MY CHILDREN
I pride myself on being a man of the world--in the better sense of the
phrase. I feel no regret over the passing of those romantic days when
maidens swooned at the sight of a drop of blood or took refuge in the
"vapors" at the approach of a strange young man; in point of fact I do
not believe they ever did. I imagine that our popular idea of the
fragility and sensitiveness of the weaker sex, based on the accounts of
novelists of the eighteenth century, is largely a literary convention.
Heroines were endowed, as a matter of course, with the possession of all
the female virtues, intensified to such a degree that they were covered
with burning blushes most of the time. Languor, hysteria and general
debility were regarded as the outward indications of a sweet and gentle
character. Woman was a tendril clinging to the strong oak of
masculinity. Modesty was her cardinal virtue. One is, of course,
entitled to speculate on the probable contemporary causes for the
seeming overemphasis placed on this admirable characteristic. Perhaps
feminine honesty was so rare as to be at a premium and modesty was a
sort of electric sign of virtue.
I am not squeamish. I have always let my children read what they would.
I have never made a mystery of the relations of the sexes, for I know
the call of the unseen--the fascination lent by concealment, of
discovery. I believe frankness to be a good thing. A mind that is
startled or shocked by the exposure of an ankle or the sight of a
stocking must be essentially impure. Nor do I quarrel with woman's
natural desire to adorn herself for the allurement of man. That is as
inevitable as springtime.
But unquestionably the general tone of social intercourse in America, at
least in fashionable centers, has recently undergone a marked and
striking change. The athletic girl of the last twenty years, the girl
who invited tan and freckles, wielded the tennis bat in the morning and
lay basking in a bathing suit on the sand at noon, is gradually giving
way to an entirely different type--a type modeled, it would seem, at
least so far as dress and outward characteristics are concerned, on the
French demimondaine. There are plenty of athletic girls to be found on
the golf links and tennis courts; but a growing and large minority of
maidens at the present time are too chary of their complexions to brave
the sun. Big hats, cloudlike veils, high heels, paint and powder mark
the passing of the vain hope that woman can attract the male sex by
virtue of her eugenic possibilities alone.
It is but another and unpleasantly suggestive indication that the
simplicity of an older generation--the rugged virtue of a more frugal
time--has given place to the sophistication of the Continent. When I was
a lad, going abroad was a rare and costly privilege. A youth who had
been to Rome, London and Paris, and had the unusual opportunity of
studying the treasures of the Vatican, the Louvre and the National
Gallery, was regarded with envy. Americans went abroad for culture; to
study the glories of the past.
Now the family that does not invade Europe at least every other summer
is looked on as hopelessly old-fashioned. No clerk can find a job on the
Rue de Rivoli or the Rue de la Paix unless he speaks fluently the
dialect of the customers on whose trade his employer chiefly
relies--those from Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois. The American no
longer goes abroad for improvement, but to amuse himself. The college
Freshman knows, at least by name, the latest beauty who haunts the
Folies Bergères, and his father probably has a refined and intimate
familiarity with the special attractions of Ciro's and the Trocadero.
I do not deny that we have learned valuable lessons from the Parisians.
At any rate our cooking has vastly improved. Epicurus would have
difficulty in choosing between the delights of New York and Paris--for,
after all, New York is Paris and Paris is New York. The chef of
yesterday at Voisin's rules the kitchen of the Ritz-Carlton or the Plaza
to-day; and he cannot have traveled much who does not find a dozen
European acquaintances among the head waiters of Broadway. Not to know
Paris nowadays is felt to be as great a humiliation as it was fifty
years ago not to know one's Bible.
Beyond the larger number of Americans who visit Paris for legitimate or
semilegitimate purposes, there is a substantial fraction who go to do
things they either cannot or dare not do at home. And as those who have
not the time or the money to cross the Atlantic and who still itch for
the boulevards must be kept contented, Broadway is turned into
Montmartre. The result is that we cannot take our daughters to the
theater without risking familiarizing them with vice in one form or
another. I do not think I am overstating the situation when I say that
it would be reasonably inferred from most of our so-called musical shows
and farces that the natural, customary and excusable amusement of the
modern man after working hours--whether the father of a family or a
youth of twenty--is a promiscuous adventuring into sexual immorality.
I do not regard as particularly dangerous the vulgar French farce where
papa is caught in some extraordinary and buffoonlike situation with the
washerwoman. Safety lies in exaggeration. But it is a different matter
with the ordinary Broadway show, where virtue is made--at least
inferentially--the object of ridicule, and sexuality is the underlying
purpose of the production. During the present New York theatrical season
several plays have been already censored by the authorities, and either
been taken off entirely or so altered as to be still within the bounds
of legal pruriency.
Whether I am right in attributing it to the influence of the French
music halls or not, it is the fact that the tone of our theatergoing
public is essentially low. Boys and girls who are taken in their
Christmas holidays to see plays at which their parents applaud
questionable songs and suggestive dances, cannot be blamed for assuming
that there is not one set of morals for the stage and another for
ordinary social intercourse.
