Is Polite Society Polite? and Other Essays

by Julia Ward Howe

Have we not all felt the tone of society to be lowered by a low view of the conduct and motives of those who are made the subjects of discussion?

Those unfortunate men and women who delight in talk of this sort always appear to me degraded by it. No matter how clever they may be, I avoid their society, which has in it a moral malaria most unwholesome in character.

I am glad to say that, although frivolous society constantly shows its low estimate of human nature, I yet think that the gay immolation of character which was once considered a legitimate source of amusement has gone somewhat out of fashion. Sheridan's "School for Scandal" gives us some notion of what this may once have been. I do think that the world has grown more merciful in later years, and that even people who meet only for their own amusement are learning to seek it without murdering the reputation of their absent friends.

There is a mean impulse in human nature which leads some people to toss down the reputation of their fellows just as the Wall Street bear tosses down the value of the investments whose purchase he wishes to command at his own price. But in opposition to this, God has set within us a power which reacts against such base estimates of mankind. The utterance of this false tone often calls out the better music, and makes us admire the way in which good springs up in the very footsteps of evil and effaces them as things of nought.

Does intercourse with great society make us more or less polite? Elizabeth Browning says:—

First time he kissed me he but only kissed

The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,

Which ever thence did grow more clean and white,

Slow to world greetings, quick with its "Oh, list,"

When the angels speak.

This clearly expresses the sanctification of a new and noble interest. How is it with those on whom the great world has set its seal of superior position, which is derived from a variety of sources, among which wealth, recognized talent, and high descent are the most important?

I must say in answer that this social recognition does not affect all people in the same manner. One passes the ordeal unscathed, is as fresh in affection, as genuine in relation and intercourse, as faithful to every fine and true personal obligation in the fiery furnace of wealth and fashion and personal distinction as he or she was in the simple village or domestic life, in which there was no question of greatness or smallness, all being of nearly the same dimensions.

The great world may boast of its jewels which no furnace blast can melt or dim, but they are rare. Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier seem to have been among these undimmed gems; so, also, was Madame de Sévigné, with a heart warm with love for her children and her friends in all the dazzle of a brilliant court. So I have seen a vessel of the finest glass, thin as paper, which a chemist left over his spirit-lamp, full of boiling liquid, and, returning the next day, found uninjured, so perfect was the temper of the glass. But for one such unspoiled world-favorite, I can show you twenty men and women who, at the first lift of fortune, forsake their old friends, neglect their near relations, and utterly ignore their poor ones.

Romance is full of such shameful action; and let me say here, in passing, that in my opinion Romance often wears off our horror of what is wicked and heartless by showing it as a permanent and recognized element of society. This is the reverse of what it should do. But in these days it so exceeds its office in the hunt after the exhausted susceptibilities of a novel-reading public that it really thumps upon our aversion to vice until it wears it out.