,^^feir ^:cg 'ic ^dlyUxM (3^^7.-n^^v£^^-^^'>-^-K^^ ^ t^ >\ IajuW ^/? THE ULTRA-FASHIONABLE PEERAGE OF AMERICA AN OFFICIAL LIST OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO CAN PROPERLY BE CALLED ULTRA-FASHIONABLE IN THE UNITED STATES. WITH A FEW APPENDED ESSAYS ON ULTRA-SMARTNESS BY CHARLES WILBUR de LYON NICHOLS 1 1, — AUTHOR OF "The Greek Madonna," "The Decadents," "The Sunday Kindergarten Art History Catechism," etc. NEW YORK GEORGE HARJES, PUBWSHER 1904 Copyrighted 1904 By C. W. DE lyYON Nichols Cds PREFACE. ^HE gentle or irate tender of these pages is fore warned not to expect from them a genealogic al treatise. The subject in hand — National Society, is treated wholly from the standpoint of fashion; birth and hereditary rank, being accounted mere accidents and not belonging to the es sence of smartness. Furthermore, the system of dis tinctions employed in the Ultra-fashionable Peerage of America, sweeps away as so much social under-crust more than ninety per cent, of the oldest families of the Republic. On the other hand, a truly American spirit pervading the work, evinces itself in the large measure of influence it assigns to the social talent of the indi vidual as one of the main factors in insuring the high est social success. As Burke's Peerage is diversified by five different grades of nobility, so in the Ultra-fashionable Peerage of America, five descending degrees of fashionable precedence obtain : 1st, the Ultra-smart " 150 " ; 2nd, the "400," supplemented by a limited few Ultra- fashionable folk of the provincial cities and towns; 3d, the outer fringe of the "400"; 4th, the Colonial and Knickerbocker families; 5th, the wealthy upper middle class in American society — society in the crude. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. Official List of the Ultra-fashionable Set of America — the "150," the "400" and the Ultra-fashionable Members of Na tional Society in the provincial cities and towns - - 7 CHAPTER II. Republican Coronets and the Golden Caste of Vere de Vera 23 CHAPTER III. How the Ultra-smart Man Dresses 36 CHAPTER IV. Dress and American Beauties 45 CHAPTER V. Some Patrician Lineages 55 CHAPTER VI. On Equipage, Style of Living and Entertaining 73 CHAPTER VII. How to get into the Ultra-smart Set 81 CHAPTER VIII. The Misadventures of Mrs. Detrimental— A Social Career 98 Zbc imtra^faebionable ipeerage of Hmerica. THE 150 MRS. ASTOR ViCEREGAI, LEADERS OF THE 150. MRS. OGDEN MILLS MRS. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, Jr. MRS. JOHN JACOB ASTOR MRS. OGDEN GOELET THE 150 I - 2 COL. AND MRS. JOHN JACOB ASTOR 3 - 4 MR. AND MRS. EDMUND L. BAYLIES 5 - 6 MR. AND MRS. TOWNSEND BURDEN 7 - 8 THE MISSES BURDEN 9 - 10 MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM A. M. BURDEN II MR. TOWNSEND BURDEN, Jr. 12 - 13 MR. AND MRS. JAMES A. BURDEN, Jr. 14 MRS. BURKE-ROCHE 15 MISS CYNTHIA BURKE-ROCHE 16 - 17 MR. AND MRS. OLIVER H. P. BELMONT 18 - 19 MR. AND MRS. EDWARD J. BERWIND 20 - 21 MR. AND MRS. H. MORTIMER BROOKS 22 - 23 MR. AND MRS. REGINALD BROOKS 24 -25 26 -27 28 29 -30 31 -32 33' -34 35 ¦36 37' ¦38 39 40- ¦41 42 43 44- ¦45 46- •47 48 MR. AND MRS. ROYAL PHELPS CARROLL MR. AND MRS. ROBERT J. COLLIER MR. JAMES DE WOLFE CUTTING MR. AND MRS. HENRY CLEWS MR. AND MRS. ELISHA DYER, jR. MR. AND MRS. GEORGE B. DE FOREST MR. AND MRS. JOHN R. DREXEL MR. AND MRS. STUYVESANT FISH MRS. OGDEN GOELET MR. AND MRS. ROBERT GOELET nee WHELEN MRS. ROBERT GOELET MR. ROBERT WALTON GOELET MR. AND MRS. ELBRIDGE T. GERRY THE MISSES GERRY MR. ROBERT LIVINGSTON GERRY 49 - 50 MR. AND MRS. GEORGE JAY GOULD 51 MRS. RICHARD GAMBRILL 52 - 53 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES DANA GIBSON MR. AND MRS. HARRY O. HAVEMEYER, Jr. MR. AND MRS. OLIVER HARRIMAN MR. AND MRS. C. OLIVER ISELIN MISS NORA ISELIN MISS THfiRESE ISELIN MR. AND MRS. ERNEST ISELIN MR. AND MRS. PEMBROKE JONES COLONEL AND MRS. WILLIAM JAY MISS ELEANOR JAY MR. WOODBURY KANE MRS. JAMES P. KERNOCHAN MR. AND MRS. HENRY SYMES LEHR MR. AND Mrs. PHILIP M. LYDIG 8 54 -55 56 -57 58 -59 60 61 62 ¦63 64. ¦65 66- ¦67 68 69 70 71- ¦72 73- 74 75 - 76 MR. AND MRS. LEVI P. MORTON 77 MISS MORTON 78 - 79 MR. AND MRS. E. ROLLINS MORSE 80 - 81 MR. AND MRS. W. STARR MILLER 82 - 83 MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE H. MACKAY 84 - 85 MR. AND MRS. OGDEN MILLS 86 - 87 THE MISSES MILLS 88 MR. OGDEN LIVINGSTON MILLS 89 MR. ALPHONSE DE NAVARRO 90 MRS. FREDERIC NEILSON 91 - 92 MR. AND MRS. HERMANN OELRICHS 93 - 94 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES M. OELRICHS 95 THE MARQUISE de TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD 96 MR. JAMES V. PARKER 97 - 98 MR. AND MRS. REGINALD RIVES 99 MISS NATICA RIVES 100 - loi MR. AND MRS. WHITELAW REID 102 MISS JEAN REID 103 - 104 MR. AND MRS. WINTHROP RUTHERFURD 105 - 106 MR. AND MRS. RUTHERFURD STUYVESANT 107 MISS LAURA PATTERSON SWAN 108 MR. LISPENARD STEWART 109 - no MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM DOUGLASS SLOANE III MR. JAMES HENRY SMITH 112 - 113 MR. AND MRS. SIDNEY J. SMITH 114 - 115 MR. AND MRS. HENRY A. C. TAYLOR 116 - 117 MR. AND MRS. H. McK. TWOMBLY 118 MR. THOMAS SUFFERN TAILER 1 19 - 120 MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT 121 - 122 MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT, Jr. 123 - 124 MR. AND MRS. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, Jr. 9 125 - 126 MR. AND MRS. REGINALD VANDERBILT 127 - 128 MR. AND MRS. ALFRED G. VANDERBILT 129 MR. JAMES J. VAN ALEN 130 MISS VAN ALEN 131 - 132 MR. AND MRS. W. STORRS WELLS 133 MISS NATALIE WELLS 134 - 135 MR. AND MRS. RICHARD T. WILSON 136 - 137 MR. AND MRS. RICHARD T. W;iLSON, Jr. 138 - 139 MR. AND MRS. ORME WILSON 140 MR. WORTHINGTON WHITEHOUSE 141 - 142 MR. AND MRS. WHITNEY WARREN 143 MISS CHARLOTTE WARREN 144 - 145 DR. AND MRS. W. SEWARD WEBB 146 MISS FREDERICKA WEBB 147 - 148 MR. AND MRS. HARRY PAYNE WHITNEY 149 - 150 MR. AND MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY 1 - 2 3 -4 5 6 -7 8 9 lo ¦ ¦ 11 12 13 14- ¦ 15 i6 17 i8 19- • 20 21 22 - ¦23 24- ¦25 26 27- 28 29 3° 31 32- ¦33 34 35 THE 400 MRS. ASTOR MR. AND MRS. CHARLES B. ALEXANDER MR. AND MRS. FREDERIC H. ALLEN MR. L- F. HOLBROOK BETTS MR. AND MRS. JAMES A. BURDEN, Sr. MR. WILLIAMS P. BURDEN MR. HENRY WORTHINGTON BULL MR. AND MRS. CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED MR. J. D. ROMAN BALDWIN MISS LOUISE BALDWIN MR. AND MRS. R. LIVINGSTON BEECKMAN MRS. FREDERIC BRONSON MISS ALICE BABCOCK MR. EDWARD H. BULKLEY MR. AND MRS. FREDERIC O. BEACH MISS ANNA TOOKER BEST MR. AND MRS. CHARLES T. BARNEY . MR. AND MRS. J. STEWART BARNEY . MISS HELEN T. BARNEY MR. AND MRS. HENRI I. BARBEY MISS BARBEY MR. HENRY G. BARBEY MR. ATHERTON BLIGHT THE MISSES BLIGHT MRS. HEBER R. BISHOP MISS BISHOP 36 37 -38 39 4o. -41 42. -43 MR. OGDEN MILLS BISHOP MR. AND MRS. CORTLAND FIELD BISHOP nee BEND MR. AUGUST BELMONT THE MISSES HELEN and KATE BRICE GEN. AND MRS. HENRY LAWRENCE BURNETT 44 MR. HENRY LAWRENCE BURNETT, Jr. 45 - 46 GENERAL AND MRS. LLOYD BRYCE 47 - 48 THE MISSES BRYCE 49 - 50 MR. AND MRS. R. FULTON CUTTING 51 MISS HELEN CUTTING 52 - 53 MR. AND MRS. W. BAYARD CUTTING 54 - 55 MR. AND MRS. WINTHROP CHANLER 56 - 57 MR. AND MRS. ALFRED CHAPIN 58 MR. JAMES B. CLEWS 59 - 60 MR. AND MRS. LEWIS STUYVESANT CHANLER 61 MR. RAWLINS LOWNDES COTTENET 62 MR. ROBERT LIVINGSTON CUTTING 63 - 64 MR. AND MRS. LESLIE COTTON 65 MRS. CASS CANFIELD 66 - 67 THE MISSES ISABELLE and CATHERINE CAMERON 68 MR. JAY COOGAN 69 - 70 MR. and MRS. CHARLES CARROLL 71 MR. GEORGE CROCKER 72 MR. OLIVER DE LANCEY COSTER 73 MR. PHILIP CLARK 74 - 75 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES A. CHILDS 76 MRS. DEVEREAUX CLAPP 77 MISS EDITH CLAPP 78 MRS. BROCKHOLST CUTTING 79 MR. WILLIAM B. CUTTING 80 MRS. MOSES TAYLOR CAMPBELL 81 - 82 MR. AND MRS. P. P. COLLIER 83 MISS CRYDER 84 MR. WILLIAM A. DUER 85 MISS CAROLINE KING DUER 86 MR. JOHN A. DIX 87 MISS MARGARET DIX 88 - 89 MR. AND MRS. CASIMIR DE RHAM 90 - 91 MR. AND MRS. BUTLER DUNCAN, Jr. 92 - 93 MR. AND MRS. F. GRAND D'HAUTEVILLE 94 MR. PAUL GRAND D'HAUTEVILLE 95 MR. J. COLEMAN DRAYTON 96 MISS CAROLINE DRAYTON 97 MR. RALPH N. ELLIS 98 - 99 MR. AND MRS. H. LE ROY EMMET 100 MRS. HARGOUS-ELLIOT loi MR. HENRY F. ELDRIDGE 102 - 103 MR. AND MRS. BLAIR FAIRCHILD 104 - 105 MR. AND MRS. E- G. FABBRI 106 - 107 MR. AND MRS. BRADHURST OSGOOD FIELD 108 - 109 MR. AND MRS. SETH BARTON FRENCH no MRS. FRANCIS ORMOND FRENCH in - 112 MR. AND MRS. THEODORE FRELINGHUYSEN 113 - 114 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES G. FRANCKLYN 115 MR. GORDON FELLOWS 116 MISS MARIAN FISH 117 MISS JANET FISH 118 MR. H. DE COURSEY FORBES 119 - 120 DR. AND MRS. AUSTIN FLINT, Jr. 121 - 122 MR. AND MRS. JAMES W. GERARD, Jr. 13 123 MR. JULIEN GERARD 124 MR. SUMNER GERARD 125 MR. F. GRAY GRISWOLD 126 - 127 MR. AND MRS. GOELET GALLATIN 128 MR. CENTER HITCHCOCK 129 MRS. THEODORE A. HAVEMEYER 130 - 131 MR. AND MRS. THEODORE A. HAVEMEYER, jR. 132 MR. FREDERICK C. HAVEMEYER 133 - 134 MR. AND MRS. FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON 135 - 136 MR. AND MRS. THOMAS HITCHCOCK 137 - 138 MR. AND MRS. THOMAS HITCHCOCK, Jr. 139 - 140 MR. AND MRS. W. PIERSON HAMILTON 141 - 142 MR. AND MRS. THOMAS HASTINGS 143 - 144 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES F. HOFFMAN 145 MRS. SIBYL SHERMAN HOFFMAN 146 - 147 MR. AND MRS. FRANCIS BURRALL HOFFMAN 148 - 149 MR. AND MRS. JOHN H. HAMMOND 150 MISS MARION HAVEN 151 - 152 MR. AND MRS. GEO. GRISWOLD HAVEN, Jr. 153 MR. GOOLD HOYT 154 MR. CYRIL HATCH 155 - 156 MR. AND MRS. E. HENRY HARRIMAN 157 - 158 THE MISSES MARY and CORNELIA HARRIMAN 159 - 160 MR. AND MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN 161 - 162 MR. AND MRS. J. ARDEN HARRIMAN 163 - 164 MR. AND MRS. JOSEPH HARRIMAN 165 - 166 MR. AND MRS. COOPER HEWITT 167 MR. MCDOUGALL HAWKS 168 - 169 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES BETTS HILLHOUSE 170 MR. EUGENE HIGGINS 14 171 MR. D. PHOENIX INGRAHAM 172 - 173 MR. AND MRS. LEWIS ISELIN 174 MR. BRADISH G. JOHNSON 175 - 176 MR. AND MRS. OLIVER GOULD JENNINGS 177 MRS. VAN RENSSELAER-JOHNSON 178 - 179 MR. AND MRS. AUGUSTUS JAY 180 MR. DE LANCEY KANE JAY 181 - 182 MR. AND MRS. DE LANCEY KOUNTZE 183 MR. ARTHUR T. KEMP 184 - 185 MR. AND MRS. DE LANCEY ASTOR KANE 186 - 187 MR. AND MRS. JOHN INNES KANE 188 - 189 MR. AND MRS. JOHN R. LIVERMORE 190 MRS. ADOLPH LADENBURG 191 - 192 MR. AND MRS. L. CASS LEDYARD 193 MRS. MATURIN LIVINGSTON 194 MISS MAUD LIVINGSTON 195 MRS. OSCAR LIVINGSTON 196 MR. E. DE PEYSTER LIVINGSTON 197 - 198 MR. AND MRS. GOODHUE LIVINGSTON 199 MR. JOHNSTON LIVINGSTON 200 MR. JAMES LANIER 201 - 202 MR. AND MRS. J. F. D. LANIER 203 MRS. PIERRE LORILLARD 504 - 205 MR. AND MRS, PIERRE LORILLARD, Jr. 206 THE COUNTESS LEARY 207 - 208 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES H. MARSHALL 209 MR. MULLER-URY 210 - 211 MR. AND MRS. CLEMENT C. MOORE 212 - 213 MR. AND MRS. RICHARD MORTIMER 214 - 115 MR. AND MRS. STANLEY MORTIMER 216 MR. CHARLES A. MUNN 15 217 MR. GEORGE C. MUNZIG 218 - 219 MR. AND MRS. D. HENNEN MORRIS 220 - 221 MR. AND MRS. A. NEWBOLD MORRIS 222 MRS. WARD MCALLISTER 223 MISS LOUISE WARD MCALLISTER 224 - 225 MR. AND MRS. H. W. McVICKAR 226 - 227 MR. AND MRS. THOMAS NEWBOLD 228 MISS NEWBOLD 229 MR. WILLIAM HUDE NEILSON 230 - 231 MR. AND MRS. LANFEAR NORRIE 232 - 233 MR. AND MRS. GORDON NORRIE 234 - 235 MR. AND MRS. STEPHEN H. OLIN 236 MR. FRANCIS J. OTIS 237 - 238 MR. AND MRS. JAMES BROWN POTTER n^e HANDY 239 - 240 MR. AND MRS. FRANCIS KEY PENDLETON 241 MISS EVELYN PARSONS 242 - 243 THE MISSES GRETA and MAMIE POMEROY 244 - 245 MR. AND MRS. HENRY PARISH, Jr. 246 MR. FRANK L. POLK 247 - 248 MR. AND MRS. BENJAMIN C. PORTER 249 - 250 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES A. POST 251 MR. RICHARD PETERS 252 - 253 MR. AND MRS. EDWARD CLARKSON POTTER 254 MR. ARDEN MORRIS ROBBINS 255 MR. H. PELHAM ROBBINS 256 - 257 MR. AND MRS. P. LORILLARD RONALDS, Jr. 258 - 259 MR. AND MRS. GEORGE L. RIVES 260 MR. REGINALD RONALDS 261 - 262 MR. AND MRS. CHARLES L. F. ROBINSON 263 - 264 MR. AND MRS. HENRY ASHER ROBBINS 16 26s - 266 MR. AND MRS. T. J. OAKLEY RHINELANDER 267 MR. GOOLD REDMOND 268 - 269 MR. AND MRS. HENRY S. REDMOND 270 MR. MONCURE ROBINSON 271 - 272 MR. AND MRS. DOUGLAS ROBINSON 273 - 274 MR. AND MRS. THEODORE DOUGLAS ROBINSON 275 MR. JAMES ROOSEVELT ROOSEVELT 276 - 277 MR. AND MRS. SIDNEY DILLON RIPLEY 278 - 279 MR. AND MRS. LORILLARD SPENCER 280 MR. LORILLARD SPENCER, Jr. 281 - 282 MR. AND MRS. W. WATTS SHERMAN 283 - 284 MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM A. STREET 285 MISS ROSAMOND STREET 286 - 287 MR. AND MRS. MARION STORY 288 - 289 MR. AND MRS. RHINELANDER STEWART 290 - 291 MR. AND MRS. RICHARD STEVENS 292 - 293 MR. AND MRS. MAXWELL STEVENSON 294 - 295 MR. AND MRS. GEORGE S. SCOTT 296 - 297 MR. AND MRS. J. CLINCH SMITH 298 - 299 MR. AND MRS. JOHN SLOANE 300 MISS EVELYN SLOANE 301 MR. JOHN SLOANE, jR. 302 MR. HENRY T. SLOANE 303 - 304 THE MISSES SLOANE 305 - 306 MR. AND MRS. FRANK K. STURGIS 307 - 308 THE BARON AND BARONESS SEILLIERE 309 - 310 MR. AND MRS- WILLIAM H. SANDS 311 - 312 THE MISSES ANITA and MARY SANDS 313 - 314 MR, AND MRS. WILLIAM JAY SCHIEFFELIN 315 MRS. WILLIAM C. SCHERMERHORN 17 3i6 MISS ANNA SANDS 317 - 318 MR. AND MRS. FREDERIC SHELDON 319 - 320 MR. AND MRS. FRANCIS B. STEVENS 321 - 322 MR. AND MRS. VICTOR SORCHA.N 323 - 324 MR. AND MRS. JAMES A. STILLMAN 325 - 326 MR. AND MRS. HERBERT LIVINGSTON SATTERLEE 327 - 328 MR. AND MRS. J. FREDERIC TAMS 329 - 330 MR. AND MRS. EDWARD R. THOMAS 331 - 332 MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM R. TRAVERS 333 - 334 MR. AND MRS. JOHN S. TOOKER 335 MR. DIODATI THOMPSON 336 - 337 MR. AND MRS. ARCHIBALD GOURLIE THATCHER 33S ¦ 339 MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM PAYNE THOMPSON 340 - 341 MR. AND MRS. BELMONT TIFFANY 342 MRS. PERRY TIFFANY 343 - 344 MR. AND MRS. J. LEE TAILER 345 MRS. VANDERBILT 346 MISS GLADYS VANDERBILT 347 - 348 MR. AND MRS. GEORGE W. vAnDERBILT 349 MR. HAROLD STIRLING VANDERBILT 350 - 351 MR. AND MRS. FREDERICK W. VANDERBILT 352 - 353 MR. AND MRS. J. LAURENS VAN ALEN 354 MRS. ALEXANDER VAN RENSSELAER 355 MISS ALICE VAN RENSSELAER 356 MR. ROBERT B. VAN CORTLANDT 357 - 35S MR. AND MRS. W. FITZ HUGH WHITEHOUSE 359 MR. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE 360 MR. WILLIAM FITZ HUGH WHITEHOUSE, Jr. 361 - 362 MR. AND MRS. J. NORMAN DE R. WHITEHOUSE i8 363 - 364 MR. AND MRS. J. J. WYSONG 365 MR. ALEXANDER S. WEBB, Jr. 366 - 367 MR. AND MRS. EGERTON WEBB 368 - 369 MR. AND MRS. STANFORD WHITE 370 MR. CREIGHTON WEBB 371 - 372 MR. AND MRS. LUCIUS K. WILMERDING 373 MRS. BENJAMIN WELLES 374 - 375 MR. and MRS. HAMILTON FISH WEBSTER 376 - 377 MR. AND MRS. FRANK S. WITHERBEE 378 MISS DOROTHY WHITNEY 379 MISS MARIE WINTHROP 380 MR. MATTHEW ASTOR WILKS 381 - 382 MR. AND MRS. GEORGE HENRY WARREN 383 - 384 MR. AND MRS. JOHN HOBART WARREN 385 MR. LLOYD WARREN 3S6 MR. HENRY ROGERS WINTHROP 3S7 - 388 MR. AND MRS. JAMES M. WATERBURY 389 MR. JAMES M. WATERBURY, Jr. 390 MISS ELSIE WATERBURY 391 - 392 MR. AND MRS. LAWRENCE WATERBURY 393 MR. df;lano WEEKES 394 - 395 MR. and MRS. ARTHUR WELLMAN 396 MR. BARTON WILLING 397 MR. FREDERIC BRONSON WINTHROP 398 MR. EGERTON L. WINTHROP 399 - 400 MR. and MRS. EGERTON L. WINTHROP, Jr. 19 Xiet of tbe mational "mitra^fasbionable Set in tbe provincial cities an^ towns. MRS. ASTOR WASHINGTON, D. C. MRS. VAN RENSSELAER CRUGER MR. AND MRS. REGINALD DE KOVEN MR. AND MRS. GEORGE PEABODY WETMORE THE MISSES WETMORE THE MESSRS. ROGERS and WILLIAM WETMORE MISS ALICE ROOSEVELT CHICAGO, ILL. MRS. POTTER PALMER MR. AND MRS. HOBART CHATFIELD-TAYLOR MR. JOSEPH LEITER PITTSBURG, PA. MR. HARRY KENDALL THAW BOSTON, MASS. MR. AND MRS. HOLLIS H. HUNNEWELL, jR. MR. AND MRS. J. DE FOREST DANIELSON MR. AND MRS. PRESCOTT LAWRENCE MR. AND MRS. EUGENE VAN RENSSELAER THAYER like BROOKS HOLYOKE, MASS. MR. RALPH RANLET PHILADELPHIA, PA. MR. AND MRS. E. MOORE ROBINSON MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM E. CARTER MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE W. DOLAN MR. AND MRS. ANTHONY J. DREXEL MR. AND MRS. JAMES FRANCIS SULLIVAN MR. AND MRS. JOSEPH WIDENER MR. AND MRS. GEORGE D. WIDENER MR. EDWARD WILLING DEVON, PA. MR. WILLING SPENCER BALTIMORE, MD. THE CARROLLS OE CARROLLTON MR. HENRY WALTERS MR. WALTER DE CURZON POULTNEY MR. WILLIAM LEHR DR. AND MRS. HENRY BARTON JACOBS VIRGINIA MRS. LANGHORNE-SHAW PROVIDENCE, R. L THE GODDARDS OE HOPETON HOUSE MR. AND MRS. ROBERT IVES GAMMELL MISS VIRGINIA GAMMELL MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM G. ROELKER, jR. nke COUDERT MR. AND MRS. SHAW-SAFE nke GAMMELL MRS. JOHN NICHOLAS BROWN GENESEO, N. Y. THE WADSWORTH FAMILY SAN FRANQSCO, CAL. MR. AND MRS. PETER DONAHOE MARTIN MR. LOUIS BRUGUIERE BUFFALO, N. Y. THE REV. AND MRS. GEORGE GRENVILLE;mERRILL nl:e DRESSER TEXAS GENERAL and MRS. FRED D. GRANT THE PHILIPPINES GENERAL AND MRS. HENRY C. CORBIN LIEUTENANT DUNCAN ELLIOT CHAPTER IT. ¦KcpubUcan Coroneta an& tbe ©olOcn Caste ot Were De IDerc. EWPORT, not the White House, is the supreme court of soqial appeals in the United States; Mrs. Astor, and not the ¦wife of the President of the United States, is the first lady of the land, in the realm of fashion. Strange to narrate, in our free, democratic United States, almost within a decade, there has sprung up an exclusive social caste as valid at certain European courts as an hereditary titled aristocracy — a powerful class of ultra-fash ionable multi-millionaires, who, at their present ratio of ascendency, bid fair to patronize royalty itself. Personages these are whom Edward VII. well might prefer to his own subjects for dinner companions and intime week-end house parties, to say nothing of their being the recipients of almost royal honors, not only at the palaces of sovereigns, but even aboard their own yachts, thus cheapening thrones in the eyes of subjects — these wearers of republican coronets and American strawberry leaves. 