The House of Vipont,—“Majora canamus.”
The House of Vipont! Looking back through ages, it seems as if the House of Vipont were one continuous living idiosyncrasy, having in its progressive development a connected unity of thought and action, so that through all the changes of its outward form it had been moved and guided by the same single spirit,—“Le roi est mort; vive le roi!”—A Vipont dies; live the Vipont! Despite its high-sounding Norman name, the House of Vipont was no House at all for some generations after the Conquest. The first Vipont who emerged from the obscurity of time was a rude soldier of Gascon origin, in the reign of Henry II.,—one of the thousand fighting-men who sailed from Milford Haven with the stout Earl of Pembroke, on that strange expedition which ended in the conquest of Ireland. This gallant man obtained large grants of land in that fertile island; some Mac or some O’——- vanished, and the House of Vipont rose.
During the reign of Richard I., the House of Vipont, though recalled to England (leaving its Irish acquisitions in charge of a fierce cadet, who served as middleman), excused itself from the Crusade, and, by marriage with a rich goldsmith’s daughter, was enabled to lend moneys to those who indulged in that exciting but costly pilgrimage. In the reign of John, the House of Vipont foreclosed its mortgages on lands thus pledged, and became possessed of a very fair property in England, as well as its fiefs in the sister isle.
The House of Vipont took no part in the troublesome politics of that day. Discreetly obscure, it attended to its own fortunes, and felt small interest in Magna Charta. During the reigns of the Plantagenet Edwards, who were great encouragers of mercantile adventure, the House of Vipont, shunning Crecy, Bannockburn, and such profitless brawls, intermarried with London traders, and got many a good thing out of the Genoese. In the reign of Henry IV. the House of Vipont reaped the benefit of its past forbearance and modesty. Now, for the first time, the Viponts appear as belted knights; they have armorial bearings; they are Lancasterian to the backbone; they are exceedingly indignant against heretics; they burn the Lollards; they have places in the household of Queen Joan, who was called a witch,—but a witch is a very good friend when she wields a sceptre instead of a broomstick. And in proof of its growing importance, the House of Vipont marries a daughter of the then mighty House of Darrell. In the reign of Henry V., during the invasion of France, the House of Vipont—being afraid of the dysentery which carried off more brave fellows than the field of Agincourt—contrived to be a minor. The Wars of the Roses puzzled the House of Vipont sadly. But it went through that perilous ordeal with singular tact and success. The manner in which it changed sides, each change safe, and most changes lucrative, is beyond all praise.
On the whole, it preferred the Yorkists; it was impossible to be actively Lancasterian with Henry VI. of Lancaster always in prison. And thus, at the death of Edward IV., the House of Vipont was Baron Vipont of Vipont, with twenty manors. Richard III. counted on the House of Vipont, when he left London to meet Richmond at Bosworth: he counted without his host. The House of Vipont became again intensely Lancasterian, and was amongst the first to crowd round the litter in which Henry VII. entered the metropolis. In that reign it married a relation of Empson’s, did the great House of Vipont! and as nobles of elder date had become scarce and poor, Henry VII. was pleased to make the House of Vipont an Earl,—the Earl of Montfort. In the reign of Henry VIII., instead of burning Lollards, the House of Vipont was all for the Reformation: it obtained the lands of two priories and one abbey. Gorged with that spoil, the House of Vipont, like an anaconda in the process of digestion, slept long. But no, it slept not. Though it kept itself still as a mouse during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary (only letting it be known at Court that the House of Vipont had strong papal leanings); though during the reigns of Elizabeth and James it made no noise, the House of Vipont was silently inflating its lungs and improving its constitution. Slept, indeed! it was wide awake. Then it was that it began systematically its grand policy of alliances; then was it sedulously grafting its olive branches on the stems of those fruitful New Houses that had sprung up with the Tudors; then, alive to the spirit of the day, provident of the wants of the morrow, over