Estcourt

“ I love pretty boys.”
20“And plucky ones, too,” laughs Vivi. “I was speaking to young Estcourt, who is his chum, and he told me that when Hector D’Estrange first came to Eton, a good many attempts were made to bully him, but he soon settled his tormentors, and gave one of them, a big overgrown monster, such a drubbing, that he never molested him more. What fun, Dodo, it would have been to see my Adonis punching the overgrown bully! I did laugh when Estcourt told me. I do so hate overgrown boys. ”

“ Estcourt was a favourite of the great Duke of Marlborough, and providore of the Beef-steak Club. Secretary Craggs went with Estcourt to Sir G. Kneller, and told him that a gentleman in company would give such a representation of some great men his friends, as would surprise him. Estcourt mimicked Lord Somers, Lord Halifax, Godolphin and others, so very exactly, that Sir Godfrey was highly delighted, and laughed heartily at the joke. Craggs gave the wink, and Estcourt mimicked Kneller himself, who cried out immediately.—Nay! there you are out, man! ”

“ The family of Estcourt has been seated at Estcourt, near Tetbury, ever since 1330, and Bucknall Estcourt has greatly increased its importance by his marriage, which gave him the chief influence over the borough of Devizes. Bucknall Estcourt was one of the best known tory members of the House of Commons during the first half of the nineteenth century. He always refused to take office, and regarded the honour of representing the university of Oxford in parliament as being the highest in any one's grasp. ”

“ Estcourt was talking to his father, and she seemed in rather an anxious state of mind, as he listened to her with an amused expression on his face. “You know, Ronald, you—you really must begin breakfast, the carriage will be coming round in no time. And you are not nearly ready, dear Arthur,” she said, giving him a hurried kiss. “Where are the railway rugs and the shawls? Your father will want them; for it is a cold morning.”
“Now, my dear sister,” said Arthur’s father, putting his hand on her shoulder, “don’t be putting yourself into a fuss about nothing ”

“ During the morning there also arrived from Maritzburg the 2nd Border Regiment, [2] afterwards to be the comrades of the battalion in the 5th Brigade.
Colonel Cooper took over the command of the garrison and immediately set to work on the arrangement of the defences. The next day, however, General Wolfe-Murray and his staff appeared on the scene. Estcourt had thus the honour of having three different commandants in two days. [Back to Contents]
(p. 028) CHAPTER IV.
ESTCOURT AND FRERE.
'Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment.'—Job, xxxii. 9. ”

“ He was a great lover of books, and for many years he was a most useful member of the committee of the London Library. Suffering from a painful internal disorder, he passed the last few years of his life in retirement at Leamington, where he died on 16 April 1884. He was buried at Kenilworth. Bishop Ullathorne, in an address delivered on the occasion, pronounced a well-merited eulogy on Estcourt's 'assiduity, accuracy, punctuality, skill, and sound judgment.' His knowledge of the earlier history of the midland district was remarkable, as was also the knowledge he had acquired of property law. ”

“ A company of the Dublin Fusiliers formed the garrison. Half were in the car in front of the engine, half in that behind. Three empty trucks, with a platelaying gang and spare rails to mend the line, followed. The country between Estcourt and Colenso is open, undulating, and grassy. The stations, which occur every four or five miles, are hamlets consisting of half a dozen corrugated iron houses, and perhaps a score of blue gum trees. These little specks of habitation are almost the only marked feature of the landscape, which on all sides spreads in pleasant but monotonous slopes of green. ”

“ He was promoted major-general on 12 Dec. 1854. The two chief staff officers, Generals Estcourt and Airey, were held by the public to be especially responsible for the sufferings of the English army during the first winter in the Crimea; but Lord Raglan defended them in the strongest terms (see Kinglake,Invasion of the Crimea, vi. 312, 342) in his despatches of 15 Jan. and 3 March 1865. Estcourt, like Airey, went on steadily with his work, despite adverse circumstances and savage criticism, until 21 June 1856, when he was suddenly struck down by cholera. ”

