University of Virginia Library

TOWN SOCIETY.

æsopi Fabulæ.

The public has seen fit to regard these letters
in the light of strictures upon the Town Society.
It was by no means my wish to give them so narrow
a limit; nor has my playful raillery borne with
it, surely, any of the assumption of a judge. Still,
the public are welcome to their decision; and in
view of it, I cannot better close, than by setting
down, more pointedly than I have yet done, a few
of my old-fashioned opinions.

But first let me spare a word for those learned
coxcombs who consider all talk about society as
sheer twaddle. That a man who knows nothing of
the courtesies of life, should sneer at them, is quite

natural; but that he should plume himself upon his
ignorance, is not a little extraordinary. Such men
are to be classed with those bold spirits who carry
their independence in their manners, or in their lack
of them. I have great faith in one who thinks for
himself on such points,—provided he thinks wisely;
but if he think wrongly, or if he think purposely
after a different manner from other men, on all the
minor forms and conventionalities of life, I think
he would be more happy and respected—though
possibly not so much stared at—if he employed
some one else to think for him.

The habits of amusement, the every-day practices,
and, in short, all those observances which go to
make up what is called fashion, have a very considerable
bearing upon the virtue, the manliness,
and the intelligence of a people. To slight them,
while careful about the ordinary claims of education,
is to neglect the atmosphere we breathe, while
anxious only for our meat and drink.

I have been accused of balking the main issues,
and of playing around matters which needed the
firm touch of analysis; but I take the liberty of
saying, that these scattered shots upon the town
have had their aim. You have seen, my dear Fritz,
our old friend Dumas (not the Guardsman) apply
the stopper of a vial to some calcareous or silicious

mass,—and watch the degree of the effervescence,—
and taste,—and try it with his blow-pipe, and
finally, setting it down, and putting his spectacles
back, you have heard him give, in a few well-chosen
words, the full account of the substance under his
hand.

It is much in this way,—though by no means
with the delicate manipulations of the French chemist,—that
I have been applying my tests, and exhibiting
those special qualities, which give character
to the whole of our society. I have coveted no
reputation of being a fashionable twaddler; nor do I
think myself very far in the road toward arriving
at that distinction. It seemed to me to be an honest
man's work, to have a crack at those follies
which were growing upon our newly-formed society;
and the more honest, since nearly all the journals
of the town were approving, and magnifying,
whatever fashion decided upon doing.

I have deemed it more politic to give a playful
trip to such light-heeled errors as good sense would
aid me in upsetting, than to affect the arbiter elegantiarum,
by deciding upon either general or special
proprieties. No effort has been made to show
familiarity with any other standards than those of
good judgment and good taste; and no pretence
has been started to anything more, or anything less,

than the character of a quiet, humble, independent
looker-on. French society possesses a luxurious
grace, a silken pliability, and a most grateful
amour-propre, that would easily induce its admirers
to prescribe from Parisian data the rules for our
social action; and on the other hand, I can understand
how a man living for only a short period in
England, should grow into such sort of respect for
their foggy quietude, their aplomb, and elegant indifference,
as would make him zealous for the establishment
of British regimen.

But it seems to me, Fritz, that every nation,
(and you have had the same opinion from me,
under the linden trees of the terrace at Frascati,)
must, and ought to have its peculiar social ordinances,
as much as those of its civil policy, or
commerce; and I see no better reason, per se, for
adopting the visiting hour of the Parisian, or for
dining in the night with the Londoner, than for
copying the Milanese in their opera etiquette, or
for showing hospitality with a pipe, and entertaining
with sherbet and attar. The skeleton of national
habit will always be made up by the hard,
osseous system of business; character will lay on
the muscle; and education, with taste and refinement,
will supply those finer tissues, and nervous
susceptibilities, which give to it social grace.

