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.