Hence the college boy who has kept straight for eight months in the year
is apt to wonder: What is the use? And the débutante who is curious for
all the experiences her new liberty makes possible takes it for granted
that an amorous trifling is the ordinary incident to masculine
attention.
This is far from being mere theory. It is a matter of common knowledge
that recently the most prominent restaurateur in New York found it
necessary to lock up, or place a couple of uniformed maids in, every
unoccupied room in his establishment whenever a private dance was given
there for young people. Boys and girls of eighteen would leave these
dances by dozens and, hiring taxicabs, go on slumming expeditions and
excursions to the remoter corners of Central Park. In several instances
parties of two or four went to the Tenderloin and had supper served in
private rooms.
This is the childish expression of a demoralization that is not confined
simply to smart society, but is gradually permeating the community in
general. From the ordinary dinner-table conversation one hears at many
of the country houses on Long Island it would be inferred that marriage
was an institution of value only for legitimatizing concubinage; that an
old-fashioned love affair was something to be rather ashamed of; and
that morality in the young was hardly to be expected. Of course a great
deal of this is mere talk and bombast, but the maid-servants hear it.
I believe, fortunately--and my belief is based on a fairly wide range of
observation--that the Continental influence I have described has
produced its ultimate effect chiefly among the rich; yet its operation
is distinctly observable throughout American life. Nowhere is this more
patent than in much of our current magazine literature and light
fiction. These stories, under the guise of teaching some moral lesson,
are frequently designed to stimulate all the emotions that could be
excited by the most vicious French novel. Some of them, of course, throw
off all pretense and openly ape the _petit histoire d'un amour_; but
essentially all are alike. The heroine is a demimondaine in everything
but her alleged virtue--the hero a young bounder whose better self
restrains him just in time. A conventional marriage on the last page
legalizes what would otherwise have been a liaison or a degenerate
flirtation.
The astonishingly unsophisticated and impossibly innocent shopgirl
who--in the story--just escapes the loss of her honor; the noble young
man who heroically "marries the girl"; the adventures of the debonaire
actress, who turns out most surprisingly to be an angel of sweetness and
light; and the Johnny whose heart is really pure gold, and who, to the
reader's utter bewilderment, proves himself to be a Saint George--these
are the leading characters in a great deal of our periodical literature.
A friend of mine who edits one of the more successful magazines tells me
there are at least half a dozen writers who are paid guaranteed salaries
of from twelve thousand dollars to eighteen thousand dollars a year for
turning out each month from five thousand to ten thousand words of what
is euphemistically termed "hot stuff." An erotic writer can earn yearly
at the present time more than the salary of the president of the United
States. What the physical result of all this is going to be does not
seem to me to matter much. If the words of Jesus Christ have any
significance we are already debased by our imaginations.
* * * * *
We are dangerously near an epoch of intellectual if not carnal
debauchery. The prevailing tendency on the part of the young girls of
to-day to imitate the dress and makeup of the Parisian cocotte is
unconsciously due to this general lowering of the social moral tone.
Young women in good society seem to feel that they must enter into open
competition with their less fortunate sisters. And in this struggle for
survival they are apparently determined to yield no advantage. Herein
lies the popularity of the hobble skirt, the transparent fabric that
hides nothing and follows the move of every muscle, and the otherwise
senseless peculiarities and indecencies of the more extreme of the
present fashions.
And here, too, is to be found the reason for the popularity of the
current style of dancing, which offers no real attraction except the
opportunity for a closeness of contact otherwise not permissible.
"It's all in the way it is done," says Mrs. Jones, making the customary
defense. "The tango and the turkey trot can be danced as unobjectionably
as the waltz."
Exactly! Only the waltz is not danced that way; and if it were the
offending couple would probably be put off the floor. Moreover, their
origin and history demonstrates their essentially vicious character. Is
there any sensible reason why one's daughter should be encouraged to
imitate the dances of the Apache and the negro debauchee? Perhaps, after
all, the pendulum has merely swung just a little too far and is knocking
against the case. The feet of modern progress cannot be hampered by too
much of the dead underbrush of convention.
The old-fashioned prudery that in former days practically prevented
rational conversation between men and women is fortunately a thing of
the past, and the fact that it is no longer regarded as unbecoming for
women to take an interest in all the vital problems of the
day--municipal, political and hygienic--provided they can assist in
their solution, marks several milestones on the highroad of advance.
On the other hand the widespread familiarity with these problems, which
has been engendered simply for pecuniary profit by magazine literature
in the form of essays, fiction and even verse, is by no means an
undiluted blessing--particularly if the accentuation of the author is on
the roses lining the path of dalliance quite as much as on the
destruction to which it leads. The very warning against evil may turn
out to be in effect only a hint that it is readily accessible. One does
not leave the candy box open beside the baby even if the infant has
received the most explicit instructions as to the probable effect of too
much sugar upon its tiny kidneys. Moreover, the knowledge of the
prevalence of certain vices suggests to the youthful mind that what is
so universal must also be rather excusable, or at least natural.
