Free Michael Cox by The Glass of Time (mobi) Page A

one of my sons did you like best? Perseus or Randolph?’
I confess that I found the question rather shocking. What mother could ask such a thing concerning her two sons, both of whom appeared to me to be eminently worthy, each in his own way, of admiration?
‘Tell me, do!’ she prompted, with unseemly relish, seeing my hesitation. ‘I long to know!’
‘I really cannot say, my Lady. I have so little knowledge of either of your sons, and, really, we spoke only a few words.’
‘But Perseus is the more handsome, is he not?’
‘He is handsome, certainly,’ I readily conceded. ‘But then Mr Randolph Duport is handsome also.’
‘But very differently composed, would you not agree? There is less refinement in poor Randolph’s features, alas, which in some moods can look a little coarse. He has more of his late father in him, and of his father’s family, I dare say, than Perseus. I am also sad to admit that Randolph lacks his brother’s higher talents. It pains me to speak so, but it is only the truth.
‘Perseus, you know, has been blessed with great literary gifts,’ she went on. ‘He has written a most impressive drama in verse, which we hope to see published very shortly. The subject is Merlin and Nimue, which I consider to be a most original one for a poetic drama.’
‘Has not Mr Tennyson written of them in the Idylls ?’ I enquired, knowing very well that he had. ‘Although I believe Nimue is there called Vivien.’
She threw me a sharply reproachful look for presuming to question her son’s originality of conception.
‘Mr Tennyson’s treatment of the characters is wholly different from my son’s,’ she said coldly, ‘and is, in my view, inferior in every way. He does not make them live as people, as Perseus does by means of the dramatic form. It is his great gift.’
I asked if Mr Perseus Duport intended to make poetry his profession.
‘A gentleman in the position of my eldest son has no need to follow a profession, as you put it, of any kind. But it is impossible to put shackles on natural genius. Like good breeding, it will out. I have no doubt that, when the work is published, it will be universally recognized as possessing uncommon merit. I shall show you the manuscript another time, so that you may judge for yourself. You told me, I think, that you were a great reader of poetry.’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘And how did a lady’s-maid acquire such a taste?’
‘My guardian read poetry to me from an early age,’ I replied, ignoring the implied insult. ‘Even when I was unable to understand the meaning of the words, their sound would soothe me, and send me dreaming. And then I was constantly encouraged to read widely, in both English and French, by my tutor, Mr Basil Thornhaugh.’
‘You had a tutor! I’ve never had a maid before who enjoyed such an advantage. And what manner of man was Mr Basil Thornhaugh?’
‘One of the cleverest there could be,’ I replied, ‘possessing, in addition, great discernment and taste.’
‘A most remarkable tutor, by your account. In my experience, such men are always dull failures; but your Mr Thornhaugh appears to have been singular in every way. Yet he was content, it seems, with tutoring a little girl. Why was that, do you suppose? Had he no other profession to follow, or any higher ambitions?’
I could not give a satisfactory answer, knowing almost nothing of my old tutor’s former life. All I could say was that Mr Thornhaugh had private interests to pursue, in addition to his pedagogic duties, and that he had long been engaged on a great work of scholarship.
‘Ah!’ cried Lady Tansor. ‘A private scholar! I know the type. Forever dreaming of writing the magnum opus that will make their name live on for generations. I understand now. Few of these men realize their ambition. It simply consumes them, for there is never an end to it.’
She turned her head away for a moment and laid it against one of the leaded window-panes. Then she raised her finger