As A Chinaman Saw Us | Page 7

gentleman. I heard a lady of unquestioned position say that she admired President McKinley, but regretted that he was not a gentleman. She meant that he was not an aristocrat, and did not possess the savoir faire, or the family associations, that completely round out the American or English gentleman. I asked this lady to indicate the gentlemen Presidents of the country. There were very few that I recall. There were Washington, Harrison, Adams, and Arthur. Doubtless there were others, which have escaped me. Lincoln, the strongest American type, she did not consider in the gentlemen class, and General Grant, the nation's especial pride, did not fulfil her ideas of what a gentleman should be.
You will perceive, then, that what some American people consider a gentleman and what its most exclusive society accepts for one, comprise two entirely different personages. I found this emphasized especially in the old society of Washington, which takes its traditions from Washington's time or even the pre-Revolutionary period. For such society a self-made man was impossible. Such are the remarkable, indeed astounding, ramifications of the social system of a people who cry to heaven of their democracy. "Americans are all equal--this is one of the gems in our diadem." This epigram I heard drop from the lips of a senator who was the recognized aristocrat of the chamber; yet a man of peculiar social reserve, who would have nothing to do with the other "equals." In a word, all the talk of equality is an absurd figure of speech. America is at heart as much an aristocracy as England, and the social divisions are much the same under the surface.
You will understand that social rules and customs are all laid down and exacted by women and from women. From them I obtained all my information. No American gentleman would talk (to me at least) on the subject. Ask one of them if there is an American aristocracy, and he will pass over the question in an engaging manner, and tell you that his government is based on the principle of perfect equality--one of the most transparent farces to be found in this interesting country. I have outlined to you what I conceived to be the best society in each city, and in the various sections of the country. In morality and probity I believe them to stand very high; lapses there may be, but the general tone is good. The women are charming and refined; the men chivalrous, brave, well-poised, and highly educated. Unfortunately, the Americans who compose this "set" are numerically weak. They are not represented to the extent of being a dominating body, and oddly enough, the common people, the shopkeepers, the people in the retail trades, do not understand them as leaders from the fact that they are so completely aloof that they never meet them. A sort of inner "holy of holies" is the real aristocracy of America. What goes for society among the people, the mob, and the press is the set (and a set means a faction, a clique) known as the Four Hundred, so named because it was supposed to represent the "blue blood" of New York ten years ago in its perfection. This Four Hundred has its prototype in all cities, and in some cities is known as the "fast set." In New York it is made up often of the descendants of old families, the heads of whom in many instances were retail traders within one hundred and fifty years ago; but the modern wealthy representatives endeavor to forget this or skip over it. It is, however, constantly kept alive by what is termed the "yellow press," which delights in picturing the ancestor of one family as a pedler and an itinerant trader, and the head of another family as a vegetable vender, and so on, literally venting its spleen upon them.
In my studies in American sociology I asked many questions, and obtained the most piquant replies from women. One lady, a leader in New York in what I have termed the exclusive set, informed me with a laugh that the ancestor of a well-known family of to-day, one which cuts a commanding figure in society, was an ordinary laborer in the employ of her grandfather. "Yet you receive them?" I suggested. The reply was a shrug of charming shoulders, which, translated, meant that great wealth had here enabled them to "bore" into the exclusive circle. I found that even among these people, the crême de la crême in the eyes of the people, there were inner circles, and these were not on intimate terms with the others. Here I met a member of the Washington and Lee family, a descendant of Bishop Provoost, the first Episcopal bishop of New York, and friend of Washington and