WOMAN IN THE STATES
There is a story told about Lord Beaconsfield which, if true, goes to
show that he was not nearly so astute a man as is generally supposed. A
lady, an ardent advocate of Woman Suffrage, once called on him and tried
to convince him of the justice of her cause. She was a very pretty lady
and she spoke with great enthusiasm. One imagines flashing eyes,
heightened color, graceful gestures of the hands. Lord Beaconsfield
listened to her and looked at her. When she had finished speaking he
said: "You darling!" The lady, we are told, was angry, thinking that she
had been insulted. She was perfectly right. The remark, which might
under other circumstances have been received with blushing satisfaction,
was just then and there a piece of intolerable rudeness. It was stupid
besides. But perhaps the great statesman meant to be rude. Perhaps, on
the other hand, he was carried away for the moment and ceased to be
intelligent. Perhaps the whole story was invented by some malicious
person and is entirely without foundation. In any case it is a serious
warning to the man who sits down to write about American women. It makes
him hesitate, fearfully, before venturing to say the very first thing he
must want to say. But he who writes takes his life in his hands. I
should be little better than a poltroon if I shrank from uttering the
truth.
I was asked by an able and influential editor in New York to write an
article on American women. It is not every day that I am thus invited to
write articles, so I take a pardonable pride in mentioning the request
of this American editor. It was after dinner that he asked me, and a
lady who was with us heard him do it. I looked at her before I answered.
If she had scowled or even frowned I should not now be writing about
American women. She encouraged me with a nod and a smile. Yet she
knew—she must have known—what I should write first of all. Upon her
head be at least part of the blame. She not merely smiled. She went on
to persuade me to write the article. By persuading me she helped to make
me quite certain that what I am writing is true.
The American woman is singularly charming.
Is this an insult? I think of the many American women whom I met who
were kind enough to talk to me, and I know that this is not what they
would like to have written about them. Some of them were very earnest
knights errant, who rode about redressing human wrongs. It happens
occasionally, not often, of course, but very occasionally, that women
with causes are not charming. They are inclined to overemphasize their
causes, to keep on hammering at a possible convert, to become just a
little tiresome. This is, as far as I could judge, never the case with
the American ladies who have causes. Others whom I met were learned and
knew all about philosophies dim to me. Others again were highly
cultured. I am an ignorant and stupid man. Very clever women sometimes
frighten me. I was never frightened in America. Others again, without
being learned or particularly cultured, were brilliant. They were all
charming. That is the truth. I have written it, and if the skies come
tumbling indignantly about my ears they just must tumble. "_Impavidum
ferient ruinæ_;" but I hope nothing so bad as that will happen to me.
There are people in the world who believe that we are born again and
again, rising or sinking in the scale of living things at each
successive incarnation according as we behave ourselves well or badly in
our present state. If this creed were true, I should try very hard
indeed to be good, because I should want, next time I am born, to be an
American woman. She seems to me to have a better kind of life than the
woman of any other nation, or, indeed, than anybody else, man or woman.
She is, as I hope I have suggested, more free than her European sister.
"So full of burrs," said a great lady of old times, "is this work-a-day
world, that our very petticoats will catch them." This is a true
estimate of the position of the European woman. They who wear petticoats
over here must walk warily with chaperons beside them. But in America
there are either fewer burrs or petticoats are made of some better
material. The American woman, even when she is quite young, can go
freely enough and no scandalous suggestions attach to her unless she
does something very outrageous. She has in other ways too a far better
time than the English woman. American social life seems to me—the word
is one to apologize for—gynocentric. It is arranged with a view to the
convenience and delight of women. Men come in where and how they can.
The late Mr. Price Collier observed this, and drew from it the deduction
that the English man tends on the whole to be more efficient than the
American, everything in an English home being sacrificed to his good.
That may or may not be true; but I think the American woman is certainly
more her own mistress than the Englishwoman, just because America does
its best for women and only its second best for men.
I do not pretend to be superior to these advantages. I like a good time
as well as any one. But I have other ambitions. And I do not want to be
an American woman only for the sake of material gains. She seems to me
to deserve her good luck because she has done her business in life
exceedingly well, better on the whole than the American man has done
his.
I am—I wish to make this clear at once—a good feminist. No man is less
inclined than I am to endorse the words of the German Emperor and
confine woman's activities to "Kirche, Küche und Kinder." I would, if I
had my way, give every woman a vote. I would invite her to discuss the
most intricate political problems, with a full confidence that she could
not possibly make a worse muddle of them than our male politicians do. I
should like to see her conducting great businesses, doctoring her
neighbors, pleading for them in law courts, driving railway engines,
and, if she wanted to, carrying a rifle or steering a submarine. I would
place woman in every possible way on an equality with man and confine
her with no restriction except those with which she voluntarily impedes
her own activities, like petticoats, stays, and blouses which hook up
the back. Having made this full confession of faith, I shall not, I
hope, be reproached for appearing to recognize a distinction between
woman's business in life, the thing which the American woman has done
very well, and man's business, which the American man seems to me to
have managed rather badly. Strictly speaking, in the ideal state all
public affairs are women's just as much as men's. Strictly speaking,
again in the ideal state, man is just as responsible as woman for the
arts of domestic life. But we are not yet living in the ideal state, and
for a long while now the household has been recognized as woman's
sphere, while man has resented her interference with anything outside
the circle of social and family life.
