"The age of chivalry is gone" from the public conveyances of New York. Apparently it has gone farther from New York than from any other American city. At least that is the conclusion to which a New Yorker is reluctantly driven who has occasion to visit other American cities. The boorishness of New York is now what impresses the British tourist. Stevenson made his first appearance in New York a matter of seventeen years after Thackeray's last appearance, and he in turn recorded his observation. It was that he was received in casual places where he was personally unknown with a surprising mixture of "rudeness and kindness." But what struck him first, struck him in the face, so to say, was the rudeness. The healing kindness came after, and the final conclusion was that New Yorkers (he was careful not to say Americans) were well-meaning and kind-hearted people who had no manners. The good intentions and the kind hearts may be questioned by any spectator of the scramble at a station of any one of the elevated roads during the crowded hours, where male creatures may be seen using the superior strength of their sex to arrive at seats in advance of women. Even where this is not put too grossly in evidence, it is plain to the spectator of the scramble that the age of chivalry is gone.
The travelling New Yorker becomes aware that this is largely local. A Southern newspaper man, writing from New York to his paper, not long ago, noted its manners with even a touch of horror. "When I saw a man sitting in a car in which a woman was standing," he says, "I knew that I was far from home." A very recent British observer, the clever author of "The Land of The Dollar," proceeding from New York to Philadelphia, recorded his refreshment at happening upon an American town where the inhabitants were not too busy, when the stranger thanked them for a piece of information, to answer "You're very welcome."
When the New Yorker goes abroad at home, he finds unwelcome confirmation of the suggestion that his own city is the most unmannerly of all. The New Englander has undoubtedly a way, as Anthony Trollope noted, of giving you a piece of information as if he were making you a present of a dollar. But for all that, the sensitive stranger finds himself much less rasped at the end of a day in Boston, than at the end of a day in New York. As you go Southward, the level of manners rises in proportion almost to the respective stages of social culture reached in the colonial times, when Josiah Quincy found in Charleston a degree of "civility" and "elegance" such as the good Bostonian recorded that he had never seen, nor expected to see, on this side of the Atlantic. One is driven, in view of the Southern courtesy, to wonder whether there may not be something in Goethe's defence of the duello, to the effect that it is more desirable that there should be some security in the community against a rude act than that all men should be secure of dying in their beds.
But this explanation does not account for the fact that in whatever direction the New Yorker goes from home he finds better manners of the road, manners of the street-car, manners of the elevator, than those he left. Western cities, unless they be Southwestern also, have not the soothing softness and deference of Southern manners, but there is in these a recognition on the part of the human brother whom you casually encounter, of your human brotherhood which you are by no means so sure of eliciting from the casual and promiscuous New Yorker. The Chicagoan will tell you in detail what you want to know, even though, as Mr. Julian Ralph has remarked, he makes you trot alongside of him on the sidewalk while he is telling it. And in an elevator in which there is a woman, the Chicagoan hats are as promptly and automatically doffed as the Bostonese, while in this regard it is New York and not Philadelphia that is the Quaker city.
"Ethnic" explanations of the bad manners of New York will occur to many readers, which "it may be interesting not to state." These mostly fall to the ground before the appalling fact that Chicago is better-mannered. The elevated roads are great demoralizers. It is barely that primitive human decency escapes from the "Sauve qui peut" and "Devil take the hindmost" of that mode of transit, to say nothing of the fine flower of courtesy. Let us hope it is all the doing of the elevated roads.
The Public Manners of Women
It is painful to have to say that inquiry among males for an explanation of the degeneration just mentioned reveals yet another lamentable decline in chivalry. For it is a fact that the current masculine hypothesis attributes it to the women themselves. This is a reversion to a state of things which prevailed long before the age of chivalry had come. The scandalous behavior of Adam, in devolving upon the partner and fragment of his bosom the responsibility for his indulgence in the "malum prohibitum" of Eden, has been frequently cited in assemblages of Woman in proof of the innate and essential unchivalrousness of Man. It is there regarded as, to say the least of it, real mean.
The citation may not appear germane to an appeal for merely equal rights, which is the professed object of the "woman-women," but it is surely pertinent to the male contention that woman would get more by throwing herself upon the mercy of man than by appealing to his justice. If we take a more modern view of the origin of the relations of the sexes, it is evident that only that minimum of courtly consideration for the weaker vessel which was needful for the preservation of the species was to be expected from a gentleman whose habits had only just ceased to be arboreal, and that the age of chivalry must have been a very long time in coming.
It is, all the same, a fact that, when a son of Adam of the younger generation is asked how, in a public conveyance, he can retain both his seat and his equanimity while a daughter of Eve is standing, he is apt to recur to the third chapter of Genesis, and to put the blame on "the woman thou gavest to be with me." "You don't even get thanked for it," he will say. His father, and much more his grandfather, would have been ashamed to offer that excuse. It would have been ruled out as invalid, even if accurate; and the heir of all the ages who makes it does not put it to the proof often enough to know whether it is accurate or not.
But it must be owned that there is too much truth in it. Woman's inhumanity to man is a good deal in evidence. The late Senator Morton, of Indiana, was, it will be remembered, an invalid and a cripple. He came into a company at the capital one day in a state of great indignation because, in a street-car crowded with young women, not one had offered him a seat, and he had been compelled to make the journey painfully and precariously supported upon his crutches. The like of this may very often be seen. Humanity, consideration for weakness and helplessness, is the root of which chivalry is the fine flower. The Senator's experience was not unique, was not even exceptional. It is a startling proposition that man's inhumanity to man is less than woman's, but the time seems to give it some proof. At any rate, a man evidently disabled would not be allowed to stand in a public conveyance in which able-bodied men were seated, even in the most unchivalrous part of our country, which I have given some reasons for believing to be the city of New York. And, if that be true, it seems that the assumption of the right of an able-bodied woman to remain seated while a disabled man is standing is an assumption that the claims of chivalry are superior to those of humanity. On the other hand, it may fairly be said that the selfishness of women with regard to the wayfaring man is more thoughtless and perfunctory than the selfishness of men with regard to the wayfaring woman. In this country, at least, this latter is in all cases felt to be a violation of propriety and decency. The native American feels himself to be both on his defence and without defence, when he is arraigned for it. This was illustrated one day in a car of the New York elevated road, in which a middle-aged woman was standing in front of a young man who was sitting. Fixing him with her glittering eye, she said, calmly but firmly, "Get up, young man, I want that seat." The conscience-stricken youth rose meekly and automatically at the summons, and left his seat the spoil of the Amazonian bow and spear.