These same authorities agree that not every poet may write Vers de Société. To quote Mr. Locker-Lampson: “The writer of Occasional verse, in order to be genuinely successful, must not only be something of a poet, but he must also be a man of the world, in the liberal sense of the expression; he must have associated throughout his life with the refined and cultivated members of his species, not merely as an idle bystander, but as a busy actor in the throng.”
Mr. Adams corroborates this by saying: “Although a clever literary artist may so far throw himself into the position of a man of society as to be able to write very agreeable Society verse, yet few can hope to write the best and most genuine Vers de Société who are not, or have not at one time been, in some measure at any rate, inhabitants of ‘Society.’”
As an instance, however, of the disagreement among the doctors, the following may be noted:
Mortimer Collins, himself a writer of Vers de Société, declared that the lines by Ben Jonson, beginning,
“Follow a shadow, it still flies you;”
is the most perfect bit of society verse written in our language. And speaking of the same poem, Mr. W. Davenport Adams says, “I cannot bring myself to look upon Ben Jonson as a ‘society poet,’ or upon the verses in question as a ‘society poem’ in the proper sense of the term—in the sense at least, in which I understand them.”
So we see, that in a degree, at least, Vers de Société is, like Beauty, in the eye of the beholder.
But a consensus of opinion seems to prove that the keynote of Vers de Société is lightness, both of theme and treatment. Yet though light, it must not be trashy. It is the lightness of beaten gold-leaf, not the lightness of chaff. It is valuable, not worthless.