Hugh Kenrick (6 page)

Two months later, a brother to Hugh was stillborn, and Effney Kenrick nearly died in labor. The boy insisted that he be allowed to be at her bedside until she recovered. He waited on her as a servant would, amused her by playing games with his three-year-old sister, Alice, on the bedroom rug, did tricks with his brass top, and read to her poems from her favorite authors. To cheer her up, he once read humorous passages from a volume of
The Spectator
, by Addison and Steele, but stopped when he saw that her laughter cost her strength. Garnet Kenrick was present at many of these sessions, first and foremost out of concern for his wife, and then because he had never seen his son express such care for anyone. This made him happy. He was so touched by the phenomenon that he at times permitted himself to pat his son’s shoulder in gratitude and camaraderie, out of sight of the Baroness.

And when she was in pain, Hugh would hold her hand. On one of these occasions, when the Baron was not present, she said to him, “I would not discourage the devotion you have shown me, Hugh. But it is more love than I have seen you demonstrate for your father and uncle. Is there a reason for it?”

Hugh smiled at her. “You are a beautiful, kind, and wise lady, Mater, and no misfortune or agony should ever darken your life. It is a personal offense to me that you should suffer.” He paused. “My devotion to you is not from duty, but from affection.”

The Baroness studied her son for a moment and stroked his hand. “Do you frown on duty, Hugh?”

The boy put down the book he had been reading from—a collection of poems by Thomas Gray—and thought for a moment. “It is of less value to me than is sincerity, Mater. I cannot understand its importance in the scheme of things.” He paused. “I am truly sorry that you lost a son.”

The Baroness smiled sadly. “Are you not sorry that you have lost a brother?”

Hugh looked perplexed, then his brow cleared. “I did not know him at all, Mater,” he replied, “and so he cannot be so much of a loss. You were better acquainted with him than I could ever be.”

The Baroness smiled again and squeezed his hand. “My dear, precious Hugh,” she said with warmth. “Stay with me while I rest for a while, and then send for Bridget.”

*  *  *

When the Baroness had fully recovered, Garnet Kenrick took his son on a postponed inspection tour of the Danvers estate, a weeklong sojourn, accompanied by Owen, the valet. They spent their nights at local taverns or as guests in tenants’ cottages. On the tour they encountered trains of packhorses laden with agricultural produce, coal, and wares bound for London, Bristol, Southampton, and other major towns. These trains also carried wool, cloth, and any other manufactured goods that could be lashed to the ponies. While on the road, they stopped to talk with chapmen, men who sold penny books, utensils and patent medicines. The Baron bought a chapbook from one of these men for Hugh, who read while he was riding his own pony, and saw that it contained some news, anecdotes, biblical sayings, and folk wisdom. They also met with “riders,” men employed by city merchants to visit tradesmen in the towns with samples of cloth patterns and other household goods, and who took orders and filled them. The idea so fascinated Garnet Kenrick that he on several occasions bought the riders lunch in nearby taverns in trade for information on the workings of this new profession.

Danvers was five thousand acres. The Earl took no active role in managing them, other than approving his brother’s decisions. Much of Danvers was tilled or occupied by leaseholders, or tenant farmers, who paid rent to the Earl in money or in kind, or a portion of their harvest or produce. In exchange for farming for the likes of the Earl and the Baron, the tenants were allowed small private plots on which they grew or pastured what they pleased. But largely they acted on the Baron’s instructions.

Garnet Kenrick owned a much-thumbed copy of Jethro Tull’s
Horse-Hoeing Husbandry
, a classic in the science of agriculture, and kept a journal thick with his own observations and endeavors. And he had long ago entered into a correspondence with a Norfolk gentleman farmer, trading ideas about how to mix soils, about paring and burning fields, the best way to abolish rack-rents, the efficacy of various kinds of manure and dung, the novelty of burying clay trunks to drain marshy soil, and improving the stock of Dorset red cattle. At one point on their venture, the Baron stopped atop a hill and waved to the panorama below them, which was a third of the Kenricks’ holdings, and lectured Hugh on the breeds of sheep and cattle they could see dotting the rolling meadows. “Ryelands and Herefords yield superb wool for fine broadcloth, Hugh. Sussex and Southdowns have a fine
soft curly wool, you see, highly prized by the factors in London. Other sheep I have introduced from the north are long-wooled Cheviots, Northumberland Muggs, and the Lancashire Silverdales, which, incidentally, account for over one-third of the country’s annual clipping.” His father stopped speaking, and took out his journal to make some notes.