It seems to me that, while there is at present a greater popular
knowledge of the high cost of sinning, there is at the same time a
greater tolerance for sin itself. Certainly this is true among the
people who make up the circle of my friends. "Wild oats" are regarded as
entirely a matter of course. No anecdote is too broad to be told openly
at the dinner table; in point of fact the stories that used to be
whispered only very discreetly in the smoking room are now told freely
as the natural relishes to polite conversation. In that respect things
are pretty bad.
One cannot help wondering what goes on inside the villa on Rhode Island
Avenue when the eighteen-year-old daughter of the house remarks to the
circle of young men and women about her at a dance: "Well, I'm going to
bed--_seule_!" The listener furtively speculates about mama. He feels
quite sure about papa. Anyhow this particular mot attracted no comment.
Doubtless the young lady was as far above suspicion as the wife of
Caesar; but she and her companions in this particular set have an
appalling frankness of speech and a callousness in regard to discussing
the more personal facts of human existence that is startling to a
middle-aged man like myself.
I happened recently to overhear a bit of casual dinner-table
conversation between two of the gilded ornaments of the junior set. He
was a boy of twenty-five, well known for his dissipations, but,
nevertheless, regarded by most mothers as a highly desirable _parti_.
"Oh, yes!" he remarked easily. "They asked me if I wanted to go into a
bughouse, and I said I hadn't any particular objection. I was there a
month. Rum place! I should worry!"
"What ward?" she inquired with polite interest.
"Inebriates', of course," said he.
I am inclined to attribute much of the questionable taste and conduct of
the younger members of the fast set to neglect on the part of their
mothers. Women who are busy all day and every evening with social
engagements have little time to cultivate the friendship of their
daughters. Hence the girl just coming out is left to shift for herself,
and she soon discovers that a certain _risqué_ freedom in manner and
conversation, and a disregard of convention, will win her a superficial
popularity which she is apt to mistake for success.
Totally ignorant of what she is doing or the essential character of the
means she is employing, she runs wild and soon earns an unenviable
reputation, which she either cannot live down or which she feels obliged
to live up to in order to satisfy her craving for attention. Many a girl
has gone wrong simply because she felt that it was up to her to make
good her reputation for caring nothing for the proprieties.
As against an increasing looseness in talk and conduct, it is
interesting to note that heavy drinking is clearly going out of fashion
in smart society. There can be no question as to that. My champagne
bills are not more than a third of what they were ten years ago. I do
not attribute this particularly to the temperance movement. But, as
against eight quarts of champagne for a dinner of twenty--which used to
be about my average when we first began entertaining in New York--three
are now frequently enough. I have watched the butler repeatedly at large
dinner parties as he passed the wine and seen him fill only four or five
glasses.
Women rarely drink at all. About one man in three takes champagne. Of
course he is apt to drink whisky instead, but by no means the same
amount as formerly. If it were not for the convention requiring sherry,
hock, champagne and liquors to be served the modern host could satisfy
practically all the serious liquid requirements of his guests with a
quart bottle of Scotch and a siphon of soda. Claret, Madeira, sparkling
Moselles and Burgundies went out long ago. The fashion that has taught
women self-control in eating has shown their husbands the value of
abstinence. Unfortunately I do not see in this a betterment in morals,
but mere self-interest--which may or may not be the same thing,
according to one's philosophy. If a man drinks nowadays he drinks
because he wants to and not to be a good fellow. A total abstainer finds
himself perfectly at home anywhere.
Of course the fashionables, if they are going to set the pace, have to
hit it up in order to head the procession. The fastness of the smart set
in England is notorious, and it is the same way in France, Russia,
Italy, Germany, Scandinavia--the world over; and as society tends to
become unified mere national boundaries have less significance. The
number of Americans who rent houses in London and Paris, and shooting
boxes in Scotland, is large.
Hence the moral tone of Continental society and of the English
aristocracy is gradually becoming more and more our own. But with this
difference--that, as the aristocracy in England and Continental Europe
is a separate caste, a well-defined order, having set metes and bounds,
which considers itself superior to the rest of the population and views
it with indifference, so its morals are regarded as more or less its own
affair, and they do not have a wide influence on the community at large.
Even if he drinks champagne every night at dinner the Liverpool pickle
merchant knows he cannot get into the king's set; but here the pickle
man can not only break into the sacred circle, but he and his fat wife
may themselves become the king and queen. So that a knowledge of how
smart society conducts itself is an important matter to every man and
woman living in the United States, since each hopes eventually to make a
million dollars and move to New York. With us the fast crowd sets the
example for society at large; whereas in England looseness in morals is
a recognized privilege of the aristocracy to which the commoner may not
aspire.
