Newport: The City of Luxury

AFTER a winter spent in the City of the Dinner Pail, in the midst of its busy life and in touch with that vast army of toilers which daily marches to the sound of the factory bells, I found myself when summer came, comfortably settled on a sea-girt farm near Newport. At first it was difficult to realize that the scenes about me and the scenes in the life of the toiler, to which I was so accustomed, were parts of the same drama. Yet the scenes so different are intimately connected, and there is more than passing significance in the fact that Fall River and Newport are separated by only twenty miles of railway track.

At Newport no factory bell awakes the sleeper in the early morning hours; the hum of industry does not reach the ear at noonday — here is no camping ground for the Army of the Dinner Pail. No, this quaint old city by the sea has nothing to suggest of wealth in the making — it speaks rather of wealth accumulated, and by its splendid pageantry dazzles the imagination with visions of America’s material prosperity. Here is more magnificence than you may find in the courts of kings — the lavish display of princes in a democracy where all men are created equal.

My first impression of Newport, however, had nothing to do with its lavish pageantry — it related rather to the toil of fisher-folk and farm-hands, and thus in the end became the means of unifying in my mind the problems suggested by the two cities. The farm was situated on the point which reaches out towards Brenton’s Reef, on which, some weeks before, a fishing steamer had been wrecked. For several days I studied the stranded vessel, wondering how long it might be before the sea would break it up, and if the ship were copper-fastened, and if so, how many barrels of driftwood I might find along the beach to burn in my study fire when the winter evenings came. But others had looked upon the wreck who had no thought of driftwood fires and colored flames, but who saw anchored there upon the rocks a whole season’s fuel for their homes, and these men set about to do themselves what I had hoped the wind and waves might do for me. There on the reef lay the wrecked vessel, to me a picturesque sight, suggesting wind and weather and the perils of the sea, but to the farmers and the fisher-folk it suggested cords of firewood and a winter day’s necessity.

Three companies engaged in reclaiming the wreck: one of Greek fishermen, whose huts stand on the beach near by, one of Portuguese farmers, whose scant acres lie some miles to the north, the other of farm-hands employed on one of the near-by estates. The work, begun in the afternoon when the tide was rising, was carried on until midnight. Men with ropes about their bodies swam to the wreck, and reaching it, hauled great hawsers from the shore; these they made fast forward, aft, and amidships. On shore yokes of oxen and teams of horses strained and tugged at the hawsers, wresting from the sea its lawful booty, and at last hauling the huge dismantled craft upon the nearer rocks.

The ship, being derelict, was anybody’s property, so the work was carried on by moonlight, lest others who had not borne the heat and burden of the day should come by night and carry away the prize. The Greeks were more fortunate than the rest, for their part of the wreck included the pilot-house. This they, wading and swimming beyond the surf or tugging from the shore, towed into a little cove between two points of weatherbeaten cliffs and landed it upon the beach. In the pilot-house they camped for the night; but for the others, they must work while the moonlight lasted and afterwards keep vigil until sunrise. A deal of labor this for a pile of firewood, hard labor indeed for the simplest necessity of life.

Later in the season, within half a mile of the place where the wreck was brought to the shore, I witnessed another scene — a scene of action quite as strenuous but to a different purpose. The polo grounds are situated on the same point where the vessel went ashore. The green field lay bright in the sunshine, while beyond rolled the ocean, blue as the sky above it. About the side-lines great ladies and gentlemen of fashion were gathered to enjoy the game. Some sat in finely upholstered carriages, drawn by magnificent horses, whose golden harness-trappings glittered in the sunshine; others sat in automobiles, while others, clinging to the tradition of an earlier day, were there on horseback. On the piazza of the club-house finely gowned women and well-groomed men drank tea while they watched swift-footed ponies, bearing their crimson-and yellow-clad riders helterskelter over the field. As for the game, it was a splendid show; they played well, those husky young fellows, with a skill and courage altogether admirable, giving the lie to the notion that wealth and dissipation necessarily go hand-in-hand.

