In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel Egerton was one of these terque, quaterque beati, and dwelt apart on a top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish – not bestowed upon vulgar buttermilk – which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, when this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband. But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him – and carried off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be conducive to his comforts, and an occasional humdrum evening by the fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he saw a widow who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste – the accounts of her jointure satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr Hazeldean had so far anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties somewhat to alienate Mrs Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves; and when she had born a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.
William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs Egerton; but as she now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton to partake of the gaieties at the Pavilion – so, as he grew older, William, who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners and rural breeding Mrs Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations either with his guardians or at the old hall. He went late to a small college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like himself.
Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his initiation into the beau monde before he had well cast aside his coral and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and galloped across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected – not only one of the Dii majoris of fashion – but he had the still rarer good fortune to be an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him; – so popular, that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying out of "the set," and continued to be as friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were commonly called heartless, were never weary of doing kind things to the Egertons. – When the time came for Audley to leave the preparatory school, at which his infancy budded forth amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton, half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father's talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can obtain – namely, that among his own contemporaries – the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man. As a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something" became more defined – it was "something in public life" that this young man was to do.
While he was yet at the university, both his parents died – within a few months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had once been so, but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his heir, and about £1500 a-year was all that sales and mortgages left of an estate that had formerly approached a rental of ten thousand pounds.
Still, Audley was considered to be opulent, and he did not dispel that favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him: and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous – but the fashion. To this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value – he associated as much as possible with public men and political ladies – he succeeded in confirming the notion that he was 'born to ruin or to rule the State.'
Now, his dearest and most intimate friend was Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton; and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.
Harley Lord L'Estrange was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied by intermarriages to the loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere, nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a great proprietor, and rarely came to the metropolis; so that he could afford to give his son a very ample allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen, (having already attained to the sixth form at Eton,) left school for one of the regiments of the Guards.
Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange – and that was, perhaps, the reason why he was so much thought of. He had been by far the most brilliant boy of his time at Eton – not only the boast of the cricket-ground, but the marvel of the school-room – yet so full of whims and oddities, and seeming to achieve his triumphs with so little aid from steadfast application, that he had not left behind him the same expectations of solid eminence which his friend and senior, Audley Egerton, had excited. His eccentricities – his quaint sayings and out-of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they had been in the small one of a public school. That he was very clever there was no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be surmised not only from the originality but the independence of his character. He dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its praise or its censure – dazzled it, as it were, because he could not help shining. He had some strange notions, whether political or social, which rather frightened his father. According to Southey, "A man should be no more ashamed of having been a republican than of having been young." Youth and extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't know whether Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of eighteen; but there was no young man in London who seemed to care less for being heir to an illustrious name and some forty or fifty thousand pounds a-year. It was a vulgar fashion in that day to play the exclusive, and cut persons who wore bad neckcloths and called themselves Smith or Johnson. Lord L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to slight some worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth, to ensure to the offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to the Dorimonts and the Wildairs.
It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age, should represent the borough of Lansmere, (which said borough was the single plague of the Earl's life.) But this wish was never realised. Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew entirely from society – he left unanswered the most pressing three-cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the table of a young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his former haunts – when seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his gay spirits seemed wholly to have left him. A profound melancholy was written in his countenance, and breathed in the listless tones of his voice. At this time the Guards were achieving in the Peninsula their imperishable renown; but the battalion to which Harley belonged was detained at home; and whether chafed by inaction or emulous of glory, the young Lord suddenly exchanged into a cavalry regiment, from which a recent memorable conflict had swept one half the officers. Just before he joined, a vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, he made it his special request to his father that the family interest might be given to his friend Egerton – went down to the Park, which adjoined the borough, to take leave of his parents – and Egerton followed, to be introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in the history of many personages who figure in my narrative; but at present