Landed gentry

“ The gentry or nobility—the terms are the same on the Continent—went to live in the towns. They could no longer afford to inhabit their country mansions. They acquired a taste for town life, its conveniences, its distractions, its amusements ”

“ The great house, the church, the village, and the labourers and the servants in their stations and degrees, seemed to me, I say, to be a closed and complete social system. About us were other villages and great estates, and from house to house, interlacing, correlated, the Gentry, the fine Olympians, came and went. The country towns seemed mere collections of ships, marketing places for the tenantry, centres for such education as they needed, as entirely dependent on the gentry as the village and scarcely less directly so. ”

“ Madge watches me working about, torn between her old attitude of maid at the Hall, with its fixed ideas as to what the gentry should do, and a something new that is slowly creeping into her mind. Throughout England, I am told, the gentry are doing things they used not to do,—for economy, for possible service to the country in its day of need. And it is slowly dawning on us all that its need is great. ”

“ The fact is, that the small planters, who constitute the majority of the land-owners, are not in a position to act the Amphytrion, and that the inhabitants of the district can scarcely aspire to be considered what we would call gentry in England, but are a frugal, simple, hog and hominy-living people, fond of hard work and, occasionally, of hard drinking. ”

“ A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon [361] the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and then he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good-nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords; and the poor planters who have but one bed, will often sit up, or lie upon a form or couch all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey. ”

“ The good old way among the gentry of England to maintain their pre-eminence over the lower rank, was by their bounty, munificence, and hospitality; and it is a very unhappy change, if at present, by themselves or their agents, the luxury of the gentry is supported by the credit of the trader. ”

“ This is the cause that the country is ruined, And the straw of the thatch is eaten away, The gentry are come to live in the land— Chimneys between the village, And the proprietor upon the white floor! ”

“ The gentry—not chiefs, but tacksmen—as we have said, did not live luxuriously. Examples may be given. ‘Although they have been attended at dinner by five or six servants, they have often dined upon oat-meal varied several ways, pickled herrings, or other such cheap and indifferent diet.... Their houses are sometimes built with stone and lime’ (like Barisdale’s palace) , but other houses of the gentry ‘are built in the manner of the huts.’ Burt [266] mentions one such house, with beasts dwelling under the roof of the owner, or tacksman. ”

“ That perils of robbers and military insolence were not the only troubles of the countryside, is shewn by the following anecdote [1343] describing the brutal encroachments of a big landlord on poorer neighbours. A landowner, apparently a man of moderate means, had three sons, well-educated and well-behaved youths, who were close friends of a poor man with a little cottage of his own. Bordering on this man’s little holding was the large and fertile landed estate belonging to a rich and powerful neighbour in the prime of life. ”

“ These same prudent and prosaic landlords have not spent their fortunes in wasteful extravagance and absurd display; they have not rackrented their tenantry that they might rival a neighbor.”
“I am sincerely rejoiced,” interposed Lady Eleanor, smiling, “that my English relative, Lord Netherby, was not a witness to this discussion, lest he should fancy that, between the wastefulness of the South and the thrift of the North, this poor island was but ill provided with a gentry. Pray, Mr. Daly, how does your sister like the North? She is our neighbor, is she not?” ”

“ If we were called upon to classify the Accomacians, we would divide them into the gentry, the miscellaneous fraternity, and the slave population. The gentry are a comparatively small class, but the principal landholders of the district. They come of good old English families, and are highly intelligent and well educated. The houses they occupy are homely in appearance, but well supplied with all the substantials that can add to the pleasures of country life. They seem to think more of comfort than display, and are distinguished for 30 their hospitality to strangers. ”

“ The ruin of the cities, which are everywhere productive centres of civilisation, contributed to the general abasement. The gentry had preserved many virtues in private and family life, but they were not enlightened enough to have the right ideas concerning the needs of the State and the methods of public life. ”

“ The consequence of these painful relations of landlord and tenant, even in this comparatively happy county, is a perceptible degeneracy in the manhood of the people. Talk to an old inhabitant, who has been an attentive observer of his times, and he will tell you that the vigorous and energetic, the intelligent and enterprising, are departing to more favoured lands, and that this process has produced a marked deterioration in the population within his memory. ”

“ The small gentry, to about the third rank upwards (considering there to be five ranks from the smallest gentry up to the greatest nobility) , are all gone, nearly to a man, and the small farmers along with them. The Barings alone have, I should think, swallowed up thirty or forty of these small gentry without perceiving it. They, indeed, swallow up the biggest race of all ”

“ Thus the unfortunate people who had formerly enjoyed home, health, and comparative prosperity in the cottages scattered over this common land had been obliged to migrate to the large towns, seeking for fresh employment and means of subsistence, or had become "law-created paupers" ”

“ We have houses to shelter in, beds to sleep on, inns to quarter at,—meat and bread. But as to any of yourselves emigrating—how could you leave property, business, friends to lead the life of a rustic? ”

“ The gentry usually lived in mansions.
The old yeoman class was disappearing due to their selling their land to larger landowners. Farming on a large scale was more productive.
The next class were the "middling sort". In this class were merchants, lawyers, substantial tenant farmers, smaller freeholders, millers, innkeepers, in town traders, middlemen, clothiers, ironmongers, goldsmiths, grocers, linen drapers, apothecaries, school masters, clerks and civil servants, customs and excise men, and .shopkeepers, who now kept their wares inside and lived on the second floor. ”

