George Campbell, [most Earls have several names, so although not needed it might added a better feel to his lineage if you added a couple more] the seventeenth Earl of Rawcliffe, one time playboy, [comma needed] dilettante and hedonist, [a lovely flow to the three nouns, but in what respect is a playboy different from a hedonist? I'd suggest another pejorative noun for the playboy] had suddenly become a withdrawn and nervous man after the advent of his twenty-first year. [You do know that means he's still only 20? If you want him to be over 21, then it's his 22nd year or after his 21st birthday] The change occurred abruptly the week of his birthday and he had since shunned all [social] [unless you intend him still to seek the company of others for non-social reasons and the narrator knows this -- but in any event to a well-bred Englishman "company" implies social intercourse, not merely a collection of people in a room] company excepting [in two minds about "excepting". I think it's more authentic without it, but I'd stand to be corrected] [that of] [I can't explain why that's wrong here, but I'm pretty sure it is-- ooh, just thought -- it would have to be "that of mine" as the "own" is then wrong] my own. [does he later ask why he's the only one?]
[suggest new para as it's a big block]When first I visited him after his most inexplicable and singular change in character, I noted with a [although the use of the indefinite article here is commonplace, it's strictly wrong, so if you're trying for perfectly correct English it should go] vague unease that he had dismissed all [of] [again commonplace, but strictly wrong] his servants [so who's getting his food? who let the narrator into the house? is the place dusty? are the fires lit? why doesn't the narrator think how odd it is if George still appears well fed and the house is tidy?] and now sat alone in the huge and disquieting manor house [Earls don't live in manor houses, not unless they've come a long way down in the world, which "ancestral home" rather contradicts] that was his ancestral home. Whereas such normal visits had once consisted of incessant, cheerful discourses [discursives] [discursive is the adjective or adverb] on current affairs or more meaningful preambles [um... preamble is rather an odd choice for "meaningful" since it means only an introduction, whereas you're getting at something rather heavier -- disquisitions, perhaps? And perhaps "learned" rather than "meaningful", which is a bit too modern in tone] on the subjects of philosophy and art, after the change in him our nights together [confusing -- at first I thought this was a continuation of the "normal visits" whereas you mean it to be the new visits, I think, so this needs some kind of way of signalling the change within the sentence] occluded [? occlude means to block up or restrain gases. Do you mean "produced" or "took place in"?] a rather strained atmosphere. Gone was the joyful, lively George with a zest for the finer matters [points] in life; all that remained was a trembling, macabre shell of his original form. It took immeasurable effort to hold his attention on any one subject, yet even when he did talk [an observer would no doubt have agreed with my] [makes the sentence too convoluted] I had the strangest conviction [perception] ["perception" is an absolute, ie he knows that George is listening to someone else, whereas surely he can only believe this -- though the "pauses" aren't simply conviction, of course, as the narrator does perceive them -- I think you need to rephrase the whole] that he continually paused [he was always pausing to listen] [the tense isn't wrong, but it's too modern in feel for an apparently archaic tone] to listen to something other than my utterances [his friends'] [er? I thought he saw no one but the narrator, so who are these friends, plural? If this is a mis-placed apostrophe and you meant "friend's narratives" I don't think the narrator would use that form when he's spoken of himself as "I" before] [narratives]. [unless the narrator is actually narrating something to George, they're not narratives] Never, though, could I discern any [esoteric] ["esoteric" means cryptic, clandestine or only understood by a few, so the narrator could only know they were esoteric if he did hear them. I think what you mean is simply out of place, which then contradicts the "other than" ] sounds other than those which [that] typically accompany such immense and ancient constructions such as [was the manner of] ["constructions" is a noun; "as was the manner" relates to an adjective] his vast and historic family home. [er... manor houses in England aren't vast and immense. Far from it. You mean stately home but I'm not sure whether this would have been used by a member of the same class as George as opposed to snippy middle-class people looking on enviously...]
