The fashionable novel is as dead
as a door nail: Lothair was nearly the last of the species. There
are novelists who write about "Society," to be sure, like Mr.
Norris; but their tone is quite different. They do not speak as if
Dukes and Earls were some strange superior kind of beings; their
manner is that of men accustomed to and undazzled by Earls, writing
for readers who do not care whether the hero is a lord or a
commoner. They are "at ease," though not terribly "in Zion."
Thackeray himself introduces plenty of the peerage, but it cannot be
said that he is always at ease in their society. He remembers that
they are lords, and is on his guard, very often, and suspicious and
sarcastic, except, perhaps when he deals with a gentleman like Lord
Kew. He examines them like curious wild animals in the Jardin des
Plantes. He is an accomplished naturalist, and not afraid of the
lion; but he remembers that the animal is royal, and has a title.
Mr. Norris, for instance, shows nothing of this mood. Mr. Trollope
was not afraid of his Dukes: he thought none the worse of a man
because he was the high and puissant prince of Omnium. As for most
novelists, they no longer paint fashionable society with enthusiasm.
Mr. Henry James has remarked that young British peers favour the
word "beastly,"--a point which does not always impress itself into
other people so keenly as into Mr.
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