MY FRIENDS
By virtue of my being a successful man my family has an established
position in New York society. We are not, to be sure--at least, my wife
and I are not--a part of the sacrosanct fifty or sixty who run the show
and perform in the big ring; but we are well up in the front of the
procession and occasionally do a turn or so in one of the side rings. We
give a couple of dinners each week during the season and a ball or two,
besides a continuous succession of opera and theater parties.
Our less desirable acquaintances, and those toward whom we have minor
social obligations, my wife disposes of by means of an elaborate "at
home," where the inadequacies of the orchestra are drowned in the roar
of conversation, and which a sufficient number of well-known people are
good-natured enough to attend in order to make the others feel that the
occasion is really smart and that they are not being trifled with. This
method of getting rid of one's shabby friends and their claims is, I am
informed, known as "killing them off with a tea."
We have a slaughter of this kind about once in two years. In return for
these courtesies we are invited yearly by the élite to some two hundred
dinners, about fifty balls and dances, and a large number of
miscellaneous entertainments such as musicales, private theatricals,
costume affairs, bridge, poker, and gambling parties; as well as in the
summer to clambakes--where champagne and terrapin are served by
footmen--and other elegant rusticities.
Besides these _chic_ functions we are, of course, deluged with
invitations to informal meals with old and new friends, studio parties,
afternoon teas, highbrow receptions and _conversaziones_, reformers'
lunch parties, and similar festivities. We have cut out all these long
ago. Keeping up with our smart acquaintances takes all our energy and
available time. There are several old friends of mine on the next block
to ours whom I have not met socially for nearly ten years.
We have definitely arrived however. There is no question about that. We
are in society and entitled to all the privileges pertaining thereto.
What are they? you ask. Why, the privilege of going to all these balls,
concerts and dinners, of course; of calling the men and women one reads
about in the paper by their first names; of having the satisfaction of
knowing that everybody who knows anything knows we are in society; and
of giving our daughters and son the chance to enjoy, without any effort
on their part, these same privileges that their parents have spent a
life of effort to secure.
Incidentally, I may add, our offspring will, each of them--if I am not
very much mistaken--marry money, since I have observed a certain
frankness on their part in this regard, which seems to point that way
and which, if not admirable in itself, at least does credit to their
honesty.
Now it is undubitably the truth that my wife regards our place among the
socially elect as the crowning achievement--the great desideratum--of
our joint career. It is what we have always been striving for. Without
it we--both of us--would have unquestionably acknowledged failure. My
future, my reputation, my place at the bar and my domestic life would
have meant nothing at all to us, had not the grand cordon of success
been thrown across our shoulders by society.
* * * * *
As I have achieved my ambition in this respect it is no small part of my
self-imposed task to somewhat analyze this, the chief reward of my
devotion to my profession, my years of industrious application, my
careful following of the paths that other successful Americans have
blazed for me.
I must confess at the outset that it is ofttimes difficult to determine
where the pleasure ends and work begins. Even putting it in this way, I
fear I am guilty of a euphemism; for, now that I consider the matter
honestly, I recall no real pleasure or satisfaction derived from the
various entertainments I have attended during the last five or ten
years.
In the first place I am invariably tired when I come home at night--less
perhaps from the actual work I have done at my office than from the
amount of tobacco I have consumed and the nervous strain attendant on
hurrying from one engagement to another and keeping up the affectation
of hearty good-nature which is part of my stock in trade. At any rate,
even if my body is not tired, my head, nerves and eyes are distinctly
so.
I often feel, when my valet tells me that the motor is ordered at ten
minutes to eight, that I would greatly enjoy having him slip into the
dress-clothes he has so carefully laid out on my bed and go out to
dinner in my place. He would doubtless make himself quite as agreeable
as I. And then--let me see--what would I do? I sit with one of my
accordion-plaited silk socks half on and surrender myself to all the
delights of the most reckless imagination!
Yes, what would I choose if I could do anything in the world for the
next three hours? First, I think, I would like an egg--a poached egg,
done just right, like a little snowball, balanced nicely in the exact
center of a hot piece of toast! My mouth waters. Aunt Jane used to do
them like that. And then I would like a crisp piece of gingerbread and a
glass of milk. Dress? Not on your life! Where is that old smoking-jacket
of mine? Not the one with Japanese embroidery on it--no; the old one.
Given away? I groan aloud.
Well, the silk one will have to do--and a pair of comfortable slippers!
Where is that old brier pipe I keep to go a-fishing? Now I want a
book--full of the sea and ships--of pirates and coral reefs--yes,
Treasure Island; of course that's it--and Long John Silver and the Black
Spot.
"Beg pardon, sir, but madam has sent me up to say the motor is waiting,"
admonishes my English footman respectfully.
Gone--gone is my poached egg, my pipe, my dream of the Southern Seas! I
dash into my evening clothes under the solicitous guidance of my valet
and hastily descend in the electric elevator to the front hall. My wife
has already taken her seat in the motor, with an air of righteous
annoyance, of courteously suppressed irritation. The butler is standing
on the doorstep. The valet is holding up my fur coat expectantly. I am
sensible of an atmosphere of sad reproachfulness.
Oh, well! I thrust my arms into my coat, grasp my white gloves and cane,
receive my hat and wearily start forth on my evening's task of being
entertained; conscious as I climb into the motor that this curious form
of so-called amusement has certain rather obvious limitations.
