by Edward Cline
Hugh found this phenomenon in much of the literature of the period: gems of reason, snatches of profundity, and eloquently expressed verities sunk in a tepid broth of humility, skepticism, and cynicism. He wondered at times about the purposes of these admixtures, or whether there was any purpose to them at all. But all attempts to make him humble, skeptical, and cynical struck his soul dully, and registered no palpable hits. He knew that there was an answer that would construe the pandemonium of ideas he encountered, and was certain that, once he knew enough, he would have the task of composing the answer himself.
Under Mr. Cole’s tutelage, Hugh also sampled Montaigne, and rummaged through the great heap of skepticism and piety of that Frenchman’s Essays, searching for nuggets of wisdom or insight, finding some, but ultimately leaving the rest behind, his memory of the task a gray stew of distaste and indifference. However, he took personal offense at one of the Frenchman’s dictums, and grave exception to one of his stated purposes: “God permits no one to esteem himself higher,” and “I make men feel the emptiness, the vanity, the nothingness of Man, wrenching from their grasp the sickly arms of human reason, making them bow their heads and bite the dust before the authority and awe of the Divine Majesty…” He rebelled against these statements to the extent that he paid a village craftsman to carve a plaque that defiantly proclaimed his single answer: “Reason is man’s sole salvation; he is its sole and proud vessel,” and had a servant fix it to the wall above his desk. He discarded everything else that Montaigne had said, because he did not think it was worth remembering.
He also read a translation of Baron de Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois, and became fascinated by the politics revealed in the seminal work. He understood only a fraction of the thinker’s observations, but enough of them to win his intellectual affections. The Frenchman’s praise for English political institutions even awakened in him a smidgen of pride for his country; though when he heard his parents, his uncle, and their guests discuss politics, this pride was checked.
Hugh continued to wrestle with the conundrum that he was not permitted to be anything. A gentleman was nothing if he was something; to be something other than a royalty-conferred identity—an attorney, an engineer, a mechanic, or any variety of tradesman or merchant—was to be less than nothing, an object of scorn, pity, or condescension. A beggar could be given a penny or a shilling, and that would buy him a dram of gin or half a loaf of bread; a tradesman could be paid false civility, and that would buy him a humiliating kind of gratitude. This did not immediately concern Hugh Kenrick; it was his fate that all the avenues of occupation, of ambition were closed to him, other than conformity to his appointed station. He was fated to be an earl, which subsumed the rank of gentleman. A gentleman’s identity was an ethereal thing, a mode of existence aspired to by those who connived to attain it. Hugh could afford the identity, but did not aspire to it. He was a gentleman, but did not attach any value to it. To be a gentleman was to be able to brush aside those who were something and indulge in one’s whims or appetites. Many envied those who were nothing; Hugh envied those who were something. This was the society in which he was raised.
Hugh Kenrick was becoming something, even if he did not know it.
He assiduously absorbed the best of the wisdom of his age, prizing that portion of it which appealed to or nourished his sense of self, storing that portion of it with which he disagreed on the premise that it was better to know one’s enemies than to be ignorant of them. Also pressing for his allegiance was a myriad of influences: the endemic skepticism that would shortly be exonerated by David Hume in his Natural History of Religion; the jealousy of Toryism; the nonchalance of Whiggism; the demands of the Dissenters; the posturing of Non-Jurors; the tolerance of the Latitudinarians.
In this chaos, his uncle the Earl remained a mystery closed to inquiry, moved by motives incomprehensible to him, while his father became more a friend and ally than a paternal mentor.
For all this, however, he did not turn into an annoying pendant, but became a vibrant young man.
And as he grew wiser, he grew lonelier. With each new insight he gleaned from a sage, or formulated by himself, he became aware of a curious, unsettling distance growing between himself and those for whom he cared, and of the gap between himself and strangers and those whom he disliked, which was widening into a chasm. He did not cherish indifference or contempt; there was no satisfaction in these things, even though they were what he justly felt. He accepted the phenomena as natural ones, and for which he presumed there would exist a corrective in the future.
