For all his championing of new money, Edward never lost his faith in the function of the aristocracy. When, in 1868, Queen Victoria had remonstrated with him over his headlong plunge into high society, he had returned a spirited, if repetitive, response. ‘In every Country a great proportion of the Aristocracy will be idle and fond of amusement, and have always been so,’ he wrote, ‘but I think that in no Country more than ours do the Higher Classes occupy themselves, which is certainly not the case in other Countries. We have always been an Aristocratic Country, and I hope we shall always
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