Opinion, climate, circumstance, all want their
action upon social organization; and adaptation to
them, at once easy, refined, and genial, make up
the highest grade of social elevation. This adaptation,
it seems to me, was perfected for France, in
those days of Louis XIV. when a Montespan was a
“leader of fashion.” Of the standard of education
and of morals I say nothing;—but surely, for the
time, for the court, and for the national habit, the
ladies of Versailles were model ladies; wit could
never have played prettier on the lip of an unfaithful
woman, than in the Vallière; and judgment
never sat with a more luxurious grace upon any
courtly dame, than upon the Maintenon. So too
it was in the age of the great Athenian commander,
when learning, power, and poetry had so ripened
social action, that the wit of the salon rivalled the
wit of the stage; and when Athenian ladies of fashion
had lost, by culture, the masculine roughness of
the Spartan, the lascivious gayety of the Ephesian,
and the slavish reserve of the Persian.

Nor is this last allusion so far off, as it might
seem; with added moral (or the assumption of it),
political condition is much the same; there is the
same power to rise. And as Aspasia, by her cultivation,
rose to the heart and home of Pericles, and
afterward drew to the same station the humble

Lysicles,—a New York lady of fashion, if only
she possessed Aspasia's wit and eloquence, might
do as much. Our social adaptation wants to be
directed in view of those changes of circumstance
which our institutions are constantly creating.

When there is no taste of a court to be humored,
—when there are no established and titled classes,
who, by the prerogative of birth, carry from generation
to generation, as it were, the dignity and
the rule of social aptitudes, every man's own judgment
must decide for him; and it is in the easy, refined,
and gracious adaptation of his manners and
habit to his own taste, that what is called fashion
will find its perfection. Yet is there very little of
this sort of adaptation in the town.

Our houses, for illustration, are arranged by rule,
and by street; with no sort of applicability to the
peculiar tastes of the inhabitant; but only for its
“party” capacity, or for a certain quality of display.
Our fashionable ranks are made up after a similar
method:—An education, fair in the rudiments, and
touched off with a trifle of Paris, a trifle of equipage,
a trifle of the opera, a trifle of Grace Church,
and a trifle of religion, completes the equipment.

Take any given set of what are called tonnish
people, and we may find one, just what would be
expected from his position and influence,—possessed

of fair appreciation of music, a pretty regard for
church matters, a knowledge of the journals, and
an easy air. A second, who is necessary to the
other, for some extrinsic quality, either of name, or
of mercantile position, has scarce none of the qualities
of the first; and though they brood together,
under their wives' tuition, their sympathies rarely
meet. A third, with intellectual cultivation and
refinement, is attached to the other by loose ligaments;
either from special pride in the position, or
for the use that can be made of the wealthy patronage.
A fourth is essentially a boor; but by extraordinary
wealth, or persistent search for just such
notoriety, is foisted upon the rest, and hangs upon
the coterie, with a kind of pleased yet foolish bewilderment,
that reminds one of poor Strepsiad,
listening to the cloud teachings of philosophy.[3]

In all this herding, there is none of that adaptation,
which results from careful observation, and
a desire to promote those comfortable elegances of
life, which make up a social genialty.

Take again the successful adventurer upon the
town society; he is well-looking, passably clever,
graceful, a good dancer, and has passed (c'est la
plus belle rose de son chapeau) a winter in Paris.
He is seen at the A.'s, who are of what is termed

the first set; this is enough to secure him an invitation
to the B.'s,—where, if his jokes be creditable
over the “board,” he is guarantied the entree at
C.'s; the sight of him in their box at the opera,
elicits inquiry from the D.'s—who have daughters
so ugly, as to be drumming up very frequent
recruits. Nor is it until our hero reaches some
observing man, who has more of an eye for qualities
and fitness, than for reputable visiting, that his
character is subjected to an inquiry which secures
him—son congé. With all the others he has
mingled by a habit of the class; nothing else
assured his position, and nothing else affirmed his
congeniality.

