worried air. "She fully intends to devote herself to that society and
make it a success, and she does so for a few weeks. Indeed, she raises
money enough to employ a superintendent, and through him to give an
exhibition of a poor man's house as it ought to be furnished, and by
way of speaking contrast a poor man's house as it is too apt to be
furnished when he has money enough to furnish it gaudily. And then she
helps get out the annual report, which mentions progress, and shows a
balance of $1.42 in the treasury, which leads her to make the
announcement that in order to insure the successful continuation of a
movement calculated to serve as a potent aesthetic influence among the
unenlightened, the liberal contributions made by friends must be
renewed in the fall. And then, there are so many other things she has
to do. Just listen, philosopher, to what the poor thing has become in
less than a year since her life appeared in the newspaper, and tell me
what she is to do.
Sec. 1. Second Vice-President of the American Cremation Society.
Sec. 2. Member of Text Committee of the Society to Improve the Morals of
Persons Undergoing Sentence.
Sec. 3. Chairman of the Inspecting Committee of the Sterilized Milk
Association.
Sec. 4. Vice-President of the American Mothers' Kindergarten Association.
Sec. 5. Life member of Society to Protect the Indians.
Sec. 6. Honorary member of the Press Women's Social and Beneficent Club.
Sec. 7. Member of the Forty Associates Sewing Bee (luncheon club).
Sec. 8. Third Vice-President of the Woman's Club, and active participator
in the following courses of original work arranged by the members of
the Club:
(_a_) Literary Course for 1897-98. Shakespeare's Women. The
Dramatists of the Elizabethan Period.
(_b_) Scientific Course for 1897-98. Darwin's Theory of
Earth-worms. The present Status of the Conflict between Science
and Religion. Recent Polar Expeditions.
(_c_) Political Course for 1897-98. The Tariff Bills of American
History. The Theory of Bimetallism.
Sec. 9. Member of The Moliere Club. (Class to read French plays one
evening a fortnight.)
Sec. 10. President of the Home Beautifying Society. (Her pet interest.)
Sec. 11. To say nothing of dinner-parties, receptions, ladies' luncheons,
the opera, concerts, authors' readings, and other more or less
engrossing social diversions and distractions.
"There!" continued Josephine. "And this does not include the thought
and worry she spends upon Mrs. J. Webb Johnston."
"And who, pray, is Mrs. J. Webb Johnston?" I asked.
"Her fascinating, deadly, and demoralizing rival," answered Josephine,
with a mournful wag of the head. "I am really very sorry, my dear
philosopher, that this fresh complication has appeared, for I really
think your Mrs. Sherman had all she could attend to already. But I
must be faithful to the truth, even though our cherished hopes are
thereby frustrated. Mustn't I, philosopher?"
"Certainly," said I; "but since you instead of me seem to be writing
this letter, I suggest that it is time to give our correspondents time
to breathe by beginning a fresh paragraph."
To _A Modern Woman_ with Social Ambitions. III.
"Just as you men--merchants, lawyers, or doctors--" pursued Josephine,
reflectively, "deliberately or unconsciously contrast yourselves with
your fellows in the same calling and become friendly rivals yet
competitors for success and renown, it seems to be inevitable that the
modern woman with social ambitions should keep her eye on other modern
women with social ambitions and try to make sure that they do not get
ahead of her. Your Mrs. Sherman, at the time the newspaper woman
visited her, had reached the point where it would naturally occur to
her to scan the horizon to observe how the other feminine celebrities
of her environment were progressing, and her attention was especially
called to the matter by the article on 'Progressive Women.' There she
had the opportunity to behold them in their respective glories, and to
be jealous of or indifferent to them, according to her judgment as to
what each amounted to. It was an interesting list, and she experienced
in perusing it, in conjunction with the portraits, some qualms of mild
envy on account of several of the progressionists, but the only face
and career which really discouraged her were the face and career of
the woman I have referred to, Mrs. J. Webb Johnston, or, as every one
calls her, Mrs. Webb Johnston.
"When she had finished she felt herself essentially on a par with the
others; but in the case of Mrs. Webb Johnston she experienced a frog
in her throat, and she looked into distance with a harassed air for
more than five minutes. Mrs. Webb Johnston was not a stranger to her,
but she was comparatively a novelty. That is, she had appeared on the
social stage since Mrs. Sherman herself had become prominent, and had
been making mushroom-like progress; such rapid progress in fact that
it was only when she read the text of the article that she realized
the extent of it. Then it came over her with a rush that she was in
peril of being distanced on her own ground. For, to all intents and
purposes, they were rivals. Their visiting lists were practically the
same; they represented and appealed to the same constituency. In
personal appearance she could not justly claim any superiority to Mrs.
