Keeping up with the Joneses

"[2] American humorist Mark Twain made an allusion to Smith and Jones families with regard to social custom in the essay "Corn Pone Opinions", written in 1901 but first published in 1923: "The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts.

"[7] Starting in 1908, D.W. Griffith directed a series of comedy shorts starring The Biograph Girl, Florence Lawrence, featuring the people next door, The Joneses.

[10] The villa reportedly spurred more building, including a house by William B. Astor (married to a Jones cousin), a phenomenon later described as "keeping up with the Joneses".

The phrase is also associated with another of Edith Wharton's aunts, Mary Mason Jones, who built a large mansion at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, then undeveloped.

A slightly different version is that the phrase refers to the grand lifestyle of the Joneses who by the mid-century were numerous and wealthy, thanks to the Chemical Bank and Mason connection.

It was their relation Mrs William Backhouse Astor, Jr who began the "patriarchs balls" around the end of the 19th century, the origin of "The Four Hundred", the list of the society elite who were invited.

"[15] In the United Kingdom, when Princess Margaret married photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, Wallis Simpson allegedly said: "At least we're keeping up with the Armstrong-Joneses".