The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-02-22
The Sameness of Society.
london World.l


Society at least is not obnoxious to the
charge preferred in the old Latin grammar
rule against the human race of being greedy of
novelty. 1t is true to its old favorites; and
just as the jokes which answer best in the
House of Commons are the familiar ones, so
the company which society loves to greet in its
drawing rooms is that composed of the stock
and standing dishes of the polite world.
we'll meaning dowager who is suspected of rev.
olutionary tendencies, and whose son is a lead
ing specimen of the rosewater academic Radi-
calism of the period, has recently ventured-
chiefly, it is believed, in a spirit of maternal
fondness- considerably to enlarge the limits of
her invitation list. Society has rightly re-
sented the audacity of the step. 1t has asked
with stare of vacant insolence, who the nov-
Ell nobodies might be; and it has almost
tainted at the shock of the announcement that
some of them were Irish members of Parlia-
ment. 1t quite understands the presence of a
few familiar nonentities. 1t acquiesces gloom
of the guests shall tail off with the names of a
Liberal journalist or two, of newspaper edi-
tor who takes his political tone from the salons
of the West End, and Of the respectable Orien
talist to whom the irony of fate has intructed
the empire of Printing House square. The
presence of these and of one or two other vari-
eties is Just tolerated. There will also be three
or four representative poets, student of cunei-
form characters and of Greek art fresh from
the British Museum, an artist or two, and half
a dozen professional dabblers in protoplasm
These constitute the ornamental fringe of the
fine world. They are, in manner, in society
bnt they are not of it; and whenever they pre-
sumo to talk too familiarly to their betters,
fashionable dame of sixty summers, who has
great notion of not allowing these people to
have ideas above their station, and who is
walking epitome of certain portions OF the
Church catechism, makes point OF turning to
some one of her set, and launching forth into
a conversation couched in the quaint esoteric
jargon which is so much affected.
With these very Insignificant exceptions,
the company at the gatherings for which the
season has now begun sugg, IS to the profane
mind an adaptation of cerla a words in the
doxology of the Church of England-as it was
in the beginning, 1t is now, and ever shall be.
One returns to the coast of Albion, and mixes
in the life of London after the lapse of years.
and finds that nothing is changed. The origi-
nal owners of a few titles are gone, but their
successors are there, and there is no need for
the Morning Post to set up the name afresh.
Ministries are formed, carry on the business of
the country for awhile, and are overthrown;
wars and revolution pass over the continent of
Europe; the sky is full of portents, and the air
of ugly noises; but nothing shakes the compos-
ure of these salons, or adds variety to the
crowds which fill them. New lessons are in
perpetual process of addition to the page Of
history; but there are no new guests to supple
ment the list, long since as wearily familiar as
the melancholy apparitions which used to pass
and repass upon the Adelphi stage. The indi-
viduals who contribute to the collective effect
of this polite phantasmagoria grow older their
talk wakes more intolerable in its staleness,
the anecdotes of the wit and the raconteur are
worn threadbare, the cynical humor and the
malignant thrusts of the Government clerk.
who won his social laurels about the time Of
the deluge, have long since lost their point.
The majority of the brilliant visitors would be
infinitely happier in bed, and the dominant
feeling, one cannot doubt, is that of supreme
mutual boredom. Yet the dismal rite knows
no intermissiOn and no Variety and il society
secretly protests against the sameness of its
entertainments, it takes good care to keep the
protest to ITSELF