The 'Smart Set'

New Zealand Tablet, 20 September 1906, Page 9

The 'Smart Set'

Father Bernard Vaughan has completed his course of fly-blisters for the pagan 'smart set' among the wealthy and titled lower orders in Eng-' land/ The great preacher's utterances inspired the following epigram by Sir Francis Burnand in the London ' Daily Telegraph ' :— ' Ere " the Smart Set " becomes a little 1 towdy, Its men a- weary and its women dowdy, All will admit that the bold preacher's art Has done, its best to make " the Smart Set " smart.-' In the latest of his fine philippics, Father Vaughan traces the history of ' the Magdalen in May fair,' It is the sad stoly of a girl born of vulgar, wealthy, and worldly parents-; brought up without a mother's love, without religion ; trained to a vicious taste for unwholesome romantic literature, and to the worst forms of vanity in dress. Her parents, who * would not humble themselves to enter the kingdom »f heaven, would lick the very dust of the floor to have their names, and their names only, associated with hired "guests who did not want to know them ', ,at ' the enchanted castle ' where the '. fast smart set ' dwell. Then the heavy bribes to secure introductions, thejengagement, the marriage (for the Magdalen's bawbees), the downfall of the undisciplined , wife, the moral ruin,and death. - . , .

Describings the lack of supervision over ' the young persons ' among the ' smart set,' Father Vaughan conveyed a lesson, part of which parents in New Zealand may- well take to heart. ' Human nature,', said

he, ' being constituted as it is, these tremendous lib-, erties between young ; -people that are -now countenanced by the smart set are fraught with consequencesthat are only too often "as shocking as they are inevitable. It is no easy thing to keep sweet and clean and good when shielded from harm. "What then must happen to the bloom and beauty of our country when they are tossed, into the arms-of men whose passions are raging like a mob ? Not only in London, but in country houses also, parents are to blame. Ought not young ladies to retire to their rooms when their mothers bid the company good night ? Surely the horse-play and bear fighting between men and girls at bed time that has- sprung up of late years in some fast country houses can end only in the same disastrous way as the home drivings after supper to which I have referred. I venture to hope and pray that this coarse romping, and these illicit intimacies between the sexes may be stamped out of existence, and denounced unmercifully by both host- and hostess in every Christian home in England. Thank God, nothing that I have here condemned have I ever seen in the typical homes of the best people in this dear, dear land.'