My First Great Social Adventure—The Horse-show with the Radigans
I picked up my paper at breakfast this morning to be informed in flaring headlines that "The Horse is King." One day in every year we must face that black-typed legend, just as at certain other times we must be instructed, as though we were ignorant of the fact, that it is a "Noisy Fourth," a "Bright Thanksgiving," or a "Merry Christmas." To further impress upon our sluggish brains the regal position of the horse we must be confronted with an impressionistic picture of a long-legged, bow-legged, knock-kneed animal, with a thin body, a neck arched like a giraffe's and a swelled head, being towed around a ring by a bandy-legged groom. It seems to me that this figure bears about as close a relation to the great Madison Square Garden circus as the lion rampant, the crest of my dear friends the Van Rundouns, has to that ancient and anæmic family. Somebody told me the other day that a certain railroad in this country used as its trademark the identical Egg that the blind woman in Mr. Kipling's "They" traced upon the rug to the confusion of reading-circles and cultured sets all over the English-speaking world. The Egg is the Oriental symbol of Life and has no connection whatever with a dining-car service, which goes to demonstrate that the equine wonder that stares at us from the front page of our morning paper on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of the show is after all only a symbol handed down from the remote ages.
This county fair of ours has always had an element of mystery for me. The horse may be king, but his is a very limited monarchy indeed. I decided that as I sat last night in the Radigan box studying the endless procession of men and women passing in review before me. Why do they come here? I found myself asking. More than eighty per cent. of them do not know a breeching from a fetlock, and is there anything more uninteresting than watching a half-dozen horses circle twice around a ring, line up in the centre, be inspected by three solemn judges, and run around and out with ribbons attached? Of course, if you own or deal in horses, it is different. Likewise if you are a multi-millionaire—inherited—and depend on horses to keep your mind working. But why thousands of well-balanced persons with moderate incomes waste time and money to yawn through an evening in a hard seat or be trampled on and crushed in that procession is a mystery. Yet they will do it. And they generally look bored—all of them.
Of course sitting in a box is different. It is like being on the stage in a thinking part. And we mediocre, humdrum folks, who cannot shine ourselves, do enjoy reflecting a little lime-light. So every minute of that long three hours was a rare pleasure to me. A first night with the Radigans, though they did make their money in pool-rooms and will not get "in" for several years, is vastly superior to a Saturday evening in a cast-off box with old New Yorkers like the Van Rundouns. I went with them last year, and then for the first time realized the chasm that separated the man in the box from the poor crushed creatures who swept around and around the promenade. I know how I felt when the fellows from my old boarding-house came along and stopped square in front of our party and stared up at me. Of course they all had to take off their hats, because that very act gave them a certain distinction in the mob, and of course I had to return their greeting. The box was Bobby Q. Williegilt's own, but they did not know that he had lent it to some poor cousins of his who had sent the tickets to some friends of theirs, who had given them to the Van Rundouns, who asked me to join them, so the boys treated me with marked deference forever after.
Now when it comes to a choice it is a toss-up between the Radigans and the Van Rundouns. I had to make a choice and I ventured all. Radigan met me on Broadway last week and brought me uptown in his new 90 horse-power car. He told me that several well-known men from the Rollers Club had promised to sit in his box, and he invited me to join the party. I recalled what the Van Rundouns said about the Radigans and rather hesitated at first, but then I remembered that after all they would only have that left-over on Saturday night and possibly not at all. Like all else in this world, old families must die. It is the new family, cradled in the 90 horse-power imported French car, that in a few years will reach that maturity which we call "smartness." In that gilded circle, supported on rickety wooden chairs, that is the great feature of the horse-show, mature families are really surprisingly scarce. There are many Radigans, with a goodly sprinkling of Van Rundouns—besides the dealers. The mature do not have to go any more. They can afford to look upon it as an "amusing show," where you can see "all kinds of people" if you drop in for, say, just one evening. The Radigans must go to prove that they are growing, and the Van Rundouns to show that they still live. The Radigan star is ascending, and I decided to grasp one of its points and go up with it.
Evidently the Radigans are willing to carry me along, for I notice that they have lost no time about taking my advice. Those Rollers Club fellows, it seems, are clerks in the office, rather decent chaps and exceedingly well groomed. Besides them, our party consisted of our host and hostess, Miss Pearl Veal, and myself. We had an excellent dinner at the St. Regis before starting, and I know positively that Radigan gave the waiters a ten-dollar tip, so you can see what the original cost must have been. There was no rare old wine on the list that was too expensive, and the club fellows made it disappear with great rapidity and relish. For myself, I kept to champagne, for, though it was cheaper, I felt that I knew just what it would do. Mrs. Radigan's sister—I can never think of her by her name—drank nothing at all, explaining to me that it made her eyes water; but our hostess was not so abstemious, and when we left the table she was beaming. We ran down to the Garden in the new car, as Radigan was scheduled to drive his high-stepping pair, Samson and Delilah, in the opening class. Mrs. Radigan told me, by the way, that she named all their horses, and asked if I did not admire her taste in this case. She had taken the names from an historical novel.