Beautiful Souls — Link

5 December 2011 – 12 August 2012

Room 28

Free

The ‘Souls’ were a sophisticated set of young aristocrats and society debutantes, who were drawn together by a shared interest in erudite conversation and high-spirited wit in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Counting amongst their number many brilliant young politicians, such as Arthur Balfour MP, later Conservative Prime Minister, a pivotal figure in the group, and the charismatic daughters of prominent families, the ‘Souls’ had a powerful impact on British culture and society.

Focusing on portraits of key individuals, this display explores the group’s spiritual affinity with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; in particular their support and close friendship with the artist, Edward Burne-Jones. Patrons and sitters for his work, several of the female ‘Souls’ inspired his depictions of nymphs and sirens. Featuring a range of prints and photographs, the display showcases the fine portrait studies of the group made by a leading ‘Soul’ – Violet Manners, Duchess of Rutland. An influential aristocrat and talented artist, Violet not only embraced the aesthetic lifestyle advocated by the Pre-Raphaelites, but also had the features of a ‘Burne-Jones Medusa’.

26 February 2012, 15:00

Gallery Talk — Link

Meet in the Main Hall

15:00

Free

By Sarah Ciacci

This talk will look at the display Beautiful Souls. Comprised largely of the portrait studies made by Violet Manners, an artist and member of the group, this display focuses on the glamorous set of aristocrats and socialites, nicknamed ‘The Souls’ because of their shared intellectual interests, that formed around the Conservative MP, and later Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, at the end of the nineteenth-century. Highlighting the cultural influence of the individuals involved, the display also demonstrates their Pre-Raphaelite associations.

Boil: To put off, or shorten, a meeting with one friend to spend time with another

Bunch: Give spontaneously and unexpectedly

Buxton: Letters, letter-writing, and the post; after Samuel Buxton, postmaster general, 1905-1910

Collins: A “thank you” letter for hospitality received, named after Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice who wrote an unquoted masterpiece in the line. They were a dreaded task for the tyro in country-house visiting and there was the lingering dread that an unscrupulous hostess might read it aloud at breakfast to entertain her remaining guests the day after one’s departure.

Dentist: A prearranged tete-a-tete with flirtatious overtones, so that the intervention of an unwanted third party playing gooseberry was known as “dentist-wrecking”; it could also have the more expected meaning of a private interview accompanied by plain speaking.

Dewdrop: A compliment retailed to you by some third party. The opposite (an insult retailed through a third party) was called a spike.

Doe: A woman

Drum: An additional party joining the original dinner guests after the meal, when the affair became rather noisier.

Floater: An embarrassing situation, or the cause of one

Gnome: An elderly admirer to be handled kindly.

Haircombing: Talking session with one or more women-friends carried on in each other’s rooms after bedtime, often till early in the morning.

Heygate: Conventional (of manners, attitudes, etc); the word carried negative connotation, and was often applied to individuals (“a heygate”) in a way similar to the use of “square” by a later generation.

Lasher: Proposal of marriage.

Navigate: To court; to approach with romantic intent.

Parti: A particularly eligible bachelor, typically a young aristocrat destined to inherit.

Phantom: A late-stayer at a ball.

Squirrel: Alert and also very elusive–synonymous with Americanism “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”).

The growing prevalence of a Yankee accent, indigenous or acquired, in smart drawing-rooms today, significantly betrays the New World leaven continually at work. Oddities of pronunciation are but the outward and audible sign of novelties in ideas. The nasal intonation reminds one that, on both sides of the Atlantic, social ideas increasingly conform to the same type. The Briton of either sex, newly arrived from the greatest of the Dependencies beneath the Southern Cross, instinctively sympathises with every sign of the Americanising process.

Gradually the new-comer realises the startling degree to which levelling-down processes have been going forward in the “old country.” Times have been bad. On every side his acquaintances of past years have experienced droll or tragic vicissitudes. Ladies, once little queens of their set, have been left to their own resources, and now manage establishments that would once have passed by the blunt name of boarding-houses. Others of the same gentle birth, if caught unawares, may be found in some Bond Street emporium of aesthetic curiosities, or are engaged in establishments of chiropody and manicure.

