I am—I wish to make this clear at once—a good feminist. No man is less inclined than I am to endorse the words of the German Emperor and confine woman's activities to "Kirche, Küche und Kinder." I would, if I had my way, give every woman a vote. I would invite her to discuss the most intricate political problems, with a full confidence that she could not possibly make a worse muddle of them than our male politicians do. I should like to see her conducting great businesses, doctoring her neighbors, pleading for them in law courts, driving railway engines, and, if she wanted to, carrying a rifle or steering a submarine. I would place woman in every possible way on an equality with man and confine her with no restriction except those with which she voluntarily impedes her own activities, like petticoats, stays, and blouses which hook up the back. Having made this full confession of faith, I shall not, I hope, be reproached for appearing to recognize a distinction between woman's business in life, the thing which the American woman has done very well, and man's business, which the American man seems to me to have managed rather badly. Strictly speaking, in the ideal state all public affairs are women's just as much as men's. Strictly speaking, again in the ideal state, man is just as responsible as woman for the arts of domestic life. But we are not yet living in the ideal state, and for a long while now the household has been recognized as woman's sphere, while man has resented her interference with anything outside the circle of social and family life.
It is in these matters which have been entrusted to her that the American woman has shown herself superior to the American man. I admit, of course, that the American man has done a great many things very brilliantly. But he does not seem to me to have succeeded in making the business of living, so far as it falls within his province, either comfortable or agreeable. The Englishman has done better. Examples of what I mean absolutely crowd upon me. Take the question of cooking food. The American man, left to his own devices, is not strikingly successful with food. The highest average of cooking in England is to be found in good men's clubs. You may, and often do, get excellent dinners in private houses in England; but you are surer of an excellent dinner in a first rate club. In America it is the other way about. Many men's clubs have skilful cooks, but you are on the whole more likely to get very good food in a woman's club or in a private house than in a man's club. I am not myself an expert in cooked food. The subject has never had a real fascination for me. But I have a sense of taste like my better educated gourmet brethren, and I am convinced that where the American woman has control of the cooking the business is better done than it generally is in England, and far better done than when it is left to American men.
The kindred subjects of drinks, again, marks the superiority of the American woman. For some reason quite obscure to me, women are not supposed to know anything about wine. They either do not like it at all or they like bad kinds of wine. Wine is man's business in all countries. In America wine is dear, and usually of indifferent quality. Man has mismanaged the cellar. On the other hand, women are supposed—again the reason is beyond me—to like eating sweets, to be specialists in that whole range of food which in America goes under the name of candies. Men have not created the demand for candies or secured the supply. They are woman's affair. The consequence is that American candies are better than any others in the world, better even than the French. It is necessary to search New York narrowly and patiently in order to find a good bottle of claret. I speak on this matter as an outsider, for I drink but little claret myself; but I am assured by highly skilled experts that the fact is as I state it. On the other hand—I know this by experience—you can satisfy your soul with an almost infinite variety of chocolates without going three hundred yards from the door of your hotel in New York or Philadelphia.
The one form of alcoholic drink in which America surpasses the rest of the world is the cocktail. I have never yet seen a properly written history of cocktails. The subject still waits its philosopher. But I am inclined to think that the cocktail, the original of the species, Manhattan, Bronx or whatever it may have been, was invented by a woman. True, these drinks are now universally mixed by men. But the inspiration is unquestionably feminine. Formulæ for the making of cocktails exist. I was once asked to review a book which contained several hundred receipts for cocktails. But every one agrees that the formula is of minor importance. The cocktail depends for its excellence not on careful measurements, but on the incalculable and indescribable thing called personality. The most skilful pharmaceutical chemist, trained all his life to the accurate weighing of scruples and measurement of drams, might well fail as a maker of cocktails. He would fail if he did not possess an instinct for the art. Now this is characteristic of all women's work. Man reaches his conclusions by argument, bases his convictions on reason, and is generally wrong. Woman responds to emotion, follows instinct, and is very often right. Man is the drudging scientist, patient, dull. Woman is the dashing empiricist, inconsequential, brilliant. The cocktail must be hers. I shall continue, until strong evidence to the contrary is offered to me, to believe that the credit for this glory of American life belongs to her and not to man.
It would, no doubt, be insulting to say that part of the business of a woman, as distinguished from a man, is to dress well and be agreeable. I should not dream of saying such a thing. But there can be no harm in suggesting that it is the duty of both sexes to do these things. There is no real reason why an idealist, man or woman, should not be pleasant to look at, nor is it necessary that very estimable people should administer snubs to the rest of us. It seems to me that even very good people are better when they have nice manners and pleasanter when they dress well. It is not, I admit, their fault when they are not good looking, but it is their fault if they do not, by means of clothes, make themselves as good looking as they can. There is no excuse for the man or woman who emphasizes a natural ugliness. Man, I regret to say, does not often recognize his duty in these matters. Woman, generally speaking, has done her best. The American woman has made the very most of her opportunities and has succeeded both in looking nice and in being an agreeable companion. In the art of putting on her clothes she has no superior except the Parisienne, and even in Paris itself it is often difficult to tell, without hearing her speak, whether the lady at the next table in a restaurant is French or American. I knew an English mother who sent her daughter to Paris for six months in order that the girl might learn to dress herself. The journey to America would have been longer, but once there the girl would have had just as good a chance of acquiring the art. I am very unskilful in describing clothes, and the finer nuances of costume are far beyond the power of any language at my command to express. But it is possible to appreciate effects without being able to analyze the way in which they are produced. The effect on the emotions of a symphony rendered by a good orchestra is almost as great for the man who does not know exactly what the trombones are doing as it is for the musician who understands that they are adding to the general noise by playing chromatic scales, or whatever it is that trombones do play. It is the same with clothes. I cannot name materials, or discuss styles in technical language, but I am pleasantly conscious that the American woman has the air of being very well dressed.
