Except in the case of one person not yet born into these pages, the
report that the lady had engaged herself, early in the year 1869, to
"Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master," had only a short currency. It was
probably devised by the Honourable Emily herself in order to soften
the blow for her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to whom
she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton. Under this name he
appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon Guards as a trooper in the
years 1862-1867; and as "Buck" Causton he attained some celebrity
when, in the last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in
the prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and ending
with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.
For all we know, it may have been Miss Dragon's Mr. Sopley who, seeing
the magnificent Buck in the ring, first put it into the ex-trooper's
head to become an artists' model. However it was, an artists' model he
did become, and, as such, the rage. No doubt Sopley, if it were he,
would gladly have kept his discovery to himself; but a neck like a
sycamore and a thorax capable of containing nine-hours-contest lungs
cannot be hid when Academy time comes round. Sopley's measure was
known. If Sopley painted an heroic picture it was certain he had had a
hero as model. The Academy opens in May; before June was out Sopley's
find was no longer his own. Sir Frederick Henson, the artist who moved
so in the world that in him the tradition of the monarch who picked up
the painter's brush for him might almost have been said to live again,
saw Buck, marked Buck down as his own, and presently had sole
possession of Buck.
The Honourable Emily Scarisbrick already had possession of Sir
Frederick. To be sure, it neither needed a Sir Frederick Henson to
teach her the stippling of birds' eggs and the copying of castles for
the albums of her friends, nor was the great Academician accustomed to
stooping to the office of salaried drawing-master; but--the Honourable
Emily was a Scarisbrick, of Mallard Bois.
In Henson's studio the Honourable Emily first saw Buck Causton.
To say that she fell in love with him would demand a definition of the
term. Certainly she fell in something with him. Perhaps that something
was the something that at the last thrusts baronies and Mallard Boises
aside as hindrances to a design even larger than that in which they
play so important a part; but we have nothing to do with large designs
here. Call it what you will: something proper enough to legend, but of
little enough propriety in a modern lady's life; a feeble echo of
Romance, perhaps, but never itself to become Romance unless, of it or
present scandal, it should prove the stronger. At any rate, it was a
very different thing from anything she felt, or ever had felt, for
Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars, her brother's nominee
for her hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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