THE TALLANTS OF BARTON.

A Tale of Fortune and Finance.

BY

JOSEPH HATTON,

Author of “Bitter Sweets: a Love Story;” “Against the Stream,” etc., etc.

“The wheel of Fortune turns incessantly round, and who can say within himself, I shall to-day be uppermost?”—Confucius.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1867.

[The Right of Translation is reserved.]

[Pg ii]

LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

[Pg iii]

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

CHAPTER I. IN THE SHADOW OF BERNE HILLS.

Barton Hall is a conspicuous feature of the landscape in the smiling Vale of Avonworth, and it stands beneath the shadow of Berne Hills. Built of white stone, and in the Italian style of architecture, it has the appearance of a modern mansion removed from Kensington Palace Gardens, and planted amongst the rare scenery of this beautiful western district of the Midlands.

All that wealth and taste can do to make the house generally worthy of the site has been lavished upon it, inside and out. It is furnished with everything that is costly and comfortable,[Pg 2] with ornaments and articles of vertu from all parts of the earth.

A long gravelly drive leads up to the principal entrance, which is cut off from the park with iron fencing and chains. On the other side of the house there are conservatories of flowers and extensive gardens. Behind, at a short distance, there is stabling for many horses, shut out from view by shrubs and young trees.

In front of the house a smooth tract of mossy lawn ends in a sunk fence; and beyond lies the park, skirted by green fields, which mount up the Berne Hills and lose themselves in the foliage of oaks, and elms, and larches.

Here and there on the lawn are clumps of young aspiring cedars, silver birch trees, ash plants, and sycamores, hemmed round about with rims of white creepers and luxuriant mosses. In “Gems of the Poets,” pictorially adorned by Laydon, you will find a fanciful illustration of Gray’s well-known lines:

[Pg 3]

In the foreground there is a leafy vignette of exotic and other plants and trees sprouting up from an island-rock. Turn the water into grass, and replace the tall cocoa-nut trees with a couple of silver birches, and you have one of the Barton Hall lawn groups; for the place is so completely “shut out from the rude world” and the easterly and northern winds, that the climate is more like southern France than western England, and vegetation flourishes there nearly all the year round.

Close by the principal lodge-entrance to the park lies a clear deep lake, fed by a stream from the Berne Hills, and the rendezvous of innumerable wild and tame water-fowl.

Few places in broad England can compare with this modern house and grounds. The sunsets are more beautiful here than anywhere else in all this western land. The twilights are full of yellows, and delicate neutral tints, and shifting[Pg 4] lights. And the mists that float about those Berne Hills, like angel shadows! and the gentle rains that follow them, filling the air with a thousand mixed perfumes, and brightening the greens and browns in the landscape,—they might make an artist frantic with delight.

In rain or sunshine, in winter or summer, Barton Hall, beneath the shadow of Berne Hills, is always beautiful. In evening sunsets, with the red light on its great flashing windows, and a tinge of gold on the vane of its Italian tower, you might take it for the romantic retreat of a southern king rather than the home of a merchant prince of Old England.

Christopher Tallant was to all intents and purposes a self-made man. He had begun life in a humble capacity in the counting-house of some great works in the north of England, where so many men of position and influence have made their way upwards from minor posts.

They look more at a boy’s talents than at his friends in those busy hives of industry northwards.[Pg 5] No matter how highly a young fellow may be connected, he has no position without ability in these busy districts.

A rare practical race, these said northerners—a race to be brought up amongst, studied for example’s sake. As a class they do not possess the refinements of manner and speech of the southern races of England, and they do not count so much upon etiquette. They are rough like their north-east winds, but genial as their own firesides.

Their rivers are black with coal washings, and the banks thereof are crowded with great works, from which blazing furnaces, and forges, and flashes of sudden flame, cast ruddy reflections upon the sullen tide. Their fields are covered with pit-heaps, and iron works, and lime-kilns, and blasting cupolas. But here and there, in out-of-the-way places, you come upon romantic woods, and running streams, and rocky glens.

