You would never suspect that she is the mother of a son twenty-five years old. Indeed, you would not suspect from her looks or her conversation that she is a mother. She is making her fight for youth most successfully. Of course, she uses no artifices—the New York women who care greatly about looks have long since abandoned artificiality, except as a fad. Her hair is thick and dark and fine. It is her own, kept vigorous by constant treatment. Her skin is clear and smooth and healthily pale—it costs her and her beauty assistants hours of labor to keep it thus. Her figure is tall and slender and girlish—her masseuse could tell you how that is done. She lives, eats, exercises, with the greatest regularity. And she eats little and drinks less.
On dress she spends about fifty-five thousand dollars a year. You will not see her many times in the same hat or dress; and she has a passion for real lace underclothing and for those stockings which seem to have been woven on fairy looms of some substance so unsubstantial that only fairies could handle it. She bought twelve thousand dollars’ worth of underclothing when she was in Paris last spring. Her bills at the dressmaker’s of the Rue de la Paix were twenty-seven thousand dollars, and at the milliner’s twenty-four hundred dollars. She has about five thousand dollars invested in parasols. She has sixty-seven thousand dollars’ worth of wraps—sables, chinchillas and ermine cannot be got for small sums. She has many evening dresses that cost from eight hundred dollars to twelve hundred dollars each. She has few dresses that cost as little as one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The average price for her hats would be, perhaps, fifty dollars. She had one with fur on it last winter that cost two hundred and seventy-five dollars.
The chief reason for her large expenditure for clothes is that now-a-days every detail of each costume must be in harmony. She must have slippers, stockings, skirt, dress, hat, parasol, all to match or in perfect harmony. For she is one of half a dozen New York women who are famous for style, and having established this reputation she must live up to it. When she ceases to fight for youth—which will be in about ten years—she will probably cut her expenditures for dress in half. By that time extravagance will have so far advanced that her successor will spend seventy-five thousand dollars or more on dress. The last season has seen a three-league advance. It is now the fashion to wear for a drive down the Avenue those delicate shades which are ruined so quickly. Next season the color scheme of the Avenue will be still more gorgeous and varied—and prodigiously more expensive.
But it is her mode of keeping house and entertaining that makes the thousands and tens of thousands fly. Her establishments are maintained like so many luxurious hotel restaurants. Though her housekeeper is a capable person and she herself studies her accounts closely, it is impossible to be ready at all times to house and feed an indefinite number of people of exacting taste without spending great sums of money. It costs to be able to say to the butler at the last moment: “There will be ten for luncheon, instead of six,” or “There will be twelve for dinner, instead of four,” or “There will be four for dinner, not eight.”
Our Mrs. Multi-Millionaire lives no better in respect of her table than scores of people in her set and around it. She pays her chef one hundred dollars a month and her butler seventy-five dollars a month, and so do they. She has no better supplies on hand than have they. Her bills at the shops where they sell things out of season—peaches at four dollars apiece, strawberries at fifty cents apiece, and peas at a dollar a small measure—show no different kinds of items from theirs. They, too, have Sèvres plates at five hundred dollars the dozen. They, too, have fruit plates and finger-bowls of gold plated on silver that cost twelve hundred dollars the dozen. They, too, have solid-gold after-dinner coffee cups at two thousand dollars the dozen, and solid-gold spoons at four hundred dollars the dozen. The difference between the dinners of those of her fortune and the dinners of those of fewer millions lies in quantity, not quality. Where they would have to make an effort in arranging an unusual dinner and could not have more than a dozen at table, her establishment and many more establishments like hers would easily and without effort expand to entertain, in a fashion once called royal, two or three scores of guests.
The main and very conspicuous characteristic of this typical leader in New York’s extravagance is, naturally, restlessness. Like the other women of her set, like their imitators, down and down through the strata of New York’s wealth-scaled society, she wanders nervously about, spending money, inventing new ways of spending it, all because she is in search of something, she knows not what, that ever eludes her. And this restlessness, this nervousness, this hysteria, possesses the women and the men alike. Does it come uptown with the men from Wall street? Does it go downtown from the women and the fever of Fifth avenue? It is impossible to say. We only know that it possesses both and that it influences their every relation of life, public and private.
A fashionable woman sails for Europe—more than five thousand dollars’ worth of flowers, jewels, books, things to eat and drink, go to the steamer on sailing day from her friends. A young couple are married—their intimates and relatives give them three-quarters of a million in wedding gifts. A brother meets his sister on her way downstairs on the morning of her birthday—“Here is a little gift for you,” he says, pausing just long enough to hand her a paper. It makes her the owner of a million in gilt-edged securities. A husband comes home from the office—“I’ve put through my deal,” he says. “You can have your new house, but I won’t stand for more than a million and a half.” A father calls his son into his study and says, “You will be twenty-one to-morrow. I fix your allowance at seventy-five thousand dollars a year.” A doctor goes to a banker to get a small subscription for a new hospital—“Why not build a new hospital?” asks the banker. “I’ll give a million. If that’s not enough I’ll give two.”
It is amazing how many great and beautiful palaces of a kind such as is occupied by our multi-millionaire are being added yearly to New York’s fashionable quarter. And there is not a single palace in New York that is comfortable. No way has yet been devised for making them otherwise than chilly and draughty. The human animal is too small for such huge surroundings; and there are not enough competent servants or even competent available housekeepers to make the domestic machinery run smoothly.
The new millionaires slip into New York, into their new palaces, attracting little attention. Men with a scant million or two are coming all the time unobserved. If it were not necessity that drove them here, many of them would doubtless become angry at their insignificance and would go where less money gives distinction. But the rapid concentration of the directing forces of the business of the country in Manhattan Island compels them to yield to the entreaties of their wives and daughters and remain.
Scores of these palace owners have or seem to have no way of getting acquainted with anybody whatsoever. There are millionaires’ families that stare drearily out of the windows, bored to death in their isolation, and wishing they were back in the Western town where they used to have lots of fun. There are others who give entertainments in the vast rooms of their palaces at which you will find their clerks, a few nondescripts male and female, and no others—these standing or strolling awkwardly about, trying to forget that they are miserable in reflecting on the cost of the pictures and the decorations.