BOOKS OF THE DAY

The Saga of American Society (D. W. Brogan) A Stream of French Histories (j. M. Hone) ..

The Papacy and Progress (W. T. Wells) .. Mr. Churchill's Gallery (Orb o Williams) .. Afterthoughts on the U.S.S.R. (Goronwy Ikees) John Knox (Janet Adam Smith) .. .. .. Orientations (Sir Arnold Wilson, M.P.) .. 638 639 640 640 .. 641 64.2 642 A Great American Humorist (Walter Allen) ..

Travellers' Tales (George Ellidge) New Poetry (William Plomer) Father Brown on Chesterton (Kate O'Brien) ..

Fanny Keats (Edmund Blunden) The Guilty Party (SyIva Norman) Fiction (Forrest Reid) ..

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650 • • 65o

•• 654

AMERICA'S ARISTOCRACY

By D. W. BROGAN

ON his epoch-making visit to the United States in 1863, the future Edward VII caused shocked consternation in Phila-

delphia by asking "What is a Biddle ? " and the error of the Prince of Wales has had innumerable parallels in the reactions of other Europeans to the mystery of American "Society."

Novelists have put rich American families into quite impossible sections of American cities, and have shown a deplorable inability to distinguish between a descendant of a Signer of the Declaration of Independence (or of an early stockholder in the New York Central) on the one hand and some upstart multi-millionaire automobile or air-conditioning magnate on the other. With a generous hospitality, exclusive European society has welcomed Americans who were not received by the best circles in New York, not to speak of those higher spheres, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston. Across the

ocean tous les chats sont gris or, perhaps it would be more exact to say, toutes ks chattes sont dorees. As for the European

rank and file, they know well from the movies what American aristocrats are like. If elderly, they have lots of white hair and a frozen manner ; if middle-aged, they are stuffy; if they are young males, they are clubmen who marry the poor but lovely girl ; if girls, they are tamed by some honest fellow- countryman, Clark Gable for preference.

Mr. Wecter has made such ignorance unnecessary and indefensible. Here we have classifications of families, of fraternities, of country clubs, all with a wealth of detail and a candour that not Burke, not Debrett, not the Almanach de Gotha dare equal. And both the historical and contemporary low-down on the high life of the United States is given. Such a book could be useful and yet silly ; amusing and yet con- temptible. But Mr. Wecter is too careful a scholar, has too much humour and too serious and respectable an interest in his subject, to fall into the many traps laid before the would-be historian of this long ascent of the ladder of aristocracy. He is fully aware of the devastating researches of Professor Wertenbaker into the origins of the " F.F.V.'s " (the First Families of Virginia) ; and, though he takes a kinder view of the claims of Massachusetts families to the dignity of coat armour than does the current head of the greatest of Massa- chusetts dynasties, he realises that in New England, as in Virginia, it was extremely rare for anyone of really impressive rank to settle, and still rarer for him to stay.

But it is with the acquisition of great wealth in the nineteenth century that there comes the real chance for the chronicler who is a serious historian and yet is not too hostile to the idea of hereditary aristocracy. Mr. Wecter takes that chance ; here we have the rise of the Astors to a dominating position in New York society, a position based not merely on great wealth, but on suitable marriages to women with respectable pedigrees and vigour enough to impose their own view of their own importance on the highly self-conscious society of New York millionaires. We have the highly comic story of Ward McAllister, the brummagem Beau Nash who invented the "Four Hundred " ; the history of the successful arrival of the Vanderbilts and the repulse of the Goulds. We have, too, the story of the international marriage market. To the swapping of millions for coronets Mr. Wecter is almost as hostile as was Charles Dana Gibson in his early crusading days, so hostile, indeed, that he is a little indiscriminate in his way of lumping together mercenary and often short-lived marriages with others that seem to have been quite normal. After all, people do travel a good deal, and a peer might want to marry an American woman for honourable reaso Wisely, however, Mr. Wecter does not confine himself to New York, and we learn a great deal about the social barriers The Saga of American Society. A Record of Social Aspira- tion. 1607-1937. By Dixon Wecter. (Scribner. r8s.) of other cities. Chicago, if we can believe what we read here, seems to have been less successful than other metropolises in building really exclusive pens. Perhaps there is something in that brisk air that makes it hard to keep out the new- corners? But what has happened in Chicago is happening everywhere.

The best days of the old closed circles are over. Funda- mentally, social power in most American societies was based on wealth, not on wealth alone it is true, but on wealth as a sine qua non. But some of the wealthiest American families, like the Rockefellers and now the Fords, have almost ignored "Society." The newest millionaires may still move to Newport as of old, but there is no one person or group that can admit them within all pales. Then, as Mr. Wecter points out, the competition of the movies is strong. The romances that tear the heartstrings of the great American public are those of the stars, not the marriage of an heiress with the tenth transmitter of an overdraft. Mr. Wecter does, indeed, suggest that some of the society names are still better drawing cards than those provided by Hollywood for its darlings, but the instances given are not very convincing. The people he lists had other claims on the public attention than their exclusiveness ; usually their endearing habit of washing their dirty linen in public with the effect on the "folks that ride in jitneys" that Mr. Cole Porter has dwelt on. But in most cases who would hesitate to choose between waiting to see the marriage of Mr. Bronson Stuveysant Saltontail and the marriage of Mr. Robert Taylor ? No, as a distinguished Columbia professor made that disillusioned socialite, the Countess Almaviva, ask,

"Dove sono i bei momenti "

when to be called on by Mrs. Astor was the summit of human felicity ? And the elite realises this, for the "endorsing " of cigarettes, face creams and, to the joy of the ribald, beds, has another side to it than that stressed by Mr. Wecter. It does not only make the aloof figures of the self-chosen less aloof, it reveals the fact that they want to " sell " themselves as well as the product. In the modern advertisement it is difficult to say who is endorsing what ; the cigarette usually gets less space than the endorser who is anxious to tell the world that her friends like her, that she drinks her gin neat, is a convinced and expert toxophilist and has a book.

Mr. Wecter is convinced that a cultivated and public- spirited aristocracy is worth having, but he has no illusions about the proportion of the members of American society who qualify for either of the adjectives. There are many reasons why this is so ; many reflecting merely the absence in America of a soil that grows Russells or Broglies easily. There is the lack of the deferential attitude for one thing. American fox-hunting may be a far better sport than English hunting ; the foxes and hounds alike may be finer animals but where is the loyal tenantry ? Where the grumbling but really delighted farmers ? The real trouble is that American society has never developed any indigenous standards of its own except in small areas. It has been parasitic on Europe, especially on England, for its ideas as well as for its butlers. In his introduction Mr. Wecter talks of Proust. But Proust's heroes have no qualms. Clovis may have been like an American parvenu when he accepted the insignia of a Roman Consul from the Byzantine equivalent of the Court of Saint James's, but by the time of Gilbert the Bad the Guerznantes family had acquired a sense of security that has been achieved by only a tiny handful of American families—and those no: the leaders of society. America has been rich in Swanns, not to speak of Blochs, but she has been short of Charluses. So it is that in any faithful chronicle of American society, comedy must prevail.