Part 3 (1/2)

As I shall show later, when I come to deal with my ancestry, Sutton was never a ”Heartbreak House” In each succeeding generation it held the place which it held when I was young, and which, Heaven be praised! it still holds A snified es in which live still just the kind of people who have lived there throughout the period of legal or of literary memory--the period described as that to which ”the e people were poor, but yet not dependent; people not, perhaps, very enterprising, and yet with a culture of their own; and people, above all, with natural dignity and good h often with a conventional set of bad h world These are always produced when they are inclined to suspect strangers of regarding thee, ridicule, or conte in one of the Sutton Court cottages, aged eighty-three or so, who lived there when I was a boy and looked then, to uished, with not oodSo of hih quite politely, that he would be put down as ”one of those muddle-headed, stupid yokels with little or noto the townses ”till they becoo, I introduced h my son was, till then, unknown to hiot the password and knew all was safe and well He proceeded at once to tell him what he had often told me--how he had ”helped to put Sir Henry” (my father's uncle, whom he succeeded) ”into his coffin” He then went on to describe how (in 1858) the coffin was carried on na to be buried there in the Strachey Chapel The event set down in cold print does not sound of very great interest or i to partake a little too much of the countryman of the melodrama, or of the comic papers, who always talks about funerals and corpses As a matter of fact, however, Israel Veal has so little self-consciousness and possesses such a gift for dignified narration that, told by him, the story, if indeed it can be called a story, always see of the air of the prophet about the narrator, though he indulge in no prophecy I found lad you have heard that as I used to hear it,” quite i for the h i sacramentally passed on by the old retainer

At Sutton, though I was not brought up in a hunting-stable, or aamekeepers, and so forth, we had the usual establishentleman of moderate means in the 'seventies My mother had a comfortable, heavy landau, with a pair of quiet horses, still officially and in bills called ”coach-horses” My father had a sistrate's work, drawn by a horse believed to be of a very fiery disposition, and called ”Black Bess” I and my brothers had ponies on whose backs we spent many hours My father had been an invalidto a stiff knee, could not ride But, though an anxious parent, he wisely realised that an Englishman must if possible kno to use the back of a horse Ours was a bad riding country, owing to the great nualloped up and down the roads with a youthful lack of consideration for our horses'

legs Curiously enough, there were no hounds near us, and therefore I never actually rode to hounds till I was forty Happily, however, I was faly careless rider, had not, even after nearly twenty years' interet on a horse and ride through woods and lanes and over Downs and Commons is an enormous pleasure, and if a mild jump or two can be added I areatest of all physical enjoyments has always been the sensation produced by a horse with all four legs off the ground

There was another aspect of the country-house, which I ah he knew little or nothing about agriculture, was to a great extent his own agent, and therefore the far to the house to consult him and to talk over small matters There also caistrate's business, to get warrants signed, so that the offenders could be legally held till brought before the Petty Sessions At these interviehether economic, administrative, or constabulary, I and my brothers were permitted to attend While istrate's room,” or ”Sir Edward's business room,” and the other persons of the drama either sat opposite him, if they were merely on business, or stood if they were accompanied by a policeman, we children sat discreetly on a sofa on my father's side of the room and listened with all our ears

It was always interesting and curious, and occasionally we had a real piece of draes of witchcraft assaults or threatening language ”likely to cause breaches of the Peace” were also regarded as highly diverting Charges of witchcraft were usually levelled by one old lady against another One ht hear accounts of how intrepid men and wohtshade was grown over the porch of a cottage to keep off witches, and how evil spirits in the shape of squeaking chickens frequented the woman as ”overlooked” My father did his best to make peace and subdue superstition, but it was quite easy to see that his audiences, especially when they oentleman, he don't understand a word about it”

That was their attitude

Lastly, lish country-houses have, a largish library The hoary tradition that English squires are as a class illiterate, which they are not even when inordinately given to sport, has no foundation In the Great Parlour, for so it was called, there were plenty of good books, and I was early turned loose aht it a criht injure the bindings or lose the volu I did exactly what I liked in the library and browsed about with a splendid incoherence which would have shocked a pedant, but delighted a true man of letters Noould open the folio edition of Ben Jonson, now Congreve's plays and poems printed by Baskerville; now a volume of ”Counsel's Brief delivered in the defence of Warren Hastings Esqre at his impeachment,” which we happened to possess; now _Travels to the Court of Ashanti_; now _Chinese Punishments_; now Flaxman's Illustrations to the _Iliad_, the _Odyssey_, or _Dante_

Those were glorious days, for one had real leisure One varied the turning over of books in the Great Parlour with a scamper on one's pony, with visits to the strawberry bed, and with stretching oneself full- length on a sofa, or the hearth-rug in the Hall, reading four or five books at a tiet one's proper lessons and the abhorred dexterity of Greek and Latin grammarians