For what is its _raison d'être_? It is obvious that if I know any
persons whose society and conversation are likely to give me pleasure I
can invite them to my own home and be sure of an evening's quiet
enjoyment. But, so far as I can see, my wife does not invite to our
house the people who are likely to give either her or myself any
pleasure at all, and neither am I likely to meet such people at the
homes of my friends.
The whole thing is a mystery governed by strange laws and curious
considerations of which I am kept in utter ignorance; in fact, I rarely
know where I am going to dine until I arrive at the house. On several
occasions I have come away without having any very clear idea as to
where I have been.
"The Hobby-Smiths," my wife will whisper as we go up the steps. "Of
course you've heard of her! She is a great friend of Marie Van Duser,
and her husband is something in Wall Street."
That is a comparatively illuminating description. At all events it
insures some remote social connection with ourselves, if only through
Miss Van Duser and Wall Street. Most of our hosts are something in Wall
Street. Occasionally they are something in coal, iron, oil or politics.
I find a small envelope bearing my name on a silver tray by the
hatstand and open it suspiciously as my wife is divested of her wraps.
Inside is a card bearing in an almost illegible scrawl the words: Mrs.
Jones. I hastily refresh my recollection as to all the Joneses of my
acquaintance, whether in coal, oil or otherwise; but no likely candidate
for the distinction of being the husband of my future dinner companion
comes to my mind. Yet there is undoubtedly a Jones. But, no! The lady
may be a divorcée or a widow. I recall no Mrs. Jones, but I visualize
various possible Miss Joneses--ladies very fat and bursting; ladies
scrawny, lean and sardonic; facetious ladies; heavy, intelligent ladies;
aggressive, militant ladies.
My spouse has turned away from the mirror and the butler has pulled back
the portières leading into the drawing room. I follow my wife's composed
figure as she sweeps toward our much-beplumed hostess and find myself in
a roomful of heterogeneous people, most of whom I have never seen before
and whose personal appearance is anything but encouraging.
"This is very _nice_!" says our hostess--accent on the nice.
"So _nice_ of you to think of us!" answers my wife.
We shake hands and smile vaguely. The butler rattles the portières and
two more people come in.
"This _is_ very nice!" says the hostess again--accent on the is.
It may be here noted that at the conclusion of the evening each guest
murmurs in a simpering, half-persuasive yet consciously deprecatory
manner--as if apologizing for the necessity of so bald a
prevarication--"Good-night! We have had _such_ a good time! _So_ good
of you to ask us!" This epilogue never changes. Its phrase is cast and
set. The words may vary slightly, but the tone, emphasis and substance
are inviolable. Yet, disregarding the invocation good-night! the fact
remains that neither have you had a good time nor was your host in any
way good or kind in asking you.
Returning to the moment at which you have made your entrance and been
received and passed along, you gaze vaguely round you at the other
guests, greeting those you know with exaggerated enthusiasm and being
the conscious subject of whispered criticism and inquiry on the part of
the others. You make your way to the side of a lady whom you have
previously encountered at a similar entertainment and assert your
delight at revamping the fatuous acquaintanceship. Her facetiousness is
elephantine, but the relief of conversation is such that you laugh
loudly at her witticisms and simper knowingly at her platitudes--both of
which have now been current for several months.
The edge of your delight is, however, somewhat dulled by the discovery
that she is the lady whom fate has ordained that you shall take in to
dinner--a matter of which you were sublimely unconscious owing to the
fact that you had entirely forgotten her name. As the couples pair off
to march to the dining room and the combinations of which you may form a
possible part are reduced to a scattering two or three, you realize with
a shudder that the lady beside you is none other than Mrs. Jones--and
that for the last ten minutes you have been recklessly using up the
evening's conversational ammunition.
With a sinking heart you proffer your arm, wondering whether it will be
possible to get through the meal and preserve the fiction of interest.
You wish savagely that you could turn on her and exclaim honestly:
"Look here, my good woman, you are all right enough in your own way, but
we have nothing in common; and this proposed evening of enforced
companionship will leave us both exhausted and ill-tempered. We shall
grin and shout meaningless phrases over the fish, entrée and salad about
life, death and the eternal verities; but we shall be sick to death of
each other in ten minutes. Let's cut it out and go home!"
You are obliged, however, to escort your middle-aged comrade downstairs
and take your seat beside her with a flourish, as if you were playing
Rudolph to her Flavia. Then for two hours, with your eyes blinded by
candlelight and electricity, you eat recklessly as you grimace first
over your left shoulder and then over your right. It is a foregone
conclusion that you will have a headache by the time you have turned,
with a sensation of momentary relief, to your "fair companion" on the
other side.
Have you enjoyed yourself? Have you been entertained? Have you profited?
The questions are utterly absurd. You have _suffered_. You have strained
your eyes, overloaded your stomach, and wasted three hours during which
you might have been recuperating from your day's work or really amusing
yourself with people you like.
This entirely conventional form of amusement is, I am told, quite
unknown in Europe. There are, to be sure, occasional formal banquets,
which do not pretend to be anything but formal. A formal banquet would
be an intense relief, after the heat, noise, confusion and
pseudo-informality of a New York dinner. The European is puzzled and
baffled by one of our combined talk-and-eating bouts.
A nobleman from Florence recently said to me:
"At home, when we go to other people's houses it is for the purpose of
meeting our own friends or our friend's friends. We go after our evening
meal and stay as long as we choose. Some light refreshment is served,
and those who wish to do so smoke or play cards. The old and the young
mingle together. It is proper for each guest to make himself agreeable
to all the others. We do not desire to spend money or to make a fête.
At the proper times we have our balls and _festas_.
