It is a pity that our language has no other word to indicate that one
has lived seventy, eighty, or ninety years, than the word "old"; for the
word "old" carries with it implications of "senility" and decrepitude,
which many merely chronologically "old" people very properly resent. The
word "young," similarly, needs the assistance of another word, for we
all know individuals of thirty and forty, sometimes even only twenty,
whom it is as absurd to call "young" as it is to call those others of
seventy, eighty, or ninety, "old."
"Youth" is too large and rich a word to serve the limited purpose of
numbering the years of undeveloped boys and girls. It should stand
rather for the vital principle in men and women, ever expanding, and
rebuilding, and refreshing the human organism, partly a physical, but
perhaps in a greater degree a spiritual energy.
I am not writing this out of any compliment to two wonderful "old"
ladies of whom I am particularly thinking. They would consider me a
dunce were they to suspect me of any such commonplace intent. No! I am
not going to call them "eighty years young," or employ any of those
banal euphemisms with which would-be "tactful" but really club-footed
sentimentalists insult the intelligence of the so-called "old." Of
course, I know that they are both eighty or thereabouts, and they know
very well that I know. We make no secret of it. Why should we? Actually
though the number of my years falls short of eighty, I feel so much
older than either of them, that it never occurs to me to think of them
as "old," and often as I contemplate their really glowing energetic
youth, I grow melancholy for myself, and wonder what has become of my
own.
They were schoolgirls together. Luccia married Irene's brother--for they
allow me the privilege of calling them by their Christian names--and
they have been friends all their lives. Sometimes I see them together,
though oftener apart, for Luccia and her white-haired poet husband--no
"older" than herself,--are neighbours of mine in the country, and Irene
lives for the most part in New York--as much in love with its giant
developments as though she did not also cherish memories of that quaint,
almost vanished, New York of her girlhood days; for she is nothing if
not progressive.
But I will tell about Luccia first, and the first thing it is natural to
speak of--so every one else finds too--is her beauty. They say that she
was beautiful when she was young (I am compelled sometimes, under
protest, to use the words "young" and "old" thus chronologically) and,
of course, she must have been. I have, however, seen some of her early
portraits, before her hair was its present beautiful colour, and I must
confess that the Luccia of an earlier day does not compare with the
Luccia of today. I don't think I should have fallen in love with her
then, whereas now it is impossible to take one's eyes off her. She seems
to have grown more flower-like with the years, and while her lovely
indestructible profile has gathered distinction, and a lifelong habit of
thinking beautiful thoughts, and contemplating beautiful things, has
drawn honeyed lines as in silver point about her eyes and mouth, the
wild-roses of her cheeks still go on blooming--like wild-roses in
moonlight. And over all glow her great clear witty eyes, the eyes of a
_grand dame_ who has still remained a girl. Her humour, no doubt, has
much to do with her youth, and I have seen strangers no little
surprised, even disconcerted, at finding so keen a humour in one so
beautiful; for beauty and humour are seldom found together in so
irresistible a combination. Is it to be wondered at that often on summer
days when I feel the need of a companion, I go in search of Luccia, and
take tea with her on the veranda? Sometimes I will find her in the
garden seated in front of her easel, making one of her delicate
water-colour sketches--for she was once a student in Paris and has
romantic Latin-quarter memories. Or I will find her with her magnifying
glass, trying to classify some weed she has come upon in the garden,
for she is a learned botanist; and sometimes we will turn over the pages
of books in which she hoards the pressed flowers gathered by her and her
husband in Italy and Switzerland up till but a year or two ago,
memorials of a life together that has been that flawless romance which
love sometimes grants to his faithful servants.
At other times we will talk politics, and I wish you could hear the
advanced views of this "old" lady of eighty. Indeed, generally speaking,
I find that nowadays the only real progressives are the "old" people. It
seems to be the fashion with the "young" to be reactionary. Luccia,
however, has been a radical and a rebel since her girlhood, and, years
before the word "feminist" was invented, was fighting the battle of
the freedom of woman. And what a splendid Democrat she is, and how
thoroughly she understands and fearlessly faces the problems and
developments of the moment! She is of the stuff the old Chartist women
and the women of the French Revolution were made of, and in her heart
the old faith in Liberty and the people burns as brightly as though she
were some young Russian student ready to give her life for the cause.
