CHAPTER III.
SOCIAL TYPES.
It is probable that the finest social types in this country have heretofore been found in the South. That this is true, or could be under the dark shadows of an institution so out of harmony with the progressive spirit of the age certainly seems paradoxical. The slave-holding population, it is claimed, represented more social refinement and elegance of personal manners than any other class in America. Whatever barbarous proclivities were chargeable to them in other respects, they were not so chargeable in the social aspects of their characters. And this was one of the slaveholder's vantage-grounds, that he never failed to employ on occasion of entertaining travelers and visitors from other portions of the world, especially from the Northern States. Perhaps there was nothing the Southern gentleman prided himself more upon than the prestige of his social power; and many a Northern man has lost the backbone of his opposition to the peculiar institution under its seductive influence. A social insult, perhaps, more than any other, was bitterly resented and summarily punished.
To attain a high degree of social culture and refinement is not unlike learning a trade, or one of the fine arts. It is an art, if not the art of arts, which requires study and practice; as much so as to become a first-class tradesman or artist of any kind. One has to pass the trying ordeal of social gymnastics. The beauty of social elegance is like the "beauty of holiness." It attracts the admiration of most, excites the envy of many, the jealousy and hate of the mean, and is a ruling power in every department of Church and State, and of society. This was the strong secret agency in the hands of the South—the "suaviter in modo" that gave them leading sway so long in Congress, and with the Government.
There is this difference, however, in the comparison between the "beauty of holiness" and that of social perfection—the one must be real, the other may have but the semblance of reality, being so much of an art, while the other is the very essence of character. In order to great social refinement one needs ample time or leisure to cultivate the art. And who in America have been so much favored in the past with leisure as the people of the South?
In elegance and ease of personal manners perhaps no man in America excelled Henry Clay. His very style of taking snuff, and handling his snuff-box, is said to have been so elegant that, though inimitable, yet his friends and admirers, in and out of Congress, who indulged the nasal habit attempted to copy him.
The late Rt. Rev. General Polk, of the Confederate Army, and Bishop of the Episcopal Church, is said to have been scarcely equaled in pleasant manners. He made it a specialty of his personal improvement until he had become something wonderful in social power. He it was that, after having occupied Columbus, Kentucky, with his troops, went on board a Federal gun-boat at Island Number Ten, by invitation of the commander, to talk over some war question, and during the interview was invited to a social glass of wine. The Federal officer led off in a toast: "To the name of George Washington, the Father of his Country." General Polk gracefully acknowledged the compliment, and then holding up his glass said: "George Washington, the first rebel." Perhaps no finer retort can be found in the history of the late war, or in the English language, as to that matter; so elegant, so devoid of grossness, or of anything that could give possible offense to a genteel mind.
We beg the reader not to take the impression of supercilious excess in the polite manners of the Southern people, or of anything bordering on affectation, for this would be great injustice to them. There was too much whole-souled magnanimity and hospitality about them for that. The play of their manners was free from the prescriptive rules and ceremony which frequently produce in one's breast an agony of anxiety, and yet it was courtly and dignified, without obsequious flattery or littleness.