The Gentleman

by Forrest Leo

  *These visits were not always in an observatory capacity. See the first note here.—HL.

  *Oddly, my poetic tastes in this instance align with Mr Savage’s. It should be acknowledged, however, that we are not in the majority in this judgment. I say this because Mr Savage presents his view as hard fact, when it is truly nothing but opinion.—HL.

  *Pocklington Place is located just across from a small park. I will not say which one out of respect for my cousins’ privacy.—HL.

  *Rather better than good, I would venture. But you needn’t take my word for it—their quality is now generally acknowledged.—HL.

  *Both these assertions, contrary to others my cousin sets forth in these pages, are hard fact.—HL.

  *By this Mr Savage means that he once contrived to have himself admitted to Bedlam, where he stayed for some time because none of the doctors noticed that he was perfectly sane. If not for the Herculean efforts of Mr Simmons it is likely that he would be there still.—HL.

  *I have tried this. I became disoriented.—HL.

  *See the first note above.—HL.

  *As I have said, I am not convinced of this. I have made enquiries of his intimates, but Mr Simmons equivocates decorously and Miss Savage changes the subject. But as this is characteristic of both of them in most conversations, I cannot take it to mean one thing or another. I wish I had known Mr Savage in our youth—I would have been curious to see him as a boy. I believe he would have been very much like he is now, only his virtues (wit, sensitivity, imagination) would I think have been fresher and his vices (narcissism, vanity, cowardice) less developed. But this may not be so. He may have been precisely the way he is now, only shorter.—HL.

  *I considered excising these disparaging sentences (and others like them) from this manuscript. However, upon reflection I decided to leave them. I did this not from lack of respect for Lady Lancaster, but for the very opposite reason. When this reaches publication, I look forward to seeing what she might do to Mr Savage.—HL.

  *This is not where he was.—HL.

  *I am surprised that no one thought of telling me. If Mr Savage had contacted me, events would have unfolded differently. I cannot say if they would have ended up better or worse, for who ever can?—HL.

  *She is, as is now common knowledge.—HL.

  *The informed reader will note that Mr Savage’s first collection of poetry, Pasquinades and Peregrinations, was published shortly after his seventeenth birthday. It is my favourite of his books. The following two collections—published at two-year intervals—grew progressively repetitive, though I still found some small enjoyment in them. The most recent was subject to an especially scathing review from Mr Pendergast.—HL.

  *I believe Mr Simmons to be an excellent literary critic. However, he is in this instance an uncharitable one.—HL.

  *My cousin Ashley had returned to London that very morning. He has since told me that his first stop was his club, where he changed clothes because he could not tolerate his own smell but refused all tonsorial advances in the name of haste, and his second was Pocklington Place.—HL.

  *This is less of an exaggeration than you might think.—HL.

  *See the note here.—HL.

  *This statement has been seriously questioned. In the time I have known him, I have met no fewer than three women who have made Cousin Ashley regret his freedom very much indeed—and I beg you to note that I say these are only the three I have met.—HL.

  *The debate which has raged around the topic of Cousin Ashley’s discovery of El Dorado deserves a volume of its own. Suffice it to say that the controversy still rages—but that he and Mr Savage are currently outfitting an expedition in hopes of settling the thing one way or the other.—HL.

  *I should say we would!—HL.

  *Record of this shipwreck has been made elsewhere. I will remind the reader only that Mr Lancaster single-handedly saved no fewer than seven Danish, four Norwegian, and two Algerian sailors from drowning.—HL.

  *There truly were letters. I was privileged to read one or two of them before they were posted. They were moving.—HL.

  *It is typical of Mr Savage that in his own mind he is Arthur Pendragon.—HL.

  *I would submit, at random: the height of Athenian democracy; the Crusades; the great Age of Discovery; Constantinople in 1453 (though not exciting in a pleasant way, perhaps); Renaissance Italy; and the year 0. I could go on, but I shall not. (I am something of an amateur historian.)—HL.

  *Mr Savage refers to Mr Pendergast’s most recent book, which is in fact titled Maxims.—HL.

  *This is another of those instances where I must put away whatever personal antipathy there is between Mr Savage and myself and confess that he and I are in complete agreement. Mr Tompkins’s shop has excellent selections both of History and Law, which are subjects about which I am particular.—HL.

  *I have often endeavoured to ascertain the precise circumstances (and date) when Messrs Simmons and Tompkins first met, but I have been unable to do so. Both men are peculiarly absent from public record, and unaccountably reticent about certain details. My own private notion is that they met many decades ago in the army—they have an unconscious ease with one another which is to be gained I think only by military comradeship or physical intimacy—but I hasten to add that this is based upon nothing but a feeling.—HL.

