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The Transformation of London “Society” at the End of Victoria's Reign: Evidence from the Court Presentation Records*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Nancy W. Ellenberger
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Extract

To its late-Victorian participants, London “Society” was one of those abstractions, like “the young,” that deteriorated with each passing generation. For decades chroniclers of Britain's clannish ruling circles had lamented the diminishing refinement, morals, and breeding of those highest sections of elite society that migrated to the capital each spring for the parliamentary and social “season.” Thus, when the press, with many contributors from the aristocracy itself, launched a new campaign against London Society in the last years of Victoria's reign, the charges had a familiar ring. Society was expanding alarmingly, abandoning its standards, worshipping notoriety and opulence, and abdicating serious responsibilities in the pursuit of frivolous amusement. If the criticisms contained few surprises, the intensity of the alarm was unprecedented. Beginning in 1874, with The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope's novel of a greedy and credulous beau monde, and continuing through a series of journal articles bearing titles such as “The New Society,” “The Deterioration of English Society,” “The Sins of Society,” and “The Enlargement of London Society,” critics subjected the aristocratic elites and the informal institutions of the London season to fierce scrutiny and nearly universal diagnosis of advanced illness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Winter 1990 , pp. 633 - 653
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1990

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the following organizations and individuals for their contributions to this project: the Social Science Research Council and the Naval Academy Research Council; the staff of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London; the Naval Academy History Works-in-Progress seminar; Andrew Federer for showing me these materials; Dr. John Kolp for his help with the chart.

References

1 See, for example, The Lounger (1786) in How They Lived, vol. 3: An Anthology of Original Documents Written between 1700 and 1815 (Oxford, 1969), p. 113Google Scholar: “The crest of noble or illustrious ancestry, has sunk before the sudden accumulation of wealth in vulgar hands. Elegance of manner…dignity of deportment…pride of virtue have given way to that tide of fortune, which has lifted the low, the illiterate, and the unfeeling, into stations of which they are unworthy.” Elizabeth Longford notes Lord Melbourne's displeasure at seeing the Rothschilds in high society in the 1830s (Queen Victoria [New York, 1964], p. 77Google ScholarPubMed). In the 1920s Lady Londonderry also complained of the changes in Society since her youth and attributed the problems to the advent of film stars (Retrospect [London, 1938], pp. 40, 252).Google ScholarPubMed

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20 Outlook, 5 February 1898. Outlook was founded by George Wyndham, junior minister for the Conservatives and a friend of W. E. Henley, to replace the defunct New Review, see Mackail, J. W. and Wyndham, Guy, eds., Life and Letters of George Wyndham, 2 vols. (London, 1925), 1: 62.Google Scholar

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25 London Gazette, 14 July 1837.

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29 In 1859, for example, Mrs. Charles Tennant, wife of a millionaire Glasgow industrialist and mother of the future Margot Asquith, was introduced under the sponsorship of Lady Camperdown, but the Tennant family did not begin to attend the London season until the late 1870s. At that time Mrs. Tennant was presented to the queen again, then introduced her eldest daughter, who was “coming out” (PRO, LC 6/8).

30 For exact figures, see appendix.

31 Figures on population increase in Britain taken from Cook, Chris and Keith, Brendon, British Historical Facts, 1830–1900 (New York, 1975), p. 232Google Scholar. On the aristocracy, see Hollingsworth, T. H., The Demography of the British Peerage, supplement to Population Studies 18 (London, [1965]), p. 33.Google Scholar

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33 These figures were obtained from a sample which counted the numbers of “Ladies” and “Honorables” among the sponsors in the years 1859, 1879, and 1899. This procedure excluded the granddaughters of title holders, as well as the daughters of baronets, but included the wives of knights.

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39 As far as possible the families of both husband and wife were checked in determining which social category to assign a woman. A woman born into a landed family — either aristocratic or gentry — was placed in that category, even if she married a professional or a businessman. A woman not from a landed background was placed in the category of her husband's occupation. Only the ranks of colonel and general in the army and captain and admiral in the navy were considered in placing a man in the category of military professional.

40 Morier: Dictionary of National Biography; Bosanquet, : Law List (1865)Google Scholar, Walford's, County Families (1888)Google Scholar. The wives of both men presented their daughters in 1881.

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44 Rubinstein, , “Wealth, Elites and Class Structure,” pp. 112–17.Google Scholar

45 Directory of Directors (1889).

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47 Davies, : obituary in The Times, 19 September 1912Google Scholar. Davies had not even the plutocrats' enormous wealth behind him, for he left “only” £87,000 when he died. Morgans, Vaughan: Dictionary of Business Biography, 3: 3Google Scholar; Who was Who on Sir Walter Vaughan Morgan.

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63 Thomas, J. A., The House of Commons, 1821–1901, pp. 14–16Google Scholar, indicates that 1880 was the first year that men from non-landed backgrounds made up a majority of the House of Commons.

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