Woman in the Golden Ages by Amelia Gere Mason - HTML preview

SALON AND WOMAN’S CLUB

· New Mania for Knowledge ·
 · Women’s Clubs as Central Points ·
 · Parallel between the Literary Salon and the
 Woman’s Club ·
 · French and American Women ·
 · Attitude of Anglo-Saxon Men toward Women ·
 · Puritan Gospel of Feminine Liberty ·
 · The Woman’s Club not a School of Manners ·
 · Its Moral Value ·
 · Its Social and Intellectual Value ·
 · Imitation Culture ·
 · Special Distinction of American Women ·
 · Their Foibles ·
 · Multiplication of Clubs ·
 · Warning in the Excesses of the Later Salons ·
 · Tendency to Separate Men and Women ·
 · The Charm of Social Life ·
 · Wisdom of Consulting the Past ·

I

It is not too much to say that the entire present generation of women is going to school. Infancy cultivates its mind in the kindergarten, while the woman of threescore seeks consolation and diversion in clubs or a university course, instead of resigning herself to seclusion and prayers, or the chimney-corner and knitting, after the manner of her ancestors. Even our amusements carry instruction in solution. Childhood takes in knowledge through its toys and games; the débutante discusses Plato or Coquelin in the intervals of the waltz; youth and maturity alike find their pleasure in papers, talks, plays, music, and recitations. In these social menus everything is included, from a Greek drama or an Oriental faith to Wagner and the latest theory of economics. We have Kipling at breakfast, Rostand or Maeterlinck at luncheon, and the new Utopia at dinner. After a brilliant day of being adored and talked about, Browning has been duly labeled and put away, but Homer classes and Dante classes still alternate with lectures on the Impressionists or the Decadents. In this rage for knowledge, science and philosophy are not forgotten. Fashion ranges the field from occultism to agnosticism, from the qualities of a microbe to the origin of man. To-day it searches the problems of this world, to-morrow the mysteries of the next. There is nothing too large or too abstruse for the eager, questioning spirit that seeks to know all things, or at least to skim the surface of all things.

Nor is this energetic pursuit of intelligence confined to towns or cities. Go into the remote village or hamlet, and you will find the inevitable club, where the merits of the last novel, the labor problem, the political situation, the silver question, the Boer war, and the state of the universe generally, are canvassed by a circle of women as freely, and with as keen a zest, as the virtues and shortcomings of their neighbors were talked over by their grandmothers—possibly may be still by a few of their benighted contemporaries.

In its extent, this mania for things of the intellect is phenomenal. One might imagine that we were rapidly becoming a generation of pedants. Perhaps we are saved from it by the perpetual change that gives nothing time to crystallize. The central points of all this movement are the women’s clubs, of which the social element is a conspicuous feature, and we take our learning so comfortably diluted and pleasantly varied that it ceases to be formidable, though on the side of learning it may leave much to be desired.

But it is notably in this mingling of literature and life that women have always found their greatest intellectual influence, and the club is not likely to prove an exception. The rapidity of its growth is equaled only by the extent of its range. Of women’s clubs there is literally no end, and they are yet in their vigorous youth. We have literary clubs, and art clubs, and musical clubs; clubs for science, and clubs for philanthropy; parliamentary clubs, and suffrage clubs, and anti-suffrage clubs—clubs of every variety and every grade, from the luncheon club, with its dilettante menu, and the more pretentious chartered club, that aims at mastering a scheme of the world, to the simple working-girls’ club, which is content with something less: and all in the sacred name of culture. They multiply, federate, hold conventions, organize congresses, and really form a vast educational system that is fast changing old ideals and opening possibilities of which no prophetic eye can see the end. That they have marvelously raised the average standard of intelligence cannot be questioned, nor that they have brought out a large number of able and interesting women who have generously taken upon themselves not only their own share of the work of the world, but a great deal more.

