About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
It was a time when, far from a dirty word, discrimination was a virtue sought. It was as if living well were a moral imperative; more than a moral imperative, living well was inherently moral.
Etiquette books replaced religious books as the guides to the good life. “Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society” by Mrs. Clara Jessup Moore, 1878, was the guide to the proper conduct of life. There was no corner of interaction beyond her reach, attention and opinion.
Moore wrote, “One man is born as good as another, and a great deal better than some.”
The way to discern between them was to mark their manners, their associates, the clothes they wore and the things that surrounded them. If good repute rested on how you spent your money, consumption was not the light, ignominious nor faintly amusing business it has been reported to be: It was serious business. It was also a tricky business. The goods conspicuously consumed had to be valuable and tasteful.
Moore cautions: “He [the man of wealth] is no longer simply the successful, aggressive male … In order to avoid stultification he must also cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent upon him to discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble in consumer goods.”
Twenty years later, while he did not approve, Thorstein Veblen, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” agreed: “Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”
Apparently, then, Mr. Charles Southmayd, Stockbridge cottager, was wrong when he instructed his law partner Joseph Choate that it was sufficient to accumulate and hold onto his money, and Joe knew it. As he built Naumkeag, indeed as the whole Gilded Age resort was built in Lenox and Stockbridge, Moore’s advice was adhered to. It was not even enough to accumulate and spend it. In order to garner public regard, one had to accumulate, discriminatingly spend and “then put in evidence” your consumption.
Of course, it was possible to become overly enthusiastic and miss the point. At Erskine Park, Mrs. George (Marguerite Erskine Walker) Westinghouse folded a $100 bill into the napkin of each of her dinner guests. Mrs. Westinghouse put it in evidence, but she definitely got it wrong.
The penalty was stultification, and social embarrassment was to be judicially avoided, as was notoriety. The general public was not the proper judge of acumen. Only the judgment of the guests at dinner, social peers, mattered. The only exception were the servants.
One Berkshire cottager admitted he only feared the opinions of the footmen at a dinner. In another cottage, a retired butler was offered an unusual job by the lady of the house.
He explained: “He [the cottager] was a brilliant man — graduate of Harvard — studied abroad and all. His wife — he tried to make me believe she was this and that. I thought, who are you kiddin’? Then she came to me, and she wanted me to teach her the manners I had learned from my experience in the grand houses. I had to tell her how to sit — back straight, both feet on the floor of course, and hands in the lap — and walk. Some had such a regal walk. All the while, you had to look like you knew what you were doing. There were dinner manners, yes, speak first to the person on your left, not too long, and then turn your head and address the person on your right. Never lean back in a chair or use the wrong piece of table ware – use from the outside in. Clothes, of course. You could always tell from the fit and the fabric. I had to teach her practically everything.”
The etiquette books of the period were articulate on this important subject of “the best society.” They were purchased and read with attention in order to “acquire an air of dignity and distinction … a higher standard of elegance and culture … encourage an improvement in manners and stimulate the growth and spread of refined taste.”
The angle of the extended hand, the changing position of a lady’s eyes as the subjects of conversation change, the proper way to remove yourself from the dinner table are described, justified, and the consequences of error are spelled out.
Some books on the subject were 567 pages long and described acceptable behavior in every conceivable situation including a section headed “Immortal Life.” (It does not describe acceptable behavior in heaven; it tells you how to get there.)
One Berkshire dowager explains. “They were protecting a way of life that was terribly pleasant. I approve of the change,” she says,” but when we rebelled against and progressed past the 19th century social prescriptions, we both gained and lost. We lost a way of life and values, now all we can do is remember. It is terribly interesting.”
So in the late afternoon, a descendent of F.D.R. and Henry James inadvertently answers a question posed by a descendent of John Jacob Astor at a different tea table on another afternoon: “I don’t think this is terribly interesting, do you?”
Was the Gilded Age terribly interesting or terribly silly? Besides elaborate manners, they created the economy and the politics that extend until today. The new plutocrats of post-Civil War America were the masters and directors of the economic revolution. So maybe it pays to understand them and their era.
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Note: Carole Owens will teach an online course on the Gilded Age, “The Berkshires: Coming of Age 1840-1890,” for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College beginning Friday, Sept. 25.
