I was present at a lively discourse, administered by a young lady just from
Europe to a veteran politician. "It is of very little consequence," she
said, "what kind of men you send out as foreign ministers. The thing of
real importance is that they should have the right kind of wives. Any man
can sign a treaty, I suppose, if you tell him what kind of treaty it must
be. But all his social relations with the nations to which you send him
will depend on his wife." There was some truth, certainly, in this
audacious conclusion. It reminded me of the saying of a modern thinker,
"The only empire freely conceded to women is that of manners,--but it is
worth all the rest put together."
Every one instinctively feels that the graces and amenities of life must be
largely under the direction of women. The fact that this feeling has been
carried too far, and has led to the dwarfing of women's intellect, must not
lead to a rejection of this important social sphere. It is too strong a
power to be ignored. George Eliot says well that "the commonest man, who
has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between
a lovely, delicate woman, and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference
in their presence." At a summer resort, for instance, one sees women who
may be intellectually very ignorant and narrow, yet whose mere manners give
them a social power which the highest intellects might envy. To lend joy
and grace to all one's little world of friendship; to make one's house a
place which every guest enters with eagerness, and leaves with reluctance;
to lend encouragement to the timid, and ease to the awkward; to repress
violence, restrain egotism, and make even controversy courteous,--these
belong to the empire of woman. It is a sphere so important and so
beautiful, that even courage and self-devotion seem not quite enough,
without the addition of this supremest charm.
This courtesy is so far from implying falsehood, that its very best basis
is perfect simplicity. Given a naturally sensitive organization, a loving
spirit, and the early influence of a refined home, and the foundation of
fine manners is secured. A person so favored may be reared in a log hut,
and may pass easily into a palace; the few needful conventionalities are so
readily acquired. But I think it is a mistake to tell children, as we
sometimes do, that simplicity and a kind heart are absolutely all that are
needful in the way of manners. There are persons in whom simplicity and
kindness are inborn, and who yet never attain to good manners for want of
refined perceptions. And it is astonishing how much refinement alone can
do, even if it be not very genuine or very full of heart, to smooth the
paths and make social life attractive.
All the acute observers have recognized the difference between the highest
standard, which is nature's, and that next to the highest, which is art's.
George Eliot speaks of that fine polish which is "the expensive substitute
for simplicity," and Tennyson says of manners,--
"Kind nature's are the best: those next to best
That fit us like a nature second-hand;
Which are indeed the manners of the great."
In our own national history we have learned to recognize that the personal
demeanor of women may be a social and political force. The slave-power owed
much of its prolonged control at Washington, and the larger part of its
favor in Europe, to the fact that the manners of Southern women had been
more sedulously trained than those of Northern women. Even
at this moment, one may see at any watering-place that the relative social
influence of different cities does not depend upon the intellectual
training of their women, so much as on the manners. And, even if this is
very unreasonable, the remedy would seem to be, not to go about lecturing
on the intrinsic superiority of the Muses to the Graces, but to pay due
homage at all the shrines.
It is a great deal to ask of reformers, especially, that they should be
ornamental as well as useful; and I would by no means indorse the views of
a lady who once told me that she was ready to adopt the most radical views
of the women-reformers if she could see one well-dressed woman who
accepted them. The place where we should draw the line between independence
and deference, between essentials and non-essentials, between great ideas
and little courtesies, will probably never be determined--except by actual
examples. Yet it is safe to fall back on Miss Edgeworth's maxim in "Helen,"
that "Every one who makes goodness disagreeable commits high treason
against virtue." And it is not a pleasant result of our good deeds, that
others should be immediately driven into bad deeds by the burning desire to
be unlike us.