A limited number of young women thrown abruptly upon their own resources become social secretaries if their own social positions have insensibly prepared them for the position, and if they live in a city large enough to warrant this fancy but by no means inactive post. In Washington they are much in demand by Senators' and Congressmen's wives suddenly translated from a small town where the banker's lady hobnobbed with the prosperous undertaker's family, to a city where the laws of social precedence are as rigid as at the court of the Hapsburgs and a good deal more complicated. But these young women must themselves have lived in Washington for many years, or they will be forced to divide their salary with a native assistant.
The most famous social secretary in the United States, if not in the world, is Maria de Barril, and she is secretary not to one rich woman but to New York society itself. Her position, entirely self-made, is unique and secure, and well worth telling.
Pampered for the first twenty years of her life like a princess and with all her blood derived from one of the oldest and most relaxed nations in Europe, she was suddenly forced to choose between sinking out of sight, the mere breath kept in her body, perhaps, on a pittance from distant relatives, or going to work.
She did not hesitate an instant. Being of society she knew its needs, and although she was too young to look far ahead and foresee the structure which was to rise upon these tentative foundations, she shrewdly began by offering her services to certain friends often hopelessly bewildered with the mass of work they were obliged to leave to incompetent secretaries and housekeepers. One thing led to another, as it always does with brave spirits, and to-day Miss de Barril has a position in life which, with its independence and freedom, she would not exchange for that of any of her patrons. She conducted her economic venture with consummate tact from the first. Owing to a promise made her mother, the haughtiest of old Spanish dames as I remember her, she never has entered on business the houses of the society that employs her, and has retained her original social position apparently without effort.
She has offices, which she calls her embassy, and there, with a staff of secretaries, she advises, dictates, revises lists, issues thousands of invitations a week during the season, plans entertainments for practically all of New York society that makes a business of pleasure.
Some years ago a scion of one of those New York families so much written about that they have become almost historical, married after the death of his mother, and wished to introduce his bride at a dinner-dance in the large and ugly mansion whose portals in his mother's day opened only to the indisputably elect.
The bridegroom found his mother's list, but, never having exercised his masculine faculties in this fashion before, and hazy as to whether all on that list were still alive or within the pale, he wrote to the social ambassadress asking her to come to his house on a certain morning and advise him. Miss de Barril replied that not even for a member of his family, devoted as she was to it, would she break her promise to her mother, and he trotted down to her without further parley. Moreover, she was one of the guests at the dinner.
Of course it goes without saying that Miss de Barril has not only brains and energy, but character, a quite remarkably fascinating personality, and a thorough knowledge of the world. Many would have failed where she succeeded. She must have had many diplomatists among her ancestors, for her tact is incredible, although in her case Latin subtlety never has degenerated into hypocrisy. No woman has more devoted friends. Personally I know that I should have thrown them all out of the window the first month and then retired to a cave on a mountain. She must have the social sense in the highest degree, combined with a real love of "the world."
Her personal appearance may have something to do with her success. Descended on one side from the Incas of Peru, she looks like a Spanish grandee, and is known variously to her friends as "Inca," "Queen," and "Doña Maria"—my own name for her. When I knew her first she found it far too much of an effort to pull on her stockings and was as haughty and arrogant a young girl as was to be found in the then cold and stately city of New York. She looks as haughty as ever because it is difficult for a Spaniard of her blood to look otherwise; but her manners are now as charming as her manner is imposing; and if the bottom suddenly fell out of Society her developed force of character would steer her straight into another lucrative position with no disastrous loss of time.
It remains to be pointed out that she would have failed in this particular sphere if New York Society had been as callous and devoid of loyalty even in those days, as the novel of fashion has won its little success by depicting it. The most socially eminent of her friends were those that helped her from the first, and with them she is as intimate as ever to-day.