CHAPTER IV
THE AMERICAN WOMAN
The most remarkable feature of America is the women. Divest your mind of any woman you know in order to prepare yourself to receive my impressions. To begin with, the American woman ranks with her husband; indeed, she is his superior in that all men render her homage and deference. It is accounted a point of chivalry to stand as the defender of the weaker sex. The American girl is educated with the boys in the public school, grows up with them, and studies their studies, that she may be their intellectual equal, and there is a strong party, led by masculine women, who contend for complete political rights for women. In some States they vote, and in nearly all may be elected to boards of various kinds and to minor offices. The Government departments are filled with women clerks, and all, from the lowest to the highest, are equal; hence, it is a difficult matter to find a native-born American who will become a servant. They all aspire to be ladies, and even aliens become salesladies, cook ladies, laundry ladies. They are on their dignity, and able to protect it from any point of attack.
The lower classes are particularly uninteresting, for they have no individuality, and ape the class above them, the result being a cheap, ludicrous imitation of a lady—an absurd abstraction. The women of the lower classes who are unmarried work in shops, factories, and restaurants, often in situations the reverse of sanitary; yet prefer this to good situations in families as servants, service being beneath their dignity and tending to disturb the balance of equality. I doubt if a native-born woman would permit herself to be called a servant; indeed, all the servants are Irish, Swedes, Norwegians, French, German, or negroes; the American girls fill the factories and the sweat-shops of the great cities. When I refer these girls to the lower classes it is merely to classify them, as morally and intellectually they are sometimes the equal of the higher classes. The middle-class women or girls are an attractive type, well educated and often beautiful. You obtain an idea of them in the great shops and bazaars of the great cities, where they fill every conceivable position and receive from five to six dollars per week.
But it is with the higher classes that you will be most interested, and when I say that the American girl, the product of the first families, is at once beautiful, refined, cultured, charming physically and mentally, I have but faintly expressed it; yet the most pronounced characteristic is their "daring," or temerity. There is no word exactly to cover it. I frequently met women at dinners. With few exceptions, it appears impossible for the American girl to take one of our race, an Oriental, seriously. She can not conceive that he may be a man of intelligence and education, and I can not better describe her than to sketch in its detail a dinner to which I was invited by the —— at Washington. The invitation was engraved on a small card and read "The ---- and Mrs. —— request the honor of the presence of the —— at dinner on Wednesday at eight o'clock, etc." I immediately sent my valet with an acceptance and a basket of orchids to the hostess, this being the mode among the men who are au fait.
A week later I went to the dinner, and was taken up to the dressing-room for men, where I found a dozen or more, all in the conventional evening dress I have described—now with tails, it being a ladies' affair. In a corner was a table, and by it stood a negro, also in a dress suit, identical with that of the others. I was cordially greeted by a guest, who said, "Let me introduce you to our American minister to Ijiji and Zanzibar," and he presented me to the tall negro, who was turning out some bottled "cocktail." I shook hands with him, and he laughed, showing a set of teeth like an elephant's tusks, and asked me "what I would have." He was a servant dealing out "appetizers," and this was an American joke. The perpetrator of this joke was a minor official in the State Department, yet the entire party apparently considered it a good joke. Fortunately, I could disguise my real feeling, and I merely relate the incident to give you an idea of the sense of the proprieties as entertained by certain Americans. All that winter the story of the American minister to Zanzibar was told at my expense without doubt.
Having been "fortified," and some of the men took two or three "cocktails" before they became "tuned up," we went down to the drawing-room, where I paid my respects to the host and hostess, who stood at the end of a beautiful room. As I approached the lady greeted me with a charming smile, extending her gloved hand almost on a direct line with her face, grasping it firmly, not shaking it, saying, "Very kind of you, ——. Delighted, I am sure. General"—turning to her husband—"you know the ——, of course," and the general shook my hand as he would a pump-handle, and whispered, "Our minister to Zanzibar treated you all right, eh?" and with a wink indescribable, closing the right eye for a second, passed me on. The story had got down-stairs before me. Americans of the official class have, as a rule, an absolute lack of savoir faire and social refinement; lack them so utterly as to become comical.
I now joined other groups of officers and officials, there being about thirty guests, half of whom were ladies. The latter were all in what is termed full dress. Why "full" I do not know. Here you see one of the most extraordinary features of American life—the dress of women. The Americans make claim to being among the most modest, the most religious, the most proper people in the world, yet the appearance of the ladies at many public functions is beyond belief. All the women in this house were beautiful and covered with jewels. They wore gowns in the French court fashion, with trains a yard or two in length, but the upper part cut so low that a large portion of the neck and shoulders was exposed. I was embarrassed beyond expression; such an exhibition in China could only be made by a certain class. These matrons were of the highest respectability. This remarkable custom of a strange people, who deluge China with missionaries from every sect under the sun and at home commit the grossest solecisms, is universal, and not thought of as improper. There was not much opportunity for introspective analysis, yet I could not but believe that such a custom must have its moral effect upon a nation in the long run.
It was a mystery to me how the upper part of some of the gowns was supported. In some instances there was no strap over the shoulders, the upper third of these alabaster torsos and arms being absolutely naked, save for a band of pearls, diamonds, or other gems, of a size rarely seen in the Orient; but I learned later that the bone or steel corset, which molds the form, constituted the support of the gown. I gradually became habituated to the custom, and did not notice it. My friend ——, an artist of repute, explained that it all depends on the point of view. "Our people are essentially artistic," he said. "There is nothing more beautiful than the divine female contour; the American women realize this, and sacrifice themselves at the altar of art." Yet the Americans are such jokers that exactly what my friend had in mind it was difficult to arrive at.