XIII
A GLIMPSE OF A SOUTHERN CITY
Every variety of climate, pace, and people is to be found in this great tract of country which has for its flag the Stars and Stripes, and any variety of taste ought to be capable of being gratified within its confines. If I were to come to live on this side of the Atlantic I think I should elect to settle in a Southern city. New York has many attractions; it has drawn to it, vortex-like, much of the best that is bright, able, active, powerful, but, vortex-like, the life swirls, spinning ceaselessly at a terrific rate, in that noisy city of unrest. Chicago accentuates the worst features of life in New York while having few of its compensations, and the large cities in the East and centre are blends of the life of both diluted with dulness. San Francisco is a thing apart—the air of the Pacific seems to blow different impulses on the people, and great and glorious air and climate and scenery are there, bracing with the breeziness of the West. Florida and the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are too near the tropics for my taste, tending towards hammock-basking too much.
Give me a Southern city, say in Georgia; and I have one in my mind's eye. There the people do not live so fast as to have no time to enjoy their life, while they have all that makes life enjoyable. Successful effort is my nearest approach to a definition of what constitutes happiness. There, there is every scope for various effort. The city and country around are still in process of active growth. "Fecundity" is writ large across the surface of the State, on fields, in mills, in mines. All the men are busy the livelong day. Here it is different from in England; you do not find a large section of men who spend the day either at various kinds of sport, at cricket, or loitering listlessly about the clubs. An idle man would be a solitary of his own sex. But it is not the material conditions that constitute the chief attraction of life in a Southern city, excellent as they are; the principal charm of the South is the character of the people themselves. There is an undefined flavour of old-world politeness and courtesy perfuming their environment The bow of a Southern gentleman does not appear to be the jerk of a string-pull; it suggests having been learned remotely from the bow that brought the sword projecting through the long coat-tails as the hat was removed from the powdered wig.
There is an indefinite something that tells one that all these people have had grandfathers and grandmothers, instead of as in New York, where the suggestion is that they are the offspring of stock-market tickers or have been shot into the world through a pneumatic tube.
That almost universal formula in America on a man being introduced bears here a real significance, "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Blank." The English equivalent is "How-d-do?" and, although inarticulate, there is frequently a silent suggestion of the phrase, "Bored to meet you," "Awfully bored to meet you." In the South they are glad to meet and welcome the stranger at their gates, and he must be hard to please if he does not have a good time within them.
The general rule that the men are at work all day has its effect in various ways on the life of the community. The social life differs from that of England in many marked features, in none more than in the part played by the Southern girl. At the first reception given by the mother of the young débutante, the men of the set in which she is to move are presented to her, and tacitly it is a presentation to them, by the mother, of what she holds most tenderly precious; to them, in trust in their honour, in full confidence in their courtesy, and, although their hearts are covered with the immaculate shirt-front of latter-day conventionality, with as full reliance on knightly service as if that stiff shirt were the armour of the day of chivalry. This social feature or condition of things strikes me as especially admirable. It strikes me as so infinitely preferable to the constant espionage of chaperonage, so much more above board and honourable towards both the young men and girls alike. They can go driving, to a theatre—where boxes are much more open and less like bathing-machines than ours—to lunch in the big club-room—an annexe to the exclusively male portion to which ladies are admitted—and will be driven to and from a dance, and will receive afternoon calls without a chaperon. Results point overwhelmingly to its success from every point of view. A breach of that code of conduct which needs not to be written would mean eternal social damnation. It is being perpetually borne in on me what a much better time the American girl has than our English sisters, and in many ways she deserves to have it so. If the man keeps horses and carriages so that he may take her out for drives in the afternoon, bring her to the theatre, take her to and from dances, if he keeps her supplied with flowers to an extent unknown Englandwards, if he is constantly giving dinner-parties and supper-parties for her, it is because she is worthy of it all and more.
To begin with, she is never blasée; and, thank goodness, it is not yet considered in America "good form" to appear blasé, even if one is not. Being full of interest and constantly au courant with events, she is always companionable, and is able to talk intelligently of many things. Being gifted with a heaven-sent sense of humour, she is never dull; and what closer bond of social sympathy is there than a sense of humour in common? In conversational fence the thrust and parry of her play is as quick and keen as her touch is true and light, and through it all ripples a sunny Southern gaiety that is as fond of giving pleasure or amusement as she is readily susceptive of either. But be not tempted in this summer region, O wanderer from the chilly North, to wear your heart upon your sleeve for the sun to shine on, or else she will pluck it off, saying, with laughing eyes, that it is no place for it, and she will put it with a row of probably half a dozen already on hers, and from time to time she will pick morsels from it at her pleasure; and the reason that it does not hurt more is because of the prettiness of her lips.
It is when one meets the mothers of these girls that one sees whence comes their charm; an old-world queenliness of motherhood, mingling with warm-hearted cordiality, renders them immediately as lovable as their daughters.
The billion-dollar trust is very adollarable, and so is the Tobacco and Standard Oil and the rest; but in the assets of the nation, more valuable, to my mind, is the heirloom of the tradition of gentle manners and cordial kindliness held so well in trust by the people of that city of the South.