And it is indubitable that this undertaking of the burdens of intellectual culture by woman has been necessary to the nation’s progress—a kind of division of labour imperatively indicated by the tremendous economic and political duties which have preoccupied the men. No European country has ever had to accomplish economically, technically, and politically, in so short a time, that which the United States has accomplished in the last fifty years in perfecting its civilization. The strength of the men has been so thoroughly enlisted that intellectual culture could not have been developed or even maintained if the zeal and earnestness of women had not for a time taken up the work. But is this to be only for a time? Will the man bethink himself that his political and economic one-sidedness will in the end hurt the nation? This is one of the greatest questions for the future of this country. It is not a question of woman’s retrograding or losing any of her splendid acquirements; no one could wish that this fine intellectuality, this womanly seriousness, this desire for a meaning in her life should be thoughtlessly sacrificed, nor that the sisters and the mothers of the nation should ever become mere dolls or domestic machines. Nothing of this should be lost or needs to be lost. But a compensatory movement must be undertaken by the men of the country in order to make up for amateurish superficiality and an inconsequential logic of the emotions.
In itself, the intellectual domination of the women will have the tendency to strengthen itself, the more the higher life bears the feminine stamp. For by so much, men are less attracted to it. Thus the number of male school teachers becomes smaller all the time, because the majority of women teachers makes the school more and more a place where a man does not feel at home. But other factors in public opinion work strongly in the opposite direction; industrial life has made its great strides, the land is opened up, the devastations of the Civil War are repaired, internal disturbances have yielded to internal unity, recognition among the world powers has been won, and within a short time the wealth of the country has increased many fold. It will be a natural reaction if the energies of men are somewhat withdrawn from industry and agriculture, from politics and war, and once more bestowed on things intellectual. The strength of this reaction will decide whether the self-assertion of the American women will, in the end, have been an unalloyed blessing to the country or an affliction. Woman will never contribute momentously to the culture of the world by remaining intellectually celibate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Aristocratic Tendencies
In the caricatures of the American which are so gladly drawn by the European, and so innocently believed in, there is generally, beside the shirt-sleeved clown who bawls “equality” and the barbarian who chases the dollar, the rich heiress bent on swapping her millions for a coronet. The longing for bankrupt suitors of undoubted pedigree is supposed to be the one symptom of any social aspiration, which the Yankee exhibits. The American begs leave to differ. He is not surprised that the young American woman of good family, with her fine intellectual freshness and her faculty of adaptation, should be sought out by men of all nations; nor is he filled with awe if there are some suitors of historic lineage among the rest. But the day is long gone in which such marriages are looked on as an enviable piece of good fortune for the daughter of any American citizen. Even the newspapers lightly smile at such marriages to a title, and they are becoming less and less frequent in the really best circles of American society. Besides, no such cheap and superficial aspirations are really indicative of aristocratic tendencies. The American is, by principle, very far from making his way into the international aristocracy of Europe, and he neither does nor will he ever attempt any artificial imitation of aristocratic institutions.
It is a capital mistake to suppose that the American, put face to face with European princedom, forgets or tries to hide his democracy. Aristocratic institutions, particularly those of England, interest him as a bit out of history; he seeks such social contact just as he wanders through quaint castles, without wishing thereby to transfer his own country house on the Hudson into a decaying group of walls and turrets. He takes an æsthetic pleasure in the brilliancy of courts, the pomp of military life, the wealth and colour of symbols; and, quite independently of that, he feels indeed a lively interest in certain fascinating figures of European politics—most of all, perhaps, in the German Kaiser. But whether his interest is historical, æsthetic, or personal, it is never accompanied by any feeling of inferiority to the persons who represent these aristocratic institutions. When Prince Henry, on his visit to the New World, quickly won the hearts of Americans as a man, there was nothing in the tone or accent of the greetings addressed to him which was out of accord with the fundamental key of democracy. The dinner speakers commenced their speeches in the democratic fashion, which is always first to address the presiding host: “Mr. Mayor, your Royal Highness.”
At the same time the peculiarly democratic contempt for things monarchical is disappearing, too; the cultivated American feels increasingly that every form of state has arisen from historic conditions, and that one is not in and for itself better than another. He feels that he is not untrue to his republican fatherland in attesting his respect for crowned heads. He shows most of all his respect, because it is just the friendly, neighbourly intercourse which makes possible a relation of mutual recognition. Democracy is itself the gainer by giving up the absurd pose of looking down on aristocracy. Thus it happens that, of recent years, even native-born Americans have sometimes received European orders. They know well enough that it will not do to wear the button-hole decoration on American soil, but they feel it to be ungracious to decline what is offered in a friendly spirit; unless, indeed, it is a politician who wishes to accentuate and propagate a certain principle. Democracy feels sure enough of itself to be able to accept a courtesy which is offered, with equal courtesy; but nobody supposes, for a moment, that European monarchical decorations have any magic to exalt a man above his democratic equality. Indeed, the feeling of entire equality, and the belief in a mutual recognition of such equality, are almost the presupposition of modern times, and only in Irish mass-meetings do we still hear protests against European tyranny. This much is sure: America shows not the slightest tendency to become aristocratic by imitating the historic aristocracies of Europe.
