Clyde Fitch - The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations

I know you are mad to hear all about the ball, so I'll tell you. In the first place it was a great success, and that settles it! The Makeways are now a power in New York society, and there's really no reason why they shouldn't be. His family are all right and her English connections are better; and then what a charming woman she is! She makes a perfect hostess. Such tact! Everything was carried out in the best of taste. If they erred at all it was on the side of simplicity; and yet that gives you a wrong idea about the ball, because it really could boast of splendor. Yes, I mean it, but of a solid, real kind. There is nothing papier maché about the Makeway house; nor about its owners, nor about their entertainment. You can't help but believe this, and it gives you a sense of social security! Everyone anyone would want in their house was there. If any line was drawn tightly inside the smart circle, it defined the pseudo-déclassé. Mrs. Makeway might be described in England as a slightly early-Victorian hostess, or if our presidents had at all the position and social power of royalties, she would be ticketed perhaps as of the Hayes period, except that would imply "Total Abstinence," which would mean instant death to anyone in smart society, thank goodness! I suppose you've heard that old mot of the dinners at the White House during the Hayes administration, that water flowed like champagne! Well, that will never be said of the Makeways. Their wine was the very best, too; I never had better at any party, seldom as good, and even John, who scoffs at the idea of women being a judge of wines, confesses, that, though we've entertained everybody all our lives, we've never had such a good wine inside our doors. The supper was, in the first place, comfortable, and, in the second place, faultless. (There was a queer kind of game, which I loathed, but of course I knew, whatever it was, under the circumstances it was the right thing, so I choked it down.) The music was superb – all the good Hungarian orchestras in town. The cotillon favors were lovely, and some very stunning gold and jeweled things from Tiffany's must have cost a fortune.

But of course what you want to know about most is the people and what they had on. I wore my – but you'll see my dress in Florida, so never mind. Mrs. Makeway had a superb dress, but she always dresses handsomely. What a nice man Mr. Makeway is. You felt sure he was bored to death by the party, and all of us at it, but he concealed it with such charming manners and such natural courtesy that you really felt somehow it was a pleasure to come and put him out. The daughter is a great success; there's no denying that. She has a perfect figure, and is very graceful. She seems to have her father's manners, brought up to date by her mother. She's going to be a leader, you can tell that, and apparently she can be an eventual duchess, if she wishes. Young Lord – is still here, and his devotion in the Makeway quarter is undisguised. Everyone likes him, and says he isn't the sort of young fellow to be merely after her money; but no one can tell if Helen is going to take him or not. I am sure of one thing, she will do as she pleases.

There were beautiful jewels in evidence at the ball. Mrs. Makeway wore, I believe, a dozen strings of the most gorgeous pearls. All real , of course, with their money. They must represent a fortune in themselves. Poor old Mrs. Hammond Blake came with all her Switzerland amethysts, and a few new topazes mixed in (she must have been at Lucerne last summer). She looked like one of those glass gas-lit signs. But really, all the best jewels in New York were there. And it is wonderful to see how the women whose throats are going the way of the world have welcomed the revival of black velvet if they haven't the pearl collarettes. I shall be wanting something of the sort myself soon. Woe is me! And John does keep looking so abominally young. I tell him out of courtesy to me he must get old more quickly, or people will be saying I married a man years younger than myself!

John says I needn't trouble to furnish people with subjects for talking; they can make up their own. But I don't think we are gossips nowadays here in America; do you? Which reminds me that everybody says the Mathews are going to separate at last. She's going to Dakota, and get it on incaptability, or cruelty, or some little thing like that. Everybody wondered at first why, since she'd stood it so long, she was going to divorce Ned now, at this late day, but it has leaked out. Think of it – Charlie Harris! Aren't you surprised? It's only about two years since he divorced his wife. Mrs. Harris got the children, so I presume Mrs. Mathews will keep hers to give Charlie in place of his own. If I remember the number he will be getting compound interest! You know the Mathews babies came with such lightning rapidity we lost count. One was always confusing the last baby with the one that came before it. Anyway, I think Charlie Harris gets the best of it; so, even if it isn't altogether ideal to possess your children "ready made," as it were, still Elsie Mathews is a charming woman, and I never could bear Mrs. Harris. She told such awful fibs, and her exaggerations were not decorative; they were criminal. Why, I couldn't recognize a piece of news I told her myself when I heard her repeating it to some one else not five minutes after, as John says.

Heavens! for the third time, "as John says," I must stop. But I am a very happy married woman! John gives me everything I want, and I adore him.

When I hear from you I will telegraph my train. We missed you awfully at the Makeways. John spoke of it several times. He loves to dance with you because you are always ready to sit it out and do all the talking. Dear me, I'm afraid that doesn't sound complimentary, but I assure you he meant it as such!

How nice it will be to be with you. You aren't strict about your mourning, are you? I don't think it's at all necessary, way off there.

My Darling George:

I hope this letter will reach you before you leave Minneapolis. I do wish you would leave politics alone, if they're going to take you away like this. Believe me, the country can get along much better without you than I can! When we are married you have got to give them up. When we are married, too, and this bore of a divorce of mine is finally settled, I presume I shall be invited to Mrs. Makeway's parties! I wasn't asked last night to her big ball! – not that I care. I am sure that beast of a husband of mine will never be able to prove his nasty charges against us, and that I shall win the case. Then there'll be no excuse for Mrs. Makeway and her prudish set, and I promise you they shall eat "humble pie," if there's any left in the world after all my dear friends have made me devour. Tom has been making overtures to my maid through a detective, but Lena is faithful to us, and I've promised her double any sum they offer her. When my position is all right again, I shall go in for society in the most extravagant, splendid way for one long, brilliant, spiteful season, and I shall punish every one of these women who have snubbed me so terribly. After all, half of them owe their positions in the world to my family, and with my family to back me there will be no trouble about my being absolutely reinstated. My people will back me up, too, for we have never had a scandal up till now. We have been almost the only family left.

Of course the papers are full of the Makeway ball, and the pictures of Mrs. Makeway are too deliciously absurd for anything. One looks like that one of me in the Evening News when I gave my evidence. I really believe it's the same picture. I hear that she looked rather well with her famous pearls on (which, between you and me, I believe are false), and her tiara, which all the out-of-town people go to the opera to see. But they say she was dressed entirely too young, and showed she thought her own party a great success. However, what can you expect? She was nobody; her family are most ordinary people, the kind that are prominent in some unfashionable church and influential in its Sunday-school. O, la-la-la-la! She prides herself on having an ancestor of some sort who fought in the War of Independence – a common soldier, I suppose, in Washington's army; that's why she has had an office in the "Daughters of the Revolution." We