spread so among all classes of American women as to have become almost
ridiculous, as in the authentic case of the individual who presented
herself at the front door of a fine house, and describing herself as an
ash-_lady_, inquired for the _woman_ of the house. It has been so often
repeated that: "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," and that "A man's a
man for a' that," that all the ash-ladies and wash-ladies of the land
have hastily concluded that the term "lady" stands for nothing
substantial.
I will not say that a washer-woman may not be a lady. It is certainly
possible for her to have all the essentials of a lady. But such a case
is so rare that I think we are justified in taking the contrary for
granted till we have proof of the fact. Not there are washer-women so
truthful, unselfish, and noble in character that they are far superior
as women to many whom we may fairly call ladies. Such women usually have
self-respect enough to understand that they lose rather than gain
dignity in claiming to be anything they are not. The essential point in
life is not the being considered a lady. It is not even to be a lady,
though that is a beautiful thing. A woman is like a vigorous plant, with
strong roots firmly fixed in the soil and abundant fresh green leaves. A
lady is such a plant crowned by a beautiful blossom. You have sometimes
seen a plant, a geranium, for instance, which had lost all its leaves,
and yet bore at the top of its crooked stem a cluster of flowers. Such
flowers are not very beautiful. The thrifty plant without a blossom is
more beautiful. Of course my moral is this, that while the term "lady"
does mean something different from "woman," it is only as a crown of
womanhood that it is really significant.
Every girl should try to be a lady, however, and every girl who
sincerely tries will have some measure of success. I remember when I was
a girl, I once said to a high-bred woman, "Do you think, after all, that
Mrs. A. is much of a lady?" She replied so firmly as to crush me for the
time, "One is either a lady or she is not a lady." I supposed she was
right, and that there were no stages on the perilous upward path which
led to being a lady. I have changed my mind now. I think each of us may
have some virtues without having all the virtues. I think with Emerson
that in a society of gentlemen and ladies we shall find no complete
gentleman and no complete lady; and so I say that every girl who tries
to be a lady will have some measure of success. I do not mean that she
should try to be recognized as a lady. If she is one she will probably,
but not certainly, be so recognized. In a small community, where she can
be known personally, she will be sure of her place, but not in a large
town.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking in England, said something to this
effect: "You think we have no classes in America because we have no
titles to distinguish them. But a barbed wire fence is as effectual in
keeping out intruders as one of boards, though you can see the boards
and the barbed wire is invisible."
Why is a barbed wire fence put up in America? Because there is a real
difference between coarse people and refined people, even when both have
the best intentions. To be sure there are other less valid reasons.
There are coarse people whom accident has put among the higher classes,
who make themselves ridiculous by putting up a fence between themselves
and poorer people even when the poor are refined. Nevertheless, there is
a true basis for distinction of classes. Only the distinction is not as
sharp as many would have it. The highly refined and the very coarse have
so little in common that they can never associate with comfort. But the
highly refined do not need barbed wire between themselves and those with
one degree less of cultivation. We can always reach one hand to those
below us, and if we reach the other to those above us, we shall be able
to lift the lower to our plane instead of sinking to theirs. Such a
chain of love, reaching from the lowest to the highest, is the ideal
society, and the highest man does not need to lift all his fellows up by
his unaided strength, because there is infinite help above him.
But in the unideal present most of us will sometimes be called upon to
stand outside the charmed circle of barbed wire which incloses more
fortunate mortals, in spite of all we can do for ourselves. We may be
better women than those within the circle, we may be better-educated,
more careful in our habits, and our manners may be finer, and yet we may
not have the magic word which would admit us. There is no doubt, for
instance, that blood and breeding do tell powerfully in refinement. I
can think of half a dozen women, however, of no birth at all in the
ordinary sense, and of no home education, who have blossomed into the
loveliest and most refined of women. In one case, the ancestors had for
generations been earnestly religious, so that the girl was really of
noble birth and predestined to refinement, though she had nothing to
help her in the world's estimation. But some of the girls came from
wretched homes, some of them did not even have good mothers, and one was
the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl. But they all had aspiration
and intellect, and their refinement was not only wonderful under the
circumstances, but wonderful under any circumstances. They were suitable
associates for the most exclusive ladies in our cities so far as genuine
refinement goes, only as their experience of life was much wider than
that of these carefully guarded dames, perhaps they would not have
assimilated very well with them after all.
Of course, the exclusive circles are suspicious of women whose
antecedents are like these, and perhaps they have a right to be
suspicious, because these girls were certainly exceptions to the rule.
At all events, none of us can help ourselves by grasping at a position.
We may, to be sure, get invitations sometimes if we are vulgar enough to
ask for them, but we shall find the barbed wire fence even in the
drawing-room to which we have been admitted. We must be content to stand
outside every circle till we are invited to enter it, and our
self-respect must heal our wounded pride.
