The personal application of astrology came late in the course of civilization. In the beginning the stars were watched solely for the welfare of the community--for the floods, the winter cold and the summer heat. It is true that the life of the king was forecast early, because in primitive societies the good of the leader personified the good of the people, but neither the Babylonians, nor any of their neighbors, the Chaldeans, nor the Assyrians, nor the Persians, ever thought to watch the stars for individual good. The old autocratic governments did not think an individual life of sufficient importance. And in one detail all the stories of soothsayers agreed. The gift of prophecy was not bestowed upon anyone for his own pecuniary benefit. He who tried to make money out of his future lost the power of divination.
Whether that was true or not, it contained a certain allegorical truth. While men were content to read the good of the community in the stars, astrology had all the elements of a genuine science at its birth. But once they commenced to read their own future the power for reasonable inference left them.
At first there was no way to distinguish the two branches of the art. The names "astronomy" and "astrology" were used interchangeably for the science of heavens. The Babylonian priests, content with the power which forecasting gave them, began to note and catalogue hundreds of minute particulars in the heavens, each with its own associations. But gradually as the Greeks skimmed off the most valuable portions, and formulated them into general rules, predictions of the movements among the stars became known as "natural astronomy" whereas "judicial astronomy" studied the effects of the movements upon human destiny.
Prediction in "natural astronomy" achieved a brilliant success, so brilliant that astronomical forecasts are now taken for granted, and the astronomers feel greatly abused if the predicted occurrence does not take place precisely at the time foretold--to the nearest fraction of a second, and in the exact place. The prophecies of no other science can compare with those of astronomy, yet all science has come within range of predictability, so long as its applications are kept general.
It is the business of meteorologists, for all practical purposes, to give weather forecasts. In their own way they are the prophets of our success and failure, particularly when such enterprises as rides, walks and picnics are concerned. Popular opinion consults and damns them daily; but a strict interpretation of their results shows that their batting average is not so low--well up into the eighties, and sometimes into the nineties. The average varies markedly due to the position of the stations. With its present equipment, Denver is exceptionally difficult because of the mountains to the west, but recent experiments from a station observing sunspots in the Andes, go to show that mountains need not be an insurpassable barrier toward this or any other development.
Even with living creatures remarkable forecasts can be made. Migratory birds return with the seasons to their old haunts, and one flight of white-throated swifts has been observed, year after year, at the mission of San Juan de Capistrano in California, arriving on St. Joseph's day, March 19, with astounding punctuality. The birds' augury must be excellent, as it should be.
But this record does not say that any one bird will return year after year, nor that any detailed set of predictions will be uniformly correct. There are too many minute circumstances which may enter into the calculations, too many unprecedented occurrences. Of course a prophet is without honor in his own country.
His own country knows a thousand instances where the particular prediction went wrong--though in general it may hold perfectly good, and other countries be willing to acknowledge it.
Where the human element enters in the difficulties increase a thousand fold. By statistics we may gauge that a certain number of people in a certain given society will commit suicide every year, but until after the act they must remain nameless. Sporting journalists try to forecast the results of games, with a precision that could only be counted indifferent, if not even poor, when compared with the efforts of astronomers. Financial and economic writers also try their luck with forthcoming changes, but they are scrupulously careful to hedge their writings with the same sort of vague phrases, alternatives and conditions that were employed at the oracle of Delphi.
When the astrologers began to interpret for the populace they fell upon evil times. Thales and Pythagoras must have heard of this curious lore among their neighbors, but they fought shy of anything so dubious. With remarkable dexterity they skimmed off all the valuable astronomical observations, and left the rest where it belonged, among the Babylonian priests, who used its mysteries to augment their own power. The Greeks might tell fortunes by flights of birds, by the numerous inspired oracles or by anything else they liked, but the philosophers flatly refused to allow such maltreatment of the accurate and scientific stars. None of the great philosophers even mentioned astrology; the common people did not know it existed, and systems for telling fortunes by the stars stayed out of Greece until the middle of the fourth century B. C., when the followers of Alexander the Great mistook them for something valuable and brought them back with the other spoils of war, By that time the safety of the Greek world was shaking, and people were ready to grasp at any new way to save themselves. Therefore late Greece made much of astrology. Even such able scientists as Ptolemy accepted it. But earlier Greece knew it not at all.
Who could tell in the earliest days which events were caused by the stars
THE Babylonians were really to blame. The Greeks would never have thought of such a thing by themselves, and certainly the Romans, with their common sense and practical minds, must be held guiltless. In the mountains and the valleys surrounding the Euphrates, the idea had its birth, and grew--without help from outside sources--until it flourished like a green bay tree, and overshadowed the Earth with its foliage.
Still the idea was not bad in the beginning; and good things as well as evil were to come of it. The desire to know the future has actuated man in all his days, and the curiosity which leads to prophecy--while it may be fatal to the individual life of an individual cat--has been extremely beneficial to mankind in general.
Who could tell in the earliest days which events were caused by the stars and which were not? No one could doubt that knowledge of the Sun's movements among the constellations gave power to foretell the rise of the river which fertilized the valley, and anticipated the cold of winter. Men thought that only a very little more knowledge was needed before all the good and evil of the community could be read in the heavens, and this desire led them to further consideration of the stars.
While the sequence of cause and effect was still dim, and events which had happened two or three times by accident bore no marked difference from events which happened regularly by natural laws, two kinds of prophecies could be made. The astrologers could keep a written or oral record of occurrences, "for a hundred years now the Tigris has risen when the Sun entered the constellation of the Bull--so whenever the Sun enters the constellation of the Bull, the Tigris will rise." It was not very good logic, as they were to find out to their cost when the Sun moved into other constellations at the spring equinox, and all the star temples were thrown out of bearing. But as a preliminary hypothesis it did well enough, and so forecasting by the stars marked the beginnings of science.
The universal laws, which constituted prediction, were only a series of closer and closer approximations to the truth; without them, science could neither progress, nor be intelligible, even to the scientists. It is like the pattern of featherstitching; there is no straight central line of progress, but by means of the veering threads to one side or the other a central line grows.
There was merit therefore, when the astrologers said that the Sun in Taurus was an omen of well-being, because the river would fertilize the crops. With a little adjustment, the statement remains true. Whenever the Sun crosses the vernal equinox the Tigris will rise from Babylonian times until doomsday. But what if men said (as they so easily might have said in Greece), "There has been a battle during every eclipse of the Sun; very well then-every time there is an eclipse of the Sun there will be a battle?" No biological effect caused by the approach of the Sun and the Moon will make the blood rise to men's heads so that they get up and fight one another.
"Why, you might just as well say," said the Hatter, "that 'I see what I eat' is the same as 'I eat what I see.'"
"You might just as well say," added the dormouse, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe.'"
"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter.
And so it was. But that you see was due to the nature of the dormouse.
