It is evident from the following amusing squib, which appeared in one of the Annuals for 1832, how far more dependent the country gentleman was upon his country neighbors in those days, when only idle men could run down from town: 

“Mr. J., having frequently witnessed with regret country gentlemen, in their country-houses, reduced to the dullness of a domestic circle, and nearly led to commit suicide in the month of November, or, what is more melancholy, to invite the ancient and neighboring families of the Tags, the Rags and the Bobtails, has opened an office in Spring Gardens for the purpose of furnishing country gentlemen in their country-houses with company and guests on the most moderate terms.  It will appear from the catalogue that Mr. J. has a choice and elegant assortment of six hundred and seventeen guests, ready to start at a moment’s warning to any country gentleman at any house.  Among them will be found three Scotch peers, several ditto Irish, fifteen decayed baronets, eight yellow admirals, forty-seven major-generals on half pay (who narrate the whole Peninsular War), twenty-seven dowagers, one hundred and eighty-seven old maids on small annuities, and several unbeneficed clergymen, who play a little on the fiddle.  All the above play at cards, and usually with success if partners.  No objection to cards on Sunday evenings or rainy mornings.  The country gentleman to allow the guests four feeds a day, and to produce claret if a Scotch or Irish peer be present.”

A country village very often has no inhabitants except the parson holding the rank of gentry.  The majority of ladies in moderate or narrow circumstances live in county-towns, such as Exeter, Salisbury, etc., or in watering-places, which abound and are of all degrees of fashion and expense.  County-town and watering-place society is a thing per se, and has very little to do with “county” society, which means that of the landed gentry living in their country-houses.  Thus, noblemen and gentlemen within a radius of five miles of such watering-places as Bath, Tonbridge Wells and Weymouth would not have a dozen visiting acquaintances resident in those towns.

To get into “county” society is by no means easy to persons without advantages of position or connection, even with ample means, and to the wealthy manufacturer or merchant is often a business of years.  The upper class of Englishmen, and more especially women, are accustomed to find throughout their acquaintance an almost identical style and set of manners.  Anything which differs from this they are apt to regard as “ungentlemanlike or unladylike,” and shun accordingly.  The dislike to traders and manufacturers, which is very strong in those counties, such as Cheshire and Warwickshire, which environ great commercial centres, arises not from the folly of thinking commerce a low occupation, but because the county gentry have different tastes, habits and modes of thought from men who have worked their way up from the counting-room, and do not, as the phrase goes, “get on” with them, any more than a Wall street broker ordinarily gets on with a well-read, accomplished member of the Bar.