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The 
 
 469 Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 of America 
 
Qjm<^^^yc-^7hkk^ 
 
The 469 
 
 Ultra-Fashionables 
 of America 
 
 A Social 
 Guide Book and Register 
 TO Date 
 
 BY 
 C. W. DE Lyon Nichoixs W^^ ^^T^ 
 
 Governor-General of the National Society of 
 Scions of Colonial Cavaliers 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Ultra-Fashionable Peerage of America,'* 
 
 "The Greek Madonna," "The Decadents," 
 
 "The Art-History Primer," etc. 
 
 BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 835 BROADWAY NEW YORK 
 
 1912 
 

 Copyright, 1912 
 
 BY 
 
 Broadway Publishing Co. 
 
 X:c.\ ^^^ 9 1 no 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 PAGE 
 How to Become Ultra-Fashionable 9 
 
 Chapter II. 
 The White House and the Ultra-Fashion- 
 able Set — List of Washington Ultra- 
 Fashionables 45 
 
 Chapter III. 
 Philadelphia Ultra-Fashionables , 52 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Baltimore Ultra-Fashionables 58 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Boston Ultra-Fashionables 63 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Providence Ultra-Fashionables 66 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 San Francisco and Chicago Ultra-Fashion- 
 ables 69 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Newport 73 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 "The 300," The Innermost Circle of New 
 York and Newport Society 92 
 
 Chapter X. 
 The Misadventures of Mrs. Detrimental — 
 A Social Career loi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The gentle or irate reader of these pages is 
 forewarned not to expect from them a genealogi- 
 cal treatise. The subject in hand — National 
 Society — is treated wholly from the standpoint 
 of fashion; birth and hereditary rank being ac- 
 counted accidents and not belonging to the essence 
 of smartness. Furthermore^ the system of dis- 
 tinctions employed in ''The Ultra-Fashionables y' 
 sweeps away as so much social undercrust more 
 than ninety per cent, of the oldest families of 
 the Republic, On the other hand, a truly Amer- 
 ican spirit pervading the work, evinces itself in 
 the large measure of influence it assigns to the 
 social talent of the individual as one of the main 
 factors in insuring the highest social success. 
 
 Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess 
 of Connaughfs recent visit as guests of our Am- 
 bassador to the Court of St. James, the Hon. 
 Whitelaw Reid and Mrs, Reid, at their town house 
 in this city, did more in a practical way, towards 
 helping to outline Who^s Who in idtra-fashionable 
 New York than any nexus of social events since 
 Mrs. A stores famous ball to the 600 in 1903, for 
 which invitations to members of society in Wash- 
 ington and other cities were also included, thus 
 creating a national tdtra-fashionable set of 600. 
 
 The idea, however, of ushering in a new social 
 7 
 
dynasty can by no means be construed as a major 
 or minor premise underlying the invitation lists 
 of the various functions given by the Whitelaw 
 Reids and Mrs. Ogden Mills in honor of the Duke 
 and Duchess of Connaught and the Princess 
 Patricia. Discounting additions made for United 
 States government and civic officials, the roll 
 d'honeur for these entertainments, was in substance, 
 closely similar to that of Mrs. Ogden Mills. A 
 large proportion of the social personages heralded 
 in the grand list of *'The 300'' in this work were 
 guests at the aforesaid fetes to visiting Royalty. 
 While this latter list of ''The 300^' is set forth in 
 these pages as representative rather than as a 
 numerical whole of Metropolitan ultra-smart so- 
 ciety, the lists of the Ultra-Fashionables of the 
 provincial cities are practically exhaustive. 
 
 *'The Ultra-Fashionables of America^* is, in a 
 sense, a greatly altered second edition of the 
 author's book, ''The Ultra-Fashionable Peerage 
 of America,'^ which was published privately in 
 1904, and won the commendation of Mrs. Astor 
 as a pen-picture of her coterie in American society, 
 and at the other horn of the social dilemna, was 
 quoted at some length by Henry George, Jr., in 
 his work, "The Menace of Privilege J* The 
 former title, "Ultra-Fashionable Peerage,*^ was 
 liable to the misconception of meaning a display 
 of American heraldry and pedigrees, instead of 
 an anthology of the fin fleur of fashion. 
 
 The Author 
 
The 
 
 469 Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 of America 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HOW TO BECOME ULTRA- 
 FASHIONABLE 
 
 Newport, not the White House, is the su- 
 preme court of social appeals in the United 
 States. Mrs. Ogden Mills, and not the wife 
 of the President of the United States, is the 
 first lady of the land in the realm of fashion. 
 In Europe the pleasures of social life are the 
 privileges of rank, which of course is founded 
 upon the Brahmin caste of nobility. 
 
 In America, in ultra-fashionable society, 
 rank has to be created and kept up by social 
 functions, these amenities of necessity being 
 extended to people already bearing the im- 
 primatur of fashion, or meet for elevation to 
 
 9 
 
 r 
 
t o UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 the golden caste of Vera de Vere. One's 
 family fixed one's social status under the old- 
 time social regime in America. A European 
 upper class finds in society in general and 
 particularly in Summer migratory residence 
 a relaxation, a surcease from care and worry. 
 The ultra-fashionable American, on the con- 
 trary, finds in society a treadmill from which 
 there is no shuffling out; the giving and at- 
 tending of a round of social functions which 
 cannot be neglected without imperilling, or, 
 more often actually losing caste. 
 
 A good way to judge a faith is to have pro- 
 fessed it and abandoned it. And society may 
 well be viewed askant for a moment by one 
 who at least in popular conception is the polar 
 opposite to its spirit. I refer to a personage 
 of world-wide repute, who, born in both the 
 metropolitan and New England purple and 
 in her youth a much-courted belle and heiress, 
 forsook society's portals years ago, carving 
 out for herself instead the career of the most 
 eminent female financier, a name to con- 
 jure with by every great corporation in the 
 world — Mrs. Hetty Rowland Robinson 
 Green. 
 
OF AMERICA ii! 
 
 Mrs. Green, while frankly avowing that 
 ^^the social game is not worth the candle," 
 regards the supremacy of Newport in Ameri- 
 can society simply as an axiom questioned only 
 by the hopelessly provincial. "If I went to 
 Newport," Mrs. Green says, "I would take a 
 cottage and entertain. I would not stop at 
 a place which is a cross between a boarding- 
 house and a hotel and be a hanger-on. What 
 I do, I do with my might. When I dress, I 
 dress with my might. If I should choose to 
 go dressed like a charwoman the rest of the 
 time, that is my own affair; I certainly would 
 not be and am not making an attempt 
 and failing in it. When I gave a large 
 dinner at the Plaza, a year or two ago, 
 to pay off my daughter Sylvia's social debts, 
 I ordered the best dinner the Plaza could cater, 
 with the Tiffany gold dinner service and the 
 ^pyramids of the Andes' for decorations. As 
 for myself, I have had my fling at society in 
 my day, along with our old neighbors in New 
 York — the Rhinelanders, Jays, Grinnells, As- 
 pinwalls, Langdons, Pells and Astors. Those 
 were good, old, substantial families, different 
 from the flashy new-rich people of to-day. 
 
12 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 Besides, my father took me to Saratoga season 
 after season, and in Boston society, I was well 
 acquainted with the Thayers, the Sturgis, the 
 Harrison Gray Otis and the Bates families. 
 After my marriage to Mr. Green we saw a 
 good deal of the English nobility in London, 
 where we lived at the time we had financial 
 interests with the Baring Brothers. But since 
 that time I have had more serious matters than 
 society to attend to — to keep the solemn 
 charge my father made me on his deathbed, 
 to increase the fortune he left me. Now I 
 keep a good supply of mourning cards, with 
 wide borders on, although Mr. Green has 
 been dead for years, and whenever social in- 
 vitations come for me I have my daughter 
 enclose one of these mourning cards. If people 
 are going to move in society nowadays they 
 must keep hard at work over it and give social 
 entertainments night and day." 
 
 But to go more fully into the minutiae of 
 how to become ultra-fashionable. A marriage 
 outright into the smart set — such, for exam- 
 ple, as the Livingston Beekman-Thomas, the 
 Suffern Tailer-Brown, or the more recent 
 Townsend Burden, Jr. - Sheedy, Burden- 
 
OF AMERICA 13 
 
 Dows and Astor - Force matrimonial alli- 
 ances — is far and away the surest method of 
 effecting an entrance into it. But one's whole 
 family must not be unloaded upon the smart 
 set at one upheaval. 
 
 Since the death of Mrs. Astor, and from a 
 complexity of causes, the power of money has 
 asserted itself as never before in society's some- 
 what checkered history. Another expeditious 
 scheme, then, for making a breach in society's 
 walls of exclusiveness is by means of a business 
 deal benefitting one or more members of the 
 smart set — not a hard cash bargaining for so- 
 cial promotion, although men have been 
 known to form business partnerships for this 
 express object. But to illustrate from actual 
 life: a short time ago a railroad transaction 
 secured admission for a family of social aspi- 
 rants into an influential section of the "magic 
 circle." There are delicate ways of conveying 
 the expression of one's social needs, and the 
 ultra-smart are endowed with a fine sense of 
 noblesse oblige, provided one is manipulating 
 events so as to fill their purses. However, at- 
 tractive personality and a measure of good 
 breeding, and, above all, extraordinary tact, 
 
14 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 must be assumed as a major premise in these 
 somewhat blind financial tactics. 
 
 An annually increasing quota of candidates 
 for metropolitan social honors, or rather 
 adoption, is made up of rich — suddenly rich — 
 Western or Pittsburg people. Such a family, 
 we will premise, is about to establish itself in a 
 New York City town house. If you are so- 
 cially ambitious, do not set up your domicile 
 on the upper west side, but fix your abode 
 as near as possible to "Millionaires' Row" — 
 the Fifth Avenue court end of Central Park — 
 not necessarily an unduly ostentatious house, 
 which will tgg everyone on to asking the 
 dread question, "Who is Who?" but letting 
 the show place come a few years later, after 
 you are well placed socially. A grandiose 
 house on a conspicuous thoroughfare, with no 
 suitable guests to fill it, like the gigantic edi- 
 fices of the Bank of Italy and Ministry of 
 Finance in Rome, is an exclamation point 
 strongly provocative of irony. 
 
 Apropos of living in apartments: To-day a 
 Park Avenue apartment, located between Six- 
 tieth and Seventy-second Streets, for example, 
 is far more fashionable than a whole high- 
 
OF AMERICA 15 
 
 stoop brownstone house of the last generation, 
 with its gloomy and forbidding entrance, 
 its morgue and sarcophagus drawing-room 
 effects and its gauche appointments for enter- 
 taining. Lease a Park Avenue apartment, if 
 you choose, or live at the Gotham, the St. 
 Regis or the Ritz-Cariton in Winter, annex- 
 ing, if you can, to your possessions a Long 
 Island or Tuxedo country house, to be kept 
 open through most of the cold months for 
 week-ends. 
 
 At all events, your household gods, suitably 
 enshrined, having taken technical advice on 
 the furnishings on every point — for I once 
 saw a chaise lunge^ meant for use only in a 
 lady's boudoir, foisted in upon the centre of 
 a reception room by a social novice — employ 
 a press agent; but be wary of too much pub- 
 licity, for in the main the role of inglorious 
 obscurity is the one you will need to play until 
 you know the ropes better. At the same time, 
 you can afford to pay the press agent well for 
 having it inserted in the personal columns of 
 a big daily which caters to fashionable folk, 
 that you sail for Europe on such a date, or 
 have returned from your country house for 
 
1 6 UL TRA'FASHIONABLES 
 
 the season; so that, at least, yourself or your 
 social sponsors will not be hampered by per- 
 sons protesting, ^'I have never heard of those 
 people." 
 
 A special phase of newspaper publicity to 
 be particularly wary of is that involved in 
 allowing the women of your family to be en- 
 rolled as members of certain clubs and chari- 
 ties, and having their names bundled out in 
 the third-class society columns of a certain 
 Sunday paper, with lists of "detrimentals"* 
 of the first water, numbers of them turning 
 out to be veritable millstones hung about the 
 neck of social aspiration. A woman of fashion 
 and a clubwoman are two mutually excluding 
 entities — two totally distant creations of 
 Almighty God, although the latter often tries 
 to palm herself oE for the former. 
 
 *A "detrimental" Is a technical New York 
 society term Invented by Mrs. Van Rensselaer 
 Cruger, the novelist par excellence of American 
 ultra-fashionable life. In this monograph a 
 "detrimental" means a person of however ex- 
 cellent moral character or ability, who does not 
 blend well socially with either the conservative 
 Knickerbocker element, or the ultra-fashionables. 
 
OF AMERICA 17 
 
 The old saying that it takes two generations 
 to make a gentleman is being refuted every 
 day, for American men are remarked not only 
 for their facility in amassing fortunes, but in 
 furnishing themselves with presentable man- 
 ners on comparatively short notice. It is more 
 particularly in women of plebeian birth that 
 vulgarity is such an obstinate factor to eradi- 
 cate. If your early training in drawing-room 
 deportment has been defective or wholly lack- 
 ing — and as likely as not it has — place your- 
 self at once under a social mentor. Have her 
 put the society intonation for a speaking voice 
 into your throat; teach you easy deportment 
 and carriage; how to enter and leave a draw- 
 ing-room, and how to converse with the latest 
 society badinage. To illustrate these points 
 from the highest fashion and from the case of 
 one who has had the advantages of birth: few 
 society women have been as close students of 
 Delsarte as Mrs. Burke-Roche. The art of 
 fencing as an adjuvant to comely figures, for 
 example, was extensively practiced during 
 this last Newport season by Mrs. Oliver 
 Gould Jennings, Mrs. Leonard M. Thomas 
 {nee Blanche Oelrichs), Mrs. Reginald Van- 
 
1 8 VL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 derbilt and Mrs. Lorillard Spencer, Jr. If 
 women who have been for years well placed 
 socially work so hard over themselves to be 
 formed and cultivated on certain lines, it is 
 doubly needful for an aspirant. 
 
 The next move for the social aspirant will 
 be to cultivate the acquaintance of some fash- 
 ionable woman whose finances are on the 
 wane, but whose temperament requires the 
 expenditure of large sums of money and who 
 is, moreover, a walking American De Brett 
 and Burke — in short, a running commentary 
 as to knowing who are the people one can re- 
 ceive. Sedulously beware, however, of any 
 society woman whose exchequer has become 
 so depleted that she has acquired any notoriety 
 as a social promoter, because then the game is 
 all over save for the lampoons in public print 
 at your social cost. Conceding that introduc- 
 tions may be sparingly given by a suitably 
 chosen social promoter, her help will in a 
 negative way be of much value in warding off 
 ^'detrimentals," thus saving you years of un- 
 doing and weeding out. 
 
 When one pauses to reflect upon the vast 
 fund of energy, time and money annually ex- 
 
OF AMERICA 19 
 
 pended in New York City by social aspirants 
 in entertaining the wrong people — people 
 who are positive dragons besetting the path 
 of social progress, these foregoing monitions 
 cannot be too often reiterated. 
 
