duchess, magnificently housed in London, a beauty, and a star
of fashion.

But our New York brummagem "duchesses" of yesterday are less liberal
in their condescensions. An attractive New York woman once said to me:
"I told a man the other day that I was tired of meeting him
incessantly at dinner, and that we met each other so often in this way
as to make conversation a bore." Could any remark have more pungently
expressed the unhappy narrowness of New York reunions? How many times
has the dainty Mr. Amsterdam or Mrs. Manhattan ever met men and women
of literary or artistic gifts at a fashionable dinner in Fifth or
Madison Avenue? How many times has he or she met any such person at a
"patriarchs' ball" or an "assembly?" Has he or she _ever_ met an actor
of note _anywhere_, except in two or three exceptional instances?
True, men and women of intellectual fame shrink from contact with our
noble Four Hundred. But that they should so shrink is in itself a
scorching comment. They encounter patronage at such places, and
getting patronage from one's inferiors can never be a pleasant mode of
passing one's time. That delicate homage which is the due of mental
merit they scarcely ever receive. Now and then you hear of a
portrait-painter, who has made himself the rage of the town, being
asked to dine and to sup. But he is seldom really held to be _des
notres_, as the haughty elect ones would phrase it, and his
popularity, based upon insolent patronage, often quickly crumbles. The
solid devotion is all saved for the solid millionnaires. Frederick the
Great, if I recall rightly, said that an army was like a snake, and
moved on its stomach. Of New York society this might also be asserted,
though with a meaning much more luxurious. To be a great leader is to
be a great feeder. You must dispense terrapin, and canvas-back ducks,
and rare brands of champagne, in lordly dining-halls, or your place is
certain to be secondary. You may, if a man, have the manners of a
Chesterfield and the wit of a Balzac; you may, if a woman, be
beautiful as Mary Stuart and brilliant as DeStael, and yet, powerless
to "entertain," you can fill no lofty pedestal. "Position" in New York
means a corpulent purse whose strings work as flexibly as the dorsal
muscles of a professional toady. And this kind of toady has an
exquisite _flair_ for your greatness and dignity the moment he becomes
quite sure of your pecuniary willingness to back both. New York is at
presen