But is there a word for it? And do they really matter, these old families? Is there a reason that, nowadays, no one snaps to attention when a Livingston—or a Pringle, or an Ortega—enters the room (except another Livingston, Pringle, or Ortega)? Most of their accomplishments, after all, are in the past, encapsulated in time, and so is most of their power, social, political, and economic. True, they are the families who invented America, who tamed the wilderness, irrigated the deserts, dammed the rivers, built the factories and mills, grew and harvested the wheat and corn, founded the colleges, museums, and hospitals, fought the wars, and prayed to a Christian Lord on Sunday. But are their jobs done now, and is their usefulness past? Are they nothing more than quaint anachronisms now, in danger of extinction? Though their names still decorate some old law firms—Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Lord, Day & Lord—are they anything more than that, a kind of polite bit of ornamentation?
Perhaps so, because these families continue to teach the unenforceable standards that all upwardly mobile Americans, except the outlaws, strive to live by. It has often been said that America has an aristocracy of wealth. But these old families are a reminder that, in America, money alone won’t do it. To money must be added a touch of—well, class.
“Class” is not a word America’s old aristocracy likes to use much. It prefers, instead, to speak of breeding, but the concepts are the same. Breeding, of course, has a genetic ring to it, and most of the old families do feel that their good breeding is in their genes. But breeding can also be taught, and most Americans are eager to learn it, and there is a whole industry out there to teach it. Breeding was what Ivy Lee tried to teach his robber baron clients, taking his cues from the aristocratic Old Guard. Today’s public relations men and women offer the same counsel. “Get involved with a charity,” the P.R. man advises the ambitious newcomer to New York. “Hire a good decorator.” “It is all right to mix your woods,” counsels the decorator. “You don’t want everything to look as though it came from the same store.” “It is all right to mix your china patterns and silver settings,” says the consultant at Tiffany’s. “You don’t want your table to look pretentious. There’s nothing wrong with paper napkins.” “Let me help you get rid of that Brooklyn accent,” suggests the elocution coach. The quest for good breeding goes on at every social level, a kind of national yearning, visible in the syndicated columns of Dear Abby and Miss Manners. What is the right way of handling this thing and that? America wants to know.
Breeding is more, though, than just manners and morals. It is essentially a matter of achieving self-esteem, and self-esteem is a commodity the Old Guard has a wealth of. It comes with the name, like the Jay nose, passed from generation to generation. It serves as a kind of ballast, and even the most eccentric members of the old families had it, a feeling that their moorings were fast, that they could not go too far adrift, that they were anchored, rooted, in the past. With their self-esteem has gone a commitment to certain values and a belief in the great nouns: loyalty, honesty, dignity, duty, work, service, patriotism, courage, God, guts, and the golden rule.
These, of course, might be seen as old-fashioned values, and the Old Guard today are essentially old-fashioned people—not chic, or trendy, or with it. Their hairstyles don’t change much, nor do their modes of dress, and they remain devoted to their antiques, portraits, and family silver. Their ancestors were for the most part outdoorsmen, men of the soil, suited to the wilderness, who headed eagerly toward the frontier, wherever it happened to be. The Old Guard today remain fond of outdoorsy pleasures: farming, gardening, riding, fishing, sailing, swimming, golf, and tennis. But values such as courage and dignity do not go in and out of fashion, even in a consumerist America of the 1980s, dedicated to making and spending big money. Self-esteem and the ability to rise to occasions will not go out of fashion, either. And if the old families themselves are not in a position to teach self-esteem, they are very much in a position to demonstrate how valuable a human resource this can be. They are in a position to set this example, and their descendants will doubtless be doing so for many years to come.
Good breeding—self-confidence, self-esteem, call it what you like—can show itself in the smallest ways, in the tiniest gestures.
Not long ago, Mr. and Mrs. S. Dillon Ripley were spending the weekend at Mr. and Mrs. John Jermain Slocums’ house in Newport. It was late afternoon, and afternoon tea had segued, as it often does, into the cocktail hour. The Slocums’ butler was new to the household and not fully trained, but he was young and eager to please, and he was able to clear away the tea things and serve the drinks without making too many mistakes. Then it was time for the hosts and their guests to repair upstairs and dress for dinner. Mary Moncrieffe Livingston Ripley rose first, carrying her empty cocktail glass, and moved toward the drinks cart. “May I fix you another drink, ma’am?” the butler said, a bit too loudly. “No, thank you,” said Mrs. Ripley. “I’m just putting my glass back on the cart.”
The right thing. A guest doesn’t leave a hostess’s sitting room with her glass left sitting on a coffee table. Just as, no matter how many people a hostess has on her staff, a house guest does not rise in the morning without making her own bed.
Mrs. Martha Ferguson Breasted is a woman of eighty whose Ferguson ancestors came to America from Scotland in the eighteenth century. Mrs. Breasted is the widow of Charles Breasted, the historian, and her mother, Isabella—one of New York’s great beauties at the turn of the century—was a close friend of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts and was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt in 1905. Mrs. Breasted spends most of her time at her house in Tucson, but her great love is her eighteenth-century farmhouse, which her ancestors built, in the horse-breeding country of northeastern Kentucky. Mrs. Breasted likes to spend a few months of each year at the farm. On a hill above the farmhouse, in the family cemetery, repose many of her Ferguson ancestors, under white headstones. In a separate corner of the cemetery, under black headstones, lie their slaves, who did not have last names and are simply identified as Ben, Mary, Emma, and so on. This bit of class differentiation amuses Martha Breasted today, and she has decided that her headstone, to atone for any past injustices, will be gray when she joins the little group.
Mrs. Breasted owns several parcels of farmland in the surrounding countryside—a hundred or so acres here, a couple of hundred there—where tobacco is grown. But some of her Boone County neighbors, in the hills and hollows surrounding her land, are poor Appalachian families whose menfolk, especially when they have been drinking, have a reputation for being rough customers. One night a while back, Martha Breasted was driving back to the farm in her battered pickup truck and, turning a corner, encountered a bit of unwelcome activity taking place on her land. A group of perhaps forty youths had built a bonfire and was having what was quite obviously a beer bash. The group had already grown quite rowdy.
Mrs. Breasted stopped her vehicle, fished an old-fashioned electric flashlight out of the glove compartment, got out of the cab, and headed across her field toward the partyers, limping slightly (a youthful bout with polio forces her to wear a leg brace). She approached the interlopers, a tall old lady, somewhat stooped, her tightly curled white hair tied back, characteristically, with a twisted length of woolen yarn, her flashlight her only means of self-defense.
As she approached the revelers and their bonfire, the young men suddenly grew still. Their silence was, at best, ambiguous, and Martha Breasted continued her approach.
One young man, who appeared to be some sort of leader of the group, stepped toward her. His fists were clenched. The two faced each other, Martha Breasted with her chin tilted upward just slightly. Mrs. Breasted was the first to speak. “May I help you?” she said.
Slowly, the young man lowered his eyes, then turned away from her toward the others. “C’mon guys,” he said a little gruffly. “This lady doesn’t want us here.”
Silently, and with obvious reluctance, the young men began gathering up th
eir empty beer cans and dousing their fire.
“This lady,” he had called her.
Class.
*During World War I, her Buick was patriotically put up on blocks, and Mrs. Iselin rode everywhere on Socony, including to church, riding sidesaddle, or the so-called “Queen’s seat.” She was also a superb four-in-hand driver and had acquired four perfectly matched gray Thoroughbreds from Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, In 1917, to promote the Liberty Bond drive (as well as to publicize the family’s patriotism and spunk), Eleanor Iselin drove her coach and four from Buffalo to New York City—a distance of nearly four hundred miles. Her feat made headlines across the country.
Image Gallery
The aristocratic George Washington and his aristocratic Cabinet (left to right): General Henry Knox, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE, INC.
John Adams of the Boston aristocracy, second president of the United States. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE, INC.
