a family famous for its hatreds. The eldest son hated his father; and, it
was said, in spite had married a lady to whom that father was attached,
and with whom Lord Monmouth then meditated a second alliance. This eldest
son lived at Naples, and had several children, but maintained no
connection either with his parent or his native country. On the other
hand, Lord Monmouth hated his younger son, who had married, against his
consent, a woman to whom that son was devoted. A system of domestic
persecution, sustained by the hand of a master, had eventually broken up
the health of its victim, who died of a fever in a foreign country, where
he had sought some refuge from his creditors.
His widow returned to England with her child; and, not having a relation,
and scarcely an acquaintance in the world, made an appeal to her husband's
father, the wealthiest noble in England and a man who was often prodigal,
and occasionally generous. After some time, and more trouble, after urgent
and repeated, and what would have seemed heart-rending, solicitations, the
attorney of Lord Monmouth called upon the widow of his client's son, and
informed her of his Lordship's decision. Provided she gave up her child,
and permanently resided in one of the remotest counties, he was authorised
to make her, in four quarterly payments, the yearly allowance of three
hundred pounds, that being the income that Lord Monmouth, who was the
shrewdest accountant in the country, had calculated a lone woman might
very decently exist upon in a small market town in the county of
Westmoreland.
Desperate necessity, the sense of her own forlornness, the utter
impossibility to struggle with an omnipotent foe, who, her husband had
taught her, was above all scruples, prejudices, and fears, and who, though
he respected law, despised opinion, made the victim yield. But her
sufferings were not long; the separation from her child, the bleak clime,
the strange faces around her, sharp memory, and the dull routine of an
unimpassioned life, all combined to wear out a constitution originally
frail, and since shattered by many sorrows. Mrs. Coningsby died the same
day that her father-in-law was made a Marquess. He deserved his honours.
The four votes he had inherited in the House of Commons had been
increased, by his intense volition and unsparing means, to ten; and the
very day he was raised to his Marquisate, he commenced sapping fresh
corporations, and was working for the strawberry leaf. His honours were
proclaimed in the London Gazette, and her decease was not even noticed in
the County Chronicle; but the altars of Nemesis are beneath every outraged
roof, and the death of this unhappy lady, apparently without an earthly
friend or an earthly hope, desolate and deserted, and dying in obscure
poverty, was not forgotten.
Coningsby was not more than nine years of age when he lost his last
parent; and he had then been separated from her for nearly three years.
But he remembered the sweetness of his nursery days. His mother, too, had
written to him frequently since he quitted her, and her fond expressions
had cherished the tenderness of his heart. He wept bitterly when his
schoolmaster broke to him the news of his mother's death. True it was they
had been long parted, and their prospect of again meeting was vague and
dim; but his mother seemed to him his only link to human society. It was
something to have a mother, even if he never saw her. Other boys went to
see their mothers! he, at least, could talk of his. Now he was alone. His
grandfather was to him only a name. Lord Monmouth resided almost
constantly abroad, and during his rare visits to England had found no time
or inclination to see the orphan, with whom he felt no sympathy. Even the
death of the boy's mother, and the consequent arrangements, were notified
to his master by a stranger. The letter which brought the sad intelligence