precedents and the prejudices of man, who, having hitherto had
everything his own way, naturally desires to keep it so. This he calls
being conservative.
Also woman is handicapped by her own inexperience. She is a good deal
in the case of one who, having long laid bound and blinded, suddenly
receives sight and freedom. She is dazed and dizzy for the moment,
but only for the moment, and, trust me, she will never again return
to the blindness or the bondage. Her place henceforth is shoulder
to shoulder, side by side with man, his comrade, his equal, his true
helpmeet in each and every world into which mankind may enter--the
other half without which he can never be a whole, and this dear old
world of ours can never attain its true perfection of attainment.
XIV.
WOMAN’S YOUTH.
Says the proverb: “A woman is as old as she looks, and a man is as
young as he feels,” but like many other widely accepted “glittering
generalities,” it will not walk on all fours. For even a girl of
fifteen may have an old look and a woman of fifty may have a young
look, and a supersensitive person, especially if she lives in the rush
and whirl of a city life, will look years younger or older in a few
hours, according to her environment. It is one of the oddest things in
this queer world, this importance attached to the question of age. The
first thing we ask about a proposed acquaintance is: What age is he or
she? The commonest form of social gossip is the telling in confidence
of the age of some lady who is older than she appears. The one item
mentioned in a burial notice is the age of the deceased, and a very
frequent remark when a death is announced is, I wonder if they will
print her age!
Another curious point is that dislike or malice always exaggerates
the age of its object, and kindly or charitable feeling always
minimizes it. It is evident, then, that we all desire for ourselves
and our friends the reputation of youth, and that there is something
disparaging and unattractive in speaking of a person as old, or even
middle-aged. Arising from this instinct, no doubt, we have the struggle
to appear young so noticeable and so piteous not only in what we call
society, but in all classes of the community.
I sat mournfully by one day at a milliner’s while she tried a blue
satin and velvet sailor hat with long streamers on a lady of about
fifty years old, whose weight must certainly have reached two hundred,
and whose great red face suggested unlimited roast beef and port wine.
The lady bought the hat and went away, and I mildly inquired of the
milliner if she really thought it was the most suitable headgear she
could have recommended. She smiled shrewdly and said: “The only other
thing she would look at was a _bébé_ bonnet, and that, she concluded,
was too old for her. She does not realize that she is no longer
fifteen.”
That little incident made a deep impression on me, as throwing a broad
light upon one phase of feminine human nature. The woman does not, or
will not, “realize that she is no longer fifteen,” and struggles to
prevent other people from realizing it either. Is it, then, so much
better to be fifteen than fifty, and why?
Why should one cling to sailor hats and _bébé_ bonnets instead of
assuming the rich and dignified headgear of middle life? Why is youth
the one thing to be struggled and fought for against all odds? And
how is it women, otherwise sensible can yield to the delusion that
youthful dress lends a youthful appearance to middle age? Looking about
me to see how these questions were answered by the elder ladies of my
acquaintance, I was considerably puzzled to determine which they were.
Many of the girls and women, whose ages I happened to know, looked
older in both form and figure than others whom I suspected to be their
seniors, and again I found that many of my acquaintances varied so much
from time to time that I had to place them afresh at each interview.
But, after all, what is the charm of youth? Is it physical simply?
Of course, clear eyes and skin, round, firm outlines, and a certain
freshness of lips and cheek are very lovely, but it is by no means all
young girls, especially in cities, who possess them. Is it manners?
There is nothing sweeter than the half-timid, yet well-trained manner
of an ingenuous girl, nothing prettier than her _naïve_ deference to
her elders and ready self-effacement; but still I must prefer for my
own part the gracious tact and quickness that come only by experience,
the ready adjustment of any little social awkwardness, the self-poise
that knows just what to say and do and leave undone of the mature
man or woman. And surely it is not the intellect and conversational
powers of youth to which we so lovingly cling. The crude ideas, the
impossible theories, the innocent conviction of originality while
uttering the baldest truisms, the misplaced credulity or the sweeping
iconoclasm--are these the conditions of mental development in which we
would remain?
What then? For, spite of all my wasted words, spite of the reason one
can bring to bear upon the matter, the foolish fact remains, and no
doubt will remain, that youth is a possession to be clung to as long as
possible and feigned as much longer as may be.
But since feigning is useless and long possession is impossible, why
will not those who no longer are young consent to beautify and enrich
middle age with own attractions? Why do not those who have outgrown the
sailor hats invent and wear charming bonnets, carefully suited to the
new conditions? Why does not Miss Chick cease to babble childishly,
and study to have something to say that will really amuse or please
or attract the men of her own age, and so leave the boys alone? When
shall we say of a friend: “Oh, she is charming. You will like her ever
so much, for she is fifty years old, and has all the varied means of
making herself agreeable that her years naturally bring. She has seen
so much and read so much and thought so much that it is a liberal
education to know her.” Ah, when?