Webb, who was at least three years her junior in age, and who
possessed a certain luscious, Juno-like beauty which was calculated,
without question, to dazzle undiscriminating eyes, and which would not
be regarded except by the very subtle as inferior in type to her own
refined effectiveness. Yes, there was no doubt about Mrs. Webb's
physical charms, or her great executive ability, or her enthusiastic
devotion to the entire range of interests over which she herself was
aiming to hold undisputed sway. Her own ambition was to be the guiding
spirit, the modern, original social force above all other modern
social forces in her constituency; yet here was another with an
evidently similar ambition, and a war-cry or shibboleth which was
disconcertingly fetching. I trust you have appreciated, philosopher,
that our Mrs. Sherman (I am really sorry for her now, so I call her
'our'), from the very first, has been decorously conservative in her
point of view, eschewing cheap and vagabond devices and adhering to
elegant and appropriately conventional usages, such as seemed to befit
a conscientious woman eager to lead public opinion. If dignified
conservatism has been her ruling motive, you will readily appreciate
that it would disturb her to find that a Bohemian looseness of social
vision distinguished her rival, who had been working her way to the
front by the specious cry of 'liberty,' and a seductively expressed
intention of freeing the community from the manacles of old fogy
conventions. I am sure you will agree, philosopher, that it is natural
she should have been worried, or, at least, distracted from settling
down to her 'Art in Humble Homes' by this discovery. And investigation
and reflection only serve to agitate her still further; for, as the
weeks go by, it becomes more and more obvious that the things
indicated in the article are true--that Mrs. Webb Johnston is hand in
glove with authors, actors, opera-singers, and other celebrities, and
that the entertainments which she gives and the conversation heard
there lack the dull, cut-and-dried, mechanical flavor observable at
ordinary social gatherings. You see the situation, don't you, dear?"
(As Josephine's prophecy has assumed an essay-like or argumentative
form, it does not seem to me advisable to interrupt its flow for my
correspondents by reciting our side observations, unless they would be
material or elucidating. Although her appropriation of my Mrs. Sherman
has proved to be a kidnapping of a very serious character, and her
conversation is bracketed as a "note," still her remarks seem to me so
pertinent that I am prepared to adopt them as a part of my letter.)
"The most perplexing thing, philosopher, for a modern woman with
social ambitions who wishes to emulate Madame Recamier or Madame de
Stael, is that we have no standards in this country. Public opinion is
the only test of conduct. The progressive woman is expected on the one
hand to be original, and yet on the other to guide correctly, and
public opinion reserves the right to follow blindly and to applaud
egregiously and afterward to condemn the leaders whom it has flattered
into folly. An ambitious woman (or a man, for the matter of that)
needs to-day a clear head, a high sense of responsibility, and a sense
of humor if she or he would avoid being led astray by the
will-o'-the-wisp crew of surface society livers which pursues talent
and originality only to be amused, and who, provided it is amused,
forgives everything else, and eggs the performer on to believe that
its shallow approval is the real verdict of society. This crew,
brought into being by mere wealth, lacking purpose and sneering at it
if it threatens to interfere with the progress of the merry-go-round,
and backed by the army of society reporters and tittle-tattlers, is a
growing factor in our large cities and serves to debauch public
sentiment by more and more audacious or frivolous ventures concerning
the orthodoxy of which it claims to be the only intelligent judge. We
are accustomed to sneer at the formal and confining conventions of
older civilizations on the ground that liberty of action is thereby
checked and life made artificial, but are we not beginning to discover
that there are advantages in a definite prescription as to what
gentlemen and ladies can do as compared with a happy-go-lucky system
of individual competition in social experiments which, however vulgar
and demoralizing, are invariably puffed and glorified by the social
gossip editors of a host of newspapers? The subsequent course of Mrs.
Sherman's career is an illustration of the plight in which a modern
woman with social ambitions is liable to find herself as a result of
the democratic habit of constituting the half-educated and often
morally obtuse society reporter, her successors and assigns, the sole
arbiter of what is socially elegant and invigorating.