The second method of forecasting was worse yet, because it was due to association of ideas, sometimes based on a mere play of words. For example, everyone knew that a child born prematurely was likely to be weak; therefore if the new Moon came earlier than expected, it was not regarded as a mere weakness in astronomical calculations, which would have been the correct interpretation, but as a prognostication of evil. In the same way the constellation Taurus was named because of the bull's known qualities of leadership, and had nothing to do with the other peculiarities of that famous animal. Yet all sorts of superstitions have arisen, among them the notion that cows should be dehorned only when the Moon is in Taurus.
Not long ago a professor of astronomy received a visitation from a calendar maker who wanted to know the exact positions of the Moon. The professor was able to give them without too much difficulty, and then, quite naturally, inquired the purpose. "Well," said the calendar maker, "a farmer came in to see me, complaining that one of his cows had bled to death when dehorned. He was perfectly sure that my calendar must have been wrong, because if the Moon had been in Taurus, everything would have been all right. I rather think he intends to sue me for loss of the cow."
Still the idea was not bad in the beginning; and good things as well as evil were to come of it. The desire to know the future has actuated man in all his days, and the curiosity which leads to prophecy--while it may be fatal to the individual life of an individual cat--has been extremely beneficial to mankind in general.
Who could tell in the earliest days which events were caused by the stars and which were not? No one could doubt that knowledge of the Sun's movements among the constellations gave power to foretell the rise of the river which fertilized the valley, and anticipated the cold of winter. Men thought that only a very little more knowledge was needed before all the good and evil of the community could be read in the heavens, and this desire led them to further consideration of the stars.
While the sequence of cause and effect was still dim, and events which had happened two or three times by accident bore no marked difference from events which happened regularly by natural laws, two kinds of prophecies could be made. The astrologers could keep a written or oral record of occurrences, "for a hundred years now the Tigris has risen when the Sun entered the constellation of the Bull--so whenever the Sun enters the constellation of the Bull, the Tigris will rise." It was not very good logic, as they were to find out to their cost when the Sun moved into other constellations at the spring equinox, and all the star temples were thrown out of bearing. But as a preliminary hypothesis it did well enough, and so forecasting by the stars marked the beginnings of science.
The universal laws, which constituted prediction, were only a series of closer and closer approximations to the truth; without them, science could neither progress, nor be intelligible, even to the scientists. It is like the pattern of featherstitching; there is no straight central line of progress, but by means of the veering threads to one side or the other a central line grows.
There was merit therefore, when the astrologers said that the Sun in Taurus was an omen of well-being, because the river would fertilize the crops. With a little adjustment, the statement remains true. Whenever the Sun crosses the vernal equinox the Tigris will rise from Babylonian times until doomsday. But what if men said (as they so easily might have said in Greece), "There has been a battle during every eclipse of the Sun; very well then-every time there is an eclipse of the Sun there will be a battle?" No biological effect caused by the approach of the Sun and the Moon will make the blood rise to men's heads so that they get up and fight one another.
"Why, you might just as well say," said the Hatter, "that 'I see what I eat' is the same as 'I eat what I see.'"
"You might just as well say," added the dormouse, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe.'"
"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter.
And so it was. But that you see was due to the nature of the dormouse.
The second method of forecasting was worse yet, because it was due to association of ideas, sometimes based on a mere play of words. For example, everyone knew that a child born prematurely was likely to be weak; therefore if the new Moon came earlier than expected, it was not regarded as a mere weakness in astronomical calculations, which would have been the correct interpretation, but as a prognostication of evil. In the same way the constellation Taurus was named because of the bull's known qualities of leadership, and had nothing to do with the other peculiarities of that famous animal. Yet all sorts of superstitions have arisen, among them the notion that cows should be dehorned only when the Moon is in Taurus.
Not long ago a professor of astronomy received a visitation from a calendar maker who wanted to know the exact positions of the Moon. The professor was able to give them without too much difficulty, and then, quite naturally, inquired the purpose. "Well," said the calendar maker, "a farmer came in to see me, complaining that one of his cows had bled to death when dehorned. He was perfectly sure that my calendar must have been wrong, because if the Moon had been in Taurus, everything would have been all right. I rather think he intends to sue me for loss of the cow."
Social activities received immense publicity in the Gilded Age
The New YorkWorld expressed a growing conviction that reform was absolutely imperative "if ruffianism and brutality and sneaking cowardice are not to be bred into our youth as a part of their training." Writing in Harper's Weekly, Theodore Roosevelt (apostle of the strenuous life) defended the game as best he could, but he also declared in forthright terms that roughness and professionalism must cease if football was to be preserved.
This chorus of disapproval compelled action. Under the leadership of Walter Camp, efforts were made to bring about reforms. The block game was done away with through the adoption of the rule requiring surrender of the ball after the fourth down unless a gain of ten yards had been made; massed rushes were discouraged by providing for more open play; and referees were empowered to deal drastically with slugging or any unnecessary roughness. The attempt was made to prevent professionalism and enforce stricter rules of eligibility. Nothing could be done to suppress the instinct to win by almost any means (that had become a part of football, and spectator interest already demanded a fierce and bitter struggle), but the game was saved from this threat of suppression for the further triumphs which awaited it in the twentieth century.
THE SOCIAL WORLD as represented by the little coterie of the very wealthy who gave elaborate fancy-dress balls, had their boxes at the opera, and hunted or played polo at the new country clubs was insignificant in numbers. That larger group of the privileged who less ostentatiously supported the legitimate stage, had the leisure to enjoy such sports as tennis and golf, and made up the college-bred crowd at football games was considerably larger, but still it did not bulk very large in a total population which had grown by the 1890's to more than sixtythree millions. Nevertheless this world of society in the broader sense had a tremendous influence in the development of recreation, for it set the standards that the democracy tried to follow as best it could.
Social activities received immense publicity in the Gilded Age. The extravagant balls of New York and Chicago millionaires, the yacht-races and the polo matches, the coaching parade at Newport, were written up with great gusto and vivid detail in the nation's press. All the world knew what was happening in these circles, and very often it wanted to go out and do likewise. The middle class was ambitious to take up every activity on which society had set the stamp of fashionable approval.
While this too often meant that a premium was placed on ostentation, it also encouraged the healthy growth of many forms of amusement. It can at least be said that society's sponsorship of the theatre and opera, of sports and outdoor activities, partly counteracted in its social effects the example it set in luxury and extravagance.
This chorus of disapproval compelled action. Under the leadership of Walter Camp, efforts were made to bring about reforms. The block game was done away with through the adoption of the rule requiring surrender of the ball after the fourth down unless a gain of ten yards had been made; massed rushes were discouraged by providing for more open play; and referees were empowered to deal drastically with slugging or any unnecessary roughness. The attempt was made to prevent professionalism and enforce stricter rules of eligibility. Nothing could be done to suppress the instinct to win by almost any means (that had become a part of football, and spectator interest already demanded a fierce and bitter struggle), but the game was saved from this threat of suppression for the further triumphs which awaited it in the twentieth century.
