Hugh Kenrick (7 page)

“Have you discussed this with Fenwick?”

The Earl frowned. “Good lord, no!
You
deal with the man, not
I
. You’ve talked about him often enough.”

“I shall have to talk to him again and soon. It would have been wiser to await my return before you acted on Hillier’s message, dear brother. Fenwick shall be more surprised than I at this news.”

“Why?”

“If there are fruits borne of your efforts—if we are granted an exclusive contract—it will mean less serge for Fenwick to sell to the colonies…to Talbot in Philadelphia, for example, though Talbot is not our only purchaser. Fenwick has other commitments. The material has been spoken for by other factors. If he breaks his contracts with them, he may never see another.”

“Why should that concern us?” replied the Earl sharply. “We will be dealing directly with the Crown.” He shook his head in consternation. “Does this cornucopia displease you, dear brother?”

The Baron sighed. “It disturbs matters,” he said.

“If you are so concerned about Fenwick, we can purchase wool and serge from Tallmadge and Brune. You told me they must send their material to Bristol and London. We can purchase it from
those
people here—and they’ll thank us for the chance—and resell it to Fenwick, so he can meet his blasted commitments.”

“Perhaps,” said the Baron, who rose and began pacing. “But they have commitments of their own. We should have to make it worth their while to break them.”

The Earl poured himself another port. “There is no
honor
in commerce, dear brother. I don’t know why it should trouble you so. Good lord! If there were any, we should not be giving the Lobster Pots a living, or even Talbot or Worley, for that matter.” Benjamin Worley was the Kenricks’ commercial agent in London.

“It is honor that makes commerce possible, dear brother. And the law courts, when men lack it.”

The Earl merely sniffed at this truism. The brothers said nothing for a while. The candles burned steadily in their lamps, and the Dutch wall clock ticked away, measuring the Earl’s growing satisfaction and the Baron’s
galling resignation.

Then the Earl said, “We shall need to hire extra servants for the occasion, Garnet. And tidy up the place. And the staff will need to be refreshed in royal deportment.
That
is especially important. We want no discourtesy shown the Duke. All courtesies paid the king must be paid to him as well. Fawkner, his secretary, has promised he will dispatch a chamberlain to instruct us more carefully in the proper etiquette. He will also send us a list of those to be in the entourage, so that we may prepare rooms.” The Earl paused to study his pensive brother. He seemed to derive some pleasure from having shaken his sibling’s certainty about business. “The town must be jollied up somehow, to greet the Duke. I shall prevail upon the Lord-Lieutenant to loan us some militia for the occasion. I read somewhere that he has a company of unemployed musicians. No doubt the Duke will be escorted by some cavalry. Billeting for them must be found, or constructed. The grounds could do with some pruning. What do you think? Should we have fireworks? That would be grand.” Then he remembered something. “Oh! How was the tour?”

S
IR
E
VERARD
F
AWKNER KEPT HIS PROMISE; A CHAMBERLAIN ARRIVED BY
packet in Swanage two weeks later and drilled the Kenricks and their household in the courtesies required of them in all situations governed by a royal presence. For the Baron and Baroness, this was a tedious exercise, for they had already met the king and his family, in London at the celebration of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. But the Earl insisted that everyone participate. On the advice of his brother, the Earl reluctantly informed the Brunes, the Tallmadges, and other local notables of the Duke’s scheduled visit, and invited them to receive the same instruction, for no one else in Danvers had ever met or even seen royalty. On one hand, the Brunes and Tallmadges were envious; on the other, relieved, for such a visit, scheduled or surprise, would have impoverished them, and they knew that they could neither count on nor discreetly prompt the Duke’s generosity for compensation.

On the Earl’s order, the great Palladian house was cleaned and scrubbed inside and out, the portraits that lined the hallways and adorned the rooms were dusted and rearranged, the grounds pruned, the estate road replenished with new stones crushed by the workers in a Portland quarry in which the Kenricks owned a part interest. The Earl paid for bolts of red, white, and blue ribbon to be hung from the village’s windows and the single steeple of St. Quarrell’s church, and even ordered a new banner bearing the Kenricks’ coat-of-arms to be made; it would be flown from a staff near the mansion’s cupola. The Kenricks’ coat-of-arms was a stale thing concocted by an ancestor in the fifteenth century. It featured a shield with a griffin and wolf rampant, a bramble flower and a rose respectively clenched in their mouths, the creatures clinging to the bend in the shield. On a scroll beneath the shield was the Kenrick family motto:
Vires facit veritas
.

