CHAPTER XXVIII
THE LIBERTY OF ANGLO-SAXON WOMEN
The mistakes made by foreigners – Misconstructions – Educational systems – Girls do not lose their charm by independence
Continental men visiting England and the United States do not, as a rule, understand the comparative familiarity with which they are treated by women to whom they have been properly introduced. They are often in danger of misinterpreting their kindness of manner, and regarding as affectionate advances or invitations to flirt what are meant as only polite attentions.
This awkward error is one into which not only Frenchmen, but all men of Continental Europe, are very apt to fall, unless they happen to be men of fine perceptions, in other words, perfect gentlemen. Young girls in France are kept so much to themselves, and young men are so completely separated from them, that when one of the latter finds himself, through some accident or fault of supervision, alone in presence of one of the former, he feels called upon as a man to make himself particularly pleasant, if not actually to make a declaration of love.
Of course, there is not in France anyone, not even the most conservative provincial mother, who does not admire, above all in America, that sweet liberty which is enjoyed by the women, married or unmarried. There is not one of those French mothers who would not like to give that same liberty to her own daughters. But how can she? Who shall be the first to do it?
It takes many generations to accept such a revolution in a system of education. People will have it that this Anglo-Saxon system would never do in France. Others even affirm that French people are incapable of shaking off perpetual thought of the relations between the sexes; that in France men are always thinking about women and women about men – in fact, that it is in the blood. The proof that these people are wrong is that young men and girls, sons and daughters of French fathers and mothers, but educated from a tender age either in England or America, do behave absolutely like English or American youths. It is not in the blood: the different systems of education alone account for those different modes of thought.
And what a difference between the French girls of my boyhood and the French girls of the present day! Not that they are yet 'Daisy Millers,' but at any rate they are no longer 'Eugénie Grandets.' Thirty years ago, a French girl well advanced in her twenties could not have, even in the early morning, gone across the street to see a friend or buy a pair of gloves without being accompanied by an elderly lady of the family or a lady's-maid. Thirty years ago, in my little native Brittany town, where a child of tender years would have been absolutely safe, an unmarried woman between forty and fifty would always be accompanied by a servant, even in daytime.
It was the correct thing to do. Indeed, a woman not married would always act in this manner as long as she thought that she was fit to be looked at by men. And very few women make up their minds to the loss of their charms. It even takes some of them a long time to become aware of that loss.
The French girl of thirty years ago, who was only allowed to read children's books, and never to set foot inside a theatre, now reads M. Zola's novels, and goes to see the plays of Alexandre Dumas fils, and as she discusses these plays she comes to the conclusion that they are very clever and interesting, but hardly such as to take her mother to.
French women are now getting freer every day, and, with the use of liberty, will lose the little defect they sometimes possess – affectation. They will become more and more natural and unaffected, and they will acquire that most charming and eminently American quality in a woman – unconventionality. They are now moving, not in the direction of innocent frivolity, but in that of greater independence. The time is soon coming when French girls will cease to regard marriage as a sort of emancipation, and will perhaps look upon it, as an American lady novelist of my acquaintance does, as a rather hard way of making a living.
Those French girls will not lose their charms by the enjoyment of greater liberty and independence. The American women have thus improved theirs.
CHAPTER XXIX
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN WOMEN HAVE NO LOVE TO SPARE FOR ONE ANOTHER
England and America are two branches of a family who once quarrelled – For their common interests they may make it up, but there will never be any love lost – There are no such quarrels to patch up as family ones
I have heard a great deal about 'our kith and kin,' 'our cousins across the Atlantic,' 'blood is thicker than water,' 'the Anglo-Saxon race,' 'the English-speaking people,' 'the Anglo-American alliance,' and other more or less venerable platitudes with which music-hall managers in England have for some time succeeded in bringing down the gallery, on Saturday nights especially. I have heard all that, and, in company with most Americans, I have laughed in my sleeve.
During their war with Spain, the Americans were grateful for English sympathy and moral support.
During the Transvaal War, the English, finding themselves isolated and blamed by the whole of Europe, hoped for American sympathy.
'I scratched your back, you scratch mine.'
This sympathy the English did not obtain, or, if they did, in a very small measure, and only among the inhabitants of Fifth Avenue and the 'Four Hundred' of a few large Eastern cities. I was in America for three months at the beginning of last year, and everywhere, from New York to New Orleans, I found ninety-nine Americans out of every hundred sympathizing with the Boers in their plucky and determined struggle for liberty and independence. Their skill and bravery appealed to a nation who, some hundred years ago, themselves fought successfully for their freedom.