The boys who were to have gone into the Guards or into diplomacy have been compelled to earn their livelihood by any work they can find. If, lacking the influence for a start in the City, they have found a stool in the office of an auctioneer or West End house-agent, with good luck who knows but that a little time hence they may not win their promotion to the managing directorship of a residential hotel and chambers, like Colonel Kenney Herbert, who, if he is not exactly in Society, can create it for himself; can rebuild the Tower of Babel as easily as he can grill a cutlet or as deftly as he can compound a curry or a salad.

Other sons of the house were shipped off to Canada with a few pounds in their pocket, to sink or swim; they tried, but soon gave up, farming; they then gradually elbowed their way into little businesses, the grocery line for choice. Some day or other they may return with a fortune in their pockets to the land of their birth. Meanwhile the ocean post keeps open their line of communications with it, and reassures their friends as to their existence. The more imperial, therefore, the spirit of the age, the closer the intimacy between the Mother Country and its trans-oceanic settlements; the greater the commerce between its component parts, with their widely different social ideals, the weaker will grow the historic sentiment against manual employment as below the dignity of the gently-born Briton.

Indeed the influence of those traditional seats of patrician training, the English public schools, operates in the same direction. It seems at first unreasonable to expect a professional parent to pay £300 a year for his son, from the age of fourteen to eighteen, in order that the boy may learn little more than what an accomplished maid-of-all-work could teach him in a single morning. To frizzle a rasher for his fag-master nicely, to light his fire, to fetch his hot water, and to keep the room tidy, are the first duties in which an Eton youngster must perfect himself.

Together with the habits of manly self-reliance, of courage, and of positive dislike for intellectual or sedentary labour of any kind, which the costly school-life inculcates, it constitutes an effective, if a rather dear, preparation for colonial success. Strength, rather than receptiveness of new ideas, is an aristocracy’s characteristic. The alliance, however, between counter and coronet has produced some modification even here. Canadian boys in every station are brought up, like the Jews of old, to some trade. One of the Dominion’s latest Viceroys, the blameless Earl of Aberdeen, has profited by the social precedent of the country he ruled so far as to adopt its practice—i.e., he has started one of his sons in the craft of quarryman.

Many years ago, when the Irish troubles were beginning, Lord Cork made it a condition of his sons going to their father’s old school, that they should win their way into “college” at Eton. Society protested at the time, but has largely profited by the example. Other lads of noble birth are continually being sent into the manufactories or railway works, where their sires have influence. All this is in the same spirit as the smart alliances between trade and birth. Class fusion is, in truth, not the monopoly of the superior orders; the humblest as well as the highest share in it.

- Society in the New Reign by A Foreign Resident (1904)

During George II’s reign, Hyde Park became the playground of the upper classes. Riding became a passion, favorite steeds were shown off, and wagers were placed on the speed of one’s horse down the mile and a half length of Rotten Row. Cricket matches were bowled in Hyde Park, and skating on the Serpentine became a fashionable pastime after it froze over its first winter. Carriages had their own drive, laid down by the king, which ran parallel to Rotten Row. The mixture of social classes in the park happened gradually over the course of the 19th century, and the construction of The Crystal Palace for 1851′s Great Exhibition cemented Hyde Park’s new status as the “people’s park.”

The fashionable hour for riders was from around 8 am to noon, and again–with both riders on Rotten Row and carriages on the drive–between 5 pm and 7 pm, where the aristocracy mingled with politicians, artists, actors and actresses, explorers, and judges. The only people with the right to drive carriages down Rotten Row were the King and the Duke of St. Albans, as Hereditary Grand Falconer. In 1895 cyclists received permission to ride in a portion of the park, a row dubbed “Cyclists Row,” and the Ladies Mile, on the north side of the Serpentine, was the spot at which the Coaching and Four-in-Hand Clubs met during the summer. Other fashionable hours were Sundays between one and two pm for the “Church Parade,” and at that hour on “Ascot Sunday,” where ladies displayed their new summer dresses.

