The pity of it is that they will not rest from these strivings, or realize that what they pursue (either with longings or vituperation) exists only in their own excited brains. Each has his feverish dream: one pictures a heavenly Salem of dukes and duchesses, another a swimming bath full of champagne and paved with ortolans, another an Elysium where infinite bridge consumes the night, and continual changing of your dress the day. These conditions have no existence; they are Wills o’ the Wisp. There does not exist in the world a Smarter Set (to retain the beloved old snobbism) than a circle of friends who, with definite aims of their own, and tastes that are not copied from other people, enjoy themselves and are at ease with each other, not being snobs on the one hand or grousers on the other. All other ideas of Smart Sets, whether in London or Manchester or the Fiji Islands, are mere moonshine: the only Smart Set that ever existed or ever will exist is that of uncensorious and simple people who have the sense to appreciate the blessings they so richly enjoy. Of these Smart Sets there are many, but they are not the Smart Sets or the capital-lettered Society that are usually meant when allusion is made to them.
But somehow the notion of the existence of ‘A Smart Set’ or Society with a big S is so deep-rooted that it will be well to examine the evidence for its existence before labelling it ‘Bad Meat,’ to be destroyed by the Board of Moral Health. The evidence in favour of its existence (if they insist on it) is derivable from three possible sources:
(i.) First-hand evidence of those who have witnessed or partaken in these ungodly orgies.
Now the purveyors of the intelligence, those who distribute it, are largely the praisers of past time, who so persistently attack it and paint such lurid pictures of its Neronism. But they must have got their information from somewhere (unless we are reluctantly compelled to suppose they made it up) and they can have got it from no other sources than those specified above.
But on their own fervent asseverations they have never so much as set foot in these Medmenham Abbeys, and if their information is derived directly from the Abbeys, it must have been conveyed either by the revellers themselves, by their valets and ladies’ maids, or have grown out of the Tranby Croft trial. It is unlikely that the revellers should have recounted the story of their shame to those sleuth-hounds on the trail of decadence, and if we rule out the Tranby Croft trial as not covering all that the sleuth-hounds say about Smart Life, we must conclude that they must have induced (no doubt with suitable remuneration) the gentleman’s gentleman and the lady’s lady to say what their owners did and when they went to bed. But not for a moment can we believe that these distinguished scribes resorted to such a trick. The statement of the proposition shows how incredible it is, for these high-minded moralists simply _could_ not have applied for the knowledge of ‘sich goings on’ from chattering servants.