As I watched the game, admiring the skill of the players and realizing the magnificent surroundings in which they spend their lives, — surroundings permitting of infinite leisure for the cultivation of body and mind, — the words quoted by Matthew Arnold, in his beautiful apostrophe to Oxford, came to my mind. “There are our young Barbarians all at play.” Arnold, it will be remembered, referred to the upper, middle, and lower classes of English society as Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace. The aristocrats, he said, inherited from the Barbarian nobles, their early ancestors, that individualism, that passion for doing as one likes, which was so marked a characteristic. From the Barbarians, moreover, came their love of field sports, the care of the body, manly vigor, good looks, and fine complexions. “ The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bearing, — what is this,” he asks, “ but the commencement of the politeness of our aristocratic class ? ” “There are our young Barbarians all at play.” That line of Arnold’s coming to my mind, which at that moment was contrasting the scenes I have described, suggested the thought that, despite the familiar words in the Declaration of Independence, and our inherited repugnance to the idea, we have an upper, middle, and lower class in America.

We cannot refer to our aristocracy by the term Barbarians, for its members are not descended from “ some victor in a Border brawl,” their ancestors being of the old-world populace. Yet by whatever name it may be called, our aristocracy of wealth possesses characteristics curiously akin to the descendants of the Goths and Huns.

America has been a surprisingly short time in creating this aristocracy in all its refinement. We need not now be ashamed to entertain the most beribboned prince in our summer palaces at Newport; and yet but little over fifty years ago the author of “ Lotus-Eating ” complained mightily of the lack of refinement in the “Society” of that famous watering-place. “ A very little time will reveal its characteristic to be exaggeration. The intensity, which is the natural attribute of a new race, and which finds in active business its due direction and achieves there its truest present success, becomes ludicrous in the social sphere, because it has no taste and no sense of propriety.” He complained that the aristocracy, being most successful in the acquisition of wealth, knew but poorly how to spend it; that Crœsus, having made his money, was bent on throwing it away, so he built his house just like his neighbors’ — only a little bigger — and furnished it with Louis Quinze or Louis Quatorze deformities, just like his neighbors, and bought carriages and gave dinners and wore splendid clothes, but owned few books or pictures; he was mastered by his means, and any other man with a large rent-roll was always respectable and awful to him.

“What is high society,” asks the LotusEater, “ but the genial intercourse of the highest intelligence with which we converse ? It is the festival of Wit and Beauty and Wisdom. ... Its hall of reunion, whether Holland House, or Charles Lamb’s parlor, or Schiller’s garret, or the Tuileries, is a palace of pleasure. Wine and flowers and all successes of Art, delicate dresses studded with gems, the graceful motion to passionate and festal music, are its ornaments and Arabesque outlines. It is a tournament wherein the force of the hero is refined into the grace of the gentleman — a masque, in which womanly sentiment blends with manly thought. This is the noble idea of society, a harmonious play of the purest powers.” And in Newport he finds but the form of it — the promise that the ideal may some day be realized; but for the time we must be content with the exaggeration, for “ Fine Society is a fruit that ripens slowly.”

A generation only has passed since the Lotus-Eater wrote his charming book, and making allowances for an exaggeration of style quite in keeping with the exaggeration of the fashionable folk about whom he wrote, we may say that his dream of what American society should be is, in a measure, a reality. Here in Newport is seen not only the form of a “ Fine Society,” but something of the substance. To be sure, much of exaggeration remains, but it is hardly fair to call it characteristic; it remains in the excesses of the ultra-fashionable set — the very new aristocracy; but back of this excess, the description of which furnishes many fair readers with so much enjoyment in the Sunday papers, there is a solid foundation of good manners, bred of culture, in which we may find that “ harmonious play of the purest powers,” the Lotus-Eater longed to see.

