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364 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
CHAPTER XXII
PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMUS
THE first and only Earl of Ringwood has submitted to the fate
which peers and commoners are alike destined to undergo.
Hastening to his magnificent seat of Whipham Market,
where he proposed to entertain an illustrious Christmas party, his
Lordship left London scarcely recovered from an attack of gout to
which he has been for many years a martyr. The disease must
have flown to his stomach, and suddenly mastered him. At
Turreys Regum, thirty miles from his own princely habitation,
where he had been accustomed to dine on his almost Royal progresses
to his home, he was already in a state of dreadful suffering,
to which his attendants did not pay the attention which his condition
ought to have excited ; for when labouring under this most
painful malady his outcries were loud, and his language and
demeanour exceedingly violent. He angrily refused to send for
medical aid at Turreys, and insisted on continuing his journey
homewards. He was one of the old school, who never would enter
a railway (though his fortune was greatly increased by the passage
of the railway through his property); and his own horses always
met him at " Popper's Tavern," an obscure hamlet, seventeen miles
from his princely seat. He made no sign on arriving at " Popper's,"
and spoke no word, to the now serious alarm of his servants. When
they came to light his carriage-lamps, and look into his postchaise,
the lord of many thousand acres, and, according to report, of
immense wealth, was dead. The journey from Turreys had been
the last stage of a long, a prosperous, and if not a famous, at least
a notorious and magnificent career.
" The late John George, Earl and Baron Ringwood and Viscount
Cinqbars, entered into public life at the dangerous period before the
French Revolution; and commenced his career as the friend and
companion of the Prince of Wales. When his Royal Highness
seceded from the Whig party, Lord Ringwood also joined the Tory
side of politicians, and an earldom was the price of his fidelity.
But on the elevation of Lord Steyne to a marquisate, Lord Ring-