Open Letters From New York

VI.

A GLIMPSE has been deferentially taken of the exterior of the quarter of brown stone and shining plate-glass, with its central avenue, the chosen abode of the most select high life in New York. Sometimes it seems the abode of no life at all. People are rather rarely seen to enter or leave the houses. Children and organ-grinders do not play much in front; and the tenants are by no means to be found personally negotiating with a vegetable man at the curb-stone, or loaning each other a saucepan over the area railings. At night, however, here and there a carpet is laid across the sidewalk, and a striped, barrel - shaped awning erected above it. Certain passengers on foot and on wheels, responsive to the action of the exhaust-chamber within, disappear into the awning as if swallowed up in the mouth - piece of some curious pneumatic tube. There is a little knot of spectators gathered about it: a couple of intimate servant - girls, with arms about each other’s waists; a pair of rude young loafers, who laugh coarsely and make fictions of being about to draw on their gloves and step airily in themselves; a well-dressed woman from a lower station, who does not fear recognition in detaining her husband and pushing boldly to the front to gratify for a moment a commendable feminine curiosity, — the whole kept in check by a sturdy policeman who has the air of being in society himself, and something more in having it thus under his patronage. Perhaps a young man not too long from the interior, a student or beginner in law or a clerk in a mercantile house, turns his head to note the disembarkation of a wonderful being in a cloud of fleecy draperies, and passes on musing. He is not convinced of the justice of the embargo by which he is shut out from acquaintanceships of such charming promise, nor that it is not a station in life he himself is as well calculated to adorn as another. How long will it be before some astonishing development of legal talent, or the investment of his savings in some wholesale enterprise affording enormous profits, will place him there on equal terms?

Supposing, however, that the young man were already one of the kind of floating atoms that this particular pneumatic tube by preference took in, what would he find? He would mount to an elegant library room or sleeping apartment, directed with a sweeping gesture by a serving-man in livery. He would find a place for his ulster and stick among a thick array of similar small bundles on the chairs and tables and floor, but would carefully retain, all the evening, his hat, made with a spring to shut up into a disk. Coming down he would take the hand of the hostess, standing, with one or more assistants, in the realized intricacy of the latest fashion plates, at the drawing-room door. Perhaps, as he waited his turn, he would hear his predecessors, invited for their desirability from a select list, with little or no previous acquaintance, mentioning their names, and the beaming entertainer greeting with more than usual effusion the bearer of some particularly good Knickerbocker title, and regretting that so little of the old blue blood is left. Within, in the babel of well-bred sounds and the tangle of rich materials, from which only the upper half of the bodies of the men, in immaculate black and white, emerges, he looks for familiar faces. It is not at all a cheerful thing if he finds none. Take the arm of Westbrook, imaginable young man! He is far from the mad presumption of thinking he knows anything particular about it himself, but we shall find witnesses in the course of the promenade to give us points.

Possibly the vision of loveliness you saw escaping up the steps is close at hand. If you had the honor of her acquaintance she might ask if you were at the Merry-Go-Rounds last night. Yes, you would reply, and found it charming. Was she going to the Whirligigs to-morrow night, you might return. “ No,” she might say, “I can’t go.” Then it would be almost time already to be moving on. The physical appearance of the people is prepossessing. Equestrianism is popular with the young girls, and they walk the avenue with a quick, elastic step. The case seems a little problematic, it is true, during the fullfledged society period, for some of these over-slender figures, but after marriage a more robust health reappears. In the case of the men, who affect an English carriage and aspect, while the women, with their greater vivacity, more resemble the French, the taste for athletic sports has risen to the height of a profession. There is no longer any reason for those who do not care to make a pretense of playing at business being driven abroad for their pleasures. It is a taste that will not hinder the natural tendency of accumulated wealth to dispersal, but it ought at least to hand down the inheritance of robust constitutions to the descendants who must commence the work of accumulation anew. There is such a variety of styles — light and dark, slender and stout, tall and short — that it is not easy to pick out the prevailing type. There is evident a wide range of intermarriages, and the influence of many climates and manners of living. A strong element made up from the foreign consuls and resident foreign merchants intermingles closely, chatting in its own languages, and aids the diversity of effect. The men, it must be said, can be inspected to better advantage in a physical way at the Racquet Club or the Polo grounds. Precious privilege as it is to be here, the heat and burden of the evening is borne largely by quiet immature youths, while there are numbers of handsome stalwart fellows approaching, say, the age of thirty who would consider it the worst kind of a bore to have to come. So is it ordained that the too much must offset the too little.