The excitement was so infectious that even Hugh Kenrick, usually aloof from the concerns of his uncle, felt a swell of anticipation. He, too, submitted to the chamberlain’s drills, and surprised the man and even his parents with the quickness of his learning. The chamberlain, in a droning, condescending tone, imparted the rules of royal decorum in an informal setting. “Unless otherwise waived by the Duke, all courtesies must be
observed, without exception… At a dinner or other table, no one may eat or drink, or initiate a meal, until the Duke has begun his repast… No one may contradict or interrupt the Duke in any discourse or conversation on any whatsoever subject… The subject of Culloden Moor will not be mentioned in the Duke’s presence, nor will any questions, either supportive or mischievous, be entertained by His Grace on that subject… Ladies and children will not address the Duke, except in answer or reply to him… All persons must rise when His Grace enters a room, and sit again only if and when His Grace sits or he waives the courtesy… No person shall wear a white rose or ribbon in the Duke’s presence; a breach of this rule will be interpreted as a treasonous gesture, and the offender will be removed from the premises… His Grace is not his father the King, and so one may meet his glance, though not in an insolent or reproachful manner…”

Hugh memorized these and other rules, and excelled in the physical demonstration of deference. He had never before had to bow to anyone; the meaning of it was not lost on him. Curiously, he looked forward to the chance to bow to someone admirable. His parents and his uncle had painted such a glowing picture of the Duke in their dinner table conversation that the impending episode had a quality of magic for which he wished to be prepared. He imagined that a heroic god was coming to visit.

Hugh’s parents were secretly pleased that their son seemed to be happy, happy at home, happy with his tutors. He was even oblivious to the chronic disapproving scrutiny of his uncle. One day, after a footman brought him home from his lessons at the Tallmadge house, he rushed into his father’s study and handed him a sheet of paper. “Pater! It ought to be your motto!” he exclaimed.

His father read the single sentence on it that was written in a fine, elegant hand:
O Fortunatas Mercatores!
He grunted in appreciation. “Oh, happy traders!” he said. He looked quizzically at his son. “
My
motto?”

Just then Hugh heard a rustle of silk, and the Earl came out of the shadows cast by the candles on the Baron’s desk. Hugh turned and glanced at his uncle, then at his father. “Yours,” he answered, “and Uncle’s.”

“Hardly the motto of a great family, Master Hugh,” remarked the Earl, who sat down in an armchair within the light.

“Under what circumstance did you come upon this idea?” asked the Baron.

“Mr. Cole gave us some sentences to put into Latin, and that was one of them.”

“Is not our motto
noble
enough for you, dear nephew?” asked the Earl.

Hugh remembered that his uncle was having a new banner with the family coat-of-arms prepared for the Duke of Cumberland’s visit by the best seamstresses in the village. “It is not a proper sentiment for commerce, sir,” he replied in his defense.

The Earl merely hummed in answer.

The Baron chuckled. “I won’t deny that our business could use a motto to celebrate its success.”

“It’s from Horace’s
Satires
,” said Hugh.

“It’s a very formal language, Latin,” mused his father. “Don’t you think?”

“No one speaks it, Pater,” observed Hugh, “yet so much wisdom can be found in it.”

“True.” His father glanced sharply at his brother, and as though he were expressing some secret defiance, smiled and said, “Henceforth, Hugh, you may address me as ‘Father.’ And your mother, ‘Mother.’ My teeth gnash every time you address me as ‘Pater.’ It’s much too formal, you see.”

“Yes…Father.”

“All right, Hugh. Get along. Your uncle and I are discussing our status as fortunate traders.”

Hugh began to turn, but hesitated.

“Is something else on your mind, Hugh?”

“Yes, Father.” Hugh paused, then spoke. “Why may not one mention Culloden Moor when the Duke comes?”

The Baron shrugged. “It is a…sensitive subject,” he replied.

“I have heard—from Mr. Cole, and Squire Tallmadge—that it was a great battle, and a great victory.”

“Perhaps the Duke is too modest to wish to discuss it,” suggested the Earl.

The Baron looked again at his brother, then smiled. “There are those who say it was a great battle and victory, Hugh, and that he wept when he rode onto the battlefield and saw all the dead Scots. And there are some who claim that the Duke ordered the execution of a wounded Scot who smiled at him, and that he established a cruel policy of punishment in that luckless country.”

“What is the truth?” asked Hugh.

The Earl answered impatiently, “What it will be when the Duke has passed to his final judgment.”

On another occasion, Hugh sat in his room late one evening, when the house was quiet and the fall wind beat against the lead-paned glass of his window. The candles on his desk flickered nervously over a page in his school notebook and twenty Latin sentences he had been assigned by Mr. Cole to “render into plain, unembellished English.” They were difficult sentences, but an hour’s effort had conquered them.

Two of them fascinated him for a reason he could not yet explain. He had even read them out loud to himself, in Latin and in English, so that he could hear the words in a place other than inside his head. “Though you lose all, remember to preserve your honor.” “Freedom with danger is preferable to peace with slavery.” These dictums attracted him; he felt like a moth near a candle. He did not fully understand honor, for so far he had none to preserve. Perhaps, he thought, it had played a role in the incident at Eton; something like honor was in peril then, though the notion of it which most people seemed to ascribe to was of a passive nature. He knew that his parents and uncle believed that his actions then had been dishonorable. He could not agree with them; they had forgiven him, but the forgiveness made him uneasy.

Neither did he fully understand the sentence about freedom and slavery; he was enough of an aristocrat that the ideas held little meaning for him in the world around him. Yet, he thought, there was some unseen connection between honor and freedom and slavery, and with what had happened to him at Eton.

