Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849

There was about this beautiful favourite of nature, and fortune a certain helplessness, which had even its grace in that high station, and which perhaps tended to insure her domestic peace, for it served to attach her to those who had won influence over her, and was happily accompanied by a most affectionate disposition. But still, if less favoured by circumstances, less sheltered from every wind that could visit her too roughly – if, as the wife of a man of inferior rank, she had failed of that high seat and silken canopy reserved for the spoiled darlings of fortune – that helplessness might have become querulous. I thought of poor Ellen Bolding and her silken shoes. Fanny Trevanion seemed to have come into the world with silk shoes – not to walk where there was a stone or a briar! I heard something, in the gossip of those around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castleton's character, while it deepened my admiration of her lord, and showed me how wise had been her choice, and how resolutely he had prepared himself to vindicate his own. One evening, as I was sitting a little apart from the rest, with two men of the London world, to whose talk – for it ran upon the on-dits and anecdotes of a region long strange to me – I was a silent but amused listener; one of the two said – "Well, I don't know anywhere a more excellent creature than Lady Castleton; so fond of her children – and her tone to Castleton so exactly what it ought to be – so affectionate, and yet, as it were, respectful. And the more credit to her, if, as they say, she was not in love with him when she married, (to be sure, handsome as he is, he is twice her age!) And no woman could have been more flattered and courted by Lotharios and lady-killers than Lady Castleton has been. I confess, to my shame, that Castleton's luck puzzles me, for it is rather an exception to my general experience."

"My dear * * *," said the other, who was one of those wise men of pleasure, who occasionally startle us into wondering, how they come to be so clever, and yet rest contented with mere drawing-room celebrity – men who seem always idle, yet appear to have read everything; always indifferent to what passes before them, yet who know the characters and divine the secrets of everybody – "my dear * * *," said the gentleman, "you would not be puzzled if you had studied Lord Castleton, instead of her ladyship. Of all the conquests ever made by Sedley Beaudesert, when the two fairest dames of the Faubourg are said to have fought for his smiles in the Bois de Boulogne – no conquest ever cost him such pains, or so tasked his knowledge of women, as that of his wife after marriage! He was not satisfied with her hand, he was resolved to have her whole heart, 'one entire and perfect chrysolite;' and he has succeeded! Never was husband so watchful, and so little jealous – never one who confided so generously in all that was best in his wife, yet was so alert in protecting and guarding her wherever she was weakest! When, in the second year of marriage, that dangerous German Prince Von Leibenfels attached himself so perseveringly to Lady Castleton, and the scandal-mongers pricked up their ears in hopes of a victim, I watched Castleton with as much interest as if I had been looking over Deschappelles playing at chess. You never saw anything so masterly: he pitted himself against his highness with the cool confidence, not of a blind spouse, but a fortunate rival. He surpassed him in the delicacy of his attentions, he outshone him by his careless magnificence. Leibenfels had the impertinence to send Lady Castleton a bouquet of some rare flowers just in fashion. Castleton, an hour before, had filled her whole balcony with the same costly exotics, as if they were too common for nosegays, and only just worthy to bloom for her a day. Young and really accomplished as Leibenfels is, Castleton eclipsed him by his grace, and fooled him with his wit: he laid little plots to turn his mustache and guitar into ridicule; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounds, (though Castleton himself had not hunted before, since he was thirty,) and drew him, spluttering German oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him the laughter of the clubs; he put him fairly out of fashion – and all with such suavity and politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that it was the finest piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been coxcomb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman as to his success with the English in general, and Lady Castleton in particular, went away with a face as long as Don Quixote's. If you had but seen him at S – House, the night before he took leave of the island, and his comical grimace when Castleton offered him a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No! the fact is, that Castleton made it the object of his existence, the masterpiece of his art, to secure to himself a happy home, and the entire possession of his wife's heart. The first two or three years, I fear, cost him more trouble than any other man ever took, with his own wife at least – but he may now rest in peace; Lady Castleton is won, and for ever."

As my gentleman ceased, Lord Castleton's noble head rose above the group standing round him; and I saw Lady Castleton turn with a look of well-bred fatigue from a handsome young fop, who had affected to lower his voice while he spoke to her, and, encountering the eyes of her husband, the look changed at once into one of such sweet smiling affection, such frank unmistakeable wife-like pride, that it seemed a response to the assertion – "Lady Castleton is won, and for ever."

Yes, that story increased my admiration for Lord Castleton: it showed me with what forethought and earnest sense of responsibility he had undertaken the charge of a life, the guidance of a character yet undeveloped; it lastingly acquitted him of the levity that had been attributed to Sedley Beaudesert. But I felt more than ever contented that the task had devolved on one whose temper and experience had so fitted him to discharge it. That German prince made me tremble from sympathy with the husband, and in a sort of relative shudder for myself! Had that episode happened to me, I could never have drawn "high comedy" from it! – I could never have so happily closed the fifth act with a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No, no; to my homely sense of man's life and employment, there was nothing alluring in the prospect of watching over the golden tree in the garden, with a "woe to the Argus, if Mercury once lull him to sleep!" Wife of mine shall need no watching save in sickness and sorrow! Thank Heaven, that my way of life does not lead through the roseate thoroughfares, beset with German princes laying bets for my perdition, and fine gentlemen admiring the skill with which I play at chess for so terrible a stake! To each rank and each temper, its own laws. I acknowledge that Fanny is an excellent marchioness, and Lord Castleton an incomparable marquis. But, Blanche! if I can win thy true simple heart, I trust I shall begin at the fifth act of high comedy, and say at the altar —

"Once won, won for ever!"

I rode home on a horse my host lent me; and Lord Castleton rode part of the way with me, accompanied by his two boys, who bestrode manfully their Shetland ponies, and cantered on before us. I paid some compliment to the spirit and intelligence of these children – a compliment they well deserved.

"Why, yes," said the marquis, with a father's becoming pride, "I hope neither of them will shame his grandsire, Trevanion. Albert (though not quite the wonder poor Lady Ulverstone declares him to be) is rather too precocious; and it is all I can do to prevent his being spoilt by flattery to his cleverness, which, I think, is much worse than even flattery to rank – a danger to which, despite Albert's destined inheritance, the elder brother is more exposed. Eton soon takes out the conceit of the latter and more vulgar kind. I remember Lord – (you know what an unpretending good-natured fellow he is now) strutting into the play-ground, a raw boy with his chin up in the air, and burly Dick Johnson (rather a tuft-hunter now, I'm afraid) coming up, and saying, 'Well, sir, and who the deuce are you?' 'Lord – ,' says the poor devil unconsciously, 'eldest son of the Marquis of – .' 'Oh, indeed!' cries Johnson; 'then, there's one kick for my lord, and two for the marquis!' I am not fond of kicking, but I doubt if anything ever did – more good than those those kicks! But" continued Lord Castleton, "when one flatters a boy for his cleverness, even Eton itself cannot kick the conceit out of him. Let him be last in the form, and the greatest dunce ever flogged, there are always people to say that your public schools don't do for your great geniuses. And it is ten to one but what the father is plagued into taking the boy home, and giving him a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig for ever. A coxcomb in dress," said the marquis smiling, "is a trifler it would ill become me to condemn, and I own that I would rather see a youth a fop than a sloven; but a coxcomb in ideas – why, the younger he is, the more unnatural and disagreeable. Now, Albert, over that hedge, sir."