The West End Club

“The Diogenes Club,” if we are to believe Sherlock Holmes, was “the queerest club in London.”  Such a claim was remarkable indeed; for Victorian men of the middle and upper classes were the most “clubbable” the world has ever known.  Although the social club was not a Victorian invention--Samuel Johnson, in 1783, had remarked of his amanuensis, “Boswell is a very clubbable man”-- it reached its apotheosis in the middle years of Victoria’s reign and even at the end of the period it was considered by many to be the most important social phenomenon of the day.

At he beginning of the century there were probably fewer than a dozen clubs of any significance but, in the years immediately following Waterloo, there was to be a period of rapid growth and expansion.  The club, all during the Victorian period, was essentially an urban phenomenon.  Clubs did develop in the counties, but they were, with rare exceptions, never to attain the status of the London clubs.  Even so, such clubs did much to set the social tone and were “the cradle of sound public opinion in matters appertaining to manners, if not to morals.”   In part, at least, the urban nature of the clubs can be attributed to the growth of the professions and the lack of clubs other than those serving the aristocracy, the military or those in politics.

The Reform Club in the 1840s

By the time of Victoria’s ascension to the throne, there were just over two dozen clubs in London and these still excluded all but noblemen, gentlemen, the services and the professional classes.  To be a member of “society” entailed being a member of at least one, and probably more, of the clubs.  No person engaged in trade, from the lowest shopkeeper to the greatest merchant could hope for admission to these bastions of privilege and exclusivicity.  By the time of the old Queen’s death, almost sixty-four years later, there were approximately one hundred and fifty clubs of which only seven had celebrated their centenary.  The wide range of clubs by 1900 included those for both sexes or for women alone and represented a range of common interests from automobiles through mountaineering to travel.

Dining at the Empress, "the most luxurious ladies club in London"

 

The impetus for women’s clubs, which developed during and after the ‘80s, appears to have come largely from two sources; shopping and politics.  A woman’s club was frequently seen as a temporary home for the city shopper.  As such, they were usually more “homey” than the men’s clubs.    At a meeting in 1899 of The International Congress of Women, the Social Section discussed the Women’s Club movement at some length.  According to Mrs Wynford Philipps, the proprietor of the Grosvenor Crescent Club and founder of the Women’s Institute (Great Britain),

They fulfilled a modern need in women’s life; some joined them to obtain creature comforts, others for intellectual food; some for aesthetic reasons, to get airy rooms and dainty surroundings, others for ethical, philanthropic and social purpose.

During the more than sixty years of the Victorian Era, much of the exclusiveness of the clubs broke down and this, along with the increase in the number of clubs, made them available for those who, before the ‘50s, would never have even considered membership a possibility.  Yet while the doors opened wider, there was “together with the increase of men eligible for clubs, an ever-increasing desire for separation and exclusion.”   The listing in Clubs of the World suggests that the period of greatest growth was in the 1860s and ‘70s.  It was in these decades that most of the clubs in the counties were established although the Union, in Manchester, dated from 1825 and the exclusive Liverpool club, the Palatine, was founded in 1836.

Theodore Hook once wrote of clubs,

If a man loves comfort and has little cash to buy it, he
Should get into a crowded Club--a most select society. 

The clubs often served different groups or were identified with particular social sets.  For many, the name tells the story; Travellers, United Service, University, Turf and Yacht.  The Garrick was the club for those with theatrical interests and the Athenaeum had associations with the Church and literature.

For country squires the only Club in London now is Boodle’s sirs,
The Crockford Club for playful men, the Alfred Club for noodles, sirs.

