The visit of Prince Albert Victor (the Duke of Clarence) and Prince George (the present King) to Ireland in the summer of 1887 is taken as the text of one of Punch's periodical appeals to the Queen to conciliate Ireland by going there herself, Hibernia being credited with a desire for her presence: —

Ah, then, if your Majesty's self we could see
Sure we'd drop every grumble and quarrel;
Stay a month in the year with my children and me,
'Twould be a nice change from Balmoral.

The Prince of Wales's silver wedding fell in 1888, and furnished Punch with a theme for loyal verse. It was also the momentous year in which three Emperors reigned in Germany, but of the significance of the change from Wilhelm I to Wilhelm II I have spoken elsewhere. Punch's Jubilee fervour had now died down, and Prince Henry of Battenberg's appointment as Governor of the Isle of Wight is recorded in a semi-burlesque picture of the Prince "with new scenery and costumes," and the comment: "Old England is safe at last."

On May 21 Prince Leopold of Battenberg (now Lord Mountbatten) had been born at Windsor: on the following day a meeting was held under the chairmanship of Lord Waterford to discuss the advisability of abolishing the office of Viceroy of Ireland. Accordingly, Punch, more in malice than seriousness, suggests as a solution of the Irish difficulty that a Battenberg Prince should be born in Ireland, and brought up as the future Viceroy, in imitation of the trick of Edward Longshanks as related by Drayton in his "Polyolbion": —

Through every part of Wales he to the Nobles sent
That they unto his Court should come incontinent
Of things that much concern'd the county to debate;
But now behold the power of unavoided fate!
When thus unto his will he fitly had them won,
At her expected hour the Queen brought forth a son —
Young Edward, born in Wales, and of Carnarvon called,
Thus by the English craft the Britons were enthralled.

Punch treats the parallel from Paddy's point of view, and winds up: —

Sly Longshanks long ago with Cambria played a game —
What if, say, Battenberg should contemplate the same?
Pat, give him a fair chance, will prove himself – right loyal;
But – ye can't heal ould wounds with mere soft soap – though Royal.

The last line is, we fear, a much truer reading of the problem than the sentiments ascribed to Hibernia on a previous page.

The betrothal of the Princess Louise to the Earl, afterwards Duke, of Fife, in the summer of 1889, impelled Punch to rewrite Burns's "The Wooing o't" for the occasion. The messages to the House from the Crown, asking that provision should be made for Prince Albert Victor and Princess Louise, led to a prolonged debate, and the question of Royal Grants was referred to a Committee of all sections of the House, on the basis that "Parliament ought not to recognize in an indefinite way the duty of providing for the Royal Family in the third generation." The Queen did not formally waive her claim, but made it clear that she would not press it in the case of any other of her grandchildren. Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Storey opposed the Majority Report of the Committee in spite of a strong speech made by Gladstone in favour of the grants, which were ultimately carried by large majorities. Punch approved of the Committee, on the ground that it was high time we knew exactly how far the system was to be carried, and ascribed similar sentiments to the average working man in his new version of a popular song of the day. The Majority Report was embodied in the Prince of Wales's Children Bill, which became law on August 9, in spite of the opposition of those, including Mr. Morley and Sir William Harcourt, who maintained that the grant was proposed in such a way as to leave room for further claims and to bind future Parliaments.

Two Views of the Kaiser

The young Kaiser and his wife visited England in 1891, and Punch's greeting came near to being fulsome. In July Punch, the Kaiser and the Prince of Wales are associated in the cartoon, "A Triple Alliance," the accompanying legend containing the following high tribute to the Imperial guest: —

The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world
In praise of – Kaiser Wilhelm; by my hopes
I do not think a braver gentleman
More active-valiant, or more valiant young,
More daring, or more bold, is now alive
To grace this latter age with noble deeds.

Yet at the close of the year the feverish versatility of the young ruler is treated with the utmost disrespect: —

The German Emperor has lately rearranged his scheme of work for weekdays. From six a. m. to eight a. m. he gives lectures on Strategy and Tactics to generals over forty years old. From eight to ten he instructs the chief actors, musicians and painters of Berlin in the principles of their respective arts. The hours from ten to twelve he devotes to the compilation of his Memoirs in fifty-four volumes. A limited edition of large-paper copies is to be issued. From twelve to four p. m. he reviews regiments, cashiers colonels, captures fortresses, carries his own dispatches to himself, and makes speeches of varying length to all who will listen to him. Any professional reporter found taking accurate notes of His Majesty's words is immediately blown from a Krupp gun with the new smokeless powder. From four to eight he tries on uniforms, dismisses Ministers and officials, dictates state-papers to General Caprivi, and composes his history of "How I pricked the Bismarck Bubble." From eight to eleven p. m. His Majesty teaches schoolmasters how to teach, wives how to attend to their families, bankers how to carry on their business, and cooks how to prepare dinners. The rest of the day he devotes to himself. On Thursday next His Majesty leaves Berlin on his tenth visit to the European Courts.

Another royal visitor in 1891 was Prince Victor Emmanuel of Italy – the present King – to whom Punch, in the character of Niccolo Puncio Machiavelli, proffers worldly advice, advising him to be liberal of snuff-boxes.

The Prince of Wales, born in the same year as Punch, completed his fiftieth year in November. Punch's Jubilee greeting is friendly without being effusive. Reviewing the Prince's career from childish days, Punch recalls the picture of him in sailor kit as a child; the nation's "Suspense" at the time of the dangerous illness in December, 1871. Punch had watched him all along, abroad and at home, "where'er you've travelled, toiled, skylarked"; and recognizes him at fifty as "every inch a Prince," and worthy of cordial greeting; adding a graceful compliment to Alexandra, "the unfading flower from Denmark, o'er the foam."

The betrothal of the Duke of Clarence to Princess Mary of Teck had been hailed with loyal enthusiasm, and his premature death in January, 1892, was recorded with genuine feeling and sympathy. In neither cartoon, however, was Tenniel at his best, and the memorial verses, though graceful and kindly, do not lend themselves to quotation, the reference to the "rending of Hymen's rosy band" betraying a pardonable inability to predict the sequel.

SOCIETY

Sir Gorgius Midas: "Hullo! Where's all the rest of yer gone to?"

Head Footman: "If you please, Sir Gorgius, as it was past two o'clock, and we didn't know for certain whether you was coming back here, or going to sleep in the City, the hother footmen thought they might go to bed – "

Sir Gorgius: "'Thought they might go to bed,' did they? A pretty state of things, indeed! So that if I'd 'a 'appened to brought 'ome a friend, there'd 'a only been you four to let us hin, hay!"

Critics and satirists of fashionable English society in the early and middle periods of the Victorian age were mainly concerned with its arrogance and exclusiveness. As we reach the 'seventies, with the breaking down of the old caste barriers and the intrusion of the new plutocracy, the ground of attack is shifted; the "old nobility," dislodged from their Olympian fastnesses, are exhibited as not merely accepting but paying court to underbred millionaires, and eking out their reduced incomes by an irregular and undignified competition with journalists, shopkeepers, and even actors. Society had ceased to be exclusive; it was becoming "smart," and had taken to self-advertisement. Wealth without manners had invaded Mayfair.

Woes of the Country Squire

These days ushered in the age of Society journals, of Society beauties, of vulgarity in high places, of parasitic peers, of the invasion of society by American heiresses, of the beginning of the end of the chaperon, the dawn of the gospel of "self-expression," and the rebellion of sons and daughters. Money, or the lack of it, was at the root of all, or nearly all, these changes. Dukes had already begun to sell their libraries and art treasures, and the wail of the old landed aristocracy was not unfairly vocalized in "The Song of the Country Squire," to the air of "The Fine old English Gentleman," and published by Punch in the autumn of 1882: —

The fine Old English Gentleman once held a fine estate,
Of a few thousand acres of farm and forest land, with polite and punctually-paying tenants, excellent shooting, ancestral oaks, immemorial elms, and all that sort of thing.
But it hasn't been so of late;
For the rents have gone down about twenty per cent., lots of acres are laid down in grass,
And the person who imagines that the Squire of whom Washington Irving and Mounseer Montalembert wrote all sorts of pretty things has a jolly good time of it in these de – testable days,
Is a sentimental ass,
Says the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the present time.
The fine Old Country Gentleman has an Elizabethan mansion,
But what the dickens is the good of that if his means continually narrow in proportion to
His family's expansion?
If he gives up his deer, and sells his timber, dismisses his servants, and thinks of advertising his house for a grammar school,
Or a lunatic asylum
(As he often has to do), what is there in his lot to excite the jealousy of those darned Radicals, though the common comfort of that poor caput lupinum, the Land Owner, on however little a scale
Seems invariably to rile 'em?
Asks the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.
With an encumbered property, diminishing rent-roll, and expenses beyond his income,
The question which confronts him at every corner is, whence will the needful "tin" come?
And when they prate to us about our "improvidence," and advise us to "cut down" and economize, why, where, in the name of patience, I ask'll
Be the pull of being a Country Gentleman at all, if one has to live like a retired pork-butcher or prosperous publican, and perhaps you will answer
That question, Mr. Charles Milnes Gaskell!⁸
Of the fine Old Country Gentleman, one of the modern time.

