Keeping Up With The Joneses - Origins

Origins

The phrase was popularized when a comic strip of the same name was created by cartoonist Arthur R. "Pop" Momand. The strip debuted in 1913, distributed by Associated Newspapers. The strip ran in American newspapers for 26 years, and was eventually adapted into books, films, and musical comedies. The "Joneses" of the title were neighbors of the strip's main characters, and were unseen characters spoken of but never actually seen in person. In the 1936 book, "The Next 100 Years", C.C. Furnas notes: "Keeping with the Joneses" descended from the spreading of the peacock's tail.

An alternative explanation is that the Joneses of the saying refer to the wealthy family of Edith Wharton's father, the Jones. The Jones were a prominent New York family with substantial interests in Chemical Bank as a result of marrying the daughters of the bank's founder, John Mason. The Jones and other rich New Yorkers began to build country villas in the Hudson Valley around Rhinecliff and Rhinebeck, which had belonged to the Livingstons, another prominent New York family to which the Jones were related. The houses became grander and grander. In 1853 Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones built a 24 room gothic villa called Wyndclyffe described by Henry Winthrop Sargent in 1859 as being very fine in the style of a Scottish castle, but by Edith Wharton, Elizabeth's niece, as a gloomy monstrosity. Reputedly the villa spurred more building, including a house by William B. Astor (married to a Jones cousin), a phenomenon 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. Wharton portrays her affectionately in The Age of Innocence as Mrs Manson Mingott, "calmly waiting for fashion to flow north".

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", the origin of the Four Hundred, the list of the society elite who were invited. By then the Joneses were being eclipsed by the massive wealth of the Astors, Vanderbilts and others but the four hundred list published in 1892 contained many of the Jones and their relations - old money still mattered.

A good illustration of the phenomenon in popular culture is a 2009 American film The Joneses written and directed by Derrick Borte.