Alfred Tennyson was a lord, so what is there to make such a fuss about. Give me lords who can't help themselves, because they were born so, and the stupider the better; and the older—for the older they are the grander their manners and the manners of their womankind.
Take, for instance, that splendid old dow, Penelope, Duchess of Rumtifoozleland—I always give nicknames to my grand acquaintances; not that she's particularly old herself, but she belongs to an antiquated order of things that is passing away—for she was a Fitztartan, a daughter of the ducal house of Comtesbois (pronounced County Boyce); and she's very handsome still.
Have you ever been presented to her Grace, O reader?
If so, you must have been struck by the grace of her Grace's manner, as with a ducal gesture and a few courtly words she recognizes the value of whatever immense achievements yours must have been to have procured you such an honor as such an introduction, and expresses her surprise and regret that she has not known you before. The formula is always the same, on every possible occasion. I ought to know, for I've had the honor of being presented to her Grace seven times this year.
Now this lofty forgetting of your poor existence—or mine—is not aristocratic hauteur or patrician insolence; it is bêtise pure et simple, as they call it in France. She was a daughter of the house of Comtesbois, and the Fitztartans were not the inventors of gunpowder, nor was she.
But for a stately, magnificent Grande Dame of the ancient régime, to meet for the seventh time, and be presented to—for the seventh time—with all due ceremony in the midst of a distinguished conservative crowd—say at a ball at Buckingham Palace—give me Penelope, Dowager Duchess of Rumtifoozleland!
(This seems a somewhat uncalled-for digression. But, anyhow, it shows that when it pleases me to do so I move in the very best society—just like Barty Josselin.)
So here was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere taking unto himself a wife from among the daughters of Heth; from the class he had always disliked, the buyers cheap and the sellers dear—whose sole aim in life is the making of money, and who are proud when they succeed and ashamed when they fail—and getting actually fond of his future father and mother in law, as I was!
When I laughed to him about old Gibson—John Gilpin, as we used to call him—being a tradesman, he said: