The Twentieth Century American Part 7

"If you marry an American girl," says _Life_--I quote from memory,--"you may be sure that you will not be the first man she has kissed. If you marry an English one, you may be certain you will not be the last."

Whether this is true, viz., that, granting that the American girl is, before marriage, exposed to more temptation than her English sister, the latter more than makes up for it in the freedom of married life, is another quagmire. No statistics, whether of marriage, of divorce, or of the ratio of increase in population, are of any use as a guide. Each man or woman, who has had any opportunity of judging, will be guided solely by the narrow circle of his or her personal experience; and I know that the man whose opinion on the subject I would most regard holds exactly opposite views to myself--and what my own may be I trust I may be excused from stating. But while on the subject of the relative conjugal morality of the two peoples opinions will differ widely with individual experience, I have never met a shadow of disagreement in competent opinion in regard to the facts about the youth of the two countries. It may be, as I have heard a clever woman say, that the way for a member of her s.e.x to get the greatest enjoyment out of life is to be brought up in America and married in England. If so let us rejoice that so many charming women choose the way which opens to them the possibility of the greatest felicity.

There is, of course, a widespread impression in England that American women as a rule are not womanly. The average American girl acquires when young a self-possession and an ability to converse in company which Englishwomen only, and then not always, acquire much later in life.

Therefore the American girl appears, to English eyes, to be "forward,"

and she is a.s.sumed to possess all the vices which go with "forwardness"

in an English maiden. Which is entirely unjust. Let us remember that there is hardly a girl growing up in England to-day who would not have been considered forward and ill-mannered to an almost intolerable degree by her great-grandmother. But that the girls of to-day are any the less womanly, in all that is sweet and essential in womanliness, than any generation of their ancestors, I for one do not believe. Nor do I believe that in another generation, when they will perhaps, as a matter of course, possess all the social precocity (as it seems to us) of the American girl of to-day, they will thereby be any the less true and tender women than their mothers.

In particular, are American girls supposed to be so commercially case-hardened that their artistic sensibilities have been destroyed. A notorious American "revivalist" some years ago returned from a much-advertised trip to England and told his American congregations of the sinfulness which he had seen in the Old World. Among other things he had seen, so he said, more tipsy men and women in the streets of London in (I think) a month than he had seen in the streets of his native town of Topeka, Kansas, in some--no matter what--large number of years. Very possibly he was right. But he omitted to say that he had also seen several million more sober ones. A population of 6,000,000 frequently contains more drunkards than one of 30,000. It also contains more metaphysicians. On the same principle it is entirely likely that the American girl, who talks so much, says many more foolish things than the English one who, if she can help it, never talks at all. The American girl is only a girl after all, and because she has acquired a conversational fluency which the Englishwoman will only arrive at twenty years later, it is not just to suppose that she must also have acquired an additional twenty years' maturity of mind.

Most English readers are familiar with the picture of the American girl who flits through Europe seeing nothing in the Parthenon or in Whitehall beyond an inferiority in size and splendour to the last new insurance company's building in New York. She has been a favourite character in fiction, and the name of the artist who first imagined her has long been lost. Perhaps she was Daisy Miller's grandmother. In reality, in spite of that lack of reverence which is undoubtedly a national American characteristic, the average American woman has an almost pa.s.sionate love for those glories of antiquity which her own country necessarily lacks, such as few Englishwomen are capable of feeling.

"How in our hearts we envy you the mere names of your streets!" said an American woman to me once. It is not easy for an English man or woman to conceive what romance and wonder cl.u.s.ter round the names of Fleet Street and the Mall to the minds of many educated Americans. We, if we are away from them for half a dozen years, long for them in our exile and rejoice in them on our return. The American of sensibility feels that he--and more especially she--has been cut off from them for as many generations and adores them with an ardour proportionately magnified.

But he (or she) would not exchange Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Euclid Avenue or the Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive, as the case may be, for all London.