This aristocracy, founded on money though it be, early learned that money is but a means, that culture is the end, and it soon came about that a man must be a pretty insignificant sort of a millionaire, who by his benefactions was unable to found a university, or at least have a professorship named for him, even if he himself were unable to write English grammatically — and the children of these millionaires benefited by their father’s aspirations. We may not say by what marvelous means the transformation was effected, but certain it is the Newport of to-day is very different from the Newport of a generation ago. Croesus does not build his house just like his neighbors’, only a little bigger, but commands the services of the ablest architects, who have transformed Newport from a city of commonplace cottages to one of rare architectural distinction. If Croesus lacks the taste to furnish his house becomingly, he has the sense to hire a decorator to do it for him — although in a larger measure than we realize, this is unnecessary; for Crœsus has, in these later days, abandoned fast horses and flashy waistcoats, and has learned to buy pictures and books for himself — and he enjoys them too, which is even a greater matter. He does not always spend his money wisely — that were asking too much in a single generation ; he still makes too great a show of his money, leading humble folk to imagine that there is some magic pleasure in the mere possession of vast wealth. He will overdo things occasionally — or at least Mrs. Crœsus will; as when once she built a temporary ball-room next to her stately summer home, at a cost — so the newspapers said — of some forty thousand dollars, and tore it down after a single evening’s entertainment. Mrs. Crœsus will spend vast sums of money to no rational purpose, and so give the socialists a deal to talk about, besides creating the impression that her husband’s wealth was not inherited; but on the whole she has made tremendous progress since she was a schoolgirl.

Yes, despite all that we like to think to the contrary, we have an upper, middle, and lower class in America, but these classes are quite different from the very distinct strata observable in Europe. If Arnold had been describing American society, it would have been difficult for him to find a nomenclature so readily as he did when he described the English. To a degree the metric system has been adopted in the division of Americans into classes — very much depends on the number of ciphers to the left of the decimal point. This is not to say that everywhere in America a man is rated by the amount of his securities — that were an absurd statement so long as the golden dome reflects the sunlight over Beacon Hill; but from the very nature of things in a nation whose history is essentially one of commercial development, any line between class and class must be relative to the success of individuals in competing for the reward of commercial supremacy; and this reward in the first instance is a matter of dollars.

The history of society in America is the story of workingmen rising to be employers of labor, and this rise is accompanied with a constantly changing standard of living; children whose fathers were content with rag-carpets buy, without knowledge of their significance, oriental rugs, and wear diamond shirtstuds. Their daughters go to finishing school and take on a fine surface polishing, their granddaughters go to college and learn that the color and design of the ancestral rug is what constitutes its distinction, not the great price which their successful forebears paid for it. This is how classes have grown in our society, despite our faith in the gospel according to Jefferson; and it is just this process which has made Newport to-day so very different from the New port George William Curtis wrote about.

I recently read a novel written twentyfive years ago, describing the humiliations of a Western girl, whose father was a wealthy ranchman, when introduced to the polite society of New York. At table she never knew which fork to use, and once she picked geranium leaves out of the finger bowl and pinned them to her gown. In the end, of course, she learned the usages of good society — and married a titled Englishman. The villain was a Western congressman, who chewed tobacco and shocked but fascinated the ladies of the exclusive set. This antithesis between the social development of the West and the East was a constant quarry for the novel-writer in the last generation, and even now stories of this kind are to be found on the bookstands. The moral usually is that real virtue is not a matter of manners — and all good Americans are pretty much alike under the skin. Such stories illustrate the fact that social classes in America are more elastic than in the old world, the one merging imperceptibly into the other as individuals rise in successful competition. In England a junk-dealer’s clerk is certain to remain a clerk until the end of his days; or if, by force of ability, he should become a junk-dealer, he will not change his social position by a hair’s breadth. In America, if he has persistency, he is more than likely to be the proprietor of a business; and if his success be great enough, you may see him occupying a box at the Newport horse-show, or hear of his wife’s brilliant entertainments at her villa. You may not read that Mrs. Blank was among the guests, — it was her grandfather who dealt in scrap iron and naturally she is a bit exclusive,— but our junk-dealer lias established himself as the ancestor of some future exclusive Mrs. Blank.

