Then at the field there are the two vast semicircles of challenging colours, the advance “rooting”—the songs, yells, ringing of bells and tooting of horns—that grows to positive frenzy as the two contesting teams come in and take their places. And, as the game proceeds, the still more fervent shouts—middle-aged men standing up on their seats and bawling three-times-threes, young girls laughing, crying, splitting their gloves in madness of applause, small boys screeching encouragement to “our side,” withering taunts to the opponents; and then all at once a deathly hush—in such a huge congregation twice as impressive as all their noise—while a goal is made or a home base run. And the enthusiasm breaks forth more furious than ever.
We are a long way now from the stodgy, dull-eyed diner-out, in his murky lair; now, we are looking on at youth at its best—its most eager and unconscious; in which guise Americans in their vivid charm are irresistible.
IV
MISS NEW YORK, JR.
There is no woman in modern times of whom so much has been written, so little said, as of the American woman. Essayists have echoed one another in pronouncing her the handsomest, the best dressed, the most virtuous, and altogether the most attractive woman the world round. Psychologists have let her carefully alone; she is not a simple problem to expound. She is, however, a most interesting one, and I have not the courage to slight her with the usual cursory remarks on eyes, hair, and figure. She deserves a second and more searching glance.
To her own countrymen she is a goddess on a pedestal that never totters; to the foreigner she is a pretty, restless, thoroughly selfish female, who roams the earth at scandalous liberty, while her husband sits at home and posts checks. Naturally, the truth—if one can get at truth regarding such a complex creature—falls between these two conceptions: the American woman is a splendid, faulty human being, in whom the extremes of human weakness and nobility seem surely to have met. She is the product of the extreme Western philosophy of absolute individualism, and as such is constituted a law unto herself, which she defies the world to gainsay. At the same time she knows herself so little that she changes and contradicts this law constantly, thus bewildering those who are trying to understand it and her.
For example, we are convinced of her independence. We go with her to the milliner’s. She wants a hat with plumes. “Oh, but, my dear,” says the saleslady reprovingly, “they aren’t wearing plumes this season—they aren’t wearing them at all. Everybody is having Paradise feathers.” Madame New York instantly declares that in that case she must have Paradise feathers, too, and is thoroughly content when the same are added to the nine hundred and ninety-nine other feathers that flutter out the avenue next afternoon. Plumes may be far more becoming to her; in her heart she may secretly regret them; but she must have what everyone else has. She has not the independence to break away from the herd.
And so it is with all her costume, her coiffure, the very bag on her wrist and brooch at her throat: every detail must be that detail of the type. She neither dares nor knows how to be different. But, within the stronghold of the type, she dares anything. Are “they” wearing narrow skirts? Every New York woman challenges every other, with her frock three inches tighter than the last lady’s. Are they slashing skirts to the ankle in Paris? Madame New York slashes hers to the shoe-tops, always provided she has the concurrence of “those” of Manhattan. Once secured by the sanction of the mass, her instinct for exaggeration is unleashed; her perverse imagination shakes off its chronic torpor, and soars to flights of fearful and wonderful audacity.
Even then, however, she originates no fantasy of her own, but simply elaborates and enlarges upon the primary copy. Her impulse is not to think and create, but to observe and assimilate. It would never occur to her to study the lines of her head and arrange her hair accordingly; rather she studies the head of her next-door neighbour, and promptly duplicates it—generally with distinct improvement over the original. True to her race, she has a genius for imitation that will not be subdued. But she is not an artist.
For this reason, the American woman bores us with her vanity, where the Englishwoman rouses our tenderness, and the Frenchwoman piques and allures. There is an appealing clumsiness in the way the Englishwoman goes about adding her little touches of feminine adornment; the badly tied bow, the awkward bit of lace, making their deprecating bid for favour. The Frenchwoman, with her seductive devices of alternate concealment and daring displays, lays constant emphasis on the two outstanding charms of all femininity: mystery and change. But when we come to the American woman we are confronted with that most depressing of personalities, the stereotyped. She has made of herself a mannequin for the exposition of expensive clothes, costly jewels, and a mass of futile accessories that neither in themselves nor as pointers to an individuality signify anything whatsoever. This figure of set elegance she has overlaid with a determined animation that is never allowed to flag, but keeps the puppet in an incessant state of laughing, smiling, chattering—motion of one sort or another—till we long for the machinery to run down, and the show to be ended.
But this never occurs, except when the entire elaborate mechanism falls to pieces with a crash; and the woman becomes that wretched, sexless thing—a nervous wreck. Till then, to use her own favourite expression, “she will go till she drops,” and the onlooker is forced to watch her in the unattractive process.