Charles Dickens - Pearl-Fishing; Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words; Second Series

But the fact was, they could not help it. It was become organic. They had acted the justice of peace, maintained the constitution against upstarts and manufacturers, signed warrants, supported the church and the house of correction, committed poachers, and then rested on the dignity of their ancestors for so many generations, that their skulls, brains, constitutions, and nervous systems, were all so completely moulded into that shape and baked into that mould, that a Rockville would be a Rockville to the end of time, if God and Nature would have allowed it. But such things wear out. The American Indians and the Australian nations wear out; they are not progressive, and as Nature abhors a vacuum, she does not forget the vacuum wherever it may be, whether in a hot desert, or in a cold and stately Rockville; – a very ancient, honorable, and substantial family, that lies fallow till the thinking faculty literally dies out.

For several generations there had been symptoms of decay about the Rockville family. Not in its property, that was as large as ever; not in their personal stature and physical aspect. The Rockvilles continued, as they always had been, a tall and not bad-looking family. But they grew gradually less prolific. For a hundred and fifty years past there had seldom been more than two, or at most three, children. There had generally been an heir to the estate, and another to the family pulpit, and sometimes a daughter married to some neighboring squire. But Sir Roger’s father had been an only child, and Sir Roger himself was an only child. The danger of extinction to the family, apparent as it was, had never induced Sir Roger to marry. At the time that we are turning our attention upon him, he had reached the mature age of sixty. Nobody believed that Sir Roger now would marry; he was the last, and likely to be, of his line.

It is worth while here to take a glance at Sir Roger and his estate. They bore a strange contrast. The one bore all the signs of progress, the other of a stereotyped feudality. The estate which in the days of the first Sir Roger de Rockville had been half morass and half wilderness, was now cultivated to the pitch of British agricultural science. The marshlands beyond the river were one splendid expanse of richest meadows, yielding a rental of four solid pounds per acre. Over hill and dale on this side for miles, where formerly ran wild deer, and grew wild woodlands or furze-bushes, now lay excellent farms and hamlets, and along the ridge of the ancient cliffs rose the most magnificent woods. Woods, too, clothed the steep-hill sides, and swept down to the noble river, their very boughs hanging far out over its clear and rapid waters. In the midst of these fine woods stood Rockville Hall, the family seat of the Rockvilles. It reared its old brick walls above the towering mass of elms, and travellers at a distance recognized it for what it was, the mansion of an ancient and wealthy family.

The progress of England in arts, science, commerce, and manufacture, had carried Sir Roger’s estate along with it. It was full of active and moneyed farmers, and flourished under modern influences. How lucky it would have been for the Rockville family had it done the same.

But amid this estate there was Sir Roger solitary, and the last of the line. He had grown well enough – there was nothing stunted about him, so far as you could see on the surface. In stature, he exceeded six feet. His colossal elms could not boast of a properer relative growth. He was as large a landlord, and as tall a justice of the peace, as you could desire; but, unfortunately, he was, after all, only the shell of a man. Like many of his veteran elms, there was a very fine stem, only it was hollow. There was a man, just with the rather awkward deficiency of a soul.

And it were 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, honorable, 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 vigor from the rich 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, honorable, and substantial family could need. The Rockvilles had no need 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. So the Rockville soul, unused from generation to generation, grew —

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, a good lawyer, – and looked up to by the neighboring 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 a 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 besides 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 world 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 , 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 neighborhood 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 prong or footpath 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.