“And you never saw a table napkin?”
His tone was bitter and accusing. I did n't understand--how could I?
Father began to talk, his words growing more and more bitter. Mother
defended herself hotly. To-day I know that justice was on her side.
But in that first adolescent self-consciousness my sympathies were all
with father. Mother had neglected us--she had not taught us to use
table napkins! Becky Sharp used them. People in history used them.
I felt sure that Great-Aunt Martha would have been horrified, even in
heaven, to learn I had never even seen a table napkin.
Our parents' quarrel dimmed the ecstasy of the “personal belongings.”
From that time we used napkins and a table-cloth on Sundays--that is,
when any one remembered it was Sunday.
Great-Aunt Martha's napkins opened up a new world for me, and they
strengthened father's determination to give his children an education.
The September before I reached seventeen, we persuaded mother to let me
go to Madison and study for a half year.
So great was my eagerness to learn from books, that I had given no
thought to people. Madison, my first town, showed me that my clothes
were homemade and tacky. Other girls wore store shoes and what seemed
to me beautifully made dresses. I was a backwoods gawk. I hated myself
and our home.
With many cautions, father had intrusted eighty dollars to me for the
half year's expenses. I took the money and bought my first pair of
buttoned shoes and a store dress with nine gores and stylish mutton-leg
sleeves! It was poor stuff, not warm enough for winter, and, together
with a new coat and hat, made a large hole in my funds.
I found work in a kindly family, where, in return for taking care of an
old lady, I received room and board and two dollars a week. Four hours
of my day were left for school.
The following February brought me an appointment as teacher in a
district school, at eighteen dollars a month and “turnabout” boarding in
farmers' families.
The next two years were spent teaching and attending school in Madison.
When I was twenty, a gift from father added to my savings and made
possible the realization of one of my dreams. I went East for a special
summer course.
No tubes shuttled under the Hudson in those days. From the ferry-boat
I was suddenly dazzled with the vision of a towering gold dome rising
above the four and five-story structures. The New York World building
was then the tallest in the world. To me it was also the most
stupendous.
Impulsively I turned to a man leaning on the ferry-boat railing beside
me. “Is n't that the most wonderful thing in the world?” I gasped.
“Not quite,” he answered, and looked at me. His look made me
uncomfortable. I could have spoken to any stranger in Madison without
embarrassment. It took me about twenty years to understand why a plain,
middle-aged woman may chat with a strange man anywhere on earth, while
the same conversation cheapens a good-looking young girl.
That summer I met my future husband. He was doing research work at
Columbia, and we ran across each other constantly in the library. I
fairly lived there, for I found myself, for the first time, among a
wealth of books, and I read everything--autobiographies, histories, and
novels good and bad.
Tom's family and most of his friends were out of town for July and
August. I had never met any one like him, and he had never dreamed of
any one like me. We were friends in a week and sweethearts in a month.
Instead of joining his family, Tom stayed in New York and showed me the
town. He took me to my first plays. Even now I know that “If I Were
King” and “The Idol's Eye”, with Frank Daniels, were good.
One day we went driving in an open carriage--his. It was upholstered in
soft fawn color, the coachman wore fawn-colored livery, and the horses
were beautiful. I was very happy. When we reached my boarding house
again, I jumped out. I was used to hopping from spring wagons.
“Please don't do that again, Mary,” reproved Tom, very gently. “You
might hurt yourself.” That amused me, until a look from the coachman
suddenly conveyed to me that I had made a _faux pas_. Not long after I
hurried off a street car ahead of Tom. This time he said nothing, but I
have not forgotten the look on his face.
Over our marvelous meals in marvelous restaurants Tom delighted to get
me started about home. Great-Aunt Martha's “personal belongings” amused
him hugely. He never tired of the visiting shoemaker, nor of the
carpenter who declared indignantly that if we wore decent clothes we
wouldn't need our bench seats planed smooth. But some things I never
told--about the table napkins, for instance.
We were married in September. Our honeymoon we spent fishing and
“roughing it” in the Canadian wilds. I felt at home and blissful.
