Brooke Astor’s Estate Is Auctioned, and a Friend Recalls Her Fondly – The Daily Beast
by pinkagendist
There’s a lovely article about Brooke Astor in The Daily Beast:
Brooke
Brooke Astor’s Estate Is Auctioned, and a Friend Recalls Her Fondly – The Daily Beast
It seems the age of the great society ladies is coming to an end. The new generation is nowhere near as refined and gracious, nor do they have the same commitment to style. My favourite, for years, has been Maya Langes-Swarovski (yes, that Swarovski). I don’t know how old she is, but apart from being incredibly elegant, she’s still magnificently beautiful. She’s got a sort of electric charisma, you can’t take your eyes off of her. She also sends me a birthday card every year, which obviously earns her bonus points. We sometimes ended up sitting together because we both smoke like chimneys. She smokes unusually thin cigarettes, of a brand called Vogue.
Maya
I think Goldsmith is right. We’re losing the high society. It’s been going on for two hundred years; you can see it when Emma Woodhouse wonders about whether she should attend Mrs Cole’s party, and again when Daisy Miller shows up in respectable ballrooms. I’ve never belonged to this world, so I can’t mourn its passing in as personal a way as you can, but these seem to be our last demigods, the final bulwark against vulgarity. The last pure specimens of a deservedly elite. We still have the unpalatably rich, but you can’t buy class, or taste.
This could be related to your recent post about the seeming friction between wealth and integrity–those who have money now get it by violating every rule of ethics, so they cannot represent the same respectability as women like Mrs Astor. They set the standards for social behavior too low.
People want to believe that there is some justice in the world, so we poor love people like Mrs Astor who get involved in their communities. We want to see that they’re using their wealth to benefit all of us, because we can forgive them for being rich if they use the money in manners we approve of. This does take a certain amount of self-promotion, but the alternative is to be hated by mass numbers of people, which became visible with the Occupy Wall Street movements.
If those Real Housewives programs are anything to go by, what’s called ‘society’ today has changed drastically.
There are, of course, destructive and bad notions linked to class, but there were also good ones. It used to be that the ideal of class was grace, kindness, making people feel at ease, hosting to bring people together and achieve certain goals. And even if it didn’t happen in the first generation, the following generations were expected to live up to certain standards.
Now it seems that’s been substituted for money and fame, just for money and fame. A lot of the ‘charity’ I see is fake charity in that it’s more about self-promotion than maximizing the help that could be given to one cause or another.
Yes, it’s the lack of noblesse oblige that we hate about modern celebrities. The older society seemed to recognize that they got rich because the rest of us gave them money, so they felt some gratitude for that, which they demonstrated through charity and community involvement. Real Desperate Housewives (and I’m speaking on hearsay, having never watched an episode of any of them) seem to believe that their money is eternal–it came from nowhere, and it’s going nowhere–so they use it in foolish ways. There’s no feeling of “giving back” to the community, because they don’t feel that the community has given them anything.
I’ve watched a couple of episodes and found the whole thing a bit horrifying. With very few exceptions the women aren’t very nice, not to each other or in general.
In the end it all boils down to education and training. Mrs. Astor was taught she had certain responsibilities. She was taught to be gracious. The problem is that when we abolished the class model, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. It actually is a good thing to make way for people, to hold doors open, to light someone’s cigarette for them, to stand up if someone comes to your table, to say thank you, to remember dates that are important to people we care about etc. etc. All those things that were associated to being a gentleman or a lady, which in turn was synonymous with membership in the upper classes.
We spread those habits around in the middle and lower classes, and gave all the stupid selfishness to the upper classes in return. Odd, how class markers shift.
We’re having a bit of a class implosion, aren’t we? Changing the definitions, watching people move up and down quickly. Perhaps before we’re dead the world will have figured it all out again.
Yes, interestingly I think those habits were spread around because courtesy was seen as the ideal to be achieved.
I fear we may be witnessing the end of that. Earlier I was criticized for saying ladies rather than women. I was taught exactly the opposite. I was supposed to say Sir/Madam /Ladies- Madame/Monsieur- Señor/Señora. My mother would have been furious if I’d referred to people without some degree of respect.
Yeah, I saw all that commotion and chose not to join. The arguers seemed to demand an unqualified apology for that other term you used, which you didn’t feel ethically bound to give. A stalemate, while you discussed yourselves into realizing that you really do have similar enough values that you can tolerate each other’s presences.
Here in the South, it’s also expected that you would refer to women as ladies. It’s often written on restroom doors, in fact. We teach children to refer to adult women as Ms Firstname, and to use Ma’am when at all possible. It’s respectful. In other areas of the country, these patterns of speech are only used sarcastically, so people in those communities see them as a sign of extreme disrespect, the opposite of the manner in which we intend it.
At one point, Charlotte Bronte said that Jane Austen may have been a perfect, complete lady, but that she was incomplete and flawed as a woman. I think some people see “lady” as describing someone who is so far up the social ladder as to be distanced from real life, and a bit incompetent when it comes to the more authentic feelings and life-or-death struggles of the poor. Kind of like the way my family sees me.
Ruth’s great-grandmother once told her that a lady never allows her car to have less than half a tank of gas at any time. A lady is prepared for any eventuality. I think it’s good advice.
You are funny.
I have to say you make me laugh.
But let’s get one thing clear. You were not criticised. I told you my POV. Not the same thing.
I was also taught as a child, the same thing too, and some many years before you.
Boring old ladies and gentlemen verbiage. I don’t think we live in the same world even if we are a few miles away!
And yeah, I had my father jumping up and down in restaurants when I realised every time I got up he had to do it too. Such fun. And totally ridiculous.
Just because I don’t agree with the system doesn’t mean I don’t know about it.
And @ angryricky. I think commotion is unfair. I didn’t ask for an apology. This is Pink’s blog and he writes what he wants. I comment what I want, and if it gets deleted or argued with, fine by me.
But, just to be doubly clear, I did not ask for an apology, just pointed out that using bimbette to describe a woman is offensive. To me.
Now I have to comment on the Ma’am title because I discussed this previously on another blog. It is extremely respectful (in the UK) because it is about power (you know, being queen, head of MI6 etc) and yet, an American blogger was offended because she thought she was being categorised as old if she wasn’t called ‘Miss’.
I come from Bronteland (geographically). Dysfunctional family doesnt even get there.
Oh I liked the read about Astor. The comments were even more interesting.
Interesting take, but when someone calls something pretentious, that can be classified as criticism
BTW, I don’t mind at all! I enjoy interesting discussions and arguments. If people agreed with me all the time, there would be no point in exchanging ideas, and I’d never see things from different perspectives.
We do live in a different time, but when I walk into the bank, the manager calls me Don Eduardo. I think it’s appropriate. He and I aren’t friends. When I call to speak to him I ask for Señor González. Also appropriate. A certain formality keeps respect in place and respect keeps the wheels of social relations well greased. There’s been a tendency in English to break down the formality, but I personally find the formality is a good thing. It draws lines in the sand from the get go and shows people I’m expecting a certain type of relationship.
get go??!!
lost the plot there – that is so seriously jargon. It is so American, which I don’ t do.
I’ll discuss the spanish later.
From ‘the start’, then, madam
Thank you. And I am loving madam
Wow… I’d love to be that elegant at ‘a certain age’.