Fifth Avenue

by Arthur Bartlett Maurice

Fame came to him through the newspaper reporter. It was a smaller New York, a more limited Fifth Avenue in those days, and Mrs. Astor ruled its society without any one to question her sovereignty. She was about to give a great ball, and Ward McAllister, as the self-appointed and generally accepted secretary of society, was in charge of the list of invitations.

To the reporter sent to interview him Mr. McAllister explained that, owing to problems of space, only four hundred cards were to be sent out, commenting: "After all, there are only four hundred persons in New York who count in a social way."

"And who are those four hundred persons?" asked the quick-witted reporter.

On that point Mr. McAllister was more reticent. But the reporter obtained the list of those who were to be invited to the ball, and the names were printed as those who constituted New York's "Four Hundred."

"Society," said my friend sagely, "needs to be managed just as a circus is managed. Of good family, with an independent income large enough to make him free from the necessity of work, and small enough to keep him from the time-using diversions of extravagance, with a knowledge of wines, and a bent for selecting the proper kind of buttons for the coat in which to attend a cock-fight, he was the man for his circle and age. A Brummel? Hardly that. There was nothing of the ill-starred Beau in his appearance. His influence was good, as Brummel's was occasionally good. You recall the saying of the Duchess of York to the effect that it was Brummel's influence which more or less reformed the manners of the smart young men who were notorious for their excesses, their self-assertiveness, their want of courtesy. He was more akin to the ill-favoured Richard Nash, whose wise autocracy helped so much in the redeeming of the city of Bath."

After all, whether it was part pose, or whether the man was quite sincere in his professed belief in the profound importance of what most of the world is inclined to regard as trivialities, he was always consistent. As a youth he went to live in the house of a relative, in Tenth Street, New York, when that neighbourhood retained a flavour of aristocracy. A legacy of one thousand dollars fell to him. It was his first legacy. A cannier soul would have made the money go a long way. He spent it all for the costume that he was to wear at the fancy dress ball that was to be given by Mrs. John C. Stevens at her residence in College Place. "I flattered myself that it was the handsomest and richest costume at the ball." A little later, in 1850, he went to San Francisco, to join his father in the practice of law. It was in the first days of the gold rush, when the city was in the making, and fabulous prices were paid for the commodities of life. In the make-up of a man there had to be a certain amount of stern stuff if he was to survive in that struggle for existence. Young McAllister prospered, and in the course of time built himself a house. "My furniture," he recorded, "just from Paris, was acajou and white and blue horse-hair. My bed quilt cost me $250. It was a lovely Chinese floss silk shawl." His talents as a giver of dinners were in evidence at that early age, and his father made use of them in connection with the law business. There was a French chef, at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year. High prices and scarcity served only as spurs to the young Petronius.

"Such dinners as I gave I have never seen surpassed anywhere," he complacently recorded in later years. Some one spoke to the elder McAllister of the admirable manner in which his son kept house. "Yes," was the sapient retort. "He keeps everything but the Ten Commandments."

Two years of California, and then he returned East. At that period of his life the idea of the Diplomatic Service as a career appealed to him. Mr. Buchanan was going to England as Minister, and Ward McAllister applied to President Pierce for the post of Secretary of Legation. He was persona grata with Buchanan, he had the influence necessary to push his petition, and the matter seemed settled. But just then along came his father, who wanted to be made Circuit Judge of the United States for the State of California. Two appointments at the same time to one family were out of the question, so the young man stepped aside as became a dutiful son. But see Europe he would, and if he could not go in the Government's service and at the public expense as a dabbler with official sealing wax, he would go as a private citizen. The record he preserved of that journey gives a marvellous picture of the man.

In London he met a Californian, in with all the sporting world, on intimate terms with the champion prize-fighter of England, the Queen's pages, and the Tattersalls crowd. Chaperoned by this curious countryman, McAllister's first introduction to London life took the form of a dinner at a great house in the suburbs. It was a strange house and a strange company, more in keeping with the eighteenth century than the middle of the nineteenth. The rat-pit, the drawing of the badger, the bloody battling of the bull terriers, the high betting, the Gargantuan eating and drinking and shouting, the smashing of glasses and plates, the imperturbable footmen in green and gold liveries calmly replacing in their chairs the guests overcome by strong potations—it was a picture for Hogarth's pencil at its best, or Gillray's at its craziest.

The intimation is that, in the course of this and similar adventures, McAllister was defraying his own expenses and those of his Californian companion. Provided it was the kind of life he wanted to see, it was money well spent.