I could cook and fish and make a bed in the open as well as any man.
It was heaven; but it left me entirely unprepared for the world I was
about to enter.
Not once did Tom say: “Mary, we do this [or that] in our family.” He
was too happy, and I suppose he never thought of it. As for me, I
wasted no worry on his family. They would be kind and sympathetic and
simple, like Tom. They would love me and I would love them.
The day after we returned from Canada to New York I spent looking over
Tom's “personal belongings”--as great a revelation as Aunt
Martha's. His richly bound books, his beautiful furniture, his
pictures--everything was perfect. That night Tom made an announcement:
“The family gets home to-night, and they will come to call to-morrow.”
“Why don't we go to the station to meet them?” I suggested.
To-day I appreciate better than I could then the gentle tact with which
Tom told me his family was strong on “good form”, and that the husband's
family calls on the bride first. My husband's family came, and I
realized that I was a mere baby in a new world--a complicated and not
very friendly world, at that. Though they never put it into words, they
made me understand, in their cruel, polite way, that Tom was the hope of
the family, and his sudden marriage to a stranger had been a great
shock, if not more.
The beautiful ease of my husband's women-folk filled me with admiration
and despair. I felt guilty of something. I was queer. Their voices,
the intonation, even the tilt of their chins, seemed to stamp these new
“in-laws” as aristocrats of another race. Yet the same old New England
stock that sired their ancestors produced my father's fathers.
Theirs had stayed in Boston, and had had time to teach their children
grace and refinement and subtleties. Mine fought for their existence in
a new country. And when men and women fight for existence life becomes
very simple.
I felt only my own misery that day. Now I realize that the meeting
between Tom's mother and his wife was a mutual misery. I was crude. No
doubt, to her, I seemed even common. With every one except Tom I seemed
awkward and stupid. Poor mother-in-law!
When she rose to go, I saw her to her carriage. She was extremely
insistent that I should not. But this was Tom's mother, and I was
determined to leave no friendly act undone. At home it would have been
an offense not to see the company to their wagon. Even in Madison we
would have escorted a caller to his carriage.
Again it was the coachman who with one chill look warned me that I had
sinned.
Before Tom came home that afternoon he called on his mother, so no
explanations from me were necessary. He knew it all, and doubtless much
more than had escaped me. Like the princely gentleman he always was,
the poor boy tried to soften that after-noon's blows by saying social
customs were stupid and artificial and I knew all the important things
in life. The other few little things and habits of his world he could
easily tell me.
Few--and little! There were thousands, and they loomed bigger each day.
Moreover, Tom did not tell me. Either, manlike, he forgot, or he was
afraid of hurting my feelings.
One of the few things Tom did tell me I was forever forgetting. Napkins
belonged to Sundays at home, and they were not washed often. It was a
long-standing habit, to save back-breaking work for mother, to fold my
napkin neatly after meals. Unlearning that and acquiring the custom of
mussing up one's napkin and leaving it carelessly on the table was the
meanest work of my life.
Interesting guests came to Tom's house, and I would grow absorbed in
their talk. Not until we were leaving the table would I realize that my
napkin lay neatly folded and squared in the midst of casually rumpled
heaps.
One night, years later, I sat between Jim Hill and Senator Bailey of
Texas at a dinner. Both men folded their napkins. I loved them for it.
During that first year Tom made up a little theater party for a
classmate who had just married a Philadelphia girl. With memories of
Ben Franklin, William Penn, Liberty Bell, and all the grand old
characters of the City of brotherly Love, I looked forward eagerly to
making a new friend.
The Philadelphian was even more languid than Tom's mother. She chopped
her words and there were no r's in her English. I tried to break the
ice by talking of the traditions of her city. She was bored. She knew
only Philadelphia's social register. Just to play tit for tat, twice
during the evening I quoted from “Julius Caesar”--and scored!
We had just settled down in old Martin's Restaurant for after-theater
supper when two tall gentlemen entered the room.
“There's Tom Platt and Chauncey Depew,” remarked Tom's friend casually.