THE SOCIAL WORLD as represented by the little coterie of the very wealthy who gave elaborate fancy-dress balls, had their boxes at the opera, and hunted or played polo at the new country clubs was insignificant in numbers. That larger group of the privileged who less ostentatiously supported the legitimate stage, had the leisure to enjoy such sports as tennis and golf, and made up the college-bred crowd at football games was considerably larger, but still it did not bulk very large in a total population which had grown by the 1890's to more than sixtythree millions. Nevertheless this world of society in the broader sense had a tremendous influence in the development of recreation, for it set the standards that the democracy tried to follow as best it could.
Social activities received immense publicity in the Gilded Age. The extravagant balls of New York and Chicago millionaires, the yacht-races and the polo matches, the coaching parade at Newport, were written up with great gusto and vivid detail in the nation's press. All the world knew what was happening in these circles, and very often it wanted to go out and do likewise. The middle class was ambitious to take up every activity on which society had set the stamp of fashionable approval.
While this too often meant that a premium was placed on ostentation, it also encouraged the healthy growth of many forms of amusement. It can at least be said that society's sponsorship of the theatre and opera, of sports and outdoor activities, partly counteracted in its social effects the example it set in luxury and extravagance.
The spirit of the American youth, as of the American man, is to win, to 'get there,' by fair means or foul
IN THE FIELD of spectator sports, which we have seen becoming more and more important toward the close of the century, the world of fashion also showed a lively interest. If it paid little attention to baseball, it rubbed shoulders with the roughest elements of the sporting world at horse-races and prize-fights. But above all else it turned out en masse for intercollegiate football. The games of the Big Three, which still provided the grand climax of the football season, were fully as much social as sporting events in the 1890's. In New York a parade of coaches would make its stately way to the playing-field. No small part of the crowd, after lunching on chicken sandwiches and champagne, watched the game from atop tally-hos.
"The air was tinged with the blue and the orange and the black as the great throngs poured through the city over the bridges, invaded Brooklyn and swept like a rising tide into Eastern Park," the New York Tribune reported after one YalePrinceton game. "They came by the railroads, horsecars, drags and coaches and afoot. Coaches, drags and tally-hos decorated with the blue or the orange and black wound through the thoroughfares and quiet side streets in a glittering procession, freighted with jubilant college boys and pretty girls, who woke the echoes of the church bells with the cheers and tooting of horns. In an almost endless procession they inundated the big enclosure, and when it was 2 p.m. the sight was that of a coliseum of the nineteenth century, reflecting the changes and tints of a panoramic spectacle."
The great crowds attracted by football-totaling thirty and forty thousand -- were naturally not entirely made up of those in the higher social brackets. The game had a wider appeal, as the tremendous publicity given it clearly proves. At the time of the Yale-Princeton game in 1895, the New York Journal published a full two and a half pages of news and sketches-running accounts of the game, a full page of technical descriptive comment by James J. Corbett, signed stories by the captains of the teams, and a feature article entitled "The Journal's Woman Reporter Trains with the Little Boys in Blue." 36 But despite this furor of publicity, football was a sport for the classes rather than the masses. It largely reflected the interests of the college world.
It was dominated by the eastern universities. In one season Yale had a championship team -- with such great players as Heffelfinger and Hinkey -- which won thirteen games and piled up a season's score of 488 while its own goal-line was uncrossed. But colleges throughout the country were now taking it up and playing increasingly better football. By the late 1890's the ArmyNavy game had become an established annual feature; among southern colleges, Virginia, Vanderbilt, Washington and Lee, had well-known teams; in the Middle West there was already fierce competition among such colleges as Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio State, and the new University of Chicago; Leland Stanford stood out among Pacific Coast teams. Even though Walter Camp might not have to look much beyond the Big Three for his famous All-American teams, there were signs that the East's supremacy would soon be challenged. Intercollegiate football had become a nation-wide sport.
Bitter criticism had marked its progress. The attacks made upon football overemphasis in the 1890's make comparable comments in the 1920's and 1930's appear mild and innocuous. The preference accorded football-players in their college work, undue absorption in the game through long training-seasons, the prevalent spirit of winning at any cost, and the open hiring of star players awoke a resentment which echoed throughout the country. The Nation was foremost in these early onslaughts: it saw all the worst elements of American character reflected in the game. "The spirit of the American youth, as of the American man, is to win, to 'get there,' by fair means or foul," it declared caustically, "and the lack of moral scruple which pervades the business world meets with temptations equally irresistible in the miniature contests of the football field." Although far more sympathetic, the special sports writer of Harper's Weekly was fully as outspoken against the rising tide of professionalism. It was prevalent among the eastern colleges, but even worse in other parts of the country. No one could have any conception, Caspar Whitney wrote in 1895, "of the rottenness of the whole structure through the middle and far West. Men are bought and sold like cattle to play this autumn on 'strictly amateur' elevens."
The brutality of the game awoke even fiercer attacks. It was the day of flying wedges, tackle-back tandems, and other mass plays. And the injuries these tactics inevitably caused were supplemented by casualties arising from the frequent slugging and free-for-all fights which the referees were powerless to control. A fair-minded English observer was horrified at the roughness of the games. And his impressions of it were amply confirmed in a report he quoted from The Nation on the Harvard-Yale game of 1894. It declared that one-third of the original combatants had had to be carried off the field. "Brewer was so badly injured that he had to be taken off crying with mortification. Wright, captain of the Yale men, jumped on him with both knees, breaking his collar bone. Beard was next turned over to the doctors. Hallowell had his nose broken. Murphy was soon badly injured and taken off the field in a stretcher unconscious, with concussion of the brain. Butterworth, who is said merely to have lost an eye, soon followed. . . ."
"The air was tinged with the blue and the orange and the black as the great throngs poured through the city over the bridges, invaded Brooklyn and swept like a rising tide into Eastern Park," the New York Tribune reported after one YalePrinceton game. "They came by the railroads, horsecars, drags and coaches and afoot. Coaches, drags and tally-hos decorated with the blue or the orange and black wound through the thoroughfares and quiet side streets in a glittering procession, freighted with jubilant college boys and pretty girls, who woke the echoes of the church bells with the cheers and tooting of horns. In an almost endless procession they inundated the big enclosure, and when it was 2 p.m. the sight was that of a coliseum of the nineteenth century, reflecting the changes and tints of a panoramic spectacle."
