rigging, he would absently gaze off at the blank sea. At the presentation to him then of some minor matter interrupting the current of his thoughts he would show more or less irascibility; but instantly he would control it.
In the navy he was popularly known by the appellation “Starry Vere.” How such a designation happened to fall upon one who, whatever his sterling qualities, was without any brilliant ones was in this wise: a favorite kinsman, Lord Denton, a freehearted fellow, had been the first to meet and congratulate him upon his return to England from his West Indian cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy of Andrew Marvell’s poems had lighted, not for the first time however, upon the lines entitled “Appleton House,” the name of one of the seats of their common ancestor, a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century, in which poem occur the lines:
This ’tis to have been from the first
In a domestic heaven nursed,
Under the discipline severe
Of Fairfax and the starry Vere.
And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney’s great victory wherein he had played so gallant a part, brimming over with just family pride in the sailor of their house, he exuberantly exclaimed, “Give ye joy, Ed; give ye joy, my starry Vere!” This got currency, and the novel prefix serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish the Bellipotent’s captain from another Vere his senior, a distant relative, an officer of like rank in the navy, it remained permanently attached to the surname.
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