What I did not realize was that the Schermerhorn line, quickly and easily traceable on-line, goes back many generations in America -- in fact -- all the way to the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam and before. I did some investigating and discovered that my own Schermerhorn roots were not all that distant from Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor. For me there is considerable irony here, and the revelation of this connection brings me to what may spark the next blog or so.
Just so you know where I'm headed, let me begin with Caroline Webster Schermerhorn and her List of Four Hundred: "Caroline Webster (Schermerhorn) Astor was the self crowned queen of New York (and Newport) Society, who set herself the task, to regulate society and keep the new rich of the Gilded Age out. Assisted by social arbiter Ward McAllister, she started in the winter season of 1872-73 to build up her list of socially prominent New Yorkers, therefore designating twenty five patriarchs, who would define society, by inviting to each ball of the season, four ladies and five gentlemen. [Equilibrium would obviously require the opposite.] In addition to the thereby convened 250 people, an undefined number of visiting guests, prominent people from other cities, and debutantes would be invited directly by Mrs Astor." <http://www.raken.com/american_wealth/OTHER/newsletter/chronicle111103.asp>.
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Caroline "Lina" Webster Schermerhorn
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Other resources show that Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor (September 22, 1830 – October 30, 1908) was perhaps the most prominent American socialite of the last quarter of the 19th century. Famous for being referred to later in life as "The Mrs. Astor" or simply "Mrs. Astor", she was the wife of real estate heir William Backhouse Astor Jr. Four years after her death her son John Jacob Astor IV was the richest man on the RMS Titanic and perished in the disaster of that ship. A very short biography of "Lina" Schermerhorn can be found at <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/davis/newport/biographies/csastor.html>.
I care little about any of this other than having a historical curiosity attached to my connections with Mrs. Astor, and to remind me of how divergent life histories can be within the same family. Aside from her penultimate role in America's Gilded Age, Mrs. Astor represents, from my point of view, very nearly the antithesis of the great egalitarian society envisioned by several of our forefathers. She gave new meaning to elitism and snobbery, and was certainly unrepresentative of the ideals of the so-called American dream -- that dream, of course, being the ability to rise to positions of wealth and power on the basis of one's own intellectual gifts, physical abilities or simply through diligence and hard work.
It is my opinion that the popular PBS Masterpiece Classic Downton Abbey, set in the first quarter of the 20th century, and in another country, sheds considerable light into how much society had already changed during that time, and only 25 years after Mrs. Astor ruled in America. I think we love Downton Abbey because it combines our fascination with the power elite of that day with a rapidly changing strata of social and cultural roles. WWI accelerated it surely, but what we fell in love with were the characters who recognized the change underway and largely embraced it. So in one sense we had the opposites of an established elite and a rising middle class, all of whom, in a pinch of time, moved all of us into a new era. Yet despite the dawn of that new era, most folks continued to maintain a certain sense of awe for established wealth, position and celebrity. And they still continued to draw the same distinction between old and new money.
I remember well my literature teachers in college who always emphasized that in its development important literature focused on or revolved around the lives of royalty by necessity. They were the more interesting subjects, and when they broke absolute moral codes of behavior the common man or groundlings applauded. Then that very same audience could also say: "I told you so!" And it was us mere mortals who provided the comic relief or cathartic release from their excesses or follies.
And now we have flashed forward to the age of pop culture where achievement may be old, new, instant, outrageous, or whatever grabs our attention on-line or on television or in news print at the time. We have Lady GaGa, Madonna, Jeremy Lin, Tiger Woods, Eli Manning, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, David Letterman, Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump -- and they are just for starters. Wasn't it Andy Warhol who declared that everyone now has his/her 15 minutes of fame? And then there's Paris Hilton, and Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh. It goes on and on. We have new ways of discerning fame and/or notoriety. That's good, but sometimes it's built upon a foundation of pompous, over-stuffed egos or extraordinary shallow material.
Frankly, although it dates me terribly, I still long for that anti-hero or the Common man -- those Willie Lomans and Santiagos created by the likes of Arthur Miller and Ernest Hemingway.
And can you imagine making a list of The Four Hundred today? Creating such a list (and given my distorted frame of mind) would drive me crazy!) It would seem quite safe, however, and given our directionless compass, to concentrate on the new royalty, which still seems to have much to do with the divine right of kings -- "Deo et mon droit" (God and my right). No, that's probably too difficult. Probably easier to look at the Forbes list: <http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/>. Not much seems to change... Please continue shopping at Wal*Mart.
Carry on,
Paul in Hilton Head, SC
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