A wonderful land the north countrie, the seat of great enterprises, and the home of strong-limbed,[Pg 6] strong-willed, clear-headed men; one would rather some of them had softer manners, but for our country’s good we can afford to sacrifice that if only in deference to their active brains and their inborn love of enterprise.

It was in the north, we say, where Mr. Christopher Tallant began life, and where the key-note of his career may be said to have been struck; but as a young man he had lived in the south-west of England, and had mastered the leading principles of trade and commerce in several great private and public works. He had proved himself an adept at legislative finance, at devising and carrying out great schemes; and at a comparatively early age he had raised himself to a position of commercial distinction and opulence.

He had been twice married. His first union was an unhappy one. It was altogether a mysterious marriage, which had puzzled and astonished his friends at the time, as well it might; for without the smallest warning the young fellow had returned from a short visit to London with a handsome,[Pg 7] dashing woman, whom he introduced as his wife. At this time he was manager of the Vulcan Forge Works on the Avon, twenty miles on the other side of a famous western city, and he had the entrée to very respectable society.

It was some time before the little local coterie forgave his sudden introduction of the unknown London wife. In a very short time he had reason to repent his rashness and folly. His wife indulged in all kinds of extravagance; she led the local fashions, she indulged in fast flirtations which set all the gossips in the neighbourhood upon her; finally, an unwomanly passion for drink set in, and after a few years of wretchedness she died, leaving behind her one child, a son, who will make a prominent figure in this history.

The poor woman’s misconduct had but little impeded her husband’s worldly advances; he secured shares in several important patents; he became director of one or two companies; and started as an iron merchant on his own private[Pg 8] account. At one time he held as his own property half the iron bars of a whole district. This was during a strike, after a period of great depression, and just before a time of sudden and unexpected activity.

Well, by-and-by, in the course of half-a-dozen years, the iron merchant married again, and took his wife home to that beautiful country residence near Severntown, and beneath the shadow of Berne Hills. He had only purchased the estate the year before his marriage.

His second wife, whom he had loved with a fervency characteristic of his earnest character, was the daughter of a nobleman, and an exceedingly handsome and lovable woman.

She died in giving birth to her first child, who, like her half-brother, is one of the leading characters in this story.

The death of his second wife had been a great affliction to Christopher Tallant. It was many months before he could bring himself even to look at his child. Travel and change of scene, lapse[Pg 9] of time, increased ardour in business occupations, and new hopes, at length softened down his great sorrow, and enabled him to take his place in the great world calmly, and as became a man of his station and influence. His new hopes centred round his only son, who was a lad about eight years old when the merchant’s greatest trouble came upon him.

The boy exhibited considerable native talent. He was a smart, well-looking, promising fellow, full of life and spirits and courage. Before he was ten years old his father clung to him like a forlorn hope, and centred in him schemes of future power and greatness. The name of Tallant had of late years become famous in the world of trade and money, and the name should be perpetuated in this son with honour and distinction. This was the happiness which, it seemed to the merchant, Fate had decreed he should have at last.

Such, briefly, is the outline of Mr. Tallant’s history. We introduce him to our readers some[Pg 10] two and twenty years after the death of his second wife,—a man over fifty years of age. At the time when we make his acquaintance he is Chairman of the great Meter Iron Works Company, a director of two of the principal railway companies, and a shareholder in many extensive city schemes.

Once a week he was to be found at the London offices of the Meter Works at Westminster, and he usually returned from London the same day. You could not have mistaken him for anything but a shrewd, conscientious man of business if you had known him. He was above the middle height, and usually wore a black shooting-coat, fitting the body tightly, and with pockets at the side; shepherd’s plaid trowsers, and a black velvet waistcoat. His hair was grey, and his face cleanly shaven. He had a quick, discerning eye, and withal a genial expression of countenance; for, though he had not forgotten the past, Time had been good to him, as it is good to other sufferers who have lost dear ones from their homes, and had comforted him with the affection[Pg 11] of his children. He bore an excellent character for kindness, integrity, and honour; but he was known at the same time to be a man of unbending pride.

