By annexing the Desborough patronymic--which,
however, he tactfully spelled Desboro', to avoid conflict with the
family prejudices--he added, at the cost of a trifling fee to the
Consistory Court of Canterbury, a flavour of old gentility to the
artistic promise of Lorenzo, the solid commercial assurance of Smith.
Together the three proved irresistible. He prospered. He died worth
twenty-five thousand pounds, which had indeed been fifty thousand but
for an unlucky error.
"Like many another discoverer, he pushed his discovery too far.
He reasoned--but the reasoning was not _in pari materia_--that what
he had applied to Art he could apply to Religion. In compliment to
what he understood to be the ancient faith of the Desboroughs he had
embraced the principles of Roman Catholicism--his motto, by the way,
was _Thorough_--and this landed him, shortly after middle age, in an
awkward predicament. He had, in an access of spleen, set fire to the
house of a client whose payments were in arrear. The good priest who
confessed him recommended, nay enjoined, an expiatory pilgrimage to
Rome; and my uncle, on the excuse of a rush of orders, despatched a
junior clerk to perform the pilgrimage for him.
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