Miss Notable. La, yes! Our vaporous "fine manners" give me the vapours.
Lady Smart. They do not have "vapours" now, above—well t'other side the Styx, let us say.
Lady Answerall. Indeed, no, nothing so simple and womanly, i' faith. They have substituted neurotic pessimism—and chloral.
Lady Smart. Worse far than our occasional sly sippings of—strong waters!
Lady Answerall. What said the dear satiric Dean?
"Now all alone poor madam sits
In vapours and hysteric fits;
A dreadful interval of spleen
How shall we pass the time between?
Here, Betty, let me take my drops,
And feel my pulse, I know it stops;
This head of mine, lord, how it swims
And such a pain in all my limbs!"
Miss Notable. Whereas now it would be:—
"Now sad and sole poor madam lies,
Insomnia holding wide her eyes:
'Past ten, and not a single wink.
Though I turned in at four, I think!
If I don't get some hours of sleep,
To-day's appointments can I keep?
And 'tis the Prince's garden-party!
Oh! to be buxom, hale, and hearty
Like some mere milkmaid, who can drowse
After a frolic and a bowse,
Upon a tumbled truss of hay!
I must have sleep. Betty, I say,
Bring me the cognac and the choral!'
—You may supply the modern moral!"
Lady Sparkish. La, child, you are as much a blue-stocking as the modish she-scribblers of the century-end. We used to leave all that sort of thing to Grub Street.
Miss Notable. Tilly-vally! Grub Street has been made genteel since the ladies took to haunting it. 'Tis now no shabby Alsatia, but a swell sanctuary. Faith, one o' these odd-cum-shortlies—as we used to say—I'll e'en write "The Journal of a Modern Lady" (in imitation of the Dean) up-to-date, for 1895, instead of 1728, to wit.