1830.] 



C " 209 ] 



MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 



The Exclusives, Svols., \Zrno. ; 1830 

 These, we were led to believe, were the 

 elite of the elite of the fashionable world, 

 and the picture, of course, drawn by one of 

 themselves, for who else could get a peep 

 behind the curtain ? The Court Journal, 

 now very high authority, whispered, a few 

 days ago, the highest personage of the land 

 was the original suggester and shaper, 

 though compelled of necessity to consign 

 the execution to less laborious hands the 

 minister's, perhaps, or some duke or duchess, 

 or peer or peeress, of lower degree, and 

 greater leisure. But we have been sadly 

 taken in it proves to be no representation 

 of those who, by the rerum imperiti, are 

 supposed to constitute the highest classes of 

 society; but of a soi-distant, self-elected 

 knot, a clique, a set, made up of persons, or 

 at least originating in persons baffled in 

 their ambitious attempts to lead the good 

 among the great, as they readily did the 

 bad, and become in danger themselves of 

 exclusion from them, resolving to turn the 

 tables upon them, set up a claim to superior 

 qualifications, arrogate the name and ho- 

 nours of fashion, and shrouding themselves 

 with a veil of mystery, exclude all who were 

 likely to censure their practices, or not go 

 completely into their views. How the 

 writer comes by his knowledge, or what is 

 his or her authority, or whether the whole 

 be not imaginary, we know not ; common 

 report, and she is " a liar," and the public 

 prints, who are not at all better, point to 

 certain well-known personages, who, whether 

 truly or not, are said not to have escaped 

 the flames without a little singeing. That 

 some such society, so influenced by a com- 

 mon spirit, or, rather, blindly following the 

 wiles and the smiles of some presiding ge- 

 nius, for self-defence, and for exclusive pur- 

 poses, exists, is not at all improbable. All the 

 world through, birds of a feather flock toge- 

 ther, and among them all, high and low, the 

 exclusive spirit pervades ; and nowhere is 

 this spirit so apparent, and so fiercely effec- 

 tive as in the middle classes of society no- 

 where appears there so much fixedness of 

 purpose, such inflexibility in resisting en- 

 croachments, such determination, in keeping 

 out the lower vulgar still, as in the- out- 

 skirts of London, at Clapham, or Kenning- 

 ton, and places of that cast. The " Ex- 

 clusives," and Almack's, long ago, in this 

 respect, are fools to them ; but these Ex- 

 clusives are represented as aiming not so 

 much to exclude, as to seduce to sweep 

 within their net the influential, the wives 

 of ministers, youthful senators, wealthy 

 peers, &c. ; and the purpose of the novel is 

 to shew the workings of the set, by detailing 

 the history of its leaders, and, especially, of 

 a few of its victims. We answer not fpr 

 the correctness of the picture ; we know 

 nothing about the parties ; it is with us a 



M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 50. 



fancy-piece, and the writer shall speak for 

 himself. He describes, obviously, to con- 

 demn, and details only to expose, and is, of 

 course, liable to the charge of exaggeration 

 that is his affair. After describing a 

 good old-fashioned assembly of the last 

 reign, where all is good-naturedly supposed 

 to be as it should be, he adds 



Thesociete choisie. however, which Lady Til- 

 ney desired to form was, in its nature, the very 

 reverse of what has been described. Its exclusive 

 character was to consist, not in the selection of 

 what was amiable in nobility.or virtuous in talent ; 

 it was not to be the circle drawn within a narrower 

 circumference, for a more perfect enjoyment of 

 private friendship, or the cultivation of more in- 

 tellectual pursuits than the wide range of fashion- 

 able life could afford ; it was not to be retirement 

 from the busier throng, for the purposes of a 

 more rational and purer existence ; but it was to 

 consist of those whose follies in the pursuit of 

 pleasure, and whose weakness in the indulgence 

 of all the emp/ty toys of life, had given them a 

 distinction above their fellows ; of those who 

 judged immorality, when burnished by the tinsel 

 of superficial acquirements, as venial error ; of 

 those, in short, who were either senseless or 

 wicked enough, to consider life but a bubble, to 

 be blown down the current according to the dic- 

 tates of the will, and whose daily existence testi- 

 fied that they were alike without a thought or a 

 fear for the morrow's eternity. Such were to be 

 its members, and its seclusion from the general 

 eye of the world ; its secession from all others 



but ; its rigid law, that unmarried women 



were not eligible to its chosen meetings for what 

 purpose, and to what end were these? If for 

 vanity of distinction, merely, it was weak; if for 

 the purpose of indulging in pursuits and conver- 

 sation, which could receive a check in a society 

 less selected for the object, it was wicked. In 

 whichever point of view, a society so constituted 

 must be demoralizing, for assuredly it would have 

 the character of being, if it even were not really 

 vicious and its example would have a contami- 

 nating effect in the corruption of morals, and the 

 overthrow of the barriers of domestic peace. 



It is, perhaps, scarcely worth the space to 

 allude further to the tale ; but in a word 

 the hero of the piece is a young lord, of 

 superior intellect, brought up with a respect 

 for religion and good morals, and betrothed 

 to a lady of the same virtuous bringing up 

 and excellent qualities. On his return 

 from a continental tour, being in parlia- 

 ment, and likely to become somebody, he is 

 immediately snapped up by the society, and is 

 soon alienated from hjs old and more sober 

 associates ; and, what is worse, one of the 

 circle, a young Circaean widow, fascinating 

 and irresistible, contrives to sow jealousies 

 between him and his soul's charmer, and 

 only fails of entangling him in a marriage 

 with herself by blundering in the address of 

 a letter. The wrong epistle luckily dis- 

 closes the whole series of artifice and in- 

 trigue in which she had long been dealing ; 



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