University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII
“SOCIETY” AT THE RICH MAN'S HOME.

We change the scene to a fine new house, in a
fashionable quarter of the city: Mrs Finley alights
from her own carriage, and meets her daughter at
the door, her face full of something she had to

communicate. “Oh, mamma,” she exclaimed,
“who was that that came into Morrison's thread
and needle store just as you passed?—a lady with
an ermine boa,—you bowed to her.”

“Mrs. Kingson. Why, Sabina Jane?”

“The lady that was with her asked her, when
they got into the shop, who she bowed to? She
said, `That Mrs. Finley that left her card at my
house!'—`Does she keep a carriage?' asked the
other lady; and then she took up her eye-glass
and looked after you, and said, so everybody might
have heard her in the shop, `Liveries! and a coat
of arms!—no wonder we are a laughing-stock to
foreigners.”'

“Well,” answered the perturbed and perplexed
mother, “I do wonder what is the harm of liveries?
It is next to impossible to find a servant that is
willing to wear them; that's a proof they are genteel;
and then, as to the coat of arms, I am sure
the man that made the harness said it was the
latest pattern he had in his shop. That coach,”
she continued, “has been nothing but a plague to
me. Your father is always fretting about the expense,
and complaining that the coachman cheats
him; and John will do nothing but drive the
horses; and everybody that has a coachman in
livery has a footman, and your father thinks the
waiter can turn into a footman when I want one,
but he don't know how inconvenient that is. Nobody
knows, but them that has them, the trials of
keeping a carriage.”[1]

“Then, mamma, why do you keep one?”

“Don't ask such silly questions, Sabina Jane.”

A servant entered. “Mrs. Finley, here are the
notes that have come in since you went out.” Mrs.
Finley took them eagerly. She had sent out invitations
for a party, and she was anxious to know
who had accepted and who refused. The first she
opened was from the teacher of her only son Arthur
William, informing her that Master Arthur was
behind-hand in all his studies, and that, unless his
lessons were superintended at home, he feared he
must dismiss the boy, as the reputation of his
school depended on the progress of his scholars.

“This is too bad,” said Mrs. Finley; “I wonder
what we pay him for but to teach? Mr. Beltam
always said Arthur was a prodigy when he
went to his school.”

“But, mamma, you said Arthur could not read
when he had been to Mr. Beltam's two years.”

“What's that to the purpose, miss? Mr. Beltam
never sent in any complaints. I will not
make myself a slave to looking after your lessons
at home; I have not health for it: besides, your
father and I never studied Latin, and French, and
philosophy, and them things.”

“I wonder what you did study, mother?”

“For shame, Sabina Jane! I am sure your
father understands every kind of arithmetic.”

“Does he, mother? I did not know he understood
any thing.”

It was difficult to decide whether this was said
with simplicity or impertinence. Unfortunate, indeed,
are those children who, with their acquisitions,
acquire a contempt for their parents' ignorance.
The next note opened was a polite notice
to Mrs. Finley, from Mademoiselle A—, that a
box of newly-arrived Parisian millinery would be
opened for her patrons' inspection the next morning.
“Very attentive in Mademoiselle!” said
Mrs. Finley, when unfortunately the pleasure of
being a patron was checked by one of the usual
penalties for such distinctions. A bill had dropped
from within the note, which the little girl handed
to her mother, reading the amount, $57 45. “How
very provoking!” exclaimed Mrs. Finley; “she
might better have sent it at any other time: your
father frets so about the expenses for the party.
I am sure they are necessary; but I can't ask him
for the money to pay Mademoiselle now, that's
certain; so, throw the bill in the fire, Sabina Jane;
and, when Mademoiselle sends for the money, I
can say I haven't got the bill.”

“Yes, mamma, and you can say it must have
dropped out; it did drop, you know.”

