She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.
This master of diverse knowledge would have smiled at the notion of finding either profit or amusement in meeting women for the purpose of conversation on the plane of the intellect. The few rare exceptions only emphasize this fact. “A woman, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can,” said Jane Austen. We are far from that time; but men of affairs even now find literary talks in the drawing-room tiresome, and persistently stay away. Thoughts, too, had become a commodity with a market value, and men of letters no longer found their pleasure or interest in wasting them on limited coteries. They preferred sending them out to a larger audience, at so much a page, while they smoked and chatted more at their ease among themselves at their clubs. Whether they did not find women inspiring,—which, under such conditions, is quite possible,—or did not care to be inspired in that way, the rôle of inspirer was clearly ended. The few efforts to take up the fallen scepter of the salon proved futile in intellectual prestige, though they may have served to while away some pleasant hours. A society based upon wealth without the traditions of culture is apt to smother in accessories the delicacy of insight and the esprit which were the life of the salons. On the other hand, those who pose as apostles of plain living and high thinking make the mistake of ignoring the imagination altogether, and too often serve their feasts of reason without any sauces at all, which fact should probably be laid to the account of the race that takes its diversion as seriously as its work. After all, one cannot say “Let us have esprit,” and have it, any more than one can say, “Let us have charm,” and put it on like a garment.
But the women of forty or fifty years ago lacked much more than a social outlet for their talents and aspirations. They had no outlet of any sort beyond charity and the fireside. The Frenchwomen had little, if any, more real freedom, possibly not so much in some directions: but rank brought them deference and consideration; the age of chivalry had put them on a pedestal. It may have been a bit theoretical, but an illusory power is better than none at all, as it has a certain prestige. If they were queens without a very substantial kingdom, they had, at least, the privileges, as well as the responsibilities, of high positions, and shone with something more than reflected glory. Then their talents were too valuable to be ignored, as they were the best of purveyors to Gallic ambitions. The Roman Church, too, was far-seeing when it provided an outlet for their surplus energies and emotions. If they had no fireside of their own, or the world pressed heavily upon them, they could retire from it, and hope for places of influence, even of power, in some of the various religious orders. In any case, there were peace and a dignified refuge. But it is a noteworthy fact that the Reformation left to women all the sacrifices of their religion, and none of its outward honors or consolations. If the philosophers had no message of freedom for them, still less was it found on Puritan soil. “Women are frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish,” said John Knox, who was far from being a model of patience himself, and seems to have been singularly swayed by these weak, inconsequent creatures above whom he asserts that man is placed “as God is above the angels.” Milton has left us in no doubt as to his position regarding them:
My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.
Such was the Puritan gospel of liberty as applied to women. John Knox and Milton joined in the chorus that glorified their vassalage, while Calvin added a cordial refrain, with a prudent reservation as to queens and princesses.
It is needless to dwell upon this phase of a past the ideals of which are as dead to us as the goddesses of Greece and the heroines of the Nibelungenlied. It has been sufficiently emphasized already, and concerns us here only as it shows us the spirit under which our grandmothers were born and bred. It cannot be denied that they were a wise, strong race, rearing thinkers and statesmen who have left few worthy successors, though they did not spend much time in discussing the best methods of training children, were better versed in domestic than social economics, and doubtless had misty ideas about Buddhism and the ultimate destiny of Woman. It may be superfluous, also, to say that many of them had occasion to think little of their restrictions, and would have resented the suggestion that they had any which were not good for them, if not positively desirable. Limitations, even hardships, do not necessarily imply misery. People are curiously flexible, and get a sort of happiness from trying to fit themselves to conditions which, though unpleasant, are inevitable. Then, conditions are not always hard because they have unlimited possibilities in that direction. One may even wear a chain and ball quite comfortably so long as one stands still, or if the chain be a silken one and the ball cast in pleasant places. The difficulty is that one does not always wish to stand still; nor is it always possible, whatever the inclination may be. The march of events is irresistible, and one is often forced to a change of position to escape being trampled upon. Besides, in a society that is based upon the right of people to do as they choose within certain very flexible limits, one half is not likely to continue to do, without a protest, what the other half says it ought to do, when it is compelled to take its full share of burdens and rather more than its full share of sacrifices, without any choice as to cakes and ale. These daughters of liberty held no longer the places of honor accorded to rank, and were not only without visible dignities of any kind, except as the palest of satellites, but were largely, if not altogether, excluded from the intellectual life of their husbands. They were told to be content with the dignity of maternity, while they were virtually shut out from the things that consecrate maternity. It was under such conditions that the woman’s club was born. Men had already set up clubs of their own, and women had no choice but to do the same thing, or drift into the hopeless position of their respectable Athenian sisters of the classic age, who lived in fashionable but ignorant seclusion, while their brilliant husbands sought more congenial companionship elsewhere.
But women did not plan a club for amusement, as men have usually done: they planned it for mental improvement. It was not without a prophecy of the coming time that the characters of our grandmothers were trained in so severe a school. They were the reverse of pleasure-loving, and took even their diversions seriously. The central point of their lives was an inexorable sense of duty. Its twin trait was energy. With a radical change of ideals their daughters did not lose these traits. A religious devotion to one set of aims was simply transferred to another. The road to their new Utopia was knowledge. All things would come in its train—culture, independence, happiness, the power to help a suffering world. It was this leaven of Puritan traditions which gave the club an element that was not found in the salon. The American woman may lack a little of that elusive quality, half sensibility, half wit, which makes so much of the Frenchwoman’s charm; she may lack, too, her perfection of tact, her inborn genius for form and measure: but she has what the Frenchwoman has not—something that belongs to a race in which the ethical overshadows the artistic. It is devotion to principles rather than to persons, to essentials rather than to forms. Her pursuit of knowledge may often be superficial, from the immensity of the field she lays out for herself; but her aims are serious, and lead her toward moral and sociological questions, rather than matters of sentiment and taste.
The woman’s club is not a school of manners, and concerns itself little with the fine art of living. It claims to instruct, not to amuse—or, rather, it seeks amusement in that way; and it is more interested in doing things than in the modes of doing them. It does not rely upon diplomacy to gain its ends, but upon the wisdom and justice of the ends, appealing to the reason instead of the imagination. It also deals more with masses than with individuals. No doubt, the necessity of going outside the realm of personal feeling in managing public or semi-public affairs helps to give the poise and self-command which go far toward offsetting the intensity of temperament that has always made the discussion of vital questions so perilous in gatherings of women, though we have occasion enough to know that wisdom and sanity do not invariably preside at gatherings of men, even supposably wise ones. The qualities fostered by the club are energy, earnestness, independence, versatility, and—not exactly intellectual conscience, which implies traditional standards, but a sense of intellectual duty that is not quite the same thing. All this is remote from the spirit of the salon, with its social codes and conventions, its graceful amenities, its sparkling wit, its play of sentiment, its diplomatic reserves, and its clear intelligence working through endless private channels toward a new order of things. It points to the club, not as a conservator of social traditions, or a creator of social standards, or a tribunal of criticism, but as a literary and political training-school, a maker of citizens with a broader outlook into the world of affairs, a powerful engine of moral force. Perhaps its greatest direct value at present lies in this moral force, which is the outgrowth of centuries of sternly moral heritage, and runs not only through philanthropic channels, but through all the avenues of life.
Of scarcely less importance are the impulse and direction the club has given to the administrative talents of women—talents which mark their special strength, and are far too valuable to be ignored at a time when all the wisdom of the world is needed, in private as well as in public affairs, to guide it safely through its threatening storms.