I am not attempting to make a comparison between the clothes of very wealthy women of the leisured classes in America and those of women similarly placed in other countries. Aristocracies and plutocracies are cosmopolitan. National characteristics are to a considerable extent smoothed off them. The women of these classes dress almost equally well everywhere. The possibility of comparison exists only when one considers the comparatively poor women of the middle and lower middle classes. It is these who, in America, have the instinct for dressing well unusually highly developed. Some women have this instinct. Others have not. It seems to be distributed geographically. There are cities—no bribe would induce me to name one of them—where the women are usually badly dressed. You walk up and down the chief thoroughfares. You enter the most fashionable restaurants and are oppressed by a sense of prevailing dowdiness. It is not a question of money. The gowns which you see, the coats, the hats have obviously cost great sums. For half the expenditure women in other places look well dressed. It is not a matter of the skill of dressmakers and milliners. A woman who has not got the instinct for clothes might go to—I forget the man's name, but he is the chief costumier in Paris—might give him a free hand to do his best for her, and afterwards she would not look a bit better dressed. It is not, I believe, possible to explain exactly what she lacks. It is an extra sense, as incommunicable as an ear for music. A woman either has it or has not. The American woman has it.
I know—no one knows better than I do—that it is a contemptible thing to take any notice of clothes. The soul is what matters. The body may be in rags. The mind is what counts, and fine feathers do not make fine birds. A great prophet would not be the less a great prophet though his finger nails were black. I hope we should all adore him just the same even if he never washed his face or wore a collar. But just at first, before we got to know him really well, it is possible that we might be a little prejudiced against him if he looked as if he never washed. That is all I wish or mean to say about the American woman's power of dressing herself. It disarms prejudice. The stranger starts fair, so to speak, when he is introduced to her. In the case of women who cannot, or for any reason will not, dress themselves nicely, there are preliminary difficulties in the way of appreciating their real worth.
But the best clothes in the world are no help when it comes to conversation, unless, indeed, one is able to discuss them in detail, and I am not. I have met exquisitely dressed women who were very difficult to talk to. The American woman is not one of these. Besides being well dressed, she is a delightful talker on all subjects. She may or may not be profound. I am not profound myself, so I have no way of judging about that. But profoundness is not wanted in conversation. Its proper place is in scientific books. In conversation it is merely a nuisance, and the American woman, when she is profound, has more sense than to show it. She talks well because she is not in the least shy or self-conscious. Even young American girls are not shy. Brought into sudden contact with a middle-aged man, they treat him as an equal, with a frank sense of comradeship. They have, apparently, no awe of advanced or advancing years. They do not pretend to think that elderly people are in any way their superiors, or display in the presence of the aged that kind of chilling aloofness which is called respect. I detest people who behave as if they respected me because I am older than they are. I recognize at once that they are hypocrites. Boys and girls must know, in their hearts, just as well as we do, that respect is due to the young from the elderly and not the other way about. The ancient Romans understood this: "Maxima debitur reverentia pueris" is in the Latin grammar, and the Latin grammar is a good authority on all subjects connected with ancient Roman civilization.
It is her power of making herself agreeable which is the greatest charm of the American woman, a greater charm than her ability in dressing. I am a man very little practiced in the art of conversation. A dinner party—a party of any kind, but particularly a dinner party—is a thing from which I shrink. I am always very sorry for the two women who are placed beside me. I know that they will have to make great exertions to keep up a conversation with me. I watch them suffering and am myself a prey to excruciating pangs of self-reproach. But my agony is less in America than elsewhere. The American woman must of course suffer as much as the Englishwoman when I take her in to dinner; but she possesses in an extraordinary degree the art of not showing it. She frequently deceives me for several minutes at a time, making me think that she is actually enjoying herself. She is able to do this because she has an amazing vitality and a very acute kind of intelligence. Now, the highest compliment which a woman can pay to a man is to enjoy his company. The American woman understands this and succeeds in pretending she is doing it. She is wise, too. Recognizing that even her powers have their limits, and that no woman, however vital and intelligent, can go on disguising her weariness for very long, she makes her dinners and luncheons as short as possible, shorter than similar functions are in England. She does not attempt anything in the way of a long-distance contest with the heavy stupidity of the ordinary man. Her's is the triumph of the sprinter. For a short time she flashes, sympathizes, subtly flatters, talks with amazing brilliance, charms. Then she escapes. What happens to her next I can only guess, but I imagine that she must be very much exhausted.