And it was no difficult task to explain, either, how this had come about. The Rockvilles saw plainly enough the necessity of manuring their lands, but they scorned the very idea of manuring their family. What! that most ancient, honourable, and substantial family suffer any of the common earth of humanity to gather about its roots! The Rockvilles were so careful of their good blood that they never allied it to any but blood as pure and inane as their own. Their elms flourished in the rotten earth of plebeian accumulations, and their acres produced large crops of corn from the sewage of towns and fat sinks, but the Rockvilles themselves took especial care that no vulgar vigour from the real heap of ordinary human nature should infuse a new force of intellect into their race. The Rockvilles needed nothing: they had all that an ancient, honourable, and substantial family could need. The Rockvilles had no necessity to study at school—why should they? They did not want to get on. The Rockvilles did not aspire to distinction for talent in the world—why should they? They had a large estate, and a large estate implies large honour and respect, though the owners of it be simply cyphers. So the Rockville soul—unused from generation to generation—grew
“Fine by degrees and beautifully less,”
till it tapered off into nothing.
Look at the last of a long line in the midst of his fine estate. Tall he was, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a bowing of his head on one side, as if he had been accustomed to stand under the low boughs of his woods, and peer after intruders. And that was precisely the fact. His features were thin and sharp; his nose prominent and keen in its character; his eyes small, black, and peering like a mole’s, or a hungry swine’s. Sir Roger was still oracular on the bench, after consulting his clerk, who was a good lawyer, and looked up to by the neighbouring squires in election matters, for he was an unswerving tory. You never heard of a rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but that mattered little—he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately gait, and of very ancient family.
With ten thousand a year, and his rental rising, he was still, however, a man of overwhelming cares. What mattered a fine estate if all the world was against him? And Sir Roger firmly believed that he stood in that predicament. He had grown up to regard the world as full of little beside upstarts, radicals, manufacturers, and poachers. All were banded, in his belief, against the landed interest. It demanded all the energy of his very small faculties to defend himself and the landed aristocracy against them.
Unfortunately for his peace, a large manufacturing town had sprung up within a couple of miles of him. He could see its red-brick walls, and its red-tiled roofs, and its tall, smoke-vomiting chimneys, growing and extending over the slopes beyond the river. It was to him the most irritating sight in the world; for what were all those swarming weavers and spinners but arrant radicals, upstarts, sworn foes of the ancient institutions and the landed interests of England? Sir Roger had passed through many a desperate conflict with them for the return of members to parliament. They brought forward men that were utter wormwood to all his feelings, and they paid no more respect to him and his friends on such occasions than they did to the meanest creature living. Reverence for ancient blood did not exist in that plebeian and rapidly multiplying tribe. There were master manufacturers there actually that looked and talked as big as himself, and, entre nous, talked a vast deal more cleverly. The people talked of rights and franchises, and freedom of speech and of conscience, in a way that was really frightful.
Then they were given most inveterately to running out in whole and everlasting crowds on Sundays and holidays into the fields and woods; and as there was no part of the neighbourhood half so pleasant as the groves and river-banks of Rockville, they came swarming up there in crowds that were enough to drive any man of acres frantic.
Unluckily there were roads all about Rockville; foot roads, and high roads, and bridle roads. There was a road up the river-side, all the way to Rockville woods; and when it reached them, it divided like a fork, and one foot-path led straight up a magnificent grove of a mile long, ending close to the hall: and another ran all along the river-side, under the hills and branches of the wood.
Oh, delicious were those woods! In the river there were islands, which were covered in summer with the greenest grass, and the freshest of willows, and the clearest of waters rushed around them in the most inviting manner imaginable. And there were numbers of people extremely ready to accept this delectable invitation of these waters. There they came in fine weather, and as these islands were only separated from the mainland by a little and very shallow stream, it was delightful for lovers to get across, with laughter, and treading on stepping-stones, and slipping off the stepping-stones up to the ankles into the cool brook, with pretty screams and fresh laughter, and then landing on those sunny, and to them, really enchanted islands.
And then came fishermen: solitary fishermen, and fishermen in rows; fishermen lying in the flowery grass, with fragrant meadow-sweet and honey-breathing clover all about their ears; and fishermen standing in file, as if they were determined to clear all the river of fish in a day. And there were other lovers, and troops of loiterers, and shouting roysterers, going along under the boughs of the wood, and following the turns of that most companionable of rivers. And there were boats going up and down; boats full of young people, all holiday finery and mirth, and boats with duck-hunters, and others, in Sir Roger’s eyes, detestable marauders, with guns and dogs and great bottles of beer. In the fine grove, on summer-days, there might be found hundreds of people. There were pic-nic parties, fathers and mothers, with whole families of children, and a grand promenade of the delighted artizans and their wives or sweethearts.