Fear is the destroyer of peace. I knew no peace until I learned not to
be afraid of conventions. The three most wretched years in my life
might easily have been avoided by a little training at home or at
school.
I realize now the unhappiness of those first years of my married life.
I was awkward and ill at ease in a world that valued social poise above
knowledge. From my childhood I had loved honest, sincere people. After
my marriage I met distinguished men and women, even a few who might be
called great; but they, too, had their affectations and petty vanities.
Being young, I judged them harshly because they set what I considered
too much store upon absurd conventions.
In the course of my travels since, I have come to realize that social
customs are a simple matter of geography! What is proper in England is
bad form in France, and many customs that were correct in Vienna would
be intolerable in Spain. In the formal circles of Vienna no one spoke
to anybody without an introduction. In Spain there was a more subtle
and truly aristocratic standard. The assumption was that anybody one
met in the home of one's host was desirable, and it was courtesy,
therefore, to begin a conversation with any guest. This is the attitude
also in parts of France.
But in those first months I had not acquired my philosophy. I lived
through homesick days, and some that were hard and bitter. I stayed
with Tom that first year only because I was too bewildered to take any
initiative, and because I kept hoping that things would right themselves
and I would wake out of my nightmare. My baby came in the second year,
and then I could not go home. The simple life of my own people slipped
very, very far away. We made a hurried trip back to the United States
that summer, but Tom would not consent to my going West. His own family
wanted to see our baby, and they decided that the little fellow had
traveled enough and should not be subjected to the hardships of a
cross-country train trip. So Tom sent for mother and the twins to come
to us, and they arrived at the Waldorf Hotel, where we were staying.
Dear, simple mother, in her terrible clothes, and the twins, got up with
more thought for economy than for beauty! I shopped extravagantly with
them. The youngsters wanted to see everything in New York; but mother,
despite all of those hard, lonely years in our rough country and the
many interesting things for her to do and see in New York--mother wanted
nothing better than to stay with the baby.
With all the children she had brought into this world one might think
she had seen enough of babies. But she adored my little son. How near
she seemed to me then! How hungry I had been for her, without realizing
it! I felt that she loved my baby boy as she had never loved me or any
of her own children. And I understood why mother never had had time to
love her own babies. In the struggle for existence of those hard years
she had never had a minute to indulge in the pure joy of having her
baby. I sat watching her with her first grandchild, so sweet in his
exquisite hand-sewn little clothes, and suddenly I found myself crying
hysterically.
Mother was very dear to me from that day. Later in this chronicle I
want to give a chapter to my mother and what we both suffered during
this period of her visit to New York, for it marked the climax of my own
development. When mother and the children started off on their return
trip to the West, Tom sent them flowers and candy and fruit. He had
already generously put financial worry away from my family for all time,
but I knew that he was a little ashamed of some of mother's crudities.
I wondered why I did not feel ashamed. I was very, very glad I did not.
It gave me something tangible to cling to--a sure consciousness of
power, that comes of knowing one possesses the true pride to rise above
the opinions of other people.
I would have given my life, that day, to be able to assure my family
that material security which they owed to my husband, who neither loved
nor understood them. I looked down the years and saw myself crushed by
a burden of indebtedness to a man I felt I no longer loved. Only
mother's grateful, simple happiness eased my hurt. I had never
approached my mother, but I knew now that if her natural dignity and
great, kind heart had been given the advantages that the women in my
husband's family took as a matter of course, she would have been
superior to them all. Yet they barely tolerated mother--no more.
I longed to go home to my own warm, hearty, open West. I stood on the
ferry after they had gone, thinking that, if my family were not so
deeply indebted to my husband, I would leave him. I suppose I did not
really mean that thought, but it made me unhappy. I felt disloyal and
dishonest. Finally I told Tom. There was a scene; but from that day he
began to understand me, and things were better. A few days later we
came home from a dinner party, and, after going to the baby's room for a
minute, Tom asked me to stay and talk. But he did not talk. For a long
time he sat smoking and thinking. I knew he had something on his mind,
and I waited. Finally I realized that he was embarrassed.
“Can I help? Is it something I have done that has embarrassed you?” I
asked.
That was many years ago, but I can never forget the look Tom gave me.
It held all the love of our courtship and something besides that I had
never seen in his face before.
“For God's sake, never say that to me again!” he cried. “Embarrassed
me! I am proud of you--you never can know how proud. I was sitting here
trying to think how to tell you something my mother said about you, and
just what it means.”
His mother! My heart dropped. His mother had never said anything about
me, excepting criticism. I had been a bitter disappointment to her.
Whatever she said would be politely cruel--at best, a damning with faint
praise.
“She said,” my husband went on, “that she is very happy in our marriage,
completely satisfied, and that she has come to be proud of you. I don't
know how to tell you just what that means.”
I knew. I knew his mother could have given me no higher praise. I had
learned what to her were the essentials; I had cultivated the manner she
placed above price. But the realization brought self-distrust. Had I
lost my honesty and sincerity?
Tom went on to tell me that his mother had particularly admired my
attitude toward my own mother, and the manner in which I met every
little failing of hers. She felt I had a sense of true values in
people, and that the simplicity and sureness with which I had met this
situation was the essence of good breeding.
I had not thought it possible that Tom's mother could understand my
feeling for my mother and my honest pride in her real worth. Perhaps,
I reflected, I had been unjust to my mother-in-law. I knew what a shock
I had been to her in the early days of our marriage, and I knew only too
well that even Tom had often regretted my ignorance of social usages.
They are simple customs, and should be taught in every school in
America, but I had not learned them. I was happy that night and for
days afterward.
Then we went back to Europe. Tom knew people on the steamer to whom I
took a dislike. They were bold and even vulgar, and Tom admitted that
he did not admire them. I made up my mind we should avoid them. The
next afternoon I found Tom and that group walking the deck arm in arm,
chatting affably. When we were alone, I asked Tom how he could do it.
I know now that a man cannot hold an official position like Tom's and
ignore politically important people. But he only said rather
carelessly, and with a laugh, that it was one of the prices a man pays
for public office.
After that I noticed that my husband was known to nearly every one. He
had a glad hand and a smile for the public--because it was the public.
I watched to see if he had a slightly different smile for the people of
Back Bay and his own particular social class; sometimes I thought he
had, and it made me a little soul-sick.
I longed for a home for my baby and a few friends I could love and
really enjoy. I was not fitted to be the wife of a public man. It was
the poverty and crudeness of my youth that had made me intolerant. One
of the big lessons life has taught me is that people can be amiable,
tolerant, and even friendly, and still be sincere. The pleasantry of
social relations among the civilized peoples of the earth is a mere
garment we wear for our own protection and to cover our feelings. It is
the oil of the machinery of life. I have found that men and women who
take part in the big work of the earth wear that garment of civility and
graciousness, and yet have their strong friendships and even their
bitter enmities.
But I did not understand this when we went back to Europe. I only knew
that my husband was amiable to people he did not like, and I questioned
how deep his affection for me went. How much of his kindness to me was
just the easiest way and the manner of a gentleman?
A hard and bare youth had made me supersensitive and suspicious and
narrow. I wanted to measure other people by the standards of my own
primitive years. Out on the frontier we had judged life in the rough.
Courage and truth were the essentials. A man fought his enemies out in
the open, and made no compromises. There was nothing easy in life, no
smooth rhythm. And I tried to drag forward with me, as I went, the bold
ethics of the frontier. I resented good manners because I believed they
were a cloak of hypocrisy.
A few months after we returned to Europe the shadow of death crossed our
path, swiftly and terribly. My little son died. Other babies came to
us later, but that first little boy had brought more into my life than
all the rest of the world could ever give. He had restored my faith in
life, my hope, and for a while was all my joy.
People were kind, but I felt that many called merely because it was
“good form”--“the thing to do.” Bitterness was creeping into my heart.
Yet why should it not be “the thing to do” to call on a bereaved mother?
It is a gesture of humanity. Tom seemed very far away. I felt that his
pride was hurt, perhaps his vanity; for he had boasted of the little
fellow and loved to show him off. How little I understood!
I bring myself to tell these intimate things because there is a lesson
in them for other women--because I resent that any free-born American
citizen should be handicapped by lacking so small and easily acquired a
possession as poise, poise that comes with knowledge of the simple rules
of the social game. It is my hope that this honest confession of my own
feelings, due directly to lack of training, may help other women, and
particularly other mothers whose children are now in the plastic years.