It was once my fortune to show over Westminster Abbey an American woman whose name, by reason of her works--sound practical common-sense works,--has come to be known throughout the United States, and I heard "the wings of the dead centuries beat about her ears." I took her to Poet's Corner. She turned herself slowly about and looked at the names carved on either side of her, and then looked down and saw the names that lay graven beneath her feet; and she dropped sobbing on her knees upon the pavement. Johnson was not kind to the American colonies in his life. Those tears which fell upon his name, where it is cut into the slab of paving, were part of America's revenge.

We all remember Kipling's "type-writer girl" in San Francisco,--"the young lady who in England would be a Person,"--who suddenly quoted at him Theophile Gautier. It is an incident which many Englishmen have read with incredulity, but which has nothing curious in it to the American mind. A stenographer in my own offices subsequently, I have heard, married a rich owner of race-horses and her dinners I understand are delightful. She was an excellent stenographer.

In all frontier communities, where women are few and the primitive instincts have freer play than in more artificial societies, there blossoms a certain rough and ready chivalrousness which sets respect of womanhood above all laws and makes every man a self-const.i.tuted champion of the s.e.x. This may be seen in a thousand communities scattered over the farther West; but it is no outgrowth of the American character, for it flourishes in all new societies in all parts of the world, no matter to what nationality the men of those societies belong.

In a certain mining camp, late at night, a man--a man of some means, the son of a banker in a neighbouring town--was walking with a woman.

Neither was sober and the woman fell to the ground. The man kicked her and told her to get up. As she did not comply he cursed her and kicked her again. Then chanced to come along one Ferguson, a gambler and a notoriously "bad man," who bade the other stop abusing the woman, whereupon he was promptly told to go to ---- and mind his own business.

Ferguson replied that if the other touched the woman again he would shoot him. It was at this point that the altercation brought me out of my cabin, for the thing was happening almost where my doorstep (had I had a doorstep) ought to have been. The banker's son paid no heed to the warning, and once more proceeded to kick the woman. Thereupon Ferguson shot him. And, with the weapon which Ferguson carried and his ability as a marksman, when he shot, it might be safely regarded as final.

No attempt was made to punish Ferguson. The deputy sheriff, arriving on the scene, heard his story and mine and those of one or two others who had heard or seen more or less of what pa.s.sed; and Ferguson was a free man. Nor was there any shadow of a suggestion in camp that justice should take any other course. The fact was established that the dead man had been abusing a woman. Ferguson had only done what any other man in camp must have done under the same circ.u.mstances.

And while the banker's son was a person of some standing, there was certainly nothing in her whom he had maltreated, beyond her mere womanhood, to const.i.tute a claim on one grain of respect.

I trust that I am not reflecting on the chivalry of the camp when I record the fact that the name by which the lady was universally known was "Molly-be-d.a.m.ned." The camp, to a man, idolised her.

One of my earliest revelations of the capacity of the American woman was vouchsafed to me in this way:

A party of us, perhaps fifteen in all, had travelled a distance of some two thousand miles to a.s.sist at the opening of a new line of railway in the remote Northwest. We duly arrived at the little mountain town at which the junction was to be made between the line running up from the south and that running down from the north, over which we had come. The ceremony of driving the last spike was conducted with due solemnity, after which a "banquet" was given to us by the Mayor and citizens of the small community. After the banquet--which was really a luncheon--we again boarded our train to complete the run to the southern end of the line, a number of the citizens of the town with their wives accompanying us on the jaunt. It chanced to be my privilege to escort to the car, and for the remainder of the journey to sit beside, the wife of the editor of the local paper. She was pretty, charming, and admirably dressed. We talked of many things,--of America and England, of the red Indians, and of books,--when in a pause in the conversation she remarked:

"I think this is such a nice way of travelling, don't you?"

It puzzled me. What did she mean? Was she referring to the fact that we were on a special train composed of private cars, or what? The truth did not at first occur to me--that she was referring to railway travelling as a whole, it being the first time that she had ever been on or seen a train. Explanations followed. She had been brought by her parents, soon after the close of the Civil War, when two or three years old, across the plains in a prairie schooner (the high-topped waggon in which the pioneers used to make their westward pilgrimage), taking some four months for the trip from the old home in, I think, Kentucky. At all events she was a Southerner. Since then during her whole life she had known no surroundings but those of the little mining settlement huddled in among the mountains, her longest trips from home having been for a distance of thirty or forty miles on horseback or on a buckboard. She had lived all her life in log cabins and never known what it meant to have a servant. She read French and Italian, but could not take any interest in German. She sketched and painted, and was incomparably better informed on matters of art than I, though she knew the Masters only, of course, through the medium of prints and engravings. What she most dearly longed to do in all the world was to see a theatre--Irving for choice--and to hear some one of the Italian operas, with the libretti of which, as well as the music, so far as her piano would interpret for her, she was already familiar.

Now at last the railway had come and she was, from that day forward, within some six days' travelling of New York; and her husband had faithfully promised that they should go East together for at least three or four weeks that winter. And as she sat and talked in her soft Southern voice, there in the heart of the wilds which had been all the world to her, she might, so far as a mere man's eyes could judge, have been dropped down in any country house in England to be a conspicuously charming member of any charming house-party.

Familiarity with similar instances, though I think with none more striking, has robbed the miracle, so far as its mere outward manifestation is concerned, of something of its wonder; but the inward marvel of it remains as inexplicable as ever. By what power or instinct do they do it? With nothing of inheritance, so far as can be judged, to justify any aspirations towards the good or beautiful, among the poorest and hardest of surroundings, with none but the most meagre of educational facilities, by what inherent quality is it that the American woman, not now and again only, but in her tens of thousands, rises to such an instinctive comprehension of what is good and worth while in life, that she becomes, not through any external influence, but by mere process of her own development, the equal of those who have spent their lives amid all that is most beautifying and elevating of what the world has to afford? When she takes her place, graciously and composedly, as the mistress of some historic home or amid the surroundings of a Court, we say that it is her "adaptability." But adaptability can do no more than raise one to the level of one's surroundings--not above them. Is it ambition? But whence derived? And by what so tutored and guided that it reaches only for what is good? How is it tempered that she remains all pure womanly at the last?

It may be that the extent to which, especially in the Western States, American women of wealth and position are called upon to bear their share in public work--in the management of art societies, the building of art buildings and public libraries, the endowment and conduct of hospitals, and in educational work of all kinds--gives them such an opportunity of showing the qualities which are in them, as is denied to their English sisters of similar position but who live in older established communities. And there are, of course, women in England who lead lives as beautiful and as beneficent as are lived anywhere upon earth. The miracle is that the American woman--and, again I say, not now and again but in her tens of thousands--becomes what she is out of the environment in which her youth has so often been lived.

It will be necessary later to refer to the larger part played by American women, as compared with English, in the intellectual life of the country,--a matter which itself has, as will be noticed, no little bearing on the question of the merits and demerits of the co-education of the s.e.xes. The best intellectual work, the best literary work, the best artistic work, is still probably done by the men in the United States; but an immensely larger part of that work is done by women than in England, and in ordinary society (outside of the professional literary and artistic circles) it is the women who are generally best informed, as will be seen, on literature and art. To which is to be added the fact that they take a much livelier and more intelligent interest than do the majority of Englishwomen in public affairs, and a.s.sume a more considerable share of the work of a public or quasi-public character in educational and similar matters. It might be supposed that this greater prominence of women in the national life of the country was in itself a proof that men deferred more to them and placed them on a higher level; but when a.n.a.lysed it will be found far from being any such proof. Rather is woman's position an evidence of, and a result of, man's neglect. By which it is not intended to imply any discourteous or inconsiderate neglect; but merely that American men have been, and still are, of necessity more busy than Englishmen, more absorbed in their own work, whereby women have been left to live their own lives and thrown on their own resources much more than in England. The mere pre-occupation of the men, moreover, necessarily leaves much work undone which, for the good of society, must be done; and women have seized the opportunity of doing it. They have been especially ready to do so, inasmuch as the spirit of work and of pushfulness is in the atmosphere about them, and they have been educated at the same schools as the men. The contempt of men for idleness, in a stage of society when there was more than enough work for all men to do, necessarily extended to the women. It is not good, in the United States, for any one, woman hardly more than man, to be idle.

Women being compelled to organise their own lives for themselves, they carried into that organisation the spirit of energy and enthusiasm which filled the air of the young and growing communities. Finding work to their hands to do, they have done it--taking, and in the process fitting themselves to take, a much more prominent part in the communal life than is borne by their sisters in England or than those sisters are to-day, in the ma.s.s, qualified to a.s.sume. Precisely so (as often in English history) do women, in some beleaguered city or desperately pressed outpost, turn soldiers. No share in, or credit for, the result is to be a.s.signed to any peculiar forethought, deference, or chivalrousness on the part of the men, their fellows in the fight. It is to the women that credit belongs.

And while we are thus comparing the position of women in America with their position in England, it is to be noted that so excellent an authority among Frenchmen as M. Paul Cambon, in speaking of the position of women in England, uses precisely the same terms as an Englishman must use when speaking of the conditions in America. Americans have gone a step farther--are a shade more "Feminist"--than the English, impelled, as has been seen, by the peculiar conditions of their growing communities in a new land. But it is only a step and accidental.

Englishmen looking at America are p.r.o.ne to see only that step, whereas what Frenchmen or other Continental Europeans see is that both Englishmen and Americans together have travelled far, and are still travelling fast, on a path quite other than that which is followed by the rest of the peoples. In their view, the single step is insignificant. What is obvious is that in both is working the same Anglo-Saxon trait--the tendency to insist upon the independence of the individual. Feminism--the spirit of feminine progress--is repugnant to the Roman Catholic Church; and we would not look to see it developing strongly in Roman Catholic countries. But, what is more important, it is repugnant to all peoples which set the community or the state or the government before the individual, that is to say to all peoples except the Anglo-Saxon.

We see here again, as we shall see in many things, how powerless have been all other racial elements in the United States to modify the English character of the people. The weight of all those elements must be, and, so far as they have any weight, is directly against the American tendency to feminine predominance. All the Germans, all the Irish, all the Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or other foreigners who are in the United States to-day or have ever come to the United States have not, as Germans, or Irish, or Frenchmen, contributed among them one particle, one smallest impulse, to the position which women hold in the life of the country to-day; rather has it been achieved in defiance of the instincts and ideas of each of those by the English spirit which works irrepressibly in the people. There could hardly be stronger testimony to the dominating quality of that spirit. One may approve of the conditions as they have been evolved; or one may not. One may be Feminist or anti-Feminist. But whether it be for good or evil, the position which women hold in the United States to-day they hold by virtue of the fact that the American people is _Anglais_--an English or Anglo-Saxon people.

And in spite of all the precautions that I have taken to make myself clear and to avoid offence, I feel that some word of explanation, lest I be misunderstood, is still needed. It is not here said that American men do not place woman on a higher plane than any Continental European people. I earnestly believe that both branches of the Anglo-Saxon stock do hold to a higher ideal of womanhood than some (and for all I know to the contrary, than all) of the peoples of Europe. What I am denying is that Americans have any greater reverence for women, any higher chivalrousness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make not with any desire to belittle the chivalry of American men but only in the endeavour to correct the popular American impression about Englishmen, which does not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which ought to exist between the peoples. I am not suggesting that Americans should think less of themselves, only that, with wider knowledge, they would think better of Englishmen.

And, on the subject of co-education, it seems that yet another word is needed, for since this chapter was put into type, it has had the advantage of being read by an American friend whose opinion on any subject must be valuable, and who has given especial attention to educational matters. He thinks it would be judicious that I should make it clearer than I have done that, in what I have said, I am not criticising the American co-educational system in any aspect save one.