The "profiteer" was already in Society and on the moors; Punch reviled him in "My 'art's in the 'Ighlands," and in a picture of an opulent Semite swearing that he hasn't "a drop of Hebrew blood in ma veinth, 'thelp me." Du Maurier created Sir Gorgius Midas as typical of the New Plutocracy – a gross, bediamonded figure, surrounded by flunkeys, with Dukes and Duchesses as his pensioners. The alleged poverty-stricken condition of the aristocracy is a frequent theme: one ducal family can only afford to go to the opera when Sir Gorgius lends them his box. But the Dukes still had their uses. The Beresford Midases put their boy's name down both for Eton and Harrow, and decided to send him to whichever has most "dooks" when the time comes. The New Rich show themselves apt pupils in all the snobbery of rank. For example, Sir Gorgius is shocked at the innovation of ladies and gentlemen riding in or on omnibuses. This is not documentary evidence, of course, but it was perfectly legitimate caricature. Du Maurier was not attacking the self-made man whose creed is summed up in the Lancashire saying: "Them as 'as brass don't care a damn what them as 'asn't thinks on 'em." He bestowed his ridicule impartially on the servile plutocrats who aped the customs of the titled classes, and the aristocrats who were unable to grow poor with dignity. Du Maurier's contribution to the social history of the middle and later Victorian age was invaluable on its critical and satirical side. But he was emphatically an aristocrat in the sense that he believed in good manners and fine physique: he set beauty above rank or riches, and was an early apostle of Eugenics. Long before the cult of athletics had begun to affect the stature and build of English girls, he devoted his pencil to glorifying the Junoesque type of English beauty. And while none of Punch's artists ever paid more consistent homage to elegance and distinction of feature and figure, he could be on occasion a merciless satirist of the physical deterioration brought about by intermarriage amongst the old nobility. Thus in 1880 he showed a ridiculous little degenerate affectionately rebuking his effete parents for "interfering in his affairs," with the result that he is "under 5 feet 1 inch, can't say Boh to a goose, and justly passes for the gweatest guy in the whole county."

The same spirit is shown in the fantastic contrast between the aristocracies of the past and the future. The scene is "an island in British Oceana"; the time 1989, a hundred years later than the date of the picture: —

His Highness the Grand Duke of Gerolstein: "Ach! Miss Prown – in your lôfly bresence I forket my zixty-vour kvarterings. I lay my Ditle at your Veet. Bitte! pecome ze Crant Tochess of Gerolstein!"

Miss Brown: "Your Highness also forgets that I have sixty-four Quarterings!"

His Highness: "Ach! How is dat, Miss Prown?"

Miss Brown: "Why, my father and mother, my four grandparents, my eight great-grandparents, my sixteen great-great-grandparents, and my thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents were all certified over six foot six inches, perfect in form and feature, and with health and minds and manners to match, or they would not have been allowed to marry. And though I'm the shortest and plainest girl in the colony, I should never be allowed to marry anyone so very much beneath myself as your Highness!"

Mrs. Beresford Midas: "I'm so glad we've put down Plantagenet's name for Eton, Beresford! Here, the newspaper says there are more Lords and Baronets there than ever!"

Beresford Midas, Esq., J.P. (Brother and Junior Partner of Sir Gorgius): "Ah, but only one Dook! Pity there ain't a few more Dooks, Maria!"

Mrs. Beresford Midas: "Perhaps there will be when Plantagenet's of an age to go there."

Mr. Beresford Midas: "Let's 'ope so! At all events, we'll put down his name for 'Arrow as well; and whichever 'as most Dooks when the time comes, we'll choose that, yer know!"

