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:—