P.J. O´Rourke on being a failed country gentleman

P.J. O´Rourkes little essay in the Wall Street Journal is good reading, particularly for all those, who dream about joining the ranks of English type country gentlemen:  

I decided to become a rustic squire when I was 32 and stupid as only 32 can be. Youth's frantic idiocy doesn't have the means. Simple-minded old age lacks the energy. In midlife, we're as dumb as we get. So I bought land in New Hampshire—first a little, then more and finally too much.

(This is an earlier version of a country gentleman out "shooting")  

This was not back-to-the-land land. I wasn't trying to get in touch with Mother Nature or even leave a message on her answering machine. I wasn't pursuing the era's whole grain and handicraft dream of self-sustenance that still persists in parts of Brooklyn. I wanted to be Lord Grantham of "Downton Abbey" before he was a figment of the BBC's imagination.

I'd majored in English literature and, as sometimes happens, thought this was supposed to make me English instead of literate. I pictured myself in knickers and a Norfolk jacket striding over my fields with a fine English double-barreled shotgun broken open on my arm and my loyal English setter at heel.

Read the entire article here