_Concerning the Attentions of Married Men_
I am sure, my dear niece, that you are a good and pure-minded girl, and
that you mean to live a life above reproach, and I fully understand your
rebellion against many of the conventional forms which are incompatible
with the career of a "girl bachelor," as you like to call yourself. But
let us look at the subject from all sides, while you are on the
threshold of life, in the morning of your career, and before you have
made any more serious mistakes than the one you mention.
For it was a mistake when you accepted Mr. Gordon's telephone message to
lunch alone with him at a restaurant, even though you knew his wife
might not object.
Mr. and Mrs. Gordon are happily married, parents of several children.
They are broader and more liberal and more unselfish than most parents,
and they went out of their path to extend courtesies to you, a young
country girl--at first because you were my niece, then because they
liked you personally.
When I first wrote Mrs. Gordon that you were to open a studio in Chicago
after your course of study in the East, she expressed deep interest in
you, and seemed anxious to have you consider her as a friend--always
ready to act as a chaperon or adviser when you felt the need of wiser
guidance than your own impulses.
Mrs. Gordon knew that your experience of the world was limited to a
country village in the West, and two years' study at the Pratt
Institute. While there she knew you boarded with a cousin of your
mother's, and enjoyed the association and privileges of the daughters of
the home.
To start alone in Chicago, and live in your studio, and dine from a
chafing-dish, and sleep in an unfolded combination bureau and
refrigerator--has more fascinations to your mind than to Mrs. Gordon's.
She was reared in comfort, bordering on luxury, and while her early home
life was not happy, she enjoyed all the refinements and all the
privileges of protected girlhood.
She knows city life as you cannot know it, and, although she discards
many of the burden-some conventions of society, she realizes the
necessity of observing some of its laws.
She wanted you to feel that you had the background of a wholesome home,
and the protection of clean, well-behaved married friends in your
exposed situation; her attitude to you is just what she would want
another woman to hold toward her daughter, were she grown up and alone
in a large city.
You have been her guest, and she has been your good friend. Mr. Gordon
admired you from the first, and that was a new incentive for this most
tactful and liberal of wives to befriend you. She always cultivates the
women he likes.
This is excellent policy on the part of a wife. If the husband has any
really noble qualities or possesses a sterling character, he will
appreciate and respect his wife's confidence, and never violate it; and
added to this, he will usually become disillusioned with the women he
has admired from a distance, when he sees them frequently at too close
range.
A wife can make no greater mistake than trying to fence her husband
about and obtruding high walls between him and the women he admires. Far
better bring them near and turn on the calcium light.
Mr. Gordon is a born lover of the fair sex, a born gallant. He is, at
the same time, a clean, self-respecting man. But he has grown a trifle
selfish and a bit vain of late years.
He does not fully realize what the interesting family of children he
shows with such pride to his friends has meant to their mother.
It has not occurred to him that to be the mother of three children, the
youngest one year old, after six years of married life, has required a
greater outlay of all the mental, moral, and physical forces than has
been demanded of their father.
He is a good husband,--yet he is not the absolutely unselfish and
liberal and thoughtful husband that Mrs. Gordon is wife.
If she seemed to you at all nervous, or less adaptable to your moods
than he, you should stop and consider the many causes which might have
led to this condition.
You are young, handsome, gifted, and unconventional, and all these
things appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, and
more than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend your
knowledge of human nature.
You say your ambition is to know the world thoroughly,--that it will aid
your art.
I think that is true, if you do not pass the border-line and lose your
ideals and sacrifice your principles. Once you do that, your art will
lose what it can never regain.
And remember this, my dear girl, no human being ever lived or ever will
live who gained anything worth having _by sacrificing the golden rule._
In your search for knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with human
nature, _keep that motto ever before your soul's sight,_ "Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you."
You say Mr. Gordon said or did nothing in that tête-à-tête luncheon his
wife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirely
about you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoided
any reference to his wife and children, surprised you.
And now you are wondering if you did wrong to accept this invitation.
Never accept invitations of any kind from married men, unless the wife
or some member of the family is included.
No matter how willing the wife may be to have you enjoy her husband's
company, avoid tête-à-tête situations with benedicts.
