Miss America; pen and camera sketches of the American girl

by Alexander Black

Social custom is so arbitrary that it might be, and doubtless would be, a reckless and inconclusive thing for any one to assume that the American girl in society is actually so radical as her reputation in other avenues might suggest. I believe that it is quite commonly agreed that while the French girl in society is, perforce, much more reserved than the American, the English girl at a ball or an “evening” exhibits a freedom from restraint not commonly seen in America. These things, however, count for little except as showing the domination of mere form, for there can be no doubt that in social life, using the term broadly, the American girl has more liberty, and uses more liberty than the English girl. If the privileges of a host’s roof are liberally construed by the English girl, the American girl takes a candid and undaunted view of a hotel and a public ballroom; and under conditions which in any manner detach her from the immediate presence of formality, she falls back upon her individual preferences, her personally developed methods of meeting situations, with a readiness and sureness that carry their own vindication. Because she can have a developed individuality yet be no rebel, the American girl can grasp and enjoy liberty without despising authority. Indeed, her very possession of liberty must develop a certain personal conservatism which as a mere subject of authority she might never acquire. A great many fantastic things which at various times have been said about the American girl might appear to have been uttered in ignorance of the fact that there is an American mother.

I have in mind a family living in Washington city, where there is, as everyone knows, a highly seasoned and heterogeneous society, a society utterly different from any that is to be met with elsewhere in this country, and one which on that account offers peculiarly excellent opportunities for study on the part of those foreign observers who enjoy being misled about us. If there is any place in the United States where the American mother has opportunity for her administrative genius, it is at the national capital. The peculiar conditions created by political, diplomatic and administrative forces in the capital of a republic, the prevalence of the open door, and the presence of both domestic and foreign transients who do not always appreciate the limitations of liberal custom, make Washington a place apart. A single instance may serve to illustrate the firmness of the women who actually control social destiny. Under circumstances which it is not necessary to detail, a certain elegant attaché of one of the legations began calling upon the young lady of the family I have named. He was a handsome and entertaining young man, easy with women and cordial with men, glib in the arts, himself a good singer, and speaking English with a fascinating inflection. One evening the mother said quietly to the daughter: “Grace, the next time the Count calls I wish that you would ask to be excused.” The daughter looked her astonishment. She was not greatly interested in the count, yet he was very agreeable, and she said so. But her mother said, “Grace, you must trust me.” And when the count came again he was made to understand.

It was a simple, unsensational incident, but because I knew the liberal ethics of the mother and the apparently complete independence of the daughter (she was twenty-three) the incident the more effectively reminded me that though the American mother does not feel it incumbent upon her to closely hover over her offspring with a solicitous wing, she not the less observes and governs. It so happened that the gilded count a few months later became involved in so gross a scandal that his withdrawal from Washington became imperative. Influence in his government saved him from worse annoyance than transfer to another court. The mother’s instinct had been true. And who can doubt that a liberally reared girl, when she herself assumes the office of mother, will, without having to make sinister payment for her knowledge, be the better equipped for a judgment of the world in the interest of those who may be dependent upon her authority?

That the American mother cares more for real than for apparent authority, explains, to those who know, the visible and so often misleading detachment of the daughter; and the daughter’s sense of a dependence that is not irksome, a suzerainty that is not intrusive, a mother care that has no vanity of assertion, appears in her freer bearing, her finer self-reliance. Whatever her special gifts, meeting her socially always is likely to have the charm associated with the fact that she never is afraid either that she will not rise to the occasion or that she will offend authority. She has not the first fear because she is playing her own game. She has not the second because she does not live in a threatening or too admonitory shadow.

You think of these things sometimes when you sit opposite a fan. Her fan! Have you not seen it blot out at the critical moment all that was worth looking at in the world? Have you not realized that it is part of her panoply? Have you not witnessed over and over again the genius which she exhibits in the management of accessories? Have you not heard in the flutter of her fan a note from that orchestra of sounds in which she makes even her silk petticoat play a witching part?

With her fan you quite naturally associate those two absolutely unanswerable arguments—an American girl’s eyes. They are different, believe me, these American eyes, from any other sort. The women of no other country can look at you that way. You must admit, and in some degree understand this, or you cannot hope to understand Miss America in society or anywhere else. You may say of her eyes what Darwin hinted of eyes in general, that they are the supreme physical paradox. They do not peer like the virgin eyes of poetical tradition. It has been complained that they have not at all the inquiring look once thought to be so winsome in the young. They seem to know, yet they are too feminine to assert. We say hard things about the poets nowadays, but who can blame the poets for becoming emotional over her eyes? Are eyes ever more a mystery, a contradiction, an uncombattable force than when Miss America turns upon us her gentle yet fearless, her wise yet maidenly orbs? We may have planned a battle. We may have girded ourselves for a glance toward these twin guns in that implacable turret, but at the first encounter our bravado withers. When she uses these weapons as she pre-eminently knows how, we declare the motion carried—the eyes have it.

So soon as we grasp the fact that Miss America can look and talk, we are in a fair way to understand some of the secrets of her power. It is quite generally admitted that she talks well, and very seldom, I think, with any disparaging reservation. She is a good talker. She is more; she is a good conversationalist, for she can listen. If speech is silver and silence is golden, I am free to admit that Miss America does not seem to believe altogether in the gold standard. She appears to be somewhat of a bi-metallist. I don’t blame her; and I always admire her method of dealing with men who believe in the free silver of continuous talk.

Her reserve here is characteristic of her agreeable poise in society whenever and wherever she is called upon to say the right thing at the right time. She never exhibits stage fright, though she has confessed (afterward) to the symptoms. If, like Isabella, she is “loth to speak so indirectly,” she doesn’t show it. She may, indeed, like the Venus of Melos, be disarmed, but she never will be found, like the Winged Victory, to have lost her head. Foreigners sometimes have said that Miss America talks too loudly, but I am sure that this effect arises from her vivacity, and one might retort that if her enunciation ever is more than necessarily audible the chances are all in favor of your being glad that you did not miss a word.