It is in these matters which have been entrusted to her that the
American woman has shown herself superior to the American man. I admit,
of course, that the American man has done a great many things very
brilliantly. But he does not seem to me to have succeeded in making the
business of living, so far as it falls within his province, either
comfortable or agreeable. The Englishman has done better. Examples of
what I mean absolutely crowd upon me. Take the question of cooking food.
The American man, left to his own devices, is not strikingly successful
with food. The highest average of cooking in England is to be found in
good men's clubs. You may, and often do, get excellent dinners in
private houses in England; but you are surer of an excellent dinner in a
first rate club. In America it is the other way about. Many men's clubs
have skilful cooks, but you are on the whole more likely to get very
good food in a woman's club or in a private house than in a man's club.
I am not myself an expert in cooked food. The subject has never had a
real fascination for me. But I have a sense of taste like my better
educated gourmet brethren, and I am convinced that where the American
woman has control of the cooking the business is better done than it
generally is in England, and far better done than when it is left to
American men.
The kindred subjects of drinks, again, marks the superiority of the
American woman. For some reason quite obscure to me, women are not
supposed to know anything about wine. They either do not like it at all
or they like bad kinds of wine. Wine is man's business in all countries.
In America wine is dear, and usually of indifferent quality. Man has
mismanaged the cellar. On the other hand, women are supposed—again the
reason is beyond me—to like eating sweets, to be specialists in that
whole range of food which in America goes under the name of candies. Men
have not created the demand for candies or secured the supply. They are
woman's affair. The consequence is that American candies are better than
any others in the world, better even than the French. It is necessary to
search New York narrowly and patiently in order to find a good bottle of
claret. I speak on this matter as an outsider, for I drink but little
claret myself; but I am assured by highly skilled experts that the fact
is as I state it. On the other hand—I know this by experience—you can
satisfy your soul with an almost infinite variety of chocolates without
going three hundred yards from the door of your hotel in New York or
Philadelphia.
The one form of alcoholic drink in which America surpasses the rest of
the world is the cocktail. I have never yet seen a properly written
history of cocktails. The subject still waits its philosopher. But I am
inclined to think that the cocktail, the original of the species,
Manhattan, Bronx or whatever it may have been, was invented by a woman.
True, these drinks are now universally mixed by men. But the inspiration
is unquestionably feminine. Formulæ for the making of cocktails exist. I
was once asked to review a book which contained several hundred receipts
for cocktails. But every one agrees that the formula is of minor
importance. The cocktail depends for its excellence not on careful
measurements, but on the incalculable and indescribable thing called
personality. The most skilful pharmaceutical chemist, trained all his
life to the accurate weighing of scruples and measurement of drams,
might well fail as a maker of cocktails. He would fail if he did not
possess an instinct for the art. Now this is characteristic of all
women's work. Man reaches his conclusions by argument, bases his
convictions on reason, and is generally wrong. Woman responds to
emotion, follows instinct, and is very often right. Man is the drudging
scientist, patient, dull. Woman is the dashing empiricist,
inconsequential, brilliant. The cocktail must be hers. I shall continue,
until strong evidence to the contrary is offered to me, to believe that
the credit for this glory of American life belongs to her and not to
man.
It would, no doubt, be insulting to say that part of the business of a
woman, as distinguished from a man, is to dress well and be agreeable. I
should not dream of saying such a thing. But there can be no harm in
suggesting that it is the duty of both sexes to do these things. There
is no real reason why an idealist, man or woman, should not be pleasant
to look at, nor is it necessary that very estimable people should
administer snubs to the rest of us. It seems to me that even very good
people are better when they have nice manners and pleasanter when they
dress well. It is not, I admit, their fault when they are not good
looking, but it is their fault if they do not, by means of clothes, make
themselves as good looking as they can. There is no excuse for the man
or woman who emphasizes a natural ugliness. Man, I regret to say, does
not often recognize his duty in these matters. Woman, generally
speaking, has done her best. The American woman has made the very most
of her opportunities and has succeeded both in looking nice and in being
an agreeable companion. In the art of putting on her clothes she has no
superior except the Parisienne, and even in Paris itself it is often
difficult to tell, without hearing her speak, whether the lady at the
next table in a restaurant is French or American. I knew an English
mother who sent her daughter to Paris for six months in order that the
girl might learn to dress herself. The journey to America would have
been longer, but once there the girl would have had just as good a
chance of acquiring the art. I am very unskilful in describing clothes,
and the finer nuances of costume are far beyond the power of any
language at my command to express. But it is possible to appreciate
effects without being able to analyze the way in which they are
produced. The effect on the emotions of a symphony rendered by a good
orchestra is almost as great for the man who does not know exactly what
the trombones are doing as it is for the musician who understands that
they are adding to the general noise by playing chromatic scales, or
whatever it is that trombones do play. It is the same with clothes. I
cannot name materials, or discuss styles in technical language, but I am
pleasantly conscious that the American woman has the air of being very
well dressed.
