Chapter IV: Prologue (2)

But of course opera is the last thing for which people buy ten-dollar seats at the Metropolitan. The “Golden Horse-Shoe” is the spectacle they pay to see; the masterpieces of _Céleste_ and _Héloïse_ (as exhibited by Madame Millions and her intimates) rather than the masterpieces of Wagner or Puccini lure them within the great amphitheatre. And certain it is that the famous double tier of boxes boasts more beautiful women, gorgeously arrayed, than any other place of assembly in America. Yet as I first saw them, from my modest seat in the orchestra, they appeared to be a collection of radiant Venuses sitting in gilded bathtubs: above the high box-rail, only rows of gleaming shoulders, marvellously dressed heads, and winking jewels were visible. Later, in the foyer, I discovered that some of them at least were more modernly attired than the lady who rose from the sea, but the first impression has always remained the more vivid.

Society--ever deliciously naïve in airing its ignorance--is heard to express some quaint criticisms at opera. At a performance of _Tristan_, I sat next a débutante who had the reputation of being “musical.” In the midst of the glorious second act, she whispered plaintively, “I do hate it when our night falls on _Tristan_--it’s such a _sad_ story!”

It will be interesting to follow New York musical education, if the indefatigable Mr. Hammerstein succeeds in his present proposal to offer the lighter French and Italian operas at popular prices. Hitherto music along with every other art in America has been so commercialized that wealth rather than appreciation and true fondness has controlled it. But meanwhile there has developed, instinctively and irrepressibly, the much disparaged ragtime. It is the pose among musical _précieux_ loudly to decry any suggestion of ragtime as a national art; yet the fact remains that it has grown up spontaneously as the popular and the only distinctly American form of musical expression. Of course, the old shuffling clog-dances of the negroes were responsible for it in the beginning. I was visiting some Americans in Tokio when a portfolio of the “new music” was sent out to them (1899), and I remember that it consisted entirely of cakewalks and “coon songs,” with negro titles and pictures of negroes dancing, on the cover. But this has long since ceased to be characteristic of ragtime as a whole, which takes its inspiration from every phase of nervous, precipitate American life.

In the jerky, syncopated measures, one can almost hear between beats the familiar rush of feet, hurrying along--stumbling--halting abruptly--only to fly ahead faster. Ragtime is the pell-mell, helter-skelter, headlong spirit of America expressed in tune; and no other people, however charmed by its peculiar fascination and wild swing, can play or dance to it like Americans. It is instinctive with them; where classical music, so called, is a laboriously acquired taste.

New Yorkers in particular take their artistic hobbies very seriously; not only music and the conventional arts, but all those occult and mystic off-shoots that abound wherever there are idle people. To assuage the ennui that dogs excessive wealth, they devote themselves to all sorts of cults and intricate beliefs. Swamis, crystal-gazers, astrologers, mind-readers, and Messiahs of every kind and colour reap a luxurious harvest in New York. Women especially have a new creed for every month in the year; and discuss “the aura,” and “the submerged self,” and the “spiritual significance of colour,” with profound solemnity. On being presented to a lady, you are apt to be asked your birth date, the number of letters in your Christian name, your favourite hue, and other momentous questions that must be cleared away before acquaintance can proceed, or even begin at all.

“John?” cries the lady. “I knew you were a John, the minute I saw you! Now, what do you think I am?”

You are sure to say a “Mabel” where she is an “Edith,” or a Gladys where she is a Helen, or to commit some other blunder which takes the better part of an hour to be explained to you. Week-end parties are perfect hot-beds of occultism, each guest striving to out-argue every other in the race to gain proselytes for his religion of the moment.

The American house-party on the whole is a much more serious affair than its original English model. The anxious American hostess never quite gains that casual, easy manner of putting her house at the disposal of her guests, and then forgetting it and them. She must be always “entertaining,” than which there is no more dreary persecution for the long-suffering visitor. Except for this, her hospitality is delightful; and it is a joy to leave the dust and roar of New York, and motor out to one of the many charming country houses on Long Island or up the Hudson for a peaceful week-end. Americans show great good sense in clinging to their native Colonial architecture, which lends itself admirably to the simple, well-kept lawns and old-fashioned gardens. In comparison with country estates of the old world, one misses the dignity of ancient stone and trees; but gains the airy openness and many luxuries of modern comfort.

As for country life in general, it is further advanced than on the Continent, but not so far advanced as in England. Americans, being a young people, are naturally an informal people, however they may rig themselves out when they are on show. They love informal clothes, and customs, and the happy-go-lucky freedom of out-of-doors. On the other hand, they are not a sporting people, except by individuals. They are athletes rather than sportsmen; the passion for individual prowess being very strong, the devotion to sport for sport’s sake much less in evidence. The spirit of competition is as keen in the athletic field as it is in Wall Street; and at the intercollegiate games enthusiasm is always centred on the particular hero of each side, rather than on the play of the team as a whole. The American in general distinguishes himself in the “individual” rather than the team sports--in running, swimming, skating, and tennis; all of which display to fine advantage his wiry, lean agility.