One can hardly overrate the value of an institution which has given light and an upward impulse to so many lives, and changed the complexion of society so distinctly for the better. But it may be worth while to ask if the women of to-day, with their splendid initiative and boundless aspirations, are not going a little too fast, getting entangled in too much machinery, losing their individuality in masses, assuming more responsibility than they can well carry. Why is it that lines too deep for harmonious thought are so early writing themselves on the strong, tense, mobile, and delicate faces of American women? Why is it that the pure joy of life seems to be lost in the restless and insatiable passion for multitudes, so often thinly disguised as love for knowledge, which is not seldom little more than the shell and husk of things? Is the pursuit of culture degenerating into a pursuit of clubs, and are we taking for ourselves new taskmasters more pitiless than the old? “The emancipation of woman is fast becoming her slavery,” said one who was caught in the whirl of the social machinery and could find no point of repose. We pride ourselves on our liberty; but the true value of liberty is to leave people free from a pressure that prevents their fullest growth. What do we gain if we simply exchange one tyranny for another? Apart from the fact that the finest flowers of culture do not spring from a soil that is constantly turned, any more than they do from a soil that is not turned at all, it is a question of human limitations, of living so as to continue to live, of growing so as to continue to grow. Nor is it simply a matter of individuals. Societies, too, exhaust themselves; and those which reach an exaggerated growth in a day are apt to perish in a day. It is not the first time in the history of the world that there has been a brilliant reign of intelligence among women, though perhaps there was never one so widely spread as now. Why have they ended in more or less violent reactions? We may not be able to answer the question satisfactorily, but it gives us food for reflection.

II

The most remarkable, though by no means the only, precedent we have for a social organization planned by women on a basis of the intellect, was the French literary salon of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These women had relatively as much intelligence as we have, and possibly more power. It must be taken into consideration that they were remote from us by race, religion, and political régime, as well as by several generations of time, and that their spirit, aims, and methods were as unlike ours as their points of view. But that which they did on traditional lines and a small scale we are doing on new lines and a very large scale. Their intellectual life found its outlet in the salon, as ours does in the club. These equally represent the active influence of women in their respective ages. Both have resulted in a mania for knowledge, a change of ideals, a radical revolution in social life, and an unprecedented increase in the authority of women. As they have certain tendencies and dangers in common, it may be of interest to trace a few points of resemblance and contrast between them; also to glance at the elements which have gone into the club and are making it so considerable a factor in American life.

The salon, like the club, was founded and led by clever women in the interests of culture, both literary and social; but, unlike the club, it was devoted to bringing into relief the talents of men. The difference, so far as manners are concerned, is a fundamental one. It would never have occurred to the women of that age to band together for self-improvement. If they had given the matter a thought, it would not have seemed to them likely to come in that way; still less would it have occurred to them that this mode of doing things could be of any service in bettering the world or their own position. Rousseau, who wrote so many fine phrases about liberty, and left women none at all, not even the small privilege of protesting against injustice, said that they were “made to please men”; and it is safe to say that the Frenchwomen had no scheme of life apart from men, until they were ready to go into seclusion for prayer and penance and preparation for the next world. They accepted the fact that men had the ordering of affairs, and that they could make their own influence felt only by acting through them. “What is the difference whether women rule, or the rulers are guided by women?” said Aristotle. “If the power is in their hands, the result is the same.” It was simply a question of the best way of ruling the rulers. In this case the rulers were of a race that has not only a great liking for women in the concrete, but a great admiration for woman in the abstract. So long as her gifts are consecrated to his interest and pleasure, the Frenchman never objects to them—indeed, he is disposed to pay much homage to them. In the interest of some one else, or even in her own, it is another matter. They might be inconvenient. But in this new kingdom of the salon he was quite willing to accord her the supremacy, since she gave him the place of honor and furnished an effective background for his talents without too much parading her own. He had only to shine and be applauded. What more could he desire?

