What one missed in these great houses was the company of one’s own class, men in the pursuit of literature or science; but such things are of no use in the patrician circles, they would only be in the way. These lords of the soil love horses, carriages, plate, all of which one can see in great perfection in the parks, and at the silversmiths’, as well as in private houses, and the pleasure in any case is but momentary. In justice, however, it must be said that high-class people are often capable of conversing with those who have little to show besides their brains; and are not slow in eliciting information from them. Lord Sandwich was a good example of such; but Lord Albemarle had a naïveté and an intelligence so delightful as to need nothing at another’s hands. Then, a rich aristocracy has opportunities which do not belong to the men who have their money to make. The one class has not to consider in his dealings with others how he can make the most out of them, but is able to be generous; this alone has an ennobling influence. An American made the remark that, many as are the faults of the English nobility, they always kept their promise.
The reason why authors, deserving of encouragement from the intrinsic value of their work, are no longer patronized and brought into notice by the great, is that the influence of the nobility has wholly died out. The literary leaders, great editors, and the like, play but a minor part; they are not enough looked up to by the people at large, who do not understand them. They can confer fame on men among their own select class, but that fame cannot over-leap its boundary, and reach even the intelligent vulgar.
Even the Royal Society, begun by a king, was long afraid to venture in its career with anything less than a royal or noble president, and this within the memory of man; but happily it now runs alone, as do all the other learned bodies in its track.
The truth may lie here—though scientific men are not growing rich, rich men are growing scientific.
I must not leave Riddlesworth without a tribute to Mrs. Thornhill, a lady so conscientious; and that means gentle, kind and full of charity. She was the daughter of Mr. Waddington, of Cavenham Hall, the county member; a devoted mother, a constant friend.
I suppose, like everybody else, except myself, she is dead; that class of people live too luxuriously to last very long.
Mrs. Thornhill’s mother, Mrs. Waddington, was a lady of extraordinary beauty. She was of the Milnes family of which Moncton Milnes was the recent head, a wit and writer who tried to legitimize bad grammar on the liberal principle that every one had a right to do what he liked with his own language. He, too, like the brewers, could not do without being a lord, though already a patrician, which is greater, and which a king cannot create. He was called the “Cool of the Evening,” which must imply that he was a very pleasant guest on a hot summer’s night.
Our country parishes, with their resident squires, are really little republics with the squire himself at their head as president, and the clergyman acting as his prime minister. It is a form of paternal government without the despotism. The parish clerk, humble as he is, fills the office of a secretary of state, the rest are the people. Where the squire lives on his estate, how many of these happy republics may be seen! All the parishes, pretty much, that I have described are of this category, and I hold it beyond human wit to improve them. All are free!
Mrs. Newton of Elvedon was the sister of Mrs. Waddington. The place of that name has since become the property of Duleep Singh. In the time of the Newtons it was no exception to the happily-governed squirearchies of East Anglia.