When the revolution comes to America, stern masculine authority will be
needed to keep her--her friend Irene too--from the barricades.
"Stern masculine authority"! As I write that phrase, how plainly I can
hear her mocking laughter; for she is never more delightful than when
pouring out her raillery on the magisterial pretensions of man. To hear
her talk! The idea of a mere man daring to assume any authority or
direction over a woman! Yet we who know her smile and whisper to
ourselves that, for all her witty tirades, she is perhaps of all women
the most feminine, and really the most "obedient" of wives--a rebel in
all else save to the mild tyranny of the poet she has loved, honoured,
and yes! obeyed, all these wonderful years.
Perhaps in nothing is the reality of her youthfulness so expressive as
in her adorable gaiety. Like a clear fresh spring, it is ever brimming
up from the heart into her mischief-loving eyes. By her side merely
technically young people seem heavy and serious. And nothing amuses her
more than gravely to mystify, or even bewilderingly shock, some proper
acquaintance, or some respectable strangers, with her carefully designed
mock improprieties of speech or action. To look at the loveliest of
grand-mothers, it is naturally somewhat perplexing to the uninitiated
visitor to hear her talk, with her rarely distinguished manner, of
frivolous matters with which they assume she has long since done.
A short while ago, when I was taking tea with her, she had for visitor a
staid old-maidish lady, little more than half her age, whom she had
known as a girl, but had not seen for some years. In the course of
conversation, she turned to her guest, with her grand air:
"Have you done much dancing this season?" she asked.
"O indeed no," answered the other unsuspiciously, "my dancing days are
over."
"At your age!" commented Luccia with surprise. "Nonsense! You must let
me teach you to dance the tango. I have enjoyed it immensely this
winter."
"Really?" gasped the other in astonishment, with that intonation in the
voice naturally so gratifying to the "old" suggesting that the person
talking with them really regards them as dead and buried.
"Of course, why not?" asks Luccia with perfect seriousness. "I dance it
with my grandsons. My husband doesn't care to dance it. He prefers the
polka."
Not knowing what to think, the poor old maid--actually "old" compared
with Luccia--looked from her to the beautiful venerable figure of her
polka-dancing husband seemingly meditating over his pipe, a little
withdrawn from them on the veranda, but inwardly shaken with mirth at
the darling nonsense of her who is still the same madcap girl he first
fell in love with so many years ago.
When the guest had departed, with a puzzled, questioning look still
lingering on her face, Luccia turned to me, her eyes bright pools of
merriment:
"It was quite true, wasn't it? Come, let us try it."
And, nimble as a girl, she was on her feet, and we executed quite a
passable tango up and down the veranda, to the accompaniment of her
husband's--"Luccia! Luccia! what a wild thing you are!"
A certain reputation for "wildness," a savour of innocent Bohemianism,
has clung to Luccia, and Irene too, all through their lives, as a legacy
from that far-off legendary time when, scarcely out of their girlhood,
they were fellow art-students together in Paris. Belonging both to
aristocratic, rather straitlaced New England families, I have often
wondered how they contrived to accomplish that adventure in a day when
such independent action on the part of two pretty young ladies was an
adventure indeed. But it was the time when the first vigorous spring of
feminine revolt was in the air. Rosa Bonheur, George Eliot, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, and other leaders were setting the pace for the advanced
women, and George Sand was still a popular romancer. As a reminiscence
of George Sand, Luccia to this day pretends that she prefers to smoke
cigars to cigarettes, though, as a matter of fact, she has never smoked
either, and has, indeed, an ultra-feminine detestation of tobacco--even
in the form of her husband's pipe. She only says it, of course, for
the fun of seeming "naughty"; which recalls to my mind her shocking
behaviour one day when I went with her to call on some very prim
cousins in New York. It was a household of an excessively brown-stone
respectability, just the atmosphere to rouse the wickedness in Luccia.
