Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns acts as a bridge between the old and the new _régime_ in her ceaseless and indiscriminate worship of celebrities and notorieties. She is the descendant of Mrs. Leo Hunter, but adds the shrewdness and cynicism of the go-between to the simple silliness of her ancestress. Todeson, another familiar figure in Du Maurier's gallery, attaches himself exclusively to the old nobility, but is always putting his foot in it by being _plus royaliste que le roi_, or more ducal than the duchess. For in the slightly distorting mirror of Du Maurier's genius we see, as an evidence of the spread of liberal ideas, a Duke dining with his tailor and being kept in very good order by him; and a musical Duchess learning to sing Parisian chansonnettes from a French expert in the _franchement canaille_ manner. The craze for the stage among "Society people" had now reached formidable dimensions. They were no longer content with amateur theatricals, but had begun to enter into competition with the professionals. The invasion of journalism by the same class _Punch_ took much more seriously. Hazlitt, some fifty years earlier, had written in his essay "On the Conversation of Lords": "The Press is so entirely monopolized by beauty, birth or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride." But this was written when the mania for fashionable novels by Noble Authors was at its height, and Hazlitt uses the word Press of the printing press generally. In the early 'eighties the competition of titled amateurs was mainly confined to Society journals, a characteristic product of the new fusion of classes. As one of their ablest and most cynical editors said of his own paper, they were "written by and for nobs and snobs." They are now practically dead, owing to the absorption in the daily Press of the special features--above all the "personal note"--then peculiar to these weekly chronicles of high life. _Punch_ ascribed the invasion of the Street of Ink by the amateurs to the penurious condition of the aristocracy and their ignoble readiness to turn their social opportunities into "copy" and cash. Under the heading of "_Labor Omnia Vincit_, or How Some of 'em try to live now," _Punch_ published a satiric sketch of the new activities of Mayfair. The scene is laid in the boudoir of Lady Skribeler, a successful contributor to various Society journals. The scene opens with the arrival of her friend the Hon. Mrs. Hardup, who gives a pathetic account of her disastrous ventures in business and her failure to secure an engagement on the stage. Why, asks Lady Skribeler, had she not made her husband go into trade or keep a shop, or sell wine?-- [Sidenote: _Titled Professionals_]