Austin Elliot

Chapter I

It so happened that, in the early spring of the year 1789, three young men, each equally full of health, hope, honour, courage, and curiosity, separated at the gates of Christ Church College, Oxford, to pursue divergent paths across that world, which at that time seemed, to those three, only a sunny fairyland lying betwixt them and the grave — only some enchanted land full of glorious adventures, and they three young knights ready to achieve them.

To one of the three — the youngest and the most famous, by name Jenkinson — we shall only allude incidentally. With regard to the other two, George Hilton and James Elliot, we shall have to be a little more explicit.

George Hilton, the handsomer and cleverer of the two, went abroad, and, having met his friend Jenkinson at the storming of the Bastile, came home again in September, bringing with him a lovely, fragile, little being of a French wife, a daughter of the Due de Mazagan, who had been pleased that his daughter should marry this fine young English merchant, and be out of the way of those troubles, which he saw gathering so darkly, and so swiftly, over the head of his devoted order.

He could not foresee that she would be dead before Christmas ; still less, that in the Conciergerie and on the guillotine, he should rejoice that there was one loving heart the less to mourn for him. But so it was : the poor, gentle, happy, loving little creature died in her husband's arms, almost before that husband knew how well he loved her. The grand old Duke made his last bow, when he took precedence of his old friend the Marquis de Varly, on the scaffold, looked at the sovereign people through an eye-glass, shrugged his shoulders with infinite contempt, and died. The gallant young Vicomte Tourbillon, who should have been duke — George's dear friend — yielded to circumstances, and entered the Republican army ; and George Hilton, disgusted with the world, from sheer want of anything to do or care about, plunged headlong into commerce.

Bringing apparently a keen, clear head, a reckless courage, and a vigilance which slept not by day or by night, to the assistance of his father's house, he tided that house successfully through those terrible revolutionary years, and raised it at last to be one of the great commercial houses in England. From very shortly after he assumed his place as an active unit in the firm, his father and his father's old partner submitted to him ; and from that time these two terrified old men found themselves dragged (if one may use such an expression) by the heels through a seething whirlpool of audacious speculation, powerless and hopeless, only to emerge again, with wealth and credit such as they had never dreamt of, before this valiant, gloomy young man had joined them. There might be terror on 'Change, or panic in Lombard Street ; but though these two might sit cowering in their chairs, fluttering papers which they scarcely understood, in their trembling fingers, yet there was always one figure before them, in which they felt forced to trust, the figure of George Hilton — the figure of a tall, handsome man in dark clothes, with a set austere face, who rarely spoke, into whose eyes they gazed with a look of awe, and a look of supplication painful to witness. Always kind, he was always undemonstrative, and they looked up to him as some god who held their fate in his hands.

Once he broke out. When an old clerk came into the room where they sat, and, with a face only more ashy pale than their own, told them the terrible disaster of Austerlitz, the two old men fell to feebly wailing ; but the younger, leaping from his chair, gave a wild hurrah, which made the respectable old ledgers on the shelves shake the dust off their leaves against him.

People began to talk. They said, " This man married a Frenchwoman. His favourite brother-in-law has notoriously deserted the traditions of his family, and become a rabid Buonapartist. He is a colonel in the Guards. This man, Hilton, is making money in some underhand way by means of his brother-in-law." It was partly true. George Hilton, with a keen and well-judged confidence in French arms, had advanced an immense sum shortly before this to his brother-in-law, with which to speculate in the French Funds. Austerlitz had been won, the coalition broken, and the Hiltons had pocketed forty thousand pounds. Since Lord Loughborough and Sir John Scott passed their Treason Act in 1792, no man had driven his coach and four through it to greater profit than George Hilton.

Some sharp and traitorous trading went on in those times ; and we are sorry to say that the house of Hilton and Co. were always looked upon as being deeply engaged in transactions which, even by the commercial world in those days, were considered dangerous and odd. Even at that time, when certain trades were paralysed, and there were so many needy merchants ready to sacrifice almost any principle to keep themselves afloat, the house of Hilton and Co., with their enormously increasing wealth, were looked on askance. They always seemed to have such wonderfully correct information from abroad. The Jews might follow George Hilton about the Exchange with bent body and sliding foot, to listen and see whether some priceless hint might not fall from him ; but the Christians were only distantly polite to him, although, when he had once been known to take a commercial step, there were hundreds eagerly ready to follow his example.

We have hardly to do with the ways by which his enormous fortune was made : our business is more with what ultimately became of it. There are plenty of houses, eminently respectable now, whose books, from 1790 to 181 5, would hardly stand a closer examination than those of Hilton and Co.

