I had seen the thing before in other papers, in Chicago, in Boston, in Washington, in Atlanta, and in the provincial habit that falls to a man who thinks of life from the view-point of a big city, I had associated the line with something very different from any conditions that seemed likely to be present here. I looked out of the station window at the little white church, at the chromatic town hall, at the general merchandise store, at a neat girl with a tan cape who was coming down the main street,—and turned with curiosity to the society column.
It was just the same as any other. It had all the adjectives of New York, or Richmond, or St. Louis, and if Voltaire had been reading it he might have hesitated to say that the adjective is the enemy of the noun. Evidently, too, the same things were going on that were going on elsewhere in society. It appeared especially that Miss Effie So-and-So had just “come out,” and that the event was signalized on Monday evening by a dance which was described at length as to the spacious drawing-rooms, the floral devices, the orchestra behind the fringe of palms, the cotillion, the favors, the elegant gown of Miss So-and-So’s mother, the gowns and ornaments of the other feminine guests, in detail, with a cordial closing word for the refreshments, which had been served at eleven o’clock. On Tuesday night there had been a birthday dance at the Sheriff’s, at which “society was largely represented”; at a pink tea on Wednesday afternoon there had been some novel decorations at small tables; and on Thursday evening the young ladies of the Polaris Club had gone over to Sudley’s with Mrs. So-and-So as chaperon. There was more as to a festival in preparation by the ladies of the First Church, as to a euchre party for the following Thursday, and as to a little surprise which it was whispered that “some society men” were arranging for the close of the season.
Here, certainly, was food for thought. Could anything more piquantly have illustrated the relativity of the term Society, more brilliantly have demolished the pretension that Society has any geography? We have our book definitions, by which we agree glibly to say that society is the cultured, the fashionable, the favored class (or elsewise, according to your dictionary) of “any community”; but how easy it is for city pretence (and provincialism is never so arrogant as in big cities) to see in its own set the true title to social eminence. It is indicative of that interesting individualism which prevails in the United States, and which perhaps we may learn to prize as one of the precious products of democracy, that no town regards itself as small in any sense that shall restrict or disqualify its individuals. This is particularly true of towns in their feminine population. You may find a community without gas, electric light, telephones or a board of trade, but you shall not on that account decide that it is too small to have a woman’s club and a social calendar. We are accustomed to say that it all is a question of degree.
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
We are accustomed to admit that in the senate of society even the small states shall say their say. But scarcely can we realize without much travel how far the fact that this country is too big for the focussing of society in any one, two, or dozen places, affects the demeanor and development of the social units. The fact that there are widely prevalent formulæ, helps us first to the assumption, safe enough, that these are applied, that there is a wish and an occasion to use them in some way. They help us further to an estimate of the relative activity of social forces, to the points of emphasis. But there is one thing the wide use of formulæ never will help you to find out, and that is the most interesting fact of all—the local flavor of the conformity. Society is an Established Church in whose pews the dissenters form a majority; and if I could, by some chance, have let my train go by and have been admitted into the circle of that village society, I certainly should have found that while it gave a sort of lip-service to the social creeds, this society had its own way of doing so, and that it adopted lightheartedly, like its new byword or improved flounce, certain phrases, certain dicta of the world’s larger social groups, for its own purposes, with its own reservations. I do not deny that I have seen social formulæ grimly and mechanically used in certain quarters, but the whimsical reservation is more characteristic.
The American girl is so definitely a social creature, and her social attributes are so personal, that she never appears to be dependent upon social machinery. She brings into society the invaluable force of her individual availability. That our social groups seem to cohere proves that she must possess in some degree that deference to form which begins in the acceptance of terms. Humanity can never pair well until it has grouped well. Grouping is the beginning of that compromise which reaches its crisis in pairing. Even the goddess of democracy, who is presumed to dote upon calling a spade a spade, who hates the euphemisms of effete monarchical society, may not despise the butler’s baritone or the futility of attempting on one occasion six hundred different forms of adieu. Even George Eliot admitted that “a little unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged in under the stress of social intercourse.” The trouble with unpremeditated insincerities, however, is that you often wish you hadn’t said them, not (unfortunately for the symmetry of the retribution) because they were insincere, but because they were unpremeditated and inferior. It is much safer to be unpremeditated with sincerities than with insincerities, and, as the literature of social satire may help us to see, there is great hazard in any case. It is a pity, perhaps, that the great advantages of meeting your kind in your and their best clothes, must be bought so dearly, yet, as Thackeray has observed, “if we may not speak of the lady who has just left the room, what is to become of conversation and society?”
