They loved him for his
casualness--for his inexactness--for refusing to make life a cut-
and-dried business--for ramming an official dispatch of high
importance into his coat-pocket, and finding it there, still
unopened, at Newmarket, several days later. They loved him for
his hatred of fine sentiments; they were delighted when they
heard that at some function, on a florid speaker's avowing that
'this was the proudest moment of his life', Lord Hartington had
growled in an undertone 'the proudest moment of my life was when
MY pig won the prize at Skipton Fair'. Above all, they loved him
for being dull. It was the greatest comfort--with Lord Hartington
they could always be absolutely certain that he would never, in
any circumstances, be either brilliant, or subtle, or surprising,
or impassioned, or profound. As they sat, listening to his
speeches, in which considerations of stolid plainness succeeded
one another with complete flatness, they felt, involved and
supported by the colossal tedium, that their confidence was
finally assured. They looked up, and took their fill of the
sturdy, obvious presence. The inheritor of a splendid dukedom
might almost have passed for a farm hand. Almost, but not quite.
For an air that was difficult to explain, of preponderating
authority, lurked in the solid figure; and the lordly breeding of
the House of Cavendish was visible in the large, long, bearded,
unimpressionable face.
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