Search-Light Letters

by Robert Grant

"On this day the cat is killed, and yet the cream is saved. True to her principles, Mrs. Sherman still bars her doors against the wanton, yet never fails to convince herself that she is an infallible judge of virtue. If there are rumors and whisperings in advance, she invariably takes the bull, or, more accurately speaking, the heifer, by the horns and puts the inquiry. The answer settles the matter. It becomes a veritable 'open sesame' to her entertainments and her friendship. She shows herself in public with her arm, metaphorically and literally, around the waist of women whom all men know to be unchaste and living in violation of social laws. They kiss and talk poetry and art and philosophy, and her face gleams with the consciousness of new importance and the realization of her ambition.

"Mrs. Sherman has now reached the point where she feels that she can fairly regard herself as the most busily progressive woman of her community. She has a finger in every pie, literary, artistic, philanthropic, educational, and what not. She is always in a hurry, and she does nothing thoroughly. Her ideas jostle against each other in their promiscuity, and become all jumbled together in her consciousness. Her time is so occupied that when she is doing one thing and talking to one person, some other thing or person is in her mind, though her social skill often enables her to conceal the fact. Her life is one continuous series of kaleidoscopic sensations and emotions without system or result. She is ostensibly a leader, but her leadership suggests only ceaseless activity and indiscriminate, superficial posings and vanities. Her nerves are kept in a constant state of tension by breathless comings and goings, her digestion perpetually tried by the viands of festivities. Nor is her conscience satisfied. A vague unrest pursues her still, torturing her by insinuations of her own utter futility, yet goading her on to fresh efforts. She presently becomes a wreck morally, mentally, and physically, though she preserves a bold front to the world, until one day the news is flashed upon a busy public that she has died suddenly from 'heart failure' following an attack of pneumonia. The physician in attendance shakes his head when asked to give assurance of her recovery. He possesses an instinctive knowledge that she has kept her vitality keyed up to concert pitch by antipyrine, phenacetine, and the other drugs to the use of which modern progressive women are addicted. And so no more of Mrs. Alexander Sherman.

"Of course," continued Josephine, "it was not strictly necessary to kill her. The constitutions of some progressive women seem to be proof against anything. But the chances were in favor of her death. And if the poor thing had lived, what hope was there for anything but a vapid old age, haunted by visions of her decreasing notoriety? And the strangest part of all is that when I began with her I felt hopeful that she would amount to something. The laws of evolution are not to be trifled with, however, even by the wives of philosophers."

To A Modern Woman with Social Ambitions. IV.

feel confident that my correspondent, Number 4, a wife thoroughly happy in the wedded state, will appreciate that there was nothing personal in Josephine's portrayal of Mrs. Alexander Sherman's career. It seems to me that it presents, more clearly than any arguments or words of mine could do, the perils of egotism and superficiality, and that I need not further indicate to my correspondents that to do a little of everything and nothing thoroughly, to be so eager for individuality or notoriety that one is ready to be led instead of to lead, and to discard social canons on the plea of liberty or superior feminine acuteness, will produce a nervous, emotional, gibbering type of character adapted to cause Madame de Staël or Madame Récamier to turn in her grave. Neither you, Number 4, nor Number 5, the radiant, able-bodied spinster, haughtily unconcerned about love and lovers, need fear any detriment to your souls or to your social progress as a consequence of doing some one or two things well, and of refusing to sacrifice your self-respect to the urgency of cheap substitutes for refinement and elegance. Certainly, thoroughness and delicacy of thought and sentiment are essential to the modern woman who would be socially effective in the best sense.

Let me here state that I am entirely conscious that it is not a prerequisite to earnest living to be socially effective at all. One can pursue one's occupation, be it house-keeping, school teaching, scientific philanthropy, or novel writing without taking any part in what is known as society, and still be respectable and worthy in character. Yet if every woman were simply to eat her three meals a day, sleep, be affectionate to her family, reasonably charitable, and do her daily task, the world would lose much of its vivacity, color, and æsthetic interest. As the world is at present constituted the greater mass of human beings, both male and female, are shut off from participation in society in its narrower sense. Their means, their manner of living, and their tastes confine them to very simple or else to very coarse social diversions. Hence we are accustomed to read in the newspapers of "society people," as a term of reproach indicating that portion of the population which cultivates the social or æesthetic side of nature in its leisure hours. The demagogic force of the term is derived from the undeniable existence of a surface element of society, which has been and is still apt to conduct itself in such a manner as to subject itself justly to the charge of frivolity and extravagance. But the unthinking extend its application to the cultivated and intelligent many, who in all countries constitute the best force of the community. Society in this better sense must always exist, and, although the woman who holds herself aloof from it may not be distinctly culpable, there can be no question that those who succeed in participating in the social interests open to them, without neglecting or allowing them to obscure sterner pursuits, live finer and more serviceable lives than those who pass all their hours of relaxation by the chimney-corner, either because they fancy that essential to comfort or because they choose to despise what they call, with a virtuous inflection, "society."

This may sound elementary, but I present it as a premise to which is to follow. You, my correspondents, are ambitious to progress socially, yet doubtless you are not altogether impervious to the seductive suggestion that social interests are hollow and unprofitable. For instance, I feel sure that you, Number 5, the radiant, able-bodied spinster, haughtily unconcerned about love and lovers, feels the pressure of the times, and would regard the life of a Madame de Staël or a Madame Récamier, however brilliant or picturesque, as at variance with modern theories of social utility. I hear you making some such representation as this, which is merely an enlargement of the letter you wrote me: "Here am I, a young woman of some means, without family responsibilities or other demands upon my time. I have no prejudice against marriage; indeed, I earnestly hope to meet some day, some man who will love me and whom I may love, and whose wife I may become; but as I am no longer so young as I was once, being nearly thirty, I have no intention of bothering my head about the subject further, and so put it aside as a contingency. I have no special talent; that is, I never could accomplish anything unusual with my voice, my pen, or a brush. I have taken, and I do take, a strong interest in charitable enterprise and investigation. I belong to philanthropic societies, and it has more than once occurred to me to join a college settlement and live among the poor. I have friends who do that; but I do not feel a special fitness for the work. Nor am I sure that, however valuable that experience may be as a form of loving service to the people one hopes to influence, it can be other than episodic and limited to the individuals who are conscious of the need or of the inspiration. I am painfully aware of the dissipations and vanities of fashionable people, in many of which I have taken part myself, and have no desire to be merely a frivolous devotee of social amusements. And yet I feel sure that the social side is no less genuine in its claims upon us than any other. It seems to me that I might interest myself socially, but I am puzzled by the intricacies of the situation. It is so difficult to be democratic in one's sympathies and yet maintain the old standards of elegance and refinement. To be socially effective one ought to be in touch with modern social tendencies and yet be true to the finest instincts of aspiring womanhood. What can one do to realize this?"

That is, I believe, a clear presentation of your state of mind and its dilemma. Having read of the vicissitudes of Mrs. Alexander Sherman, you have probably a more distinct idea of what you ought not to do; but would have a right to argue that a mere warning loses half its force unless a substitute be supplied. To begin with, you are correct in your assumption—you see I credit you with a considerable intelligence—that if you hope to be effective you must not be content with mere aristocratic elegance. That is a requisite which will gain you a standing within certain narrow limits, and if cleverly cherished, may bring you a surface reputation which the society newspapers will vie with each other to enhance. The acquirement of mere fine ladyism is going on actively in our society, and though it has not turned the heads of so many American women as its opposite, superficial democratic smartness, it seems too apt to fill the breasts of its votaries with a pleasing self-satisfaction, which no suggestion that the gift is not original serves to disturb. It is a product of and inheritance from the older civilizations, and in its most precious but not its exaggerated form, is absolutely essential to the most highly evolved womanhood. A fringe of our people in the North and in the South, and latterly in the West, has always insisted on and cultivated it, generally with much credit, and has thereby evoked the taunt that they were out of sympathy with the institutions of the country. That has been far less true than demagogues would have us believe, but there has been enough truth in it, and there is still enough truth in it to put our well-bred class—"society people," as they are called—on their guard against themselves. There is certainly nothing essentially American in conventional fine manners and in the conventional social tone which people of breeding the world over cultivate, and where these are the possessor's chief or only title to superiority, and are worn as such, there is room for the sneer that he or she is not an American at heart.