 Form the acquaintance of an occasional 
 visiting nobleman, if fully assured he is not 
 an impostor, and stands well at his consulate 
 and is likely to be received by families who 
 might, perhaps, be made to fall in line, for 
 furthering your campaign. Minister well to 
 his gastronomic needs, for more than likely 
 he has taken lodgings sans meals. But avoid 
 making yourself unduly conspicuous in public 
 print with such people of title, for should any 
 one of them turn out to be a scapegrace, the 
 satirical periodicals will show you up as a 
 nobody caught in the flagrante delictu of snob- 
 bishness and hanging on by the eyebrows. 
 
 If, on the other hand, a titled European is 
 comfortably wealthy and persona grata at 
 houses of the highest fashion, secure the honor 
 of his presence, if only for a single night, as 
 a guest for your opera box, no matter if he 
 passes the greater part of the evening calling 
 on friends outside in the '^golden horseshoe," 
 
20 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 not being seen once in your loge between acts 
 when the lights are turned on. Of course your 
 social mentor has explained to you that there 
 is no greater social reinforcement than the pos- 
 session of a box at the opera. But be not over- 
 sanguine, and do not waste undue time 
 and efifort over this highly accredited noble- 
 man unless you have on the tapis a marriage- 
 able daughter with an ample dot, for in all 
 probabihty he will flout you as soon as he has 
 ascertained your exact social status. 
 
 The snubs, cuffs and slings of outrageous 
 fortune you are experiencing on every hand 
 may be perverting you into a woman hater and 
 a cynic, when your youth and beauty are at 
 their zenith; but keep up a bold front, steering 
 clear of flamboyant toilettes, for a woman 
 needs to be astonishingly well placed socially 
 to dress like a cocotte. To lay aside all persi- 
 flage, many a social aspirant has handicapped 
 herself by being habitually overdressed. To 
 draw from life: A pretty and in some ways 
 tactful postulant for social entree attended one 
 Lenten morning a sewing guild of the great 
 metropolitan Cathedral of St. John the 
 Divine, In the presence of a bevy of social 
 
OF AMERICA 21 
 
 leaders dressed in simple, sober tone, as be- 
 fitted the season of penitence in a religious 
 house, Mrs. Would-Be flounced in lavishly 
 bejeweled and attired in an elaborate tailored 
 costume of white broadcloth! The efforts of 
 the influential social sponsor who accompa- 
 nied Mrs. Would-Be were of course rendered 
 of no avail, for upon their crossing the thresh- 
 old of the guildroom a painfully suppressed 
 smile went round as if by electric unison. 
 
 And above all, be philanthropic with your 
 purse, although, perhaps, the heart responds 
 but feebly. But let one of the special forms 
 of your altruism be giving social functions, a 
 goodly quota of the guests, until you are well 
 placed, consisting of old Colonial and Knick- 
 erbocker families, who may never be able to 
 return your hospitality in kind, but each of 
 whom may know a few ultra-fashionables. 
 Anent of philanthropy, conditions have 
 changed a great deal since William D. How- 
 ells wrote his "Travels in Altruria," and fash- 
 ionable charities as an adjuvant to social 
 climbing, are growing more difficult to be 
 worked, and the church still more intractable 
 to be hoodwinked for these ends. The last 
 
2 2 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 generation's perversion of a church into a 
 social club, by means of which to effect an 
 entrance into society, is wholly alien to twen- 
 tieth century metropolitan trend of events. 
 The newly rich are no longer marrying their 
 daughters to clergymen, for supposed social 
 position — in fact, the church and fashion are 
 constantly drifting wider apart, much to the 
 spiritual purification of the former. 
 
 A novelist of society, like Robert W. Cham- 
 bers, despite his cleverness, depicts a social 
 aspirant as donating a large cheque to the 
 bishop, to further his social ascent, and its 
 being the talk of the clubs. A mondaine such 
 as Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, who is to-day 
 and always has been an active factor in ultra- 
 fashionable life at home and abroad, would 
 not think of committing such an anachronism 
 in one of her novels. The ultra-smart set 
 frame of mind with reference to the church is 
 set forth in caricature by Mrs. Wharton in 
 The House of Mirth, when she cites Mrs. 
 Trenor, the leader of fashion in her novel, and 
 hostess of a week-end house party, as saying: 
 ^'You know, we have to have the Bishop once 
 a year. I always have had bad luck about the 
 
OF AMERICA 23 
 
 Bishop's visits. Last year when he came Gus 
 forgot all about his being here and brought 
 home the Ned Wintons and the Parleys — five 
 divorces and six sets of children between 
 them!" 
 
 In the ultra-smart set, then in London, and 
 in New York and Newport, what with Satur- 
 day night dances ending at three o'clock in the 
 morning of the Lord's Day; what with Sun- 
 day motoring, country club lunching, golfing, 
 yachting and bridge, the breach away from 
 the church is deepening and widening every 
 day. The clergy have almost disappeared 
 from fashion's invitation lists, and are being 
 remanded by its votaries to their rightful 
 spiritual province — the functions of baptiz- 
 ing, burying and marrying them; provided 
 the latter ceremony does not for statutory rea- 
 sons have to be performed by a civil magis- 
 trate. One must not, however, form the 
 perverse notion that there do not exist in the 
 ultra-fashionable set whole groups of devout 
 communicants of churches, as well as philan- 
 thropists. 
 
 The Episcopal Church and the Catholic 
 Church are the churches of beautiful man- 
 
24 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 ners, and if your birth has placed you under 
 the ban of being a dissenter, cultivate Epis- 
 copal emotions and shuffle off the mortal coil 
 of Presbyterianism on as short notice as pos- 
 sible. AfTect the church with a hierarchy, if 
 only for the subjective effect it will have upon 
 your manners. Ralph Waldo Emerson said 
 no truer thing in his English Traits than that 
 *'You can tell a dissenter by his manners!" 
 You can divine that some women were not 
 born in the church by their smile. 
 
 If one is blessed with young daughters, no 
 matter what one's creed, hurry them away to 
 a French convent for a while, for a convent 
 is a school of respect, a nursery of beautiful 
 manners, inculcating what always makes a 
 young woman doubly attractive to mankind — 
 the subjection of women. To see convent-bred 
 manners in their flower and fruition, one 
 really needs to know the delightful society of 
 the continent of Europe. For your daughters' 
 finishing choose the most fashionable metro- 
 politan schools, entertaining your daughter's 
 schoolmates, i. e., those from fashionable fami- 
 lies, lavishly and often, for there is no more 
 unerring entering wedge than thus winning 
 
OF AMERICA 25 
 
 over their parents to your Napoleonic cam- 
 paign of the social allied powers. 
 
 Do not, I beg of you, turn yourself and 
 family into a national one-night stand theatre 
 comique, by making the grand tour of hiring 
 cottages at Newport, Lenox and the other 
 modish resorts, before society has given the 
 slightest recognition to your claims to be 
 passed upon. Invoke the aid of old Father Nep- 
 tune; secure a yacht, as sumptuous a one as you 
 please, and, socially speaking, if your bark 
 sink, 'tis to another sea. If ignored or snubbed 
 at Newport, spread sail for Narragansett Pier 
 or Bar Harbor, felicitating yourself that the 
 social thud is not barbed with the added 
 poignancy of one's having been a cottager in 
 a place and not being received. Furthermore, 
 there is no more acceptable mode of entertain- 
 ing and of putting people under heavy obliga- 
 tions than the ownership of yachts and opera 
 boxes. 
 
 During this, the period of your social rein- 
 carnation, go abroad early and stay late, stop- 
 ping at Claridge's or the Ritz. What is a 
 paltry two hundred and fifty dollars a day for 
 a suite of rooms on the sixth floor of an hotel 
 
26 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 in the heart of Mayfair, where kings and 
 queens, emperors and princes of the royal 
 blood of all nations have stayed? Or there is 
 another suite on the second floor which a 
 crown prince occupied at four hundred and 
 fifty dollars a day. Contact with the great 
 world of Europe will ennoble your manners, 
 imparting an air of distinction and greater 
 confidence in approaching the fin fleur of 
 your own countrymen's society. 
 
 As your sojourn in England may be some- 
 what lengthy, you must have your own private 
 carriages, and it is infra dig to be seen so often 
 without crest or coat-of-arms on your panels 
 during the crush in Bond Street at four 
 o'clock. Then hie away down to the Royal 
 College of Heralds in Queen Victoria Street, 
 where one of your compatriots the other day 
 paid the last of a series of fees, piling up to 
 nearly two thousand dollars, for crest, motto 
 and emblazoned coat-of-arms. 
 
 We will give you the credit of not trying to 
 tamper with the Lord Chamberlain's office 
 for the coveted bit of pasteboard which will 
 admit one to the state balls and concerts at 
 Buckingham Palace, for which as high as ten 
 
OF AMERICA 27 
 
 thousand dollars has been paid a conniving 
 peeress by an American Croesus. Besides a 
 box for the royal opera at Covent Garden, 
 with Lucullan feasts at the Ritz or Carlton 
 afterwards, you may charter far in advance 
 a commodious houseboat for the Cowes re- 
 gatta, to say nothing of musicales to be given 
 with grand opera artists, whose services com- 
 mand high in the thousands. 
 
 It is assumed that you have secured from 
 the start for the London campaign the services 
 of a high-class social promoter; such a person- 
 age, by judicious management, can be cor- 
 ralled from the ranks of the nobility, numbers 
 of these bearers of titles among the women 
 being sub rosa in some form of commission 
 business. An English lady has not the same deli- 
 cacy that an American society woman needing 
 money has, for rendering social service for a 
 financial consideration. Arrange with your 
 social promoter to have a dinner given in your 
 name at your hotel, in honor of an eminent 
 peeress, with covers laid for no other Ameri- 
 cans besides yourselves, and see that the event 
 is given the widest exploiting it will warrant 
 on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
2 8 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 In London society then, it is the smart court 
 circle for which you are supposed to be aim- 
 ing. A court presentation, while in itself 
 almost indispensable, cannot give one open 
 sesame into this charmed circle. After your 
 English visiting list warrants it, you may elect 
 to lease a country house, say, on the Thames. 
 The barrister who draws up the agreement, 
 the inventory taker, the butler, the footman, 
 the coachman, the grooms, the stablemen, 
 housemaids, parlor maids, the buttons — every- 
 one fastens on you like a cavalcade of Nea- 
 politan lazzaroni, to make an extra bit, and 
 the plucking of the American golden goose 
 makes the laughter long and loud in the ser- 
 vants' hall. 
 
 The management of the servants' hall alone 
 in a large English country establishment re- 
 quires the tact of an angel, the law of prece- 
 dence being carried out just as punctiliously 
 as with the titled guests above stairs. The 
 kitchen sits in judgment of the drawing-room 
 far more rigorously than if an English hostess 
 were the mistress of the manse. Only skilled 
 labor is possible to run such a house, for per- 
 fection of service is demanded by your exact- 
 
OF AMERICA 
 
 29 
 
 ing British guests and no leniency is shown 
 in case of mistakes. The country house which 
 has fully forty bedrooms to be of any size in 
 England, is run like a small hotel and costs so 
 much to keep up — the food for the servants' 
 quarters alone would suffice for several poor 
 families — that the houseboat and motor 
 launches for the river are reckoned among the 
 minor expenses. 
 
 The more quiet and conservative guests are 
 to be bidden for the midweek house parties; 
 the gayer element, of which there are more 
 men, often numbering forty or fifty people in 
 all, are invited for the week-end. But ever 
 and anon the American hostess who is a novice 
 will find to her dismay that A sharp is 
 amusing herself at the expense of B flat. Still 
 be mindful of the reflection that every annoy- 
 ing feature of this British ordeal has its uses 
 toward fitting one for an American social ca- 
 reer, even if one meets few American ultra- 
 fashionables, while performing these social 
 labors of Hercules. Go to Paris every year 
 to buy clothes; frequent occasionally some of 
 the celebrated spas on the Continent fre- 
 quented by royalty, stopping invariably at 
 
30 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 hotels; lease houses only in London or in fash- 
 ionable country home localities of England. 
 If during your European sojourns you fall in 
 with fashionable Americans, try by delicate 
 and becoming advances to ingratiate yourself 
 with them, leaving it entirely to them to take 
 the initiative of keeping up the acquaintance 
 on American soil. Sedulously avoid even the 
 semblance of future building upon them, or 
 banking upon the name. In your conversations 
 with American ultra-fashionables, although 
 the major part of their talk among themselves 
 is about people, be wary of indulging in per- 
 sonalities yourself and keep to objective 
 themes — the opera, the plays, the modes, any- 
 thing — and hold yourself well in hand, never 
 showing the slightest eagerness, if great names 
 in society chance to drop from ultra-fashion- 
 able lips. Never deign to ask for introduc- 
 tions to those better placed socially. 
 
 During this, the trying-on time for your 
 royal American progress, whether abroad or 
 at home, you must accept with true Christian 
 resignation the truth of the major premise that 
 you yourself are not worth meeting, and ac- 
 cordingly as many of your dinners and musi- 
 
OF AMERICA 31: 
 
 cales as possible — you are to give musicales 
 instead of receptions — must have as a social 
 piece de resistance a guest of honor. And as 
 it will be an affront to the guest of- honor, if 
 those of her friends bidden do not grace your 
 house with their presence, there you are with 
 a number of smart people meshed in the toils 
 of a very effectual form of polite coercion. 
 The guest of honor subterfuge works equally 
 well for a family which has held high position 
 and is on the down grade socially. A debu- 
 tante or lately betrothed young girl is the most 
 suitable and unsuspecting guest of honor to 
 subserve such an end. 
 
 As your Winters are to be passed in New 
 York, where the real battle for social accept- 
 ancy has to be fought out — Newport will 
 come much later — strictly avoid sending out 
 cards for general reception days for the sea- 
 son, or for a series of any length of informal 
 afternoons at home with music, for undesir- 
 able persons and social mountebanks are sure 
 to take undue advantage of such loopholes. 
 Be at home on Sunday afternoons to serve tea 
 at five o'clock, from Horse Show time and the 
 opening of the opera in November, until your 
 
32 ULTRA-FASHION ABLES 
 
 Spring exodus to Paris to buy clothes en route 
 for the London season. Issue no cards for 
 Sunday afternoons, having it given out that 
 those of your friends whom you really desire 
 to have come are bidden by verbal invitation, 
 and that you receive only a few. Give no lati- 
 tude to the bringing of extra guests without 
 your explicit consent; in this respect be as arbi- 
 trary as if you were a classic Corinthian pillar 
 of society. There are so many people whom 
 it is a pleasure and an honor to receive, who 
 have one or two acquaintances of practically 
 no social standing, but bound to them by some 
 tie of self interest, who will beg and importune 
 them to be brought to the house of a wealthy 
 social aspirant for self-seeking ends really not 
 at all complimentary to the hostess. 
 (^ Should it during your period of social pro- 
 bation be your good fortune — and your wealth 
 will act as a lure — to receive an invitation to 
 the church for a wedding in a really fashion- 
 able family, for which invitations have been 
 sent out by the thousands, make a costly and 
 artistic wedding present. For example, give 
 a pair of handsome candelabra. Few wedding 
 gifts, aside from cheques, which can be given 
 
OF AMERICA 33 
 
 only by relatives or exceedingly old friends 
 of a family, are more acceptable than candle- 
 sticks, which are always in fashion and can 
 be disposed in such a variety of places and in 
 cozy nooks about a house. 
 