Our prophetic instinct enables us to foresee that the British Aristocracy of the future will consist of two distinct parties – not the Tories and the Whigs – but the handsome people and the clever people. The former will be the highly developed descendants of the athletes and the beauties, the splendid cricketers and lawn tennis players of our day. The latter will be the offspring, not of modern æsthetes – oh, dear, no! but of a tougher and more prolific race, one that hasteth not, nor resteth; and for whom there is a good time coming. The above design is intended to represent a fashionable gathering at Lord Zachariah Mosely's, let us say, in the year two thousand and whatever-you-like.

N.B. – The happy thought has just occurred to His Lordship that a fusion of the two parties into one by means of intermarriage, would conduce to their mutual welfare and to that of their common progeny.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns

In illustrating the falling away of the titled classes from the maxim noblesse oblige on its physical side, Du Maurier occupied an exceptional position on Punch; but he was not less active than other artists and writers in exposing the "moral and intellectual damage" which they inflicted on the community. In 1878 the vogue of "Fancy Fairs" evokes a vigorous protest against the vanity, bad taste, forwardness and free-and-easiness of society women who made themselves cheap in order to sell dear to 'Arries. From this date onwards the vagaries of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, in whom Du Maurier incarnated all the pushfulness of the thrusting woman of fashion, are a constant source of entertainment. One of her earliest exploits as a Lion-hunter was to invite Monsieur de Paris to one of her receptions. Her husband thought she meant the Comte de Paris, but she speedily undeceives him. It was the headsman she was pursuing, not the Prince. "All the world" came, but the faithless executioner went to visit the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's instead! Later on, as the social mentor, guide, philosopher and friend of Lady Midas, we find her warning her pupil against inviting the aristocracy to meet each other. A music-hall celebrity must be provided as a "draw," and Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns recommends Nellie Micklemash and her banjo. "She is not respectable, but she is amusing, and that is everything." So when the Tichborne Claimant was released in 1884, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns contemplates inviting him to dinner: "Surely there are still some decent people who would like to meet him." Elsewhere and in more serious vein Punch denounces the undue publicity given to this impostor's movements in the Press – one leading paper having stultified itself by condemning the practice in a leading article and simultaneously publishing an advertisement of the Claimant's appearance at a music-hall. This dualism, however, was no monopoly of the 'eighties and has become common form in the Georgian Press.

Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns acts as a bridge between the old and the new régime in her ceaseless and indiscriminate worship of celebrities and notorieties. She is the descendant of Mrs. Leo Hunter, but adds the shrewdness and cynicism of the go-between to the simple silliness of her ancestress. Todeson, another familiar figure in Du Maurier's gallery, attaches himself exclusively to the old nobility, but is always putting his foot in it by being plus royaliste que le roi, or more ducal than the duchess. For in the slightly distorting mirror of Du Maurier's genius we see, as an evidence of the spread of liberal ideas, a Duke dining with his tailor and being kept in very good order by him; and a musical Duchess learning to sing Parisian chansonnettes from a French expert in the franchement canaille manner. The craze for the stage among "Society people" had now reached formidable dimensions. They were no longer content with amateur theatricals, but had begun to enter into competition with the professionals.

The invasion of journalism by the same class Punch took much more seriously. Hazlitt, some fifty years earlier, had written in his essay "On the Conversation of Lords": "The Press is so entirely monopolized by beauty, birth or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride." But this was written when the mania for fashionable novels by Noble Authors was at its height, and Hazlitt uses the word Press of the printing press generally. In the early 'eighties the competition of titled amateurs was mainly confined to Society journals, a characteristic product of the new fusion of classes. As one of their ablest and most cynical editors said of his own paper, they were "written by and for nobs and snobs." They are now practically dead, owing to the absorption in the daily Press of the special features – above all the "personal note" – then peculiar to these weekly chronicles of high life. Punch ascribed the invasion of the Street of Ink by the amateurs to the penurious condition of the aristocracy and their ignoble readiness to turn their social opportunities into "copy" and cash. Under the heading of "Labor Omnia Vincit, or How Some of 'em try to live now," Punch published a satiric sketch of the new activities of Mayfair. The scene is laid in the boudoir of Lady Skribeler, a successful contributor to various Society journals. The scene opens with the arrival of her friend the Hon. Mrs. Hardup, who gives a pathetic account of her disastrous ventures in business and her failure to secure an engagement on the stage. Why, asks Lady Skribeler, had she not made her husband go into trade or keep a shop, or sell wine? —

