who, aflame at the outrage, appealed
passionately and authoritatively to his mother; who, after a painful
period of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his
instances (as she always did), and immediately embracing his cause with
an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet
bonnet and said: "I'll go and see Louisa van der Luyden."

The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid,
in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained.
At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called "plain
people"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who
(as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons) had
been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans.
People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to
be; and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and
Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to
last much longer.

Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum
was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands,
Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined
them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least
those of Mrs. Archer's generation) were aware that, in the eyes of the
professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could
lay claim to that eminence.

"Don't tell me," Mrs. Archer would say to her children, "all this
modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If there is
one, neither the Mingotts nor the Mansons belong to it; no, nor the
Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers and
great-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants,
who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because
they did so well. One of your great-grandfathers signed the
Declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and
received General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga. These
are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or
class. New York has always been a commercial community, and there are
not more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin
in the real sense of the word."

Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like every one else in New York,
knew who these privileged beings were: the Dagonets of Washington