.

High Society

The Cornelius mansion on Park Avenue, New York
City, Sunday, August 22, 1886

A derby hat; a fresh, white boutonniere
On my lapel. You just can’t have a new
Beau Brummel jacket without something bright
To make the pretty debutantes draw near—
The girls who sigh that I’m a Wall Street knight,
The handsome Sultan of Fifth Avenue!

Yes, Mister Mirror-Man, you’re looking tops!
You’re… confident. In fact, you’re quite the corker!
Why, more than that I’d say that you’re “top-drawer.”
Your ruby class ring; shirts from high end shoppes;
A smile so dazzling strangers beg for more;
And swagger fitting one well-heeled New Yorker!

So, Mirror-Man, what’s triggered such elation?
This grin? This spark? You guessed! Her name is Mabel!
The clever girl that I intend to marry!
Of course, she doesn’t know my adoration,
This all-consuming secret that I carry.
I’ll speak my heart as soon as I am able.

But Father’s such a pill! This life he’s built
Hobnobbing with the Vanderbilts and Morgans
Has leashed me to a life so rarified,
So stifling it would make a cactus wilt.
He’ll balk at humble Mabel as my bride—
But I won’t marry one of his rich gorgons!

I entered Mabel’s shoppe. I sought a hat—
The kind that might appeal to snobbish mothers.
She took my hand, showed bonnets in glass cases,
And stole my heart. Love came as quick as that!
I wasn’t dealt a queen—I got four aces!
She’s mine. And, friend, I always get my druthers.

A milliner! The magic Mabel makes
With ribbons, feathers, flowers, silk and fur!
An artist—not one whit beneath my station!
So I don’t care if all Manhattan quakes
Or if I shock each silver-spooned relation.
I know the wife I want, by gum. It’s her!

I’ll leave at noon—that’s when she reads her book
In Central Park at the Bethesda Fountain—
Sweet angel! Like the statue at its peak!
And here’s the plan. I’ll “lose” my ring and look
For it near Mabel. We’ll play hide and seek—
Then watch love grow from molehill into mountain!

New York, watch out! There’s going to be a wedding!
And I can promise—it’s not just some stage
I’m going through to challenge my staid life.
When love bursts forth, there’s nothing worth regretting.
With me a gent and Mabel a grand wife,
Our marriage will gold-plate this gilded age!

.

.

Edison Lights Up New York 

—September 4, 1882. Pearl Street, lower Manhattan

It’s plain that Ellie’s more enthralled than I.
She gasps with pleasure. Then she grabs my arm—
“The city streets are all lit up like magic!
Why Edison is soaring even higher
Than Adam did when he first mastered fire!”

I quote her Prospero: “’Tis new to thee.”
My tone is slightly wry. For near three weeks
I’ve followed Edison and his strange crew
As they strung wire and hung globes made of glass
Directly from our gas-light fixture brass.

No magic dragons here, though not mundane:
It’s voltage captured in an airless bottle
With carbon bent into a filament.
The black of night is quelled by this deterrent.
But it’s no spell. It’s just electric current.

And yet think of the possibilities!
The cobbled streets aglow, the sidewalks gleaming
All lit by rows of lamps, each like a star—
Collectively more brilliant than the moon.
A bane to crime; for commerce a great boon!

Electric light can turn night into day.
The glow is bright yet also smooth and steady.
It doesn’t make one hot. It does the job
In ways that coal gas simply cannot handle.
It’s clear as day that flame can’t hold a candle.

My wife had begged to see this demonstration!
But Ellie’s so naïve. She does not grasp
This “magic” soon shall cost me my employment.
They’ll buy out our gas easements for a song.
They won’t be needing lamplighters for long.

A pity, too, ‘cause I’m the best—I give
My wood-slide lighting stick a flick and get
The gas aflame in forty seconds flat.
Another lamp ignited. Then repeat.
But soon it seems I shall be obsolete.

Is Edison indeed a modern Moses?
He flips a thumbscrew, says “let there be light.”
What say the pastors on this new invention?
“Hosanna for the incandescent lamp!”
Perhaps. But I’m in the opposing camp.

I wish that I had Ellie’s open mind.
I fear this change when it should be embraced.
But we’ve had gas-lights barely fifty years.
It’s strange how quickly they are brushed aside—
Brought in, then quickly swept out with the tide.

Of course I am excited to see lights
Shine both inside and out the New York Times—
The largest building ever lit up thus
And now one of Manhattan’s greatest sights.
Its journalists can lie now days and nights.

Gas had its day. It limited our work.
No glass bulbs needed. But some real demerits.
The stage and costumes set aflame by limelight.
Just think of all the theaters burned down
And all the deaths from fires in this town.

But Edison provides safe incandescence!
A shine so bright I must avert my eyes
As if the Lord of Hosts has come to Earth!
I check my watch. It’s now exactly seven
And Ellie glows as if she’s just seen Heaven.

