The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable or aristocratic life, comprises those who
think that, in the nineteenth century, other means must be taken to
preserve their order in its high and responsible position than those
which, in dark ages, conferred honour upon the tallest or the bravest.
They think, and think wisely, that the only method of keeping above the
masses, in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further into
the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting, in a fair
neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth, their purer blood, and
urging the generous contest for fame, regardless of the allurements of
pleasure, or the superior advantages of fortune. In truth, we might
ask, what would become of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they
came, as a body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their
black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of
Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the
platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these
harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there
was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that
there is better.
We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families, a few men of
original, commanding, and powerful intellect; many respectable in most
departments of intellectual rivalry; many more laborious, hard-working
men; and about the same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed,
conceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the same
given number of those commonly called the educated classes. We refer you
to the aristocracies of other countries, and we think we may safely say,
that we have more men of that class, in this country, who devote
themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its
pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the
responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think
they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of
birth and fortune--who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less
prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they
feel, with the poet:
"At heros, et decus, et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco."
It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that
the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at
twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this
undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man
in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast
ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.
This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling
themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the
natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one
way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent
in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter
the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by
virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they
must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest
and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy
responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the
burden of responsible power.
One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in
public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of
the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the
aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed,
is yet oftener bestowed without any desert whatever; and that title to
admiration and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and
suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the illustrious
dead to the undistinguished living.
Without giving a catalogue _raisonné_ of the slow fellows, (we use the
term not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction to the others,)
we may observe that, besides the public service in which the great names
are sufficiently known, you have poets, essayists, dramatists,
astronomers, geologists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than
all, philanthropists. In compliment to human nature, we take the liberty
merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart and Lord Ashley. The
works of the slow fellows, especially their poetry, indicate in a
greater or less degree the social position of the authors; seldom or
never deficient in good taste, and not without feeling, they lack power
and daring. The smooth style has their preference, and their verses
smack of the school of Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not that, in poetry
or prose, we can point out one of our slow fellows of the present day
rising above judicious mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that the most
daring and original of our noble authors have, in their day, been fast
fellows; it is only necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.
Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to intellect in a
small way. These patronize a drawing-master, not to learn to draw, but
to learn to talk of drawing; they also study the _Penny Magazine_ and
other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London
University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as
far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of
fashionable _screws_, they take care never to subscribe to any thing.
They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the
confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every
thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the
evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people _can_ eat
those hot lunches. They take constitutional walks and Cockle's pills;
and, by virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always
consulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a guinea. They
talk of music, of which they know something--of books, of which they
know little--and of pictures, of which they know less; they have always
read "the last novel," which is as much as they can well carry; they
know literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House, but,
if they meet them in Park Lane, look as if they never saw them before;
they are very peevish, have something to say against every man, and
always say the worst first; they are very quiet in their manner, almost
sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows; they
treat their inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, "honest
friend," "my good man," and so on, but have very little heart, and less
spirit.
They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They
are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their
pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows
ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to
annoy him, talking of the "autumnal tints," and "the gilding of the
western hemisphere;" if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a
root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it
is a great curiosity in _his line_; if an entomologist, they are sure to
send him away "with a flea in his ear." If he affects poetry, the fast
fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from _Bell's Life_,
Scroggins's poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree,
or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist
upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a
thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren,
not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "_gagging_," and
genteel people "_quizzing_," but with a seriousness and gravity that
heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly
ridiculous.
It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows,
that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who
glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be
distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against
it all their lives; but so it is;--the compensating power that rules
material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is
given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it.
Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be
surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great
names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule)
are plebeian.