Boodle’s, as indicated drew its membership from country gentlemen while Crockford’s was a gambling club.  Known for its excellent cuisine, it did not survive the mid-century.  It was “a place of most unenviable celebrity … whose walls--if walls could speak--would be able to disclose not a few transactions of very nefarious character.”   Stakes were high and it was not uncommon for fortunes to be made, or lost, on the turn of a card.  Both the Duke of Wellington and Talleyrand were members of this prestigious “hell” of the early Victorian years, despite its illegality.  Hazard, a dice-game for high stakes, was the most popular game and Crockford was reported to spend £2,000 a year on dice to see that the game was honest.   The Alfred Club, on the other hand, was noted for its dullness having been described as “the asylum of doting tories and drivelling quidnuncs.”

The Oriental Club, founded in 1824, was composed

of noblemen and gentlemen who have travelled or resided in Asia, at St. Helena, in Egypt, at the Cape of Good Hope, the Mauritius, or at Constantinople; or whose official situations connect them with the administration of our Eastern government abroad or at home.

The club was well known for its excellent “eastern” cuisine and its wines.  Composed, in the main, of retired Indian officers, it was commonly referred to by hackney-coachmen as “the Horizontal Club.”  It was said of the club that the smell of curry powder pervaded the establishment. 

Among the political clubs of the Victorian Age were the Reform, the Conservative and the Carlton.  The Athenaeum, on which Mycroft Holmes’s Diogenes was modelled, was considered the “mental” club.  It was founded because

the fashionable and military Clubs not only absorb a great portion of society, but have spoiled all the Coffee Houses and Taverns so that the artist, or mere literary man neither of whom are members of the established Clubs, are in a much worse situation, both comparatively and positively than they were.

There’s first the Athenaeum Club; so wise, there’s not a man of it
That has not sense enough for six (in fact that is the plan of it);
The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical,
And always place the knives and forks in order mathematical.

Although the great majority of clubs, and certainly those having the greatest influence in the latter half of the nineteenth century were for men, by 1899 there were more than three dozen clubs either for women alone or admitting both sexes to membership.   Of those clubs which were strictly for women, some welcomed male visitors while by the last decade of the century some of the men’s clubs even had a few female members including the Cobden, Bachelors, Cavalry, New Vagabonds and even the Savages.

Marking Criminals - Photographing Felons

The 1830s and '40s saw the rapid development of a range of photographic processes.  In France, in 1838, Louis Daguerre took the first known picture containing a person, a man having his shoes polished on the Boulevard du Temple.  At about the same time, Robert Cornelius, took a self-portrait which has written on the back, "The first light picture ever taken."  In England, William Henry Fox Talbot was working on a process which became the calotype and laid the basis for most of the processes which were developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

By the 1850s and '60s, photography had developed rapidly and become widespread.  Pictures were taken during the Crimean War although, admittedly, they showed no action, and the American Civil war was thoroughly documented.  Families and individuals were increasingly having their pictures taken and while one might have to sit still for an extended period of time, there was usually a head-brace to restrain the subject from motion and the whole process took far less time and was far less expensive than the alternative; a painting.

As photography became more popular, its social uses became equally evident.  Thus it was that from the mid-1850s onward the notion that it might be an effective way of identifying criminals began to come into increasing focus. Various ways of identifying criminals have been practiced throughout history.  Dr. Anil Aggrawal, professor of Forensic Medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, has noted that

Identification of persons especially criminals has always been a problem with the police. In ancient Egypt, detailed descriptions of criminals were maintained by the police. In many societies, the problem of identifying wrongdoers was solved by branding and mutilating them. This made the work of the police that much easier. With this system, if a person was apprehended picking a pocket, the police would have no problem knowing whether he was the first offender or not. If he was already branded, it would be clear that he had already committed an offence, and he would receive a much more severe sentence.

Although not widely practiced, branding was a form of indentifying certain criminals in Great Britain and its colonies even into the second half of the nineteenth century. J. I. Ikin, at the time a Lecturer in Anatomy and Physiology in the School of Medicine at Leeds, writing in the British Medical Journal (10 January 1857) tells us that the branding of deserters with the letter "D" was still practiced although the "branding" was done, not with a hot iron, as had once been the practice, but "with three or four needles tied together, and the letter D is pricked out in the skin under the left arm; a little gunpowder rubbed in, which does better than caustic; in fact, it is the same as tattooing."