I am not attempting to make a comparison between the clothes of very
wealthy women of the leisured classes in America and those of women
similarly placed in other countries. Aristocracies and plutocracies are
cosmopolitan. National characteristics are to a considerable extent
smoothed off them. The women of these classes dress almost equally well
everywhere. The possibility of comparison exists only when one considers
the comparatively poor women of the middle and lower middle classes. It
is these who, in America, have the instinct for dressing well unusually
highly developed. Some women have this instinct. Others have not. It
seems to be distributed geographically. There are cities—no bribe would
induce me to name one of them—where the women are usually badly
dressed. You walk up and down the chief thoroughfares. You enter the
most fashionable restaurants and are oppressed by a sense of prevailing
dowdiness. It is not a question of money. The gowns which you see, the
coats, the hats have obviously cost great sums. For half the expenditure
women in other places look well dressed. It is not a matter of the skill
of dressmakers and milliners. A woman who has not got the instinct for
clothes might go to—I forget the man's name, but he is the chief
costumier in Paris—might give him a free hand to do his best for her,
and afterwards she would not look a bit better dressed. It is not, I
believe, possible to explain exactly what she lacks. It is an extra
sense, as incommunicable as an ear for music. A woman either has it or
has not. The American woman has it.
I know—no one knows better than I do—that it is a contemptible thing
to take any notice of clothes. The soul is what matters. The body may be
in rags. The mind is what counts, and fine feathers do not make fine
birds. A great prophet would not be the less a great prophet though his
finger nails were black. I hope we should all adore him just the same
even if he never washed his face or wore a collar. But just at first,
before we got to know him really well, it is possible that we might be a
little prejudiced against him if he looked as if he never washed. That
is all I wish or mean to say about the American woman's power of
dressing herself. It disarms prejudice. The stranger starts fair, so to
speak, when he is introduced to her. In the case of women who cannot, or
for any reason will not, dress themselves nicely, there are preliminary
difficulties in the way of appreciating their real worth.
But the best clothes in the world are no help when it comes to
conversation, unless, indeed, one is able to discuss them in detail, and
I am not. I have met exquisitely dressed women who were very difficult
to talk to. The American woman is not one of these. Besides being well
dressed, she is a delightful talker on all subjects. She may or may not
be profound. I am not profound myself, so I have no way of judging about
that. But profoundness is not wanted in conversation. Its proper place
is in scientific books. In conversation it is merely a nuisance, and the
American woman, when she is profound, has more sense than to show it.
She talks well because she is not in the least shy or self-conscious.
Even young American girls are not shy. Brought into sudden contact with
a middle-aged man, they treat him as an equal, with a frank sense of
comradeship. They have, apparently, no awe of advanced or advancing
years. They do not pretend to think that elderly people are in any way
their superiors, or display in the presence of the aged that kind of
chilling aloofness which is called respect. I detest people who behave
as if they respected me because I am older than they are. I recognize at
once that they are hypocrites. Boys and girls must know, in their
hearts, just as well as we do, that respect is due to the young from the
elderly and not the other way about. The ancient Romans understood this:
"_Maxima debitur reverentia pueris_" is in the Latin grammar, and the
Latin grammar is a good authority on all subjects connected with ancient
Roman civilization.
It is her power of making herself agreeable which is the greatest charm
of the American woman, a greater charm than her ability in dressing. I
am a man very little practiced in the art of conversation. A dinner
party—a party of any kind, but particularly a dinner party—is a thing
from which I shrink. I am always very sorry for the two women who are
placed beside me. I know that they will have to make great exertions to
keep up a conversation with me. I watch them suffering and am myself a
prey to excruciating pangs of self-reproach. But my agony is less in
America than elsewhere. The American woman must of course suffer as much
as the Englishwoman when I take her in to dinner; but she possesses in
an extraordinary degree the art of not showing it. She frequently
deceives me for several minutes at a time, making me think that she is
actually enjoying herself. She is able to do this because she has an
amazing vitality and a very acute kind of intelligence. Now, the highest
compliment which a woman can pay to a man is to enjoy his company. The
American woman understands this and succeeds in pretending she is doing
it. She is wise, too. Recognizing that even her powers have their
limits, and that no woman, however vital and intelligent, can go on
disguising her weariness for very long, she makes her dinners and
luncheons as short as possible, shorter than similar functions are in
England. She does not attempt anything in the way of a long-distance
contest with the heavy stupidity of the ordinary man. Her's is the
triumph of the sprinter. For a short time she flashes, sympathizes,
subtly flatters, talks with amazing brilliance, charms. Then she
escapes. What happens to her next I can only guess, but I imagine that
she must be very much exhausted.