Not that Mrs. Haughton honestly designed, nor even wished to draw the
young man from the dazzling vortex of high life into her own little
currents of dissipation. She was much too proud of Lionel to think that
her friends were grand enough for him to honour their houses by his
presence. She had in this, too, a lively recollection of her lost
Captain's doctrinal views of the great world's creed. The Captain had
flourished in the time when Impertinence, installed by Brummell, though
her influence was waning, still schooled her oligarchs, and maintained
the etiquette of her court; and even when his /misalliance/ and his debts
had cast him out of his native sphere, he lost not all the original
brightness of an exclusive. In moments of connubial confidence, when
owning his past errors, and tracing to his sympathising Jessie the causes
of his decline, he would say: "'Tis not a man's birth, nor his fortune,
that gives him his place in society--it depends on his conduct, Jessie.
He must not be seen bowing to snobs, nor should his enemies track him to
the haunts of vulgarians. I date my fall in life to dining with a horrid
man who lent me L100, and lived in Upper Baker Street. His wife took my
arm from a place they called a drawing-room (the Captain as he spoke was
on a fourth floor), to share some unknown food which they called a dinner
(the Captain at that moment would have welcomed a rasher). The woman
went about blabbing--the thing got wind--for the first time my character
received a soil. What is a man without character! and character once
sullied, Jessie, man becomes reckless. Teach my boy to beware of the
first false step--no association with parvenus. Don't cry, Jessie--
I don't mean that he is to cut your--relations are quite different from
other people--nothing so low as cutting relations. I continued, for
instance, to visit Guy Darrell, though he lived at the back of Holborn,
and I actually saw him once in brown beaver gloves. But he was a
relation. I have even dined at his house, and met odd people there--
people who lived also at the back of Holborn. But he did not ask me