_Au contraire_, I once asked an Englishman if he did not think a
certain lady of about thirty years old very pretty.
“Pretty! Why, she’s gray as a badger,” replied he, referring to the few
threads of silver that gave piquancy to her fresh, bright face.
But the old man or woman who has had the tact and the wit to see the
question in its true light, and deal with it intelligently, and who
has grown old gracefully and wisely, is a treasure not enough to be
valued by those who enjoy it. For there is a ripened sweetness in such
a life, a calm acceptance of those evils or sorrows against which we
younger ones struggle so wildly and so hopelessly; a peace passing
understanding that, like an attar, diffuses itself on every side;
experience, wisdom and judgment, that only long years ending in quiet
thoughtfulness can give.
Have you such a mother or such a grandmother? Make much of her, love
her, tell her that you love her, cherish her at once reverently
and tenderly; let every day that passes add to the store of happy
memories laid by for the time when her chair shall be vacant, her
dear, tremulous hand forever still, and her voice forever hushed. And
remember as your own years pile themselves one upon another that they
are building the monument whereby in the future those who come after
will remember you, and let them not say as they turn from it with a
pitying smile, she did not realize that she was no longer fifteen.
XV.
OLD MAIDS.
It does not take a very long or wide experience of society to wear off
the first surprise at some of its “words and ways,” and to teach one
the folly of “getting mad” over what cannot be helped. Still there are
some occasions when the original Adam within me gets the better of
training, and one of them is suggested by the heading of this paper.
The very last time that I was at a reception ill fortune pushed me
into a corner with a “gilded youth” who would not go away or let me
do so; a pair of lovely eyes smiled amusement over his shoulder and
a crisply sweet voice exchanged with me a word of greeting. Eyes and
voice belonged to one of the most charming women of New York, more than
thirty years old and unmarried.
“Oh, Miss So-and-so,” exclaimed my companion, looking after her and
trying to find his mustache to pull. “Too bad she’s ‘Miss’ still, isn’t
it? I should think that a nice woman like that would have found _some
one_ to marry her.”
“That’s what I am always saying of Mr. Timon, over there,” said I,
glancing at a society man, perhaps forty years old, just passing us.
“He is very rich, very handsome, agreeable, cultured and wide awake. I
should think, before this, he would have found _some_ woman to marry
him.”
“Timon! Why, he could be married any day he chose!” exclaimed my
artless companion. “The women are all wild after him! It is he that
says no, not they.”
“And does it not occur to you that Miss So-and-so may be the one to
say no literally and verbally, and to say it very often?” demanded I.
“Why should a woman with ample income, pleasant family surroundings,
wit, beauty and the choice of society in any part of the world, bind
herself down to the companionship of a man who will probably weary
her, possibly ill-treat her and never, by any chance comprehend
her? Of course, if she chances to be in love with him, that is a
different matter, for the world is well lost for love. But why cannot
you men understand that very many women make a great--a very great
sacrifice--in marrying any man at all, and that no woman receives
anything more than she gives in marriage, and as a general thing, not
so much!”
But is it not true? Do not _all_ men, and alas, some women, speak of an
“old maid” or one verging toward that condition in terms of pity, and,
if she is at all attractive, of surprise?
Why cannot men understand that there are other pleasures in life
besides that of worshipping them?
A bright woman, especially if well educated and traveled, generally
has to keep a tight rein in talking to the average society man, or
she will ride away from him, leaving him angrily humiliated in the
rear. Or he will loftily adopt himself to her lower plane and instruct
her, in a confused and elementary fashion, upon matters of which she
has seen the “true inwardness” a long time before. It is really very
seldom that she meets a man so thoroughly her equal or superior that
it is a privilege for her to exchange ideas with him, and she is quite
sharp enough to know that in married life there are a great many hours
when a stupid man, or a groveling-minded man, or a conceited man, or
a protoplastic man is about as agreeable a companion as the brutal
ruffian chained for life to the educated forger, brought to the galleys
by a mistaken use of advanced capacities.
No, don’t continue to say:
“Too bad she’s single still!” but change the formula to:
“Pity she never found any man worth accepting, when there are such
hosts of them in the world.”
XVI.
THE SOCIETY GIRL AS A WIFE.
Years ago the favorite scheme of the novelist was to demonstrate that
no woman of fashion had a heart, and that girls trained in luxury and
educated by the example of fashionable mothers could not possibly
become good wives, especially for poor men. But is this so?
Persons born and bred in luxury have their faults, but so do persons
born and bred in penury, and I do not know that one class of faults is
any more tolerable or more likely to make a girl into a bad wife than
the other.
The fashionable girl, for instance, has been used all her life to
attendance, and probably never has learned to mend her own clothes,
or to go and fetch what she wants, or to wait upon anybody else.