The great crowds attracted by football-totaling thirty and forty thousand -- were naturally not entirely made up of those in the higher social brackets. The game had a wider appeal, as the tremendous publicity given it clearly proves. At the time of the Yale-Princeton game in 1895, the New York Journal published a full two and a half pages of news and sketches-running accounts of the game, a full page of technical descriptive comment by James J. Corbett, signed stories by the captains of the teams, and a feature article entitled "The Journal's Woman Reporter Trains with the Little Boys in Blue." 36 But despite this furor of publicity, football was a sport for the classes rather than the masses. It largely reflected the interests of the college world.
It was dominated by the eastern universities. In one season Yale had a championship team -- with such great players as Heffelfinger and Hinkey -- which won thirteen games and piled up a season's score of 488 while its own goal-line was uncrossed. But colleges throughout the country were now taking it up and playing increasingly better football. By the late 1890's the ArmyNavy game had become an established annual feature; among southern colleges, Virginia, Vanderbilt, Washington and Lee, had well-known teams; in the Middle West there was already fierce competition among such colleges as Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio State, and the new University of Chicago; Leland Stanford stood out among Pacific Coast teams. Even though Walter Camp might not have to look much beyond the Big Three for his famous All-American teams, there were signs that the East's supremacy would soon be challenged. Intercollegiate football had become a nation-wide sport.
Bitter criticism had marked its progress. The attacks made upon football overemphasis in the 1890's make comparable comments in the 1920's and 1930's appear mild and innocuous. The preference accorded football-players in their college work, undue absorption in the game through long training-seasons, the prevalent spirit of winning at any cost, and the open hiring of star players awoke a resentment which echoed throughout the country. The Nation was foremost in these early onslaughts: it saw all the worst elements of American character reflected in the game. "The spirit of the American youth, as of the American man, is to win, to 'get there,' by fair means or foul," it declared caustically, "and the lack of moral scruple which pervades the business world meets with temptations equally irresistible in the miniature contests of the football field." Although far more sympathetic, the special sports writer of Harper's Weekly was fully as outspoken against the rising tide of professionalism. It was prevalent among the eastern colleges, but even worse in other parts of the country. No one could have any conception, Caspar Whitney wrote in 1895, "of the rottenness of the whole structure through the middle and far West. Men are bought and sold like cattle to play this autumn on 'strictly amateur' elevens."
The brutality of the game awoke even fiercer attacks. It was the day of flying wedges, tackle-back tandems, and other mass plays. And the injuries these tactics inevitably caused were supplemented by casualties arising from the frequent slugging and free-for-all fights which the referees were powerless to control. A fair-minded English observer was horrified at the roughness of the games. And his impressions of it were amply confirmed in a report he quoted from The Nation on the Harvard-Yale game of 1894. It declared that one-third of the original combatants had had to be carried off the field. "Brewer was so badly injured that he had to be taken off crying with mortification. Wright, captain of the Yale men, jumped on him with both knees, breaking his collar bone. Beard was next turned over to the doctors. Hallowell had his nose broken. Murphy was soon badly injured and taken off the field in a stretcher unconscious, with concussion of the brain. Butterworth, who is said merely to have lost an eye, soon followed. . . ."
By 1892 golf was spreading westward, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Denver, and the Pacific Coast
Together with such pastimes as lawn tennis, archery, and trapshooting, some of these clubs began also to provide facilities for a game new to America. It was far more important than yachting, coaching, or polo. It was not for very long to remain, as Harper's Weekly termed it in 1895, "pre-eminently a game of good society." It was soon to give rise to a tremendous growth in country clubs which were to become the special prerogative of the great middle class in cities and towns throughout the country. This sport, of course, was golf.
It did not really take hold in this country, despite its hoary antiquity in Scotland and occasional attempts to introduce it on this side of the Atlantic ever since colonial days, until after 1888. The organization in that year of the St. Andrews Club, near New York, may well be taken as the first important date in golfs history in the United States. Other courses were built -- whatever number of holes was most convenient -- after St. Andrews had showed the way. Soon a great number of the country clubs about Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had their links. By 1892 golf was spreading westward. It took Chicago by storm and moved on to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Denver, and the Pacific Coast. In 1894 the United States Golf Association was formed.
No other game has evoked such scorn among the uninitiated. The democracy still considered tennis a rather feminine game, a chance to sport white flannels and gay-colored blazers rather than exercise. It simply did not know what to make of the absurd spectacle of enthusiastic gentlemen in scarlet coats furiously digging up the turf in frenzied -- and wholly serious -- efforts to drive a little white ball into a little round hole some hundreds of yards away. Nor were the red coats of these pioneer golfers the only article of costume that seemed singularly inappropriate on the rolling fairways of the new courses. They wore elaborate leg-wrappings to protect themselves from the gorse indigenous to Scottish hills but quite foreign to this country, and they pulled down over their foreheads visored caps in the best Sherlock Holmes tradition. Women had not yet taken up the game, although it was already being urged upon them as an admirable compromise between "the tediousness of croquet and the hurlyburly of lawn tennis," but together with wondering little boys who had been pressed into service as caddies, they often accompanied their lords and masters about the links. The public guffawed, little dreaming of golfs popularity in another two decades or of the public courses of today.
It did not really take hold in this country, despite its hoary antiquity in Scotland and occasional attempts to introduce it on this side of the Atlantic ever since colonial days, until after 1888. The organization in that year of the St. Andrews Club, near New York, may well be taken as the first important date in golfs history in the United States. Other courses were built -- whatever number of holes was most convenient -- after St. Andrews had showed the way. Soon a great number of the country clubs about Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had their links. By 1892 golf was spreading westward. It took Chicago by storm and moved on to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Denver, and the Pacific Coast. In 1894 the United States Golf Association was formed.
No other game has evoked such scorn among the uninitiated. The democracy still considered tennis a rather feminine game, a chance to sport white flannels and gay-colored blazers rather than exercise. It simply did not know what to make of the absurd spectacle of enthusiastic gentlemen in scarlet coats furiously digging up the turf in frenzied -- and wholly serious -- efforts to drive a little white ball into a little round hole some hundreds of yards away. Nor were the red coats of these pioneer golfers the only article of costume that seemed singularly inappropriate on the rolling fairways of the new courses. They wore elaborate leg-wrappings to protect themselves from the gorse indigenous to Scottish hills but quite foreign to this country, and they pulled down over their foreheads visored caps in the best Sherlock Holmes tradition. Women had not yet taken up the game, although it was already being urged upon them as an admirable compromise between "the tediousness of croquet and the hurlyburly of lawn tennis," but together with wondering little boys who had been pressed into service as caddies, they often accompanied their lords and masters about the links. The public guffawed, little dreaming of golfs popularity in another two decades or of the public courses of today.