Naturally, under such conditions, among the first of her arts was that of making things agreeable. If she had any fine moral lessons to inculcate, she gave them in the form of sugared pills that were pleasant to take. In her category of virtues the social ones were uppermost; but they were the means to an end, and this end must not be lost sight of. Her special mission was to correct coarse manners and bad morals, as well as to secure due recognition for talent; but she went about it in her own way. It may be said that, as a rule, the Frenchwoman is much less interested in what is done than in how it is done. In the early days of the salons she concerned herself little, if at all, with theories and grave social problems; but she did concern herself very much with questions of taste and manners, the refinements of language and literature, the subtleties of sentiment, the dignity of converse between men and women. Nor did she bring to these questions an untrained mind. If she did not make so much of a business of improving it as we do, she did not neglect private study and the reading of the best books, which, though few, were undiluted. “It gives dull colors to the mind to have no taste for solid reading,” said Mme. de Sévigné, who delighted in Montaigne and Pascal, Tacitus and Vergil, with various other classics which are not exactly the food for frivolity. These women did not always spell correctly, and would have declined altogether to write a paper on the “Science of Government” or the “Philosophy of Confucius,”—subjects which the school-girls of to-day feel quite competent to treat,—but they showed surprising clearness and penetration in their criticisms of literature and manners. The coteries which formed an audience for Corneille, sympathized with the exalted thought of Pascal and Arnauld, helped to modify and polish the maxims of La Rochefoucauld,—as those which, a century or so later, discussed the tragedies of Voltaire or the philosophy of Rousseau with men of genius who would have had small patience with platitudes,—needed no lowering of levels to suit their taste or comprehension. They were held firmly to fine literary ideals. All they asked was simplicity of statement, and this was made a fashion, to the lasting benefit of French literature.

It is true that the movement of the salon was in the direction of a brilliant social as well as a brilliant intellectual life; but to fuse such varied materials, to unite men of action and men of letters, nobles and philosophers, statesmen and poets, people within the pale and people outside of it, in a harmonious society, presided over by women who set up new standards and new codes of manners, meant more than intelligence, more than social charm. It involved diplomacy of a high order, which implies flexibility, penetration, and the subtler qualities of the intellect, as well as tact, sympathy, and knowledge of men. This was notably an outgrowth of the salon, where women owed much of their influence to a quick perception of the fine shades of temperament, genius, interest, and passion through which the world is swayed. The result of such training was a mind singularly lucid, great administrative ability, and a character full of the intangible quality that we call charm. If it was a trifle weak as to moral fiber, this may be largely laid to the standards of the time, which were not ours. Mme. du Deffand put the philosophy of her age and race into an epigram when she said that “the virtues are superior to the sentiments, but not so agreeable.” Both temperament and education led these women toward Hellenic ideals. The latter-day woman is inclined to look upon their methods as trivial and their attitude as humiliating; but, whatever we may think of their point of view, we must admit their masterly ability in making vital changes for the better, and attaining a position of influence which we have hardly yet secured for ourselves. They did much more than form society, create a code of manners, and set the fashions, which we are apt to look upon as their special province. They refined the language, stimulated talent, gave fresh life to literature, exacted a new respect for women, and held political as well as social and academic honors in their hands.

If they sometimes dipped into affairs of state in support of their friends, and with a too incidental reference to the interests of the State, I am not sure that even the men of our own time are absolutely free from a personal tinge of the same sort, without the saving grace of altruism. At all events, in the pursuit of a better order of things, they took the pleasant path around the mountain rather than the doubtful and untrodden path over it, which, since they could not go over it if they tried, was, to my thinking, the wiser way.

III

But other times, other conditions and other methods. It was a long step from these fine ladies in rouge and ruffles to the earnest American women of high aims and simpler lives who, not far from thirty years ago, began seriously to group themselves in clubs for social fellowship and mental culture. The difference is equally marked, now that these gatherings are numbered by thousands. It is more vital than a variation in manners, as it lies in the character of the two races.