As we sat together in an upright conversation that sounded like the
rustling of dried leaves in a cemetery, why! Luccia, for all her eighty
years, seemed like a young wild-rose bush filling the tomb-like room
with living light and fragrance. I could see the wickedness in her
surging for an outburst. She was well aware that those respectable
connections of hers had always looked upon her as a sort of "artistic"
black sheep in the family. Presently her opportunity came. As our visit
dragged mournfully towards its end, the butler entered, in pursuance of
the early Victorian ritual on such occasions, bearing a tray on which
was a decanter of sherry, some tiny wine-glasses, and some dry biscuits
of a truly early Victorian dryness. This ghostly hospitality was duly
dispensed, and Luccia, who seldom drinks anything but tea, instead of
sipping her sherry with a lady-like aloofness, drained her glass with a
sudden devil-may-care abandon, and, to the evident amazement even of the
furniture, held it out to be refilled. Such pagan behaviour had never
disgraced that scandalized drawing-room before. And when to her action
she added words, the room absolutely refused to believe its ears. "I
feel," she said, with a deep-down mirth in her eyes which only I could
suspect rather than see, "I feel today as if I should like to go on a
real spree. Do you ever feel that way?"
A palpable shudder passed through the room.
"Cousin Luccia!" cried out the three outraged mummies; the brother with
actual sternness, and the sisters in plain fear. Had their eccentric
cousin really gone out of her mind at last?
"Never feel that way?" she added, delighting in the havoc she was
making. "You should. It's a wonderful feeling."
Then she drained her second glass, and to the evident relief of all
three, rose to go. How we laughed together, as we sped away in our
taxicab. "It's as well to live up to one's reputation with such people,"
she said, that dear, fantastic Luccia.
_À propos_ that early Parisian adventure, Rosa Bonheur had been one of
Luccia's and Irene's great exemplars, and one might say, in one
particular connection,--heroes. I refer to the great painter's adoption
of masculine costume. Why two unusually pretty young women should burn
to discard the traditional flower-furniture of their sex, in exchange
for the uncouth envelopes of man, is hard to understand. But it was
the day of Mrs. Bloomer, as well as Rosa Bonheur; and earnest young
"intellectuals" among women had a notion, I fancy, that to shake off
their silks and laces was, symbolically, at all events, to shake off the
general disabilities of their sex, and was somehow an assertion of a
mental equality with man. At all events, it was a form of defiance
against their sex's immemorial tyrant, which seems to have appealed to
the imaginations of some young women of the period. Another woman's
weakness to be sternly discarded was that scriptural "glory" of her
hair. That must be ruthlessly lopped. So it is easy to imagine the
horror of such relatives as I have hinted at when our two beautiful
adventuresses returned from Paris, and appeared before their families in
great Spanish cloaks, picturesque, coquettish enough you may be sure,
veiling with some show of discretion those hideous compromises with
trousers invented and worn by the strong-minded Mrs. Bloomer, and
wearing their hair after the manner of Florentine boys. To face one's
family, and to walk New York streets so garbed, must have needed real
courage in those days; yet the two friends did both, and even for
a while accepted persecution for vagaries which for them had the
dead-seriousness of youth.
Passionate young propagandists as they were, they even preferred to
abandon their homes for a while--rather than their bloomers--and, taking
a studio together in New York, started out to earn their own living by
the teaching of art. Those were the days of the really brave women.
But to return to the less abstract topic of the bloomers, I often tease
Luccia and Irene about them, seeking for further information as to why
they ever came to retrograde from a position so heroically taken, one of
such serious import to human progress, and to condescend once more to
don the livery of feminine servitude, and appear, as they do today, in
delicate draperies which the eye searches in vain for any hint of
sanguinary revolution. Luccia always looks shamefaced at the question.