1880's Tournaments in lawn games, tennis matches, yachts and horses
SOCIETY had been the pioneer in the promotion of sports. We have seen that in the middle of the century the more wealthy had been almost the only people with the leisure and means to enjoy them. As the opportunity to play games became available for a wider public in the 1890's, the world of fashion tended more and more to favor those activities of which the expense definitely excluded the common man. The same impulse that motivated the rivalry over elaborate entertainment and opera boxes was responsible for an attitude toward sport in which conspicuous waste rather than simple enjoyment became the general rule. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., determined to win the position in society denied his father, made sport his means of entrée into that exclusive world. He sailed yachts and fought his way to the proud post of commodore of the New York Yacht Club; he took up coaching and drove his four-in-hand in the Newport parade; he introduced polo and founded the Westchester Polo Club.
The days were indeed far distant when society, in the person of members of the old Knickerbocker Club, had taken up baseball and endeavored to keep it an exclusive pastime. "Naturally," wrote a correspondent of Outing in 1894, describing the sporting life of fashionable Philadelphia, "since baseball is so much of a professional game, it can hardly come under the head of what we recognize as out-of-door recreation." But society could still approve archery and tennis. Tournaments in these lawn games remained social functions. When the clubs of archers, merry bowmen, or toxophilites that made up the National Archery Association had their annual meeting in 1897 on the grounds of the Chicago White Sox, band music and refreshments still contributed to the enjoyment of a select gathering. The tennis matches at Newport, despite increasing interest in a sport which had become so much more active and competitive, were also a festival of the fashionable world. As late as 1886 the Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports complacently stated that lawn tennis remained "the game of polite society, essentially one for ladies and gentlemen.
Yachts and horses were expensive enough to be proof against any alarming tendency toward democratization, and society was enthusiastic over these artistocratic pastimes. There was a great revival of yachting, marked by renewal of the America's Cup races. The wealthy engaged in lively competition both in the regattas for smaller boats (the one-design classes had been introduced) sponsored by such organizations as the New York Yacht Club, and in the purchase of expensive and elaborate ocean-going yachts. In the same way, ownership of a stable of thoroughbreds became highly fashionable, and the very rich extended their patronage as never before to the turf. The exclusive American Jockey Club was founded, an ultrafashionable course laid out at Jerome Park, and the Kentucky Derby became an annual feature of an invigorated racing calendar. 27 The common man could watch the races, and the gambling fraternity made a profitable living from betting on them, but only the very wealthy could support a stable.
The horse was glorified in other ways. Fox-hunting in the English manner was taken up by clubs on Long Island, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and in Virginia and Maryland. In 1885 the National Horse Show was instituted, to become one of the outstanding social events of the year. There was a beginning of polo, introduced in 1876, at Westchester and Newport. Coaching was imported from England, a further refinement of the fashionable driving that already crowded the roads of such resorts as Tuxedo and Lenox with expensively turned out dogcarts, buckboards, landaus, and phaetons.
The annual coaching parade in New York was one of the city's most colorful shows. Four-in-hand drags and tally-hos bowled down Fifth Avenue in the crisp autumn air, the guards gaily winding their horns, while crowds lined the street to watch their triumphant progress. The coaches were painted pink, blue, or dark-green with under-carriages of some sharply contrasting shade, and the beautifully matched and carefully groomed horses wore artificial flowers on their throat-latches. Society rode proudly atop these splendid equipages, the men in striped waistcoats and silk toppers, the ladies holding gay parasols over their immense picture hats.
For the fullest enjoyment of these varied sports, a new institution sprang into being in the 1880's -- the country club. The first of the genus is believed to have been the Brookline Country Club, near Boston, but it was soon followed by the Westchester Country Club, the Essex Country Club, the Tuxedo Club, the Philadelphia Country Club, the Meadowbrook Hunt Club, and the Country Club of Chicago. Those near the shore promoted yachting and sailing; others were a center for hunting, ponyraces, and polo. Coaching parties drove out from the city for sports events, dances, teas, and the annual hunt ball.
The days were indeed far distant when society, in the person of members of the old Knickerbocker Club, had taken up baseball and endeavored to keep it an exclusive pastime. "Naturally," wrote a correspondent of Outing in 1894, describing the sporting life of fashionable Philadelphia, "since baseball is so much of a professional game, it can hardly come under the head of what we recognize as out-of-door recreation." But society could still approve archery and tennis. Tournaments in these lawn games remained social functions. When the clubs of archers, merry bowmen, or toxophilites that made up the National Archery Association had their annual meeting in 1897 on the grounds of the Chicago White Sox, band music and refreshments still contributed to the enjoyment of a select gathering. The tennis matches at Newport, despite increasing interest in a sport which had become so much more active and competitive, were also a festival of the fashionable world. As late as 1886 the Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports complacently stated that lawn tennis remained "the game of polite society, essentially one for ladies and gentlemen.
Yachts and horses were expensive enough to be proof against any alarming tendency toward democratization, and society was enthusiastic over these artistocratic pastimes. There was a great revival of yachting, marked by renewal of the America's Cup races. The wealthy engaged in lively competition both in the regattas for smaller boats (the one-design classes had been introduced) sponsored by such organizations as the New York Yacht Club, and in the purchase of expensive and elaborate ocean-going yachts. In the same way, ownership of a stable of thoroughbreds became highly fashionable, and the very rich extended their patronage as never before to the turf. The exclusive American Jockey Club was founded, an ultrafashionable course laid out at Jerome Park, and the Kentucky Derby became an annual feature of an invigorated racing calendar. 27 The common man could watch the races, and the gambling fraternity made a profitable living from betting on them, but only the very wealthy could support a stable.
The horse was glorified in other ways. Fox-hunting in the English manner was taken up by clubs on Long Island, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and in Virginia and Maryland. In 1885 the National Horse Show was instituted, to become one of the outstanding social events of the year. There was a beginning of polo, introduced in 1876, at Westchester and Newport. Coaching was imported from England, a further refinement of the fashionable driving that already crowded the roads of such resorts as Tuxedo and Lenox with expensively turned out dogcarts, buckboards, landaus, and phaetons.
The annual coaching parade in New York was one of the city's most colorful shows. Four-in-hand drags and tally-hos bowled down Fifth Avenue in the crisp autumn air, the guards gaily winding their horns, while crowds lined the street to watch their triumphant progress. The coaches were painted pink, blue, or dark-green with under-carriages of some sharply contrasting shade, and the beautifully matched and carefully groomed horses wore artificial flowers on their throat-latches. Society rode proudly atop these splendid equipages, the men in striped waistcoats and silk toppers, the ladies holding gay parasols over their immense picture hats.
For the fullest enjoyment of these varied sports, a new institution sprang into being in the 1880's -- the country club. The first of the genus is believed to have been the Brookline Country Club, near Boston, but it was soon followed by the Westchester Country Club, the Essex Country Club, the Tuxedo Club, the Philadelphia Country Club, the Meadowbrook Hunt Club, and the Country Club of Chicago. Those near the shore promoted yachting and sailing; others were a center for hunting, ponyraces, and polo. Coaching parties drove out from the city for sports events, dances, teas, and the annual hunt ball.
