But other times, other conditions and other methods. It was a long step
from these fine ladies in rouge and ruffles to the earnest American
women of high aims and simpler lives who, not far from thirty years
ago, began seriously to group themselves in clubs for social fellowship
and mental culture. The difference is equally marked, now that these
gatherings are numbered by thousands. It is more vital than a variation
in manners, as it lies in the character of the two races.
The club had no prestige of a class behind it, and concerned itself
little with traditions. It was a far more radical departure from the
old order than the salon, which, though it established a new social
basis, did it through delicate compromises that left the aristocratic
spirit intact. It was only in its later days that the iconoclasts
invaded it, to some extent, and made it a sort of hotbed for the
propagation of democratic theories which seemed quite harmless until,
one day, a spark set them ablaze, and the generation that had played
with them was swept to destruction. The club was democratic from the
foundation. It did not revolve round men of letters, or men of any
class. There was no man, or influence of man, behind it--no man in the
vista. It does not aim to bring into relief the talents of men, but
the talents of women who had come, perhaps, to wish a little glory on
their own account. There was no longer an outlet for their activities
in the salon, which belonged neither to the genius of the age nor the
genius of the race. The Anglo-Saxon man is not preëminently a social
being, and though he has not been entirely neglected in the matter of
vanity or personal susceptibility, he has rather less of either than
his Gallic compeers. Nor is he so amenable, either by temperament or
training, to the delicate arts that make social life agreeable. Half a
century or so ago, the American, in whose chivalrous regard for women
we take so much pride, was in the habit of saying many fine things
about them in what he was pleased to call the sphere God had assigned
them; indeed, he went so far as to offer a great deal of theoretical
incense to them as household divinities, with special and very human
limitations as to privileges. But he frowned distinctly upon any
intellectual tastes or aspirations. His attitude was tersely and
modestly expressed in Tennyson’s couplet:
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.
This master of diverse knowledge would have smiled at the notion of
finding either profit or amusement in meeting women for the purpose of
conversation on the plane of the intellect. The few rare exceptions
only emphasize this fact. “A woman, if she have the misfortune of
knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can,” said Jane
Austen. We are far from that time; but men of affairs even now find
literary talks in the drawing-room tiresome, and persistently stay
away. Thoughts, too, had become a commodity with a market value, and
men of letters no longer found their pleasure or interest in wasting
them on limited coteries. They preferred sending them out to a larger
audience, at so much a page, while they smoked and chatted more at
their ease among themselves at their clubs. Whether they did not find
women inspiring,--which, under such conditions, is quite possible,--or
did not care to be inspired in that way, the rôle of inspirer was
clearly ended. The few efforts to take up the fallen scepter of the
salon proved futile in intellectual prestige, though they may have
served to while away some pleasant hours. A society based upon wealth
without the traditions of culture is apt to smother in accessories the
delicacy of insight and the esprit which were the life of the salons.
On the other hand, those who pose as apostles of plain living and high
thinking make the mistake of ignoring the imagination altogether, and
too often serve their feasts of reason without any sauces at all, which
fact should probably be laid to the account of the race that takes its
diversion as seriously as its work. After all, one cannot say “Let us
have esprit,” and have it, any more than one can say, “Let us have
charm,” and put it on like a garment.
But the women of forty or fifty years ago lacked much more than a
social outlet for their talents and aspirations. They had no outlet of
any sort beyond charity and the fireside. The Frenchwomen had little,
if any, more real freedom, possibly not so much in some directions:
but rank brought them deference and consideration; the age of chivalry
had put them on a pedestal. It may have been a bit theoretical, but
an illusory power is better than none at all, as it has a certain
prestige. If they were queens without a very substantial kingdom, they
had, at least, the privileges, as well as the responsibilities, of high
positions, and shone with something more than reflected glory. Then
their talents were too valuable to be ignored, as they were the best of
purveyors to Gallic ambitions. The Roman Church, too, was far-seeing
when it provided an outlet for their surplus energies and emotions. If
they had no fireside of their own, or the world pressed heavily upon
them, they could retire from it, and hope for places of influence, even
of power, in some of the various religious orders. In any case, there
were peace and a dignified refuge. But it is a noteworthy fact that the
Reformation left to women all the sacrifices of their religion, and
none of its outward honors or consolations. If the philosophers had no
message of freedom for them, still less was it found on Puritan soil.
“Women are frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish,” said John Knox, who
was far from being a model of patience himself, and seems to have been
singularly swayed by these weak, inconsequent creatures above whom he
asserts that man is placed “as God is above the angels.” Milton has
left us in no doubt as to his position regarding them:
My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.
Such was the Puritan gospel of liberty as applied to women. John Knox
and Milton joined in the chorus that glorified their vassalage, while
Calvin added a cordial refrain, with a prudent reservation as to queens
and princesses.
