Life — August 5, 1897 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> LIFE: Life’s Personally Conducted j,Tours. LENOX, ENOX is the apex of the American social pyramid; the roof-garden of society; the Garden of Eden of the faut ton, where Eve may hold sweet converse with the devil, while Adam, as becomes an American gentleman, husbands the vegetable crop and gazes contem- platively over the fence at a vulgar outside world. Lenox is a secluded ce of terri- tory within the confines of Massachu- setts, which can be found on the map with the aid of a microscope and a rail- road time-table. It was discovered by a gloomy aristocrat who had fled into the wilderness from Tuxedo when that bucolic retreat had grown too swift for comfort, too vociferous for opera-box patrons, and too frank for a coterie which esteemed the JMoulin Rouge languid and productive of exnui, Lenox was idyllic; its scenic attractions were good; its aspect was charmingly English; it was distant from the giddy centres of whirligig. The Columbus of Lenox was weary of the nickel-plated splendor of the season; he sighed for pastures fresh and population green; he saw that with proper accessories, with the necessary costumes, stage effects, prop- erties, possibil lights and supernumeraries, the ies for new acts of the social com- edy were illimitable in Lenox. Rush and whirl, splurge and squander, were essential to social prestige; but a place for pleasant, quiet social splendor, with old baronial stage effects; a spot free from the tumultu- ous gauds of trans-Mississippi barons; a recuperating station, in fact, with all the soothing conditions of a jag-cure denuded of its vulgar associations, was a crying want, . * . 5 the social possibilities of this simple Arcadian region burst upon him tears welled from his eyes, and the wife of his bosom saw reaching out before her mental vision a series of social triumphs, in which her rivals were outdone even to the edge of humiliation. Discovery was followed by action. Farms were purchased from the simple Massa- chusetts aborigines, who retired into the fastnesses of the hills laden with golden plunder; and in time farms were sold by the foot instead of the acre, and the natives went bare-footed, so active was the demand for stockings as banks of deposit. The wild and savage country of ten years before was transformed into a region calculated to give the supple British tradesman spasms of joy; the beautiful bucolic bliss of rural England was reproduced in America with all its humanizing influences. Old Elizabethan houses dotted lea and wold; carly Georgian mansions adorned the landscape; frowning Norman castles, beautifully out of repair, stared from the hills; and venerable and time-worn aspects were added to all by the best scene painters in the country, who were called in to ‘age ’ the edifices. ‘* The Strawberries,” ‘ Bilgehurst,” ‘Quartz Hall,” ‘ Kerosene Manors” and other good old English names distinguished the residence: and the rude farms, denuded of rail fences and barns, became parks and demesnes. Stone-pillared gates, with armorial bearings, marked the entrance to the estates; and lodge houses perched beside them, where simple English porters did duty, doffing their hats and aitches to the squire. Peasantry and retainers thronged the stubborn glebe to greet the fine old lord of the manor as he returned at eve to his ancestral acres, after skinning lambs in Wall street for the price of them. It soothed and calmed the weary nobleman of Chicago to come to this haven of peace; it touched him deeply to hear the voices of his old family retainers, who had grown gray in the long and honorable service of six months with his refined HEN HOUSE OF H. BONDISON BOND, ESQ., LENOX.