|
Chapter XI - AristocracyPart II
Part II
I was surprised to observe the very small attendance usually in the House
of Lords. Out of 573 peers, on ordinary days, only twenty or thirty. Where are
they? I asked. "At home on their estates, devoured by ennui, or in the Alps,
or up the Rhine, in the Harz Mountains, or in Egypt, or in India, on the
Ghauts." But, with such interests at stake, how can these men afford to
neglect them? "Oh," replied my friend, "why should they work for themselves,
when every man in England works for them, and will suffer before they come to
harm?" The hardest radical instantly uncovers, and changes his tone to a lord.
It was remarked, on the 10th April, 1848 (the day of the Chartist
demonstration), that the upper classes were, for the first time, actively
interesting themselves in their own defence, and men of rank were sworn
special constables, with the rest. "Besides, why need they sit out the debate?
Has not the Duke of Wellington, at this moment, their proxies, - the proxies
of fifty peers in his pocket, to vote for them, if there be an emergency?"
It is however true, that the existence of the House of Peers as a branch
of the government entitles them to fill half the Cabinet; and their weight of
property and station gives them a virtual nomination of the other half; whilst
they have their share in the subordinate officies, as a school of training.
This monopoly of political power has given them their intellectual and social
eminence in Europe. A few law lords and a few political lords take the brunt
of public business. In the army, the nobility fill a large part of the high
commissions, and give to these a tone of expense and splendor, and also of
exclusiveness. They have borne their full share of duty and danger in this
service; and there are few noble families which have not paid in some of their
members, the debt of life or limb, in the sacrifices of the Russian war. For
the rest, the nobility have the lead in matters of state, and of expense; in
questions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and domestic hospitalities.
In general, all that is required of them is to sit securely, to preside at
public meetings, to countenance charities, and to give the example of that
decorum so dear to that British heart.
If one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, what service this class
have rendered? - uses appear, or they would have perished long ago. Some of
these are easily enumerated, others more subtle make a part of unconscious
history. Their institution is one step in the progress of society. For a race
yields a nobility in some form, however we name the lords, as surely as it
yields women.
The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, born to
wealth and power, who have run through every country, and kept in every
country the best company, have seen every secret of art and nature, and, when
men of any ability or ambition, have been consulted in the conduct of every
important action. You cannot wield great agencies without lending yourself to
them, and, when it happens that the spirit of the earl meets his rank and
duties, we have the best examples of behavior. Power of any kind readily
appears in the manners; and beneficent power, le talent de bien faire, gives a
majesty which cannot be concealed or resisted.
These people seem to gain as much as they lose by their position. They
survey society as from the top of St. Paul`s, and, if they never hear plain
truth from men, they see the best of everything, in every kind, and they see
things so grouped and amassed as to infer easily the sum and genius, instead
of tedious particularities. Their good behavior deserves all its fame, and
they have that simplicity, and that air of repose, which are the finest
ornament of greatness.
The upper classes have only birth, say the people here, and not thoughts.
Yes, but they have manners, and `tis wonderful how much talent runs into
manners: - nowhere and never so much as in England. They have the sense of
superiority, the absence of all the ambitious effort which disgusts in the
aspiring classes, a pure tone of thought and feeling, and the power of
command, among their other luxuries, the presence of the most accomplished men
in their festive meetings.
Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They wear the laws as
ornaments, and walk by their faith in their painted May-Fair, as if among
the forms of gods. The economist of 1855 who asks, of what use are the lords?
may learn of Franklin to ask, of what use is a baby? They have been a social
church proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring the lover and the loved.
Politeness is the ritual of society, as prayers are of the church; a school of
manners, and a gentle blessing to the age in which it grew. `Tis a romance
adorning English life with a larger horizon; a midway heaven, fulfilling to
their sense their fairy tales and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding of
the nobleman really made him brave, handsome, accomplished, and great -
hearted.
On general grounds, whatever tends to form manners, or to finish men, has
a great value. Every one who has tasted the delight of friendship, will
respect every social guard which our manners can establish, tending to secure
from the intrusion of frivolous and distasteful people. The jealousy of every
class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality they have found in life.
When a man once knows that he has done justice to himself, let him dismiss all
terrors of aristocracy as superstitions, so far as he is concerned. He who
keeps the door of a mine, whether of cobalt, or mercury, or nickel, or
plumbago, securely knows that the world cannot do without him. Everybody who
is real is open and ready for that which is also real.
Besides, these are they who make England that strong-box and museum it
is; who gather and protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning cities
and revolutionary countries, and brought hither out of all the world. I look
with respect at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or, like Warwick Castle,
nine hundred years old. I pardoned high park-fences, when I saw that,
besides does and pheasants, these have preserved Arundel marbles, Townley
galleries, Howard and Spenserian libraries, Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon
manuscripts, monastic architectures, millennial trees, and breeds of cattle
elsewhere extinct. In these manors, after the frenzy of war and destruction
subsides a little, the antiquary finds the frailest Roman jar, or crumbling
Egyptian mummy-case, without so much as a new layer of dust, keeping the
series of history unbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who is sure to
arrive. These lords are the treasurers and librarians of mankind, engaged by
their pride and wealth to this function.
