Goodwood

“ I told you in my last letter that I should be unable to brighten Goodwood with the sunshine of my smile. But what is Goodwood compared to racing at Jersey? Indeed, it was unfortunate for Goodwood that the meetings clashed, and it should be avoided in future. ”

“ You have made a conquest such as the proudest women in the peerage have vainly tried to make; you have one of the highest titles in the country offered to you; you have won a man whom everybody declared would never be won; you have done this, pardon me, without either birth or fortune on your own side, and then you speak of rejecting Goodwood—Goodwood, of all the men in England! ”

“ Wait till you've had a few years of it before you say whether going through the same hoops and passing over the same sawdust is so very amusing."
"If I do not, I shall desert the troupe, and form a circus of my own less mechanical and more enjoyable."
"Il faut souffrir pour être belle, il faut souffrir encore plus pour être à la mode!" said Goodwood, on her right, while Lady Egidia Hautton thought, "How bold that little Montolieu is!" and her sister, Lady Feodorowna, wondered what her cousin Goodwood could see there. ”

“ He left her accordingly to Goodwood till the curtain fell after the last act of the "Barbiere;" and Lady Marabout congratulated herself on her own adroitness. "There is nothing like a little tact," she thought; "what would society be without the guiding genius of tact, I wonder? One dreadful Donnybrook Fair!"
But, someway or other, despite all her tact, or because her son inherited that valuable quality in a triple measure to herself, someway, it was Goodwood who led her to her carriage, and Carruthers who led the little Montolieu.
"Terribly bête of Philip; how very unlike him!" ”

“ You are ambitious—what can flatter your ambition more than such an offer. You are clever—as Goodwood's wife you may lead society like Madame de Rambouillet [Pg 203] or immerse yourself in political intrigue like the Duchess of Devonshire. It is an offer which places within your reach everything most dazzling and attractive, and it is one, my dear Flora, which you must forgive me if I say a young girl of obscure rank, as rank goes, and no fortune whatever, should pause before she lightly rejects. You cannot afford to be fastidious as if you were an heiress or a lady-in-your-own-right. ”

“ Bincker," marveled Miss Goodwood, in her turn.
John grinned maliciously at Pie Face. "He done gone to baid," said he. "All he clothes spiled, and he powerful mad 'bout it. He kill somebody, come mahnin'."
"Oh, Lord!" said Pie Face to himself. "How will I fix it with Mr. Bincker and James?"
"Suffering giraffes!" groaned Mr. Goodwood. "I'll never be able to square it with the New York police!"
"Gracious!" cried Miss Goodwood's repentant inner spirit. "How am I ever going to explain it to everybody when the truth comes out?"
John, butler and villain, alone was calm. ”

“ That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back to England. “Ah then,” said Caspar, “I’m afraid I shall be a fifth wheel to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you.”
“Good heavens—it’s the golden age! You’re all too kind.”
“The kindness on my part is to her; it’s hardly to you.”
“Granting that, she’s kind,” smiled Ralph.
“To get people to go with you? Yes, that’s a sort of kindness,” Goodwood answered without lending himself to the joke. ”

“ Goodwood had come and gone, a brief bright season of loss and gain, fine gowns, flirtation, lobster en mayonaise, champagne, sunshine, dust, glare, babble of many voices, successes, failures, triumphs, humiliations. A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside, this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth—so too here under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the company. ”

“ The good park has many deer and no race-course.
And yet Goodwood is superb, for it has some of the finest trees in Sussex within its walls, including the survivors of a thousand cedars of Lebanon planted a hundred and fifty years ago; and with every step higher one unfolds a wider view of the Channel and the plain. ”

“ Goodwood has great weight, my dear, in the best circles. A compliment from him is a great compliment to any woman, and the sort of answer you gave him——"
"Must have been a great treat to him, dear Lady Marabout, if every one is in the habit of kow-towing before him. Princes, you know, are never so happy as when they can have a little bit of nature; and my speech must have been as refreshing to Lord Goodwood as the breath of his Bearnese breezes and the freedom of his Pyrenean forests were to Henri Quatre after the court etiquette and the formal ceremonial of Paris." ”

