Celebrities seem to be ubiquitous these days.

So much so, that I haven’t even heard of most of the names that people mention or know the reason for their apparent celebrity status. And it’s not just the pop and sports worlds that produce them either.

Social media, the era of influencers and reality tv are no doubt responsible for many who appear to have acquired the label and now feature regularly on the pages of certain celebrity-focused magazines. There, we are invited to view their splendid homes and marriages and life styles and envy at their conspicuous affluence and material wealth.

For the one thing these celebrities appear to have in common is money. They have made money.

Tip back a century or two and those with the equivalent of today’s celebrity status came from a very different section of society.

And it was my companion on a visit to Leighton House in Kensington this week who made this perceptive comment – I cannot take the credit! The artists of the day – the second half of the 19th century – were the celebrities of their time.

Lord Leighton – artist and owner of the splendid house that was his home and his studio – was very much a celebrated and feted celebrity. Featured regularly in the press of the day, his home came to embody how a great artist should live and came to be a hub and a gathering place for famous as well as fledgling artists of the times. Even Queen Victoria deigned to visit him there and take tea!

And if you search on the internet for names that comprise a list of ‘celebrities’ of the 19th century, the names that emerge are fascinating.

For unlike today, these names are not synonymous with making money (although some clearly did gain wealth from their activities) but with making or achieving something extraordinary.

There are, of course, the artists and people who were either part or close to Frederick Leighton’s circle: George Frederic Watts – married to Ellen Terry, a celebrity in her own right – and the other artists of what was known as the Holland Park Circle.

There was Charles Dickens who achieved celebratory status, not just in the UK but across the United States with his marathon tours – his one-man performances of readings of his novels.

Charlotte Bronte, initially writing under a pseudonym, eventually emerged from such obscurity and visited London to move in exalted social circles with Elizabeth Gaskell and William Makepeace Thackeray. Thackeray’s daughter, Anne Isabella, recalled a visit by Charlotte to her father:

This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating; The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm.

Somehow, I cannot imagine even a well known novelist of today receiving such reverence when doing a reading at Waterstones on a rainy winter’s evening!

Thomas Hardy’s ashes are in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, a conspicuously celebrated sort of place, while his heart, at his request, lies in a Dorset churchyard.

Leaving the authors to one side, a google search reveals other 19th century ‘celebrities’ as Florence Nightingale, Lister, Darwin, Brunel, Gertrude Jekyll ….and many more – all of whom need no explanation to define such categorization.

They all created something. Or discovered something. Or changed something. For the enrichment of lives on so many possible levels and in so many diverse ways.

Will people look back on the so-called celebrities of the present times and wonder quite why they gained such accolades and consider them merely the ephemeral product of the times?

And will the artists and writers, the reformers and inventors of the day climb back and regain their rightful place – as the true celebrities – and influencers! – of society?

Don’t hold your breath!