Yet, as I had many times the opportunity of telling American audiences, 'In the Anglo-Boer struggle, it is not the Boers, but the English who are fighting for what your ancestors fought for so successfully during the War of Independence – the liberty of the citizen and good and honest government. I have sympathy for the Boers on account of their ignorant patriotism and bravery; but, for the sake of humanity and civilization, I hope the English will win.'
It is true that I got applause for this statement, it is true that the presidents of many American universities thanked me for putting the truth and the facts of the question plainly before the students; but I am afraid I made very few converts to the pro-English cause, although I believe I was more successful on the platform in America than in France, where I got enthusiastically hissed and had several narrow escapes of being mobbed for expressing my rather pro-English sentiments.
The more charitable of my compatriots said it was only fair for a Frenchman who had long enjoyed the hospitality of the English to speak well of them abroad. Some went so far as to suggest that I was probably in the pay of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.
However all this may be, my point is this: I don't care what a few American millionaires, who prefer England to America, who crawl on all fours before the English aristocracy, who would think it beneath their dignity to give their daughters to honest Americans, and prefer to get some English noblemen's coats-of-arms out of pawn with their daughters and their dollars – I say I don't care what these people may say to the contrary, my firm conviction, more and more absolute every time that I travel throughout the United States, is that there is very little love to spare in America for the English people. And this state of things will exist as long as the Americans build their patriotism on their successes of 1776 and 1812 against the English, and so long as school-books published in America teach American children that the English are the hereditary foes of their country.
Add also to this that not one-third of the population of the United States are of English extraction. The Germans and the Scandinavians are not 'kith and kin,' and the Irish are tooth and nail. Now, if you don't believe me, let me wish you had been in America, as I was, during the Venezuelan squabble, some five years ago, and you will be convinced of the truth of my statement.
But I must leave aside all these political considerations, and also the question whether American and English men love each other or not, for I was very near forgetting that the subject of this chapter is 'What American and English Women think of each other.' Here again, as in the case of the men, we must not speak of the aristocracy and the plutocracy of the two countries. Those people are cosmopolitan; besides, they travel and they get rid of their international prejudices.
But what about the good, worthy masses of the people, say, at least nine-tenths of the populations of America and England?
Well, I should like to tell what I think to be the truth frankly and plainly. I am not a rich man – far from it – but I now see my way to easily paying my butcher's bills for the rest of my life, and I can afford to say what I mean. If you don't like it, and want something else, please apply elsewhere for compliments, platitudes, and falsehoods.
I am absolutely convinced that most American women despise English women, and that most English women cordially hate American women. And as it is much more flattering to be hated than to be despised, it is the American women who seem to me the better served of the two.
In the eyes of the English women who have not travelled in America or had the good fortune of mixing in Europe with the best American women, and who, in good womanly fashion, stick fast to their prejudiced notions, the daughters of Brother Jonathan are bumptious, vulgar, overdressed, loud, assertive, indifferent mothers, selfish wives, bad housekeepers, or else unbearable prigs and blue-stockings. And you will hear them deliver judgment in a way that seems to admit of no appeal.
In the eyes of the American women who have not lived the home-life of the English or mixed with the women of good English society, and who have been fed on ideas and opinions given in some American books or published in the newspapers of the smaller American cities, the English women are silly, sat-upon, ignorant creatures, seedy and dowdy, badly shaped, badly dressed, and who can only talk of their babies and their servants.
Among that class of women in both countries, the only concessions I have heard them make are the following: English women admit that their American sisters are freer and smarter than they are, and the American women envy the complexion of the daughters of John Bull.
How amiable women can be!
CHAPTER XXX
THE WOMAN I HATE
Women's-righters – Electric fluids – The bearded lady – The first-fiddle – Lady doctors – Lady lawyers – Lady speech-makers – Prominent women – A pretty picture
Ernest Renan, whom nobody would dream of charging with frivolity, said that the first duty of woman was to look beautiful. Victor Hugo once said that it was to look pleasant. In mythology we find that the gods fell in love with Venus, but never with Minerva.
The functions of woman are to inspire and to guide, not to lead or command, and I think that the saddest spectacle of the latter end of the nineteenth century was the supremely ridiculous efforts made by some women to usurp functions which by Nature were intended for men to perform. Poor women's-righters! They cannot be men, and they want to cease to be women. Men and women are like electric fluids. When of the same name, they repel each other; when of different kinds, they attract each other. Now, women's-righters are seldom beautiful, very seldom attractive. A manly woman is as objectionable a sight as an effeminate man. The blue-stockings are mostly of the 'unclaimed blessing' sisterhood, and very few of them set up for professional beauties. The blue-stocking fascinates me as much as the bearded lady of a Chicago dime museum.
When a woman is beautiful, she is generally satisfied with playing a woman's part. The tedious women's-righters embrace the thankless career of exponents of women's grievances because they have never found anything better to embrace. And, for that matter, these excellent ladies must not put it into their heads that they have created the part, for it existed in the days of Aristophanes. Praxagora was neither more nor less ridiculous than most of the present champions of women's rights.
I hate the woman who appears in public. I hate the woman who lectures in public or in private. I hate the woman who rises to make a speech after dinner. I hate the woman who speaks about politics, and would like to sit in Parliament so as to transform it into a Chatterment. I hate the scientific woman who lectures on evolution or writes on natural philosophy. I hate the lady physician, the lady lawyer, the lady member of the School Board, the lady preacher, the lady president, the lady secretary, the lady reciter, even the lady who conducts an orchestra. I hate the prominent woman. And, although I don't see her, I hate the woman who writes a book, and feel almost ready to exclaim with Alphonse Karr: 'One book more and one woman less!'
Compared to all these, how I love the pretty woman who dresses well, smiles pleasantly, parts her hair in the middle, and has never done anything in her life! 'Ah!' will exclaim the hateful woman, 'but see, she wears the collar of servitude.' Nonsense! The marks that you see on her neck are not those of a collar of servitude, but those made by the arms of the husband and the children that clasp her round it.
Women, priests, and poultry have never enough, but in wishing to extend her empire woman will destroy it.
Now, ladies, what do you want? I hear you constantly loudly demanding the emancipation of your sex. You say you can do without us, and as for our protection, you'll none of it. For you, in times past, have we drawn the sword; to-day you hold us scarce worthy to draw cheques at your bidding. You would be man's equal, as if you ought not to be content with being incontestably his superior. You have graces of body and mind, and men pay you a homage that falls little short of worship. Your first duties are to be tender, sweet, and beautiful. You have every intention of continuing to be the latter, we have no doubt, but you mean to be tender and sweet no longer. In a word, you mean to strike, as your sisters did in the good old days of Aristophanes.
'You want to be learned? But you are learned in the heart's lore by Nature. You want to be free? But we are your slaves confessed. You want to make the laws? But your lightest word is law already. And, besides, between ourselves, do you not practically make your husbands vote pretty much as you please in all the parliaments of the world? You want to have more influence in the higher councils? But are you not satisfied with knowing that it was a woman who was the cause of the fall of the human race? that a woman has been the cause of every great catastrophe, from the Siege of Troy down to the Franco-Prussian War? that, in a word, woman has ever inspired our noblest actions and our foulest crimes? The rights of woman! What a sonorous platitude!'
You are proud of saying that to your sex belonged Joan of Arc, Charlotte Corday, George Sand, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Madame Roland, Madame de Staël. Quite true; but could you find many men who would have been happy by taking to wife any one of the ladies I have just mentioned?
If you give a boy the education of a girl, or a girl the education of a boy, the result will be an unsubmissive or degraded being. It is always this result which must be reached by all who, believing that they are protesting against laws and usages, are really in rebellion against Nature. 'I dream of a society,' said Jules Simon, 'where women would be the mistresses in their own household, and would figure in public affairs only through the intermediary of their fathers and their husbands. I would like to sacrifice myself for woman, but not to obey her. I repel her domination, but I crave for her influence.'
The name of woman will ever be glorious so long as it is synonymous with beauty, tenderness, sweetness, devotion, all the sacred troop of virtues. It will be glorious, thanks to the Lucretias, the Penelopes, the Cornelias, ancient and modern, the devoted daughters, the loving wives, the adorable mothers, to the thousands of obscure heroines, who remind us, in the words of the great poet of antiquity, that the best women have been those whom the world has heard least of.