“ To supply this deficiency is the intent of the present publication, which aims, as already suggested, at being a handbook to the nobility and gentry of London—the term gentry being understood to include logically those to whom the title of gentleman has been accorded by common consent—those as a rule whose vocation in life p. ”

“ It is almost impossible, in travelling, to steer clear of this evil habit. Strangers are almost invariably drawn into it in the course of business.
The town of C— being the point where a large number of emigrants landed on their way to the backwoods of this part of the colony, it became for a time a place of great resort, and here a number of land-jobbers were established, who made a profitable trade of buying lands from private individuals, or at the government sales of wild land, and selling them again to the settlers from the old country. ”

“ You good-for-nothing, lying wind-bag you, how dare you calumniate your own landlord? You hound of the whole village, you! that barks at every man behind his back, and licks his hand when he faces you. ”

“ No wages can tempt the Wodgate man from his native home, that squatters’ seat which soon assumed the form of a large village, and then in turn soon expanded into a town, and at the present moment numbers its population by swarming thousands, lodged in the most miserable tenements, in the most hideous burgh, in the ugliest country in the world. ”

“ It makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and bitter words of their parents. The passion for the possession of land is the chord on which the agent plays, and at his touch it vibrates with 'the deepest notes of woe.' By the agent of an improving landlord it is generally touched so cunningly, that its most exquisite torture cannot easily be proved to be a grievance. ”

“ The poor persecuted peasant, whom, with weak wife and helpless family, a brutal landlord or pitiless agent has evicted in the depth of winter from the hallowed home of his ancestors, is traced across the Atlantic, followed into a newly-settled district and there discovered—a respected resident, a good neighbour, and, very often, an independent man. ”

“ I never saw human beings living in such utter filth and poverty. A crofter's cottage in Scotland, or an Irish hovel with the pigs and children all living together, was a palace compared to that awful hole. I remonstrated vigorously with W. and the Mayor of La Ferté for allowing people to live in that way, like beasts, upon the highroad, close to a perfectly prosperous country town. ”

“ The gentleman farmers who had made the land distinct and distinguished were renting their acres to tobacco tenants on shares and were moving to town to get back their negro servants and to provide their children with proper schooling. And those children of the gentle people, it seemed, were growing more and more indifferent to education and culture, and less and less marked by the gentle manners that were their birthright. ”

“ And there are many such primitive towns nestling among our hills and valleys, some even less pretending; and there are lone cottages scattered by the road-side, and huts of squalid poverty, and the thrifty homestead of the farmer, all of which have their heart-histories. ”

“ They are learned in sounds, these triangular-headed gentry. See! he looks up; if it were a moonlight night, I should think some of the young neighbouring vagabonds had come to plunder the rookery or the dovecot. ”

“ In a certain village there lived a very rich landlord, who owned several villages, but was such a great miser that no tenant would willingly cultivate his lands, and those he had gave him not a little trouble. ”

“ The town and the colony are sound as a bell, never were sounder, never had more stuff in the; never had so much. There is the land still, not a yard of it is gone ; no great fellow has put that on his back and gone off with it. The land is there, and the houses, and the merchandise, and the flocks, and herds, and horses ”

“ Now, alas, almost every country gentleman's house in the neighborhood is no longer occupied by its ancient proprietors, and is sold or let to successful tradespeople, so that the quintessence of society in the town plumes itself on not knowing the occupants of these stately mansions. ”

“ The gentry seem to have resided in our vicinity, when there was the greatest inducement to leave it, impassable roads: they seem also to have quitted the country, now there is the greatest inducement to reside there; roads, which improve their estates, and may be travelled with pleasure. ”

“ A spectral poor-law sits by our waysides, wrapped up in death-flannels of the English cut, and shakes its skinny hand at the mansion-houses of our landlords,––vision beyond comparison more direfully portentous than the apparition seen by the lone shepherd of Strathcarron. But in the Highlands, at least, it is merely the landlord of the new and improved state of things––the landlord of widespread clearings and stringent removal-summonses––that it threatens. ”

“ The second stage of retirement from the farm was through absentee landlordism and the placing of tenants on the farm. This process has come to an end in many sections of the Middle West, with the return of the sons of the landlord to the family acres in the country, so that there is a sort of rhythm in the flow of population from the country into the town and backward to the land. ”

“ Those who lived near had been long accustomed to fishing and fowling in the swamp, without paying any rent, or having to ask anybody’s leave. They had no mind now to settle to the regular toilsome business of farming,—and to be under a landlord, to whom they must pay rent. ”

“ Nor could the landlord “knowingly harbor in house, barn, or stable, any rogues, vagabonds, thieves, sturdy beggars, masterless men or women.” Our ancestors were kindly neighbors to godly folk, but sternly intolerant of wrong-doers, or even of those suspected of wrong.
We cannot wonder that citizens did not seek to become ordinary-keepers when we learn how they were hampered, or how the magistrates tried to hamper them. They were at one time not to be permitted to sell “sack or strong waters,” nor have any dancing or singing within their walls. No games could be played in their precincts. ”

“ The French quarter is out of repair, and has the air of being for rent; but in fact there is comparatively little change in occupancy, Creole families being remarkably adhesive to localities. The stranger who sees all over the French and the business parts of the town the immense number of lodging-houses—some of them the most stately old mansions—let largely by colored landladies, is likely to underestimate the home life of this city. ”

“ Whereas perhaps one-third of the men assembled might be called gentlemen by stretching the term, the remainder were the calloused, hard young rowdies of the neighborhood—the same nonworking element that has thrown the clean games of billiard and pool in disrepute all over the country by the mere fact of its continued loafing in these havens of refuge. ”