“You are right,” exclaimed the Bostonian, “to ridicule the wooden butterflies that play about our glass-house flowers. No one ever dreamt of mocking the manners of the Dutch merchants. They stick to trade; and, if our merchants were to do the same, they would command the respect of the world, instead of affording amusement by their attempt at aristocratic distinctions. You cannot but esteem Brother Jonathan when you see him on the ocean, or in his workshop; but his affectations in the parlour seldom fail to disgust you. In the salon the most fashionable of our race is but an anomaly, with not one-tenth part the liberality, politeness, and affability of an European. His bow, his smile, his constrained ease, his affected carelessness, his very apparel, and, if he venture himself so far, his conversation, are unnatural; and you are actually moved to compassion when you see him sacrifice himself at a dance. The old people will tell you they give parties for their children; the girls dance because it is the way to get engaged and married; but the young men look upon society as a business they must go through at specified intervals.”
“And yet, mean and contemptible as the elements of our first society may be,” rejoined my Southern friend, “they produce incalculable mischief. In the first place, they are the means of spoiling our women; not that I mean that they destroy their virtue,—which, thank Heaven! is proof against greater temptation than that of our fashionable men, who, moreover, have so little time for the petits soins which the ladies require of them, that they prefer the marrying for good and all to the tedium of a long courtship; but it makes our women indolent, unfit for the performance of domestic duties, and, in many instances, prodigal and sophisticated in the extreme,—and this at an age when Englishwomen scarcely venture out into company. And how small is the number of our fashionable people whose fortunes are at all commensurate with their expensive habits! The country at large is rich, on account of the great ease of our middle and even lower classes; but, in attempting to vie with the splendour of the English nobility, we introduce a reckless system of expenditure, wholly above the means even of our wealthiest people, and undermining the solid basis of our national wealth.”
“Society in America,” continued my friend, “is characterised by a spirit of exclusiveness and persecution unknown in any other country. Its gradations not being regulated according to rank and titles, selfishness and conceit are its principal elements; and its arbitrary distinctions the more offensive, as they principally refer to fortune. Our society takes it upon itself to punish political, moral, and religious dissenters; but most of its wrath is spent upon the champions of democracy. That society is the means of seducing our unsophisticated country members, making them believe that republicanism is only fit for backwoodsmen, is a fact too notorious to be mentioned. It destroys our independence in words and actions, and makes our duties of citizens subordinate to the exactions of a coterie. What man is there in this city that dares to be independent, at the risk of being considered bad company? And who can venture to infringe upon a single rule of society, without being published to the world, and persecuted for the remainder of his life? We take it as an insult offered to our joint judgment when a man stubbornly follows his own mind; for we are accustomed to everything, except seeing a man not influenced by the opinion of his neighbours.
“How often have I envied Englishmen for the privilege of being independent in private life! And how often did I wish myself in England, where I might be permitted to have an opinion of my own, and express it, without suffering in the consideration of my friends and the public! Political liberty is, after all, but an abstract and general good, never felt by individuals, unless it be joined to freedom of intercourse, and that degree of independence which leaves a man in all matters relating to himself sole arbiter of his actions. Intolerance and persecution in private and social intercourse are far more odious, and, perhaps, more destructive to the higher faculties of the mind, than the most systematic political despotism acting from above. And yet I would pardon our society all its faults, if it did not act perniciously on the women.”
“Let us hear what complaint our Anglo-maniac has against our women,” exclaimed the New-Yorker, who had already looked more than twenty times on his watch as if pressed by urgent business.
“Oh!” cried my friend, “my charge against them is small, and refers principally to our exclusives: I am sorry that they are unfit for anything but society, and that in society they do not fill the place which belongs to them.”
“A mere trifle!” said the doctor, filling his glass.
“I do not speak of the great mass of our women,” rejoined my friend; “much less of the wives and daughters of our Western settlers, who, Heaven knows, are as busy and industrious as the best German housewives: what I have to say applies merely to our aristocracy, and still more to those who aspire to being considered candidates for that distinction. Our women in general are, as you know, not brought up to work,—the chivalrous spirit of our men spurning such a vulgar abuse of their delicate limbs; they ought, therefore, to be brought up to save, or at least to live within their income. If, for instance, one of our tavern-keepers will not allow his wife and daughters to appear before his guests,—if a shopkeeper will not exhibit his wife before his customers,—I shall certainly respect the feelings and principles of both: but if the tavern or shopkeeper’s wife insists upon living in Broadway, wearing nothing but satin and gros de Naples, and is constantly emptying her husband’s purse for the purpose of ‘pushing in society;’ if she does not regulate her expenditure according to his means; if she takes no pains to ascertain what these means are; in short, if she be but a useless article of furniture in his parlour,—then I certainly maintain that there is something radically wrong either in her education or in the state of society of which she is a member.
“If we had as many distinct and established orders of society as in England, there would not be that everlasting attempt to go beyond one another which particularly characterises our women, and, joined to the credit system, is the cause of so many failures; a circumstance which, in whatever light merchants and bankers may view it, is nevertheless one of the greatest moral evils with which an honest community can be afflicted.
“A large portion of our matrons,” he continued, “would, I am sure, be more happy in wearing muslin or calico, instead of silk; and the men, instead of racking their brains in order to find the means of providing for a thousand unnecessary expenses, would find their homes cheap and comfortable. They would look upon their wives as friends and counsellors, instead of mere companions of their pleasures. Instead of ‘boarding out,’—a custom which is the grave of affection and domestic happiness,—young husbands would be enabled to keep house, and to give their wives a home; a thing which is not so much rendered difficult by the badness of the servants,—the usual complaint of the higher classes,—as by the exactions of society. I know many an American that is now living in Europe merely because he does not wish to board, and is not rich enough to keep house according to our expensive fashion.