“ I wish you would come and bid at the sale, Philip; I should like to see you married—well married, of course."
"My beloved mother!" cried Carruthers. "Leave me in peace, if you please, and catch the others if you can. There's Goodey, now; every chaperone and débutante in London has set traps for him for the last I don't know how many years; wouldn't he do for Valencia?"
"Goodwood? Of course he would; he would do for any one; the Dukedom's the oldest in the peerage. Goodwood [Pg 89] is highly eligible. Thank you for reminding me, Philip. Since Valencia is coming, I must do my best for her." ”

“ That indifference and nonchalance is the very thing to pique and retain such a courted fastidious creature as Goodwood; and she knows it, too. Now a clumsy casual observer might even fancy that she liked some others—even you, Philip, for instance—much better; she talks to you much more, appeals to you twice as often, positively teases you to stop and lunch or come to dinner here, and really told you the other night at the Opera she missed you when you didn't come in the morning ”

“ I saw you waltzing with her last night," said Goodwood at Lord's the next morning, watching a match between the Household Cavalry and the Zingari Eleven.
"Yes, she is the best thing we have seen for some time," said Cheveley, glancing round to see if the Marabout liveries were on the ground.
"Don't let the Amandine or little Maréchale hear you say so, or you'll have a deuce of a row," laughed Goodwood. "She's worth a good deal, too; she's all her mother's property, and that's something, I know. ”

“ I suppose that peerage cost the old devil the deuce of a sum. Even baronetcies have gone up frightfully nowadays, I’m told. And he’s started a racing-stable. By the way, put your last collar-stud on Ocean Breeze for the Goodwood Cup. It’s a cert.”
“I’m going to.”
“It can’t lose. I mean to win enough on it to marry Charlotte with. You’re going to Goodwood, of course?”
“Rather!”
“So are we. We’re holding a meeting on Cup day just outside the paddock.”
“But, I say, aren’t you taking frightful risks? Your uncle’s sure to be at Goodwood. Suppose he spots you? ”

“ Besides, even you must admit that Goodwood is a much more desirable alliance, and if Valencia had accepted Cardonnel, pray what would all Belgravia have said? Why, that, disappointed of Goodwood, she took the other out of pure pique! We owe something to society, Philip, and something to ourselves."
Carruthers laughed:
"Ah, my dear mother, you women will never be worth all you ought to be till you leave off kowtow-ing to 'what will be said,' and learn to defy that terrible oligarchy of the Qu'en dira-t-on?" ”

“ Lord Alfred was talking to Lady Elizabeth when he entered, and Emily was engaged with a bald-headed old gentleman with a little ribbon and a star. The bald-headed old gentleman soon departed, and then Cousin George, in some skilfully indirect way, took an opportunity of letting Emily know that he should not go to Goodwood this July.
"Not go to Goodwood?" said she, pretending to laugh. "It will be most unnatural, will it not? They'll hardly start the horses without you, I should think." ”

“ I don't much like the man, supercilious and empty-headed; still he's an unobjectionable alliance. And there is Goodwood. Every one has tried for Goodwood, and failed. I should like Valencia to win him; he is decidedly the most eligible man in town. I will invite him to dinner. If he is not attracted by Valencia's beauty, nothing can attract him——Despréaux! comme vous êtes bête! Otez ces panaches, de grace!"
"Valencia will give me no trouble; she will marry at once," thought Lady Marabout again, looking across the dinner-table at her niece. ”

“ George's.
"That's a decidedly handsome girl, that cousin of yours, Phil," said Goodwood, on the pavement before her Grace of Amandine's, in Grosvenor Place, at the same hour that night.
"I think she is counted like me!" said Carruthers. "Of course she's handsome; hasn't she De Bonc [oe] ur blood in her, my good fellow? We're all of us good-looking, always have been, thank God! If you're inclined to sacrifice, Goodwood, now's your time, and my mother'll be delighted. She's brought out about half a million of débutantes, I should say, in her time, and all of 'em have gone wrong, somehow ”

“ To attempt to spare his sensibility or to escape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man who had barred the way less sturdily—this, in dealing with Caspar Goodwood, who would grasp at everything of every sort that one might give him, was wasted agility. ”

