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:—
Aunt Jane: "Ugh! When I was your age, Matilda, Ladies of Rank and Position didn't have their photographs exposed in the shop windows."
Matilda (always anxious to agree): "Of course not, Aunt Jane. I suppose photography wasn't invented then?"
Old Bailey Ladies