Chapter V: on Greeley is prime, but it is hardly true to say (5)

The Protestant clergy of to-day are sadly weakened by a spirit of compromise. They are afraid to preach Christianity, partly because they do not believe in it, and partly because they are afraid it won’t “draw.” They attempt to beguile men into the church by announcing secular themes, by the discussion of timely political and literary topics. As a matter of fact, the ungodly respect heartily a Christian minister who is absolutely sincere and who confines his sermons to religion, and they despise a vacillating and worldly minded pastor, who seems to apologize for his religion, and who substitutes lectures on politics and socialism for the preaching of the gospel. No mistake is greater than the mistake of the minister who conceives it to be his duty to preach politics from the pulpit. To an audience who have read the daily papers all the week, and the Sunday paper that very morning, nothing is more superfluous than a political discourse in church. I remember the case of a prominent clergyman who, during a whole Presidential campaign, preached Sunday after Sunday against one of the candidates, to a constantly diminishing audience. On the night when the returns came in, the object of his attacks was apparently successful, and he cried out in despair, “What can be done now?” He was effectively answered by one of the ungodly who happened to be present. “I don’t see that there is anything left for you now, Doctor, except to preach the gospel.”

The tremendous strength of the Roman Catholic Church lies in its fidelity to principle, in its religious vitality, and in its hatred of compromise. It should be an object-lesson to all Protestant ministers. They may not believe its dogmas, they may not accept any theological dogmas at all; but they ought to learn that the chief duty of a preacher is to hold forth Christianity, and not to discourse on sanitation, political economy, or literature. People everywhere are eager for the gospel, and always respond to it when it is convincingly set forth, whether by men like Phillips Brooks or men like Billy Sunday. The great Boston bishop never had any trouble in getting an audience; and although he was a man of the highest and broadest cultivation, interested in every modern movement in literature, politics, and art, he never preached anything but the Christian religion. He used all his remarkable gifts in that one direction. The result was that his congregations were enormous, and that he was beloved and respected by all classes of men.

The pastor should be a leader, not a follower. If he has less conviction than his audience, how can he lead them? What would be thought of the general of an army who had no definite ideas as to where he ought to take his men, and no conviction that his cause was good? If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle? The main difficulty with the church to-day is that the people in the pews do not have the gospel preached to them. The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.

THE FEMINIST OF FRANCE

BY ETHEL DEAN ROCKWELL

I

Feminists include as many different kinds of women in France as elsewhere. The term can be applied equally to a George Sand or a Marguérite Audoux. We find the movement as marked, too, in France as in other countries. But the interesting thing about it is that though similar to all the others in basic principles, the French feminist is instinctively individual, always French. Compare her, for instance, with her sister across the channel. In England she bends all her energies to winning the suffrage, to carrying reforms by act of Parliament; in France she takes no part in political campaigns, cares not at all for the vote. In England the ladies of the aristocracy are the prime movers; in France, with few exceptions, the women of the upper classes look on the movement with indifference, and the leaders come from a small group of intelligent and ambitious women of the bourgeoisie. In England women are working for the cause of all women rather than for individual advantage; in France they impress one as working for their own benefit, not for humanity. In England, throwing off their feminine garb, they often become blatant, clamorous, unwomanly; in France, believing that woman’s deadliest weapon is her womanliness, they never withdraw the battery of their feminine charms. In England the feminist is still a conformist to moral law; in France, unfortunately, she is too often a rebel against moral as well as social restrictions.

The tendency has existed in many brilliant women since French history began. We naturally think of the women of the salons, for instance. But they were only sporadic examples of cleverness. A general “woman movement” was not known till the French Revolution.

“Since when have women occupied themselves with politics?” asked Napoleon of Mme. de Staël.

“Since they have been guillotined,” was her reply.

But the Revolution brought them no recognition, for upon its heels came Napoleon, who took from them even that which they had. Two other movements also came to naught: followers of St. Simon, the Socialist, who believed in the complete emancipation of woman and in her entire equality with man, owed their failure to the extravagance of some of their doctrines, and to lack of organization. The other attempt was snuffed out in 1851 with the _coup d’état_ of Napoleon III. Through the twenty years of political reaction succeeding that event, there were always women, often famous, who fought valiantly, if not always wisely, for emancipation; and since the establishment of the republic, their efforts have made uninterrupted headway.

II

We speak of steady advance. Yet measured by American standards, or those of other Northern countries, Frenchwomen must yet travel far to reach the point where these were fifty years ago. Americans accept as a matter of course liberty of thought and action, equal opportunities for study and work, and the respect of men. Frenchwomen are not generally possessed of these blessings. Why this difference? Among many causes, three stand out preëminent--social, civil, and religious reasons.

Socially, France belongs with the Latin races. In these countries man has generally treated woman with gallantry, but not respect, and has received her attempts at higher life in a spirit of mockery which it has been almost impossible to overcome. Because her happiness depended on his good will, her one aim in life has been to please him. As Pierre de Coulevain expresses it, “She is entirely absorbed by man and maternity.” The moral standard of both men and women has been low, and the well-known bargaining about the dowry has added sordidness. The case of the _jeune fille_ serves as an example. Her carefully guarded, restricted life, her interests, and her education, not fitting her to think or to be of service to her community, are too well known to need amplification. It well illustrates how, in Southern countries, their Latin heritage has been a strong social factor in the retarded awakening of women.

In France these conditions were fixed still more immutably by Napoleon’s civil code, which thus becomes the second, or civil, reason. Napoleon’s only use for women was as producers of more men for his wars. “Make them believers, not thinkers,” was his command. In legal status he classed them with children, imbeciles, and criminals. A married woman could possess no property; her husband owned what she brought him in marriage and what she inherited or earned thereafter. The pitiful plight of Balzac’s _Eugénie Grandet_ and her mother was not an exceptional case, but the rule. Furthermore, she could not testify in civil suits, or be a witness to any legal document, or have any part in the family council for the government of her children. Yet this Frenchwoman, a nullity in the eyes of the law, is respected by all the world for her marvelous common sense and managing ability. So marked is this that virtually all the petty retail business in the country is in her hands, and she manages her business, her children, and her husband as a matter of course.

This principle of the subjection of woman to the higher authority of man, installed by immemorial custom, fast bound in civil law by Napoleon’s code, has in general also been emphasized by the church. It has consistently developed the passive virtue of sacrifice and the cheerful acceptance of things as they are. Therefore, although conditions have changed, to-day, and there are many noble Catholic feminists, it has in the past been the exception rather than the rule; and Frenchwomen of the upper classes have been led by their convent training to accept without question the position assigned them by social custom and the Napoleonic code. Two of these three conditions are aptly summed up by Pierre de Coulevain when she says, “France is the land of femininity, not of feminism: femininity is Latin and Catholic; feminism is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.”

Against these germs of arrested development have sprung up other germs which have almost killed the first and have produced the present epidemic of feminism. World forces which affect even China are of course felt in France. One of these is economic pressure. By the introduction of machinery and the constantly increasing cost of living, women of the lower classes have been forced into industry in France as everywhere else, until it has been stated that sixty per cent. of the women of France are now wage-earners. Naturally, then, industrial conditions have compelled them to demand recognition on the same basis as men. In the middle classes this same pressure postpones the age of marriage for the man, thus throwing the burden of support for a longer time on the girl’s father; at the same time it makes it increasingly difficult for the father to provide the necessary dot. It therefore sends girls into professions to ease the family burden, instead of into the convent. “To ease the family burden,” I say, for she seldom works, as do so many American young women, for her own enrichment. Her earnings go to her parents.

Photograph by T. T.
MME. MARGUÉRITE DURAND
Editor and journalist.

Photograph by Chéri-Rousseau
MME. DIEULAFOY
Lecturer and archæologist.

Photograph by Henri Manuel

MME. CURIE

The joint discoverer of radium,
who succeeded her husband
in a chair of physics and
chemistry at the Sorbonne.

From the portrait by Gandara
COUNTESS MATHIEU DE NOAILLES
Novelist and poet.

Photograph by Touranchet
MME. BLANC (~Th. Bentzon~)
Novelist and journalist.
]

Then, too, the tradition that every girl must marry or retire to a convent has left too many women unaccounted for in the social scheme. Four and a half million women in France have no home or children--unmarried women, widows, divorcées, or mothers whose children are grown. Olive Schreiner says that the woman movement is the endeavor on the part of women to find new fields of labor as the old slip from them--a demand for a continued share in the work of the world. And these millions of Frenchwomen with no home ties are clamoring for their share. They claim the privilege of employing their hitherto ingrowing energy in useful work, and in whatever field they wish.

To these economic and social stimuli a third factor should be added--the result of the separation of church and state in 1905; and with time this change will be increasingly felt. Since the convents exerted a conservative influence, their dissolution minimizes that tendency. The convents had been almost exclusively the schools of the girls of the higher classes; they had been the refuge of unmarried and unfortunate women; the sisters had had charge of the hospitals, nursing, and nearly all other charities. But since girls must now follow the nuns to the border countries for their education, not so many go; and those who stay at home receive a more modern and less conservative training. Since the unsought in marriage must leave France in order to take refuge in a convent, more stay in the world. And since the hungry and sick were left without caretakers, other women had to take up the works of charity discontinued by the nuns. Thus perforce, since the separation, new fields of activity, new occupations, new responsibilities have been thrust upon the women of France. The withdrawal of the nuns created a vacuum into which others have rushed.

They are ready for these fresh fields and pastures new. They see women of other nations so engaged, and example is contagious. A gain for feminism in Sweden gives impetus in France; a rebellion against long-established custom in Constantinople gives courage for one in Paris. Above all, the several international women’s conferences that have met in Chicago, Berlin, London, and Paris in the last fifteen years have been great educators, great awakeners. Then, too, Parisians never lack for foreign examples, for Paris is cosmopolitan, and Americans especially she has always with her. The Frenchwoman, who, when her children are grown, is inclined to lose all interest in life, and settle down to old age, sees American grandmothers making a tour of the world, and tries to find the secret of their eternal youth. Thus it may be that as French diplomats have won half Africa by the skilful use of American inventions and institutions, so Frenchwomen may yet win all France by clever adaptation of the American type of woman.

Englishwomen also furnish examples in their interest in sport. “Sport” is fashionable. Bicycling was once a fad; tennis, riding, and swimming are popular. The girls’ schools are now advertising swimming-pools and tennis-courts. For one woman that you met skating thirty years ago, you now meet five hundred. We long ago learned, if we ever had to learn, the moral and intellectual value of exercise. The French, both men and women, are only now discovering it. We find, therefore, that the hothouse products are vanishing, and with them, morbidity, unhealthy thoughts, overstimulated emotions, sluggish brains. In their stead we find healthy bodies, healthy minds, initiative, organizing ability, development of the dormant will power, and last, but not least, natural and unrestrained meeting with men in all sorts of games.

Certain classes of men have been strong and active supporters of the feminist cause. Indeed, this is one of the most characteristic features of the movement in France. It seems sometimes as though the men were more ardent and intelligent feminists than the women themselves. The little band of French Protestants is naturally in the forefront of sympathy for the movement. There are fewer Protestants in all France than there are Jews in New York City, but they exercise an influence for progress far out of proportion to their small number. Almost all literary men, no matter what their creed, and lawyers, teachers, professional men in general, as well as a few deputies and senators, are on the side of the feminists. The constant pounding away on the question by playwrights and poets such as Brieux, Lavédan, Mirbeau, and Jules Bois, has done much to break down prejudice and widen the point of view. The Odéon and Comédie Française have struck sounding blows against the old order of “The Doll’s House,” and novelists like Victor Margueritte, and Marcel Prévost have done their part in arousing sympathy for the _Noras_ of France. Socialists, too, espouse the women’s cause.

III

In the combination of all these causes, then, economic, industrial, cosmopolitan, social, religious, and literary, the awakening has come to the women--and men--of France. The successive steps, seeming slow as they were laboriously gained, become rapid in retrospect. In professional studies, since 1868, when the first woman was admitted to a medical school, one after another all barriers have come down, till to-day all doors are wide open, and in the University of Paris alone there are over two thousand women students. After permission to study and take a degree was obtained, came the more arduous struggle to be allowed to practise their profession, for prejudice acted as a complete boycott. The prejudice was of two sorts. One was that of friends and family, who considered a woman utterly disgraced if she worked. This attitude is still general, and is the cause of untold unhappiness and estrangement. The other prejudice, and a strong one, was from her competitors, the men. Women medical students could obtain their degree, but had no opportunity to attend clinics or to be internes in hospitals. Law students, likewise, could not take the bar examinations or practise. It is owing to the unflagging efforts of two or three able women that this competitive struggle is also now a thing of the past. Mlle. Jeanne Chauvin was the test case in law practice. She won after a long and bitter struggle only ten years ago. In the profession of university teaching women have been on a par with men since Mme. Curie, having twice won the Nobel prize for her benefits to mankind through her chemical discoveries, was appointed to succeed her deceased husband in the chair of physics and chemistry in the Sorbonne. Three years ago she became the test case in yet another contest--a contest over the right of women to public recognition of their attainments by admission to the Academy. In this first engagement, like most pioneers, she lost; but the decision raised such a storm of protest and discussion that there is scarcely a question of the ultimate victory in this also. We shall yet see women taking their honored place among the seats of the famous Forty.

The struggle to change woman’s legal status has been particularly long and hard, and is still in progress. This cause owes much to Mlle. Maria Chéliga, a Pole, who has lived most of her life in Paris, and by her essays, lectures, stories, and plays has awakened public sympathy; and to Mlle. Jeanne Schmahl, editor of “L’Avant Courrière,” who succeeded after many years of effort in getting a bill through the Chamber of Deputies giving to married women the control of their own earnings. At first it failed in the Senate. Undaunted, she worked for eleven years more until, in 1907, she wrested from an unwilling Senate the vote in favor of the bill. For the last five years, therefore, a married woman has been able to spend what she earns, and to have her own bank-account. Within the last four years women at the head of large business houses have been able to vote for the judges of the tribunals of commerce, and thus see that their business interests are not unfairly dealt with by this powerful body. Women teachers have for some time been allowed to vote for the members of the board of education, though women are not eligible for office in either of these bodies. A married woman can now testify, and act as a witness in legal documents. She still has no voice in the family council, a vital institution in France; and if she invests her earnings in furniture or other portable property, these possessions belong to the husband.

Photograph by Henri Manuel JEAN BERTHEROY (~Mme. Le
Barillier~) Poet and historical novelist.

Photograph by Henri Manuel MME. HENRI DE REGNIER (~Gérard
D’Houville~) Poet and novelist.

Photograph by Ogerau MME. SÉVÉRINE A fervent and eloquent public
speaker, whose conférences at the Odéon are a feature of Parisian
life.

Photograph by Nadar JUDITH GAUTIER Daughter of Théophile Gautier.

Photograph by Boisonnas and Tapouler MARCELLE TINAYRE Author of “La
Maison du Péché.”
]

Another sign of the times is the ever-present discussion over the education and training of the _jeune fille_. Thirty years ago there was not a public school for girls in the country. To-day there are many, though five for the whole of Paris seems insufficient. The inadequate curriculum is a constant bone of contention, and has already been much widened and strengthened in both state and Catholic schools to meet the demand for vocational training. The _jeune fille_ is gaining slowly in independence, and we find her in novels, spoken of as looking forward quite naturally to activities and spheres of usefulness outside of, as well as within the home. “A whole woman is too much for a man,” one heroine declares.

Owing to the gap left by the nuns’ departure, we find one important movement of humanitarian interest in the attempts to reorganize and strengthen the profession of nursing. It had been left either to the sisters, who were not always as modern in their methods as could be desired, or to an outside class of _Sairey Gamps_, lower in intelligence and decency than domestic servants. Now they are trying to interest girls of the better classes in the profession, founding training-schools and studying American methods.

The fact that the international professional-women’s club of London, the Lyceum, has now a branch in Paris, and that there are many other women’s clubs, is significant. Till recently the club movement has found no response in France. The woman has been too much occupied in her own household, too much claimed by an army of relatives, to be drawn outside by clubs or anything else for the sake of her own development. Then, again, the Frenchwoman of leisure and ability has been content with her own lot and oblivious of her duty to her less fortunate sisters. She has therefore not felt the need of united effort through club organization for a common humanitarian cause. And even when she has felt this call of duty, she has always shown an astonishing lack of appreciation of the value of system and organization for attaining the desired results. Sixty years ago the feminist pioneers might have succeeded if their efforts had not been scattered and individual. Indeed, even now French feminism gives one an impression of ununified restlessness. That there is now a “club movement,” therefore, shows that at last there is in France desire for individual development, a sense of duty to one’s neighbor, and an appreciation of the value of organization. There are still countless activities that American women are habitually engaged in--municipal improvement, efforts to improve labor conditions, child-labor laws, social settlements, etc.--that have not yet reached France to a noticeable extent. But now that a beginning has been made, we shall look for all these and more.

Marked as is this general leavening of the lump, art and literature show the most complete conquest. The art prizes are all open to women, and at one time or another most of them have been won by women. To say nothing of their success in painting, sculpture, and architecture, women absolutely own the field in illustrating, arts-and-crafts work and in making innumerable small art objects. They also nearly monopolize literature: in essays, poetry, novels, journalism, their name is legion, their influence unbounded.

Journalism in France is an influential literary profession, with strong leaders that no other country can surpass. Women hold responsible positions on the staff of most of the leading French reviews, and contribute an astonishing number of articles, generally under men’s names. Beginning with Mme. Juliette Adam, the line is unbroken. She was the last of the old school, the first of the new, wielding high political influence at first through her salon, then through the pages of the “Nouvelle Révue,” which she founded in 1879. She also wrote novels, essays, and reminiscences. Mme. Sévérine, a fervent and eloquent public speaker, with rather a permanent instinct for revolt, shouts her war-cry in the “Echo de Paris.” The “Révue des Deux-Mondes” and the “Journal des Débats” include on their staff, among other women, Mme. Arvède Barine. Three times has the Academy crowned a work of hers, and she wears the cross of the Legion of Honor, as did Mme. Thérèse Bentzon, who died five years ago. Mme. Blanc, as she was better known, was on the staff of these two periodicals. This estimable woman also wrote novels and essays, some crowned by the Academy. She was especially loved in America, to which she made several visits, because she was the most faithful interpreter to the French of American literature, social customs, and educational methods. She was an ardent Roman Catholic. Mlle. Maria Martin edits the “Journal des Femmes,” and Marguérite Durand, “Les Nouvelles.” The latter is perhaps the most popular woman in France, and charmingly and essentially feminine.

Photograph by Eug. Pirou
MME. PEYREBRUNE
Novelist and poet.

Photograph by Chéri-Rousseau
YVONNE SARCEY
Writer and feminist.

Photograph by Ogerau

MME. ADAM (~Juliette Lamber~)

Founder of the “Nouvelle Révue.”
One of the most influential of
modern Frenchwomen.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
MME. LUCIE DELARUS-MARDRUS
Dramatist and poet.

Photograph by Chéri-Rousseau
MME. LUCIE FÉLIX-FAURE GOYAU
Daughter of Félix Faure.
]

Novelists and poets have much in common. They are rather too apt to be feminists of most advanced type, drowned in a noxious wave of free-thinking, swinging too far in their revolt, and disregarding moral laws.

This epidemic of free-thinking seems to be most evident in the upper classes, leaving the women of the bourgeoisie untouched. But perhaps all this is only the fledgling trying its wings, a phase of development, an ugly stage of self-consciousness, which the French temperament, essentially one of harmony, will sooner or later adjust. In poets this characteristic manifests itself in a tendency to reveal without restraint the inmost secrets of their woman’s soul. Mme. de Noailles, though admitted by men critics to be in the first rank, is no exception. She is also a novelist and is on the staff of the “Révue des Deux-Mondes.” Gérard d’Houville is another poet as well as novelist; and Lucie Delarus-Mardrus another, seeking unusual and exotic effects by travels in Eastern lands. The novelists confine their plots for the most part to studies of feminists. Thus, Marcelle Tinayre’s “La Rebelle” is a beautiful young journalist; her heroine in “Hellé” is a charming example of the noblest type of emancipated young womanhood; Colette Yver’s “Les Dames du Palais” deals with women lawyers and the divorce question; her “Princesses de Science” takes up scientific women. Gabriel Réval’s “Ruban de Venus” shows us artists; and women interested in sociological questions are the heroines of Renée and Tony d’Ulmès. But the inevitable underlying theme of them all is the irresistibility of passion, “the impossibility of woman’s escaping the brutal laws of her own temperament,” as one commentator expresses it. Moreover, the heroines are all selfish in their feminism; they are in search of their individual happiness.

Of the novelists and essayists, more than a passing word should be given to Marcelle Tinayre, conceded by men critics to be the most vigorous and virile of women writers, and even classed by one above George Sand. Her works have been crowned by the Academy, and she has won the cross of the Legion of Honor. Daniel Lesueur and Mme. Peyrebrune are both important, and have been distinguished with many honors. Mme. Maeterlinck is opera-singer, essayist, and lecturer, as well as novelist. Jeanne Bertheroy and Judith Gautier, daughter of Théophile Gautier, are famous, as are also Mme. Dieulafoy and Mme. Félix-Faure Goyau, daughter of the former president of the republic. Colette Yver, with her “Princesses de Science,” was the first to win the prize offered by the woman’s paper, “La Vie Heureuse.” (This is the prize that was awarded to the seamstress Marguérite Audoux for “Marie Claire.”) Pierre de Coulevain, remarkably cosmopolitan, and with a wonderfully wide point of view, is read more by foreigners than by the French. Mme. Yvonne Sarcey is exceptional in appealing to a sense of duty as the controlling force in life.

Much as we should like to linger over this long literary list, we must pass on to other topics. In the matter of the suffrage, progress is not so marked. Small suffrage societies here and there have existed for twenty-five years, but the National French Woman’s Suffrage Association was formed only three years ago. It has converted many teachers and employees of the post, telegraph, and telephone service, but has not made any impression on the women of the working-classes. In 1911 it had a membership of 3000 out of a total female population of 20,000,000. So it can be seen that the suffrage movement in France is still in its swaddling-clothes. The most encouraging thing for the suffrage supporters is the number of “_hommes-femmes_”; that is, influential men who give devoted service to the suffrage cause. We have already spoken of the broad-minded men who have done much to educate public opinion to more enlightened views on women. They generally go further still, and are suffragists. About three years ago they formed a men’s association, called “The Voters’ League for Woman Suffrage,” which counts among its members two senators and nine deputies. This league holds itself in readiness to push forward whatever legislative measures it considers worth while. It has been working on a bill for women’s vote in municipal elections, and it is stated as a possibility that it may be passed. Socialists also favor the suffrage, both because from the anti-reactionary nature of their doctrines they must, to be consistent, and because they want the women’s vote. But their help is of little practical value, for the labor party and the unions control the socialist party, and these two powerful organizations are bitter and formidable enemies of women’s entrance into the economic and political field. Opposition is strong from the politicians in power. Having brought about the separation of church and state seven years ago, they fear that all the old clerical question, which has been the cause of many years of most bitter wrangling, would be reopened by the women at the first opportunity, under the instigation of the priests. It is asserted, moreover, that there is no decided Catholic opposition, as such, to woman suffrage.

It must have become evident from the foregoing pages, however, that feminism in France is not a matter of the suffrage. There have been other conquests to make, in the realm of thought rather than action; old prejudices, old traditions to be removed, rights of moral and intellectual equality to be established. Indeed, French feminism can well be defined as “a state of mind, not yet crystallized into aggressive agitation for reform.” After all, in the last analysis, we see that for the realization of the feminist ideals must come, and is coming, a change in man--in his moral standards, in his attitude toward women, in his whole Latin conception of the social basis of society. Olive Schreiner says that the new woman is accompanied by the new man, or there would be no new woman. We see this development in France to-day. Says Marcel Prévost: “The new college youth cares more for sport, is more robust physically and is more healthy-minded. He is less sentimental, more athletic; he does not think of woman.” In this one statement lies more hope for the ultimate complete emancipation of woman than in all her literary and professional achievements.

The newer type of Frenchwoman, breaking away from tradition, strong-willed, earnest, Maeterlinck is striving to depict in his later heroines, like _Aglavaine_ and _Ariane_. His talented wife thus interprets them for us:

Apparently vainglorious, almost brazen, free, and unsubjected,
marching in the light of day, without faith or principle, we are
in reality the submissive slaves of to-morrow. Beneath our songs
of gladness rises a sorrowful prayer, which no one hears. No one
understands our obscure duty. Sprung from the present, we are
daughters of the future, and it is but natural that the moment which
created us should distinguish us but imperfectly. To hasten our work,
would that men might understand us better, fear us less. Let them
learn that for centuries and throughout the ages, there has been but
one divine woman, lover, mother, sister. If at the present moment we
appear different, rebellious, it is only that we may one day offer
them stronger companions and nearer to perfection. For centuries
men hailed in us a beauty that was all effacement. The women who
charm the most in the past appear like those frescoes that old
walls still offer to our eyes half-discolored, pale, ideal, frozen
in contemplative attitude, with lilies in their hands. An abyss
seems to separate these _Griseldas_ from the _Aglavaines_
and _Arianes_. And yet these two are loving handmaids of
the future.... It is customary to say that woman, influenced by
man, perfects herself according to his ideal. But to-day, grown
clearer-sighted, she seems to look over the shoulder of her mate, and
perceive what he does not yet descry on the horizon.

THE SCARBOROUGH SPOONS

A STORY FOR ENGLISH AND AMERICANS

(DOINGS ON PERILOUS)

BY LUCY FURMAN

Author of “Mothering on Perilous,” etc.

During their talks in the Eastern States one winter, the head workers of the Settlement School on Perilous met Emily Scarborough, the distinguished essayist and college professor, and one of them said to her casually:

“In our work in the mountains we come across numbers of good, even aristocratic, English names, and are always wishing we might trace the families back through their century and more in Kentucky, and their previous residence in Virginia, to their old English homes.

“Your own name, Scarborough, is well known to us.”

A look of instant interest succeeded the polite but weary smile on Miss Scarborough’s face. This expression of weariness was the one flaw in the satisfying beauty of the essayist, one of those rare celebrities the sight of whom is not a shock to admirers. “Tell me about them,” she said.

“The only thing to tell is that all the males of the family perished in a feud twenty-five years ago--a feud so fierce that ‘the Scarborough-Bohun War’ is still referred to with horror. The climax came when Guilford Scarborough and his five sons were ambushed one day by twenty of the Bohuns, and with their backs against a rocky cliff fought until the last fell, a dozen Bohuns paying for victory with their lives. That cliff to-day is called Scarborough’s Doom. One daughter of the race survives.”

But Miss Scarborough seemed not to hear the last sentences.

“Guilford Scarborough!” she exclaimed.

“It was the name of the founder of our family, a poor knight who won renown and an earldom by saving the king’s life at Agincourt. From that day it has been the favorite name for our sons.

“The present earl, the head of our family in England, bears it; my great-great-grandfather--a second son of the twelfth earl--who left England and settled an estate in Virginia the middle of the eighteenth century, bore it.”

She spoke simply, rapidly,--evidently descent from and kinship with earls was only one of the many fortuitous circumstances of her brilliant life.

“This Guilford of Virginia,” she continued, “had two sons who at the outbreak of the Revolution took opposite sides. Lionel, my great-grandfather, remained a stanch Tory, Guilford joined the Continentals, and when last heard of, though a mere boy, was a captain in Washington’s army. Afterward he disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him. Surely it cannot be that--”

“Many Revolutionary officers received land-grants in Kentucky for their services,” interrupted the school woman, “and those who entered into the isolation of the mountains were afterward lost to the world.”

“Then your mountain family may, nay, must be descended from the lost Guilford,” exclaimed Miss Scarborough. “You will understand my excitement when I tell you I have always supposed myself the sole representative of the American line. You say that one woman there also survives?”

“Yes, Dosia Vance. Her little girl--by the way, she has your name, Emily--is in our school.”

“Theodosia and Emily,--how the old names come down through the centuries!” said Miss Scarborough, adding, “You must put me in communication with this Dosia Vance at once.”

“Oh, she is unable to write,” was the reply.

Miss Scarborough’s face paled. “A Scarborough not write!” she cried incredulously.

“What possible chance could she have, sixty miles away from a school or a church? One remarkable thing, however, she accomplished after her marriage. With the help of an old blue-back speller and the family Bible, she taught herself and her husband to read. Writing was less possible. She is a woman of great natural intelligence, and is ambitious for her children.

“Her two eldest sons are at Berea College; we have Emily, and shall take the younger ones. Emily shows remarkable home-training; on the day she came to us she was a perfect lady.”

The result of this casual talk was that Miss Scarborough began an immediate correspondence with Dosia Vance through little Emily.

Of its progress the school women knew little, for soon after their return in the spring, vacation began, and all the children, including Emily, went home to hoe corn.

In June, however, a letter came to the school from the essayist. She wrote:

I send to-day by express a package which I beg you will have
delivered to Theodosia Vance. As soon as I was satisfied that
Theodosia was a descendant of the lost Guilford, I wrote my kinsman
the earl of the interesting survival. He and I are very good friends,
and several times on my trips abroad I have visited his home, the
ancient seat of our family. On one of these occasions, he had an old
leather case brought in, and showed me the most precious heirloom
of the family, six dozen worn spoons, the property of the original
Guilford of Agincourt. Taking out a dozen, the earl gave them to me.
Of course I prize them more than anything I possess. When he heard
of the finding of Theodosia, he sent me, for her, another dozen of
the precious spoons. They are in this package.

The spoons at last arrived, and were sent on to Dosia. The school women had much curiosity as to their reception; but when they made inquiries of Emily on her return the first of August, the child only replied, with her usual dignity, that “Maw was proud to get them.”

In early October another letter came from the essayist. “I have a growing desire,” she wrote, “to follow up the Scarborough spoons and see my new-found relatives. Emily’s letters interest me a good deal. This being a sabbatical year with me, I purpose visiting your school and the Vance home before going abroad for the winter.”

* * * * *

Late October found Miss Scarborough journeying across the mountains on her way from the railroad. To a woman accustomed to luxurious motor-cars, a ride of fifty miles had not seemed formidable; but as the heavy road-wagon crashed, thumped, and banged along its difficult way at the rate of two miles an hour, she decided differently. Also, as she saw women weaving and spinning in porches of lonely log-houses, men felling timber in virgin forest, whole families gathering corn in precipitous fields, some conception of the primitive hardships of the life dawned upon her.

Although at forty-seven Emily Scarborough was as vigorous as she was beautiful, before the two-days’ trip was ended, weariness possessed her, every bone seemed dislocated, and on her arrival at the school she had to be assisted to bed by the trained nurse.

The next morning the visitor was half awakened by a tap at the door and by the entrance of some silent-footed person, who set down a tray. Stillness followed; but increasingly aware that she was an object of scrutiny, Miss Scarborough at last opened her eyes.

A small girl of twelve stood by the bed, gazing with grave, controlled eagerness at the face on the pillow. When the eyes opened, she smiled ever so slightly, and said quietly:

“Will you have your breakfast now, Cousin Emily?”

Miss Scarborough sat up in bed so suddenly that the masses of her spun-silver hair fell in a cloud about her face and shoulders.

“Are you Emily?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied the child. Very gravely she extended a hand. “I am proud to see you,” she said.

Miss Scarborough took the small hand.

“You know we are of one blood, Emily,” she said; “may I offer you the salute of kinship?” She brushed the child’s delicate cheek with her lips.

The little girl as calmly returned the salute, and then stepped back.

“I was glad when I heared you was coming,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well, I craved to see a ginuwine Scarborough, I have heared maw tell such a sight about them.”

“I hope you did not expect so much that you are sadly disappointed in me?” Although Miss Scarborough smiled, there was a tone of real anxiety in her voice.

Emily’s gaze swept her slowly, critically, for some seconds.

“I was powerful afeared you wouldn’t be a pretty woman,” she said at last; “but you are. I like your looks.” She sighed, as though from relief, then made a more minute appraisement. “I like them big black eyes,” she said; “I like that tender skin. I like that quare hair; it favors the Scarborough spoons. I allow,” she summed up solemnly, judicially, “that you are the pine-blank prettiest woman ever I seed.”

Miss Scarborough laughed, but her face flushed deeply with pleasure. Then she in her turn scrutinized the slender figure in the checked homespun dress, the small face with its lines of purity and look of race, the well-carried head, smoothly plaited hair, and austere blue eyes.

“I like your looks, too,” she said.

At this the child again smiled the rare smile.

“I am glad,” she said; “now you must eat before it is cold.”

Miss Scarborough reached for the negligée of pink-flowered silk that hung beside her bed, and drew it over her delicate, embroidered gown, Emily looking on large-eyed.

“You dress up in blossoms, don’t you?” she exclaimed, with another joyous sigh.

“Emily,” said Miss Scarborough, “I do believe that you have the artistic temperament. You love beauty, don’t you?”

“Ugly things they hurts me here in my breast,” replied the child, solemnly, pressing both small hands upon her stomach.

For two days thereafter the distinguished guest remained in the school, visiting its departments, talking graciously with its workers; but she lingered longest in the classrooms where Emily recited, or at the table or loom where Emily worked, and the attraction between the two was plain to be seen.

On Friday morning the nag sent by Dosia arrived, and at noon Miss Scarborough and Emily set out for the Vance home, formerly that of the Scarboroughs. The last two miles the trail followed the summit of a ridge, with glorious views on each hand of mountains in autumnal splendor. At the highest point Emily reached around her cousin’s waist and stopped the nag.

“I allus take a far look from here,” she said. After both had drunk their fill of beauty, Emily pointed eastward, where against the horizon a great blue wall was dimly visible, remarking, “Yan side of them is where you lived at when you was little, maw says.”

Miss Scarborough looked once, then turned almost violently away, cutting the horse with her whip.

Going down the ridge, Emily pointed out her home in the valley below. Very lonely and remote it seemed, folded away here in the hills, with never another habitation in sight. No wonder that here a branch of the Scarboroughs had been swallowed up and lost. Drawing nearer, the visitor saw a large log-house in a strip of bottom-land, with corn-fields stretching up the mountains on all sides.

Dosia awaited them at the stile, and her greeting was full of kindness and dignity.

“Cousin Emily Scarborough,” she said with emotion, “it gives me the most gratefulest pleasure of my life to welcome you to my home and my family.”

Edwin Vance, her tall husband, lifted the guest down, and she was conducted into the principal room of the house.

Here, when there was opportunity, she looked about. It was a huge room, with bare floor, log walls, and massive beams of hewn timber. The furniture--all home-made--consisted of three bedsteads, a chest of drawers, and a number of splint-bottomed chairs. On the beds were beautiful woven coverlets, and a pitcher of rich dahlias adorned the “fireboard.” Nothing was ugly, nothing useless; and any effect of bleakness would have been obviated either by the great open fire, or by the presence of Dosia, sitting with her four youngest children crowded against her, her kind face, warm brown eyes, and auburn hair radiating light and cheer.

After a while Edwin and the two small boys left the room, and soon the lowing of cattle, whinnying of nags, squealing of hogs, and excited clatter of fowls announced the joyful hour of feeding, while melodious calls of “coo-nanny, coo-nanny, coo-sheep, coo-sheep,” echoed back from the mountain-tops. Then Dosia went, followed by the five little girls. Miss Scarborough heard her giving quiet orders out in the open hallway that separated the two large rooms of the lower story. Later Emily returned, to say with awe in her voice:

“Cousin Emily, we are aiming to eat out of the Scarborough spoons to-night.”

“You have never used them before?” inquired Miss Scarborough.

“No, indeed. Maw she wouldn’t hardly let us look at them.” After gazing into the fire a moment, the child spoke again. “Being as we are fixing to use the spoons to-night, I thought maybe you might want to put on that pretty dress that matches them so good.”

“Why, of course,” smiled Miss Scarborough. She had brought with her to the school a simple dinner gown of soft, silvery satin, as lustrous and shining as her own hair, and seeing Emily’s delight in it, had put it into the “poke” on starting to Dosia’s.

“You can get over in yan corner to change,” said Emily. She came again in a few moments, and, after pinning a splendid pink dahlia in the lace on her cousin’s bosom, stood back with clasped hands and an ecstatic sigh.

At last supper was ready, and the guest was taken into “t’ other house” and seated at Dosia’s right. This room, too, was huge and bare, with a long table in the middle. On the table was a handsome hand-woven cloth, and, at the guest’s place, a napkin. A second napkin was spread over an oblong object beside Dosia’s plate.

When all were seated, Dosia reverently lifted this napkin, displaying a small leather case, the lid of which at a touch flew open, revealing a dozen teaspoons of thin old silver. Dosia then rose in her chair.

“Beloved offsprings and husband,” she began impressively, “we are gathered around this board to-night on a solemn occasion, not only to celebrate the coming of our honored kinswoman, but likewise to remember ourselves of past generations and dead-and-gone forefathers.

“You will one and all bear me witness, children, that never have I give you a chance to forget that you was Scarboroughs on your maw’s side, not casting no reflections on your paw’s, which is good as far as it goes. But many’s the time I have heared my paw relate, which he got from his paw, and so on back, that the Scarboroughs has been brave folk and faithful folk and gentle folk for five hundred year’, and has poured out their blood like water for the glory of Old England before they come over and poured it out for this present land. You have heared me tell all I know of their doings here--how your great-great-grandpaw fit under Washington, and had this land we now stand on, two thousand acre’ of it, granted him for his deeds; how his sons and grandsons kept right on fighting spang down through the century, Indians, and Mexicans, and then for the Union, dying mostly with their boots on, and before they was good grown; how, when there wa’n’t no more wars on the outside, they raised one here at home, for justice, and being few again’ many, died a-fighting, down to my little brother of fourteen. Never have I forebore to tingle your years with the braveness of our men and the honorableness of our women, and what you was bound to live up to.

“But little did I ever look to hear the history of them ’way-back forefathers of ours that flourished allus-ago in Old England. On which text Cousin Emily Scarborough is now raised up for to enlighten us. She knows ’em from lid to lid, and has writ me some of the marvelousest tales ever I heared, especially the antecedents of these here Scarborough spoons, which come down from a man that saved his king that was felled in battle five hundred year’ gone. These spoons, as you know, has been kindly sont us at this present time by another far-away relation in Old England. Him Cousin Emily speaks of as a’ earl, which entitlement I don’t rightly know the meaning of, but I take it to signify that he is a’ extry brave and God-fearing man, and one you would not be ashamed to claim kin with.

“I will now ax Cousin Emily Scarborough to rise and relate such glimpses of ancient history as she thinks befitting. Following which I will pour the coffee. Then I request all and singular--you too, Edwin, sence you may rightly be called a blood-relation--to rise in your chairs whilst I pass around the Scarborough spoons. And then, in solemn silence, I charge you to take, all together and simultaneous’, a sup of coffee with them spoons, being careful not to chaw down on them with your teeth, or so much as mumble them with your lips. Having done which, lay them back in your saucers and don’t touch another finger to them till Emily can gather and wash and restore them to their case. And my onliest regret is that our two boys Guilford and Lionel hain’t here to keep the feast, too.”

Miss Scarborough rose and related salient points in family history--the story of Guilford of Agincourt; of Austin, the bishop burned at the stake by Mary; of Lionel, the famous admiral of Elizabeth’s day; of later Scarboroughs great in war or peace.

Then came the solemn moment when the case was passed, and every member of the circle drew forth a spoon; then the still more awful instant when, hanging breathless upon Dosia’s movements, the family took the simultaneous sup of coffee.

Silence reigned until the spoons were collected, washed, and returned to the case, after which the meal proceeded with subdued cheer.

As Emily Scarborough sat there, another scene rose before her--the great old dining-room of Scarborough Castle, with its carved ceiling, splendid plate, and elaborate service. But she rejoiced in the fact that in log-house as in castle voices were gentle, manners kind, spirits simple and earnest. “Ah, the old blood runs virile and pure in whatever environment!” she said to herself with pride. But her next breath was a sigh. Was it that she herself should have no part in handing down such a heritage?

Bedtime came soon after all had returned to the first room, and Dosia said:

“Now, Cousin Emily, I have got four good, warm beds in the loft, every grain as nice as these. But they are purely for strangers and sojourners; I couldn’t have the heart to send blood-kin that far off from me to sleep. And I take it you feel the same, and would be better pleased to sleep right here with me and Edwin and the children, in the bosom of the family.”

“Certainly,” replied Miss Scarborough, repressing a smile. “Any arrangement that suits you, Dosia.”

Edwin considerately left the room during the undressing. Miss Scarborough and Emily had one bed, three of the little girls another, Dosia, Edwin, and the smallest child a third, while the two little boys occupied a pallet on the floor. There was general conversation for a while, and it was all very sociable. Miss Scarborough felt that she was indeed in the bosom of a family.

Days of large peace followed. With all the manifold, unceasing activities of the household,--everything eaten and worn was produced upon the land or manufactured in the house,--there was no stress or strain, hurry or worry. Dosia herself had saved up what she called a “good listening job” against Miss Scarborough’s visit, and while Emily and the smaller girls carded, reeled, knitted, or sewed, she herself, a picturesque figure in brown homespun and red yarn stockings, walked back and forth across the floor in that most ancient and graceful of all the occupations of women, spinning. At other times they ascended to the huge “loft,” where on a great loom Dosia wove awhile on winter clothing. Always the spirit of the home was perfect; the children hung reverently upon their mother’s every word, and the visitor noticed that Edwin never looked upon his wife without pride.

Dosia asked endless questions. “This great, unthinkable world of which I have seed nothing, I crave to l’arn about it, now I may,” she would say; and Miss Scarborough would tell tales, old and new, of the countries she had visited, the family listening spellbound.