“ It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle—even for Alderneys—is the meadow. Cows in a park [Pg 40] are a poor makeshift; parks are for deer. To my eyes Goodwood House has a chilling exterior; the road to the hill-top is steep and lengthy; and when one has climbed it and crossed the summit wood, it is to come upon the last thing that one wishes to find in the heart of the country, among rolling Downs, sacred to hawks and solitude—a Grand Stand and the railings of a race-course! Race-courses are for the outskirts of towns, as at Brighton and Lewes ”

“ The best two-year-olds are usually seen out at Goodwood, and as a general rule those that have chiefly distinguished themselves during the year, and are to make names for themselves later in life, are found contesting the Middle Park Plate at the Newmarket Second October Meeting and the Dewhurst Plate at the Newmarket Houghton. ”

“ When on the morrow the entire population of the district turned out to see the races, and when, ours being the first, we did the customary pipe-opener, the leading artists at Goodwood or Ascot felt less pride, possibly less desperate determination. ”

“ She says she wants me to look after this excrescence while he's in New York. By Jove, Jeeves, if I only fawn on him a bit, so that he sends back a favourable report to head-quarters, I may yet be able to get back to England in time for Goodwood. Now is certainly the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, Jeeves. We must rally round and cosset this cove in no uncertain manner. ”

“ GOODWOOD, a mansion in the parish of Boxgrove, in the Chichester parliamentary division of Sussex, England, 4 m. N.E. of Chichester. It was built from designs of Sir William Chambers with additions by Wyatt, after the purchase of the property by the first duke of Richmond in 1720. The park is in a hilly district, and is enriched with magnificent trees of many varieties, including some huge cedars. ”

“ No, my love, he is not; very few men have Philip's talents and person," said Lady Marabout, consciously mollified and propitiated, but going on, nevertheless, with a Spartan impartiality highly laudable [Pg 179] "Goodwood's rank, however, is much higher than Philip's (at least it stands so, though really the Carruthers are by far the older, dating as far back as Ethelbert II., while the Doncaster family are literally unknown till the fourteenth century, when Gervaise d'Ascotte received the acolade before Ascalon from Godfrey de Bouillon) ”

“ This meant that they would also stay the night. By the same mail went a request to her father (the earl) that he send out her diamonds for use at a dinner party the twenty-fifth of the month. The company would be chaperoned by Miss Tibbs, a maiden aunt with an hysterical nature and a kittenish disposition.
Of the three young men, Miss Goodwood, after deliberation, chose a practical business man. There seemed more chance of testing the inherence of American chivalry in his person. Much depended, after all, on how the hero rose to the occasion. ”

“ I’m tired, dead tired, of bein’ poor. Of course we get a little something from Lord Julius. But Eddy—you know what Eddy is! No sooner does he pick himself up from Epsom than Ascot gives him a fair knockout, and if he lives through the Sandown Eclipse there’s Goodwood waitin’ for him with a facer. I can’t understand it; other men seem to win sometimes—you’d think the unluckiest duffer would get a look-in once in a while—but no, he just gets hammered one meeting after another. And I’m tired of it, Frank! ”

“ Your phraseology is as strange as my son's!"
"To accept him only for the coronet and the rent-roll, his position and his Helmsley, seems not a very grateful and flattering return for his preference?"
"I do not see that at all," said Lady Marabout, irritably. Is there anything more annoying than to have unwelcome truths thrust in our teeth? "It is not as though he were odious to you—a hideous man, a coarse man, a cruel man, whose very presence repelled you. Goodwood is a man quite attractive enough to merit some regard, independent of his position ”

“ Lindley Murray, if alive, wouldn't, perhaps, receive or recognize it as such: "Not bad-looking."
"It isn't who a woman is, it's what she is, that's the question, I take it," said Goodwood, as he left the Guards' box to visit the Marabout. [Pg 196]
"By George!" laughed Nugent to Carruthers, "Goodey must be serious, eh, Phil? He don't care a button for little Bibi; he don't care even for Zerlina. When the ballet begins, I verily believe he's thinking less of the women before him than of the woman who has left the house ”