At the same time, there is nothing more typically American or more inspiring to watch than one of the great collegiate team games, when thirty thousand spectators are massed round the field, breathlessly intent on every detail. Even in an immense city like New York, on the day of a big game, one feels a peculiar excitement in the air. The hotels are full of eager boys with sweaters, through the streets dash gaily decorated motors, and the stations are crowded with fathers, mothers, sisters and sweethearts on their way to cheer their particular hopeful. For once, too, the harassed man of affairs throws business to the four winds, remembers only that he is an “old grad” of Harvard or Princeton or Yale, and hurries off to cheer for his Alma Mater.

Then at the field there are the two vast semicircles of challenging colours, the advance “rooting”--the songs, yells, ringing of bells and tooting of horns--that grows to positive frenzy as the two contesting teams come in and take their places. And, as the game proceeds, the still more fervent shouts--middle-aged men standing up on their seats and bawling three-times-threes, young girls laughing, crying, splitting their gloves in madness of applause, small boys screeching encouragement to “our side,” withering taunts to the opponents; and then all at once a deathly hush--in such a huge congregation twice as impressive as all their noise--while a goal is made or a home base run. And the enthusiasm breaks forth more furious than ever.

We are a long way now from the stodgy, dull-eyed diner-out, in his murky lair; now, we are looking on at youth at its best--its most eager and unconscious; in which guise Americans in their vivid charm are irresistible.

IV

MISS NEW YORK, JR.

There is no woman in modern times of whom so much has been written, so little said, as of the American woman. Essayists have echoed one another in pronouncing her the handsomest, the best dressed, the most virtuous, and altogether the most attractive woman the world round. Psychologists have let her carefully alone; she is not a simple problem to expound. She is, however, a most interesting one, and I have not the courage to slight her with the usual cursory remarks on eyes, hair, and figure. She deserves a second and more searching glance.

To her own countrymen she is a goddess on a pedestal that never totters; to the foreigner she is a pretty, restless, thoroughly selfish female, who roams the earth at scandalous liberty, while her husband sits at home and posts checks. Naturally, the truth--if one can get at truth regarding such a complex creature--falls between these two conceptions: the American woman is a splendid, faulty human being, in whom the extremes of human weakness and nobility seem surely to have met. She is the product of the extreme Western philosophy of absolute individualism, and as such is constituted a law unto herself, which she defies the world to gainsay. At the same time she knows herself so little that she changes and contradicts this law constantly, thus bewildering those who are trying to understand it and her.

For example, we are convinced of her independence. We go with her to the milliner’s. She wants a hat with plumes. “Oh, but, _my dear_,” says the saleslady reprovingly, “they aren’t wearing plumes this season--they aren’t wearing them _at all_. Everybody is having Paradise feathers.” Madame New York instantly declares that in that case she must have Paradise feathers, too, and is thoroughly content when the same are added to the nine hundred and ninety-nine other feathers that flutter out the avenue next afternoon. Plumes may be far more becoming to her; in her heart she may secretly regret them; but she must have what everyone else has. _She has not the independence to break away from the herd._

And so it is with all her costume, her coiffure, the very bag on her wrist and brooch at her throat: every detail must be that detail of the _type_. She neither dares nor knows how to be different. But, within the stronghold of the type, she dares anything. Are “they” wearing narrow skirts? Every New York woman challenges every other, with her frock three inches tighter than the last lady’s. Are they slashing skirts to the ankle in Paris? Madame New York slashes hers to the shoe-tops, always provided she has the concurrence of “those” of Manhattan. Once secured by the sanction of the mass, her instinct for exaggeration is unleashed; her perverse imagination shakes off its chronic torpor, and soars to flights of fearful and wonderful audacity.

Even then, however, she originates no fantasy of her own, but simply elaborates and enlarges upon the primary copy. Her impulse is not to think and create, but to observe and assimilate. It would never occur to her to study the lines of her head and arrange her hair accordingly; rather she studies the head of her next-door neighbour, and promptly duplicates it--generally with distinct improvement over the original. True to her race, she has a genius for imitation that will not be subdued. But she is not an artist.

For this reason, the American woman bores us with her vanity, where the Englishwoman rouses our tenderness, and the Frenchwoman piques and allures. There is an appealing clumsiness in the way the Englishwoman goes about adding her little touches of feminine adornment; the badly tied bow, the awkward bit of lace, making their deprecating bid for favour. The Frenchwoman, with her seductive devices of alternate concealment and daring displays, lays constant emphasis on the two outstanding charms of all femininity: mystery and change. But when we come to the American woman we are confronted with that most depressing of personalities, the stereotyped. She has made of herself a mannequin for the exposition of expensive clothes, costly jewels, and a mass of futile accessories that neither in themselves nor as pointers to an individuality signify anything whatsoever. This figure of set elegance she has overlaid with a determined animation that is never allowed to flag, but keeps the puppet in an incessant state of laughing, smiling, chattering--motion of one sort or another--till we long for the machinery to run down, and the show to be ended.

But this never occurs, except when the entire elaborate mechanism falls to pieces with a crash; and the woman becomes that wretched, sexless thing--a nervous wreck. Till then, to use her own favourite expression, “she will go till she drops,” and the onlooker is forced to watch her in the unattractive process.

Of course the motive of this excessive activity on the part of American men and women alike is the passionate wish to appear young. As in the extreme East age is worshipped, here in the extreme West youth constitutes a religion, of which young women are the high priestesses. Far from moving steadily on to a climax in ripe maturity, life for the American girl reaches its dazzling apex when she is eighteen or twenty; this, she is constantly told by parents, teachers and friends, is the golden period of her existence. She is urged to make the most of every precious minute; and everything and everybody must be sacrificed in helping her to do it.

As a matter of course, she is given the most comfortable room in the house, the prettiest clothes, the best seat at the theatre. As a matter of course, she accepts them. Why should it occur to her to defer to age, when age anxiously and at every turn defers to her? Oneself as the pivot of existence is far more interesting than any other creature; and it is all so brief. Soon will come marriage, with its tiresome responsibilities, its liberty curtailed, and children, the forerunners of awful middle age. Laugh, dance, and amuse yourself today is the eternal warning in the ears of the American girl; for tomorrow you will be on the shelf, and another generation will have come into your kingdom.

The young lady is not slow to hear the call--or to follow it. With feverish haste, she seizes her prerogative of queen of the moment, and demands the satisfaction of her every caprice. Her tastes and desires regulate the diversion and education of the community. What she favours succeeds; what she frowns on fails. A famous American actress told me that she traced her fortune to her popularity with young girls. “I never snub them,” she said; “when they write me silly letters, I answer them. I guard my reputation to the point of prudishness, so that I may meet them socially, and invite them to my home. They are the talisman of my career. It matters little what I play--if the young girls like me, I have a success.”

The wise theatrical manager, however, is differently minded. He, too, has his harvests to reap from the approval of Miss New York, Jr., and arranges his program accordingly. Thus the American play-goer is treated to a series of musical comedies, full of smart slang scrappily composed round a hybrid waltz; so-called “society plays,” stocked with sumptuous clothes, many servants, and shallow dialogue; unrecognizable “adapted” pieces, expurgated not only of the _risqué_, but of all wit and local atmosphere as well; and finally the magnificently vacuous extravaganza: this syrup and mush is regularly served to the theatre-going public, and labelled “drama”! Yet thousands of grown men and women meekly swallow it--even come to prefer it--because _Mademoiselle Miss_ so decrees.

She also is originally responsible for the multitude of “society novels,” vapid short stories, and profusely illustrated gift books, which make up the literature of modern America. On her altar is the vulgar “Girl Calendar,” the still more vulgar poster; flaunting her self-conscious prettiness from every shop window, every subway and elevated book-stall. She is displayed to us with dogs, with cats, in the country, in town, getting into motors, getting out of boats, driving a four-in-hand, or again a vacuum cleaner--for she is indispensable to the advertising agent. Her fixed good looks and studied poses have invaded the Continent; and even in Spain, in the sleepy old town of Toledo, among the grave prints of Velasquez and Ribera, I came across the familiar pert silhouette with its worshipping-male counterpart, and read the familiar title: “At the Opera.”

From all this superficial self-importance, whether of her own or her elders’ making, one might easily write the American girl down as a vain, empty-headed nonentity, not worth thoughtful consideration. On the contrary, she decidedly is worth it. Behind her arrogance and foolish affectations is a mind alert to stimulus, a heart generous and warm to respond, a spirit brave and resourceful. It takes adversity to prove the true quality of this girl, for then her arrogance becomes high determination; her absurdities fall from her, like the cheap cloak they are, and she takes her natural place in the world as a courageous, clear-sighted woman.

I believe that among the working girls is to be found the finest and most distinct type of American woman. This sounds a sweeping statement, and one difficult to substantiate; but let us examine it. Whence are the working girls of New York recruited? From the families of immigrants, you guess at once. Only a very small fraction. The great majority come from American homes, in the North, South, or Middle West, where the fathers have failed in business, or died, or in some other way left the daughters to provide for themselves.

The first impulse, on the part of the latter, is to go to New York. If you are going to hang yourself, choose a big tree, says the Talmud; and Americans have written it into their copy-books forever. Whether they are to succeed or fail, they wish to do it in the biggest place, on the biggest scale they can achieve. The girl who has to earn her living, therefore, establishes herself in New York. And then begins the struggle that is the same for women the world over, but which the American girl meets with a sturdiness and obstinate ambition all her own.

She may have been the pampered darling of a mansion with ten servants; stoutly now she takes up her abode in a “third floor back,” and becomes her own laundress. For it is part of all the contradictions of which she is the unit that, while the most recklessly extravagant, she is also, when occasion demands, the most practical and saving of women. Her scant six or seven dollars a week are carefully portioned out to yield the utmost value on every penny. She walks to and from her work, thus saving ten cents and doing benefit to her complexion at the same time in the tingling New York air. In the shop or office she is quiet, competent, marvellously quick to seize and assimilate the details of a business which two months ago she had never heard of. Without apparent effort, she soon makes herself invaluable, and then comes the thrilling event of her first “raise.”

