A Frenchman in America Part 10
The Americans are the most docile people in the world. They are the slaves of their servants, whether these are high officials, or the "reduced d.u.c.h.esses" of domestic service. They are so submitted to their lot that they seem to find it quite natural.
The Americans are lions governed by bull-dogs and a.s.ses.
They have given themselves a hundred thousand masters, these folks who laugh at monarchies, for example, and scorn the rule of a king, as if it were better to be bullied by a crowd than by an individual.
In America, the man who pays does not command the paid. I have already said it; I will maintain the truth of the statement that, in America, the paid servant rules. Tyranny from above is bad; tyranny from below is worse.
Of my many first impressions that have deepened into convictions, this is one of the firmest.
When you arrive at an English railway station, all the porters seem to say: "Here is a customer, let us treat him well." And it is who shall relieve you of your luggage, or answer any questions you may be pleased to ask. They are glad to see you.
In America, you may have a dozen parcels, not a hand will move to help you with them. So Jonathan is obliged to forego the luxury of hand baggage, so convenient for long journeys.
When you arrive at an American station, the officials are all frowning and seem to say: "Why the deuce don't you go to Chicago by some other line instead of coming here to bother us?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ENGLISH RAILWAY STATION.]
This subject reminds me of an interesting fact, told me by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew on board the _Teutonic_. When tram-cars were first used in the States, it was a long time before the drivers and conductors would consent to wear any kind of uniform, so great is the horror of anything like a badge of paid servitude. Now that they do wear some kind of uniform, they spend their time in standing sentry at the door of their dignity, and in thinking that, if they were polite, you would take their affable manners for servility.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RAILWAY PORTER.]
_Everett House, New York. (Midnight.)_
So many charming houses have opened their hospitable doors to me in New York that, when I am in this city, I have soon forgotten the little annoyances of a railway journey or the hardships of a lecture tour.
After dining here, I went to spend the evening at the house of Mr.
Richard Watson Gilder, the poet, and editor of the _Century Magazine_, that most successful of all magazines in the world. A circulation of nearly 300,000 copies--just think of it! But it need not excite wonder in any one who knows this beautiful and artistic periodical, to which all the leading _litterateurs_ of America lend their pens, and the best artists their pencils.
Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder is one of the best and most genial hostesses in New York. At her Fridays, one meets the cream of intellectual society, the best known names of the American aristocracy of talent.
To-night I met Mr. Frank R. Stockton, the novelist, Mr. Charles Webb, the humorist, Mr. Frank Millet, the painter, and his wife, and a galaxy of celebrities and beautiful women, all most interesting and delightful people to meet. Conversation went on briskly all over the rooms till late.
The more I see of the American women, the more confirmed I become in my impression that they are typical; more so than the men. They are like no other women I know. The brilliancy of their conversation, the animation of their features, the absence of affectation in their manners, make them unique. There are no women to compare to them in a drawing-room.
There are none with whom I feel so much at ease. Their beauty, physically speaking, is great; but you are still more struck by their intellectual beauty, the frankness of their eyes, and the naturalness of their bearing.
I returned to the Everett House, musing all the way on the difference between the American women and the women of France and England. The theme was attractive, and, remembering that to-morrow would be an off-day for me, I resolved to spend it in going more fully into this fascinating subject with pen and ink.
CHAPTER XII.
NOTES ON AMERICAN WOMEN--COMPARISONS--HOW MEN TREAT WOMEN AND VICE VERSA--SCENES AND ILl.u.s.tRATIONS.
_New York, January 18._
A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married twenty years without being able to understand his wife. "You should not complain of that," remarked the friend. "I have been married to my wife two years only, and I understand her perfectly."
The leaders of thought in France have long ago proclaimed that woman was the only problem it was not given to man to solve. They have all tried, and they have all failed. They all acknowledge it--but they are trying still.
Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every Frenchman is never exhausted. Parodying Terence, he says to himself, "I am a man, and all that concerns woman interests me." All the French modern novels are studies, a.n.a.lytical, dissecting studies, of woman's heart.
To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes appear a trifle puerile, if not also ridiculous. But to understand this feeling, one must remember how a Frenchman is brought up.
In England, boys and girls meet and play together; in America and Canada, they sit side by side on the same benches at school, not only as children of tender age, but at College and in the Universities. They get accustomed to each other's company; they see nothing strange in being in contact with one another, and this naturally tends to reduce the interest or curiosity one s.e.x takes in the other. But in France they are apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they can meet when they have attained the age of twenty!
Strange to reflect that young people of both s.e.xes can meet in ball-rooms without exciting their parents' suspicions, and that they cannot do so in cla.s.s-rooms!