The worst feature of our situation is that the quasi-genteel working
class, of whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of
thousands--telephone operators, stenographers, and the like--greedily
devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model
themselves, so far as possible, after it. It is almost unbelievable how
intimate a knowledge these young women possess of the domestic life,
manner of speech and dress of the conspicuous people in New York
society.
I once stepped into the Waldorf with a friend of mine who wished to send
a telephone message. He is a quiet, unassuming man of fifty, who
inherited a large fortune and who is compelled, rather against his will,
to do a large amount of entertaining by virtue of the position in
society which Fate has thrust on him. It was a long-distance call.
"Who shall I say wants to talk?" asked the goddess with fillet-bound
yellow hair in a patronizingly indifferent tone.
"Mr.----," answered my companion.
Instantly the girl's face was suffused with a smile of excited wonder.
"Are you Mr.----, the big swell who gives all the dinners and dances?"
she inquired.
"I suppose I'm the man," he answered, rather amused than otherwise.
"Gee!" she cried, "ain't this luck! Look here, Mame!" she whispered
hoarsely. "I've got Mr. ---- here on a long distance. What do you think of
that!"
One cannot doubt that this telephone girl would unhesitatingly regard as
above criticism anything said or done by a woman who moved in Mr. ---- 's
circle. Unfortunately what this circle does is heralded in exaggerated
terms. The influence of these partially true and often totally false
reports is far-reaching and demoralizing.
The other day the young governess of a friend of my wife gave up her
position, saying she was to be married. Her employer expressed an
interest in the matter and asked who was going to perform the ceremony.
She was surprised to learn that the functionary was to be the local
country justice of the peace.
"But why aren't you going to have a clergyman marry you?" asked our
friend.
"Because I don't want it too binding!" answered the girl calmly.
So far has the prevalence of divorce cast its enlightening beams.
* * * * *
I have had a shooting box in Scotland on several different occasions;
and my wife has conducted successful social campaigns, as I have said
before, in London, Paris, Rome and Berlin. I did not go along, but I
read about it all in the papers and received weekly from the scene of
conflict a pound or so of mail matter, consisting of hundreds of
diaphanous sheets of paper, each covered with my daughters' fashionable
humpbacked handwriting. Hastings, my stenographer, became very expert at
deciphering and transcribing it on the machine for my delectation.
I was quite confused at the number and variety of the titles of nobility
with which my family seemed constantly to be surrounded. They had a
wonderful time, met everybody, and returned home perfected
cosmopolitans. What their ethical standards are I confess I do not know
exactly, for the reason that I see so little of them. They lead totally
independent lives.
On rare occasions we are invited to the same houses at the same time,
and on Christmas Eve we still make it a point always to stay at home
together. Really I have no idea how they dispose of their time. They are
always away, making visits in other cities or taking trips. They chatter
fluently about literature, the theater, music, art, and know a surprising
number of celebrities in this and other countries--particularly in London.
They are good linguists and marvelous dancers. They are respectful, well
mannered, modest, and mildly affectionate; but somehow they do not seem
to belong to me. They have no troubles of which I am the confidant.
If they have any definite opinions or principles I am unaware of them;
but they have the most exquisite taste. Perhaps with them this takes the
place of morals. I cannot imagine my girls doing or saying anything
vulgar, yet what they are like when away from home I have no means of
finding out. I am quite sure that when they eventually select their
husbands I shall not be consulted in the matter. My formal blessing will
be all that is asked, and if that blessing is not forthcoming no doubt
they will get along well enough without it.
However, I am the constant recipient of congratulations on being the
parent of such charming creatures. I have succeeded--apparently--in this
direction as in others. Succeeded in what? I cannot imagine these girls
of mine being any particular solace to my old age.
Recently, since writing these confessions of mine, I have often wondered
why my children were not more to me. I do not think they are much more
to my wife. I suppose it could just as well be put the other way. Why
are _we_ not more to _them_? It is because, I fancy, this modern
existence of ours, where every function and duty of maternity--except
the actual giving of birth--is performed vicariously for us, destroys
any interdependence between parents and their offspring. "Smart"
American mothers no longer, I am informed, nurse their babies. I know
that my wife did not nurse hers. And thereafter each child had its own
particular French _bonne_ and governess besides.
Our nursery was a model of dainty comfort. All the superficial
elegancies were provided for. It was a sunny, dustless apartment, with
snow-white muslins, white enamel, and a frieze of grotesque Noah's Ark
animals perambulating round the wall. There were huge dolls' houses,
with electric lights; big closets of toys. From the earliest moment
possible these three infants began to have private lessons in
everything, including drawing, music and German. Their little days were
as crowded with engagements then as now. Every hour was provided for;
but among these multifarious occupations there was no engagement with
their parents.
Even if their mother had not been overwhelmed with social duties herself
my babies would, I am confident, have had no time for their parent
except at serious inconvenience and a tremendous sacrifice of time. To
be sure, I used occasionally to watch them decorously eating their
strictly supervised suppers in the presence of the governess; but the
perfect arrangements made possible by my financial success rendered
parents a superfluity. They never bumped their heads, or soiled their
clothes, or dirtied their little faces--so far as I knew. They never
cried--at least I was never permitted to hear them.