“ Dick Estcourt, the celebrated Comedian, about a year before his death, opened the Bumper Tavern in Covent-Garden. He was the companion of Addison, Steele, Parnell, and all the learned and choice spirits of the age, and was celebrated for ready wit, gay pleasantry, and a wonderful talent in mimickry. ”

“ It was some days after this, when Arthur had hardly got over the first excitement, that another letter arrived. This time the post-mark was Southampton. They were in England, and hoped to be at Mrs. Estcourt’s house the following day. What a long and wearisome morning the next was! for, as I dare say every one knows, time always passes slowly when we are expecting or waiting for anything. Mrs. Vivyan had said in her letter, that the train by which they intended to come arrived at about five o’clock. ”

“ King Charles of France having, as I have said, reduced the town of Bapaume, to his obedience, departed thence on the 19th day of July with his whole army, and halted at a village called Vercourt, situated on a small brook two leagues from Arras. He had left his engines of war at Bapaume, under the guard of sir Gasselin du Bos and a sufficient garrison. Sir Gasselin, as gover [Pg 49] nor of the town, made the mayor, sheriffs and commonalty, take a solemn oath of fidelity to the king, and to him as his governor.
From Vercourt, the king, passing by Arras, was lodged in the town of Vailly [7] ”

“ Meanwhile L'Estrange ran downwards to the shore over a wild bleak common, till he came to a low-roofed, evil-looking house. A light burning in one window showed the inmates were awake, and with a full heart he approached the lonely dwelling. As he neared the door, he thought he heard laughter and loud talking once or twice; however, undeterred by this not unusual noise, he stood in another moment before the door, and with his riding whip's handle made three or four masonic taps. A loud, hoarse oath was the answer, and he heard footsteps approaching the door from the inside. ”

“ When they struggled into a sitting position, they saw Queen Esther standing upon a broad flat rock and whirling in a ghastly dance that had in it something Oriental. She still swung the great war hatchet that seemed always to be in her hand. Her long black hair flew wildly about her head, and her red dress gleamed in the dusk. Surely no more terrible image ever appeared in the American wilderness! In front of her, lying upon the ground, were twenty bound Americans, and back of them were Iroquois in dozens, with a sprinkling of their white allies. ”

“ Every one who knows Exeter will remember that the High Street forms the upper portion of the main street of the city, the lower part of which is called Fore Street, and terminates in a steep declivity leading towards the railway station ”

“ Eschdorf, a town with perhaps two thousand people, is built on three hills which rise well above the surrounding countryside and give excellent observation over open ground for a half-mile to a mile in every direction. The ascent to the town is made across ridge folds. The main road coming in from the south turns away east to Heiderscheid and the Sauer crossing at Bourscheid, but other roads, three in all, continue north to the Sure River, one leading to the bridge at Heiderscheidergrund. ”

“ Esther Lord was born in Carlisle, Schoharie county, New York, in the year 1812. Her father was a Connecticut Yankee, her mother a native of Massachusetts. When Esther was ten years of age her father died, leaving ten children. We know little of the struggles through which they passed before reaching manhood and womanhood. ”

“ Out of the mass of grumbling discontented soldiery L’Estrange set himself to select a number of men of strongest character, of fiercest nature, of greatest recklessness of consequences. This winnowing method he carried out both in the Scarlet Hussars and in the Household Infantry, and having recruited to his behests a band of desperadoes in either corps, he had those “select men” sworn by detachments into memberhood of the Regenerators at the obscure branch lodge whose quarters were in the Natty Coster beerhouse up Skin-the-Rabbit Court off the New Cut. ”

“ Exeter impresses the stranger to-day merely as a prosperous county-town, a pleasant cathedral city, yet in the reign of Stephen it was ranked for importance next after London, York, and Winchester, supplanting Lincoln, once the holder of the fourth place, from which it was soon itself to be dislodged by Bristol. But Exeter, seated on the hill where, in dim, wild ages a band of Britons built them a rude stronghold, beside the stream up whose reddened waters the vessels of Roman and Saxon and Dane have fought their way, does not forget. ”