The purpose, of course, was to provide a means of identification and Ikin goes on to discuss ways in which deserters would try to hide the D on attempting to rejoin the forces. All of the various methods of identification were gradually replaced with photographs and even after the advent of finger-printing as a tool for identification, photographs remained of great importance.

For much of the nineteenth century, identification of criminals was largely dependent upon detectives being able to recognize criminals with whom they had been in contact.  There were even paid officers whose primary task appears to have been the recognition of criminals.  Unfortunately, as John Dawson pointed out "as matters at present stand, the detectives ... are better known to the criminals than the criminals are to the detectives."  Thus it was that photographs seemed such a useful tool, especially when combined with a detailed description. Initially the photographs that were used by the police and by the gaol administrators were taken by amateurs or photographic studios more experienced in finding a "good" pose.  The police or prison puctires were commonly face on and were posed in a variety of different ways.  Even so, it is quite remarkable that in the mid-1850s, less than two decades after Daguerre's important picture, Richard Monckton Milnes in evidence before the House of Commons' Transportation Committee,could state that

Mr. Gardner, the ingenious and excellent governor of the Bristol gaol, has possessed himself of a photographic apparatus, with which he takes the likeness of every one of his prisoners who he has reason to believe is a person really embarked in crime as a calling.  New. he says he can produce copies for 6d. each.  it is believed by the police that, with the exception of London, 14 copies would be all that would be required, to send them to the great resorts of criminals, namely, to towns which are likely to be visited by old offenders, who desire to hide themselves, and to go where they are not known.

Gardner himself, in a circular distributed in 1854, discusses the advantages to be gained through photographing offenders.  He describes how he sent a photograph around when he thought one of his prisoners might be a habitual criminal and the image was recognized as that of a man "convicted at Wells; the necessary witness was subpoenaed, his former conviction proved, and he was sentenced to four years' penal servitude."

A 12 Years Old Prisoner in Wandworth Gaol

Photography as a means of identification was not greeted with unalloyed enthusiasm.  There were still those in the criminal justice system, both amongst the police and in the prison system who advocated more drastic forms of marking.  Not surprisingly, with the harsher attitudes implied in the Canarvon Committee (1863), the views of those like the Governor of Huntingdon were at least heard, if not acceded to. Governor Shepherd of that prison advocated marking prisoners in the same way deserters were marked albeit with India Ink rather than gunpowder.  But this may simply have been a reaction to his lack of faith in photography.

In Birmingham, as early as 1858, the police were arranging for photographs of those arrested to be taken in a private studio. The number of photographs rapidly increased and soon there was an archive of photographs, a rogues' gallery. With each photograph was listed comprehensive data including details of the supposed crime. and the sentence eventually handed down. By the 1890s there was much talk of the Bertillon system for criminal identification.  Originally known as "anthropometry," it was later called "Bertillonage" after its creator, Alphonse Bertillon.  Although the method, which was based on a series of formal and extensive measurements never became popular in Great Britain which preferred fingerprinting, Bertillon's insistance on a formal structure carried over into the creation of a standard "mug shot" which involved two views; one full face and one profile, a technique which is still employed world-wide. Nonetheless, "Bertillonage" was well enough known in England by the 1890s, for that greatest of consulting detectives, Sherlock Holmes, to express his admiration of the system in "The Naval Treaty."

within a few years, photographs of prisoners were being taken on their entering prison and on their release. And this, along with a detailed physical description was to be the primary means of identification until the beginning of the twentieth century and the gradual introduction of fingerprinting.

The Victorian Middle Class

It is never easy to define, let alone identify the key traits, of a particular class.  In the case of the Victorian middle-class it is especially difficult.  For one thing, the long period of time from the ascent of Victoria to the throne to her death covered more than six decades.  During those long years, Great Britain went from being a rural, almost medieval, society to one which stood on the cusp of modernism.  As well, all of the changes during that time impacted not only on the classes themselves, but on the structure and relations between classes.