It was my utter lack of appreciation of manners and customs in my
husband's class that estranged me from Tom. I was resentful and
antagonistic merely because I was different.
My husband was suffering even as I was suffering; but no one realized
it, least of all myself. Every one was especially kind to me, because I
was a woman. People are rarely attentive and tender with men when loss
comes. Men are supposed to be strong and self-controlled; their hearts
are rated as a little less deep and tender than the hearts of women; yet
when men are truly hurt they need love and care even as little children.
A month after the baby's death, Tom and I were walking along the
Embankment in London one Saturday afternoon, when we met a small girl
carrying a little child. The baby was too tired to walk any farther; it
was dirty, and was crying bitterly. Tom stopped, spoke to the girl, and
offered to carry the baby, who soon quieted down on Tom's shoulder. At
the end of that walk Tom's light summer suit was ruined. I expected him
to turn with some trivial, jesting remark, but he said nothing. I
looked at him and saw that his face was set and hard and his eyes wet.
Without looking at me, he said: “Don't speak to me now.”
That moment of silence revealed to me my husband's character better than
months of talking.
The next day my husband came to me and said: “Mary, I have asked for a
leave of absence. We are going back to the United States. We are going
out West to have a visit with your family.”
Two years before I had believed that Tom would not fit into my
Northwest. But in twenty-four hours Tom and my father were old pals.
He was as much at home with mother and the children as I, and all the
neighbors liked him. He was interested in everything on the ranch, and
even in the small-town life of the village. He interested father in
putting modern equipment on the ranch. He went hunting with the men,
played games with the children, visited the little district schoolhouse,
and found joy in buying gifts for the youngsters. When mother made a
big platter full of taffy, he pulled as enthusiastically as a boy. As I
stood at the corral, one day, and watched Tom with my youngest brother,
I remembered him at the court of St. James, and I began to understand.
Tom was natural. It was just a part of him to be kindly and gracious to
everybody. I had never seen him angry with men of his own type, but I
saw him furious enough to commit murder when a man on the ranch tied up
a dog and beat her for running away. In after years I saw Tom angry
with men of his own class; I saw him waging long, bitter fights against
public men who had betrayed public trust. Something barbaric in me was
satisfied that my kind, gently bred man was one with the men of my own
tribe, who fought man and beast and the elements to take civilization
farther west.
Almost a generation slipped by between that visit to the West and the
next scene in my life of which I shall write. Many things of personal
and of national importance happened meantime, but they have nothing to
do with this message to women. I was in France when the World War
began. I had been in Vienna again, and in England at regular intervals.
I had learned to accept life as I found it, and to get much joy out of
living. Sometimes I chafed a little under the demands of social life
and needless formalities, but I accepted them as inevitable.
Then the world was torn in two. The earth dripped in blood and sorrow.
Life became more difficult than on the frontier, and more elemental. I
was present, in the first year of the war, in a house where the King and
Queen of the Belgians were guests, where great generals and great
statesmen had gathered on great and earnest and desperate business. I
was only an onlooker, and I noticed what every one else was too absorbed
to see. As the evening progressed, I realized that pomp and ceremony
had died with the youth of France. King, generals, statesmen met as
human men pitting their wits against one another, desperately struggling
to find a way out of the hell into which they were falling.
Twice the king rose to his feet, and no one else stood. They were all
too deep in the terrible question of war.
When the meeting was over and the guests of the house ready to retire,
the little queen said very quietly: “Madam, may not my husband and I
occupy this room together? It is very kind of you to arrange two suites
for us, but I am sure there are many guests here to-night--and, anyway,
I prefer to be near him.”
The war had done that. Who would expect a queen to think of the
problems of housing guests, even a great queen? And the war had made
the king not the king, but her man, very near and very dear.
Many other conventions I saw die by the way as the war progressed. Then
America came in.
There is a temptation to talk about America in the war, but, after all,
that has no bearing on my story. Soon after the United States entered,
American men and women began to arrive in Europe in great numbers.
I met them everywhere; sight-seeing, in offices, at universities, at
embassies and consulates. I met them and loved them and suffered for
them.
I was proud of something they brought to France that France needed, and
I have no doubt that many of them took back to America something from
France that we need.
