to the statement that all of this talk about the seriousness of women’s
clubs is based on a misapprehension. In outward form the clubs are
serious, and the theme, their ostensible _raison d’être_, almost
justifies the misapprehension. When you see a batch of women setting
in upon civil government, or mediæval pottery, or Sanskrit, or Homer’s
hymn to the Dioscuri, or the Heftkhan of Isfendiyar, it is, perhaps,
instinctive that the uninformed should jump to the conclusion that
these women are serious, though a moment’s thought might suggest a
wiser view. If women really took these things seriously they would not
survive. The truth is that the French Revolution, and the Rig-Veda,
and the Ramayana are all very amusing if you know how to go at them.
If the physical culture classes took the exercises as seriously as the
teachers I am sure the members would all break down. And it is the
same way with the study of cathedrals or street-cleaning.”
I reminded the Professor of the lady I had heard of, who wanted to
know at the club whether the Parliamentary drill then organizing was
anything like the Delsarte movements, and of the other, who, at her
first meeting, being appointed a teller, wanted to know what she was to
tell. “I trust, Professor, that you will not take from me my simple,
unquestioning faith in the earnestness of these light-seeking ladies.”
“Those instances,” smiled the Professor, “illustrate the first phase.
You must not be misled by them, for they actually are confirmatory.
You may discern in them the attitude of mind favorable to the feminine
way of taking things lightly. A woman who asks why, never gets nervous
prostration. It is when she gets above asking why that you may watch
for shipwreck.”
“Well, Professor, all I can say is that you have left me in a state
of miserable darkness as to women’s clubs. Surely there are vast
misapprehensions somewhere.”
“There surely are,” admitted the Professor.
“But how do you explain them?”
“The women?”
“The clubs.”
“By woman’s revolt against her segregation. Not, in my opinion, that
she is protesting against the gregarious advantages of man, but because
she is beginning to discover that her sisters are worth knowing. She
has begun to be impersonally interested in, as well as interesting to,
the other woman. The woman’s desire is not improvement; it is, whether
she knows it or not, the other woman, precisely as a man’s interest
in his club is the other man. It has been said that a man often goes
to his club to be alone, and that there is this advantage in a club
that is a place, over a club that is a state of mind. But a woman goes
to a club _not_ to be alone. I suppose there are times when it
would do a woman good to get away from her family, not into company,
but into lonesome quiet. Mrs. Moody, who has said so many wise things,
declares in her ‘Unquiet Sex’ that college girls are too little alone
for the health of their nerves. This may be so, yet women’s clubs are
contemporaneous with girls’ colleges. It begins to look as if it was at
college that the American girl learned that it is not good for woman to
be alone--even with her family. At any rate, that independence which
is so characteristic of the American girl, which is, as I have been
informed and believe, somewhat disconcerting to men, is, undoubtedly,
largely the result of the American girl’s improved relations with her
sister women. When she is as successfully gregarious with regard to
women as men are with regard to men, her sex maturity will be complete.
I know that you are wondering what sort of a woman she is going to be
in that matured state. Have no anxiety. She will not be less agreeable,
but more so. She will overdo the clubs, but she will recover from
that; she will shed them the moment they cease to serve her purpose.
I am going to a club now. I am going to talk to it about Savonarola.
The club will be very well dressed, and so shall I, if I know myself,
and we neither of us shall let smoke from the fateful fires of the
fifteenth century blind us to the fact that we are living in the
nineteenth.”
[Illustration]
“All of which,” I said, in a severe tone, “is illustrative of the fact
that woman is a sophist--though perhaps I should say an artist, for she
uses life as so much material with which to construct an effect.”
“Life _is_ an art,” remarked the Professor at the mirror.
“And you, Professor--”
[Illustration]
But she was gone. I understood well enough that the Professor had just
given an exhibition of her dexterity in taking the other side, taking
it in a feminine rather than in a pugnacious spirit. The Professor’s
negatives always remind me of how affirmative the American girl is.
There is an English painting called “Summer,” in which the artist (Mr.