"But here in New York each night I have been pressed to go to a grand
entertainment and eat a huge dinner cooked by a French chef and served
by several men servants, where I am given one lady to talk to for
several hours. I must converse with no one else, even if there is a
witty, beautiful and charming woman directly opposite me; and as I talk
and listen I must consume some ten or twelve courses or fail to do
justice to my host's hospitality. I am given four or five costly wines,
caviar, turtle soup, fish, mousse, a roast, partridge, pâté de fois
gras, glacés, fruits, bonbons, and cigars costing two francs each. Not
to eat and drink would be to insult the friend who is paying at least
forty or fifty francs for my dinner. But I cannot enjoy a meal eaten in
such haste and I cannot enjoy talking to one strange lady for so long.
"Then the men retire to a chamber from which the ladies are excluded. I
must talk to some man. Perhaps I have seen an attractive woman I wish to
meet. It is hopeless. I must talk to her husband! At the end of
three-quarters of an hour the men march to the drawing room, and again I
talk to some one lady for half an hour and then must go home! It may be
only half-past ten o'clock, but I have no choice. Away I must go. I say
good-night. I have eaten a huge dinner; I have talked to one man and
three ladies; I have drunk a great deal of wine and my head is very
tired.
"Nineteen other people have had the same experience, and it has cost my
host from five hundred to a thousand francs--or, as you say here, from
one hundred to two hundred dollars. And why has he spent this sum of
money? Pardon me, my friend, if I say that it could be disbursed to much
better advantage. Should my host come to Florence I should not _dare_ to
ask him to dinner, for we cannot afford to have these elaborate
functions. If he came to my house he would have to dine _en famille_.
Here you feast every night in the winter. Why? Every day is not a feast
day!"
I devote space and time to this subject commensurate with what seems to
me to be its importance. Dining out is the metropolitan form of social
entertainment for the well-to-do. I go to such affairs at least one
hundred nights each year. That is a large proportion of my whole life
and at least one-half of all the time at my disposal for recreation. So
far as I can see, it is totally useless and a severe drain on one's
nervous centers. It has sapped and is sapping my vitality. During the
winter I am constantly tired. My head aches a large part of the time. I
can do only a half--and on some days only a third--as much work as I
could at thirty-five.
I wake with a thin, fine line of pain over my right eye, and a heavy
head. A strong cup of coffee sets me up and I feel better; but as the
morning wears on, especially if I am nervous, the weariness in my head
returns. By luncheon time I am cross and upset. Often by six o'clock I
have a severe sick headache. When I do not have a headache I am usually
depressed; my brain feels like a lump of lead. And I know precisely the
cause: It is that I do not give my nerve-centers sufficient rest. If I
could spend the evenings--or half of them--quietly I should be well
enough; but after I am tired out by a day's work I come home only to
array myself to go out to saw social wood.
I never get rested! My head gets heavier and heavier and finally gives
way. There is no immediate cause. It is the fact that my nervous system
gets more and more tired without any adequate relief. The feeling of
complete restedness, so far as my brain is concerned, is one I almost
never experience. When I do wake up with my head clear and light my
heart sings for joy. My effectiveness is impaired by weariness and
overeating, through a false effort at recuperation. I have known this
for a long time, but I have seen no escape from it.
Social life is one of the objects of living in New York; and social life
to ninety per cent of society people means nothing but eating one
another's dinners. Men never pay calls or go to teas. The dinner, which
has come to mean a heavy, elaborate meal, eaten amid noise, laughter and
chatter, at great expense, is the expression of our highest social
aspirations. Thus it would seem, though I had not thought of it before,
that I work seven or eight hours every day in order to make myself
rather miserable for the rest of the time.
"I am going to lie down and rest this afternoon," my wife will sometimes
say. "We're dining with the Robinsons."
Extraordinary that pleasure should be so exhausting as to require rest
in anticipation! Dining with these particular and other in-general
Robinsons has actually become a physical feat of endurance--a _tour de
force_, like climbing the Matterhorn or eating thirteen pounds of
beefsteak at a sitting. Is it a reminiscence of those dim centuries when
our ancestors in the forests of the Elbe sat under the moss-hung oaks
and stuffed themselves with roast ox washed down with huge skins of
wine? Or is it a custom born of those later days when, round the blazing
logs of Canadian campfires, our Indian allies gorged themselves into
insensibility to the sound of the tom-tom and the chant of the
medicine-man--the latter quite as indispensable now as then?
If I should be called on to explain for what reason I am accustomed to
eat not wisely but too well on these joyous occasions, I should be
somewhat at a loss for any adequate reply. Perhaps the simplest answer
would be that I have just imbibed a cocktail and created an artificial
appetite. It is also probable that, in my efforts to appear happy and at
ease, to play my part as a connoisseur of good things, and to keep the
conversational ball in the air, I unconsciously lose track of the number
of courses I have consumed.
It is also a matter of habit. As a boy I was compelled to eat everything
on my plate; and as I grew older I discovered that in our home town it
was good manners to leave nothing undevoured and thus pay a concrete
tribute to the culinary ability of the hostess. Be that as it may, I
have always liked to eat. It is almost the only thing left that I enjoy;
but, even so, my palate requires the stimulus of gin. I know that I am
getting fat. My waistcoats have to be let out a little more every five
or six months. Anyhow, if the men did not do their part there would be
little object for giving dinner parties in these days when slender women
are the fashion.
