The Reign of Gilt

by David Graham Phillips

It is with eyes on this lofty height that the New York family, just emerging from obscure poverty, with five or six thousand a year, anxiously ask themselves: “Now, can we at last afford a man to go to the door and wait on the table?”

For the man-servant is the beginning of fashion, and its height can be measured—as certainly as in any other way—by the number of men-servants and the splendor of their liveries.

Of course, our family of pacemakers have an “adequate” supply of secretaries, tutors, governesses, valets, maids; and the housekeeper has her staff, the chef his, the butler his, the head coachman his, the captain of the yacht his. Then there are caretakers, gardeners and farmers, the racing-stable staff, various and numerous occasional employees. At the request of Mr. Multi-Millionaire, his private secretary recently drew up a list of all persons in the family’s service. It contained—with the yacht out of commission and the Newport place not yet opened—seventy-nine names.

Mr. Multi-Millionaire, becoming interested in statistics, went on to have his secretary take a census of the horses and carriages owned by the family. Of horses there were sixty-four, excluding the seventeen thoroughbreds in the racing stable at Saratoga, but including the hunters and the polo ponies. The little girl had the fewest. Poor child! She had only a pair of ponies and a saddle horse, and she complained that her sister was always loaning the hack to some friend whom she wished to have riding with her. The grown son had the most—thirteen; he must hunt and he must coach and he must play polo, or try to. The father himself was almost as badly off as his little daughter—he had only four.

Of vehicles there were at the town stables a landau, two large victorias and a small one, two broughams, a hansom; an omnibus, seating six; four automobiles, a tandem cart, a pony cart. At the several country places—a coach, a drag, a surrey, a victoria phaeton, two dos-à-dos, two T-carts, four runabouts, three buggies, two breaking carts, making a total of thirty-one.

The secretary remarked that these vehicles, assembled and properly distanced, would, with their animals, form a procession about three-quarters of a mile long. He then tried to read Mr. Multi-Millionaire some statistics of harness, saddles, and so forth, but was forbidden.

In further pursuit of this statistical mania, Mr. Multi-Millionaire discovered that his family and their friends—and the servants—had drunk under his various roofs during the past year nearly two thousand quarts of red wine, about one thousand quarts of champagne, one hundred and fifty quarts of white wine, one hundred and fifty quarts of whiskey, one thousand eight hundred quarts of mineral water, and an amazing amount of brandy, chartreuse, and so forth. The family’s total bills for drink, food, cigars, and cigarettes had been of such a size that they represented an expenditure of about three hundred and seventy dollars a day—about one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars a year. His wife became very angry when he showed her these last figures. She told him that he was meddling in her business and that she didn’t purpose to spend her whole life in watching servants.

Our multi-millionaire did not make his fortune; he inherited it. But he has been very shrewd in managing it, for all his extravagance. Though he is cautious about expenses in one way, he shows by the allowances he makes to the various members of his family that he believes in carrying out to the uttermost the idea that his family must live in state. His wife has a million in her own name, but he makes her an allowance of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to maintain herself and their households. The grown son has had an allowance of twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and when he marries it will be trebled—perhaps quadrupled. This is large for persons of their modest fortune, but many fathers of smaller means are doing as much for their children, and our multi-millionaire will not see his children suffer. His grown daughter has an allowance of fifteen thousand dollars—more than she needs, as she has only to buy her clothes and pay her small expenses out of it. The boy in college has five thousand dollars a year; he is always in debt, but his mother helps him. The youngest child has ten dollars a week—her clothes are bought for her, and she can always get money from her father or mother when she wishes to make handsome presents.

The most interesting person in the family is the mother. She is its moving force, one of the moving forces in the extravagant life of New York City to-day. You see her name and her pictures in the newspapers very often, always in connection with the news that she is doing something. She was the first in New York to have huge flunkeys in gaudy knee-breeches and silk stockings in waiting at her front door. She was the first to have as an entertainment for a few people after dinner several of the grand opera stars and the finest orchestra in the country. She is a woman with ideas—ideas for new and not noisy or gaudy, but attractive ostentations of luxury. She spends money recklessly, but she gets what she wants.

She is one of the busiest women in town. And the main part of her business is one which engages New York women, and men, too, ever more and more—the fight for prolonging youth.