And what a difference between the French girls of my boyhood and the French girls of the present day! Not that they are yet 'Daisy Millers,' but at any rate they are no longer 'Eugénie Grandets.' Thirty years ago, a French girl well advanced in her twenties could not have, even in the early morning, gone across the street to see a friend or buy a pair of gloves without being accompanied by an elderly lady of the family or a lady's-maid. Thirty years ago, in my little native Brittany town, where a child of tender years would have been absolutely safe, an unmarried woman between forty and fifty would always be accompanied by a servant, even in daytime.
It was the correct thing to do. Indeed, a woman not married would always act in this manner as long as she thought that she was fit to be looked at by men. And very few women make up their minds to the loss of their charms. It even takes some of them a long time to become aware of that loss.
The French girl of thirty years ago, who was only allowed to read children's books, and never to set foot inside a theatre, now reads M. Zola's novels, and goes to see the plays of Alexandre Dumas fils, and as she discusses these plays she comes to the conclusion that they are very clever and interesting, but hardly such as to take her mother to.
French women are now getting freer every day, and, with the use of liberty, will lose the little defect they sometimes possess—affectation. They will become more and more natural and unaffected, and they will acquire that most charming and eminently American quality in a woman—unconventionality. They are now moving, not in the direction of innocent frivolity, but in that of greater independence. The time is soon coming when French girls will cease to regard marriage as a sort of emancipation, and will perhaps look upon it, as an American lady novelist of my acquaintance does, as a rather hard way of making a living.
Those French girls will not lose their charms by the enjoyment of greater liberty and independence. The American women have thus improved theirs.
CHAPTER XXIX
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN WOMEN HAVE NO LOVE TO SPARE FOR ONE ANOTHER
England and America are two branches of a family who once quarrelled — For their common interests they may make it up, but there will never be any love lost — There are no such quarrels to patch up as family ones.
I have heard a great deal about 'our kith and kin,' 'our cousins across the Atlantic,' 'blood is thicker than water,' 'the Anglo-Saxon race,' 'the English-speaking people,' 'the Anglo-American alliance,' and other more or less venerable platitudes with which music-hall managers in England have for some time succeeded in bringing down the gallery, on Saturday nights especially. I have heard all that, and, in company with most Americans, I have laughed in my sleeve.