History

The Title X

It is a truth not universally acknowledged, but a man of inarguably low circumstances and unexpectedly excellent luck might still make something great of his life by showing courage and resilience in battle. Such was the fate of Henry Wheeling-Hare at the Battle of Vitoria in the year of our Lord 1813. For saving the lives of half his regiment, along with a lieutenant colonel of particular favor to the queen, he earned the distinction of Grand Commander of the Order of the Bath...as well as a viscounty and an impressive parcel of land to support it. Peerage, with all its complicated economic and social obligations, did not come easily to poor Henry, whose own ancestry involved shopkeepers and parcel-tiers. Even so, he married well and did his best and left an eldest son to carry on the title.

The second Viscount Briarewe was amiable in the extreme and far more popular with both his tenants and his fellow nobles than his father had ever been. Malcolm would never be regarded as particularly clever, but like his father, he married well—this time, in the sense that the Viscountess Annalise proved to possess a skeptical, practical and thrifty mind to balance her husband's genial generosity. Like so many marriages of their class, theirs was not a love match. They resolved to be partners, however, and true affection grew between them, only increasing with the addition of one, then another, and then a third son to their family.

The Musician X

Daniel Jonathan Wheeling-Hare was born into comfort of all sorts. As youngest son, he had no worries about the responsibilities of inheritance, and his elder brothers took the brunt of his parents' disciplinary attention and academic ambitions. Considered shy and sensitive, he was often left to follow his own inclinations, and from his youngest years, all his interest and passion aligned in the pursuit of music. His mother had played and sung to great praise in her youth; she gladly bestowed all her experience (and perhaps some thwarted personal ambition) upon her youngest son. With such encouragement, he improved by extraordinary leaps, and while he'd once been judged the whimsical dreamer of the family, he proved more than willing to play his fingers down to the bone in pursuit of excellence on the keys.

He hadn't intended to make a career of it—or of anything, of course, given his situation—but after a celebrated performance in front of the royal family at fifteen years of age, his world opened up in unexpected ways. His original path, dull but certainly doable, had led from Eton to Oxford and probable marriage. Instead, he received an invitation to study under a pianist in Paris. Then in Frankfurt. Then in Vienna. Separated from his family for the first time, he learned a self-reliance that would later serve him well. He also developed an independence of mind, body and spirit that he came to value more than almost anything else.

The sudden death of his mother shook that new confidence. It also forced his return to England, where he completed his studies at Cambridge, rather than following in his father's and brothers' footsteps at Oxford. But home seemed unendurably different without the Viscountess, and he resumed his travels as quickly as possible—first on the Continent, and then much further afield.

He skirted the edges of Africa, India, and the Orient. The sounds and sights fascinated him, and he learned both the true value of a shilling and the best ways to stretch it in all directions. He also began to come to terms with the fact that his vision, never good, was growing ever so gradually worse. In America, he visited a physician that had little to offer beyond an uncertain diagnosis and a pair of spectacles that he could only rarely bring himself to wear. The silver lining was finding new inspiration—not in the gilded bustle of New York or the odd familiarity of Boston, but in the uneasy cultural mélange of the American South, where pain and joy and rhythm were combining in ways he had never before imagined.

Amid so much inner and outer turmoil, the news of his father's remarriage came as a shock. Too proud to admit he felt betrayed, he lingered in Charleston until any hope of reaching London before the wedding had passed. He kept finding excuses for two long years.

Finally, he received a letter with news he couldn't bear to ignore. A sister, twenty-five years his junior, had been born on the first of May.

He returned to Briarewe to find that his father had remarried for the only worthwhile reason: love, at last. He couldn't pretend that sort of sentiment towards his new stepmother (a scant four years older than him), but from the moment he held tiny Mariel in his arms, all need for pretense dissolved. Love poured out of him like lifeblood, more pure and profound than any music he'd ever heard or made.

He'd meant to return to America within weeks. Instead, he stayed for over a year, watching his sister surmount the many milestones of infancy with unexpected enthusiasm. While he chafed under the renewed expectations of his family and their life in society, he accepted the discomfort as the price of enjoying their company. When his travels resumed, they no longer lasted so long or strayed so far. His previous wanderlust could no longer obsess him. The birth of another brother within a few years reinforced his decision to make a true place for himself with his restructured family.

The Tragedy X

That he was therefore in London for his father's rapid decline and death was a mixed blessing and curse. Despite their heartbreak, the Wheeling-Hare household found solace in each other, and the dowager Viscountess—widowed twice, now—remained a solid presence in the family even when Samuel took on the title and all its responsibilities. The birth of the next generation in Samuel's son, Henry Malcolm, gave them all a badly-needed touchstone of joy during the next year.

Like their late mother, Samuel considered himself a connoisseur of the arts. Daniel found his family interested, abruptly, in sometimes accompanying him to his performances and the exhibitions and events that often surrounded them. So much togetherness admittedly strained his patience. He still cherished his independence, and moreover, the secret of his deteriorating sight was becoming more and more difficult to hide from those who loved him best. Maintaining a precarious equilibrium struggled against a growing tide of his own guilty resentment. When the Viscount proposed that the entire family make a journey to Paris for the third annual exhibition by the Société des Artistes Indépendants, he was able to agree with only an internal gnashing of teeth.

They departed in April for two months in France. The voyage itself went well, with pleasant spring days split between the calm of the countryside and the excitement of the city. He reestablished acquaintances with whom he had fallen out of contact in the years since his Paris studies, and the exhibition did not disappoint. If he spent more late evenings in the company of musicians and performers than his family, well. Minor rebellion could be forgiven in a man suffering increasing hints from that family about settling down into a domestic tranquility of his own.

Daniel, who had promised a performance in London on the 2nd of July, returned to England two weeks ahead of the rest. With him he brought Mariel—much to her disappointment—and Nathaniel, who had suffered a minor fever and was judged better able to recover in the country air at home. His stepmother, his brothers, and their extended family would return by ship at mid-month.

He received word of the sinking of the Laureate on July 17th, 1887. All crew and passengers drowned.

So profound a loss seemed to open a rip straight through the fabric of the world. For some weeks, the darkness beyond the broken stitching was all he could see. The bodies of the Viscount and Viscountess were recovered from the wreckage. The others were not, and the burial, while finished, felt incomplete. The same sense of absence and emptiness lingered in the hushed halls of Briarewe, and for the second time in Daniel's life, the manor no longer felt like home. Nothing fit correctly; no one could endure such an adjustment. Packing up his devastatingly small household and preparing the spend the Christmas season in Mayfair was a welcome distraction.