THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER.
Seated, reading by a shaded study-lamp, was a young woman of what I
should call the Jeanie Deans order--one whose whole personal appearance
indicated that sort of compact, efficient union of energy and simplicity
characteristic of the Scottish heroine. Her hair, of a pretty curly
brown, was cut short, _à la_ Rosa Bonheur; her complexion glowed with a
sort of a wholesome firmness, indicative of high health; her large,
serious grey eyes had an expression of quiet resolution, united with
careful observation. Her figure inclined to the short, stout and
well-compacted order, which gave promise of vitality and power of
endurance--without pretensions to beauty. There was a wholesome,
thoughtful cheerfulness and good humor in the expression of the face
that made it decidedly prepossessing and attractive.
The furniture of the room, too, was in contrast with all the other
appointments of the house. It was old and worn, and of that primitive
kind that betokened honest and respectable mediocrity. There was a
quaint, old-fashioned writing-desk, with its array of drawers and
pigeon-holes; there were old slippery wooden arm-chairs, unrelieved by
cushions; while the floor was bare, excepting in front of the fire,
where it was covered by a large square of what New England housekeepers
call rag-carpet. The room, in fact, was furnished like the sitting-room
of an old New England farm-house. A cheerful, bountiful wood-fire,
burning on a pair of old-fashioned brass andirons, added to the
resemblance.
"You see, Mr. Henderson," said Miss Eva, when I had been introduced and
seated, "you are now in the presence of Miss Van Arsdel proper. This
room is Papa's and Ida's joint territory, where their own tastes and
notions have supreme sway; and so you see it is sacred to the memories
of the past. There is all the old furniture that belonged to papa when
he was married. Poor man! he has been pushed out into grandeur, step by
step, till this was all that remained, and Ida opened an asylum for it.
Do you know, this is the only room in the house Papa cares much for. You
see, he was born on a farm, dear gentleman, and he has an inveterate
yearning after primitive simplicity--huckleberries and milk, you know,
and all that. Don't this look like the old 'keeping-room' style?"
"Yes," said I, "it looks like _home_. I know rooms just like it."
"But I _like_ these old primitive things," said Ida. "I like hardness
and simplicity. I am sick to death of softness and perfumed cushions and
ease. We women are sweltered under down beds, and smothered with
luxuries, in our modern day, till all the life dies out of us. _I_ want
to live while I live, and to keep myself in such trim that I can _do_
something--and I won't pet myself nor _be_ petted."
"There," said Eva, laughing, "blood will tell; there's the old Puritan
broken loose in Ida. She don't believe any of their doctrines, but she
goes on their track. She's just like a St. Bernard dog that she brought
home once. As soon as snow came, he was wild to run out and search in
it, and used to run off whole days in the woods, just because his
ancestors were trained to hunt travelers. Ida is as bent on testifying
and going against the world as any old Covenanter."
"The world needs going against," said Ida. "By the by, Mr. Henderson,
you must allow me to thank you for your article on the 'Woman of our
Times,' in the _Milky Way_. It is bracing, and will do good."
"And I," said Eva, kindling with a sort of flame-like vivacity, "have
been perfectly dying to tell you that you don't _know_ us fashionable
girls, and that we are not, after all, such poor trash as you seem to
think. All the out-of-jointness of society is not our fault."
"I protest, Miss Eva," said I, astonished at the eagerness of her
manner. "I'm sure I don't know what I have said to give that
impression."
"Oh, I dare say not. You have only used the good stock phrases and said
the usual things. You reformers and moralists, and all that have got a
way of setting us girls down as sinners as a matter of course, so that
you never think when you do it. The 'Dolls of fashion,' the
'Butterflies,' &c., &c., are used to point the moral and adorn the tale.
The girl of the period is the scapegoat for all the naughty things
going. Now, I say the girl of the period isn't a particle worse than the
boy of the period; and I think reformers had better turn their attention
to him."
"But I don't remember," said I, astonished and confused at the sudden
vivacity of this attack, "that I said anything."
"Oh, yes, but I do. You see it's the party that's hit that knows when a
blow is struck. You see, Mr. Henderson, it isn't merely you, but
everybody, from the London _Spectator_ down, when they get on their
preaching-caps, and come forth to right the wrongs of society, begin
about _us_--our dressiness, our expensiveness, our idleness, our
extravagance, our heartlessness. The men, poor, dear creatures, are led
astray and ruined by _us_. It's the old story of Adam: 'The woman
beguiled me.'"