One thing, however, we can do. We can quietly resist being patronized.
We are not often called upon to accept favors from those who are not our
superiors but who condescend to us because we are poor or obscure. It is
true we must be humble, and we need not resent such favors, but we must
beware of being flattered by the notice of any one who is simply rich or
powerful. When we recognize true superiority either in the rich or the
poor, we ought to be glad to acknowledge it. We can accept a favor from
those who are really above us, though we know we cannot return it. And
we can always be ready to do our best work for others whether they
slight us or not. That does not show a mean but a noble spirit.
What are the essentials of a lady?
A knowledge of the manners of the world is generally considered
necessary if one would be a lady. Even where customs themselves are
trivial, ignorance of them makes a woman awkward and self-conscious, so
that she does not have the grace we associate with a perfect lady.
Etiquette is superficial, it is true, but it has a genuine value. The
manners which belong instinctively to a woman of kindness and refinement
are a far better test of her real rank.
I think, on the whole, a lady is most quickly recognized by her purity.
Even a pure enunciation is a sign of a lady, for it gives a certain
beauty of speech rarely heard except among those not only carefully
educated, but brought up among those who have the same habits. And
nobody is quite willing to pronounce any one a lady who is not
exquisitely neat in her personal habits. These, to be sure, are only an
outward and visible sign, but they point clearly to something within.
Somebody is sure to remember a class of New England housekeepers who
spend all their time scrubbing floors and have no spirit left for
anything else, and ask if they have the visible stamp of a lady. The
idea of neatness is so distorted in them that we cannot admire it very
much, yet perhaps it is their one connecting link with refinement. Such
women, however, are, curiously enough, seldom particularly neat in their
personal habits. Their dress is often untidy, their hair uncombed, they
are careless about bathing, and their teeth are neglected. Personal
neatness is far more characteristic of a lady than neatness of
surroundings, and cleanliness is better than order. The lover of
"Shirley" says, "I have often seen her with a torn sleeve, but the arm
beneath it was white."
Somebody else will say that neatness is, after all, a luxury beyond the
means of poor people. How can you be clean when you do dirty work? It
takes either time or money. I know a wealthy lady who used to be poor,
who says that for years she could never afford as much washing as she
thought indispensable, and she was too much of an invalid to do her own
washing. Nevertheless, she was always a lady and always looked like one,
though her dresses were sometimes absurdly old-fashioned. I should say
that her love of neatness was so strong that she sacrificed less
important things to it, and always did reach a high standard, though not
the standard of luxury.
I know a gentleman whose lot has been to do the heaviest and dirtiest
work on a ranch for years, and yet his hands to the tips of his
fingernails look as if he had just come from a manicure's. I suppose he
has been determined that his hands should be clean and has been willing
to take the trouble to keep them so. Still, we ought to make some
allowance for poverty in our estimate of neatness. "Why are you building
an addition to your house?" asked one lady of another. "Oh, for Mr. B.'s
tooth-brushes," replied Mrs. B, carelessly. "When a man has been brought
up as Mr. B. has been, his tooth-brushes take up a great deal of room."
I have said all this of outward purity, because it is easier to speak of
this, but it is still more the purity of mind and character which
distinguishes a lady. In some classes of society even in America girls
are kept almost isolated chiefly to preserve their purity of thought.
Purity, even the purity of ignorance, is beautiful, but such purity has
not deep foundations, and I cannot think that girls are best guarded in
this way. Nevertheless, purity is so essential to a lady that such girls
will always be counted as ladies.
The love of beauty is characteristic of a real lady. This is recognized
in some measure. Girls are taught dancing and music and something of
art. They listen to good music even if they are not musicians, and they
look at good pictures if they cannot paint them. This is partly a matter
of fashion, but it has a genuine root. And so with the beauty of dress,
and of the home. Both these ought to be beautiful, but as few women are
artistic enough to design anything, they follow the fashion. In this way
they escape criticism from their companions who are like them. But the
moment ugly dress or furniture is out of fashion its ugliness is
apparent. I suppose most of us must be content to be tyrannized over
more or less by fashion, or by fashion and poverty combined, till we
develop greater genius in working out the problem of how to make our
surroundings beautiful. I would simply suggest that we should resist
fashions we know to be hideous, and try to follow those which commend
themselves to our sense of beauty.
The two forms of beauty which are free to all of us are, I think, most
neglected, and more neglected among those who are surest of their title
as ladies than among those of more modest pretensions. These are poetry
and nature. To read beautiful poems constantly and to learn them by
heart, and to look out day by day on the glory of the world--these
things give higher refinement than can be won by anything else merely
intellectual. And such a love of beauty usually has deep springs in the
moral nature.