23 This all-powerful social trust, the ultra-fash ionable set in American society, means, in reality, a combine of not more than four hundred families, aggregating about six hundred individuals, scattered through a very restricted number of cities of the Republic, only a few more, in fact, than the sum total of those cities which once claimed the honor of having been the birthplace of Homer. New York City, notably Newport-New York, Brook lyn, of course, being without representation, con tributes a large quota of these coroneted families of the Republic; Washington half a dozen to a dozen in the winter season, not inclusive of the diplomats, who are ex-officio decreed by fashion personce grata; the world over; Boston and Balti more, three or four, each, perhaps; Philadelphia eight, Providence six; Chicago three; Pittsburg one; Buffalo one; Virginia one; Devon, Pennsyl vania, one; Texas one; Geneseo, N. Y., one; Hol- yoke, Mass., one; the Philippines two; South Caro lina and Connecticut, both the land of proud colonial pedigrees, none; California, only one, un less Mr. Herman Oelrichs and Mr. and Mrs. Peter Donahoe Martin, nee Oelrichs, can be accounted residents. Philadelphia seems to be a decided vantage ground for a social aspirant to hail from, carefully taken statistics proving that within the two years past, more candidates from the Quaker City have 24 been received into the smart set at Newport, than from any other city in the country, save the me tropolis itself. The Philadelphian prides himself upon being what he terms well born; but birth and rank to the ultra-smart, alike in New York and London, are of the nature of accidents and do not belong to the essence of smartness. On the other hand, one may be enormously rich, yet preemi nently dowdy; still there must be a nucleus of very rich people to form a substrate for a twentieth cen tury smart set, whether in England or in the United States, and such a centralization of social forces in both these countries is to-day, to the fullest extent, a fait accompli. Wealth, then, forms the principal ingredient enter ing into the composition of this big social trust whose subjective aim is pleasure, and whose objective one is to make a fine art of social life; but for enrollment in its membership, one's manners must also be comme il faut, and this is patent from the fact that some of the most opulent families on its lengthy waiting lists will not be deemed acceptable without under going a tedious apprenticeship, with more than a possibility of repeated and perhaps final failure. This doctrine of the relations and proportions of wealth as a factor in ultra-fashionable society is acquiesced in by Mr. Lispenard Stewart, a premier beau of society's smartest set. Another of society's jeunesse doree, like Mr. Lispenard Stewart, a man 25 of both wealth and patrician lineage, says, "When I go out to a social entertainment, I want to be amused; but it takes money to amuse me, and that is why I always enjoyed going to Mr. William C. Whitney's house, and why I look forward to Mr. James Henry Smith's entertainments under the same hospitable roof." Mrs. Astor, on the other hand, with somewhat of a predilection for the old Knickerbocker and Colonial families, would state the case more con servatively than the majority of the men and women of her following. Aristocracy in America, we admit, consists in a measure of the possession of hereditary wealth; at all events, a family equipped with unabsorbed riches needs to get into its second generation on as short notice as possible. Note, for instance, the ascendant star in the social firma ment of the William B. Leeds, the Edward R. Thomases, the Thomas Hastings, the William G. Roelkers, the Goadby Loews, and of the Spreckels, Bruguiere and M. H. De Young families of San Francisco. Review the social triumphs of the past twelve months of the Clarence W. Dolans, the George and Joseph Wideners and the E. Moore Robinsons, also of Philadelphia. To go further back in the pages of the history of fashion, retrace the social evolution of the Pembroke Jones, only a few sea sons ago occupying a cottage on Halidon Hill, 26 Newport, living very quietly and comparatively unknown to national society. The last two sum mers the Pembroke Jones were depended upon and looked up to as among the foremost entertainers of the Newport season, and the year before, they gave more fetes and banquets on land and sea in honor of Consuelo, the Duchess of Marlborough, than any other members of the spectacular colony of the proud city by the sea. To guarantee then the possession of good manners, a person does not need to produce a pedigree dating back to Mt. Ararat. The national smart set offers little scope for men encased in stiff Colonial and Knickerbocker types of manners with the aspirations of dukes and the fortunes of footmen. Extraordinary personal beauty, such as that of Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, Mrs. Benjamin C. Porter, Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, Miss May Handy — Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson being italicised as the handsomest married couple moving in New York society — and artistic genius, especially in the vocation of portrait painting, when backed by irre proachable manners, sometimes act as an open se same into society's true inner circle. Let the dis torted inference once for all be forestalled and corrected that the guest lists of Mrs. Astor's annual ball are made up of a solid phalanx of multi-mil lionaires. Among the portrait painters bidden to the last of these court functions were Mrs. Leslie 27 Cotton, Mr. Eliot Gregory, Mr. Harper Pennington, Mr. Muller-Ury, Mr. George C. Munzig and Mr. Charles Dana Gibson. The 400 Coroneted families of the Republic — such a generalization or definition of the national social trust would not have been possible ten years ago, because it would have been split up into the disjointed social sets of various cities. Nowadays a person may be a social leader, in a provincial city like Boston, Chicago, Charleston, S. C, or San Francisco, and not necessarily have standing in national society, the ultra-fashionable set in the United States, whose claims must virtually be passed upon by Newport-New York and the Astor- Ogden Mills-Ogden Goelet-Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., social oligarchy, a court presentation more difficult to secure than one to a Buckingham Palace drawing-room or the Faubourg St. Germain. While any member of the ultra-smart Newport- New York set could find instant admission into the exclusive circles of the provincial cities, only a very small minority of the latter would readily receive invita tions from national society, whose summer capitol is Newport. Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and Mrs. J. Montgomery Sears, cultured and charming women, are the ac knowledged leaders of Boston society, but it levies no diminution upon their social status in their own city, to explain that they do not belong to national 28 society, the sublimated ultra-fashionable constitu ency of the United States, whereas, other Bostoni- ans, for instance, Mr. and Mrs. E. Rollins Morse, Mr. and Mrs. J. De Forest Danielson, Mr. Hollis Hunnewell, Jr., Mr. Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer and Mr. and Mrs. Prescott Lawrence, have com plied with the conditions, and having been decreed eligible, are members of the national social trust. For registration as one of the 400 Coroneted families of the Republic— that is, to be accounted ultra-smart, one is ordinarily supposed to have received an invitation to an Astor ball; and not to have dined at Mrs. Astor's virtually debars one from eminent leadership in that surpassing coterie known as national and international American society. It must always be borne in mind that it is the rank and number of one's dinner, and not of one's ball-room invitations, that the more vitally affect one's true ultra-smart status. Far from the truth would it be and an act of rank injustice even to intimate that the Astor family in any way caters to leadership or the swaying of social sceptres; at the same time, this exalted position is accorded them by both the tacit acclamation and etiquette of the combined social trust of the United States. Smartness is fashion incarne, outwardly ex pressed by fitting artistic forms of dress, deport ment and equipage. The following roll d'konneur 29 of smartness, while representative, is not exhaustive, but is distinctively illustrative of those personages who, in their several vocations of society leaders, Wall Street magnates, authors, ecclesiastics, artists, or statesmen, would be recognized not only at home but abroad, as men and women of the highest cos mopolitan fashion, and equally valid in the draw ing-rooms not only of New York and Newport, but of London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg or Madrid. Among these striking examples of ultra- smartness may be cited Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Ogden Goelet, Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, Mr. and Mrs. CorneHus Vanderbilt, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin C. Porter, Miss Natica Rives, Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt, Mr. Arthur Brisbane, Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., General and Mrs. Henry Lawrence Burnett, Creighton Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Reginald De Koven, Mr. and Mrs. George Jay Gould, Mr. Bourke Cochran, Mr. and Mrs. Philip M. Lydig, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, the Marquise ¦de Talleyrand-Perigord nee Curtis, the Princess Ruspoli nee Curtis, Mr. and Mrs. Levi P. Morton, Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Mr. Lispenard Stew art, Mrs. James P. Kernochan, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clews, Miss Alice Van Rensselaer, Mr. James V. Parker, Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Rives, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Iselin, Mrs. Van Rensselaer Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Collier, Mrs. Oscar F. Living- 30 ston, Mrs. Moses Taylor Campbell, Mrs. Burke- Roche, Miss Cynthia Burke-Roche, Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Mrs. Richard Gambrill, Mrs. Lloyd Griscom, Mrs. Frederic Bronson, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Livingston Satterlee, Mr. Walter de C. Poultney, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Payne Whit ney, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hastings, Mr. and Mrs. Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, Mr. Eliot Gregory, Mr. and Mrs. John R. Drexel, Mr. T. Sufifern Tailer, Miss Rosamond Street, Mr. and Mrs. Royal Phelps Carroll, Miss Anna Tooker Best, Mr. and Mrs. Ed mund L. Baylies, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Carroll, Mr. and Mrs. Henry A. C. Taylor, Miss Evelyn Parsons, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, Jay Coogan, Mr. Charles de L. Oelrichs, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney J. Smith, Miss d'Acosta, Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Miss Alice Babcock, Miss Marion Haven, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Cotton, Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey M. Depew, Miss Laura Patterson Swan, Mr. and Mrs. Elisha Dyer, Jr., and Mr. Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, Let it be once for all premised that the shibbo leths, "the 150," "the 400" and "the 600" are never used by the members of the ultra-smart set themselves, and that in social life, to talk of the 1 50 or the 400 argues one's self utterly outside the pale of these designations. The slogans, the 1 50 and the 400, are used in this work merely as ap proximations; for instance, the number of fashion able folk who are always en evidence and the most 31 ambitious to carry on the really hard work incurred by the treadmill of society number 1 50 more closely than any other figures. The mystical number, 1 50, thus symbolizes the true innermost circle of fashion. As Mrs. John R. Drexel, one of the social . leaders in New York and Newport's smartest set, said the other day, " This having to keep en evidence the year round, we society women simply drop down in harness." To be seen at an occasional Astor ball, or even at an Astor dinner, and at no other dinners of im portance the rest of the year, will not enroll one among the 150. Time was when a family, fortified by a proud Knickerbocker panoply and backed by a fortune in keeping, could sit apart like the gods upon Olympus, taking little active part in society; but, on the contrary, being ministered to by it, and emerge occasionally from a glorious obscurity by giving a crush reception, with a blockade of car riages of the ultra-fashionable; but the old order passeth away. If a family is not willing to do the work of society in regular American fashion every month and every day in the year, it is relegated to the background. I am glad to see that some of the heirs of the late William C. Schermerhorn are beginning to ponder on these themes. In European society, which is based upon an hereditary aristocracy, the whole family is ac counted fashionable, although one of its daughters, 32 ignoring society altogether, may give the bent of her energies to charities, another to music, and a third to writing, like Lady Sarah Wilson, for in stance, who went down into the Transvaal as a newspaper war correspondent. In the United States, on the contrary, the rebound from conserva tism is so accentuated that a solitary individual may be the only member of a family decreed fash ionable. Social talent, it must be borne in mind, is rightly accounted as much of an inborn gift as a talent for portrait painting or sculpture. The vice regal leaders under Mrs. Astor of the 150, which is the smartest set in the United States, are Mrs. Ogden Mills, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Corne lius Vanderbilt, Jr., and Mrs. Ogden Goelet. Mrs. Ogden Mills can really plume herself on having the most exclusive house in America. For her balls, there is no scurrying around to hunt up danc ing young men and women, who are never seen at an ultra-smart dinner, to fill out ; she has no assistant "manager" for her ball-room guest list, and begging around in behalf