Give it to any person with-out calling it by any name, and that person will soon find one for himself. He will at once call it chalk and water." Decline of Almack's By 1825, Almack's was showing signs of deterioration, despite its continuing popularity. Prince Puckler-Muskau, visiting London in April 1825, wrote: "The first Almack's ball took place this evening; and from all I had heard of this celebrated assembly, I was really curious to see it: but never were my expectations so disappointed. It was not much better than at Brighton. A large bare room, with a bad floor, and ropes round it, like the space in an Arab camp parted off for the horses; two or three naked rooms at the side, in which were served the most wretched refreshments; and a company into which, spite of the immense difficulty of getting tickets, a great many 'Nobodies' had wriggled; in which the dress was generally as tasteless as the tournure was bad; – this was all. In a word, a sort of inn-entertainment: – the music and the lighting the only good things. And yet Almack's is the culminating point of the English world of fashion." The decline in popularity of the balls appears to have begun about 1835. In 1837, writers could still say of the Lady Patronesses that they "have the power, by their single fiat, of making or unmaking entire families. They can open or shut the doors of fashionable life on them, by the mere circumstance of giving or withholding a ticket to Almack's. The proudest and most aristocratic family in the land are fain to bow down, and with cap in hand, to use a homely but expressive phrase, supplicate " a subscription" from this "coalition cabal." To be a member of Almack's is a sure passport to the very first society: it is to give either a lady or gentleman the highest status in the world of fashion to which human beings can attain." By 1840, a contemporary Quarterly Review could find in Almack's "a clear proof that the palmy days of exclusiveness are gone by in England; and though it is obviously impossible to prevent any given number of persons from congregating and re-establishing an oligarchy, we are quite sure that the attempt would be ineffectual, and that the sense of their importance would extend little beyond the set." James Willis,