Hugh looked from the panorama to his father. “It is a grand enterprise! You are a great man, Pater.”

His father leaned on the pommel of his saddle to study his son. There was a set, subdued smile on his face, a smile that wished it could be more. “Thank you, Hugh. However, you mustn’t forget that all this is your uncle’s.”

Hugh’s face turned red. He had forgotten the Earl, and he wished he had no reason to remember him. “No, Pater. I shan’t forget it.”

When they came to farms, the Baron said, “Turnips, you see, do not deduct from the soil. They add healthiness to it. My plan is to have all the tenants let crop fields lie fallow and sown with turnips, and instead of feeding the cattle by letting them wander over a fallow field, require the tenants to harvest turnips and feed their stock in pens and stables. This will prevent damage by stock to the fields. It will also simplify the care of stock in winter. I plan to eliminate untreated dung from the fields—and with it flies, which are thought by some to cause certain ailments.”

His father, Hugh learned, encouraged the cultivation of clover, sainfoin, and lucerne grasses for fair-weather cattle grazing, and mandated the practice of sowing seed by hoe and drill. The Danvers sheep population was evenly divided among the Cheviots, Muggs, and Silverdales. In the town, the Baron had established a “factory” which used a fly-shuttle and hosiery frames, to which the tenants brought their shearings. Danvers produced some of the finest serge in the south of England, which found ready buyers in Exeter, a closer market than was London. Garnet Kenrick carried with him a little book of notes in which was itemized the tasks he had given each tenant on previous tours. Hugh noted that while many of the tenants greeted his father with some cheer and familiarity, their inquiries after the health of the Earl were more a reluctant afterthought than genuine concern. It was as though his father were a respected Apollo, and his uncle a feared Zeus.

One evening, while they rested in a tenant’s cottage, Hugh said, “What wonderful material those sheep are! I shall write a play!” Owen, the valet, had just finished serving them a meal at the rickety table, and was busy
with chores by the fire he had lit. The tenants, a man, his wife, and three children, had retired to the stable to share straw with their cattle. The Baron had invited them to stay, but the tenant, out of respect for his master, had insisted on spending the night with his livestock.

The Baron exchanged interested glances with Owen, the valet. “About sheep?” asked the father.

“No,” said Hugh. “About men. I mean, about families. They shall be the Cheviots, the Muggs, and the Silverdales. It will be a farce.”

“A farce?”

“About
our
families.” Hugh paused. “We will be the good family—the Silverdales,” he assured his father. “But they will all act like sheep.”

The Baron laughed, and Owen grinned. “I don’t know as I like being cast as a sheep, Hugh.”

“You will be the smartest Silverdale. The Muggs will be the Brunes, and the Cheviots will be the Tallmadges. I will make people laugh!”

“Well,” said the Baron, not certain of the seriousness of his son’s ambition, “you may also make others angry. Has your tutor not yet taught you the misfortunes of John Dryden, and of Defoe, and John Gay? Near-death at the hands of an offended statesman’s ruffians—for satirical remarks on that man’s character—gaol and the pillory for mocking the government’s policies—and enforced literary eclipse. Ah, the pugnacious phrase, the skewed allusion, the hurtful rhyme!” exclaimed the Baron with a shake of his head. “Riskier business than piloting a leaking merchantman into port in a storm!” He noticed the curious look on his son’s face, and added, “But, I’m sure that
you
would compose nothing of that ilk.”

Hugh leaned across the table anxiously. “You would not be offended by it, would you, Pater?”

