



Produced by David Widger and Dagny





KENELM CHILLINGLY

HIS ADVENTURES AND OPINIONS


By Edward Bulwer Lytton

(LORD LYTTON)




BOOK I.



CHAPTER I.

SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, of Exmundham, Baronet, F.R.S. and F.A.S., was the
representative of an ancient family, and a landed proprietor of some
importance. He had married young; not from any ardent inclination for
the connubial state, but in compliance with the request of his parents.
They took the pains to select his bride; and if they might have chosen
better, they might have chosen worse, which is more than can be said for
many men who choose wives for themselves. Miss Caroline Brotherton was
in all respects a suitable connection. She had a pretty fortune, which
was of much use in buying a couple of farms, long desiderated by the
Chillinglys as necessary for the rounding of their property into a
ring-fence. She was highly connected, and brought into the county that
experience of fashionable life acquired by a young lady who has attended
a course of balls for three seasons, and gone out in matrimonial
honours, with credit to herself and her chaperon. She was handsome
enough to satisfy a husband's pride, but not so handsome as to keep
perpetually on the _qui vive_ a husband's jealousy. She was considered
highly accomplished; that is, she played upon the pianoforte so that any
musician would say she "was very well taught;" but no musician would
go out of his way to hear her a second time. She painted in
water-colours--well enough to amuse herself. She knew French and Italian
with an elegance so lady-like that, without having read more than
selected extracts from authors in those languages, she spoke them both
with an accent more correct than we have any reason to attribute to
Rousseau or Ariosto. What else a young lady may acquire in order to be
styled highly accomplished I do not pretend to know; but I am sure that
the young lady in question fulfilled that requirement in the opinion
of the best masters. It was not only an eligible match for Sir
Peter Chillingly,--it was a brilliant match. It was also a very
unexceptionable match for Miss Caroline Brotherton. This excellent
couple got on together as most excellent couples do. A short time after
marriage, Sir Peter, by the death of his parents--who, having married
their heir, had nothing left in life worth the trouble of living
for--succeeded to the hereditary estates; he lived for nine months of
the year at Exmundham, going to town for the other three months. Lady
Chillingly and himself were both very glad to go to town, being bored at
Exmundham; and very glad to go back to Exmundham, being bored in town.
With one exception it was an exceedingly happy marriage, as marriages
go. Lady Chillingly had her way in small things; Sir Peter his way in
great. Small things happen every day; great things once in three years.
Once in three years Lady Chillingly gave way to Sir Peter; households so
managed go on regularly. The exception to their connubial happiness was,
after all, but of a negative description. Their affection was such
that they sighed for a pledge of it; fourteen years had he and Lady
Chillingly remained unvisited by the little stranger.

Now, in default of male issue, Sir Peter's estates passed to a distant
cousin as heir-at-law; and during the last four years this heir-at-law
had evinced his belief that practically speaking he was already
heir-apparent; and (though Sir Peter was a much younger man than
himself, and as healthy as any man well can be) had made his
expectations of a speedy succession unpleasantly conspicuous. He had
refused his consent to a small exchange of lands with a neighbouring
squire, by which Sir Peter would have obtained some good arable land,
for an outlying unprofitable wood that produced nothing but fagots and
rabbits, with the blunt declaration that he, the heir-at-law, was fond
of rabbit-shooting, and that the wood would be convenient to him next
season if he came into the property by that time, which he very possibly
might. He disputed Sir Peter's right to make his customary fall of
timber, and had even threatened him with a bill in Chancery on that
subject. In short, this heir-at-law was exactly one of those persons
to spite whom a landed proprietor would, if single, marry at the age of
eighty in the hope of a family.

Nor was it only on account of his very natural wish to frustrate the
expectations of this unamiable relation that Sir Peter Chillingly
lamented the absence of the little stranger. Although belonging to that
class of country gentlemen to whom certain political reasoners deny the
intelligence vouchsafed to other members of the community, Sir Peter was
not without a considerable degree of book-learning and a great taste
for speculative philosophy. He sighed for a legitimate inheritor to the
stores of his erudition, and, being a very benevolent man, for a more
active and useful dispenser of those benefits to the human race which
philosophers confer by striking hard against each other; just as, how
full soever of sparks a flint may be, they might lurk concealed in the
flint till doomsday, if the flint were not hit by the steel. Sir Peter,
in short, longed for