The Treatment of “Talent.”—Visits to New England and to the West.—My Mother’s Seventieth Birthday.—The papeterie Club.—Elisabeth Stewart Phelps Ward.—Thomas Nelson Page.
IN the ’nineties the women’s clubs were beginning to offer a field for lecturers. After reading a paper before my own club in Plainfield I was emboldened to enter this, and during twenty-five years made lecture trips to New England and the middle West, as well as to near-by points. “The Art of Conversation,” and “Personal Reminiscences of Distinguished People” were among my most popular talks.
Boston was my mother’s home and also a great center of club activity. Hence I was glad to give many talks in New England, combining them with visits to her delightful home at 241 Beacon Street. On one of these trips I attended an authors’ reading where the name of Elizabeth Stewart Phelps Ward was on the program. She duly took her part, but we learned afterward that she had told the chairman she might not feel like speaking. “When it is my turn, do not announce me unless I spring up and come forward.” As Mrs. Ward was sitting behind the chairman, the latter had some anxious moments before the author of “Gates Ajar” decided to “spring up.”
If not the first to speak on the subject of manners, I was a pioneer in the field. A friend surprised me by saying that my talks at schools had become the fashion in New York. A look at my engagement-book showed that she was right.
To talk to young girls is a great pleasure. We always seemed to understand one another perfectly; I interspersed my subject with anecdotes and with bits of fun which they cordially appreciated. My aim was to set before them the essentials of good nature rather than the formalism of mere etiquette.
A speaker on manners is confronted with many difficulties. She must not speak of elementary details as if her hearers were ignorant of them, yet she must enter somewhat into particulars. I thought it perfectly safe to speak of gum-chewing in public as an odious custom, permissible only to football players. Alas! One of my hearers always chewed gum while traveling, to avoid car-sickness!
I often asked the principals whether there were any special points they wished mentioned. One lady requested me to speak of mimicry, as she had a pupil much given to it. I willingly did so, quoting from Miss Edgeworth’s story of “The Mimic.” Unfortunately the girl for whom the admonition was especially intended was not feeling well. Either the other girls recognized the culprit or the weight of her own guilt overwhelmed her. I have a dim vision of a youthful figure reclining in an anteroom. I was never asked to speak in that school again!
If I had realized all the pitfalls lurking in the path of the speaker on manners, I should have embarked upon it with a less cheerful heart. But in all professions we learn by doing. To be “the Missionary of good manners” has been a pleasure. The principals have been kind and appreciative hostesses, and I have been truly glad to visit a great number of schools which afforded attractive homes as well as excellent educational advantages to the bright-faced, happy young girls of our country. It has been a privilege to see so much of the flower of young American womanhood.
Ruth McEnery Stewart has described in her inimitable way the treatment of the woman speaker in early days. Many of her experiences were also mine. She apparently preferred to stay with private families, and I certainly did. The cold isolation of a hotel in a small country town, the depressing furniture of the bedroom, the unappetizing menu and service of the dining-room, the chattering drummers in the distance, these were not at all to my taste.
As a guest in a private house one incurs additional fatigue, but this is more than compensated for by the pleasure of meeting and learning to know your fellow-men and women. Is there a little desire for incense in all this? It may be, but there is also a genuine liking for one’s kind. To get a peep into the lives and thoughts of others can hardly fail to be interesting. Your material comforts are also much better attended to in the nest of the average clubwoman than in the leading hotel of the small town. The former gives you the best she has; she does everything in her power to make you comfortable under her roof. The chief danger is that of killing you with kindness by putting you on exhibition through unduly long hours.