Titled Professionals

Mrs. Hardup: "Oh, he has done that. He was Chairman of that Thuringian Claret Company; and we got ever so many people about us to take a quantity. But it fermented – or did something stupid; and they do say it killed the poor Duke, who was very kind to Harry, you know, and took a hundred dozen at once. And now, of course, there's no sale – or whatever they call it; and Harry says if it can't be got rid of to a firm of Blue Ink Makers, who are inquiring about it, it will have to go out to the Colonies as Château Margaux – at a dreadful loss. [Summing up.] I don't believe the men understand trade a bit, dear. So I'm going to do something for myself."

The sequel describes her initiation into the tricks of the trade by Lady Skribeler: —

Profiting by the morning's conversation, Mrs. Hardup besieges unprotected Editors, contributes to the literature of her country most interesting weekly accounts of the doings of her friends and acquaintances, and, it is to be hoped, practically solves, to her own satisfaction, the secret of the way in which a good many of us manage to live now.

Lady Gwendoline: "Papa says I'm to be a great artist, and exhibit at the Royal Academy!"

Lady Yseulte: "And papa says I'm to be a great pianist, and play at the Monday Pops!"

Lady Edelgitha: "And I'm going to be a famous actress, and act Ophelia, and cut out Miss Ellen Terry! Papa says I may – that is, if I can, you know!"

The New Governess: "Goodness gracious, young ladies! Is it possible His Grace can allow you even to think of such things! Why, my Papa was only a poor half-pay officer, but the bare thought of my ever playing in public or painting for hire, would have simply horrified him – and as for acting Ophelia or anything else – gracious goodness, you take my breath away!"

For success in this walk of journalism, "literary culture must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and discrimination – qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of the journalistic aspirant." It was not by any means monopolized by amateurs, and Punch, in his series of "Modern Types" a few years later, traces, under the heading "The Jack of all Journalisms," the rise to power and influence of a humble but unscrupulous scribe, successively venal musical and dramatic critic, interviewer and picturesque social reporter, but always "the blatant, cringing, insolent, able, disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his fellow-creatures." The sketch is an ingenious composite photograph, in which those familiar with London journalism in the 'eighties and 'nineties will recognize in almost every paragraph the lineaments of one or other of the most notorious and poisonous representatives of the Society Press.

As we have seen, journalism was only one field for the commercial instincts of penurious "Society people." In 1887 Punch takes for his text the following paragraph from a daily paper: —

"One well-known West End Milliner is a graduate of Girton; another bears a title; a third conceals a name not unknown to Burke under a pseudonym… Many of the best women of all classes are ready to do anything by which the honest penny may be earned."

Punch was somewhat sceptical as to the honesty of their intentions; the only way, he tells us, to get an invitation to the dances given by one titled shopkeeper was to buy one of her bonnets. This may have been a malicious invention, but he was fairly entitled to make game of the advertisement which appeared in the Manchester Evening Times in the spring of 1887: —

"To Christian Widowers. – A Nobleman's Widow, of good birth, about 40, no family, left with small income, pleasing, sweet-tempered, cultured, domesticated, fond of children, desires Settled Home and a high-minded Protestant Husband of 50, or older, seeking domestic happiness with a devoted, loving Christian wife. – Address – "

The American Invasion

The lady shopkeeper had become such an institution that Punch included her in one of his series of "Modern Types" in 1891. The portrait is not exactly flattering, though he admitted that she sometimes possessed other than purely social qualifications for success: —

At first everything will go swimmingly. Friends will rally round her, and she may perhaps discover with a touching surprise that the staunchest and truest are those of whom, in her days of brilliant prosperity, she thought the least. But a succès d'estime is soon exhausted. Unless she conducts her business on purely business lines, delivers her goods when they are wanted, and, for her own protection, sends in her accounts as they fall due, and looks carefully after their payment, her customers and her profits will fall away. But if she attends strictly to business herself, or engages a good business woman to assist her, and orders her affairs in accordance with the dictates of a proper self-interest, she is almost certain to do well, and to reap the reward of those who face the world without flinching, and fight the battle of life sturdily and with an honest purpose.

