A Thousand Years Hence/Chapter 11
A sanitary project of the future which was entirely my own.—Author, chap. i.
In this chapter, and for this century, I propose to confine my illustration, as I have done in the preceding, to one special subject, but a subject also quite characteristic of the times we are engaged with. We have seen how successfully we carried out the resanitation, or sanitary reconstruction, of London—an exemplary movement which was promptly followed by that of most others of our cities and towns, and which enormously advanced the general physical comfort and social well-being. Following that great sanitary step, or rather, in great measure, marching concurrently with it, we also successfully effected a great moral resanitation in a certain section of society, that, namely, which was connected with crime and mendicancy. But a much more advanced, and, indeed, entirely different ideal of resanitation has been silently at work all this time; while we have delayed mentioning it until now, because the full fruition of the work did not appear for these several centuries. I shall now enter upon this further great step of society, and call it distinctively—
"Honour to whom honour is due." That distinguished ancestor of mine, of a thousand years back, whom I have such repeated occasion to call up in such long retrospect—the great founder of my house, and of that great provision trade in which his descendants have ever since been engaged, and who in this, as well, probably, as countless other matters of his day, if every one had his due and at its due time, ought to have been and would have been much more highly and more publicly appreciated by his generation,—has left on record how, through his own sole instrumentality, this remarkable resanitation took its beginning. Now, indeed, the whole story belongs to the world's fame. My great ancestor, noticing, on one occasion, amongst the juvenile street Arabs of his day—a day when such social spectacles were still possible in our midst,—certain naturally healthful and perfect forms, although otherwise rag-covered, soiled, and totally neglected, the idea occurred to him to collect together and carefully train all such perfect forms. They were to be specially brought up in separate institutions, where they might be duly educated so as to complete all the rudimentary advantages nature had given them, and thus be sent forth into the world as a kind of superior race—a natural nobility—to take, by force of pure personal quality, their natural lead in society.
How far my noble-minded and disinterested ancestor foresaw all that was ultimately to come of his novel idea, we are not told. Any way, his originating movement had very grand results. But he had at first to fight his battle against universal opposition: his own wife, as he has amusingly recorded, fighting most vigorously of all against his future fame. Although unsparing of his own means, progress at first was slow. But the idea afterwards gained ground, and, ere its author left the world, he saw the promise of its substantial success. Indeed, the subject, very soon after, assumed such importance as to become a public question, which the State incorporated with that of the general education of the people; that is to say, the State enjoined a distinctive drafting out of all young children of perfect health and form, whose high natural advantages were to be specially supplemented by all the superior educational advantages for which they showed themselves capable. The State looked, by way of reward, to the rearing of quite a superior class of subjects, and the consequently increased credit and accelerated advancement of the country.
At first, of course, only the very poorest classes submitted to be the objects of this distinctive charity, for as such it had doubtless commenced; while the title of "nature's nobility," which was early conferred upon the new order, had probably no complimentary intention. But, as generations passed, nature's nobility began to crop up all through society, and to exhibit qualities which gave to it commanding social and intellectual position. To enter the lists of the new order was no longer a contemptible object, and there was a gradual dissociation from connection with public charity. That latter aspect of the case had already been superseded, when the resanitated body had risen to conspicuous dimensions, and already included many of the most prominent citizens. There began, on the other hand, a natural tendency towards a special and separate order—the order, namely, of perfect sanitude in mind and body. But the ranks of this order remained always open to the like qualities from outside; and at length every one without, who could pass the due medical ordeal, pressed eagerly into the ranks of this natural nobility.
