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THE TOUCHSTONE OF FORTUNE
Being the Memoir of Baron Clyde, who lived, thrived, and fell in the
Doleful Reign of the so-called Merry Monarch, Charles II
by
CHARLES MAJOR
Author of When Knighthood Was In Flower, etc.
1912
To My Wife
CHAPTER I
DAUGHTERS AND POVERTY
Goddess Fortune seems to delight in smiling on a man who risks hisall, including life, perhaps, on a desperate chance of, say one to onehundred. If her Ladyship frowns and he loses, his friends call him afool; if he wins, they say he is a lucky devil and are pleased to sharehis prosperity if he happens to be of a giving disposition. Lucky? No!He has simply minted his courage.
The most remarkable illustration of these truths that has ever come to myknowledge is my friend George Hamilton, the second son in this generationof the illustrious House of Hamilton, Count Anthony being its presenthead. The younger son was penniless save for the crumbs that fell fromhis elder brother's table, and Count Anthony was one who kept an eye onthe crumbs.
George, who was of an independent nature, accepted Anthony's grudginghelp reluctantly. Therefore when Charles II was restored to the Englishthrone in 1660, the younger Hamilton, who had been with the king inexile, was glad to assume the duties of Second Gentleman of theBedchamber in Whitehall Palace. With the pension attached to this office,winnings at cards and other uncertain revenues from disreputable sources,George was enabled to maintain himself at court where debts were notnecessarily paid, where honesty and virtue were held in contempt, andwhere vice of all sorts was not only the daily stock in trade but thedaily stock of jest and pleasure, boasting and pride; for what is theuse of being wicked if one hides one's light under a bushel?
Hamilton was a favorite with those who knew him well and was respectedby those who knew him slightly, not because of his virtues, for they werefew, but because he was strikingly handsome in person, moderately quickof wit, generous to an enemy, kind to every one, brave to the point ofrecklessness, and decent even in vice, if that be possible. He was nobetter than his friends save in these easy qualities, but while he was asbad in all other respects as his surroundings, the evil in him was duemore to environment than to natural tendencies, and the good—well, thatwas his undoing, as this history will show. A man who attempts to 'boutship morally in too great haste is liable to miss stays and be swamped,for nothing so grates on us as the sudden reformation of our friends,while we remain unregenerate.
But to write Hamilton's history I must begin at the beginning, whichin this case happens to be my beginning, and shall conclude with his"hundred to one" venture, which closed his career and mine, at leastin England.
* * * * *
The Clydes, of whom I am the present head, have always had great respectfor the inevitable and have never permitted the idealization of ahopeless cause to lead them into trouble solely for trouble's sake. Soit was that when my father of blessed memory saw that King Charles I andhis favorites were determined to wreck the state, themselves, and theirfriends, he fell ill of the gout at an opportune moment, which made itneces