When the time came for them to go to bed each raised a rosy little cheek
and said sweetly: "Good night, papa." They had, I think, the usual
children's diseases--exactly which ones I am not sure of; but they had
them in the hospital room at the top of the house, from which I was
excluded, and the diseases progressed with medical propriety in due
course and under the efficient management of starchy trained nurses.
Their outdoor life consisted in walking the asphalt pavements of Central
Park, varied with occasional visits to the roller-skating rink; but
their social life began at the age of four or five. I remember these
functions vividly, because they were so different from those of my own
childhood. The first of these was when my eldest daughter attained the
age of six years. Similar events in my private history had been
characterized by violent games of blind man's buff, hide and seek, hunt
the slipper, going to Jerusalem, ring-round-a-rosy, and so on, followed
by a dish of ice-cream and hairpulling.
Not so with my offspring. Ten little ladies and gentlemen, accompanied
by their maids, having been rearranged in the dressing room downstairs,
were received by my daughter with due form in the drawing room. They
were all flounced, ruffled and beribboned. Two little boys of seven had
on Eton suits. Their behavior was impeccable.
Almost immediately a professor of legerdemain made his appearance and,
with the customary facility of his brotherhood, proceeded to remove tons
of débris from presumably empty hats, rabbits from handkerchiefs, and
hard-boiled eggs from childish noses and ears. The assembled group
watched him with polite tolerance. At intervals there was a squeal of
surprise, but it soon developed that most of them had already seen the
same trickman half a dozen times. However, they kindly consented to be
amused, and the professor gave way to a Punch and Judy show of a
sublimated variety, which the youthful audience viewed with mild
approval.
The entertainment concluded with a stereopticon exhibition of supposedly
humorous events, which obviously did not strike the children as funny at
all. Supper was laid in the dining room, where the table had been
arranged as if for a banquet of diplomats. There were flowers in
abundance and a life-size swan of icing at each end. Each child was
assisted by its own nurse, and our butler and a footman served, in
stolid dignity, a meal consisting of rice pudding, cereals, cocoa, bread
and butter, and ice-cream.
It was by all odds the most decorous affair ever held in our house. At
the end the gifts were distributed--Parisian dolls, toy baby-carriages
and paint boxes for the girls; steam engines, magic lanterns and
miniature circuses for the boys. My bill for these trifles came to one
hundred and twelve dollars. At half-past six the carriages arrived and
our guests were hurried away.
I instance this affair because it struck the note of elegant propriety
that has always been the tone of our family and social life. The
children invited to the party were the little boys and girls whose
fathers and mothers we thought most likely to advance their social
interests later on.
Of these children two of the girls have married members of the foreign
nobility--one a jaded English lord, the other a worthless and dissipated
French count; another married--fifteen years later--one of these same
little boys and divorced him within eighteen months; while two of the
girls--our own--have not married.
Of the boys one wedded an actress; another lives in Paris and studies
"art"; one has been already accounted for; and two have given their
lives to playing polo, the stock market, and elevating the chorus.
* * * * *
Beginning at this early period, my two daughters, and later on my son,
met only the most select young people of their own age in New York and
on Long Island. I remember being surprised at the amount of theatergoing
they did by the time the eldest was nine years old. My wife made a
practice of giving a children's theater party every Saturday and taking
her small guests to the matinée. As the theaters were more limited in
number then than now these comparative infants sooner or later saw
practically everything that was on the boards--good, bad and
indifferent; and they displayed a precocity of criticism that quite
astounded me.
Their real social career began with children's dinners and dancing
parties by the time they were twelve, and their later coming out changed
little the mode of life to which they had been accustomed for several
years before it. The result of their mother's watchful care and
self-sacrifice is that these two young ladies could not possibly be
happy, or even comfortable, if they married men unable to furnish them
with French maids, motors, constant amusement, gay society, travel and
Paris clothes.
Without these things they would wither away and die like flowers
deprived of the sun. They are physically unfit to be anything but the
wives of millionaires--and they will be the wives of millionaires or
assuredly die unmarried. But, as the circle of rich young men of their
acquaintance is more or less limited their chances of matrimony are by
no means bright, albeit that they are the pivots of a furious whirl of
gaiety which never stops.
No young man with an income of less than twenty thousand a year would
have the temerity to propose to either of them. Even on twenty thousand
they would have a hard struggle to get along; it would mean the most
rigid economy--and, if there were babies, almost poverty.
Besides, when girls are living in the luxury to which mine are
accustomed they think twice before essaying matrimony at all. The
prospects of changing Newport, Palm Beach, Paris, Rome, Nice and
Biarritz for the privilege of bearing children in a New York apartment
house does not allure, as in the case of less cosmopolitan young ladies.
There must be love--plus all present advantages! Present advantages
withdrawn, love becomes cautious.
Even though the rich girl herself is of finer clay than her parents and,
in spite of her artificial environment and the false standards by which
she is surrounded, would like to meet and perhaps eventually marry some
young man who is more worth while than the "pet cats" of her
acquaintance, she is practically powerless to do so. She is cut off by
the impenetrable artificial barrier of her own exclusiveness. She may
hear of such young men--young fellows of ambition, of adventurous
spirit, of genius, who have already achieved something in the world, but
they are outside the wall of money and she is inside it, and there is no
way for them to get in or for her to get out. She is permitted to know
only the _jeunesse dorée_--the fops, the sports, the club-window men,
whose antecedents are vouched for by the Social Register.
She has no way of meeting others. She does not know what the others are
like. She is only aware of an instinctive distaste for most of the young
fellows among whom she is thrown. At best they are merely innocuous when
they are not offensive. They do nothing; they intend never to do
anything. If she is the American girl of our plays and novels she wants
something better; and in the plays and novels she always gets him--the
dashing young ranchman, the heroic naval lieutenant, the fearless
Alaskan explorer, the tireless prospector or daring civil engineer. But
in real life she does not get him--except by the merest fluke of
fortune. She does not know the real thing when she meets it, and she is
just as likely to marry a dissipated groom or chauffeur as the young
Stanley of her dreams.
The saddest class in our social life is that of the thoroughbred
American girl who is a thousand times too good for her de-luxe
surroundings and the crew of vacuous la-de-da Willies hanging about her,
yet who, absolutely cut off from contact with any others, either
gradually fades into a peripatetic old maid, wandering over Europe, or
marries an eligible, turkey-trotting nondescript--"a mimmini-pimmini,
Francesca da Rimini, _je-ne-sais-quoi_ young man."
The Atlantic seaboard swarms in summertime with broad-shouldered,
well-bred, highly educated and charming boys, who have had every
advantage except that of being waited on by liveried footmen. They camp
in the woods; tutor the feeble-minded sons of the rich; tramp and
bicycle over Swiss mountain passes; sail their catboats through the
island-studded reaches and thoroughfares of the Maine coast, and grow
brown and hard under the burning sun. They are the hope of America. They
can carry a canoe or a hundred-pound pack over a forest trail; and in
the winter they set the pace in the scientific, law and medical
schools. Their heads are clear, their eyes are bright, and there is a
hollow instead of a bow window beneath the buttons of their waistcoats.
The feet of these young men carry them to strange places; they cope with
many and strange monsters. They are our Knights of the Round Table. They
find the Grail of Achievement in lives of hard work, simple pleasures
and high ideals--in college and factory towns; in law courts and
hospitals; in the mountains of Colorado and the plains of the Dakotas.
They are the best we have; but the poor rich girl rarely, if ever, meets
them. The barrier of wealth completely hems her in. She must take one of
those inside or nothing.
When, in a desperate revolt against the artificiality of her existence,
she breaks through the wall she is easy game for anybody--as likely to
marry a jockey or a professional forger as one of the young men of her
desire. One should not blame a rich girl too much for marrying a titled
and perhaps attractive foreigner. The would-be critic has only to step
into a Fifth Avenue ballroom and see what she is offered in his place to
sympathize with and perhaps applaud her selection. Better a year of
Europe than a cycle of--shall we say, Narragansett? After all, why not
take the real thing, such as it is, instead of an imitation?
I believe that one of the most cruel results of modern social life is
the cutting off of young girls from acquaintanceship with youths of the
sturdy, intelligent and hardworking type--and the unfitting of such
girls for anything except the marriage mart of the millionaire.
I would give half of all I possess to see my daughters happily married;
but I now realize that their education renders such a marriage highly
difficult of satisfactory achievement. Their mother and I have honestly
tried to bring them up in such a way that they can do their duty in that
state of life to which it hath pleased God to call them. But
unfortunately, unless some man happens to call them also, they will have
to keep on going round and round as they are going now.
We did not anticipate the possibility of their becoming old maids, and
they cannot become brides of the church. I should honestly be glad to
have either of them marry almost anybody, provided he is a decent
fellow. I should not even object to their marrying foreigners, but the
difficulty is that it is almost impossible to find out whether a
foreigner is really decent or not. It is true that the number of foreign
noblemen who marry American girls for love is negligible. There is
undoubtedly a small and distinguished minority who do so; but the
transaction is usually a matter of bargain and sale, and the man regards
himself as having lived up to his contract by merely conferring his
title on the woman he thus deigns to honor.
I should prefer to have them marry Americans, of course; but I no longer
wish them to marry Americans of their own class. Yet, unfortunately,
they would be unwilling to marry out of it. A curious situation! I have
given up my life to buying a place for my children that is supposed to
give them certain privileges, and I now am loath to have them take
advantage of those privileges.
The situation has its amusing as well as its pathetic side--for my son,
now that I come to think of it, is one of the eligibles. He knows
everybody and is on the road to money. He is one of the opportunities
that society is offering to the daughters of other successful men.
