This genial custom was one of the many habits which he abandoned on his marriage. The victories in the Peninsula, the retreat from Moscow, Leipzig, and the abdication of the tyrant all went uncelebrated. It so happened, however, that in the summer of 1815 Sir Ferdinando was staying for a few weeks in the capital. There had been a succession of anxious, doubtful days; then came the glorious news of Waterloo. It was too much for Sir Ferdinando; his joyous youth awoke again within him. He hurried to his wine merchant and bought a dozen bottles of 1760 brandy.
The Bath coach was on the point of starting; he bribed his way on to the box and, seated in glory beside the driver, proclaimed aloud the downfall of the Corsican bandit and passed about the warm liquid joy. They clattered through Uxbridge, Slough, Maidenhead. Sleeping Reading was awakened by the great news. At Didcot one of the ostlers was so much overcome by patriotic emotions and the 1760 brandy that he found it impossible to do up the buckles of the harness. The night began to grow chilly, and Sir Ferdinando found that it was not enough to take a nip at every stage: to keep up his vital warmth he was compelled to drink between the stages as well.
They were approaching Swindon. The coach was travelling at a dizzy speed – six miles in the last half-hour – when, without having manifested the’ slightest premonitory symptom of unsteadiness, Sir Ferdinando suddenly toppled sideways off his seat and fell, head foremost, into the road. An unpleasant jolt awakened the slumbering passengers. The coach was brought to a standstill; the guard ran back with a light. He found Sir Ferdinando still alive, but unconscious; blood was oozing from his mouth. The back wheels of the coach had passed over his body, breaking most of his ribs and both arms. His skull was fractured in two places. They picked him up, but he was dead before they reached the next stage. So perished Sir Ferdinando, a victim to his own patriotism. Lady Lapith did not marry again, but determined to devote the rest of her life to the well-being of her three children – Georgiana, now five years old, and Emmeline and Caroline, twins of two.’
Henry Wimbush paused, and once more put on his pincenez. ‘So much by way of introduction,’ he said. ‘Now I can begin to read about my grandfather.’
‘One moment,’ said Mr Scogan, ‘till I’ve refilled my pipe.’
Mr Wimbush waited. Seated apart in a corner of the room, Ivor was showing Mary his sketches of Spirit Life. They spoke together in whispers.
Mr Scogan had lighted his pipe again. ‘Fire away,’ he said.
Henry Wimbush fired away.
‘It was in the spring of 1833 that my grandfather, George Wimbush, first made the acquaintance of the “three lovely Lapiths,” as they were always called. He was then a young man of twenty-two, with curly yellow hair and a smooth pink face that was the mirror of his youthful and ingenuous mind. He had been educated at Harrow and Christ Church, he enjoyed hunting and all other field sports, and, though his circumstances were comfortable to the verge of affluence, his pleasures were temperate and innocent. His father, an East Indian merchant, had destined him for a political career, and had gone to considerable expense in acquiring a pleasant little Cornish borough as a twenty-first birthday gift for his son. He was justly indignant when, on the very eve of George’s majority, the Reform Bill of 1832 swept the borough out of existence. The inauguration of George’s political career had to be postponed. At the time he got to know the lovely Lapiths he was waiting; he was not at all impatient.
‘The lovely Lapiths did not fail to impress him. Georgiana, the eldest, with her black ringlets, her flashing eyes, her noble aquiline profile, her swan-like neck, and sloping shoulders, was orientally dazzling; and the twins, with their delicately turned-up noses, their blue eyes, and chestnut hair, were an identical pair of ravishingly English charmers.
‘Their conversation at this first meeting proved, however, to be so forbidding that, but for the invincible attraction exercised by their beauty, George would never have had the courage to follow up the acquaintance. The twins, looking up their noses at him with an air of languid superiority, asked him what he thought of the latest French poetry and whether he liked the Indiana of George Sand. But what was almost worse was the question with which Georgiana opened her conversation with him. “In music,” she asked, leaning forward and fixing him with her large dark eyes, “are you a classicist or a transcendentalist?” George did not lose his presence of mind. He had enough appreciation of music to know that he hated anything classical, and so, with a promptitude which did him credit, he replied, “I am a transcendentalist.” Georgiana smiled bewitchingly. “I am glad,” she said; “so am I. You went to hear Paganini last week, of course. ‘The Prayer of Moses’ – ah!” She closed her eyes.
“Do you know anything more transcendental than that?” “No,” said George, “I don’t.” He hesitated, was about to go on speaking, and then decided that after all it would be wiser not to say – what was in fact true – that he had enjoyed above all Paganini’s Farmyard Imitations. The man had made his fiddle bray like an ass, cluck like a hen, grunt, squeal, bark, neigh, quack, bellow, and growl; that last item, in George’s estimation, had almost compensated for the tediousness of the rest of the concert. He smiled with pleasure at the thought of it. Yes, decidedly, he was no classicist in music; he was a thoroughgoing transcendentalist.
‘George followed up this first introduction by paying a call on the young ladies and their mother, who occupied, during the season, a small but elegant house in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square. Lady Lapith made a few discreet inquiries, and having found that George’s financial position, character, and family were all passably good, she asked him to dine. She hoped and expected that her daughters would all marry into the peerage; but, being a prudent woman, she knew it was advisable to prepare for all contingencies. George Wimbush, she thought, would make an excellent second string for one of the twins.
‘At this first dinner, George’s partner was Emmeline. They talked of Nature. Emmeline prótested that to her high mountains were a feeling and the hum of human cities torture. George agreed that the country was very agreeable, but held that London during the season also had its charms. He noticed with surprise and a certain solicitous distress that Miss Emmeline’s appetite was poor, that it didn’t, in fact, exist. Two spoonfuls of soup, a morsel of fish, no bird, no meat, and three grapes – that was her whole dinner. He looked from time to time at her two sisters; Georgiana and Caroline seemed to be quite as abstemious. They waved away whatever was offered them with an expression of delicate disgust, shutting their eyes and averting their faces from the proffered dish, as though the lemon sole, the duck, the loin of veal, the trifle, were objects revolting to the sight and smell. George, who thought the dinner capital, ventured to comment on the sisters’ lack of appetite.
‘“Pray, don’t talk to me of eating,” said Emmeline, drooping like a sensitive plant. “We find it so coarse, so unspiritual, my sisters and I. One can’t think of one’s soul while one is eating.”
‘George agreed; one couldn’t. “But one must live,” he said.
‘“Alas!” Emmeline sighed. “One must. Death is very beautiful, don’t you think?” She broke a corner off a piece of toast and began to nibble at it languidly. “But since, as you say, one must live . . .” She made a little gesture of resignation. “Luckily a very little suffices to keep one alive.” She put down her corner of toast half eaten.
‘George regarded her with some surprise. She was pale, but she looked extraordinarily healthy, he thought; so did her sisters. Perhaps if you were really spiritual you needed less food. He, clearly, was not spiritual.
‘After this he saw them frequently. They all liked him, from Lady Lapith downwards. True, he was not very romantic or poetical; but he was such a pleasant, unpretentious, kind-hearted young man, that one couldn’t help liking him. For his part, he thought them wonderful, wonderful, especially Georgiana. He enveloped, them all in a warm, protective affection. For they needed protection; they were altogether too frail, too spiritual for this world. They never ate, they were always pale, they often complained of fever,
