and his imposing procession of worldly, heartless, noble old dames. Trollope prefers country life, but his Claverings, de Courcys, Luftons, and the Duke of Omnium, show that he has no desire to neglect its aristocracy. Dickens, on the other hand, loved London and its struggling poor, but in the Merdles, the Veneerings, and the Dorrits redivivi, he does what he can with the humors of the struggling rich.
To Meredith the exasperating thing about polite society was its impoliteness,—its delight in gossip and scandal, its petty but venomous persecutions, and the false courtesy that takes refuge in conventionality. This impression apparently deepened with time, for it is glimpsed only in Evan Harrington and Sandra Belloni, of the earlier books, but is entirely absent from none of the last half dozen.
Butler, preoccupied with other subjects, takes time for only one good shot at this, but that one is so good that it forms a fitting climax. He mentions casually an Erewhonian custom, which may be taken as symbolic of that country's social behavior and philosophy:[1]
"When any one dies, the friends of the family * * * send
little boxes filled with artificial tears, and with the name of the
sender painted neatly upon the outside of the lid. The tears
vary in number from two to fifteen or sixteen, according to
the degree of intimacy or relationship; and people sometimes
find it a nice point of etiquette to know the exact number
which they ought to send. Strange as it may appear, this
attention is highly valued, and its omission by those from whom
it might be expected is keenly felt. These tears were formerly
stuck with adhesive plaster to the cheeks of the bereaved, and
were worn in public for a few months after the death of a relative;
they were then banished to the hat or bonnet, and are
now no longer worn."
- ↑ Erewhon, 136.
