Treasury, and must needs spend it and their private allowances besides on the maintenance of a cab and diminutive groom, owing to the vast size of London. The reader is wafted back to the days when a "week-end" party lasted for a full month, and albums and "a little harmony"—Views of Venice and Tom Moore's ballads—more than sufficed for the evening's hilarity. And lastly, the severe etiquette of the day is sharply illustrated. Instance the occasion when the house party at St. Mary's comes out on the Terrace. Lord Beaufort offers to walk with Eliza Douglas down a garden path, one hundred yards in broad daylight, to join his sister who is visible at the far end. Eliza is anxious to comply with so agreeable a proposal, but an obvious difficulty occurs to them both. The plan must fall through unless a chaperon is forthcoming!
The social life which Miss Eden portrays in the Semi-attached Couple does indeed belong to a civilization far more strange to us to-day than that of the Pharaohs. It is for this reason, I believe, she will particularly appeal to a generation that ever pines for something fresh, something different, and is not averse from finding it in the atmosphere of the early nineteenth century, now emerging more brilliant than ever from its Victorian eclipse.
If I am right, then at this late hour Miss Eden on her merits will obtain from posterity her fitting place in the Outer Hall of Honour. She herself would have deprecated any such distinction—a further proof of the remoteness of her generation—and her warmest admirers seek no niche for her in the inner shrine where the Immortals are.