of friends is prac tically useless. The "400" in this the American Peerage, is composed of very fashionable people, a number of whom have received the fully accredited Astor and Ogden Mills social cachet. There are two grades of social acceptance represented by the 400, as will be readily seen by anyone understand- 33 ing the structure of society. To designate to what persons the second grade applies would be invidi ous, besides a whole group of these individuals are making rapid social headway, and who knows but they may arrive any day within the charmed circle of the 150. The greatest genius America has produced for planning balls and dinners and al fresco routs, as well as for ranging fashionable society into a judi ciously blended exclusive caste was the late Mr. Ward McAllister. Mr. McAllister had planned for me the details of an unique charity fete, be sides outlining the order for the decorations, mu sical programme and tout ensemble of a golden wedding for some near relatives of mine, at which I was to be master of ceremonies. And so, when the combined newspaper and magazine press of the country was firing its fusilades at Mr. McAllister's book — Society, as I Have Found It — I presented him with a monograph, written by myself, bringing out into bold relief what few strong points were latent in the book. Mr. McAllister's enthusiasm was so great that he went personally to the editor of the New York Herald and had my eulogies of his book inserted in its columns in an article cov ering nearly a page. The announcement was pla carded in huge lettering on the bill-boards of all the elevated railroad stations in town — "Read next Sunday's Herald. The Rev. Dr. C. W. de Lyon 34 Nichols, Ward McAUister's first Apostle on the Philosophy of Society, and Mrs. James Brown Pot ter on Women in India." But the register of ultra-smart people has changed a good deal since Mr. McAllister's day, although Mrs. Astor still remains the leader, with a national attitude of importance now superadded to such regency. And wealth and the highest fashion have become so much more centralized in Newport every year, that it has become as impera tive for a social aspirant's- claims to be passed upon by Newport, as it was for a potentate of the era of Charlemagne to go to St. ,Peter's, Rome, for coronation ! . . '^ 35 CHAPTER III. Ibow tbe initrasemart ^an Dreeses. HE ultra-smart man is ordinarily rated as expending from one to three thousand dollars a year for clothes, albeit the tailor bills of Col. John Jacob Astor, who is always dressed every inch the gentleman, would, beyond gainsay, fall below the thousand dollar low-water mark. As noticeably well dressed men, this monograph brevets Mr. Elisha Dyer, Jr., sometimes pointed out as "the best-dressed man at Newport;" Henry C. Clews, Jr., Henry Symes Lehr, Woodbury Kane, James Henry Smith, T. Sufifern Tailer, Hon. Levi P. Morton, Reginald Ronalds, Herbert Livingston Satterlee, James V. Parker, Whitney Warren, H. McK. Twombly, Stanford White, W. Fitz Hugh Whitehouse, George J. Gould, R. T. Wilson, Jr., M. Orme Wilson, Harry Havemeyer, James A. Stillman, Alphonse de Navarro, Royal Phelps Carroll, R. H. I. God- dard, Adrian Iselin, Jr., Stanley Mortimer, Charles A. Munn, Robert Ives Gammell, James R. Keene, Charles H. Marshall, Oliver Harriman, Jr., Robert J. Collier, A. Newbold Morris, W. Watts Sherman, 36 Prescott Lawrence, Lispenard Stewart, William B. Cutting, August Belmont, Senator William A. Clark, Henry Siegel, William P. Thompson, Ruth erford Stuyvesant, Robert Livingston Gerry, Wil liam K. Vanderbilt, Robert Walton Goelet, Henry Parish, Jr., Dr. Seward Webb, Edward R. Thomas, Townsend Burden, Pembroke Jones, Richard Peters, Egerton L. Winthrop, Sr., Egerton L. Win- throp, Jr., Rhinelander Stewart, Robert B. Van Cortlandt, Oliver H. P. Belmont, Arthur Brisbane, J. Abercrombie Burden, Sr., J. Abercrombie Bur den, Jr., William A. Duer, T. J. Oakley Rhine- lander, David Wolfe Bishop, W. Starr Miller, Geo. B. De Forest, Charles Dana Gibson, F. O. Beach, William Douglas Sloane, Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Jay Coogan and Reginald Vanderbilt. To Mr. Henry C. Clews, Jr., is accorded the royal accolade of being the foremost among ultra- smart amateurs in creating fashions in dress for men. To Mr. Clews is referred the invention of the folded cuff, to say nothing of a whole consignment of fancy waistcoats. Furthermore, Mr. Clews was the first to introduce at Newport, from Paris, the Charvet, or, as it is now Americanized, "Imandt Grand Prix" vest. On this occasion, the interna tional tennis tournament at Newport, Mr. Clews wore a suit of purplish gray cheviot, with a double- breasted vest of bright brocaded purple satin, a long flowing scarf, of a bit brighter shade of purple, 37 a white felt chapeau-la-ville hat, with heavy folds of purple corded-silk girded around it. His boutonniere consisted of a light purple, exotic shade of what is called "snowball," in a New England old wives' garden. A Grand Prix vest is always cut double- breasted and made without any buttons visible. Its material, usually purple corded silk, or silk pop lin of the same hue, comports well with a frock coat, of course, and even with a fancy light-colored sack coat on gala occasions. While among ultra-fashionable women, reac tions ever and anon set in for a while against the flamboyant and conspicuous in dress, with the men, on the contrary, a steadily increasing picturesque- ness and poetic license in personal attire are en regie. This emancipation of the male sex from the sombre effects and dead-level monochrome of attire which held sway only a few years ago is largely due to the advent of the Summer man among us. Of the Summer fine art of dressing Mr. Clarence H. Mackay ranks as an exponent. For dining at home at one's country seat in summer, nothing is cooler, more novel or half so chic as a light Tuxedo suit of white silk basket-weave, plain twilled silk, or white duck; Mr. Mackay has fully a dozen of such outfits. For summer riding and shooting habits, Mr. Woodbury Kane's, Foxhall Keene's and Craig Wadsworth's style is usually of the latest. The 38 Rev. Dr. Rainsford's golf and tennis suits of a few seasons ago have passed into sartorial history of a sui generis content. Certainly, a golf suit was never before or since pressed into service for so great a variety of social functions by a single individual. Anent of shooting coats — the really modish ones are cut with a gap in the back — a new common- sense wrinkle, to insure perfect freedom in handling a gun. The use of the pink hunting-coat, which I have seen worn, alike on the Roman Campagna and in Windsor Forest, is really as general among the polite nations of the Occident as the adoption of French as the court language of the world. A man invited to a fashionable hunt, such as one of P. F. Collier's at Newport, for instance, if punctili ous about how he is groomed, should procure a single-breasted frock hunting-coat, cut long, with full skirts and made of Oxford gray or dark-brown mixed goods. Men's predilections for special features in per sonal attire naturally vary. Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry's fancies entwine themselves around a sealskin cap; Mr. Townsend Burden and Mr. Henry Siegel, both particularly well-groomed men, have a penchant for foot-gear, often having stowed away in their wardrobes as many as forty pairs of new shoes of superior quality and workmanship. The caprice of Mrs. Burden's kinsman, Mr. Walter de Curzon Poultney, Baltimore's aristocratic and veteran beau 39 of society runs to turquoise rings and costume de bain, his record in the cut and translucency of bathing habiliments at our American Trouville a season or two ago having inscribed Mr. Poultney's name upon the pages of deathless fame of the nation's Sartor Resartus. But to take up an approximate inventory of an ultra-smart man's wardrobe : It contains a fur-lined top coat for the opera; an Inverness fur-lined, without the fur showing; a Chesterfield, in black or dark gray, or a Newmarket, to be worn over dress clothes ordinarily; a long, loose sack over coat, silk-faced for Spring and early Autumn; a double-breasted Newmarket, a single-breasted Prince Henry coat, a Strand coat, which is single- breasted with tails; rain and steamer coats, yacht ing suits, a double-breasted ulster, made of home spun; golf costumes and a short covert coat for between seasons. For golfing, only a few incura ble Anglomaniacs among our society men still persist in wearing Knickerbockers with rough stockings and Norfolk jackets, the outfit being voted exasperatingly trying in midsummer. Driv ing and automobile coats, of course, vary with the season. For four-in-hand driving, the Newmarket coat must disport a flaring skirt. In top coats de luxe, nothing in New York City has been worn comparable with Senator William A. Clark's sable-lined one, for which he drew his 40 cheque for upward of two thousand dollars. Fur thermore, it was not an imported garment. In general, it is a fallacy, jointly flattering to the invention of one or two of the society reporters on the daily papers, and the tissue of lies told by cer tain society folk themselves departing for Europe, misleading the general pubhc into believing that more than six out of a dozen of our men of fashion go over to London for clothes. Mr. Craig Wads worth, William B. Cutting, F. O. Beach, Richard Peters, Harry and Fred Havemeyer, have been for years patrons of Poole and Hill Bros., of London, but William K. Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Col. John Jacob Astor, Townsend Burden, and scores of other men of equal standing in our great world, favor, to a large extent, with their patronage the tailoring shops of Fifth Avenue and a culled out few of its intersecting thoroughfares in the Thirtieth streets. The sturdy independence of excessive Englisl;i domination in male attire was seldom as pointedly exhibited as by the rejection, not long ago, of the single-breasted frock coat which King Edward, then Prince of Wales, tried to create, and which was afterward exposed in the United States to be, in reality, the conventional dress coat of a Church of England bishop; at all events, our leaders of the mode tabooed it as essentially unbecoming, giving as it did to a man an ecclesiastical and pro- 41 fessional aspect, "when wishing, above all, to look like a Wall Street magnate. At the other horn of a somewhat similar sartorial dilemma, people untu tored in the clothes philosophy, fall into the ludi crous blunder of thinking that because the color of a Grand Prix waistcoat is purple it must be regarded as a vestment of the Church. Apropos of purple, which Elisha Dyer and Harry Lehr ever and anon affect in their neckwear, the only purple straw hat ever worn at our national summer capitol, was that of a European ecclesiastic, who was told in defence of his chapeau, which riveted attention, that "noth ing was ever conspicuous at Newport." A man or woman brought into social contact with the "magic circle" needs to be solidly well placed socially, to indulge in inventive vagaries in dress, or make the slightest semblance of setting a fashion. The bon mot I once heard uttered at the Waldorf-Astoria, that a New Yorker could, at a glance, detect a man from the provinces by his hat, contained more than a half-truth. To such aspir ants outside of the Brahmin caste, it needs to be iterated and reiterated that the majority of men, fitted to be censors of taste, are wearing fobs more than watch chains and quiet seal rings made entirely of dead gold, without stones set in them. A conspicuous watch chain, although a concen trated effort is being made in some of the European capitols to bring them into vogue again, placards a 42 man as vulgar, and the stouter his girth the more vulgar, for no one in his senses is eager to label an embonpoint. The late Mr. Ward McAllister was not a well-dressed man, but he was particularly strenu ous in his monitions on this latter point. Apropos of bijouterie, by no means every man of fashion invests in costly pearls for scarf-pins or sleeve-buttons; in common with some of the women of the smart-set, they wear the best artificial pearls New York or Paris affords — the Frederic fishskin pearls. Unlike, perhaps, a Rockefeller on his way to teach a Bible class of a Sunday morning, the man of highest fashion is not seen so often as he was a year or two ago, wearing his frock coat and silk hat to church on Sunday morning; he is quite as likely to appear in English walking coat and even a Derby hat. The idea of dressing up in one's best of a Sunday morning, like a ci-devant Easter parade, is now relegated to the class of men who buy their clothes in Eighth avenue, and to men of aldermanic proportions, who disport themselves in suits of big plaid patterns on week days. We will condone Mr. Thomas Sufifern Tailer's green suits of clothes at Newport last season, for they had very modish transatlantic precedents to fall back upon, besides, when one has the blood of both a Suffern and a Tailer coursing through his veins, he can do a variety of things with impunity. That far-descend- 43 ed beau of society, Mr. James V. Parker, has even been charged with the introduction of that nonde script known as the polka-dot collar. One of the freshest novelties, both in London and at Newport, the past season was the English straw hat. Only two or three of them were seen at Newport, but one or two of those were worn by Vanderbilts. These hats are of gray and white mixed straw, with the brim lined with black straw, which relieves the glaring white effect which an Englishman dislikes in a straw hat, and the whole chapeau has the virtue of not soiling easily amid the soot of London or the soft coal atmosphere of New York City. The hat is the one known as the Lansdowne. Mr. Elisha Dyer, Jr., is sometimes pointed out as the best dressed man at Newport. Whether the encomium be fully accredited or not, both Mr. Dyer and Mr. Lispenard Stewart are always so well dressed, wearing nothing too voyant or conspicu ous, and the general effect harmonizes so well that one is at a loss to fathom what makes them so well dressed. Simplicity and repose, however, were the norm of the Greek ideal of beauty. 44 CHAPTER IV. 2)res3 an6 Smerican fficautles. RS. JOHN R. DREXEL, who came back from Europe last summer, having been the recipient of almost royal honors from Edward VII. and his court, and whose steamer luggage consisted mostly of boxes piled high with the freshest creations of Paquin, Doucet and other couturieres and modistes of the Rue de la Paix, was adjudged not only one of the best gowned, but also one of the most beautiful women at Newport, in both these respects carrying off equal encomiums with Mrs. Philip Lydig and Mrs. Moore Robinson. Mrs. Drexel, who is the smartest of any of the women of the Drexel families, has always been remarked for her thrift and good practical common sense, and has even been known to have a gown made over, if she has taken a decided fancy to it. It was she who uttered the somewhat famous pro- nunciamento on dress, "We must attain simplicity; we can no longer go about dressed like the demi monde." Mrs. Drexel's and Mrs. Lydig's portraits appear in the recherche American Beauty Book, 45 arranged by Miss Isabella Cameron, a daughter of the late Sir Roderick Cameron. Other women of national repute in the world of fashion, who may be cited as combining good dress- 'ing with personal beauty to a noticeable degree, are Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay, Mrs. Lorillard Spencer, Mrs. Burke-Roche, Miss Cyn thia Burke-Roche, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., Mrs. James Brown Potter nee Handy, Mrs. Benjamin C. Porter, Mrs. Herman Oelrichs, Mrs. Van Renssel aer Cruger, Mrs. Peter D. Martin nee Oelrichs. Mrs. E. Moore Robinson, Mrs. Oscar Livingston, Mrs. James Francis Sullivan, of Philadelphia; Mrs. Henry Clews, Miss Natica Rives, Miss Alice Blight, Mrs. Edward R. Thomas, Mrs. Benjamin Thaw, Mrs. William B. Leeds, Mrs. Henry L. Burnett, Miss Natalie Storrs Wells, Mrs. Henry Siegel, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., Miss Gwendolin Bur den, Mrs. Oliver Harriman, Miss Anna Tooker Best, Mrs. George Jay Gould, Mrs. Leslie Cotton, Miss Eleanor Jay, Mrs. J. Lee Tailer, Miss Violet Cruger, Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, Mrs. Lang horne-Shaw, Mrs. Robert Goelet nee Whelen, Miss Rosamond Street, Mrs. Norman Whitehouse, Miss Mathilde Townsend, Mrs. John A. de Zerega, Mrs. Payne Whitney, Miss Isabella Cameron, Mrs. Clark Culver, Mrs. William Payne Thompson, Mrs. De Lancey Kountze, Mrs. Cass Canfield, Mrs. Regi nald Brooks, Mrs. Jacob Berry, Miss Gladys Berry, 46 Miss Alice Babcock, Mrs. William G. Roelker, Jr. nee Coudert; Mrs. Edwin Gould, Mrs. Cortland Field Bishop nee Bend, Miss Maud Livingston, Mrs. Adolph Ladenburg, Mrs. Edgar Barclay Car roll, Mrs. Charles H. Marshall, Mrs. Reginald Van derbilt, Mrs. Fred D. Grant, Mrs. James Cogswell Converse nee Berry, Mrs. Oakley Rhinelander^ Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. Sidney J, Smith, the Misses Ogden Mills and Mrs. W. Watts Sherman. Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, Mrs. Benjamin C. Porter, Mrs. Lee Tailer, Mrs. Lorillard Spencer, Mrs. Burke-Roche, Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, Mrs. Clarence Mackay and Mrs. James Brown Potter nee Handy, are singled out by artists as "the classical and aristocratic beauties." Let royal coffers be what they may, the col lective contents of the jewel caskets of the ultra- fashionable set in New York society approximate closely to one hundred and seventy millions of dol lars. Upwards of half a dozen women, notably Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Oliver H. P, Belmont, and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., each have a million dollars invested in these arti cles for personal adornment. Among women whose bijouterie foot up in value closely to eight hundred thousand dollars, may be cited Mrs. Ogden Goelet, Mrs. Orme Wilson, and Mrs. Herman Oelrichs. 47 Others worthy of being entered as prize exhib itors at any lapidary's vanity fair, are Mrs. Levi P. Morton, Mrs. George Jay Gould, Mrs. Henry Siegel, Mrs. Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Mrs. J. Abercrombie Burden, Sr., Mrs. John R. Drexel, Mrs. W. Starr Miller, Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt, Mrs. William Douglas Sloane, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Mrs. Payne Whitney, Mrs. Edwin Gould, Mrs. Stuy vesant Fish and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. But the ultra-smart and old Father Neptune have a combine working against them, for the Frederic fish-skin pearl, the cleverest imitation under the sun, is having a great vogue. These arti ficial pearls, more beautiful than some of the real ones, are sometimes worn by fashionable women along with their others, when aiming at especially grand effects in dressing, or when not wishing to bother with the risk of carrying their genuine pearls along with them when traveling. Mrs. Ogden Goelet's famous dog collar with its solitaire black pearl in the centre, probably eclipses any other article of personal adornment in real pearls in this country since Mrs. Oliver Belmont's wedding present of her ropes of pearls to her daughter, the Duchess of Marlborough; and both have been estimated as highly as two hundred thousand dollars in value. Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger was one of the first women of the smart set to appear with long ropes of Oriental pearls, in the 48 horseshoe tier of the Metropolitan Opera boxes, and she wears them in both of her exquisite portraits by Sargent and Benjamin C. Porter. Mrs. Oscar Liv ingston is often envied her old family heirlooms in black pearls.M.-. - While ropes of Oriental pearls of almost price less purity enchain the necks and shoulders of the smartest set, the coronets of diamonds worn at the opera cost on the average not more than twenty thousand dollars. Of a few of the more imposing tiaras, however, each of the pear-shaped brilliants capping the apex could easily command five thou sand dollars. If a woman aspires to regal effects in evening dress, besides her diamond tiara, a cor sage piece of diamonds, valued at, say, seventy-five thousand dollars, is requisite. Mrs. John R. Drex el's glittering sheen of sunbursts, disposed in this fashion, has passed into social history, illustrating as it does a fundamental canon of high art, whether in church decoration or that of one's house or per son, that artistic ornaments should represent, as often as possible, objects in nature. The rich necklace of Holbein work presented by the English ambassador to the Empress Jo sephine at the time of her marriage to Napoleon I., now graces the jewel casket of Mrs. Henry Siegel, one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of New York society, whose house in Park Lane during the recent London season was much fre- 49 quented by peers and peeresses of the realm. A brooch, once belonging to Mary, Duchess of Cam bridge, the mother of the late Duke, has also come into Mrs. Siegel's possession. It is of old mine diamonds, in the old crown setting of a hundred and fifty years ago. Mrs. Siegel also has souvenirs of Marie Antoinette in her jewel casket. To Mrs. Burke-Roche, the smartest horsewoman in the United States, one must look for the tech nically correct thing in riding habits. Those worn by her at Newport, customarily made of linen, are in tan, white and gray shades, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Ogden Mills, Mrs. Herman Oelrichs, Mrs. George Jay Gould, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Clarence Mackay, Mrs. Henry S. Lehr, and Mrs. William Watts Sherman are superbly gowned women. Mrs. John Jacob Astor, in keeping with the precedent set by her mother-in-law, Mrs. Astor, owes some of her felicitous creations in the line of toilettes to Parisian couturieres, of whom at the present are Paquin, Callot, and the Maison Beer. The fur cloaks of Mrs. John Jacob Astor and of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, another frequent patroness of Parisian dressmakers, are of almost fabulous cost liness and elegance. Mrs. Sidney Smith, on the other hand, evinces artistic cleverness of a high order in designing some of her own most admired gowns, several of them having been mistaken for Parisian creations. 50 A number of conspicuously smart women, I re gret to aver, are overbearing and difficult in the extreme to have dealings with in gowns and hats. A woman who will draw her cheque perhaps for thousands of dollars, for the services of a soloist from the Metropolitan Opera for a musicale, as likely as not, will dicker with her dressmaker to an exasperating degree about the cost of making a gown. "You must stop to consider the value of our name to you," she will argue when haggling about the price of a gown. "A New York firm will dress me for nothing," a Newport cottager plead, a short time ago, with a Summer dressmaker. In fact, a woman, who is making a fortune as a dressmaker, said to me, "Deliver me from the smart set; give me a new rich woman from the upper West side every time for a customer." Of Chicago ultra-fashionables, no two are more handsomely gowned than Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. Arthur Caton, Mrs. Palmer's bills for clothes having been rated as high as ten thousand a year. Of Philadelphians, the women who lead the van in the fine art of dressing are Mrs. Moore Robinson, Mrs. William E. Carter, Mrs. James Francis Sulli van and Mrs. Joseph Widener. The three reigning dowagers of highest fashion in America are Mrs. Astor, Mrs. James P. Kerno- ' chan and Mrs. R. T. Wilson, Sr.; but unlike the 51 ultra-smart London dowager, not any one of this trio of American grand dames is ever guilty of committing anachronisms in dress. In fact, Newport-New York women are the best dressed women in the world. Dress not only heightens virtue, but actually creates beauty nowadays. This high aesthetic doctrine was seldom so vividly ex emplified as by the fancy dress costumes worn at Mrs. Herman Oelrich's white ball, the crowning event of this Newport season, and in which Mrs. Osborn reached her apotheosis as a dressmaker to the smart set. Reverting again to beauty, which is always akin to dress, one reason why New York society has been obliged to ransack Philadelphia, Baltimore, the whole solid South and the Pacific Slope for beautiful women is because such a strong infusion of coarse Holland Dutch market gardening blood coursed through the veins of established metropoli tan society up to a decade ago. A notable and happy international marital alli ance was that of Sir George and Lady Frankland nee di Zerega. The late Lady Frankland, in whose honor a large and highly artistic memorial window was placed by her family in the Episcopal church at Westchester, N. Y., was the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John A. di Zerega. Mrs. di Zerega, a woman of rare and varied accomplishments, is exceedingly pretty and always well gowned, the 52 same encomiums also being merited by her nieces, Mrs. Stewart Pullman West nee di Zerega, Mrs. James Cogswell Converse nee Berry and Miss Gladys Berry. No other w^oman in New York society pos- ¦sesses more' 6f' that distinctive type of elegance which stamps the Faubourg Saint Germain than Mrs. John A. di Zerega. She is a sister of Mr. Jacob Berry, the well-known banker, who married one of the Monumental City's belles. The di Zerega family is also connected by marriage with the titled Pel- ham-Clintons of England. The little coterie, of which Mrs. di Zerega and her family connections form the leaders, is exclusive, in the best sense of the term, an education to one who wishes to acquire manners, and bears the hall-marks of a genuine salon quality. Two young society debutantes of blue-blooded Maryland antecedents and related to several of Baltimore's social leaders — the Misses McLean, the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Donald McLean, of this city, are everywhere remarked for their beauty, natural style and tasteful dressing. Apropos of Baltimore, Mrs. Lee Tailer, Mrs. William E. Carter nee Polk, and Mrs. Francis B. Stevens, were Monu mental City belles and are adepts in the fine art of personal attire. Baltimore women, from time im memorial, I am happy to record, have paid more attention to the cosmetics than to the Cosmos. 53 Newport's spectacular quintette of young soci ety belles is just now composed of Miss Natica Rives, who has such an extraordinary penchant for picture hats, and is patrician to her finger tips; Miss Cynthia Burke-Roche, who should follow the sartorial example of her beautiful mother and not essay little mannerisms in dress; Miss Gwendolin Burden, the younger daughter of the fearfully and wonderfully well-dressed Townsend Burden family; the beautiful Miss Edith Colford, whose relation ship to a former social leader who once lived in a marble palace in Fifth avenue, society chroniclers seem to have overlooked, and Miss Anna Tooker Best, niece of Mr. Gabriel Mead Tooker, of New port and Paris, and own cousin to Mrs. Whitney Warren, whose first formal appearance in society was made at one of Mrs. Astor's balls. The Misses Ogden Mills, always gowned in keeping with the most approved Parisian and Lon don refinements of the art, would be taken any where for English young women. Both comely and distingue, in their patrician expression of vis age and in their bearing, they reflect the Royal House of Bruce lineage of their father, Mr. Ogden Mills coupled with the aureole of their maternal Livingston ancestry. 54 CHAPTER V. Some iPatrician Xfneages. RE you shoddy, or old family .' Shoddy pays the best." An over-candid ser vant, looking for a place the other day, put the question to the chatelaine of a Fifth Avenue mansion. Wealth is such a potent factor in ultra-fashionable life that the Phillistine is very apt to topple over to the extreme and make bold to say that it is all a matter of crass, crude riches and that scarcely any patrician lineages can be deciphered among the ultra-smart, and further more, that plutocrats do not care a picayune for that sort of stilted bagatelle. In refutation of this, the Royal College of Arms of London is more than half supported by wealthy Americans, emulous of having their pedigrees trailed back to Domesday Book, or at least to kings and princes of the royal blood. Families who will not bother to join the Colonial Dames or that sort of thing, will sub rosa expend hundreds and thousands of dollars in having their European as well as American antecedents exploited for their own private self-content. Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, 55 Mr. E. D. Morgan and Mrs. Herbert Livingston Satterlee are scions of a dynasty of Welsh kings, the founder of which was Gynned Cymric, king of all Wales 605, A. D. Mr. Morgan can by right use eighteen quarterings on his shield, but by choice shows only twelve. Daniel N. Morgan, ex-Treas urer of the United States, belongs to the same clan. Furthermore, we are able to muster with ease a roll d honneur of ultra-fashionable folk whose line ages will bear close inspection under the X-rays of the genealogical searchlight, notably those of Mr. and Mrs. Lorillard Spencer, Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry nee Livingston, Mrs. George W. Vander bilt nee Dresser, Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, Mr. and Mrs. Royal Phelps Carroll, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Carroll, Mrs. Ogden Mills, James V. Par ker, Mrs. Townsend Burden, Mrs. Henry Symes Lehr, Mrs. James P. Kernochan, Mrs. Oscar Liv ingston, Mrs. James Francis Sullivan, Mr. and Mrs. T.J. Oakley Rhinelander, Stuyvesant Le Roy, Colonel William Jay, Mr. and Mrs. W. Bayard Cut ting, Mr. and Mrs. R. Fulton Cutting, Thomas Suffern Tailer, General and Mrs. Henry Lawrence Burnett, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, Mr. and Mrs. W. Watts Sherman, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney J. Smith nee Tailer, Mrs. Robert Goelet nee Warren, Whitney Warren, Mrs. Henry Siegel nee Vaughan, Francis Burton Harrison, Walter dc Curzon Poult ney, Mrs. Henry Parish, Jr. nee Ludlow, Frederic 56 Diodati Thompson, Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Ward McAllister, Miss Ward McAllister, Mrs. Astor, Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer Trask, William Jay Schieffelin, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund L. Baylies, Rawlins Cottenet, W. Fitz Hugh Whitehouse, Worthington Whitehouse, Mrs. Richard McCreery nee Kip, James J. Van Alen, Lispenard Stewart, Mrs. Frank S. Witherbee, Mr. and Mrs. Prescott Lawrence nee Bulkley, Edward H. Bulkley, Louis F. Holbrook Betts, Barton Wil ling, Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay, Mrs. James Aber crombie Burden, Mrs. James Brown Potter nee Handy, Mrs. Moses Taylor Campbell nee De Ruy- ter. Miss Cynthia Burke-Roche, Winthrop Ruther- furd, Mrs. and Mrs. Frederic Sheldon, J. Roosevelt Roosevelt, Charles Astor Bristed, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Fish Webster, Mrs. Frederic Bronson, George Jay Gould, Egerton L. Winthrop, Frederic Bronson Winthrop, Robert B. Van Cortlandt, Wil liam K. Vanderbilt, Jr., George Livingston Nichols, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Frederick Hoffman nee Preston, Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer, Miss Alice Van Rensselaer, Mrs, Adolph Ladenburg, nee Stevens, Miss Alice Roosevelt, Mrs. Langhorne- Shaw, Miss Laura Patterson Swan, Acosta Nichols, Miss Natica Rives, Mrs. Louis L. Lorillard nee Beeckman, R. Livingston Beeckman, Francis Key Pendleton, Mrs. Vanderbilt and the Marquise de Talleyrand-Perigord nee Curtis. 57 Mrs. Astor, who was a Schermerhorn, besides having a good old English and Colonial Barclay ancestral backing, traces her lineage to King James I. of Scotland. Colonel John Jacob Astor's pedigree is emblazoned by the escutcheons of two Kings James I. of Scotland and Hugh Capet of France, from the latter of whom, supplemented by generation upon generation of gentility, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, one of the most far- descended as well as beautiful leaders of the ultra-smart set in the United States, derives her patrician cast of family type. Ogden Mills, Mrs. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Oscar Livingston, Mrs. James Francis Sullivan, of Phila delphia, Mrs. Frank S. Witherbee, Lispenard Stewart, James Laurens Van Alen, Mrs. Royal ; Phelps Carroll and Mrs. Vanderbilt descend grace- '|fully from kings. The name of Admiral De Ruyter graces the topmost bough of the family tree of Mrs. Moses Taylor Campbell, nee De Ruyter, one of the smart young matrons of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish's immediate coterie. Mrs. Campbell's mother was a Miss Cromwell, daughter of the late Charles Cromwell, Esq., of New York, and Manursing Island, Rye, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Oddly enough. Admiral De Ruyter and Oliver Cromwell fought one another in the North Sea. Mrs. Charles Crom well, Mrs. Campbell's mother, was a Miss Brooks, in direct line from Governor Bradford; and the 58 Brooks mansion is to this day the aristocratic old chateau of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The family of Mr. H. Mortimer Brooks, several generations back, was allied to this proud race of Brookses. Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay, Mrs. Frederic Bronson, WilHam K. Van derbilt, Jr., and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt can justly plume themselves on being scions of Lord Stirling. Mrs. Belmont was also a granddaughter of Governor Desha and a grandniece of Commodore Barney. The cognomens Suffern and Tailer also call up proud lineages. The Tailers emanate from Sir William Tailer, Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia in the Colonial era, who married a niece of Governor Stoughton. The Sufiferns were a Hugue not family dating back to Admiral de Suffern under Louis XIV. and whose statue adorns the fagade of the Palace of Versailles. Mr. T. Sufifern Tailer, Mrs. Sidney J. Smith, Mrs. Robert R. Livingston and Mrs. Henry Lawrence Burnett nee Agnes Suf fern Tailer, all children of Mr. and Mrs. E. N. Tailer nee Suffern, belong to this noted pedigree. General Burnett, a great-great-grandson of Lieu tenant-Governor Burnett, of New Jersey, came from the original Scotch clan which the Robber Barons of Scotland headed centuries ago. Mr. Lorillard Spencer's mother was a Griswold, a member of one of the greatest Colonial families of the Republic — the Griswolds of Connecticut, a 59 concatenation of celebrities, including more than a dozen governors and thirty-five chief justices. Mrs. James P. Kernochan's mother was also a Griswold of the same illustrious lineage. Mrs. Kernochan's great-grandfather. Colonel Lashar, of New York City, won distinction as a Revolutionary hero. The Princess Cenci, of Rome, is related to Mrs. Kerno chan and Mr. Lorillard Spencer. The Spencers were old-time metropolitan society leaders, in direct line from Governor De Witt Clinton and lived for generations in Washington Square. Mrs. Lorillard Spencer is a daughter of Mrs. Charles H. Berry- man, who was a Miss Whitney, of New York City, a member of the Stephen Whitney family, and con nected with the Phoenix and Suydams, and other people of note; in fact, no other Whitney family in the United States can be mentioned in the same old-time patrician category with the Whitneys of Bowling Green, New York City, where the family occupied an imposing mansion for generations. Of the Stephen Whitney posterity, Mrs. Lorillard Spencer is a beauty of international repute, and a portrait of her taken with one of her children in her arms, has been copied and reproduced as an ideal type in almost every State and territory of the great Republic. The advent into society of her son, Lorillard Spencer III., is adding a renewed zest to Mrs. Spencer's flagging interest of late years in its gayeties. 60 Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, the first lady of Washington, formerly for many years a leader in the most exclusive coterie of the metropolis, can claim the two royal Governors Wentworth and Lady Elizabeth Wentworth in a direct line back, and is also a grandniece of Washington Irving. Her mother was a Miss Paris, of a family of courtly traditions and social importance; in fact, compared with Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger, most other Wash ington women, whether related to official life or permanent residents, are, in birth, manners and social experience, mere bourgeoisie. The name and fame of old Governor Peter Stuyvesant adds lustre to the pedigrees of Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt, Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. John Nicholas Brown, Stuyvesant Le Roy, Winthrop Rutherfurd, Rutherfurd Stuyvesant and Mrs. George Grenville Merrill nee Dresser. The Goulds of Fairfield, Fairfield County, Con necticut, the ancestors of George Jay Gould, formed in both the early and late Colonial eras one of the most eminent and aristocratic clans in New Eng land. The Goulds were not only rich and import ant in England, but the pioneer of the Jay Gould branch in this country was the richest man in the Fairfield Colony and his son became Deputy-Gov ernor of Connecticut, to say nothing of the renowned military heroes and statesmen of the Gould family in its earlier and later generations. George Jay 6i Gould's forefathers were allied to such families as Governor Talcott's, Sir Richard Ward's, Sir Rich ard Gunville's and the Aaron Burrs and Roger Shermans. Besides Mr. George Jay Gould, Mr. L. F. Holbrook Betts, Oliver Gould Jennings, Spencer Trask, General Joseph Wheeler, Mrs. James Gris wold Wentz, Morris K. Jessup, Henry G. Marquand, Dr. George Taylor Stewart, George Foster Pea- body, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, and Baroness Elizabeth Schonberg, of Austria, the Countess Castellane, of Paris, and Lady Francis Evans, of England, are all lineal descendants of Andrew Ward, the Connecticut Colonial statesman, son of Sir Richard Ward and grandson of Sir Richard Gunville, from whom Oliver De Lancey Ward and the rest of the Wards of Ward's Island emanated. How few American families can trace the origin of their pioneer in this country to be that of a son of an English nobleman! In more than eight out of a dozen instances a chasm yawns between the family in the mother country and the first settler in this, which hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars expended in genealogical research will not bridge over, the services of even Crozier's Armory proving unavailing. The Marquise de Talleyrand-Perigord, born Elizabeth Curtis, and her sister, the Princess Rus poli, belong to the patrician Curtis family, of Mur ray Hill, New York City, related to the Hofifmans 62 and the Murrays of Murray Hill. The Marquise and the Princess were the daughters of the late Joseph Curtis, Esq., of New York and Paris, a descendant of the ancient and honorable Colonial Curtis family of Stratford, Connecticut. The great grandfather of the Marquise Talleyrand-Perigord, Joseph Davis Beers, the Wall Street banker, built the Southern New Jersey Railroad and it is on a portion of the Beers estate in New Jersey that Chatsworth, the ultra-fashionable and successful country club, founded by the Marquise de Talley rand-Perigord and officered by Hon. Levi P. Morton, Mr. John E. Parsons and other men of equal note, is situated. The Marquise de Talley rand and the Princess Ruspoli are lineal descend ants of Thomas Welles, the fourth Colonial Gov ernor of Connecticut. Mrs. Oscar F. Livingston and Mrs. James Francis Sullivan, the latter of Philadelphia, the wife of one of the Quaker City's regnant financiers, are the two beautiful and distingue great-grand daughters of Benjamin Romaine, a highly-connected and eminent Mayor of New York City; grand daughters of the Hon. Charles Nichols, former U. S. Minister to The Hague, and daughters of the late Washington Romaine Nichols, a well-known lawyer of the metropolis. Mrs. Livingston and Mrs. Sullivan also can produce a pedigree running back to the Sherman family from which Roger 63 Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Indepen dence, of the Remonstrance to the King and of the Constitution of the United States, sprang. The Countess of Craven nee Bradley Martin, and the Countess Castellane nee Gould, sprang from this same Sherman stock. A fashionable bachelor of Mrs. Astor's entourage, Mr. James Vanderburg Parker, is a member of the noted old Parker family of Boston, from which he inherited a large share of the fortune which has enabled him to be a lifelong man of leisure. From his mother's side of the house, the Vanderburgs of Albany, Mr. Parker can lay claim to a fine strain of Knickerbocker Dutch lineage. Mrs. Townsend Burden was a Miss Moale, of Baltimore, of one of the pioneer families of the Monumental City, related to the celebrated Byrds, of Westover, Virginia, and the Poultneys, of whom Mr. Walter de Curzon Poultney, Mrs. Burden's cou sin, is rightly designated " the first gentleman of Baltimore." Sir John Vaughan, the redoubtable Britisher who did active service in this country in the Revo lutionary era, was a forefather of Mrs. Henry Siegel nee Marie Vaughan, and of the Misses Georgine and Dorothy Wilde, all of whom come from straight, clear-cut Anglo-Saxon antecedents. Mrs. Siegel's house in Park Lane during the recent London sea son was much frequented by members of the British 64 nobility. She is a daughter of the late Judge Vaughan, of Illinois, and a grandniece of Governor William Bebb, of Ohio. Her mother was Miss Isa- belle Oliver Peters, a granddaughter of Robert Courtney Peters, Esq., owner of the estates of Lloyd's Forest and Camsey's Chance, of Caroline County, Maryland, and related to the old Peters family of Philadelphia. Mrs. Siegel's daughters, the Misses Georgine and Dorothy Wilde, under the patronage of the Princess de Croy, have been pass ing a year at the famous Convent at Bruge, socially the most difficile of admission on the Continent of Europe. Mr. Frederic Diodati Thompson, named after his kinsman. Count Diodati of Italy, numbers among his progenitors the Gardiners, of the Manor of Gardiner's Island, and the high-born clan of the Thompsons of Long Island. Mr. Diodati Thomp son was knighted by the Sultan of Turkey a few years ago and was the late Mr. Ward McAllister's first lieutenant in his famous charge of the 400. The handsomest coach for four-in-hand seen at Newport last summer belonged to Mr. Jay Coogan, a descendant of Lord Gordon, who spent some time in this country in the Colonial era, leaving a vast landed estate at Argyll, in the upper section of the State of New York. Mr. Coogan, who is the eldest son of James J. Coogan, of New York and Newport, a former President of Manhattan Borough, New 65 York City, .is also connected on his mother's side of the house with the family of Lady ^ Randolph Churchill, now Mrs. Cornwallis West. Lord- Gor don, Mr. Coogan's Colonial forebear, belonged to the Scotch ducal Argyll clan. The Storm-Livingston estate of New York City, from which the Elbridgfe .T- Gerrys and the Charles F. Hoffmans dr>aw.a large share of their wealth, was originally the property of the Misses Storm, the daughters of General Storm, of whom one married Mr. Robert Livingston, the father of Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry, and the other, Glorvina Rossell Storm, became the wife of Samuel Verplanck Hoffman, the grandfather of Mr. Charles F. Hoffman. Although much has been written of the ancestral " Hoffman estate " of late, Samuel Verplanck Hoffman really had but a drop in the bucket compared with the real estate holdings of his wife, Glorvina Storm, of the Storm-Livingston estate. The progenitor of this branch of Hoffmans in this country was Marti- nus Hoffman, a military officer — an occupation in finitely to be preferred to that of a number of the Knickerbocker Dutch — market gardening. Mrs. Charles F. Hoffman was a Miss Preston, of the fam ily well known in diplomacy. Of the members of San Francisco's smartest set who have become allied with New York society, perhaps no one has the royal ancestral backing of Mrs. George Taylor Stewart, who was Miss May 66 Fargo, of San Francisco, coming in a direct line from both King William of Orange and a long dyn asty of Saxon kings. Wolfert Webber, Mrs. Stew art's New York City forefather, was a grandson of William of Orange and a kinsman of Anneke Jans, besides being connected with the Romaine, Van Orden and Van Dusen families. Mrs. Stewart's husband. Dr. George Taylor Stewart, the only son of the late ex-Congressman Thomas E. Stewart and Hariette Allen Taylor, is of distinguished New England ancestry, related to the Marquands, Pells, Jessups, and the Wards of Ward's Island. The Stewart country seat at Bay Shore, Long Island, is built on a portion of the original NicoU Patent granted by King William. Mr. Ogden Mills's genealogical chart also forms another notable exception to the usual antecedents of the San Francisco set, running as it does straight back to King Robert Bruce through the marriage of his forefather, Richard Mills, of Westchester, New York, to the daughter of Sergeant Francis Nichols, Colonial proprietor of a vast estate at Stratford, Conn., a grandson of Sir George Bruce and a brother of Sir Richard Nicholls, the first Eng lish Governor of New York, who named New York and founded Anglo-Saxon supremacy in that city. The NicoU family of New York and of the NicoU Patent of landed estates on Long Island, of which Mr. De Lancey NicoU is a member, are descended 67 from Matthias Nicolls, Secretary of the Colonial Provinces of New York, who was a cousin of Gov ernor Nicholls. Among the other well-known people, besides Mr. Ogden Mills, who can trace their lineage in a straight line back to King Robert Bruce through Sergeant Francis Nichols, are Chauncey M. Depew, General Joseph Wheeler, Mrs. Oscar F. Livingston, Mrs. James Francis Sul livan, of Philadelphia, Mrs. Spencer Trask, George Livingston Nichols, Mrs. James Griswold Wentz, Acosta Nichols and the Right Reverend William Ford Nichols, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of California, who married Miss Ada Quintard, a niece of the late Bishop Quintard. A dynasty of other crowned heads, in addition, forms part of the imperial aegis of General Joseph Wheeler's ancestral dignity. Charlotte Corday's pictures in the Louvre might almost pass for a likeness of Miss Louise Ward McAllister's grandmother McAllister, the resem blance being due to the fact that Mrs. McAllister was descended on the maternal side from the Cor- day family of France. Mrs. McAUister nee Ward, who was the mother of the late Mr. Ward McAllis ter, was a great-great-granddaughter of the Rev. Gabriel Marion, the grandfather of General Francis Marion. The Rev. Gabriel Marion was the propri etor of an extensive plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. The Wards of the banking firm of Prime, Ward & King formed part of the very van 68 of the old guard of metropolitan society and did honor to the memory of their forefathers, the Gov ernors Ward of Rhode Island. Of unsurpassed" metropolitan lineages, that of Mrs. Frederic Bronson and Mrs. Lloyd C. Griscom nee Elsa Bronson, who was one of the bridesmaids of the Duchess of Marlborough, includes Lady Kitty Duer, Lord Stirling, Hon. Rufus King, Archibald Gracie and a galaxy of other celebrities and social leaders. Mrs. Bronson was Miss Sara Gracie King, a daughter of the late Archibald Gracie King, and was ranked one of the most aristocratic belles of the metropolis. The Gracie mansion, where King Louis Phillipe and Lafayette were entertained, the summer home of her great grandfather, Archi bald Gracie, Esq., still stands in East River Park, fronting Hell Gate, the former scene of probably the most sumptuous entertaining in the annals of old New York Society, as its spacious banqueting hall alone would partially attest. The late Mr. Frederic Bronson's mother was a Brinkerhoff