"You see," said Ida, laughing, "Eva's conscience troubles her; that's
why she's so sensitive."
"Well, that's the truth," said Eva. "I'm _in_ the world, and Ida has
gone out of it; and so she can sit by, all serene, when hits are made at
us, and say, 'I told you so.' But, you see, _I_ am _in_, and am all the
while sure that about half what they say of us is true, and that makes
me sensitive when they say too much. But, I insist upon it, it isn't
_all_ true; and if it is, it isn't our fault. We are in the world just
as we are in a railroad-car, and we can't help its carrying us on, even
if we don't like the places it takes us through."
"Unless you get out of it," said Ida.
"Yes, but it takes courage to get out alone, at some desolate way
station, and set up your tent, and make your way, and have everybody in
the cars screaming remonstrances or laughing at you. Ida has the courage
to do it, but I haven't. I don't believe in myself enough to do it, so I
stay in the car, and wish I didn't, and wish we were all going a better
way than we do."
"No," said Ida; "women are brought up in a way to smother all the life
out of them. All literature from the earliest ages teaches them that it
is graceful to be pretty and helpless; they aspire to be superficial and
showy. They are directed to look on themselves as flowers--
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and warm the heart;
Nor blush, my fair, to be compared to these--
Your best, your noblest mission, is _to please_."
"Well," said Eva, flushing, "wasn't it a _man_ that wrote that? and
don't they always misunderstand us? We _are_ soft--we _are_ weak--we
_do_ love beauty, and ease, and comfort; but there is a something in us
more than they give us credit for. Where is that place in Carlyle?" she
said, rising with a hasty impulse, and taking down a volume, and running
rapidly over the leaves--"Oh, here it is!" and she read with energy from
Carlyle's _Hero Worship_:
'It is a calumny to say that men are nerved to heroic action by ease,
hope of pleasure, recompense--sugar-plums of any kind--in this world
or the next. In the meanest mortal there is something nobler. The
poor, swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his honor of a soldier
different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not
to taste sweet things, but to _do_ noble and true things, and
vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the
poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, and
the dullest drudge kindles into a hero.
'They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease.
Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are _allurements_ that act on
the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, and you have a
flame that burns up all lower considerations.'
"Now," she said, her face glowing, and bringing down her little fist
with emphasis, "_that_ is true of _women_ as well as men. They wrong
woman greatly who say she is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty,
abnegation, martyrdom, death, are _allurements_ that act on the heart of
woman. Now, Mr. Henderson, every woman that _is_ a woman, feels this in
the depths of her heart, and it is this feeling suppressed that is at
the bottom of a great deal of unhappiness in woman's life. You men have
your chance to express it--that is your great good fortune. You are
called to be heroes--your hour comes--but we are buried under eternal
common-places and trifles."
"Yet, Miss Eva," said I, "I don't think we are so very much better off
than you. The life of the great body of _men_ is a succession of mere
ignoble drudgeries, with nothing great or inspiring. Unless we learn to
ennoble the common-place by a heroic spirit, most of us must pass
through life with no expression of this aspiration; and I think that
more women succeed in doing this than men--in fact, I think it is the
distinctive prerogative of woman to idealize life by shedding an
ennobling spirit upon its very trifles."
"That is true," she said, frankly; "but I confess it never occurred to
me; yet don't you think it harder to be heroic in every-day affairs?"
"Certainly; but those that can inspire common-place drudgery with noble
and heroic meanings are the true heroes. There was a carpenter once in
Nazareth who worked thirty years quietly at his bench; but who doubts
that every stroke of that work was inspired and heroic, as much as the
three public years that followed? And there are women, like him, toiling
in poverty--hard-working wives, long-suffering mothers, whose every
breath is heroic. There _can_ be no common-place where such noble
creatures live and suffer."
