would-be-fashionables

Updated: May 1, 2025

At last, Doctor Plausible's instruments were used in good earnest; and, although not known or even heard of in the fashionable world, he was sent for by the would-be-fashionables, because they imagined that he was employed by their betters. Now it so happened that in the same street there lived another medical man, almost a prototype of Doctor Plausible, only not quite so well off in the world.

Frederick Marryat - Newton Forster