You say you are not egotistical enough to imagine Mr. Gordon had any
hidden motive for wanting to be alone with you, or for seemingly
forgetting in his conversation that he was a husband and father. Yet I
can see that in a measure it disillusioned you.
You do not ask a man to fling his wife and children at the head of each
woman he meets, but you like him to recognize their existence.
You are a young, romantic girl seeking the ideal.
You want to find happy wives and husbands,--men and women who have
sailed away from the Strands of Imagination to the more beautiful land
of the Real, from whose shores they beckon you, saying: "Here is
happiness and great joy. Come and join us, and feel no fear in flinging
the illusions of youth behind you."
If married men only knew that is what young women are seeking,--if
married women only knew that is what young men are seeking, what
reconstruction would take place in the deportment of husbands and wives!
Never yet did a married woman indulge in flirtatious or sentimental
converse with a bachelor without lowering herself and all women in his
heart of hearts.
Never yet did a married man seem to forget his domestic ties in the
presence of single women without losing a portion of their respect,
however they may have been flattered by his attentions.
In every man's heart, in every woman's, is this longing to find husbands
and wives who are satisfied and happy and proud, above all other things,
of their loyalty.
It would be well for you to keep this fact before the minds of the men
you meet. You can, in a small way, do your little toward educating on
this subject the married men you encounter. And you can save yourself
some embarrassing experiences.
It is no compliment to you if the husband of your friend, or a stranger,
falls in love with you.
It is an easy matter for a young, attractive woman to infatuate
irresponsible men.
It is a far greater compliment to you when women respect and trust you,
and when you help elevate the ideals of weak men regarding your sex.
You can study the whole Encyclopedia of Manhood without breaking through
the glass doors of your friend's bookcases. And you can live a free,
unconventional life without sacrificing one principle, though you may
ignore some customs. It is not the custom in conventional society for
young women to go to theatres or dinners alone with young men. Yet I am
perfectly willing you should join the large army of self-supporting,
self-respecting, and well educated girls who do these things. You have
been reared with that American idea of independence, and with that
confidence in your ability to protect your virtue and good name, which
carries the vast majority of our young women safely through all the
vicissitudes of youth, and sends them chaste wives to the altar. Our
American men understand this attitude of our girls, and half of them
respect it, without being forced to, as the other half can be, if woman
so wills.
There is no reason, to my thinking, why you should not enjoy the
companionship of interesting bachelors and widowers, and take the
courtesies they offer, with no chaperon but your own pride, taste, and
will. So long as you know, and these men know, that you are doing
nothing and going nowhere you need remember with shame or regret, the
next day, just so long you are on no dangerous path.
But you must draw the line at married men, happy or unhappy. Any
confidential, tête-à-tête companionship of a single woman with a married
man cheapens her in the eyes of all other men and women.
It is a simpler matter to drift into free and easy manners and call them
"bohemian" than to cleanse your reputation of their stain, or lift your
mind from the mire to which they inevitably lead.
Once a woman begins to excuse her lawless conduct on the ground of her
"artistic temperament," there are no depths to which she may not sink.
Take pride in being at once independent yet discreet; artistic, yet
sensible; a student of men, yet an example of high-minded womanhood; an
open foe to needless conventions, yet a staunch friend of principles;
daring in methods, yet irreproachable in conduct; and however adored by
men, worthy of trust by all women.
Do not take the admiration of men too seriously. Waste no vitality in a
rage over their weaknesses and vices. Regard them with patience and
inspire them to strive for a better goal than self-indulgence.
You can safely take it for granted that many who approach you with
compliments for your charms, and pleas for your favours, would make the
same advances to any other attractive girl they chanced to encounter.
Too many young women mistake a habit for a grand passion. And they
forget, while they are studying man, that he is studying woman, and
testing her susceptibility to flattery and her readiness to believe in
his simulated infatuation.
Do not fall into the error of so many young country girls in a large
city, and imagine you can establish new laws, create a new order of
things, and teach men new lessons.
A great city is like an ever-burning fire,--the newcomers who thrust in
their fingers will be scorched and scarred, but the fire will not be
changed or extinguished.
_Keep out of the fire_.
There is no reason why you should scar yourself or smoke your garments
while keeping comfortably warm.