Philosophy of the beau monde - 1. Caste

• Posted by mgr on January 19th, 2010 filed in HISTORISCHES, Zeitdokumente
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Many are the supplementary distinctions which, in England (denominated by Napoleon ‘the great chandler’s shop of Europe’)—are accepted as a substitute for Caste,—nay—which are even admitted to possess a species of arbitrary value, beyond all computation in the vulgar currency of society. It is not, however, to be imagined that the concession implies any deficiency of servility, or of deference to the glories of parchments, patents, or emblazonments;—it is, that we think to yield the highest honour to talent, valour, beauty, or merit, by meting the meed of their deserts according to the standard of the Heralds’ office. We are not aware that there exists (with a name, or in a local habitation) any actual ‘exchange,’ Royal or Noble, where the price current of such matters may be ascertained; but it is not the less understood by all persons of tact, moving in the circles of fashion, that a man of low birth and ignoble calling, having the disposal of a fair daughter and a quarter of a million for her dowry, is fairly equivalent to a Baronet of 1660, or to any Peer of the nineteenth century, saving those who date from the heroic epoch of 1814! Since the enschedulement of rotten boroughs and the extinction of Parliamentary impunity, we rather conceive that at Crockford’s, the Travellers’, or Newmarket, the wealthy parvenu might even rate with Viscounts of Hanoverian creation, and younger sons of Dukes. The Emperor of Japan, for instance, with his New Road Palace, need only have figured a winter or two at Brighton, or half a Session in Parliament, to have picked and chosen, for a son-in-law, through the genealogical pages of Burke: and his forbearance does honour to his independence.

In like wise, also, are the ineffable distinctions of caste rendered subservient to those of Genius. Sheridan (no less by birth than marriage degraded below the established standard) was eventually elevated as high as the breath of lordly and ladyly adulation could bear him. His unrivalled powers of vivifying the listless torpor of the true elect were fairly worth a coronet;—nor is Moore so much the idol of Lausdowne House in our own day, as were the Sheridans, man, woman, and child, of Devonshire House, during the golden prime of its Hegira of wit and beauty. The stiffest neck bowed down before the Moliere of the ‘School for Scandal;’—the most exclusive smiles obsequiously courted the acceptance of the descendant of an Irish schoolmaster! At one time Richard Brinsley was at par with one Duke, or the small change of three Irish Lords and a Baronet!

Beauty, too, may be said to count largely among the equivalents. If ducats have ennobled the Rothschilds, and guineas the Barings,—the Gunnings of a former period, and the Brandlings of this, have been called to high station by the chain of high caste. The accomplishments of Robert Arkwright have imparted to the daughter of Stephen Kemble an honourable and undisputed place among the fiercest aristocrats of the Peerage; and to one or two other members of the fashionable world the hue of a complexion and tincture of a skin—’love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn’—have afforded an equally valid credential.

On the whole, however, of all the qualifying pretensions that enable an individual to dispense with virtue of ancestry in obtaining the immunities of caste, wealth is probably the safest and surest;—wealth combined with prodigality:—the railroad that traverses the marble ways of the great world must be made of gold! Thousands have bought their way through the portals of the Temple of Fashion, for tens that have alighted in the sanctuary, borne upon the pinions of Genius, or who have overthrown its walls, like those of Jericho, with the braying of the trumpets of martial fame. And if the structure of high society be at the present moment closely examined, we shall perhaps discover that the high price exacted by the exclusives for a billet d’entree to their sanctuary has so far dazzled the eyes of the doorkeepers, that the lame, the halt, and the blind,— the publican and sinner, –the leper and the lunatic, have been occasionally smuggled through the brazen gates, concealed under a glistening mantle of gold.

From: The Court Journal or Gazette of the Fashionable World. Nr. 212. May 18, 1833.

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