the length and breadth of the land it wove the interlacing network of useful cousinhood! Then, too, it began to build palaces, to enclose parks; it travelled, too, a little, did the House of Vipont! it visited Italy; it conceived a taste: a very elegant House became the House of Vipont! And in James’s reign, for the first time, the House of Vipont got the Garter. The Civil Wars broke out: England was rent asunder. Peer and knight took part with one side or the other. The House of Vipont was again perplexed. Certainly at the commencement it, was all for King Charles. But when King Charles took to fighting, the House of Vipont shook its sagacious head, and went about, like Lord Falkland, sighing, “Peace, peace!” Finally, it remembered its neglected estates in Ireland: its duties called it thither. To Ireland it went, discreetly sad, and, marrying a kinswoman of Lord Fauconberg,—the connection least exposed to Fortune’s caprice of all the alliances formed by the Lord Protector’s family,—it was safe when Cromwell visited Ireland; and no less safe when Charles II. was restored to England. During the reign of the merry monarch the House of Vipont was a courtier, married a beauty, got the Garter again, and, for the first time, became the fashion. Fashion began to be a power. In the reign of James II. the House of Vipont again contrived to be a minor, who came of age just in time to take the oaths of fealty to William and Mary. In case of accidents, the House of Vipont kept on friendly terms with the exiled Stuarts, but it wrote no letters, and got into no scrapes. It was not, however, till the Government, under Sir Robert Walpole, established the constitutional and parliamentary system which characterizes modern freedom, that the puissance accumulated through successive centuries by the House of Vipont became pre-eminently visible. By that time its lands were vast; its wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as “a Great House,” was a part of the British Constitution. At this period, the House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand divisions,—the peer’s branch and the commoner’s. The House of Commons had become so important that it was necessary for the House of Vipont to be represented there by a great commoner. Thus arose the family of Carr Vipont. That division, owing to a marriage settlement favouring a younger son by the heiress of the Carrs, carried off a good slice from the estate of the earldom: uno averso, non deficit alter; the earldom mourned, but replaced the loss by two wealthy wedlocks of its own; and had long since seen cause to rejoice that its power in the Upper Chamber was strengthened by such aid in the Lower. For, thanks to its parliamentary influence, and the aid of the great commoner, in the reign of George III. the House of Vipont became a Marquess. From that time to the present day, the House of Vipont has gone on prospering and progressive. It was to the aristocracy what the “Times” newspaper is to the press. The same quick sympathy with public feeling, the same unity of tone and purpose, the same adaptability, and something of the same lofty tone of superiority to the petty interests of party. It may be conceded that the House of Vipont was less brilliant than the “Times” newspaper, but eloquence and wit, necessary to the duration of a newspaper, were not necessary to that of the House of Vipont. Had they been so, it would have had them.
The head of the House of Vipont rarely condescended to take office. With a rent-roll loosely estimated at about L170,000 a year, it is beneath a man to take from the public a paltry five or six thousand a year, and undergo all the undignified abuse of popular assemblies, and “a ribald press.” But it was a matter of course that the House of Vipont should be represented in any Cabinet that a constitutional monarch could be advised to form. Since the time of Walpole, a Vipont was always in the service of his country, except in those rare instances when the country was infamously misgoverned. The cadets of the House, or the senior member of the great commoner’s branch of it, sacrificed their ease to fulfil that duty. The Montfort marquesses in general were contented with situations of honour in the household, as of Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, or Master of the Horse, etc.,—not onerous dignities; and even these they only deigned to accept on those special occasions when danger threatened the star of Brunswick, and the sense of its exalted station forbade the House of Vipont to leave its country in the dark.