Writing not long after the end of that era, R. H. Gretton noted that there were “few subjects … in which definition is more difficult.”  Almost 100 years later, his words still ring true. As he goes on to note, the term, “middle-class”

has...an inherent vagueness; the very name “Middle Class” suggests a stratum of society which, though obviously in existence, and calling for a descriptive label, was so lacking in marked characteristics or qualities that it could only be described as lying between two other classes.

The problem, he continues, is that the term “middle” can be read as “transitional.”  This means that at one end the middle-class merges with a higher class and at the other, with a lower class.  In the former, it is, in all probability, intentional and desirable, an admission of successful upward striving.  At the other, it may well be “a confession of failure.”  Of course, over time not only does the middle-class itself shift its ground, the lines at which it merges with other classes are fluid and change as well.  Even within the middle-class there were distinctions which determined the behaviour of individuals.  One might, for example, be a professional man and that might mean that one was a "gentleman" since a lawyer would undoubtedly be privy to much information about the gentry.  Those of the middle-class who interacted either professionally or socially would have been considered as "gentlefolk."  On the other hand, there were those whose fortunes could not buy them entry into the gentry.  Nobody would have considered them as "gentlefolk," although they were certainly middle-class.  At the other extreme were those whom, today, we would describe as "white-collar" workers.  Clerks, managers and civil servants amongst others, earning between 100 and 200 pounds per annum might well be considered middle-class, but would certainly not have ranked as gentlemen.

A number of factors conspired during the nineteenth century to focus attention on the middle-class.  Not least among these were industrialization and education.  The former acted as a two-edged sword.  For many Britons it increased their wealth, expanding and consolidating new markets and confirming the new middle-class.  And with the growth of this class, so too grew consumerism.  One of the features of the emergent middle-class was what the Norwegian economist and sociologist, Thorstein Veblen, referred to as "conspicuous consumption." But for others the Industrial Revolution rather than offering hope, dragged them down.  Life was changed dramatically for the working class when a bare subsistence wage was considered adequate recompense for a working day that might extend from the early hours of the morning until well after dark six days a week.  The thousands of agricultural labourers who left the land rarely found their lives bettered in the cities under the factory system.

Consumerism by the middle-classes was contributed to by greater leisure and the development of department stores.  These stores were  bright and spacious, with gas-lights and plate-glass windows.  They offered an opportunity for the newly well-off middle-class, particularly the middle-class matrons, to spend their money on all the new and wonderful products that were constantly being made available to the market.  There were, of course, all sorts of other products including travel which was becoming increasingly popular in the Victorian years.  As Lawrence James, in his history of the middle-class comments, the "middle class expended as much time, energy and ingenuity on spending money as they did earning it."

Education, or rather lack of it, was a problem for the middle-class, particularly those who were just clawing their way up from the working classes.  Thomas Arnold, in the mid-1860s, was asking why it was that secondary education was reserved for an elite rather than being available to “the children of our middle and professional classes.” And while the newspapers advertised all sorts of wonderful educational opportunities aimed at the middle-class, it was, as Arnold comments, that  “no one who knows anything of the subject , will venture to affirm that … [they] give, or can give, that which they 'conscientiously offer.'”  It was not until the following decade and beyond, beginning with the 1870 Education Act, that a form of public education began to provide the weapon of widespread literacy for the working classes, thereby offering them a tool for upward mobility.

If there was one word to describe the Victorian middle-class, it would undoubtedly be “respectability.”  And if there was one outstanding virtue, it would have to be the work ethic.  Through hard work one could become, if one was not already, one of the middle-class.  There were self-help books in a-plenty, with perhaps the best known of these being Self Help by the aptly named Samuel Smiles.  While it is easy to make fun of this book, it is important as a marker of the best characteristics of the middle-class; a class which during Victoria's long reign changed the face of Great Britain.

