I once asked a very great lady, whose gracious manner was never disturbed, who floated through the endless complications of her life with smiling serenity, how she achieved this Olympian calm. She was good enough to explain. “I make a list of what I want to do each day. Then, as I find my day passing, or I get behind, or tired, I throw over every other engagement. I could have done them all with hurry and fatigue. I prefer to do one-half and enjoy what I do. If I go to a house, it is to remain and appreciate whatever entertainment has been prepared for me. I never offer to any hostess the slight of a hurried, distrait ‘call,’ with glances at my watch, and an ‘on-the-wing’ manner. It is much easier not to go, or to send a card.”
This brings me around to a subject which I believe is one of the causes of my correspondent’s dilemma. I fear that she never can refuse anything. It is a peculiar trait of people who go about to amuse themselves, that they are always sure the particular entertainment they have been asked to last is going to “be amusing.” It rarely is different from the others, but these people are convinced, that to stay away would be to miss something. A weary-looking girl about 1 a.m. (at a house-party) when asked why she did not go to bed if she was so tired, answered, “the nights I go to bed early, they always seem to do something jolly, and then I miss it.”
There is no greater proof of how much this weary round wears on women than the acts of the few who feel themselves strong enough in their position to defy custom. They have thrown off the yoke (at least the younger ones have) doubtless backed up by their husbands, for men are much quicker to see the aimlessness of this stupid social routine. First they broke down the great New-Year-call “grind.” Men over forty doubtless recall with a shudder, that awful custom which compelled a man to get into his dress clothes at ten a.m., and pass his day rushing about from house to house like a postman. Out-of-town clubs and sport helped to do away with that remnant of New Amsterdam. Next came the male revolt from the afternoon “tea” or “musical.” A black coat is rare now at either of these functions, or if seen is pretty sure to be on a back over fifty. Next, we lords of creation refused to call at all, or leave our cards. A married woman now leaves her husband’s card with her own, and sisters leave the “pasteboard” of their brothers and often those of their brothers’ friends. Any combination is good enough to “shoot a card.”
In London the men have gone a step further. It is not uncommon to hear a young man boast that he never owned a visiting card or made a “duty” call in his life. Neither there nor with us does a man count as a “call” a quiet cup of tea with a woman he likes, and a cigarette and quiet talk until dressing time. Let the young women have courage and take matters into their own hands. (The older ones are hopeless and will go on pushing this Juggernaut car over each other’s weary bodies, until the end of the chapter.) Let them have the courage occasionally to “refuse” something, to keep themselves free from aimless engagements, and bring this paste-board war to a close. If a woman is attractive, she will be asked out all the same, never fear! If she is not popular, the few dozen of “egg-shell extra” that she can manage to slip in at the front doors of her acquaintances will not help her much.
If this matter is, however, so vastly important in women’s eyes, why not adopt the continental and diplomatic custom and send cards by post or otherwise? There, if a new-comer dines out and meets twenty-five people for the first time, cards must be left the next day at their twenty-five respective residences. How the cards get there is of no importance. It is a diplomatic fiction that the new acquaintance has called in person, and the call will be returned within twenty-four hours. Think of the saving of time and strength! In Paris, on New Year’s Day, people send cards by post to everybody they wish to keep up. That does for a year, and no more is thought about it. All the time thus gained can be given to culture or recreation.
I have often wondered why one sees so few women one knows at our picture exhibitions or flower shows. It is no longer a mystery to me. They are all busy trotting up and down our long side streets leaving cards. Hideous vision! Should Dante by any chance reincarnate, he would find here the material ready made to his hand for an eighth circle in his Inferno.
No. 21—“Like Master Like Man.”
A frequent and naïve complaint one hears, is of the unsatisfactoriness of servants generally, and their ingratitude and astonishing lack of affection for their masters, in particular. “After all I have done for them,” is pretty sure to sum up the long tale of a housewife’s griefs. Of all the delightful inconsistencies that grace the female mind, this latter point of view always strikes me as being the most complete. I artfully lead my fair friend on to tell me all about her woes, and she is sure to be exquisitely one-sided and quite unconscious of her position. “They are so extravagant, take so little interest in my things, and leave me at a moment’s notice, if they get an idea I am going to break up. Horrid things! I wish I could do without them! They cause me endless worry and annoyance.” My friend is very nearly right,—but with whom lies the fault?
The conditions were bad enough years ago, when servants were kept for decades in the same family, descending like heirlooms from father to son, often (abroad) being the foster sisters or brothers of their masters, and bound to the household by an hundred ties of sympathy and tradition. But in our day, and in America, where there is rarely even a common language or nationality to form a bond, and where households are broken up with such facility, the relation between master and servant is often so strained and so unpleasant that we risk becoming (what foreigners reproach us with being), a nation of hotel-dwellers. Nor is this class-feeling greatly to be wondered at. The contrary would be astonishing. From the primitive household, where a poor neighbor comes in as “help,” to the “great” establishment where the butler and housekeeper eat apart, and a group of plush-clad flunkies imported from England adorn the entrance-hall, nothing could be better contrived to set one class against another than domestic service.
Proverbs have grown out of it in every language. “No man is a hero to his valet,” and “familiarity breeds contempt,” are clear enough. Our comic papers are full of the misunderstandings and absurdities of the situation, while one rarely sees a joke made about the other ways that the poor earn their living. Think of it for a moment! To be obliged to attend people at the times of day when they are least attractive, when from fatigue or temper they drop the mask that society glues to their faces so many hours in the twenty-four; to see always the seamy side of life, the small expedients, the aids to nature; to stand behind a chair and hear an acquaintance of your master’s ridiculed, who has just been warmly praised to his face; to see a hostess who has been graciously urging her guests “not to go so soon,” blurt out all her boredom and thankfulness “that those tiresome So-and-So’s” are “paid off at last,” as soon as the door is closed behind them, must needs give a curious bent to a servant’s mind. They see their employers insincere, and copy them. Many a mistress who has been smilingly assured by her maid how much her dress becomes her, and how young she is looking, would be thunderstruck to hear herself laughed at and criticised (none too delicately) five minutes later in that servant’s talk.