Should I wish my own girls to marry a youth like him? Far from it! Yet
he is exactly the kind of fellow that my success has enabled them to
meet and know, and whom Fate decrees that they shall eventually marry if
they marry at all.
When I frankly face the question of how much happiness I get out of my
children I am constrained to admit that it is very little. The sense of
proprietorship in three such finished products is something, to be sure;
and, after all, I suppose they have--concealed somewhere--a real
affection for their old dad. At times they are facetious--almost
playful--as on my birthday; but I fancy that arises from a feeling of
embarrassment at not knowing how to be intimate with a parent who
crosses their path only twice a week, and then on the stairs.
My son has attended to his own career now for some fourteen years; in
fact I lost him completely before he was out of knickerbockers. Up to
the time when he was sent away to boarding school he spent a rather
disconsolate childhood, playing with mechanical toys, roller skating in
the Mall, going occasionally to the theater, and taking music lessons;
but he showed so plainly the debilitating effect of life in the city for
eight months in the year that at twelve he was bundled off to a country
school. Since then he has grown to manhood without our assistance. He
went away undersized, pale, with a meager little neck and a sort of
wistful Nicholas Nickelby expression. When he returned at the Christmas
vacation he had gained ten pounds, was brown and freckled, and looked
like a small giraffe in pantalets.
Moreover, he had entirely lost the power of speech, owing to a fear of
making a fool of himself. During the vacation in question he was
reoutfitted and sent three times a week to the theater. On one or two
occasions I endeavored to ascertain how he liked school, but all I could
get out of him was the vague admission that it was "all right" and that
he liked it "well enough." This process of outgrowing his clothes and
being put through a course of theaters at each vacation--there was
nothing else to do with him--continued for seven years, during which
time he grew to be six feet two inches in height and gradually filled
out to man's size. He managed to hold a place in the lower third of his
class, with the aid of constant and expensive tutoring in the summer
vacations, and he finally was graduated with the rest and went to
Harvard.
By this time he preferred to enjoy himself in his own way during his
leisure and we saw less of him than ever. But, whatever his intellectual
achievements may be, there is no doubt as to his being a man of the
world, entirely at ease anywhere, with perfect manners and all the
social graces. I do not think he was particularly dissipated at Harvard;
on the other hand, I am assured by the dean that he was no student. He
"made" a select club early in his course and from that time was
occupied, I suspect, in playing poker and bridge, discussing deep
philosophical questions and acquiring the art of living. He never went
in for athletics; but by doing nothing in a highly artistic manner, and
by dancing with the most startling agility, he became a prominent social
figure and a headliner in college theatricals.
From his sophomore year he has been in constant demand for cotillions,
house parties and yachting trips. His intimate pals seem to be
middle-aged millionaires who are known to me in only the most casual
way; and he is a sort of gentleman-in-waiting--I believe the accepted
term is "pet cat"--to several society women, for whom he devises new
cotillion figures, arranges original after-dinner entertainments and
makes himself generally useful.
Like my two daughters he has arrived--absolutely; but, though we are
members of the same learned profession, he is almost a stranger to me. I
had no difficulty in getting him a clerkship in a gilt-edged law firm
immediately after he was admitted to the bar and he is apparently doing
marvelously well, though what he can possibly know of law will always
remain a mystery to me. Yet he is already, at the age of twenty-eight, a
director in three important concerns whose securities are listed on the
stock exchange, and he spends a great deal of money, which he must
gather somehow. I know that his allowance cannot do much more than meet
his accounts at the smart clubs to which he belongs.
He is a pleasant fellow and I enjoy the rare occasions when I catch a
glimpse of him. I do not think he has any conspicuous vices--or virtues.
He has simply had sense enough to take advantage of his social
opportunities and bids fair to be equally successful with myself. He has
really never done a stroke of work in his life, but has managed to make
himself agreeable to those who could help him along. I have no doubt
those rich friends of his throw enough business in his way to net him
ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, but I should hesitate to retain
him to defend me if I were arrested for speeding.
Nevertheless at dinner I have seen him bullyrag and browbeat a judge of
our Supreme Court in a way that made me shudder, though I admit that the
judge in question owed his appointment entirely to the friend of my son
who happened to be giving the dinner; and he will contradict in a loud
tone men and women older than myself, no matter what happens to be the
subject under discussion. They seem to like it--why, I do not pretend to
understand. They admire his assurance and good nature, and are rather
afraid of him!
I cannot imagine what he would find to do in my own law office; he would
doubtless regard it as a dull place and too narrow a sphere for his
splendid capabilities. He is a clever chap, this son of mine; and though
neither he nor his sisters seem to have any particular fondness for one
another, he is astute at playing into their hands and they into his. He
also keeps a watchful eye on our dinner invitations, so they will not
fall below the properly exclusive standard.