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette

That marvelous creation of Thackeray's, George Fitz-Boodle, Esquire, Member of the Omnium Club and the third-best whist-player in Europe tells us that he is

 . . . not, in the first place, what is called a ladies' man, having contracted an irrepressible habit of smoking after dinner, which has obliged me to give up a great deal of the dear creatures' society; nor can I go much to country-houses for the same reason. Say what they will,ladies do not like you to smoke in their bedrooms: their silly little noses scent out the odor upon the chintz, weeks after you have left them.

Certainly, amongst men, smoking was a serious social rite.  Special clothing was worn by men who engaged in the practice when ladies were not present or had retired.  Lady Constance Howard, in Etiquette: What to Do, and How to Do it, published in 1885 tells us that

In country houses in the evening gentlemen usually don a smoking suit, which suits are composed of velvet, satin, Indian silk, cloth braided,etc., according to the wearers' tastes and finances.  Slippers are worn instead of boots; but on no account what is called a 'smoking cap' -- that is an article of male attire happily consigned to oblivion.

Interestingly, although opposed to the practice of smoking, it appears that the dictates of fashion, when applied to the men who were so engaged, were still very much "observed" if not "dictated" by women.

Etiquette books generally seem to have agreed that smoking was not a desirable habit.  One work published in the mid '50s, described it as "at best, an ungentlemanly and dirty habit," while Cassell's Hand-book of Etiquette for 1860 warns gentlemen that

If you smoke or take snuff, you will find it difficult to observe that constant personal cleanliness so essential in a gentleman.  Before mixing with ladies take off your coat in which you have been smoking, and rinse your mouth, lest your breath should be tainted with the 'weed'.

By the 1890s, Lady Gertrude Elizaberth Campbell could write, in Etiquette of Good Society, that

A gentleman ... will never smoke in the presence of a lady without first obtaining her permission, and if, when smoking out of doors, he meets any lady, be she friend or foe, he will take his cigar out of his mouth while passing her.

Although there is a considerable body of information on smoking during the Victorian period, much of it is found in contemporary etiquette books or novels.  Thus, it generally relates to the upper classes and particularly "club" men.  There is also a reasonable amount of information on the middle classes, but as in all things, the information about smoking in the lower and labouring classes is limited.  Nonetheless, some information can be derived from observers of the lower classes and the "explorers" of "darkest" England. 

While smoking in England has a long history, dating back to the sixteenth century, tobacco was primarily smoked in pipes and by men.  To this, over the years, was added both snuff taking and cigar smoking with the latter taking hold after the Napoleonic wars.  But it was only after the Crimean war that cigarette smoking became popular.  By the middle of the 1860s, cigarette shops were appearing and with the industrialization of cigarette manufacture by W. D. and H. O. Wills the cigarette had come to Great Britain to stay.  The machinery employed by the company could produce 200 cigarettes a minute and undoubtedly contributed to the growing consumption of tobacco. By the '80s Wild Woodbine had become one of the most popular cigarettes in the country and the price of cigarettes had dropped to as low as a penny.  Through the last four decades of the nineteenth century, as a result of cheap and readily available cigarettes, the rate of tobacco consumption increased by 5 per cent per year!

Because cigarettes were sold in paper packets, it was common practice to insert a piece of cardboard in order to keep the cigarettes from being crushed.  This led to the practice of putting pictures on the cards and, of course, as any good entrepreneur would know, sets of cards (one card from the set to each packet) would encourage the smoker to buy the same brand each time he wanted more cigarettes. A set of these, from the last years of the nineteenth century, can be seen at the top of the page.

A Smoker
1844

Although it was not until the middle years of the 20th Century that scientific evidence was used to establish the dangers of smoking,  the debate over the risks it entailed was already being engaged in 100 years earlier. Dr George Sigmond writing in The Lancet as early as 1837, described at some length, the consequences of smoking. He did, however, suggest, as what not uncommon, that there were medicinal benefits to be found in tobacco, including the relief of asthma.  A sketch of a "typical" smoker in the mid 1840s, as seen in the Illustrated London News, can be seen on the left.