and he was also related to the Egerton L. Winthrop and Hollis H. Hunnewell famihes. Mr. Bronson was for years president of the Metro politan Coaching Club, and the house parties at his country seat, Verna House, built Italian villa style, on Greenfield Hill, Fairfield, Connecticut, were justly accounted the most fashionable and distingue of any given in the State of Connecticut. Miss Elsa 69 Bronson, the only daughter of Mrs. Frederic Bron son, married Mr. Lloyd C. Griscom, U. S. Minister to Japan, a son of Clement C. Griscom, of Philadel phia. The proud race of Baltimoreans to which Mr. Harper Pennington can claim the honor of belong ing is closely related to the great ducal house of Leeds; his mother was grandniece of a Duchess of Leeds. The Carrolls of CarroUton and the fa mous McTavish belles of Baltimore are also kinsfolk of Mr. Harper Pennington and so were the three Caton beauties, known as the "Three American Graces " at the court of George HI. The rise of the Colonial and patriotic organiza tions has given a decided impetus to the fostering of family traditions and lineages even among ultra- fashionable folk. And the work of these organiza tions in cherishing the sentiment of patriotism and preserving the landmarks of American history, cannot be too highly commended in this era of ex cessive European immigration to our shores and when persons of pure and unadulterated American and English descent are so rapidly disappearing from our United States census. Mrs. Donald Mc Lean, who is the regent of the banner chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution — the New York City chapter — is doing through her own ef forts, coupled with those of her chapter, a noble and monumental work for promoting patriotic edu- 70 cation and knowledge of the history of our country among all classes, and I know of no other woman so eminently fitted for the office of President-Gen eral of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, which will ultimately be hers if justice and equity prevail. Almost on the edge of the crown land of Wind sor Forest, Windsor Castle, England, stands alight yellow-colored mansion. New Lodge, Windsor Forest, the country seat of Queen Victoria's favor ite godson, at whose christening she was personally present — Lieut -Colonel Victor Bates Van de Meyer, who married Lady Emily Georgiana, a daughter af the late Earl of Craven, a sister of Lady Coventry and aunt of the young Earl of Craven, who married Miss Bradley Martin. The Van de Weyer town house stands in Arlington Street, S. W., between Lord Wimborne's and Lord Salisbury's. Lieut.-Colonel Van de Weyer's grandfather, Joshua Bates, the London banker, was an Ameri can. Lieut.-Colonel Van de Weyer is related to Mr. George Foster Peabody, the banker-philanthropist of New York, who is descended from Andrew Ward, the Connecticut statesman, the Marquis of ChamiUy and Marshall of France, the Nicholses of Nichols and the Burroughs of Bridgeport. At the old Burroughs family mansion, once a spacious landmark of this latter city, Joshua Bates was a frequent guest of his brother-in-law, Stephen Bur- 71 roughs III., the son of Stephen Burroughs II., the inventor of the decimal system of notation. Mr. Walter Burroughs Nichols, of Bridgeport, formerly of New York City, who married his cousin, a Miss Nichols of Nichols, is the nearest relation Lieut.- Colonel Van de Weyer, of Windsor Forest, Queen Victoria's godson, has living in this country. Joshua Bates, Lieut.-Colonel Van de Weyer's grandfather, from whom he inherited New Lodge, Windsor Forest, married Lucretia Jen nings, a daughter of Levi Jennings, of Bos ton, formerly of Fairfield, Conn., and of the same family as Mr. Oliver Gould Jennings, of New York and Newport, who has an eseate with a Colonial mansion at Fairfield, Conn. Mrs. Oliver Gould Jennings', nee Brewster, lineage can be traced to the Mayflower pioneer bearing the same patronymic. In conclusion, a general hubbub about coats- of-arms has lately been stirred up among the ultra- smart, who are greatly addicted to the use of armorial bearings, by an Englishman, William Armstrong Crozier, F.R.S., now resident in New York City, and backed by the Royal College of Arms, of London. Crozier's General Armory has leaped into fame as an arbiter on what Ameri can families are entitled to bear arms and what are remanded to have their armorial bearings scraped off from their carriage doors instanter! 72 CHAPTER VI. Equipage, Stglc of Xtvlng ana Entertaining. HE ultra-smart definition of poverty is having only one man-servant in one's house. For such a simple act of cour tesy as serving a cup of five o'clock tea to a solitary visitor there must be two men-servants in attendance — one to open the door and the other to bring in the tea things. An ideally complete establishment employs be sides a chef, a cook and kitchen maid, a second kitchen maid, known as a scullery, one or two laundresses, a parlor maid and three or four men, viz.: a butler, second man, third man and fourth man. The third man does dining-room work and valeting, the fourth useful work, like cleaning. / Mrs. Vanderbilt, Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vander bilt, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. and Mrs. George Jay Gould and the Whitelaw Reids are es pecially noteworthy for the retinue of servants in their establishments. But consider a few of the other accessories of state and equipage. Such a menage is expected to be supplied with about the following cavalcade of 73 turnouts: an omnibus, more commonly called an opera 'bus; a mail coach and brake for four-in-hand driving, a victoria, a spider phaeton, a runabout, station wagon, a mail phaeton for men's driving, a one-horse cabriolet, a two-wheel gig, besides a basket phaeton for young women. To the New York City stable of the family, in the season, we will add a bachelor's brougham for one horse, an other two-horse brougham for women and a han som cab. Such an equipped stable requires from six to ten horses and the services of half a dozen or more men. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, a practical horsewoman in a quiet way, who is seen sometimes over at the mart in East Twenty-fourth Street buying a horse, usually has her brougham taken with her to New port, at variance with the general custom in this respect. Maroon is Mrs. Fish's favorite color for her carriages, Mr. John Sloane's is green; the colors of the Vanderbilts, William Douglass Sloanes and Twombleys are maroon and canary; blue is the color of Messrs. Clarence H. Mackay and Charles Lanier ; magenta and green of Edward R. Thomas. Quiet, sober tones in the painting and decora tions of carriages obtain to a great extent also among the other real ultra-fashionables. With the upper West Side plutocrats of the metropolis, on the other hand, the colorsof the rainbow lend them selves with prodigal hand for variegating brough- 74 ams, cabriolets, victorias or almost any old thing^ on wheels. Pathetic it is that it cannot be drilled ' into some of these people that a coat-of-arms — provided it be honestly acquired — should not be blazoned on any smaller vehicle than a big landau or the largest size of brougham. It is, moreover, useless to tell a few of the more flashy of these in dividuals that if on heraldry bent, their crests should be used on their cabriolets, victorias and small broughams, for the simple reason that they cannot distinguish between a coat-of-arms and a crest. Anent of quiet, sober tones in colors for vehi cles, Mr. Jay Coogan's four-in-hand coach, which won so many plaudits at Newport, made to order by a Paris firm, was painted at his special sugges tion a very dark shade of green and black, with white enamel used for the panelling of the doors. Mr. Coogan had a string of fifteen horses at the stables of White Hall, his father's villa, one of the show places of Newport, his pair of polo ponies distancing almost any of the others brought to the polo-loving City by the Sea. Then, to add to the regal state of fashionable rapid transit, there are the private cars and whole trains de luxe — Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's favorite way of entertaining, the great churchman-financier seldom being so happy as when scurrying across the continent aboard one of these palaces on wheels filled with bishops as his guests. So minutely does 75 Mr. Morgan minister to the welfare and comfort of these itinerating ecclesiastics that he never fails to have his physician comprised in the party. The keeping of a yacht is no more en regie for a fashionable family ^z.v\.^z.t7i. gentlemannowadays should be college-bred. About one's mode of living, the palatial family hotel, a twentieth century marvel of comfort and luxury, ridding one of the vexed servant problem, will have a growing tendency to compete with the town house as a winter residence during the brief and broken-up season in town. Mr. and Mrs. Al fred G. Vanderbilt occupied an apartment in a fam ily hotel last winter. Of these hostelries, the new St. Regis, in Fifth Avenue,is voted the handsomest and most commodious in the world, its royal suite of apartments, consisting of only five rooms, occu pied lately by that prince of entertainers, Mr. Ed ward R. Thomas, commanding a rental of forty- five thousand dollars a year. Elegant simplicity is the keynote to Mrs. Astor's style of entertaining. Born a Knickerbocker, she has an innate shrinking from the seeming vulgarity of great wealth, although recognizing its necessity for carrying on society. And she always has mixed in with the multi-millionaires, at her state dinners and balls, personages the amount of whose goods and chattels would draw no satellites about them. Mrs. Astor, contrary to the popular myths, is not 76 a woman who thinks in " 1 50s," " 400s " or " 6oos," the talismanic "600" chancing to be nearer than some other number to that of the guest-list of her annual ball. She is, above all, a practical social leader and not given to airing theories of caste or evolving Hellenic unities. She goes out in society now only to a moderate degree and is withdrawing more from its gayeties. Gifted with marvellous social talent, which al ways includes tact and diplomacy, well born, of more than passing personal comeliness and grace of manner, Mrs. Astor rose to the leadership of American society by the acclamation of society it self Still, one must not be unmindful that when Mr. Ward McAllister adjudged in her favor the question of precedence between the two Mrs. Astors as to which should be Mrs. Astor assoluta and also ruled that, counter to the claims of a powerful rival, she should be assigned the place of first lady at the great Centennial ball in New York, all this was not without its effects. Mr. McAllister at that time was in the effulgence of his power as a social dictator, although his dictatorship sub sequently waned, owing to internecine jealousies and rival claims of the new millionaires. Mr. EHsha Dyer, Jr., a man man of extraordin ary tact and diplomacy, of good, sound business judgment, never talking for publication, steering clear of the spectacular, and democratic, and genial 77 to a degree to meet socially, is looked up to by the men and women of the "magic circle" as its male Coryphaeus. Of the elaborate and eminently picturesque type of entertaining, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay, Mrs. George Jay Gould and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish may be cited as expo nents. Mrs. Oelrichs's bal blanc at Rosecliff, her Newport villa, will go down into social history for a long time to come. She and Mrs. William K. Van derbilt, Jr., have evidently inherited the artistic trend of their mother, the wife of the late U. S. Senator Fair, of San Francisco, whose dinners and balls were given on a scale of Oriental magnificence. 'The California '49ers, the Fairs, Floods, Hearsts, Crockers, D. Ogden Millses, Mackays and their peers, at a time, too, when multi-millionaires of equal for tune were somewhat scarce in New York City, made up their minds that no matter how short some their pedigrees were, they themselves would live well and long. Accordingly they they set themselves to work to invent the art of dining. And Mr. Ward McAllister, during his stay in San Francisco as a young man, acquired the whole gastronomic art of war of the '49ers and came back and imparted what he knew to benighted New York, then in the throes of the mincing and pinched-up Knickerbocker regime. 78 Mr. McAllister's forerunner in this epicurean mission to New York was his uncle, Sam Ward, who married a Miss Astor, a sister of the late Wil liam Astor, and was the brother of the severely ethical, handsome, courtly and severely intellectual Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. THE SOCIETY OF THE FUTURE In casting the horoscope of the society of the future, the claims of genius and cleverness will be more fully recognized by the Golden Caste of Vere de Vere; the author, the musical virtuoso, the jour nalist and the actor enjoying equal precedence with the society portrait painter at the tables of the social oligarchs. But some of the men and women of talent and cleverness, on their part, will have to be less enterprising about trying to work off their schemes on their multi-millionaire hosts and hostesses, and will need to stand in somewhat more respectful awe of them, in this respect, just as gifted English guests do of their nobles, not regarding them in the cold, calculating light of utility men and women. Society at present is in its golden age in not much more than one sense, but the good leaven is working, and that of the still somewhat remote future will not rest content to be penned up in a coterie made up largely of the ephemeral plutocracy of the hour, where a family is wealthy, and to the 79 fore one year and the next drops out of sight. Among the younger social oligarchs, the seer dis cerns two born leaders — Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., and Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay. Wedded, too, as the former is to a man of genius, we may also look to that quarter for a broadening out of social conditions. Mrs. Clarence H. Mackay, born a Duer, and grand daughter of the wit, William R. Travers, is eminently fitted to head a salon. Mrs. Mackay received with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the actress, on the stage of the theatre at a matinee, after the play, and often mixes in people of talent and esprit with those of the Golden Caste of Vere de Vere around her festive board, thus trying to tem per the undue afflatus of wealth. Mrs. John Jacob Astor and Mrs. Ogden Mills, both also patricians to their finger tips, will always help to guide the social destinies of state. We are growing every day more cosmopolitan, and I see, in the society of the future, a circle of brilliants, if one may be allowed the figure, radiant with the good sense of the countrymen of Locke and Bacon, the wit and epigrammatic brilliancy of the clear-cut compatriots of Montaigne, and the depth of the land of mystic philosophy and dreams. 