"Setting aside the matter of the ethics of her egotism, our lady in
question is animated by a conscientious desire to be a refining and
admirable influence. It is her ambition to lead, but to lead nobly and
unimpeachably. Her entertainments and her posture in and toward
society have been pursued on this principle, and she has believed the
effect produced by her to be irreproachable intellectual elegance,
redeemed from formalism or dullness by scintillating vivacity. The
suggestion, therefore, that she is behind the times gives her a
genuine shock. She has hitherto prided herself on her mental acumen
and on her knowingness. She has considered that she knew life to the
dregs, so to speak, for she had passed through a course of French, and
translated Russian novels, and acquired thereby a knowledge of things
evil, which she kept stored in her inner consciousness as a source of
pride and an antidote against undue primness in matters sexual and
social. She begins to ask herself if it can possibly be true that she
is an old fogy, and lacks breadth of view, and that society in its
demands for liberty of conduct and agreeable entertainment is prepared
to discard, as outworn and futile, conventions and limitations which
she has been disposed to consider essential to civilized and decent
deportment. As the result of this reasoning she resolves to cap her
rival's next venture with something of her own. So it happens that not
long after Mrs. Webb Johnston has summoned a few select spirits to sup
and witness Miss Almira Wing, a visiting coryphee, do a skirt dance,
Mrs. Sherman issues notes of invitation to what is mysteriously
specified as 'An Eclipse Smoke Talk.' This proves to be a small
gathering of choice souls to observe a total eclipse of the moon due
at two o'clock in the morning from her own roof, and to listen to
remarks by a leading astronomer secured for the occasion. This
entertainment is a success, and serves to give her new heart. It was
bold, still decent. She has preserved her self-respect, yet shown
herself alive to the necessity of being original. She is prompt to
reinforce it by an evening with a Russian Nihilist, a young woman
reputed to have been prominent in plots to assassinate the Czar, and
who makes a specialty of narrating her experiences after a Welsh
rabbit, cigarette in mouth. Naturally, these enterprises spur Mrs.
Webb Johnston to fresh efforts of the imagination. Her guests are
beguiled at her next evening by a paper on 'Life among the Mormons,'
delivered by one of the early female disciples of that community. No
men are invited on this occasion. A fortnight later a very small and
secretly invited company are bidden to behold an exhibition of the
vagaries of a hypnotic patient.
"This enlargement of her horizon, though stimulating, puts Mrs.
Sherman on tenter-hooks. It becomes necessary for her to keep
accurately posted as to the comings of celebrities in order to get the
first 'go' at them, so to speak, before they fall into the clutches of
her rival. As a consequence, aspirants in every line of art or
accomplishment who desire to win the patronage of the public ask for
the use of her name and receive it. She had been nervous and
over-occupied before, but now her days are passed in a ferment. She
has recourse to tonics and to sleeping draughts. She feels elated at
the success of her enfranchisement, but a feverish interest as to what
Mrs. Webb Johnston will do next keeps her uneasy. Nor has she
forgotten her serious intentions. She tries to assure herself that her
progressiveness is for the benefit of society, and that she is leading
it in noble directions. She still retains her scruples. She draws the
line on women celebrities of unchaste life. In this she refuses to be
led astray by her rival's practices. Mrs. Webb Johnston's openly
avowed theory had been that where art was concerned, she chose to ask
no questions. Accordingly, she took to her bosom, socially, any one
who was brilliant or attractive; and every notoriously erotic actress,
singer, dancer, or other artist whose talent had caught the public
fancy was invited to her house, and became privileged on very short
acquaintance to kiss her and call her by her first name.
"Mrs. Sherman's conscience obliges her to draw this line, but she is
conscious that it is an inconvenience to do so, which puts her at a
disadvantage. Mrs. Webb Johnston has merely to swoop down on the
hotel, or insinuate herself behind the scenes, and offer her visiting
card, and presently her cheek, in order to carry off the prize. She
cannot but feel that there are advantages in the Bohemian democratic
point of view which asks no questions, but takes the good without
heeding the ill.
"By refusing social recognition to women whose private characters are
disreputable, she is shutting herself off from alluring friendships
with sopranos, contraltos, tragediennes, skirt-dancers, music-hall
singers, and many other brilliant and fascinating creatures whose
presence at her house could not fail to make her entertainments
interesting to her guests. All these women are sought out and
cherished by Mrs. Webb Johnston.
"The old adage that there are other ways of killing a cat than choking
her with cream, comes pertinently to mind in this connection.
Conscience is apt to be a tyrant if deliberately overridden, but it
may be hoodwinked with comparative complacency. Mrs. Sherman remains
true to her principle of excluding meretricious characters from social
intercourse with her guests, but she reserves to herself the right of
passing on the evidence. Seeing that she had read Madame Bovary and
Anna Karenina, was she not amply qualified to detect immorality at
first blush? That seemed to be almost an essential attribute of a
modern woman with social ambitions.
"The occasion for putting into practice this prerogative was not far
to seek. The arrival from Europe of one of the most brilliant of the
galaxy of foreign actresses brings her heart into her mouth. She reads
eagerly everything which the newspapers have to say about her, and
naturally finds nothing there suggestive of impropriety. She buys and
scans photographs, and these merely serve to heighten the ideal
estimate which has shaped itself in her mind. She refuses to entertain
sundry rumors which have reached her to the effect that the lady in
question has been successively maintained by a French marquis, and a
Russian banker, and was at present reputed to be on unduly intimate
terms with the famous leading man of her own troupe. To the person who
has confided to her these whisperings she answers, 'I don't believe a
word of it,' and then adds, significantly, 'Wait.' The person is a
man, and he shrugs his shoulders. But her soul is jubilant in its
faith and in the hope that at last she has found a way to compete with
Mrs. Webb Johnston.