Education has so much to do with refinement that we expect a lady to be
educated as a matter of course, at least in some directions, mathematics
and science being thus far not included. George Eliot says of Nancy in
"Silas Marner," that she often used ungrammatical language, and was not
highly educated, but that she was a thorough lady because she had
delicate personal habits and high rectitude.
This brings us to the deep foundations. A lady must be truthful. And the
outward marks of truthfulness are sometimes recognized when their source
is misunderstood. The lady wears real lace instead of a showy imitation.
If she cannot afford what is real, she goes without. She is as careful
about neat underclothing as neat dress. She does not pretend to
accomplishments she has not. Indeed, the modesty essential to a lady is
intimately connected with truthfulness. When she is wrong she does not
think it beneath her dignity to own it. She never allows blame which
belongs to her to fall on any one else. She makes no display. She wishes
to be loved for herself and not because she belongs to the "best set,"
so she does not take pains to introduce the names of great acquaintances
into her conversation. And of course she always tells the truth. She may
observe all these things simply because it is good form, but a truthful
woman will observe them without knowing they are good form, and she will
be the real lady.
But one may have all the qualities we have enumerated and yet miss the
charm we associate with the name "lady." A truthful person may not be
kind. A woman may love beauty and still be hard. A perfectly pure woman
may be unfeeling, perhaps all the more because she needs no charity
herself. But a woman who does not show consideration for others cannot
be an ideal lady. If she is considerate in a mechanical way, because she
knows a lady must be so, it does not amount to much. And some women do
all they can for others from a sense of duty. They study to make others
happy in even trivial ways. They are good women, and on the
whole--ladies. But the woman whose love for others is spontaneous, who
sheds the radiance of kindness about her because she cannot help it--she
is the lovely lady whose charm we all feel. Truth and love are the
eternal foundations of the character of a real lady.
IX
THE PROBLEM OF CHARITY.
I suppose every large-hearted girl wishes to do some work which will add
to the happiness of others, and most girls would like to do a little, at
least, outside of their own immediate circle. It seems to me that the
most beautiful charity is always that which is done within one's own
circle. There is the personal giving, the real denial of ourselves for
others, the doing of the duties which come to us rather than of those we
have fancifully chosen. And these duties are done for love.
Do you remember how Mrs. Pardiggle in "Bleak House" tried to interest
Esther and Ada in some great schemes for doing good by wholesale, and
how Esther modestly answered that they hardly felt equal to such great
things, but that they hoped if they were careful to do all they could
for those immediately about them their circle would gradually widen?
This is the ideal way to do good. You help your neighbor simply without
any pretense or self-consciousness. She helps her neighbor, and so on.
There need be no break in the chain from lowest to highest. Mrs. Whitney
has taught beautiful lessons of this kind in her stories, emphasizing
the theory of "nexts." I have often thought this was the only kind of
charity which did not injure the giver; for the moment we try to help
those perceptibly below us we are apt to be condescending and to feel a
secret pride. Probably this inward satisfaction accounts for the
readiness of many people to undertake forms of missionary work, though
they are by no means thoughtful of those around them. There has often
been bitter criticism of foreign missions to the heathen on this ground.
Part of it is, no doubt, just. But as bitter criticism might be made of
much noble work at home, like that of the Associated Charities, for
instance.
In Boston, it is said, there is not one woman of any standing in society
who is not interested in some charity. Most of their work is probably
genuine. It is done from a sincere wish to do the best thing--very
likely in many cases simply to ease the importunate New England
conscience, yet also, no doubt, with the hope of relieving suffering.
But we can hardly hope that much of it is ideal since the true charity
is "Not what we give but what we share."
The women who are readiest to give their money and even their time to
the desperately poor do not like to share their pew in church with some
quiet person whom they consider below them in the social scale. Some one
tells of a woman who spent all her time in going about among the poor
giving practical help, but who really cared so little about those she
helped that every day on her return from her rounds she amused the
family by satirizing her pensioners. She could not love them, perhaps,
and it may still have been an excellent thing for her to help them.
Nevertheless, this was not the ideal charity.
There are a great many girls who would like to do some definite
charitable work. They would like to be the founders of a great charity.
They are ambitious, and their ambition is, on the whole, a noble one.
Some of them are so sweet and generous to everybody about them that I
really think they might be trusted to do something on a large scale. One
of them might even oversee an orphan asylum; yet I do not think she
could be such a blessing to little children as is a woman I know who is
the matron of such an institution, for this woman had an unsympathetic
step-mother, and she learned through a lonely childhood how to pity
motherless children, and I heard a thoughtful woman say of her orphan
asylum, "It was a shabby place, but beautiful to me because there was
such a motherly atmosphere about it."
Others of these girls are too intolerant of everybody outside their own
particular set to be allowed to do any work for the poor except to give
money, and even then there is danger they may be so lifted up by a sense
of their own goodness that perhaps it would be better for them
personally to spend the money extravagantly, for then they would
certainly be ashamed of themselves. Nevertheless, the poor need their
money, so perhaps it is better they should give it.
