CHAPTER LI
OLD AND NEW SQUIRES
WHEN a stone-breaker begins to ply his useful labours on the road, he generally selects a large stone wherewith to form the foundation of his heap, and so his Grace the Duke of Tergiversation used to establish his parties on the foundation of some such attractive centre as a Prince. Having thus laid the foundation of his heap, he investigated his position in the country; thought who were steady—who were beginning to jib, who it would be useful to cajole, and forthwith invitations used to issue, déjeûners to the tractable, dinners to the docile, fêtes to the froward. A person may be brought to the neutral ground of a fête who might shy at the apparent downright committal of a dinner.
The Duke weighed everything well before he did it, and never took any step without a motive.
Time was—before the establishment of railways—that the Squires used to respond to the call of their chiefs with the greatest alacrity, but the whistle of the engine has somewhat dispelled the authority of the leaders, and made men think more for themselves than they did. In truth, there is perhaps no class of Her Majesty’s subjects more benefited by the introduction of railways than the country gentlemen generally, who too often, after what used to be called the “Grand Tour,” buried themselves and their usually good educations in remote country places, there to marry “neighbours’ bairns,” and perpetuate the practice. Now they fly about the world, here and there and everywhere, importing ladies from all parts, making the whole kingdom but as one county, while the lists of members of the various Clubs show that they are not indifferent to the attractions of the capital. The very thing has come to pass that was predicted when stage-coaches were first established some two hundred years ago, namely, that “country gentlemen and their wives would get easily and cheaply conveyed to London,” without the remainder of the prophecy, however, being fulfilled, namely, “that they would not settle quietly at their homes in the country afterwards,” for whole families whisk about in all directions, and feel all the better for the change, enjoying their spacious homes the more from having perhaps put up with contracted quarters elsewhere.
Heaven help the parties’ ideas of ease who attributed anything of the sort to even the latest and best of the old stage-coaches, let alone the ponderous, unwieldy vehicles that first ploughed the bottomless roads, turning up the great boulder-stones like flitches of bacon, and taking the liberal allowance of from twelve to sixteen days in performing the journey between London and Edinburgh! Dr. Johnson, we make no doubt, described very accurately what they were in his time, when he boasted that he had travelled from London to Salisbury in a day by the common stage, “hung high and rough.” The doctor’s observation, that a postchaise had jolted many an intimacy to death, was doubtless very correct also. Who hasn’t a lively recollection of the musty old horrors? Talking of travelling, there is or was a notice in the coffee-room of the Black Swan Hotel at York, stating that a four days’ stage-coach would begin to run (crawl, would perhaps have been a more proper expression), on Friday the 12th of April, 1706.
“All that are desirous to pass from London to York,” continues the advertisement, “or from York to London, or any other place on that road, let them repair to the Black Swan in Holburn, in London, or to the Black Swan in Coney Street, in York.
“At both which places they may be received in a stage-coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the whole journey in four days (if God permits). And sets forth at five in the morning. And returns from York to Stamford in two days, and from Stamford by Huntingdon to London in two days more. And the like stages on their return. Allowing each passenger 14 lbs. weight, and all above 3d. a-pound.”
Rather a diminutive allowance for a modern exquisite’s luggage.
As time advanced, the pace certainly improved, but even up to the last of the coaches, they were five times as long as the rail.
In truth, the country gentlemen were a land-locked, leg-tied tribe, before the introduction of railways—coaching was uncomfortable, and posting expensive, besides which a journey took such a time. There was no running up to town for a week in those days. It took the best part of a week coming from a remote country to make the journey, and recover from the effects of it. No wonder the gentry did not make them very often, and contented themselves with their country towns instead of the capital. They were somebody in them, but nobody when they got into London. It seems rather strange, though, that even in those days, when transit was so slow and expensive, and men had to live so long on the road, that there were always plenty of country gentlemen ready to contest their respective counties, though the cost was frightful, and the poll as lingering as the coaches.