 More than likely your munificent wedding 
 gift will receive mention in the newspapers 
 through the kind offices of society reporters 
 whom your husband has treated to champagne 
 galore, and one or two of whom have perhaps 
 already shown their gallantry by inserting 
 your name in their columns among lists of 
 guests at smart entertainments, at which you 
 were neither present in the body nor honored 
 with an invitation. At all events, the general 
 public, which is hot-headed, and some very 
 conventional society matrons of high degree, 
 who could not conceive of such a ruse, upon 
 reading of your somewhat extravagant wed- 
 ding gift will jump at the conclusion that you 
 were of course bidden to the reception. Fur- 
 thermore, from time to time, much coveted 
 bits of pasteboard for other church weddings 
 are more than likely to follow suite. This 
 clever little strategem was resorted to at New- 
 port by a family of long-suffering social pro- 
 
34 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 bationers from Providence, who were invited 
 to the church for the Oelrichs-Martin wed- 
 ding, a few years ago, and to this day is yield- 
 ing a good bonus in social per cents. 
 
 The classic Greek aphorism, ''Know thy- 
 self," must in your case as often be reversed. 
 The reverse side of the medal, ''Know your 
 people," must alike be your mental and social 
 watchword. Many a social probationer pos- 
 sessed of the wealth of Ormus or of Ind 
 seems to be devoid of a conception of the 
 meaning of what is termed "family," or gentle 
 birth, and the advantages accruing from such 
 a high estate, granting that the composition 
 of the structure of fashionable society is rela- 
 tively two-thirds made up of wealth. 
 
 It is assumed then that you have all along 
 been a close student of fashionable society and 
 have perceived that there are only two sets 
 in society with which a really ambitious per- 
 son can afford to have anything to do — the 
 smart set and its outward fringe and the old 
 Colonial and Knickerbocker families. I speak 
 advisedly of the latter, for should one finally 
 not succeed in penetrating into the true ultra- 
 smart inner circle, the defeat can be partially 
 
OF AMERICA 35 
 
 cloaked by falling back upon the Knicker- 
 bockers. And their names at every stadium 
 of the upward climb up society's toilsome hill 
 will pose well in the newspapers along with 
 those whom you perchance may be able to 
 muster for your dinners and musicales. In 
 general, whenever you receive a social thud 
 from an ultra-fashionable, fly into the arms of 
 a Knickerbocker. 
 
 Among Knickerbockers and Colonials there 
 are of course varying degrees of fashionable 
 validity, and I append herewith a partial list 
 of those standing nearest the throne of ultra- 
 smartness as an ideal goal to be aspired to, 
 although in all probability one may have to 
 rest content for a long time with the com- 
 panionship of knights and ladies of much 
 lower degree in the Knickerbocker peerage 
 around one's festive board. 
 
 Of Van Rensselaers, the Alexander Van 
 Rensselaers, to whom Mrs. Edmund L. Bay- 
 lies, Miss Alice Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Van 
 Rensselaer-Johnson and the Alexander Van 
 Rensselaers, of Philadelphia, belong, are of 
 premier importance. Mrs. Edmund L. Bay- 
 lies, nee Van Rensselaer, outranks the whole 
 
36 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 clan Van Rensselaer as the apogee of fashion; 
 besides being the annual much-feted guest of 
 the Bradley-Martins and the Earl and 
 Countess of Craven. But do not, I pray you, 
 be hypnotized by the name Van Rensselaer; 
 separate carefully the Van Rensselaer chaff 
 from the Van Rensselaer wheat, and if need 
 be rebuke the arrogance of the clan by a gentle 
 reminder that the first Van Rensselaer patroon 
 was a tradesman when he came to America. 
 
 Of the very wide ramifications of the Liv- 
 ingston family tree the Maturin and Goodhue 
 Livingstons, Miss Laura Livingston and one 
 or two of the young Robert Livingstons are 
 almost the only bearers of that ancient pat- 
 ronymic who have kept up in the van of 
 fashion to-day. The T. J. Oakley Rhineland- 
 ers are the only ultra-fashionable Rhine- 
 landers, and the Herbert C. Pells, Miss 
 Charlotte Pell and the Stephen H. P. Pells 
 are keeping propped up the somewhat waning 
 social renown of the numerous Pell clan of 
 manorial escutcheons. The death of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Frederic J. de Peyster relegated the de 
 Peysters pretty much to the social background, 
 although Mr. Dongan de Peyster is a bit in 
 
OF AMERICA 37 
 
 evidence. The Gallatins — a time-honored 
 name, which was beginning to fall into social 
 desuetude — is again coming to be associated 
 with ultra-fashionable life, and Mr. R. Hor- 
 ace Gallatin has lately purchased a villa at 
 Newport. Of Hoffmans, a semi-obscure 
 Dutch lineage m Colonial times and never 
 until of late much identified with fashion, the 
 Charles F. and Francis Burrall Hoffmans are 
 the solitary representatives of their family de- 
 creed ultra-fashionable. Charles F. Hoffman 
 is a relative of Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry, and 
 the alliance proved helpful as an entering 
 wedge into Newport society. The Gardiners, 
 of the Manor of Gardiner's Island, have for 
 society chiefly a reminiscent interest. Mr. 
 Robert B. Van Cortlandt is almost single- 
 handed in his efforts to keep up the social fame 
 of that grand old manor family. 
 
 The Winthrops, especially the Egerton L. 
 jWinthrops; the Lorillards, the Livingston- 
 Beeckmans, the E. N. Tailers and the Sufifern 
 Tailers, the Newbold Morrises, the Schermer- 
 horns, would all prove helpful, provided you 
 can only get the presentations, which is not an 
 easy matter. If you cannot deal with these 
 
3 8 UL TRA'FASHIONABLES 
 
 principals, angle for their relations. Study 
 the doings of society closely and which Knick- 
 erbockers are enjoying any vogue or lead up 
 to any will be readily apparent. At all haz- 
 ards it is only well-bred people whom you can 
 afford to receive in your drawing-room, and 
 Knickerbockers and Colonials usually are 
 blessed with a fair complement of the social 
 graces. On the other hand, it is amazing how 
 certain parvenus acquire such presentable 
 manners on comparatively short notice; but 
 possess them they must, no matter how tedious 
 or humbling the technical drill, if they would 
 move in ultra-fashionable society. It is only 
 exceedingly well placed old social celebrities 
 who can have the temerity to violate the 
 convenances. 
 
 Be wary and sly about it, but be willing 
 to invest hundreds or a thousand dollars in 
 having every nook and cranny of your own 
 and your husband's pedigrees searched, and if 
 you should light upon any presentable ances- 
 try in this country — for Heaven's sake, don't 
 go back to kings — you could confide the sur- 
 prising discovery as old-time history, known 
 for generations by your family, to an occa- 
 
OF AMERICA 39 
 
 sional Knickerbocker acquaintance. But keep 
 yourself well in hand and do not go to the 
 extreme of running out to the Fourth Avenue 
 shops and hanging the walls of your dining- 
 room with counterfeit presentments of as- 
 sumed ''ancestors." Also do not unmuzzle 
 yourself on the forefather claim to any mem- 
 ber of the smart set, unless you are not loath 
 to be made a laughing stock. In general, few 
 conversational faux pas lay bare one's plebeian 
 social origin more glaringly than harping on 
 one's lineage on short acquaintance with a 
 person, or under any circumstances, with an 
 Englishman, to whom all Americans alike are 
 commoners. Treasure in memory the incident 
 of the enormously rich social aspirant from 
 the West who begged Bishop Potter for intro- 
 ductions to several of Grace Church's most 
 stiff-necked families, solely on the ground that 
 her family "came over" with William the 
 Conqueror. 
 
 "That is most interesting, Madame," re- 
 joined the courtly Bishop. "And, perhaps, you 
 have a bar sinistre, too, somewhere back in 
 your family tree." 
 
 "A bar sinistre in our family; that is too 
 
40 VL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 good to be true. I shall run right up to Demp- 
 sey & Carroll's and have them hunt up a bar 
 sinistre for our family." 
 
 Give a wide berth to Lenox, for it is a 
 mincing, conservative and somewhat provin- 
 cial colony, more or less dominated by Bos- 
 ton ideas, and to most of whose members, 
 although two-thirds of them live on estates, 
 the genus social climber is as repellant as to 
 the townsfolk of a strenuous, Puritan New 
 England village. While the doors of New- 
 port drawing-rooms readily swing wide open 
 to such notable Lenox cottagers as the William 
 Douglass Sloanes, the Bradhurst Osgood 
 Fields, the Laniers, the Frank Sturgis, the 
 Joseph Choates, the Newbold Morrises and 
 a limited number of others, there is a goodly 
 list of families moving in general society at 
 Lenox not particularly significant for wealth, 
 patrician lineage, or natural style, who would 
 pass a tediously dull season were they to at- 
 tempt Newport. The Charles Astor Bristeds 
 owned cottages at both these resorts, but even 
 they found their book of social engagements 
 much fuller at Lenox than at Newport. To 
 state the case from a somewhat different social 
 
OF AMERICA 41 
 
 plane, one's being well received by general so- 
 ciety at Lenox would be no guarantee of an 
 enjoyable season at Newport, and it is New- 
 port which is to be the acme of your social 
 endeavors in America. Edith Wharton made 
 a grave mistake when she sold Land's End at 
 Newport and built the Mount at Lenox. 
 
 Pay your first visit to Newport at the time 
 of the national tennis tournament, which com- 
 mences about the middle of August, having 
 secured in advance a suite of rooms at the 
 Muenchinger-King Cottage. Do your enter- 
 taining mainly at Berger's, provided your 
 guests do you credit in the public eye; other- 
 wise, invite your friends en famille where you 
 are stopping. Unless quite sure of your 
 ground socially, do not tarry for the Newport 
 Horse Show, the first week in September, for 
 the boxes for the show, not being very numer- 
 ous and glaringly in evidence, the question of 
 Who's Who as to both the occupants and the 
 callers at the boxes, is something drastic. 
 
 As to the art of entertaining, procure imme- 
 diately a volume of Ralph Pulitzer's book, 
 New York Society on Parade, written from 
 the inside by one who knows both his smart 
 
42 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 world and how to write. Aim also at origi- 
 nality and the freshest European modes, and 
 do not omit your prayers to old Father Nep- 
 tune. For instance, if your Winter social 
 campaigns warrant in a measure your leasing 
 a cottage at Newport, put your yacht in com- 
 mission and have it given out that although 
 you have hired a commodious villa, you are 
 so much of a sea dog that you are going to live 
 aboard your yacht more than half of the time. 
 If dinner invitations do not come pouring in 
 as fast as you like, take frequent little cruises 
 of a day or two on your yacht, having mention 
 made in the newspapers by your publicity 
 agent every time you get on or off your aquatic 
 social motor. 
 
 Suffer the horse, too, to help you along up 
 the social hill of difficulty. Invest in a string 
 of racehorses and be an exhibitor at the va- 
 rious fashionable horse shows, provided your- 
 self or your husband have a genuine and un- 
 affected love of the horse. See what wonders 
 the equine god has sometimes wrought for 
 blue ribbon social probationers. Somewhat in 
 sequence of this thought, contrast the list of 
 guests bidden to the Hastings-Benedict nup- 
 
OF AMERICA 43 
 
 tials in the Presbyterian Church at Greenwich 
 not many years ago, with the ultra-smart en- 
 tourage in which the Thomas Hastings are 
 now moving. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that if a social 
 aspirant be a resident of any one of the provin- 
 cial cities which have ultra-fashionable repre- 
 sentation, such, for example, as Boston, Phila- 
 delphia, Baltimore or Washington, similar 
 lines of tactics as for New York City postu- 
 lants obtain — above all, exerting oneself to 
 affiliate with those denizens of these respective 
 cities who have good social standing at New- 
 port. 
 
 In ^n^^ it is but a truism to reflect that the 
 role of fifty per cent, of those now high and 
 mighty in the national smart set has been 
 essentially that of climbers. Not many years 
 ago the family of a leading metropolitan spe- 
 cialist in medicine, people well placed so- 
 cially, sent out cards for a debutante's recep- 
 tion for their handsome daughter. *^Now, I 
 give you carte blanche for flowers, music, ca- 
 terers and everything else to make Clara's 
 debut a notable one, but I have one favor to 
 beg and I must be peremptory about it," pater. 
 
44 VL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 familias insisted; ^'the So-and-So's must be 
 invited." 
 
 "Impossible!" His aristocratic wife threw 
 up her hands in despair. "Those girls dress 
 abominably, and the man is so untutored he 
 can't even pronounce Fifth Avenue; he calls 
 it Tit' Avenue." 
 
 "But the man is a very lucrative patient of 
 mine, with locomotor ataxia and he came 
 around to my office this morning and told me 
 he had read the notice of our reception in The 
 Herald, and that his one ambition in life was 
 for his family to get into society. And be- 
 sides, you will give his wife the credit of doing 
 a thinking part — of doing no talking at all. 
 If a woman does not open her mouth, she cer- 
 tainly does not expose her crudity." 
 
 They were invited. Two of those "abomi- 
 nably dressed girls" are at the present hour 
 queening it not only in American, but in inter- 
 national society; one of them the mother of a 
 duchess prominent in the recent coronations, 
 both allied to colossal fortunes of world-wide 
 prestige, and one of them playing the hostess 
 aboard her husband's yacht and at her own 
 sweet will to the crowned heads of Europe. 
 
OF AMERICA 45 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 The White House is powerless to create 
 anyone ultra-fashionable. Unhke European 
 courts, the White House and its immediate 
 entourage stand in no integral relation to na- 
 tional society. Mrs. Grover Cleveland, a 
 provincial beauty, it is true, enjoyed a certain 
 wide- reaching vogue, but Astor Court had not 
 at that time risen to its full ascendancy and, 
 in fact, the late Mrs. William Astor was not 
 acclaimed the leader of national society until 
 1902. At the opening of the twentieth cen- 
 tury, and up to the time of her death, it was 
 Mrs. Astor and not the wife of any one of the 
 Presidents of the United States who was the 
 most widely discussed American woman. 
 
 To-day, in the realm of fashion, it is Mrs. 
 Ogden Mills who takes precedence before the 
 wife of the President of the United States. 
 It is the answers to the questions how such 
 national social cynosures as Mrs. Ogden Mills, 
 
4^ UL TRA-FASHWNABLES 
 
 Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. Stuyvesant 
 Fish, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney and the 
 Elbridge T. Gerry's live, dress and pass their 
 time which decree the convenances for the 
 ultra-fashionable. The President and the 
 members of his family, no matter what their 
 birth, previous social condition or personal 
 qualifications, in common with the diplomats 
 accredited to the various powers, sustain a 
 quasi ex-officio relation to the ultra-smart set, 
 or at least, to a section of it, if they choose to 
 accept its invitations. Under the Roosevelt 
 administration, which was the most brilliant 
 social one in many terms of office of the na- 
 tion's chief executives, the White House was 
 frequented by the Ogden Mills, the Cornelius 
 Vanderbilts, the Stuyvesant Fishes; in fact, 
 by more ultra-fashionables than during any 
 Presidential regime prior or subsequent. The 
 line of comparative criticism between the 
 Roosevelt and Taft social order of events at 
 the national capital, which may have been 
 erroneously imputed to the Baroness Hengel- 
 muller, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador, 
 at all events savored strongly of the truth. 
 President Roosevelt, although by birth an 
 
OF AMERICA 47 
 
 aristocrat, and himself and family much 
 courted by the ultra-fashionable set, was not 
 listed with it, for, on the other hand, he is a 
 man of the people and it would have been 
 distasteful to him to be explicitly aligned to 
 the closest exclusion in the great republic. 
 Miss Alice Roosevelt, the present Mrs. Nich- 
 olas Longworth, invariably represented the 
 President's family at Newport. Possessed of 
 the savoir-faire and graces of manner which 
 should become a daughter of the White 
 House, she was repeatedly the guest of the 
 Ogden Mills and the Cornelius Vanderbilts 
 at Newport. 
 