Let us look at a lady of a first set, and by first set I
mean whatever set is most talked of, most conspicuous,
most devoted to expensive public amusements,
and most famous for its balls. Madame is passably
looking, with passably looking children; she is
generous enough for display, and rich enough for
occasional well-timed charities; her carriage is
known, her footman is known, and her milliner,
and her clergyman, and perhaps her lover. She is
very likely a kindly sort of woman at heart, with
fair education—who goes to the opera because she
likes to see and be seen; and frequents the balls because
she loves attention, or oysters. And what

tastes could be more decided, or who could be at
more liberty to gratify them? And yet abundance
of people are sneering at her position and extravagance,
and, if there be a spark of scandal about
her, show the most Christian solicitude to fan it
into a flame. Very likely we shall find these very
traducers most anxious to get at her parties, or to
follow in the wake of her equipage. They do so,
because she possesess a fashionable publicity, and
not because they would enjoy a téte-à-téte; yet
they would endure a long one—to share her position,
or the softness of her lounge, or the luxurious suppers,
or any or all of those things which give her the eminence
at which they secretly rail.—And if it be
eminence, do you not perceive, my dear lady, that
by running after it with your infernal clatter of
wonder and scandal, you are exalting it to a place
in the public eye, that its own unaided qualities
could never secure to it?

Let her be the princess of suppers, the queen of
lorgnettes, and the sultana of the divan! Seek
your companions where you find agreement of
tastes, or of occupations; in short, give up your
tacit allegiance to those sets which, by notoriety,
are first sets; follow the dictates of your own judgment,—refined
as much as you please with education,—and

adorned as much as you dare with
charity.

As it is, our classes monopolize the distinctions, to
the discredit of the individual attractions. What
strange lady, after a year's life in the town, is
known as a delightful companion, or a pleasant
entertainer, one half so well as she is known for a
visitor in such and such circles, or as belonging to
such or such a set? And who, under the present
artificial range of classifications, can safely judge
of a man's character, by the houses at which he
visits?

A sensible man chooses his companion for congeniality
of tastes; they together choose a third;
and presently you have a good fellowship, natural,
easy, and honest. But put yourself in a town-saloon
upon a reception day, and you shall find the farthest
remove from this; and the more notoriously
fashionable the house, the farther is the remove.
Some are come to do themselves the honor of making
show of the acquaintance; others feel that
they are doing a generous condescension, and sustain
their position by a pretty superciliousness.
In this matter, let me note, for contrast, the easy
groupings of a Paris reception, where affinities are
more studied, and where the visitors mingle spontaneously,

as it were, and with a genial hum of
talk. With us, it is all the good lady can do, to
keep up an appearance of bonhommie, by adroit
manœuvres from party to party. But while I
make this special comparison, in which the French
are more liberal, and truly republican, than ourselves,
I would not be understood to carry it farther.
Democratic institutions, and education,
ought to modify social action. Those Medici who
gave grandeur to what is now the Tuscan Duchy,
showed as much social as political wisdom, in
searching out companions and partners for their
children, among the most meritorious of the Florentine
Bourgeois. Prescriptive castes in an old country,
and a feudal country, may be time-honored
and legitimate; in our town, they are either
prurient affectations, or the result of a publicity
and notoriety at which true delicacy is shocked.
They defeat the issues of rational geniality, and
make shelter for all manner of pompous deceits.

The absurd intimations which I have seen in
some country papers, that my letters were written
merely to unfold the pretensions of the vulgarly
rich, or the follies of an upper ten thousand, I
wholly abjure; if I cordially detest anything, it is
those eternal railers at an imaginary set, whom
they thus designate. It is not necessary to be rich,

to be vulgar,—nor to be vulgar, to be rich. Folly
has been my target, wherever it appeared; and I
have endeavored, by the wide range of my observations,
to do away with the suspicion that I ranked
vice by social grades, or heaped upon wealth or
fashion any gratuitous reproach.