  *I consider Miss Thomasina Kensington to be a person of enormous capacity and great depths of friendship. We are acquainted.—HL.

  *This claim has been substantiated and confirmed.—HL.

  *Like so many of my cousin’s poetical notions, this work has yet to see the light of day.—HL.

  *Proof seems a strong word; it is at most circumstantial evidence. If a case were built upon the letters alone, I do not believe it would hold up in court. It did not in the case of Musser vs Van Dyke.—HL.

  *The discerning reader will have noticed that here Mr Kensington displays not sophistry but astute apprehension and keen insight into the human heart.—HL.

  *In our youth, Ashley, Vivien, and I spent a great deal of time together. Their father, Lord Lancaster, is the elder brother of my father. I mention this only to state that never, in all our time together, did Ashley Lancaster display toward me, or any person or thing in my sight, deliberate cruelty. He is not a man who torments for pleasure.—HL.

  *Mr Savage believes himself fiendishly clever for ending a chapter mid-sentence, sans punctuation. I vainly endeavoured to have it changed, but he smiled at me in that odd way he has (which I truthfully find a little unnerving) and said, ‘Hubert, the same was done by Cervantes—so why not by I?’ I had not time to compose the dissertation necessary to reply.—HL.

  *Lancaster family legend holds that we have a shadowy, possibly illegitimate great-uncle who was a famous boxer. I do not know if that is true or not. But it is an undeniable fact that we Lancasters have a rather devastating uppercut.—HL.

  *Mr Savage does not record it, but he in fact broke three bones in his left hand—I do not know why he used his left, but he did—and was compelled to wear a plaster cast for the next several weeks. As he makes no mention of this, I can only assume it was an embarrassment to him.—HL.

  *The holes in the walls at Pocklington Place have yet to be filled. Attempts have been made, but the study is Mr Savage’s domain and he has forbidden it. He says that the holes serve to remind him of the ‘marvellous eccentricity’ of his family.—HL.

  *This is unquestionably the case. I have become very dear friends with Miss Savage, and I do not think she would be offended to hear me say that her anger, on the rare occasions it is displayed, is more frightening than anything I have yet witnessed.—HL.

  *Mr Savage of course refers to Lord Macaulay’s hero who single-handedly held a bridge against an army by forcing it to engage him one soldier at a time. Mr
Savage claims to deplore Macaulay’s verse as simplistic and pandering, but I do not think that he can truly mean it, as his is very much the same.—HL.

  *This gun is still in Mr Savage’s study. It has a place of honour on the wall, beside a pair of crossed sabres. Mr Savage refers to it as ‘the only gun which ever began a friendship.’—HL.

  *Bruegel.—HL.

  *It had been eighteen months.—HL.

  *Miss Savage was not flirting with him: I believe she was toying with him. She does this often with men. It can sometimes feel demeaning.—HL.

  *It is common knowledge that Dr Nansen’s ship was designed with an egg-shaped hull, so that instead of being crushed by pack ice it should pop out of the water like a champagne cork and ride atop the ice farther north than any ship has hitherto sailed.—HL.

  *Such reports are common in Norway. I assume they are groundless, but cannot be certain. Cousin Ashley seems to put some stock in them.—HL.

  *I believe this to be true. I once had the privilege of accompanying Cousin Ashley on an expedition of sorts. We were boys, and decided to have an adventure. We snuck out of Garrick Hall, which is the Lancaster estate, and spent the night somewhere in the park, under a willow tree. It was awful. But at about two in the morning Vivien found us. She had also snuck out, and had brought pillows, blankets, candles, water, and a mincemeat pie. I have the fondest recollections of that night.—HL.

  *I am glad that Mr Savage prevented Cousin Ashley from revealing himself to Miss Savage. His motives derived perhaps more from a personal and less a moral feeling, but all the same it was well done. Sometimes I believe that Miss Savage must be protected, if I can be forgiven for saying it, from herself.—HL.

  *I cannot help but feel that there must be a middle ground which is healthier than either extreme. I like to think that I live in this middle ground.—HL.

  *I have attempted to debunk this, as it is scarcely credible. However, I have not yet been able to.—HL.

  *Watching these two gentle, unassuming intellectual giants spar is one of the great pleasures of any educated man’s life.—HL.

  *The island nation of Iceland has a history as dramatic and fascinating as our own. I recommend study of it to any reader who has an interest in such things. —HL.

  *Dissolute?—HL.