 Private levees at the White House have 
 seldom been so vigilantly censored on moral 
 grounds as under the Roosevelt and Taft ad- 
 ministrations. And the former Miss Alice 
 Roosevelt, in her father's Presidential term, 
 carrying out the White House policy at New- 
 port, administered a drastic and public snub- 
 bing to a spectacular leader of society there 
 who was one of the chief figures in a myste- 
 rious and highly sensational scandal. 
 
 The Taft Presidential social regime, while 
 not stamped with the ultra - fashionable 
 
48 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 imprimatur of the Roosevelt era, is admir- 
 ably conducted on official lines and prac- 
 tically above criticism from the standpoint of 
 good, broad Americanism. ^Washington so- 
 ciety at best is such a tangled congeries of 
 political, social, not to say business interests, 
 cosmopolitan in one aspect and almost as pro- 
 vincial as a New England village in another, 
 and its more fashionable residents are so flit- 
 ting and transient in their sojourn, that it is 
 somewhat puzzling to a censor of ultra- 
 fashionable conditions. Nevertheless, an ultra- 
 fashionable set, irrespective of official life, 
 exists at the national capital, and were our 
 present Ambassador at the Court of St. James' 
 to retire to Washington Mrs. Whitelaw Reid 
 would at once be accorded the rank of its 
 social leader. As to actual facts, in style of 
 entertaining, the house and its appointments 
 and in equipage, no one at the present hour is 
 leading the ultra-fashionable life in Washing- 
 ton in better form than the Perry Belmonts, 
 and their popularity as host and hostess is 
 steadily augmenting. 
 
 Apropos of the John Hays Hammonds, 
 their status in the ultra-fashionable set has 
 
OF AMERICA 49 
 
 been for the most part official, in connection 
 with the Coronation Ambassadorship, while 
 in private life they had never been identified 
 with it to any appreciable extent, Mrs. Ham- 
 mond having previously been known more as 
 a clubwoman than a society woman. The 
 John Hays Hammonds were honored by the 
 Whitelaw Reids by being included among 
 their guests at one of the functions given their 
 Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of 
 Connaught recently at their New York town 
 house. 
 
 The John R. McLeans, with their open- 
 house lunches at Friendship, and their vast 
 town house, backed by as ample a fortune, 
 have apparently never aimed at being dis- 
 tinctly ultra-smart, perhaps desiring above all 
 else to be comfortable. 
 
 The Edward B. McLeans, their jewel 
 caskets now enriched by the world-famous 
 Hope and Star of the East diamonds, bid fair 
 to do the spectacular social honors for both 
 sides of their respective houses. 
 
 Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, during her 
 several years' sojourn at the national capital, 
 was known far and wide as ''the first lady of 
 
50 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 Washington," but she seems to have elected 
 to live in Paris. But no matter what happens, 
 Preston Gibson will never sufifer Washington 
 to stagnate. 
 
 List of Washington Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 Mrs. Henry White 
 
 1-2 Former Ambassador and Mrs. Henry 
 
 White. 
 3-4 Senator and Mrs. George Peabody 
 
 Wetmore. 
 5-6 The Misses Wetmore. 
 7-8 Messrs. William S. K. and Roger 
 Wetmore. 
 9-10 Mr. and Mrs. Perry Belmont. 
 11-12 Representative and Mrs. Nicholas 
 
 Longworth. 
 13-14 Mr. and Mrs. Preston Gibson. 
 15-16 Secretary of the Navy and Mrs. 
 
 George Von L. Meyer. 
 17-18 The Misses Meyer. 
 
 19 Mrs. Charles A. Munn. 
 20-21 Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Wadsworth. 
 22-23 ^^' ^^^ Mrs. James W. Wadsworth. 
 
OF AMERICA 51 
 
 24 Miss Harriet Wadsworth, 
 
 25-26 Mr, and Mrs, James W, Wadsworth, 
 Junior. 
 
 27 Mrs, Richard Townsend. 
 
 28 Mrs, Lawrence Townsend, 
 
 29 Miss Yvonne Townsend, 
 
 30 Mr. and Mrs, Lawrence Townsend, 
 31-32 Mr, and Mrs, Edward B, McLean, 
 
 33 Mrs, Leiter, 
 
 34-35 Mr. and Mrs, Joseph Leiter, 
 
 36 Miss Katherine Elkins. 
 
 37-38 Mrs. William H. Draper, 
 
 39 Miss Margaret Draper. 
 
 40 Representative Hamilton Fish. 
 
 41 Miss Rosalind Fish. 
 
 42 Mr, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 43-44 Mr, and Mrs, William Corcoran 
 
 Eustis. 
 
 45-46 Mr, and Mrs, Robert B. Roosevelt. 
 
 47 Mrs. Gammell Slater. 
 
 48-49 Mr. and Mrs. Beekman Winthrop. 
 
 50 Mr, Henry White, Jr, 
 
52 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 The national ultra-fashionable set offers 
 little scope for men encased in stiff Colonial 
 types of manners, with the aspirations of 
 dukes and the fortunes of footmen. Paradox 
 as it may seem at first blush, Philadelphia 
 purports to be a decided vantage ground for 
 a social aspirant to hail from, carefully taken 
 statistics proving that within the past decade 
 more candidates from the Quaker City have 
 been received into the smart set at Newport 
 than from any other city in America save the 
 metropolis itself. 
 
 The Philadelphian prides himself upon 
 being what he terms well born, which, of 
 course, is a social adjuvant; still, birth and 
 patrician breeding to the ultra-fashionable 
 alike in New York and London are some- 
 what of the nature of accidents and do not 
 necessarily belong to the essence of smartness. 
 On the other hand, one may be enormously 
 
OF AMERICA 53 
 
 rich, yet pre-eminently dowdy. There arc 
 scores of millionaires' families sequestrated in 
 the upper west side of New York City, for 
 example, living in social obscurity! Granting 
 all this, there must be a nucleus of very rich 
 people to form a substrate for a twentieth 
 century ultra-fashionable set, whether in 
 England or in the United States, and such 
 a centralization of social forces in both these 
 countries is to deny to the fullest extent a 
 fait accompli. 
 
 The most captious critic cannot lampoon 
 Philadelphians for having customs without 
 manners, as has often been averred of Bos- 
 tonians. Still, Philadelphia society, with its 
 historic old lumber rooms of Cadwaladers 
 and Biddies, must not lose sight of the fact 
 that wealth forms the principal ingredient 
 entering into the composition of this big social 
 trust, the national ultra-fashionable set, whose 
 subjective aim is pleasure and whose objective 
 one is to make a fine art of social life. But 
 for enrollment on its roster one's manners 
 must also be comme il faut, and this is patent 
 from observing that some of the most opulent 
 families on its waiting lists will not be 
 
54 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 deemed acceptable without undergoing a te- 
 dious apprenticeship. 
 
 In cities like Philadelphia and Boston pa- 
 trician lineage, or what is commonly termed 
 ''family," is much overrated as an asset for 
 admission into ultra-smart society. Female 
 beauty, with which the daughters of the 
 Quaker City — not of Boston — have time out 
 of mind been graced, is far more of a social 
 coign of vantage than ''family." Mrs. Joseph 
 Widener, Mrs. Robert Goelet — who was a 
 jWhelan of Philadelphia — and Mrs. James F. 
 Sullivan, all known to national society, alone 
 have given a wide vogue to the pulchritude of 
 Philadelphia women. And one of the pre- 
 eminent belles of the present season in the City 
 of Brotherly Love, whose social leader is Mrs. 
 Craig Biddle, with Mrs. Van Rensselaer and 
 Mrs. John Thompson Spencer as vice-regal 
 aides, is Miss Leta Livingston Sullivan, the 
 second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James 
 Francis Sullivan and niece of Mrs. James B. 
 Clews and Mrs. Charles Emory Smith, of 
 New York. Miss Sullivan is a lineal descend- 
 ant of the Cavalier, Sergeant Francis Nich- 
 olls, proprietor of a ten-thousand-acre Colo- 
 
OF AMERICA SS 
 
 nial grant In Connecticut, besides being a 
 grandson of Sir George Bruce of Carnock 
 and eldest brother of Sir Richard Nicholls, 
 the first royal Governor of New York, who 
 founded the Anglo-Saxon supremacy in that 
 city. Among other members of the national 
 ultra-fashionable set who trace their lineage 
 back to Sergeant Francis Nicholls are Ogden 
 Mills, Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Ogden Living- 
 ston Mills, Mrs. Lorillard Spencer, Sr., Lor- 
 illard Spencer, Jr., Mrs. James B. Clews, 
 Chauncey M. Depew, Mrs. Henry C. Phipps 
 and the Countess Grannard. 
 
 List of Philadelphia Ultra-Fashion- 
 ables 
 
 Mrs. Craig Biddle 
 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. Anthony J. DrexeL 
 3-4 Mr. and Mrs. Craig Biddle. 
 
 5 Mr. J. R. Barton Willing. 
 6-7 Mr. and Mrs. John Thompson Spen- 
 cer. 
 
 8 Mr. Willing Spencer. 
 
S6 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 9-10 Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Van Rens- 
 selaer. 
 
 1 1 -1 2 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Widener. 
 
 13-14 Mr, and Mrs. George D. Widener. 
 15 Miss Eleanor El kins Widener. 
 
 16-17 Mr. and Mrs. William E. Carter. 
 
 18-19 Mr. and Mrs. James Francis Sullivan. 
 
 20-21 The Misses Frances and Leta Living- 
 ston Sullivan. 
 
 22-23 ^^' ^^^ Mrs. Paul Denckla Mills. 
 24 Miss Julia Berwind. 
 
 25-26 Mr. and Mrs. George McFadden. 
 
 27-28 Mr. and Mrs. Harold Sands. 
 
 29-30 Mr, and Mrs. Edward T. Stotes- 
 bury {Mrs. Oliver Cromwell). 
 
 31-32 Mr, and Mrs. Clarence W. Do Ian. 
 
OF AMERICA si 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 BALTIMORE 
 
 A Boston litterateur to whom I was once 
 giving Baltimore society its meed of praise 
 at a dinner, let fly the repartee that a huge 
 terrapin ought to be chiseled out of granite 
 and perched upon top of the Washington 
 Monument in Baltimore. Baltimoreans, alike 
 with fashionable folk out in San Francisco, 
 are certainly past masters in the art of dining. 
 
 A far more hackneyed truism is it to re- 
 count that the Oriole City, time out of mind, 
 has been graced with an entail of beautiful 
 women without a break in the links. The 
 three Caton beauties known at home and 
 abroad as the American Graces at the Court 
 of George IV., and each of whom married 
 British noblemen, were scions of the house 
 of Carrolls of Carrollton. At the period when 
 the author was a student at the Johns Hop- 
 kins University, the Misses Emily and Vir- 
 ginia McTavish, kinswomen of the Duchess 
 of Leeds, and the Carrolls of the Manor 
 
5 8 VL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 shared with Miss Nannie Tiffany (now Mrs. 
 Bradley-Jones) and Miss Florence McPhee- 
 ters (Mrs. Padelford) the prestige of being 
 the reigning belles of Baltimore. 
 
 Baltimore vies with the City of Brotherly 
 Love in having been the birthplace of a roster 
 of ultra-smart women pre-eminent as leaders 
 of national society in New York and New- 
 port. Among these social cynosures who 
 sprang from this courtly cavalier stock may 
 be cited Mrs. Townsend Burden, nee Moale, 
 related to the Byrds, of Westover; Mrs. 
 Elisha Dyer, who was Miss Sydney Turner, 
 a granddaughter of the Bonaparte Pattersons; 
 Miss Laura Patterson Swan, Mrs. Henry 
 Clews, Jr., Mrs. Richard Irvin and Mrs. Lee 
 Tailer, members of the old and fashionable 
 Morris family; Mrs. T. Sufifern Tailer, Mrs. 
 Anthony J. Drexel, Mrs. James Henry Smith, 
 Mrs. William E. Carter (Lucille Polk) and 
 the Princess Braganza. The present Mrs. Al- 
 fred G. Vanderbilt was Miss Margaret 
 Emerson, of the Oriole City. Miss Lota Ran- 
 dolph Robinson, who passes much of her time 
 in New York and Newport, a daughter of the 
 John M. Robinsons, formerly of Baltimore, 
 
OF AMERICA 59 
 
 is singled out as a typical belle of the ultra- 
 smart set. Bom in Virginia, a granddaughter 
 of the Byrds, of Westover, and related to the 
 Beverly Robinsons, Miss Lota Robinson is 
 possessed of much of the epigrammatic wit of 
 her intimate friend, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. 
 
 The marriage of a daughter of the Alex- 
 ander Browns, of Baltimore, to Mr. T. Suf- 
 fern Tailer, of New York and Newport, one 
 of the most fashionable and aristocratic beaux 
 of society, will in time have the effect of in- 
 creasing the Oriole City's ultra-fashionable 
 representation at Newport, the Henry Barton 
 Jacobs not having been particularly expansive 
 in their efforts to launch their fellow-towns- 
 folk socially at the City by the Sea. It is high 
 time then that the Alexander Browns, who 
 have been exceedingly well received at New- 
 port under the aegis of the Suffern Tailers, 
 should stop hedging and playing coy over 
 at Jamestown and Narragansett Pier, and 
 should come forward and take a villa at New- 
 port and let some of their old friends and 
 neighbors from Baltimore share with them 
 the '^good thing" with which fortune has 
 blessed them at Newport. 
 
6o UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 List of Baltimore Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs 
 
 I'he Carrolls, of Carrollton, viz.: 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Carroll. 
 3-4 Mr. and Mrs. Royal Phelps Carroll. 
 
 5 Miss Suzanne Carroll. 
 6-7 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Jerome Bona- 
 parte. 
 
 8 Mr. Walter de Curzon Poultney. 
 
 9 Miss Lota Randolph Robinson. 
 10 Mr. Henry Walters. 
 
 11-12 Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs. 
 13-14 Mr. and Mrs. Walter B. Brooks, Jr., 
 
 nee Cromwell. 
 15-16 Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Brown. 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. George W. Vanderhilt. 
 3-4 Mr. and Mrs. Beekman Lorillard. 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. Richard T. Wilson. 
 
OF AMERICA 6r 
 
 3-4 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Harriman, 
 
 Kentucky 
 
 I Miss Tevis Camden, 
 
62 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 CHAPTER V; 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Mrs. Nathaniel Thayer, born Pauline Re- 
 vere, is the acknowledged leader of Boston's 
 ultra-fashionables; Mrs. Jack Gardner, of 
 the musical and artistic element in that city 
 of carefully weeded-out visiting lists. Bos- 
 tonians are still devotees of their Brahmin 
 caste of families, wealth having made less 
 militant inroads upon conservatism than in 
 either Philadelphia or Baltimore. 
 