After the long straight front and the habit back, social usage is
frowning on the stomach, hips and other heretofore not unadmired
evidences of robust nutrition. Temperance, not to say total abstinence,
has become _de rigueur_ among the ladies. My dinner companion nibbles
her celery, tastes the soup, waves away fish, entrée and roast, pecks
once or twice at the salad, and at last consumes her ration of ice-cream
with obvious satisfaction. If there is a duck--well, she makes an
exception in the case of duck--at six dollars and a half a pair. A
couple of hothouse grapes and she is done.
It will be observed that this gives her all the more opportunity for
conversation--a doubtful blessing. On the other hand, there is an
equivalent economic waste. I have no doubt each guest would prefer to
have set before her a chop, a baked potato and a ten-dollar goldpiece.
It would amount to the same thing, so far as the host is concerned.
* * * * *
I had, until recently, assumed with some bitterness that my dancing days
were over. My wife and I went to balls, to be sure, but not to dance. We
left that to the younger generation, for the reason that my wife did not
care to jeopardize her attire or her complexion. She was also conscious
of the fact that the variety of waltz popular thirty years ago was an
oddity, and that a middle-aged woman who went hopping and twirling about
a ballroom must be callous to the amusement that followed her gyrations.
With the advent of the turkey trot and the tango, things have changed
however. No one is too stout, too old or too clumsy to go walking
solemnly round, in or out of time to the music. I confess to a
consciousness of absurdity when, to the exciting rhythm of Très
Moutard, I back Mrs. Jones slowly down the room and up again.
"Do you grapevine?" she inquires ardently. Yes; I admit the soft
impeachment, and at once she begins some astonishing convolutions with
the lower part of her body, which I attempt to follow. After several
entanglements we move triumphantly across the hall.
"How beautifully you dance!" she pants.
Aged roisterer that I am, I fall for the compliment. She is a nice old
thing, after all!
"Fish walk?" asks she.
I retort with total abandon.
"Come along!"
So, grabbing her tightly and keeping my legs entirely stiff--as per
instructions from my son--I stalk swiftly along the floor, while she
backs with prodigious velocity. Away we go, an odd four hundred pounds
of us, until, exhausted, we collapse against the table where the
champagne is being distributed.
Though I have carefully followed the directions of my preceptor, I am
aware that the effect produced by our efforts is somehow not the same as
his. I observe him in a close embrace with a willowy young thing,
dipping gracefully in the distance. They pause, sway, run a few steps,
stop dead and suddenly sink to the floor--only to rise and repeat the
performance.
So the evening wears gaily on. I caper round--now sedately, now
deliriously--knowing that, however big a fool I am making of myself, we
are all in the same boat. My wife is doing it, too, to the obvious
annoyance of our daughters. But this is the smartest ball of the season.
When all the world is dancing it would be conspicuous to loiter in the
doorway. Society has ruled that I must dance--if what I am doing can be
so called.
I am aware that I should not care to allow my clients to catch an
unexpected glimpse of my antics with Mrs. Jones; yet to be permitted to
dance with her is one of the privileges of our success. I might dance
elsewhere but it would not be the same thing. Is not my hostess' hoarse,
good-natured, rather vulgar voice the clarion of society? Did not my
wife scheme and plot for years before she managed to get our names on
the sacred list of invitations?
To be sure, I used to go to dances enough as a lad; and good times I had
too. The High School Auditorium had a splendid floor; and the girls,
even though they were unacquainted with all these newfangled steps,
could waltz and polka, and do Sir Roger de Coverley. Good old days! I
remember my wife--met her in that old hall. She wore a white muslin
dress trimmed with artificial roses. I wonder if I properly appreciate
the distinction of being asked to Mrs. Jones' turkey-trotting parties!
My butler and the kitchen-maid are probably doing the same thing in the
basement at home to the notes of the usefulman's accordion--and having a
better time than I am.
It is a pleasure to watch my son or my daughters glide through the
intricacies of these modern dances, which the natural elasticity and
suppleness of youth render charming in spite of their grotesqueness. But
why should I seek to copy them? In spite of the fact that I am still
rather athletic I cannot do so. With my utmost endeavor I fail to
imitate their grace. I am getting old. My muscles are stiff and out of
training. My wind has suffered. Mrs. Jones probably never had any.
And if I am ridiculous, what of her and the other women of her age who,
for some unknown reason, fatuously suppose they can renew their lost
youth? Occasionally luck gives me a débutante for a partner when I go
out to dinner. I do my best to entertain her--trot out all my old jokes
and stories, pay her delicate compliments, and do frank homage to her
youth and beauty. But her attention wanders. My tongue is stiff, like my
legs. It can wag through the old motions, but it has lost its
spontaneity. One glance from the eye of the boy down the long table and
she is oblivious of my existence. Should I try to dance with her I
should quickly find that crabbed middle-age and youth cannot step in
time. My place is with Mrs. Jones--or, better, at home and in bed.
Apart, however, from the dubious delight of dancing, all is not gold
that glitters socially. The first time my wife and I were invited to a
week-end party at the country-house of a widely known New York hostess
we were both much excited. At last we were to be received on a footing
of real intimacy by one of the inner circle. Even my valet, an
imperturbable Englishman who would have announced that the house was on
fire in the same tone as that my breakfast was ready, showed clearly
that he was fully aware of the significance of the coming event. For
several days he exhibited signs of intense nervous anxiety, and when at
last the time of my departure arrived I found that he had filled two
steamer trunks with the things he regarded as indispensable for my
comfort and well-being.