Lieutenant Jacob Schieffelin and his wife, the former Hannah Lawrence. Their marriage raised eyebrows, since he was a British officer and her family were Quakers. COURTESY OF THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY
Sir Richard Saltonstall, first of the long line. COURTESY MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Governor and Mrs. Leverett Saltonstall waiting for election returns on November 7, 1944. COURTESY MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Gouverneur Morris and his New York manor, Morrisania. BOTH COURTESY OF THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY
John Jay. America’s first Chief Justice, and his beautiful wife, the former Sarah Livingston. They tied the dynastic knot of money, power, and property. JOHN JAY, THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE, INC.; SARAH LIVINGSTON JAY, THE QUEENS OF AMERICAN SOCIETY BY ELIZABETH ELLET [PHILADELPHIA: PORTER & COATES. 1867]
Liberty Hall in New Jersey, childhood home of Sarah Livingston Jay. ILLUSTRATION BY DORIS STOLBERG FROM PATRIOT’S LADY BY LOIS HOBART [NEW YORK: THOMAS Y. CROWELL. 1960]. COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY LOIS HOBART. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HARPER & ROW. PUBLISHERS. INC.
Clermont in Tivolion-Hudson, New York, home of Robert R. Livingston. COURTESY OF THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY
John Jacob Astor. Whenever old families needed an infusion of wealth, his fortune would come in handy. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE, INC.
The eccentric John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia.
Three Philadelphia aristocrats: Nicholas Biddle, Robert Morris, and John Cadwalader. THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their children in their Washington home in 1916, when Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE, INC.
Charleston’s Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel. She betrayed her class by spilling the secrets of St. Cecilia. SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The Great Splurge era produced “cottages” like Rosecliff in Newport. THE PRESERVATION SOCIETY OF NEWPORT COUNTY
John Jay Chapman, the mad belletrist praised by Edmund Wilson. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE, INC.
St. Louis’s ebullient and irascible August Anheuser Busch. MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY, PHOTOGRAPHER: STRAUSS
Presentation of Lila Childress as queen of the Veiled Prophet’s Ball. 1935. MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY, PHOTOGRAPHER: EUGENE TAYLOR, NEGATIVE NUMBER: EVENTS 152
Wedding garments of Mr. and Mrs. Auguste Chouteau worn by their descendants. Miss Beatrice Chouteau Turner and Mr. Auguste Chouteau VI (c. 1910–20). MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY, NEGATIVE NUMBER: OBJECTS 204
Boston’s staid Somerset Club, on Beacon Hill. Ladies still must use a separate entrance. COURTESY MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, and its longtime headmaster, George Van Santvoord. THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL
Newport’s reigning couple, Mr. and Mrs. John Jermain Slocum, at left, with Mr. Stanley F. Reed at right.
American royalty mixes well with British: J. Carter Brown. Jr., of Rhode Island and the Princess of Wales. UPI/BETTMANN NEWSPHOTOS
A membership certificate of California’s most exclusive club, the Society of California Pioneers. Members must prove an ancestor arrived before midnight on December 31, 1849. COURTESY OF GEORGE T. BRADY, JR.
Doña Francesca de Ortega de Brady of San Francisco and her son George T. Brady, Jr., in heirloom Spanish costumes (c. 1930). COURTESY OF GEORGE T. BRADY, JR.
New York’s Henry H. Livingston and his family mansion. Oak Hill, on the Hudson River.
Periodically, Livingstons from all over the world—too many to crowd into a group photograph—assemble at Clermont on the Hudson River to celebrate almost three centuries of family continuity. NYT PICTURES/PENNY COLEMAN
Still the life of the party at over ninety. Mrs. Margaret Trevor Pardee, great-great-granddaughter of Jacob and Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin and kin of Roosevelts, Jays, Lispenards, and Livingstons. COPYRIGHT © 1984 BY SCOTT AREMAN
A NOTE ON SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Two unusual sources were made available to me in the preparation of this book.