 Boston's representation at Newport was 
 falling several degrees below the ultra-smart 
 cachet since the absence of the E. Rollins 
 Morses, until the Nathaniel Thayers entered 
 the lists of entertainers previous to their recent 
 period of mourning. Mrs. Thayer is the 
 mother of the Countess Moltke and of Mrs. 
 Frederic Winthrop, and an aunt of Eugene 
 Van Rensselaer Thayer, Jr., who married 
 Miss Brooks, a daughter of the Mortimer 
 Brooks, of New York and Newport. 
 
 Miss Susan Hargous Appleton, Boston's 
 
OF AMERICA 63 
 
 most important debutante of the present sea- 
 son, with the exception of the Misses Hunne- 
 well, is a niece of Mrs. George B. de Forest 
 and of Mrs. Woodbury Kane, nee Hargous, 
 formerly a much-feted belle of New York and 
 Newport. There are few American pedigrees 
 the peer of that of the Boston Appletons. 
 Mrs. George Von L. Meyer, formerly of Bos- 
 ton, who is listed with Washington ultra- 
 fashionables, was born an Appleton. 
 
 Apropos of Boston women in general, I am 
 rejoiced to know that each year it can be said 
 less truthfully that Boston women pay more 
 attention to the cosmos than to the cosmetics. 
 The French philosopher Helvetius rightly 
 said that into the mind of an accomplished 
 coquette entered as many ideas and combina- 
 tions of ideas as were needful for the mental 
 outfit of an Aristotle or a Solon. 
 
 List of Boston Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 Mrs. Nathaniel Thayer 
 
 1-2 Mr, and Mrs, Eugene Van Rensselaer 
 Thayer, Jr. 
 
64 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 3-4 Mr, and Mrs. Prescott Lawrence, 
 
 5 Miss Prescott Lawrence, 
 
 6 Mrs, J, de Forest Danielson. 
 
 7-8 Mr, and Mrs. Hoi lis Hunnewell. 
 
 9-10 Mr. and Mrs. Bayard Thayer. 
 
 1 1- 1 2 Mr, and Mrs. Frederic Winthrop, nee 
 Thayer. 
 
 13 Miss Eleanor Sears, 
 
 14-15 Mr, and Mrs. Larz Anderson. 
 
 16-17 Dr. and Mrs. William Appleton, 
 
 18 Miss Susan Hargous Appleton. 
 
 19-20 Mr. and Mrs. Lothrop Ames. 
 
 21-22 Mr. and Mrs. Amor Hollingsworth. 
 
 23-24 Mr. and Mrs. Frederic H. Prince. 
 
 25-26 Mr. and Mrs. William Phillips, nee 
 
 Drayton. 
 
 27-28 Mr. and Mrs. James Lowell Putnam. 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 1-2-3 ^^' ^^^ Mrs. Henry S. Glover and 
 Miss Helen Le Roy Glover, of 
 Fairfield, Fairfield County, 
 
OF AMERICA 65 
 
 CHAPTER VT 
 PROVIDENCE 
 
 Nothing conspicuously ultra-smart save 
 Elisha Dyer, Jr., and the William Watts 
 Shermans ever came out of Providence. 
 Providence society, although made up of emi- 
 nently substantial people, has always been 
 somewhat hampered by the homely traits of 
 its forefathers, the Puritans of Providence 
 plantations. 
 
 In marked contrast to the pioneers of Provi- 
 'dence plantations, with their dyspeptic entail, 
 early Colonial Newport was settled by those 
 courtly old cavaliers, the Dyers, Sir Godfrey 
 Marleybone, the Coddingtons, Eastons, Brin- 
 leys, Gardiners, Brentons, Cranstons and 
 Coggeshalls. No less an authority than 
 Colonel Asa Bird Gardiner, president of the 
 Order of the Cincinnati of the State of Rhode 
 Island, alleges that the Newport Colonial 
 cavaliers lived in far more sumptuous style 
 than the other royalist families scattered 
 sparsely through New England. 
 
6b UL TRA'FASHIONABLES 
 
 Heredity is practically fate, hence this ex- 
 ceptional little discussion of the origin of the 
 Providence species. For generations the 
 dozen or two Providence families having 
 villas at Newport have held a proud social 
 position, but the rank and file of them, under 
 the new regime since the death of Mrs. Astor, 
 are looked upon as too conservative, and above 
 all as too loath to part with their money. 
 A few others from this staid Baptist Rhode 
 Island City, who are too willing to invest in 
 social display advertising at Newport, are 
 finding their progress no more assured in con- 
 sequence. When one takes a villa as near 
 home as Newport to Providence, the question 
 is at once raised, whose drawing-rooms does 
 a family frequent in the home city? 
 
 During a decade or more it has been curious 
 to note the Herculean patience manifested in 
 the social evolution at Newport of a certain 
 somewhat numerous family of long-sufifering 
 social aspirants from Providence. Highly 
 respectable, and always having known nice 
 people, but for the most part uninteresting, 
 they have succeeded in performing the leger- 
 demain of forming acquaintance with the 
 
OF AMERICA 67 
 
 ultra-exclusive families of their own city 
 mainly by way of Newport. Still they have 
 never been able to effect the crossing of the 
 threshold of an Astor, Vanderbilt, Ogden 
 Mills or a Gerry. 
 
 List of Providence Ultra-Fashionables 
 Mrs. John Nicholas Brown 
 
 The Goddards, of Hopeton House, 
 i. e.: 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. Robert H, 1. Goddard. 
 
 3 Mrs. William Goddard. 
 
 4 Mr. Robert H. I. Goddard, Jr. 
 5-6 Mr. and Mrs. William Gammell. 
 7-8 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ives Gammell. 
 
 9 Mr. Robert H. Ives Gammell. 
 lO-ii Mr. and Mrs. T. Shaw-Safe, nee 
 
 Gammell. 
 12-13 Mr. and Mrs. Harry Parsons Cross, 
 
 nee Gammell. 
 
 14 Mrs. John Nicholas Brown, 
 
 15 Mrs, Harold Brown. 
 
68 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 The California forty-niners, the Fairs, 
 Floods, Haggins, Crockers, D. Ogden 
 Millses, Mackays and their peers, at a 
 time, too, when multi-millionaires of equal 
 fortune were somewhat scarce in New York 
 City, made up their minds that no matter 
 how short some of their pedigrees were, they 
 themselves would live long and well. Ac- 
 cordingly they set themselves to work to invent 
 the cosmopolitan art of dining in America. 
 And Mr. Ward McAllister, during his stay 
 in San Francisco as a young man, acquired 
 the whole gastronomic art of war of the forty- 
 niners and came back and imparted what he 
 knew to benighted New York, then in the 
 throes of the mincing and pinched up Knick- 
 erbocker regime. 
 
 What ideas were lacking in the culinary 
 art San Francisco imported direct from Paris, 
 the delicious and prodigal supplies of vegeta- 
 bles and fruits of the Golden Gate lending 
 
OF AMERICA 69 
 
 additional facilities for good living. Cali- 
 fornians now domiciled in New York adhere 
 to these delectable traditions, Mrs. Hermann 
 Oelrichs and her sister, Mrs. William K. Van- 
 derbilt, Jr., having evidently inherited the 
 artistic bon vivant trend of their mother, the 
 wife of the late Senator Fair, of San Fran- 
 cisco, whose entertainments were given on a 
 scale of Oriental magnificence. 
 
 San Francisco Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 Mrs. William H. Crocker 
 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. Peter D. Martin, nee 
 
 Oelrichs. 
 3-4 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Templeton 
 Crocker. 
 5 Miss Jennie Crocker. 
 6-7 Mr. and Mrs. William H. Crocker. 
 8 Miss Crocker. 
 9-10 Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. 
 
 1 1 Mrs. Bruguiere. 
 
 12 Mr, Louis Bruguiere. 
 
70 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Marvelous commercial focus that it is, with 
 a strikingly handsome residential section be- 
 sides, Chicago is far and away more "West- 
 ern" in its ideas and prevailing type of natives 
 than San Francisco. Chicago, which has been 
 aptly yclept the ''Windy City," for reasons 
 both real and metaphorical, blusters with a 
 pig-headed sort of social autonomy, which by 
 no means affiliates well with the metropolis of 
 the Western Hemisphere, the real axis about 
 which all things revolve — New York. 
 
 Chicago Ultra-Fashionables 
 
 Mrs. Potter Palmer 
 
 I Mrs. Potter Palmer. 
 
 2-3 Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr. 
 
 4 Mrs. Marshall Field. 
 
 5-6 Mr. and Mrs. Hobart Chat field-Taylor, 
 
 7 Miss Chatfield-Taylor. 
 
 Marquette, Michigan* 
 
 1-2 Mr. and Mrs. Edward N. Breitung. 
 
OF AMERICA 71 
 
 Cincinnati 
 
 I Mrs. John J. Emery. 
 
 Geneseo, New York 
 
 The Wadsworth family. 
 I James S. Wadsworth, Esq, 
 
 Buffalo, New York 
 
 1-2 The Rev. and Mrs. George Grenville 
 Merrill, nee Dresser, 
 
72 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 NEjWPORT 
 
 Wealth and the highest fashion are focused 
 at Newport to such a degree of tension that 
 it has become as imperative for a social aspi- 
 rant's claims to be passed upon by Newport 
 as it was for a potentate of the era of Charle- 
 magne to go to St. Peter's, Rome, for cor- 
 onation! 
 
 Since the passing of Mrs. Astor, and from 
 a complex of causes, the power of money has 
 asserted itself as never before in the annals 
 of Newport society. A steadily augmented 
 little squad of society folk, both all-the-year- 
 round residents of Newport and cottage 
 owners from New York, some of whom were 
 occasionally guests at Mrs. Astor's dinners 
 and often at her balls, are now almost stricken 
 from the guest lists of the ultra-smart dinners 
 and dances. 
 
 Of these victims of social eclipse by the 
 whirligig of time, a certain contingent quit 
 the place altogether during the height of the 
 
OF AMERICA 73 
 
 season. It is difficult to dispose of cottages 
 of moderate pretensions unless needed to be 
 torn down to enlarge adjoining estates, for 
 people have a growing aversion to exposing 
 themselves and their belongings to being over- 
 shadowed by the ultra-fashionables. On the 
 other hand, the proportion of palatial villas 
 being reared from season to season discounts 
 the croaking of social pessimists, who would 
 raise the hue and cry that Newport is on the 
 decline. 
 
 Although fifty per cent, of the men, in com- 
 mon with their families, stand ready to pledge 
 their fortunes and their sacred honor to the 
 shibboleth of "class," many of them fret and 
 fume over the distance of Newport from New 
 York, and absent themselves a good share of 
 the week, except in the hottest weather. How- 
 ever, as it is the women who really set the 
 keynote of Newport, as well as of fashionable 
 society in general, the record of a day's doings 
 sort of index to what manner of life obtains 
 of a Bellevue Avenue matron will serve as a 
 at this the queen of American watering places. 
 Cofifee is often served at ten A. M., before 
 rising — an hour earlier than when in town — » 
 
74 VL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 in order to allow time for a dip in the ocean 
 between eleven and twelve o'clock, down at 
 Bailey's bathing beach, which is controlled by 
 a close corporation of cottagers. By the way, 
 it was not until this season just past that sea 
 bathing has become really fashionable among 
 Newport cottagers. The latest on dit is the 
 project of building not only a solarium for the 
 bathers down at Bailey's, but of adding a 
 miniature crystal palace of banqueting and 
 ballrooms. It would be so convenient for a 
 four o'clock A. M. dip in the surf, after the 
 dances, and far more exclusive than the Casino 
 at all times. 
 
 But to turn another leaf of our Bellevue 
 Avenue diary. Breakfast, with two maids in 
 attendance — one to assist with toilette and the 
 other with the breakfast. If the grande dame 
 chances to afifect auburn hair and is one of the 
 extremely few even of Newport's habitues 
 who is in possession of the celebrated formula 
 for producing Titianesque-hued locks, obtain- 
 able only under rare conditions in Paris, she 
 will pass the better part of two days of each 
 month in solitary confinement with her maid, 
 going through this starthng and lugubrious 
 
OF AMERICA 75 
 
 "process." The first application of the paste 
 turns the hair a jet black! The second, which 
 is spread over several hours later, transmutes 
 it into a vivid copper green! The third and 
 final poulticing, which is applied much later, 
 turns the hair into a glossy auburn — the ideal 
 shade, over which poets and painters have 
 raved time out of mind. 
 
 But as this is not the day of the Titianesque 
 ordeal for our Newport chatelaine, with its 
 enforced seclusion, the same marvelously ex- 
 pert maid, who is in effect a beauty specialist, 
 follows up the cold cream enameling and 
 massaging of the night before with a roseate 
 liquid beautifier, either rouge vinaigre or 
 Imperial Venus tint, either of which, she flat- 
 ters herself, will prove impervious to the rav- 
 ages of sea bathing. 
 
 Ensconced in her solarium boudoir, looking 
 down toward the Cliff walk and the ocean, or 
 in a shaded upper porch, with the same 
 marine view, our queen of the mode glances 
 at her morning's mail and her book of engage- 
 ments in the company of her social secretary, 
 dictating replies, if they are urgently needed, 
 though as much of the communication is car- 
 
76 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 ried on by telephone as courtesy will allow. 
 But what weighs on her mind is the list of 
 dinner guests to be made out on the morrow 
 and invitations to be sent for a banquet of a 
 hundred people, with dancing afterward. An 
 impending divorce scandal affords the com- 
 plication. Under pretext to her lynx-eyed sec- 
 retary, that she is peering far out into the 
 ocean to descry an incoming yacht, provided 
 she belong to that rampant minority of New- 
 port hostesses who convey an erroneous im- 
 pression of the resort and its morals to the 
 general public, she mentally indulges in some- 
 what the following soliloquy: 
 
 ^'Mr. and Mrs. Blank are important on 
 other lines than the moral ones. I might strike 
 off Mrs. Blank's name from my dinner and 
 visiting lists, just as I did Mrs. X., who was 
 divorced on the statutory grounds, and end by 
 turning turtle and gushing ecstatically over 
 her afterward, just because a dozen intimate 
 friends are insisting that she and her husband 
 are necessary adjuncts to society. Some of our 
 foremost financiers and representative men 
 have their affairs, yet they are cordially re- 
 ceived everywhere, and in most cases the so- 
 
OF AMERICA 77 
 
 ciety woman in the intrigue is welcomed to 
 our drawing-rooms, provided she wields 
 social power. In spite of this undercurrent of 
 talk which has come to the surface in Town 
 Topics, the Blanks are received everywhere. 
 I will be loving and forgiving; the ignoring 
 eye is the better, and I will not erase them 
 from the list. In the face of all the hospitality 
 we have just been accepting from them, the 
 omission would be pointed. Besides, one 
 would be hated by a whole group of their 
 relatives and friends were any blacklisting 
 attempted. As for that matter, nearly half of 
 our families of first rate celebrity and any 
 size have some sort of a cause celebre — 
 divorce or worse." 
 
 Next in order, the housekeeper or maitre 
 d'hotel is commanded to receive a few direc- 
 tions, perhaps, about the menu for a dinner to 
 be given on Sunday evening, or criticisms to 
 be passed on the marketing. A blase society 
 like that of Newport hankers after gastro- 
 nomic novelties, and our hostess knows well 
 that where the head of an establishment her- 
 self takes a personal interest, the best cuisine 
 is almost always to be found. To live like the 
 
\ 
 
 78 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 Gerrys and Berwinds, for example, has be- 
 come the Lucullan proverb of the day at 
 Newport. 
 