The New Governess (through her pretty nose): "Waall – I come right slick away from Ne' York City, an' I ain't had much time for foolin' around in Europe – you bet! So I can't fix up your gals in the Eu-ropean Languages no-how!"

Belgravian Mamma (who knows there's a Duke or two still left in the Matrimonial Market): "Oh, that's of no consequence. I want my daughters to acquire the American accent in all its purity – and the idioms, and all that. Now I'm sure you will do admirably!"

Millinery was the favourite field of enterprise, but the duchess who rebuked the indiscreet Todeson for his condemnation of trade as unworthy of the nobility, mentioned that her husband had gone in for bric-à-brac and her mother for confectionery. "Society people," in short, were dabbling extensively in trade, but it was mainly confined to the luxury trades. Punch does not mention, however, what was generally believed to be true, that a well-known peer was a partner in a firm of money-lenders, trading under a name most literally suggestive of blood-sucking. Commercialism in high places is illustrated indirectly but pointedly by the invasion of American heiresses. Dowagers with large families of daughters – for large families were still frequent and fashionable – found themselves seriously affected by the "unfair competition" of these wealthy and vivacious beauties. In 1888 Punch satirized their misfortunes in a picture representing English society mothers engaging American governesses so that their daughters might be instructed how to hold their own against American girls in attracting eligible dukes. So again in the Almanack of 1889, under the title "Social Diagnosis," a French baron identifies a certain lady as an English duchess on the evidence of her indisputably American origin, and in the same year, in a sardonic article, Punch exposes the American tendency to gloat over evidences of class distinctions in English society, while pretending to denounce them. This was inspired by the activities of certain American correspondents and "G. W. S." (the late Mr. Smalley) in particular, who is described as "too intimate with the 'hupper suckles' to think much of them." It was he, by the way, whose favourite form of social entertainment was described as not a "small and early" but an "Earl and Smalley." The hardest thing that Punch said of the American heiresses was put into the mouth of one of their number. In 1890 he published a picture of three fair New Yorkers conversing with a young Englishman. When he asks whether their father had come with them to Europe, one of them replies: "Pa's much too vulgar to be with us. It's as much as we can do to stand Ma." But the verses on "The American Girl" in the same year wind up on a note of reluctant admiration: —

Mayfair's New Idols

THE AMERICAN GIRL

(An American Correspondent of The Galignani Messenger is very severe on the manners of his fair countrywomen.)

She "guesses" and she "calculates," she wears all sorts o' collars,
Her yellow hair is not without suspicion of a dye;
Her "Poppa" is a dull old man who turned pork into dollars,
But everyone admits that she's indubitably spry.

She did Rome in a swift two days, gave half the time to Venice,
But vows that she saw everything, although in awful haste;
She's fond of dancing, but she seems to fight shy of lawn tennis
Because it might endanger the proportions of her waist.

Her manner might be well defined as elegantly skittish;
She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do;
And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British,
And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through and through.

She's bediamonded superbly, and shines like a constellation,
You scarce can see her fingers for the multitude of rings;
She's just a shade too conscious, so it seems, of admiration,
With irritating tendencies to wriggle when she sings.

She owns she is "Amur'can," and her accent is alarming;
Her birthplace has an awful name you pray you may forget;
Yet, after all, we own La Belle Américaine is charming,
So let us hope she'll win at last her long-sought coronet.

An heroic attempt was made in 1882 by that devoted apostle of the (socially) Sublime and Beautiful, Mr. Gillett, to revive Almack's. But, as Punch had frankly and even cheerfully recognized in connexion with a previous attempt, the time had gone by for the oligarchical control of the entertainments of the fashionable world.

Society had ceased to be small, select and exclusive; it was becoming increasingly mixed, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. The horizon was enlarged and the range of interests multiplied, but the desire to be in the movement was not always indulged in with dignity or discretion. Mayfair worshipped at new shrines and erected new idols. It was an age of strange crazes and pets and favourites. The great ladies of the 'thirties and 'forties may have been arrogant, but they seldom exploited their personalities, or cultivated a limelight notoriety. There is shrewd criticism in the legend of one of the earliest of the "Things one would have rather left unsaid," illustrated by Du Maurier in 1888: —

8. This gentleman had recently written an article on the subject in the Nineteenth Century.