First-hand evidence, then, being ruled out, the purveyors may have derived their information from report. Here the baffled aspirants to the social distinction of being Smart may have helped them. But still such knowledge if worth anything must be based on something, and if on report it is merely the more valueless for having gone through so many mouths.
We are left then with the question of evidence derived from reporters, and here I think we touch the source of the appalling state of things pictured by the loquacious pessimist. The delightful anonymous author of the Londoner’s Log-book, has grouped the organs of those who chronicle social happenings under the title of Classy Cuttings, and it is from these columns that we must conclude that the praisers of past time derive their awful information. It is they who give to the thirsty public the details of the menu of the supper that followed the dance, and hint how great were the losings of a certain Countess who lives not a hundred miles from B-lgr-v-Sq-r-, when she played poker at St-l-n-. But, does that sort of information carry the required conviction? Indeed it only carries conviction of the lamb-like credulity of the person who believes it. Once upon a time an eminent and excellent lady revealed to a horrified audience that the Smart Set habitually drank what she called ‘White Cup’ at tea (sensation). It sounded thoroughly Neronian, but lost its impressiveness when the further revelation was made that at a tennis-party certain individuals had been so lost to all sense of decency as to partake of hock and soda instead of tea and cream.
It is on such foundations, columned by Classy Cuttings, that the praisers of past time build the Old Bailey, where, bewigged and berobed, they so solemnly pronounce the extreme sentence on Smart Sets and Society. We must not deny to their summing-up something of the gorgeously Oriental vocabulary of Ouida, though we cannot allow them much share in her wit. She told in the guise of fiction the sort of thing which the praisers of past time--after consulting Classy Cuttings--expect us to accept as facts; she and Classy Cuttings mixed the effervescent beverage which they allow to get flat, and then label it the beef-tea of Fact. And when we are offered these fantastic imaginings and are assured that the lurid pictures are positively photographic in their accuracy, all our pleasure, as readers, is gone, and we expire with a few hollow yawns. We had hoped it was Ouida, but to our unspeakable dismay we are told that it is all Too True. Not being able to swallow that, we can but remember the story of Dr. Johnson and the hot potato.