Littell's Living Age/Volume 131/Issue 1691/The American Summer and American Society
THE AMERICAN SUMMER AND AMERICAN SOCIETY.
English visitors in Philadelphia this summer have experienced the feelings and have had the general appearance during the past month of those unfortunate Polar bears one sees now and then in a zoological garden. While enjoying the gentle pleasures of a spring and summer upon the Thames last year, I was constantly surprised by complaints of unusual heat, with the thermometer at a mild 75° or 80°. It seemed to me that the complainants hardly appreciated the climatic blessings of Providence in their own country, and that a visit to America in July and August would be an excellent experience for them. Some Englishmen have had this experience in the present season, and none who have, I think, will ever complain of the heat in England again. Even a residence in a warm southern latitude does not prepare a person for the discomforts of what is called a "heated term" in this country. There are no forewarnings of these terms; their coming is so uncertain that no efficient means in the way of appliances or buildings are taken to provide for them. The climatic relations of the American people are exactly the obverse of those of the Italian people. In Italy every preparation is made for summer and no preparation for winter; in America all the resources of architectural and mechanical ingenuity are turned to account for protection against a long season of frost and snow. In Italy a "cold snap" finds every one shivering and with no means of keeping warm; in America people can simply resign themselves to misery during a heated term. With the exception of the naturalized Germans, who have established a few beer-gardens in every large city, the Americans have not learned as yet to enjoy themselves in the open air like the people of the Continent.
The Americans know of only one means of making the summer heat endurable. This is to leave their homes and live in cottages or hotels by the seaside and in mountain resorts. The number of these places runs well up among the hundreds before those are exhausted which have either a State or a national reputation. Add to these the quiet, out-of-the-way nooks which a few families here and there have discovered, and the places of summer resort may be fairly called "innumerable." The few which are more or less known in England — as Saratoga, Long Branch, or Newport — occupy no such relative position in this country as do the great watering-places of England and the Continent in Europe. So many others dispute their precedence, or at least attract attention and patronage away from them, that none of them enjoys anything approaching a monopoly nor concentrates so much of the national wealth and fashion as to make it imposing like Brighton, or finished and attractive like Wiesbaden. Newport, perhaps, is as charming a resort, and as magnificently built up, according to the number of its summer population, as any in the world; but it is simply a distant suburb of New York, Boston, and Providence. Aside from the old commercial town of about ten thousand inhabitants, almost as venerable in its appearance as if it were a neighbor of Coventry, Newport is merely a city of private villas, Saratoga, on the contrary, is entirely devoted to transient guests drawn there by the temptations of a short fashionable season and the special attractions of two "racing weeks." The guest of an hotel in Newport has a doubtful social position, except so far as he may have personal friends among the "cottagers." The latter take absolute precedence, and the occupants of private lodging-houses rank next. At Saratoga the few dwellers in private cottages have no recognized existence, except as they appear at the hotels or attract the attention of hotel guests. At none of the American watering-places are there those distinctions of classes according to the season of the year which are characteristic of Brighton and Scarborough in England. There is only one season at any of them, and all kinds of visitors go at the same time. It would puzzle an English visitor, indeed, to see any lines of demarcation between the social "classes" as they gather at these resorts. No one can do so except a skilled American. In a country like this, where social classes have scarcely any basis except personal taste — where two or more classes may claim precedence, with no one to decide between them and with no recognized standard on which to found a decision — where no settled traditions exist and there are no letters patent from the government — where the term "good society" means nothing in particular and everything in general — it requires a very learned eye to mark the distinctions which really do exist. An English lady recently insisted, in conversation with myself, that class-distinctions were very decided in American society. She was right. But it is nevertheless true that neither she nor any other stranger has the slightest tangible means of learning what the distinctions are or where they begin and end. When our comic writer, Nasby, wrote a letter to show the advantages of the Alaskan climate, during our negotiations with Russia, he remarked that the isothermal line went "corkscrewing" up among the parallels of latitude, and that strawberries flourished all the year round on one side of it and icebergs on the other. The corkscrew may be taken as a fair illustration of the boundaries which mark the various classes of American society. If this is true even when society is at home, in our cities, the truth is more noticeable when all the elements of our society mingle together at a summer resort. Except so far as he depends on his letters of introduction, an English gentleman visiting one of them cannot do better than be guided by his personal taste in his judgment of the people he meets. If he is himself a man of refinement he may be tolerably certain, following this rule, that the people he likes best and becomes best acquainted with belong to "good society" in this country. If he is not himself refined, he will select a very different kind of people, though he will feel quite as well satisfied, in the end, that he has been circulating among the best classes here. Those he meets, in fact, will constantly assure him to that effect. It is, or should be, a particular charm of American society that every foreigner, whomsoever he meets, feels confident that he has been in its highest circles.