Centuries had thus passed, and a painful transition scene was evidently impending over society. Almost from the very first, the then despised nature's nobility had shown a disposition to intermarry amongst themselves. And what wonder! for where else were found such beautiful specimens of either sex? And now, when generations and centuries had done their further work, this custom of restrictive intermarriage became more and more the practice of the new order. The inevitable end began at last to heave in sight; for, on one side was this new order, which, in all its vigorous superiority of body and mind, had now entered upon the full supervision and command of society; on the other side a mass of human infirmity, from which the other section could hardly but feel increasingly impatient to be free. When those latter ruling powers not only rejected alliances for themselves with this distempered remnant of the old society, but at last, as a sanitary measure in the public interest, prohibited marriage amongst all its membership, the last vestiges of the old condition were finally to disappear.
They did disappear accordingly, and thenceforward we started as, in many respects, a renovated race; while other countries, in view of such results, acted more or less upon our example. An appreciably greater health and vigour pervaded all scientific, business, and general life, which told marvellously on our national progress. I often wonder even now at the busy spectacle around me, for doubtless we still benefit from the renovating effects of that great movement. Take my worthy old father, for instance, who in spite of nearly a century of years, is yet as early and as hard at business as the youngest of us, and earning always a great deal more than he spends. May Heaven long preserve—may Heaven, as I dutifully repeat, prosper him to the uttermost!
Amongst the lingering survivors of those old social remnants, whose final extinction we have just recorded was the last representative of one of the great families of the old times and systems now passed away. This family was that of the Selphnils. In its high days of those old times, there had been Dukes of Selphnil, with great property inheritance; but when primogeniture and entail laws and other artificial family props had been done away with, and, as the new rule, every one had to stand or fall by his own qualities and merits, the Selphnil family fell all behind in the common race, and, sad to say, its last representative died in the Public Charity. All that remained of the old grandeur was his name. Even that the neighbours had inappreciatively abbreviated; but while they called him only Freddie Selfie, the proper family and baptismal designation was Frederick Adolphus Constantine Maximilian Ferdinand Alphonso Nicholas Wilhelmus Napoleon Cæsar Augustus Tiberius Selphnil.
The great Selphnil family had been more conspicuous in these modern than in more ancient times. There were not so many Selphnils in feudal days. In tracing back the particular family line now in question, some trader or banker turns up with a deal of money; but the family in after times do not dwell overmuch upon this fundamental personage. It little matters, to be sure, whether his name was Brown, Jones, or Robinson, seeing his descendants changed it, when, at an early stage, they married into the Selphnils, and took their name. These Selphnils, after that accession, with large and entailed estates, became a great and flourishing family. They could proudly boast that Selphnils were to be abundantly met with throughout even the very highest ranks.
The staff and stay of Selphnil greatness was "the family." The mere individual personality disappeared. Apart from his family and his nobility, as the first duke gloried in saying, he himself was nothing. The family fortunes were at their height with this first Duke of Selphnil. There had previously been in succession, Baron, Viscount, Earl, and Marquis Selphnil. The great life's aim of the baron had been to be viscount, of the viscount to be earl, of the earl to be marquis, and now, from a marquis, the family ambition, with its traditional instincts, turns to the dukedom.
But the path, even to such honours, in these comparatively practical and prosaic times, was not always up to the noble marquis's mind and taste. The premier of the day, for instance, with whom he must needs come in contact about this coveted honour, albeit, happily for the marquis's cause and prospects, of Conservative politics, was, as the marquis described him, one Smith, who was not only destitute of the slightest particle of nobility in his family, but who, even worse still, seemed indifferent on that point, and whose immediate ancestry, to use the marquis's dignified family-like expression, for even but a single step backwards, had actually kept a shop.
To such a premier, then, he, a peer of the realm, must needs address himself. The said premier was, first of all, a man of business; and, in his cordial reception of the noble marquis, he had at least one eye upon the large family estates, and the number of votes that might possibly come of them in times of need. But there was still one difficulty attending the noble marquis's application for promotion. What were the merits? What could the willing-enough premier plead, to a critically curious, and not seldom rather troublesome public, as warrant for the required step?