“I? Heavens, no, for I would know that you meant me no malice. Your mother might even feel flattered by the attention, and I’m sure you would do her justice. But if you wrote such a fable, you must have some object in mind, some custom, or foible, or hypocrisy that you wished to mock, and some character in your opus must be a paragon of it. And he must be confounded in the end, and made the object of contempt. And though you may cloak your cast in several varieties of wool, it would be less the verse or the prose that would cause people to laugh, and more the sly inspiration for that object. Your ‘mocked man’ must deserve his
shearing
, if you will allow the analogy. Nothing is so silly-looking as a sheared sheep, and sillier-looking still is a sheared ram, and many of
his
biped kin have the run of
society. The foolish and the corrupt may be audacious in their actions, or blind or indifferent to their foolishness and corruption, but never so blind or foolish that they would not savor vengeance. For, you see, Hugh, mirth and mockery can be more stinging than an undisguised truth, and outlive both their author and his object.”

“By your leave, your lordship,” interjected Owen, who was cleaning the Baron’s muck-covered boots by the fireplace, “if I might construe your epistle? How many poets have purchased immortality at the price of their lives?” He paused and turned to address Hugh. “That is what your father the Baron is telling you, milord.”

“Why, Owen!” exclaimed Garnet Kenrick with a laugh, “How perfect a way to putting an end to my blather! I could have gone on for hours! I’m in your debt!”

The valet raised his eyebrows and smiled with half-serious emphasis. “A shilling a month more in my wages would make me happy, your lordship.”

The Baron replied without hesitation. “You shall have two, Owen.”

For a reason he could not then fathom, Hugh learned more about men, from this short exchange between his father and the valet, than he did from his father’s epistle.

*  *  *

When they returned from the tour, they found that the Earl had gone to London. “Urgent business that needed his special attention,” explained the Baroness to her husband. “He would not say what it might be, although another of Hillier’s men arrived with a message. He said he may have a surprise for you when he returns.”

The Baron grinned. “Danvers will be ours for a while.”

The Kenricks had a placid week during the absence of the Earl. They did not acknowledge the peace, but it was real to them all the same. When the Earl returned, he was beaming after his own fashion. He immediately called his brother into his own study and poured them both glasses of port. “We want a guaranteed purchaser of our serge,” he explained. “That would be Fenwick, in Exeter. Fenwick wants a share of the contracts to supply the army with clothing. That would be Wraxall, in Army Supply. Wraxall has the close ear of the Duke. I have been to see Wraxall—and the Duke, who granted me a short audience, thanks to Wraxall. I have convinced him of
the quality and dependability of Fenwick, who would never be granted an audience, as he is a mere commercial commoner. The Duke will grant him a large contract, once he has seen our sheep and our serge.” The Earl drained his glass of port, and helped himself to another. He fell back into his chair and seemed to gloat.

The Baron stood with his untasted port. “He is coming
here
?”

“In three months. In January, to be precise. Not exclusively to visit Danvers. He will be making a tour of the south coast to evaluate defenses in the larger port towns. He will be accompanied by a modest entourage. He will stop here for a night or two. We must prepare for this occasion.”

“A royal visit…,” murmured the Baron.

“I know what you’re thinking, dear brother. I can picture you despairing over the chaos in your neatly kept ledger books. You should see the look on your face! How costly an affair! The entertainment, the food, all the incidental expenses of putting up a
large
, important man and his train. But—think of the benefits, think of the gains! A contract to supply the army with its jackets, breeches, and blankets! The contract would be two-fold: one with Fenwick, and one with Danvers. Fenwick is part-owner of a dying establishment in London.”

“I know,” said the Baron, sitting down on the edge of an armchair as though it was too delicate to take his weight.

“Yes, you know.” The Earl grunted once. “But it was an opportunity
you
neglected.”

The Baron put his glass aside on the table. “How did Hillier come upon this opportunity?”

“He has friends in the ministry, and he heard about it. He introduced himself to Wraxall.”

The Baron thought for a moment before he spoke again. “Is there to be another war?”

The Earl shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I know of,” he replied. “Neither does Wraxall, nor the Duke. It’s a matter of laying up supplies.”

“How is the Duke?” asked the Baron abstractly.

“In the best of spirits, despite the albatross of unpopularity nesting on his shoulders.”

“Did he thank you for the birthday gifts you sent him?”

“I did not think it opportune to jog his memory of them. It seems he chose to see me in the middle of an impromptu meeting of the Jockey Club at his lodge, in Windsor Park. The subject was some sickly Arabian studs
he bought from another member, and he was so fit to be tied that I thought he might be short with me. But he was most gracious and accommodating, and we had a very amiable chat.”