"Yes, Mr. Henderson," said Ida, "heroism can be in any life that is a
_work_-life--any life which includes energy and self-denial. But
fashionable life is based on mere love of ease. All it seeks is
pleasurable sensation and absence of care and trouble, and it starves
this heroic capability; and that is the reason, as Eva says, why there
is so much repressed unhappiness in women. It is the hunger of starving
faculties. What are all these girls and women looking for? Amusement,
excitement. What do they dread more than anything? Effort, industry,
self-denial. Not one of them can read a serious book through--not
because they are not able, but because it takes an effort. They read
nothing but serial stories, and if there is much thought in them, they
skip it, to get at the story. All the education they get in schools lies
idle; they do nothing with it, as a general thing. They neither read,
write, nor speak their French, Italian, or German--and what is the use
of having got them? Men study languages as a key to literature, and use
literature for some purpose; women study only to forget. It does not
take four languages and all the ologies to enable them to dance the
German and compose new styles of trimming. They might do all they do
equally as well without these expensive educations as with----"
"There now, you have got sister Ida on her pet topic," said Eva, with
heightened color; "she will take up her prophecy now, and give it to us
wicked daughters of Zion; but, after all, it only makes one feel worried
and bad, and one doesn't know what to do. We don't make the world; we
are born into and find it ready made. We find certain things are
customs--certain things are expected of us--and we begin to say A, and
then we must say B, and so on through the whole alphabet. We don't want
to say B, but we must because we have said A. It isn't every one that is
brave and strong enough to know where to stop, and face the world, and
say, 'No, I will not do it.' We must keep step with our neighbors."
"Well," said Ida, "who is it that says, 'Be not conformed to the
world'?"
"Yes--I know," said Eva; "there's the Bible--there are all the lessons
and prayers and hymns of the Church all going one way, and our lives all
going the other--_all_ our lives--everybody's life--even nice people's
lives--all go the other way; except now and then one. There's our new
rector, now, he is beginning to try to bring us up to live as the Church
directs; but mamma and Aunt Maria, and all of them, cry out that he is
High Church, and going to Popery, and all that; they say that if one is
to live as he says, and go out to prayers morning and evening, and to
Holy Communion every Sunday, it will just upset our whole plan of life,
that one might as well go into a convent--and so it will. One can't be
in parties all night, and go to prayers every morning; one can't go
through that awful Holy Communion every Sunday, and live as we generally
do through the week. All our rector is trying to do, is simply to make a
_reality_ of our profession; he wants us to carry out in good faith what
is laid down in the Prayer-book; but you see we can't do it without
giving up the world as we have it arranged now. For my part, I'm going
to the daily services in Lent, if I don't any other time, and though it
does make me feel dreadfully wicked and uncomfortable."
"Oh, you poor child!" said Ida; "why haven't you strength to do as you
please?"
"Why haven't I the arm of a blacksmith? why can't I walk ten miles?
There are differences of power in mind as well as body," said Eva.
The conversation was interrupted at this moment by Mr. Van Arsdel, who
entered quietly, with his spectacles and newspapers.
"The children are having lively times in there," he said, "and I thought
I'd just come here and sit where it's quiet, and read my papers."
"Papa says that every evening," said Eva.
"Well, the fact is, Mr. Henderson," said he, with a confiding sort of
simplicity, "Ida and I feel at home in here, because it's just the
little old place wife and I had when we began. You see, these are all my
old things that we first went to housekeeping with, and I like them. I
didn't want to have them sent off to auction, if they are old and
clumsy."
"And he should have them, so he should, Pa-sey dear," said Eva,
caressingly, putting her arm round his neck. "But come, Mr. Henderson, I
suppose the gay world outside will expect us."
I had risen and was looking over the library. It was largely composed of
modern scientific and physiological works.
"You see my light reading," said Ida, with a smile.
"Ida's books are a constant reproach to me," said Eva; "but I dip in now
and then, and fish up some wonderful pearl out of them; however, I
confess to just the fatal laziness she reprobates--I don't go _through_
anything."
"Well, Mr. Henderson, we won't keep you from the world of the parlors,"
said Ida; "but consider you have the _entrée_ here whenever you want a
quiet talk; and we will be friends," she said, stretching out her hand
with the air of a queen.
"You honor me too much, Miss Van Arsdel," said I.
"Come now, Mr. Henderson, we can't allow our principal literary lion to
be kept in secret places," said Miss Eva. "You are expected to walk up
and down and show yourself; there are half a dozen girls to whom I have
promised to present you."
And in a moment I found myself standing in a brilliant circle of gay
tropical birds of fashion, where beauty, or the equivalent of beauty,
charmingness, was the rule, and not the exception. In foreign lands, my
patriotic pride had often been fed by the enthusiasm excited by my
countrywomen. The beauty and grace of American women their success in
foreign circles, has passed into a proverb; and in a New York company of
young girls one is really dazzled by prettiness. It is not the grave,
grand, noble type of the Madonna and the Venus de Milo, but the
delicate, brilliant, distracting prettiness of young birds, kittens,
lambs, and flowers--something airy and fairy--belonging to youth and
youthful feeling. You see few that promise to ripen and wax fairer in
middle life; but almost all are like delicate, perfectly-blossomed
flowers--fair, brilliant and graceful, with a fragile and evanescent
beauty.
