it might be, “ eau de Nil satin draped with gold-spangled mousseline de soie and bands of sable at hem and neck.” Formal dinners followed in full evening dress. All day, herds of servants glided silently about, bringing early morning tea and The Times , carrying up bath water and coal for the fireplaces, replenishing vases daily with fresh flowers, murmuring “His Grace is in the Long Library,” sounding gongs at meal times and waiting up to uncorset Her Ladyship for bed.
Each guest at the house parties had his name on a card fitted into a brass frame on his bedroom door and a corresponding card beside the bell indicator in the butler’s pantry. In assigning rooms the recognized, if unacknowledged, liaisons had to be considered. As long as the partners in these intramural infidelities did nothing to provoke a public scandal by outraged wife or cuckolded husband, they could do as they pleased. The overriding consideration was to prevent any exposure of misconduct to the lower classes. In that respect the code was rigid. Within the closed circle of the ruling class the unforgivable sin was to give away any member of the group; there must be no appeal to the Divorce Court, no publicity that would bring the members as a class into disrepute. If, regrettably, a husband refused absolutely to be complaisant and threatened action, all the arbiters of Society, including, if necessary, the Prince of Wales (despite his own hardly faultless record), rallied to stop him. He must not, they reminded him, sacrifice his class to such exposure. It was his duty to preserve appearances and an unsullied front before the gaze of the vulgar. Subdued, he would obey, even at the cost, in the case of one couple, of not speaking to his wife except in public for twenty years.
In their luxurious and lavish world, self-indulgence was the natural law. Notable eccentrics like the nocturnal Duke of Portland and bad-tempered autocrats like Sir George Sitwell and Sir William Eden were merely representatives of their class in whom the habit of having their own way had gone to extremes. But for the majority it was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease and to make life for the great and wealthy as uninterruptedly pleasant as possible.
The lordly manner was the result. When Colonel Brabazon, who affected a fashionable difficulty with his r ’s, arrived late at the railroad station to be informed that the train for London had just left, he instructed the station master, “Then bwing me another.” Gentlemen who did not relish a cold wait at a country station or a slow journey on a local made a habit of special trains which cost £25 for an average journey. There were not a few among them who, like Queen Victoria, had never seen a railway ticket. Ladies had one-of-a-kind dresses designed exclusively for them by Worth or Doucet, who devoted as much care to each client as if he were painting her portrait. “So as to be different from other people,” the English-born beauty, Daisy, Princess of Pless, had “a fringe of real violets” sewn down the train of her court dress, which was of transparent lace lined with blue chiffon and sprinkled with gold sequins.
Fed upon privilege, the patricians flourished. Five at least of the leading ministers in Lord Salisbury’s Government were over six feet tall, far above the normal stature of the time. Of the nineteen members of the Cabinet, all but two lived to be over seventy, seven exceeded eighty, and two exceeded ninety at a time when the average life expectancy of a male at birth was forty-four and of a man who had reached twenty-one was sixty-two. On their diet of privilege they acquired a certain quality which Lady Warwick could define only in the words, “They have an air!”
Now and then the sound of the distant rumble in the atmosphere caused them vague apprehensions of changes coming to spoil the fun. With port after dinner the gentlemen talked about the growth
Each guest at the house parties had his name on a card fitted into a brass frame on his bedroom door and a corresponding card beside the bell indicator in the butler’s pantry. In assigning rooms the recognized, if unacknowledged, liaisons had to be considered. As long as the partners in these intramural infidelities did nothing to provoke a public scandal by outraged wife or cuckolded husband, they could do as they pleased. The overriding consideration was to prevent any exposure of misconduct to the lower classes. In that respect the code was rigid. Within the closed circle of the ruling class the unforgivable sin was to give away any member of the group; there must be no appeal to the Divorce Court, no publicity that would bring the members as a class into disrepute. If, regrettably, a husband refused absolutely to be complaisant and threatened action, all the arbiters of Society, including, if necessary, the Prince of Wales (despite his own hardly faultless record), rallied to stop him. He must not, they reminded him, sacrifice his class to such exposure. It was his duty to preserve appearances and an unsullied front before the gaze of the vulgar. Subdued, he would obey, even at the cost, in the case of one couple, of not speaking to his wife except in public for twenty years.
In their luxurious and lavish world, self-indulgence was the natural law. Notable eccentrics like the nocturnal Duke of Portland and bad-tempered autocrats like Sir George Sitwell and Sir William Eden were merely representatives of their class in whom the habit of having their own way had gone to extremes. But for the majority it was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease and to make life for the great and wealthy as uninterruptedly pleasant as possible.
The lordly manner was the result. When Colonel Brabazon, who affected a fashionable difficulty with his r ’s, arrived late at the railroad station to be informed that the train for London had just left, he instructed the station master, “Then bwing me another.” Gentlemen who did not relish a cold wait at a country station or a slow journey on a local made a habit of special trains which cost £25 for an average journey. There were not a few among them who, like Queen Victoria, had never seen a railway ticket. Ladies had one-of-a-kind dresses designed exclusively for them by Worth or Doucet, who devoted as much care to each client as if he were painting her portrait. “So as to be different from other people,” the English-born beauty, Daisy, Princess of Pless, had “a fringe of real violets” sewn down the train of her court dress, which was of transparent lace lined with blue chiffon and sprinkled with gold sequins.
Fed upon privilege, the patricians flourished. Five at least of the leading ministers in Lord Salisbury’s Government were over six feet tall, far above the normal stature of the time. Of the nineteen members of the Cabinet, all but two lived to be over seventy, seven exceeded eighty, and two exceeded ninety at a time when the average life expectancy of a male at birth was forty-four and of a man who had reached twenty-one was sixty-two. On their diet of privilege they acquired a certain quality which Lady Warwick could define only in the words, “They have an air!”
Now and then the sound of the distant rumble in the atmosphere caused them vague apprehensions of changes coming to spoil the fun. With port after dinner the gentlemen talked about the growth
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