“That's well thought of, Sabina Jane, and no
lie either.” Thus did this poor child receive from
her weak mother a lesson in fraud, lying, and hypocrisy.
Mrs. Finley proceeded in the examination
of her notes. “`Mrs. Dilhurst accepts,' &c.
Oh, I knew she would accept; I wonder when
she ever refused? `Mrs. Kingson regrets an engagement,'
&c. What a shame it is for people
to lie so! She cannot have an engagement a fortnight
ahead!” We have not space to give the

various returns Mrs. Finley then read and received
in the course of the day. She had made
a great effort to assemble a party of fashionable
people: she had, to use the current word, cut
those of her acquaintance that might be suspected
of vulgarity; and she had left her cards at the
houses of those who had been all their lives, and
their parents before them, in the best society.
She was sure Mrs. Kingson, at whose request she
had repeatedly subscribed to societies, would accept;
and, if Mrs. Kingson accepted, the Misses
— would, and then the Baron de — would,
and then the success of her party was secured.
Presuming upon all this, no expense had been
spared: the Kendall band had been engaged; and
the party was to be as brilliant as music, lights,
china, glass, and the luxuries of the season could
make it. Finley, whose vanity was his next
strongest passion to his cupidity, had been lavish
of his money. Every thing his wife asked for he
had granted, with one single reservation: he had
stood at bay at a paté-de foie gras,[2] which his
wife maintained to be essential. “What, thirty
dollars,” he said, “for what was nothing, after all,
but a pie of geese's livers!—no, he could not go
that!” and Mrs. Morris Finley, more prudent than
some wives, never urged when morally certain of
urging in vain.

Poor Mrs. Finley, with every luxury that money
could buy, felt deeply mortified at the absence of
that which money could not buy. There is a certain
aristocracy in our city that is most carefully
guarded. It is said that the barriers here may be
as easily passed as the fences that enclose our
fields, so mildly contrasting with the thorny hedges
of the aristocracy of the parent land. But it is
not so. All that we would ask is, that the terms
of admission might be settled on the right ground.
However, we leave this to be arranged by the parties
concerned, and proceed to the facts in the
case of Mrs. Morris Finley. Her husband cared
nothing about the matter; but that it should appear
Morris Finley was among the first—good society
(so called), he looked upon as a part of his money's
worth—a fair return for his expenditure, and
therefore he had his full part in his wife's mortification,
when, after all her pushing, her arts and
trucklings, her shirking this old acquaintance and
cutting that relation, their empty places were not
filled by bright names in the fashionable world.

Two or three stars wandered from their sphere
into Mrs. Finley's orbit; some from motives arising
from a business-relation with Finley, and
others from good-nature peculiar to the individuals.
But these few lights only served to show the
general darkness. Such vain ambition as the Finleys'
might be cured, if comments like the following
were overheard.

“Mrs. Kingson, do you mean to accept Mrs.
Finley's invitation?”

“No, my dear.”

“Why, aunt? they say it is to be something
quite superb.”

“So much the worse. Did she not let her poor
mother toil away her life in a second-rate boarding-house?
and she will not employ her worthy
cousins who sew for me, because they are her
cousins. No, I'll have nothing to do with such
people as the Finleys.”

“Mamma, do you mean to go to the Finleys'?”

“No, indeed; it was too impertinent of the
woman to ask me. I never saw her except at
Saratoga.”

“Mrs. Smith, are you going to the Finleys'?”

“No; they are too ignorant and vulgar.”

“But you visit the Fitzroys?”

“My dear, you forget; Fitzroy is a junior partner
of Mr. Smith.”

“Oh, is he?”

“Mrs. Brown, do you go to the Finleys'?”

“No, I will not, when I can help it, visit the
merely rich.”

These reasons, and a hundred similar, were of
course not alleged to Mrs. Finley, but veiled in
the conventional “regrets,” “previous engagements,”
&c. &c. So Mrs. Morris Finley gave
her party to those for whom she did not think it
worth the trouble; nor did her husband deem it
worth the expense. The house was turned topsy-turvy,
the servants overworked, the children made
ill by surfeiting, and no one happy or grateful;
the invited regarded Mrs. Finley with contempt,
and the left out with resentment.

Which, we would ask, was the richest man, estimated
by the hospitality exercised and enjoyed,—
Henry Aikin, or Morris Finley?