At the
end of eight or ten seasons in London society he professed to
know less about it, or how to enter it, than he did when he made
his first appearance at Miss Burdett Coutts's in May, 1861.
Sooner or later every young man dropped into a set or circle,
and frequented the few houses that were willing to harbor him. An
American who neither hunted nor raced, neither shot nor fished
nor gambled, and was not marriageable, had no need to think of
society at large. Ninety-nine houses in every hundred were
useless to him, a greater bore to him than he to them. Thus the
question of getting into -- or getting out of -- society which
troubled young foreigners greatly, settled itself after three or
four years of painful speculation. Society had no unity; one
wandered about in it like a maggot in cheese; it was not a hansom
cab, to be got into, or out of, at dinner-time.
Therefore he always professed himself ignorant of society; he
never knew whether he had been in it or not, but from the
accounts of his future friends, like General Dick Taylor or
George Smalley, and of various ladies who reigned in the
seventies, he inclined to think that he knew very little about
it. Certain great houses and certain great functions of course he
attended, like every one else who could get cards, but even of
these the number was small that kept an interest or helped
education.
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