The club had no prestige of a class behind it, and concerned itself little with traditions. It was a far more radical departure from the old order than the salon, which, though it established a new social basis, did it through delicate compromises that left the aristocratic spirit intact. It was only in its later days that the iconoclasts invaded it, to some extent, and made it a sort of hotbed for the propagation of democratic theories which seemed quite harmless until, one day, a spark set them ablaze, and the generation that had played with them was swept to destruction. The club was democratic from the foundation. It did not revolve round men of letters, or men of any class. There was no man, or influence of man, behind it—no man in the vista. It does not aim to bring into relief the talents of men, but the talents of women who had come, perhaps, to wish a little glory on their own account. There was no longer an outlet for their activities in the salon, which belonged neither to the genius of the age nor the genius of the race. The Anglo-Saxon man is not preëminently a social being, and though he has not been entirely neglected in the matter of vanity or personal susceptibility, he has rather less of either than his Gallic compeers. Nor is he so amenable, either by temperament or training, to the delicate arts that make social life agreeable. Half a century or so ago, the American, in whose chivalrous regard for women we take so much pride, was in the habit of saying many fine things about them in what he was pleased to call the sphere God had assigned them; indeed, he went so far as to offer a great deal of theoretical incense to them as household divinities, with special and very human limitations as to privileges. But he frowned distinctly upon any intellectual tastes or aspirations. His attitude was tersely and modestly expressed in Tennyson’s couplet:

She knows but matters of the house,
 And he, he knows a thousand things.

This master of diverse knowledge would have smiled at the notion of finding either profit or amusement in meeting women for the purpose of conversation on the plane of the intellect. The few rare exceptions only emphasize this fact. “A woman, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can,” said Jane Austen. We are far from that time; but men of affairs even now find literary talks in the drawing-room tiresome, and persistently stay away. Thoughts, too, had become a commodity with a market value, and men of letters no longer found their pleasure or interest in wasting them on limited coteries. They preferred sending them out to a larger audience, at so much a page, while they smoked and chatted more at their ease among themselves at their clubs. Whether they did not find women inspiring,—which, under such conditions, is quite possible,—or did not care to be inspired in that way, the rôle of inspirer was clearly ended. The few efforts to take up the fallen scepter of the salon proved futile in intellectual prestige, though they may have served to while away some pleasant hours. A society based upon wealth without the traditions of culture is apt to smother in accessories the delicacy of insight and the esprit which were the life of the salons. On the other hand, those who pose as apostles of plain living and high thinking make the mistake of ignoring the imagination altogether, and too often serve their feasts of reason without any sauces at all, which fact should probably be laid to the account of the race that takes its diversion as seriously as its work. After all, one cannot say “Let us have esprit,” and have it, any more than one can say, “Let us have charm,” and put it on like a garment.

But the women of forty or fifty years ago lacked much more than a social outlet for their talents and aspirations. They had no outlet of any sort beyond charity and the fireside. The Frenchwomen had little, if any, more real freedom, possibly not so much in some directions: but rank brought them deference and consideration; the age of chivalry had put them on a pedestal. It may have been a bit theoretical, but an illusory power is better than none at all, as it has a certain prestige. If they were queens without a very substantial kingdom, they had, at least, the privileges, as well as the responsibilities, of high positions, and shone with something more than reflected glory. Then their talents were too valuable to be ignored, as they were the best of purveyors to Gallic ambitions. The Roman Church, too, was far-seeing when it provided an outlet for their surplus energies and emotions. If they had no fireside of their own, or the world pressed heavily upon them, they could retire from it, and hope for places of influence, even of power, in some of the various religious orders. In any case, there were peace and a dignified refuge. But it is a noteworthy fact that the Reformation left to women all the sacrifices of their religion, and none of its outward honors or consolations. If the philosophers had no message of freedom for them, still less was it found on Puritan soil. “Women are frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish,” said John Knox, who was far from being a model of patience himself, and seems to have been singularly swayed by these weak, inconsequent creatures above whom he asserts that man is placed “as God is above the angels.” Milton has left us in no doubt as to his position regarding them:

My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
 Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
 God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
 Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.

