“In spite of my democracy / I’ve married the aristocracy / Like a true American girl.” This isn’t a line trilled in the television show Downton Abbey, but it could have been.
It’s from a song by George Grossmith, the comedian, composer, and writer (The Diary of a Nobody), whose sketch shows toured England and the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, skewering the antics of the transatlantic upper classes.