Now, when both counties and costs are curtailed, and transit so quick, there is great difficulty in getting country vacancies filled by resident gentry as they occur. The fact is, the world is so opened out, that every man who has a taste for travel, or who can sit a horse, or walk a moor, thinks he can employ his time and money better than in paying for working for other people. Members ought to be elected free of expense, and then let them work for nothing if they like. It is singular that some of the greatest screws—some of the most determined “nothing for nothing,” and uttermost-farthing men, are now the greatest spendthrifts in the matter of electioneering expenses. And the humiliating part of the matter is, that men who question and fight every farthing in their respective trade transactions, will part with thousands upon thousands in the wildest, blindest way, and declare that they hadn’t the slightest idea the money was for anything but legitimate expenses! Why didn’t they see to its application, then?
But to return to the Old Squires. Another safety-valve that the gentry of the old school had for emitting the steam of their wealth, besides keeping hounds and electioneering, was in huge house-building—they built against each other. It Squire Fatfield built a great staring house, Squire Flaggon would follow suit with a bigger, and Squire Jollybuck would cap Squire Flaggon with a larger still. Now building a big house, and buying a big house, are two distinct things; for the builder of a big house is expected to live in it, and maintain a suitable establishment, while the buyer of a big house can shut up as much of it as he finds is too large for his purpose. Then the larders, and the cellars, were expected to correspond with the houses, the characters of the owners depending a good deal on the strength of their taps, while the conviviality of the dining-room always found a hearty response in the servants’ hall—masters and butlers considering it a reproach to let any one leave the house sober. These hospitalities expired together, French wines superseding the glorious old port, and railways opening out other means of expenditure than upon malt liquor for gratuitous distribution. A country house in former days was little better than a great unlicensed inn—everything was taken in that arrived, and everybody had to be refreshed that came. We have heard of a gentleman—not an M.P., or a man of large fortune either—whose brewer’s bill for a single year, amounted to no less a sum than eight hundred pounds!
In thus noting the manners and customs of a bye-gone day, we must not omit to do justice to the merits of the port wine, which certainly was excellent. There was no buying of two dozen hampers in those days; every man had his stock of port wine in wood as well as in bottle, and that in the wood was not advanced to the bottle before a long probationary process. Being at length bottled, it would lay many years in its bin mellowing for use, an occasional bottle being produced to competent judges to see how it was advancing, and then when it was at length pronounced “fit,” it was “drunk on the premises” without further to-do. Port was the staple beverage in those days, fine clear ruby-coloured wine, not a headache in a hogshead of it as the old ones used to say, and certainly they tried it at high pressure. They generally drank out of small glasses, so small indeed as to be insignificant, and a man helped himself almost incontinently, as the oft-recurring bottle passed round. In the midst of mirth and conversation, one man is very apt to do what another does, and it is not till the next morning that he becomes sensible of any excess.
There was no blowing men out with Champagne or sparkling Moselle during dinner then, as there is now; Sherry and Madeira were the regulation wines, varied perhaps latterly with a little of what the Yorkshire farmer called “Bluecellas;” but the dinner wines were rarely taken into account, the night’s consumption being calculated solely on the Port. In fact, the real business of the evening did not commence until the ladies (or as they say in Courts of Justice, women and children) had withdrawn from the dining-room; then the horse-shoe table would be brought out, the fire stirred up, the log put on, and everything arranged for a symposium.
We can fancy the surprise and indignation of a party of these worthies at the intrusion of the three-quarters drunken butler, and the half-drunken footman, with coffee, at the end of half an hour after they had got so settled. We think they would go out faster than they came in. But we will not imagine anything so monstrous and inhospitable. No; the party sit true to their glasses, the bottle circulates briskly, the glasses are fairly filled to the brim, and as fairly drained, and a couple of hours glide away, amidst jokes, songs, and sentiments, ere there is even a summons from the ladies. If the jokes were not very new, they answered just as good a purpose as if they were, and it shows a kindly disposition to greet an old friend with a laugh. There was no Punch in those days to supply the weekly stock of fun, and the papers were small, and deficient of news. No family breakfast table cloth-like sheets, with information from all parts of the globe. But if the size was small, the price was large; sevenpence being charged, some forty years ago, for a four-columned London paper of four pages. A quick reader would skim through one of them in five minutes, for the type was bold and well-leaded. The country papers were worse, and contained little but advertisements:—“Horse stolen,” “Hay for Sale,” “Green Dragon Inn to Let,” “Main of Cocks to be Fought,” “Gout and Bilious Pills,” “Cornhill Lottery Tickets,” “Fire and Life Assurance Offices,” all well spread out in the most liberal, amplified way; mixed with murders, inquests, and a very slight sprinkling of political and parliamentary news. No wonder that people were thrown on their own and each other’s resources for information and amusement.