There is a danger in generalization, and we must not infer that there is no part of our American society claiming refinement as its heritage, that refinement which is inseparable from true nobility and finds its best expression in simplicity of life and character. Such society we may find enthroned in the finest of the palaces which front the sea at Newport; we will find it, too, in some humble home yonder in the City of the Dinner Pail. Wealth offers no barrier to this society any more than poverty is its open sesame. To the happy mortals who dwell therein, money is but the means to make the world a happier place in which mankind shall live. This man owns a great house which overlooks the sea, beautiful pictures hang upon its walls, and in the library are fine books and precious manuscripts. It has been his pleasure to collect these masterpieces of literature and art; he shares the joy of them with his friends, he invites the student and the connoisseur to enjoy his treasures with him; he lends his pictures to the public galleries and holds his manuscripts in trust for scholars; and so his pleasure has added to the public wealth as surely as the railroads his industry has built or the mine he has opened. And after the long day’s work in one of the countless factories which the genius of this multi-millionaire has created, many a man and woman return to their quiet homes, there to enjoy the same pictures and books which enrich his mansion — for in this marvelous age, machinery, so despised by some, has given to the humblest citizen all the means of culture.

One day during my summer on the sea-girt farm, society was stirred by the arrival of a duchess who came for a visit to a great house on the avenue. The next afternoon many carriages stopped at the door, the footmen leaving cards; society paid its call of welcome. Driving my quiet rig by the house, the sound of the horse’s feet upon the pavement attracted attention within. The great doors swung open; two flunkeys, dressed in crimson satin livery, white silk stockings, golden knee-buckles, and powdered wigs, stood before me; one extended a golden salver to receive my cards, but, seeing his mistake, retired. Before the doors closed behind him, I glanced into the great hall, down which a line of other flunkies in similar livery stood at attention. Somehow that livery has remained in my memory ever since. Surely, in the fifty years since Mrs. Potiphar consulted the Reverend Mr. Cream Cheese concerning the color and cut of the Potiphar livery, Americans have made tremendous strides in dressing their servants. It is not, however, the questionable right of Americans to the apostolic succession of fluukydom that keeps the vision of those radiant servants in my memory, but the suggestion of luxury their decorous forms called up to a mind filled, that afternoon, with the problems of poverty and with speculations concerning the possibilities of a distribution of wealth in which a living wage might be guaranteed to every ablebodied man who is willing to work for it.

Poverty and Luxury — these are the diseases of our industrial regime, to the cure of which the socialists offer their ineffectual remedy; ineffectual since the population of the United States is made up of ninety million individuals, some of whom will be forever on the verge of bankruptcy, however great their income, and some frugal and always carrying their account on the right side of the balance-sheet, however small their annual allotment of wealth.

Poverty and Luxury — twin diseases sapping the life of society: the one destroying ambition by withholding sufficient nourishment to the body; the other rendering men worthless to society by a superabundance of the good things of life. Poverty is a disease not indigenous to our American soil; it is a plague brought in by immigrant ships from worn-out Europe, and the patients are cured here by the thousands. So long as there remains an uncultivated acre of land anywhere in the Union, there is no real cause for poverty, nor any excuse for luxury while a foot of land is undeveloped.

“ The extreme of luxury,” De Lavelaye says, “ is that which destroys the product of many days’ labor without bringing any rational satisfaction to the owner.” Another author calls luxury “ that which creates imaginary needs, exaggerates real wants, diverts them from their true end, establishes a habit of prodigality in society, and offers through the senses a satisfaction of self-love which puffs up, but does not nourish the heart, and which presents to others the picture of a happiness to which they can never attain.”

Take either definition you will, we behold in the social life at Newport a measure of luxury men have not witnessed since the fall of Rome.

There was a time when economists apologized for luxury on the ground that those who supported it kept money in circulation, thus benefiting the poor; but that was when scholars believed that money was wealth in itself, and fondly believed that one might eat his cake and have it too. “ Money changes hands,” they said, “and in this circulation the life of business and commerce consists. When money is spent, it is all one to the public who spends it.” We have passed beyond such specious arguments, but there are those even now who think if a man builds a temporary ballroom and destroys it the next day, some one has been benefited. The workers engaged in building and demolishing it and the men who employed them have, no doubt, obtained an immediate benefit; yet the same money might have built ten houses to be the homes of generations of men. Mrs. Crœsus has had her vanishing palace, but ten families are sleeping without shelter because of it. She should beg her husband to use his influence at Washington to restrict immigration, or else to employ his wealth in such a way that these newcomers may be allowed to earn a proper living.

