Read Ebook: The Meccas of the World The Play of Modern Life in New York Paris Vienna Madrid and London by Cranston Ruth

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The American house-party on the whole is a much more serious affair than its original English model. The anxious American hostess never quite gains that casual, easy manner of putting her house at the disposal of her guests, and then forgetting it and them. She must be always "entertaining," than which there is no more dreary persecution for the long-suffering visitor. Except for this, her hospitality is delightful; and it is a joy to leave the dust and roar of New York, and motor out to one of the many charming country houses on Long Island or up the Hudson for a peaceful week-end. Americans show great good sense in clinging to their native Colonial architecture, which lends itself admirably to the simple, well-kept lawns and old-fashioned gardens. In comparison with country estates of the old world, one misses the dignity of ancient stone and trees; but gains the airy openness and many luxuries of modern comfort.

As for country life in general, it is further advanced than on the Continent, but not so far advanced as in England. Americans, being a young people, are naturally an informal people, however they may rig themselves out when they are on show. They love informal clothes, and customs, and the happy-go-lucky freedom of out-of-doors. On the other hand, they are not a sporting people, except by individuals. They are athletes rather than sportsmen; the passion for individual prowess being very strong, the devotion to sport for sport's sake much less in evidence. The spirit of competition is as keen in the athletic field as it is in Wall Street; and at the intercollegiate games enthusiasm is always centred on the particular hero of each side, rather than on the play of the team as a whole. The American in general distinguishes himself in the "individual" rather than the team sports--in running, swimming, skating, and tennis; all of which display to fine advantage his wiry, lean agility.

At the same time, there is nothing more typically American or more inspiring to watch than one of the great collegiate team games, when thirty thousand spectators are massed round the field, breathlessly intent on every detail. Even in an immense city like New York, on the day of a big game, one feels a peculiar excitement in the air. The hotels are full of eager boys with sweaters, through the streets dash gaily decorated motors, and the stations are crowded with fathers, mothers, sisters and sweethearts on their way to cheer their particular hopeful. For once, too, the harassed man of affairs throws business to the four winds, remembers only that he is an "old grad" of Harvard or Princeton or Yale, and hurries off to cheer for his Alma Mater.

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.

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.

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.

Of course the motive of this excessive activity on the part of American men and women alike is the passionate wish to appear young. As in the extreme East age is worshipped, here in the extreme West youth constitutes a religion, of which young women are the high priestesses. Far from moving steadily on to a climax in ripe maturity, life for the American girl reaches its dazzling apex when she is eighteen or twenty; this, she is constantly told by parents, teachers and friends, is the golden period of her existence. She is urged to make the most of every precious minute; and everything and everybody must be sacrificed in helping her to do it.

As a matter of course, she is given the most comfortable room in the house, the prettiest clothes, the best seat at the theatre. As a matter of course, she accepts them. Why should it occur to her to defer to age, when age anxiously and at every turn defers to her? Oneself as the pivot of existence is far more interesting than any other creature; and it is all so brief. Soon will come marriage, with its tiresome responsibilities, its liberty curtailed, and children, the forerunners of awful middle age. Laugh, dance, and amuse yourself today is the eternal warning in the ears of the American girl; for tomorrow you will be on the shelf, and another generation will have come into your kingdom.

The young lady is not slow to hear the call--or to follow it. With feverish haste, she seizes her prerogative of queen of the moment, and demands the satisfaction of her every caprice. Her tastes and desires regulate the diversion and education of the community. What she favours succeeds; what she frowns on fails. A famous American actress told me that she traced her fortune to her popularity with young girls. "I never snub them," she said; "when they write me silly letters, I answer them. I guard my reputation to the point of prudishness, so that I may meet them socially, and invite them to my home. They are the talisman of my career. It matters little what I play--if the young girls like me, I have a success."

She also is originally responsible for the multitude of "society novels," vapid short stories, and profusely illustrated gift books, which make up the literature of modern America. On her altar is the vulgar "Girl Calendar," the still more vulgar poster; flaunting her self-conscious prettiness from every shop window, every subway and elevated book-stall. She is displayed to us with dogs, with cats, in the country, in town, getting into motors, getting out of boats, driving a four-in-hand, or again a vacuum cleaner--for she is indispensable to the advertising agent. Her fixed good looks and studied poses have invaded the Continent; and even in Spain, in the sleepy old town of Toledo, among the grave prints of Velasquez and Ribera, I came across the familiar pert silhouette with its worshipping-male counterpart, and read the familiar title: "At the Opera."