The young girl is the central figure. In Brief Honors, a late gracefully told little story from the Chicago house of Jansen, McClurg & Co., devoted to New York matters, and especially, with much pointedness, to the abuses of insurance companies, she is thus described: “ The New York girl is the wonder and envy of all other American young women. She is not prettier, or more graceful, or more favored in any way by nature; she cannot dance, sing, paint, play, talk, write, or perform in any of the so-called accomplishments better than any other of her countrywomen. She does not necessarily spend more time or money in her toilette; but she acquires a nameless faculty of satisfaction with herself which young ladies of the best education and surroundings in lesser cities and towns never quite possess. . . . She begins society where other and so-called provincial young ladies leave off, namely, in understanding it.”

The satire called The Tender Recollections of Irene Maegillieuddy, in the December and January numbers of Blackwood’s, attributed to an English author of the best social opportunities, who passes much of his time here, ascribes her success matrimonially to this thorough sophistication and her assumption of the management of her own affairs; unlike her English sister, who is kept in leading-strings and browbeaten by a kind of “ awfully-aw ” style of men. The same writer rates her as much brighter and more solidly accomplished than her equals of the other sex. “ I remember one evening,” says the sprightly Irene, pursuing her breathless autobiography, “ half a dozen of us girls counting up the young men who could converse intelligently on any of the literary, scientific, or even political questions of the day. When we had got up to two we were obliged to stop. . . . When you are not down in your eternal Wall Streets, you are out at Jerome Park, or looking out of the club windows; but as for informing your minds and giving your naturally bright intellects some wholesome food to digest, which should make you instructive as well as agreeable members of society, you won’t do it. . . . I feel that I owe you some explanation for having taken an Englishman when I had the whole Spuyten Duyvel Club to choose from.”

If the young girl be the central figure, her domain is much circumscribed in favor of the young married woman, and will inevitably be more so in the approximation in progress towards European manners. The age and civilization of “societies” can be accurately gauged according to the prevalence in them of mature people. You recollect how it was with you at X——, before coming to New York. You selected a young lady you knew to have been invited to the same party, escorted her there, and brought her safely home without the interposition of anybody. Here the chaperone is a necessity; a more complicated system is installed. The chaperone forms the rallying point for an older element, who gather to talk to her. At first, we may suppose the young matron assisted in this capacity. By degrees she took part, and is now involved in the whirl to the fullest degree. Marriage in metropolitan society is not the signal for a portentous gravity and an exclusive interest in domestic affairs. The theory prevails that with increased intelligence people can come together with even greater profit than before. The whole of life is thus thrown open, and participation in its pleasures no longer circumscribed by an arbitrary limit.

