own class, to play the ends against the middle, to court the aristocracy and to flatter the peasantry, who, as he regretted to observe, were beginning to call themselves "labourers" and to form unions and to fraternize with the insolent middle class and to harken to middle class orators, instead of looking to the game-preserving lords of their land, as in the good old days of the Stuarts.
As leader of the country gentry, it behooved him to follow their ancient and honorable custom and occupation of "owning land." This was a rather serious responsibility for one whose chief accumulations consisted of an enormous mass of debts, on which he was paying extortionate interest, when he was not dodging his creditors and the bailiffs. But the man had genius. He married a coquettish widow who made him a "perfect wife," and also brought him £5,000 a year. He entered into a romantic correspondence with an eccentric lady of seventy or eighty who presently died leaving him a legacy of £30,000. He wrote a life of Lord George Bentinck, for which some interested person rewarded him in lordly fashion. Another admirer took charge of all his debts and apparently lent him unlimited thousands at two per cent. He never was out of debt, but with these helps and windfalls, and with the income of his offices and novels and his paternal inheritance, he managed eventually to possess and occupy, if not perfectly to own, land enough with manor, parks, timberland, peacocks, etc., to support the dignity of an English earl.