My wife's maid had been equally assiduous. Both she and the valet had no
intention of learning on our return that any feature of our respective
wardrobes had been forgotten; since we had decided not to take either of
our personal servants, for the reason that we thought to do so might
possibly be regarded as an ostentation.
I made an early getaway from my office on Friday afternoon, met my wife
at the ferry, and in due course, but by no means with comfort, managed
to board the train and secure our seats in the parlor car before it
started. We reached our destination at about half-past four and were
met by a footman in livery, who piloted us to a limousine driven by a
French chauffeur. We were the only arrivals.
In my confusion I forgot to do anything about our trunks, which
contained our evening apparel. During the run to the house we were both
on the verge of hysteria owing to the speed at which we were
driven--seventy miles an hour at the least. And at one corner we were
thrown forward, clear of the seats and against the partition, by an
unexpected stop. An interchange of French profanity tinted the
atmosphere for a few moments and then we resumed the trajectory of our
flight.
We had expected to be welcomed by our hostess; but instead we were
informed by the butler that she and the other guests had driven over to
watch a polo game and would probably not be back before six. As we had
nothing to do we strolled round the grounds and looked at the shrubbery
for a couple of hours, at the end of which period we had tea alone in
the library. We had, of course, no sooner finished than the belated
party entered, the hostess full of vociferous apologies.
I remember this occasion vividly because it was my first introduction to
that artificially enforced merriment which is the inevitable concomitant
of smart gatherings in America. The men invariably addressed each other
as Old Man and the women as My Dear. No one was mentioned except by his
or her first name or by some intimate diminutive or abbreviation. It
seemed to be assumed that the guests were only interested in personal
gossip relating to the marital infelicities of the neighboring
countryside, who lost most at cards, and the theater. Every remark
relating to these absorbing subjects was given a feebly humorous twist
and greeted with a burst of hilarity. Even the mere suggestion of going
upstairs to dress for dinner was a sufficient reason for an explosion of
merriment. If noise was an evidence of having a good time these people
were having the time of their lives. Personally I felt a little out of
my element. I had still a lingering disinclination to pretend to a
ubiquity of social acquaintance that I did not really possess, and I had
never learned to laugh in a properly boisterous manner. But my wife
appeared highly gratified.
Delay in sending to the depot for our trunks--the fault of the butler,
to whom we turned over our keys--prevented, as we supposed, our getting
ready in time for dinner. Everybody else had gone up to dress; so we
also went to our rooms, which consisted of two huge apartments connected
by a bathroom of similar acreage. The furniture was dainty and
chintz-covered. There was an abundance of writing paper, envelopes,
magazines and French novels. Superficially the arrangements were wholly
charming.
The baggage arrived at about ten minutes to eight, after we had sat
helplessly waiting for nearly an hour. The rooms were plentifully
supplied with buttons marked: Maid; Valet; Butler's Pantry--and so on.
But, though we pressed these anxiously, there was no response. I
concluded that the valet was hunting or sleeping or otherwise occupied.
I unpacked my trunks without assistance; my wife unpacked hers. But
before I could find and assemble my evening garments I had to unwrap the
contents of every tray and fill the room knee-high with tissue-paper.
Unable to secure any response to her repeated calls for the maid, my
wife was nearly reduced to tears. However, in those days I was not
unskillful in hooking up a dress, and we managed to get downstairs, with
ready apologies on our lips, by twenty minutes of nine. We were the
first ones down however.
The party assembled in a happy-go-lucky manner and, after the cocktails
had been served, gathered round the festive board at five minutes past
nine. The dinner was the regulation heavy, expensive New York meal,
eaten to the accompaniment of the same noisy mirth I have already
described. Afterward the host conducted the men to his "den," a
luxurious paneled library filled with rare prints, and we listened for
an hour to the jokes and anecdotes of a semiprofessional jester who took
it on himself to act as the life of the party. It was after eleven
o'clock when we rejoined the ladies, but the evening apparently had only
just begun; the serious business of the day--bridge--was at hand. But
in those days my wife and I did not play bridge; and as there was
nothing else for us to do we retired, after a polite interval, to our
apartments.
While getting ready for the night we shouted cheerfully to one another
through the open doors of the bathroom and, I remember, became quite
jolly; but when my wife had gone to bed and I tried to close the blinds
I discovered that there were none. Now neither of us had acquired the
art of sleeping after daylight unless the daylight was excluded. With
grave apprehension I arranged a series of makeshift screens and
extinguished the lights, wandering round the room and turning off the
key of each one separately, since the architect had apparently forgotten
to put in a central switch.
If there had been no servants in evidence when we wanted them before
dinner, no such complaint could be entered now. There seemed to be a
bowling party going on upstairs. We could also hear plainly the rattle
of dishes and a lively interchange of informalities from the kitchen end
of the establishment. We lay awake tensely. Shortly after one o'clock
these particular sounds died away, but there was a steady tramp of feet
over our heads until three. About this hour, also, the bridge party
broke up and the guests came upstairs.
There were no outside doors to our rooms. Bells rang, water ran, and
there was that curious vibration which even hairbrushing seems to set
going in a country house. Then with a final bang, comparative silence
descended. Occasionally still, to be sure, the floor squeaked over our
heads. Once somebody got up and closed a window. I could hear two
distant snorings in major and minor keys. I managed to snatch a few
winks and then an alarm-clock went off. At no great distance the
scrubbing maid was getting up. I could hear her every move.
