Jonathan and His Continent Part 10

A young Baltimore lady told me one day that she often invited twenty or thirty girl friends to lunch with her. Not the shadow of a man at these parties. The same kind of entertainment is given by numbers of young ladies in Society in other cities. At these lunches there often are as many as forty or fifty of Brother Jonathan's fair daughters; and they, with no other helps than their tongues and their teeth, spend three or four hours most merrily without the aid of man, and have a "real good time," as they call it.

There are numerous women's clubs in the United States, These sanctuaries are never profaned by the presence of man. The very postman and tradesmen only approach it with bated breath.

The members have their library, drawing-room, dining-room, boudoirs, bedrooms. They make music, read, write, chat, and pa.s.s time very agreeably.

One of the most important ladies' clubs is the Sorosis Club, of New York. Once a year the ladies of Sorosis give a banquet, to which gentlemen, as well as ladies, are invited. It was a source of sincere regret to me that my engagements in the South prevented me from accepting the kind invitation of the President to join that brilliant gathering at Delmonico's.

This spirit of independence in woman produces excellent results, it must be confessed. You find, in America, women who, by their talents, have won for themselves positions which numbers of men might envy. And do not imagine that I am speaking of blue-stockings, spectacled spinsters disdained of Cupid. Not at all. The American woman has always tact enough to remain womanly. Even among the heroines of the platform, I have always noticed a little touch of coquetry, which proves to me that man is not in imminent danger of being suppressed in America.

Only a few days after I set foot in New York, a friend took me to visit the offices of the princ.i.p.al newspapers of the city. Pa.s.sing along a corridor in _The World's_ offices, I remarked a lady writing in one of the rooms. My friend led the way in, and presented me to her. I found her to be a pretty brunette of about twenty or twenty-two, delightfully _piquante_, and with most distinguished manners. I was struck with her simple bearing and her intelligent expression, and, on leaving the room, naturally wanted to know to whom I had had the pleasure of being introduced. I learned then that this young American girl did all the literary reviewing and gossip for the _New York World_, and took up as large a salary as a writer on the staff of the Paris _Figaro_.

The _St. Nicholas Magazine_ is conducted by a lady.

Since her husband's death, Mrs. Frank Leslie has carried on, under her own management, the numerous magazines which issue from the house founded by that gentleman.

The largest newspapers, and all the princ.i.p.al Reviews, have ladies on their staffs.

Miss Mary Louise Booth, who directs the _Harper's Bazaar_, receives a salary of eight thousand dollars.

The two editors of _The Critic_ are Miss Jeannette Gilder and Mr.

Joseph Gilder, sister and brother of Richard Watson Gilder, poet and chief editor of the _Century Magazine_, who himself has for colleagues Mr. Buel and a talented lady.

I might name many more.

The education of the women being, in America, very much the same as that of the men, ladies naturally may aspire to many employments which, in Europe, are looked upon as being the monopoly of man.

CHAPTER XIII.

_Prudery.--"Shocking" Expressions.--Transformation of the Vocabulary.--War on Nudities.--The Venus of Milo does not escape the Wrath of the Puritans.--Mr. Anthony Comstock in Chief Command.--New England Prudes.--Tattling or Calumny?_

The New England descendants of the Puritans have inherited a more than British prudery.

Charles d.i.c.kens speaks, in his _American Notes_, of people who covered the nakedness of their piano legs with little ornamental frills.

There still exist worthy creatures who would think it indecent to speak of such and such a star as being visible to the naked eye.

The word "leg" is improper; you must say "lower limb." Trousers have become "lower garments." Instead of going to bed, people "retire"; so that the bedroom becomes "retiring-room."

A lady having said, not long ago, in a Philadelphian drawing-room, that she felt s.h.i.+vers down her back, created a veritable panic among the hostess's guests.