For pure mental quality and courage, no people on earth could match what
the American girls took to France. It was the finest stuff in the
world. They knew how to meet hardship without grumbling. They knew how
to run a kitchen and see that hungry men were fed. They knew how to
nurse, to run telephones, automobiles--anything that needed to be done.
Some failed and fell by the wayside, but they were the smallest possible
percentage.
Those American girls knew how to do everything--almost everything.
Two wonderful girls, one who ran a telephone for the army and another in
the “Y,” both from the Middle West, were at headquarters the day the
King and Queen of the Belgians arrived. With others they were sent to
serve tea, and they served it. The “Y” girl, taking a young captain
whose presence made her eyes glisten to her Majesty, said:
“Captain Blank, meet the queen.”
And the queen, holding out her hand, and never batting an eye to show
that all the conventions had been thrown to the winds, said:
“Captain, I am very happy to meet you.”
They served tea--served it to the king, the queen, the general of the
American army, and other important people. There was cake besides tea,
and it was not easy to drink tea and eat cake standing. The telephone
girl insisted that General Pershing must sit down. The king was
standing, and of course, General Pershing continued to do the same.
“Will you sit down?” said another girl to the king. “There are plenty
of chairs.”
That girl had done her job in France--a job of which many a man might
have been proud--and on her left breast she wore a military medal for
valor. The king touched the medal, smiled at her, and said he was glad
there were plenty of chairs, for he knew places where there were not.
But General Pershing and his cake still bothered the little Illinois
girl, who went back at him again and asked him to sit down and enjoy his
cake. The king indicated to the general to be seated.
No one but General Pershing would have known what to do between the rule
to stand when a king stands and the rule to obey the order of the king.
He gracefully placed his plate on the side of a table, half seated
himself on it, which was a compromise, and went on enjoying himself.
The king sat down.
If any one had told that girl the sacredness of the convention she had
ignored, she would have suffered as keenly as I had suffered in my
youth. It was such a simple thing to learn; yet who in the middle of a
war would think of stopping to run a class in etiquette? The point is
that any girl capable of crossing half the world to do a big job and a
hard one in a foreign land should have been given the opportunity to
learn the rules of social intercourse.
I saw some American girls and men on official occasions at private
houses and at official functions. They were clever, attractive,
fascinating; but when they came to the end of their visit, they rose to
go, and then stood talking, talking, talking. They did not know exactly
how to get away. They did not want to be abrupt nor appear to be glad
to leave.
It would have been so simple for some one to say to them: “One of the
first rules in social life is to get up and go when you are at the end
of your visit.”
I was in Paris when Marshal Joffre gave the American Ambassador, Mr.
Sharp, the gold oak leaves as a token of France's veneration for
America. There were young girls around us who did not hesitate to
comment on everybody there. One little New Jersey girl insisted rather
audibly that Clemenceau looked like the old watchman on their block;
and a boy, a young officer, complained that General Foch “had not won
as many decorations as General Bliss and General Pershing.” Some
youngsters asked high officers for souvenirs. Many French people
perhaps did worse, but it hurt me to see even a few of our own splendid
young people guilty of such crudities, because our American youth is so
fine at heart.
When the great artist Rodin died, I went to the public ceremony held in
his memory. Suddenly I realized that America and France each had
something left that war had not destroyed. A young American art
student, who had given up his career for his uniform, and was invalided
back in Paris minus an arm, stood very near me. As he turned to Colonel
House I heard him say:
“Rodin's going is another battle lost.”
It was typical of the American quality of which we have cause to
boast--the fineness of heart that is in our young people.
The day of the armistice in France, those of us who are older stood
looking on and realizing that all class distinctions, all race, age, and
pursuits, had been wiped off the map. People were just people. There
was a complete abandon. I am not a young woman, but I was caught up by
the fury of the crowd, and swept along singing, laughing, weeping.
Young soldiers passing would reach out to touch my hand, sometimes to
kiss me.
That night I believed that the war had broken down many of our barriers;
that all foolish customs had died; that the terrific price paid in human
blood and human suffering had at least left a world honest with itself,
simple and ready for good comradeship; that men were measured by
manliness and women by ideals. It was a part of the armistice day
fervor, but I believed it.
And then I came home and went to Newport.