Yet there were other works for British dukes to do. George Loudon,
Quintinye, Evelyn, had taught them to make gardens. Arthur Young, Bakewell,
and Mechi have made them agricultural. Scotland was a camp until the day of
Culloden. The Dukes of Athol, Sutherland, Buccleugh, and the Marquis of
Breadalbane have introduced the rape-culture, the sheep-farm, wheat,
drainage, the plantation of forests, the artificial replenishment of lakes and
ponds with fish, the renting of game-preserves. Against the cry of the old
tenantry, and the sympathetic cry of the English press, they have rooted out
and planted anew, and now six millions of people live, and live better, on the
same land that fed three millions.
The English barons, in every period, have been brave and great, after the
estimate and opinion of their times. The grand old halls scattered up and down
in England are dumb vouchers to the state and broad hospitality of their
ancient lords. Shakespeare`s portraits of good duke Humphrey, of Warwick, of
Northumberland, of Talbot, were drawn in strict consonance with the
traditions. A sketch of the Earl of Shrewsbury, from the pen of Queen
Elizabeth`s Archbishop Parker;^3 Lord Herbert Cherbury`s autobiography; the
letters and essays of Sir Philip Sidney; the anecdotes preserved by the
antiquaries Fuller and Collins; some glimpses at the interiors of noble
houses, which we owe to Pepys and Evelyn; the details which Ben Jonson`s
masques (performed at Kenilworth, Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble houses)
record or suggest; down to Aubrey`s passages of the life of Hobbes in the
house of the Earl of Devon, are favorable pictures of a romantic style of
manners. Penshurst still shines for us, and its Christmas revels, "where logs
not burn, but men." At Wilton House the "Arcadia" was written, amidst
conversations with Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, a man of no vulgar mind, as
his own poems declare him. I must hold Ludlow Castle an honest house, for
which Milton`s "Comus" was written, and the company nobly bred which performed
it with knowledge and sympathy. In the roll of nobles are found poets,
philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid virtues and of lofty
sentiments; often they have been the friends and patrons of genius and
learning and especially of the fine arts; and at this moment almost every
great house has its sumptuous picture-gallery.
[Footnote 3: Dibdin`s Literary Reminiscences, vol. I, xii.]
Of course, there is another side to this gorgeous show. Every victory was
the defeat of a party only less worthy. Castles are proud things, but `tis
safest to be outside of them. War is a foul game, and yet war is not the worst
part of aristocratic history. In later times, when the baron, educated only
for war, with his brains paralyzed by his stomach, found himself idle at home,
he grew fat and wanton, and a sorry brute. Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn show
the kennels to which the king and court went in quest of pleasure. Prostitutes
taken from the theatres were made duchesses, their bastards dukes and earls.
"The young men sat uppermost, the old serious lords were out of favor." The
discourse that the king`s companions had with him was "poor and frothy." No
man who valued his head might do what these pot-companions familiarly did
with the king. In logical sequence of these dignified revels, Pepys can tell
the beggarly shifts to which the king was reduced, who could not find paper at
his council table, and "no handkerchers" in his wardrobe, "and but three bands
to his neck," and the linen-draper and the stationer were out of pocket, and
refusing to trust him, and the baker will not bring bread any longer. Meantime
the English Channel was swept and London threatened by the Dutch fleet,
manned, too, by English sailors, who, having been cheated of their pay for
years by the king, enlisted with the enemy.
The Selwyn correspondence, in the reign of George III., discloses a
rottenness in the aristocracy which threatened to decompose the state. The
sycophancy and sale of votes and honor for place and title; lewdness, gaming,
smuggling, bribery, and cheating; the sneer at the childish indiscretion of
quarrelling with ten thousand a year; the want of ideas; the splendor of the
titles, and the apathy of the nation, are instructive, and make the reader
pause and explore the firm bounds which confined these vices to a handful of
rich men. In the reign of the Fourth George things do not seem to have mended,
and the rotten debauchee let down from a window by an inclined plane into his
coach to take the air, was a scandal to Europe which the ill fame of his queen
and of his family did nothing to retrieve.
Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the Court is thought to
have put a check on the gross vices of the aristocracy; yet gaming, racing,
drinking, and mistresses bring them down, and the democrat can still gather
scandals if he will. Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying the gossip of the last
generation of dukes served by bailiffs, with all their plate in pawn; of great
lords living by the showing of their houses; and of an old man wheeled in his
chair from room to room, whilst his chambers are exhibited to the visitor for
money; of ruined dukes and earls living in exile for debt. The historic names
of the Buckinghams, Beauforts, Marlboroughs, and Hertfords have gained no new
lustre, and now and then darker scandals break out, ominous as the new
chapters added under the Orleans dynasty to the "Causes Celebres" in France.