The first, and perhaps the more important, was the treasure trove of materials found in the New York apartment of Mrs. Margaret Trevor Pardee. For much the better part of a century, Margaret Pardee has collected anything of possible interest concerning her ancestors and relatives by marriage: the Schieffelins, Lawrences, Bownes, Jays, Trevors, Pardees, Lispenards, Roosevelts, Astors, Vanderbilts, and others to whom she is marvelously, almost Byzantinely, connected. This material includes genealogies, family histories, old diaries, sketches of personalities, family crests and mottoes, and much more that has never been previously published. Her collection also includes scrapbooks filled with family-connected newspaper and magazine stories and other documents. Unfortunately, most of these clippings were pasted in undated and without attribution to their specific newspaper or magazine sources. In some cases, I was able to arrive at approximate dates by guesswork—the scrapbook containing items from Mrs. Pardee’s debutante year, for example—but in quoting, as I have done in the text, from some of these published accounts, it was impossible to ascertain exact dates or names of publications in which these stories appeared, particularly since in 1910 there were a great many more newspapers and magazines published than there are today. In the source notes that follow, therefore, I have been forced to be a little vague, and to attribute these sources to “Schieffelin-Trevor-Pardee family papers” or to “Pardee scrapbooks.” This, however, does not diminish my gratitude to Mrs. Pardee for making her materials available to me for use in this book.
The second special source involved the lucky happenstance of my making the acquaintance of Mr. Scott Areman of Mount Vernon, New York. Mr. Areman, a talented young photographer, has spent many hours over the last several years photographing, and tape-recording interviews with, various members of old American families in and around New York with the idea of someday turning this material into a book. His book project may one day be realized, but in the meantime he was good enough to make his taped interviews available to me for first use here. Thus, in the following notes, the notation “interview with Scott Areman” indicates that this is material drawn from some forty-five hours of his taped conversations.
In addition to these two individuals, there are a number of other people who were generous with their time, memories, and family-related materials whom I would especially like to thank. For details relating to the Livingston family, I am indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Goodhue Livingston, Mr. Henry H. Livingston, and Mr. William W. Reese, all of New York, and to Mrs. James H. Livingston of Orlando, Florida, as well as to Mr. and Mrs. S. Dillon Ripley of Washington. For material pertaining to the Jays, I would like particularly to thank Mr. John Jay Iselin of New York and Mrs. Eleanor Jay Iselin Wade of Bozeman, Montana. For insights into the Brown clan of Rhode Island, I would like to thank Mrs. John Jermain Slocum of Newport and Mr. J. Carter Brown of Washington. The proud old Morris family of New York and New Jersey has an able spokesman in Mr. Benja
min P. Morris, Jr., whom I tracked down in McAllen, Texas. The late Mrs. Corinne Douglas Robinson Alsop Cole, in my hometown of Hartford, was helpful with Alsop-Roosevelt family tales. The genealogist Timothy Beard of Roxbury, Connecticut, applied his well-known expertise in helping me deal with the extraordinary intrafamily relationships that have evolved among our old American families. In San Francisco, the hidalgo pride—not to mention the extensive family papers—of Mr. George T. Brady, Jr., makes him one of the most knowledgeable men on the subject of the California land-grant aristocracy, including his own family, Carrillo-Ortegas.
I would also like to thank Miss Shannon Cunat of Cincinnati, who typed my manuscript from beginning to end and also saw it through many revisions. My Little, Brown editor, Fredrica Friedman, has a finicky eye, unerring taste, and a firm blue pencil, which were nothing but helpful. And I would also like to thank my friend and agent, Carl Brandt, who guided this project with his usual cool head, and his wife, Clare Brandt, whose own book on the Livingston family was a most valuable source for this one.
While all the above people were helpful to me in the preparation of this book, I alone must be held responsible for any sins of omission, errors, or shortcomings.
SOURCES
PART ONE: FIRST PEERS OF THE REALM
America's Secret Aristocracy Page 37