He found more use for his father’s library than for his uncle’s. The libraries, he realized, were stocked with books that reflected his uncle’s and father’s frames of mind. His father’s library was larger, and contained more titles that piqued his curiosity. The one book he valued the most came from his father’s library, and was now his own. His antidote to the received wisdom of his age was Drury Trantham, the hero of Hyperborea.
* * *
A boy adopts a hero for two reasons: because a hero captivates his soul and serves as a projection of his innermost self; and because a hero seems to have solved many problems that may worry a boy, or at least demonstrates the capacity to solve them. The hero is an idealization of successful living, even though he may die in a story. The death may be gallant, brave, tragic, or perhaps even foolhardy. But living or dead, a hero is the stylistic embodiment of living on one’s own terms—noble terms, grand terms, exciting terms—terms, in short, that complement any youth’s uncorrupted, untamed, unabridged projection of what is possible to him in life.
Drury Trantham, shipwrecked merchant, became Hugh’s model of manhood, his test for moral stature and successful living. His image of Trantham loomed large enough in his mind that it crowded out all other candidates of exemplars and became the exclusive touchstone of heroic worth.
Trantham, the tall, handsome, hardy, commanding gentleman rogue who was equally at home on the deck of his merchantman, The Greyhound, or in a raucous tavern, or on the floor of a great lord’s ballroom; Trantham, who owned a magnificent estate in Sussex and a great house in London, purchased with the proceeds of a career of flouting the King’s law; Trantham, a man who made no distinction between a common murderer and a Revenue rider; Trantham, the captain of a skilled and loyal crew whose members were willing to die for him, and often did, on land and at sea, and who would risk his life for any of them should an injustice be committed; Trantham, the ship’s captain who boasted that his vessel had never come within twenty miles of London Bridge to be customed, inspected, or unshipped, but whose holds were the secret envy of all other merchants; Trantham, the scoundrel and the patriot, who spied and fought for the country he loved, but mocked the men who ruled it.
Drury Trantham, the discoverer of Hyperborea, a land of enchanting, seductive freedom—a “kingdom of the just”; Trantham, the outsider who won the love of Circe, the beautiful daughter of the land’s wisest sage, and who became the best friend of his jealous rival for her affections; Trantham, who sailed with his crew on The Greyhound to fight an armada of pirates who had chanced near the unchartered straits that led to Hyperborea; Trantham, the laughing, defiant captain, who ordered his crippled, flaming ship to sail directly into the pirate chief’s flagship, certain that he would sink the enemy only at the price of his own death; Trantham, who died happily with the rest of his crew, because he had seen something that he had always searched for, proof of his convictions; Trantham, who died to save Circe and preserve the secret of Hyperborea’s existence.
Hyperborea governed the course of his required reading. In his uncle’s library were Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, Bishop Sherlock’s works, Richard Allestree’s The Whole Duty of Man, and Samuel Parker’s Discourses of Ecclesiastical Polity—all rendered superfluous by Hyperborea. In his father’s library there was James Tyrrell’s Patriarcha non Monarcha, Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, and all of John Locke’s works—and Hugh thought he saw so
me connection between the novel and the philosophy he found in these works. He could not decide whether the philosophy inspired the novel, or the same vision of the novel had inspired the philosophers, long before the author of Hyperborea had been born. He could not help but think that some notion of Drury Trantham had existed in the minds of these men, and that their thoughts of the right political conditions friendly to that hero were the consequences of that notion. Yet, even though all these works appealed to him—and he could understand only a small portion of them—Hugh sensed that something was missing. Drury Trantham answered the best of them, and the worst. And in Drury Trantham lay the answer to that missing thing.
* * *
One day he startled Mr. Rittles with the question: “Why cannot moral questions be posed with the same precision as a mathematical equation, so that given x andy, z is the only possible answer?”