A fact which is not generally known in England in connection with American society is this: whatever influence wealth, new or old, may have, culture is something which uniformly commands respect and a good position in all circles. It may be entirely overshadowed by the claims of wealth, through sheer force of superior numbers, in some places and among some classes; but it is everywhere recognized as a sufficient passport in itself to the highest social circle. This is quite as true of social life in a far-western city, where not one member of society in a hundred lays claim to a liberal education, as it is in the most exclusive circles of Boston, where culture claims an absolute monopoly — where it seems only to tolerate wealth, and to look with a complacently patronizing air upon "birth." On the other hand, there is no circle of American society in which many of its members do not owe their position to the possession of wealth. This must always be true of any society which is untrammelled by long-existing aristocratic traditions. The utmost exclusiveness to be found in Boston or Philadelphia, or among the "Knickerbocker" families of New York, yields to the power of wealth, where it is accompanied by a fair amount of good taste on the part of its possessors. Nor is it necessary that culture or any high degree of good taste should be possessed by the father and mother of a family. American society, however exclusive, is ever ready to assume that a man of wealth has struggled upward from a youth of scant advantages, and it is amply satisfied if he gives his children the opportunities of culture which he himself may have lacked. Men like this, in truth, are among the strongest supports of any American social circle, whatever or whoever its other members may be. A few practical hints, then, to an English gentleman coming to America might be given, as follows. Supposing him to be extending his acquaintance beyond the immediate limits of his personal letters, which can be done very readily at our summer resorts, if he meet people who have cultivation, but do not presume upon it or show too much evidence that they are conscious of possessing it, he may assume that they move in good circles, and he need not ask himself what profession or business the head of the family is engaged in. If he meet a family of which the younger members are truly refined — all marked assumption of refinement being barred — he need not trouble himself if the father be a plain or even rough business man. The mother will probably be a quiet-mannered and cultivated woman; if not the latter, she will be gentle and retiring, neither denying nor parading her lack of early advantages. Such a family, the visitor may feel almost certain, belongs to the "best circles" of its own neighborhood. The description will fit thousands of families in all parts of this country who hold unchallenged positions in the highest social ranks. Finally, if an English visitor fail to find any true refinement in a family, and nothing, at best, beyond a display of showy accomplishments, he need not deceive himself by any preconceived notions of the power of wealth in American society. Such a family does not move in the really good society here, and any opinions of American social life based upon the supposition that it does will be erroneous. However sensitive the people of a country may be to the criticisms of foreign visitors, it is the visitors themselves who are chiefly interested in the formation of correct views; and I give these simple hints for the benefit of those who must at best find American society, especially at its summer gathering-places, a very elaborate puzzle to comprehend. I would only suggest in addition that they remember that universal rule of all rules — every rule has its exceptions.
Whatever its future may be, and however grand a few of its hotels now are, Saratoga cannot, with all its reputation, be favorably compared with the equally celebrated resorts of Europe. One cause which has operated against it, and will continue to do so, is the tendency of all the great eastern cities to support summer resorts of their own, so to speak. Philadelphia, for instance, has built up, with the assistance of considerable national reputation which the place has lately acquired, the city of Cape May. This city is a conglomeration of huge wooden hotels, small boarding-houses, and private cottages, accommodating about twenty thousand visitors in all. Long Branch, about equally supported at present by Philadelphia and New York, though originally built up by New York, accommodates as many more. The Delaware Water Gap, a mountain resort, and four or five other well-known places in my mind, all within easy reach of this city, have room for from twelve to fifteen thousand. Atlantic City will take another fifteen thousand. All these places are quite as apt to be full as Saratoga. During the present season visitors to the Centennial are running to and fro between these resorts and Philadelphia. To the English visitor desirous of seeing something of American society, a trip to any of them is exceedingly interesting; quite as interesting, perhaps, as what he may find at the exhibition. The "season" is at its height in the early days of August, and it continues for about six weeks longer. B. H.