“ When Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and their friends, met at supper in Goldsmith's rooms, where was the "best society" in England? When George the Fourth outraged humanity in his treatment of Queen Caroline, who was the first scoundrel in Europe?
Pause yet a moment, indignant friend. Whose habits and principles would ruin this country as rapidly as it has been made? Who are enamored of a puerile imitation of foreign splendors? Who strenuously endeavor to graft the questionable points of Parisian society upon our own? ”

“ Proper respect for some persons is best preserved by avoiding their neighborhood.
And what, think you, is the influence of this extravagant expense and senseless show upon these same young men and women? We can easily discover. It saps their noble ambition, assails their health, lowers their estimate of men, and their reverence for women, cherishes an eager and aimless rivalry, weakens true feeling, wipes away the bloom of true modesty, and induces an ennui, a satiety, and a kind of dilettante misanthropy, which is only the more monstrous because it is undoubtedly real. ”

“ If gilt were only gold, or sugar-candy common sense, what a fine thing our society would be! If to lavish money upon objets de vertu, to wear the most costly dresses, and always to have them cut in the height of the fashion; to build houses thirty feet broad, as if they were palaces; to furnish them with all the luxurious devices of Parisian genius; to give superb banquets, at which your guests laugh, and which make you miserable ”

“ This belonged peculiarly to Grandma and Grandpa Keeler. It contained the "parlor" and three "keepin'" rooms opening one into the other, all of the same size and general bare and gloomy appearance, all possessing the same sacredly preserved atmosphere, through which we passed with becoming silence and solemnity into the "end" room, the sunny kitchen where Grandma and Grandpa kept house by themselves in the summer time, and there at the door, her very yellow coat reflecting the rays of the sun, stood Fanny, presenting about as much appearance of life and animation as a pensive summer squash. ”

“ If the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness, a fine, budding form, and wreathed in a semi-transparent haze of flounced and flowered gauze, is so vapid that we prefer to accost her with our eyes alone, and not with our tongues, is the same Caroline married into a Madame Pettitoes, and fanning herself upon a sofa—no longer particularly fresh, nor young, nor pretty, and no longer budding, but very fully blown—likely to be fascinating in conversation? ”

“ I am persuaded that circuses fill an aching void in the universe. What children did before their invention I shudder to think, for circuses are to childhood what butter is to bread; and what the world did before the birth of Barnum is an almost equally frightful problem. Some are born to shows, others attain shows, and yet again others have shows thrust upon them. Barnum is a born showman. If ever a man fulfills his destiny, it is the discoverer of Tom Thumb. ”

“ The "best society" is that in which the virtues are most shining, which is the most charitable, forgiving, long-suffering, modest, and innocent. The "best society" is, by its very name, that in which there is the least hypocrisy and insincerity of all kinds, which recoils from, and blasts, artificiality, which is anxious to be all that it is possible to be, and which sternly reprobates all shallow pretense, all [Pg 235] coxcombry and foppery, and insists upon simplicity as the infallible characteristic of true worth. That is the "best society," which comprises the best men and women. ”

“ An insipid uniformity is the Procrustes-bed, upon which "society" is stretched. Every new house is the counterpart of every other, with the exception of more gilt, if the owner can afford it. The interior arrangement, instead of being characteristic, instead of revealing something of the tastes and feelings of the owner, is rigorously conformed to every other interior. The same hollow and tame complaisance rules in the intercourse of society. Who dares say precisely what he thinks upon a great topic? What youth ventures to say sharp things, of slavery, for instance, at a polite dinner-table? ”

“ How many of them inherit the valiant genius and hard frugality which built up their fortunes; how many acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their opportunities how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty, human sympathy ”

“ At last it was evident that Seffy fully understood, and his father broke into that discordant whistle once more.
"A gal that ken jump a six-rail fence—and wissout no running start—don't let her git apast you!"
"Well, I'm going to set up with her to-night," said Seffy again, with a huge ahem. And the tune his father whistled as he opened the door for him sounded something like "I want to be an angel."
"But not to buy no pasture-land!" warned Seffy. ”

“ Hostess—Oh, Henry! You must hurry—I'm going to use your room for the gentlemen's dressing-room, and it's time now for people to come. You must hurry.
Host (from above, just as front door opens, admitting Baron von Gosheimer and two women guests) —Where the devil are my shirts?
Hostess (unconscious of arrivals) —Under the bed in my room. Hurry!
(Host, in bath gown and slippers, dashes madly into wife's room, and dives under bed as women guests enter. Unable to escape, he crawls farther beneath bed. His feet remain visible. Women guests discover them.) ”

“ We have seen dancing in other countries, and dressing. We have certainly never seen gentlemen dance so easily, gracefully, and well, as the American. But the style of dancing, in its whirl, its rush, its fury, is only equaled by that of the masked balls at the French opera, and the balls at the Salle Valentino, the Jardin Mabille, the Château Rôuge, and other favorite resorts of Parisian grisettes and lorettes. ”

“ Criticism is not construction, it is observation. If we could surpass in its own way everything which displeased us, we should make short work of it, and instead of showing what fatal blemishes deform our present society, we should present a specimen of perfection, directly.
We went to the brilliant ball. There was too much of everything. Too much light, and eating, and drinking, and dancing, and flirting, and dressing, and feigning, and smirking, and much too many people. Good taste insists first upon fitness. But why had Mrs. Potiphar given this ball? ”

“ Vanity Fair is peculiarly a picture of modern society. It aims at English follies, but its mark is universal, as the madness is. It is called a satire, but, after much diligent reading, we can not discover the satire. A state of society not at all superior to that of Vanity Fair is not unknown to our experience ”