 The golden strand of Bailey's bathing beach 
 this morning is transformed into a veritable 
 beauty show, with Mrs. Leonard M. Thomas, 
 V ^^ the former Blanche Oelrichs; Mrs. Oliver 
 Gould Jennings, Mrs. Robert Goelet, Mrs. 
 Reginald Vanderbilt, Mrs. Burke-Roche, 
 Mrs. Joseph Widener, Miss Angelica Brown, 
 Mrs. James Brown Potter, Miss Lota Robin- 
 son, Mrs. Oliver Harriman, Mrs. Lorillard 
 Spencer, Sr., Mrs. Henry Clews and Mrs. 
 David Dows, the former Gwendolyn Burden, 
 disporting themselves in the foreground. 
 
 After a refreshing dip in the ocean and a 
 sunshiny dalliance on the beach at Bailey's, 
 the chauffeur whirls his mistress and her maid 
 back through Bellevue Avenue in time for 
 the former to dress for a large luncheon party 
 of women, followed by bridge, to be given at 
 Berger's by a young matron actually stopping 
 at a pension, who is thus paying off the social 
 debts of the season, having received a thou- 
 sand-dollar cheque from her father-in-law 
 mainly for that debit and credit balancing of 
 
OF AMERICA 79 
 
 the social ledger. It is only young couples 
 who are the scions of families of stellar social 
 prestige and great wealth who have the 
 temerity to stop in pensions at Newport. 
 
 At the entrance to Berger's Milady fairly 
 collides with a young man, who is crossing 
 the threshold in company with a wealthy 
 Italian nobleman of royal blood, a relative of 
 more than one European monarch, who has 
 just arrived and is destined to be the lion of 
 the season. She gives a stony and flaunting 
 cut to the young American, who is really of 
 an eminent Southern family far outclassing 
 the tradesfolk from whom she herself sprang. 
 He is the young tenor who sang at her dinner 
 the night before, and to whom her secretary 
 has just mailed his cheque. He has been in 
 her employ, and he must not be recognized 
 in the presence of Society; he must be ig- 
 nored along with the servants and the trades- 
 people. 
 
 His singing of the night before her guests 
 went into raptures over. The young tenor had 
 sung at a chamber concert at the Quirinal 
 Palace at Rome; the Queen had congratu- 
 lated him in person, and afterward bowed to 
 
8o UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 him on more than one occasion on her drives 
 in the Pincio. 
 
 The bridge following the lunch of costly 
 favors and floral garnitures is somewhat cur- 
 tailed, nearly all the guests having pledged 
 themselves either to take active part or patron- 
 ize a garden fete to be given for charity on 
 the lawn of one of society's foremost enter- 
 tainers. Whenever the market has been bad 
 and Wall Street depressed for a season or 
 more, a whole crop of charity entertainments 
 is sure to spring up at Newport. This form 
 of altruism proves as much of a blessing to 
 society in an ^'ofif" financial Summer as it does 
 to the objects of its almsgiving, for it helps to 
 save society from what is the sword of Damo- 
 cles ever hanging over the American ultra- 
 fashionable set — from being bored by itself. 
 
 Anent the oft-quoted prevalence of divorce 
 at Newport. In proportion to the number 
 of Summer cottagers, divorces are not more 
 frequent than in other sections of the country, 
 and other social strata, save among the middle 
 class. It is the stellar prominence of certain 
 of the Newport families in which the aid of 
 the courts is invoked in conjugal infelicities 
 
OF AMERICA 8i 
 
 of the sort which blazons the fall from marital 
 grace. In an instance like that at Newport 
 last season of the remarriage of a divorced 
 man, whose family had been munificent bene- 
 factors to the church for generations, it was 
 in direct violation of ecclesiastical ethics both 
 in the Church of England and in its offshoot, 
 the American church, for the contracting par- 
 ties to be censured by name from the pulpit 
 or by interviews given out by bishops and 
 other ecclesiastics to newspapers. Such a 
 course of procedure simply has the effect of 
 alienating the rich from the church, and the 
 latter needs them when there is a cathedral 
 to finish which will be a bulwark to the whole 
 cause of Christianity, irrespective of creed, in 
 America. Numbers of the clergy lose sight of 
 the fact that the church was not primarily in- 
 tended for saints, and that its mission is to 
 inculcate by precept and example general 
 principles which will guide the errant, instead 
 of hammering at them by name in the presence 
 of a whole nation. 
 
 As to alleged excess in drinking among so- 
 ciety folk at Newport, it is far more preva- 
 lent and public in various sections of the 
 
8 2 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 South ; and it is the South, especially the far 
 South, which is one of the most trenchant 
 critics of Newport — largely through envy. 
 
 A foreword about social leadership at New- 
 port. Few figments of the imagination bear 
 less support from facts than the allegation that 
 rivalry exists, for instance, between two such 
 hostesses of international repute as Mrs. 
 Ogden Mills and Mrs. John R. Drexel. The 
 arena of intense social ambitions has been in 
 a measure transferred to the London season 
 and its aftermath of following royalty down to 
 the Continental spas. 
 
 With reference to the British nobility as 
 contrasted somewhat with the American ultra- 
 fashionable set, the main reason perhaps why 
 it continues to exist in this reactionary era so 
 given to the shattering of idols and building 
 the sepulchres of the fathers, is its studied 
 unobtrusiveness. The better specimens of this 
 privileged class are simple and democratic 
 from the serene consciousness of exalted social 
 position, backed by generation upon genera- 
 tion of good breeding. I was once a guest 
 at a lunch in London where the Duke of Nor- 
 folk and the Marquis of Ripon were the per- 
 
OF AMERICA 83 
 
 sonages of honor. Each of these peers of the 
 realm stood forth as an object lesson — an ex- 
 ponent of manners of noble simplicity. 
 
 To move then with acceptancy in the smart 
 London court circle is to reach a plane of 
 exaltation on the Parnassus of social aspira- 
 tion higher than that of Newport, although 
 the latter by no means always admits the 
 valuation in the case of postulants for admis- 
 sion to its magic circle. If one has in London 
 the avant heralding of being an Ogden Mills, 
 a Vanderbilt, a Goelet, an Astor, a Pierpont 
 Morgan, or a Belmont, for instance, the doors 
 of its exclusive drawing-rooms swing open 
 sesame. For Americans not dowered with in- 
 ternational social and financial prestige, time, 
 tact and, above all, ceaseless expenditures of 
 money are requisite. 
 
 To the American social aspirant, however, 
 it is somewhat comforting to be apprised that 
 no mean proportion of titled English folk is 
 privately engaged in some form of commis- 
 sion business. To one. Lord So-and-So has 
 entrusted his entire cellar of grand old 
 encrusted ports and '72 clarets, "which have 
 never been disturbed by the family until this 
 
84 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 hour." Another knows of a horse for sale that 
 has '^drawn the phaeton of a duchess from the 
 Grosvenor Gate of Hyde Park over to Marble 
 Arch. And the horse is worth, in consequence, 
 at least a thousand dollars, even though he 
 may have spavined hocks and be broken 
 vended." 
 
 The London season comes dear to the social 
 aspirant; but to come nearer home, the query 
 is often put, of what would the average ex- 
 penditures consist and what sum would they 
 aggregate for a family to maintain a villa at 
 Newport and move with eclat in its ultra- 
 smart set? There is such a nexus of qualify- 
 ing conditions that it would seem almost 
 futile at first blush to essay an enumeration of 
 particulars for such an induction. There are 
 families well placed and moving in the ultra- 
 exclusive set whose manner of living and 
 equipage are positively humble in contrast to 
 that of Mrs. Vanderbilt, the Ogden Mills, 
 Colonel Astor, the Belmonts, Gerrys, Ber- 
 winds, Townsend Burdens, or Arthur Curtiss 
 James. But it must be borne in mind that most 
 of the mediocre spenders are related to some 
 of the great houses, and bound by ties of well- 
 
OF AMERICA 85 
 
 nigh inseparable intimacy to others. Of 
 course, a lady cannot be seen walking on Belle- 
 vue Avenue any more than a member of the 
 resident nobility can on the Corso in Rome. 
 
 Granting us our own major premise, how- 
 ever, we will attempt a bill of particulars for 
 a family which has a measure of social entree, 
 but whose chief asset and claim to recognition 
 will be the expenditure of money. More than 
 a hundred thousand dollars could easily be 
 dissipated from the first of July to the end of 
 the Newport Horse Show, which ends the first 
 week of September, not inclusive of the cost 
 of keeping a yacht, which always enhances the 
 success of a Summer social campaign. Sup- 
 pose one making such a bid for social honors 
 is to build a villa at Newport. With the de- 
 fections of entertainers over to the London 
 season, and as the resort is badly suffering 
 from the lack of a fashionably appointed and 
 eligibly situated Summer hotel, and two-thirds 
 of the cottagers are opposed to it, the success 
 of its Summer season is quite dependent upon 
 additional villas being built on some of its 
 large outlying acreage. 
 
 A show place, something altogether out of 
 
S6 ULTRA'FASHIONABLES 
 
 the ordinary, which is destined to pique so- 
 ciety's jaded visual sense, cannot be built and 
 furnished for less than a million dollars, not- 
 inclusive of the grounds; e. g., the palatial 
 Arthur Curtiss James establishment, whose 
 doors have lately been thrown open to society 
 at Newport. In limine then, your Newport 
 season is annually going to cost more than 
 $50,000 for a roof over one's head, say, 
 $70,000, covering the interest on the money 
 invested, taxes and repairs. For entertaining, 
 living expenses, servants' wages, fuel, electric 
 lighting, etc., $25,000. For what new motor 
 cars may be needed (nearly every member of 
 one's family being supplied with one, aside 
 from several for general use), chauffeurs' 
 wages and incidentals, $18,000 is a conserva- 
 tive estimate. Modistes, dressmakers and 
 tailors' bills, dues to clubs and other personal 
 expenditures of the family are of course not 
 included in the above figures. 
 
 The Arthur Curtiss Jameses are destined to 
 
 \ cut a wide swath in Newport society, and the 
 
 1 housewarming of their magnificent villa at 
 
 'Brenton's Cove lately was attended by a nota- 
 
 .ble assemblage of the elect, and they were also 
 
OF AMERICA ^1 
 
 included in the guest list of the Whitelaw 
 Reids in this city in one of the series of fetes 
 given in honor of their Royal Highnesses the 
 Duke and Duchess of Connaught. Still, like 
 the John Hays Hammonds, of Washington, 
 the Arthur Curtiss Jameses, as evinced by 
 some of the guest lists of their dinners and 
 house parties, have not yet arrived at an ex- 
 actly scientific conception of Who's Who in 
 ultra-fashionable America. 
 
 Speaking in general, one may be dowered 
 with villas, Italian gardens, galleries of price- 
 less paintings, yachts and pots of gold, but if 
 the Ogden Mills cachet be lacking, one's New- 
 port season, albeit enjoyable in certain ways, 
 will be wanting in its highest distinction, and 
 socially and at the same time very figuratively 
 speaking, might be likened to a torso — the 
 trunk of a statue with head and arms lopped 
 off. Almost needless it is to reiterate that since 
 the passing of Mrs. Astor, the acknowledged 
 leader not only of Newport, but of American 
 society in general — for there is a national 
 ultra-fashionable set distributed by grace of 
 New York and Newport through several of 
 our provincial cities — is Mrs. Ogden Mills. 
 
8 8 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 Devoid of aspirations for national social lead- 
 ership, making no effort to blend the various 
 social sets, her dances seldom outnumbering 
 one hundred and fifty people and her dinners 
 thirty or forty guests, Mrs. Mills is accorded 
 this exalted prerogative by the tacit acclama- 
 tion of the American ultra-fashionable world. 
 
 Born a Livingston of the Manor, of large 
 and lucrative estates, Mrs. Mills is naturally 
 guided somewhat by a predilection for patri- 
 cian birth and breeding; still, of the older 
 families moving in her circle, nearly all con- 
 sist of those possessed of wealth enough to 
 keep up fashionable. 
 
 Family and wealth, a powerful combine — 
 a Gordian knot! The same categories apply 
 to the Ogden Mills as well as to the Livingston 
 side of the house, although the years of ad- 
 versity which befell the earlier career of the 
 late D. O. Mills and one or two of his more 
 immediate forefathers, might seem to cloud 
 the distinctness of the assertion somewhat. 
 Known to few is it that Ogden Mills and his 
 sister, Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, wife of our present 
 Ambassador to England, are lineal descend- 
 ants of the early Colonial proprietor of the 
 
OF AMERICA ^ 
 
 Mills Lordship, Richard Mills, Esq., of Strat- 
 ford, Connecticut. Richard Mills, Esq., who 
 subsequently removed to Westchester County, 
 New York, where the family became con- 
 nected with the Pells and Ogdens, married 
 while living in Connecticut the only daughter 
 of the Cavalier, Sergeant Francis Nicholls, 
 who had a proprietary grant under the Crown 
 of more than ten thousand acres at Stratford, 
 Connecticut, and was a grandson of Sir 
 George Bruce, of Carnock, a scion of Robert 
 Bruce. The British pedigree of Mrs. Richard 
 Mills far eclipsed that of any Livingston who 
 ever emigrated to our coasts. And her uncle, 
 Sir Richard Nicholls, was the founder of the 
 Anglo-Saxon supremacy in New York, be- 
 sides naming both New York and Albany. 
 Bishop Nicholls, of California, is a scion of 
 this same lineage. 
 
 The Countess of Grannard, nee Ogden 
 Mills, can see the grand chateau of her royal 
 house of Bruce forefathers still standing in the 
 great park of Ampthill, Bedfordshire, Eng- 
 land, near the cross marking the site of the 
 castle to which Catherine of Aragon repaired 
 while her divorce from Henry VIII. was 
 
90 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 pending. The same chateau now designated 
 the Park House, with its forest of oaks, the 
 most famous in Great Britain, is now occupied 
 by Lady Ampthill, a former lady-in-waiting 
 to Queen Victoria. 
 
OF AMERICA 91 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ^THE 300" 
 
 NEW YORK AND NEWPORT SO- 
 CIETY'S INNERMOST CIRCLE 
 
 Mrs. Ogden Mills 
 
 1-2 Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor. 
 
 3 Mr. Vincent Astor. 
 
 4-5 Mr. and Mrs. Charles B, Alexan^ 
 
 der. 
 
 6-7 The Misses Alexander. 
 
 8-9 Mr. and Mrs. Edmund L. Baylies. 
 
 10 Mrs. James Abercromhie Burden. 
 
 11-12 Mr. and Mrs. James A. Burden. 
 
 13 Mr. Williams P. Burden. 
 
 14-15 Mr. and Mrs. Townsend Burden. 
 
 16 Miss Evelyn Byrd Burden. 
 
 17 Mrs. W. A. M, Burden. 
 
 18-19 Mr. and Mrs. Townsend Burden, 
 
 Junior. 
 20-21 Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Scott Burden, 
 
92 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 22 Miss Angelica S. Brown. 
 
 23-24 Mr. and Mrs. Edward J . Berwind. 
 
 25-26 Mr. and Mrs. R. Livingston Beeck- 
 
 man. 
 
