Women of America Part 10

Southward now to the land of the mixed blood, where the two ancient enemies, France and England, have joined in a race that owes allegiance to the latter but retains many of the characteristics of the former. To write the history of Canadian women is largely to speak of individuals, since there has been but little alteration or development of conditions of a social nature. Yet some may be noted.

The first settlement of Canada, in which term is of course included Acadia, or, as it is now known, Nova Scotia, was touched by a strange romance. The Sieur de Roberval was on his voyage to join the great Jacques Cartier and with him to found a colony, when he discovered that his niece, Marguerite de Roberval, loved, more fondly than was consistent with the Sieur's conceptions of right, a young cavalier of his company. A lonely island, known as the Isle of Demons, was sighted soon after this discovery was made; and Roberval sternly condemned his niece to perpetual imprisonment on this barren rock. Her lover jumped overboard and swam after his beloved; and together they lived, forgotten of men, on the island, thus founding the first Canadian home. A child was born to them, but it died early, and Marguerite's lover, whose name has not come down to us, soon followed his infant. Marguerite with her own hands hollowed the graves of those she loved, and then she lived on, more lonely than even Alexander Selkirk, on this island which was for her full of terrors, real and imagined; the nature of the latter may be guessed from the name bestowed upon the place. She was clad in skins and learned to use the guns with which, in strange mercy, she had been provided by her uncle; and it was not until more than two years had pa.s.sed that she was rescued by some Maloine fishermen and found her way to her native land. Here she lived in seclusion until her death, which did not come until she had pa.s.sed the number of years allotted to man.

So the first Canadian home was founded in romance, and, better yet, in true love; and Marguerite de Roberval, faithful wife in fact if not by t.i.tle, deserves to be held in honor among Canadian traditions as the tutelary saint of the Canadian household. Nor was there lack of romance in the further story of the women of Canada, while love and faith are also to be found prominent in that story.

Of the condition of the women in the Acadian colony but little is known.

It was probably, as a rule, that which was common to the French peasantry of the time; but there was in the settlement a lack of women, as we know from the account of Marc Lescarbot in 1507, wherein he tells us that it was owing to the want of good housewives that the cows which had been imported at so many pains died soon after their arrival; and much of his treatise is given up to bewailing the absence from the colony of women in sufficient numbers to make it pleasant and thriving.

Yet among these colonists, who were rudely driven from their homes by the strong hand of England, there were women, as we know from the poetical story of Evangeline, too familiar in Longfellow's poem to be narrated here, as well as from the later story of the Lady de la Tour, a Huguenot girl who had married Charles la Tour, the seigneur of Port Royal. It was a time of conspiracy and internecine strife among the people of Acadia, and though conspiracy and strife were petty enough in cause and action and result, they were none the less important to the actors in them. There arose on the part of Charles de Menou, Seigneur d'Aulnay de Charnisay, a plot to deprive La Tour of his seigniory, which Charnisay, whose lands adjoined those of his rival, claimed as his own.

The French court and the governor's house at Boston, then tenanted by the stern John Endicott, were made in turn arenas of dispute, but we are concerned more with the appeal to force which came at last. Charles La Tour had gone to Boston to seek aid against his rival, leaving his fort in the hands of his wife, who had already been of sterling service in baffling the intrigues of Charnisay, when his opponent, hearing that the chatelaine was alone in command of the fort and had but fifty retainers and little ammunition, determined to take by force that which he coveted. So he sailed into the Bay of Saint John, where stood Fort La Tour, and summoned the garrison to surrender. But the Lady de la Tour was as dauntless in courage as she was faithful in heart to the fortunes of her husband, and she answered with cannon b.a.l.l.s. Charnisay replied in kind, but the lady had the better of the argument, though conducted on principles not congenial to her s.e.x, and she forced her foe to retire in discomfiture, notwithstanding his superiority in men and arms. She herself directed and inspired the defence, and it is said that she even laid some of the guns with her own hands. Her triumph was brief, however, for Charnisay returned in two months' time; and though she again gallantly defended her home and her husband's stronghold, her situation grew at last so desperate that she yielded to fair proffers of treaty and surrendered. But the victor had no intention of holding to his plighted word, and he promptly hanged every man in the garrison, with the exception of one who turned hangman as the price of his own miserable life. To make the blot upon his escutcheon yet fouler, Charnisay actually had the rope placed around the neck of the chatelaine herself; but, though her heroic spirit disdained to plead for safety to such a monster, either whim or some fear of results, for he could not be accused of any humane impulse, caused him to remit the sentence. It might almost as well have been carried out, however, for in a few days the lady died from grief at her defeat and the baseness of treachery to which she and her followers had been subjected.

