The Jews in America Trilogy by Stephen; Birmingham

“The rising generation of young elegants in America are particularly requested to observe that, in polished society, it is not quite comme il faut for gentlemen to blow their noses with their fingers, especially when in the street.” The gentlemen’s habit of chewing tobacco created no end of special problems. “A lady on the second seat of a box at the theatre,” writes a social critic of the day, “found, when she went home, the back of her pelisse entirely spoilt, by some man behind not having succeeded in trying to spit past her.” And an English visitor was surprised to see John Jacob Astor remove his chewing tobacco from his mouth and absently begin tracing a watery design with it on a windowpane. Other European visitors were startled by what appears to have been a social custom exclusively New York’s. On the horse-drawn Fifth Avenue omnibuses it was considered de rigueur , when these vehicles became crowded, for seated gentlemen to let ladies perch on their knees.
    Though much of the criticism of New York’s bad manners came from Europeans, it does appear to have been largely justified. In 1848 the New York Herald took New York society to task for “loud talking at table, impertinent staring at strangers, brusqueness of manners among the ladies, laughable attempts at courtly ease and self-possession among the men—the secret of all this vulgarity in Society is that wealth, or the reputation of wealth, constitutes the open sesame to its delectable precincts.”
    Very much a precinct leader was August Belmont. His passionate interest in high society was perhaps peculiar for men of his day (editors and cartoonists of the nineteenth century usually depicted social climbing as a woman’s occupation), but at least it was consistent. Perhaps his glimpse of Rothschild grandeur had given him his abiding urge to be a social potentate. In any case, three years after his arrival in America, we find him dashingly in Elkton, Maryland, and, “over a subject too trite to be mentioned,” fighting a duel.
    Dueling was an established social-climbing technique, and AugustBelmont seems to have chosen his opponent more for his publicity value than anything else. It was Edward Heyward, “one of the exquisite sons of Mr. Wm. Heyward,” a member of the ancient and noted Heyward family of Charleston. No one was killed in the duel, but both men were injured, and Belmont, who was shot in the thigh, declared his honor satisfied. And, by having chosen a Heyward as a dueling partner, he established himself with the press and the public as a gentleman of Heyward quality. The duel, in fact, did more than anything else to register the Belmont name in the annals of American society.
    What the quarrel, which took place at Niblo’s restaurant in New York, was really about is now uncertain. Belmont, naturally, always liked to leave the impression that Heyward had made some ungallant allusion to a lady in Belmont’s party. But there is also a story that Heyward had made a veiled reference to Belmont’s Jewishness—a particularly touchy subject.
    Belmont was always sorry that his dueling scar appeared in such an ignominious spot, and the wound gave him a pronounced limp which would be a permanent affliction. The wound and the limp seemed to increase his bitterness. His rolling gait heightened his threatening appearance as he entered doorways of salons. The duel and the scar seemed to add to his sinister allure, and through New York drawing rooms rumors began to circulate of certain society ladies who, for one reason or another, had been permitted to see that scar.
    In the years since his arrival Belmont had been so successful at channeling Rothschild funds into the United States Treasury in return for government securities that he was rewarded, in 1844, by being appointed United States Consul General to Austria—a move designed not only to provide Mr. Belmont with