She sees a thing in a shop, and having plenty of pocket money, or
plenty of credit in her father’s name, she orders it sent home, and
perhaps never looks twice at it again. If she is properly brought up
she devotes most of her time and energy to study and the practice of
various accomplishments, which, with necessary exercise, so fills her
day that she really could not if she would learn anything of practical
matters--of the art of keeping a house, of training servants or of
doing without them, of buying clothes at the right time and to the best
advantage, of making those clothes or so repairing and refreshing them
as to
“Mak’ auld claithes
A’maist as good’s the new.”
Of course if a girl so trained marries a poor man she has a great deal
both to learn and to unlearn, and her capacity for these new lessons
will be the measure of her ability to become a good wife.
But suppose such a girl marries a rich man? We all know, especially
in this country, that money alone will not make a comfortable home;
it will hire servants sometimes at tremendous wages, but the air of
this free country is fatal to servitude, and the man or maid who while
at home in England or Ireland was the very incarnation of obedience,
respectfulness and content, only requires a few months in one of our
cities, with the advantage of reading the papers before they reach
the hands of the family, and of listening to the lessons of their
compatriots who have been here a little longer, before they imbibe the
principles of liberty and equality to such an extent, that, unless
the heads of the house are well able to hold their own position, they
speedily lose it, and become the servants rather than the rulers.
Now is a girl fresh from her school, or even after some years of
society life, able to take and keep this position of head of a
turbulent and revolutionary staff of servants simply because her
husband has the money to pay them?
Of course she is not, unless she has had a mother so very unusually
alive to her responsibilities that she has taught her the art of
housekeeping, in addition to her school studies and the requirements
of society; and such mothers are, to say the least of it, uncommon.
So our poor society girl is not by position and education fitted to
become the wife either of a poor man or of a rich one.
Is she then never to be a successful wife? Are both poor men and rich
men warned off from trying to appropriate her delicate loveliness and
dainty grace to the embellishment of that _home_ for which every man
longs in his inmost heart?
Nay, the case is not quite as bad as this for our dear society rosebuds
and half-opened blossoms. There is a teacher who can in quite a short
course of most delightful lessons teach the most inexperienced girl,
whether she be city bred and luxurious, or whether she be country
bred and unsophisticated, to lay aside all her previous habits and to
acquire a complete new set; to take up the most tedious and distasteful
tasks and find them charming; to like the things she supposed she
should abhor, and to grow careless of what had been her very breath of
life.
His terms are high, to be sure, this wonderful teacher of ours; he
demands even more than Shylock with his pound of flesh, for he is not
satisfied with less than the whole being of his pupil--her heart, her
brain, her hands, her feet, her will and her obedience; in fact, all
that makes her herself. The teacher’s name, as you long since have
guessed, is Love, dear, old, yet ever young, Dan Cupid, who has been at
work among us from the day when this weary old world was as fresh and
young as the _débutante_ of yesterday.
And now the crucial question is, Can the fashionable girl, the society
girl, take the course Master Love requires? She has, perhaps, “gone in”
for the higher mathematics, for Greek and even Hebrew; she knows the
principles of navigation, trigonometry and astronomy; she has strained
her poor little brain to its utmost capacity, and is quite fit to
assume the chair of mathematics at the coming college for the coming
woman, but is she able to learn Love’s sweet lessons and to graduate
in his school?
Those old novelists and essayists, those compounders of gilded pills
who write moral tales for the young and novels with an educational
purpose, in fact, all the class of theorists to whom I at first
referred, say no, she can’t. They maintain that a worldly life makes
the whole nature worldly; they say that artificial habits, such as
sleeping half the day, and waking more than half the night, so upset
and transform the natural tastes and capacities that they languish and
die and are supplanted by others adapted to the new order of things. If
this is true, a fashionable girl cannot learn of love any more than a
blind girl could truly understand the beauty of nature, or a deaf one
appreciate the chorus of birds on a summer morning.
But I, for one, am not ready to grant that this is the truth. I have
seen, I have known girls trained in the lap of luxury and the vortex
of fashionable life who have learned to love so truly, so purely, and
so naturally that the artificial character, that seemed to be their
only one, has utterly changed its complexion and build, and the pupil
of Love has graduated as a wife with brilliant success. Let us look a
little at the course of study.
Society teaches selfishness; the object of each individual is to
surpass a little every other individual in the dearest object of
ambition. With the men, this object is wealth, or political importance,
or some form of worldly ambition leading to power and prominence. With
the women, it is social leadership, authority in matters of dress, the
reputation of entertaining with splendor and success, beauty, style,
or fascinating manner, acquaintance with the mighty personages of the
earth, and all the minor details of their lives.
Now the attainment of the first place in all these matters involves the
pushing somebody else back into the second place, and if this is not
selfishness what can be?