The young married men are of great social importance. They are said to be the most indefatigable ball-goers, the recognized leaders of the German, and established authorities on all matters of etiquette. They flirt actively with unmarried girls, in some cases keeping it up until their own daughters come out. They overwhelm “ the girls of their choice with bouquets, bonbonnières, and trifling presents, taking them drives, giving them dinners, boxes at the opera, and distinguishing them by such marks of delicate attention as are always grateful to the female mind.” The more intelligent elderly portion of the men seem to have only a temporary connection with the assemblages. They are strangers in town, or newly risen to fame, or returned after a long absence, and friends who have come out to welcome them. Whatever the recurring reasons may be, the ranks are kept tolerably full. Here is a noted artist, long resident in Rome, with a gallant and polished air, complimenting and being complimented by a circle of ladies. A distinguished ex-candidate for a very high office is smiling feebly by the mantel-piece. A tall young editor raises above the assemblage, for a while, a serious head that seems exotic to such scenes. He converses with the distinguished candidate, and both disappear early. The wellknown wit, Mr. Rip-Rap, brought out of retirement by his connection as a witness with the famous Tanglewood case, is finishing one of his anecdotes to this group and passing on to the next. There are some traveling lords from the Brevoort House, some army officers on leave, and the interesting Lady Banbury Cross, who was such a “ card ” at Newport last summer. Almost everybody in this circle has traveled. To have lived abroad is the rule rather than the exception. There are plenty of persons who have passed not one or two, but six and seven years there. In its elements and opportunities it is a great cosmopolitan society. It might be supposed, under these circumstances, that conversation of an improving order would flourish. There is, of course, much interesting talk, but it is not so to a notable extent. Manner is an object of attention quite as much as matter. The new-comer sometimes finds, with a sense of surprise that makes him an unequal participant, that to be particularly well read and interested in intellectual matters is thought not quite “ in good form.”

Perhaps the conversation of society, like that of common life under similar circumstances, can never depart very far from the description of Rousseau, who complains that “ nothing so dwarfs the mind, so engenders trivialities, tittletattle, evasions, and falsehoods, as to be shut up face to face in an apartment, and reduced to the necessity of continual babble.” ‘‘Let it be a condition that I must talk, and I inevitably make a fool of myself. Moi présent on n’aurait jamais su ce que je valais.” And it is not I, but Matthew Arnold, who, speaking of the use of an aristocracy to counteract that hard type of life which a constant subjection to petty cares tends to establish, says further that the peculiar serenity of aristocracies, of Teutonic origin at least, appears to come from their never having had any ideas to trouble them. There appears to be at present no semblance of a salon, like the salons of history, and perhaps of New York in the past, where persons of opinions and definite knowledge come together, amidst an agreeable luxury of surroundings, for intellectual friction.

If it lack profundity somewhat, society conversation is not wanting in a dashing readiness, often approaching wit. The desire to be entertained implies the duty of entertaining, and it is by this method that the effort to fulfill the obligation is chiefly attempted, rather than by the conveying of information, which is not indeed an easy matter, everybody being courteously supposed to know everything already. Proficiency in this talent throws its lustre around “ the fashionable set,” indifferently known as “ the fast set,” whatever it may be for the moment. The fashionable set is a variable domination. “It is Mrs. Brown’s set this year. Mrs. Jones’s set next year, and Mrs. Robinson’s set the year after,” says The Sarcasm of Destiny, of Mrs. Sherwood, — a work whose value consists in the observations her intimate connection with society enables the authoress to make more than in its plot or characters. “Whoever has health, money, and a disposition, whoever will give attention enough, can for a short season be a leader of a fashionable set. The moment one becomes too autocratic a new departure comes.” Certain belles and enterprising persons, it thus seems, create, as it were, schools of fashion, which display for the moment definite characteristics and an animating principle, and are presently dissipated as lightly as the dust on a butterfly’s wing. The fashionable set is apt to approach, in an off-hand freedom of manners and lack of squeamishness (so curiously do the ends of life approach) sets quite at the other extreme of society. Nor is this an exclusively New York or an exclusively American trait of high society. Is there not a noble attaché at Windsor, in Charles Sumner’s letters, who comes down-stairs and talks about “ the gals,” meaning no less prominent persons than the august maids of honor of the royal household ?

