I see growing and filling out before me the image of an actual Duke of Norfolk.For instance,Norfolk men all make their voices run up very high at the end of a sentence.The Duke of Norfolk's voice,therefore,ought to end in a perfect shriek.They often (I am told)end sentences with the word "together";entirely irrespective of its meaning.Thus Ishall expect the Duke of Norfolk to say:"I beg to second the motion together";or "This is a great constitutional question together."Ishall expect him to know much about the Broads and the sluggish rivers above them;to know about the shooting of water-fowl,and not to know too much about anything else.Of mountains he must be wildly and ludicrously ignorant.He must have the freshness of Norfolk;nay,even the flatness of Norfolk.He must remind me of the watery expanses,the great square church towers and the long level sunsets of East England.If he does not do this,I decline to know him.
I need not multiply such cases;the principle applies everywhere.Thus Ilose all interest in the Duke of Devonshire unless he can assure me that his soul is filled with that strange warm Puritanism,Puritanism shot with romance,which colours the West Country.He must eat nothing but clotted cream,drink nothing but cider,reading nothing but 'Lorna Doone',and be unacquainted with any town larger than Plymouth,which he must regard with some awe,as the Central Babylon of the world.Again,Ishould expect the Prince of Wales always to be full of the mysticism and dreamy ardour of the Celtic fringe.
Perhaps it may be thought that these demands are a little extreme;and that our fancy is running away with us.Nevertheless,it is not my Duke of Devonshire who is funny;but the real Duke of Devonshire.The point is that the scheme of titles is a misfit throughout:hardly anywhere do we find a modern man whose name and rank represent in any way his type,his locality,or his mode of life.As a mere matter of social comedy,the thing is worth noticing.You will meet a man whose name suggests a gouty admiral,and you will find him exactly like a timid organist:you will hear announced the name of a haughty and almost heathen grande dame,and behold the entrance of a nice,smiling Christian cook.These are light complications of the central fact of the falsification of all names and ranks.Our peers are like a party of mediaeval knights who should have exchanged shields,crests,and pennons.For the present rule seems to be that the Duke of Sussex may lawfully own the whole of Essex;and that the Marquis of Cornwall may own all the hills and valleys so long as they are not Cornish.
The clue to all this tangle is as simple as it is terrible.If England is an aristocracy,England is dying.If this system IS the country,as some say,the country is stiffening into more than the pomp and paralysis of China.It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon--and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms.To be wrong,and to be carefully wrong,that is the definition of decadence.The disease called aphasia,in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee,commonly ends in their silence.Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society.They all seem straining to keep things in rather than to let things out.For the kings of finance speechlessness is counted a way of being strong,though it should rather be counted a way of being sly.By this time the Parliament does not parley any more than the Speaker speaks.Even the newspaper editors and proprietors are more despotic and dangerous by what they do not utter than by what they do.We have all heard the expression "golden silence."The expression "brazen silence"is the only adequate phrase for our editors.If we wake out of this throttled,gaping,and wordless nightmare,we must awake with a yell.The Revolution that releases England from the fixed falsity of its present position will be not less noisy than other revolutions.It will contain,I fear,a great deal of that rude accomplishment described among little boys as "calling names";but that will not matter much so long as they are the right names.
