You will perceive, then, that what some American people consider a gentleman and what its most exclusive society accepts for one, comprise two entirely different personages. I found this emphasized especially in the old society of Washington, which takes its traditions from Washington's time or even the pre-Revolutionary period. For such society a self-made man was impossible. Such are the remarkable, indeed astounding, ramifications of the social system of a people who cry to heaven of their democracy. "Americans are all equal—this is one of the gems in our diadem." This epigram I heard drop from the lips of a senator who was the recognized aristocrat of the chamber; yet a man of peculiar social reserve, who would have nothing to do with the other "equals." In a word, all the talk of equality is an absurd figure of speech. America is at heart as much an aristocracy as England, and the social divisions are much the same under the surface.
You will understand that social rules and customs are all laid down and exacted by women and from women. From them I obtained all my information. No American gentleman would talk (to me at least) on the subject. Ask one of them if there is an American aristocracy, and he will pass over the question in an engaging manner, and tell you that his government is based on the principle of perfect equality—one of the most transparent farces to be found in this interesting country. I have outlined to you what I conceived to be the best society in each city, and in the various sections of the country. In morality and probity I believe them to stand very high; lapses there may be, but the general tone is good. The women are charming and refined; the men chivalrous, brave, well-poised, and highly educated. Unfortunately, the Americans who compose this "set" are numerically weak. They are not represented to the extent of being a dominating body, and oddly enough, the common people, the shopkeepers, the people in the retail trades, do not understand them as leaders from the fact that they are so completely aloof that they never meet them. A sort of inner "holy of holies" is the real aristocracy of America. What goes for society among the people, the mob, and the press is the set (and a set means a faction, a clique) known as the Four Hundred, so named because it was supposed to represent the "blue blood" of New York ten years ago in its perfection. This Four Hundred has its prototype in all cities, and in some cities is known as the "fast set." In New York it is made up often of the descendants of old families, the heads of whom in many instances were retail traders within one hundred and fifty years ago; but the modern wealthy representatives endeavor to forget this or skip over it. It is, however, constantly kept alive by what is termed the "yellow press," which delights in picturing the ancestor of one family as a pedler and an itinerant trader, and the head of another family as a vegetable vender, and so on, literally venting its spleen upon them.
In my studies in American sociology I asked many questions, and obtained the most piquant replies from women. One lady, a leader in New York in what I have termed the exclusive set, informed me with a laugh that the ancestor of a well-known family of to-day, one which cuts a commanding figure in society, was an ordinary laborer in the employ of her grandfather. "Yet you receive them?" I suggested. The reply was a shrug of charming shoulders, which, translated, meant that great wealth had here enabled them to "bore" into the exclusive circle. I found that even among these people, the crême de la crême in the eyes of the people, there were inner circles, and these were not on intimate terms with the others. Here I met a member of the Washington and Lee family, a descendant of Bishop Provoost, the first Episcopal bishop of New York, and friend of Washington and Hamilton. This latter family is notable for an ancestry running back to the massacre of St. Bartholomew and even beyond. I astonished its charming descendant, who very delicately informed me that she knew her ancestry as far back as 1200 A. D., when I told her that I had my "family tree," as they call it, without a break for thirty-two hundred years. I am confident she did not believe me, but her "Indeed!" was delightful. In fact, I assure you I have lost my heart to these American women. I met representatives of the Adams, Dana, Madison, Lee, and other families identified with American history in a most honorable way.
The continuity of the Four Hundred idea as a logical system was broken by the quality of some of its members. Compared to the society I have previously mentioned it was as chaff. There was a total lack of intellectuality. Degeneracy marked some of their acts; divorce blackened their records, and shameless affairs marked them. In this "set," and particularly its imitators throughout the United States, the divorce rate is appalling. Men leave their wives and obtain a divorce for no other reason than that a woman falls in love with another woman's husband. On a yacht we will say there is some scandal. A divorce ensues, and afterward the parties are remarried. Or we will say a wife succumbs to the blandishments of another man. The conjugal arrangements are rearranged, so that, as a very merry New York club man told me, "It is difficult to tell where you are at." In a word, the morale of the men of this set is low, their standard high, but not always lived up to. I believe that I am not doing the American of the middle class wrong and the ultra-fashionable class an injustice in saying that it is as a class immoral.
Americans make great parade of their churches. Spires rise like the pikes of an army in every town, yet the morality of the men is low. There are in this land 600,000 prostitutes—ruined women. But this is not due entirely to the Four Hundred, whose irregularities appear to be confined to inroads upon their own set. Nearly all these men are club men; two-thirds are in business as brokers, bankers, or professional men; and there is a large percentage of men of leisure and vast wealth. They affect English methods, and are, as a rule, not highly intelligent, but blasé, often effeminate, an interesting spectacle to the student, showing that the downfall of the American Republic would come sooner than that of Rome if the "fast set" were a dominating force, which it is not.
In the great middle class of the American men I find much to admire; half educated, despite their boasted school system, they put up, to quote one of them, "a splendid bluff" of respectability and morality, yet their statistics give the lie to it. Their divorces are phenomenal, and they are obtained on the slightest cause. If a man or woman becomes weary of the other they are divorced on the ground of incompatibility of temper.
A lady, a descendant of one of the oldest families, desired to marry her friend's husband. He charged his wife with various vague acts, one of which, according to the press, was that she did not wear "corsets"—a sort of steel frame which the American women wear to compress the waist. This was not accepted by the learned judge, and the wife then left her husband and went away on a six or eight months' visit. This enabled the husband to put in a claim of desertion, and the decree of divorce was granted. A quicker method is to pretend to throw the breakfast dishes at your wife, who makes a charge of "extreme incompatibility," and a divorce is at once obtained. Certain Territories bank on their divorce laws, and the mismated have but to go there and live a few months to obtain a separation on almost any claim. Many of the most distinguished statesmen have been charged with certain moral lapses in the heat of political fights, which, in almost every instance, are ignored by the victims, their silence being significant to some, illogical to others; yet the fact remains that the press goes to the greatest extremes. No family secret is considered sacred to the American politician in the heat of a campaign; to win, he would sacrifice the husband, father, mother, and children of his enemy. So remarkable is the rage for divorce that many of the great religious denominations have taken up arms against it. Catholics forbid it. Episcopalians resent it by ostracism if the cause is trivial, and a "separation" is denounced in the pulpit.