American Wives and English Housekeeping 40
The other evening at a charming dinner party in London, and in that intimate time which is just before the men return to the drawing room, I found myself tête-à-tête with my genial hostess. She leaned forward and said with a touch of anxiety in her pretty eyes, "Confess that I am heroic?"
"To give a dinner party without champagne."
It was only then that I realised that we had had excellent claret and hock instead of that fatal wine which represents, as really nothing else does, the cheap pretence which is so humorously characteristic of Modern Society.
"You see," she said with a deep sigh, "I have a conscience, and I try to reconcile a modest purse and the hospitality people expect from me, and that is being very heroic these days, and it does so disagree with me to be heroic! Besides, people don't appreciate your heroism, they only think you are mean!"
I realised at once the truth and absurdity of what she said. It does require tremendous heroism to have the courage of a small income and to be hospitable within your means, for by force of bad example hospitality grows dearer year by year. The increasing extravagance of life is all owing to those millionaires, and imitation millionaires, whose example is a curse and a menace. They set the pace, and the whole world tears after. Because solely of their wealth, or supposed wealth, they are accepted everywhere, and it is they who have broken down the once impassable barriers between the English classes, with the result that the evil which before might have been confined to the highest, now that extravagant imitation is universal, permeates all ranks even to the lowest.
The old aristocracy is giving place to the new millionaires, and it gladly bestows on them its friendship in exchange for the privilege of consorting with untold wealth and possible hints on how to make it. The dignity that hedges about royalty is indeed a thing of the past, since a bubble king of finance is said to have been too busy to vouchsafe an audience to an emperor.
There is nothing in the modern world so absolutely real and convincing and universal as its pretence. It has set itself a standard of aims and of living which can best be described as the Champagne Standard.