Whittier has sung the wrath of the husband of the Lady de la Tour; but he omits to mention, nor would it chime well with the rest of the poem, that years afterward that husband married the widow of the man who had placed the rope around the neck of the heroic lady, and who had been drowned in the Pen.o.bscot River while on a voyage. The marriage, which found its celebrants at an advanced age for matrimonial union, settled forever the sternest struggle that Acadia had known; but even this desirable result scarcely enables us to forgive the Seigneur de la Tour for his treason to the memory of his devoted wife in thus allying himself to the house of him who had done her to death.

With this story of the most famous of the women of Acadia let us turn to Canada proper. It was not for some time after the first futile and later partially successful attempts to found a colony upon the bleak sh.o.r.es of the Saint Lawrence that there was to be found on those sh.o.r.es the refining influence that comes from feminine companions.h.i.+p. The first permanent colony, however, which established itself on the heights of Quebec, held among its members one of the gentler s.e.x, Dame Hebert, the wife of Louis Hebert, who had been an Acadian. His wife was a woman of courage and resource, as befitted a pioneer colonist; and she had need of both qualities in her fight with the conditions that pressed so hardly upon the new colonists. She first set her foot upon Canadian soil in 1617, and she lived through the most remarkable of the mutations of the first colony, including the surrender to the English and the treaty of Saint Germain which again gave Canada to France. For the first three years of her sojourn in the new land she was the only woman on those sh.o.r.es; and when in 1620 she was joined in her isolation by Helene de Champlain, wife of the great pioneer of New France, it was but for a time, hardly four years in all. At the expiration of that period Madame de Champlain returned, broken in health and spirits by her exile, to her beloved France, held by her in higher esteem than her gallant but cold husband, and there she entered a convent, leaving behind her a memory as one of the two women who first inhabited the wilderness of New France, and leaving also her name to an island in the Saint Lawrence. Though much may be said in extenuation of the homesickness and lack of endurance found in the young wife of the great Champlain, she was no heroine as was Dame Hebert, and her easy acceptance of the Catholic faith as her own after her marriage,--she had been a staunch Huguenot,--moved thereto rather by the atmosphere of her new home than by any conviction, is suggestive of the real lack of strength in her character. Yet she is worthy of remembrance as one of the women pioneers of Canada. Those of her s.e.x who followed in her westward footsteps were generally made of sterner stuff than the faint-hearted Helene; but it was long before she knew a successor as one of the women of New France, for her return to the land of her birth was in 1624, and it was not until 1634 that the third woman, the wife of the surgeon Giffard, came to found a home amid the wilds of the west. It is true that there were two girls, the daughters of Dame Hebert, in the colony even before the coming of Madame de Champlain; but these could be considered only as involuntary pioneers and do not deserve to be placed among those who came of their free will, or for love of their husbands. One of these daughters of Dame Hebert, however, furnished in her union with Stephen Jonquest occasion for the first marriage ceremony celebrated in Canada, a ceremony which preceded by more than two years that first celebrated in New England.

For more than two decades after the death of Champlain in 1635, the tide of immigration was very feeble; but it bore on its bosom two notable women in the annals of Canada Madame de la Peltrie, the founder of the first girls' school ever opened in the province, and Mother Marie Guyard, the honored head of that school. In 1659 these two and five other women, three calling themselves Hospitalieres, arrived at the little settlement of Quebec, consisting of scarcely two hundred and fifty souls. They came for the glory of G.o.d, to work His work among the Indians; and they were received with all the honors the little colony could compa.s.s. Madame de la Peltrie, the head of the peaceful expedition, found the state of affairs worse than she had been told by the missionaries who had urged her coming; but she faced the difficulties and discouragements of the situation with a heart as gallant as that of those of her s.e.x who dared "battle, murder, and sudden death" at the hands of the Indians in their search for a home, and the Ursuline Convent at Quebec is an enduring monument to the memory of the women who did so much for the uplifting of the Indians of Canada.

