Great outward respect was shown to the Rockvilles on account of the length of their descent, and the breadth of their acres. They were always, when any stranger asked about them, declared, with a serious and important air, to be a very ancient, honourable, and substantial family. “Oh! a great family are the Rockvilles—a very great family.”
But if you came to close quarters with the members of this great and highly distinguished family, you soon found yourself fundamentally astonished. You had a sensation come over you, as if you were trying, like Moses, to draw water from a rock, without his delegated power. There was a goodly outside of things before you, but nothing came of it. You talked, hoping to get talking in return; but you got little more than “noes,” and “yeses,” and “oh, indeeds!” and “reallys,” and sometimes not even that, but a certain look of dignity, or dignification, that was meant to serve for all purposes. There was a sort of resting on aristocratic oars or “sculls,” that were not to be too vulgarly handled. There was a feeling impressed on you, that eight hundred years of descent and ten thousand a year in landed income, did not trouble themselves with the trifling things that gave distinction to lesser people—such as literature, fine arts, politics, and general knowledge. These were very well for those who had nothing else to pride themselves on, but for the Rockvilles—oh, certainly they were by no means requisite!
In fact, you found yourselves, with a little variation, in the predicament of Cowper’s people—
“who spent their lives
In dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing tired of drawing nothing up.”
Who has not often come across these dry wells of society?—solemn gulfs out of which you can pump nothing up? You know them—they are at your elbow every day in large and brilliant companies, and defy the best sucking-buckets ever invented to extract anything from them. But the Rockvilles were each and all of this actual description. It was a family feature, and they seemed, if either, rather proud of it. They must be so; for proud they were, amazingly proud, and they had nothing else to be proud of, except their acres and their ancestors.
But the fact was, they could not help it, it was become organic. They had acted the justice of peace, and maintained the constitution against upstarts and manufacturers, signed warrants, supported the Church, and the house of correction, committed poachers, and then rested on the dignity of their ancestors for so many generations, that their sculls, brains, constitutions, and nervous systems were all so completely moulded into that shape, and baked in that mould, that a Rockville would be a Rockville to the end of time, if God and Nature would have allowed it. But such things wear out. The American Indians and the Australian natives wear out. They are not progressive: and as Nature abhors a vacuum, she does not forget the vacuum, wherever it may be, whether in a hot desert or in a cold and stately Rockville,—a very ancient, honourable, and substantial family that lies fallow till the thinking faculty literally dies out.
For several generations there had been symptoms of decay about the Rockville family. Not in its property; that was as large as ever. Not in their personal stature and physical aspect. The Rockvilles continued, as they always had been, a tall and not bad-looking family. But they grew gradually less prolific. For a hundred and fifty years past, there had seldom been more than two, or at most, three children. There had generally been an heir to the estate, and another to the family pulpit, and sometimes a daughter, married to some neighbouring squire. But Sir Roger’s father had been an only child, and Sir Roger himself was an only child. The danger of extinction to the family, apparent as it was, had never induced Sir Roger to marry. At the time that we are turning our attention upon him, he had reached the mature age of sixty. Nobody believed that Sir Roger now would marry; he was the last, and likely to be, of his line.
It is worth while here to take a glance at Sir Roger and his estate. They exhibited a strange contrast. The one bore all the signs of progress, the other of a stereotyped feudality. The estate, which in the days of the first Sir Roger de Rockville had been half morass and three-quarters wilderness, was now cultivated to the pitch of British agricultural science. The marsh lands beyond the river were one splendid expanse of richest meadows, yielding a rental of four solid pounds per acre. Over hill and dale on this side for miles, where formerly ran wild deer, and grew wild woodlands or furze-bushes, now lay excellent farms and hamlets, and along the ridge of the ancient cliffs rose the most magnificent woods. Woods, too, clothed the steep hill-sides, and swept down to the noble river, their very boughs hanging far out over its clear and rapid waters. In the midst of these fine woods stood Rockville Hall, the family seat of the Rockvilles. It reared its old brick walls over the towering mass of elms, and travellers at a distance recognised it for what it was—the mansion of an ancient and wealthy family.
The progress of England in arts, science, commerce, and manufactures, had carried Sir Roger’s estate along with it. It was full of active and moneyed farmers, and flourished under modern influences. How lucky it would have been for the Rockville family had it done the same!
But amid this estate, there was Sir Roger, solitary, and the last of the line. He had grown well enough—there was nothing stunted about him, as far as you could see on the surface. In stature he exceeded six feet. His colossal elms could not boast of a more proper relative growth. He was as large a landlord and as tall a justice of the peace as you could desire; but, unfortunately, after all, he was only the shell of a man. Like many of his veteran elms, there was a very fine stem, only it was hollow. There was a man just with the rather awkward deficiency of a soul.