“ Whenever a new scare arose he was busy among blue-books in the library.
L'Estrange loved to dine at the Cock tavern with a party of men from the inn, and to invite them to his chambers to take coffee afterwards. And when they had retired, and only one remained, he would say, "What a nice fellow so-and-so is; you do meet a nice lot of fellows in the Temple, don't you?" It seemed almost sufficient that a man should belong to the Temple for L'Estrange to find him admirable. ”

“ The ardent young L’Estrange no sooner reached home than he prevailed on his father to receive Ethelston into his own house. He painted to his sister Nina, a girl of seventeen, the sufferings and the heroism of their guest in the most glowing colours; he made her prepare for him the most refreshing and restoring beverages; he watched for hours at the side of his couch; in short, he lavished upon him all those marks of affection with which a [97] hasty and generous nature loves to make reparation for a wrong. ”

“ Men have called it, with austere irony, the Ravenscourt. I shall not, I trust, wound the patriotism of Bayswater, or the lonelier pride of Brompton, or that of any other historic township, by taking these two special examples. ”

“ At Étretat almost everybody swims and wears a costume of blue serge, trimmed with scarlet, or other bright colour; and everybody sits in the afternoon in the gay little bay, purchases shell ornaments and useless souvenirs, sips coffee or ices, and listens to the band. For a very little place, without a railway, and with only two good hotels, Étretat is wonderfully lively and attractive; and the drives in the neighbourhood add to its natural attractions. ”

“ On 8 July 1646 L'Estrange issued a broadside called ‘Roger Lestrange to a Gentleman, a Member of the Honourable House of Commons,’ in which he set forth a statement of his case and of his sufferings (Lemon, Cat. of Broadsides, p. 113) . On 7 April 1647 he discussed the same topics in a pamphlet entitled ‘L'Estrange, his Appeale from the Court-Martiall to the Parliament.’ He was still in Newgate in the spring of 1648, but at that date the governor connived at his escape, regarding him as ‘one in whom there was no more danger’ (Clarendon, iv. 333) . ”

“ The declining popularity of the whigs led to no abatement in the fury of the ‘Observator's’ blows. In the autumn of 1683 L'Estrange defended the government's attitude to the Rye House plot in ‘Considerations upon a printed sheet entitled the Speech of the late Lord Russell to the Sheriffs, together with the Paper delivered by him to them at the Place of Execution on July the 21st, 1683,’ London, 4to (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 365 b) . On 24 Feb. 1683–4 Titus Oates petitioned the privy council to prevent L'Estrange from continuing his attacks on him in his periodical. ”

“ At a foolish County Meeting in 1797, to petition his Majesty to remove his late Minister, Mr. Pitt, I called up my apprentices at 3 o'clock in the morning; we got a ladder, and scaladed the walls of the Castle of Exeter, got in unperceived, I wrote conspicuously No petition, no civil war, and at many more lofty hazardous places in the city, that the freeholders might read it when they came to the meeting; we (had) done the whole before the people were up. I again put out handbills warning the mobility of Exeter of riot ”

“ Chapter 7 1 The king and Haman came to the banquet with Esther the queen. 2 And again the king said to Esther on the second day, as they were drinking wine, "What is your request, Esther the queen? It will be granted to you. What are you asking for? Up to half my kingdom, it will be done."
3 Esther the queen replied, "If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be spared as my request, and my people are what I am asking for. 4 Because we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, to be extermined. ”

“ The hamlet of Westerkirk, with its parish church and school, lies in a narrow part of the valley, a few miles above Langholm. Westerkirk parish is long and narrow, its boundaries being the hill-tops on either side of the dale. It is about seven miles long and two broad, with a population of about 600 persons of all ages. Yet this number is quite as much as the district is able to support, as is proved by its remaining as nearly as possible stationary from one generation to another.* [3] But what becomes of the natural increase of families? "They swarm off!" ”