She still feels guilty, I can see, of a traitorous backsliding and
occasionally threatens to make up for it by a return to masculine
costume--looking the most exquisite piece of Dresden china as she says
it. I have seen that masculine tyrant of hers smiling knowingly to
himself on such occasions, and it has not been difficult to guess why
and when those historic bloomers disappeared into the limbo of lost
causes. There is little doubt that when Love came in by the door, the
bloomers went out, so to speak, by the window.
Irene seems to have held out longer, and, doubtless, scornful of her
more frivolous comrade's defection, steadfastly kept the faith awhile
unsupported, walking the world in bloomered loneliness--till a like
event overtook her. Such is the end of every maid's revolt! But Irene,
to this day, retains more of her student seriousness than her more
worldly-minded friend. Her face is of the round cherubic type, and her
large heavy-lidded eyes have a touch of demureness veiling humour no
less deep than Luccia's, but more reflective, chuckling quietly to
itself, though on occasion I know no one better to laugh with, even
giggle with, than Irene. But, whereas Luccia will talk gaily of
revolution and even anarchy for the fun of it, and in the next breath
talk hats with real seriousness, Irene still remains the purposeful
revolutionary student she was as a girl; while Luccia contents herself
with flashing generalizations, Irene seriously studies the latest
developments of thought and society, reads all the new books, sees all
the new plays and pictures, and has all the new movements of whatever
kind--art, philosophy, and sociology--at her finger ends; and I may add
that her favourite writer is Anatole France. Whenever I need light on
the latest artistic or philosophic nonsense calling itself a movement
(cubism, futurism, Bergsonism, syndicalism, or the like) I go to her,
certain that she will know all about it. Nothing is too "modern" for
this wonderful "old" lady of seventy-nine; and, whenever I am in town,
we always go together to the most "advanced" play in the newest of new
theatres.
_À propos_ our theatre-going together, I must not forget a story about
her which goes back to that bloomer period. A little while ago, calling
to take tea with her, I found her seated with a fine soldierly
white-haired "old" man, and they were in such merry talk that I felt
that perhaps I was interrupting old memories. But they generously took
me into the circle of their reminiscence. They had been laughing as I
came in--"Shall I tell him, General?" she said, "what we were laughing
about?" Then she did. She and the General had been girl and boy
together, and as they came to eighteen and nineteen had been
semi-serious sweethearts. The embryo General--no doubt because of her
pretty face--had taken all her student vagaries with lover-like
seriousness, and had, on one occasion, assisted in a notable enterprise.
The bloomers had not been definitely donned at that time, but they were
on the way, glimmering ahead as a discussed ideal. Whether it was as a
preliminary experiment, or only in consequence of a "dare," I am not
quite sure. I think it was a little of both, and that the General had
dared Irene to go with him to the opera (in the gallery) dressed in
boy's clothes. She accepted the challenge, borrowing a suit of clothes
from her brother for the purpose. Her figure, according to the General's
account, had looked anything but masculine, and her hair, tucked up
under her boy's hat as best she could, was a peculiar peril. How her
heart had almost stopped beating as a policeman had turned upon the
youthful pair a suspicious scrutiny, how they had taken to their heels
at his glance, how she had crimsoned at the box-office, and hid her face
behind a fat man as they had scurried past the ticket-attendant, and how
during the whole performance a keen-faced woman had glanced at her with
a knowing persistency that seemed to threaten her with imminent exposure
and arrest, and how wonderful the whole thing had been--just to be in
boy's clothes and go in them to the theatre with one's sweetheart. O
youth! youth! youth!
As I looked at the General with his white hair, and Irene with her
quaint little old lady's cap over her girlish face, and visualized for
myself those two figures before me as they had appeared on the night of
that escapade, I realized that the real romance of life is made by
memory, and that for these two old friends to be able thus to recall
together across all those years that laughing freak of their young blood
was still more romantic than the original escapade. But as I went on
looking at Irene, with the bloom of her immortal youth upon her, I grew
jealous of the General's share in that historic night. Well, never mind,
it is I who take her to the theatre nowadays--and, after all, I think I
prefer her to go dressed just as she is.