It is not only the class of people who dine in smart restaurants and sit in stalls of theaters which is subject to rules of this kind. Every class has its own conventions, and, so far as my observation goes, every class is a little freer in America than it is in England. No English chauffeur with any self-respect would consent to drive a motor car about London unless he were wearing some kind of uniform. In America the most magnificent cars are frequently driven by chauffeurs in gray tweed suits with ordinary caps on their heads.
I am nearly sure that it is women, the women of our own class, who decide what clothes we shall wear and what clothes they will wear themselves. I am quite sure that it is they who regulate the degree of formal stiffness there is to be in our intercourse with them. English women have to a very considerable extent given up requiring from men those symbols of respect which had long ago ceased to be anything but the mere conventional survivals of the mediæval idea of chivalry. Men and women in England meet on friendlier and more equal terms than they used to. American women have gone even further than the English in setting themselves and us free from the old restrictions. They invite comradeship and have, as far as possible, swept away the barriers to free intercourse between sex and sex.
To some people liberty of any sort, liberty for its own sake, will always seem a desirable thing. These will prefer the manners of America to those of England, but will cling to their admiration of the Englishman's tolerance of criticism. There are others—it is a matter of temperament—who prefer restraint, who like to talk cautiously, who cling to social conventions. To them it will be a comfort to know that in one respect the American woman is not so free as her English sister. In England a woman may, without loss of reputation, smoke almost anywhere, anywhere that men smoke, except in the streets and the entrance halls of theaters. In New York there are only two or three restaurants in which a woman is allowed to smoke. Even if she is indifferent to her reputation and does not mind being considered fast, she cannot smoke in the other restaurants. The head waiter comes and stops her if she tries. This may be quite right. I do not know whether it is or not. Many very strong arguments may be and are brought against women smoking. It is, I am thankful to say, no business of mine to weigh them against the other arguments which go to show that women are as well entitled to the solace of tobacco as men are. What interests me far more than the arguments on either side is the fact that American women are in this one respect much less free than English women. The women of both nations smoke, but the American woman must do it in privacy or semi-privacy. The Englishwoman inhales her cigarette with untroubled enjoyment in any restaurant in London. She must dress herself strictly as convention prescribes for each occasion. She must be a little careful in her intercourse with men. She has not yet got a vote. But she may smoke. The American woman has much more freedom in the matter of clothes. She can be as friendly with a man as she likes. In several states she has a vote. But society in general frowns on her smoking and sets its policeman, the head waiter, to prevent her doing it. I should myself prefer a cigarette to a vote; but I am fond of tobacco, and all elections bore me, so I am not an unprejudiced judge. American women may be in this matter, as indeed they certainly are in other matters, nobler than I am. They may gladly sacrifice tobacco for the sake of the franchise, but I do not see why they should not have both.
CHAPTER IX
WOMAN IN THE STATES
There is a story told about Lord Beaconsfield which, if true, goes to show that he was not nearly so astute a man as is generally supposed. A lady, an ardent advocate of Woman Suffrage, once called on him and tried to convince him of the justice of her cause. She was a very pretty lady and she spoke with great enthusiasm. One imagines flashing eyes, heightened color, graceful gestures of the hands. Lord Beaconsfield listened to her and looked at her. When she had finished speaking he said: "You darling!" The lady, we are told, was angry, thinking that she had been insulted. She was perfectly right. The remark, which might under other circumstances have been received with blushing satisfaction, was just then and there a piece of intolerable rudeness. It was stupid besides. But perhaps the great statesman meant to be rude. Perhaps, on the other hand, he was carried away for the moment and ceased to be intelligent. Perhaps the whole story was invented by some malicious person and is entirely without foundation. In any case it is a serious warning to the man who sits down to write about American women. It makes him hesitate, fearfully, before venturing to say the very first thing he must want to say. But he who writes takes his life in his hands. I should be little better than a poltroon if I shrank from uttering the truth.
I was asked by an able and influential editor in New York to write an article on American women. It is not every day that I am thus invited to write articles, so I take a pardonable pride in mentioning the request of this American editor. It was after dinner that he asked me, and a lady who was with us heard him do it. I looked at her before I answered. If she had scowled or even frowned I should not now be writing about American women. She encouraged me with a nod and a smile. Yet she knew—she must have known—what I should write first of all. Upon her head be at least part of the blame. She not merely smiled. She went on to persuade me to write the article. By persuading me she helped to make me quite certain that what I am writing is true.
The American woman is singularly charming.
Is this an insult? I think of the many American women whom I met who were kind enough to talk to me, and I know that this is not what they would like to have written about them. Some of them were very earnest knights errant, who rode about redressing human wrongs. It happens occasionally, not often, of course, but very occasionally, that women with causes are not charming. They are inclined to overemphasize their causes, to keep on hammering at a possible convert, to become just a little tiresome. This is, as far as I could judge, never the case with the American ladies who have causes. Others whom I met were learned and knew all about philosophies dim to me. Others again were highly cultured. I am an ignorant and stupid man. Very clever women sometimes frighten me. I was never frightened in America. Others again, without being learned or particularly cultured, were brilliant. They were all charming. That is the truth. I have written it, and if the skies come tumbling indignantly about my ears they just must tumble. "Impavidum ferient ruinæ;" but I hope nothing so bad as that will happen to me.
There are people in the world who believe that we are born again and again, rising or sinking in the scale of living things at each successive incarnation according as we behave ourselves well or badly in our present state. If this creed were true, I should try very hard indeed to be good, because I should want, next time I am born, to be an American woman. She seems to me to have a better kind of life than the woman of any other nation, or, indeed, than anybody else, man or woman. She is, as I hope I have suggested, more free than her European sister. "So full of burrs," said a great lady of old times, "is this work-a-day world, that our very petticoats will catch them." This is a true estimate of the position of the European woman. They who wear petticoats over here must walk warily with chaperons beside them. But in America there are either fewer burrs or petticoats are made of some better material. The American woman, even when she is quite young, can go freely enough and no scandalous suggestions attach to her unless she does something very outrageous. She has in other ways too a far better time than the English woman. American social life seems to me—the word is one to apologize for—gynocentric. It is arranged with a view to the convenience and delight of women. Men come in where and how they can. The late Mr. Price Collier observed this, and drew from it the deduction that the English man tends on the whole to be more efficient than the American, everything in an English home being sacrificed to his good. That may or may not be true; but I think the American woman is certainly more her own mistress than the Englishwoman, just because America does its best for women and only its second best for men.
I do not pretend to be superior to these advantages. I like a good time as well as any one. But I have other ambitions. And I do not want to be an American woman only for the sake of material gains. She seems to me to deserve her good luck because she has done her business in life exceedingly well, better on the whole than the American man has done his.