The opening of the Metropolitan, for all its importance in the world of music and drama
The opening of the Metropolitan, for all its importance in the world of music and drama, illustrated even more vividly than any formal dinner or fancy-dress ball society's irresistible impulse to make its amusements an occasion to flaunt its wealth. For true music-lovers of the 1880's the operas currently being given at the Academy of Music fully met all artistic standards. The sole difficulty was that while there was plenty of available room at these performances in orchestra and galleries, every box at the Academy was taken for the season. And society had made an opera box one of the hall-marks of social success. The Metropolitan was built not in response to a demand for music, but to meet this need for fashionable display.
It was financed by a group of social aspirants stung into action by the refusal of an offer of $30,000 for one of the boxes at the Academy of Music. They would have their own opera house. Naturally enough its predominant feature became its two ornate tiers of boxes. At the formal opening it was toward the Golden Horseshoe rather than the stage that all eyes turned. "The Goulds and the Vanderbilts and people of that ilk," the New York Dramatic Mirror reported with forthright candor on that memorable occasion, "perfumed the air with the odor of crisp greenbacks. The tiers of boxes looked like cages in a menagerie of monopolists."
This did not mean that the Metropolitan did not uphold the highest standards of operatic art. It did. Italian operas were staged during its first season, and musical history was made when German music and the Wagnerian operas were given the Metropolitan's formal approval in 1884. The company made an annual post-season tour, visiting Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington. . . . The world of society in these cities had its opportunity to emulate that of New York. Grand opera took its place, despite a sprinkling of more humble musiclovers in the upper galleries, as one of the most exclusive and fashionable of all diversions.
It was financed by a group of social aspirants stung into action by the refusal of an offer of $30,000 for one of the boxes at the Academy of Music. They would have their own opera house. Naturally enough its predominant feature became its two ornate tiers of boxes. At the formal opening it was toward the Golden Horseshoe rather than the stage that all eyes turned. "The Goulds and the Vanderbilts and people of that ilk," the New York Dramatic Mirror reported with forthright candor on that memorable occasion, "perfumed the air with the odor of crisp greenbacks. The tiers of boxes looked like cages in a menagerie of monopolists."
This did not mean that the Metropolitan did not uphold the highest standards of operatic art. It did. Italian operas were staged during its first season, and musical history was made when German music and the Wagnerian operas were given the Metropolitan's formal approval in 1884. The company made an annual post-season tour, visiting Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington. . . . The world of society in these cities had its opportunity to emulate that of New York. Grand opera took its place, despite a sprinkling of more humble musiclovers in the upper galleries, as one of the most exclusive and fashionable of all diversions.
Golden age of the theatre, Becky Sharp and A Doll's House, Camille and Fanny Davenport in Tosca, Cyrano de Bergerac
If one chose one's theatre, it was not necessary to see an equestrian exhibition or sensational melodrama, as had so often been the case in the first half of the century. There was no need, as there once had been, to sit through cheap variety acts to enjoy Romeo and Juliet, or listen to a series of comic songs as entr'actes in a performance of Hamlet. And in response to a more intelligent audience, contemporary playwrights were beginning to write with a little more perception and sense of reality than had inspired Putnam, the Iron Son of '76, The Lady of Lyons, or The Drunkard.
Bronson Howard had written Young Mrs. Winthrop and Shenandoah, William Gillette his Held by the Enemy and Secret Service. There were The County Fair by Charles Barnard and Neil Burgess, and Steele Mackaye's phenomenally successful Hazel Kirk. A serious attempt to introduce realism to the stage was made by James A. Herne with Shore Acres and Margaret Fleming. Still more important, perhaps, were the plays of European dramatists. Ibsen, Pinero, Oscar Wilde, and Shaw all had a wide and friendly reception on the American stage.
In this golden age of the theatre, Mrs. Fiske was adding to her laurels in Becky Sharp and A Doll's House; Clara Morris played in Camille and Fanny Davenport in Tosca; Richard Mansfield introduced Cyrano de Bergerac; E. H. Sothern was starring in The Prisoner of Zenda, James O'Neill, the father of Eugene O'Neill, in The Count of Monte Cristo (in which he acted almost five thousand times), and William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes. Until he left the stage, Edwin Booth was the greatest of Shakespearean stars; his tour of the country with Lawrence Barrett in 1890 was a continuous triumph. There was none really to take his place. But Mansfield, Barrett, McCullough, and Mantell carried on the Shakespearean tradition among the actors, while Julia Marlowe was a lovely Rosalind in As You Like It, and Mary Anderson made an incomparable Juliet. Many other names -- producers, dramatists, and actors-might be mentioned: Charles Frohman and David Belasco; Augustus Thomas and Clyde Fitch; the Barrymores, John Drew, Otis Skinner, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Margaret Anglin. . . . There were also such foreign stars as Henry Irving and Tommaso Salvini, Helena Modjeska, Sarah Bernhardt, and Eleanora Duse.
Among the light operas, Pinafore, first of the delightful concoctions of Gilbert and Sullivan to cross the Atlantic, was a sensation. It was first played at the Boston Museum, on November 25, 1878, then in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and finally in New York. There it was produced simultaneously in half a dozen theatres. There were children's companies, church-choir companies, and colored opera companies playing Pinafore. The fish exhibition had to be removed from the Aquarium for an engagement in what had been Castle Garden. All New York, all America, sang and whistled "Little Buttercup."
Still another triumph was won by English operetta in the 1880's when Erminie had a phenomenal run of 1,256 performances at the New York Casino. Soon thereafter the Boston Ideals presented in Chicago the most popular of all American light operas, Reginald De Koven Robin Hood. It was followed by other De Koven scores, and at the close of the century John Philip Sousa and Victor Herbert were further embellishing this type of polite musical entertainment with El Capitan and The Wizard of the Nile.
Concert singing, visits by foreign musicians, and orchestral playing also revealed a growing taste among the sophisticated for more serious music. Jenny Lind had paved the way for the tours of European artists in the middle of the century, and Ole Bull had made two memorable visits. In the 1890's Ysaye, Paderewski, Fritz Kreisler, Adelina Patti, Melba, Calvéé, and Madame Schumann-Heink were all on tour. Symphonic music had had its start with the organization of the New York Philharmonic as early as 1842, but it was not until 1878 that this orchestra had any real rival. In that year the New York Symphony Orchestra was established, to be followed in another three years by the Boston Symphony, and in 1891 by the Chicago Orchestra. Walter Damrosch and Theodore Thomas were adding a new interest to the musical scene.