If the physical ”aura” of Sutton Court was delightful and sti and of still happier chance was the mental at brought up in Whig ideas, in a Whig fa traditions, for in spite of the stones, intellectual and political, that have been thrown at thes I do not, of course,aristocracy as represented by modern Tory historians, or by the parasitic sycophants of aprinciples--the principles of Halifax, of Somers, of Locke, of Addison, and of Steele--the principles of the Bill of Rights and of ”the Glorious Revolution of 1688”;--the Whiggisin in the party of Cromwell and of the Independents, of John Milton and of Richard Baxter, the party which even in its decadence flowered in England in Chathaton, John Ada principles to me mean that the will of the majority of the nation as a whole must prevail, and not the will of any section, even if it is a large section and does manual work These are the principles which are in deadly opposition to Jacobinism and Bolshevism Under Jacobinism and Bolshevism, as their inventors proclaim, true policy must be e is claiarchy, and a very archy, thus takes the place of true deh the will of the people, be it what itclaims absolute liberty in all matters of personal opinion and of conscience, and advocates the greatest amount of liberty procurable in social action He will not sanction direct action in order to secure even these things, but he asserts the right of free speech in order to convert the , to his views, and will not rest till he obtains it Never persecute aas he does not proceed to lawless action Maintain freedoainst a lawless crown Never refuse a uilty till he has been proved so These are the true Whig principles, and in these I was brought up

It is true thatnot unnaturally to the fashi+on of his day,--the fashi+on of decrying the Whigs--would always call hiism in his youth was often little better than a specially bad type of Toryisan to study history in any detail, that is not in handbooks, but in the originals, I soon saw that he was one of the best of Whigs, whether in matters of State or Church Moderation, justice, freedo, tolerance, yielded not in the forht which could not be gainsaid--these were the pillars of his ht up in these views and by such an expounder? As I looked at the pictures that hung on the walls in the Great Hall (not very great, in fact, though bearing that nalow of pride that it was on these principles that my family had been nourished Williainia, would, I felt, have been a true Whig if Whig principles had been enunciated in his tiinia Company was a Liberal movegism, for was he not the intimate friend of John Locke? Locke in his letters from exile and in his formative period writes to Strachey with affection and adination John Strachey thus became the unknown inspirer of Locke, and therefore, perhaps, the inspirer and founder of the Whig philosophy The son of Locke's friend, though the West Country was, as a rule, hopelessly Tory and full of Squire Westerns, stood fire I As a Fellow of the Royal Society, the second John Stracheyof Science

There were also Croh once more not in the ordinary conventional sense, the aura of Sutton was a Whig aura

Though the aura of Sutton Court had a strong effect upon me morally and intellectually, the emotional side of me was even more deeply touched

The beauty and fascination of the house, its walls, its trees, and its memories, made, as I have already said, so deep an impression upon ht of it, and even the very na By nature I a those who become permanently attached to objects It is true that I love my own home in Surrey, a house which I built, as it were, with my own hands I love the scenery; I love it also as the place wherepeople, and as the place where ht of it does not touch ht of Sutton What I have felt about Sutton all my life, I shall feel till I feel no more on earth But that will not be all I am convinced that I shall in some sense or other feel it in some other place The indent on my soul will not be effaced

I have touched on sos, natal and prenatal, which went to the an to shape that mind for myself Every man must do this, for whatever be the stars in his horoscope or the good fairies who preside over his cradle, they can only give, as it were, ”useful instructions” and a good plan of the route

They leave hi those instructions and plunging into every kind of folly that they showed him how to avoid In the last resort, a h, of course, he has a right, nay, a duty, to give thanks for all good chances and happy circumstances At any rate, I must now approach the tiic boat that had been built and equipped for me by others Had I been fully conscious when I started on ratitude that ed in the eclipse, and that I set sail under so bright a sky and with so prosperous a gale behindthe picture ofto avoid describing hi so unworthy Important as were our home and traditions, our fa inwhen compared to the influence of such a man as he was

I shall not attempt to describe my father's physical appearance, for that has been done with sympathy, felicity, and power of presentation in my brother's portrait here reproduced I will say only that he was slight of build and short of stature He is standing in the little Great Hall at Sutton, in his black overcoat and hat, ready for one of those walks on the terrace which he took from his earliest childhood He was born in the old house in 1812 It was not, however, till the year 1819 that he first came to live at Sutton His earliest recollection was, as he used to tell us, playing on the terrace with the great ginger- coloured tonifico to have derived from some stock imported by the first Sir Henry when he was Master of the Household to George III As e's successor, in the true ”mode” of his race, sits in a purely detached manner in the middle of the polished oak floor near, but in no special relation to his h many have dependents

But unstinted, unconditional eulogy is bound to end in flattery, and ood a man and too simple a h he would take sincere praise and sympathy with the pleasure of a wholly unaffected nature, the best courtier in the world would have found it impossible to flatter him

I shall, therefore, be particular to draw clearly such faults as he had