80 CHAPTER VII. Ibow to get into tbe TUlttassmart Set. MARRIAGE outright into the smart set is far and away the surest method of effecting an entrance into it; few visit ing lists, for example, having under gone a more radical change than that of Mrs. Drexel-Dahlgren since her marriage to Mr. Harry Lehr. Another expeditious method is by means of a business deal, benefiting one or more members of the smart set — not a hard cash bargaining for social promotion, although men have been known to form business partnerships for this express ob ject; but, to illustrate— -a short time ago a railroad transaction secured admission for a family 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 man ipulating events so as to fill their purses. An annually increasing quota of candidates for metropolitan social honors, or rather, adoption, is made up of rich — suddenly rich western people. Such a family, we will premise, is about to estab- Si itself in a New York town house. If you are socially 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 un duly ostentatious house which will egg 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 edifices of the Bank of Italy and Ministry of Finance in Rome, is an exclamation point strongly provocative of irony. Your household gods suitably enshrined, em ploy a press agent at once, but be wary of too much publicity, for in the main, the role of inglori ous 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 the season; so that, at least, you will not be hampered by persons protesting, "I have never heard of those people." A particular phase of newspaper publicity to fight shy of is that involved in allowing the women of your family to become enrolled as members of certain clubs and charities, and having their names 82 bundled out in the third-class society column of a certain Sunday paper with Hsts of "detrimentals"* of the first water, numbers of them turning out to be veritable mill-stones hung about the neck of social aspiration. A woman of fashion and a club woman are two mutually excluding entities — two totally distinct creations of Almighty God, although the latter often tries to palm herself off as the former. If your early training in drawing-room deport ment has been defective or wholly lacking — and as likely as not it has — place yourself at once under such a social mentor as Miss d'Angelo Bergh, the leader of the metropolitan musical smart set. 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 drawing-room, how to converse with the latest society badinage, and how to give a musicale. To illustrate these points from the ranks of highest fashion : Few society women have been as close students of Del- sarte as Mrs. Burke-Roche. A scion of the Ducal house of Russell and also of the d'Angelo nobility, related to the Charles H. Marshalls and to the patrician Morse family of this city, besides the Wrights, Morses and Russells of *A "detrimental" is a technical social term and means a person of however excellent moral character or ability, -who does not blend well so cially with either the conservative Knickerbocker element or the Ultra fashionables. 83 Boston, Miss d'Angelo Bergh has been presented at several European courts, decorated by France, and is a prodigy of cultivation. The American aptitude par excellence is our facility for seizing an opportunity. As Americans, our manners are our weak point, and the sooner we rid ourselves of all foolish self-consciousness on this point, and bow down to this humiliating fact, the sooner shall we mend our ways and stand on a more equal social footing with older forms of civil ization than our own, and, above all, with the best bred people of our own country, to whose com panionship we aspire. The old saying that it takes two generations to make a gentleman is being re futed every day, for Americans are remarked not only for their facility in amassing fortunes, but in furnishing themselves with presentable manners on short notice, under the right environment, and under proper mentors. The next move for the social aspirant will be to cultivate the acquaintance of some fashionable 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 receive. Conceding that introductions may be very sparingly given, her help will, in a negative way, be of much value in warding off "detrimentals," 84 thus saving you years of undoing and weeding out. When one pauses to reflect upon the vast fund of energy, time and money annually expended in New York City by social aspirants in entertaining the wrong people — people who are positive dragons besetting the pathway 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 imposter, and that he is received by persons who might be made, possibly, to fall in line some way for further ing your campaigns. Minister well to his gastro nomic needs, for in all probability, he has taken lodgings sa7ts meals. But avoid making yourself unduly conspicuous in public print with these 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 snobbishness and hanging on by the eyebrows. If on the other hand, a titled European is com fortably wealthy and persona grata at the houses of the highest fashion, do not waste much time and effort over him, for in all probability he will front you as soon as he has ascertained your exact social status. With reference to your own countrymen all along, give a wide berth to certain soi disant society folk of the upper West Side, who will get your name in the newspapers morning, noon and 85 night and three times on Sunday, until it becomes case-hardened on the lists of the socially impossible. The snubs, cuffs and slings of outrageous for tune 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 flamboy ant toilettes, for a woman needs to be astonishingly well placed socially to dress like a Cocbtte. And, above all, ,be philanthropic with your purse, although, perchance, the heart responds but feebly. Conditions have changed a good deal since Williani D. Howells wrote his "Traveler in Altruria," and fashionable charities as .an adjuvant to social climbing are growing more dil|icult,to be worked, and the Church still more intractable for these ends; but there is a dernier ressort; f^oin the Countess Leary's charities. No matter if you are a Calvinistic Presbyterian of bilious hue, or a trans cendental Unitarian of diaphanous pallor, and she wishes you to donate, and take active part in an entertainment to found a college for the avowed purpose of preventing Roman Catholics from enter ing Protestant colleges. No matter if the manage ment will not deign to have your name appear on the printed patroness list, calling you a "patroness" when no one besides yourself is within hearing dis tance; invest in a stout package of tickets at five dollars each. People of the same Protestant per- 86 suasion as yourself have done this self-same thing, with good rate of interest accruing in rise of social values, and the percents. are annually increasing. The Episcopal church and the Catholic church are the churches of beautiful manners, and if your birth has placed you under the social ban of being a dissenter, cultivate Episcopal emotions and shuffle off the mortal coil of Presbyterianism on as short notice as possible. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his "English Traits," said no truer thing than "You can tell a dissenter by his manners." You can di vine that some women were not born in the Church by their smile. Beware, then, of sectarian smiles — those unmeaning smiles, such as the wife of a certain General of the United States army and her daughter, who subsequently became a princess, lav ished so de trop on Newport cottagers the first season after Mrs. Astor's house-warming, when they visited the wife of an hotel keeper at her New port villa, and introduced their hostess right and left. If you are blessed with young daughters, no matter what your creed, hurry them away to a French convent; 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 con vent-bred manners in their full flower and fruition, one really needs to know the delightful society of Continental Europe. 87 Do not, I beg of you, make a national one- night stand theatre comique of yourself and family by making the grand tour of hiring cottages at Newport, Lenox and the other ultra-smart resorts before society has given the slightest recognition to your claims. 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 New port, spread sail for Narragansett Pier or Bar Har bor, felicitating yourself that the social thud is not barbed with the added poignancy of one's having b^eri a cottager in a place and not being received. Besides, there is no more acceptable way of enter taining and of putting people under heavy social obligations to one than by "giving yachting parties. The rapid social headway a certain family from the West is, at the present hour, making with our social oligarchs is due partly to the fact that the ultra- smart women who are going social sponsor for them cannot afford to keep a yacht. During this your period of social probation go to Europe rather often in your yacht. If you can not master the art of war of the ultra-smart at home, study it abroad, but do not suffer yourself to be deluded into the belief that the entree into America's exclusive set is to be secured through European social alliances or meeting fashionable Americans abroad. All such finessing, like form- 88 ing ocean steamship acquaintances, is a thing of the past; but contact with the great world of Eu rope will ennoble your manners, imparting an air of distinction and greater confidence in approach ing the fin fleur of your own countrymen's society. Go abroad early and stay late, in the London season, stopping at the Carlton or at Claridge's, at all events, dining and supping frequently at the Carlton. Secure the services of a high-class social promoter; such a person can be corralled by judi cious advertising from the ranks of the nobility for a sufficient price. Only a short time ago an Eng lish woman, backed by an eminent peeress, guar anteed to several Americans court presentations to Edward himself at five thousand dollars a head ! Arrange with the promoter to have a dinner given in your name at the Carlton in honor of a distin guished peer or peeress, with covers laid for no other Americans besides yourselves, and see that the event is given the widest possible exploiting on both sides of the Atlantic. If, during your Eu ropean sojourns, you fall in with fashionable Amer icans, try, by delicate and becoming advances, to ingratiate yourself with them, leaving it entirely to them, however, to take the initiative of keeping up the acquaintance on American soil. Strenuously avoid even the semblance of future building upon them, or banking on the name after your return home. 89 Should it finally be your good fortune to receive an invitation to the church for a wedding in a really fashionable family, for which invitations have been sent out by the thousands, make a costly and artistic present. More than likely it will receive mention in the newspapers through th^ kind offices of society reporters, whom your husband has treated to champagne galore, and one or two of whom have perhaps shoWji their gallantry by in serting your name in their -columns among lists of guests at smart entertainments, at which you were neither present in the body nor honored with art invitation. At all events, the general public, which is hot-headed, upon reading of your extrava gant wedding gift, will jump to the conclusion that you were, of course, bidden to the reception. Pro vided the marriage is not altogether a cold-blooded one of convenience, a feeling toward yourself closely simulating gratitude may well up in the hearts of the bride and her family. This clever little stratagem was resorted to by an aspiring family of wealthy Newport cottagers invited to the church for the Oelrichs-Martin wed ding, and to this day is yielding a good bonus in social returns. It is also sometimes practiced by a finessing member of the Newport cottage colony, the daughter of an old-time shop-keeper of one of the most plebeian trades, whose social position is on the wane, and who, having pretty much relinquished 90 hopes of being invited to most of the ultra-smart dinners — being even willing to have personages from that coterie urged to come to her cottage as dinner guests, without a return in kind, is putting up a hard fight to keep in evidence at least for the balls and general entertainments. As to the art of entertaining during this the trying-on time of your social reincarnation, you must accept with true Christian resignation the truth of the major promise that you yourself are not worth meeting, and accordingly, as many of your dinners and musicales 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 effect ual 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 debutante or lately betrothed young girl is the most suitable and unsuspecting guest of honor to subserve such an end. Sedulously avoid sending out cards for general reception days for the season, or for a series of any length, of informal afternoons at home with music, for undesirable persons and social mountebanks are sure to take undue advantage of such loop holes. 91 Be at home on Sunday afternoons at five o'clock, to serve tea, but issue no cards to that effect, hav ing 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. It is, of course, taken for granted that you have been all along a close student of fashionable society and have perceived that there are only two sets in society with which a really ambitious person should have anything to do — the smart set and its outer fringe, and the old Knickerbocker and Colonial 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 cloaked by falling back upon the Knickerbockers. And their names at every stadium of the upward climb will pose well in the newspapers with those of the few rather smart guests whom you, per chance, 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 varying degrees of fashionable validity, and I ap pend herewith a partial list of those standing near est the throne of ultra-smartness as an ideal goal to be aspired to, although in all probability, you will have to rest content with the companionship of much lesser lights of the Knickerbocker peerage 92 around your festive board. Bear in mind that those Knickerbockers whom I check off" in what follows, are all refined and honored citizens, but simply can not be classed as ultra-fashionable, or as standing in as close proximity to the smartest set as some others, as likely as not thinking the ultra-smart game not worth the candle. Of Van Rensselaers, the Alexander Ran Rens- selaers of New York, to whom Mrs. Edmund L. Baylies, Miss Alice Van Rensselaer and Mrs. Van Rensselaer-Johnson belong, are of premier import ance. The Philadelphia Alexander Van Renssel aers are not especially given to desiccating social flavors, and ranging themselves in line with the new Golden Caste of Vere de Vere. Do not be hypnotized by the name, then, and if a Van Rensselaer be inclined to be overbearing, quietly remind him that the first Van Rensselaer Patroon was a tradesman when he came to this country. For the purpose you have in hand, ac cordingly, separate carefully the Van Rensselaer chaff from the Van Rensselaer wheat. Then there are the Oakley and Philip Rhine- landers, the only ultra-fashionable Rhinelanders; the Sir Frederic J. de Peysters, who are not the Fourteenth Street de Peysters; the Kips and the Gardiners of the manor of Gardiner's Island; the Livingston Beeckmans, Duers, the various Winthrop families, especially the Egerton L. and Buchanan 93 Winthrops, and the E. N. Tailers; these will all be helpful, provided you can only get the presentation, Tvhich is not easy. Of Livingstons, the Goodhue, Maturin, Johnston and Oscar Livingstons are rather to be preferred. Of Hoffmans, the Charles F. and Francis Burrall Hoffmans and William M. V. Hoff mans are far and away the most fashionable. If you cannot deal with these, the principals, angle for their relations. Study the doings of society closely and which Knickerbockers are enjoying any fash ionable vogue or lead up to any, will be readily ap parent. Be wary and sly about it, but be willing to invest hundreds of dollars if need be in having every nook and cranny of your own and your hus band's pedigrees searched, and if you should light upon any presentable ancestry, you could confide the find as old-time history, known for generations by your family, to an occasional Knickerbocker ac quaintance ; but I beg of you, do not go to the extreme of hanging the walls of your dining-room with coun terfeit presentments of assumed " ancestors." Also, do not unmuzzle yourself on the forefather claim to any member of the smart set, unless desirous of be ing made a laughing-stock. In general, few conver sational faux pas lay bare one's bourgeoisie social origin more glaringly than talking of one's lineage on short acquaintance with a person, or under any circumstances with an Englishman to whom all Americans alike are commoners. 