Skip to Content
Indiana University

Search Options




View Options

[Hide Table of Contents]
Pilgrims of fashion. Cornwallis, Kinahan, (1839–1917).
Requires cookie*[Print]
no previous
next
page: (Cover) [View Page (Cover) ]
PILGRIMS OF FASHION.
page: (TitlePage) [View Page (TitlePage) ]

PILGRIMS OF FASHION. A novel.

BY

KINAHAN CORNWALLIS.

NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1862.
page: iii[View Page iii]

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by KINAHAN CORNWALLIS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

TO
CHARLES READE, ESQ., LL.D.,
LONDON
Whose Friendship I Value,
AND WHOSE GENIUS I ADMIRE,
ALL THAT IS MOST WORTHY IN THIS VOLUME
I RESPECTFULLY DEDICATE.

THE AUTHOR.

page: iv-v[View Page iv-v]
  • "What from this barren being do we reap.
  • Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
  • Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
  • And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale,
  • Opinion, an Omnipotence, whose veil
  • Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
  • And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale,
  • Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
  • And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light."
  • "Alas! our young affections run to waste,
  • Or water but the desert, whence arise
  • But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
  • Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes;
  • Flowers, whose wild odours breathe but agonies.
  • "Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, for here
  • There is such matter for all feeling."

—Childe Harold.

page: vi-vii[View Page vi-vii]

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

IT is true that in the concluding chapters of this history the scene is laid in the United States, and the fortunes of two of the characters lead them to take an active part in the war for maintaining the integrity of this great and, I may add, still glorious republic; the observations I am about to make, however, although relating to America, do not particularly apply to the personages in question, but are introduced quite irrespectively of the work itself; and at a time like the present, when the influences of this revolution upon society are being more or less discussed by all, I see no reason why I should not offer some reflections on the subject, even through the medium of this my novel, notwithstanding that in so doing I perhaps risk a repetition of what I have written in another form elsewhere.

If war be a destroyer, it is also a purifier. It has its uses as well as its evils. No great war ever took place without exerting an influence upon the society of the country in or by which it was waged; and where the nation has been rich and prosperous, the effect has been always of a salutary character. It is the tendency of nations, and especially of young nations, at peace and in the enjoyment of great commercial and territorial wealth, to relapse into extravagance and effeminacy. Native pleasures pall so far upon the palate accustomed to the gratification of every desire, that exotic luxuries alone suffice to satisfy that morbid craving which at length page: viii-ix[View Page viii-ix] becomes a passion. We, the people of the United States, have cultivated that foreign taste to an extent that, till recently, threatened the extinction of every vestige of our national character. We not only did this, but entered into vulgar rivalry with our neighbors in matters which were purely questions of taste and income. If we had twenty thousand a year we took a mansion in the Fifth Avenue, and kept carriages and gave dinners in a style which we were determined should not be surpassed by anybody with double that income. Our wives and daughters—the first to set and the last to withhold the example—would give an impetus to our own impulse towards reckless expenditure, and convert themselves into walking monuments of our own folly. We did not see it, however, and rather liked the dash and magnificence which placed us beyond doubt within the envied limits of the upper ten. French silks—the more costly the better; Brazilian diamonds—the purer the water the greater their brilliancy; Cashmere shawls—the more heavily embroidered the more showy and Oriental; Parisian jewelry—the more modern the more expensive. These were the things, with countless others of similar character and price, that our mothers and sisters, our wives and daughters, insisted upon having ad libitum, and still they complained of having nothing to wear. We gave parties, worthy, as we thought, of the English nobility; we were continually adding to our blood stock and wine stock, and trying, but vainly, to attain the acme of every thing first class; we thought only millionaires good enough for our daughters, and entertained some idea of finding titles for them in Washington or Europe; and so long as we found the money to pay for all these vanities we never asked ourselves, how long will this state of things last?

If we had only ten thousand a year, we were determined not to be outdone by our friends with twenty, and, like them, furnished a mansion in Fifth Avenue and kept our carriage. It is true we found it difficult to make both ends meet at the end of the year, and were driven pretty hard to meet our bills all the year round; but what was that to the satisfaction of appearing twice as rich as we were? We cut a dash at the United States at Saratoga, and always made a point of appearing at Newport immediately afterwards. We had as showy a livery as any one on the avenue, and managed to give a ball and receptions every winter, which, we flattered ourselves, in point of taste and elegance, completely eclipsed our neighbors over the way.