Stephens) gracefully symbolizes the drowsy indolence of June. This
classic allegory may not have the English girl specifically in mind,
but I am quite certain that we should not be satisfied with an American
symbol for the same idea which did not in some way indicate that Miss
America, even in summer, is likely to be representing some enthusiasm,
Pickwickian or not as you may choose to make it out. The spirit of
fantasy, sitting in the midst of our variegated life, who should call
up the American Summer Girl, must summon a different company. The
spirit of fantasy would know that the American summer girl, though
she can be a sophist, and agree that this or that is the fashion
this summer, is nevertheless not to be painted as a reiteration. It
frequently was remarked of the Americans at Santiago that they had
great individual force as fighters. There always will be critics to
remark upon the hazard of this trait in war. At all events it was and
is an American trait. And in conducting her summer campaign against an
elusive if not altogether a smokeless enemy, Miss America is displaying
the same trait. She can accept a social sophistry, but you must leave
her individuality. She will not have tennis wholly put aside if she
does not choose. She will not give up her horse because a little steed
of steel has entered the lists, nor give up her bicycle because it has
become profanely popular. She may choose to arm herself solely with a
parasol, to detach herself from even the suggestion of a hobby, which,
to one who has the individual skill, is a notoriously potent way in
which to establish one of those absolute despotisms so familiar and so
fatal in society. There is the girl with a butterfly net, the girl who
goes a-fishing, the girl who swims, the girl who wears bathing suits,
the girl who gives a sparkle to the Chautauqua meetings in the summer,
the girl who gets up camping parties, the girl who gets up the dances,
the girl who plots theatricals, the girl with the camera, the girl who
can shoot like a cowboy,--where should we end that remarkable list? How
impossible to express the summer girl in any single type?
[Illustration]
Indeed, the American girl’s methods of amusing herself are so various
as to make it increasingly difficult to typify her at all, except as
a goddess who, like Minerva (though _she_ did not go in much
for amusing herself), shall illustrate a wide range of activities
serenely and successfully undertaken. There is a triteness in the
accomplishments of any period, yet the spirit of individualism in the
American girl introduces here, as elsewhere, a diversifying element.
I was reading the other day that Miss Mitford had that “faculty for
reciting verses which is among the most graceful of accomplishments.”
Where have all the verse reciters gone? Why did this elegant
accomplishment perish? Are we all less poetical? Are our girls losing
that sense of sentiment to which we used to look for so many of their
quieter charms? Has this change anything to do with another change,
surely not to be lightly accepted, which has of late years taken poetry
from the top of the page, where we once thought it belonged of natural
right, and placed it at the bottom? Is it finally to be crowded off
the page altogether? Has the fact that women no longer consider verse
an accomplishment anything to do with this subtle but revolutionary
change? And what shall poetry say? Will poetry go on as it has from the
beginning of time arming us with epithets of praise?
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
I must ask the Professor some day what she thinks of the disappearance
of poetry--she would tell me to say verse--as an accomplishment.
For of course we cannot afford to ignore the significance of
accomplishments, their influence either upon those who display or
upon those who observe them. Accomplishments are more than an armor,
a decoration,--they are a vent. A boy has his fling; a girl must have
her accomplishments. It is long since hobbies were fitted with a
side-saddle, and we have had no occasion to resent the general results.
The concrete effect upon individual men is sometimes disquieting,
but that is another matter. Miss America is, after all, especially
accomplished in what she knows. The product of a system by which the
limits of her information are the limits of her curiosity,--for, in
general, she is not prohibited from reading the newspapers,--she has
acquired a faculty which may, for aught I know, have superseded her
quotation of verse,--the faculty for quoting facts. Yes, she still
quotes, and the newer accomplishment, if less elegant, is not one
which we may scorn or overlook. If in Tennyson’s phrase, she is part
of all that she has seen, we might add “in print,” as a supplemental
explanation of her attitude of mind.
Perhaps if the author of “Les Misérables” saw her at certain times he
might use the qualified praise he applied to the Parisians when he
called them “frivolous but intelligent.” Yet if St. Jerome had seen
her on the beach I hardly think he could have had the heart to say, “I
entirely forbid a young lady to bathe.” Her whole effect is qualifying.
She carries into all her enthusiasms a modifying reservation. The
trait is typified and illustrated for us when we see her coming home
from the reading club on a wheel, or carrying her novel to breakfast.
The social hysteric always is sure that something dreadful is going
to happen, and then, in one of those sensational hairbreadth escapes
in which nature delights, the thing does not happen. The hysteric has
overlooked the reservation by which the fad escapes monomania, by which
the enthusiasm is subordinated to its owner.
[Illustration]
Intermittently her enthusiasms bring up the venerable charge of
mannishness. A hundred years ago the editor of the London “Times”
complained savagely that women were becoming wickedly masculine. “Their
hunting, shooting, driving, cricketing, fencing, faroing and skating,”
he cried, “present a monstrous chaos of absurdity not only making day
and night hideous but the sex itself equivocal. Lady-men or men-ladies,
‘you’ll say it’s Persian, but let it be changed.’” Ptahhotpou the
ancient Egyptian has something to the same effect, but I have forgotten
his phrase.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
V
“WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOCIETY”
[Illustration]
One day it happened with me, as with many another impatient traveler,
that I had to spend two hours between trains in a certain obscure town.
