THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES 119 



sufficient evidence to throw some light on the problem 

 before us. 



The account given of the family of Elwes is one of 

 the fullest and also one of the most interesting, since a 

 singular combination of qualities, those of miser and 

 spendthrift, ran side by side in it. The story begins 

 with Sir Gervase Elwes, spendthrift and roysterer, 

 created a baronet by Charles II. Of his children and 

 their marriages there is no account. The title and the 

 scanty remains of an encumbered entailed estate passed 

 to a grandson Hervey, who, consumptive in youth, 

 remained unmarried, lived a solitary life, accumulated a 

 vast fortune, and was known as Elwes the miser. His 

 money passed to his sister's child, who took the name 

 of Elwes, the barren title going elsewhere. The sister, 

 obviously a miser by inheritance, was married to a 

 prosperous brewer, son of Sir George Meggott, M.P. 

 At her husband's death, which occurred when her son John 

 was four, she received one hundred thousand pounds, 

 in spite of which, says Burke, " true to the failing of 

 her race," she literally starved herself to death. This 

 son John is the most interesting character in the family 

 history. Although dissipated, he was economical in 

 small matters, two characteristics inherited from his 

 mother's family. In later life he became as apt a miser 

 as his uncle, living with one or two servants in which- 

 ever of his numerous large houses happened to be short 

 of a tenant. He was a good and upright magistrate, 

 an able man of business, thrice member of Parliament, 

 and, in times when elections were expensive luxuries, 

 could boast of having got his seat at an outlay of 

 eighteenpence in certain of these matters inheriting 