If we had only five thousand a year, we did not like to see our style of living surpassed by people that we thought worth no more than ourselves. We condemned their vulgar extravagance a little, and with an ostentatious show of superior taste took a small mansion in Madison Avenue, where we prided ourselves rather upon being considered solid than fashionable, although we never refused an invitation to a fashionable ball, nor yet neglected to visit as many fashionable people as were included within the range of our acquaintance. We were able, small as our means were, to keep a brougham and give one or two parties during the season. We had our crest, which we discovered at a shop in Broadway, painted on the brougham, and we prided ourselves on the aristocratic neatness of the silver band round the coachman's hat, and the dark blue livery with silver buttons. We got into debt considerably towards the end, like many others, and had to stop payment; but, fortunately, we had been provident enough in the high tide of our prosperity to buy the house and furniture we lived in and assign it to our better half, so we were not disturbed in our comfortable abode during this financial crisis.

This is the way in which the ambitious in our American Vanity Fair used to mar their own happiness and pave the way to their own ruin by foolish social rivalry. Verily we were all snobs. We were aiming to be something more than ourselves, and what good has it page: x-xi[View Page x-xi] all done us? Or, rather, what harm has it not done us? Why should we have bowed our heads to the graven image? Why have we made money the summum bonum of existence, the ultima thule of human effort? Our standard of taste has been false, and we ought to feel abashed at our own worship of mammon and our own hollow pretensions. We aped the lion and still remained the monkey. We almost lost sight of the manly and womanly attributes of our nature, and strove to be as artificial as possible. We appeared to think foreigners better than ourselves, foreign travel better than American travel, and, although democrats, were avowed admirers of titles of nobility. We respected ourselves and our own individuality, too little, and the opinions of others too much. Rather than appear poor, if we really were so, we closed the fronts of our houses during the summer, and took up our residence in the back part, and submitted to all the privations of a long imprisonment there, rather than have people suppose we were not out of town. Who can laugh loud enough at any thing so ridiculous?

The war has changed the spirit of our dream of fashion, and we are now avowed economists. Already the good work of regeneration has spread far and wide over the land. There is little or no market here for French silks and expensive jewelry now. The importations have therefore all but ceased, and every article of foreign luxury is equally unsaleable. This is a good sign—a sign that the strong wine of our native character is no longer weakened into a wretched mixture more worthy of the name of eau sucre than any other. When silks are laid aside, cottons and such like useful fabrics will take their place. We shall, therefore, see ladies that were formerly masses of millinery, set off with fine gold and precious stones, dressed in becoming gingham, and looking quite as graceful and much more sensible for the change. We shall see brown stone fronts in fashionable thoroughfares no longer looked upon as necessary to the respectability of people already respectable. We shall adapt ourselves to our reduced incomes with patriotic contentment, and profit by the lesson we have received. Wealth will be no longer the criterion of what a man is worth. There will be a great social levelling of the classes, and a far greater equality of wealth. Excellence will rise to its proper position in the social scale, and vicious and perverted tastes will be swept away. All this will be better for the country and the generation, and its good effects will be carried down on the waves of an enlightened posterity. Such are the uses of adversity and the war.