"What are you asking old Washburn for?" he will ask. "He's been a dead
one these five years!" Or: "I'd cut out the Becketts--at least if you're
asking the Thompsons. They don't go with the same crowd." Or: "Why don't
you ask the Peyton-Smiths? They're nothing to be afraid of if they do
cut a dash at Newport. The old girl is rather a pal of mine."
So we drop old Washburn, cut out the Becketts, and take courage and
invite the hyphenated Smiths. A hint from him pays handsome dividends!
and he is distinctly proud of the family and anxious to push it along
to still greater success.
However, he has never asked my help or assistance--except in a financial
way. He has never come to me for advice; never confided any of his
perplexities or troubles to me. Perhaps he has none. He seems quite
sufficient unto himself. And he certainly is not my friend. It seems
strange that these three children of mine, whose upbringing has been the
source of so much thought and planning on the part of my wife and
myself, and for whose ultimate benefit we have shaped our own lives,
should be the merest, almost impersonal, acquaintances.
The Italian fruit-vender on the corner, whose dirty offspring crawl
among the empty barrels behind the stand, knows far more of his children
than do we of ours, will have far more influence on the shaping of their
future lives. They do not need us now and they never have needed us. A
trust company could have performed all the offices of parenthood with
which we have been burdened. We have paid others to be father and mother
in our stead--or rather, as I now see, have had hired servants to go
through the motions for us; and they have done it well, so far as the
mere physical side of the matter is concerned. We have been almost
entirely relieved of care.
We have never been annoyed by our children's presence at any time. We
have never been bothered with them at meals. We have never had to sit up
with them when they could not go to sleep, or watch at their bedsides
during the night when they were sick. Competent nurses--far more
competent than we--washed their little dirty hands, mended the torn
dresses and kissed their wounds to make them well. And when five o'clock
came three dainty little Dresden figures in pink and blue ribbons were
brought down to the drawing room to be admired by our guests. Then,
after being paraded, they were carried back to the nursery to resume the
even tenor of their independent existences.
No one of us has ever needed the other members of the family. My wife
has never called on either of our daughters to perform any of those
trifling intimate services that bring a mother and her children
together. There has always been a maid standing ready to hook up her
dress, fetch her book or her hat, or a footman to spring upstairs after
the forgotten gloves. And the girls have never needed their mother--the
governess could read aloud ever so much better, and they always had
their own maid to look after their clothes. When they needed new gowns
they simply went downtown and bought them--and the bill was sent to my
office. Neither of them was ever forced to stay at home that her sister
might have some pleasure instead. No; our wealth has made it possible
for each of my children to enjoy every luxury without any sacrifice on
another's part. They owe nothing to each other, and they really owe
nothing to their mother or myself--except perhaps a monetary obligation.
But there is one person, technically not one of our family, for whom my
girls have the deepest and most sincere affection--that is old Jane,
their Irish nurse, who came to them just after they were weaned and
stayed with us until the period of maids and governesses arrived. I paid
her twenty-five dollars a month, and for nearly ten years she never let
them out of her sight--crooning over them at night; trudging after them
during the daytime; mending their clothes; brushing their teeth; cutting
their nails; and teaching them strange Irish legends of the banshee.
When I called her into the library and told her the children were now
too old for her and that they must have a governess, the look that came
into her face haunted me for days.
"Ye'll be after taking my darlin's away from me?" she muttered in a dead
tone. "'T will be hard for me!" She stood as if the heart had died
within her, and the hundred-dollar bill I shoved into her hand fell to
the floor. Then she turned quickly and hurried out of the room without a
sob. I heard afterward that she cried for a week.
Now I always know when one of their birthdays has arrived by the queer
package, addressed in old Jane's quaint half-printed writing, that
always comes. She has cared for many dozens of children since then, but
loves none like my girls, for she came to them in her young womanhood
and they were her first charges.
And they are just as fond of her. Indeed it is their loyalty to this old
Irish nurse that gives me faith that they are not the cold propositions
they sometimes seem to be. For once when, after much careless delay, a
fragmentary message came to us that she was ill and in a hospital my two
daughters, who were just starting for a ball, flew to her bedside, sat
with her all through the night and never left her until she was out of
danger.
"They brought me back--my darlin's!" she whispered to us when later we
called to see how she was getting on; and my wife looked at me across
the rumpled cot and her lips trembled. I knew what was in her mind.
Would her daughters have rushed to her with the same forgetfulness of
self as to this prematurely gray and wrinkled woman whose shrunken form
lay between us?
Poor old Jane! Alone in an alien land, giving your life and your love to
the children of others, only to have them torn from your arms just as
the tiny fingers have entwined themselves like tendrils round your
heart! We have tossed you the choicest blessings of our lives and
shouldered you with the heavy responsibilities that should rightfully
have been our load. Your cup has run over with both joy and sorrow but
you have drunk of the cup, while we are still thirsty! Our hearts are
dry, while yours is green--nourished with the love that should belong to
us. Poor old Jane? Lucky old Jane! Anyhow God bless you!