A certain reputation for "wildness," a savour of innocent Bohemianism, has clung to Luccia, and Irene too, all through their lives, as a legacy from that far-off legendary time when, scarcely out of their girlhood, they were fellow art-students together in Paris. Belonging both to aristocratic, rather straitlaced New England families, I have often wondered how they contrived to accomplish that adventure in a day when such independent action on the part of two pretty young ladies was an adventure indeed. But it was the time when the first vigorous spring of feminine revolt was in the air. Rosa Bonheur, George Eliot, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other leaders were setting the pace for the advanced women, and George Sand was still a popular romancer. As a reminiscence of George Sand, Luccia to this day pretends that she prefers to smoke cigars to cigarettes, though, as a matter of fact, she has never smoked either, and has, indeed, an ultra-feminine detestation of tobacco—even in the form of her husband's pipe. She only says it, of course, for the fun of seeming "naughty"; which recalls to my mind her shocking behaviour one day when I went with her to call on some very prim cousins in New York. It was a household of an excessively brown-stone respectability, just the atmosphere to rouse the wickedness in Luccia. As we sat together in an upright conversation that sounded like the rustling of dried leaves in a cemetery, why! Luccia, for all her eighty years, seemed like a young wild-rose bush filling the tomb-like room with living light and fragrance. I could see the wickedness in her surging for an outburst. She was well aware that those respectable connections of hers had always looked upon her as a sort of "artistic" black sheep in the family. Presently her opportunity came. As our visit dragged mournfully towards its end, the butler entered, in pursuance of the early Victorian ritual on such occasions, bearing a tray on which was a decanter of sherry, some tiny wine-glasses, and some dry biscuits of a truly early Victorian dryness. This ghostly hospitality was duly dispensed, and Luccia, who seldom drinks anything but tea, instead of sipping her sherry with a lady-like aloofness, drained her glass with a sudden devil-may-care abandon, and, to the evident amazement even of the furniture, held it out to be refilled. Such pagan behaviour had never disgraced that scandalized drawing-room before. And when to her action she added words, the room absolutely refused to believe its ears. "I feel," she said, with a deep-down mirth in her eyes which only I could suspect rather than see, "I feel today as if I should like to go on a real spree. Do you ever feel that way?"
A palpable shudder passed through the room.
"Cousin Luccia!" cried out the three outraged mummies; the brother with actual sternness, and the sisters in plain fear. Had their eccentric cousin really gone out of her mind at last?
"Never feel that way?" she added, delighting in the havoc she was making. "You should. It's a wonderful feeling."
Then she drained her second glass, and to the evident relief of all three, rose to go. How we laughed together, as we sped away in our taxicab. "It's as well to live up to one's reputation with such people," she said, that dear, fantastic Luccia.
À propos that early Parisian adventure, Rosa Bonheur had been one of Luccia's and Irene's great exemplars, and one might say, in one particular connection,—heroes. I refer to the great painter's adoption of masculine costume. Why two unusually pretty young women should burn to discard the traditional flower-furniture of their sex, in exchange for the uncouth envelopes of man, is hard to understand. But it was the day of Mrs. Bloomer, as well as Rosa Bonheur; and earnest young "intellectuals" among women had a notion, I fancy, that to shake off their silks and laces was, symbolically, at all events, to shake off the general disabilities of their sex, and was somehow an assertion of a mental equality with man. At all events, it was a form of defiance against their sex's immemorial tyrant, which seems to have appealed to the imaginations of some young women of the period. Another woman's weakness to be sternly discarded was that scriptural "glory" of her hair. That must be ruthlessly lopped. So it is easy to imagine the horror of such relatives as I have hinted at when our two beautiful adventuresses returned from Paris, and appeared before their families in great Spanish cloaks, picturesque, coquettish enough you may be sure, veiling with some show of discretion those hideous compromises with trousers invented and worn by the strong-minded Mrs. Bloomer, and wearing their hair after the manner of Florentine boys. To face one's family, and to walk New York streets so garbed, must have needed real courage in those days; yet the two friends did both, and even for a while accepted persecution for vagaries which for them had the dead-seriousness of youth.