The tutor scratched his peruke, at a loss to answer. He had never heard the question posed before; and it had been asked by a mere boy. Finally, he ventured a reply, hoping that it did not precipitate another query. “Because many such questions do not require precise answers. Theology and the Scriptures do not invite reasoned inquiry. And moral philosophy only seems to.”
“No, they don’t,” remarked Hugh. “But I believe they should.”
Another time, in the middle of a dancing master’s class, after the instructor had put the children through a strict rehearsal of gavottes and minuets, Hugh asked, “Sir, are there no dances for couples?” All the other children gaped at him, except Reverdy Brune, who smiled in the secret knowledge that Hugh had preferred her as a partner in dances that called for many partners, making sure that all their dances began and ended with her.
“Those are for plain folk, milord,” answered the tutor, who did not know whether to be astounded or angry. “Gentlemen and ladies do not indulge in such…gross amusements,” he added. “Dancing is a social grace, milord, and not a vehicle for personal diversion.”
“It can be both,” answered Hugh in a tone unconscious of its finality.
The dancing master did not pursue the subject, but peevishly instructed his students in the moves of a new country-dance.
Hugh and Roger Tallmadge had often donned stable boys’ clothes and stolen down into the village to be among people who demanded nothing of them, to see how they lived and hear what they thought. Their most enjoyable times were when they would sit on the edge of a wedding party or other celebration, and watch the villagers dance to simple tunes played on flutes and fiddles. They felt more warmth and companionship in these gatherings than in the regal, stilted balls held in the Earl’s home. “The plain folk in the village seem to have more fun,” thought Hugh, “dancing with one another, instead of with everyone.”
Westcott painted the family as a group first, then the individual members: Hugh and his sister, Alice, together and separately; the Baron and Baroness, together and separately; and the Earl. Hugh expressed interest in the art of portraiture, and often sat quietly on a stool to watch Westcott at work.
In early fall, Westcott completed his commission. Hugh’s portrait was the last canvas he finished. Westcott had managed to mute the piercing green eyes, but they were still compelling. He was not at all certain that this particular canvas would be approved. But, to his relief, Hugh’s parents were delighted with the portrait.
It depicted the boy sitting at his desk, the plaque on the wall above him, the top resting to the side of an open book, the first volume of Hyperborea. The second volume sat atop a pile of books elsewhere on the desk, its title clearly visible. Hugh’s face was lit by a sconce on the wall and a candle on the desk. Because of Westcott’s trouble with the eyes, they did not return the glance of the viewer, as was a common practice then, but rose above and beyond the viewer’s, giving the face a curious uplifted, inward, and distant expression, as though the boy had been disturbed in the middle of a thought.
Much to Westcott’s surprise, the Baron patted him on the back when he saw the finished portrait. “That’s our Hugh!” he remarked. “Well done, sir.” And the Baroness gave him a gracious smile of gratitude.
The portraits were hung on the walls. The Earl’s was put in the dining room, opposite the Earl’s usual place at the head of the table, in order that he could see it. The Baroness’s went into the Baron’s study, and the Baron’s into the breakfast room. Hugh’s portrait was also hung in the Baron’s study. “I wish to mark the difference over time,” he told his wife.
Basil Kenrick did not like Hugh’s portrait, even though he agreed to pay for it. He was glad that he would not need to see it often. The animated, pensive face of the boy confirmed his certainty that the boy was not material for rule—neither to rule, nor to be ruled. “There’s no dignity in it,” he remarked to his brother. “Looks as though he might become a higgler of ideas, or a mere scrivener. What’s that blasted book he’s reading? I can’t make out the title.”
“Hyperborea,” answered Garnet Kenrick.
The Earl looked at his brother sharply. “A blasphemous, seditious mass of verbiage!” he spat, his face reddening. “How did he come to acquire it?”
“I gave it to him,” replied Garnet Kenrick with a slight shrug of his shoulders. He smiled. “How would you know so much about it, Basil—unless you had committed the sin of reading it?”
“I was told about it by some persons in Lords who had the distasteful, lawful chore of reading it and recommending its suppression.”