The most use made of Hyde Park was for demonstrations. About £8000 a year was spent on police work for Hyde Park alone, and demonstrators were required to forward information about their gatherings and marches to Scotland Yard to insure the protection and watchfulness of the “bobbies in blue.” The Mud March of 1907 was the most striking of gatherings, when “smart ladies in thousand-guinea motors, costers who were forced to leave their carts outside, factory women with babies in their arms, titled dames and girls from the slums, all marched or rode or drove in that great procession.” That same year, the Church of England began conducting open-air services every Monday night under the auspices of the Bishop of London’s Evangelistical Council, where the Bishop hoped to touch the lives of London’s neglected citizens.

We turn once more to Mrs. Alec-Tweedie, who rhapsodizes over the nature in Hyde Park, exclaiming “every kind of tree is here,—the elm, the lime, the beech, the common ash, the plane, and many besides…Shrubs have been planted in endless variety, and —when the tree trunks stand out bare and bleak in winter, and the branches are leafless—give to the walks a pleasant bordering of green. The particular glory of the Park shrubs is to be found in the rhododendrons, which in the weeks when they are in full bloom are alone worth coming to London to see.

The imported gulls, ducks and geese and moorhens, which number seven or eight hundred, never wander from the Serpentine, and are always ready. to welcome pieces of bread or biscuit, have become the most domesticated, and therefore the most commonly known. The wildfowl live largely on fish, which accounts for these seldom reaching more than three ounces in weight in the Serpentine.”

She also goes on: “But, alas! the twentieth century has sounded their [carriages] knell. Those delightful meets held in the summer months at the Magazine in Hyde Park, when the Four-in-Hand and Coaching Club muster twenty or thirty coaches each time, drive round the Park, then off to Hurlingham or Ranelagh to lunch, are coming to an end. Motors are hustling coaches off the road, and already the two famous Polo Clubs outside London are instituting automobile races and shows, because the entries for the coaches have dwindled so terribly, while for the former they have gone up by bounds in a few years. Horses are already threatened.” Her lament was rather justified, for society columns remarked upon the near desertion of Hyde Park by fashionable society in 1910 because of the automobile. Thankfully, the next season saw a return to Rotten Row, but this was a harbinger of the decline of the horse.

Further Reading:
Hyde Park, Its History and Romance by Mrs. Ethel Alec-Tweedie

Published in February 1912 issue of The Crisis; photograph by Addison Scurlock. Click to enlarge.

From the Smithsonian Institutions Research Information System

The Marlborough House Set, and to a lesser extent, The Souls, largely set the tone of aristocratic Edwardian society—though sticklers such as the Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury (who never followed the common practice of inviting Alice Keppel to a house party with the King) did not approve of their hi-jinks. Based on those aforementioned adages, husbands and wives were permitted to take lovers after filling their nursery with legitimate children, and society respected these extramarital bonds just as much, if not more so in some cases, as they did the couples’ legitimate marriages. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII, known as Bertie to intimates), however, was permitted much more freedom for dalliance than his subjects, and everyone knew just whom a certain lady entertained when a particular carriage dawdled at her front steps during afternoon tea (the prescribed hour for affaires d’amour).

But our Edwardian gentlemen and ladies did not enter into affairs lightly. In fact, casual affairs were quite rare, if only because of their impossibility. Not only because of the cumbersome clothing ladies wore, but because they lived under the constant surveillance of servants. They were awakened and dressed by maids, servants were constantly cleaning or attending to the family, and they played their social roles in public—riding in Rotten Row, attending dinners, dancing at balls, paying calls, etc etc—all under the eye of servants and the general public. As a result, a lady and her erstwhile lover could spend months exchanging sighs, heated glances and brief embraces, and scribbling loving letters to one another, before they could arrange a schedule for their assignations. This all appears so bloodless and correct, but human nature doesn’t respect rules, and it wasn’t uncommon for even the most circumspect people to lose themselves in a blaze of passion.

And in stepped scandal.

