Pinching Pennies in the Gilded Age

One famous gilded age belle was engaged, or rumored to be engaged, several times. At one point, May Van Alen was said to soon be engaged to the Duke of Manchester and the newspapers ate the story up, complete with all the necessary “family gossip” and pedigrees. When May eventually did marry, (one former suitor was dead from suicide, another had married her sister) she didn’t show up for the nuptials, leaving the wedding guests confused, while she and her groom, having gotten married in secret 4 days earlier, left for a motor tour of England.

The greatest falling off and expenditures this season has undeniably been in turnouts. Delivery men may be said to be raving and tearing their hair at the unwanted parsimony of the world of fashion. Many people who jobbed a landau or a barouche, for which they paid $300 per month, finding their own liveries, now actually go without the fashionable after-dinner drive, or are satisfied to hire a rumble seat phaeton for their daughters. This is the low carriage which ladies delight to drive, and one of the sensations at Newport is the sight of some famous belle, driving with a sister or cousin to play propriety beside her, and her beau behind in the rumble. 

It is most difficult to persevere that air of conquering grace which a beau who has a fine pair of mustaches one inevitably assumes when one is a cramped in a tiny seat, intended for a boyish page, fastened to the carriage by tiny iron springs, and bounding high into the air, whenever the carriage gives the least tip. But this is the style nowadays, and as it inculcates considerable self-sacrifice in young men who are apt to be selfish, and gives rest to those buttony boys who are considered the correct attendants for such an equipage, it is a good thing. 

I regret to learn that even here the fell spirit of economy intervenes, and that too many parents, instead of hiring these concerns by the month, take them only occasionally for the afternoon drive. Young ladies therefore can make themselves conspicuous and their beaus ridiculous, at the low rate of $4 an afternoon, which, it must be allowed, is cheap indeed. —New York Times, August 1875

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia