The Shuttle | Page 6

time,
charmed stress upon the fact that he spoke with an "English accent."
His enunciation was in fact clear cut and treated its vowels well. He
was a man who observed with an air of accustomed punctiliousness
such social rules and courtesies as he deemed it expedient to consider.
An astute worldling had remarked that he was at once more
ceremonious and more casual in his manner than men bred in America.
"If you invite him to dinner," the wording said, "or if you die, or marry,
or meet with an accident, his notes of condolence or congratulation are
prompt and civil, but the actual truth is that he cares nothing whatever
about you or your relations, and if you don't please him he does not
hesitate to sulk or be astonishingly rude, which last an American does
not allow himself to be, as a rule."
By many people Sir Nigel was not analysed, but accepted. He was of
the early English who came to New York, and was a novelty of interest,

with his background of Manor House and village and old family name.
He was very much talked of at vivacious ladies' luncheon parties, he
was very much talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner
parties he was furtively watched a good deal, but after dinner when he
sat with the men over their wine, he was not popular. He was not
perhaps exactly disliked, but men whose chief interest at that period lay
in stocks and railroads, did not find conversation easy with a man
whose sole occupation had been the shooting of birds and the hunting
of foxes, when he was not absolutely loitering about London, with his
time on his hands. The stories he told--and they were few--were chiefly
anecdotes whose points gained their humour by the fact that a man was
a comically bad shot or bad rider and either peppered a gamekeeper or
was thrown into a ditch when his horse went over a hedge, and such
relations did not increase in the poignancy of their interest by being
filtered through brains accustomed to applying their powers to
problems of speculation and commerce. He was not so dull but that he
perceived this at an early stage of his visit to New York, which was
probably the reason of the infrequency of his stories.
He on his side was naturally not quick to rise to the humour of a "big
deal" or a big blunder made on Wall Street--or to the wit of jokes
concerning them. Upon the whole he would have been glad to have
understood such matters more clearly. His circumstances were such as
had at last forced him to contemplate the world of money-makers with
something of an annoyed respect. "These fellows" who had neither
titles nor estates to keep up could make money. He, as he
acknowledged disgustedly to himself, was much worse than a beggar.
There was Stornham Court in a state of ruin-- the estate going to the
dogs, the farmhouses tumbling to pieces and he, so to speak, without a
sixpence to bless himself with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen
of the rank which in bygone times had not associated itself with trade
had begun at least to trifle with it--to consider its potentialities as
factors possibly to be made useful by the aristocracy. Countesses had
not yet spiritedly opened milliners' shops, nor belted Earls adorned the
stage, but certain noblemen had dallied with beer and coquetted with
stocks. One of the first commercial developments had been the
discovery of America--particularly of New York--as a place where if

one could make up one's mind to the plunge, one might marry one's
sons profitably. At the outset it presented a field so promising as to lead
to rashness and indiscretion on the part of persons not given to analysis
of character and in consequence relying too serenely upon an
ingenuousness which rather speedily revealed that it had its limits.
Ingenuousness combining itself with remarkable alertness of perception
on occasion, is rather American than English, and is, therefore, to the
English mind, misleading.
At first younger sons, who "gave trouble" to their families, were sent
out. Their names, their backgrounds of castles or manors, relatives of
distinction, London seasons, fox hunting, Buckingham Palace and
Goodwood Races, formed a picturesque allurement. That the castles
and manors would belong to their elder brothers, that the relatives of
distinction did not encourage intimacy with swarms of the younger
branches of their families; that London seasons, hunting, and racing
were for their elders and betters, were facts not realised in all their
importance by the republican mind. In the course of time they were
realised to the full, but in Rosalie Vanderpoel's nineteenth year they
covered what was at that