Her coadjutor, Mother Marie Guyard, left behind her a name no less honored than that of Madame de la Peltrie a name unexcelled for the virtues of piety, constancy, self-sacrifice, and devotion to the cause of degraded humanity. Her work among the Indians bore n.o.ble fruit, even if hardly to the extent of her wishes. She had many discouragements to face and obstacles to overcome; among them, not a few at the hands of those who should have been her allies. In 1661 the new governor, Baron Dubois d'Avaugour, moved thereto by an ill-advised plea on the part of a missionary for the commutation of the sentence pa.s.sed upon a woman for violating the law that no brandy should be sold to the Indians, gave free license to the sale of spirituous liquors throughout the dominion.

The result was deplorable and almost nullified the work of a score of weary years; and Mother Marie, sick at heart, wrote thus to her son:

"I have told you in another letter about a cross that is far harder to bear than the incursions of the Iroquois. There are in this country certain Frenchmen so despicable and so little touched by the fear of G.o.d that they are ruining all our new Christians by giving them strong drink, such as wine and brandy, to get their beaver-skins from them."

It was because of this and kindred causes that Mother Marie deemed her life-work a failure at last; but the thought was erroneous. She left her influence in the hearts of many of her Indian pupils, and she gave to Canada by her efforts the school which is one of the n.o.blest monuments of the past of Quebec.

The Hospitalieres, who had come over in the same s.h.i.+p with the founders of the girls' school, founded the hospital that is now known as Quebec's Hotel-Dieu; at first, their philanthropic efforts on behalf of the Indians found nothing but failure as reward, for an unfortunate epidemic that broke out soon after the establishment of the hospital in an old storeroom, and the death of most of the patients there treated, persuaded the red men that the hospital was a scheme devised for their extinction rather than for their good. But here, too, perseverance in good works overcame stupendous difficulties, though here again, as well, the result did not take the form which was at first intended. Yet none the lighter is the praise to be awarded to the n.o.ble women who undertook the work and who carried it on in the face of danger and failure, and the names of such women as Marie Irwin, Catherine Chevalier, and Madame d'Ailleboust, the wife of the third governor of Quebec, are still deservedly held in honor by the dwellers in New France.

In the younger sister colony to Quebec, that of Montreal, Jeanne Mance founded a hospital with the money supplied her by Madame Bullion, a rich and pious widow living in Old France but interested in all projects for the amelioration of existent conditions in the new land. The hospital was of excellent service in caring for the wounded who had done battle with the fierce Iroquois, and many a stricken soldier blessed the name of its founder. Marguerite de Bourgeoys, of whom Parkman writes as the "fair ideal of Christian womanhood, a flower of earth expanding in the rays of heaven," on her part founded in Montreal a girls' school, and her work so prospered that she actually built by her own efforts a church, now known, though in its second building, as "Notre Dame de Bonsecours." She and Jeanne Mance were known as "the two mothers of Montreal," and well did they deserve the honorable t.i.tle.

The work and character of Marguerite de Bourgeoys are thus admirably summed up by a recent biographer:

"The visible result of Marguerite de Bourgeoys' long life in Canada was the inst.i.tution of a band of young women who were bound by vows to teach the young, the building of a church, and the establishment of schools for the instruction of Indian and French children. She died January 12, 1700. Her heart, which had beaten with pain at the cry of suffering childhood, with agony at the shriek of the tortured victim of Iroquois cruelty, with shame at the contentions of Christian brotherhoods, and with rapture when even one little child received the anointing drops of baptism, that heart, encased in its silver covering, now rests in the chapel of a convent where she so long labored and loved."

These were the triumphs of peace, won by heroines of endurance and patience rather than of fiery physical courage; but of the latter quality there were many brilliant examples among the women of the French settlers of Canada. Madeleine de Vercheres is both famous and typical among these sterner heroines. She was but fourteen years old when she found herself in charge of her father's fort, that fort suddenly burst upon by the savage Iroquois, and she with a garrison consisting of two soldiers, two boys, and an old man of eighty. There were women and children also, but these were detriments, not aids. The gallant girl, though actually surprised in the fields by the marauders, managed to close the gates, took command of the panic-stricken company,--the soldiers were as frightened and helpless as the rest,--and soon organized a defence which lasted for a week, and was ended by the arrival of a succoring force. Her little brothers, but ten and twelve years of age respectively, n.o.bly seconded her efforts; but the whole glory of the splendid defence was due to Madeleine, whose account of the occurrence is extant. She inherited heroic blood on the distaff side, for her mother, two years before, had held the same fort with but four armed men against an attack by the Iroquois, the siege lasting two days.

The conditions of the first half century of Canadian colonization were generally similar to those existing in New England, of course, with a difference of racial impulses and customs. That half century saw but slow development of the country; but between 1665 and 1667 the coming of the Carignan regiment, sent by Louis XIV. to establish firmly his hold upon the new dominion, brought about a change. In order to prevent desertion and make the soldiers truly at home in the land, it was soon found necessary that there should be established homes, and to this end women were necessary. But women were precisely the rarest treasure in the Canadas, and there was therefore adopted the plan, already executed in the English colonies of the South, of importing girls as wives.

Accordingly, from time to time, there arrived consignments of maidens, called "the king's girls," and semi-annual wife-markets were held in Quebec and Montreal. The character of these imported ladies was not invariably of the best; but a trifle such as this did not affect the soldiers of the baser sort, who were willing to overlook past peccadillos in consideration of the dowry which their wives brought them and in hope of gaining the bounty offered for the rearing of large families. Moreover, there was pa.s.sed a law which provided that every unmarried young man, who had not within two weeks of the arrival of a company, entered into the matrimonial state should be deprived of the privileges of hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, and trading, while the persistent bachelors were to be excluded from all places of honor and responsibility, and it was even suggested that they should be branded as felons. Marriage was certainly esteemed honorable in those days. The account of La Hontan, a witty officer of the Canadian forces, of the first coming of "the king's girls" is worth quoting in part:

"After these first inhabitants there came a folk useful to the country and a good riddance to the Kingdom. There arrived one day at Quebec a small fleet loaded with Amazons and crowds of females, Nuns of Paphos or of Cythera conducting this precious cargo. I have been told the circ.u.mstances of their coming, and I cannot resist the pleasure of sharing the story with you.

"This chaste folk was led to the pasture by old and prudish Shepherdesses. As soon as they had arrived, these wrinkled dames pa.s.sed their soldiery in review, and having separated them into three cla.s.ses, each group entered a different room. As they had to crowd quite close together on account of the smallness of the place, they made rather a pleasant decoration, and the good merchant Cupid had no reason to be ashamed of his wares. Never had he made a better a.s.sortment. Blonde, brunette, red, black, fat, thin, large, small,--he could satisfy the most bizarre and most fastidious tastes.

"The report of the new cargo being spread abroad, all the well-intentioned in the way of multiplication hastened thither. As it was not permitted to examine all and still less to take them on trial, it was a case of buying a pig in a poke, or rather of buying the whole piece from the sample. But the disposal of them was none the less rapid on this account. Each selected his partner, and in a fortnight these three lots of venison had been taken away with all the seasoning that could be taken with them.

"The next day the Governor-general caused to be distributed to them enough provisions to give them courage to embark upon this stormy sea.

They went to housekeeping almost as did Noah in the Ark, with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and a piece of money. The officers were more fastidious than the soldiers and allied themselves with the daughters of other officers or of the richer settlers who had been established in the country for nearly a century."

The coming of these girls in such numbers, followed or accompanied as they were by many young Frenchmen of gay, if not dissolute habits, produced a natural change in the aspect of the social conditions.

Simplicity became a thing of the past, and the merriment, as in New England, at last became scandalous to those of graver trend of thought.

Some restrictive laws were pa.s.sed, among others one which provided that all girls and women should be in their houses by nine of the night; but as some who incurred the penalty were dragged from their beds and whipped by officers of the town, the punishment seems hardly less conducive to lesion of good morals than the crime itself. As in New England, laws regulating personal adornment were pa.s.sed, and the wearer of a top-knot was refused admission to the communion; and all these stern enactments had about as much repressive effect as their fellows in the lower colonies,--practically none.

From this time forward there began to grow in New France the follies and frivolities of her mother country, and there arose that which is termed "society," at least in the growing towns. Quebec and Montreal flourished, and the young, and also the old at times, frolicked and danced and made merry. On the frontiers there was still some of the fine simplicity of olden days; but those frontiers were being pushed further and further away from proximity to the towns. At last there came the time when the infamous Bigot ruled in Quebec, caring for nothing but to fill his purse and take his pleasures; and then Canadian society touched its lowest. There was thought of little beyond rout and revel; Bigot ruled as if king of New France, and emulated his sovereign in Old France by having his Pompadour in the person of Angelique de Pean, who was as grasping and reckless as was her French compeer. She was a beautiful woman, the wife of Monsieur de Pean,--who considered the surrender of his wife to Bigot but a fair return for certain lucrative offices,--and she did not, as it is said, though not proved, hesitate to stain her hands with blood in order to maintain her influence over the Intendant.