I am talking always of the American girl of good parentage and refinement, _who is the average New York business girl_; not of the gum-chewing, haughty misses of stupendous pompadour and impertinence, who condescend to wait on one in the cheaper shops. The average girl is sinned against rather than sinning, in the matter of impudence. Often of remarkable prettiness, and always of neat and attractive appearance, she has not only the usual masculine advances to contend with, but also the liberties of that inter-sex freedom peculiar to America. The Englishman or the European never outgrows his first rude sense of shock at the promiscuous contact between men and women, not only allowed, but taken as a matter of course in the new country. To see an employé, passing through a shop, touch a girl’s hand or pat her on the shoulder, while delivering some message or order, scandalizes the foreigner only less than the girl’s nonchalant acceptance of the familiarity.

But among these people there is none of the sex consciousness that pervades older civilizations. Boys and girls, instead of being strictly segregated from childhood, are brought up together in frank intimacy. Whether the result is more or less desirable, in the young man and young woman, the fact remains that the latter are quite without that sex sensitiveness which would make their mutual attitude impossible in any other country. If the girl in the shop resents the touch of the young employé, it is not because it is a man’s touch, but because it is (as she considers) the touch of an inferior. I know this to be true, from having watched young people in all classes of American society, and having observed the unvarying indifference with which these caresses are bestowed and received. Indeed it is slanderous to call them caresses; rather are they the playful motions of a lot of young puppies or kittens.

The American girl therefore is committing no breach of dignity when she allows herself to be touched by men who are her equals. But I have noticed time and again that the moment those trifling attentions take on the merest hint of the serious, she is on guard--and formidable. Having been trained all her life to take care of herself (and in this she is truly and admirably independent), without fuss or unnecessary words she proceeds to put her knowledge to practical demonstration. The following conversation, heard in an upper Avenue shop, is typical:

“Morning, Miss Dale. Say, but you’re looking some swell today--that waist’s a peach! (The young floor-walker lays an insinuating hand on Miss Dale’s sleeve.) How’d you like to take in a show tonight?”

“Thank you, I’m busy tonight.”

“Well, then, tomorrow?”

“I’m busy tomorrow night, too.”

“Oh, all right, make it Friday--any night you say.”

Miss Dale leaves the gloves she has been sorting, to face the floor-walker squarely across the counter. “Look here, Mr. Barnes; since you can’t take a hint, I’ll give it you straight from the shoulder: you’re not my kind, and I’m not yours. And the sooner that’s understood between us, the better for both. Good morning.”

Here is none of the hesitating reserve of the English or French woman under the same circumstances, but a frank, downright declaration of fact; infinitely more convincing than the usual stumbling feminine excuses. It may be added that, while the American girl in a shop is generally a fine type of creature, the American man in a shop is generally inferior. Otherwise he would “get out and hustle for a bigger job.” His feminine colleagues realize this, and are apt to despise him in consequence. Certainly there is little of any over-intimacy between shop men and girls; and the demoralizing English system of “living-in” does not exist.

But there is a deeper reason for the general morality of the American working girl: her high opinion of herself. This passion (for it is really that), which in the girl of idle wealth shows itself in cold selfishness and meaningless adornment, in her self-dependent sister reaches the point of an ideal. When the American girl goes into business, it is not as a makeshift until she shall marry, or until something else turns up; it is because she has confidence in herself to make her own life, and to make it a success. The faint heart and self-mistrust which work the undoing of girls of this class in other nations have no place in the character of Miss America. Resolutely she fixes her goal, and nothing can stop her till she has attained it. Failure, disappointment, rebuff only seem to steel her purpose stronger; and, if the worst comes to worst, nine times out of ten she will die rather than acknowledge herself beaten by surrendering to a man.

But she dies hard, and has generally compassed her purpose long since. It may be confined to rising from “notions” to “imported models” in a single shop; or it may be running the gamut from office girl to head manager of an important business. No matter how ambitious her aspiration, or the seeming impossibility of it, the American girl is very apt to get what she wants in the end. She has the three great assets for success: pluck, self-confidence, and keen wits; and they carry her often far beyond her most daring dreams of attainment.

My friend, Cynthia Brand, is an example. She came to New York when she was twenty-two, with thirty dollars and an Idea. The idea was to design clothes for young girls between the ages of twelve and twenty; clothes that should be at once simple and distinguished, and many miles removed from the rigid commonplaceness of the “Misses’ Department.” All very well, but where was the shop, the capital, the _clientèle_? In the tip of Cynthia’s pencil.

She had two or three dozen sketches and one good tailored frock. Every American woman who is successful begins with a good tailored frock. Cynthia put hers on, took her sketches under her arm, and went to the best dressmaking establishment in New York. That is another characteristic of American self-appreciation: they always go straight to the best. The haughty forewoman was bored at first, but when she had languidly inspected a few of Cynthia’s sketches she was roused to interest if not enthusiasm. Two days later, Cynthia took her position as “designer for _jeunne filles_” at L----’s, at a salary which even for New York was considerable.

Hence the capital. The _clientèle_ developed inevitably, and was soon excuse in itself for the girl to start a place of her own. At the end of her third year in New York, she saw her dream of independence realized in a _chic_ little shop marked _Brand_; at the end of her fifth the shop had evolved into an establishment of three stories. And ten years after the girl with her thirty dollars arrived at an East Side boarding-house, she put up a sky-scraper--at any rate an eleven-story building--of her own; while the hall bedroom at the boarding-house is become a beautiful apartment on Central Park West. And meanwhile someone made the discovery that Cynthia Brand was one of _the_ Brands of Richmond, and Society took her up. Today she is a personage, as well as one of the keenest business women, in New York.

Marvellous, but a unique experience, you say. Unique only in degree of success, not in the fact itself. There are hundreds, even thousands, of Cynthia Brands plying their prosperous trades in the American commercial capital. As photographers, decorators, restaurant and tea-room proprietors, jewellers, florists, and specialists of every kind, these enterprising women are calmly proving that the home is by no means their only sphere; that in the realm of economics at least they are the equals both in energy and intelligence of their comrade man.

It is interesting to contrast this strongly feminist attitude of the American woman with the suffragism of her militant British sister. No two methods of obtaining the same result could be more different. Years ago the American woman emancipated herself, without ostentation or outcry, by quietly taking her place in the commonwealth as a bread-winner. Voluntarily she stepped down from the pedestal (to which, however, her sentimental _confrère_ promptly re-raised her), and set about claiming her share in the business of life. To disregard her now would be futile. She is too important; she has made herself too vital a factor in economic activity to be disregarded when it comes to civic matters.

And so, while Englishwomen less progressive in the true sense of the word have been window-smashing and setting fires, the “rights” they so ardently desire have been tranquilly and naturally acquired by their shrewder American cousins. Fifteen of the forty-odd States now have universal suffrage; almost every State has suffrage in some form. And it will be a very short time--perhaps ten years, perhaps fifteen--until all of the great continent will come under the equal rule of men and women alike.

I had the interesting privilege of witnessing the mammoth Suffrage Parade in New York, just before the presidential election last fall. In more than one way, it was a revelation. After the jeering, hooting mob at the demonstrations in Hyde Park, this absorbed, respectful crowd that lined both sides of Fifth Avenue was even more impressive than the procession of women itself. But seeing the latter as they marched past twenty thousand strong gave the key to the enthusiasm of the crowd. A fresh-faced, well-dressed, composed company of women; women of all ages--college girls, young matrons, middle-aged mothers with their daughters, elderly ladies and even dowagers, white-haired and hearty, made up the inspiring throng. They greeted the cheers of the spectators smilingly, yet with dignity; their own cheers no less ardent for being orderly and restrained; and about their whole bearing was a sanity and good sense, joined to a thoroughly feminine wish to please, which gave away the secret of their popularity.

It was the American woman at her best, which means the American woman with a steady, splendid purpose which she intends to accomplish, and in which she enlists not only the support but the sympathy of her fellow-men. With her own unique cleverness she goes about it. President-elect Wilson stole into Washington the day before his inauguration, almost unnoticed, because everyone was off to welcome “General” Rosalie Jones and her company of petitioners: instead of kidnapping the President (as her English sisters would have planned), the astute young woman kidnapped the people; winning them entirely by her sturdy good humour and daring combined, and refusing to part with a jot of her femininity in the process.

If I have seemed to contradict myself in this brief analysis of so complex and interesting a character as the American woman, I can only go back to my first statement that she herself is a contradiction--only definite within her individual type. The type of the mere woman of pleasure, which implies the woman of wealth, I confess to finding the extreme of vapidity and selfishness, as Americans are always the extreme of something. This is the type the foreigner knows by heart, and despises. But the American woman of intelligence, the woman of clear vision, fine aim, and splendid accomplishment, he does not know; for she is at home, earning her living.

_Underwood & Underwood_

AMERICAN WOMAN GOES TO WAR!

(MARCH OF THE SUFFRAGISTS ON WASHINGTON)]

V

MATRIMONY & CO.

Of all the acts which America has in solution, marriage is as yet the most unsatisfactory, the least organized. It is easy to dismiss it with a vague wave of the hand, and the slighting “Oh, yes--the divorce evil.” But really to understand the problem, with all its complex difficulties, one must go a great deal further--into the thought and simple animal feeling of the people who harbour the divorce evil.

Physiologically speaking, Americans are made up of nerves; psychologically they are made up of sentiment: a volatile combination, fatal to steadiness or logic of expression. We have spoken of the everyday habit of contact among them, the trifling touch that passes unheeded between young men and girls, from childhood into maturity. This is but a single phase of that diffuseness of sex energy, which being distributed through a variety of channels, with the American, nowhere is very profound or vital. The constant comradeship between the two sexes, from babyhood throughout all life, makes for many fine things; but it does not make for passion. And, as though dimly they realize this, Americans--both men and women--seem desperately bent on manufacturing it.

Hence their suggestive songs, their suggestive books, their crudely suggestive plays, and, above all, their recognized game of “teasing,” in which the young girl uses every device for plaguing the young man--to lead him on, but never to lead him too far. Always suggestion, never realization; as a nation they retain the adolescent point of view to the end, playing with sex, which they do not understand, but only vaguely feel, yet about which they have the typically adolescent curiosity.

So much for the physiological side. It is not hard to understand how under such conditions natural animal energy is dissipated along a hundred avenues of mere nerve excitement and satisfaction; so that when it comes to marriage the American man or woman can have no stored-up wealth of passion to bestow, but simply the usual comradeship, the usual contact intensified. This is all very well, to begin with, but it is too slender a bond to stand the strain of daily married life. Besides, there is the ingrained craving for novelty that has been fed and fostered by lifelong freedom of intercourse until it is become in itself a passion dangerously strong. A few misunderstandings, a serious quarrel or two, and the couple who a year ago swore to cleave to one another till death are eager to part with one another for life--and to pass on to something new.

But a formidable stumbling-block confronts them: their ideal of marriage. Sentiment comes to the front, outraged and demanding appeasement. American life is grounded in sentiment. The idea of the American man concerning the American woman, the idea of the woman concerning the man, is a colossus of sentiment in itself. She is all-pure, he is all-chivalrous. She would not smoke a cigarette (in public) because he would be horrified; he would not confess to a _liason_ (however many it might please him to enjoy), because she would perish with shame. Each has made it a life business to forget that the other is human, and to insist that both are impeccable. When, therefore, before the secret tribunal of matrimony, this illusion is condemned to death, what is to be done?

Nothing that could reflect on the innocence of the woman, or the blamelessness of the man. In other words, the public ideal still must be upheld. With which the public firmly agrees; and, always willing to be hoodwinked and to hoodwink itself, makes a neat series of laws whereby men and women may enjoy unlimited license and still remain irreproachable. Thus the difficulty is solved, sentiment is satisfied, and chaos mounts the throne.

I am always extremely interested in the American disgust at the Continental marriage system. Here the inveterate sentimentalism of the nation comes out most decided and clear. In the first place, they say, the European has no respect for women; he orders them about, or betrays them, with equal coolness and cruelty. He is mercenary to the last degree in the matter of the _dot_, but himself after marriage makes no effort to provide his wife with more than pin-money. After the honeymoon she becomes his housekeeper and the mother of his children; while he spends her dowry on a succession of mistresses and immoral amusements elsewhere.

All of which, as generalization, is true. The complementary series of facts, however, the American complacently ignores. He knows nothing, for instance, of the European attitude to the young girl--how could he? His own sisters and daughters are presented, even before they are in long skirts, as objects of intimacy and flirtation; harmless flirtation, admitted, yet scarcely the thing to produce reverence for the recipient. Instead she is given a free-and-easy consideration, which to the European is appalling. The latter may be a rake and a _debauché_, but he has one religion ingrained and unimpeachable: in the presence of a young girl he is before an altar. And throughout all European life the young girl is accorded a delicate dignity impossible to her less sheltered American cousin.

What good does that do her, asks the downright American, if the minute she marries she becomes a slave? On the contrary, she gains her liberty, where the American girl (in her own opinion at least) loses hers; but even if she did not it is a matter open to dispute as to which is better off in any case: the woman who is a slave, or the woman who is master? For contentment and serenity, one must give the palm to the European. She brings her husband money instead of marrying him for his; she stands over herself and her expenditure, rather than over him and his check-book; and she tends her house and bears children, rather than roams the world in search of pleasure. Yet she is happy.

She may be deceived by her husband; if so, she is deceived far without the confines of her own home. Within her home, as mother of her husband’s children, she is impregnable. She may be betrayed, but she is never vulgarized; her affairs are not dragged through the divorce court, or jaunted about the columns of a yellow press. Whatever she may not be to the man whom she has married, she is once and forever the woman with whom he shares his name, and to whom he must give his unconditional respect--or kill her. She has so much, sure and inviolate, to stand on.

The American woman has nothing sure. In a land where all things change with the sun, die and are shoved along breathlessly to make room for new, she is lost in the general confusion. Today she is Mrs. Smith, tomorrow--by her own wish, or Mr. Smith’s, or both--she is Mrs. Jones, six months later she is Mrs. Somebody Else; and the conversation, which includes “your children,” “my children,” and “our children,” is not a joke in America: it is an everyday fact--for the children themselves a tragedy.

Young people grow up among such conditions with a flippant--even a horrible--idea of marriage. They look upon it, naturally, as an expedient; something temporarily good, to be entered upon as such, and without any profound thought for the future. “She married very well,” means she married dollars, or position, or a title; in the person of what, it does not matter. If she is dissatisfied with her bargain, she always makes an exchange, and no one will think any the worse of her. For, while Americans are horror-stricken at the idea of a woman’s having a lover without the law, within the law she may have as many as she likes, and take public sympathy and approval along with her; so long as the farce of her _purity_ is carried out, these sentimentalists (whom Meredith calls, in general, “self-worshippers”) smile complaisance.

It is simply another light on the prevailing superficiality that controls them, for that a woman shall be faithful--where she has placed her affections of whatever sort--they neither demand nor appear to think of at all. She may ruin her husband buying chiffons, or maintaining an establishment beyond his means, and not a word of blame is attached to her; on the contrary, when the husband goes bankrupt, it is he who is outcast, while everyone speaks pitifully of “his poor wife.” The only allegiance expected of the woman is the mere allegiance of the body; and this in the American woman is no virtue, for she has little or no passion to tempt her to bodily sin.

Rather, as we have seen, she is a highly nervous organism, demanding nerve food in the shape of sensation--constant and varied. Emotionally, she is a sort of psychic vampire, always athirst for victims to her vanity; experience from which to gain new knowledge of herself. This is true not only of the idle woman of society, but of the best and intentionally most sincere. They are wholly unconscious of it, they would indignantly refute it; yet their very system of living proves it: throughout all classes the American woman, in the majority, is sufficient unto herself, and--no matter in how noble a spirit--self-absorbed.

If she is happily married, she loves her husband; but why? Because he harmoniously complements the nature she is bent on developing. In like fashion she loves her children--do they not contribute a tremendous portion towards the perfect womanhood she ardently desires? And this is not saying that the finer type of American woman is not a devoted mother and wife; it is giving the deep, unconscious motive of her devotion.

But take the finer type that is not married, that remains unmarried voluntarily, and by the thousands. Take the Cynthia Brands, for example. Americans say they stay single because “they have too good a time,” and this is literally true. Why should they marry when they can compass of themselves the things women generally marry for--secure position and a comfortable home? Why, except for overpowering love of some particular man? This the Cynthia Brands--_i. e._, women independently successful--are seldom apt to experience. All their energy is trained upon themselves and their ambition; and that is never satisfied, but pushes on and on, absorbing emotion--every sort of force in the woman--till her passion becomes completely subjective, and marriage has nothing to offer her save the children she willingly renounces.

Thus there is in America almost a third sex: a sex of superwomen, in whom mentality triumphs to the sacrifice of the normal female. One cannot say that this side of the generally admirable “self-made” woman is appealing. It is rather hard, and leads one to speculate as to whether the victorious bachelor girl of today is on the whole more attractive or better off than the despised spinster of yesterday. Of course, she has raised and strengthened the position of women, economically speaking; socially, too. But one cannot but think that she is after all only a partially finished superwoman, and that the ultimate creature will have more of sweetness and strong tenderness than one sees in the determined, rather rigid faces of the army of New York business women of the present.

As for the New York man (whom one is forever slighting because his rôle is so inconspicuous), we have a type much less complex--quite the simplest type of normal male, in fact. The average New Yorker (that is, the New Yorker of the upper middle class) is a hard-working, obvious soul, of obvious qualities and obvious flaws. His _raison d’être_ is to provide prodigally for his wife and children; to which end he steals out of the house in the morning before the rest are awake, and returns late in the evening, hurriedly to dress and accompany Madame to some smart restaurant and the play.

_Underwood & Underwood_

THE TRIUMPHANT “THIRD SEX” TAKES WASHINGTON]

Here, as at the opera or fashionable reception, his duty is simply that of background to the elaborate gorgeousness and inveterate animation of his womenfolk. Indeed, throughout all their activities the American husband and wife seem curiously irrelevant to one another: they work as a tandem, not as a team. And there is no question as to who goes first. The wife indicates the route; the husband does his best to keep up to her. If he cannot do it, no matter what his other excellences, he is a failure. He himself is convinced of it, hence his tense expression of straining every nerve toward some gigantic end that usually he is just able to compass.

The man who cannot support a woman, not in reasonable comfort, but in the luxury she expects, thinks he has no right to her. The woman has taught him to think it. Thus a young friend of mine, who on twenty-five thousand a year had been engaged to a charming New York girl, told me, simply, that of course when his income was reduced to five thousand he could not marry her.

I asked what the girl thought about it. “Oh, she’s a trump,” he said enthusiastically; “she wouldn’t throw me over because I’ve lost my money. But of course she sees it’s impossible. We couldn’t go the pace.”

From which ingenuous confession we rightly gather that “the pace” comes first with both husband and wife, in New York; the person of one another second, if it counts at all. Their great bond of union is the building up of certain material circumstances both covet; their home life, their friends, their instinctive and lavish hospitality--everything is regulated according to this. Instead of a peaceful evening in their own drawing-room, after the man’s strenuous day at the office, the woman’s no less strenuous day at bridge and the dressmaker’s, they must rush into evening clothes and hasten to show themselves where they should be seen. Other people’s pleasures become to the American couple stern duties; to be feverishly followed, if it helps them in ever so little toward their goal.

Thus we hear Mrs. Grey say to George: “Don’t forget we’re dining with the Fred Baynes’ tonight. Be home early.”

“The deuce we are!” says George. “I wanted to go to the club. I detest Bayne, anyhow.”

“Yes, but he’s President of the _Security Trust_. If you want to get their new contract, you’d best dine, and get him to promise you. I’ve already lunched her, so the ground’s prepared.”

“Oh, very well,” growls George; “of course you’re right. I’ll be on hand.”

Result: They cement a friendship with two odious people whom they are afterward obliged to invite; but George gets the contract, and twenty thousand goes down to the family bank account. This spirit is by no means unknown in English and Continental life, but certainly it has its origin and prime exponents in America. No other people finds money sufficient exchange for perpetual boredom.

The European goes where he is amused, with friends who interest him. He dares. The American does not; having always to prove that he can afford to be in certain places, that he is of sufficient importance to be with certain people. America is full of ruinously expensive resorts that have sprung up in response to this craving for self-advertisement on the part of her “rising” sons and daughters. Squads of newspaper reporters go with them, and the nation is kept accurately informed to the minute as to what Mrs. Spender wore this morning at Palm Beach, Mrs. Haveall at Newport, Mrs. Dash at Hot Springs; also how many horses, motor cars, yachts and petty paraphernalia Charles Spender, Jimmy Haveall, and Henry Dash are carrying about. The credit of these men, together often with the credit of large business firms, depends on the show they can afford to make, and the jewels their wives wear.

But I believe that no man has a duller life than the rich man--or the moderately rich man of New York. He is generally the victim of dyspepsia--from too rich food taken in too great a hurry; he is always the victim of the office. Not even after he has retired, to spend the remainder of his days in dreary luxury between his clubs and Continental watering places, does the office habit cease to torment him. Once and forever, it has murdered the enjoyment of leisure and annihilated pleasure in peace.

Being naturally heavy-minded on all subjects except business, the American man with time on his hands is in a pitiable plight. I have met some of these poor gentlemen, wandering helplessly about the world with their major-general wives, and I must say they are among the most pathetic of married men. They hibernate in hotel lounges, smoking their enormous cigars and devouring their two-weeks-old New York newspapers; or, when they get the chance, monologuing by the hour on their past master strokes in the land where “things hum.” Sometimes in self-defence against the wife’s frocks and French hats, they have a hobby: ivories, or old silver--something eminently respectable. If so, they are apt to be laborious about it, as they are about all culture which they graft on themselves, or have grafted on them. Sometimes they turn their attention to sport; but the real sport of the American, man and woman, is climbing. It is born in them, and they never actually give it up until they die.

Meanwhile the couple who have resisted divorce and continued to climb together turn anxious eyes on the upward advance of their children. If the latter make a false step, mother with her trained wit must repair it; father must foot the bill. No more extravagantly indulgent parent exists than the American parent who himself has had to make his own way. His children are monarchs, weightedly crowned with luxuries they do not appreciate; and for them he slaves till death or nervous prostration lays him low. One wonders when the nation that has lost its head over the American girl will awake to the discovery of the American father. For the present he is a silent, deprecatory creature, toiling unceasingly six days of the week, and on the seventh to be found in some unfrequented corner of the house, inundated by newspapers, or unobtrusively building blocks in the nursery--where there is one.

As a rule, American children own the house, monopolize the conversation at meals, which almost invariably they take with their elders--whether there are guests or not, and are generally as arrogant and precocious little tyrants as unlimited indulgence and admiration can make them. They have been allowed to see and read everything their parents see and read; they have been taken to the theatre and about the world, from the time they could walk; they have, many of them, travelled abroad, and are ready to discuss Paris or London with the languid nonchalance of little old men and women; on the whole, these poor spoiled little people, through no fault of their own, are about as unpleasant and unnatural a type as can be found.

Instead of being kept simple and unsophisticated they are early inculcated with the importance of money and the things it can buy. American boys, rather than vying with one another in tennis or swimming vie with one another in the number of motor cars they own or sail-boats or saddle-horses, as the case may be. They would scorn the pony that is the English boy’s delight, but it is true that many young Americans at the tender age of twelve own their own motors, which they drive and discuss with the _blasé_ air of men of the world. In like fashion the little girls, from the time they can toddle, are consumed with the idea of outdressing one another; and even give box parties and luncheons--beginning, almost before they are out of the cradle, to imitate their mothers in ambition and the consuming spirit of competition.

Naturally, one is speaking of the children of the wealthy, or at least well off; among the children of the working classes, whatever their grade of intelligence or education, we find the same sturdy independence and ability that characterizes their mothers and fathers. But all American children are sophisticated--one glance at a daily newspaper is enough to make them so; and they live in an atmosphere of worldly wisdom and knowledge of the sordid, which those of us who believe that childhood should be ingenuous and gay find rather sad. The little pitchers, in this case, have not only big ears but eyes and wits sharp to perceive the sorry things they would naturally learn soon enough.

They are allowed to wander, unshielded, among the perplexing mixed motives, the standards in disarray, of this theatre where life in its myriad relations is still in adjustment. Like small troubled gnomes seeking light, they flit across the hazardous stage; where their more experienced leaders have yet to extricate order out of a sea of sentimental hypocrisies, inflated ideals, and makeshift laws.

American men and women have been at great pains to construct “a world not better than the world it curtains, only foolisher.” They have obstinately refused to admit one another as they actually are--which, after all, is a remarkably fine race of beings; preferring the pretty flimsiness of a house of cards of their own making to the indestructible mansion of humanity. When their passion for inventing shall be converted into an equally ardent passion for reflecting--as it surely will be--they will see their mistake in a trice; and, from that time, they are destined to be not a collection of finely tuned nervous organisms, but a splendid race of thinking creatures.

II

THE CURTAIN RISES

(Paris)

I

ON THE GREAT ARTISTE

Out of the turmoil and struggling confusion of rehearsal, to gaze on the finished performance of the great _artiste_! For in Paris we are before the curtain, not behind it; and few foreigners, though they may adopt the city for their own, and lovingly study it for many years, are granted more than an occasional rare glimpse of its personality without the stage between. From that safe distance, Paris coquets with you, rails at you, laughs and weeps for you; but first she has handed you a programme, which informs you that she does the same for all the world, at a certain hour each day, and for a fixed price. And if ever in the ardour of your admiration you show signs of forgetting, of seeking her personal favour by a rash gesture or smile, she points you imperiously to the barricade of the footlights--or vanishes completely, in the haughtiness of her ire.