Passionate young propagandists as they were, they even preferred to abandon their homes for a while—rather than their bloomers—and, taking a studio together in New York, started out to earn their own living by the teaching of art. Those were the days of the really brave women.
But to return to the less abstract topic of the bloomers, I often tease Luccia and Irene about them, seeking for further information as to why they ever came to retrograde from a position so heroically taken, one of such serious import to human progress, and to condescend once more to don the livery of feminine servitude, and appear, as they do today, in delicate draperies which the eye searches in vain for any hint of sanguinary revolution. Luccia always looks shamefaced at the question. She still feels guilty, I can see, of a traitorous backsliding and occasionally threatens to make up for it by a return to masculine costume—looking the most exquisite piece of Dresden china as she says it. I have seen that masculine tyrant of hers smiling knowingly to himself on such occasions, and it has not been difficult to guess why and when those historic bloomers disappeared into the limbo of lost causes. There is little doubt that when Love came in by the door, the bloomers went out, so to speak, by the window.
Irene seems to have held out longer, and, doubtless, scornful of her more frivolous comrade's defection, steadfastly kept the faith awhile unsupported, walking the world in bloomered loneliness—till a like event overtook her. Such is the end of every maid's revolt! But Irene, to this day, retains more of her student seriousness than her more worldly-minded friend. Her face is of the round cherubic type, and her large heavy-lidded eyes have a touch of demureness veiling humour no less deep than Luccia's, but more reflective, chuckling quietly to itself, though on occasion I know no one better to laugh with, even giggle with, than Irene. But, whereas Luccia will talk gaily of revolution and even anarchy for the fun of it, and in the next breath talk hats with real seriousness, Irene still remains the purposeful revolutionary student she was as a girl; while Luccia contents herself with flashing generalizations, Irene seriously studies the latest developments of thought and society, reads all the new books, sees all the new plays and pictures, and has all the new movements of whatever kind—art, philosophy, and sociology—at her finger ends; and I may add that her favourite writer is Anatole France. Whenever I need light on the latest artistic or philosophic nonsense calling itself a movement (cubism, futurism, Bergsonism, syndicalism, or the like) I go to her, certain that she will know all about it. Nothing is too "modern" for this wonderful "old" lady of seventy-nine; and, whenever I am in town, we always go together to the most "advanced" play in the newest of new theatres.
À propos our theatre-going together, I must not forget a story about her which goes back to that bloomer period. A little while ago, calling to take tea with her, I found her seated with a fine soldierly white-haired "old" man, and they were in such merry talk that I felt that perhaps I was interrupting old memories. But they generously took me into the circle of their reminiscence. They had been laughing as I came in—"Shall I tell him, General?" she said, "what we were laughing about?" Then she did. She and the General had been girl and boy together, and as they came to eighteen and nineteen had been semi-serious sweethearts. The embryo General—no doubt because of her pretty face—had taken all her student vagaries with lover-like seriousness, and had, on one occasion, assisted in a notable enterprise. The bloomers had not been definitely donned at that time, but they were on the way, glimmering ahead as a discussed ideal. Whether it was as a preliminary experiment, or only in consequence of a "dare," I am not quite sure. I think it was a little of both, and that the General had dared Irene to go with him to the opera (in the gallery) dressed in boy's clothes. She accepted the challenge, borrowing a suit of clothes from her brother for the purpose. Her figure, according to the General's account, had looked anything but masculine, and her hair, tucked up under her boy's hat as best she could, was a peculiar peril. How her heart had almost stopped beating as a policeman had turned upon the youthful pair a suspicious scrutiny, how they had taken to their heels at his glance, how she had crimsoned at the box-office, and hid her face behind a fat man as they had scurried past the ticket-attendant, and how during the whole performance a keen-faced woman had glanced at her with a knowing persistency that seemed to threaten her with imminent exposure and arrest, and how wonderful the whole thing had been—just to be in boy's clothes and go in them to the theatre with one's sweetheart. O youth! youth! youth!