But Love’s first lesson is unselfishness! His pupil must learn to put
herself in the background and consider what will make another person
happy or be to his advantage; she must hold her own plans and wishes
in so light a grasp that she can instantly relinquish them and take
up another set originating in another will. She must learn to think
very lightly of her own ideas and convictions, and accept with delight
and admiration those she has never dreamed of or has looked upon as
quite erroneous. She must learn to look upon her own beauty, grace and
acquirements as only valuable because somebody else values them, and
not in the least because they are her own and add to her own importance.
Yes, Love teaches unselfishness, and if one takes the full course,
and acquires it thoroughly, as, alas! few have strength to do, he
adds sincerity, tact, docility, silence under provocation, patience,
sweetness, energy, and untiring determination to do and to be whatever
will make the beloved one happy, and a holy hypocrisy in disguising all
the disappointments, self-sacrifices and changes of purpose involved in
giving up one’s life to become the counterpart of another life.
But where a nature is strong enough, and at the same time yielding
enough, to take the whole course and learn every lesson to the end,
which is also the end of life, that woman, be she a fashionable girl or
a country girl, will make a good wife and become the delight and joy of
her husband, although he probably will never half appreciate her, for
it is one of the many contradictions of the masculine nature that the
more perfect a woman is the less they admire and try to please her. A
perfect woman, or one as nearly perfect as we ever find in this world
of imperfection, must either be satisfied with the approval of her own
sex, who do as a general thing appreciate and admire her, or, if she
remains in Love’s school and faithful to his guidance, he will keep her
supplied with rose-colored glasses through which not only the man she
loves, but her own life and the sacrifices she makes for him, and his
stolid acceptance of those sacrifices will all show in a soft radiance,
a lovely Claude Lorraine effect which can transform the most stupid
landscape, the most commonplace surroundings, into a scene of ideal
beauty.
Civilization does not materially change the basis of human nature, and
fashionable life is not half so powerful an agent for good or bad as
unfashionable people are apt to think. I have known a good many men and
women on both sides of the Atlantic who would no doubt be marked as
leaders of society--the typical fashionable people, although, by the
way, society objects just now to the term fashionable, and, especially
in London, holds itself aloof from and far above those to whom it sets
fashions in its own arbitrary mode. But, however you may style them,
these are the people who hold themselves at the head of the social
system in the great centers of civilization, and, having studied them a
good deal and rather critically, I am quite ready to aver that they are
just men and women like the rest of us.
The men like to fancy themselves wiser than other men, and are most
charmed by those who most defer to them; they are suspicious in the
wrong place, and easily binded and led by the women who know how to
do it; they are highly polished on the surface, and rather coarse and
material under the surface; in fact, they are like all other men. And
the women love to be admired for whatever charms they pride themselves
upon most highly, love to see men turn from other women to them, love
to be attended to and sought out, love to be loved. This is the basis
of feminine human nature, and whether it is covered up by the silks
and laces of a fashionable woman, or is hidden in the folds of muslins
and woolen, and the pretty devices of a girl’s own fingers and happy
inventions because she has no money to buy those of other people, it
is always the _woman_ who is underneath, and who, when the man and the
hour arrive, breaks forth fresh and radiant as Galatea from her marble
under Pygmalion’s touch.
Do you see the kernel of the whole matter? Do you know exactly-how I
reply to the question you have asked me, as to whether a fashionable
life destroys the capacity for true love?
I say no, not if the original nature of the fashionable girl is capable
of love. In such a one the power of love will transform the nature, and
from what has seemed dead and cold, and bound in an impenetrable husk
of conventionality, will evolve a sweet and gracious growth, as the
flower springs from the seed that to ignorant eyes gave no promise of
containing such a treasure.
But alas! some seeds are sterile; some natures have no capacity for
love; some pupils go to the great master’s school and learn nothing
but some parrot phrases, some poor smattering of their lesson, some
imitation of what they hear their fellow pupils so joyously recite.
They soon leave school, and they leave it just about as ignorant as
they entered it; they have no capacity for learning, and they do not
even know that there was anything more to learn than their own poor
hollow phrases.
For such a pupil it does not matter whether she were bred in the lap of
luxury or in the barren home of poverty; she cannot love, and so she
cannot be a good wife for a poor man or a rich one. She has missed the
aim of her existence, for, no matter what heights the coming woman may
attain, or what power she may wield, she will never get beyond that
old, old axiom, the true creed of womanhood--“The greatest thing in the
world is love.”
XVI.
THE DECEITS OF LOVE.
One of the advantages proposed to themselves by those ingenious persons
who “make love” to other persons of the opposite sex is the coming into
possession of a kindred soul to which he or she may communicate every
thought as it arises, find an echo for every opinion, and sympathy for
each emotion.