Since the inception of our nation as an autonomous political entity following the War of Independence, the American citizen has always taken the deepest patriotic pride in the egalitarian principles upon which his country is founded. The redoubtable Crèvecoeur—in identifying the particular attributes that distinguish our youthful republic from the hidebound societies of the Old World—placed the utmost emphasis on the matter of comparative wealth, proclaiming that “the traveller through our districts views not the hostile castle and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the day-built hut and the miserable cabin. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe.”

Like so many beliefs cherished by the multitude, however, this assertion of the relative economic equality permeating our society bears only a tenuous relation to the truth. To be sure, the American system is blessedly free of that privileged, aristocratical order whose preeminence stems from no other cause than the accident of birth. Nonetheless, only the most undiscerning observer could fail to perceive the extreme disparities in circumstance that characterize the classes in America. However theoretical our dedication to egalitarian ideals may be, there is quite as much practical inequality in the New World as the Old. The magnates of the Exchange do not strut less proudly in Manhattan than in London; nor are their wives and daughters more backward in supporting their pretensions. Man’s vanity—and the desire for distinction inherent in our all-too-human nature—simply cannot be altered by any merely political or legislative principle.

Indeed, it may be argued that the commercial essence of the American system renders our society even less attractive, in certain notable regards, than the aristocratical nations of Europe. For—however undeserving the nobility may be of the inordinate wealth and power that accrue to it simply by virtue of inheritance—it is nonetheless the case that, historically, men of highborn rank have always served as the primary patrons of the arts; whereas, in our own country, the possessors of wealth are, by and large, those inordinately successful members of the mercantile class devoid of the slightest appreciation of music, painting, or literature. As a result, it is the Philistine who dominates in America; while men of rare talent—I may even say genius—in the fields of literary and artistic pursuit are often reduced to die most humble, even desperate, of circumstances.

These reflections were inspired in me by my first, astonished glimpse of the remarkable Nicodemus mansion, tales of whose extravagant architectural features I had often listened to in wonder, though—until that moment—I had never had occasion to observe them at first hand.