No. II.—THE CORINTHIAN LADY.
The Corinthian Lady is the latest resultant of the two forces of ennui and dissipation acting on a Society that is willing to spend money and desires to kill time. She has played many parts, some (of infinitesimal proportions), on the burlesque stage, others in the semi-private life of her own residence in the South-west district of London. Her versatility has gained for her many admirers and a precarious income, but so long as she possesses the former she scorns to live upon the latter. Being unquestionably a real lady, she has been elected an honorary member of a night club to which undoubted gentlemen resort. There she occasionally consents to dance; more often she sups to an accompaniment of Viennese music, loud and mirthless laughter, jests which are as fatuous as they are suggestive, and wine which, unlike the humour of the plated youths, her companions, is always sparkling and sometimes dry.
Her real name is a mystery, which, however, she did not find attractive. Having, therefore, abandoned it, she generally substitutes for it the patronymic of a Norman peer, but, lest this should be thought too strong, she dilutes it by the addition of a pet name drawn from the nursery. By this title her fame is celebrated amongst many foolish young men who singe themselves at the flame of her friendship, and many others who, wishing to be thought wise, pretend to know her. Like all doves, she plumes herself on her good looks. Unlike them, she is proud of her bad habits; but she is a stern censor, and shows scant mercy to those colleagues who, surpassing her in the former, lack means or chances to attain to the splendour of the latter. Should one of these happen to be admitted to a club she frequents, or to a supper-party she honours with her presence, she has been known to wrap herself in her sealskins, and to depart indignantly in her private brougham.
She possesses the secret of nocturnal youth, and her eyes are warranted to kill across a supper-table, yet she is no longer young, and sometimes betrays herself by her anecdotes of familiar associations with "boys" who have long since passed into respectability and middle-age. Though she adores diamonds, she frequently sells them, and includes in the transaction those who have purchased them for her; yet she retains and wears as many jewels as would furnish forth a Duchess in a Bow Bells novel. But her elbow gloves, which rarely come within a measurable distance of godliness, inevitably proclaim the Corinthian.
She is constant only in her love of excitement, and in her devotion to change, whether it be of the persons of her adorers, or of the colour of her hair. Having early in life learnt the lesson that only those who possess are happy, she endeavours to assure herself against misery by transferring to herself the wealth of those who fall under her influence, or aspire to her affections. She apes what she conceives to be the manners of good society by a languid affectation of refinement and a supercilious drawl, yet she has been known to clothe herself in objurgations as in a tea-gown, and to repel with scurrility the advances of those who are not moneyed. She earns a certain popularity by the display of a kind of rough good-nature, and the possession of a pet poodle. She has been seen on a coach at Ascot, and in a launch at Henley Regatta, together with a select company of those who cultivate excitement by not looking at the exertions of horses or athletes, whilst they themselves drink Champagne. Nor is she unknown in the boxes of the Gaiety or the Avenue, whither she repairs after dining at the Café Royal. She goes, but not alone, to Monte Carlo, and returns, under a different escort, to London, after losing a great deal of the money of other people.
She was once married to a racing man of shady reputation and great wealth, but having soon wearied of the mock-respectability of a quasi-matrimonial existence, she makes the acquaintance of Mr. Justice Butt at a moment when he is engaged neither upon the probate of wills nor on the collisions of ships. Yet her dislike of one husband who happened for a time to be her own has not in the least impaired her affections for the husbands, actual or to be, of others. No lady can be considered truly Corinthian unless she has figured as the defendant in an action for goods supplied by a milliner. It is thus that the Public learns the Corinthian value of silks, and satins, and laces, and decorative butterflies.
Finally, however, in spite of her gallant and protracted struggles, the years overtake her. She begins to be talked of with a pitying contempt as "Old So-and-So"; art ceases to outwit Nature, and she herself can no longer deceive men. For some time she clings to the fringe of the society she once adorned; but sinking gradually from the Corinthian to the Continental, from the Continental to the Cavour, from the Cavour to a supper-less Music-hall existence, and hence, after many misfortunes, to the cold comfort of the pavement, she ends her days decrepit, obscure, and unfriended, in the back bed-room of a Soho lodging.