The object of the present work is to record the family particulars, military and civil services, distinctions, public employments, professional and commercial pursuits, and general personal information in regard to that large section of the community who dwell at the “West End,” and in kindred localities.
Hitherto books of the same character have been restricted to the titled and territorial classes; excluding as a rule those whom education and intelligence—tested by their professional and commercial pursuits—have rendered equally deserving of honourable and gratifying mention, forming as they do the bulk of what is termed good society.
To supply this deficiency is the intent of the present publication, which aims, as already suggested, at being a handbook to the nobility and gentry of London—the term gentry being understood to include logically those to whom the title of gentleman has been accorded by common consent—those as a rule whose vocation in life does not debar them from admission to our West End Clubs.
To the work, as a whole, we have given the title of “Aristocracy of London,” as a compliment in the first place to that titular and hereditary element to which alone the word “Aristocracy” has been hitherto assumed to belong, and next as a tribute to that other intellectual and commercial element to which, in a wider sense, it may be equally allowed to apply; as a homage, in short, to that eminence of rank and that eminence of intelligence which, combined, impart their tone to our educated classes, and necessarily to the reflex of these, the present publication.
On the special interest which a work such as the “Aristocracy of London” must possess in the eyes of our oligarchic public—to say nothing of its indispensable utility to every person moving in society—it is needless here to dilate: the numerous personal books, peerage and other, which have preceded it in popular estimation, constituting at once our reason and apology for endeavouring to achieve comprehensively that which has hitherto been attempted in fragments only.
For the sake of convenience the “Aristocracy of London,” will be divided into eight parts, to be annually revised and corrected, namely:
1.—The Aristocracy of Kensington.
2.—The Aristocracy of Notting Hill and Bayswater.
3.—The Aristocracy of Paddington and St. John’s Wood.
4.—The Aristocracy of Portman, Cavendish, and Russell Squares, &c.