| "The story of our Lives from Year to Year"
All the Year Round | ||
| No. 26. New Series. | Saturday, May 29, 1869. | Price Twopence. |
Wrecked in Port.
A Serial Story by the Author of "Black Sheep."
Book III.
Chapter III.The Opportunity.
Mr. Bokenham did not improve in the estimation either of the constituency of Brocksopp, or of those in London who had the guidance of electioneering matters in the borough in the Liberal interest. The aspiring candidate was tolerably amenable at first, went down as often as the policy of such a course was suggested to him, and visited all the people whose names were on the list with which he was supplied; though his objectionable manner, and his evident lack of real interest in the place and its inhabitants, militated very much against his success. But after a little time he neglected even these slight means for cultivating popularity. A young man, with an excellent income, and with the prospect of a very large fortune on his father's death, has very little trouble in getting into such society as would be most congenial to him, more especially when that society is such as is most affected by the classes which he apes. Young Mr. Bokenham, whose chief desire in life was, as his sharp-seeing keen-witted old father said of him, to "sink the shop," laid himself out especially for the company of men of birth and position, and he succeeded in hooking himself on to one of the fastest and most raffish sets in London. The fact that he was a novus homo, and that his father was "in trade," which had caused him to be held up to ridicule at Eton, and had rendered men shy of knowing him at Christchurch, had, he was delighted to perceive, no such effect in the great city. He began with a few acquaintances picked up in public, but he speedily enlarged and improved his connexion. The majors, with the billiard-table brevet, the captains, and the shabby old bucks of St. Alban's-place, with whom Tommy Bokenham at first consorted, were soon renounced for men of a widely different stamp, so far as birth and breeding were concerned, but with much the same tastes, and more means and opportunities of gratifying them. It is probable that Mr. Bokenham owed his introduction among these scions of the upper circles to a notion, prevalent among a certain section of them, that he might be induced to plunge into the mysteries of the turf, and to bet largely, even if he did not undertake a racing establishment. But they were entirely wrong. Young Tommy had not sufficient physical go and pluck in him for anything that required energy; he commanded his position in the set in which, to his great delight, at length he found himself, by giving elaborate dinners and occasionally lending money in moderate amounts, in return for which he was allowed to show himself in public in the company of his noble acquaintances, and was introduced by them to certain of their male and female friends, the latter of whom were especially frank and demonstrative in their reception and welcome of him.
The fascination of this kind of life, which began to dawn on young Mr. Bokenham almost concurrently with the idea of his standing for the borough of Brocksopp, soon proved to be incompatible with the proper discharge of the duties required of him as candidate. He found the necessity for frequent visits to his intended constituents becoming more and more of a nuisance to him, and entirely declined a suggestion which was made to the effect that now, as the time of the election was so near at hand, it would be advisable for him
