Page 579 - vanity-fair

fashionable newspapers and with whom you see that all
sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and many
more might be mentioned had they to do with the history at
present in hand. But while simple folks who are out of the
world, or country people with a taste for the genteel, behold
these ladies in their seeming glory in public places, or envy
them from afar off, persons who are better instructed could
inform them that these envied ladies have no more chance
of establishing themselves in ‘society,’ than the benighted
squire’s wife in Somersetshire who reads of their doings in
the Morning Post. Men living about London are aware of
these awful truths. You hear how pitilessly many ladies of
seeming rank and wealth are excluded from this ‘society.’
The frantic efforts which they make to enter this circle, the
meannesses to which they submit, the insults which they
undergo, are matters of wonder to those who take human
or womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under
difficulties would be a fine theme for any very great person
who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of the Eng-
lish language necessary for the compiling of such a history.
Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Craw-
ley had known abroad not only declined to visit her when
she came to this side of the Channel, but cut her severely
when they met in public places. It was curious to see how
the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether a
pleasant study to Rebecca. When Lady Bareacres met her in
the waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her daughters
about her as if they would be contaminated by a touch of
Becky, and retreating a step or two, placed herself in front

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