And also the history of the accumulation of this fortune must be told ; because, in the mad and successful pursuit of his wealth, George Hilton had reached the age of fifty years before he bethought him that there was no one to inherit it.

The gold that he had wallowed in for thirty years had left its dross upon him; and the George Hilton of 18 19 was a sadly different man from the George Hilton of 1789. The sarcastic young dandy had developed into a cold, calculating man of fifty; a man who seldom spoke in the House, but always shortly and to the purpose ; a man who had refused office, some said ; an odd man ; a man no one liked very much, but a man so careful in his facts, that when he spoke he put every one else, save four or five, in a flutter ; a man who would contradict the King on his throne, and had never had a genial smile or a joke for any man in the House, save for one. Lord Hawkesbury. After 1806 he laughed and joked no more in Parliament. Lord Hawkesbury never forgave him the Austerlitz affair before mentioned. He kept on speaking terms with him for a time, but after his removal into the House of Lords, in 1808, George Hilton found himself without a friend in the House, and only one friend in the world — that is to say, James Elliot, the third of those we saw at Christ Church Gate in 1789.

In 1819, then, he married. The wife he selected was a Frenchwoman. She was a cousin of his first wife's, and a daughter of an emigre count, Commilfaut, very little, very pretty, and an intensely devout Huguenot in religion. This marriage Vv^as a happier one than his first. She was soon the mother of two children, Eleanor and Robert.

Chapter II

With, perhaps, less energy and talent than his friend George Hilton, James Elliot, the second of the two men mentioned in the first page of this book, contrived, in after life, to land himself in a higher position in the world than did his friend. His taste would have led him into political life — for who could have been at Christ Church with Canning and Jenkinson, and not have been ambitious ? — but his fortune was far too meagre to allow him think of it. He remained at his college, living on his studentship and his small fortune very happily indeed ; keeping up a constant correspondence with the richer and better-born men who had gone out into the world to fight in the great battle which was then raging.

So his politics were confined to the common-room. But sometimes he appeared before the world and had his say with the rest. He wrote a pamphlet once which made a sensation ; he found this very charming. Here was a way to make himself heard. He wrote another pamphlet and then another. They were all good. His assumed signature began to be looked for, and people began to ask who he was. These pamphlets of his were very humorous and full of stinging allusions, which, we daresay, made men laugh then, but which now fall dead on the ear of any but a very old man indeed. Some of them have absurd titles, such as one (1801), " Choking the Black Dog with Butter; " and again, same date, " Shall we have the Doctor's Boy or the Constable ? " By which last delicate allusion to Lord Sidmouth, it appears, not that it is of any great consequence, that he was in favour of a vigorous prosecution of the war, and that his enthusiasm was slightly too strong for his manners.

The art of pamphleteering becomes, like most others, more easy by practice. James Elliot got to a great perfection in the art. He had considerable humour, and so his half-truths were put forward under a cloud of ridicule, and before people had done laughing, the question had gone by. He never spared but one man, Mr. Jenkinson. Once this gentleman (developed into Lord Hawkesbury since 1796) was accused of having written one of these pamphlets himself, but the very next one which appeared under the same signature entirely dissipated that notion. Lord Hawkesbury came in for his share of good-humoured railing abuse with the rest. It was evident that this man, this " Beta," as he chose to sign himself, was a man of great ability. Nobody was safe with him. His principles wanted fixing: he had no principles at present. They must really be fixed. Such a man was lost to the public business of the country.

In 1808, then, his old friend. Lord Liverpool, with the full consent of all his colleagues, offered place to his old friend and correspondent James Elliot ; the place of Inspector of Shoals and Quicksands, worth ;^ 1,500 a year. And of all the appointments made by the good Lord Liverpool during his long tenure of office, this was perhaps the best. It was made in quieter and less anxious times than those which followed — in the merry old war times, when a man's friend was his friend still, and one knew one's friend from one's enemy — when one's heart could warm up at thinking of dear old Jim Elliot's delight at getting this place, and one still had wit or folly enough left in one to put a few lines of doggrel into the postscript of the letter giving him the offer of it — in the times which came before the Peace, and before those weary fifteen years when one sat and drove, or tried to drive, four such terrible horses as Peel, Wellington, Huskisson, and Canning, four-in-hand, only to drop down dead from sheer anxiety and over-work at the end of it all. Peace be with Lord Liverpool's ashes ! We very strongly suspect him of having been a good and noble man.