“Poor souls. Well, you must own that Hugh will be the wiser for having read it himself. You will remain ignorant of its true potency for sedition.”
Basil Kenrick scoffed. “Mark my words, dear brother: That book will warp his already addled brain! See here!” he added, wagging his finger, “I want no Whig puppies raised in this house! One word of compassion for the mob from him, and I’ll brand his tongue!”
“The Whigs dislike the book as much as you do, Basil,” sighed the Baron. “And I can’t imagine Hugh expressing much sympathy for any mob.” He chuckled. “But, then, of course, I have read the book, too, and must have a warped mind myself. Whatever I have to say is the spittle of a madman.”
“Don’t be flippant,” replied the Earl. “you’re an adult, and know better than to succumb to the allure of such trash. Does he know that it was written by an executed criminal?”
“No. I don’t think it would matter if he did. Though I believe that if he did know, he would wonder why the fellow was hanged, and not awarded a royal pension.”
The Earl sniffed.
The Baron smiled and said, “After all, dear brother, who are we to judge criminals and malcontents? If it happened that a member of the Lobster Pots penned a treatise on moral philosophy, I should probably subscribe to its publication.”
The family portrait was hung on the dining room wall opposite the Earl’s. Westcott was perceptive enough to feel the tension in the family, and to note that Hugh Kenrick was disliked by his uncle and that there existed a measure of coldness between the boy’s parents and the Earl. Westcott had certainly heard of the affair round the Duke of Cumberland, and was certain that this was the reason for the tension. Because it was the Earl’s commission, Westcott composed the group portrait so that the figure of Hugh was on the far right of the tableau, almost but not quite on the fringe of it. He chose a standard setting, the breakfast room in the orangery, and assembled the family around an oval table. The Earl sat prominently in the middle foreground; the Baron and Baroness sat to the side, little Alice, a look of sweet amazement on her face, on her mother’s lap. Hugh stood at the edge of the table, looking bored but deferential. Above the group was the rendering of the first Hugh Kenrick, laying waste to a town so many centuries ago.
* * *
The Kenricks journeyed to London that fall, for both business and social reasons. Hugh was taken to many balls and concerts, and immersed in the haute culture of the times. He developed an appreciation for Gluck’s ballet Don Juan, and discovered Viva
ldi’s “Echo” Concerto for Two Violins, the Concerto for Four Violins, and the Double Concerto.
He liked the “Echo” Concerto so much that he persuaded his father to pay the musicians to perform it again after the theater had emptied of the other patrons. The novelty of the answering, off-stage violin appealed to him for a reason he did not know. He sat forward, his arms crossed on the back of the seat in front of him, his chin resting on his wrists, his fingers moving in time with the melody. His face was set in a melancholy his parents had never seen in him before. They could not decide whether it was joy or loneliness.
Chapter 10: The Young Men
“NOW I SHALL HAVE NO MORE PEACE,” LAMENTED GEORGE II ON the death of Henry Pelham, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, in March of 1754. Pelham, brother of the Duke of Newcastle, succeeded Robert Walpole in the “prime ministership,” and for eight years channeled his energies into balancing the budget, trimming the army and navy, and reducing the land tax. The king was to be proven right. Pelham’s passing inaugurated a political maelstrom that would last for decades between Tories, New Whigs, and Old Whigs—and between England and the rest of the world.
And in the following May, at Great Meadows Run in the wilds of Pennsylvania, young George Washington and a band of Virginians fired on a contingent of breakfasting French soldiers camped in a soggy bower of the forest and, after a short fight, compelled the survivors to surrender. On July 4, at Fort Necessity, Washington himself was obliged to surrender to a larger force of French, whose officer tricked him into signing a confession of murder before allowing him and his men to leave “with honor.” The French reasoned that as a state of war did not officially exist, Washington’s action in May was morally and diplomatically reprehensible. Washington did not realize that he had signed such a confession, which was written in French, until he reached Williamsburg to report to Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie, the man who had sent him on the “preemptive” expedition.