From all this superficial self-importance, whether of her own or her elders' making, one might easily write the American girl down as a vain, empty-headed nonentity, not worth thoughtful consideration. On the contrary, she decidedly is worth it. Behind her arrogance and foolish affectations is a mind alert to stimulus, a heart generous and warm to respond, a spirit brave and resourceful. It takes adversity to prove the true quality of this girl, for then her arrogance becomes high determination; her absurdities fall from her, like the cheap cloak they are, and she takes her natural place in the world as a courageous, clear-sighted woman.

I believe that among the working girls is to be found the finest and most distinct type of American woman. This sounds a sweeping statement, and one difficult to substantiate; but let us examine it. Whence are the working girls of New York recruited? From the families of immigrants, you guess at once. Only a very small fraction. The great majority come from American homes, in the North, South, or Middle West, where the fathers have failed in business, or died, or in some other way left the daughters to provide for themselves.

The first impulse, on the part of the latter, is to go to New York. If you are going to hang yourself, choose a big tree, says the Talmud; and Americans have written it into their copy-books forever. Whether they are to succeed or fail, they wish to do it in the biggest place, on the biggest scale they can achieve. The girl who has to earn her living, therefore, establishes herself in New York. And then begins the struggle that is the same for women the world over, but which the American girl meets with a sturdiness and obstinate ambition all her own.

She may have been the pampered darling of a mansion with ten servants; stoutly now she takes up her abode in a "third floor back," and becomes her own laundress. For it is part of all the contradictions of which she is the unit that, while the most recklessly extravagant, she is also, when occasion demands, the most practical and saving of women. Her scant six or seven dollars a week are carefully portioned out to yield the utmost value on every penny. She walks to and from her work, thus saving ten cents and doing benefit to her complexion at the same time in the tingling New York air. In the shop or office she is quiet, competent, marvellously quick to seize and assimilate the details of a business which two months ago she had never heard of. Without apparent effort, she soon makes herself invaluable, and then comes the thrilling event of her first "raise."

But among these people there is none of the sex consciousness that pervades older civilizations. Boys and girls, instead of being strictly segregated from childhood, are brought up together in frank intimacy. Whether the result is more or less desirable, in the young man and young woman, the fact remains that the latter are quite without that sex sensitiveness which would make their mutual attitude impossible in any other country. If the girl in the shop resents the touch of the young employ?, it is not because it is a man's touch, but because it is the touch of an inferior. I know this to be true, from having watched young people in all classes of American society, and having observed the unvarying indifference with which these caresses are bestowed and received. Indeed it is slanderous to call them caresses; rather are they the playful motions of a lot of young puppies or kittens.

The American girl therefore is committing no breach of dignity when she allows herself to be touched by men who are her equals. But I have noticed time and again that the moment those trifling attentions take on the merest hint of the serious, she is on guard--and formidable. Having been trained all her life to take care of herself , without fuss or unnecessary words she proceeds to put her knowledge to practical demonstration. The following conversation, heard in an upper Avenue shop, is typical:

"Morning, Miss Dale. Say, but you're looking some swell today--that waist's a peach! How'd you like to take in a show tonight?"

"Thank you, I'm busy tonight."

"Well, then, tomorrow?"

"I'm busy tomorrow night, too."

"Oh, all right, make it Friday--any night you say."

Miss Dale leaves the gloves she has been sorting, to face the floor-walker squarely across the counter. "Look here, Mr. Barnes; since you can't take a hint, I'll give it you straight from the shoulder: you're not my kind, and I'm not yours. And the sooner that's understood between us, the better for both. Good morning."

Here is none of the hesitating reserve of the English or French woman under the same circumstances, but a frank, downright declaration of fact; infinitely more convincing than the usual stumbling feminine excuses. It may be added that, while the American girl in a shop is generally a fine type of creature, the American man in a shop is generally inferior. Otherwise he would "get out and hustle for a bigger job." His feminine colleagues realize this, and are apt to despise him in consequence. Certainly there is little of any over-intimacy between shop men and girls; and the demoralizing English system of "living-in" does not exist.

But there is a deeper reason for the general morality of the American working girl: her high opinion of herself. This passion , which in the girl of idle wealth shows itself in cold selfishness and meaningless adornment, in her self-dependent sister reaches the point of an ideal. When the American girl goes into business, it is not as a makeshift until she shall marry, or until something else turns up; it is because she has confidence in herself to make her own life, and to make it a success. The faint heart and self-mistrust which work the undoing of girls of this class in other nations have no place in the character of Miss America. Resolutely she fixes her goal, and nothing can stop her till she has attained it. Failure, disappointment, rebuff only seem to steel her purpose stronger; and, if the worst comes to worst, nine times out of ten she will die rather than acknowledge herself beaten by surrendering to a man.