Perhaps I should say, in a certain obscure railway station, for the
town was singularly vague, uninviting and irresponsive, not at all the
sort of place that one would expect to know what to do with. It was,
indeed, the fragment of a town, as if, in the sprinkling of villages
along the railway, the material at this point ran short, leaving barely
a sufficient supply of elemental features. And being confronted by the
unprofitableness of the prospect,--by the drowsy, straggling street,
running (the word sounds ironical) from the station, the unfriendly
stare of the town hall, plastered over with play bills; the sunburned
whiteness of the little church; the obvious taciturnity of the man
smoking in front of the general merchandise store,--I bought the local
paper, for there was a local paper, with a “patent outside,” that
occurred every Friday morning. And the first thing that struck my eye
in the local paper was a conspicuous headline: “What is Going on in
Society.”
I had seen the thing before in other papers, in Chicago, in Boston, in
Washington, in Atlanta, and in the provincial habit that falls to a man
who thinks of life from the view-point of a big city, I had associated
the line with something very different from any conditions that seemed
likely to be present here. I looked out of the station window at
the little white church, at the chromatic town hall, at the general
merchandise store, at a neat girl with a tan cape who was coming down
the main street,--and turned with curiosity to the society column.
It was just the same as any other. It had all the adjectives of New
York, or Richmond, or St. Louis, and if Voltaire had been reading it
he might have hesitated to say that the adjective is the enemy of
the noun. Evidently, too, the same things were going on that were
going on elsewhere in society. It appeared especially that Miss Effie
So-and-So had just “come out,” and that the event was signalized on
Monday evening by a dance which was described at length as to the
spacious drawing-rooms, the floral devices, the orchestra behind the
fringe of palms, the cotillion, the favors, the elegant gown of Miss
So-and-So’s mother, the gowns and ornaments of the other feminine
guests, in detail, with a cordial closing word for the refreshments,
which had been served at eleven o’clock. On Tuesday night there had
been a birthday dance at the Sheriff’s, at which “society was largely
represented”; at a pink tea on Wednesday afternoon there had been
some novel decorations at small tables; and on Thursday evening the
young ladies of the Polaris Club had gone over to Sudley’s with Mrs.
So-and-So as chaperon. There was more as to a festival in preparation
by the ladies of the First Church, as to a euchre party for the
following Thursday, and as to a little surprise which it was whispered
that “some society men” were arranging for the close of the season.
Here, certainly, was food for thought. Could anything more piquantly
have illustrated the relativity of the term Society, more brilliantly
have demolished the pretension that Society has any geography? We have
our book definitions, by which we agree glibly to say that society
is the cultured, the fashionable, the favored class (or elsewise,
according to your dictionary) of “any community”; but how easy it is
for city pretence (and provincialism is never so arrogant as in big
cities) to see in its own set the true title to social eminence. It is
indicative of that interesting individualism which prevails in the
United States, and which perhaps we may learn to prize as one of the
precious products of democracy, that no town regards itself as small in
any sense that shall restrict or disqualify its individuals. This is
particularly true of towns in their feminine population. You may find a
community without gas, electric light, telephones or a board of trade,
but you shall not on that account decide that it is too small to have
a woman’s club and a social calendar. We are accustomed to say that it
all is a question of degree.
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
[Illustration]
We are accustomed to admit that in the senate of society even the small
states shall say their say. But scarcely can we realize without much
travel how far the fact that this country is too big for the focussing
of society in any one, two, or dozen places, affects the demeanor
and development of the social units. The fact that there are widely
prevalent formulæ, helps us first to the assumption, safe enough, that
these are applied, that there is a wish and an occasion to use them in
some way. They help us further to an estimate of the relative activity
of social forces, to the points of emphasis. But there is one thing
the wide use of formulæ never will help you to find out, and that is
the most interesting fact of all--the local flavor of the conformity.
Society is an Established Church in whose pews the dissenters form
a majority; and if I could, by some chance, have let my train go by
and have been admitted into the circle of that village society, I
certainly should have found that while it gave a sort of lip-service to
the social creeds, this society had its own way of doing so, and that
it adopted lightheartedly, like its new byword or improved flounce,
certain phrases, certain dicta of the world’s larger social groups, for
its own purposes, with its own reservations. I do not deny that I have
seen social formulæ grimly and mechanically used in certain quarters,
but the whimsical reservation is more characteristic.