He was proud of his name, of his wealth, of his son, of his house, of his grounds, of his farms, of his estates; proud of everything. And to a certain extent it was a laudable pride, for his riches were the result of his own ability and industry. He felt, with a certain acknowledgment of the bounty of Providence, that he had made them all himself. He might have thanked God a little more for his worldly success and been none the less happy, and certainly more grateful; but it was his pride that he had worked his way up, from the lowest rung of the ladder, and that he stood on the top of it with safety.

Everything he had was better than anything anybody else had; he would have it so, and yet he was a kindly, courteous sort of man, whom you might have had pleasure in visiting. His pride of wealth would crop up now and then; but his wines were[Pg 12] superb, his cuisine everything that could be desired, the views from his windows magnificent, his pictures modern and by the best moderns, his books modern and in glorious bindings, and his daughter—there was nothing more sweet to look upon in all the Avonworth valley, or beneath the Berne Hill shades, than the merchant’s only daughter.

[Pg 13]

CHAPTER II. INTRODUCES THE READER TO THE MERCHANT’S SON AND DAUGHTER.

Do you know Dicksee’s picture of “Miranda?” It was exhibited at the Royal Academy a few years ago. There are copies of it in the Strand and Regent Street picture-shops.

It is a fair, sweet, spirituel face, full of inquiring love and innocence—a frank, open face, set off with a heavy wealth of bright brown hair—a sunny face, with red, parted lips, and all the pure soul of woman in the deep blue eyes.

When first we saw that picture, we could not, “for the life of us,” think where we had seen the earthly model of it. It haunted us for days; we dreamt about it; we bought the best copy we could procure; and at length, with the picture[Pg 14] lying beside us, carefully packed, on the seat of a Great Western Railway carriage, a London purchase for our country library, we remembered Phœbe Tallant.

It hangs before us whilst we write, with all the story of the life of her whom it so much resembles mapped out in our mind.

Perhaps Phœbe Tallant was not quite so pretty as Mr. Dicksee’s picture, but she was as near an approach to it as one is likely to meet with once in a dozen years.

Occasional visitors at Barton Hall from London were in raptures with the bright, fair girl; and one or two young fellows had gone home desperately in love with her; but none of them dared hardly to think of their love in presence of Mr. Tallant: not that the merchant said much about Phœbe, not that she seemed to be on such affectionate terms with him as might have been expected; but he was proud of her beauty, proud of her accomplishments. And, moreover, it was shrewdly anticipated that Miss Tallant would not[Pg 15] have anything like the dowry which the daughter of so wealthy a father ought to have; for the merchant was all engrossed in his heir.

Richard Tallant, who was destined by the old man for such a store of riches, was a dark, dashing young fellow, of five or six and twenty, when we first make his acquaintance—some half-a-dozen years older than his half-sister Phœbe.

He had been an Eton boy, had graduated at Oxford, and travelled through Europe and Asia.

He had already spent enough money recklessly, foolishly, ay, and wickedly, to have produced an annuity of at least a thousand a year. He was professedly one of the managing directors of the Meter Works, and resided in London to take the metropolitan and continental business of the company.

When his father complained of his enormous expenditure (which was very seldom, by the way), Richard Tallant alluded to his position in the world, his education, and his habits.

At Oxford he had been a don, not of learning,[Pg 16] but of fashion; kept his hunters and his mail phaeton, and made many a scion of the old aristocracy envy the mushroom son of iron and railway debentures.

“You have given me every indulgence; you have bred me up in the hot-bed of luxury; I am just fresh from a European tour, where I travelled like a prince, to finish my college education, and now you expect me to pull in,” Richard would say, sitting astride one of the heavy mahogany chairs in the Westminster managerial room, and looking over the back of it at his father.

“I should not care, Dick, if you would only do the work of your office, as well as draw the salary,” Mr. Tallant would remark.

“Come, now, my dear governor, have you not told me you have enough invested to enable me to live like a prince all my life?”

“I may have been weak enough to say so; but I calculated upon your doing something towards keeping the money coming in.”