Grand opera also had become firmly established. It had long been a distinctive feature of the social life of New Orleans, and there had been various attempts to introduce it in New York and other cities. Troupes of Italian singers had come and gone; elaborate opera houses had been opened-usually to fail after one or two seasons. "Will this splendid and refined amusement be supported in New York?" we find Philip Hone asking in 1833. "I am doubtful." And for almost half a century his doubts were largely justified. It was in 1883 that the Metropolitan Opera House, costing nearly $2,000,000, provided grand opera with its first really permanent home in America.
Bronson Howard had written Young Mrs. Winthrop and Shenandoah, William Gillette his Held by the Enemy and Secret Service. There were The County Fair by Charles Barnard and Neil Burgess, and Steele Mackaye's phenomenally successful Hazel Kirk. A serious attempt to introduce realism to the stage was made by James A. Herne with Shore Acres and Margaret Fleming. Still more important, perhaps, were the plays of European dramatists. Ibsen, Pinero, Oscar Wilde, and Shaw all had a wide and friendly reception on the American stage.
In this golden age of the theatre, Mrs. Fiske was adding to her laurels in Becky Sharp and A Doll's House; Clara Morris played in Camille and Fanny Davenport in Tosca; Richard Mansfield introduced Cyrano de Bergerac; E. H. Sothern was starring in The Prisoner of Zenda, James O'Neill, the father of Eugene O'Neill, in The Count of Monte Cristo (in which he acted almost five thousand times), and William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes. Until he left the stage, Edwin Booth was the greatest of Shakespearean stars; his tour of the country with Lawrence Barrett in 1890 was a continuous triumph. There was none really to take his place. But Mansfield, Barrett, McCullough, and Mantell carried on the Shakespearean tradition among the actors, while Julia Marlowe was a lovely Rosalind in As You Like It, and Mary Anderson made an incomparable Juliet. Many other names -- producers, dramatists, and actors-might be mentioned: Charles Frohman and David Belasco; Augustus Thomas and Clyde Fitch; the Barrymores, John Drew, Otis Skinner, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Margaret Anglin. . . . There were also such foreign stars as Henry Irving and Tommaso Salvini, Helena Modjeska, Sarah Bernhardt, and Eleanora Duse.
Among the light operas, Pinafore, first of the delightful concoctions of Gilbert and Sullivan to cross the Atlantic, was a sensation. It was first played at the Boston Museum, on November 25, 1878, then in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and finally in New York. There it was produced simultaneously in half a dozen theatres. There were children's companies, church-choir companies, and colored opera companies playing Pinafore. The fish exhibition had to be removed from the Aquarium for an engagement in what had been Castle Garden. All New York, all America, sang and whistled "Little Buttercup."
Still another triumph was won by English operetta in the 1880's when Erminie had a phenomenal run of 1,256 performances at the New York Casino. Soon thereafter the Boston Ideals presented in Chicago the most popular of all American light operas, Reginald De Koven Robin Hood. It was followed by other De Koven scores, and at the close of the century John Philip Sousa and Victor Herbert were further embellishing this type of polite musical entertainment with El Capitan and The Wizard of the Nile.
Concert singing, visits by foreign musicians, and orchestral playing also revealed a growing taste among the sophisticated for more serious music. Jenny Lind had paved the way for the tours of European artists in the middle of the century, and Ole Bull had made two memorable visits. In the 1890's Ysaye, Paderewski, Fritz Kreisler, Adelina Patti, Melba, Calvéé, and Madame Schumann-Heink were all on tour. Symphonic music had had its start with the organization of the New York Philharmonic as early as 1842, but it was not until 1878 that this orchestra had any real rival. In that year the New York Symphony Orchestra was established, to be followed in another three years by the Boston Symphony, and in 1891 by the Chicago Orchestra. Walter Damrosch and Theodore Thomas were adding a new interest to the musical scene.
Grand opera also had become firmly established. It had long been a distinctive feature of the social life of New Orleans, and there had been various attempts to introduce it in New York and other cities. Troupes of Italian singers had come and gone; elaborate opera houses had been opened-usually to fail after one or two seasons. "Will this splendid and refined amusement be supported in New York?" we find Philip Hone asking in 1833. "I am doubtful." And for almost half a century his doubts were largely justified. It was in 1883 that the Metropolitan Opera House, costing nearly $2,000,000, provided grand opera with its first really permanent home in America.
Every city had its fashionable playhouses: social atmosphere of Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre, the Madison Square
FOR ALL the lavish prodigality of these affairs, and despite the widespread publicity they obtained, they were not important. They directly touched the lives of only a very small coterie in the upper brackets of the fashionable world. Society in a broader sense, members of the community in which wealth was allied with culture, had many other forms of recreation where their patronage had some real significance. One of these was the legitimate stage, as contrasted with the more popular theatrical entertainment of the urban democracy.
The small, luxuriously appointed theatres where reserved seats ranged in price from one to three dollars had become the home of a relatively exclusive amusement. Every city had its fashionable playhouses. Writing of New York, Henry Collins Brown speaks of the friendly social atmosphere of Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre, the Madison Square ("most exquisite theatre in all the world"), and the Union Square. In Chicago there were McVicker's and Hooley's; Boston offered the Museum and the old Boston Theatre. These houses appealed to the carriage trade. Here, in a new elegance of surroundings-the pit had become the parquet with sloping floor; upholstered plush seats were furnished throughout; steam heat (the Lyceum also had "medicated air, charged with ozone") had replaced the foyer stove; and the new electric lights were being installed -the world of fashion could enjoy the play in a quiet and comfortable atmosphere far removed from the democratic hurlyburly of mid-century.
The productions at these theatres generally centered about some starred actor or actress, although a few able stock companies still survived, and they often achieved long-sustained runs comparable to those of today's popular plays. With the great expansion of popular entertainment for the masses, it had become not only possible but also necessary for managers of the better theatres to pay more attention to the cultural standards of their comparatively limited and sophisticated audience. There were revivals of Shakespeare and other classic writers; wellstaged productions of serious contemporary drama, both American and foreign; and comedies and light operas which bore little resemblance to the blood-and-thunder melodrama and questionable burlesque that ruled at the people's theatres.
Contemporary critics often failed to realize that the divorcing of popular entertainment from the legitimate stage rivaled development of the star system as the outstanding feature of theatrical history in the second half of the century. Forgetting the slapstick and circus stunts with which it had been so heavily cluttered, they looked back nostalgically to the theatre of an earlier day and remembered only Shakespeare. They could not understand how a public which had once seemed to enjoy the drama so much had shifted its allegiance to vaudeville and burlesque. Deciding it had degenerated into "vulgarians," they damned the producers for their "practical, shopkeeping cultivation of this popular appetite." They often seemed totally unaware that vaudeville's assumption of the task of entertaining the million, which the theatre itself had once borne, was actually affording the legitimate stage far greater opportunity for the development of the drama than it had ever had before in the democratic society of America.
