Fortune Hunting

by Tony Rothwell

Lord Blenkinsop was a good man. Good family. Acquaintance of the King. Wide of girth. Not the sharpest knife.  Took his responsibilities seriously though, always had. One of them was the further education of his nephew Nigel Carruthers.

When he was 19, Nigel’s courageous Royal Naval father, Captain William Carruthers had been killed by a musket ball on his own poop deck while serving His Majesty on the sloop HMS Orion, fighting the French off Brest. “Damn that little shrimp Boney and his dastardly ambitions,” muttered his Lordship at Carruthers’ funeral as the service wore on. And that is when, in an instant, he decided that it was his solemn duty, in loco parentis so to speak, to make sure Nigel was schooled in the ways of the world. With no children of his own he had always taken a fatherly interest in the boy who he felt had lived a rather sheltered life, with tutors coming to the London house throughout his childhood and, more recently, fencing and dancing instructors. The result was that he had few friends of his own age with whom to get out and about.

When Blenkers (as he was irreverently known in the family) put the idea to Marjorie Carruthers she agreed wholeheartedly – the tutoring had been her husband’s idea and had severely restricted her social life as it required her to be at home during the early tutoring rather than out with the fashionable set to which she felt she belonged, a ruse of the good Captain, who necessarily spent much time afloat. But now that her husband had departed this mortal coil, Blenkinsop’s notion suited her down to the ground – she needed to see and be seen in society, even if her attire was, temporarily, mourning black.

His Lordship planned an agenda for the proper instruction of a young man entering London society. First he took him to his club where he had his first taste of alcohol, a brandy no less, reading The Times in a large leather armchair after a good lunch. On another day they went to a coffee shop, a place of male intrigue if ever there was one concluded Nigel – it appealed to him a great deal and he entered into interesting political conversations. On another it was off to the House of Commons where shouting seemed to be the order of the day but where again he took a keen interest in the proceedings. In the evenings they visited a tavern or two where he evinced quite a deal of attention from the ladies, unused to seeing virile young men in city inns. The longer this “education” went on the more Nigel seemed to be enjoying it. He was getting a taste for ale and brandy and his Lordship was very pleased with the way the programme was proceeding and with the boy’s keen interest and sharp mind. He was definitely blossoming, like a bottle long-stoppered, finally open.