  *I cannot better Mr Savage’s description—I can but confirm that this is precisely what it looks like, and if you doubt it you may go there and see for yourself.—HL.

  *The Hefestaeum in fact caused so much trouble for the Metropolitan Fire Brigade that the government became involved. A fine system was imposed. The club was allowed two fires per annum, which the MFB would put out gratis. Each fire after that would incur a heavy fee.—HL.

  *Well said, sir, and God save the Queen!—HL.

  *What neither of my cousins grasped is that the answering of three questions to gain admittance was a typical trial undergone by questers and knights errant in days gone by. Had they borne this in mind, they would have perhaps found themselves more amenable to their situation, and much trouble could have been prevented. I have pointed this out to them, but have received in return for my pains only blank, unamused stares.—HL.

  *I have spoken with several members of the Hefestaeum, none of whom can agree on what kind of metal it was—but they do confirm that it was not iron.—HL.

  *The reader will be amused to note that the possessor of this Jovian forehead is the inventor of that mysterious device which has lately been the subject of so much press, the Minerva Mechanism.—HL.

  *I have consulted multiple sources, including Messrs Lancaster, Benton, Kensington, and Asquith, and am assured that in fact no more than about fifteen minutes could have elapsed.—HL.

  *See the note here. What I failed to mention there is that, to avoid the fee (for the Hefestaeum has far more than two fires a year), the club has formed its own in-house fire brigade.—HL.

  *I like Mr Kensington very much, and wish he did not have this unfortunate distrust of Her Majesty’s government.—HL.

  *What is ironic is that I had not read this (or had not attended, if I had) when I wrote the note here. Also, I beg the reader to observe that the people Mr Savage sees he imagines all to belong to the seedier parts of humanity. This is to me sad. I would have seen soldiers, scholars, doctors, lawyers, ministers, and perhaps even a poet.—HL.

  *A ‘great honour,’ ‘equal gravity,’ and a ‘small bow’—you will note that my cousin’s politeness decreases proportionally to the amount of civility with which he is treated. I once chanced to compliment him on a poem and he replied, ‘Hubert, if I cared about your opinion or thought you in any way qualified to judge such things, I would be gratified.’ This shows you what I mean.—HL.

  *What my cousin fails to articulate is that he finds beauty and wisdom in the chivalric tales of long ago. It is a knightly quality which he is attempting to describe. He does so poorly because there is no room in those tales for cynicism, and Mr Savage is made nervous by sincerity.—HL.

  *I cannot speak to the truth of this. Mr Savage seems always to have thought rather well of himself.—HL.

  *As do I. It is one of the few things Mr Savage and I agree upon.—HL.

  *Both Mr Savage and Mr Lancaster often work in this way. It is why, together, they tend to be dangerous and unpredictable.—HL.

  *Yes. One does. I have checked with Mr Kensington—though I do not know why Mr Savage could not have done that himself.—HL.

  *It is of course called a palette.—HL.

  *There may be sense in what she says. I do not know, however, and I do not wish to court controversy and so shall not delve into the fraught question of feminism.—HL.

  *Candidly, Mr Savage’s first apologies rarely are sincere.—HL.

  *I, too, can attest to this. I once sailed for an afternoon with Cousin Ashley upon the Daydream. I enjoyed it very much, but learned first-hand the weight of good sailcloth.—HL.

  *This figure has been questioned.—HL.

  *Mr Savage wears this coat still. He refuses to have it mended. He says it is for sentimental reasons, but I believe it is so that when people point out the rip, he can tell the story.—HL.

  *Doubtful.—HL.

  *Again, yes.—HL.

  *I have taken the liberty of inserting this fragment, which was written by Mr Savage’s comrade-in-words Whitley Pendergast—who was an eyewitness to the events recorded in this chapter, and who wrote voluminously of them. It seemed to me a fitting addition, and I thought the reader would benefit from a third-party perspective.—HL.

  *There are times when I worry for the part of my family which lives at Pocklington Place. But then I remember that they have got Simmons, and my mind is eased.—HL.

  *While I have the utmost respect for Mr Simmons, I am compelled as a solicitor to point out the shortcomings of his argument.—HL.

  *There were none. I did learn, however, that one of these bullets prematurely ended a duel being fought nearby.—HL.

  *I refuse to any longer be Mr Savage’s research assistant. If you are curious, dear reader, look it up yourself: for I will not.—HL.

  *Inspector Dewhurst and I are acquainted. He is a good police officer and a good man. I am sorry that he is made to look foolish in these pages, for he is not so in life.—HL.

  *Legally speaking, this was well done.—HL.