I was just going to commence a tirade regarding the aristocracy
here, and to rage against that cool assumption of superiority which
distinguishes their lordships' commerce with artists of all sorts:
that politeness which, if it condescends to receive artists at all,
takes care to have them altogether, so that there can be no mistake
about their rank--that august patronage of art which rewards it with
a silly flourish of knighthood, to be sure, but takes care to
exclude it from any contact with its betters in society--I was, I
say, just going to commence a tirade against the aristocracy for
excluding artists from their company, and to be extremely satirical
upon them, for instance, for not receiving my friend Morgiana, when
it suddenly came into my head to ask, was Mrs. Walker fit to move in
the best society?--to which query it must humbly be replied that she
was not. Her education was not such as to make her quite the equal
of Baker Street. She was a kind honest and clever creature; but, it
must be confessed, not refined. Wherever she went she had, if not
the finest, at any rate the most showy gown in the room; her
ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets, marabouts, and
other fallals, always the most conspicuous. She drops "h's" here
and there. I have seen her eat peas with a knife (and Walker,
scowling on the opposite side of the table, striving in vain to
catch her eye); and I shall never forget Lady Smigsmag's horror when
she asked for porter at dinner at Richmond, and began to drink it
out of the pewter pot. It was a fine sight. She lifted up the
tankard with one of the finest arms, covered with the biggest
bracelets ever seen; and had a bird of paradise on her head, that
curled round the pewter disc of the pot as she raised it, like a
halo. These peculiarities she had, and has still. She is best away
from the genteel world, that is the fact. When she says that "The