Great Houses like that of Vipont assist the work of civilization by the law of their existence. They are sure to have a spirited and wealthy tenantry, to whom, if but for the sake of that popular character which doubles political influence, they are liberal and kindly landlords. Under their sway fens and sands become fertile; agricultural experiments are tested on a large scale; cattle and sheep improve in breed; national capital augments, and, springing beneath the ploughshare, circulates indirectly to speed the ship and animate the loom. Had there been no Woburn, no Holkham, no Montfort Court, England would be the poorer by many a million. Our great Houses tend also to the refinement of national taste; they have their show places, their picture galleries, their beautiful grounds. The humblest drawing-rooms owe an elegance or comfort, the smallest garden a flower or esculent, to the importations which luxury borrowed from abroad, or the inventions it stimulated at home, for the original benefits of great Houses. Having a fair share of such merits, in common with other great Houses, the House of Vipont was not without good qualities peculiar to itself. Precisely because it was the most egotistical of Houses, filled with the sense of its own identity, and guided by the instincts of its own conservation, it was a very civil, good-natured House,—courteous, generous, hospitable; a House (I mean the head of it, not of course all its subordinate members, including even the august Lady Selina) that could bow graciously and shake hands with you. Even if you had no vote yourself, you might have a cousin who had a vote. And once admitted into the family, the House adopted you; you had only to marry one of its remotest relations and the House sent you a wedding present; and at every general election, invited you to rally round your connection,—the Marquess. Therefore, next only to the Established Church, the House of Vipont was that British institution the roots of which were the most widely spread.
Now the Viponts had for long generations been an energetic race. Whatever their defects, they had exhibited shrewdness and vigour. The late Marquess (grandfather to the present) had been perhaps the ablest (that is, done most for the House of Vipont) of them all. Of a grandiose and superb mode of living; of a majestic deportment; of princely manners; of a remarkable talent for the management of all business, whether private or public; a perfect enthusiast for the House of Vipont, and aided by a marchioness in all respects worthy of him,—he might be said to be the culminating flower of the venerable stem. But the present lord, succeeding to the title as a mere child, was a melancholy contrast, not only to his grandsire, but to the general character of his progenitors. Before his time, every Head of the House had done something for it; even the most frivolous had contributed one had collected the pictures, another the statues, a third the medals, a fourth had amassed the famous Vipont library; while others had at least married heiresses, or augmented, through ducal lines, the splendour of the interminable cousinhood. The present Marquess was literally nil. The pith of the Viponts was not in him. He looked well; he dressed well: if life were only the dumb show of a tableau, he would have been a paragon of a Marquess. But he was like the watches we give to little children, with a pretty gilt dial-plate, and no works in them. He was thoroughly inert; there was no winding him up: he could not manage his property; he could not answer his letters,—very few of them could he even read through. Politics did not interest him, nor literature, nor field-sports. He shot, it is true, but mechanically; wondering, perhaps, why he did shoot. He attended races, because the House of Vipont kept a racing stud. He bet on his own horses, but if they lost showed no vexation. Admirers (no Marquess of Montfort could be wholly without them) said, “What fine temper! what good breeding!” it was nothing but constitutional apathy. No one could call him a bad man: he was not a profligate, an oppressor, a miser, a spendthrift; he would not have taken the trouble to be a bad man on any account. Those who beheld his character at a distance would have called him an exemplary man. The more conspicuous duties of his station—subscriptions, charities, the maintenance of grand establishments, the encouragement of the fine arts—were virtues admirably performed for him by others. But the phlegm or nullity of his being was not, after all, so complete as I have made it, perhaps, appear. He had one susceptibility which is more common with women than with men,—the susceptibility to pique. His amour propre was unforgiving: pique that, and he could do a rash thing, a foolish thing, a spiteful thing; pique that, and, prodigious! the watch went! He had a rooted pique against his marchioness. Apparently he had conceived this pique from the very first. He showed it passively by supreme neglect; he showed it actively by removing her from all the spheres of power which naturally fall to the wife when the husband shuns the details of business. Evidently he had a dread lest any one should say, “Lady Montfort influences my lord.” Accordingly, not only the management of his estates fell to Carr Vipont, but even of his gardens, his household, his domestic arrangements. It was Carr Vipont or Lady Selina who said to Lady Montfort, “Give