Part 10 (1/2)

CHAPTER XIII

_A Post-Knickerbocker Petronius_

A Post-Knickerbocker Petronius--The Early Life of Mr. Ward McAllister--A Discovery of Europe--A Glimpse of British High Life--The Judgment of a Diplomat--The South and Newport--Organizing New York Society--The ”Four Hundred”--Maxims of a Master and Maitre d'Hotel.

He does not reign in Russia cold, Nor yet in far Cathay, But o'er this town he's come to hold An undisputed sway.

When in their might the ladies rose, ”To put the Despot down,”

As blandly as Ah Sin, he goes His way without a frown.

Alas! though he's but one alone, He's one too many still-- He's fought the fight, he's held his own, And to the end he will.

--_From a Lady after the Ball of February 25, 1884._

Mrs. Burton Harrison, in ”Recollections, Grave and Gay,” told of a visit made in 1892 as one of a party of invited guests travelling by special train to the newly built Four Seasons Hotel at c.u.mberland Gap, in Tennessee, where the directors of a new land company and health-resort scheme had arranged a week of sports and entertainments. About forty congenial persons from New York and Was.h.i.+ngton made the trip, the mountaineers and their families along the route a.s.sembling at stations to see the notabilities among them. The chief attraction, Mrs. Harrison recorded, seemed to be Ward McAllister, who had been expected, but did not go. At one station, James Brown Potter, engaged in taking a const.i.tutional to remove train stiffness, was pointed out by another of the party to a group of staring natives as the famous arbiter of New York fas.h.i.+on.

”I want to know!” said a gaunt mountain horseman. ”Wal, I've rid fifteen miles a-purpus to see that dude McAllister, and I don't begrutch it, not a mite.”

All over the land there were yokels and the spouses of yokels and even the children of yokels, moved by a like interest and curiosity; while rural visitors to New York, and also New Yorkers born for that matter--if such a person as a born New Yorker actually existed--craned their necks from the tops of the Fifth Avenue buses in the hope of catching a glimpse of the great man, who, for a brief, flitting moment was an inst.i.tution of as much importance as the Obelisk or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But so far as the great world beyond the Weehawken Hills went, Ward McAllister's was an ephemeral glory. It was a clear case of anachronism. He was born one hundred years too late, or two hundred years, or two thousand. His was the soul of the Roman Petronius, or of one of the Corinthian eccentrics, who strutted in St. James's Park or past Carlton House in the early days of the Regency, and gave colour to that otherwise grim England that was grappling for life with the Corsican; or of ”King” Nash of Bath. It was the ”King,” perhaps, that he suggested most of all. But in the Carlton House circle he might have out-Brummelled Brummel, and supplanted that famous Beau as the object of the fat Prince's attentions and ingrat.i.tude. Indeed there was a flavour of Brummel's biting insolence in some of the sayings that were attributed to the New Yorker. For example, there was a well-known literary woman of New York, who had in some way incurred the arbiter's august disapproval.

”She write stories of New York society!” he said. ”Why, I have seen her myself, buying her Madeira at Park & Tilford's in a demijohn.”

When Thackeray was contemplating writing ”The Virginians,” he desired information about the personality of Was.h.i.+ngton, and applied to the American historian Kennedy. Kennedy began to impart his knowledge in the manner that might have been expected from a historian when the Englishman interrupted rather testily, ”No, no. That's not what I want.

Tell me, was he a fussy old gentleman in a wig, who spilled snuff down the front of his coat?” It was in some such spirit that I applied to that old friend of the fine Italian manner, and the profound personal and inherited knowledge of the ways and the men and women of New York. I did not, I explained, wish to be unkind, but the memory of that latter-day Petronius was one of the most mirth-provoking memories of my boyhood. Was he fair game for a chapter of a flippant nature? But why not? was the retort. He himself would have adored it.

Fame came to him through the newspaper reporter. It was a smaller New York, a more limited Fifth Avenue in those days, and Mrs. Astor ruled its society without any one to question her sovereignty. She was about to give a great ball, and Ward McAllister, as the self-appointed and generally accepted secretary of society, was in charge of the list of invitations.

To the reporter sent to interview him Mr. McAllister explained that, owing to problems of s.p.a.ce, only four hundred cards were to be sent out, commenting: ”After all, there are only four hundred persons in New York who count in a social way.”

”And who are those four hundred persons?” asked the quick-witted reporter.

On that point Mr. McAllister was more reticent. But the reporter obtained the list of those who were to be invited to the ball, and the names were printed as those who const.i.tuted New York's ”Four Hundred.”

”Society,” said my friend sagely, ”needs to be managed just as a circus is managed. Of good family, with an independent income large enough to make him free from the necessity of work, and small enough to keep him from the time-using diversions of extravagance, with a knowledge of wines, and a bent for selecting the proper kind of b.u.t.tons for the coat in which to attend a c.o.c.k-fight, he was the man for his circle and age.

A Brummel? Hardly that. There was nothing of the ill-starred Beau in his appearance. His influence was good, as Brummel's was occasionally good.

You recall the saying of the d.u.c.h.ess of York to the effect that it was Brummel's influence which more or less reformed the manners of the smart young men who were notorious for their excesses, their self-a.s.sertiveness, their want of courtesy. He was more akin to the ill-favoured Richard Nash, whose wise autocracy helped so much in the redeeming of the city of Bath.”

After all, whether it was part pose, or whether the man was quite sincere in his professed belief in the profound importance of what most of the world is inclined to regard as trivialities, he was always consistent. As a youth he went to live in the house of a relative, in Tenth Street, New York, when that neighbourhood retained a flavour of aristocracy. A legacy of one thousand dollars fell to him. It was his first legacy. A cannier soul would have made the money go a long way. He spent it all for the costume that he was to wear at the fancy dress ball that was to be given by Mrs. John C. Stevens at her residence in College Place. ”I flattered myself that it was the handsomest and richest costume at the ball.” A little later, in 1850, he went to San Francisco, to join his father in the practice of law. It was in the first days of the gold rush, when the city was in the making, and fabulous prices were paid for the commodities of life. In the make-up of a man there had to be a certain amount of stern stuff if he was to survive in that struggle for existence. Young McAllister prospered, and in the course of time built himself a house. ”My furniture,” he recorded, ”just from Paris, was acajou and white and blue horse-hair. My bed quilt cost me $250. It was a lovely Chinese floss silk shawl.” His talents as a giver of dinners were in evidence at that early age, and his father made use of them in connection with the law business. There was a French _chef_, at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year. High prices and scarcity served only as spurs to the young Petronius.

”Such dinners as I gave I have never seen surpa.s.sed anywhere,” he complacently recorded in later years. Some one spoke to the elder McAllister of the admirable manner in which his son kept house. ”Yes,”

was the sapient retort. ”He keeps everything but the Ten Commandments.”

Two years of California, and then he returned East. At that period of his life the idea of the Diplomatic Service as a career appealed to him.