GOOD AND BAD SOCIETY.
Many of our correspondents ask us to define what is meant by the
terms "good society" and "bad society." They say that they read in
the newspapers of the "good society" in New York and Washington
and Newport, and that it is a record of drunkenness, flirtation,
bad manners and gossip, backbiting, divorce, and slander. They
read that the fashionable people at popular resorts commit all
sorts of vulgarities, such as talking aloud at the opera, and
disturbing their neighbors; that young men go to a dinner, get
drunk, and break glasses; and one ingenuous young girl remarks,
"We do not call that good society in Atlanta."
Such a letter might have been written to that careful chronicler
of "good society" in the days of Charles II., old Pepys of courtly
fame. The young maiden of Hertfordshire, far from the Court, might
well have thought of Rochester and such "gay sparks," and the
ladies who threw glasses of wine at them, as not altogether
well-bred, nor entitled to admission into "good society." We
cannot blame her.
It is the old story. Where, too, as in our land, pleasure and
luxury rule a certain set who enjoy no tradition of good manners,
the contradiction in terms is the more apparent. Even the external
forms of respect to good manners are wanting. No such overt
vulgarity, for instance, as talking aloud at the opera will ever
be endured in London, because a powerful class of really well-born
and well-bred people will hiss it down, and insist on the quiet
which music, of all other things, demands. That is what we mean by
a tradition of good manners.
In humbler society, we may say as in the household of a Scotch
peasant, such as was the father of Carlyle, the breaches of
manners which are often seen in fashionable society would never
occur. They would appear perfectly impossible to a person who had
a really good heart and a gentle nature. The manners of a young
man of fashion who keeps his hat on when speaking to a lady, who
would smoke in her face, and would appear indifferent to her
comfort at a supper-table, who would be contradictory and
neglectful--such manners would have been impossible to Thomas or
John Carlyle, reared as they were in the humblest poverty. It was
the "London swell" who dared to be rude in their day as now.
But this impertinence and arrogance of fashion should not prevent
the son of a Scotch peasant from acquiring, or attempting to
acquire, the conventional habits and manners of a gentleman. If he
have already the grace of high culture, he should seek to add to
it the knowledge of social laws, which will render him an
agreeable person to be met in society. He must learn how to write
a graceful note, and to answer his invitations promptly; he must
learn the etiquette of dress and of leaving cards; he must learn
how to eat his dinner gracefully, and, even if he sees in good
society men of external polish guilty of a rudeness which would
have shocked the man who in the Scotch Highlands fed and milked
the cows, he still must not forget that society demands something
which was not found in the farm-yard. Carlyle, himself the
greatest radical and democrat in the world, found that life at
Craigenputtock would not do all for him, that he must go to London
and Edinburgh to rub off his solitary neglect of manners, and
strive to be like other people. On the other band, the Queen of
England has just refused to receive the Duke of Marlborough
because he notoriously ill-treated the best of wives, and had
been, in all his relations of life, what they call in England a
"cad." She has even asked him to give back the Star and Garter,
the insignia once worn by the great duke, which has never fallen
on shoulders so unworthy as those of the late Marquis of
Blandford, now Duke of Marlborough. For all this the world has
great reason to thank the Queen, for the present duke has been
always in "good society," and such is the reverence felt for rank
and for hereditary name in England that he might have continued in
the most fashionable circles for all his bad behaviour, still
being courted for name and title, had not the highest lady in the
land rebuked him.
She has refused to receive the friends of the Prince of Wales,
particularly some of his American favorites, this good Queen,
because she esteems good manners and a virtuous life as a part of
good society.
Now, those who are not "in society" are apt to mistake all that is
excessive, all that is boorish, all that is snobbish, all that is
aggressive, as being a part of that society. In this they are
wrong. No one estimates the grandeur of the ocean by the rubbish
thrown up on the shore. Fashionable society, good society, the
best society, is composed of the very best people, the most
polished and accomplished, religious, moral, and charitable.
The higher the civilization, therefore, the better the society,
it being always borne in mind that there will be found, here and
there, the objectionable outgrowths of a false luxury and of an
insincere culture. No doubt, among the circles of the highest
nobility, while the king and queen may be people of simple and
unpretending manners, there may be some arrogant and
self-sufficient master of ceremonies, some Malvolio whose
pomposity is in strange contrast to the good-breeding of Olivia.
It is the lesser star which twinkles most. The "School for
Scandal" is a lasting picture of the folly and frivolity of a
certain phase of London society in the past, and it repeats itself
in every decade. There is always a Mrs. Candour, a Sir Benjamin
Backbite, and a scandalous college at Newport, in New York,
Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Saratoga,
Long Branch, wherever society congregates. It is the necessary
imperfection, the seamy side. Such is the reverse of the pattern.
Unfortunately, the right side is not so easily described. The
colors of a beautiful bit of brocade are, when seen as a whole, so
judiciously blended that they can hardly be pronounced upon
individually: one only admires the _tout ensemble_, and that
uncritically, perhaps.