The next day, Mr. Cole congratulated Hugh on all the translations but one. “Danger
seemed
preferable, Master Kenrick, not
is
. ‘Poitor visa est periculosa libertas quieto servito.’”

Hugh was surprised with his error, and conceded the point, but preferred his error to the literal translation. He said, “It ought to read
is
, sir.”

“You may not correct Sallust,” said Mr. Cole. “Kindly keep in mind that the quotation is from his
History
.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Cole assigned his pupil twenty more translations. He meant it to be punishment. His pupil did not know it.

This was an aspect of Hugh which caused his parents to smile and which confounded his tormentors and enemies: his amity with thought. He did not regard thinking as a painful, cursed exercise peripheral to his life. Thought was as much an appendage to his being as an arm or a leg, and more: it was a constant, inseparable, welcome companion, as much an automatic
reflex as using any of his limbs. Puzzles, problems, and conundrums did not last long under his purview. The behavior of many adults and of other children who did not think perplexed him for the longest while; he was growing to be intolerantly contemptuous of anyone who resisted or dismissed it. He neither nurtured nor dwelt on this contempt; it seethed at any chance encounter with resistance, then ebbed when the cause was no longer present.

Another tutor, Mr. Rittles, instructor in rhetoric, asked his pupils to parse two selections from Cicero, and to write an essay on the logical connection between them and on the moral inference to be drawn from them. Hugh obeyed, but tested the tutor’s patience when he questioned the truth of the second selection. When Mr. Rittles noted the statement in his pupil’s essay, and bid him to explain its brevity, Hugh said, “Cicero wrote: ‘Every judgment is an act of reasoning. Of good reasoning, if the judgment is true. Of bad reasoning, if it is false.’”

“Have you any difficulty with that, Master Kenrick?” asked the tutor.

“Some,” answered Hugh. “You see, sir, he goes on to say that ‘Reason underlies all our vices and is the seed of injustice, intemperance, and cowardice.’” Hugh paused and laid down his notebook. “I cannot connect the two logically, sir, because I do not believe that reason can be a partner in vice, injustice, intemperance, or cowardice.”

Mr. Rittles scoffed, and with a discreet glance at the other boys—there were seven other pupils—invited them to join him. All but Roger Tallmadge chortled. The tutor asked, “Then to what would you attribute the cause of vice and all those other failings, Master Kenrick?”

“I am sure that it is not reason, sir, or any kind of thought at all. Reason is too noble an endowment to sire stupidity.”

“How would you explain false judgments, if not by bad reasoning?”

“Perhaps by…counterfeit thought, sir!” exclaimed Hugh. “Or just…
emotion. Whimsy. A man can
pretend
to think, to reason, but it is not actually
reasoning
. If reasoning is concerned with only truth, it cannot be employed to create a lie, or an untruth.” He spoke, and his bright eyes seemed to reflect the light that had flared up in his mind. He derived an almost feverish joy from following a course of logic, from putting his thoughts into words, thoughts that were his own, and words that were his own. “So there cannot be such a thing as
bad
reasoning. Bad
thinking
, perhaps, but not bad reasoning. But men do lie, they do put over untruths. They use words and logic, but do not report truth, they have not employed
reason, they have only erected a
subterfuge
, or a facade.” Hugh paused to catch his breath. “Bad thinking is either intentional, or proof of lack of wit.”

Mr. Rittles had leaned forward on his lectern, engrossed together with the boys in the impromptu speech. Then he realized that Hugh was waiting for a reply. He snapped to attention, patted his wig once, then cleared his throat and said, “My apologies, Master Kenrick. It seems that you have propelled us, prematurely, into the realm of
sophistry
. For that is the name of what you were laboring to identify.” He gave his pupils a broad, all-inclusive grin. “Sophistry may be called the antithesis of reason.”

Roger Tallmadge smiled in celebration of his friend’s victory. The other boys granted Hugh a grudging, if envious respect. And Mr. Rittles said, “Thank you, Master Kenrick. Someday, when you assume the ermine of your office, you may speak with such passion in Lords. I earnestly hope to audit that moment.” He never baited or mocked Hugh again.

Hugh cemented his friendship with Roger Tallmadge inadvertently, but inevitably. The boy was mystified by Hugh’s self-possession and aloofness, which seemed to both reject companionship and at the same time invite it. He observed that Hugh’s bearing provoked hostility or wary respect. He could not understand the older boy’s character, but he was attracted to it.

Roger Tallmadge was given a clue to understanding it when, one afternoon, he had difficulty delivering an oral description of two countries to the geography and history tutor, Mr. Galpin. Mr. Galpin was the lowest paid and the least liked of all the tutors in Squire Tallmadge’s pay. His colleagues avoided him and his pupils feared him. He compensated for his unpopularity by being a prig to his colleagues and a tyrant to his dozen charges. He regularly failed a pupil’s otherwise competently written paper for the misspelling of a single word, and badgered anyone who displayed the least hesitancy in answer to a question in class.

Hugh Kenrick was the only pupil who had never been subjected to the tutor’s abuse, because he always knew his lessons, and because he was the nephew of an earl.