“ I went to see the elephant. To speak truly, I saw not one elephant, but half a dozen. I had a feast of roaring and a flow of circus. In fact I indulged in the wildest dissipation. I visited Barnum's circus and sucked peppermint candy in a way most childlike and bland. The reason seems obscure, but circuses and peppermint candy are as inseparable as peanuts and the Bowery. Appreciating this solemn fact, Barnum provides bigger sticks adorned with bigger red stripes than ever Romans sucked in the palmy days of the Coliseum. ”

“ We may like very well, in our individual capacity, to partake of the delicacies prepared by our hostess's chef, we may not be averse to paté and myriad objets de goût, and if you caught us in a corner at the next ball, putting away a fair share of dinde aux truffes, we know you would have at us in a tone of great moral indignation, and wish to know why we sneaked into great houses, eating good suppers, and drinking choice wines, and then went away with an indigestion, to write dyspeptic disgusts at society. ”

“ Think what immortal hates must arise from these dual performances! We all like to receive the reward of merit, but when two performances are going on simultaneously, how are the artists to know for whom it is intended? Applause is the sweet compensation for which all strive privately or publicly, and to be cheated out of it, or left in doubt as to its destination, is a refined form of the Inquisition. ”

“ They should remember, what they uniformly and universally forget, that we are not invited, upon the rising of the curtain, to behold a cosmorama, or picture of the world, but a representation of that part of it called Vanity Fair. What its just limits are—how far its poisonous purlieus reach—how much of the world's air is tainted by it, is a question which every thoughtful man will ask himself, with a shudder, and look sadly around, to answer. ”

“ Yes, but if they stay away, it is very certainly their great gain. The elderly people are always neglected with us, and nothing surprises intelligent strangers more than the tyrannical supremacy of Young America. But we are not surprised at this neglect. How can we be, if we have our eyes open? When Caroline Pettitoes retreats from the floor to the sofa, and, instead of a "polker," figures at parties as a matron, do you suppose that "tough old Joes" like ourselves are going to desert the young Caroline upon the floor, for Madame Pettitoes upon the sofa? ”

“ If we lived among people who adored squinting, should we not all take to it, and cherish it as the apple of our eye? And if we fell among anthropophagi, would not our love of approbation make us long to be as succulent as young pigs? What glory to escape from the jaws of death, if the jaws repudiate us? ”

“ Vivian Grey and Pelham are the models of their ambition, and they succeed in being Pendennis. They enjoy the reputation of being "very clever," and "very talented fellows," and "smart chaps"; but they refrain from proving what is so generously conceded. They are often men of a certain cultivation. They have traveled, many of them—spending a year or two in Paris, and a month or two in the rest of Europe. Consequently they endure society at home, with a smile, and a shrug, and a graceful superciliousness, which is very engaging. ”

“ And since my introduction to Barnum's female gymnast,—a good-looking, well-formed mother of a family, who walks about unflinchingly with men and boys on her shoulders, and carries a 300-pound gun as easily as the ordinary woman carries a clothes-basket,—I have been persuaded that "the coming woman," like Brother Jonathan, will "lick all creation." In that good time, woman will have her rights because she will have her muscle. Then, if there are murders and playful beatings between husbands and wives, the wives will enjoy all the glory of crime. What an outlook! ”

“ But the seal of their shame is their own smile at their early dreams, and the high hopes of their boyhood, their sneering infidelity of simplicity, their skepticism of motives and of men. Youths, whose younger years were fervid with the resolution to strike and win, to deserve, at least, a gentle remembrance, if not a dazzling fame, are content to eat, and drink, and sleep well ”

“ What eloquent sermons we remember to have heard in which the sins and the sinners of Babylon, Jericho and Gomorrah were scathed with holy indignation. The cloth is very hard upon Cain, and completely routs the erring kings of Judah. The Spanish Inquisition, too, gets frightful knocks, and there is much eloquent exhortation to preach the gospel in the interior of Siam. Let it be preached there and God speed the Word. But also let us have a text or two in Broadway and the Avenue.
The best sermon ever preached upon society, within our knowledge, is Vanity Fair. ”

“ If Vanity Fair be a satire, what novel of society is not? Are Vivian Grey, and Pelham, and the long catalogue of books illustrating English, or the host of Balzacs, Sands, Sues, and Dumas, that paint French society, less satires? ”

“ It suggests the terrible thought of the enfeebling of moral power, and the deterioration of noble character, as a necessary consequence of contact with "society." Every man looks suddenly and sharply around him, and accosts himself and his neighbors, to ascertain if they are all parties to this corruption. Sentimental youths and maidens, upon velvet sofas, or in calf-bound libraries, resolve that it is an insult to human nature—are sure that their velvet and calf-bound friends are not like the dramatis personæ of Vanity Fair, and that the drama is therefore hideous and unreal. ”

“ Yet, in not one of them can the traveler be so quietly comfortable as in an English inn, and nowhere in New York can the stranger procure a dinner, at once so neat and elegant, and economical, as at scores of cafés in Paris. ”

“ I was exceedingly thrilled by the appearance of the two young gentlemen from the Cannibal Islands, who are beautifully embossed in green and red, and compassionated them for the sacrifices they make in putting on blankets and civilization. Is it right to deprive them of their daily bread,—I mean their daily baby? ”

“ The spirit of our time and of our country knows no such thing, but the habitue of "society" hears constantly of "a good family." It means simply, the collective mass of children, grand-children, nephews, nieces, and descendants, of some man who deserved well of his country, and whom his country honors. But sad is the heritage of a great name! The son of Burke will inevitably be measured by Burke. The niece of Pope must show some superiority to other women (so to speak) , or her equality is inferiority. ”