But what about the good, worthy masses of the people, say, at least nine-tenths of the populations of America and England?
Well, I should like to tell what I think to be the truth frankly and plainly. I am not a rich man—far from it—but I now see my way to easily paying my butcher's bills for the rest of my life, and I can afford to say what I mean. If you don't like it, and want something else, please apply elsewhere for compliments, platitudes, and falsehoods.
I am absolutely convinced that most American women despise English women, and that most English women cordially hate American women. And as it is much more flattering to be hated than to be despised, it is the American women who seem to me the better served of the two.
In the eyes of the English women who have not travelled in America or had the good fortune of mixing in Europe with the best American women, and who, in good womanly fashion, stick fast to their prejudiced notions, the daughters of Brother Jonathan are bumptious, vulgar, overdressed, loud, assertive, indifferent mothers, selfish wives, bad housekeepers, or else unbearable prigs and blue-stockings. And you will hear them deliver judgment in a way that seems to admit of no appeal.
In the eyes of the American women who have not lived the home-life of the English or mixed with the women of good English society, and who have been fed on ideas and opinions given in some American books or published in the newspapers of the smaller American cities, the English women are silly, sat-upon, ignorant creatures, seedy and dowdy, badly shaped, badly dressed, and who can only talk of their babies and their servants.
Among that class of women in both countries, the only concessions I have heard them make are the following: English women admit that their American sisters are freer and smarter than they are, and the American women envy the complexion of the daughters of John Bull.
How amiable women can be!
CHAPTER XXX
THE WOMAN I HATE