We can hardly class the advent of the shoddy aristocracy, however, among the social uses of the war. It is simply one of its social results, and by no means the one most to be desired. It is neither as reputable, nor as satisfactory, to be included in the shoddy aristocracy as in that of cotton or codfish; for, whereas, admission within the sacred portals of the latter might have been gained by sharp, yet honest, trading, the former is obviously composed of men whose patriotism was not strong enough to prevent their enriching themselves at the expense of their country. We will not go so far as to say they cheated the Government, but they were certainly so far skillful in their tactics, that they succeeded in getting moneys out of the National Treasury that were not altogether for value delivered. In other words, there was a heavy weight of shoddy substituted for the genuine article, in the fulfillment of many of their contracts. But the shoddy aristocrats in nowise feel remorse or delicacy on this account. They have the bird in the hand, and possession with them is more than nine points of the moral law. Therefore, they make their debut in society with a happy consciousness that they are as good as any of those who derive their aristocracy from Knickerbocker connections, or cotton, or codfish, and, probably, as the Irishman remarked, a great deal better. They have, in the course of life, become aware that birds page: xii-xiii[View Page xii-xiii] are, for the most part, judged by their feathers, and taking advantage of this weak spot in the human mind, they assume the plumage of first class birds of society. They try to dress in the same way, regardless of expense; to live in the same kind of houses, regardless of high rents; to drive in the same style of carriages, drawn by the same sort of horses, and driven by the same sort of liveried coachmen, regardless of being considered bad imitators; and they otherwise act in a manner which shows that they are quite regardless of being considered parvenus, and of making themselves vulgar and ridiculous. But it is not the United States alone that is, or has been, honored with a shoddy aristocracy. If we look to England, France, Russia, Austria, to all the great military countries, we find men who, having made large fortunes by Government contracts, have suddenly burst, comet-like, upon the fashionable world with an ostentatious splendor which made the sham appear to the uninitiated even more lustrous than the real. Republics are, therefore, not alone in the manufacture of this Brummagum nobility. But there is more yearning after aristocracy, and a more intense desire felt to be aristocratic in this country, than in any other in the world. It is, consequently, not surprising that people here, after experiencing a pecuniary windfall, should resolutely set themselves to work for the purpose of outshining their neighbors, and creating a sensation by conspicuously extravagant living, through which they fondly hope to pass within the invisible boundary line inclosing that mysterious and envied number—the Upper Ten Thousand. Hence this new furniture, these new carriages, these new clothes. The flounders all want to get into the same globe with the gold-fish. For this they are perhaps more deserving of pity than reproach. Their efforts to be grand are none the less ludicrous for being serious; and what can we do but laugh at these social contortions for which we are indebted to shoddy and the war? We would much rather see republican simplicity, but we must put up with whatever comes; and there may come a time when some other mushroom aristocracy will revive old fashions in a style which will make a sword and cocked hat, shoe buckles and hair powder, necessary to our respectability. We would pray, however, that it may not occur to this generation.

For the shoddy aristocracy we predict only a short reign. It will pass away as it has sprung up, like a gourd, and a better social result of the war will take its place. We shall have improved tastes, improved manners, improved minds. The war will inaugurate a new era in our national history, and in native literature and art. The aristocracy of nature, intellect, and true gentility, will be substituted for the ephemeral ones of trade. We shall see Merit rise, and Mammon descend, to their proper positions, and shall require something more than money and vulgarity to make us the lions of the day.

The war will obviously not be without its uses in permanently elevating the tone of American society. Its influence will not alone be felt in the common relations of every-day life, but will take a subtle hold of the public mind, and find its way into every branch of politics, and every department of the public service. It will create a power which will act as a salutary counterpoise to some of the evils of popular suffrage, and in all respects we shall find ourselves the better for the change. As with the nations of Europe, the effect of a large portion of the upper strata of our male population being in the army, and accustomed to obedience and politeness to superior officers, will be to make us more courteous and polite as a people. The habit of courtliness will be one of the conventional marks which society will imprint upon itself, and to this all will of necessity aspire. This will lead, as well as follow, a corresponding improvement in the moral tone of society, and we shall be less disposed to be ruled by the canaille than page: xiv-xv (Table of Contents) [View Page xiv-xv (Table of Contents) ] formerly, when it was allowed that the best man to represent us was the one who could secure the most votes at a popular election, regardless of every thing else. The uses of the war will be to strengthen our Government, and lead to the selection of better representatives than we have had hitherto; and, while making us a military people, with a military spirit, advance us immeasurably in the refining arts of civilization; and with the prospects of such results of the war as these before us, we can safely bear the temporary infliction of even a shoddy aristocracy.

With respect to the war itself I need say but little. Much as the philanthropist, and every lover of liberty, may deplore it, there now remains for the people of the great North but one course, and that is to carry it through to the end.

The blow aimed at the Union, by Southern conspirators, has fallen; but, as if struck with the boomerang, it has been made to recoil upon the striker with more than its original force. The Union has arisen in its strength and majesty to chastize and bring back the deserters; and, with law, and right, and might on its side, its final triumph is secure. It is simply a question of a few weeks or a few months as to the Union victory. With a population of twenty millions against eight millions, an army numbering hundreds of thousands of brave and loyal men, and inexhaustible wealth, and unbounded resources of every kind, against a bankrupt exchequer, and a ragged, unpaid soldiery; with a powerful navy against a miserable fleet of privateers, and with the knowledge that Justice stands arrayed on our side, it can not be otherwise than certain that the resistance of the South will not be for long, and that the Union flag, to a certainty, is destined to again wave over the ramparts at present included in the seceded States.

Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.

CONTENTS.

no previous
next