The last Lord High Inspector of the Shoals and Quick- 6 sands was Admiral Sir Foreland North, who died in 1707. He accumulated a fortune in that office, and was made Lord Sands of Godwin. It was found that he had scandalously neglected his duties, and the peculiar revenues of the office being found remunerative, it was put in commission, my Lords of the Shoals and Quicksands being required to pay an Inspector so much a year, and to pocket the rest of the revenues themselves. This was found to work very well ; it created patronage ; and the Inspector being liable to forfeiture of his office for neglect, the work was better done than in the old times.

The revenues of the office of Lord High Commissioner' of the Shoals and Quicksands were derived from several sources. Heavy tonnage dues were demanded from all ships which passed through the Needles, came within three miles of Eddystone Rock, passed St. Michael's Mount without letting fly topsail-halliards, threw empty bottles or garbage into the sea within three miles of any one of the Cinque Ports (counting from Old Hythe, and including eight miles east of Deal), passed through the Steat of Skye, and did many other things too tedious to mention. These revenues, though they doubtless cost a great deal to collect, paid in a great deal of money. The office might sometimes once a year have a grand battalion day in the Arches, and might have to spend several thousand pounds in proving " that John Smith, of the Hope schooner, master mariner, was within three miles of the port of Sandwich when, on the day aforesaid, he did then and there, not having the fear of God before his eyes, wilfully, maliciously, and devilishly, cast into the sea, sundry, that is to say, five hundred glass bottles, against the peace of our Lord the King, &c., &c.; " yet, in spite of all this, the revenues of the office were, for many years, a very pretty provision for five lords, and an inspector to do their work. There were good years and bad years. Sometimes John Smith would prove his case — prove " that he was a good five miles off Sandwich ; that, being disguised in liquor, he had only thrown his empty brandy-bottle at his apprentice's head, and that it had gone accidentally overboard, and had floated within the prescribed limits ; " in which case, my lords would take it up to Chancery, and have to pay. But the Inspector always got his salary ; and my lords made a pretty good thing of it on the whole.

But after sixty years or so, master mariners began to have the fear of God before their eyes, to go round the Isle of Wight, to let fly topsail-halliards in the right place, to keep clear of the Eddystone, to kick the apprentice into the lee-scuppers before they threw the brandy-bottle at him — to conform, in fact, more or less, to all laws, human and divine ; which proceedings had this result : that the Lords of the Shoals and Quicksands were left without money to pay their Inspector. It became necessary to supplement their revenues by a parliamentary grant, which was done. But the parliamentary grant was so small, that, since 1795, the position of a Lord of the Shoals and Quicksands had been merely an honorary one. Parliament paid their Inspector. Sometimes they got twenty pounds apiece ; sometimes they did not. But Government allowed them a yacht, and the Inspector had the use of it.

When Mr. Elliot took the place, in 1808, he found everything in confusion. There were fifty squabbles on hand with the Lords of the Admiralty on the one hand, and with the Trinity Board on the other. He set to work like a young giant, although he was now forty years of age, and brought everything into order.

He had no special knowledge of his subject, but he soon knew more about it than any one. When a man has learnt how to learn, he can soon learn anything. The " experts " connected with his office, coasting skippers, pilots, lighthouse-keepers, and such people, came to him with their facts, put them before him, and looked at him, as much as to say, " Here are our facts, can you generalize 8 from them ? " They very soon found that he could. They were perfectly contented. It was a very good appointment.

My Lords of the Admiralty were high, and the Trinity brothers were mighty with him. There had been " heats " between these two great bodies on the one side, and the Commissioners of Shoals and Quicksands on the other, in which my Lords of the Shoals had left their Inspector to bear the brunt. The story of my Lords of the Admiralty having threatened to fire into the yacht of the Shoals and Quicksands, on the Motherbank, must be untrue, for the Admiralty yacht had no gun on board. Therefore, how could they have threatened to fire ?

Mr. Elliot composed all these difficulties, and got his office into noble order. His beloved Lord Liverpool used to point to him with pride : " My man, gentlemen."

But what with soothing my Lords of the Admiralty, and doing battle with the Trinity House, for leave to do their work, it was five years before he thought of marrying. When he did think of it, there was no doubt about the lady whatever. He married a certain Miss Beverley, a lady of thirty-one, gentle and good, like himself ; and on his forty-ninth birthday she bore him a noble boy.

Chapter III

It is with the fortunes of this boy, Austin Elliot, and with the fortunes of George Hilton's little girl, Eleanor, that we have principally to concern ourselves.