By the middle of the century, it was commonly accepted that smoking was likely to be injurious to one's health.  But the main concern of the medical profession continued to be excessive smoking.  As Dr J. C. Bucknill wrote to The Lancet in 1857,

There can be no doubt of the fact, that the excessive use of tobacco, in any of its forms, is highly pernicious.  the excessive use of snuff is liable to occasion unmanageable forms of indigestion; that of chewing and smoking weakens the energy of the nervous syste, impairs the digesting force of the stomach, and the secreting force of the liver; and, in extreme cases, produces an affection of the muscular system not unlike paralysis agitans.

The Illustrated London News, in its "Metropolitan News" for 11 April 1863, reported the death of a forty-eight year old Italian confectioner as a result of what his medical advisor claimed was "excessive smoking" which had "unquestionably produced disease or nervous paralysis of the heart."  The Duke of Wellington was strongly opposed to smoking and as a result of the growth of cigar smoking, particularly among military officers, he asked that

The Officers commanding Regiments ... prevent smoking in the Mess Roomns of their several Regiments ... and to discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank in their Regiments.

Such discussions were, in the main, the province of the middle and upper classes.  The lower and labouring classes smoked and undoubtedly enjoyed it.  While women of the better classes generally eschewed tobacco, at least until the latter years of the century, poorer women enjoyed smoking.  They commonly smoked "cutties" or short pipes which were often referred to as "nose warmers."  G. L. Apperson, in his Social History of Smoking, notes

The old Irishwomen who were once a familiar feature of London street-life as sellers of apples and other small wares at street corners, were often hardened smokers; and so were, and doubtless still are, many of the gipsy women who tramp the country.

If a woman from the "better" classes smoked, in the middle-years of Victoria's reign, it was an indication that she was "fast." But as time moved on, so too did the attitudes toward smoking. Although, as late as 1891, a report appeared in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper of a row which erupted in a café when a woman tried to light her cigarette and was told women were not allowed to smoke there. She was requested to desists, but refused. When her companion threw a bottle at the waiter's head and broke a panel behind his target, the police were called in. Obviously the court was somewhat sympathetic since the defendant was fined 1 shilling with 5 pounds costs for the broken panel.

Certainly such ceremonious smoking behaviour as that we have seen from the "better" classes was not to be met with in the lower and labouring classes; and while fights within these social groups were frequent, they were unlikely to be over smoking.  Richard Rowe in Life in the London Streets (1881) wrote of

two or three score of thick-necked, low-browed young men and hobbydehoys, in greasy cords or threadbare pea-jackets, and a sprinkling of ugly, shabbily-dressed women, sprawling their elbows on porter-slopped tables in rough wooden boxes, smoking rank tobacco, drinking adulterated beer, and listening, in moping, unsocial silence, to the wiry jangle of a worn-out little square piano in a corner...

Clearly smoking was a "hot" issue and the acceptance or rejection of it as a social rite appears to have had more to do with class than with other forms of behaviour.  What was acceptable for the poorer classes was distinctly unacceptable or barely acceptable for their betters although the modes of engaging in the activity differed from class to class.
 
A copy of the full report of the incident where a woman was asked to stop smoking appears below.

The Aristocracy

 The Duke and Duchess of York at

the Duchess of Devonshire's Ball

In any analysis of England it is important to have some idea of the structure of the society.  In the Victorian years, although there was an ever-increasing fluidity to society, it still retained a great deal of the pattern that had emerged over the previous centuries. The upper-most classes consisted largely of the aristocracy and what is sometimes referred to as the "squirearchy."  Although "Squire" was not an official title, it was commonly used to identify the wealthy landowners who were not part of the Aristocracy.  The Aristocracy was made up of the royal family and the lords temporal and ecclesiastical. At the very top of the "Beehive" was the Queen and her Consort. 