a ball;” “You should ask so and so to dinner;” “Montfort was much hurt to see the old lawn at the Twickenham villa broken up by those new bosquets. True, it is settled on you as a jointure-house, but for that very reason Montfort is sensitive,” etc. In fact, they were virtually as separated, my lord and my lady, as if legally disunited, and as if Carr Vipont and Lady Selina were trustees or intermediaries in any polite approach to each other. But, on the other hand, it is fair to say that where Lady Montfort’s sphere of action did not interfere with her husband’s plans, habits, likings, dislikings, jealous apprehensions that she should be supposed to have any ascendency over what exclusively belonged to himself as Roi faineant of the Viponts, she was left free as air. No attempt at masculine control or conjugal advice. At her disposal was wealth without stint, every luxury the soft could desire, every gewgaw the vain could covet. Had her pin-money, which in itself was the revenue of an ordinary peeress, failed to satisfy her wants; had she grown tired of wearing the family diamonds, and coveted new gems from Golconda,—a single word to Carr Vipont or Lady Selina would have been answered by a carte blanche on the Bank of England. But Lady Montfort had the misfortune not to be extravagant in her tastes. Strange to say, in the world Lord Montfort’s marriage was called a love-match; he had married a portionless girl, daughter to one of his poorest and obscurest cousins, against the uniform policy of the House of Vipont, which did all it could for poor cousins except marrying them to its chief. But Lady Montfort’s conduct in these trying circumstances was admirable and rare. Few affronts can humiliate us unless we resent them—and in vain. Lady Montfort had that exquisite dignity which gives to submission the grace of cheerful acquiescence. That in the gay world flatterers should gather round a young wife so eminently beautiful, and so wholly left by her husband to her own guidance, was inevitable. But at the very first insinuated compliment or pathetic condolence, Lady Montfort, so meek in her household, was haughty enough to have daunted Lovelace. She was thus very early felt to be beyond temptation, and the boldest passed on, nor presumed to tempt. She was unpopular; called “proud and freezing;” she did not extend the influence of “The House;” she did not confirm its fashion,—fashion which necessitates social ease, and which no rank, no wealth, no virtue, can of themselves suffice to give. And this failure on her part was a great offence in the eyes of the House of Vipont. “She does absolutely nothing for us,” said Lady Selina; but Lady Selina in her heart was well pleased that to her in reality thus fell, almost without a rival, the female representation, in the great world, of the Vipont honours. Lady Selina was fashion itself.
Lady Montfort’s social peculiarity was in the eagerness with which she sought the society of persons who enjoyed a reputation for superior intellect, whether statesmen, lawyers, authors, philosophers, artists. Intellectual intercourse seemed as if it was her native atmosphere, from which she was habitually banished, to which she returned with an instinctive yearning and a new zest of life; yet was she called, even here, nor seemingly without justice, capricious and unsteady in her likings. These clever personages, after a little while, all seemed to disappoint her expectations of them; she sought the acquaintance of each with cordial earnestness; slid from the acquaintance with weary languor,—never, after all, less alone than when alone.
And so wondrous lovely! Nothing so rare as beauty of the high type: genius and beauty, indeed, are both rare; genius, which is the beauty of the mind,-beauty, which is the gen ius of the body. But, of the two, beauty is the rarer. All of us can count on our fingers some forty or fifty persons of undoubted and illustrious genius, including those famous in action, letters, art. But can any of us remember to have seen more than four or five specimens of first-rate ideal beauty? Whosoever had seen Lady Montfort would have ranked her amongst such four or five in his recollection. There was in her face that lustrous dazzle to which the Latin poet, perhaps, refers when he speaks of the—
“Nitor
Splendentis Pario marmore purius...
Et voltus, niminm lubricus adspici,”
and which an English poet, with the less sensuous but more spiritual imagination of northern genius, has described in lines that an English reader may be pleased to see rescued from oblivion,—
“Her face was like the milky way i’ the sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without a name.”
(Suckling)
The eyes so purely bright, the exquisite harmony of colouring between the dark (not too dark) hair and the ivory of the skin; such sweet radiance in the lip when it broke into a smile. And it was said that in her maiden day, before Caroline Lyndsay became Marchioness of Montfort, that smile was the most joyous thing imaginable. Absurd now; you would not think it, but that stately lady had been a wild, fanciful girl, with the merriest laugh and the quickest tear, filling the air round her with April sunshine. Certainly, no beings ever yet lived the life Nature intended them to live, nor had fair play for heart and mind, who contrived, by hook or by crook, to marry the wrong person!
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