Even peers who are men of worth and public spirit are overtaken and
embarrassed by their vast expense. The respectable Duke of Devonshire, willing
to be the Maecenas and Lucullus of his island, is reported to have said that
he cannot live at Chatsworth but one month in the year. Their many houses eat
them up. They cannot sell them, because they are entailed. They will not let
them for pride`s sake, but keep them empty, aired, and the grounds mown and
dressed, at a cost off our or five thousand pounds a year. The spending is for
a great part in servants, in many houses exceeding a hundred.
Most of them are only chargeable with idleness, which, because it
squanders such vast power of benefit, has the mischief of crime. "They might
be little Providences on earth," said my friend, "and they are, for the most
part, jockeys and fops." Campbell says, "Acquaintance with the nobility, I
could never keep up. It requires a life of idleness, dressing, and attendance
on their parties." I suppose, too, that a feeling of self-respect is driving
cultivated men out of this society, as if the noble were slow to receive the
lessons of the times, and had not learned to disguise his pride of place. A
man of wit, who is also one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion,
confessed to his friend that he could not enter their houses without being
made to feel that they were great lords, and he a low plebeian. With the tribe
of artistes, including the musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no terms,
but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and Mario sang at the houses of the Duke
of Wellington and other grandees, a cord was stretched between the singer and
the company.
When every noble was a soldier, they were carefully bred to great
personal prowess. The education of a soldier is a simpler affair than that of
an earl in the nineteenth century. And this was very seriously pursued; they
were expert in every species of equitation, to the most dangerous practices,
and this down to the accession of William of Orange. But graver men appear to
have trained their sons for civil affairs. Elizabeth extended her thought to
the future; and Sir Philip Sidney in his letter to his brother, and Milton and
Evelyn, gave plain and hearty counsel. Already, too, the English noble and
squire were preparing for the career of the country-gentleman, and his
peaceable expense. They went from city to city, learning receipts to make
perfumes, sweet powders, pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, coins,
and divers curiosities, preparing for a private life thereafter, in which they
should take pleasure in these recreations.
All advantages given to absolve the young patrician from intellectual
labor are of course mistaken. "In the university, noblemen are exempted from
the public exercises for the degree, &c., by which they attain a degree called
honorary. At the same time, the fees they have to pay for matriculation, and
on all other occasions, are much higher."^4 Fuller records "the observation of
foreigners, that Englishmen, by making their children gentlemen, before they
are men, cause they are so seldom wise men." This cockering justifies Dr.
Johnson`s bitter apology for primogeniture, "that it makes but one fool in a
family."
[Footnote 4: Huber. History of English Universities.]
The revolution in society has reached this class. The great powers of
industrial art have no exclusion of name or blood. The tools of our time,
namely, steam, ships, printing, money, and popular education, belong to those
who can handle them: and their effect has been that advantages once confined
to men of family are now open to the whole middle class. The road that
grandeur levels for his coach, toil can travel in his cart.
This is more manifest every day, but I think it is true throughout
English history. English history, wisely read, is the vindication of the brain
of that people. Here, at last, were climate and condition friendly to the
working faculty. Who now will work and dare, shall rule. This is the charter,
or the chartism, which fogs, and seas, and rains proclaimed, - that intellect
and personal force should make the law; that industry and administrative
talent should administer; that work should wear the crown. I know that not
this, but something else, is pretended. The fiction with which the noble and
the bystander equally please themselves is that the former is of unbroken
descent from the Norman, and so has never worked for eight hundred years. All
the families are new, but the name is old, and they have made a covenant with
their memories not to disturb it. But the analysis of the peerage and gentry
shows the rapid decay and extinction of old families, the continual recruiting
of these from new blood. The doors, though ostentatiously guarded, are really
open, and hence the power of the bribe. All the barriers to rank only whet the
thirst, and enhance the prize. "Now," said Nelson, when clearing for battle,
"a peerage, or Westminster Abbey!" "I have no illusion left," said Sydney
Smith, "but the Archbishop of Canterbury." "The lawyers," said Burke, "are
only birds of passage in this House of Commons," and then added, with a new
figure, "they have their best bower anchor in the House of Lords."
Another stride that has been taken appears in the perishing of heraldry.
Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the middle class, the badge
is discredited, and the titles of lordship are getting musty and cumbersome. I
wonder that sensible men have not been already impatient of them. They belong,
with wigs, powder, and scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may be
advantageously consigned, with paint and tattoo, to the dignitaries of
Australia and Polynesia.
A multitude of English, educated at the universities, bred into their
society with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day
confronting the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, as
often, in the race of honor and influence. That cultivated class is large and
ever enlarging. It is computed that, with titles and without, there are
seventy thousand of these people coming and going in London, who make up what
is called high society. They cannot shut their eyes to the fact that an
untitled nobility possess all the power without the inconveniences that belong
to rank, and the rich Englishman goes over the world at the present day,
drawing more than all the advantages which the strongest of his kings could
command.
|
