From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America

by George A. Birmingham

Comic papers on both sides of the Atlantic have adopted the marriages between American women and English men of the upper classes as a standing joke; one of those jokes of which the public never gets tired, whose infinite variety repetition does not stale. The fun lies in the idea of barter. The Englishman has a title. The American woman has dollars. He lays a coronet at her feet. She hands money bags to him. Essentially the joke is the same on whichever side of the Atlantic it is made. But there is a slight difference in the way the parts of it are emphasized. The tendency among American humorists is to dwell a little on the greed of the Englishman, who is represented as incapable of earning money for himself. The English jester lays more stress on the American woman's desire to be called "my lady," and pokes sly fun at the true democrat's fondness for titles. I appreciate the joke thoroughly wherever it is made, and I invariably laugh heartily at it. But I decline to take it as anything more than a joke. It is not a precise and scientific explanation of fact.

There are a great many marriages between American women of large or moderate fortune and English men, or other Europeans, of title. That is the fact. No doubt the dollars are as attractive to noblemen as they are to anybody else. There are a number of pleasant things, steam yachts, for instance, which can be got by those who have dollars, but not by those who are without them. They may occasionally be the determining factor in the choice of a wife. But I feel sure that most Englishmen, when they marry American women, do so because they like them. They marry the woman, not the money. In the same way a title is a very pleasant thing to have. I have never enjoyed the sensation and never shall, but I know that it must be most agreeable to be styled "Your Grace," or to have a coronet embroidered on a pocket handkerchief. But I do not believe that American women marry coronets. They marry men. The coronet counts, I daresay, but the man counts more.

It is interesting to notice that, although there are many marriages between American women and Englishmen, there are comparatively few marriages between English women and American men. If it were a mere question of exchanging money for titles we might expect English women of title to marry American men. There are a great many English women with titles and a great many rich American men. They might marry each other, but they do not, not, at all events, in large numbers. It is true that the woman cannot, unless she is a princess, give her husband a title, as a man can give a title to his wife. But it is no small thing to have a wife with a title. It is a pleasure well worth buying, if it is to be bought. But apparently it is not. The English woman of title prefers to marry an English man, however rich Americans may be. The American man prefers American women, though none of them have titles. Exact statistics about these marriages are not available, but we may take the vitality of current jokes as an indication of what the facts are. The joke about the marriage between Miss Sadie K. Bock, daughter of the well-known dollar dictator of Capernaum, Pa., U.S.A., and the Viscount Fitzeffingham Plantagenet, is fresh and always popular. But no one ever made a joke about a marriage between the dollar dictator's son and Lady Ermyntrude. There would be no point in that joke if it were made because the thing does not happen, or does not happen often enough to strike the popular imagination.

The truth appears to be that American women, apart from any question of their dowries, are attractive both to English and American men. English men, on the other hand, are attractive both to English and American women.

I occupy in this investigation the position of an unprejudiced outsider. I am neither English nor American, but Irish, and I can afford to discuss the matter without passion, since Irish women are admittedly more attractive than any others in the world and Irish men are seldom tempted to marry outside their own people. A very wise English lady, one who has much experience of life, once said that young Englishmen of good position are lured into marrying music hall dancers, a thing which occasionally happens to them, because they find these ladies more entertaining and exciting than girls of their own class. I do not know whether this is true or not, but if it is it helps to explain the attractiveness of American women. There is always a certain unexpectedness about them. They are always stimulating and agreeable. It is much more difficult to account for the attractiveness of the English man.

The manners of a well-bred English man are not superior to those of a well-bred American man. Nor are they inferior. Looked at superficially, they are the same. As far as mere conventional behavior toward women is concerned, there is no difference between an Englishman and an American. A well-mannered Englishman rises up and opens the door for a woman when she leaves the room. So does a well-mannered American. The Englishman hands tea, bread and butter or cake to a woman before he takes tea, bread and butter or cake for himself. So does the American. The outward acts are identical. But there is a subtle difference in the spirit which inspires them. The English man does these things because he is chivalrous. His manners are based on the theory "Noblesse oblige." The woman belongs to the weaker sex, he to the stronger. All courtesy is therefore due to her. This is the theory which underlies the behavior of Englishmen to women. Good manners are a survival, one of the few survivals, of the old idea of chivalry; and chivalry was the nobly conceived homage of the strong to the weak, of the superior to the inferior. The American, performing exactly the same outward acts, is reverent. And reverence is essentially the opposite of chivalry. It is not the homage of the strong to the weak, but the obeisance of the inferior in the presence of a superior.

This difference of spirit underlies the whole relationship of men to women in England and America. It helps to explain the fact that the feminist movement in England is much fiercer than it is in America. The English feminist is up against chivalry and wants equality. The American woman, though she may claim rights, has no inducement to destroy reverence.

I should be very sorry to think, I should be mad to say, that this difference in spirit has anything to do with the attractiveness of Englishmen, considered not as temporary companions, but as husbands. But there are, or once were, people who held the theory that the natural woman—and all women are perhaps more or less natural—prefers as a husband the kind of man who asserts himself as her superior. "O. Henry" has a story of a woman who learned to respect and love her husband only after she had goaded him into beating her. Up to that point she had despised him thoroughly. Other novelists, deep students of human nature all of them, have worked on the same scheme. They are quite wrong, of course. But if they were right they might quote the Englishman's invincible chivalry as the reason of his attractiveness; maintaining, cynically, that a woman prefers, in a husband, that kind of homage to the reverence that the American man continually offers her.

The American man strikes me as more alert than the Englishman. If this were noticeable only in New York, I should attribute the alertness to the climate. The air of New York is extraordinarily stimulating. The stranger feels himself tireless, as if he could go on doing things of an exhausting kind all day long without intervals for rest. It would be small wonder if the natives of the place were eager beyond other men. But they are not more eager and alert than other Americans. Therefore we cannot blame, or thank, the climate for these qualities. They must depend upon some peculiarity of the American nervous system, unless indeed they are the result of living under the American constitution. A man would naturally feel it his duty to be as alert as he could if he felt that his country was preeminently the land of progress and that all the other countries in the world were more or less old-fashioned and effete. But wherever the alertness comes from it is certainly one of the characteristics of the American man.

With it goes sanguineness. Every man who undertakes any enterprise looks at it from two points of view. He thinks how very nice life will be if the enterprise succeeds. He also considers how disagreeable things will become if, for any reason, it fails to come off. The Englishman, unless he is a politician, is temperamentally inclined to give full weight to the possibility of failure. The American dwells rather on the prospects of success. There are, of course, a great many sanguine Englishmen. Most Members of Parliament, for instance, must be extraordinarily hopeful, otherwise they would not go on expecting to get things done by voting and listening to speeches. Some Americans, though not many, are cautious to the point of being almost pessimistic. But, broadly speaking, Americans are more sanguine than Englishmen. That is why so many new faiths, and new foods, come from America. Only a very hopeful people could have invented Christian Science or expect to be benefited by eating patent foods at breakfast time. That is also, I imagine, why Americans drink so much iced water. Conscious of the dangers of being too sanguine, they try to cool down their spirits in the way which is generally recognized as best for reducing excessive hopefulness. To pour cold water on anything is a proverbial expression. The Americans pour gallons of very cold water down their throats, which shows that they are on the watch against the defects of their high qualities.