"The twice ten thousand for whom earth was made,"
When we recollect, to our shame, that not only these swarms of trashy volumes, which penetrate even into the back-slums, and may be seen unfolded in the paper-patched windows of eighteen-penny milliners in the lowest quarters of our metropolis, find a never-failing succession of ravenous readers, but that newspapers—Sunday newspapers, forsooth—devoted to smutty epigrams, low abuse, vile insinuations, and openly indecent allusion to the connexions, habits of life, and even personal appearance, of fashionable and pseudo-fashionable people, receive a disgraceful and dangerous support; we must come to the conclusion, that in this, as in all other merchandize, the demand creates the supply, and that it is among the lower orders of the middle classes that these caricaturers by profession of the upper, their slanderers and their eulogists, find sympathy and encouragement.
There is a sort of "hero-worship," as Mr Carlyle would term it, attaching to the most absurd, ridiculous, and even vicious doings of people who might be fashionable; a counter-jumper, barber's clerk, medical student, or tailor's apprentice, adores the memory of that great man whom we are happy to be able to style the late "markis." The pavé of the Haymarket he considers classic ground, and the "Waterford Arms" a most select wine-bibbing establishment. If he does not break a dozen bells or wrench three or four brace of knockers in the season, this penny-cigar-smoking creature hardly thinks he attains to his fractional proportion of humanity.
This may be relied on, that the great inducement of young scapegraces of fashion to the committal of their diurnal and nocturnal outrages upon propriety, is the mischievous gratification they derive from the awkward imitation of their inferiors; and the most effectual method of bringing these aristocratic pranks into disrepute, will be, to treat them as merely vulgar outrages, and punish the perpetrators accordingly.
If, indeed, the small-fry of society would set themselves to imitate all that is worthy imitation in the better sort of their betters, following good examples instead of bad, it would be something to talk of. But since it is not to be expected that they will pursue virtue, piety, good sense, and good breeding for their own sakes, and as these attributes, when they exist in fashionable life—and they do exist among the most fashionable of fashionable people—are in their nature retiring and unobtrusive, while all that is bad in good society is pushed into notoriety, for the example of the mob, we must take pains to point out at some length the difference between really "good society" and what is vulgarly called good society; that is, in fact, the difference between good and bad, and to mark the distinguishing characteristics of the truly fashionable and the vulgarly fashionable man, as wide and deep as is the gulf between a gent and a gentleman.
If the fashionable world be truly represented, as it is not, in the swarms of so-called fashionable novels, gleaned from the sloppy conversation of footmen's ordinaries, or the retail tittle-tattle of lady's-maids in waiting at the registry-offices, how little is it to the credit of the mass of the reading public that they peruse such stuff; or would it be perused at all, but for that vulgar love, so prevalent about town, of imitation of the Lady Fannys and Lady Mary Dollymops, their nonchalance, their insipidity, their studied ease, and their affectation of being unaffected?
We therefore desire, before we begin, that our young lady readers, our jury of maidens, will do us the favour to dismiss from their recollection all that they may have heard and read of the fashionable world; that they will not believe the exclusives to be as dull as so many bottles of stale small-beer, or as lively as Seltzer water from the spring, with a dash of brandy in it; that they will forget that there is, in fashionable life, any thing worthy their imitation or adoption, unless it should otherwise appear by the evidence; and that they will not once take up a professedly fashionable novel till they have carefully studied and slept upon what we are going to say.
The word "world" is a comprehensive term, and should be taken in all its relations with great latitude, whether with adjectives or without. For example, the "fashionable world" is far from being an integral quantity, or capable of being reasoned upon as if it were as definite in its relations and proportions as an equilateral triangle. It contains within itself a complete gradation from fashionable excellence to fashionable villany; from fashionable virtue to fashionable vice; fashionable ladies and gentlemen, fashionable pimps, demireps, and profligates. It must be individualized if we wish to treat it fairly, as judges try prisoners severally, not in a lump. But our impressions of the fashionable world, as a class, must be taken from the general preponderating characteristics of good or evil of the whole.
Hast ever been, reader, to Bartlemy fair? If you have, you may have seen—nay, you must have seen—Richardson's immortal show. You must have seen a tall platform in front of the migratory edifice, and on that platform you must have delighted your visual orb with the clown, the pantaloon, the harlequin, the dancing ladies, the walking dandy, the king with his crown, the queen in her rabbit-skin robes, the smock-frocked countryman, the top-booted jockey, and all the dramatis personæ of the performance that every moment of every day, during every fair, is for ever "going to begin." You may hardly have observed, sliding quietly through all this tinselled and spangled poverty, a plain carpenter-like man, in a decent suit, who looks as if he had never seen a performance in the whole course of his life, and as if he never cared to see one. This man is, or rather was, the late Mr Richardson, who died worth thirty thousand pounds, and all the clowns, harlequins, pantaloons, dancing ladies, walking dandies, kings with their crowns, and queens in their rabbit-skins, and the rest, are poor pinch-bellied devils, caricaturing humanity for some twelve or fourteen shillings a-week, finding their own paint and frippery. Now, whenever you wish to form a correct idea of the two great classes of fashionable life, call to your remembrance the gentlemen who, like the late lamented Mr Richardson, are proprietors of shows, and the berouged, bedraggled creatures who exhibit on the platform outside for their living.
To be sure, there may be a little difference in names. The proprietors of the show may be dukes, and earls, and marquisses, and so forth. The mountebanks outside may be called counts, chevaliers, knights of the order of the golden fleece, or of the thimble, or of Malta. But the realities are the same. Fashionable life is a show, truly fashionable people are the proprietors, who are never prominently or ridiculously seen therein; and these several orders of over dressed, under-fed, empty-pocketed mountebanks, are the people put on the platform outside, to astonish the eyes and ears of the groundlings.