When I was a boy at school in France, I can well remember how we boys felt on the subject. If we heard that a young girl, say the sister of some school-fellow, was with her mother in the common parlor to see her brother, why, it created a commotion, a perfect revolution in the whole establishment. It was no use trying to keep us in order. We would climb on the top of the seats or of the tables to endeavor to see something of her, even if it were but the top of her hat, or a bit of her gown across the recreation yard at the very end of the building. It was an event.
Many of us would even immediately get inspired and compose verses addressed to the unknown fair visitor. In these poetical effusions we would imagine the young girl carried off by some miscreant, and we would fly to her rescue, save her, and throw ourselves at her feet to receive her hand as our reward. Yes, we would get quite romantic or, in plain English, quite silly. We could not imagine that a woman was a reasoning being with whom you can talk on the topics of the day, or have an ordinary conversation on any ordinary subject. To us a woman was a being with whom you can only talk of love, or fall in love, or, maybe, for whom you may die of love.
This manner of training young men goes a long way toward explaining the position of woman in France as well as her ways. It explains why a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman, when they converse together, seldom can forget that one is a man and the other a woman. It does not prove that a Frenchwoman must necessarily be, and is, affected in her relations with men; but it explains why she does not feel, as the American woman does, that a man and woman can enjoy a _tete-a-tete_ free from all those commonplace flatteries, compliments, and plat.i.tudes that badly-understood gallantry suggests. Many American ladies have made me forget, by the easiness of their manner and the charm and naturalness of their conversation, that I was speaking with women, and with lovely ones, too. This I could never have forgotten in the company of French ladies.
On account of this feeling, and perhaps also of the difference which exists between the education received by a man and that received by a woman in France, the conversation will always be on some light topics, literary, artistic, dramatic, social, or other. Indeed, it would be most unbecoming for a man to start a very serious subject of conversation with a French lady to whom he had just been introduced. He would be taken for a pedant or a man of bad breeding.
In America, men and women receive practically the same education, and this of course enlarges the circle of conversation between the s.e.xes. I shall always remember a beautiful American girl, not more than twenty years of age, to whom I was once introduced in New York, as she was giving to a lady sitting next to her a most detailed description of the latest bonnet invented in Paris, and who, turning toward me, asked me point-blank if I had read M. Ernest Renan's "History of the People of Israel." I had to confess that I had not yet had time to read it. But she had, and she gave me, without the remotest touch of affectation or pedantry, a most interesting and learned a.n.a.lysis of that remarkable work. I related this incident in "Jonathan and his Continent." On reading it, some of my countrymen, critics and others, exclaimed: "We imagine the fair American girl had a pair of gold spectacles on."
"No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No gold spectacles, no guy. It was a beautiful girl, dressed with most exquisite taste and care, and most charming and womanly."
An American woman, however learned she may be, is a sound politician, and she knows that the best thing she can make of herself is a woman, and she remains a woman. She will always make herself as attractive as she possibly can. Not to please men--I believe she has a great contempt for them--but to please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were to remark to a lady how clever some woman in the room looked, she would probably closely examine that woman's dress to find out what I thought was wrong about it. It would probably be the same in England, but not in America.
A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another woman's cleverness. She will far more readily forgive her this qualification than beauty. And in this particular point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman resembles all the women in the Old World.
Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in declaring that the American ones are the least affected. With them, I repeat it, I feel at ease as I do with no other women in the world.
With whom but an _Americaine_ would the following little scene have been possible?
I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to be the reception day of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine and my wife's, I thought I would call upon her early, before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I went to the house about half-past three in the afternoon. Mrs. X.
received me in the drawing-room, and we were soon talking on the hundred and one topics that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently the conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X. drew her chair up a little nearer to the fire, put the toes of her little slippers on the fender stool, and with a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural, manner, said:
"You are married and love your wife; I am married and love my husband; we are both artists, let's have our say out."
And we proceeded to have our say out.
But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the seam of her black silk bodice was unsewn. We men, when we see a lady with something awry in her toilette, how often do we long to say to her: "Excuse me, madam, but perhaps you don't know that you have a hairpin sticking out two inches just behind your ear," or "Pardon me, Miss, I'm a married man, there is something wrong there behind, just under your waist belt."
Now I felt for Mrs. X., who was just going to receive a crowd of callers with a little rent in one of her bodice seams, and tried to persuade myself to be brave and tell her of it. Yet I hesitated. People take things so differently. The conversation went on unflagging. At last I could not stand it any longer.
"Mrs. X.," said I, all in a breath, "you are married and love your husband; I am married and love my wife; we are both artists; there is a little bit of seam come unsewn, just there by your arm, run and get it sewn up!"
The peals of laughter that I heard going on upstairs, while the damage was being repaired, proved to me that there was no resentment to be feared, but, on the contrary, that I had earned the grat.i.tude of Mrs. X.