The manners of our girls have been criticised, from the foreign
standpoint, somewhat severely. It is the very nature of republican
institutions to give a sort of unconventional freedom to its women.
There is no upper world of court and aristocracy to make laws for them,
or press down a framework of etiquette upon them. Individual freedom of
opinion and action pervades every school; it is breathed in the very
air, and each one is, in a great degree, a law unto herself. Every
American girl feels herself in the nobility; she feels adequate to the
situation, and perfectly poised in it. She dares do many things not
permitted in foreign lands, because she feels strong in herself, and
perfectly sure of her power.
Yet he who should presume on this frank generosity of manner, will find
that Diana has her arrows; and that her step is free only because she
knows her strength, and understands herself perfectly, and is competent
to any situation.
At present, the room was full of that battledore-and-shuttlecock
conversation, in which everything in heaven above or earth beneath is
bantered to and fro, flitting and flying here and there from one bright
lip to another.
"Now, really and truly, girls, are you going to the early services this
Lent? Oh, Mr. Selwyn is such a good man! and wasn't his pastoral letter
beautiful? We really ought to go. But, girls, I can't get up--indeed, I
can't; do you know, it's dreadful--seven o'clock--only think of it. You
won't go, Eva?"
"Yes, I shall."
"I lay you a pair of gloves you won't, now," quoth a mouth, adorned with
a long pair of waxed moustaches of a true Imperial type.
"See if I don't."
"Oh, mamma says I mustn't try," said another; "I haven't the strength."
"And I tell Eva she can't do it," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Eva is always
over-doing; she worked herself to death in a mission class last year.
The fact is, one can't do these things, and go into society."
"But what's the use of society, mamma?" said Eva.
"Oh, well; we can't all turn into monks and nuns, you know; and that's
what these modern High Church doings would bring us to. I'm a good,
old-fashioned Episcopalian; I believe in going to church on Sundays--and
that's all we used to hear about."
"Do you know, Mr. Fellows, I saw you at St. Alban's," said Miss Alice.
"On your knees, too," said Miss Eva.
"Do you believe in bowing to the altar?" said a third; "I think it's
quite Popish."
"Girls, what are going to be worn for hats this spring? have you been to
Madame De Tullerigs? I declare it's a shame! but Lent is just the
busiest time about one's clothes, one must have everything ready for
Easter, you know. How do you like the new colors, Mr. Fellows?"
"What! the hell-fire colors?" said Jim.
"Oh, horrors! You dreadful creature, you ought to be ashamed of
yourself!" screamed in four or five voices.
"Am ashamed--sackcloth and ashes, and all that; eat nothing but
codfish," said Jim. "But that's what they call 'em, any way--hell-fire
colors."
"I never did hear such a profane creature. Girls, isn't he dreadful?"
"I say, Miss Alice," said Jim, "do you go to confession up there?
'Cause, you see, if that thing is getting about, I think I'll turn
priest."
"I think _you_ ought to go to confession," said she.
"I shall in the good times coming, when we have lady priests."
"Oh, Mr. Henderson, do you believe in women's rights?"
"Certainly."
"Well, for my part, I have all the rights I want," said Miss Alice.
"I should think you did," said Jim Fellows; "but it's hard on us."
"Well, I think that is all infidelity," said another--"goes against the
Bible. _Do_ you think women ought to speak in public?"
"Ristori and Fanny Kemble, for instance," said I.
"Oh, well--they are speaking other people's words; but their own?"
"Why not as well as in private?"
"Oh, because--why, I think it's dreadful; don't you?"
"I can't perceive why. I am perfectly charmed to hear women speak, in
public or private, who have anything good or agreeable to say."
"But the publicity is so shocking!"
"Is it any more public than waltzing at the great public balls?"
"Oh, well, I think lecturing is dreadful; you'll never convince me. I
hate all those dreadful, raving, tearing, stramming women."
In which very logical and consecutive way the leading topics of the age
were elegantly disposed of; and at eleven o'clock I found myself out on
the pavement with the inexhaustible Jim, who went singing and whistling
by my side as fresh as a morning blackbird. My head was in a pretty
thorough whirl; but I was initiated into society,--to what purpose shall
hereafter appear.