But these eccentricities were merely verbal, and under them lay a deep vein of genuine and lasting regard. "I've lived under four dukes and four 'ousekeepers, and I'm not going to be put upon in my old age!" was the exclamation of an ancient poultry-woman, whose dignity had been offended by some irregularity touching her Christmas dinner. When the daughter of the house married and went into a far country, she was sure to find some emigrant from her old home who welcomed her with effusion, and was full of enquiries about his Lordship and her Ladyship, and Miss Pinkerton the governess, and whether Mr. Wheeler was still coachman, and who lived now at the Entrance Lodge. Whether the sons got commissions, or took ranches, or became curates in slums, or contested remote constituencies, some grinning face was sure to emerge from the crowd with "You know me, sir? Bill Juffs, as used to go birds-nesting with you"; or, "You remember my old dad, my lord? He used to shoe your black pony." When the eldest son came of age, his condescension in taking this step was hailed with genuine enthusiasm. When he came into his kingdom, there might be some grumbling if he went in for small economies, or altered old practices, or was a "hard man" on the Bench or at the Board of Guardians; but, if he went on in the good-natured old ways, the traditional loyalty was unabated. Lord Shaftesbury wrote thus about the birth of his eldest son's eldest son:—"My little village is all agog with the birth of a son and heir in the very midst of them, the first, it is believed, since 1600, when the first Lord Shaftesbury was born. The christening yesterday was an ovation. Every cottage had flags and flowers. We had three triumphal arches; and all the people were exulting. 'He is one of us.' 'He is a fellow-villager.' 'We have now got a lord of our own.' This is really gratifying. I did not think that there remained so much of the old respect and affection between peasant and proprietor, landlord and tenant."
In the present day, if a season of financial pressure sets in, people shut up their country houses, let their shooting, cut themselves off with a sigh of relief from all the unexciting duties and simple pleasures of the Home, and take refuge from boredom in the delights of London. In London life has no duties. Little is expected of one, and nothing required.
But in old days, when people wished to economize, it was London that they deserted. They sold the "Family Mansion" in Portland Place or Eaton Square; and, if they revisited the glimpses of the social moon, they took a furnished house for six weeks in the summer; the rest of the year they spent in the country. This plan was a manifold saving. There was no rent to pay, and only very small rates, for everyone knows that country houses are shamefully under-assessed. Carriages did not require re-painting every season, and no new clothes were wanted. As the ladies in Cranford said—"What can it matter what we wear here, where everyone knows who we are?" The products of the Park, the Home Farm, the hothouses, and the kitchen-garden kept the family supplied with food. A brother-magnate staying at Beaudesert with the famous Lord Anglesey waxed enthusiastic over the mutton, and, venturing on the privilege of an old friendship, asked how much it cost him. "Cost me?" screamed the hero. "Good Gad, it costs me nothing! I don't buy it. It's my own," and he was beyond measure astonished when his statistical guest proved that "his own" cost him about a guinea per pound. In another great house, conducted on strictly economical lines, it was said that the very numerous family were reared exclusively on rabbits and garden-stuff, and that their enfeebled constitutions and dismal appearance in later life were due to this ascetic regimen.
People were always hospitable in the country; but rural entertaining was not a very costly business. The "three square meals and a snack," which represent the minimum requirements of the present day, are a huge development of the system which prevailed in my youth. Breakfast had already grown from the tea and coffee, and rolls and eggs, which Macaulay tells us were deemed sufficient at Holland House, to an affair of covered dishes. Luncheon-parties were sometimes given—terrible ceremonies which lasted from two to four; but the ordinary luncheon of the family was a snack from the servants' joint or the children's rice pudding; and five o'clock tea had only lately been invented. To remember, as I just can, the Foundress[20] of that divine refreshment seems like having known Stephenson or Jenner.
Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really vinous.
Grace was said before and after dinner. There was a famous squire in Hertfordshire whose love of his dinner was constantly at war with his pietistic traditions. He always had his glass of sherry poured out before he sat down to dinner, so that he might get at it without a moment's delay. One night, in his generous eagerness, he upset the glass just as he dropped into his seat at the end of grace, and the formula ran on to an unexpected conclusion, thus: "For what we are going to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful—D—n!" But if the incongruities which attended grace before dinner were disturbing, still more so were the solemnities of the close. Grace after dinner always happened at the moment of loudest and most general conversation. For an hour and a half people had been stuffing as if their lives depended on it—"one feeding like forty." Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh, and everyone was talking at once, and very loud. Perhaps the venue was laid in a fox-hunting country, and then the air was full of such voices as these: "Were you out with the Squire to-day?" "Any sport?" "Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." "Plenty of the animal about, I hope?" "Well, I don't know. I believe that new keeper at Boreham Wood is a vulpicide. I don't half like his looks." "What an infernal villain! A man who would shoot a fox would poison his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!" "What's the matter?"
"For what we have received," &c.
"Do you know you've been talking at the top of your voice all the time grace was going on?"
"Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But our host mumbles so, I never can make out what he's saying."
"I can't imagine why people don't have grace after dessert. I know I'm much more thankful for strawberry ice than for saddle of mutton."