Littell's Living Age/Volume 131/Issue 1691/American "Watering-Place" Acquaintance
AMERICAN "WATERING-PLACE' ACQUAINTANCE.
A striking peculiarity of life at Cape May and Long Branch — and these places may be taken as illustrations of nearly all American resorts except Newport — is the general absence of even those slight distinctions which mark the various circles of society in the home cities of this country. This to a stranger is one of the most curious phases of summer life in America, and it cannot be understood by the application of any rules known to the society of England or the Continent. It is made possible by a single unwritten law of the American social code, which is universally recognized, and the authority of which is rarefy, if ever questioned. An acquaintance formed at a watering-place involves no obligation of any kind after the end of the season. A lady may dance with a new acquaintance every evening for six weeks at Long Branch, and a slight passing bow in the street is all that the most stringent etiquette requires of her in New York or Philadelphia during the following winter. Even this is given more from that kindness on which all courtesy is based than because it is demanded by etiquette; and a gentleman is expected, like the ballroom acquaintance of a single evening in England, to await his recognition from the lady. This rule is so well established here that even such people as would like to disobey it and take advantage of an acquaintance formed at a summer resort are entirely overruled, and seem to be perfectly harmless. Under this law of the Medes and Persians — for such it has become — the most careful father or mother sees no danger in the formation of "promiscuous" acquaintances during the summer, so far as mere social entanglements are concerned. The only serious danger is of the kind which the otherwise harmless "detrimental" introduces into English society. A daughter may find herself interested in a young man of pleasing address and unexceptionable manners, whose character and resources are such that he would be anything but a desirable son-in-law. By the word "resources" is meant, in this connection and in this country, his ability to work successfully in business or a profession rather than the present possession of property. This danger, however, is one which is cheerfully and rather recklessly encountered. American parents seem indifferent, as a general rule, to the ancestral antecedents of their sons' or their daughters' future companions, and they are singularly ready to run grave risks, to say the least, as to their personal qualifications. There is little restriction, therefore, in the formation of new acquaintances at the summer resorts, and nearly any young gentleman of good manners appearing at one of them is taken up and utilized for the temporary uses of the dance and flirtation. In ninety-nine cases in a hundred he is laid aside again at the end of the season with quite as little ceremony. This process is constantly going on at all the seaside and mountain resorts. A stranger would hardly notice it at such crowded centres as Cape May and Long Branch. He would find many secluded circles, too, among the throngs at these places in which very "strict" ideas prevail. But these are mere eddies in the general current of American society. They represent no important class, and may be regarded as individuals only. At either of these resorts the stranger sees the result; he sees a great conglomerate social mass; but he would be confused if he attempted to learn how people have become acquainted with each other who had never met before; how the most intimate social relations have come to exist among utter strangers of the previous week. Let him go to the Delaware Water Gap, or Spring Lake, or Brynmaur, or any of the minor resorts within equally easy reach of Philadelphia, and he will understand the process in a day. He will see a young man arrive, for instance, at a small hotel in the afternoon, well dressed and of good manners. The new visitor will smoke a cigar, offer another gentleman a light, exchange a few words, drop into a chat — play a game of billiards, perhaps. There is dancing-music in the drawing-room during the evening. There are two, perhaps three, ladies for every gentleman. Sets are to be formed for a quadrille. The ladies' curiosity has already been piqued as to who the young stranger is, and what he is like. His cigar-acquaintance approaches him: "Dance? — good. By the way, what did you say your name was? Oh, yes; I'll introduce you. Mr. ——, Miss ——." Where is papa? the English reader naturally asks; he is talking politics or business with a friend of two hours' standing on the piazza, and will probably go to bed at ten o'clock without disturbing the rest of the family. And mamma? She is sitting in a corner of the drawing-room chatting with another matron. It may or may not occur to her that she has never before seen the gentleman her daughter is dancing with. In any event, the evening is supposed to count only for itself, and the partner of the dance is a temporary convenience, having no necessary connection with any future social relations. As to the young man himself, he becomes one of the party from that moment, and is depended upon by the young ladies as an attendant in the drawing-room, on pleasure excursions, and at other times. By similar easy processes the acquaintances of families are brought about. A few words between the fathers or between the wives, a look and a smile between the daughters, and friendships warm enough for the purposes of summer society are formed at once. Personal congeniality is the only consideration among the ladies; politics and business are enough to interest the gentlemen in each other. All that we have thus seen in a small hotel goes on continually at Long Branch and Cape May, though the simple original processes are not so readily observed. The one thing that makes them possible, as I have said, is the universally recognized law, that "watering-place acquaintances" do not "count" after the season is over, except when both sides desire them to be permanent.
It is on account of this peculiar freedom of social intercourse, this temporary throwing off of restraints considered imperative at other seasons, that an American summer resort may be considered one of the pleasantest places in the world for the casual tourist. The way is even more open, if possible, to an English visitor than an American, the native ladies and gentlemen feeling a certain responsibility for the extension of hospitality; nor can any number of valuable letters take the place of the universal welcome — pro tem — extended to the stranger. One young Englishman of my acquaintance, whose face and manners are in themselves a passport, surprised me the other evening at a summer hotel where we were remaining but a single day. We had arrived about two hours before, and were watching a few ladies and gentlemen who were dancing and chatting in the drawing-room. My companion left my side, addressed one of the ladies pleasantly but respectfully, seemed to enter into a conversation, and presently became her partner in a quadrille. When we afterwards met I asked him how he had managed to walk so quietly over the few impediments which even I had always found. "Oh," he answered, "I told her I was English and a great way from home, and had no acquaintances here — and she took me up in a matronly sort of way, as if she felt it her duty to make me as comfortable as possible. I often do that in America, you know, at a summer resort." This, of course, is an extreme case: it implies tact and a very respectful manner on the part of the gentleman; and it could only happen, among people that can be called members of good society here, at a small place where the dangers of imposition by adventurers could never occur to the mind, as at Cape May or Long Branch. While, however, the proceeding is more direct than an American gentleman could safely venture upon, and the lady's approval depends on a good-natured recognition of a stranger's position, it involves no social principle which is not recognized here in the summer season. Except among that "strict" few, representing no general class, to whom I have already referred, the ladies most likely to resent such a direct self-presentation on the part of a polite foreign gentleman belong to a lower rather than an upper order of American society — to that class who feel obliged to follow the "rules" of etiquette, without trusting themselves to make their own exceptions as circumstances may suggest. B. H.