The Mordaunt and Aylesford divorce cases shook the core of the fun-loving Marlborough House Set since they involved the Prince of Wales, but they did nothing to end Bertie and his circle’s indulgences. In his pursuit of pleasure, many of his set fell to rack and ruin in their attempts to follow his lead:

Lillie Langtry, royal mistress of the Prince of Wales from 1877 to 1880, fell from grace when she became pregnant with her daughter Jeanne Marie, and definitely could not pass the child off as her husband’s. Only her enduring relationship with the Prince of Wales saved her from complete ruin, when in the wake of her divorce from Edward Langtry and their creditors, she became an actress. Though audiences in England and America only purchased tickets because of her notoriety and Bertie’s appearance at her first nights, her success did much to rehabilitate her reputation in society.

Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 20th Earl of Shrewsbury wreaked havoc when he eloped with the very married Ellen Miller-Mundy. She managed to divorce her husband and marry the Earl only months before the birth of their son, Viscount Ingestre, in 1882. Unfortunately, the Earl and Countess separated soon after, and though Lord Shrewsbury could re-enter society, no amount of support from his powerful sisters–which included Theresa, Marchioness of Londonderry–facilitated her re-entrance. Due to this gross breach of etiquette, Lady Shrewsbury spent the remainder of her life plagued with monetary troubles and largely ostracized from society until her death in 1940.

Lady Colin Campbell, née Gertrude Elizabeth Blood, was a delicious Irish beauty who met and married Lord Colin Campbell, fifth son of the 8th Duke of Argyll, quickly after meeting him in 1880. Despite Lord Colin’s impeccable background, he was a rake of the first order, and their wedding was actually postponed twice because of health issues. Despite this, Gertrude’s social-climbing mother pushed through the obstacles in order to see her daughter become a member of such an illustrious family. Shortly after moving to London, Lady Colin Campbell discovered that her husband had infected her with venereal disease. She filed for and was granted a judicial separation from Lord Colin in 1884 on the grounds of cruelty, that he had knowingly infected her. But that wasn’t the end of their marriage, for both sued one another for divorce that same year, with Lord Colin accusing her of adultery with four prominent gentlemen in the trial which finally took place in 1886. Gertrude was denied her divorce, and under the double-standards of the day, her husband was granted a divorce. A scandalous divorcée, Lady Colin Campbell rebuilt her life along her own lines, becoming a respected journalist in her own right and close friends with James McNeill Whistler and George Bernard Shaw.

Daisy, Countess of Warwick was prone to scandal. When in 1889, Daisy (then Lady Brooke) discovered that Lady Charles Beresford was pregnant with her husband’s child when he was having an affair with her, she dashed off a furious letter to Lord Charles, which his wife intercepted. Lady Charles then refused to return the letter, placing it in the care of society’s favorite solicitor, George Lewis. The beautiful Daisy pleaded with the Prince of Wales to intercede, and it was no surprise when she became his latest inamorata. In the meantime, Lady Charles continued to write about Daisy’s affair with her husband to whomever she could, and her sister wrote an anonymous pamphlet ridiculing Lady Brooke’s tantrum over her lover impregnating his own wife, spreading the scandal far and wide. Nevertheless, as Bertie’s new mistress, Daisy’s position in society was now unassailable, and Lady Charles was forced to retreat into seething silence.

After her affair with Bertie cooled in 1898, she fell in love with Joe Laycock, a millionaire who fathered two of her children, Maynard and Mercy (so named when she discovered she was pregnant at age 41). But Laycock was also seeing Kitty Downshire, the wife of an Irish marquess, and when Kitty’s husband threatened divorce over her affair, this menage-a-trois set society’s pens ablaze with letters deploring, snickering at, and gossiping about such scandalous conduct. Joe and Kitty married after her divorce (a man named as correspondent in a divorce suit was considered a cad if he didn’t marry the divorcée), and the heartsick Daisy was forced to attend to other matters, such as her near poverty. Years of lavish entertainment and socialistic pursuits had depleted the immense fortune she’d inherited from her grandfather. Daisy’s last scandal was her 1913 attempt to sell Bertie’s love letters to her. George V ignored her blackmail, but Arthur do Cros purchased the lot and they were published in the 1960s.

Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, known as the “Dancing Marquess” for his habit of performing “sinuous, sexy, snake-like dances,” packed a lot of scandal into his short life. Upon the death of his father in 1898, he inherited his title and the family estates with about 30,000 acres, which provided an annual income of £110,000. He promptly went on a spending spree, buying jewels, outlandish clothes, and bizarre fripperies. His wife, the former Lillian Florence Maud Chetwynd, filed for an annulment in 1900, claiming non-consummation, and rumor had it he forced her to lie naked while he covered her body with jewels, after which he stood and admired his handiwork. Shed of a wife, Lord Anglesey poured more and more of his money in jewels and building an opulent theater in which he and a hired troupe performed lavishly-decorated plays. He also mortgaged his estates to the hilt, bringing in an additional £250,000, and kept spending. Therefore it was no surprise when in 1904, he had racked up hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt. He was forced to sell his precious clothes, jewels, dogs, railway car, horses, cars, carriages and yachts to pay creditors, and left with £3,000 a year, he moved to Monaco, where he died the following year after a long illness at the age of 30.

This was just the tip of the iceberg, though it seemed a nice portion of scandal resulted from the alliances of American heiresses with British peers (as well as the European aristocracy). One scandal which comes to mind is that of Katherine McVickar. The daughter of a Commodore in the U.S. Navy, Miss McVickar arrived in England in 1870, where she met the forty-something Major Charles Grantley Norton and accepted his proposal of marriage. Nine years later, her marriage to Norton was dissolved so she could marry his cousin John Richard Brinsley Norton, 5th Baron Grantley, who was twenty years younger and the father of her unborn child. Katherine and Lord Grantley married only five days before she gave birth to the Hon. Joan Mary Conyers Norton. This bit of scandal was covered up by Debrett’s, who amended their subsequent editions to make it appear that Katherine hadn’t divorced her husband to marry his cousin days before the birth of her daughter. Fortunately for all parties involved, Katherine went on to become a noted society hostess until her death in 1897.

Another noted case was Frances Work, who married James Burke Roche, later 3rd Baron Fermoy, in 1880. Her father was very much against international marriages and as a condition of Frances’ marriage to Burke Roche, her twin sons Francis and Maurice were raised in America. Frances divorced Roche for desertion in 1891, but her father remained mistrustful of his daughter’s sense, and left a will with fifteen codicils, which mirrored her marital career, one of which cut her out of his will when she married Hungarian horse trainer Aurel Batonyi in 1905. She was restated in the will by another codicil, which left her a nice sum if she separated from Batonyi.

As you can see, not even the Edwardians were exempt from messy scandals, bitter divorces, and illegitimate children. The difference between us and them was style with which they carried off their breaches of etiquette. Though, as mentioned above, the double-standards frequently resulted in the ostracism of women, if enough money, power, and position were involved, even the most shocking circumstances could be overcome.

Further Reading:
The Marlborough House Set by Anita Leslie
To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace
Article on the 5th Marquess of Anglesey from the Daily Mail
American Jennie by Anne Sebba

Where places like the aforementioned Newport, or Bar Harbor, sprang up around sleepy New England villages, and were easily accessed by the non-rich, Tuxedo Park was to be ultra-exclusive, man-made, and entirely unique. Through a combination of poker winnings and legitimate purchasing, Lorillard pieced together five thousand acres of land in the Ramapo Mountains region of Orange County, New York. At the urging of his lover, socialite-turned-actress Cora Brown Potter, he then turned the tract of land over to architect Bruce Price (the father of Emily Post) to design and build a gated community which would consist of luxurious cottages, private roads, a clubhouse, a private police station, and landscaping to mimic a rustic setting. Lorillard imported Italian and Slovak immigrants to build Tuxedo Park, and he rather thoughtlessly, but true to the period, named the shanties in which they lived “Fifth Avenue,” “Broadway,” and “Wall Street;” the workers mess hall was “Delmonico’s.”