The sentiments which give rise to luxury, we are told, are vanity, sensuality, and the instinct of adornment; but the greatest of these is vanity, the desire to distinguish one’s self and to appear of more importance than others. It is this aspect of luxury that flaunts itself on the avenue during the season. “ My owner is rich, rich, rich,” toots the horn of yonder marvelously upholstered motorcar, as it speeds along regardless of the pedestrian exercising his inalienable right to cross the street. “ My husband is a multi-millionaire,” this splendidly gowned matron declares, trailing her marvelously wrought skirt in the mud as she steps from her carriage, while her footman, in a livery more splendid than that of any prince in Europe, stares vacantly into space and touches his shining hat. Yes, these people are distinguished, but it would take an exceptionally sharp eye to tell which in this hierarchy of ostentation is of the most importance.

Condemnation of luxury, however, is not condemnation of wealth. Luxury is a disease merely, which may attack the successful individual just as poverty may sink the unsuccessful one to lower and lower depths of despair, and is no more a necessary result of a large income than poverty is of a small one. The question, after all, is not, how great is this man’s fortune, but what does he do with it? We can make no quarrel with the Captain of Industry because he possesses so many dollars that neither he nor a dozen clerks could count them in a twelvemonth, if he has earned those dollars by his skill in trade and is conscious of his stewardship. He entered the race on even terms with many thousand others, and outstripped them; by the very bent of his genius he is incapable of becoming a prey to luxury, and uses his wealth to develop new railroads and open new mines, and thus feeds with a bountiful hand thousands of half-starved immigrants from the old world. Such a man is a benefactor of mankind, as truly as the greatest philanthropist. He is engaged in a real service to the nation, and his great fortune is the witness of his service. It has become the fashion of late to belittle these men of great genius and to forget the benefits which they have bestowed; but this fashion will soon pass and men will again restore to them the praise which is their due.

When, in the economic history of man, the world passed from the agricultural, through the handicraft, to the industrial stage, the multi-millionaire became inevitable; when the first factory was built, the “ trust ” was its certain result. The trust and the multi-millionaire are essential factors in our industrial evolution, stepping-stones to a new and better order. Very well, you say, we will accept the multi-millionaire at his real value; he is indeed a necessary factor in the development of our industrial world and we will not only cease to pursue him with venomous prejudice, but we will weigh carefully the findings of investigating committees and allow the rich every privilege guaranteed to the humblest citizen by the Constitution. We will do even more than this: we will admit the right of the multi-millionaire to the fruit of his industry, and allow him to keep unmolested his numerous residences, his horses, his motor-cars and his steam yachts. But what right has his son, who never earned a dollar throughout all his useless days, to inherit this vast wealth ? Well, that is a matter for future philosophers and future statesmen to settle among themselves. When the evil becomes sufficiently acute, they will, no doubt, find some remedy, but for the present we have more immediate problems.

We do not know toward what end our American republic is moving, whether it be toward that industrial state which one enthusiastic young socialist has prophesied will be a reality within ten years, or whether it be in quite a different direction. But those who mark the course of events see a mighty evolution at work in our national life. On one side we behold the flood of immigration typified by the Greek fisher-folk and Portuguese farm-hands, working throughout the long night on Brenton’s Point, to win from the sea a scanty pile of firewood; and on the other, the lords of wealth, living in regal splendor in the stately homes overlooking the sea. The amazing natural resources of the new world have brought hither these humble folk to a richer life than their fathers ever dreamed might be, and the same natural resources have made possible this life of splendor — more vast if not more magnificent than the world has known before. What this evolution means, we shall none of us live to understand; for the American nation is still in its infancy, its natural resources are still undeveloped, and its contribution to civilization still lies in the future.