The news about the death of Viscount Lipton had been a long time coming. Given that this particular Viscount had held on to the title for decades, from the early death of his father, the people of the area of North Yorkshire where the Viscount lived had taken his life and his existence for granted. No one could remember when someone else had been Viscount, at least no one who was not as old as the Viscount himself. His rule had been so long, from his teenage years to the age of more than 90, that he was a local institution and had long been a national institution. Although Viscount Lipton was by no means the wealthiest of the peers, his income at more than ten thousand pounds was still considerable, and he had lived long enough have made his mark in ensuring the family interest in both tea, where the family had first made its name in the India trade, as well as sugar, although Viscount Lipton would have strongly resented any accusation that he was a West Indies planter like some of the members of that lobby whose interest was starting to decline in the face of growing opposition to slavery and the slave trade like the Bertrams.

It is not the purpose of this particular volume to go into detail about the Viscount’s political beliefs. To be sure, the Viscounts Lipton in general had a strong degree of support for the landed interests of North Yorkshire as well as the commercial interests of Market ________ and south to Hull, which was the port from which their own trade and shipping came from, but the family as a whole did not have a strong partisan interest in politics. They had not had to worry about the House of Commons, except in controlling a rotten borough of their own, and in making sure that the people who held the office had a concern for the well-being of the English people as a whole and the people of North Yorkshire in particular. While their patriotism and their landed interests might class them as leaning towards the Tories, there was a genuine reformist streak and a general lack of snobbery in the family that also made them compatible with the better class of Whigs. It was by no means clear to which of the two parties the family tended, for they were known to be a family that had long engaged in service to the crown without being too particular about party discipline. Fortunately for many of my dear readers, this is not a book that seeks to examine in detail the political system of late 18th century Great Britain. Other writers have been far more interested in such matters and have filled chapters giving detailed discussions about the questions of toleration and political reform that were in the air at the time. If you wish for such material, it would be best to consult with them.

Anyone who has had a great deal of experience in dealing with old people knows that aging is not kind to people. Viscount Lipton had been very fit in his youth, as fit as a fiddle, he liked to remind others, and had been active in running, skating, horseback riding, and boating throughout his youth and well into his adulthood. He assumed, as many people do who are born with a good constitution, that the good times would continue to last for a long time. He loved to swing an axe and cut down from among the bountiful woods within his estate for his own firewood, although he could have very easily and very cheaply hired other people to do it instead. He was not a bookish lord, but he had many books because one could often find them cheap in distressed booksellers, and he was as interested in deals as anyone could be. He raised his rents at least as often as other lords did, because any time his own expenses rose, he could be trusted to squeeze his own tenants just a bit harder in order to make sure that his own standard of living was not harmed, even though he was not the sort of person who would pay full price for anything. He considered this a mark of practical intelligence, though the people who he squeezed for money might have thought him to be as cheap as a Welshman.

Be that as it may, his life in Lipton House was a lonely one, and increasingly lonely as the years went by. For some twenty years, his second son and the family had lived in East Florida and only communicated with the Viscount through letters, because he was too cheap to pay for them to visit him very often, and certainly too cheap to put their son up in an elite school and a university education. A young man, in the Viscount’s eyes, should be self-directed enough to educate himself as to what is necessary through hard work and dedicated reading. One did not need a high class education, or a focus on technology that he could not even fathom or understand. His eldest son, long his heir, was long closer to the house, but he was a man of known dissipated habits, and his fondness for drink and drugs were long known and scandalous, and he had never married or sired any legitimate heirs of his own. In time, his liver or some other organs gave out, and so the son preceded his father in death. At his death, his younger brother already having died of apoplexy, left the man whose education had been so inconsiderately treated by the Viscount as an heir. The Viscount had never been close to the one who became an heir, and would have wanted to get to know him a bit before passing on his estate, but it was not to be. It was already too late in the day for the elderly Viscount to get to know his only grandson, who was to inherit everything he owned. This was the most distressing thing about the news he had received about the grandson being imprisoned in a Spanish jail, news of which came first indirectly and then from his grandson’s own testimony, filtered through the concern of the Viscount’s understandably upset daughter-in-law.

