The Passing of the Idle Rich

by Frederick Townsend Martin

Think, if you can, of the swift stages through which we pass. Picture the solid, conventional, Christian, and cleanly society of New York immediately after the Civil War. To think of it now, even as I learned it by hearsay, very likely, brings me a feeling of personal regret, as though I had lost a fine old friend. Picture, then, the beginning of a revolution, small, inconsequent—yet, to the most discerning, portentous of evil and pregnant of disaster. A few young men, sons of society, set up new idols in the ancient temples. They began to ape the habits and to imitate the morals of that world which, while possessing wealth in plenty, had never possessed the refinement or the ethical standards of true society.

It is a melancholy fact that the impetus toward extravagance, excess, debauchery, and shamelessness came to us from the under-world.

For always, in every country, just outside the gates, there lives a people peculiar to itself. They have wealth equal, perhaps, to that of any in the social world. They have education, it may be, of the finest. They have desires, just as all men have. They have instincts, it may be, little better or little worse than those of the best in the land. The gates are shut against them for reasons that, to those inside, seem quite sufficient. It may be vulgarity; it may be immorality; it may be mere gaucherie of manners; it may be lack of education; or it may be any one of a dozen other reasons that puts them beyond the pale. Whatever may be the reason, the fact remains that they are beyond the pale.

In this class of society, always, in all races, morals, and manners tend to excesses. They are not restrained by sane conventions and laws that regulate society; nor are they held in the leash of respectability or in the chains of religion or of honour, as are the sturdy men and women of the so-called middle class. Constantly they are in rebellion against these laws and these traditions. Ever they are prone to substitute license for liberty, to plunge into immorality, to draw upon the stage in its worst moods for their passions and their pleasures, and to practise in their lives the vices of the decadent nations.

In this stage of our social life of which I write, the manners, the morals, and the practices of this social class crept into even that small section of society which calls itself “the Upper Class.” The young men—and unhappily the young women—of the finest families in our great cities began to copy the vices and to imitate the manners of this other class, and to plunge into the same excesses that marked its manner of life.

There is a vast difference between the healthy, wholesome spending of money for amusements, pleasures, and recreations and the feverish searching for some new sensation that can be had only at a tremendous cost. The simple expenditure of money, even in startling amounts, eventually fails to produce the thrill that it ought to have, and when the man or woman of fortune, with little to think of but the constant hunt for amusement and novelty, begins to suffer from continuous ennui, the result is frequently amazing and sometimes sickening.

A wearied, bored group of men arranged a dinner. They had been attending dinners until such functions had lost interest for them. Similarly their friends were wearied by the conventional dinner of the time. Why not prepare a meal, the like of which had never been before? Why not amuse society and astonish the part of the community that is outside of society? They did so. The dinner was served on horseback on the upper floor of a fashionable New York resort, the name of which is known from coast to coast; the guests were attired in riding habits; the handsomely groomed horses pranced and clattered about the magnificent dining-room, each bearing, besides its rider, a miniature table. The hoofs of the animals were covered with soft rubber pads to save the waxed floor from destruction. At midnight a reporter for an active and sensational morning newspaper ran across the choice bit of news. He telephoned the information to his city editor and the reply of that moulder of opinion was brief and to the point.

“You’re lying to me,” said the editor.

The most sensational paper in town refused to believe its reporter, who attempted later on to reach the scene of the event, but was repulsed and driven away.

“How much did it cost?” the public inquired interestedly. The man who paid the bill knew. The public and its newspapers guessed, their estimates running from ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars.