cogitation, that no one but his young friend Portia could have caused
him to receive the impressively simple card which lay before him,
reading: “The Pleasure of your Company is requested at the First Annual
Gentlemen’s Day at the Club of the Bachelor Maids.” Therefore, before
dispatching his acknowledgment to the house committee, he wrote to
Portia that he should be more than happy to accept the invitation if
she would be good enough to accompany him and see him safely through.
To this she acceded with a promptness that implied her anticipation of
the suggestion; and so the designated afternoon found them entering the
portal together. I quote the account of his experiences as exactly as I
can remember it.
“The house, which had been remodelled out of two dwellings in the
fifties near the avenue, was very interestingly although simply
furnished, in colonial fashion for the most part. There was a spacious
public room with tapestried walls and wicker furniture, a library and
a reading-room with home-like fireplaces, and an extensive lunch and
dinner-room in mahogany and cream. I understood that there were also
Turkish baths in the basement, and a sun parlor and a garden on the
roof, but these were not shown.
“When I turned my attention from the furnishings to the company which
had assembled in the larger rooms, I realized the truth of a recent
observation that our American women are steadily improving in personal
appearance. There was never, to be sure, any crying need for such
improvement. Yet, after examining the portraits of early American
women by Copley, West, and Stuart, hung in the dinner-room, or the
loan collection of Malbone and Staigg miniatures in the library, it
was impossible not to be forcibly struck by the living faces about
them. Whether due to the operation of natural selection or to our
national crossing of races, to modern intellectual advancement or
to contemporary social emphasis on better air, food, and exercise,
I cannot say. But the superiority of the modern women in symmetry
and grace, delicacy and modulation of coloring, and in variety and
individuality of expression, was beyond question. The splendid carriage
of many of the guests and their refined voices, Mr. Henry James to the
contrary notwithstanding, were a delight at the moment, and have been a
pleasant memory ever since.
“Portia was so much pleased at my pleasure, that she was quite
willingly drawn to a recess whence I could look and where she could
elucidate without interruption. There she told me what she could
concerning the possessors of such aesthetic mouths, lustrous eyes, and
autumn-tinted hair as especially fascinated my gaze.
“I ventured also to inquire about the wearers of particular gowns, for
even my masculine eye could perceive, here and there, certain rare
harmonies of costume with appearance and bearing, and I was flattered
to be told of almost every person who thus attracted my attention that
she was generally thought to be especially interesting. Whereupon
I jotted down in my pilgrim’s scrip the observation that, in spite
of fashion, dress may yet sometimes become a subtle expression of
personality. Portia, indeed, told me that fashion troubled some of
these ladies so little that one of them had made an aphorism to the
effect that ‘Individual women are seldom in fashion; they are usually
in advance of it.’ Which saying I remembered instead of my own.
“This phrase and its maker, a gifted designer of jewelry, deflected
our conversation to the subject of occupations, it being a
qualification for membership in the club that ‘one must be somebody
or do something for one’s self,’ as Portia put it; a requirement more
strictly enforced than that of the celibacy implied by the name of
the organization. As one member and another appeared or passed with
her guests, Portia singled out for me the architect and the decorator
who had planned and furnished the house, and then the florist who
had arranged the decorations, and the caterer who had provided the
unique refreshments of the day. There were also numerous librarians
and settlement workers, two successful real estate operators, and
the manager of an important branch of the office work of a huge life
insurance company. One handsome, middle-aged woman, that I took to be
one of the philanthropic patrons who had made the club’s equipment
possible, Portia singled out as a practitioner of what struck me as
the most interesting profession of all--a department-store critic. It
was her function to make a daily survey of every part of one of our
immense emporiums in order, from her observation, her knowledge of
other shops, and of their patrons’ tastes, to make suggestions for
improvements in stock, display, or service. I saw also a number of
artists and authors, reviewers and publishers’ readers. In one of the
rooms an excellent programme was being rendered by several members
representative of a musical group, which alternated with similar
literary, artistic, and dramatic coteries, in providing entertainment
for a series of weekly club evenings throughout the winter.
“Upon my making particular inquiry concerning such of the club’s
members as were graduates of our colleges for women, Portia for a
time devoted her attention to representatives of that class. A number
of these, naturally enough, were college instructors. Several were
physicians and hospital officials; one, an attorney, was probation
officer in a juvenile court; two were on the editorial staff of
newspapers. Many found regular employment in religious or philanthropic
enterprises; only one was in business--as assistant to the secretary of
a large electrical company.
“When I was unoriginal enough to ask the conventional question
concerning the general attitude of college women toward marriage,
Portia gave what I instantly recognized as the only possible answer,
inconclusive as it was: the college woman was as yet too recent a
phenomenon for any generalization about her to be safe. The particular
question of her attitude to marriage could be solved only by the
well-nigh impossible process of comparing equal groups of college and
non-college women of the same social kind. Such indications as there
were showed no great differences, except perhaps that college women
were likely to marry somewhat later.
“Indeed, I found that the club was intended, for one thing, to be a
sort of outpost for studying and, if need be, aiding the solution
of just such problems in the economic and social life of women,
‘especially of such as would go a-careering,’ in the words of the
phrase-maker. Among the many announcements on a bulletin board, I saw
that a well-known litterateur--or should one say litteratrice?--was
to speak on Madame de Staël, George Sand, and Mrs. Browning; a
philanthropist on Madame Roland and the Countess Schimmelmann; a
psychologist on Marie Bashkirtseff and Mary MacLean. And there
were lists of conferences on physiology and hygiene, sociology and
economics, and religion and philanthropy, in addition to announcements
of the weekly entertainments already mentioned.
“Another bulletin bore an equal number of announcements of all sorts of
outside recreations, from the opera and selected theatres to golf and
Adirondack camps.
“In all of its activities the organization displayed not only the same
energy but also the same breadth of view. The cant of sentimentality
and the anti-cant of grievance were alike conspicuously absent.
The club picture gallery included Rossetti’s ‘Blessed Damozel’ and
Alma-Tadema’s ‘Cleopatra,’ as well as portraits of Susan B. Anthony and
the Countess of Warwick. Its library contained social studies as unlike
as Aristophanes’ ‘Ladies in Parliament’ and Mary Wollstonecraft’s
‘Vindication of the Rights of Women;’ and philosophic deductions as
opposed as Comte’s ‘Worship of Women’ and Schopenhauer’s ‘Woman as
Insufficient Reason.’ The only piece of militant feminism anywhere to
be seen was one of a series of inscriptions on oaken panels:
_Women have risen to high excellence
In every art whereto they give their care._
On closer inspection, I found this to be a quotation from Ariosto.
Beside it was an inscription from Herbert Spencer which read: ‘If
women comprehended all that is contained in the domestic sphere, they
would ask no other.’ That the club realized the humorous as well as
the serious suggestion of such juxtaposition was proved by one of the
mantelpieces, where rested side by side an effigy of Egypt’s great
queen Hatasu, and a fragment of a Roman matron’s epitaph, reading, ‘She
stayed at home and span.’
“When I asked Portia to what conclusions, if any, her club life had led
her, she confessed to only a few, and those very tentative. As compared
with the married women of her acquaintance whose cultivation was
equal to that of her fellow club members, most of the latter appeared
over-serious, self-distrustful, or inconsistent. A few seemed to find
full activity and satisfaction in careers for which they obviously
possessed decided gifts. But the majority, after a certain eagerness
for experience and self-realization had become satisfied, seemed to be
but half-heartedly filling in their time while anticipating or desiring
something else. This attitude, together with the census statistics,
appeared to indicate that the chief career for the great majority of
women was still through marriage. Whether it was becoming less so for
the kind of women the club comprised, and if this were the case, what
was the alternative--these were among the questions upon which the
organization held itself open to conviction.
“For herself, Portia was happy still to be in the mood of acquisition:
there were many things that she was eager to learn and to experience
before it became time to inquire what she was going to be. As yet she
had got no further than realizing that, while being a bachelor woman
seemed to have obvious limitations, it was surely extremely pleasant to
be a bachelor maid.
“I very honestly replied that, considering her youth and her
opportunities, I would not have her feel differently--certainly not at
present.”
XX
_A Small College_
Professor Maturin has always questioned the somewhat popular belief
that the small college, once so important, is about to disappear
between the portentously rumbling upper and nether millstones of the
universities and the public schools. He was therefore more than glad to
accept, in the form of an invitation to visit a professorial friend at
a country college, an opportunity to see for himself.
During two hundred express-train miles away from the metropolis, and
twenty more deliberate ones away from the main line, he thought a
good deal about the matter, not without regret that the German ideal
of specialized scholarship should completely overcome the English
ideal of general culture. After the professor’s cordial greetings,
conversation at once turned to this topic. The professor, however, was
so unapprehensive that he claimed attention rather for the attractive
situation of his town, after remarking that, as a matter of fact, the
small colleges were increasing in attendance and resources much more
rapidly, in proportion, than the great universities. His own college,
in the last five years, had enlarged its endowment from three hundred
thousand to nearly a million dollars, and its attendance from two
to nearly four hundred students. Five hundred was to be the limit,
the president and his faculty being unanimous in believing that no
college should be too large to give attention to every student every
day in every class. “This was sufficiently reassuring,” said Professor
Maturin, as he told me about it, “to permit my attending comfortably to
my surroundings, which were indeed charming.” I continue the account in
his own words.
“The college campus stretched along the main street, at the southern
end of the town--a large rectangle of wonderful greensward, resulting
from the English recipe of watering for a hundred years, and guarded by
a small army of enormous elms that must have been already in occupation
when the tract was bought from the provincial proprietors, in the early
years of the republic. Here stood the two buildings that accommodated
all the academic and domestic life of the college during its first
half century. Both of native limestone, with softer brownstone
trimmings, the older was a notable example of the best American public
architecture of an hundred years ago. The dozen other buildings nearby
were similarly landmarks in the later history of the institution.
“The brownstone and dark brick chapel gave its lower floor to the
libraries of the college and the literary societies, which made a total
of about forty thousand volumes, some of them purchased and imported
in bulk by the founders of the college. For student use the collection
seemed quite adequate, not indeed for specialization, but certainly
for the fundamental, general training for which the college stood.
The work of the freshman and sophomore years consisted largely of
required subjects, the junior and senior years largely of electives.
This system, long in vogue, proved most acceptable, particularly to
such graduates as my friend the professor, who had taken in college,
Latin, Greek, French, and German; much English, some history, and
a little economics; geology, physics, chemistry, physiology, and
hygiene; mathematics up to and including calculus and astronomy;
logic, psychology, ethics, and an introduction to philosophy--surely a
broad foundation for his subsequent specialization in history. Later
experience made him wish that he had studied also biology, sociology,
and something of music and the fine arts. The first two of these were
now provided by the institution.
“I had long heard of the president of the college as a distinguished
clergyman and a more than kindly man. My first meeting with him left
an impression of rarely mingled strength and fineness that every
subsequent conversation but confirmed and deepened. I saw most of
the professors, next morning, ranged on the chapel platform, and
I subsequently learned to know all of them, either personally, or
through my friend’s characterizations. This acquaintance was entirely
in rebuttal of the charge that all professors belong to the mutually
exclusive classes of those who know their subjects and those who love
their students. These professors, almost to a man, managed to do both.
The amount of wise and kindly personal consideration given to every
student was little short of incredible, and had notable results in both
character and culture. A better-mannered set of undergraduates I never
saw, and this in spite of the fact that the freshmen indicated, for
the most part, that the college had to work with more than ordinarily
raw material. Something in the atmosphere added a fineness to the
prevailing vigor, which delighted the eyes of a visitor accustomed to
city anaemia, and produced a host of generous customs like doffing the
hat to professors and standing in chapel while the president passed.
“I could not see that my friend’s very considerable scholarship was
hindered by the obligation that he felt to know the name and something
of the nature of each of his students. Indeed, I think that it was
rather helped. His intellectual life had a freedom from dreaminess, on
the one hand, and from pedantry, on the other, that I could attribute
to no other cause. Such constant and intimate contact with youthful
immaturity and ignorance would probably cause deterioration in a man
of inferior ability and training, but my friend was both able and well
trained, and so were most of his colleagues. His college course had
been immediately followed by a year at one American university, and two
years at another. Then, after an interval of teaching, he had had six
months in England and a year and a half on the Continent, finishing in
Germany with a doctor’s degree and a dissertation of real historical
value. The others had had similar experiences, the language men,
particularly, having enjoyed prolonged foreign residence.
“I was interested to learn that the head of the department of
English, although an inspiring teacher and a writer of originality
and distinction, had never been to college at all, but had gained
his training and had amassed his really notable scholarship entirely
through private instruction, individual reading, and extensive travel,
and had come to his professorship only after a successful career
as a critic and an editor. I was sufficiently impressed by this to
inquire of the president how he avoided the requirement I had heard
more than one university officer make, that every instructor should be
the possessor of a doctor’s degree. He answered almost abruptly: ‘In
selecting our staff, as everything else, we try to ignore the union
label. It is always the sign of the conventional, and the conventional,
especially in the humanities, too often means the mediocre.’ And then
he changed the subject. That was surely radical educational doctrine,
but in this case, at least, it was certainly justified by the results.
“In fine, the faculty seemed to me quite equal to the average of
a university staff, and, because of their constant accessibility,
appeared to be considerably more influential as teachers of immature
students.
