This doesn't really fit in with the thread similarly labelled below, so I'll start a different thread.

Reading about Sir Walter poring over his favourite book had a personal connection for me.

From my birth until my grandmother passed away a few years ago, I was in the Debrett's Baronetage and Peerage, along with the rest of my mother's side of the family on her mother's side. (After she died, only the male branches of her family continued to be listed)

Every few years we would receive a few proof pages from Debrett's to correct and update, adding new members to the family by birth or marriage.

I found it amusing to be listed on those pages, but beyond that, I cannot imagine spending hours and hours looking at the book. We never even bought the entire book. One time I happened to see one in the library, and just out of curiosity checked to see whether 'our' page was actually in the book.

I hope this doesn't sound like blogging, but the personal connection really made me wonder just what kind of satisfaction could be gained by looking at it over and over again? Or by looking at other peoples' entries?

Considering that Sir Walter feels 'pity and contempt' for baronetcies of newer creation (and BTW, I read that James VI/I was the first king to create baronets in the early 17th century? So at the time of his grandson Charles II in the latter part of the same century there weren't really all that many baronetcies older than that) it seems kind of a self esteem thing, assuring himself that he's better than all of those others, even though some of them actually did something to earn the creation of their baronetcy, other than just being born.