At last came Nemesis; the English were at the gates of Quebec. Not all the influence and efforts of the n.o.ble Montcalm could avert the coming disaster, and Quebec fell. With it fell the ascendency of French ways in "Our Lady of the Snows." After the coming of the English and the partial amalgamation of the two races, there was a steady development of society; but it was along normal lines and was not of a nature to call for remark. It did not tend to any individuality of type; it produced very charming women, but not a typical woman as differing from the representatives of other modern races. This is said of the cities of Canada. There were mutations of fas.h.i.+on and custom and thought and conditions; but these were not individual but rather reflexes of the universal movements of society, save that they were a little modified by the circ.u.mstances which were imposed by natural causes upon their progress. It is true that Canadian society was peculiar in its preservation, in certain ways, of the lines distinguis.h.i.+ng the Latin and the Teuton; but these lines grew fainter and fainter, and even when most distinctly marked held on the one side or the other nothing that was not of European origin and method. Therefore there remains nothing to be said of the Canadian woman of the cities. There were many individuals doubtless worthy of mention for special graces or attributes, but they were not typical of any peculiar culture. They represented nothing, being but projections of English or French womanhood in its variant aspects. With the coming of the English ends the story of Canadian women as found in the strongholds of femininity.

Still the story is not yet completely told, for there were then and have been ever since outlying posts of womanhood in the Dominion, where there has been preserved a certain individuality of type. The Gallic blood runs almost uncontaminated, giving impulse of Gallic thought and custom, in the veins of those who are called the _habitants_ the French-Canadians of olden type. Their very t.i.tle is suggestive; it tells of "unreconstructed" alliance to the spirit of their original country, that "pleasant land of France." They are but inhabitants, not citizens in truth of the land over which floats the banner of England; they are French at heart as in origin.

So we can still find in Canada an individual type of womanhood, though to do so we must go somewhat far afield. Even so, the type is not of p.r.o.nounced peculiarity; it touches and even blends with other types of the Latin countries of Europe and meets at certain points even the lines of our own Teutonic culture. But this latter meeting is brought about by circ.u.mstances rather than inherent tendency and is not racial. It is indeed a remnant of the old conditions of pioneer life, which imposes upon Latin as well as Teuton certain fixed and imperative needs, to be met only by equally fixed methods.

If we go into the French-Canadian villages, where alone we can find an individual womanhood in the Dominion, we shall find conditions that do not exist in exactly similar form elsewhere, and which have been brought about by racial modification of accepted circ.u.mstances. The woman of the habitants is in many respects primitive in the sense of the primitive culture of America while still in its infancy of Caucasian settlement.

It is true that with the growth of towns and the development of the railway systems there is constantly coming change in the conditions of the habitants, and that it is becoming more and more needful to extend our pilgrimage to the remoter quarters of the country if we would find the more primitive conditions; but they still exist. Some of these enduring customs are peculiarly connected with womanhood. The use of the loom, for example, is still known in some of the far-away villages of the French-Canadians, and in those villages little is worn that is not the product of home toil. It may be that this is the only quarter of the western hemisphere where the hand loom is not a thing of the past; but here it exists, and with it as its natural accompaniment some of the more old-fas.h.i.+oned traits of womanhood. The wife of the _habitant_ is industrious, thrifty, cleanly, and simple in ideas and manners. She is economical to a degree that is rarely found among the Latin races, and she has other virtues that are not common among those of like racial origin. She is moral and religious; indeed, in the latter quality she may be excessive in one way, being entirely under the dominion of her spiritual pastor. But then she has good reason for this filial obedience, for the relations of the French-Canadian bishop or priest with his flock are in all ways commendable. She is fond of innocent gaiety and not averse to adornment of person when this does not conflict with her love of economy; but when, as sometimes happens, the bishop issues a pastoral in which he commands the relinquishment of certain modes of amus.e.m.e.nt, such as the waltz, or reprehends certain named frivolities of costume, she abandons the forbidden thing with a quiet obedience which may be unmodern in spirit, but which is pleasant to see in its cheerful submission to an authority which she considers as the highest that can be evoked and one which it were sin to despise or disobey.

The wife of the _habitant_ has also a virtue which is not in high esteem among her sisters of a higher culture, but which is still held in respect among the more primitive communities: she is highly prolific.