Tuxedo Park opened in 1886, and members of the Four Hundred rushed to snap up land. However, those families who were not allotted parcels on which to erect a cottage had to undergo a formal test before being allowed to buy land and build a home: first they contracted to buy land, at which point they were examined by the Tuxedo Association for admission to the club. If a prospective homeowner was denied admission to the club, their contract to buy property was simply voided. Nonresident members were permitted to stay in Tuxedo, but only for limited periods, and family members stayed in apartments on the top floors of the clubhouse, bachelors resided in a separate building, and families with children were housed in a separate building nicknamed “the baby kennels.” As Tuxedo Park was focused around the clubhouse, it was ruled with an iron fist by George Griswold, who created a set of rules and enforced them in a socially ruthless manner.

Laura Claridge describes the opening day on May 30, 1886 in Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners:

[T]hree special trains, loaded with seven hundred guests, arrived from New York City. Green-and-gold buses and wagons, branding the scene with the club’s colors, lined up at the station to transport the visitors to the park. For latecomers, there were the Tuxedo taxicabs–single-horse covered carts, locally called “jiggers”–to pick up the slack.

Though Tuxedo Park was built as a sporting resort, its proximity to New York naturally incorporated a stay into the year-round social season–some families preferring to go there after the Newport season, instead of the Berkshires, and some even made Tuxedo their permanent residence. The year Tuxedo Park opened sparked not only the birth of the country club and modern American resort, but an item of clothing which was to change the way men dressed for formal events to this day.

There are two accounts about the origins of the tuxedo. In one account, Pierre Lorillard’s son Griswold turned up in a tail-less evening jacket at Tuxedo Park’s annual Autumn Ball and apparently, the jacket became “known as the tuxedo when a fellow asked another at the Autumn Ball, ‘Why does that man’s jacket not have coattails on it?‘ The other answered, ‘He is from Tuxedo Park.’ The first gentleman misinterpreted and told all of his friends that he saw a man wearing a jacket without coattails called a tuxedo, not from Tuxedo.”

The other account gives the provenance of the tuxedo to fellow Tuxedo Park resident James Brown Potter, who brought a Homburg jacket made at Henry Poole & Co. home from a trip to England in 1886. When Potter and his friends wore this coat to a dinner party at Delmonico’s, it created a sensation and was dubbed a “tuxedo.” Whomever originated the tuxedo, its adoption over the tailcoat was considered daring until the Prince of Wales (later Duke of Windsor)–an ardent lover of all things American–made it acceptable for semi-formal evening dress. Though tie and tails prevailed for most, the younger generation preferred the tuxedo for its slightly informal aspect and its modernity.

The Albermarle Club, founded in 1874, is marked at the first ladies’ club, but it admitted both gentlemen and ladies–a shocking development in and of itself. The first women’s club was the Somerville Club, founded in 1879, for graduates of the college and those of a strong intellectual and philanthropic bent, but the first ladies’s club was the Alexandra, which was founded in 1884 and required its prospective members maintain eligibility to attend Court Drawing Rooms. The other ultra-exclusive club was the Victoria (1894), and both possessed dining rooms, reading rooms, drawing rooms, and bed chambers for its members, the last of which accommodated ladies for a fortnight’s lodging. Other clubs of note were the University Club (1887), which counted among its members university graduates, licensed physicians, and students or lecturers who had been in residence for at least three terms in Girton or Newnham, Cambridge, or Lady Margaret or Somerville, Oxford; the Pioneer Club (1892), founded by Mrs. Massingberd for ladies of rank and professional women, its aim being that of promoting democracy and abolishing class lines within its handsome residence; and the Writers’ Club (1892), which strove to provide opportunities for English lady journalists.

By 1899, London saw nearly twenty-five clubs catering specifically to the needs of London’s aristocratic and middle class women–and that number did not include the growing number of clubs and societies formed for the benefit of working-class women. Soon, not only did other British cities follow the lead with such clubs as Edinburgh’s Queen’s Club (1897) and Manchester’s The Ladies’s Club, but American cities, with New York’s The Colony Club being the most opulent and aristocratic club of its kind. Though they were primarily sociable in focus, the clubs could be a hotbed of political activism, with many suffragists taking prominent positions in the multitude of clubs which sprang up since 1899, and social change.