It is needless to dwell upon this phase of a past the ideals of
which are as dead to us as the goddesses of Greece and the heroines
of the Nibelungenlied. It has been sufficiently emphasized already,
and concerns us here only as it shows us the spirit under which our
grandmothers were born and bred. It cannot be denied that they were a
wise, strong race, rearing thinkers and statesmen who have left few
worthy successors, though they did not spend much time in discussing
the best methods of training children, were better versed in domestic
than social economics, and doubtless had misty ideas about Buddhism
and the ultimate destiny of Woman. It may be superfluous, also, to say
that many of them had occasion to think little of their restrictions,
and would have resented the suggestion that they had any which were
not good for them, if not positively desirable. Limitations, even
hardships, do not necessarily imply misery. People are curiously
flexible, and get a sort of happiness from trying to fit themselves to
conditions which, though unpleasant, are inevitable. Then, conditions
are not always hard because they have unlimited possibilities in that
direction. One may even wear a chain and ball quite comfortably so long
as one stands still, or if the chain be a silken one and the ball cast
in pleasant places. The difficulty is that one does not always wish to
stand still; nor is it always possible, whatever the inclination may
be. The march of events is irresistible, and one is often forced to a
change of position to escape being trampled upon. Besides, in a society
that is based upon the right of people to do as they choose within
certain very flexible limits, one half is not likely to continue to do,
without a protest, what the other half says it ought to do, when it is
compelled to take its full share of burdens and rather more than its
full share of sacrifices, without any choice as to cakes and ale. These
daughters of liberty held no longer the places of honor accorded to
rank, and were not only without visible dignities of any kind, except
as the palest of satellites, but were largely, if not altogether,
excluded from the intellectual life of their husbands. They were told
to be content with the dignity of maternity, while they were virtually
shut out from the things that consecrate maternity. It was under such
conditions that the woman’s club was born. Men had already set up clubs
of their own, and women had no choice but to do the same thing, or
drift into the hopeless position of their respectable Athenian sisters
of the classic age, who lived in fashionable but ignorant seclusion,
while their brilliant husbands sought more congenial companionship
elsewhere.
But women did not plan a club for amusement, as men have usually
done: they planned it for mental improvement. It was not without a
prophecy of the coming time that the characters of our grandmothers
were trained in so severe a school. They were the reverse of
pleasure-loving, and took even their diversions seriously. The central
point of their lives was an inexorable sense of duty. Its twin trait
was energy. With a radical change of ideals their daughters did not
lose these traits. A religious devotion to one set of aims was simply
transferred to another. The road to their new Utopia was knowledge.
All things would come in its train--culture, independence, happiness,
the power to help a suffering world. It was this leaven of Puritan
traditions which gave the club an element that was not found in the
salon. The American woman may lack a little of that elusive quality,
half sensibility, half wit, which makes so much of the Frenchwoman’s
charm; she may lack, too, her perfection of tact, her inborn
genius for form and measure: but she has what the Frenchwoman has
not--something that belongs to a race in which the ethical overshadows
the artistic. It is devotion to principles rather than to persons, to
essentials rather than to forms. Her pursuit of knowledge may often be
superficial, from the immensity of the field she lays out for herself;
but her aims are serious, and lead her toward moral and sociological
questions, rather than matters of sentiment and taste.
The woman’s club is not a school of manners, and concerns itself little
with the fine art of living. It claims to instruct, not to amuse--or,
rather, it seeks amusement in that way; and it is more interested in
doing things than in the modes of doing them. It does not rely upon
diplomacy to gain its ends, but upon the wisdom and justice of the
ends, appealing to the reason instead of the imagination. It also
deals more with masses than with individuals. No doubt, the necessity
of going outside the realm of personal feeling in managing public or
semi-public affairs helps to give the poise and self-command which go
far toward offsetting the intensity of temperament that has always made
the discussion of vital questions so perilous in gatherings of women,
though we have occasion enough to know that wisdom and sanity do not
invariably preside at gatherings of men, even supposably wise ones. The
qualities fostered by the club are energy, earnestness, independence,
versatility, and--not exactly intellectual conscience, which implies
traditional standards, but a sense of intellectual duty that is not
quite the same thing. All this is remote from the spirit of the salon,
with its social codes and conventions, its graceful amenities, its
sparkling wit, its play of sentiment, its diplomatic reserves, and its
clear intelligence working through endless private channels toward a
new order of things. It points to the club, not as a conservator of
social traditions, or a creator of social standards, or a tribunal of
criticism, but as a literary and political training-school, a maker
of citizens with a broader outlook into the world of affairs, a
powerful engine of moral force. Perhaps its greatest direct value at
present lies in this moral force, which is the outgrowth of centuries
of sternly moral heritage, and runs not only through philanthropic
channels, but through all the avenues of life.
Of scarcely less importance are the impulse and direction the club has
given to the administrative talents of women--talents which mark their
special strength, and are far too valuable to be ignored at a time when
all the wisdom of the world is needed, in private as well as in public
affairs, to guide it safely through its threatening storms.