Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays

by Julia Ward Howe

When I think of it, I believe that I had a salon once upon a time. I did not call it so, nor even think of it as such; yet within it were gathered people who represented many and various aspects of life. They were real people, not lay figures distinguished by names and clothes. The earnest humanitarian interests of my husband brought to our home a number of persons interested in reform, education, and progress. It was my part to mix in with this graver element as much of social grace and geniality as I was able to gather about me. I was never afraid to bring together persons who rarely met elsewhere than at my house, confronting Theodore Parker with some archpriest of the old orthodoxy, or William Lloyd Garrison with a decade, perhaps, of Beacon Street dames. A friend said, on one of these occasions: "Our hostess delights in contrasts." I confess that I did; but I think that my greatest pleasure was in the lessons of human compatibility which I learned on this wise. I started, indeed, with the conviction that thought and character are the foremost values in society, and was not afraid nor ashamed to offer these to my guests, with or without the stamp of fashion and position. The result amply justified my belief.

Some periods in our own history are more favorable to such intercourse than others. The agony and enthusiasm of the civil war, and the long period of ferment and disturbance which preceded and followed that great crisis,—these social agitations penetrated the very fossils of the body politic. People were glad to meet together, glad to find strength and comfort among those who lived and walked by solid convictions. We cannot go back to that time; we would not, if we could; but it was a grand time to live and to work in.

I am sorry when I see people build palaces in America. We do not need them. Why should we bury fortune and life in the dead state of rooms which are not lived in? Why should we double and triple for ourselves the dangers of insufficient drainage or defective sanitation? Let us have such houses as we need,—comfortable, well aired, well lighted, adorned with such art as we can appreciate, enlivened by such company as we can enjoy. Similarly, I believe that we should, individually, come much nearer to the real purpose of a salon by restricting the number of our guests and enlarging their variety.

If we are to have a salon, do not let us think too much about its appearance to the outside world,—how it will be reported, and extolled, and envied. Mr. Emerson withdrew from the Boston Radical Club because newspaper reports of its meetings were allowed. We live too much in public to-day, and desire too much the seal of public notice.

There is not room in our short human life for both shams and realities. We can neither pursue nor possess both. I think of this now entirely with application to the theme under consideration. Let us not exercise sham hospitality to sham friends. Let the heart of our household be sincere; let our home affections expand to a wider human brotherhood and sisterhood. Let us be willing to take trouble to gather our friends together, and to offer them such entertainment as we can, remembering that the best entertainment is mutual.

But do not let us offend ourselves or our friends with the glare of lights, the noise of numbers, in order that all may suffer a tedious and joyless being together, and part as those who have contributed to each other's ennui, all sincere and reasonable intercourse having been wanting in the general encounter.

We should not feel bound, either, to the literal imitation of any facts or features of European life which may not fit well upon our own. In many countries, the currents of human life have become so deepened and strengthened by habit and custom as to render change very difficult, and growth almost impossible. In our own, on the contrary, life is fresh and fluent. Its boundaries should be elastic, capable even of indefinite expansion.

In the older countries of which I speak, political power and social recognition are supposed to emanate from some autocratic source, and the effort and ambition of all naturally look toward that source, and, knowing none other, feel a personal interest in maintaining its ascendency, the statu quo. In our own broad land, power and light have no such inevitable abiding-place, but may emanate from an endless variety of points and personalities.

The other mode of living may have much to recommend it for those to whom it is native and inherited, but it is not for us. And when we apologize for our needs and deficiencies, it should not be on the ground of our youth and inexperience. If the settlement of our country is recent, we have behind us all the experience of the human race, and are bound to represent its fuller and riper manhood. Our seriousness is sometimes complained of, usually by people whose jests and pleasantries fail to amuse us. Let us not apologize for this, nor envy any nation its power of trifling and of persiflage. We have mighty problems to solve; great questions to answer. The fate of the world's future is concerned in what we shall do or leave undone.

We are a people of workers, and we love work—shame on him who is ashamed of it! When we are found, on our own or other shores, idling our life away, careless of vital issues, ignorant of true principles, then may we apologize, then let us make haste to amend.