More Criticism of McAllister’s Manners

Nathan Lane as Ward McAllister and Carrie Coon as the fictional Berth Russell in HBO’s “The Gilded Age”

Another small portion of a dismal review of 

Ward McAllister’s book, 

“Society as I Have Found It”

The Paris dressmaker Worth receives an extensive advertisement throughout the pages of “Society As I Have Found It.” The author’s “distinguished” friends– an adjective which he applies indiscriminately to all of his friends, but which is quite superfluous, since we are perfectly aware from his own admissions that he would avoid the acquaintance of anyone who was not distinguished– are invariably described as having been arrayed in magnificent Worth gowns at the entertainments recorded in his book. The impression which he thus endeavors to convey, that the ladies in the foremost ranks of New York society get their dresses from Worth, is likely to create a considerable impression among his feminine readers in the Western and Southern States, and to prove of much pecuniary value to the once famous faiseur in question. 

For there has been a very marked decrease in the latter’s formerly important transatlantic clientele since the American élégante have at length began to realize that his Vogue disappeared with the fall of the Empire, and to discover that his European customers are almost entirely restricted to the wives of Levantine bankers and to the princesses of the stage and of the demi-monde. No leader of fashion in either London, Vienna or St. Petersburg, nor indeed any Parisian élégante, would ever dream of confining the construction and design of her toilette to the somewhat heavy hands of the Gallicized Yorkshire man in the Rue de la Paix, whose questionable and inartistic taste betrays his north-country origin, and who invariably strives to conceal the vulgarity of his coupe by overloading his creations with parvenu magnificence.

Mr. McAllister's readers, especially those who hope to derive from its pages social experience and a knowledge of etiquette, would likewise do well to avoid following too closely “the forms of invitations used by Mr. McAllister.” It is possibly owing to his connection with trade that he has adopted the commercial method of abbreviating words, such as, for instance, “yrs.” for “yours.” Abbreviations infer that the writer does not regard the person whom he is addressing as worthy of the trouble involved by writing out the word in full, and are therefore discourteous.

More over, it is hardly good form to refer in a letter to a “polite” invitation, while the expression “pray present me most kindly to Mrs. I and believe me yours, etc.,” must surely be an Americanism pure and simple, and the use of which is restricted to Mr. McAllister's “swell” friends. For it is certainly never used in Mayfair or Pall Mall. All these lapses, not only of language, but also of ordinary breeding and education, appear trivial, however, when we come to the appalling confusion of pronouns, which he introduces in his attempts to show his readers how to write a note in the third person.

In conclusion, permit me to express the earnest hope that young America will not regard as a model of European fashions, nor Europe consider as an example of American fashion, this feeble imitation of the Calais– not the London– Beau Brummel, whose manners, breeding, education and form are like his Huguenot legs– “very, very groggy.” – By an Ex-Diplomatist in the New York Tribune, 1890 

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