Explore "Scarlet and Hyssop" by E.F. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was about a fortnight after this Sunday at Richmond that the list of Birthday honours came out, and it was a surprise to nobody that Mr. Brereton's name appeared as the recipient of a peerage. For respectability and cash are things that in themselves confer such nobility on their fortunate possessor that it is only right and proper to stamp him with a coronet like writing-paper. Respectability no doubt has been, and will again be, dispensed with, but cash cannot be replaced except by exceptional achievements of some kind, of which Andrew was hopelessly incapable.
And as it would clearly be absurd to bar a man from his birth from the possibility of attaining to the ranks of hereditary legislators, custom, slowly broadening down, has brought it about that since achievement in great deeds is within the reach but of the few, plenty of good gold, bestowed on plenty of good or party institutions, paves the way, so to speak, to what has been called by politicians who wrangle hotly in another place "the upper snows."