Читать книгу The Chord of Steel - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 9

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Alexander the First died in London in 1865. He makes his last appearance in a group photograph of the three Alexanders taken when his grandson was, at the most, sixteen years of age. It must be confessed that the old man dominates the picture; his hair abundant and white, his face clean-shaven, his nose and mouth firm, a thespian to the last. One is struck by the resemblance he bore to Canada’s great Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

In the meantime young Alexander had been engaged as a teacher of music and elocution at the Weston House Academy in Elgin and had discovered in himself a real aptitude for teaching, a liking which remained with him as long as he lived. His older brother, Melville, had stayed with their father in Edinburgh, acting as his assistant. The death of the grandfather made different arrangements necessary. Alexander Melville Bell decided to remove to London and take over his father’s connections, young Alexander to follow later. The older boy remained in Edinburgh and carried on his father’s classes there.

The time has come to tell something of the Bell house on Harrington Square. The square lay east of Regent’s Park at the fork of Eversholt Street and Hampstead Road. It was, in reality, a triangle, the converging sides filled with tall and substantial houses, the third opening on Mornington Crescent. It lay too far north to be fashionable. To Harrington Square had drifted retired army and navy officers, widows of reasonable means, a few doctors and lawyers, some successful dabblers in the arts. Clearly it was a more pleasant place in which to live than in the rarefied atmosphere of Mayfair or the excessive affluence of Bloomsbury, where the wealthy merchants of London vied with one another in the splendor of their carriages and the gorgeous liveries of their footmen and “tigers,” a tiger being a diminutive footman who stood up very straight on the step at the rear of the conveyance.

No family could be more unconventional or more blessed with lively spirits than the Bells; except, perhaps, the combination of two most aristocratic families which resulted in Harrington Square. There was, first, Anna Maria, a daughter of the third earl of Harrington, who married the Duke of Bedford. She was a lovely girl and very high-spirited herself, a niece of the eccentric fourth earl, who astonished all London by his habits. This unusual peer never made an appearance until six in the evening and then he would burst on society in the most extravagant of clothes, which he designed himself to accentuate his resemblance to that great philanderer Henri IV of France. He was odd in everything (he liked tea and had caddies in every room at Harrington House) but, when he finally married, he adopted a course which later became almost a fixed habit in the aristocracy; he chose an actress, an Irish girl, Maria Foote, who was pretty, vivacious, and universally popular, and who, moreover, introduced the song “Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid?” The fair Maria knew exactly where she was going and she seems to have adapted herself well to life in Mayfair.

The Duke of Bedford was one of the richest peers in England. Woburn Abbey, his country seat, was a show place, filled with fine paintings and priceless furniture. He owned great land holdings in London, including Covent Market and extensive tracts in the northern part of the city. Being resourceful in the management of his unwieldy estates, he decided to do something about his properties east of Regent’s Park. It was in 1843 that he laid out the triangle which he named Harrington Square in honor of his wife. It seems to have been a real estate speculation, for none of the Harringtons lived there, preferring their London house in St. James’s Place. The converging sides, with houses which loudly bespoke their respectability, were well populated when Alexander the First bought No. 18. There was still an air of morality and strict standards about the neighborhood when his son moved in to succeed him.

The house at No. 18 was all that could be expected in these days of darkest Victorianism. The ceilings were high and the windows long, necessitating the use of solidly dark hangings. There were horsehair sofas and deep chairs, and a very great deal of black mahogany, ornate round knobs, and marble slabs wherever a use could be found for one, mostly to support glass bells over curious objects of no conceivable interest to anyone. Some of the gloom was dissipated when Alexander the Second brought his family there, for this introduced laughter into the house, and animated talk and music at all times of the day. The Victorian solemnity vanished through the tall draped windows and the halls resounded with the tap of busy heels.

The family had come to London at a moment when a general upsurge of interest in scientific matters was taking place. The great impetus, perhaps, had been supplied by the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, an event which had rocked the world and had brought down a storm of anathema from pulpit and synod and convention. This was only one phase, however. Learned minds were turning in every direction and out of this enlightened curiosity would come, finally, the flying machine, the automobile, the motion pictures, the phonograph, in the fields of applied science.

What appealed most to the newcomers on Harrington Square was that men in all parts of the world were thinking about the problems of speech and the possibility of transmitting sound over wires and under the seas. The word “telephone” had already been coined and it crept frequently into conversations about scientific possibilities. It was not then applied to the meaning which was given it later—when the quiet youth, who sometimes accompanied the ebullient Alexander Melville Bell in his meetings with other men of scientific bent, had succeeded in creating a device which would change the whole face of life.