But she dies hard, and has generally compassed her purpose long since. It may be confined to rising from "notions" to "imported models" in a single shop; or it may be running the gamut from office girl to head manager of an important business. No matter how ambitious her aspiration, or the seeming impossibility of it, the American girl is very apt to get what she wants in the end. She has the three great assets for success: pluck, self-confidence, and keen wits; and they carry her often far beyond her most daring dreams of attainment.

Marvellous, but a unique experience, you say. Unique only in degree of success, not in the fact itself. There are hundreds, even thousands, of Cynthia Brands plying their prosperous trades in the American commercial capital. As photographers, decorators, restaurant and tea-room proprietors, jewellers, florists, and specialists of every kind, these enterprising women are calmly proving that the home is by no means their only sphere; that in the realm of economics at least they are the equals both in energy and intelligence of their comrade man.

It is interesting to contrast this strongly feminist attitude of the American woman with the suffragism of her militant British sister. No two methods of obtaining the same result could be more different. Years ago the American woman emancipated herself, without ostentation or outcry, by quietly taking her place in the commonwealth as a bread-winner. Voluntarily she stepped down from the pedestal , and set about claiming her share in the business of life. To disregard her now would be futile. She is too important; she has made herself too vital a factor in economic activity to be disregarded when it comes to civic matters.

And so, while Englishwomen less progressive in the true sense of the word have been window-smashing and setting fires, the "rights" they so ardently desire have been tranquilly and naturally acquired by their shrewder American cousins. Fifteen of the forty-odd States now have universal suffrage; almost every State has suffrage in some form. And it will be a very short time--perhaps ten years, perhaps fifteen--until all of the great continent will come under the equal rule of men and women alike.

I had the interesting privilege of witnessing the mammoth Suffrage Parade in New York, just before the presidential election last fall. In more than one way, it was a revelation. After the jeering, hooting mob at the demonstrations in Hyde Park, this absorbed, respectful crowd that lined both sides of Fifth Avenue was even more impressive than the procession of women itself. But seeing the latter as they marched past twenty thousand strong gave the key to the enthusiasm of the crowd. A fresh-faced, well-dressed, composed company of women; women of all ages--college girls, young matrons, middle-aged mothers with their daughters, elderly ladies and even dowagers, white-haired and hearty, made up the inspiring throng. They greeted the cheers of the spectators smilingly, yet with dignity; their own cheers no less ardent for being orderly and restrained; and about their whole bearing was a sanity and good sense, joined to a thoroughly feminine wish to please, which gave away the secret of their popularity.

It was the American woman at her best, which means the American woman with a steady, splendid purpose which she intends to accomplish, and in which she enlists not only the support but the sympathy of her fellow-men. With her own unique cleverness she goes about it. President-elect Wilson stole into Washington the day before his inauguration, almost unnoticed, because everyone was off to welcome "General" Rosalie Jones and her company of petitioners: instead of kidnapping the President , the astute young woman kidnapped the people; winning them entirely by her sturdy good humour and daring combined, and refusing to part with a jot of her femininity in the process.

If I have seemed to contradict myself in this brief analysis of so complex and interesting a character as the American woman, I can only go back to my first statement that she herself is a contradiction--only definite within her individual type. The type of the mere woman of pleasure, which implies the woman of wealth, I confess to finding the extreme of vapidity and selfishness, as Americans are always the extreme of something. This is the type the foreigner knows by heart, and despises. But the American woman of intelligence, the woman of clear vision, fine aim, and splendid accomplishment, he does not know; for she is at home, earning her living.

MATRIMONY & CO.

Of all the acts which America has in solution, marriage is as yet the most unsatisfactory, the least organized. It is easy to dismiss it with a vague wave of the hand, and the slighting "Oh, yes--the divorce evil." But really to understand the problem, with all its complex difficulties, one must go a great deal further--into the thought and simple animal feeling of the people who harbour the divorce evil.

Physiologically speaking, Americans are made up of nerves; psychologically they are made up of sentiment: a volatile combination, fatal to steadiness or logic of expression. We have spoken of the everyday habit of contact among them, the trifling touch that passes unheeded between young men and girls, from childhood into maturity. This is but a single phase of that diffuseness of sex energy, which being distributed through a variety of channels, with the American, nowhere is very profound or vital. The constant comradeship between the two sexes, from babyhood throughout all life, makes for many fine things; but it does not make for passion. And, as though dimly they realize this, Americans--both men and women--seem desperately bent on manufacturing it.

Hence their suggestive songs, their suggestive books, their crudely suggestive plays, and, above all, their recognized game of "teasing," in which the young girl uses every device for plaguing the young man--to lead him on, but never to lead him too far. Always suggestion, never realization; as a nation they retain the adolescent point of view to the end, playing with sex, which they do not understand, but only vaguely feel, yet about which they have the typically adolescent curiosity.

