Dukes
The Duc de Chambertin-Pommard was a small but lively relic of a really
aristocratic family, the members of which were nearly all Atheists
up to the time of the French Revolution, but since that event
(beneficial in such various ways) had been very devout.
He was a Royalist, a Nationalist, and a perfectly sincere patriot
in that particular style which consists of ceaselessly asserting
that one's country is not so much in danger as already destroyed.
He wrote cheery little articles for the Royalist Press entitled
"The End of France" or "The Last Cry," or what not, and he gave
the final touches to a picture of the Kaiser riding across a pavement
of prostrate Parisians with a glow of patriotic exultation.
He was quite poor, and even his relations had no money.
He walked briskly to all his meals at a little open cafe,
and he looked just like everybody else.
Living in a country where aristocracy does not exist, he had a high
opinion of it. He would yearn for the swords and the stately
manners of the Pommards before the Revolution--most of whom had been
(in theory) Republicans. But he turned with a more practical
eagerness to the one country in Europe where the tricolour has
never flown and men have never been roughly equalized before the
State. The beacon and comfort of his life was England, which all
Europe sees clearly as the one pure aristocracy that remains.
He had, moreover, a mild taste for sport and kept an English
bulldog, and he believed the English to be a race of bulldogs,
of heroic squires, and hearty yeomen vassals, because he read all
this in English Conservative papers, written by exhausted little
Levantine clerks. But his reading was naturally for the most part
in the French Conservative papers (though he knew English well),
and it was in these that he first heard of the horrible Budget.
There he read of the confiscatory revolution planned by the
Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer, the sinister Georges Lloyd.
He also read how chivalrously Prince Arthur Balfour of Burleigh
had defied that demagogue, assisted by Austen the Lord Chamberlain
and the gay and witty Walter Lang. And being a brisk partisan
and a capable journalist, he decided to pay England a special visit
and report to his paper upon the struggle.
He drove for an eternity in an open fly through beautiful woods,
with a letter of introduction in his pocket to one duke, who was
to introduce him to another duke. The endless and numberless avenues
of bewildering pine woods gave him a queer feeling that he was driving
through the countless corridors of a dream. Yet the vast silence
and freshness healed his irritation at modern ugliness and unrest.
It seemed a background fit for the return of chivalry. In such
a forest a king and all his court might lose themselves hunting
or a knight errant might perish with no companion but God. The castle
itself when he reached it was somewhat smaller than he had expected,
but he was delighted with its romantic and castellated outline.
He was just about to alight when somebody opened two enormous gates
at the side and the vehicle drove briskly through.
"That is not the house?" he inquired politely of the driver.
"No, sir," said the driver, controlling the corners of his mouth.
"The lodge, sir."
"Indeed," said the Duc de Chambertin-Pommard, "that is where
the Duke's land begins?"
"Oh no, sir," said the man, quite in distress. "We've been in his
Grace's land all day."
The Frenchman thanked him and leant back in the carriage,
feeling as if everything were incredibly huge and vast, like Gulliver
in the country of the Brobdingnags.
He got out in front of a long facade of a somewhat severe building,
and a little careless man in a shooting jacket and knickerbockers
ran down the steps. He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue,
babyish eyes; his features were insignificant, but his manner
extremely pleasant and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury,
perhaps the largest landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder
until he began to write abrupt little letters about the Budget.
He led the French Duke upstairs, talking trivialties in a hearty way,
and there presented him to another and more important English oligarch,
who got up from a writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk.
He had a gleaming bald head and glasses; the lower part of his
face was masked with a short, dark beard, which did not conceal
a beaming smile, not unmixed with sharpness. He stooped
a little as he ran, like some sedentary head clerk or cashier;
and even without the cheque-book and papers on his desk would
have given the impression of a merchant or man of business.
He was dressed in a light grey check jacket. He was the Duke
of Windsor, the great Unionist statesman. Between these two loose,
amiable men, the little Gaul stood erect in his black frock coat,
with the monstrous gravity of French ceremonial good manners.
This stiffness led the Duke of Windsor to put him at his ease
(like a tenant), and he said, rubbing his hands:
"I was delighted with your letter ... delighted. I shall be very
pleased if I can give you--er--any details."
"My visit," said the Frenchman, "scarcely suffices for
the scientific exhaustion of detail. I seek only the idea.
The idea, that is always the immediate thing."
"Quite so," said the other rapidly; "quite so ... the idea."
Feeling somehow that it was his turn (the English Duke having done all
that could be required of him) Pommard had to say: "I mean the idea
of aristocracy. I regard this as the last great battle for the idea.
Aristocracy, like any other thing, must justify itself to mankind.
Aristocracy is good because it preserves a picture of human dignity
in a world where that dignity is often obscured by servile necessities.
Aristocracy alone can keep a certain high reticence of soul and body,
a certain noble distance between the sexes."
The Duke of Aylesbury, who had a clouded recollection of having squirted
soda-water down the neck of a Countess on the previous evening,
looked somewhat gloomy, as if lamenting the theoretic spirit
of the Latin race. The elder Duke laughed heartily, and said:
"Well, well, you know; we English are horribly practical.
With us the great question is the land. Out here in the country
... do you know this part?"
"Yes, yes," cried the Frenchmen eagerly. "I See what you mean.
The country! the old rustic life of humanity! A holy war upon
the bloated and filthy towns. What right have these anarchists to attack
your busy and prosperous countrysides? Have they not thriven under
your management? Are not the English villages always growing larger
and gayer under the enthusiastic leadership of their encouraging squires?
Have you not the Maypole? Have you not Merry England?"
The Duke of Aylesbury made a noise in his throat, and then said
very indistinctly: "They all go to London."
"All go to London?" repeated Pommard, with a blank stare. "Why?"
This time nobody answered, and Pommard had to attack again.
"The spirit of aristocracy is essentially opposed to the greed
of the industrial cities. Yet in France there are actually
one or two nobles so vile as to drive coal and gas trades,
and drive them hard." The Duke of Windsor looked at the carpet.
The Duke of Aylesbury went and looked out of the window.
At length the latter said: "That's rather stiff, you know.
One has to look after one's own business in town as well."
"Do not say it," cried the little Frenchman, starting up.
"I tell you all Europe is one fight between business and honour.
If we do not fight for honour, who will? What other right have we
poor two-legged sinners to titles and quartered shields except
that we staggeringly support some idea of giving things which
cannot be demanded and avoiding things which cannot be punished?
Our only claim is to be a wall across Christendom against the Jew
pedlars and pawnbrokers, against the Goldsteins and the--"
The Duke of Aylesbury swung round with his hands in his pockets.
"Oh, I say," he said, "you've been readin' Lloyd George.
Nobody but dirty Radicals can say a word against Goldstein."
"I certainly cannot permit," said the elder Duke, rising rather shakily,
"the respected name of Lord Goldstein--"
He intended to be impressive, but there was something in the Frenchman's
eye that is not so easily impressed; there shone there that steel
which is the mind of France,
"Gentlemen," he said, "I think I have all the details now.
You have ruled England for four hundred years. By your own
account you have not made the countryside endurable to men.
By your own account you have helped the victory of vulgarity and smoke.
And by your own account you are hand and glove with those very
money-grubbers and adventurers whom gentlemen have no other business
but to keep at bay. I do not know what your people will do;
but my people would kill you."
Some seconds afterwards he had left the Duke's house, and some hours
afterwards the Duke's estate.