Now, every pursuit and calling has its organ, all admirably conducted, and published at very low prices, so that a modern squire can select such papers as suit his taste, and have his non-eating, non-drinking guests down by each post, whom he can lay aside when he’s had enough of their company, which he can’t do by a tiresome chattering guest, who can neither talk nor hold his tongue. Some squires are not very lively. We shall presently have the pleasure of introducing a gentleman to the reader, who is only amusing when he falls asleep or talks in his slumbers.
The establishment of the Penny Post, and the liberal scattering of post-offices too, has been a wonderful boon to country gentlemen, indeed to all sorts and conditions of people; but the old squires being about the only people in the country who received letters, or who, perhaps, could read them when got, were often sadly put to in the sending long distances for them. To be sure many of them did not care much about getting them, and there are even some now, who if they happen to leave home for a few days, won’t have them forwarded on to where they are.
The grand, the crowning benefit of all, however, were railways. Without them, cheap postage, cheap papers, cheap literature, extended post-offices, would have been inefficient, for the old coaches would never have carried the quantity of matter modern times has evoked. Who does not remember the last spasmodic efforts of the unwashed, worn-out old vehicles, and weak horses to compete with the accumulating traffic in the neighbourhood of a newly-making line—amid the anathemas of coachmen and guards, and their brandified predictions of a speedy return to the road? But at a certain hour on a certain day, without noise, or boast, or effort, came the smoothly-gliding engine, whisking as many passengers along as would have filled the old coaches for a week, unlocking the country for miles, and bringing parties within a few hours of each other who had formerly been separated by days. Large, roomy, prebendal stall-fitted-up like vehicles, usurped the place of little stuffy, straw-bedded stages, into which people packed on the mutual accommodation principle, you letting me put my arm here, I letting you put your leg there. So they toiled on through a live-long day, cramped, squeezed, and confined, making about the same progress that they do now in a couple of hours with the greatest ease and enjoyment. Independently of the saving of time, railways may be looked upon as downright promoters of longevity, for assuredly a man can do and see twice as much as he formerly could without; so if Squire Mistletoe lives to seventy or eighty, he will be entitled to have put on his monument that he died at a hundred and forty, or a hundred and sixty, as the case may be. Squire Mistletoe can run up to town fifty times for once that his father did, and feel all the better instead of all the worse for the trip.
The next greatest boon to railways that modern squires have to be thankful for, is the great multiplication of London Clubs.
Without Clubs, the railway system would have been incomplete. After such luxurious travelling a man requires something better than the old coaching-houses— the Bull-and-Mouth, the Golden Cross, or even than the once prized Piazza, with its large cabbage-smelling coffee-room. A night at the old Bull-and-Mouth, with its open corridors, was a thing not to be forgotten. The railway companies, to be sure, anticipated the want, and built spacious hotels at their respective termini, the Piazza became a Crystal Palace, and the Bull-and-Mouth changed its ugly name! but disguise it as you will, an hotel is an hotel, and an Englishman cannot make himself believe that it is his home.
Then these railway houses are all out of the way of where pleasure-seeking people want to be, and though a party’s requirements are fairly supplied, yet these hotels hold out no inducement for a run up to town for the mere pleasure of the thing. This is what the Clubs do. They invite visits. A man feels that he has a real substantial home—a home containing every imaginable luxury, without the trouble of management or forethought—a home that goes on as steadily in his absence as during his presence, to which he has not even the trouble of writing a note to say he is coming, to find everything as comfortable as he left it.
No preparation, no effort, no lamps expiring from want of work; good fires always going, good servants always in attendance, everything anticipated to his hand. Verily, a member of a Club may well ask, “What are taxes?”
