"Dear Lord Frank,—Lady Mundane tells me that you are one of the privileged few who can get invitations to the Bodwinkles'. Please exert your interest in my favour. You know this is Alice's first season.—Yours truly,
"Mary Pimlico."
Here is another one:—
"Dear Lord Frank,—Do please get an invitation for my very great friend, Amy Rumsort, for the Bodwinkles'. She is most anxious to go, for very particular reasons. I will tell you them when we meet. Spiffy Goldtip sent mamma mine, but declines to come to the front about Amy.—Yours most sincerely, Harriet Wylde."
"Wild Harrie" is the name by which this young lady is usually known among her sporting friends. She is a promising débutante, and very properly calls herself "first favourite" of the season.
"Dear me," thought I, as I opened a series of similar epistles, "if I were the head of a public department, who only recommended honours to be given to those who applied for them oftenest, and if all these were meritorious public servants wanting C.B.'s, or gallant soldiers anxious for Victoria Crosses, they could not beg more pertinaciously and unblushingly." And I made a list of the petitioners, leaving out those who had written to me without knowing me, and went to the club, where I intrusted them to Spiffy, with a peremptory request that he would distribute the required invitations upon pain of my financial displeasure.
Spiffy gave me some curious statistics about invitations and the means employed to obtain them. Three ladies who never asked him to their parties, and whom he had therefore left out, though all more or less leaders of the beau monde, actually wrote to Mrs Bodwinkle in various strains—one was a threatening, the other an appealing letter, and the third assumed that she had been omitted by mistake. Two young gentlemen had the impertinence, after trying every other mode in vain, actually to call on Mrs Bodwinkle, and extract invitations from that bewildered woman, who was too much frightened to refuse them. Bodwinkle was not idle in the House, and two Liberals and an extreme Radical, all young, unable to resist temptation, voted against the Government on the promise of invitations. As for Spiffy, even he was acquiring fresh social experience, and tells me he can scarcely resist entering upon a pecuniary exploitation of his position in society. "There is," said that enterprising and original individual, "so much to be done by a man of genius. Just look what is open to me in this line,——
"'Families in the country anxious that their sons should be well lancés in the society of the metropolis, are requested to apply to the Honourable Spiffington Goldtip. Invitations to the most fashionable parties obtained at a reasonable amount. Charges moderate for introductions to Clubs. No charge whatever for introductions to noblemen.'
"Or in this line,—
"'To Debutantes and Others in want of Chaperonage.—Young ladies whose mothers are invalids, or are from some cause considered objectionable by society, or who have only step-mothers, or who are orphans with unkind or Evangelical relations, or who are unexpectedly at the last moment deprived of their natural protectors, on applying to the undersigned will be provided with suitable chaperons. The undersigned begs to notify that his stock of chaperons will bear the strictest examination as to character, and have all at one time or other moved in the highest circles of society. No debutante or young lady whose birth and antecedents do not entitle her to the same privilege need apply. Spiffington Goldtip.'
"Then the pendant to this would be,—