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Chapter XI - AristocracyPart I
Part I
The feudal character of the English state, now that it is getting
obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the democratic tendencies. The
inequality of power and property shocks republican nerves. Places, halls,
villas, walled parks, all over England, rival the splendor of royal seats.
Many of the halls, like Haddon, or Kedleston, are beautiful desolations. The
proprietor never saw them, or never lived in them. Primogeniture built these
sumptuous piles, and, I suppose, it is the sentiment of every traveller, as it
was mine, `Twas well to come ere these were gone. Primogeniture is a cardinal
rule of English property and institutions. Laws, customs, manners, the very
persons and faces, affirm it.
The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of the people is loyal.
The estates, names, and manners of the nobles flatter the fancy of the people,
and conciliate the necessary support. In spite of broken faith, stolen
charters, and the devastation of society by the profligacy of the court, we
take sides as we read for the loyal England and King Charles` "return to his
right" with his Cavaliers, - knowing what a heartless trifler he is, and what
a crew of God-forsaken robbers they are. The people of England knew as much.
But the fair idea of a settled government connecting itself with heraldic
names, with the written and oral history of Europe, and, at last, with the
Hebrew religion, and the oldest traditions of the world, was too pleasing a
vision to be shattered by a few offensive realities, and the politics of
shoemakers and costermongers. The hopes of the commoners take the same
direction with the interest of the patricians. Every man who becomes rich buys
land, and does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which he hopes to
rise. The Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. Time and law
have made the joining and moulding perfect in every part. The Cathedrals, the
Universities, the national music, the popular romances, conspire to uphold the
heraldry, which the current politics of the day are sapping. The taste of the
people is conservative. They are proud of the castles, and of the language and
symbol of chivalry. Even the word lord is the luckiest style that is used in
any language to designate a patrician. The superior education and manners of
the nobles recommend them to the country.
The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and held it for his eldest son.
The Norman noble, who was the Norwegian pirate baptized, did likewise. There
was this advantage of western over oriental nobility, that this was recruited
from below. English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has
courage and faculty, let him come in. Of course, the terms of admission to
this club are hard and high. The selfishness of the nobles comes in aid of the
interest of the nation to require signal merit. Piracy and war gave place to
trade, politics, and letters; the war-lord to the law-lord; the law-lord to
the merchant and the mill-owner; but the privilege was kept, whilst the means
of obtaining it were changed.
The foundations of these families lie deep in Norwegian exploits by sea,
and Saxon sturdiness on land. All nobility in its beginnings was somebody`s
natural superiority. The things these English have done were not done without
peril of lifee nor without wisdom and conduct; and the first hands, it may be
presumed, were often challenged to show their right to their honors, or yield
them to better men. "He that will be a head, let him be a bridge," said the
Welsh chief Benegridran, when he carried all his men over the river on his
back. "He shall have the book," said the mother of Alfred, "who can read it;"
and Alfred won it by that title: and I make no doubt that feudal tenure was no
sinecure, but baron, knight, and tenant often had their memories refreshed, in
regard to the service by which they held their lands. The De Veres, Bohuns,
Mowbrays, and Plantagenets were not addicted to contemplation. The Middle Age
adorned itself with proofs of manhood and devotion. Of Richard Beauchamp, Earl
of Warwick, the Emperor told Henry V. that no Christian king had such another
knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, and caused him to be named, "Father
of curtesie." "Our success in France," says the historian, "lived and died
with him."^1
[Footnote 1: Fuller`s Worthies, II., p. 472.]
The war-lord earned his honors, and no donation of land was large, as
long as it brought the duty of protecting it, hour by hour, against a terrible
enemy. In France and in England, the nobles were, down to a late day, born and
bred to war: and the duel, which in peace still held them to the risks of war,
diminished the envy that, in trading and studious nations, would else have
pried into their title. They were looked on as men who played high for a great
stake.
Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be kept great. A creative
economy is the fuel of magnificence. In the same line of Warwick, the
successor next but one to Beauchamp, was the stout earl of Henry VI. and
Edward IV. Few esteemed themselves in the mode, whose heads were not adorned
with the black ragged staff, his badge. At his house in London, six oxen were
daily eaten at a breakfast; and every tavern was full of his meat; and who had
any acquaintance in his family, should have as much boiled and roast as he
could carry on a long dagger.
The new age brings new qualities into request, the virtues of pirates
gave way to those of planters, merchants, senators, and scholars. Comity,
social talent, and fine manners, no doubt, have had their part also. I have
met somewhere with a historiette, which, whether more or less true in its
particulars, carries a general truth. "How came the Duke of Bedford by his
great landed estates? His ancestor having travelled on the continent, a
lively, pleasant man, became the companion of a foreign prince wrecked on the
Dorset-shire coast, where Mr. Russell lived. The prince recommended him to
Henry VIII., who, liking his company, gave him a large share of the plundered
church lands."
The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken descent from the Norman,
and has never worked for eight hundred years. But the fact is otherwise. Where
is Bohun? where is De Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, the silkmercer lies perdu
under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing; especially
skilful lawyers, nobody`s sons, who did some piece of work at a nice moment
for government, and were rewarded with ermine.