United States senators are important people in Wisconsin--at least, they
were when I was young. If a senator visited our community, everybody
turned out. I knew much of both these men, and Tom had often spoken
warmly of Depew. As they approached our table, Tom and his friend both
stood up. Thrilled, I rose hastily. My eyes were too busy to see Tom's
face, and I did not realize until afterward that the only other woman
had remained coolly seated.
On our way home, Tom told me, in his gentle way, never to rise from a
dining table to acknowledge an introduction even to a woman--or a
senator. That night a tormenting devil with the face of the other woman
kept me awake. For the first time since my marriage I felt homesick for
the prairies.
And then we were invited to visit Tom's Aunt Elizabeth in Boston and
meet the whole family. I was sick with dread. I begged Tom to tell me
some of the things I should and should not do.
“Be your own sweet self and they 'll love you,” he promised, kissing me.
He meant it, dear soul; but I knew better.
From the very first minute, Tom's Aunt Elizabeth made me conscious of
her disapproval. In after years I won the old lady's affection and real
respect, but I never spent a completely happy hour in her presence.
The night we arrived she gave me a formal dinner. Some dozen additional
guests dropped in later, and I was bewildered by new faces and strange
names. Later in the evening I noticed a distinguished-looking
middle-aged gentleman standing alone just outside the drawing-room door.
Hurrying out, I invited him to come in. He inquired courteously if
there was anything he could do for me.
“Yes, indeed,” I assured him. “Come in and talk to me.” He looked shy
and surprised. I insisted. Then Tom's aunt called me and, drawing me
hastily into a corner, demanded why I was inviting a servant into her
drawing-room.
“Servant! He looks like a senator,” I protested. “He's dressed exactly
like every other man at the party and he looks twice as important as
most of them.”
“Didn't you notice he addressed you as 'Madam'?” pursued Aunt Elizabeth.
“But it 's perfectly proper to call a married woman 'Madam.'
Foreigners always do,” I defended.
“Can't you tell a servant when you see one?” inquired the old lady
icily.
I begged to know how one could. All Boston was summed up in her answer:
“You are supposed to know the other people.”
Tom's wife could have drowned in a thimble.
The third day of our visit, we were at the dinner table, when I saw Aunt
Elizabeth's face change--for the worse. Her head went up higher and her
upper lip drew longer. Finally she turned to me.
“Why do you cut your meat like a dog's dinner?” she snapped.
Tom's protesting exclamation did not stop her.
I laid my knife and fork on my plate and folded my hands in my lap to
hide their trembling.
Time may dim many hurts, but with the last flicker of intelligence I
shall remember that scene. Even then, in a flash, I saw the symbolism
of it.
On one side--rare mahogany, shining silver, deft servants, napkins to
rumple, leisure for the niceties of life. On the other hand--a log
cabin, my tired mother with new babies always coming, father slaving to
homestead a claim and push civilization a little farther over our
American continent.
A great tenderness for my parents filled my heart and overflowed in my
eyes. I have, I confess, had moments of bitterness toward them. But
that was not one of them.
“I think I can tell you,” I answered, as quietly as I could. “It 's
very simple. I was the first baby, and mother cut up my food for me.
After a while she cut up food for two babies. By the time the third
came, I had to do my own cutting. Naturally, I did it just as mother
had. Then I began to help cut up food for the other babies. It 's a
baby habit. And I must now learn to cut one bite at a time like a
civilized grown person.”
Even Aunt Elizabeth was silenced. But Tom rose from the table,
swearing. My father would not have permitted a cowpuncher to use such
language before my mother. But I loved Tom for it.
However, I did not sleep that night. Next morning Tom's Aunt Elizabeth
apologized, and for Back Bay was really unbending.
Some days later we returned to New York, and I thought my troubles were
over for a time. But the first night Tom came home full of excitement.
He had been appointed to the diplomatic corps, and we were to sail for
England within a month!
The news struck chill terror to my heart. With so much still to learn
in my native America, what on earth should I do in English society?