The sun also rose and threw fire-pointed darts at us through the
windowshades. By five o'clock I was ready to scream with nerves; and,
having dug a lounge suit out of the gentlemen's furnishing store in my
trunk, I cautiously descended into the lower regions. There was a rich
smell of cigarettes everywhere. In the hall I stumbled over the feet of
the sleeping night-watchman. But the birds were twittering in the
bushes; the grassblades threw back a million flashes to the sun.
Not before a quarter to ten could I secure a cup of coffee, though
several footmen, in answer to my insistent bell, had been running round
apparently for hours in a vain endeavor to get it for me. At eleven a
couple of languid younger men made their appearance and conversed
apathetically with one another over the papers. The hours drew on.
Lunch came at two o'clock, bursting like a thunder-storm out of a
sunlit sky. Afterward the guests sat round and talked. People were
coming to tea at five, and there was hardly any use in doing anything
before that time. A few took naps. A young lady and gentleman played an
impersonal game of tennis; but at five an avalanche of social leaders
poured out of a dozen shrieking motors and stormed the castle with
salvos of strident laughter. The cannonade continued, with one brief
truce in which to dress for dinner, until long after midnight. _Vox, et
praeterea nihil!_
I look back on that house party with vivid horror. Yet it was one of the
most valuable of my social experiences. We were guests invited for the
first time to one of the smartest houses on Long Island; yet we were
neglected by male and female servants alike, deprived of all possibility
of sleep, and not the slightest effort was made to look after our
personal comfort and enjoyment by either our host or hostess.
Incidentally on my departure I distributed about forty dollars among
various dignitaries who then made their appearance.
It is probable that time has somewhat exaggerated my recollections of
the miseries of this our first adventure into ultrasmart society, but
its salient characteristics have since repeated themselves in countless
others. I no longer accept week-end invitations;--for me the quiet of my
library or the Turkish bath at my club; for they are all essentially
alike. Surrounded by luxury, the guests yet know no comfort!
After a couple of days of ennui and an equal number of sleepless nights,
his brain foggy with innumerable drinks, his eyes dizzy with the pips of
playing cards, and his ears still echoing with senseless hilarity, the
guest rises while it is not yet dawn, and, fortified by a lukewarm cup
of faint coffee boiled by the kitchen maid and a slice of leatherlike
toast left over from Sunday's breakfast, presses ten dollars on the
butler and five on the chauffeur--and boards the train for the city,
nervous, disgruntled, his digestion upset and his head totally out of
kilter for the day's work.
Since my first experience in house parties I have yielded weakly to my
wife's importunities on several hundred similar occasions. Some of these
visits have been fairly enjoyable. Sleep is sometimes possible. Servants
are not always neglectful. Discretion in the matter of food and drink is
conceivable, even if not probable, and occasionally one meets congenial
persons.
As a rule, however, all the hypocrisies of society are intensified
threefold when heterogeneous people are thrown into the enforced contact
of a Sunday together in the country; but the artificiality and
insincerity of smart society is far less offensive than the
pretentiousness of mere wealth.
* * * * *
Not long ago I attended a dinner given on Fifth Avenue the invitation to
which had been eagerly awaited by my wife. We were asked to dine
informally with a middle-aged couple who for no obvious reason have been
accepted as fashionable desirables. He is the retired head of a great
combination of capital usually described as a trust. A canopy and a
carpet covered the sidewalk outside the house. Two flunkies in cockaded
hats stood beside the door, and in the hall was a line of six liveried
lackeys. Three maids helped my wife remove her wraps and adjust her
hair.
In the salon where our hostess received us were hung pictures
representing an outlay of nearly two million dollars--part of a
collection the balance of which they keep in their house in Paris; for
these people are not content with one mansion on Fifth Avenue and a
country house on Long Island, but own a palace overlooking the Bois de
Boulogne and an enormous estate in Scotland. They spend less than ten
weeks in New York, six in the country, and the rest of the year abroad.
The other male guests had all amassed huge fortunes and had given up
active work. They had been, in their time, in the thick of the fray. Yet
these men, who had swayed the destinies of the industrial world, stood
about awkwardly discussing the most trivial of banalities, as if they
had never had a vital interest in anything.
Then the doors leading into the dining room were thrown open, disclosing
a table covered with rosetrees in full bloom five feet in height and a
concealed orchestra began to play. There were twenty-four seats and a
footman for each two chairs, besides two butlers, who directed the
service. The dinner consisted of hors-d'oeuvre and grapefruit, turtle
soup, fish of all sorts, elaborate entrées, roasts, breasts of plover
served separately with salad, and a riot of ices and exotic fruits.
Throughout the meal the host discoursed learnedly on the relative
excellence of various vintages of champagne and the difficulty of
procuring cigars suitable for a gentleman to smoke. It appeared that
there was no longer any wine--except a few bottles in his own
cellar--which was palatable or healthful. Even coffee was not fit for
use unless it had been kept for six years! His own cigars were made to
order from a selected crop of tobacco he had bought up entire. His
cigarettes, which were the size of small sausages, were prepared from
specially cured leaves of plants grown on "sunny corners of the walls of
Smyrna." His Rembrandts, his Botticellis, his Sir Joshuas, his Hoppners,
were little things he had picked up here and there, but which, he
admitted, were said to be rather good.
Soon all the others were talking wine, tobacco and Botticelli as well as
they could, though most of them knew more about coal, cotton or creosote
than the subjects they were affecting to discuss.
This, then, was success! To flounder helplessly in a mire of
artificiality and deception to Tales of Hoffmann!
If I were asked what was the object of our going to such a dinner I
could only answer that it was in order to be invited to others of the
same kind. Is it for this we labor and worry--that we scheme and
conspire--that we debase ourselves and lose our self-respect? Is there
no wine good enough for my host? Will God let such arrogance be without
a blast of fire from heaven?