Such was the Puritan gospel of liberty as applied to women. John Knox and Milton joined in the chorus that glorified their vassalage, while Calvin added a cordial refrain, with a prudent reservation as to queens and princesses.

It is needless to dwell upon this phase of a past the ideals of which are as dead to us as the goddesses of Greece and the heroines of the Nibelungenlied. It has been sufficiently emphasized already, and concerns us here only as it shows us the spirit under which our grandmothers were born and bred. It cannot be denied that they were a wise, strong race, rearing thinkers and statesmen who have left few worthy successors, though they did not spend much time in discussing the best methods of training children, were better versed in domestic than social economics, and doubtless had misty ideas about Buddhism and the ultimate destiny of Woman. It may be superfluous, also, to say that many of them had occasion to think little of their restrictions, and would have resented the suggestion that they had any which were not good for them, if not positively desirable. Limitations, even hardships, do not necessarily imply misery. People are curiously flexible, and get a sort of happiness from trying to fit themselves to conditions which, though unpleasant, are inevitable. Then, conditions are not always hard because they have unlimited possibilities in that direction. One may even wear a chain and ball quite comfortably so long as one stands still, or if the chain be a silken one and the ball cast in pleasant places. The difficulty is that one does not always wish to stand still; nor is it always possible, whatever the inclination may be. The march of events is irresistible, and one is often forced to a change of position to escape being trampled upon. Besides, in a society that is based upon the right of people to do as they choose within certain very flexible limits, one half is not likely to continue to do, without a protest, what the other half says it ought to do, when it is compelled to take its full share of burdens and rather more than its full share of sacrifices, without any choice as to cakes and ale. These daughters of liberty held no longer the places of honor accorded to rank, and were not only without visible dignities of any kind, except as the palest of satellites, but were largely, if not altogether, excluded from the intellectual life of their husbands. They were told to be content with the dignity of maternity, while they were virtually shut out from the things that consecrate maternity. It was under such conditions that the woman’s club was born. Men had already set up clubs of their own, and women had no choice but to do the same thing, or drift into the hopeless position of their respectable Athenian sisters of the classic age, who lived in fashionable but ignorant seclusion, while their brilliant husbands sought more congenial companionship elsewhere.

But women did not plan a club for amusement, as men have usually done: they planned it for mental improvement. It was not without a prophecy of the coming time that the characters of our grandmothers were trained in so severe a school. They were the reverse of pleasure-loving, and took even their diversions seriously. The central point of their lives was an inexorable sense of duty. Its twin trait was energy. With a radical change of ideals their daughters did not lose these traits. A religious devotion to one set of aims was simply transferred to another. The road to their new Utopia was knowledge. All things would come in its train—culture, independence, happiness, the power to help a suffering world. It was this leaven of Puritan traditions which gave the club an element that was not found in the salon. The American woman may lack a little of that elusive quality, half sensibility, half wit, which makes so much of the Frenchwoman’s charm; she may lack, too, her perfection of tact, her inborn genius for form and measure: but she has what the Frenchwoman has not—something that belongs to a race in which the ethical overshadows the artistic. It is devotion to principles rather than to persons, to essentials rather than to forms. Her pursuit of knowledge may often be superficial, from the immensity of the field she lays out for herself; but her aims are serious, and lead her toward moral and sociological questions, rather than matters of sentiment and taste.