That society is bad whose members, however tenacious they be of
forms of etiquette and elaborate ceremonials, have one code of
manners for those whom they deem their equals, and another for
those whom they esteem to be of less importance to them by reason
of age, pecuniary condition, or relative social influence. Bad
manners are apt to prove the concomitant of a mind and disposition
that are none too good, and the fashionable woman who slights and
wounds people because they cannot minister to her ambition,
challenges a merciless criticism of her own moral shortcomings. A
young girl who is impertinent or careless in her demeanor to her
mother or her mother's friends; who goes about without a chaperon
and talks slang; who is careless in her bearing towards young men,
permitting them to treat her as if she were one of themselves;
who accepts the attention of a young man of bad character or
dissipated habits because he happens to be rich; who is loud in
dress and rough in manner--such a young girl is "bad society," be
she the daughter of an earl or a butcher. There are many such
instances of audacity in the so-called "good society" of America,
but such people do not spoil it; they simply isolate themselves.
A young man is "bad society" who is indifferent to those older
than himself, who neglects to acknowledge invitations, who sits
while a lady stands, who goes to a ball and does not speak to his
host, who is selfish, who is notoriously immoral and careless of
his good name, and who throws discredit on his father and mother
by showing his ill-breeding. No matter how rich, how externally
agreeable to those whom he may wish to court, no matter how much
varnish of outward manner such a man may possess, he is "bad
society."
A parvenue who assumes to keep other people out of the society
which she has just conquered, whose thoughts are wholly upon
social success (which means, with her, knowing somebody who has
heretofore refused to know her), who is climbing, and throwing
backward looks of disdain upon those who also climb--such a woman,
unfortunately too common in America, is, when she happens to have
achieved a fashionable position, one of the worst instances of bad
society. She may be very prominent, powerful, and influential. She
may have money and "entertain," and people desirous of being
amused may court her, and her bad manners will be accepted by the
careless observer as one of the concomitants of fashion. The
reverse is true. She is an interloper in the circles of good
society, and the old fable of the ass in the lion's skin fits her
precisely. Many a duchess in England is such an interloper; her
supercilious airs betray the falsity of her politeness, but she is
obliged by the rules of the Court at which she has been educated
to "behave like a lady;" she has to counterfeit good-breeding; she
cannot, she dare not, behave as a woman who has suddenly become
rich may sometimes, nay does, behave in American society, and
still be received.
It will thus be seen, as has been happily expressed, that "fashion
has many classes, and many rules of probation and admission." A
young person ignorant of its laws should not be deluded, however,
by false appearances. If a young girl comes from the most secluded
circles to Saratoga, and sees some handsome, well-dressed,
conspicuous woman much courted, lionized, as it were, and observes
in her what seems to be insolent pretence, unkindness, frivolity,
and superciliousness, let her inquire and wait before she accepts
this bit of brass for pure gold. Emerson defines "sterling fashion
as funded talent." Its objects may be frivolous or objectless;
but, in the long-run, its purposes are neither frivolous nor
accidental. It is an effort for good society; it is the bringing
together of admirable men and women in a pleasant way.
Good-breeding, personal superiority, beauty, genius, culture, are
all very good things. Every one delights in a person of charming
manners. Some people will forgive very great derelictions in a
person who has charming manners, but the truly good society is the
society of those who have virtue and good manners both.
Some Englishman asked an American, "What sort of a country is
America?" "It is a country where everybody can tread on
everybody's toes," was the answer.
It is very bad society where any one wishes to tread on his
neighbor's toes, and worse yet where there is a disposition to
feel aggrieved, or to show that one feels aggrieved. There are
certain people new in society who are always having their toes
trodden upon. They say: "Mrs. Brown snubbed me; Mrs. Smith does
not wish to know me; Mrs. Thompson ought to have invited me. I am
as good as any of them." This is very bad society. No woman with
self-respect will ever say such things. If one meets with
rudeness, take no revenge, cast no aspersions. Wit and tact,
accomplishments and social talents, may have elevated some woman
to a higher popularity than another, but no woman will gain that
height by complaining. Command of temper, delicacy of feeling, and
elegance of manner--all these are demanded of the persons who
become leaders of society, and would remain so. They alone are
"good society." Their imitators may masquerade for a time, and
tread on toes, and fling scorn and insult about them while in a
false and insecure supremacy; but such pretenders to the throne
are soon unseated. There is a dreadful Sedan and Strasburg
awaiting them. They distrust their own flatterers; their
"appanage" is not a solid one.
People who are looking on at society from a distance must remember
that women of the world are not always worldly women. They forget
that brilliancy in society may be accompanied by the best heart
and the sternest principle. The best people of the world are those
who know the world best. They recognize the fact that this world
should be known and served and treated with as much respect and
sincerity as that other world, which is to be our reward for
having conquered the one in which we live now.