Baltimore: the city’s proximity to Washington meant the elites of both cities mingled frequently, and society comprised natives of Baltimore and relations of Washington elites. Possessing one of the largest populations of African-Americans before and after the Civil War, by the late nineteenth century, Baltimore’s elite society emerged from the free families aligned with the city’s civic, educational, and religious life for generations. Tying the black elite together was the presence of George Murray, who was born free in 1773 and lived until 1890. Those living in Baltimore were rather affluent as well, with a black editor calculating the collective wealth of the elites at approximately $500,000, of which $75,000 was the worth of John Locke, the owner of a hack and funeral business. Others gained their wealth from catering, barbering, hod-carrying, brickmaking, and caulking. The wealth and relative leisure permitted vacations, and the most popular spots were Harper’s Ferry, Cape May, and Arundel-on-the-Bay, later called Highland Beach, which was founded by Frederick Douglass’ son Charles.

Charleston: this was the most aristocratic city of the South for blacks and whites, and most if not all, of the black elites in this city had deep (miscegenation) ties to the white aristocrats. During the antebellum era, they existed in a happy plane below whites but above slaves, and indeed, a number owned slaves themselves. They were the most exclusive of black elite circles, and most considered Charleston society superior to any other city.

New Orleans: As with Charleston, a substantial portion of the black elite traced their lineage to free people of color, but they developed on a completely separate line than Charleston due to New Orleans’ unique history. They “enjoyed more privileges and were more respected by their white neighbors than in any other city in the United States” and were considered, at best, quasi citizens. This situation created a “peculiar social system” wherein “men who elsewhere would be called ‘colored’ because of their known African origins, f[ound] their social business here as Creoles.” Though Jim Crow put a crimp in their antebellum status, they nonetheless prided themselves on their education, their breeding, and wealth.

Philadelphia: The old families of this city contained three distinct components: native Philadelphians, the West-Indian group, and fair-complexion, free-born Southerners who migrated there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Much of the wealth came from catering, and the most renowned and successful cater was Robert Bogle, whose patrons were esteemed white Philadelphians. Black elites here were closely identified with the abolitionist movement, several benevolent societies, various civic and religious enterprises, and especially the prestigious Banneker Institute. Unlike the cities of the South (as you will see with other Northern cities), the old elite quickly adapted to the influx of educated and skilled blacks who migrated north after Reconstruction, retaining their social prominence by entering the fields of law, medicine, education and business.

New York: the black population in the city was small but elegant. They, like the old Philadelphia aristocracy, were made up of native New Yorkers (many of whom traced their lineage to the days of Dutch settlement), migrants to the city, and West Indian emigres. This elite group was divided in two, with the New York and Brooklyn factions battling for exclusiveness. Brooklyn won out, however, especially after the harsh racial climate after the Draft Riots and the influx of black Southerners after the Civil War. In 1895, the New York Times was moved to note that as soon as black New Yorkers “amass a comfortable fortune, they move across the East River [to Brooklyn]“. Most were of the professional class; caterers, physicians, druggists, and so on, with much of their wealth derived from real estate holdings. On the subject of Harlem, blacks did not begin to move to this area until the late 1900s, and most of the wealthy residents were not of the black elite.

Boston: elite black Bostonians were even more tied to abolitionist circles than in Philadelphia. Though they made up only 2% of the black population of the city, they counted attorneys, physicians, salaried employees, business proprietors, and literary and musical people a part of their small, exclusive circle. Their vocations brought them in contact with upper-class whites more often than lower-class blacks, with many taking part in the city’s civic life (for example, George L. Ruffin, a Harvard-educated lawyer, served as a legislator and city judge). Their circle was difficult to pierce, and Boston’s black elite tended to associate with their white neighbors, they employed white servants, attended a few select churches, and vacationed together at Saratoga and Oak Bluff (Martha’s Vineyard). Unlike any other city, black Brahmins were privileged enough to attend public events such as performances at the Boston Symphony, the opera, celebrations at Harvard, and races at Mystic Park, where a few of their horses won cups.