The marquis had to suppress, as he best could, his indignant sense of this modern method with the noble and titled classes of society. Were these honours then to be trucked and trafficked for, as though peerages were the common articles of a market? Merits, forsooth! He had thought that a sufficient merit might have been his being already a marquis, in claiming to be a duke. In the end. Premier Smith, it is to be feared, was "the unjust judge" of that occasion with his importunate suitor, and perhaps for much the same reason as swayed his prototype. So the marquis became Duke of Selphnil.
But this Smith was, after all, an incurably vulgar fellow, as the following incident, in the duke's own experience and narrating, would show. A government berth had been resolved upon for a young cadet of the duke's family; and, of course, the youth's high connections were all duly arrayed in the duke's application on his behalf; so that he was run in, upon all this recommendatory category, as for assured victory. But what are the young man's own qualities? asked the busy premier, somewhat abruptly. The duke tartly rejoined that he thought he had already well answered that question. The applicant, to begin with, was a distant connection of his own, besides having other nobility relations on the paternal side, and even on the mother's side he was But just at this completing climax of the exposition, the case would appear to have broken down, between the highly impatient premier on the one hand, and the highly offended duke on the other. At any rate the latter then swore that he would plead for no more cadets before Premier Smith; and, indeed, having now secured his title, he had resolved to cut that person's further acquaintance.
The duke belonged to the Nowurke branch of the Selphnils. But the Nowurke Selphnils were quite distinct from another noble family, that simply of the Knowurkes, who were also spreading considerably about this time. The duke rather looked down upon this latter lot. The two names, he said, sounded alike, but the spelling detected the true quality.
Having reached the summit of nobility in his dukedom, the duke's further ambition could be gratified only in the repetition of additional ducal and other titles. His great aim at last was to pile up all these upon his already crowded escutcheon. Thus, the name of any place that had become illustrious the duke would claim for addition to his category of titles. He would be earl of this, marquis of that, and duke of the other. Smith, his old enemy, while still premier, did not see much need to thwart his political supporter in that harmless and conveniently fertile direction; and thus, happily, there came between them, in the end, well-nigh a reconciliation.
So grand a life must needs be fittingly concluded by a grand death. The noble duke, in his later years, turned all his mind to this final family triumph; and, accordingly, the splendid funeral, and the grand monument, upon which was to be emblazoned all the family titles and greatness, were duly arranged for. If anything could have added to the proud satisfaction with which the duke must have gazed back from the tomb upon that resplendent monument of the titled glories of his house, it might have been the fact that another monument, to a different kind of human greatness, happened to stand over against his own, and strikingly to contrast its brief inscription, wholly destitute as it was of allusion to one particle of family nobility, or even a vestige of the current national rank, hereditary or personal, with all the length and fulness of the Selphnil honours.
The inscription on the great duke's grand monument ran thus:—
To
THE MOST NOBLE
Augustus Gustavus Frederick Adolphus Ludovicus Nicholas Alexander Theodore Christian Maximilian Ernest Oscar Constantine William John Henry Edward George Albert Victor
SELPHNIL,
who was fifth Baron, fourth Viscount, third Earl, second Marquis, and first Duke of Selphnil; Marquis Laplace and Duke de Lesseps; Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquis, and Duke of Washington; Duke of Waterloo and Inkerman, of Aphgan-Robburts and Cairowolseley; Earl of Arkwright, Jameswatt, Smeaton and Stephenson; Marquis of Smithadam, Humeton and Gibbonville; Earl of Siemens and Bessemer, and Duke of Richardowen, Portdarwin, Huxleyville, and Tyndalton. Also, Selphnil MacSelphnil, and the MacSelphnil of that Ilk in North Britain; and Selphnil O' Selphnil, and the O'Selphnil of Bally Selphnil, in the Sister Isle, and territorially affiliated to the O'Shillelaghs of Donnybrook, in the most ancient peerage of Ireland.
The other monument above alluded to was inscribed as follows:—
To
Fellow of the Royal Society;
Author of "The Origin of Species;"
Founder of his age's accepted Theory of the
Evolution of all Organic Being.