[There can be no] compromise over the process: for one [is] either one of the favourite children, the jeunesse dorée and adorée, or one [is] relegated to that vast outer throng, that anonymous bank of seaweed which never comes to the surface. To be déclassé [is] to vanish without trace, there being, to the official eye, only one class – First, Reserved, and paid for in advance.
Can it be otherwise? It is ‘quaint’ at the beginning, but it cannot go on being quaint: complimentary tickets and shared taxis may patch up the cracks for a time, but it is inevitable that So-and-so’s company should in the course of time become either an embarrassment or an expensive luxury – he is chary of the second bottle of champagne, public familiarity with his wife’s wardrobe earns it contempt in every restaurant in the West End of London, and the fact that they cannot return even the most modest form of hospitality is a trenchant debit in the social budget. Besides, sooner or later So-and-so will be wanting to borrow money, which is a different thing altogether. It was said of Sheridan that one could not take off one’s hat to him in the street without its costing fifty pounds, and that to stop to speak to him meant a certain loan of a hundred: news of such a financial hazard travels fast and widely, and deduces one’s social circle to a literal nodding acquaintanceship.
When poverty comes in at the door, love not only flies out of the window but bolts the shutters on the outside.
Let's be careful not to stereotype.
