But if she sets a booby-trap
And wears a fringe, she is a treasure.
The old ideal of growing old gracefully had been superseded by a refusal to grow old at all; and the "unfair competition" of matron with maid is pointedly illustrated in Punch's "Country House Hints" in 1908, where, after giving information about tips, dresses, etc., the writer observes that girls are at a discount as guests: "they are not rich enough for Bridge, and they put a restriction on funny stories." They may have done so fourteen years ago; but only a year later, in a burlesque article based on the fulsome Society paragraphs of the contemporary Press, Punch made it clear that the process of emancipation was proceeding apace:—
Wise mothers—and modern mothers are seldom wanting in astuteness—do not keep their young "flapper" daughters buried in the schoolroom until the day of presentation. They prepare them for their complete emancipation by a series of preliminary canters. Thus they take them to dine at the Fitz or the Tarlton while the hair that is hanging down their backs is still their own....
The upbringing of Lady Sarah Boodle has been wholly unconventional, and as her parents spend most of their time in balloons, she is looking forward to her first season with all the fougue de dix-huit ans. Until she was sixteen Lady Sarah was allowed to read nothing but the Sporting Times and the Statist. This led, not unnaturally, to a violent reaction, and Lady Sarah is now a devoted student of Maeterlinck, Mr. W. B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod. Happily this development has not impaired her healthy enjoyment of Bridge. Last year she won £300 at this winsome pastime.... One may fitly conclude this group of winsome English girls with the mention of two beautiful cousins, Lady Phoebe Bunting and Miss Miriam Belshazzar. By an extraordinary coincidence they are both third cousins once removed of Daphne, Lady Saxthorpe, whose coster impersonations were so marked a feature of her late husband's tenure of office as Governor of Hong Kong. Lady Phoebe, strange to say, never learned her alphabet until she was nearly fifteen, while her cousin had mastered the intricacies of compound interest almost before she could walk. Lady Phoebe is a winsome blonde, while Miss Belshazzar is a svelte brunette whose superb Semitic profile recalls the delicious proboscis of her illustrious grandfather, Sir Joshua Schnabelheimer.
Ostentatious Luxury
Extravagant expense and ostentation—another old abomination of Punch's—were not only rife, but they were constantly written up and discussed with a foolish voice of praise in what purported to be democratic papers. A ducal wedding in the mid-'nineties, which was carefully "rehearsed" before it was actually solemnized, caused a veritable explosion in Punch about the columns of matrimonial gush and statistics—the "haystacks of chrysanthemums"—which deluged the papers. In the picture of coroneted sandwichmen engaged by adroit speculators to puff their schemes, Punch in 1897 was only repeating an old indictment of parasitic peers. He had no quarrel with people who took to trade openly and seriously, disregarding the old fine-drawn social distinctions and contempt for commerce—witness his song of "The English Gentleman of the Present Day" in 1899. But he had no welcome for the newfangled newspaper articles on gastronomy, with menus and prices, puffing well-known hotels and restaurants. The statement of a writer in The Times in 1900 that "the necessaries of life may be purchased for £2,000 a year" provided Punch with food for ironical comment. A year later it was seriously maintained in a popular monthly that, from the point of view of a smart Society woman, it was impossible to dress on £1,000 a year. The standard of high living had gone up by leaps and bounds from the days when to Punch's youthful fancy £1,000 a year represented wealth almost beyond the dreams of avarice.
Another old grievance—needless extravagance in the Army—raised its head in 1900, when a correspondent in The Times complained that the latest regulations issued by the War Office were like a tailor's list, and contained details of seventy-seven kinds of gold lace! No wonder was it, as Punch noted, that the fathers of subalterns in crack regiments had to guarantee them a minimum allowance of £600 a year. This was just before the South African war, which immediately led to a general rise of prices—the universal excuse "owing to the war" foreshadowing what took place fifteen years later. Parallels abound, though on a smaller scale. Marriage is ironically declared to be impossible for self-respecting and self-protective girls owing to the dearth of servants. "Like the Dodo, the domestic servant is extinct," and Punch, in his list of suggested exhibits for museums, includes the following:—
Domestic Servant (Mummy).—An extremely rare and finely preserved specimen of a vanished class, whose extinction dates from 1901 a.d. It is therefore of the highest interest to the Anthropologist and the Comparative Anatomist. Its duties are now performed, perhaps more effectively, by the automatic "general" and the electric dumb-waiter. When alive, it commanded the salary of a prima donna, etc.
Aversion from work was already abroad. A fond parent is shown in this year commenting on the recalcitrant attitude of her daughter: "No, she won't work. She never would work. She never will work. There's only one thing—she'll 'ave to go out to service."
Still "smart" Society went on its way unheeding. The increasing publicity of social life is satirized under "Public Passion" in the recital of a young wife who writes: "We are never at home. I believe it is fashionable to go to hospitals now and be ill amongst all sorts and conditions of people." The honeymoon was passing because brides could not face the awful loneliness of a tête-à-tête existence, and welcomed a speedy return to a semi-detached go-as-you-please existence amongst their friends. A week-end honeymoon at Brighton is indicated as the maximum period which could be endured by a modern couple. In fashionable speech inanity began to be replaced by profanity. Unbridled language on the part of aristocrats and smart people led in 1903 to the famous conversational opening of a burlesque Society novel: "'Hell!' said the Duchess, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation"[7]—which Punch takes as his text for a discourse upon further developments and reactions. The device of engineering and paying for personal notices in the papers and simultaneously denouncing the scandalous enterprise of pressmen, and the introduction of "freak" parties from America are noticed and reproved in 1903, when amongst other recreations of the Smart Set we read of "Shinty, a wild and tumultuous version of hockey, in which there are absolutely no rules."