Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/211



"Always in the best set, never flirting with the wrong man, and never speaking to the wrong woman, all agreed that the Ladies Saint Maurice had fairly won their coronets."

Again it appears in this account of the hero:

"The banquet was over: the Duke of Saint James passed his examination with unqualified approval; and having been stamped at the Mint of Fashion as a sovereign of the brightest die, he was flung forth, like the rest of his golden brethren, to corrupt the society of which he was the brightest ornament."

The house party of the Dacres, a family of taste and high standards, is described negatively:

"* * * no duke who is a gourmand, no earl who is a jockey, no manœuvering mother, no flirting daughters, no gambling sons, for your entertainment, * * * As for buffoons and artists, to amuse a vacant hour or sketch a vacant face, we must frankly tell you at once that there is not one."

But from Popanilla through the Trilogy the inanity and pretense of this social circle is made more pointed by contrast with those socially beneath it. Egremont's experience with the plain people induces this serious indictment of his own set:

"It is not merely that it is deficient in warmth and depth and breadth; that it is always discussing persons instead of principles, * * * it is not merely that it has neither imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor feeling, nor knowledge, to recommend it, but * * * it is in short, trivial, uninteresting, stupid, really vulgar."

Thackeray also speaks from within, and has to his credit his great roster of Snobs, his panoramic Vanity Fair,