Families of fifteen children are common among the French-Canadians, and the mother of but a paltry half-dozen feels that she has not done her duty to humanity and her country. Early marriages are the rule among the _habitants_, being wisely encouraged by the priests in the interests of morality. It is a sociable race, and the women vie with each other in promoting the innocent gaiety which makes up a large part of their lives. Because of this love for social merriment as well as of their religious feeling, the fetes of the Church are celebrated in French Canada as nowhere else in northern America, and the industry of the women is tempered by the frequent holidays which call for enjoyment.

Their dress is as a rule simple and, in the further outlying communities, which are chiefly referred to here, frequently entirely of homespun material, the fruit of their own labors.

One of the chief traits of the French-Canadians, male and female, is their love of music; yet to the cause of music the women of French Canada have furnished but one noted contribution, Madame Albani, the famous opera singer, who owns birth as one of this people, though hardly as a true _habitante_, in the more limited sense of the word. But music is the greatest pa.s.sion of the French-Canadians, and the violin holds an honored place in all their communities. It is in the simple pleasure of listening to the music of the violin, or of dancing to its merry strains, that the woman of the habitants finds her chief respite from the toils of her daily life.

Such is the most characteristic type of womanhood of the Canada of to-day. It is a good type and a comely; but it is not fitted to endure before the changes which our present culture brings about where it enters. The _habitants_ form the nearest approach to a peasantry, as found in European lands, that this country can show; and peasantry is doomed to extinction, be it sooner or later. In the case of the simple people of French Canada, it would seem that it will be sooner.

In the history of her women, Canada need veil her face before the claims of no other country of the globe. No land has been graced by n.o.bler types, either by birth or adoption, than the Dominion; yet she has failed to produce a racial type, and it may be that her lot is the happier that it is so. It is enough for her that she can point to such daughters, whether of their own wills or by birthright, as Madame de la Peltrie, Mother Marie Guyard, Jeanne Mance, Marguerite de Bourgeoys, and others who labored in the cause of degraded humanity. With such names inscribed upon her banner, we may well forgive her such as the infamous Angelique de Pean and forget the madness that came upon her when Bigot lorded it in Quebec and virtue and honor were looked upon by most of the women of that city as enc.u.mbrances to pleasure or ambition. To-day her women worthily sustain the standard which has been left them as a legacy by their n.o.ble sisters of the past; so Canada may well be content in this wise, even though she has furnished no leaders in the march of present-day womanhood toward its desired goal.

CHAPTER IX

THE YOUNG REPUBLIC

The final establishment of republican rule in America found the country exhausted of present resources, but full of latent energy and with untold treasures of internal wealth lying ready to its hand when that hand should become sufficiently strong to grasp them. In a social aspect, there was of course little outward change to be noted between the years immediately preceding the actual warfare and those immediately subsequent thereto; but by the cessation of that war and the consequent growth of new national ideas and ideals there were imported new conditions of society that were to find rapid growth--and as rapid decay.

The primary ideal of American republicanism was simplicity. There was talk of this on all sides, and it affected all the prevailing customs of social life. It is true that there were many dissenters, by life if not by theory, from the popular creed; but these dared not open their mouths in scorn, even if they felt impelled so to do. In the eyes of the founders of our nation, republicanism and simplicity were almost interchangeable terms; ornateness of custom, as of dress, was by theory for royal courts and castles, not for the homes or social circles of the sons and daughters of a republic. The practice of our ancestors did not always, even in those first days of enthusiasm, comport with the theory which they promulgated as the rule of social life, but consistency is not an invariable attribute of humanity.

As a matter of fact, simplicity did predominate; it was even the fas.h.i.+on, and that made it almost universal. More than ever were the days of the early republic the era of the housewife; the distaff was considered, even by most of the ladies themselves, to be the rightful sceptre of womanhood, with no Salic Law to cast it into contempt. The requirements for a housewife of those industrious days were many, and may be judged from an advertis.e.m.e.nt which appeared in the _Pennsylvania Packet_ under date of September 23, 1780:

"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active, and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Economy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to such a character."

Such a person would hardly need "encouragement," one would think, as being a paragon of knowledge and capacity, and one can only wonder that "geometry and the use of the globes" were omitted from the list of her accomplishments as needful. The advertis.e.m.e.nt is, however, typical of the knowledge which our great-grandmothers looked upon as indispensable to the notable housekeeper of that day, though it might well appall the most skilful of our housewives of the present.