Clubs, in fact, are the greatest and cheapest luxuries of modern times. We have before us the balance-sheet of one of the largest Clubs in London, whose income is some fifteen thousand a-year, which of course is all spent inside the house, there being no carriages, no horses, no coachmen, no grooms, no valets; nothing but butlers, waiters, cooks, housemaids, what are generally called menial servants, in fact. Of this 15,000l. salaries and wages come to between 2000l. and 3000l. a-year; lighting, 1000l.; fuel, 500l.; liveries, 400l.; washing nearly as much; and for some eight or ten pounds a-year, a member has the full benefit of the entire expenditure, with the range of a magnificent house, the use of a valuable library, reading-rooms, writing-rooms, billiard-rooms, smoking-rooms, baths, everything except beds. The propagation of Clubs has caused quite a revolution in the matter of town visitors’ living. We saw that an unfortunate Boniface, who had got into the quagmire of the Insolvent Court, attributed his misfortunes to the altered system of the day, many of his once best customers, he said, now driving up to his door with their luggage, and after washing their hands adjourning to the Wellington, or the St. James’s Hall, instead of eating and drinking for the good of his house, as they used to do; but we know many men who have washed their hands of hotels altogether, and drive up to bachelor bedroom-houses in the neighbourhood of the Clubs, where for a few shillings a-night, they get capitally lodged, with a sneck key and invisible valeting of the first order. Then having renovated their outer men on arriving, they go to their Clubs and live like princes, the best of everything being sought for their use.
Talk of country cream, country butter, country eggs, “our farm of four acres,” and so on; what country house can surpass the butter, cream, and eggs of a firstrate London Club? Not only is the cream good, the butter good, and the eggs good, but the whole breakfast apparatus is of the nicest and most inviting order. Everything you want, and nothing more. Then the finely-flavoured tea is always so well made with real boiling water, instead of the lukewarm beverage we sometimes get; the muffins are fresh, the ham handsomely cut, the rolls crisp, and the toast neither leathery nor biscuity. A Club-breakfast is a meal to saunter over and enjoy, alternately sipping the tea and the newspaper.
The dinners are quite on a par with the breakfasts, and adapted to every variety of pocket and appetite. The best of all is, that though there is no previous arrangement on the part of the members, everything is as quickly supplied as if there had been. A quarter of an hour suffices to have dinner on the table—soup, fish, meat, sweets, and all.
Then the prices for which a man can live are something incredibly low; but it is the nature of luxury to beget luxury, we do not know that the new generation have profited much, in a pecuniary point of view, by the establishment of Clubs. The old squires were rich —rich in the fewness of their wants, but the new squires have found wants that their forefathers were ignorant of. The old home manor won’t do, they must have a moor; the row on the river won’t do, they must have a yacht on the sea; the couple of hunters for Squire Jowleyman’s hounds won’t do, they must have six, and go upon grass; so that an increased expenditure has far more than absorbed the value of the reductions that have been made, and the money-saving advantages that have been acquired. The consequence of this is, that the new squires have begun to turn their attention to what their fathers had a great aversion to, namely, a little trade, and endeavour to “make both ends meet,” as Paul Pry used to say, by a little speculation. Railroads first led them astray at the time that all the world went mad together, and though it is true the Stock Exchange gentlemen were not so self-denying as to let any of the squires make any money at that time, yet the seed of the desire was sown, and has gone on fructifying ever since. Joint-Stock Banks were in favour until they brought so many parties down with a run, but the new Limited Liability Act offers great facilities for adventurous enterprise. We strongly suspect, however, that the squires will find no safer or better speculation than in draining and improving their own land. We do not advocate their teaching the farmers their trade, but we like to see them dispel the prejudices of habit by their example and superior intelligence.
Altogether the country gentlemen have become a very different race to what they were. They are more men of the world, and have shaken off the rancour and delusions of party, which, as Lord Brougham well said, “allowed no merit in an adversary, and admitted no fault in a friend.” Whether this change is attributable to the emancipation of railways, or to the shock their system sustained by the ruthless repeal of the Corn-laws, or a combination of both, is immaterial to inquire. The fact is undoubted, and to men like the Duke of Tergiversation, who want to turn everybody to account, the change is inconvenient.
But we must apologise to his Grace for keeping him so long at his stone-heap, and will now proceed to assist him to entertain his Prince.