Mr. Elliot had lived in an atmosphere of politics ever since he was nineteen, and had known, and known well, some, nay most, of the leading men of his time. He had his grievance, his crotchet, like most other men, good or bad ; and his grievance was this : That he, James Elliot, might have succeeded in public life, if he had not been so unfortunately poor. He was very likely right. No one will ever know whether he was right or not ; the thought was a little, carefully unexpressed, grievance to him. He never got sour over it, he never expressed it in words; but the thought that he had been only prevented from holding a very high place in the world by his poverty, was at times a source of vexation to him, more particularly whenever he saw a beggar on horseback, or a fool in a high place.

He was poor no longer : he had a good place, his wife succeeded to a very good fortune, and his boy, Austin, was growing to be one of the handsomest, cleverest, bravest lads ever seen — a boy who at ten years old showed, as his father thought, most singular and precocious talent.

At this time, when Austin was ten years old, and when there was no doubt of his being a very clever boy of his age, Mr. Elliot took the great resolution of his life. That boy should be educated as a statesman. " That boy should be prime — Hush — don't let us talk nonsense," said Mr. Elliot to himself, with a radiant smile, as he sat one night over the fire, and saw various things in the hot coals.

The idea was rather a grand one. Mr. Elliot's creed was, that statesmanship was a trade, and that a man must serve his apprenticeship to that trade as to any other. A man should be trained to politics early, if he was going to succeed. Look at Pitt the younger. (He could not have read Lord Macaulay's " Life of Pitt ; " it would have killed him. Lord Macaulay's atrocious suggestion, that Pitt was not the most sublimely wise of the human race, would have cut the ground from under his feet.) Yes, a statesman must be trained ; of that there was not the least doubt in the world.

And he, James Elliot, would train and educate one. His own boy. If he, with his intricate knowledge of every political twist and turn for forty years, could not do that, who could } And see the material he had to work on ; was there ever such a boy.> " Never," said Mr. Elliot:

*' Seldom," say we. He certainly was a boy of the very highest promise, and the man who doubted that Mr. Elliot would succeed in maldng a leading statesman of him must have been a foolish person. It is no use for that man to say that Mr. Elliot did not succeed. By all rules he should have succeeded, therefore the charge of folly stands.

So Mr. Elliot was going to educate his son for a statesman. But how ?

This was the most delightful problem. The thought of it made Mr. Elliot's good face glow with happiness. Here was a beautiful soul, a noble intellect, ready to receive any impression whatever. Mr. Elliot worked at his task with a will, but he perhaps began it a little too early. The young ambition must be excited by the recital of noble deeds, and so little Austin heard many a long story of great debates, grand political tricks, and so on, which were far from interesting. At the same time, Mr. Elliot was very furious with the conduct of a certain great statesman on the Catholic question, and found it rather pleasant to denounce him to the wondering Austin, who, at ten years old, had acquired a distinct idea that Parliament was a place something like school : and that Sir Robert Peel was a traitor many degrees worse than Guy Fawkes ; had a distinct belief, indeed, that, when every one had their due, the Right Honourable gentleman would be carried about on a chair, with his boots on hindside before, and all the straw coming out at his knees.

When Austin was ten years old, his mother died, and he was left more exclusively to his father's care. And then these two contracted a strong personal affection for one another, which lasted to the very end, and which was never clouded for one instant. It was well for Austin to remember that hereafter ; well to remember that he had never cast one shadow on his father's kind, gentle face.

This boy Austin grew so rapidly in both moral and physical beauty, that the absurd chimerical plans of his father seemed to become, year by year, more probable of fulfilment, and his old friends began to leave off laughing at him and to confine themselves to shaking their heads.

There can be no doubt that the boy was not perfect, but really he was one of the finest and noblest boys ever seen. He made a great success everywhere. Possibly it would be better, instead of cataloguing his various perfections, to ask you to think of the handsomest and most amiable boy you ever knew, and call him Austin Elliot. You will know him as a man ; let us skip his paedeia.

One of Austin's earliest recollections was that of going to play with Eleanor and Robert Hilton ; for, after Lord Liverpool's death, James Elliot resumed his intimacy with his old friend George Hilton once more. He had always kept up his acquaintance with him, but it had not been very close for many years. Lord Liverpool had never forgotten the affair of the French funds. It was the sort of thing that he could not forget ; and, indeed, it is not a pleasant subject to dwell on. James Elliot never mentioned George Hilton's name before him, but he would not throw his old friend entirely overboard. And after Liverpool and Canning died, with the harness on their backs, the world was very lonely to him, and he once more grew intimate with his old friend, whom he had always tried to defend, even against his own conscience.