Chicago: the city was first settled by a black sable trader from Santo Domingo, but the black population didn’t become identifiable until the 1840s, and was made up of escaped slaves and free blacks from the North and the South. Though Chicago had a reputation as a “sinkhole of abolition,” this was not the case for black Chicagoans, who lived beneath a yoke of legal and extralegal discrimination. After the Civil War, blacks in Chicago battled discrimination in housing, employment, and the use of public conveyances, but a black elite nevertheless thrived. A unique feature of black Chicago was its professional tone: society was led by physicians, dentists, druggists, and attorneys. Fannie Barrier Williams was certain that the black aristocracy in Chicago was “better dressed, better housed, and better mannered than almost anywhere in the wide west.” Though education was paramount, wealthy black businessmen were able to join society by the 1920s.

The West: black communities on the West coast remained small until WWI, where in 1900, the combined population of blacks in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Los Angeles numbered but 7,191–less than 1/8th of Philadelphia and less than 1/4th of Chicago. San Francisco was the hub of black elites in the West, and the keyword for telling who was who was the use of the word “pioneer.” Los Angeles’ black population surpassed that of San Francisco’s after 1900, and was marked by the city’s founding by blacks and mulattoes, as well as the vast numbers of professional blacks who migrate to Los Angeles after 1890. Seattle’s black population was very small–406 in 1900–but the wealthy residents were considerably well-to-do, the most comfortable being the Caytons, publishers and editors of the Seattle Republican, who lived in spacious house on Capital Hill, the city’s most exclusive neighborhood, and existed between the black and white worlds. Denver’s population grew from 23 in 1866 to 4000 in 1900, more than one wealthy black family gained prominence after the gold rush.

Further Reading:

Aristocrats of Color by Willard B. Gatewood

Though there were three more expositions of significance by the dawn of WWI (St Louis in 1904, Seattle in 1909, and San Francisco in 1915), the one held in 1900 was unique in that it was the first and last fair to bridge the gap between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was also the pinnacle of imperialism, and the “nadir of race relations in America.” After witnessing the successful campaign for the inclusion of African-Americans in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, African-Americans viewed the Paris Exhibition as another avenue to promote the progress of their people in the thirty-five years since the end of slavery. The year before the fair, W.E.B. Du Bois, a noted sociologist and activist for African-Americans, began to collect material for the display, and focused on “creating charts, maps, and graphs recording the growth of population, economic power, and literacy among African Americans in Georgia.” In conjunction with Daniel A.P. Murray, assistant to the Librarian of Congress, Du Bois was able to assemble a large collection of written works, which included a bibliography of 1400 titles, 200 books, and many of the 150 periodicals published by black Americans.

Du Bois stated that the objective of the exhibit was quadruple, and by displaying it he hoped to illustrate “the History of the American Negro, the Present condition of the Negro, the Education of the Negro, and Literature of the Negro.” he project was backed with a $15,000 budget appropriated from the American government and amounted to numerous artifacts, including “musical compositions, books by African American authors, and the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, their award-winning display of photographs, books, models, maps, patents, and plans from several black universities, including Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Hampton, and Tuskegee, showed the world African Americans “studying, examining, and thinking of their own progress, and prospect.”

One highlight of the exhibit utilized nine model displays to depict the progress of Negroes from slavery to the present day. The models began with the homeless freedman and end[ed] with the modern brick schoolhouse and its teachers. Finally, to illustrate the increase in population of the race and to demonstrate other contributions, there were charts showing population growth, the decline in illiteracy and a record of the more than 350 patents granted to black men since 1834. Du Bois stated, concerning the exhibit “we have thus, it may be seen, an honest, straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves.” As a result of its great success, the Negro Exhibit was awarded with seventeen medals during its time on display at the Paris Exposition. Specifically, it received “two grand prizes, four gold medals, seven silver medals, two bronze medals and two honorable mentions” in the various categories of appraisal.

Further Reading:
About Du Bois and the Paris Exposition
The 1900 Paris Exposition
The Exhibit of American Negroes
W.E.B. Du Bois and the 1900 Paris Exhibition
Africans, Darkies and Negroes: Black Faces at the Pan American Exposition of 1901, Buffalo, New York
A small nation of people: W.E.B. Du Bois and African American portraits of progress from the Library of Congress with essays by David Levering Lewis and Deborah Willis.
The Exhibit Online