That news, moreover, had struck the Viscount at a delicate time. It had long been known to those around the Viscount that he was in decline. He himself admitted readily towards the end of his life that he didn’t have the same amount of energy that he did when he was a kid. He commented how hard it was to read a book, how little he enjoyed eating with his false teeth, how long his wounds tended to linger when he moved his arm the wrong way or when he tripped over his feet or when the covers pulled his toes back in the night. His limbs were cold, his circulation was poor, he had sores that lingered, and he had a persistent cough that made people think that he had a contagious disease or had spent his life working in a coal or asbestos mine for too many years of his life. Long before he had reached the end of his life, life had ceased to be very pleasant for him. He could not taste food unless it was extremely spicy, which most other people did not wish to eat, he could not chew well with his false teeth, and he could not hear or see particularly well, and complained of problems with his carriages that he was too cheap to pay to repair. Travel had long ceased to be all that much fun for the Viscount. He talked about his desire to see the various possessions that Great Britian had acquired around the world, but more and more he was homebound, except for those times when he would visit the market to look for deals and complain about the large number of carriages and the difficulty of finding good parking for them, or the high prices of goods in a time of general inflation as a result of decades of war and conflict.

Towards the end of his life, though, the decline became more serious and more severe. Viscount Lipton had always been a deeply religious man, of the kind not only to be pious and faithful in his own dealings, but also to fancy himself to be well-qualified to tell others of their shortcomings and expect them to take his advice to heart and act upon it, as if he had been meant to be a teacher, a guide, and a spiritual mentor to those around him. Even well into his old age he was highly critical of other people, of the poor qualify of speaking of many of the vicars or priests of his time, fond of visiting a great many churches to give them knowledge of his that they did not possess, and which he expected them to be grateful towards him that he deigned to share it with them, but while he remained critical until the very end, at some point he ceased to fulfill his own end of the bargain that would allow others to see him as any kind of spiritual authority. He came to church to teach, and not to learn, in other words. Without being able to read and being hard of hearing and disinclined to listen to others talk, his speaking became the repetitive sharing of his thoughts and concerns and prejudices and opinions over and over again. He would repeat the glories of his youth, and what he thought over and over again, not knowing or caring that he had shared the same thoughts in the same language dozens of times before to the same audience, who he expected not merely to be patient and longsuffering with him but to be positively overjoyed to hear him pronounce wisdom and insight in their company. He had even, at least for the last few months of his life, been so without energy that he could not get up and get ready in time for church. He would regularly complain about the state of his stool and the painfulness that resulted from constipation, which he sought to eliminate through eating enough spicy food that it would induce his bowels to eliminate waste in a timely fashion in the morning right after he got up.

At the very end, his state was pitiful indeed. He would cry out to his loyal servants for boiled eggs and orange juice while he was bedridden. His frame, never very full, wasted away until he was skin and bones, and his energy level, which had long been in decline, made it impossible for him even to leave his room. Being unable to read more than a page or two a day, he had some of his loyal servants read his daily reading of the scriptures to him, which he would comment on as long as he had the energy to do so. When his business manager was in the house, which was often, as there was much business that needed to be done and the Viscount was obviously in no shape to do it, letters were read aloud and the Viscount would say what he wanted someone to act upon it, trusting (and usually right to trust) that someone at least would act upon his orders and put it into practice. He looked out of the window of his room and complained about the grass growing too long or the berry bushes growing too thick and needing to be cut back, or cuttings not being planted in good time. All the while he was upset about what would happen to his house and his estate when he was gone, and why it was that his family was so far away and unable and unwilling to spend time with him in his final hours. In the end, it was only those people whom he paid to serve him who remained with him until he drew his dying breath, and who tended the house after his death, wondering who would come to rule over the house now that the Viscount was gone.