Meanwhile, the music has been playing since ten o’clock, and round dancing desultorily in progress. - At midnight the doors are thrown open and a glittering table disclosed. The elegant men in black and white fall upon the pinnacled and rose and lily tinted comestibles like a descent of Goths and Vandals upon Italy, and bear away sections, held by a precarious tenure, to the ladies distributed in chairs, with their voluminous skirts as close-reefed as possible, in the vicinity. Then the chairs are arranged in pairs, and the real business of the evening begins, — the German cotillion. The last carriages are rolling away at three o’clock. This is society, the ball, the culminating act of the long series of society conjurations whose object is to bring people together. A priori, one who knew nothing about it would imagine — would he not ? — that a society freed from the sordid cares of the struggle for bread, with unlimited opportunities of development in education and the arts, would be found conversing like the Poet at the Breakfast-Table, engaged in some subtle and exquisite pursuits, cherishing ideals radically different from and beyond those prevailing below. The hard truth in life is rather that the impulse obtained by the overcoming of difficulties is that which goes on to the greatest accomplishments after the immediate purpose for which it is aroused is subserved. It is not the denizen of the tropics, stretching his hand to the bread-fruit and cocoa-nut grown for him without planting, who develops letters and the arts and founds great commercial republics, but the assiduous Hollander, first snatching bis dreary marsh from the jaws of the North Sea. It would not do to claim that any American society had yet reached the point of being benumbed by its luxury. Its men, at least, are engaged in the common avocations and the common struggle. The scale, not the kind, of their demands is altered. But if it has not gone down it has not gone up. The ideal of the largest and best secured fortunes does not differ greatly from yours and mine, — material gains, more interest, advantageous marriages.

“ Society” is not a different order of beings, it is disappointing to find, but simply the upper classes taking their pleasure. To take their pleasure in the way deemed decorous and requisite involves a certain expenditure. Money, therefore, is the first condition of society. Possibly there are thirty thousand people in New York capable of carrying on the desirable scale of display in houses, dress, equipage, and entertainments. This is altogether too many; bases for divisions must be found. The uneducated rich are left out. The local political rich form a circle by themselves. There is a religious set, houses that remind one of Lady Pitt Crawley’s in Great Gaunt Street. Bible-reading is mingled with its gayeties, and ladies who delighted to be gone all day on coaching excursions with profligate young millionaires, considerably the worse for their wine after dinner, and to return tooting horns through the streets at night, would not be received, nor possibly the millionaires either, though the painful reflection occurs to one that they might not want to be. The rich of “family” insist upon taking the topmost position. Their claim is half admitted, owing to the need of some peculiar titles to consideration where all are otherwise equally equipped, and is half maintained by force. It is a very shrewd claim. It cuts the ground from under the feet of ambitious aspirants, who can never arrive at this qualification, whatever they may do with the others, and it also obviates the need of uncomfortable exertions on the part of its assertors. In any partnership with money or brains, family preserves a consciousness of contributing its full share to the fund. Why will not somebody undertake a defense of these much-abused factitious distinctions? Money and family are at least something tangible; how difficult of estimation is true worth! It can’t be positively determined by looks or talk, and who has time to go around hunting up conduct? Besides that, appearances may be deceptive. If Gall and Spurzheim were only infallible, and there were a central bureau where everybody’s head could be charted and placed on file for reference, it would be quite another matter.

By these various eliminations society is reduced to manageable proportions. The circle determined to be the best company, by the Chesterfieldian rule of selection,—that which all other circles admit to be the best next to their own, — invites from six hundred to one thousand people to its balls, and thus practically admits so many to terms of equality. But this number is already unwieldy, and further divisions would seem to be called for. The swarm of guests has outgrown any but the largest houses. The rooms at Delmonico’s begin to be taken for all sorts of private festivities. It must be a convenience to buy a coming-out party or a birthday party of any desired size, and pay for it in a single solid lump; but the growth of the custom is regretted by some as a detraction from a more sentimental ideal of hospitality and the home formerly prevailing.