[Pg 17]

“You didn’t want me, you said, to be waiting, like some heirs, for your death, and then reckoning upon living in style; you would rather I had my fill of life, and see me enjoy it in your own days. Come now, father, you know you have said so,” said Richard, twirling his moustache, and tapping his patent-leather boot with a riding-whip.

“I fear I had not my usual foresight about me when I did say so,” said Mr. Tallant.

And he said truly; but having risen by hard work himself, and sprung from a comparatively humble position, Mr. Tallant was one of those men who like to see their children in the other extreme, and who, never having been within the pale of college and aristocratic life, believe, and truly, that, to be a leader therein, a merchant’s son must let his money fly freely, and like a prince indeed.

He had given his son a free rein. When first Richard went to Oxford, he had been snubbed by a young lord, and an epigram had been levelled[Pg 18] at him, the point of which turned upon his name and origin; he was called the produce of fifty talents of silver invested in iron.

When Richard told his father this, the great merchant snapped his fingers, and said he could buy up all the Oxford lords in a heap, and, turning cleverly round upon their lordships, in reply to the epigrammatic hit at his son’s origin, he said,

“Never mind them, Dick; there’s as good blood in your veins as there is in any of theirs; it may not come from a swell who plundered the Saxons at the time of the Norman Conquest, or mixed in the vices of licentious courts; there is no dishonour in it, and it has to be proved yet whether to spring from merchant princes of England is not the highest of all descent.”

“Bravo,” said Mr. Richard Tallant; “why, father, you speak like an orator. That hit about the merchant princes would drive half-a-dozen hustings mad.”

Mr. Tallant had warmed up, and was angry; he paid no attention to his son’s comment; he[Pg 19] only saw before him some “stuck up” aristocrat sneering at his name and origin.

“Look here, Dick,” he continued, producing a blank cheque, “fill that up in the presence of these aristocratic snobs, and show them what the Tallants can do.”

This was surely putting too much of power and revenge into the hands of a young man naturally frivolous and overbearing, and it no doubt influenced, in a great measure, his future career.

One would have given Mr. Christopher Tallant credit for more real worldly wisdom than this; he could, perhaps, have borne “the proud man’s contumely” himself; he might have shrugged his shoulders, and sneered at it, with a consoling thought about his wealth; he might have said to himself, “Ah, never mind, I could buy you up, stick and stone” (for he was weak, you see, on this point); but he would not have protested and been demonstrative: contempt would have been his answer, and, in the midst of his commercial cares, he would have speedily forgotten the inane[Pg 20] taunt. To have his son treated with indifference, to see him taunted with his origin, by men who had nothing but their ancestors to boast about; this was a different thing altogether, and he chafed at it, and was angry indeed.

His pride was shocked. The feeling that he could buy everything was shaken. He was not accustomed to crosses, except such as his wealth or his energy could overcome; and his sense of injured honour, too, was touched.

“I would not have you do anything that is mean, Dick; there is nothing mean in being generous and open-handed; and there are two powers, it appears, at Oxford,—money and blood; don’t be afraid to hold your own; you have no reason to be ashamed of your birth, and you can make them ashamed of their poverty, the sneaks! Don’t spare them one jot, Dick; punish them, and show them what talents of silver invested in iron can do—the miserable sneaks!”

Thus all the merchant’s practical wisdom and his just pride were thrown to the winds; but he[Pg 21] is not the only man of his class who, chafing at the arrogance of “gentle blood,” has sought revenge on Society at the shrine of Mammon, and obtained nothing in return but “a crown of golden sorrow.”

[Pg 22]

CHAPTER III.

It lay on the western border of the park, and comprised about eight hundred acres of arable and pasture land.

The buildings were red brick, with white dressed corner stones and facings. There were model cow-houses, cattle-sheds, piggeries, barns, corn-lofts, and poultry pens, that would have satisfied even Mr. Mechi’s critical eye. An agricultural writer of considerable repute had, in truth, written an essay upon these model buildings, and it had been printed in an important agricultural and scientific review; for there were no better arranged buildings in the country.

[Pg 23]