 27-28 Mr. and Mrs. August Belmont. 
 
 29 Mr. Raymond Belmont. 
 
 30-31 Mr. and Mrs. August Belmont, Jr. 
 
 32 Mrs. Frederic Bronson. 
 
 33-34 Mr. and Mrs. Frederic 0. Beach. 
 
 35-36 Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Brooks. 
 
 37 Mr. L. F. Holbrook Betts. 
 
 38-39 Mr. and Mrs. Francis C. Bishop. 
 
 40-41 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Carroll. 
 
 42-43 Mr. and Mrs. Royal Phelps Carroll. 
 
 44 Miss Suzanne Carroll. 
 
 45-46 Mr. and Mrs. W. Bayard Cutting. 
 
 /\rj Mr. James De Wolfe Cutting. 
 
 48 Miss Eliazbeth Cannon. 
 
 49-50 Mr. and Mrs. J. Francis A. Clark. 
 
 51-52 Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clews. 
 
 53 Mr. Henry Clews, Jr. 
 
 54-55 Mr. and Mrs. James B. Clews. 
 
 56-57 Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Collier. 
 
 58 Mr. Rawlins Lowndes Cottenet. 
 
 59 Mrs. Moses Taylor Campbell. 
 
 60 Miss Caroline Duer. 
 
OF AMERICA 93 
 
 61-62 Mr\ and Mrs. David Dows, nee 
 
 Burden. 
 
 63-64 Mr. and Mrs. William Earl Dodge. 
 
 65-66 Mr. and Mrs. Chaiincey M. Depew. 
 
 67-68 Mr. and Mrs. George B. de Forest. 
 
 69-70 Mr. and Mrs. J. Gordon Douglas. 
 
 71-72 Mr. and Mrs. Elisha Dyer. 
 
 73-74 Mr. and Mrs. John R. Drexel. 
 
 75 Miss Alice Gordon Drexel. 
 
 76-77 Mr. and Mrs. Anthony J. Drexel, 
 
 Jr., nee Gould. 
 
 78-79 Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. 
 
 80-81 Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Jr. 
 
 82-83 Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Freling- 
 
 huysen. 
 
 84-85 Mr. and Mrs. Paulding Fosdick. 
 
 86 Mr. Eliot Gregory. 
 
 87-88 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson. 
 
 89-90 Mr. and Mrs. R. Horace Gallatin. 
 
 91-92 Mr. and Mrs. F. Gray Griswold. 
 
 93-94 Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd C. Griscom. 
 
 95 Mrs. Goelet. 
 
 96 Mr. Robert Walton Goelet. 
 
 97 Mrs. Ogden Goelet. 
 
 98-99 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Goelet. 
 
 lOO-lOl Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry. 
 
94 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 102-103 The Misses Angelica and Mabel 
 
 Gerry, 
 104-105 Mr. and Mrs, Robert Livingston 
 
 Gerry, 
 106-107 Mr. and Mrs. Peter Goelet Gerry. 
 
 108 Mrs. Richard Gambrill. 
 109-110 Mr. and Mrs. George Jay Gould. 
 111-112 Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence L. Gilles- 
 pie, 
 113-114 Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. LLoffman. 
 115-116 Mr. and Mrs. William Pierson 
 
 LL ami It on. 
 1 1 7-1 18 Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cooper LJewitt. 
 1 19-120 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Llitchcock, 
 
 Junior. 
 1 21-122 Mr. and Mrs, F, Grand d' Haute- 
 
 ville, 
 123-124 Miss Marion Hollins. 
 125-126 Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Have- 
 
 meyer. 
 127-128 Mr. and Mrs, Frederick C. Have 
 
 meyer. 
 129-130 Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Harriman. 
 
 131 Miss Carol Harriman. 
 ^32-133 Mr. and Mrs. J. Borden Harriman. 
 ^34'^ 35 -M^' and Mrs. J. Arden Harriman. 
 
OF AMERICA 95] 
 
 136-137 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hastings. 
 
 138 Mr. D. Phoenix Ingraham. 
 
 139-140 Mr. and Mrs. C. Oliver Iselin. 
 
 141 Mr. Adrian Iselin, Second. 
 
 142 Mr. Adrian Iselin. 
 
 143-144 The Misses Therese and Louise 
 
 Iselin. 
 
 145-146 Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Iselin. 
 
 147-148 Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Iselin. 
 
 149-150 Colonel and Mrs. William lay. 
 
 151-152 Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Curtiss lames. 
 
 1 53" 1 54 ^^' ^^^ Mrs. Oliver G. Jennings. 
 
 155-156 Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke Jones. 
 
 157 Miss Sadie Jones. 
 
 158 Mrs. James P. Kernochan. 
 159-160 Mr. and Mrs. John Innes Kane. 
 
 161 Mrs. Woodbury Kane. 
 
 162 Mr. Pierre Lorillard. 
 
 163 Mr. Pierre Lorillard, Jr. 
 
 164 Mr. Griswold Lorillard. 
 
 165 Mrs. Maturin Livingston. 
 166-167 Mr. and Mrs. Goodhue Livingston 
 168-169 Mr. and Mrs. W. Goad by Loew. 
 
 1 70-171 Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Cass Ledyard 
 
 172 Mr. Charles Lanier. 
 
 173-174 Mr. and Mrs. James F. D. Lanier. 
 
96 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 175-176 Mr, and Mrs. Philip M. Lydig. 
 
 177-17^ Mr. and Mrs. W. Starr Milles. 
 
 179 Miss Starr Milles, 
 
 1 80 Miss Muriel Morris. 
 181-182 Mr. and Mrs. Levi P. Morton. 
 
 183 Miss Morton. 
 
 184-185 Mr. and Mrs. Ogden Mills. 
 
 186-187 Mr. and Mrs. Ogden Livingston 
 Mills. 
 
 ^ 188-189 Mr. and Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay. 
 
 1 90- 1 91 Mr. and Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan. 
 
 192-193 Mr. and Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan, 
 Junior, 
 
 194 Mr, Frederic Townsend Martin. 
 
 195-196 Mr, and Mrs. Bradley Martin, Jr, 
 
 197 Mr, Charles A. Munn. 
 
 198-199 Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Mortimer, 
 
 200-201 Mr. and Mrs. Richard Mortimer. 
 
 202-203 Mr. and Mrs. Henry W. McVickar. 
 
 204 Mrs. Frederic Neil son, 
 
 205 Mr. Alphonse de Navarro, 
 
 206 Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs. 
 207-208 Mr. and Mrs. Stephen D. Olin. 
 209-210 Mr. and Mrs, Ralph Pulitzer, nee 
 
 Webb, 
 
 2 1 1 Mr. Howard Phipps. 
 
OF AMERICA 97 
 
 212-213 Mr, and Mrs. Henry C. Phipps. 
 
 214-215 Mr. and Mrs. Francis Key Pendle- 
 ton. 
 
 216-217 Mr. and Mrs. James Brown Potter. 
 
 218 General Horace Porter. 
 
 219-220 Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Robinson. 
 
 221-222 Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 223-224 Mr. and Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid. 
 
 225-226 Mr. and Mrs. George L. Rives. 
 
 227 Miss Mildred Rives. 
 
 228 Mr. Moncure Robinson. 
 
 229 Miss Lota Robinson. 
 
 230-231 Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Livingston 
 Satterlee. 
 232 Mrs. William Watts Sherman. 
 233.234 Mr. and Mrs. Richard Stevens. 
 
 235 Miss Anna Sands. 
 236-237 Mr. and Mrs. Lorillard Spencer, 
 Junior. 
 
 238 Mr. Lispenard Stewart. 
 
 239 Mr. W. Rhinelander Stewart, Jr. 
 
 240 Miss Laura Patterson Swan. 
 241-242 Mr. and Mrs. William Payne 
 
 Thompson. 
 243-244 Mr. and Mrs. Henry A. C. Taylor. 
 7 ^5-246 Mr. and Mrs. T. Suffern Tailer. 
 
98 ULTRA-FASHION ABLES 
 
 247 Mrs, Hamilton McK. Twombly. 
 
 248 Miss Ruth Vanderbilt Twombly. 
 249-250 Mr. and Mrs. Leonard M, Thomas, 
 
 251 Mrs. Vanderbilt, 
 
 252-253 Mr. and Mrs, William K. Vander- 
 bilt. 
 
 254-255 Mr. and Mrs, William K. Vander- 
 bilt, Jr, 
 
 256 Mr. Harold Stirling Vanderbilt. 
 
 257-258 Mr. and Mrs. Frederick W. Van- 
 derbilt. 
 
 259-260 Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. 
 
 261-262 Mr. and Mrs. Alfred G. Vanderbilt. 
 
 263 Mrs. French Vanderbilt. 
 
 264-265 Mr. and Mrs, Reginald Vanderbilt, 
 
 266 Mr. James J. Van Alen, 
 
 267 Miss Van Alen, 
 
 268 Miss Alice Van Rensselaer, 
 269-270 Dr. and Mrs. W. Seward Webb. 
 271-272 Mr. and Mrs, James JVatson Webb, 
 273-274 Mr, and Mrs, Lawrence Water- 
 bury, 
 
 275-276 Mr. and Mrs, Frank S, Witherbee. 
 
 277 Miss Witherbee, 
 
 278-279 Mr. and Mrs. Whitney Warren. 
 
OF AMERICA 99 
 
 280-281 Mr. and Mrs. George Henry War- 
 ren. 
 
 282 Miss Constance Warren. 
 
 283 Mr. Egerton L. Winthrop. 
 284-285 Mr. and Mrs. Egerton L. Win- 
 throp, Jr. 
 
 286 Mr. Frederic Bronson Winthrop. 
 287-288 Mr. and Mrs. William Woodward. 
 
 289 Mr. Craig Wadsworth. 
 290-291 Mr. and Mrs. M. Orme Wilson. 
 292-293 Mr. and Mrs. M. Orme Wilson, Jr. 
 
 294 Mr. Richard Trornton Wilson. 
 295-296 Mr. and Mrs. J. Norman de R. 
 
 Whitehouse. 
 297-298 Mr. and Mrs. Harry Payne Whit- 
 ney. 
 299-300 Mr. and Mrs. Payne Whitney, 
 
1 00 VL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE MISADVENTURES OF MRS. 
 
 DETRIMENTAL— A SOCIAL 
 
 CAREER 
 
 Mrs. Detrimental, a sort of female knight 
 errant of social adventure — a somewhat prev- 
 alent type. Birthplace, Denver — a propitious 
 social star to be born under. Father, a livery- 
 stable keeper — not so lucky an owner. Pater- 
 nal grandmother, cook for Miners' camps — 
 not a bar sinistre in Denver society. Mrs. 
 Detrimental's mother with only a country dis- 
 trict primary school training, secures a good 
 education for her pretty daughter, who mar- 
 ries a boarder of theirs, a rough and ready son 
 of the border, but who in the lapse of a decade 
 proves to be a multi-millionaire, controlling 
 mines eclipsing the wealth of Ormus and of 
 Ind. 
 
 The Detrimentals Start Out From 
 Denver 
 
 As for society, Mr. Detrimental ^ Vants none 
 
OF AMERICA loi 
 
 of it," but shares heart and soul as a silent part- 
 ner, his wife^s and daughter's unquenchable 
 ambitions. Mrs. Detrimental and her daugh- 
 ter accordingly, betake themselves to the me- 
 tropolis for a couple of Winters establishing 
 themselves in a showy house on Riverside 
 Drive. They invest heavily in two charities 
 and are soon bidden to dances and lunches by 
 soi disant ^^social leaders" who lie in wait for 
 Western nouveaux riches. Alas! by a collision 
 of carriages, the smashing of automobiles, or 
 some other accident, they fall in for a bit with 
 a genuine woman of fashion of the fin fleur of 
 the smart set. Mrs. Detrimental confides to 
 her the social campaign projects which are 
 giving her sleepless nights, quoting with ela- 
 tion and peculiar swelling of the throat as 
 friends the names of Mrs. So-and-So, the 
 aforesaid leaders of the '^best society." 
 
 The smart woman takes the ground from 
 under her feet by confronting her with the 
 statement that the alleged "social leaders" 
 quoted by her are themselves "detrimental." 
 The woman of fashion quickly perceives that 
 personally she can do nothing socially for 
 Mrs. Detrimental but give advice, as a long 
 
102 ULTRA-FASHION ABLES 
 
 and tedious technical training is needed, and 
 wisely tells her to pack her trunks for a Win- 
 ter in Rome, this chancing to be an auspicious 
 year — the Anno Santo or Holy Jubilee year. 
 They sail in November, finding to their dis- 
 may only one passenger of the real American 
 ultra-fashionable set on board the huge North 
 German Lloyd steamer, and she refuses, not 
 only by actions, but by words, to have anything 
 to do with Mrs. and Miss Detrimental, al- 
 though she is so hard pressed by ennui that she 
 takes up with a pretty female purchasing agent 
 from Wanamaker's millinery department and 
 her companion, a sleek drummer, even sitting 
 at a small table with them in the dining saloon, 
 as they could levy no sort of social claim upon 
 her. 
 
 Shortly before the steamer reaches port, 
 the Detrimentals fall in with a young man 
 of stranded exchequer who had lately dropped 
 down and out of the smart set of New York 
 and Newport for that obvious reason. They 
 had often read his name in the newspapers as 
 ''among those present" and they wisely adopt 
 him for a social cicerone, after proper in- 
 quiries, and stop at the Grand Hotel, Rome, by 
 
OF AMERICA 103 
 
 his advice, dining him often, and receiving as 
 recompense a few introductions to really 
 smart Americans, who are held back from go- 
 ing down to Egypt for the Winter by rumors 
 of the plague. Mrs. Detrimental and her 
 daughter hire a pew in the American Episco- 
 pal Church in the Via Nationale and give lib- 
 erally besides to the rector in aid of the con- 
 version of Catholics to Episcopalians and their 
 own conversion to smartness, following this up 
 with a dinner at the Grand Hotel in honor of 
 the rector, for which he invites two-thirds of 
 the guests and their social secretary the other 
 third. The rector speaks a good word for 
 them to their Ambassador to whom they 
 brought no letters, and they receive one invita- 
 tion to a reception of their country's supreme 
 representative at the Piombini palace, their 
 point de resistance on this occasion being, not 
 their manners which were only tolerable, but 
 their gowns — copies of their North German 
 Lloyd's cynosure's. 
 
 A nobleman to whom Mrs. Detrimental's 
 secretary had loaned money sans-returns years 
 before, secures for them an introduction by 
 means of which they become registered at the 
 
1 04 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 Palestra, on the Quirinal Hill, Rome's exclu- 
 sive Casino, and Miss Detrimental, who is 
 pretty and fairly chic, is actually bidden to 
 join the hunting set of Italian nobility and 
 fashionable Americans scurrying out over the 
 old Appian Way for a steeplechase. The 
 Ambassador, a knowing man of the world, 
 speedily divines the supreme aim and goal of 
 Mrs. Detrimental's existence to be, not Rome, 
 Paris, or London, but Newport, and accord- 
 ingly recommends her, to secure the entree of 
 the Tuesday receptions given by Hayward, 
 the honorary Papal Chamberlain, at his 
 sumptouus palace near St. Peter's, but offers 
 not a hand to help. 
 