* * * * *
There was a time not so very long ago when this same man was thankful
enough for a slice of meat and a chunk of bread carried in a tin
pail--content with the comfort of an old brier pipe filled with cut plug
and smoked in a sunny corner of the factory yard. "Sunny corners of the
walls of Smyrna!"
It is a fine thing to assert that here in America we have "out of a
democracy of opportunity" created "an aristocracy of achievement." The
phrase is stimulating and perhaps truly expresses the spirit of our
energetic and ambitious country; but an aristocracy of achievement is
truly noble only when the achievements themselves are fine. What are the
achievements that win our applause, for which we bestow our decorations
in America? Do we honor most the men who truly serve their generation
and their country? Or do we fawn, rather, on those who merely serve
themselves?
It is a matter of pride with us--frequently expressed in disparagement
of our European contemporaries--that we are a nation of workers; that to
hold any position in the community every man must have a job or
otherwise lose caste; that we tolerate no loafing. We do not conceal our
contempt for the chap who fails to go down every day to the office or
business. Often, of course, our ostentatious workers go down, but do
very little work. We feel somehow that every man owes it to the
community to put in from six to ten hours' time below the residential
district.
Young men who have inherited wealth are as chary of losing one hour as
their clerks. The busy millionaire sits at his desk all day--his ear to
the telephone. We assume that these men are useful because they are
busy; but in what does their usefulness consist? What are they busy
about? They are setting an example of mere industry, perhaps--but to
what end? Simply, in seven cases out of ten, in order to get a few
dollars or a few millions more than they have already. Their exertions
have no result except to enable their families to live in even greater
luxury.
I know at least fifty men, fathers of families, whose homes might
radiate kindliness and sympathy and set an example of wise, generous and
broad-minded living, who, already rich beyond their needs, rush
downtown before their children have gone to school, pass hectic,
nerve-racking days in the amassing of more money, and return after their
little ones have gone to bed, too utterly exhausted to take the
slightest interest in what their wives have been doing or in the
pleasure and welfare of their friends.
These men doubtless give liberally to charity, but they give
impersonally, not generously; they are in reality utterly selfish,
engrossed in the enthralling game of becoming successful or more
successful men, sacrificing their homes, their families and their
health--for what? To get on; to better their position; to push in among
those others who, simply because they have outstripped the rest in the
matter of filling their own pockets, are hailed with acclamation.
It is pathetic to see intelligent, capable men bending their energies
not to leading wholesome, well-rounded, serviceable lives but to gaining
a slender foothold among those who are far less worthy of emulation than
themselves and with whom they have nothing whatsoever in common except a
despicable ambition to display their wealth and to demonstrate that they
have "social position."
In what we call the Old World a man's social position is a matter of
fixed classification--that is to say, his presumptive ability and
qualifications to amuse and be amused; to hunt, fish and shoot; to ride,
dance, and make himself generally agreeable--are known from the start.
And, based on the premise that what is known as society exists simply
for the purpose of enabling people to have a good time, there is far
more reason to suppose that one who comes of a family which has made a
specialty of this pursuit for several hundred years is better endowed by
Nature for that purpose than one who has made a million dollars out of a
patent medicine or a lucky speculation in industrial securities.
The great manufacturer or chemist in England, France, Italy, or Germany,
the clever inventor, the astute banker, the successful merchant, have
their due rewards; but, except in obvious instances, they are not
presumed to have acquired incidentally to their material prosperity the
arts of playing billiards, making love, shooting game on the wing,
entertaining a house party or riding to hounds. Occasionally one of them
becomes by special favor of the sovereign a baronet; but, as a rule his
so-called social position is little affected by his business success,
and there is no reason why it should be. He may make a fortune out of a
new process, but he invites the same people to dinner, frequents the
same club and enjoys himself in just about the same way as he did
before. His newly acquired wealth is not regarded as in itself likely to
make him a more congenial dinner-table companion or any more delightful
at five-o'clock tea.
The aristocracy of England and the Continent is not an aristocracy of
achievement but of the polite art of killing time pleasantly. As such it
has a reason for existence. Yet it can at least be said for it that its
founders, however their descendants may have deteriorated, gained their
original titles and positions by virtue of their services to their king
and country.
However, with a strange perversity--due perhaps to our having the
Declaration of Independence crammed down our throats as children--we in
America seem obsessed with an ambition to create a social aristocracy,
loudly proclaimed as founded on achievement, which, in point of fact, is
based on nothing but the possession of money. The achievement that most
certainly lands one among the crowned heads of the American nobility is
admittedly the achievement of having acquired in some way or other about
five million dollars; and it is immaterial whether its possessor got it
by hard work, inheritance, marriage or the invention of a porous
plaster.
In the wider circle of New York society are to be found a considerable
number of amiable persons who have bought their position by the lavish
expenditure of money amassed through the clever advertising and sale of
table relishes, throat emollients, fireside novels, canned edibles,
cigarettes, and chewing tobacco. The money was no doubt legitimately
earned. The patent-medicine man and the millionaire tailor have my
entire respect. I do not sneer at honest wealth acquired by these
humble means. The rise--if it be a rise--of these and others like them
is superficial evidence, perhaps, that ours is a democracy. Looking
deeper, we see that it is, in fact, proof of our utter and shameless
snobbery.