Because of the predominance of the theory of simplicity in republican circles, there was need of a limited reconstruction of social conditions. The period cannot be said to have been formative, either in aspect or effect, for it showed merely the elevation of certain widely-held ideals over others which had been no less stubbornly maintained; yet that a new social system was founded in those days cannot be successfully denied. The American woman realized that she was standing upon the threshold of an illimitable future, and she also recognized the responsibilities of her position. As she directed her first steps under the new order of things, so would her children and her children's children walk; or so at least she believed and hoped.

Therefore it behooved her to take good heed to those first steps, lest they lead to a goal which was not worthy.

It is this new sense of responsibility, added to the sense of dignity which was always strong with the representative colonial woman of the later days, that we see, if we look deep enough, when we turn our gaze upon the young days of the republic in its social aspects and inquire their meaning. That simplicity of manners and customs was the fas.h.i.+on, and as a fas.h.i.+on was frequently carried to absurd lengths, is undoubtedly true; but underneath the fas.h.i.+on lay a creed, and the creed was of high nature. It was with a grave face, but with a brave heart, that the American woman looked forward to the future of the country for which she had suffered so much and therefore loved so well. To her husband in that day and her sons and grandsons in the future were committed the graver issues of the things which were to guide the land in its coming path; but she too, in her different yet contiguous sphere, had laid upon her a burden of trust, and she would be faithful thereto.

So American womanhood, cla.s.sing it as a universal ent.i.ty, was confronted at its first unaided and ungoverned steps by many problems, difficult of solution and of pressing nature. Added to the sense of responsibility, too, was the power of recoil--a power which has been more effectual, both for good and evil, than any other that has ever influenced man. The hold of Old World custom upon the American woman had suddenly been loosed, and it is no cause for wonder if she rebounded to the opposite extreme. She must be freed in every way from European dominance; she must prove herself an American indeed, utterly unruled by European fas.h.i.+on as by English monarch. Only so would she be worthy of her newly gained emanc.i.p.ation. Such, though unexpressed and even perhaps unrecognized by herself, was her theory.

There was another powerfully operative cause in the changes that took place in American society in the period subsequent to the close of the war for independence. There came about for the first time a certain centralization, until then unknown in the colonies. Up to that time there had been several centres of social dominance, each ruling its own territory. Boston--though in lesser strength--New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Williamsburg, Charleston, and other cities which had grown from town-infancy to the higher estate, had been maelstroms of the society for their sections; but the foundation of Was.h.i.+ngton, though at first its influence was hardly felt, was increasingly influential in forming new conditions. Though the national capital was not founded in the days which we are at the moment considering, in a way its predecessors were equally potent for centralization, and it is most convenient to speak of the whole process as of one place. When the first president of the republic took up his abode in a recognized capital, there was imported into the republican society the very thing which was most antagonistic to all its proclaimed principles--the atmosphere of a court. It was no matter that the court was not that of a potentate; though not a royal, it was a social court, which took its place as the head of all social functions and aspects. It availed nothing that such a stern republican as Jefferson reprobated all ceremony and insisted upon the extremes of democratic simplicity; the spirit of the court was infused into the social elements of America, and its influence was enormous, even though to this day that influence has been unacknowledged. Enough of theory, let us look at resultant facts. For the first time one woman filled the eyes of the nation as preeminently the first lady of the land. That this position was so worthily filled was most fortunate for the future of American society, though even that circ.u.mstance did not avail to ward off certain evils that followed in the train of centralization. But none of these evils can be laid at the door of Martha Was.h.i.+ngton, whom all America rightfully delighted to honor. The widow of Colonel Custis won lasting fame when she gave her hand to George Was.h.i.+ngton, then but a colonel of militia; but, like the mother of the first of Americans, "Lady Was.h.i.+ngton," as she was affectionately called, possessed qualities that made her worthy of high esteem for her own sake. It will suffice merely to give one picture of her which shows alike the domesticity of her nature and the simplicity of manners which were so prevalent at this time. Mrs. Carrington thus describes her most lasting impression of Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton during a visit to Mount Vernon:

"Let us repair to the old lady's room, which is precisely in the style of our good aunt's,--that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work.

On one side sits the chambermaid, with her knitting; on the other, a little colored pet, learning to sew. An old, decent woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes' winter clothes, while the good old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She points out to me several pairs of nice colored stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her sake."