The Champagne Standard

“Confess that I am heroic?” asks a London hostess—because she has served claret and hock, but no champagne. In Mrs. John Lane’s hands, the missing bottle becomes a measure of modern society’s most absurd pretensions.

Writing in the early twentieth century, Lane begins at a dinner party and follows its small social discomfort into a much larger argument about wealth, status, and imitation on both sides of the Atlantic. Her hostess is caught between a modest purse, a conscience, and guests who may mistake restraint for meanness; meanwhile, millionaires set the pace and everyone else is expected to follow. With a satirist’s relish, Lane skewers glittering excess—and finds a quieter counterforce in the plain-living, ice-water-drinking class. Can a society so intent on keeping up with appearances learn to value anything else?

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