SOCIAL TYPES.
It is probable that the finest social types in this country have
heretofore been found in the South. That this is true, or could be
under the dark shadows of an institution so out of harmony with
the progressive spirit of the age certainly seems paradoxical. The
slave-holding population, it is claimed, represented more social
refinement and elegance of personal manners than any other class
in America. Whatever barbarous proclivities were chargeable to
them in other respects, they were not so chargeable in the social
aspects of their characters. And this was one of the slaveholder's
vantage-grounds, that he never failed to employ on occasion of
entertaining travelers and visitors from other portions of the world,
especially from the Northern States. Perhaps there was nothing the
Southern gentleman prided himself more upon than the prestige of his
social power; and many a Northern man has lost the backbone of his
opposition to the peculiar institution under its seductive influence. A
social insult, perhaps, more than any other, was bitterly resented and
summarily punished.
To attain a high degree of social culture and refinement is not unlike
learning a trade, or one of the fine arts. It _is_ an art, if not
the art of arts, which requires study and practice; as much so as to
become a first-class tradesman or artist of any kind. One has to pass
the trying ordeal of social gymnastics. The beauty of social elegance
is like the "beauty of holiness." It attracts the admiration of most,
excites the envy of many, the jealousy and hate of the mean, and is a
ruling power in every department of Church and State, and of society.
This was the strong secret agency in the hands of the South--the
"_suaviter in modo_" that gave them leading sway so long in Congress,
and with the Government.
There is this difference, however, in the comparison between the
"beauty of holiness" and that of social perfection--the one _must_ be
real, the other may have but the semblance of reality, being so much of
an art, while the other is the very essence of character. In order to
great social refinement one needs ample time or leisure to cultivate
the art. And who in America have been so much favored in the past with
leisure as the people of the South?
In elegance and ease of personal manners perhaps no man in America
excelled Henry Clay. His very style of taking snuff, and handling his
snuff-box, is said to have been so elegant that, though inimitable,
yet his friends and admirers, in and out of Congress, who indulged the
nasal habit attempted to copy him.
The late Rt. Rev. General Polk, of the Confederate Army, and Bishop of
the Episcopal Church, is said to have been scarcely equaled in pleasant
manners. He made it a specialty of his personal improvement until he
had become something wonderful in social power. He it was that, after
having occupied Columbus, Kentucky, with his troops, went on board a
Federal gun-boat at Island Number Ten, by invitation of the commander,
to talk over some war question, and during the interview was invited
to a social glass of wine. The Federal officer led off in a toast: "To
the name of George Washington, the Father of his Country." General Polk
gracefully acknowledged the compliment, and then holding up his glass
said: "George Washington, the first rebel." Perhaps no finer retort can
be found in the history of the late war, or in the English language,
as to that matter; so elegant, so devoid of grossness, or of anything
that could give possible offense to a genteel mind.
We beg the reader not to take the impression of supercilious excess in
the polite manners of the Southern people, or of anything bordering
on affectation, for this would be great injustice to them. There was
too much whole-souled magnanimity and hospitality about them for that.
The play of their manners was free from the prescriptive rules and
ceremony which frequently produce in one's breast an agony of anxiety,
and yet it was courtly and dignified, without obsequious flattery or
littleness.