Mis-Mated Americans
By Julien Gordon
(Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger)
MR. Henry James is inclined to pity American women, because their men—husbands and lovers—are not up to their level of fastidious refinement.
We are inclined to ask Mr. James to what American women he alludes.
Living in a center which makes history, among men of monumental achievement, of vast intellectual resource, and of comprehensive judgment, I confess that when I first encountered some of these men they seemed to me so lacking in the charms of the drawing room that I asked myself: “How can their women stand them?” When, however, I had made the acquaintance of some of these women, or ladies, the query in my soul became: “How can they stand their women?”
Mating and reproduction are largely animal processes, requiring little play of the imagination. If they did, race suicide would never have been heard of. The heroine of “The Garden of Allah” pins a pale Christ over her bed on her wedding night. It has been a late fashion for English and French writers—Verlaine, Mallock, Oscar Wilde, and even that rare genius Robert Hichens—to intermingle religion and spirituality with the sexual instinct. The fact remains that nothing can be more sane or simple, and it only touches fanatical frenzy in minds which border hysteria and decadence.
We believe that the average American, being absolutely sane, finds his mate. He is even persuaded, when she has invested in a diamond brooch and a brocaded front, that she has become a woman of rare elegance, belonging to that type which energetic newspaper reporters depict as a “leader.” The illusion is no doubt calming. Social ambition is salient among politicians and ambassadors, and a good American who expects Paradise desires his wife and daughters to be “all right.” He is quickly and conveniently persuaded that they are. The enormous egotism of the man of success is large enough to cover, with its gilded wing, family ramifications in its spasms of self-laudation.