Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like every
one else in New York, knew who these privileged beings
were: the Dagonets of Washington Square, who came
of an old English county family allied with the Pitts
and Foxes; the Lannings, who had intermarried with
the descendants of Count de Grasse, and the van der
Luydens, direct descendants of the first Dutch governor
of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary marriages
to several members of the French and British aristocracy.
The Lannings survived only in the person of two very
old but lively Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully
and reminiscently among family portraits and Chippendale;
the Dagonets were a considerable clan, allied to the
best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia; but the
van der Luydens, who stood above all of them, had
faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight, from
which only two figures impressively emerged; those
of Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden.
Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had been Louisa Dagonet,
and her mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel
du Lac, of an old Channel Island family, who had fought
under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland, after
the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth
daughter of the Earl of St. Austrey. The tie
between the Dagonets, the du Lacs of Maryland, and
their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas,
had always remained close and cordial. Mr. and
Mrs. van der Luyden had more than once paid long visits
to the present head of the house of Trevenna, the
Duke of St. Austrey, at his country-seat in Cornwall
and at St. Austrey in Gloucestershire; and his Grace
had frequently announced his intention of some day
returning their visit (without the Duchess, who feared
the Atlantic).
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden divided their time between
Trevenna, their place in Maryland, and Skuytercliff,
the great estate on the Hudson which had been one
of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to the
famous first Governor, and of which Mr. van der Luyden
was still “Patroon.” Their large
solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom opened,
and when they came to town they received in it only
their most intimate friends.
“I wish you would go with me, Newland,”
his mother said, suddenly pausing at the door of the
Brown coupe. “Louisa is fond of you; and
of course it’s on account of dear May that I’m
taking this step—and also because, if we
don’t all stand together, there’ll be
no such thing as Society left.”
Mrs. Henry van der Luyden listened in silence to
her cousin Mrs. Archer’s narrative.
It was all very well to tell yourself in advance that
Mrs. van der Luyden was always silent, and that, though
non-committal by nature and training, she was very
kind to the people she really liked. Even personal
experience of these facts was not always a protection
from the chill that descended on one in the high-ceilinged
white-walled Madison Avenue drawing-room, with the
pale brocaded armchairs so obviously uncovered for
the occasion, and the gauze still veiling the ormolu
mantel ornaments and the beautiful old carved frame
of Gainsborough’s “Lady Angelica du Lac.”