 Mrs. Detrimental now buys up, at an exor- 
 bitant price, some tickets to the Tribuna, out 
 in the portico of St. Peter's, to range her party 
 in juxtaposition to the Papal and other no- 
 bility, to witness the splendid ceremony of the 
 opening of the Holy Door, thus placing a 
 couple of smart Americans under heavy obli- 
 gations by accepting them. Though them- 
 selves Protestant Episcopalians — since the 
 date when Mrs. Detrimental conceived the 
 idea of being born again smart — they now all 
 
OF AMERICA 105 
 
 of a sudden exhibit a leaning toward the 
 Church of Rome, at least as long as their con- 
 versation with the rector of the American 
 College, who has secured them a presentation 
 to the Pope, lasts, Mrs. Detrimental actually- 
 warming up, under the influence of Roman 
 candles, to the extent of offering a donation 
 to be applied to the purchase of rugs to be 
 laid on the cold stone pavements of the stu- 
 dents' cells. The upshot of this beneficence 
 is that some Tuesday the Detrimentals find 
 their feet treading the scarlet velvet carpet- 
 ings of the courts and grand staircase of Bra- 
 mante's masterpiece, the Palazzo Giraud, the 
 palace of Honorary Papal Chamberlain Hay- 
 ward, the social leader of English-speaking 
 Catholics in Rome, at whose levees a chosen 
 few wealthy American Episcopalians are in 
 attendance. Toward the approach of Mardi 
 Gras Mrs. Detrimental, at the instigation of 
 her secretary, the social cicerone adverted to, 
 manages to have it leak out that she will 
 donate a princely sum of money to the King 
 to have the carnival in the Corso restored that 
 year — provided others will combine financial 
 forces ; she knows well enough they will not, 
 
io6 ULTRA^FASHIONABLES 
 
 but Miss Detrimental's dot has become town- 
 talk all the same. 
 
 But Mrs. Detrimental and her daughter 
 are all the while actually en route for New- 
 port, and already racking their brains to try 
 to conjecture what proportion of those few 
 smart Americans in Rome, whose Summer 
 habitat is Newport and upon whom they are 
 now lavishing money, will not by August be 
 suffering from aphasia and every other sort 
 of queer lapses of tongue and memory. 
 Abandoning the saturnalia of their Roman 
 triumphs at just the proper time, our heroine, 
 her daughter and their suite of courier, 
 French maid, male mentor and coach — now 
 installed secretary at a fixed salary in reality, 
 but made to pose as society man in public — 
 take the train de luxe for Paris, quartering 
 themselves at the Hotel Ritz. 
 
 The excitement over shopping at Paquin's, 
 Doucet's and the millinery and jewelry shops 
 along the Rue de la Paix acts as a rest cure 
 for several days, after keeping up an enforced 
 and precarious social position in the Eternal 
 City, but they speedily find that the social 
 triumphs of the Grand Hotel, Rome, are not 
 
OF AMERICA 107 
 
 to be repeated, even on a small scale, at the 
 Ritz. But to her joy, Mrs. Detrimental finally 
 descries on the hotel register of the Paris edi- 
 tion of the New York Herald the name of the 
 American family of fashion whom she had 
 entertained in Rome in her loge in the 
 tribuna, at the opening of the Holy Door at 
 St. Peter's, and afterward at a sumptuous 
 lunch. And a moment or two later the grande 
 dame herself passes them by, without cutting 
 them, to be sure, but tactfully avoiding them 
 and walking straight over to a woman who on 
 inspection proved to be the beautiful New- 
 port divorcee of highest fashion, who had 
 repelled Mrs. Detrimental's every advance at 
 self-introduction aboard the North German 
 Lloyd steamer coming over. She was actually 
 comparing notes with their new-made Roman 
 acquaintance and staring dubiously! 
 
 There was a North American chill in the 
 air of the Ritz, and our heroine, with her 
 daughter and avant courier, the social secre- 
 tary, was relieved enough to be driven up the 
 Champs Elysee to the Elysee Palais Hotel for 
 a cup of tea. About half an hour later, when 
 they were all recovering from an attack of 
 
io8 ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 incipient heart failure, their whilom Roman 
 acquaintance was ushered into the palm-room, 
 accompanied by a little group of ultra- 
 fashionable folk. Mrs. Detrimental stepped 
 forward and greeted her with effusion, but 
 her '*f riend," while not manifesting actual dis- 
 pleasure, drew her aside and presented her, 
 not to the smart people with whom she was 
 
 talking, but to a Mrs. Van and Miss Van , 
 
 old friends of her mother's from New York. 
 Mrs. Detrimental's spirits rose at the sound 
 of the name indicative of one of the oldest 
 families of the metropolis, but the secretary, 
 by a course of delicate but adroit question- 
 ing — his mother having been an old Knicker- 
 bocker — repressed that comfortable emotion. 
 The Van 's did not belong to the fashion- 
 able branch of their family and did not even 
 know any of the Gallatins, Pells, de Peysters, 
 the Alexander Van Rensselaers, Rhineland- 
 ers, or, in fact, any of the group of New York's 
 old patrician families, who had kept to the 
 fore and stood nearest the throne of the ultra- 
 smart set. 
 
 The two women were able to find partial 
 relief for their emotions of vexation by cut- 
 
OF AMERICA 109 
 
 ting dead as a doornail two of their ^'detri- 
 mental" friends of the upper west side, New 
 York contingent, v/ho suddenly arrived upon 
 the scene of discomfiture ready to welcome 
 them with open arms. But almost in the next 
 carriage passed some Californians who knew 
 all about them, and were voluble talkers, too. 
 At the Ambassador's, to cap the climax, Mrs. 
 Detrimental met with a rebuff from head- 
 quarters. It seems that two weeks later the 
 President of France was to give a ball at the 
 Elysee Palace, and our heroine, in the mo- 
 mentary absence of her social secretary, ven- 
 tured to ask the Ambassador to secure three 
 invitations for her, bolstering up her claims 
 with the avowal that her family came over 
 with William the Conqueror and was of the 
 purest Norman blood. 
 
 "My good Madame, isn't it sufficient for 
 any family to have started in all right with its 
 own country?" the Ambassador tartly replied. 
 
 Safe in the seclusion of their carriage the 
 social secretary delivers himself to Mrs. Det- 
 rimental, now wallowing in the abyss of 
 chagrin and humiliation : "Pardon my plain- 
 ness of speech, Madame, but that's what I'm 
 
no ULTRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 hired for. Don't I beg of you, ever trust your- 
 self to talk on 'family' again to your dying 
 day. It's only bundling out the old livery 
 stable in Denver, your miner's cook of a 
 grandmother, and every other ridiculous scrap 
 of family history which you implored me to 
 be on my guard against exposing. The very 
 notice of our arrival, with the fulsome men- 
 tion of the social attentions which we received 
 in Rome, which I had inserted in the Paris 
 edition of the New York Herald just to humor 
 you, is working mischief. Certain of those 
 society people from the Grand Hotel, Rome, 
 are at this very moment in Paris, and they 
 have fallen in with knowing ones from the 
 States, and they are beginning to analyze, and 
 I'm afraid they will never stop analyzing. 
 The odds are against us in Paris, which is 
 anyhow so overrun with jWestern people that 
 it seems like another Chicago. We must beat 
 a retreat to London." 
 
 The Shower of Gold in London. 
 
 In London Mrs. Detrimental and her suite 
 put up at Claridge's. In Paris they had re- 
 
OF AMERICA in 
 
 ceived the cold shoulder, but had acquired 
 experience. In London, however, the secre- 
 tary managed to get them speedily presented 
 to Lord and Lady Down-in-the-Heel, nobility 
 of exalted station but crumbling fortunes. By 
 an ingenious artifice Lord Down-in-the-Heel 
 was led to manipulate a block of their own 
 mining stock, which brought him in such a 
 yield that he and his titled wife were ready 
 to serve them to the queen's taste, Miss Detri- 
 mental being thus at once provided with a 
 chaperone from the peerage. The policy of 
 the Detrimentals was now to avoid their 
 fellow-Americans for a while, until they 
 should ingratiate themselves with the English 
 nobility more thoroughly. They gave several 
 dinners and theatre parties, with titled persons 
 mostly for guests, until finally an American, 
 one of the smartest representatives of New- 
 port's smart set, asked for an introduction to 
 them at the Italian opera, came and sat in 
 their box at Covent Garden and made them 
 promise that they would come and bring Mr. 
 Detrimental and pay him a week-end visit at 
 a fixed date in August at his Newport villa. 
 The telegraphic cables flashed across the 
 
1 1 2 VLTRA'FASHIONABLES 
 
 Atlantic to the States the accounts of Mrs. 
 and Miss Detrimental's gowns and gems and 
 of the titled personages who were their guests 
 at the opera. But Mrs. Detrimental was now 
 longing to achieve American triumphs on 
 American soil. 
 
 Lord and Lady Down-in-the-Heel. 
 
 Mrs. Detrimental was eager to lease Mar- 
 ble House, Newport, for July and August at 
 the price of a king's ransom, but her secretary 
 and social mentor, whose judgment had all 
 along proven well-nigh infallible, frowned 
 the proposition down in toto. ^'Do not commit 
 yourself to taking a cottage at Newport until 
 you are sure of your ground, Madame. Go to 
 Newport in a yacht and stay on the yacht." 
 
 Mrs. Detrimental urges Lord and Lady 
 Down-in-the-Heel to go over to the States 
 with them, but they both obstinately refuse 
 even to accept an invitation to Newport for 
 August, if a yacht should be sent over ex- 
 pressly for them. Sub rosa they have heard 
 a thing or two from the States by way of down 
 on the Continent, and now that they have got 
 
OF AMERICA 113 
 
 a breach or two in their castle walls repaired 
 and Milady has acquired several changes of 
 raiment which could no longer be termed 
 dowdy, they are starting in to kick over the 
 traces even in London, for people are begin- 
 ning to chafif them about "Detrimental" 
 money. 
 
 Mrs. Detrimental, nothing daunted, secures 
 as lieutenants for the Newport August cam- 
 paign two young unmarried noblemen of the 
 British peerage, and her husband hires and 
 puts into commission an elephantine yacht — 
 the largest ever built on American soil. They 
 arrive at the City by the Sea, to accept the 
 invitation extended to them in London, and 
 now formally renewed for a few days' visit at 
 a villa of the creme de la creme of the ultra- 
 smart set on Ochre Point. Invitations have 
 been sent out for a formal dinner in their 
 honor. The response is cordial and entire. 
 
 The dinner passes ofif joyously, neither 
 Astors nor Vanderbilts present, to be sure, but 
 others of the "quality'' of almost equal cachet. 
 But as soon as the men are left to their post 
 prandial cigars, the women en masse turn their 
 backs upon Mrs. and Miss Detrimental, who 
 
114 l^L TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 are left to examine portfolios of water colors, 
 photographic albums, or to study the move- 
 ments of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 ^'Can't you see through it all? Mr. , 
 
 our host, has some property he wants to work 
 off on the Detrimentals," one of the smart 
 guests was afterward overheard whispering in 
 the ladies' dressing-room. 
 
 ^We are being paid off in our own coin," 
 Miss Detrimental muttered to her mother. 
 ^Why under the canopy did you go into all 
 that pilavering with those women, pretending 
 we had been in the deepest mourning for more 
 than five years before we went abroad, to try 
 to patch up our not knowing certain people in 
 society? Those women took in at a glance 
 that we did not belong to their world. Any- 
 how, Dad could buy and sell out any half 
 dozen of those families at the dinner," Miss 
 Detrimental added, in a vain effort to cloak 
 her discomfiture. 
 
 The Detrimentals have received a shoulder- 
 ing of more icy coldness than was ever dealt 
 them in Paris, or even their own native habitat. 
 For days afterward invitations came pouring 
 in for the two noblemen, their guests, but none 
 
OF AMERICA 115 
 
 for the hostesses. Even these members of the 
 British peerage cannot stand the denouement, 
 as there is an undercurrent of ridicule at their 
 own expense on the part of the flippant, and 
 they beg Mr. Detrimental to have the yacht 
 pull up anchor for Narragansett Pier, Long 
 Branch, or even Coney Island. In the days of 
 Aunty Paran Stevens' social exploiting, or of 
 the first fancy dress ball given by the Willie 
 K. Vanderbilts, the abstract fact of having 
 two such members of the British peerage 
 as Mrs. Detrimental's guests aboard one's 
 yacht would have brought half of Newport 
 to terms of capitulation. But times have 
 changed. Certain members of the New- 
 port smart set actually patronize noblemen 
 sometimes nowadays. 
 
 Mr. Detrimental, deeply chagrined at his 
 wife and daughter's defeat in Newport waters 
 two years before, more than half the time in 
 the interim having been passed by them 
 abroad, now ordered a palatial yacht of his 
 own built and again it*lies at anchor in New- 
 port harbor. This time Lord and Lady Down- 
 in-the-Heel, who are more hard up than ever 
 before, and have a goodly visiting list of New- 
 
1 1 6 UL TRA^FASHIONABLES 
 
 port cottages, have deigned to be guests of 
 honor on the Detrimental yacht, Milord hav- 
 ing consented to accept some sort of partner- 
 ship in the head of the family's mines, and the 
 husband of a pronounced Newport society 
 leader a highly lucrative deal in the stock. A 
 patent medicine cotillion is to be given aboard 
 the yacht, with all sorts of patent nostrums 
 doing little stunts, and with an extraordinary 
 and most sensational vaudeville for a finale 
 costing thousands of dollars. 
 
 The invitations are issued solely by Lord 
 and Lady Down-in-the-Heel, aided somewhat 
 by the smart Newport family who had made 
 money in Mr. Detrimental's mine. The Det- 
 rimentals are the guests of their own guests 
 that evening on board their own yacht. 
 
 In at the Death. 
 
 Fewer than half of the three hundred invita- 
 tions sent out by Lord and Lady Down-in-the- 
 Heel and the cottage queen of the mode for 
 the patent medicine cotillion on board the 
 Detrimental yacht were accepted, the fact of 
 
OF AMERICA 117 
 
 Lord Down-in-the-Heel's having come upon 
 a Newport cottager for a loan of a hundred 
 thousand dollars to keep bailififs and sheriffs 
 at bay on the other side not tending to swell 
 the number of acceptances for this spectacular 
 fete. Not an Astor, Ogden Mills or Vanderbilt 
 was present, but a goodly number of their 
 friends, especially of the younger set, honored 
 the occasion, thinking the Detrimentals would 
 be '^great fun" and there would be plenty of 
 Ruinart. 
 
 As for Mrs. Detrimental, the pleasure was 
 never hers of meeting those goddesses en- 
 shrined in her heart as the chief end of exist- 
 ence to know — Mrs. Ogden Mills and her 
 daughters, Mrs. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Cornelius 
 Vanderbilt and the Gerrys and Goelets, for a 
 social honor of which she little dreamed was 
 in store for her a few days later — she died at 
 Newport and was laid away in an ultra-smart 
 grave, with a glimpse of Marble House in the 
 dim horizon! 
 
 But her daughter. Miss Detrimental, who 
 never lost her head and whose life did not go 
 out in fireworks, lived to compel all these 
 social oligarchs to receive her by marrying one 
 
1 1 8 UL TRA-FASHIONABLES 
 
 of the most courted and powerfully connected 
 men of the spectacular ''150/' having virtually 
 settled upon him a couple of millions by ante- 
 nuptial contract. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 C 310 88 
 
mioua. 
 

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