VI

A word as to another phase of the club. We have seen that the salons

broke through the exclusive lines of rank, and created a society

based largely upon standards of the intellect, with a meeting-point

of good manners. The woman’s club has done a similar work toward

preventing the crystallization of American society on the basis of

wealth. Its standards are professedly of the mind, though they are

flexible enough to include a wide range of ability, aspiration,

and small distinctions of various sorts. It would be too much to

say that these elements are fused into anything like a homogeneous

society; but they have a recognized point of contact that suffices for

literary or charitable aims, though not altogether for social ones,

which demand the larger contact of personal sympathies, and a certain

community of language that comes within the province of manners. The

salons, however, were wise enough to establish and maintain the social

equilibrium between men and women, while the clubs seem to be rapidly

destroying it. Outside of a limited dinner-giving, amusement-loving

circle, it is undeniable that our social life is centering largely

in clubs composed exclusively of women, whose tastes are diverging

more and more from those of men, and in the functions growing out of

them. To these we may add a few receptions with a sprinkling of men,

and an endless procession of teas and luncheons with no men at all.

Private entertaining of a general character, with its varying flavor of

individuality, seems likely, with many other pleasant things, to become

a memory. If these clubs grew out of a state of affairs in which women

were virtually excluded from the intellectual life of men, we are fast

drifting toward the reverse condition, in which men will have no part

in the intellectual and very little in the social life of women.

Whether this marked separation of interests beyond a reasonable point

be for the good of either men or women, is a matter of grave doubt.

It is certain that women who are brought into frequent contact with

the minds of men think more clearly and definitely, look at things

in a larger way, and do a finer quality of intellectual work, than

those who have been limited mainly to the companionship of their own

sex. Societies of women are apt to fail in breadth through too much

attention to technicalities out of season, to sacrifice the greater

good to personal prejudices, to emphasize a little brief authority, to

grow hard rather than strong, to become carping and critical without

the clearness of vision that gives a rational basis for criticism.

Nor does the fact that a great many women are superior to these

limitations, and that men are not invariably free from them, affect the

general drift of things. On the other side, it is equally true that men

have done the greatest work under the influence of able women, from the

days of Pericles and the great Greeks who found a fresh inspiration

in the salon of Aspasia, to the brilliant men of modern times, too

numerous to cite here, who have not failed to acknowledge their debt to

feminine judgment and criticism. Men, too, are naturally averse to the

trammels of form, and, left to themselves, rapidly lose the refinement

and courtesy that came in with the social reign of women. While the

best of each is drawn out through social contact on the plane of the

intellect, the worst is accented by separation.

Then, aside from the fact that a large part of the happiness of the

world depends upon a certain degree of harmony in the tastes of men

and women, which is not likely to exist if they have utterly divergent

points of social interest, men are an incontestable factor in all

our plans for bettering matters, themselves included. We cannot

fairly claim to constitute more than half of the human family, and,

if we do not make some social compromise, we may share the fate of

the Princess Ida, and see all of our fine schemes melt away like

the fabric of a dream. We are not yet ready to establish an order

of intellectual vestals, though drifting in that direction; and,

since the women’s clubs do really constitute a distinct social life,

why not make them more effective on that side? Why leave all these

possibilities of power in the hands of those who make a business of

amusing themselves? It is a fashion to rail at society as frivolous;

but it is precisely what we make it, and it is ruled by women. If it

tends to grow vapid, and luxurious, and commercial, and artificial, we

have only to plan something as attractive on a finer and more natural

basis. And where do we find a better starting-point than in connection

with the women’s clubs? To be sure, men do not, as a rule, find them

interesting; indeed, they vote them a trifle dull, but that may be

because they have no vital part in them. Then, the fault may lie a

little in the women themselves. There is clearly a flaw somewhere

in our methods or our ideals. In trying to avoid the frivolities of

society, we may fall into the equally fatal error of failing to make

better things attractive, and so permit the busy men of to-day to slip

away altogether from the influence of what many are pleased to call

our finer moral and esthetic sense--to say nothing of what we lose

ourselves. It may be deplorable, but it is still a fact, that truth is

doubly captivating when served with the piquant sauces that make even

error dangerously fascinating. We have to deal with people as they are,

not as we think they ought to be.

I am not disposed to quote the Frenchwomen of a century or so ago as

models. But there are many points we might take from them in the art

of making a social life on intellectual lines agreeable, as well as a

vital force. When women who are neither young nor beautiful dominate

an age of brilliant men through intellect and tact, it does no harm

to study their methods a little in an age when women of equal talent,

superior education, and finer moral aims succeed to only a limited

extent in doing more than stimulate one another--a good thing to do,

but not final. Those women, too, had old distinctions to reconcile,

and a powerful court for a rival. They had one advantage, as they made

a cult of esprit, which is a gift of their race, while we make a cult

of knowledge, which may be more substantial, but is less luminous, and

not so available socially. Besides, knowledge is a thing to be acquired

and not caviar to mediocrity, which is apt to use it crudely, and with

pretension. “Let your studies flow into your manners, and your readings

show themselves in your virtues,” said Mme. de Lambert. I am sorry to

say that the typical Frenchwoman of a hundred years ago did not always

take so exalted a view of her duties; but even as a matter of taste

she had too delicate a sense of proportion to merge the woman in the

intellect. She scattered about her the flavor of knowledge rather than

the knowledge itself; which is not so easy, as one does not have the

real flavor of knowledge without the essence of it, and something more.

Rare natural gifts have a distinction of their own, but in ordinary

life what one _is_ counts for more than what one _knows_, and

the secret of attraction lies rather in the sum of the qualities which

we call character than in the acquirements. A woman may be familiar

with Sanskrit, and calculate the distance of the fixed stars, without

being interesting, or even admirable, as a woman. The main point is to

preserve one’s symmetry, and one’s center of gravity; then, the more

knowledge the better. It may be that the flaw in our ideals lies just

here, and that in the too exclusive pursuit of certain things fine in

themselves, we neglect other things equally if not more vital.

No doubt the Frenchwoman did much that she ought not to have done, and

left undone much that she ought to have done, just as we do, though the

things were not precisely the same; we know, too, that the time came

when she did lose her poise, and with it her power. But, with all her

faults, in the days of her glory she never forgot her point of view.

She was rarely aggressive, and, without being too conscious of herself

or her aims, it was a part of her esthetic creed to call out the best

in others. With consummate tact, she crowned her serious gifts with

the gracious ways and gentle amenities that disarmed antagonism and

diffused everywhere a breath of sweetness. She carried with her, too,

the sunshine that springs from an inexhaustible gaiety of heart, and

this was one source of her unfailing charm. Perhaps it was partly why

the literary salon retained its prestige for nearly two hundred years,

and, in spite of its errors, was brilliant and amusing, as well as an

intellectual force, to the end.

It is far from my intention to repeat the old cry that other days were

better days, and other ways better ways, than ours. We have a life of

our own, and do not wish to copy one that is dead, or to put on manners

that do not fit us. But the essentials of human nature are eternally

the same, and in bringing new forces to bear upon it we may do well

sometimes to consult the wisdom of the past, to ponder the secret of

its failures as of its successes. It is not a matter of depreciating

our aims or our ways, but of getting the most out of them, perhaps

through some subtle touch that we have missed; also of preserving our

sanity and equilibrium in this new order of things, which tends always

to grow more complex and more bewildering.