"On the day when the actress arrives in town Mrs. Sherman goes to see
her. The meeting is by appointment at ten o'clock in the morning, and
lasts more than two hours. They come down-stairs together with the
mien of happy sisters. Mrs. Sherman's face wears a seraphic smile. Her
carriage is in waiting, and in it they are driven to her home for
luncheon, and on the same evening cards are issued for an
after-theatre supper-party as a preliminary announcement of impending
festivities. She sends for the man who told her the rumors, and in a
triumphant tone says, 'My friend, your stories are untrue; I have been
to headquarters. I have seen her and asked her, and she has assured
me, with tears in her eyes, that they are a wicked falsehood--a
malicious, baseless slander.'
"'Surely,' says the man, 'she ought to know,' and then he shrugs his
shoulders again, a caustic act which, though done as a friend,
provokes Mrs. Sherman to anger, and puts a chasm between them.
"On this day the cat is killed, and yet the cream is saved. True to
her principles, Mrs. Sherman still bars her doors against the wanton,
yet never fails to convince herself that she is an infallible judge of
virtue. If there are rumors and whisperings in advance, she invariably
takes the bull, or, more accurately speaking, the heifer, by the horns
and puts the inquiry. The answer settles the matter. It becomes a
veritable 'open sesame' to her entertainments and her friendship. She
shows herself in public with her arm, metaphorically and literally,
around the waist of women whom all men know to be unchaste and living
in violation of social laws. They kiss and talk poetry and art and
philosophy, and her face gleams with the consciousness of new
importance and the realization of her ambition.
"Mrs. Sherman has now reached the point where she feels that she can
fairly regard herself as the most busily progressive woman of her
community. She has a finger in every pie, literary, artistic,
philanthropic, educational, and what not. She is always in a hurry,
and she does nothing thoroughly. Her ideas jostle against each other
in their promiscuity, and become all jumbled together in her
consciousness. Her time is so occupied that when she is doing one
thing and talking to one person, some other thing or person is in her
mind, though her social skill often enables her to conceal the fact.
Her life is one continuous series of kaleidoscopic sensations and
emotions without system or result. She is ostensibly a leader, but her
leadership suggests only ceaseless activity and indiscriminate,
superficial posings and vanities. Her nerves are kept in a constant
state of tension by breathless comings and goings, her digestion
perpetually tried by the viands of festivities. Nor is her conscience
satisfied. A vague unrest pursues her still, torturing her by
insinuations of her own utter futility, yet goading her on to fresh
efforts. She presently becomes a wreck morally, mentally, and
physically, though she preserves a bold front to the world, until one
day the news is flashed upon a busy public that she has died suddenly
from 'heart failure' following an attack of pneumonia. The physician
in attendance shakes his head when asked to give assurance of her
recovery. He possesses an instinctive knowledge that she has kept her
vitality keyed up to concert pitch by antipyrine, phenacetine, and the
other drugs to the use of which modern progressive women are addicted.
And so no more of Mrs. Alexander Sherman.
"Of course," continued Josephine, "it was not strictly necessary to
kill her. The constitutions of some progressive women seem to be proof
against anything. But the chances were in favor of her death. And if
the poor thing had lived, what hope was there for anything but a vapid
old age, haunted by visions of her decreasing notoriety? And the
strangest part of all is that when I began with her I felt hopeful
that she would amount to something. The laws of evolution are not to
be trifled with, however, even by the wives of philosophers."
To _A Modern Woman_ with Social Ambitions. IV.
I feel confident that my correspondent, Number 4, a wife thoroughly
happy in the wedded state, will appreciate that there was nothing
personal in Josephine's portrayal of Mrs. Alexander Sherman's career.
It seems to me that it presents, more clearly than any arguments or
words of mine could do, the perils of egotism and superficiality, and
that I need not further indicate to my correspondents that to do a
little of everything and nothing thoroughly, to be so eager for
individuality or notoriety that one is ready to be led instead of to
lead, and to discard social canons on the plea of liberty or superior
feminine acuteness, will produce a nervous, emotional, gibbering type
of character adapted to cause Madame de Stael or Madame Recamier to
turn in her grave. Neither you, Number 4, nor Number 5, the radiant,
able-bodied spinster, haughtily unconcerned about love and lovers,
need fear any detriment to your souls or to your social progress as a
consequence of doing some one or two things well, and of refusing to
sacrifice your self-respect to the urgency of cheap substitutes for
refinement and elegance. Certainly, thoroughness and delicacy of
thought and sentiment are essential to the modern woman who would be
socially effective in the best sense.