Snobbishly so called. Why draw these crude distinctions? We
all know that Mayfair happens to lie a few miles further west than
Whitechapel. It argues a lack of breeding to go on calling attention
to the fact. If the people of Whitechapel were less beautiful or less
well-mannered or more ignorant than we, there might be some excuse.
But they are not so. True, themselves talk about the East End, but
this only makes the matter worse. To a sensitive ear their phrase
has a ring of ironic humility that jars not less than our own coarse
boastfulness. Heaven knows they have a right to be ironic, and who
shall blame them for exercising it? All the same, this sort of thing
worries me horribly.
I said that I found Christmas rather agreeable than otherwise. But I
was speaking as one accustomed to live mostly in the past. The walk I
have just taken, refreshing in itself, has painfully reminded me that
I cannot hit it off with the present. My life is in the later days of
the eighteenth and the earlier days of the nineteenth century. This
twentieth affair is as a vision, dimly foreseen at odd moments, and
put from me with a slight shudder. My actual Christmases are spent
(say) in Holland House, which has but recently been built. Little
Charles Fox is allowed by his father to join us for the earlier stages
of dessert.
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