There are many who seem to believe that, therefore, the only aristocracy of America consists in the clique of multi-millionaires which holds its court in Newport and Fifth Avenue. The whole country observes their follies and eccentricities; their family gatherings are described at length by the press, quite as any court ceremonies are described in European papers; and to be taken into this sacred circle is supposed to be the life ambition of industrious millionaires. Many Americans who are under the influence of the sensational press would probably agree with this; and, judging by outward symptoms, one might in fact suppose that these Crœsuses along the Cliff-walk at Newport were really the responsible social leaders of America. This must seem very contemptible to all who look on from a distance, for everything which the papers tell to the four winds of heaven about these people is an insult to real and sound American feeling. The fountains of perfumery, the dinners on horseback, the cotillons where the favours are sun-bursts of real gems—in short, the senseless throwing away of wealth in the mere interests of rivalry and without even any æsthetic compensations, cannot profoundly impress a nation of pioneers.
On looking more closely, one sees that the facts are not so bad, and that the penny-a-liners rather than the multi-millionaires are responsible for such sensational versions. In fact, in spite of many extravagances, there is a great deal of taste and refinement in those very circles; much good sense, an appreciation of true art, honest pleasure in sport, especially if it is on a grand scale; polished address, accomplished elegance in costume, and at table a hospitality which proudly represents a rich country. In the matter of style and address, these people are in fact leaders, and deserve to be. Their society, it is true, is less interesting than that of many very much more modest circles; but the same is true throughout the world of those people who make pleasure their sole duty in life. Their ostentatious enjoyments display much less individuality, and are more along prescribed lines, than those of European circles which live in a comparable luxury—a fact which is due largely to the universal uniformity of fashion that prevails in every class of Americans, and that is too little tolerant of individual picturesqueness. In spite of all this, neither diplomatic Washington, nor intellectual Boston, nor hospitable Baltimore, nor conservative Philadelphia, nor indomitable Chicago, nor cosmopolitan San Francisco, can point to any collection of persons which, in that world where one is to be amused expensively at any cost, is better qualified to take the lead than just the Four Hundred of New York and Newport.
And yet there is a fundamental error in the whole calculation. It is simply not true that these circles exercise any sort of leadership for the nation, or have become the starting-point of a New World aristocracy. The average American, if he is still the true Puritan, is outraged on reading of a wedding ceremony where more money is spent on decorating the church than the combined yearly salaries of thirty school teachers, or of the sons of great industrial leaders wasting their days in drinking cocktails and racing their automobiles. If, on the other hand, he is a true city-bred man, he takes a considerable pleasure in reading in the newspaper about the design and equipment of the latest yacht, the decorations in the ball-room of the recently built palace, or about the latest divorce doings in those elect circles. The two sorts of readers—that is, the vexed and the amused—agree only in one thing;—neither of them takes all this seriously from the national point of view. The one is outraged that in his large, healthy, and hard-working country, such folderol and licentiousness are gaped at or tolerated. And the other is pleased that his country has become so rich and strong as to be able to afford such luxuriousness and extravagance; he looks on quizzically as at a vaudeville theatre, but even he does not take the actors in this social vaudeville the least bit seriously. The one accounts this clique a sort of moral slum, and the other a quickly passing and interesting froth; and both parties overestimate the eccentric whimsies and underestimate the actual constant influence of these circles in improving the taste for art and in really refining manners. But this clique is accounted a real aristocracy merely by itself and by the tradesmen who purvey to it.
In spite of this, American society is beginning to show important differentiations. It is not a mere sentimental and fanciful aristocracy, trying to imitate European monarchianism, and it is not the pseudo-aristocracy dancing around the golden dinner-set; it is an aristocracy of leading groups of people, which has risen slowly in the social life of the nation, and now affords the starting-point of a steadily increasing individuation of social layers. The influence of wealth is not absent here, but it is not mere wealth as such which exalts these people to the nobility; nor is the historical principle of family inheritance left out of account, although it is not merely the number of one’s identifiable ancestors that counts. It is, most of all, the profounder marks of education and of personal talent. And out of the combination of all these factors and their interpenetration proceed a New World group of leaders, which has in fact a national significance.