s of every
twenty-four hours began with a long dinner at a quarter past eight, or
sometimes a quarter to nine. For any young man who took part in the
social movement, dinner would be followed by two or by more "At Homes."
Then, when midnight was approaching, began the important balls, of
which any such young man would show himself at an equal number, and
dance, eat quails, or sit with a suitable companion under palm trees, as
the case might be; while vigilant chaperons, oppressed by the weight of
their tiaras, would ask one another, "Who is the young man who is
dancing with _my_ daughter?" Finally, if the night were fair, young men,
and sometimes ladies, if their houses were close at hand, would stroll
homeward through the otherwise deserted streets, while the East, gray
already, was being slowly tinged with saffron.

If the life of those who play a part in a London season is to be judged
by what they do with themselves during a London season itself, it might
be reasonably asked (as it _is_ asked by morose social critics) how any
sensible people can find such a life tolerable. To this question there
are several answers. One is that no society of a polished and brilliant
kind is possible unless special talents and graces, wide experience,
knowledge, and the power that depends on knowledge, enter into its
composition and support it in a peculiar manner which does not prevail
elsewhere. This fact, however, will be but partly intelligible unless we
remember that it is based on, and implies, another--namely, that the
society which is identified with the life of a London season represents
for those who figure in it, not life as a whole, but merely one phase of
a life of which the larger part is of very different kinds, and which
elsewhere exhibits very different aspects.

This observation specially applies to the days when London society was
in the main an annual assemblage of old-established landed families,
whose principal homes were in the country, and whose consequence was
derived from their rural, not from their urban, associations. Their
houses in the country were constantly filled with visitors. Society, in
a certain sense of the word, surrounded them even there. But it was a
society differing in its habits, and even in its constitution, from that
which formed itself in London, and of the total lives of most of the
persons, composing it, London life represented not more than a quarter.
For me, my own annual life as a