“Most of the professors lived near the college. My friend was the
owner of an attractive small house, with a bit of ground, opposite
the campus, computing the entire carrying cost at less than three
hundred dollars a year. Adequate food and service were equally
available and cheap. ‘Indeed, I have,’ he said, very earnestly,--I
take pains to quote him exactly,--‘I have the smallest quarrel that
it is possible to have with the academic income. Ours is not the ill
fortune of those professors who suffer privation because ambitious
presidents and business-like trustees agree that advertising is better
than instruction, and spend on unessential but showy buildings funds
that would relieve the men on their staff from financial anxieties
distracting in themselves and occasioning those efforts to earn from
outside sources which so often seriously undermine a professor’s
academic usefulness, if not his intellectual and physical health. We
manage to live on the two thousand dollars which is the professorial
stipend here, knowing that proportion of the income of the college
to be a generous proof of its belief in the primary importance of
instruction. We decrease the numerator to suit the denominator. We
seek the simplest food, clothing, and furnishings; reduce service to a
minimum; buy fewer books; take shorter vacations; give less to charity,
and nothing to public causes. Not being able to have what we want,
we succeed pretty well in enjoying what we have, sustained by the
intellectual and moral satisfactions of our calling--except sometimes.
We, of course, become accustomed to the humiliating knowledge that the
public does not consider our labor and devotion worth paying highly
for. But the realization that the meagreness of our incomes, by more
and more separating our lives from those of other men, is steadily
decreasing our usefulness and influence--that is at times hard to bear.
“‘So far as living in a small town is concerned, save for the spice
of variety which one may store up in vacation, it furnishes ideal
nourishment for the intellectual life. The time at one’s command seems
almost inexhaustible, and there are practically no distractions. Our
social circle is limited, but interesting. Lacking the opera, our
ladies become fair pianists. In place of museums of art, they have a
club that studies art appreciation and history. Instead of going to the
theatre, we read and talk of books, of which we know a few well rather
than many slightly. Being devoid of the opportunity and hence free
from the obligation of winnowing the current ephemera of my specialty,
I am constantly occupied, instead, with the monumental, permanent
contributions to the subject. One cannot do both things, and I am
content with my enforced choice.’
“The students were unquestionably gainers by their rural environment.
They evidently studied a great deal, that being the most interesting
occupation available. The cheapness of the place enabled many of them
to obtain for a low tuition and a ridiculously low cost of living,
a training they would elsewhere have been unable to pay for. For
recreation they spent much time in the gymnasium, on the athletic
field, and wandering far through the charming surrounding country.
There was a not unhealthy amount of what is known as college and class
spirit, with the numerous traditional customs thereto attendant.
“I could not see that the fraternities, which played a large part in
the student life, did anything more than give to natural tastes and
tendencies an organization that helped the student to see qualities,
and the faculty to watch defects, in the mass. The religious life
of the place impressed me as abundant and powerful, but in no way
overstrained. When I saw some of the young ladies whose habit it was
to be at home to students on Friday evenings, I wished myself a youth
again. The boys repaid their kindness in many ways, not the least
pleasing of which was the serenading which invariably followed the
closing of the fraternity meetings, which were held from ten o’clock
to midnight on the night preceding the weekly holiday--a custom that
seemed to satisfy the youthful desire to act very much grown up, at the
small price of consequent sleepiness. The healthy spirit of the place
frowned on actual dissipation.
“Thinking over my visit, during the return journey, I realized that
the whole question of the relative usefulness of the metropolitan
university and the rural college reduces to an estimate of the
comparative values of the large and the small, the near and the remote,
of efficiency and culture. Our national environment and history have
emphasized the importance of the large, the immediate, the efficient.
But there is always much to be said on both sides of every question,
and it is at least possible that enough importance has not been
attributed to the small, the distinctive, the fine.
“On the whole,” concluded Professor Maturin, “I am inclined to disagree
with my friends in the universities, and to believe that the future of
the small college is bright rather than dark.”
XXI
_Old Town Revisited_
I found Professor Maturin, the other evening, recently returned from a
visit to the home of his youth with a bundle of such pleasant memories
that I set them down as nearly in his own words as possible, without
any of the inquiries and the interruptions of appreciation that they
inevitably drew from me.
“In the first part of the journey thither, repeated efforts failed to
conjure up anything like a full and definite picture of the place. But,
suddenly, as so often happens, the mists of memory cleared, and it
seemed as though I had never been away. This almost theatrical change
causing me to look about with surprise, I became quickly aware that the
train had swung into the beginning of what we used to call ‘The Happy
Valley.’ With a sigh of content, I sank back into the comfort of old
adjustments, with a sense of their completeness that could come only
from a knowledge of later maladjustments to compare them with.