This brings me to another point. In the country it is still possible to
keep to the ideal neighborly charity, but in the city there are quarters
where the misery is wholesale, and wholesale scientific methods must be
applied to relieve it. The Associated Charities in Boston, for instance,
do a kind of work which must be done unless we are willing to sit down
and let all the innocent suffer with the guilty. And many of the leaders
have the ideal spirit, and they hold up ideal standards for the visitors
of the poor, that is, they ask us to visit the poor with love in our
hearts. The work to be done in cities is so enormous that every woman of
leisure who feels the desire to help should certainly be encouraged to
do so, and I am even inclined to think that where so well-organized a
system exists as in the Associated Charities, it is a saving of energy
for her to put herself under its direction though not so wholly as to
allow her no means or leisure for her personal sphere of action to
expand naturally.
As long as we try to do the nearest duties there will always be failure
enough to keep us humble and to make it safe for us spiritually to
undertake something beyond. A girl tries to help her brothers, and
instead of admiring her for it they frankly tell her how far she fulls
short. But if she does a tithe as much for the poor she is likely to get
some thanks, more or less sincere, and all her circle of friends admire
her. This pleasant encouragement does her no harm as long as she has the
antidote of the family criticism, so I would let every ardent woman have
some outside work, and the Associated Charities will find room for every
worker. Some women can help children by teaching them and amusing them,
and this is the most efficient kind of work, for it prevents crime and
misery. Some can sew for the poor, some can cook, some can manage
tenement houses as Octavia Hill has done.
To give what we call practical help we must be practical ourselves. I
think if the busy housekeepers who do their own work have time to visit
the poor, their suggestions are of infinitely more value than any given
by rich ladies who are making a business of charity; but such women have
little time, so the rich must humbly try to take their place.
I know a charming girl whose mother does not allow her to go into the
kitchen. She found great difficulty at school in learning the weights
and measures, and at last her teacher asked her if she had ever seen a
quart measure, to which she replied doubtfully that she was not quite
sure. A few years hence she is certain to be what is called a "friendly
visitor." I have no question about her friendliness, and the poor will
bless her sweet face, especially when she gives them money freely, as
she can easily do, but I should not expect her to be able to give them
very useful advice about spending money--which they need still more. It
must not be supposed, however, that I scorn the kind of work she can do.
There is something better to be done for the poor than to teach them
economy--even a wise economy--it is to rouse their higher nature. I
should think that no one could be an hour with this young girl without
having some aspiration to be noble.
A beautiful and graceful woman has a unique work to do for the poor. It
is on the same principle that the Princess of Wales can give pleasure by
simply distributing the flowers in a hospital with her own hands. It is
possible for beauty to condescend without wounding. A woman who is not
outwardly attractive must do a different kind of work. The first brings
a poetic element into a dreary life, and may even in this way arouse the
aspiration for an unattainable ideal. But a plain and awkward woman may
be the inspiration of a still higher ideal by the radiance of her
goodness.
When girls ask me, as they often do, _what_ they shall do for others, I
find it impossible to answer. Their talents and their opportunities must
decide the particular form of work. But its real value will depend
entirely on what they are. I can only say that there is so much work to
be done that each must do all she can; that she must choose the thing
she can do best and persevere with that quietly, not trying to do many
kinds of work at once; that all she does must be done with love; and
that above all things she must not forget that her own circle of family
and friends shows plainly the centre from which God wishes her to begin
to work.
To the women who live in the country the circle widens naturally and
beautifully. If a neighbor is ill, one sends in delicacies to the
invalid, another offers to take care of the children, and a third acts
as watcher. When a drunkard reduces his family to destitution, one
neighbor sends a breakfast to them, another flannel for the baby,
another finds work for the oldest girl, and another pays the boys a
trifle for bringing wood and water. The cases of actual destitution are
so few that they can all be met in this way unless the sufferers are too
proud to let their wants be known; and even then there is sure to be
some real friend who goes to see them naturally without any thought of
being a friendly visitor, and thus comes to the rescue.
Charity in the country is the natural flower of a loving heart. If a
woman has a beautiful home in the country, it stands for a refining
influence for the whole village, for she usually opens it to those of
her neighbors who can appreciate it, since in the country there are not
too many people, and those of like tastes meet without regard to
differences of fortune.
A woman in the country who has even a collection of photographs of
beautiful pictures can easily make them a real blessing to many who have
no other avenue open to art. And so with books. One owns a copy of
Plato, another of Dante, another of Goethe, and these books circulate
freely among all who care to read them. They are better than a public
library where the books must be hurried back at a given date. They are
sometimes even better than large private libraries where the number of
books is distracting.