F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 51
that forcibly reminds you of what occurred at the table of my Lady
Clarendon, with whom you twice had the pleasure and rare honor of
dining. And by implication, you always give us a sort of
lavender-water description of the very excellent persons you met
there, and what they were kind enough to say of America, and how
they complimented you, and made you the centre and all-absorbing
object of attraction-in a word, a truly wonderful person. And you
will not fail, now that it is become fashionable, to extol with
fulsome breath the greatness of every European despot it hath been
your good fortune to get a bow from. And you are just vain enough to
forever keep this before your up-country cousins. You say, too, that
you have looked in at Almacks. Almacks! alas! departed greatness.
With the rise of the Casino hath it lain its aristocratic head in
the dust.
Well!--the St. Cecilia you must know (its counterparts are to be
found in all our great cities) is a miniature Almacks-a sort of
leach-cloth, through which certain very respectable individuals must
pass ere they can become the elite of our fashionable world. To
become a member of the St. Cecilia-to enjoy its recherch
assemblies-to luxuriate in the delicate perfumes of its votaries, is
the besetting sin of a great many otherwise very sensible people.
And to avenge their disappointment at not being admitted to its
precious precincts, they are sure to be found in the front rank of
scandal-mongers when anything in their line is up with a member. And
it is seldom something is not up, for the society would seem to live
and get lusty in an atmosphere of perpetual scandal. Any amount of
duels have come of it; it hath made rich no end of milliners; it
hath made bankrupt husbands by the dozen; it hath been the theatre
of several distinguished romances; it hath witnessed the first
throbbings of sundry hearts, since made happy in wedlock; it hath
been the shibolath of sins that shall be nameless here. The reigning
belles are all members (provided they belong to our first families)