Pleasure
becomes a business, then so oppressive, that all good company is
destroyed by it. Half the men are sick with the feasts which they eat day
after day. The women are thinking of the half-dozen parties they have to
go to in the course of the night. The young girls are thinking of their
partners and their toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and quiet
enjoyment of life. On the other hand, the crowd of bourgeois has not
invaded Brighton. The drive is not blocked up by flys full of
stockbrokers' wives and children; and you can take the air in your chair
upon the chain-pier, without being stifled by the cigars of the odious
shop-boys from London." So Lady Kew's name was usually amongst the
earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded amongst the arrivals.
Her only unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, lived with her ladyship. Poor
Lady Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her
for many years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her mother's
eyes, she was the old lady's victim, her pincushion, into which Lady Kew
plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily.
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