The loveliest picture in the world is that which represents a soldier lying on the battlefield with a woman kneeling by his side tending his wounds. Let the field be that of the everyday battle of life.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE KIND OF WOMAN I LOVE
Another answer to critics – Distorted minds – The portrait of a womanly woman
I once wrote an article on 'The Woman I Hate,' which brought me an avalanche of letters, not all very pleasing reading. Many of them conveyed to me the wrath of viragos, women's-righters, petticoated males, trousered females, misunderstood and unclaimed women, ripe, spectacled spinsters, cockatoos of all sorts and conditions, who happened by the irony of fate and freaks of nature to be born of a sex of which they failed to be an ornament.
One of these correspondents accused me of 'possessing a nasty mind' for sneering at lady doctors. 'You insult women,' she says. 'Can you imagine, for instance, a respectable woman submitting to an examination by a man?' My dear lady, I am afraid I must return you the compliment. Let me assure you that, just as an artist will see nothing in a female figure beyond beauty and perfect harmony of lines, and will admire her with as cool a mind as he would a statue, just so a doctor will examine a woman as he would a piece of anatomy, and your mind must be fearfully distorted and impure, if you imagine for a moment that a single objectionable thought will pass through the mind of this man of science.
If you really do think so, let me assure you that I pity you, or even must despise you, from the bottom of my heart. And, while on this subject, allow me to remind you that an eminent American man exclaimed only the other day: 'In our country we have a great many female doctors, female lawyers, female journalists, female orators, female preachers, and females in all classes and professions and trades, but what we want is a good many more female women.'
The woman I love is the female woman that I would protect and cherish in return for all the sweet attention she would pay me, and which would enable me to cheerfully fight the battle of life. How to describe her I hardly know.
Should she be beautiful? Not necessarily. Pretty? Yes, rather. Good figure? Decidedly. Clever? H'm – yes. Cheerful? By all means. Punctual? Like a military man. Serious? Not too much. Frivolous? Yes, just a little. Of a scientific turn of mind? B-r-r-r! no; I should shudder at the idea of it. Of an artistic nature, then, with literary tastes? Yes, certainly. But, above all, a keen, sensible, tactful little woman who would make it the business of her life to study me, as I would make it the business of my life to study her; a woman who could be in turn, according to circumstances, a housewife, a counsellor, a 'pal,' a wife, a sweetheart, a nurse, a patient, the sunshine of my life, and always a confidante, a friend, and a partner.
In a little Normandy town I have a dear lady friend, Parisienne to the core, whom I have known and loved from childhood. She is not far from sixty, but, upon my word, I think she is still very beautiful. She was in succession a loving, devoted daughter, an excellent wife, and an adorable mother. She has now lost all she loved in the world, and she devotes her time cultivating a lovely garden of flowers and attending all the church services of the parish. A beggar never passes her without receiving a little contribution, and she helps many a poor family. In a word, the gay life of Paris is all forgotten, and you would imagine that my recluse friend was a hermit, a sort of lay nun, as it were.
Well, yes, she is all that; but isn't she a woman still, though! 'Do you see,' she was saying to me one day, 'I have renounced all my worldly ideas? My flowers, my books, my poor friends, that's the only thought of my life now. I am old; I don't care how I dress or how I look. Anything does for me now. The Parisienne that you used to know, my dear friend, is dead and buried.'
'What a charming dress you have on!' I remarked. 'I do admire the material and the colour, and the cut, too. And how beautifully made and finished! Did you have that made in this town?'
The expression of her face was a study.
'My dear friend,' she exclaimed, 'you do not imagine I would get a dress made in this stupid little hole of a town. They make bags here, not gowns.' And she almost looked indignant, the dear! at the idea that I could suppose she had not her dresses made in Paris. I smiled, and said nothing.
And, as I looked at the book-shelves in her boudoir, I saw 'L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ.' The volume next to it was 'Les Secrets du Cabinet de Toilette.' I could not help making a little sarcastic remark to my dear old friend.
'Well, mon cher ami,' she said, 'do you think the bon Dieu would give me a better reception if I presented myself with a face covered with wrinkles? By the way, what is that stuff they make in England which you told me is so good for the skin?'
Those little contradictions in a good and delightful woman make her lovable. So I think, at any rate.
The woman I love is the woman who possesses all the womanly virtues and qualities – sweetness, devotion, reliability. The little failings I forgive in her are those of her sex – frivolity and the divine right of changing her mind. If in any way woman apes man, she is intolerable and hateful.