So much for the physiological side. It is not hard to understand how under such conditions natural animal energy is dissipated along a hundred avenues of mere nerve excitement and satisfaction; so that when it comes to marriage the American man or woman can have no stored-up wealth of passion to bestow, but simply the usual comradeship, the usual contact intensified. This is all very well, to begin with, but it is too slender a bond to stand the strain of daily married life. Besides, there is the ingrained craving for novelty that has been fed and fostered by lifelong freedom of intercourse until it is become in itself a passion dangerously strong. A few misunderstandings, a serious quarrel or two, and the couple who a year ago swore to cleave to one another till death are eager to part with one another for life--and to pass on to something new.

Nothing that could reflect on the innocence of the woman, or the blamelessness of the man. In other words, the public ideal still must be upheld. With which the public firmly agrees; and, always willing to be hoodwinked and to hoodwink itself, makes a neat series of laws whereby men and women may enjoy unlimited license and still remain irreproachable. Thus the difficulty is solved, sentiment is satisfied, and chaos mounts the throne.

What good does that do her, asks the downright American, if the minute she marries she becomes a slave? On the contrary, she gains her liberty, where the American girl loses hers; but even if she did not it is a matter open to dispute as to which is better off in any case: the woman who is a slave, or the woman who is master? For contentment and serenity, one must give the palm to the European. She brings her husband money instead of marrying him for his; she stands over herself and her expenditure, rather than over him and his check-book; and she tends her house and bears children, rather than roams the world in search of pleasure. Yet she is happy.

She may be deceived by her husband; if so, she is deceived far without the confines of her own home. Within her home, as mother of her husband's children, she is impregnable. She may be betrayed, but she is never vulgarized; her affairs are not dragged through the divorce court, or jaunted about the columns of a yellow press. Whatever she may not be to the man whom she has married, she is once and forever the woman with whom he shares his name, and to whom he must give his unconditional respect--or kill her. She has so much, sure and inviolate, to stand on.

The American woman has nothing sure. In a land where all things change with the sun, die and are shoved along breathlessly to make room for new, she is lost in the general confusion. Today she is Mrs. Smith, tomorrow--by her own wish, or Mr. Smith's, or both--she is Mrs. Jones, six months later she is Mrs. Somebody Else; and the conversation, which includes "your children," "my children," and "our children," is not a joke in America: it is an everyday fact--for the children themselves a tragedy.

It is simply another light on the prevailing superficiality that controls them, for that a woman shall be faithful--where she has placed her affections of whatever sort--they neither demand nor appear to think of at all. She may ruin her husband buying chiffons, or maintaining an establishment beyond his means, and not a word of blame is attached to her; on the contrary, when the husband goes bankrupt, it is he who is outcast, while everyone speaks pitifully of "his poor wife." The only allegiance expected of the woman is the mere allegiance of the body; and this in the American woman is no virtue, for she has little or no passion to tempt her to bodily sin.

Rather, as we have seen, she is a highly nervous organism, demanding nerve food in the shape of sensation--constant and varied. Emotionally, she is a sort of psychic vampire, always athirst for victims to her vanity; experience from which to gain new knowledge of herself. This is true not only of the idle woman of society, but of the best and intentionally most sincere. They are wholly unconscious of it, they would indignantly refute it; yet their very system of living proves it: throughout all classes the American woman, in the majority, is sufficient unto herself, and--no matter in how noble a spirit--self-absorbed.

If she is happily married, she loves her husband; but why? Because he harmoniously complements the nature she is bent on developing. In like fashion she loves her children--do they not contribute a tremendous portion towards the perfect womanhood she ardently desires? And this is not saying that the finer type of American woman is not a devoted mother and wife; it is giving the deep, unconscious motive of her devotion.

Thus there is in America almost a third sex: a sex of superwomen, in whom mentality triumphs to the sacrifice of the normal female. One cannot say that this side of the generally admirable "self-made" woman is appealing. It is rather hard, and leads one to speculate as to whether the victorious bachelor girl of today is on the whole more attractive or better off than the despised spinster of yesterday. Of course, she has raised and strengthened the position of women, economically speaking; socially, too. But one cannot but think that she is after all only a partially finished superwoman, and that the ultimate creature will have more of sweetness and strong tenderness than one sees in the determined, rather rigid faces of the army of New York business women of the present.

Here, as at the opera or fashionable reception, his duty is simply that of background to the elaborate gorgeousness and inveterate animation of his womenfolk. Indeed, throughout all their activities the American husband and wife seem curiously irrelevant to one another: they work as a tandem, not as a team. And there is no question as to who goes first. The wife indicates the route; the husband does his best to keep up to her. If he cannot do it, no matter what his other excellences, he is a failure. He himself is convinced of it, hence his tense expression of straining every nerve toward some gigantic end that usually he is just able to compass.

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