The Nobility had begun to feel that it had better
be just a little less noble than heretofore. When the news of the fall
of the Bastille was brought to him, the first Lord Lansdowne (I
conceive) remained for many hours in his study, lost in thought, and
at length, rising from his chair, went out into the hall and
discharged two footmen. This action may have shortened his life, but I
believe it to be a fact that when he lay dying, some fifteen years
later, he said to his heir, `Discharge two more.' Such enlightenment
and adaptability were not to be wondered at in so eminent a Whig. As
time went on, even in the great Tory houses the number of retainers
was gradually cut down. Came the Industrial Age, hailed by all
publicists as the Millennium. Looms were now tended, and blast-
furnaces stoked, by middle-aged men who in their youth had done
nothing but hand salvers, and by young men who might have been doing
just that if the Bastille had been less brittle. Noblemen, becoming
less and less sure of themselves under the impact of successive Reform
Bills, wished to be waited on by less and less numerous gatherings of
footmen. And at length, in the course of the great War, any Nobleman
not young enough to be away fighting was waited on by an old butler
and a parlourmaid or two; and the ceiling did not fall.
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