I read the following piece of information in a New York paper among the news from a certain New England city:

"The authorities have begun a crusade against the nude in art. One of the wealthiest gentlemen in the city will be proceeded against for keeping in his house copies of the Venus de Milo, the Venus de Medici, Canova's Venus, Power's Greek Slave, the Laoc.o.o.n, and other works."

During my stay in New York, I was constantly hearing of a certain Mr.

Anthony Comstock, who had attained celebrity by a campaign he had undertaken against nudities. Mr. Comstock visited the museums, galleries, exhibitions, and shops, and, whenever he found a bit of human flesh portrayed in paint or marble, he went before the magistrates and had a grand field-day. I must say, for the credit of the New Yorkers, that Mr. Comstock had earned for himself a reputation as grotesque as it was noisy. To take up such a line of censors.h.i.+p is, it seems to me, to publish one's own perversity; and the individual whose mind is so ill-formed that he cannot look at an artistic counterfeit presentment of the human form divine, without thinking evil thoughts, is to be pitied, if not despised.

But I suppose there will always be quack doctors with the cant of virtue on their lips, and vile and filthy imaginations in their hearts.

Be that as it may, the nude in art has been having a hard time of it lately.

Meanwhile, the Americans newspaper seemed to look upon Mr. Comstock as a legitimate target for their jokes and satire.

The New England ladies have the reputation of being the most easily-shocked women in the world. An American gentleman told me that a Philadelphia lady, at whose side he was seated one day at table, grew red to her very ears at his asking her which part of a chicken she preferred, the wing or the leg.

Are the New England women _Saintes--Nitouches_?

Baron Salvador says that he received from a correspondent the following information:

"There exists, in a certain New England city, a fas.h.i.+onable man-milliner, who has a room reserved ostensibly for fitting, but really for ladies who do not disdain to imbibe privately, through a straw, certain American drinks which they would not dare touch in public. In this dissimulated bar, under cover of silks and satins, they delight to chat on fas.h.i.+on and frivolities, while absorbing pretty tipples invented for their lords."

The prettiest part of the affair is, that the husbands pay for the beverages without knowing it.

On the bills, the milliner has added so much for tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs (read: iced champagne), so much for lace (read: sherry-cobbler); and the duped husbands have nothing to complain of, except that the new fas.h.i.+ons demand a great deal of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g.

Is this tattle or calumny?

I am inclined myself to give very little credence to the story.

CHAPTER XIV.

_John Bull's Cousin German.--A Salutary Lesson.--Women's Vengeance.--A Battle with Rotten Eggs.--An Unsavoury Omelette.--Tarring and Feathering.--Description of the Operation.--An Awkward Quarter-of-an-hour.--Vengeance of a Ladies' School.--A Town Council of Women.--Woman's Standing in the States.--Story of a Widow and her Two Daughters._

Jonathan is the cousin-german of John Bull, but yet not so German as one might imagine; for, if Germany supplies America with three or four hundred thousand immigrants yearly, these Germans do not Germanise America. On the contrary, they themselves become Americanised, thanks to that faculty of a.s.similation which they possess in a high degree.

One strong proof of this is the way in which women are treated from one end of the United States to the other. And here I may say that in this matter Jonathan sets John Bull an example which the latter would do well to profit by.

Whilst English justice gives merely one or two months' imprisonment to the man who is found guilty of having almost kicked his wife to death, an American town is in arms at the mere rumour of a man having maltreated a woman.

Here are a few scenes which I have come across in America:

Elmore Creel, an inhabitant of Greeve's Run, Wirt County, Virginia, had been known for some time to have subjected his wife and children to harsh treatment. The complaint became, at last, so general that an avenging mob took upon itself to chastise him. At midnight, Creel's house was surrounded. Creel was in bed. A squad of masked men broke into the house, and, overcoming his struggles, tied his hands, took him to the yard, and gave him a fearful thras.h.i.+ng with cowhides and hickory withes. After whipping him, they untied him and let him go, with the warning that another visit from them might be looked for if he was not kinder to his wife.