Eleanor Hilton was not, as a child, beautiful, or even pretty. At first, her features were too square and prononcd ; but, from the very first, she was as gentle, good, and sensible as a child might be. Robert, on the other hand, was peevish and somewhat violent. He had, also, a strange wayward mendacity — at times refusing to tell a lie to save himself from punishment, at another lying without an object. A still more fatal vice had not hitherto shown itself, but was developed afterwards.

When Eleanor was twelve and Robert ten, their mother died ; and, nearly at the same time, Austin Elliot went to Eton, and Robert was left with Eleanor to the care of a governess. Had old Hilton known as much about the

Z2 boy, as the governess and Eleanor, he would never have, in all probability, sent the boy to Eton ; but so it was. He followed Austin to Eton after two years ; and we need hardly say, after the character we have before given to Austin, that he was affectionately kind to his old playfellow, and did all for him he could. But Robert soon began to go wrong : he was always in trouble. Nothing serious, however, took place till after several months.

There came to Eton the very same half, and to the very same house as Austin, a certain Lord Charles Barty, of the same age as Austin, and by no means unlike him in person and manners. In a very short time, a great boyfriendship sprang up between the two. In the very first letter he wrote to Eleanor his new friend was mentioned, in most enthusiastic terms ; and his intimacy with this friend seemed to increase as it went on. It is useless to describe Lord Charles Barty as a boy, for we shall see him hereafter in manhood, in far more terrible places than the old playing-fields, or the Brocas or Surly, or any of those places one hears Eton men talking about ; nevertheless, it is necessary to tell you that, like Austin, he was a noble and manly fellow, and that he was as worthy of Austin's honest love as Austin was of his.

When Robert Hilton appeared, after two years of friendship between these two, whether it was through jealousy, or through mistrust, or what, it is impossible to say, but Lord Charles Barty took a violent dislike to him. To obviate this, and to interest his friend in poor Robert Hilton, Austin told him what he had not very long known for himself, that he was in love with Eleanor Hilton, and that this was her brother.

All the chivalry in Charles Barty's heart fired up at this. One sharp pang of jealousy shot through him when Austin told him that there was one in the world preferred to himself, but it was instantly smothered and killed. He would have liked a few more years of his friend's undivided love, but it was not to be, Austin was in love, fianci. Mrs.

Austin's brother must be taken up, whatever might be his faults.

It is no use trying to laugh at all this, by saying that Lord Charles Barty and Austin were neither of them fifteen. They were quite as much in earnest, if not more so, than if they had been five-and-twenty. Lord Charles took up Robert Hilton and patronized him and was affectionate to him and fought his battles for him to the death, but all in a high and mighty manner, and under protest.

But the catastrophe came. One day, while Austin and Charles Barty were out at cricket, or what not, a boy, at home in disgrace, came into Lord Charles' room and found Robert Hilton at his desk. He seized him and raised an alarm. The master was fetched, and the wretched boy's boxes were searched. Everything which had been missed in the house for a long time was found there. The habit which the governess and Eleanor had noticed in him, and which they dared not mention to his father, was confirmed with a vengeance. The lad was a thief ! When Austin and Lord Charles came innocently home, laughing, they found the whole mine sprung under their feet. Either one of them would have given their right hands to save the lad, whom neither liked , but it was too late.

He was so very, very young, they pleaded for him. Austin and Lord Charles went personally round to the other boys whose things had been stolen and begged their forbearance. He was so very, very young. I need not say what English boys did under those circumstances. There was no scandal : he was sent home.

So it came about, that George Hilton's inordinate, and somewhat unprincipled love of gain began to be revenged on him in the person of his only son. He knew it and felt it as keenly as any one, but he hardened his heart. He refused to see the boy for some time, and he saw him but very seldom until he died.

It becomes necessary that we should follow Robert Hilton to the end, before we return to Austin and Eleanor, and it is very shortly done.

This case was the one on which the Rev. Letmedown Easy gained his present enormous and justly-earned reputation for keeping young bears from growling, by feeding them with the toast from under the asparagus, with the ends of the twists, the eggs out of the pigeon-pies, and other soothing dainties, until the whole thing was blown over and everybody had forgotten all about it. He well earned the thousand pounds which George Hilton paid him for keeping his son five years without scandal, and for sending his father a good character of him each half-year. The Rev. Letmedown was not such a very great rogue ; he undertook to whitewash the boy, and he whitewashed him. He kept him at his parsonage in Essex safe out of temptation for five years, until the whole thing was forgotten. He was paid for doing it and he did it.