Following on from the excesses of her predecessors, Victoria made the Court and the Royal Family more respectable than it had ever been before.  Her entire style was such as to define her as a "middle-class" monarch. It was, however, not so much that she was middle-class; clearly she was not, but that she appealed to the constantly growing middle-classes; reflecting their values and morality. Despite the middle-class virtues reflected by the Royal Family, the aristocracy still held sway throughout the nineteenth century.  Few, if any, in the upper-class worked and  Income came from inherited land and investments.

As late as the 1880s, more than half the members of the House of Commons came from the upper classes and, of course, the entire House of Lords.  Many owned multiple establishments and while the Duke of Devonshire (the Harty-Tarty who had been involved with the lovely Skittles) was certainly at the top of the social tree with his wife, the double Duchess (Duchess of Manchester in her first marriage and Duchess of Devonshire in her second), they were not unusual.  For them, the year revolved around a number of locations. The extravagance of their lives is difficult to appreciate.

According to the younger sister of the present Duke,

Each year they spent time in at least five different houses.  From the middle of July until 12 August they stayed at their seaside home, Compton Place in Eastbourne.  Then they moved up to Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire for the grouse shooting, where they remained until the middle of September.  The winter months were spent at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, where they entertained for shooting parties and for Christmas.  The extravagance of these entertainments was, even for those days, great.  Turtles, destined for soup, were sent up from London three times a week at a cost of 24 pounds each, sometimes only to be thrown away unused.  A Derbyshire farmer on being told the price of these reptiles exclaimed, "I'm darned if that dead shell fish isn't worth as much as my dead cow!" Because there was always so much food left over, anyone who worked at Chatsworth by the day was allowed to take away enough food for his supper.  This practice eventually had to be stopped, as non-workers from far and wide came for a free meal, and one man was seen removing wheelbarrows full of food.

In the early spring the Devonshires went to Lismore Castle in County Waterford, where their time was spent salmon fishing on the Blackwater River.  By the middle of April it was time to pack up and move to Devonshire House in London for the season, which got under way at the beginning of May.

The social life of the upper classes revolved, very much, around itself and a rather predictable set of activities.  There was, first and foremost of course, "The Season."  While the upper class often had a full and active social life in the country, it was in the three months that they generally spent in London that the most splendid and expensive entertainment was available. "The Season" was a period of conspicuous consumption and something that only the wealthy or well-placed could afford.  For the men it might be a time of work or an opportunity to retreat to their city clubs, but for the women it was the highpoint of the social year.  And the highest point of "The Season," was a young woman's "coming out."  It was this presentation at Court that provided the passport to all of the activities of "The Season."

Preparation for presentation was hectic and strenuous.  All of the details as to what one could and could not wear, what one was to do and not do, learning the deep court curtsy and how to back gracefully out of the monarch's presence were all skills to be acquired before one's "coming out."

And then there were the balls.  Costume balls were a feature of "The Season," and there were none as elaborate as that given by the Duchess of Devonshire on 2 July 1897.  It was the Jubilee year; the sixtieth year of Victoria's reign.  In that Indian Summer, Victoria ruled over almost one-quarter of the world and its population.  One of those attending the great ball wrote to the Pall Mall Gazette  on 6 July in rather effusive terms to describe the event.

 Looking back on the glories of a short, thougfh exceptionally brilliant, season, the one ineffaceable memory where social functions are concertned will be magnificent fancy dress ball given by the Duchess of Devonshire.  Gracious Royalties, lovely women, handsome men were there and, best of all, an entente cordiale that caused the whole entertainment to be a complete and unparalled success.

Lady Violet Greville noted that in "a scene of unvarying gaiety and brilliance," everybody who was anybody, "jostled and moved."
 
 But the golden years were drawing to a close.  New powers were beginning to flex their muscles and there may have been a certain hectic excitement a hint, perhaps of hysteria, which heralded the years to come.