Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1902-09-14
WAT TERSON RED HOT
LOUISVILLE EDITOR FIERCELY RE-
NEWS HIS ATTACK ON THE
-FOUR HUNDRED
CRUELTY TRACES HISTORY.
Morals, Manners, and Methods All
Bnd and Bnso1
NOT GOOD AMERICAN SOCIETY.
Insists That the Social Conditions
Arc PeriInus and Should Not Be
Treated Lightly, and That Vices
and Fol1ies Are Aped and the De-
cencies All Ignored, and Old Fash
toned Propriety Laughed Out.

LOUISVILLE. ky, September 1s-
Especial Henry watterson, in the Cour-
rier Journal, to-day. renews his attack
on Newport society, heading his article:
The Four Hundred: the Newspapers,
and the truth" He says:
When Ward McAlister, rather absurd
but yet welI-born gentleman, invented
the -Four Hundred it was his purpose
two parts turnkey and one part i1anl-to
supposed to be rich enough to form a
court circle in the great and growing
city of New York
That was five and twenty years ago.
There were many who laughed both at
him and his conceit. There were some
who seriously accepted the homage in
tended to be conveyed. Perhaps, very
few thought that the imaginary lines
thus established in the minds eye of a
rather solemn bon vivant who lived high
and died poor, would come to be the boun-
daries of an actual territory: q newly
discovered country as fantastic as Won
derland; with laws of its own, Inhabited
by a people marked, quoted. and signed
for deeds of strenuous frivolity; an aris-
tocracy without a pedigree; coterie de
rambouillet without wit or humor.
The Good old Days.
In the good O.. days when Bret Hart
was a social as well as literary lion and
Mark Twain was considered equal to
extracting sunbeaus from cucunbers. the
dinners were in solid virtues with what
II ;,, 1i~tA -Nl- ING
jokes; the diners were dull. but respect
able; Chauncey being grand chamberlain
and POSTMASTER in ordinary. What is
now called lower Fifth avenue could not
be described as Mr.. Dooley recently de-
scribed Newport, the abode Of luxury and
alimony, where the husband of yesterday
''intfradooces he wife that was to the
wife that is or ought 70 be-. In the be-
ginning it was a sJiff-necked high-backed
affair. having its abutment on Washing
ton Square There were then, as there
are still-around that genteel. comfort
breeding complain, brick walls, with
white facings to which scandal was a
stranger; habitations that went by the
name Of home; the homes OF the Coopers.
the Duncans. the Rhinelanders, the Hew-
tits the Carriers the Thorndikes: solid
folk. who if not as RIG. as the elder IS
tors were wholly unostenta uous. Ihey
form to-day the basis Of what may fairly
be called good society. Accuse one OF
them being Of the -Four Hundred, and If
YOU do not offer an insult, you perpetuate
a solecism.
They Move Up Town.
Mr.. Devery leads the Four Hundred OF
slunas. Who leads the Four Hundred OF
the uDper crust? 1t little matters. but
wherein shall we seek for any moral dill
ference in point of immoral influence that
doks not lean to the side OF the Devery?
IT was all on account Of moving up
town It began with the sudden wealth
Of which war is the progenitor. AS long
as the average New Yorker had to work
for his living and got his riches by the
sweat of his brow, money mad both a
character and a value. When Union
Square was fenced around by wooden
railing and the site of Fifth avenue was
vet frog pond. not a shop above Hous-
ton street in Broadway-the old brick
Roosevelt mansion at what is now Dead
4 Mans Curve, a kind of advance guard Of
| the march northward-the granCees OF
Gotham were content to live IN brown
stone fronts as like one to another as two
of a kind: and they lived exceedingly
well. They could tell the difference be-
tween Crow whiskey and rain wafer.
! when Decadence Set In.
They played whist, not bridge. Grace
/ cathedral, indeed. seemed to have little
/ more ruf1e than shirt to it But there
! were other places of worship, and they
! were not i'll attended, but about the
/ time the equestrian statue Of the Father
/ of his county went up, and the pal1Hgs
! around Union Square came down, and
/ the order to place his head to the rising
| sun and his tail to DR.. Cheever's church
! ;--,,eS no riches Of the
/ war came upon the scene: the monotony
/ of brown stone was not goou enough for
I them: what had been the center Of Gull
| ture and fashion, the sober shadow OF the
1 library, and the original homestead in
/ Astor Place just around the corner. hard
/ by the Academy, where music was some
! times heard. the sonbre gaiety, the sure
| footed, square-cut frivolity OF Fifth ave
/ nue. but a stones throw away, were given
| over to Bohemia and the Bohemians;
/ greater space and Seclusion, wider am
! plitude Of architectural display were re-
/ auired to meet the hizzare taste OF the
army contracts and the stock brokers and
| the lengtheninE shoddy line Of those who
/ had made profit out Of the opportunities
of the time, shall we say out of the trav-
| all of their country and their countryren
/ So the uptown move began. and along
| with if the down grade OF fashion.
NIiiIfonafres Grew Plentiful.
With magical rapidity wealth had al
| ready started to accumulate, fortunes tc
pe multiplied raillionaires TO become plen.
! tiful as ackberries-commcn; not only
/ common in quantity. but in quality. Cen
trail Park was made to the very hands
of these That they should build their
grandose places near it was inevitable.
/ In the early EOS Fiske stood for the hor-
| rid example just as Devery stands now
| The show was the thing. The turnout
as they called the -Four Hundred, ha6
come neither to their patrimony nor theil
protomic. But they existed in crude
| coarse way. expressing themselves II
| bangtails and shirt fronts and sinners: 6
trifle too brazen and noisy, perhaps bu
undeniably rich. The men had not ye1
learned the stony stare and the bruta
swaEger Of the bucks of the Jardin Ma
bile and the titled briisers Of the Argyle
| rooms The women were still women
! God bless thenn-a little vulgarized by sc
much money. but ignorant CT the Pinch
beck airs and graces of the demt mon
dame and the unspeakable dirt OF Lon
don and Paris.
An Orgy of License.
/ Yet, then, as now. the best people. NJ
matter how rich, turned silently asid'
: ~ 1nE