94 Aim at originality and the freshest European modes in your style of entertaining, and do not omit your prayers to old Father Neptune. For instance, if your winter's social campaign warrants your leas ing a cottage at Newport, put your yacht in com mission and have it given out that although you have hired a sumptuous villa, you are so much of a sea- dog that you are going to live on 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 so cial motor. These pretty mancEuvres on land and sea were successfully gone through this last season at the City by the Sea by a family of aspirants, re inforced by a triple alliance of social luminaries, with a brilliant and spectacular social leader pitted against the campaign. Suffer the horse, too, to help you' along up the social hill of difficulty. Invest in a string of race horses and be an exhibitor at the various fashiona ble horse shows, provided yourself or your husband have a genuine and unaffected love of the horse. See what wonders the equine god has wrought for the Edward R. Thomases and the Thomas Has tings in a social way. Contrast the list of guests bidden to the Presbyterian church at Greenwich only two or three years ago, to the wedding of Mr. 95 and Mrs. Thomas Hastings nee Benedict, with the ultra-smart coterie in which they are to-day mov ing, Mrs. Hastings now queening it as president of a coaching club, composed of a whole section of the most fashionable horsewomen in America ! In fine, it is but a truism to reflect that the role of whole groups 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 physician, people well placed socially, sent out cards for a debutante's reception for their handsome daughter. "Now I give you carte blanche for flowers, music, caterers and every thing else to make Clara's debut a notable one, but I have one favor to beg and I must be peremptory about it, pater familias insisted — the So and So's must be invited." "Impossible!" his aristocratic wife threw up her hands. "Those girls dress abominably, and the man is so untutored, he can't even pronounce Fifth avenue; he calls it 'Fit' avenue.'" "But he is a very lucrative patient of mine and he came around to my office this morning and told me he had read the notice of our reception in the Tribune, and that his one ambition in life was for his family to get into society. And besides, you will give his wife the credit of doing a thinking part of doing no talking at all. If a woman doesn't open her mouth, she certainly does not expose her crudity." 96 They were invited. Two of those " abominably dressed girls" are at the present hour queening it not only in American, but in international society, one of them being the mother of a duchess, both allied by marriage to colossal fortunes of world wide prestige, and both playing the hostess aboard their own yachts, and at their own sweet will, to the crowned heads of Europe ! Parnassus widens, as we leave the summit. 97 CHAPTER VIII. ttbe ^fsa&ventutc0 of Odte. Detrimental— H Social Career. ]RS. DETRIMENTAL, a sort of female knight errant of social adventure — a somewhat prevalent type. Birthplace, Denver — a propitious social star to be born under. Father, a livery-stable keeper — not so lucky an omen. Paternal grandfather, cook for miners' camps — not a barsinistre in Denver society. Mrs. Detrimental's mother, however, with only a country district primary school training, secures a good education for her pretty daughter, who event ually marries a crude, rough-and-ready multi-mil lionaire, controlling mines eclipsing the wealth of Ormus or Ind. The Detrimentals start out from Denver. As for society, Mr. Detrimental " wants none of it," but shares heart and soul, as a silent partner, his wife and daughter's unquenchable ambitions. Mrs. Detrimental and her daughter accordingly betake themselves to the metropolis for a couple of winters, establishing themselves in a showy house on Riverside Drive. They invest heavily in two 98 charities and are soon bidden to dances and lunches hy 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 oi the fin fleur of the smart set. Mrs. Detrimental confides to her her social cam paign projects, quoting with elation and peculiar swelling of the throat as friends the names of Mrs. So-and-So, the aforesaid leaders of the " best so ciety." The smart woman takes the ground from under Mrs. Detrimental's feet by confronting her with the statement that the alleged " social leaders " quoted by her are themselves "detrimentals." The woman of fashion quickly perceives that per sonally she can do nothing socially for Mrs. Detrimental but give advice, as a long and tedious technical training is needed, and wisely tells her to pack her trunks for a winter in Rome, this chancing to be an auspicious year — the Anno Santo or Holy Jubilee year. They sail in November, finding to their dismay only one passen ger 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 Detrimen tal, although she is so hard pressed by ennui that she takes up with a pretty female purchasing agent 99 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 wisely adopt him for a so cial cicerone, after proper inquiries, and stop at the Grand Hotel, Rome, by his advice, dining him of ten, receiving as recompense a few introductions to really smart Americans, who are held back from going down to Egypt for the winter by rumors of the plague. Mrs. Detrimental and her daughter hire a pew in the American Episcopal Church in the Via Nationale and give liberally besides to the rec tor in aid of the conversion of Catholics to Episco palians 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. The rector speaks a good word for them to their Ambassador, to whom they brought no letters, and they receive an invitation to a reception of their country's supreme represent ative at the Piombino Palace, their point de resist ance on this occasion being, not their manners, which were only tolerable, but their gowns — copies of their North German Lloyd cynosure's. A nobleman to whom Mrs. Detrimental's secre tary had loaned money, sans returns, years before secures for them an introduction by means of which they become registered at the Palestra on the Qui- rinal Hill, Rome's exclusive Casino and Miss Det rimental, who is pretty and chic, is actually bidden to join the hunting set of Italian nobility and fash ionable 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 exist ence to be not Rome, Paris or London, but New port, and accordingly recommends her to secure the entree of the Tuesday receptions given by Hayward, the honorary Papal Chamberlain, at his sumptuous palace near St. Peter's, but offers not a hand to help. Mrs. Detrimental now buys up, at an exorbitant price, some tickets to the Tribuna, out in the por tico of St. Peter's, to range her party in juxtaposi tion to the Papal and other nobility, to witness the splendid ceremony of the opening of the Holy Door on this the Christmas Eve of the Jubilee year, thus placing a couple of smart Americans under heavy obligations by accepting them. Though themselves Protestant Episcopalians — since the date when Mrs. Detrimental conceived the idea of being born again smart — they now, all of a sudden, exhibit a leaning toward the Church of Rome, at least as long as their conversation 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 pave ments of the students' cells, the upshot of the mat ter being that some Tuesday the Detrimentals find their feet trending the scarlet velvet carpetings of the courts and grand staircases of Bramante's mas terpiece, the Palazzo Giraud, the palace of Honarary Papal Chamberlain Hayward, the social leader of English-Speaking Catholics in Rome, at whose levees a chosen few wealthy American Episcopa lians are in attendance. Towards the approach of Mardi Gras, Mrs. Detrimental, at the instigation of her secretary, the social cicerone adverted to, man ages 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 — but Miss Detrimental's dot has become town talk all the same. But she and her daughter are all the while ac tually en route for Newport, and already racking their brains to try to conjecture what proportion of those few smart Americans in Rome, whose sum mer habitat is Newport, and upon whom they are now lavishing money, will not by August be suf- fering from aphasia and every sort of other 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 them selves 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 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 edition of the New York Herald the name of an American family of fashion whom she had entertained once at a luncheon in Rome, 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 Newport 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 103 new-made Roman acquaintance and staring dubi ously ! There was a North American chill in the air of the Ritz, and our heroine, with her daughter and avant courier, the secretary, was relieved enough to be driven up the Champs Elysee to the Elysee Palais Hotel for a cup of tea. About half an hour after their arrival, their whilom Roman acquaint ance was ushered in, accompanied by a little group of ultra-fashionable folk. Mrs. Detrimental stepped forward and greeted her with effusion, but her " friend," while not manifesting actual displeasure, 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 moth er'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 secre tary, by a course of delicate but adroit questioning, repressed that comfortable emotion. The Van s did not belong to the fashionable branch of their family and did not even know the Gallatins, the Frederic J. de Peysters, the Alexander Van Rensselaers, the Frederic H. Bettses or, in fact, any of the group of New York's old patrician fami lies nearest the throne of the smart set. The two women were able to find partial relief for their emotions of vexation by cutting dead as a door nail two of their " detrimental" friends of the 104 upper West Side, New York, contingent who sud denly arrived upon the scene of discomfiture. But almost in the next carriage passed some Californi- ans who knew all about them and were voluble talkers, too. At the Ambassador's, to cap the cli max, Mrs. Detrimental met with a rebuff from headquarters. It seems that two weeks later the President of France was to give a ball at the Elysee Palace and our heroine, in the momentary absence of her secretary, ventured to ask the Am bassador to secure three invitations for her, bol stering up her claims with the avowal that her fam ily came over with William the Conqueror and was of the purest Norman blood. " My good Madame, isn't it sufficient for any family in the United States to have started in all right with its own country ?" the Ambassador re plied, tartly. Safe in the seclusion of their carriage, the sec retary delivers himself: " Pardon my plainness of speech, Madame, but that's what I'm hired for. Don't, I beg of you, ever trust yourself to talk on ' family ' again to your dying day. It is only bund ling out the old livery stable in Denver, your miners'- 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 mention of the so cial attentions which we received in Rome, which 105 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 there, are this very moment in Paris 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 West ern people from the States that it seems like an other Chicago. We must beat a retreat to Lon don." THE SHOWER OF GOLD IN LONDON. In London, Mrs. Detrimental and her suite put up at Claridge's. In Paris they had received the cold shoulder, but had acquired experience. In London, however, the secretary managed to get them speedily presented to Lord and Lady Down- in-the-Heel, nobility of exalted station but crumb ling 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 Detrimental being at once thus provided with a chaperon 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 1 06 mostly for guests, until finally an American, one of the smartest representatives of Newport's smartest set, asked for an introduction to them at the Italian opera, came and sat in their box and made them promise that they would bring Mr. Detrimental and pay him a three or four days' visit at a fixed date in August at his Newport villa. The telegraphic cables flashed across the At lantic 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 Marble 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 stop 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 in vitation to Newport for August if a yacht should be sent over expressly for them. Sub rosa they have 107 heard a thing or two from the States and the Con tinent, and now that they have got a breach or two in their castle walls repaired and Milady has ac quired 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 beginning to chaff" them about " Detrimental" money. Mrs. Detrimental, nothing daunted, secures as lieutenants for the Newport August campaign 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 and accept the invitation extended to them in Lon don and now formally renewed for a week-end visit at a villa of th.& fin fleur 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 off" 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 are left to examine portfo lios of water-colors, photographic albums or to study the movements of the heavenly bodies through the open windows. io8 " Can't you see through it all i" — Mr. , our host, has some property in Newport he wants to work off" on the Detrimentals," one of the smart guests was afterwards overheard whispering in the ladies' dressing-room. " We are being paid off in our own coin," Miss Detrimental muttered to her mother. The Detrimentals have received a shouldering of more icy coldness than was ever dealt them in Paris, or even their native habitat. For days after wards invitations come pouring in for the two no blemen, their guests, but none for the hostesses. Even these members of the British peerage cannot stand the denouement, and beg Mrs. 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 on one's yacht would have brought half of Newport to terms of capitulation. But times have changed. Certain members of the Newport smart set actually patronize noblemen sometimes nowa days. Mr. Detrimental, deeply chagrined at his w^ife's and daughter's defeat in Newport waters two years before, more than half the time in the interim hav ing been passed by them abroad, now ordered a 109 palatial yacht of his own built and again it lies at anchor in Newport harbor. This time Lord and Lady Down-in-the-Heel, who are more hard up than ever before, and have a long visiting list of Newport cottagers, have deigned to be guests of honor on the Detrimental yacht, Milord having in the meanwhile consented to accept some sort of a partnership 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 cotillon 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, the whole 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 Detrimentals are the guests of their own guests that evening on board of their own yacht. IN AT THE DEATH. Fewer than half of the two hundred invitations sent out by Lord and Lady Down-in-the-Heel for the patent medicine cotillon on board the Detri mental yacht were accepted, the fact of Lord Down- in-the-Heel's having come upon a Newport cottager for a loan of a hundred thousand to keep bailiffs and sheriffs at bay on the other side, not tending to swell the number of acceptances for this spectacu lar fete. Not an Astor, Ogden Mills or Vander bilt 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 godesses enshrined in her heart as the chief end of human existence to know — Mrs. Astor, Mrs. John Jacob Astor and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., 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, whose life did not go out in fireworks, lived to compel all these social oligarchs to receive her by marry ing one of the most courted and powerfully-con nected men of the spectacular " 150," having vir tually settled a couple of millions upon him by ante-nuptial contract. FINIS. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 01406 0660 ^o o5 CO