Crushing Out

Herbert Maxwell was 87 when he wrote his autobiography ‘Evening Memories’ (1932). The things that struck me:

• He wrote his autobiography in order to help others to understanding of "ordinary" human circumstance and behavior. And his offspring may care to hear something about bygone years.
• His parents were Irvingite, i.e. strict believers.  So was his wife. Herbert wasn’t. They expected the Second Advent as being imminent. 
• Herbert was a very shy and an indolent student at school (Eton and Albury) and university (Christ Church, Oxford). In retrospect he writes that it was caused by: “the enervating automatic assurance that everything was certain to be done and found for me, that turned me into the futile, if harmless, creature that I was for several years” (page 81-82).
• The writer of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was his “extremely dry and repellent” mathematics teacher at Oxford.
• He inherited the baroncy of Maxwell of Monreith in 1877 from his father. At “two-and-thirty” master at last.
• In 1880 he became a member of parliament (M.P. between 1880-1906). He paid out of his own pocket for all seven elections the costs for getting elected for district Wigtownshire. “Neither asking nor receiving any contribution from party funds or any other source.”
• #Curious. Herbert: “One of the most curiously attractive men I have known was James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford. Had I been born a woman, he might have done as he pleased with me. Yet he was far from handsome (…)” (page 224).
• #Week-ends. “The nineteenth century was near its close before week-ends in country-houses became established as a regular feature in the London season”(page 226).
• After the great war (1914-1918) Herbert sold half of his 16,000 acres estate. This enabled him, “to repay all the mortgaged debt [120,000 pounds]; and so for the first time, I suppose, since the early 18th century, the laird of Monreith was free from all debt” (page 352).
• “Crushing” death duties since 1896 upon heirs to landed and other property. “[D]enouncing landowners as fraudulent oppressors of the people, and evidently aiming at crushing the out of existence by sheer weight of taxation.” This form of taxation will, according to Herbert, put an end to any landowning on a large scale in Great-Brittain (page 341 and 354).

 

Nice read about a lost world. When every member of parliament (M.P.) seemed to belong to the nobility and knew eachother. A small world. A world of London clubs and out in the country: great houses, field sporting (read: shooting) and angling (read: fishing).

 

P.S. I wrote  about "to help others to understanding of "ordinary" human circumstance and behavior" before in post 'Autumn Leaves' (1-2020).