The national tastes of the English do not lead them to the life of the
courtier, but to secure the comfort and independence of their homes. The
aristocracy are marked by their predilection for country-life. They are
called the county-families. They have often no residence in London, and only
go thither a short time, during the season, to see the opera; but they
concentrate the love and labor of many generations on the building, planting,
and decoration of their homesteads. Some of them arc too old and too proud to
wear titles, or, as Sheridan said to Coke, "disdain to hide their head in a
coronet"; and some curious examples are cited to show the stability of English
families. Their proverb is that, fifty miles from London, a family will last a
hundred years; at a hundred miles, two hundred years; and so on; but I doubt
that steam, the enemy of time, as well as of space, will disturb these ancient
rules. Sir Henry Wotton says of the first Duke of Buckingham, "He was born at
Brookeby in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had chiefly continued about
the space of four hundred years, rather without obscurity, than with any great
lustre."^2 Wraxall says that, in 1781, Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of
Norfolk, told him that when the year 1783 should arrive, he meant to give a
grand festival to all the descendants of the body of Jockey of Norfolk, to
mark the day when the dukedom should have remained three hundred years in
their house, since its creation by Richard III. Pepys tells us, in writing of
an Earl Oxford, in 1666, that the honor had now remainded in that name and
blood six hundred years.
[Footnote 2: Reliquiae Wottonianae, p. 208.]
This long descent of families and this cleaving through ages to the same
spot of ground captivates the imagination. It has too a connection with the
names of the towns and districts of the country.
The names are excellent, - an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over
the land. Older than all epics and histories, which clothe a nation, this
under-shirt sits close to the body. What history too, and what stores of
primitive and savage observation, it infolds! Cambridge is the bridge of the
Cam; Sheffield the field of the river Sheaf; Leicester the castra or camp of
the Lear or Leir (now Soar); Rochdale, of the Roch; Exeter or Excester, the
castra of the Ex; Exmouth, Dartmouth, Sidmouth, Teignmouth, the mouths of the
Ex, Dart, Sid, and Teign rivers. Waltham is strong town; Radcliffe is red
cliff; and so on: - a sincerity and use in naming very striking to an
American, whose country is whitewashed all over by unmeaning names, the cast -
off clothes of the country from which its emigrants came; or named at a pinch
from a psalm-tune. But the English are those "barbarians" of Jamblichus, who
"are stable in their manners, and firmly continue to employ the same words,
which also are dear to the gods."
`Tis an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew their names from
playbooks. The English lords do not call their lands after their own names,
but call themselves after their lands, as if the man represented the country
that bred him; and they rightly wear the token of the glebe that gave them
birth; suggesting that the tie is not cut, but that there in London, - the
crags of Argyle, the kail of Cornwall, the downs of Devon, the iron of Wales,
the clays of Stafford, are neither forgetting nor forgotten, but know the man
who was born by them, and who, like the long line of his fathers, has carried
that crag, that shore, dale, fen, or woodland, in his blood and manners. It
has, too, the advantage of suggesting responsibleness. A susceptible man could
not wear a name which represented in a strict sense a city or a county of
England, without hearing in it a challenge to duty and honor.
The predilection of the patricians for residence in the country, combined
with the degree of liberty possessed by the peasant, makes the safety of the
English hall. Mirabeau wrote prophetically from England, in 1784, "If
revolution break out in France, I tremble for the aristocracy: their chateaux
will be reduced to ashes, and their blood spilt in torrents. The English
tenant would defend his lord to the last extremity." The English go to their
estates for grandeur. The French live at court, and exile themselves to their
estates for economy. As they do not mean to live with their tenants, they do
not conciliate them, but wring from them the last sous. Evelyn writes from
Blois, in 1644, "The wolves are here in such numbers, that they often come and
take children out of the streets: yet will not the Duke, who is sovereign
here, permit them to be destroyed."
In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient families, the traveller is
shown the palaces in Piccadilly, Burlington House, Devonshire House, Lansdowne
House in Berkshire Square, and, lower down in the city, a few noble houses
which still withstand in all their amplitude the encroachment of streets. The
Duke of Bedford includes or included a mile square in the heart of London,
where the British Museum, once Montague House, now stands, and the land
occupied by Woburn Square, Bedford Square, Russell Square. The Marquis of
Westminster built within a few years the series of squares called Belgravia.
Stafford House is the noblest place in London. Northumberland House hold its
place by Charing Cross. Chesterfield House remains in Audley Street. Sion
House and Holland House are in the suburbs. But most of the historical houses
are masked or lost in the modern uses to which trade or charity has converted
them. A multitude of town places contain inestimable galleries of art.
In the country, the size of private estates is more impressive. From
Barnard Castle I rode on the highway twenty-three miles from High Force, a
fall of the Tees, towards Darlington, past Raby Castle, through the estate of
the Duke of Cleveland. The Marquis of Breadalbane rides out of his house a
hundred miles in a straight line to the sea, on his own property. The Duke of
Sutherland owns the county of Sutherland, stretching across Scotland from sea
to sea. The Duke of Devonshire, besides his other estates, owns 96,000 acres
in the County of Derby. The Duke of Richmond has 40,000 acres at Goodwood, and
300,000 at Gordon Castle. The Duke of Norfolk`s park in Sussex is fifteen
miles in circuit. An agriculturist bought lately the island of Lewes, in
Hebrides, containing 500,000 acres. The possessions of the Earl of Lonsdale
gave him eight seats in Parliament. This is the Heptarchy again: and before
the Reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four persons sent three hundred
and seven members to Parliament. The borough-mongers governed England.
These large domains are growing larger. The great estates are absorbing
the small freeholds. In 1786, the soil of England was owned by 250,000
corporations and proprietors; and, in 1822, by 32,000. These broad estates
find room in this narrow island. All over England, scattered at short
intervals among ship-yards, mills, mines, and forges, are the paradises of
the nobles, where the livelong repose and refinement are heightened by the
contrast with the roar of industry and necessity, out of which you have
stepped aside.
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