Climbing among the skyscrapers

According to Ward McAllister, the fabled gate-keeper of New York high society in the 1890s, to be counted among the privileged few you needed

poise, an aptitude for polite conversation, a polished and deferential manner, an infinite capacity of good humour, and the ability to entertain and be entertained.

And also, by the by, pots of money. Given that one was expected to change one’s entire outfit nine times a day and take 20 gowns just for summer hols, the cost of belonging could have floated a small country, let alone a young lady. Yet the need to be part of an icily exclusive set with a profound sense of position was so desperate that women tormented themselves into obedience to shared rituals of numbing idiocy which must surely have smothered their humanity.

Of course, none of them admitted it was torment, and it is no part of Mr Homberger’s intention to ridicule these people. His is a serious and valuable social history, drawing upon worthy sources to build a detailed portrait of the elite and their way of life. But it does leave the reader bouche bZe in wonderment.

Take the etiquette alone. When making a visit to somebody’s house, female guests had to sit on chairs around the walls of the room and wait to be handed refreshments in turn by the servants; only the hostess had the freedom to get up and walk about. And through this ordeal ‘an aristocratic frigidity of demeanour was believed to express social refinement’. The central purpose of being ‘in’ appeared to be an invitation to the ball, but since that was ‘a minefield of social dangers’ it afforded not a moment of pleasure, just hours of tension. All this, says Homberger, was to establish and protect a system of living which counterbalanced the otherwise frenetic instability of New York.