LORDLINESS AND LEISURE.
OR]) MELBOURNE said that he never carried a -1-4 watch but asked his servant the time, adding, "And he tells me what he likes." The remaa is a perfect example of lordliness, of an affectation which, though it is not dead, now finds such different expression as to seem at first sight to belong to the past. Good-natured arrogance has obtained admiration in England, does obtain indul- gence still, but we have to look for it in new places. It used to have some kind of oonnexion with Feudalism,with the few men at the top who, however hard they worked, believed they had a right to leisure and who belonged to the outdoor type, the type who, speaking generally, had led. an aotive life and done nothing. For them time was, as it were, a matter of hearsay, something about which a man could ask information and excuse a mistake. Unless they happened to be ambitious or exceptionally patriotio or singularly politically minded, they knew nothing of time- table work whatever, and of course the minority who did shared the manners and bearing of the majority who did not.
Years ago, within the memory perhaps of a very old man, there was still something feudal about English village life. Lordliness was still the prerogative of the great. There was some one whom those who lived upon the land looked up to as the owner of the soil, and who looked upon them as somehow his own. But it is long since there was much reality in this idea ; for the past half. century it has been crumbling and for thirty years or more it may be said to have been in ruins.- A picturesque ruin, however, is a great asset in a countryside. It forms a nucleus of fancy and feeds the imagination of every child who lives near it. The feudal system is our great national ruin, a splendid piece of destruction which compels the eyes of the townsman hurrying by, and still holds the attention of the land whose allegiance it has lost. Till lately in innumerable villages the squire was the most conspicuous figure. He and his family engaged the thoughts of the parish more pleasantly perhaps than his ancestors had done when they ruled it. The people liked to feel that they possessed a squire who had—tradi- tionally—possessed them. They were proud of their ruins. If he belonged to a really great family, to the complicated cousinhood of the English aristocracy, he stood before his people as a symbol of the country's past ; if he had no such pretensions, but his ancestors had long reigned in the village, he at least represented the con- tinuity of its life, a past life, when time did not mean what it means now—when there was " ohurch time" and meal times and no "station time "—and poor people worked till they "got done," and there was no " over- time," and squires did not work at all. The past is always roseate at first sight ; but perhaps in reality the squires of Sir Roger de Coverley's days were hardly as popular as the latter-day squires, the men who all over the country are leaving or have left their big houses or who, even if they remain in them, have sentimentally abdicated. The last of those who pretended to reign were wonderfully loyal to their people, and felt a strong sense of duty towards them which was not altogether returned. For the people dutifulness lay among the ruins ; they had not time to " keep it up," so to speak. The present writer remembers one such " lordly " landowner whose whole manner and bearing witnessed to the time when " time " didn't matter. He always played at being a king among his tenantry. He never asked for any service he could command ; on the other hand, he always seemed grateful for it. He never used his position as a landlord as a lever to procure obedience in any serious matter whatever. Had he done so, he would have been successfully resisted. Perhaps he knew this. Anyhow, he never put the matter to the proof. Only so could he make believe that the tradition still held. An optimistic conservative, hoping against hope that things would not permanently change, he yet admitted now and again that disturbances and " movements " which he could not disregard were not so certain to "settle down again" as he was accustomed to declare, and that the country gentleman life which he loved was doomed. For a man born to such a life he felt there was no other, and he regarded the state of society which it involved, or rather had in his youth involved, as far the best for the country. He never doubted the fitness of his awn class to rule, partly because they had time to do it, and partly because he had a sentimental regard for the upper-class sense of honour which he thought released them from a too slavish subservience to the moral law, a condition of mind which he deprecated as distinguishing the middle class, and likely to lead to the only sin he could not forgive—hypocrisy. When he died his son sold the much- involved estate to a Jew, and the lordliness which distin- guished the great house to the mingled envy and amuse- ment of the parish was gone for ever. On the whole' the neighbourhood rather enjoyed the new sense of equality with "the family," but never ceases to regret in words the old, more romantic relation.
Qualities do not die with systems, and fashions always spread before they pass away. Gentility spread and spread until ridicule killed it, and lordliness is spreading in like manner. We see it all round us, still connected, as it always was, with leisureliness. The hand-workers might almost paraphrase Lord Melbourne's ' sentence. They might say we do not carry a watch. We ask our leaders the time, and they tell us what they like. In every trade, in every shop, among all the jacks-in-office, we find the same temper. The new English officialism, unlike the foreign brand, is perfectly good tempered though sometimes gratuitously rude. Its representatives seem to regard themselves as the masters of the public, not as their servants bound in duty to work and to finish "up to time." Ordinary critics who are not nice in their choice of words say that such people have become "independent." When the expression was new it was irritating. Independence, one felt, was a great virtue, and the name of it should not be profaned. But the people who used it meant something which it is very difficult to express otherwise. Lordliness at the top was a picturesque fashion. For a long while, to say the least, it has been a perfectly harmless one and has added to the pleasant scenery of life and come into its drama as a very agreeable relief. But lordliness all over the place is nothing but a disintegrating and nonsensical mannerism, a thing which sensible opinion must soon kill, because the world as a whole has not time nor patience to put up with it. As it is now, each man is beginning to hate it in all men but himself.
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