[Illustration]
The American girl is so definitely a social creature, and her social
attributes are so personal, that she never appears to be dependent upon
social machinery. She brings into society the invaluable force of her
individual availability. That our social groups seem to cohere proves
that she must possess in some degree that deference to form which
begins in the acceptance of terms. Humanity can never pair well until
it has grouped well. Grouping is the beginning of that compromise which
reaches its crisis in pairing. Even the goddess of democracy, who is
presumed to dote upon calling a spade a spade, who hates the euphemisms
of effete monarchical society, may not despise the butler’s baritone or
the futility of attempting on one occasion six hundred different forms
of adieu. Even George Eliot admitted that “a little unpremeditated
insincerity must be indulged in under the stress of social
intercourse.” The trouble with unpremeditated insincerities, however,
is that you often wish you hadn’t said them, not (unfortunately for
the symmetry of the retribution) because they were insincere, but
because they were unpremeditated and inferior. It is much safer to
be unpremeditated with sincerities than with insincerities, and, as
the literature of social satire may help us to see, there is great
hazard in any case. It is a pity, perhaps, that the great advantages
of meeting your kind in your and their best clothes, must be bought so
dearly, yet, as Thackeray has observed, “if we may not speak of the
lady who has just left the room, what is to become of conversation
and society?”
[Illustration]
Social custom is so arbitrary that it might be, and doubtless would
be, a reckless and inconclusive thing for any one to assume that the
American girl in society is actually so radical as her reputation
in other avenues might suggest. I believe that it is quite commonly
agreed that while the French girl in society is, perforce, much more
reserved than the American, the English girl at a ball or an “evening”
exhibits a freedom from restraint not commonly seen in America. These
things, however, count for little except as showing the domination
of mere form, for there can be no doubt that in social life, using
the term broadly, the American girl has more liberty, and uses more
liberty than the English girl. If the privileges of a host’s roof are
liberally construed by the English girl, the American girl takes a
candid and undaunted view of a hotel and a public ballroom; and under
conditions which in any manner detach her from the immediate presence
of formality, she falls back upon her individual preferences, her
personally developed methods of meeting situations, with a readiness
and sureness that carry their own vindication. Because she can have
a developed individuality yet be no rebel, the American girl can
grasp and enjoy liberty without despising authority. Indeed, her very
possession of liberty must develop a certain personal conservatism
which as a mere subject of authority she might never acquire. A great
many fantastic things which at various times have been said about the
American girl might appear to have been uttered in ignorance of the
fact that there is an American mother.
I have in mind a family living in Washington city, where there is, as
everyone knows, a highly seasoned and heterogeneous society, a society
utterly different from any that is to be met with elsewhere in this
country, and one which on that account offers peculiarly excellent
opportunities for study on the part of those foreign observers who
enjoy being misled about us. If there is any place in the United States
where the American mother has opportunity for her administrative
genius, it is at the national capital. The peculiar conditions created
by political, diplomatic and administrative forces in the capital
of a republic, the prevalence of the open door, and the presence of
both domestic and foreign transients who do not always appreciate
the limitations of liberal custom, make Washington a place apart. A
single instance may serve to illustrate the firmness of the women who
actually control social destiny. Under circumstances which it is not
necessary to detail, a certain elegant attaché of one of the legations
began calling upon the young lady of the family I have named. He was a
handsome and entertaining young man, easy with women and cordial with
men, glib in the arts, himself a good singer, and speaking English with
a fascinating inflection. One evening the mother said quietly to the
daughter: “Grace, the next time the Count calls I wish that you would
ask to be excused.” The daughter looked her astonishment. She was not
greatly interested in the count, yet he was very agreeable, and she
said so. But her mother said, “Grace, you must trust me.” And when the
count came again he was made to understand.
It was a simple, unsensational incident, but because I knew the liberal
ethics of the mother and the apparently complete independence of the
daughter (she was twenty-three) the incident the more effectively
reminded me that though the American mother does not feel it incumbent
upon her to closely hover over her offspring with a solicitous wing,
she not the less observes and governs. It so happened that the gilded
count a few months later became involved in so gross a scandal that
his withdrawal from Washington became imperative. Influence in his
government saved him from worse annoyance than transfer to another
court. The mother’s instinct had been true. And who can doubt that a
liberally reared girl, when she herself assumes the office of mother,
will, without having to make sinister payment for her knowledge, be the
better equipped for a judgment of the world in the interest of those
who may be dependent upon her authority?
That the American mother cares more for real than for apparent
authority, explains, to those who know, the visible and so often
misleading detachment of the daughter; and the daughter’s sense of a
dependence that is not irksome, a suzerainty that is not intrusive,
a mother care that has no vanity of assertion, appears in her freer
bearing, her finer self-reliance. Whatever her special gifts, meeting
her socially always is likely to have the charm associated with the
fact that she never is afraid either that she will not rise to the
occasion or that she will offend authority. She has not the first fear
because she is playing her own game. She has not the second because she
does not live in a threatening or too admonitory shadow.
You think of these things sometimes when you sit opposite a fan. Her
fan! Have you not seen it blot out at the critical moment all that was
worth looking at in the world? Have you not realized that it is part
of her panoply? Have you not witnessed over and over again the genius
which she exhibits in the management of accessories? Have you not heard
in the flutter of her fan a note from that orchestra of sounds in which
she makes even her silk petticoat play a witching part?
[Illustration]