Without money, family, or conspicuous brains, — you would do much better with the first than with either of the others unaided,—imaginary student or merchant’s clerk, it will do you no good to be at this party. You might as well not have come. You cannot have a career. This is natural. The two purposes of society are to be fashionable and to be entertained. If you can contribute to neither, why should you come? One would like to know as much as possible, since this is to be but a momentary glimpse, of the inner meaning of society, of its capabilities for happiness.

All the accounts I have glanced at agree as to the reality of the “ old family” claim; all insist upon the prevalence of an excessively mercenary spirit, and a proneness to unblushing withdrawals of countenance from unfortunate associates. Young Morgan, the anonymous Chicago author’s hero, is thrown over by Miss Juliette Ramsay as a person of low tastes, because he continues to visit the bankrupt family of Stephen Wilting in a back street down town. He marries the bankrupt merchant’s daughter in the end, a girl with a bright, active mind, a talent for chess, and some vestiges of coquetry in spite of her reverses, and seems to have made a happy exchange; but this, of course, is a matter that the novelist has entirely in his own hands. Nina, in Mrs. Sherwood’s story, seeking aid as a teacher at houses where she had once been fêted and flattered, is represented as having her card returned to her by Mrs. Merivale, with the message, “I do not know the person.” When she returns to prosperity, Mrs. Merivale again fawns upon her. There is no gambling set now, as there was shortly after the fierce excitements of the war, where ladies of fashion smoked cigarettes with “the men,” and played for fifties and hundreds of dollars at a time; but there are unpleasant statements as to other points of morality. Mrs. Rose Averill is quoted as saying, arguing for the admission of certain questionable guests to her ball, “ I do not wish to be called the young American matron, and derided for my propriety. I assure you, men laugh very much at any assumption of that kind. It is out of fashion, and it is only that I am young and pretty and rich and well born that I can afford to be in love with my husband.”

“ I should hope any daughter of mine would be in love with her husband, or else pretend to be,” said Mrs. Pear-Tree.

“ No, mamma, that is not the fashion of the period; if you are not wrong, you must pretend to be, or else you lose caste.”

This is not so far from the pictures of life presented by the comic dramatists of the Restoration and similar luxurious periods. “My friends who are living quiet and guarded lives,” says another society account, — in the March Appletons’ Journal, — “are very unhappy. They describe their dull monotony of days as something very forlorn.” The young married women “ are left alone, with every want in life satisfied except the greatest of all wants, something to do, and with but one possible excitement, and that is flirtation.”

It must be borne in mind that the striking effects of satirists, and half the time those of the story-writers, have to be produced with the faults instead of the merits of the community. One crime resounds farther than a hundred virtues. Demoralization of manners is probably one of the things in time to be expected here, as it has always followed elsewhere in the train of great wealth and prosperity, but the manifestations are yet too extremely slight to justify any general aspersions. Whatever may be the doings of “ a certain set,” always exaggerated by rumor, a proposition to take the “ not ” out of the Decalogue is far from being yet in order. The best company in New York has many aspects of freshness and simplicity. Church-going is the rule. Its younger element is trained at the grave seminaries and colleges of the quiet interior. In the classes from which it is drawn, though not immediately in society, there are persons of studious tastes, surrounding themselves with the appliances of an admirable culture, who lead lives that seem the worthiest and most enviable of all. There is some frivolity and inconstancy in the classes below; I suppose life is not quite free from it anywhere. There are butchers who maltreat their poor relations, and bakers who give themselves airs over candlestick-makers for living on a fourthfloor flat at fifteen dollars a month instead of a fifth at ten.

I hope this account is not going to appear abusive. It would not be much less so if any other class were the subject of its story. All it ought to do is to justify an inference that society is not so unspeakably more precious and exalted in its transactions than ordinary life that one need repine bitterly, like the fabled Peri at the gate of Paradise, disconsolate, if he never quite gets into it. Rightly understood, contentment is no doubt possible outside of it.

Raymond Westbrook.