The woman’s club is not a school of manners, and concerns itself little with the fine art of living. It claims to instruct, not to amuse—or, rather, it seeks amusement in that way; and it is more interested in doing things than in the modes of doing them. It does not rely upon diplomacy to gain its ends, but upon the wisdom and justice of the ends, appealing to the reason instead of the imagination. It also deals more with masses than with individuals. No doubt, the necessity of going outside the realm of personal feeling in managing public or semi-public affairs helps to give the poise and self-command which go far toward offsetting the intensity of temperament that has always made the discussion of vital questions so perilous in gatherings of women, though we have occasion enough to know that wisdom and sanity do not invariably preside at gatherings of men, even supposably wise ones. The qualities fostered by the club are energy, earnestness, independence, versatility, and—not exactly intellectual conscience, which implies traditional standards, but a sense of intellectual duty that is not quite the same thing. All this is remote from the spirit of the salon, with its social codes and conventions, its graceful amenities, its sparkling wit, its play of sentiment, its diplomatic reserves, and its clear intelligence working through endless private channels toward a new order of things. It points to the club, not as a conservator of social traditions, or a creator of social standards, or a tribunal of criticism, but as a literary and political training-school, a maker of citizens with a broader outlook into the world of affairs, a powerful engine of moral force. Perhaps its greatest direct value at present lies in this moral force, which is the outgrowth of centuries of sternly moral heritage, and runs not only through philanthropic channels, but through all the avenues of life.

Of scarcely less importance are the impulse and direction the club has given to the administrative talents of women—talents which mark their special strength, and are far too valuable to be ignored at a time when all the wisdom of the world is needed, in private as well as in public affairs, to guide it safely through its threatening storms.

IV

But it is of the intellectual and social value of the club that I wish more especially to speak here. It is often asked by thoughtful foreigners why American women, who are free to pursue any career they like, with ample privileges of education and the universal reign of the literary club, have produced no writers of the first order, measured even by the standards of their own sex. One finds many clever ones, and a few able ones, but no Jane Austen, no George Eliot, no Mme. de Staël, no Mrs. Browning. This may be partly due to the fact that we have not yet passed the period of going to school. It is possible that another generation, reared in the stimulating atmosphere of this, may give us some rare flower of genius, if its mental force be not weakened by the general pouring-in process, or dissipated in the modern tendency toward limitless expansion and dilution. But club life in itself is not directly favorable to creative genius. The qualities of the imagination never flourish in crowds, though a certain order of talent does flourish there—a talent that brings quicker returns and more immediate consideration, at far less cost. The salon made brilliant and versatile women who were noted for conversation and diplomacy; it made charming women who ruled men and affairs through rare gifts of administration, tempered with intelligent sympathy and tact; it made executive women, and finely critical women, and masterful women, who left a strong and lasting impression upon the national life: but, though they lived in the main intellectual current of their time, stimulated and inspired its leaders, and had much to do with its direction, they seldom made a serious effort in literature themselves. The few who have left a name in letters only illustrate the fact that individual genius is a flower of another growth. Mme. de Staël would have been a great woman under any conditions; but we owe all of her best work in literature to her exile from the social life of Paris, where her thoughts had no time to crystallize. The gift of Mme. de Sévigné was nearly allied to a conversational one, but her mind was matured and deepened during years of seclusion under the lonely skies of Brittany. Mme. de la Fayette left the world of the salons early, to find her literary inspiration in the solitude of ill health and the stimulating friendship of La Rochefoucauld. Mme. du Châtelet, whose talent was of another color, wrote on philosophy and translated Newton, not in the breezy air of the salons, but in the tranquil shades of Cirey and the less tranquil society of Voltaire. There were other women who wrote, though they usually chose to hide a light which was not a very brilliant one, and to shine in other ways. It may be that it was the salon which made these women possible, as it created an intellectual atmosphere in which thought blossomed into intense and vivid life; but its direct tendency was to foster in women talents of a quite different sort from creative ones. It developed to a high degree, however, the fine discrimination and critical sense which led Rousseau to say that “a point of morals would not be better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris.”

The clubs have hardly lived long enough to justify a final judgment as to their outcome; but the best writers of our own time have not been, as a rule, actively identified with them, though a few, whose minds were already formed in another school, have had much to do in founding and leading them. The many able women who have given their time and talents to the clubs have oftener merged their literary gifts, if they had them, into work of another sort, not less valuable in its way, but less tangible and less individual. It is the work of the general, who plans, organizes, sifts values, adapts means to definite ends, but who lives too much in the swift current of affair