Most of these people are in society not on account of their personal
qualities, or even by virtue of the excellence of their cut plug or
throat wash which, in truth, may be a real boon to mankind--but because
they have that most imperative of all necessities--money. The
achievement by which they have become aristocrats is not the kind of
achievement that should have entitled them to the distinction which is
theirs. They are received and entertained for no other reason whatever
save that they can receive and entertain in return. Their bank accounts
are at the disposal of the other aristocrats--and so are their houses,
automobiles and yachts. The brevet of nobility--by achievement--is
conferred on them, and the American people read of their comings and
goings, their balls, dinners and other festivities with consuming and
reverent interest. Most dangerously significant of all is the fact that,
so long as the applicant for social honors has the money, the method by
which he got it, however reprehensible, is usually overlooked. That a
man is a thief, so long as he has stolen enough, does not impair his
desirability. The achievement of wealth is sufficient in itself to
entitle him to a seat in the American House of Lords.
A substantial portion of the entertaining that takes place on Fifth
Avenue is paid for out of pilfered money. Ten years ago this rhetorical
remark would have been sneered at as demagogic. To-day everybody knows
that it is simply the fact. Yet we continue to eat with entire unconcern
the dinners that have, as it were, been abstracted from the dinner-pails
of the poor. I cannot conduct an investigation into the business history
of every man who asks me to his house. And even if I know he has been a
crook, I cannot afford to stir up an unpleasantness by attempting in my
humble way to make him feel sorrow for his misdeeds. If I did I might
find myself alone--deserted by the rest of the aristocracy who are
concerned less with his morality than with the vintage of his wine and
the _dot_ he is going to give his daughter.
The methods by which a newly rich American purchases a place among our
nobility are simple and direct. He does not storm the inner citadel of
society but at the start ingratiates himself with its lazy and
easy-going outposts. He rents a house in a fashionable country suburb of
New York and goes in and out of town on the "dude" train. He soon learns
what professional people mingle in smart society and these he bribes to
receive him and his family. He buys land and retains a "smart" lawyer to
draw his deeds and attend to the transfer of title. He engages a
fashionable architect to build his house, and a society young lady who
has gone into landscape gardening to lay out his grounds. He cannot work
the game through his dentist or plumber, but he establishes friendly
relations with the swell local medical man and lets him treat an
imaginary illness or two. He has his wife's portrait painted by an
artist who makes a living off similar aspirants, and in exchange gets an
invitation to drop in to tea at the studio. He buys broken-winded
hunters from the hunting set, decrepit ponies from the polo players, and
stone griffins for the garden from the social sculptress.
A couple of hundred here, a couple of thousand there, and he and his
wife are dining out among the people who run things. Once he gets a
foothold, the rest is by comparison easy. The bribes merely become
bigger and more direct. He gives a landing to the yacht club, a silver
mug for the horse show, and an altar rail to the church. He entertains
wisely--gracefully discarding the doctor, lawyer, architect and artist
as soon as they are no longer necessary. He has, of course, already
opened an account with the fashionable broker who lives near him, and
insured his life with the well-known insurance man, his neighbor. He
also plays poker daily with them on the train.
This is the period during which he becomes a willing, almost eager, mark
for the decayed sport who purveys bad champagne and vends his own brand
of noxious cigarettes. He achieves the Stock Exchange Crowd without
difficulty and moves on up into the Banking Set composed of trust
company presidents, millionaires who have nothing but money, and the
élite of the stockbrokers and bond men who handle their private
business.
The family are by this time "going almost everywhere"; and in a year or
two, if the money holds out, they can buy themselves into the inner
circles. It is only necessary to take a villa at Newport and spend about
one hundred thousand dollars in the course of the season. The walls of
the city will fall down flat if the golden trumpet blows but mildly. And
then, there they are--right in the middle of the champagne, clambakes
and everything else!--invited to sit with the choicest of America's
nobility on golden chairs--supplied from New York at one dollar per--and
to dance to the strains of the most expensive music amid the subdued
popping of distant corks.
In this social Arabian Nights' dream, however, you will find no sailors
or soldiers, no great actors or writers, no real poets or artists, no
genuine statesmen. The nearest you will get to any of these is the
millionaire senator, or the amateur decorators and portrait painters
who, by making capital of their acquaintance, get a living out of
society. You will find few real people among this crowd of intellectual
children.
The time has not yet come in America when a leader of smart society
dares to invite to her table men and women whose only merit is that
they have done something worth while. She is not sufficiently sure of
her own place. She must continue all her social life to be seen only
with the "right people." In England her position would be secure and she
could summon whom she would to dine with her; but in New York we have to
be careful lest, by asking to our houses some distinguished actor or
novelist, people might think we did not know we should select our
friends--not for what they are, but for what they have.
In a word, the viciousness of our social hierarchy lies in the fact that
it is based solely upon material success. We have no titles of nobility;
but we have Coal Barons, Merchant Princes and Kings of Finance. The very
catchwords of our slang tell the story. The achievement of which we
boast as the foundation of our aristocracy is indeed ignoble; but, since
there is no other, we and our sons, and their sons after them, will
doubtless continue to struggle--and perhaps steal--to prove, to the
satisfaction of ourselves and the world at large, that we are entitled
to be received into the nobility of America not by virtue of our good
deeds, but of our so-called success.
We would not have it otherwise. We should cry out against any serious
attempt, outside of the pulpit, to alter or readjust an order that
enables us to buy for money a position of which we would be otherwise
undeserving. It would be most discouraging to us to have substituted
for the present arrangement a society in which the only qualifications
for admittance were those of charm, wit, culture, good breeding and good
sportsmanship.