I fear how this invention may unweave
The rainbow even as it bolsters sight.
And yet how Edison lights up the night!
A coal-dark world turned bright with lightning tamed!
If she sees “magic,” Ellie can’t be blamed.

.

.

Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.

 

***Read Our Comments Policy Here***

 

15 Responses

  1. Mark Stellinga

    One of our teenage nephews recently went through this virtually identical – “You are NOT marrying that girl” ordeal with all but a few of his friends and family members! Connie and I included. He fortunately found a very major upgrade. 🙂 You share these 2 wonderfully Victorian, first-person stories so realistically it’s easy to imagine ‘you’ as this admirably-committed, love-struck holdout, and this understandably-worried lamp-lighter. BTW – just how old are you Brian? Fun reads, both.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Mark. I realized when writing High Society that I was tapping into a rather archetypal situation — almost a situation comedy given how gung ho my speaker is! I could practically hear this young man’s parents shouting at him for sullying the (imaginary) family name.

      As for my age, the birth certificate says 64 but my challenged lumbar spine is convinced that I’m 138. Sadly, I just barely missed the Chester Arthur and Grover Cleveland years.

      Reply
      • Mark Stellinga

        FYI – I’m a legitimate 11 years your senior and have been coping with similar back issues since my early 60s. Dealing in antique billiard tables and beefier pre-1900 furniture for more than 45 years, it was inevitable… nevertheless, you have my sympathy! 🙂 Our pretty much dormant antiques site =https://www.billiard-antiques.com/ Keep up the great work, both of these formats are quite difficult.

  2. Julia Griffin

    Are you writing a series of New York poems? These would make a splendid collection!
    You could do a matching reflection from Mabel, perhaps addressed to a girlfriend in the Shoppe – and perhaps less impressed than he imagines …

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Julia, thank you so much. That is a terrific idea! I love historical New York and there are so many different decades I would like to explore. I’m on it!

      Reply
  3. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Wow! Two stunning masterpieces as if the poet were living in another era almost 140 years ago while being a member of high society and marveling at Edison’s invention. The “High Society” poem reminds me of some classic movies I have seen from the 1930’s wherein a girl from the working class becomes the wife of person from high society in which the dandy becomes independent and ignores the castigations of friend and family. “Edison Lights Up New York” is a detailed depiction worthy of being its own movie suffused with consideration for the love of one’s life coming to view the miracle that Edison wrought while expressing a degree of sadness for the soon to be loss of the old lamplighters. Brilliant, imaginative, creative, compelling–and the list of adjectival praise is too long to put down in a comment.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Roy, for this generous comment! As I mentioned to Mark, I did indeed tap into an archetypal situation — the young man or lady who falls in love “beneath his station.” This is a subject of countless pieces of literature ranging from Wuthering Heights and Far From the Madding Crowd to HMS Pinafore. I’m sure it’s been tackled in many a film, too. Shakespeare in Love comes to mind. Ultimately, they all seem to be variations of the Cinderella story.

      Just for kicks I did a little research. Cinderella has its antecedents in an ancient story told by a first century Greek named Strabo (who I have never heard of) of Rhodopis, a Greek slave girl who marries the King of Egypt.

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    I get the impression, after a few readings of “High Society,” that the speaker is grossly stupid — a kind of thoughtless, unperceptive, upper-class jackass who is governed by his impulses and emotions.

    He starts out as a Beau-Brummel fop, concerned with his apparel and good looks. His language is common and plebeian (“you’re looking tops!… quite the corker!… well-heeled… by gum”), and calling himself “Mirror-Man” is a sledgehammer indication of narcissism and conceit.

    Then what? He becomes infatuated on sight with a shopgirl (“Mabel” is a typical late-19th-century name for a lower-middle-class girl), and he’s already fatuously planning a marriage without even bothering to ask her! Talk about male arrogance. He also takes no thought whatsoever about the social and financial considerations of his imagined marriage, dismissing possible familial objections as of no importance. In addition, he thinks Mabel is clever and artistic because she makes hats.

    But the height of idiocy is his plan to stalk Mabel on her lunch hour in Central Park, create some absurd scenario about losing his college ring, play “hide-and-seek” with her, and from all this rigmarole he believes a magnificent love will blossom between them. Is this guy utterly clueless? If a male stranger in 1886 approached Mabel in the park with this kind of approach, she’d scream for a cop.

    I know that there really are some puerile men who think this way, but it’s hard to believe that any sane woman would have anything to do with them.