He writes:

"The essential purpose of the system of co-education which had been adopted, not only in the State universities supported by public funds, but in certain colleges of earlier date, such as Oberlin, in Ohio, and in comparatively recent inst.i.tutions like Cornell University, of New York, is to secure for the women facilities for training and for intellectual development not less adequate than those provided for the men.

"It was contended that if any provision for higher education for women was to be made, it was only equitable, and in fact essential, that such provision should be of the best. It was not practicable with the resources available in new communities, to double up the machinery for college education, and if the women were not to be put off with instructors of a cheaper and poorer grade and with inadequate collections and laboratories, they must be admitted to a share of the service of the instructors, and in the use of the collections, of the great inst.i.tutions.

"It is further contended by well-informed people that what they call a natural relation between the s.e.xes, such as comes up in the compet.i.tive work of university life, so far from furthering, has the result of lessening the risk of immature sentiment and of undesirable flirtations.

By the use of the college system, the advantages of these larger facilities can be secured to women, and have in fact been secured without any sacrifice of the separate life of the women students.

"In Columbia University, for instance (in New York City), the women students belong to Barnard College. This college is one of the seven colleges that const.i.tute Columbia University: but it possesses a separate foundation and a faculty of its own. The women students have the advantage of the university collections and of a large number of the university lectures. The relation between the college and the university is in certain respects similar to that of Newnham and Girton with the University of Cambridge, with the essential difference that Barnard College const.i.tutes, as stated, an integral part of the university, and that the Barnard students are ent.i.tled to secure their university degrees from A.B. to Ph.D."

From the above it is by no means certain that on the one point on which I have dwelt, his opinion coincides with mine; and the best explanation thereof that I can offer is that while he knows certain parts of the country and some inst.i.tutions better than I, I know certain parts of the country and some inst.i.tutions better than he. And we will "let it go at that."

As for the rest, for the general economic advantages of the co-educational system to the community, I think I am prepared to go as far as almost anyone. I am even inclined to follow Miss M. Carey Thomas, the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact that she has in most cases had precisely the same education as her brothers.

At present I believe that something more than one-half (56 per cent.) of the pupils in all the elementary and secondary schools, whether public or private, in the United States are girls; and that the system is permanently established cannot be questioned. What are known as the State universities, that is to say universities which are supported entirely, or almost entirely, by State grants, or by annual taxes ordered through State legislation, have from their first foundation been available for women students as well as for men. The citizens, who, as taxpayers, were contributing the funds required for the foundation and the maintenance of these inst.i.tutions, took the ground, very naturally, that all who contributed should have the same rights in the educational advantages to be secured. It was impossible from the American point of view to deny to a man whose family circle included only daughters the university education, given at public expense, which was available for the family of sons.

Co-education had its beginning in most parts of the United States in the fact that in the frontier communities there were often not enough boy pupils to support a school nor was there enough money to maintain a separate school for girls; but what began experimentally and as a matter of necessity has long become an integral part of the American social system. So far from losing ground it is continually (and never more rapidly than in recent years) gaining in the Universities as well as in the schools, in private as well as public inst.i.tutions.

But, as I said in first approaching the subject, the merits or demerits of co-education are not a topic which comes within the scope of this book. It was necessary to refer to it only as it impinged on the general question of the relation of the s.e.xes.

FOOTNOTES:

[113:1] The English reader will find this explained at length in Mr. A.

R. Colquhoun's work, _Greater America_.

[113:2] That Americans may understand more clearly what I mean and, so understanding, see that I speak without intention to offend, I quote from the list of "arrangements" in London for the forthcoming week, as given in to-day's London _Times_, those items which have a peculiarly cosmopolitan or extra-British character:

Friday--Pilgrims' Club, dinner to Lord Curzon of Kedleston, ex-Viceroy of India.

Sat.u.r.day--Lyceum Club, dinner in honour of France to meet the French Amba.s.sador and members of the Emba.s.sy, etc.

Sunday--Te Deum for Greek Independence, Greek Church, Moscow Road.

Monday--Royal Geographical Society, Sir Henry MacMahon on "Recent Exploration and Survey in Seistan."