The tone of all my letters has been Republican;
they have tended, in their humble way, towards
the dismantling of those awkward and vulgar
scaffoldings, by which our social architects of the
town were trying to build up something like the
gone-by feudal fabrics of the old world. I have
pandered to none of the finical tastes of an “Upper
Ten,”—to none of the foolish longings of a “Lower
Ten,” and to none of the empty and ill-directed
clamor of those who affect to guide the million.
John Timon, in the pride of his citizenship, as a
Republican, and as a New-Yorker, acknowledges
no Upper Ten! He will live where he chooses to
live; and he will amuse himself as he chooses to
amuse himself. He will neither take his building
schemes from the nod of Mr. Such-an-one, nor
wear his glove at the beck of—Such-another. He
will try to consult those proprieties which reason,
good feeling, and good custom suggest; and he will
mingle in such circles as will receive him kindly,
—as will greet him with a manly cordiality, and

entertain him by such frankness, intelligence, and
refinement, as he thinks he can appreciate.

Nor do I apprehend that these things are to be
bounded by houses, or by streets;—or that any
man, or any set of men, can lay down the codes
by which I am to reach them, or prescribe the ways
in which I am to enjoy them. Good habit, in a
free society, is as much a matter of taste and circumstance,
as coloring in painting, or the management
of the rod in angling; and who, pray, is going
to give us rules for the precise amount of chromes,
or for the exact length of line, or the dressing of a
hackle?

Good breeding does not necessarily suppose a
knowledge of all conventionalities; and a true gentleman
can in no way better show his gentle blood,
than by the grace and modesty with which he
wears his ignorance of special formulas. If there be
not a native courtesy in a man, which tells him
when he is with gentlemen, and when with the vulgar;
and which informs him, as it were by intuition,
what will conspire with the actions of the first, and
offend against the sympathies of the last, he may
study till doomsday his etiquette, and his French
Feuilleton, and remain a boor to the end!

To conclude—as the Doctors say,—let me suggest,
that our Town Society needs nothing so much

as an added geniality, honesty, and simplicity. It
hardly seems to me of so much importance that
our streets should show a Paris pardessus, but ten
days old, or a new polka, in the fortnight of its introduction
along the Faubourg St. Honoré,—as that
social fellowship should become easy and refined,
and a little wit, taste, and grace be grafted upon
the body of our Fashion.

And now, Fritz,

It is hard to quit friends; and some friends I feel
sure that I have made. There are scores of honest
fellows, who, reckoning me honest, will have sent
me, by that chord of sympathy which stretches back
from number to number of my work,—as it were,
on telegraphic posts,—a cordial greeting. There
are ladies, too, not all of them old ladies, who, if
their confession means anything, entertain a kindly
feeling for the old gentleman who has talked so
honestly of their errors, as to make the crowd of
their virtues—dazzling.

They must be sure that he bears them no ill-will;
and that he will reckon their tolerance of
his garrulity as one of the best prizes of his
labor. I feel sure, indeed, that many have seen,

under all the apparent harshness of my speech, a
tenderness and admiration for those who adorn the
sex,—more honorable to them, than to himself. If,
in the merest trifle, I may have quickened their disgust
for what is vain and false, or kindled their regard
for what is simple and true, I shall count
it my highest reward, to have made one jewel the
brighter, in the coronet of their charms.

My publishers have intimated their design of
sending my portrait to the world, with this volume;
but I feel quite sure, that if I receive such flattery
at the hands of the kindly artists, as most of
the town-authors have secured, very few, even of
my most intimate friends, will be able to recognize
me.

My humble position will remain, therefore, inviolate.
I have wished that my opinions should have
such credit, and only such, as their intrinsic value
would seem to justify. It is true indeed that I could
add little weight to them by an open avowal, save
among those who know me personally, and who, I
am sorry to say, have not yet learned to recognize
the hand and the heart of an acquaintance, in these
quaint and unusual labors of my pen. But I am
spared, thus, the pang of saying farewell to those
who do not yet know in Timon—an old and cherished
comrade.

Let me assure the critics, however, that it is
from no sense of shame, or of fear, that I forbear
to make known my name;—nor, on the other hand,
do I feel prompted to such a course, by any feelings
of vanity:—primus vestrûm non sum—nec imus.

I have amused myself quietly; and quietly
I shall slip away from public notice. There was
no flourish of trumpets to announce my coming
on the stage; and there shall be no hireling
mourners to attend my going off.