The initial procedure is commonly the same. Dotted over a wide expanse between Chelsea and St. John's Wood are scores of houses in which one determined woman has, in the first instance, caught and tamed a single author: he is as much a member of the family as the butler; and his employer would be justly incensed if any one tried to tempt him away with an offer of better wages. At first he is a prize in himself, and in his honour parties are given until his owner has established her reputation as a patron of literature; later he is a decoy for other prizes; and B., who might not come of his own accord, is invited to meet A. Here the artistic ambition is reinforced by the social: the Duchess of Stilton, who has hitherto ignored Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, is lured by the bait of Mr. Cimabue Brown and Mr. Postlethwaite; and the churl who tosses all invitations unread into his waste-paper-basket may quite possibly do for the Duchess of Stilton what he has always refused to do for Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns. _Noblesse oblige_ has been freely rendered: "One must be obliging to duchesses." From this point the game develops automatically; and the triumphant hostess realises her ambition as the acknowledged ruler of one or other postal district of London. If any one would meet this Bloomsbury impressionist or that Hampstead sculptor, he must meet him in her house; she has proclaimed her reservation, and henceforth, so long as she can maintain herself, Westminster or Pimlico, Chelsea or Golders Green, with all that they contain, are hers. Ceasing to court others, she is herself courted. Whether she is repaid in the result for her necessary first humiliations she alone can decide. Her pretensions are ridiculed by those who accept her hospitality; she is too busy adding to her acquaintances to spare time for making friends; and amid all the insincerity of her life the one thing brutally sincere is the ingratitude of those who treat her house as a free menagerie. So it has been since the days of Du Maurier; but, in spite of satire and ridicule, her breed continues. Perhaps her only alternative is to look after a husband and children; perhaps she is consoled by the magnitude of her achievement in founding a _salon_ on the strength of a resident poet; perhaps she is unconscious of the figure which she cuts. Literary snobbishness is no more attractive than any other kind; and it is to be hoped that she sins of ignorance rather than of malice.