At Brocket, the Melbourne’s country house, there were plenty of outdoor amusements and occupations; the girls did not play hockey and cricket like their twentieth-century descendants, but they rode and hunted, fished and walked. In the early years of the nineteenth century there were the new dances, waltzes and quadrilles, to be learned, and Emily Lamb must have joined the parties given at Devonshire House or in her own home, Melbourne House, for the purpose of practising them. They would assemble at three o’clock in the afternoon at what was called a “morning” dance, with a cold dinner laid in one of the back drawing-rooms. The Tango teas of the twentieth century are not quite such an innovation as has been supposed. In those days girls married young, and on 21st July 1805 Emily Lamb was married to the fifth Earl Cowper. Though only eighteen she at once took her place as one of the leaders of society. The others who with her ruled the world of fashion were Lady Tankerville, Lady Jersey, and Lady Willoughby. They all lived to be over eighty, and were friends to the last. These ladies had such power as leaders of society that it was said they could even get an important debate in the House postponed if one of them had fixed a grand dinner on that evening. Lady Cowper was beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished, and soon became the most popular of the Lady Patronesses of Almack’s, the most exclusive and brilliant of fashionable assemblies. When the number of hostesses entertaining on a large scale was comparatively small, need was felt of some way of meeting more often, and so in 1764 a man known as William Almack built a suite of Assembly Rooms in King Street, St. James’s,[24] where for a subscription of ten guineas a series of weekly balls were given for twelve weeks. But only those who knew the saints who guarded its heaven could pass through “Almack’s holy gate.” A contemporary writer thus describes the Committee which ruled affairs at Almack’s, and bestowed happiness by granting the vouchers of admission, or despair by withholding them, as: “That most distinguished and despotic conclave, composed of their High Mightinesses the Ladies Patronesses of the balls at Almack’s, the rulers of fashion, the arbiters of taste, the leaders of _ton_, and the makers of manners, whose sovereign sway over ‘the world’ of London has long been established on the firmest basis, whose decrees are laws, and from whose judgment there is no appeal.”