    The Edison poem is a thoughtful monologue on what might go on in the mind of someone who can fully appreciate the glory and brilliance of electric light, but who at the same time must face the fact that its coming will put him out of work. I suppose this happens in every century, as when the large machine looms put weavers out of work, and the automobile did the same for blacksmiths. But most of those who lost their livelihoods did not have the calm and equanimity of this speaker.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Joe, thank you for an outspoken comment which has given me and my romantically self-absorbed speaker an uncomfortable laugh and a much-needed dose of reality — rather like when Cher slaps Nicholas Cage in “Moonstruck” and says “snap out of it!” I read your comment a couple of times and realized that your distaste was indeed for my impulsive speaker , not the poem. I still have to smile because a) you are so very and fearlessly candid and b) what you so is so TRUE! My speaker in High Society is absolutely a romantic fool. Guilty. As you know, I love history but I also have a tendency to write characters who are so damned serious. Here I decided that I wanted to write a late 19th Century period piece which is breezy, naive, kinda dumb and kinda sweet — the opposite of stuffy and Victorian. So I invented this somewhat foppish, self-centered, speaker caught in a romantic fantasy and ran with it. And I admit that it’s fatuous enough to fit comfortably into a hypothetical musical comedy about The Gilded Age. It would not be out of place in “Hello, Dolly!” which was one of the inspirations for this poem. Gilbert and Sullivan’s work shows that the 19th Century is no stranger to amiable foolishness.

      For the sake of balance, I’m especially glad that you found interest in Edison Lights Up New York. Your thoughts on this piece are spot-on as my speaker explores the distrust and resentment that can accompany new inventions even as they make our lives better — or at least easier. I’m grateful to have a computer to write these words on, but I can’t help feeling a loss from not setting words down on paper. Plus, computers have created many unintended social consequences — for the worse. I have sometimes wondered how the buggy manufacturers felt about the advent of the horseless carriage or how the ice man felt when affordable refrigerators became ubiquitous and he found himself out of a job. Technological advances can be a mixed bag. I can never forget that Samuel Morse’s first words transmitted on his astonishing new “telegraph” machine in 1844 were “What hath God wrought?”

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    Brian, I really had no negative criticism at all to make about the “High Society” poem. The metrics and the rhymes are perfect, and the character described holds the reader’s attention, even if one must judge him as something of a daft post-adolescent.

    Several years ago I had an online argument with Paul Lake about the subject of unpleasant or repulsive characters in dramatics monologues. He seemed to think that one needed to have some latent sympathy with any character to whom you were giving voice in the poem; my counter-argument was that there were many cases in English verse where one couldn’t possibly imagine the poet liking the figure he was writing about. How, I asked, could any poet like the figure of Caliban in Browning’s monologue, or the vicious monk in “Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister”? Both of these characters are total scumbags.

    That’s why your carefully delineated picture of the silly fop in “High Society” drew my impatience. It had nothing to do with the excellence of the poem itself, which is a solid piece of craftsmanship. It’s simply that the image you created of this witless, self-absorbed, utterly unrealistic buffoon reminded me of several real-life versions of the character. And that’s good, because one of the major tasks of great poems is to be disturbing and upsetting to conventional piety and complacency.

    Sometimes Americans fall for the silly French idea that “to understand all is to pardon all” (I can’t remember which Frog said it). Long experience has taught me that “to understand all” sometimes gives you a horrendously vivid picture of how evil-to-the-core somebody is.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      “Tout com​pren​dre, c’est tout par​don​ner.” I’ve tried to trace the source of this quote online and I’ve found attributions ranging from Spinoza to Evelyn Waugh in “Brideshead Revisited.” The most probable attribution seems to be Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, commonly known as Madame de Staël, who was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris at the turn of the 19th century during Revolutionary and Napoleonic times. A fan of both Rousseau and Montesquieu , she was apparently an influential philospher, woman of letters and political theorist during those fractious times. Irrespective, I agree with you. The quote is both naive and inane.

      And thank you, Joe, for clarifying your views on High Society. I appreciate your generosity regarding the poem’s craftsmanship.

      Reply
  6. Michael Vanyukov

    Such a vivid reading into perceptions of people facing a miracle, even if technological and thus nor ascribable to supernatural. But almost. Makes me wish I were there.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Michael! If I’ve romanticized the Gilded Age a bit it’s because I find the present so objectionable. I would much rather be alive in the 1880s than the sordid, hostile present.

      Reply
  7. Adam Sedia

    Your dramatic monologues place us firmly in the Gilded Age. One presents a timeless scenario of disapproved love and the other a time-rooted prediction that didn’t age well — or did it? You give us some delicious turns of phrase: “gold-plate this gilded age,” “I wasn’t dealt a queen — I got four aces,” and my favorite: “its journalists can lie now days and nights.”

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Adam! I’m very pleased that you enjoyed both poems and am especially delighted by your compliment of “delicious turns of phrase!” The dig at the New York Times was the closest I came to criticizing modern times (though my research found bitter criticism of the Times even in the late 19th Century!) I’m glad you picked up on that little barb.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.