"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the ending—"
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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As for this little Petersburg swell, they're turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish. But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after anyone."
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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He leaned back in his chair and said: “You must take me as I am;” and I replied: “Yes—and you must take us as we are. We’re homely people, we are not swells.”
George and Weedon Grossmith. The Diary of a Nobody (1882)