In time they looked back upon this period, as dramatic critics are so wont to do, with entirely different eyes. In retrospect the actors and actresses who supported the legitimate stage, even the plays produced at the more fashionable playhouses, took on Olympian stature. The years between 1870 and 1890 were said in many critical memoirs to stand out as the theatre's golden age. The last decade of the century fell under something of a cloud. The rise of a theatrical trust, dominated by a group of managers who appeared to be deserting the ways of Wallack and Daly, threatened to impose a monopolistic control which considered only the box-office. But even in those days there could be no real question that dramatic standards were far higher than in mid-century.
The small, luxuriously appointed theatres where reserved seats ranged in price from one to three dollars had become the home of a relatively exclusive amusement. Every city had its fashionable playhouses. Writing of New York, Henry Collins Brown speaks of the friendly social atmosphere of Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre, the Madison Square ("most exquisite theatre in all the world"), and the Union Square. In Chicago there were McVicker's and Hooley's; Boston offered the Museum and the old Boston Theatre. These houses appealed to the carriage trade. Here, in a new elegance of surroundings-the pit had become the parquet with sloping floor; upholstered plush seats were furnished throughout; steam heat (the Lyceum also had "medicated air, charged with ozone") had replaced the foyer stove; and the new electric lights were being installed -the world of fashion could enjoy the play in a quiet and comfortable atmosphere far removed from the democratic hurlyburly of mid-century.
The productions at these theatres generally centered about some starred actor or actress, although a few able stock companies still survived, and they often achieved long-sustained runs comparable to those of today's popular plays. With the great expansion of popular entertainment for the masses, it had become not only possible but also necessary for managers of the better theatres to pay more attention to the cultural standards of their comparatively limited and sophisticated audience. There were revivals of Shakespeare and other classic writers; wellstaged productions of serious contemporary drama, both American and foreign; and comedies and light operas which bore little resemblance to the blood-and-thunder melodrama and questionable burlesque that ruled at the people's theatres.
Contemporary critics often failed to realize that the divorcing of popular entertainment from the legitimate stage rivaled development of the star system as the outstanding feature of theatrical history in the second half of the century. Forgetting the slapstick and circus stunts with which it had been so heavily cluttered, they looked back nostalgically to the theatre of an earlier day and remembered only Shakespeare. They could not understand how a public which had once seemed to enjoy the drama so much had shifted its allegiance to vaudeville and burlesque. Deciding it had degenerated into "vulgarians," they damned the producers for their "practical, shopkeeping cultivation of this popular appetite." They often seemed totally unaware that vaudeville's assumption of the task of entertaining the million, which the theatre itself had once borne, was actually affording the legitimate stage far greater opportunity for the development of the drama than it had ever had before in the democratic society of America.
In time they looked back upon this period, as dramatic critics are so wont to do, with entirely different eyes. In retrospect the actors and actresses who supported the legitimate stage, even the plays produced at the more fashionable playhouses, took on Olympian stature. The years between 1870 and 1890 were said in many critical memoirs to stand out as the theatre's golden age. The last decade of the century fell under something of a cloud. The rise of a theatrical trust, dominated by a group of managers who appeared to be deserting the ways of Wallack and Daly, threatened to impose a monopolistic control which considered only the box-office. But even in those days there could be no real question that dramatic standards were far higher than in mid-century.
In the cities of the West, where the golden stream flowed so freely
In the cities of the West, where the golden stream flowed so freely in these thriving days and those who would scale society's heights often had so much to forget, even greater extravagances were sometimes recorded. It took many diamonds and much wine for some of the new dowagers to erase entirely the mark of the laundry tub or kitchen sink. Only money could do it, and the sensational inspired most newspaper copy. The new plutocracy gave dinners at which cigarettes were wrapped in hundreddollar bills or the guests found fine black pearls in their oysters. For one gala occasion the room was filled with cages of rare song-birds and dwarf fruit-trees, while half a dozen graceful swans swam in a miniature lake. There was a famous horseback dinner. "The guests were attired in riding habits," wrote Frederick Townsend Martin; "the handsomely groomed horses pranced and clattered about the magnificent dining-room, each bearing, besides its rider, a miniature table. The hoofs of the animals were covered with soft rubber pads to save the waxed floor from destruction."
The Bradley Martin ball in 1897 created the greatest sensation of the Gilded Age. The ball-room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was converted into a replica of Versailles and sumptuously decorated with rare tapestries and beautiful flowers. Mrs. Bradley Martin, as Mary Queen of Scots, wore a necklace of Marie Antoinette's and a cluster of diamond grapes once owned by Louis XIV. The suit of gold-inlaid armor worn by Mr. Belmont was valued at ten thousand dollars. The publicity given this affair was incredible. The New York Times and the Herald virtually gave over their front pages to descriptions of it, and the London papers all carried cabled dispatches. On the morning after the affair, the London Daily Mail, with allowance for the difference in time, reported: "Mrs. Bradley Martin, we have every reason to believe, is dressed at this very moment in a train of black velvet lined with cerise satin, and a petticoat, if it is not indiscreet to say so, of white satin, embroidered with flowers and arabesques of silver." The LondonChronicle congratulated New York society on its triumph -- "It has cut out Belshazzar's feast and Wardour Street and Mme. Tussaud's and the Bank of England. There is no doubt about that."
But there were limits to which even the American public would go in condoning such heartless extravagance in a year when there was widespread distress among the poor. The storm of disapproval that followed in the train of this ball drove the Bradley Martins out of the country. Depressed by their unexpected notoriety, they settled permanently in England.
The Bradley Martin ball in 1897 created the greatest sensation of the Gilded Age. The ball-room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was converted into a replica of Versailles and sumptuously decorated with rare tapestries and beautiful flowers. Mrs. Bradley Martin, as Mary Queen of Scots, wore a necklace of Marie Antoinette's and a cluster of diamond grapes once owned by Louis XIV. The suit of gold-inlaid armor worn by Mr. Belmont was valued at ten thousand dollars. The publicity given this affair was incredible. The New York Times and the Herald virtually gave over their front pages to descriptions of it, and the London papers all carried cabled dispatches. On the morning after the affair, the London Daily Mail, with allowance for the difference in time, reported: "Mrs. Bradley Martin, we have every reason to believe, is dressed at this very moment in a train of black velvet lined with cerise satin, and a petticoat, if it is not indiscreet to say so, of white satin, embroidered with flowers and arabesques of silver." The LondonChronicle congratulated New York society on its triumph -- "It has cut out Belshazzar's feast and Wardour Street and Mme. Tussaud's and the Bank of England. There is no doubt about that."
But there were limits to which even the American public would go in condoning such heartless extravagance in a year when there was widespread distress among the poor. The storm of disapproval that followed in the train of this ball drove the Bradley Martins out of the country. Depressed by their unexpected notoriety, they settled permanently in England.
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