Is Polite Society Polite? Part 1

Is Polite Society Polite?

by Julia Ward Howe.

Preface

I REMEMBER that, quite late in the fifties, I mentioned to Theodore Parker the desire which I began to feel to give living expression to my thoughts, and to lend to my written words the interpretation of my voice.

Parker, who had taken a friendly interest in the publication of my first volumes, "Pa.s.sion Flowers" and "Words for the Hour," gave his approval also to this new project of mine. "The great desire of the age," he said, "is for vocal expression. People are scarcely satisfied with the printed page alone: they crave for their instruction the living voice and the living presence."

At the time of which I write, no names of women were found in the lists of lecture courses. Lucy Stone had graduated from Oberlin, and was beginning to be known as an advocate of temperance, and as an antislavery speaker. Lucretia Mott had carried her eloquent pleading outside the limits of her Quaker belonging. Antoinette Brown Blackwell occupied the pulpit of a Congregational church, while Abby Kelly Foster and the Grimke Sisters stood forth as strenuous pleaders for the abolition of slavery. Of these ladies I knew little at the time of which I speak, and my studies and endeavors occupied a field remote from that in which they fought the good fight of faith. My thoughts ran upon the importance of a helpful philosophy of life, and my heart's desire was to a.s.sist the efforts of those who sought for this philosophy.

Gradually these wishes took shape in some essays, which I read to companies of invited friends. Somewhat later, I entered the lecture field, and journeyed hither and yon, as I was invited.

The papers collected in the present volume have been heard in many parts of our vast country. As is evident, they have been written for popular audiences, with a sense of the limitations which such audiences necessarily impose. With the burthen of increasing years, the freedom of locomotion naturally tends to diminish, and I must be thankful to be read where I have in other days been heard. I shall be glad indeed if it may be granted to these pages to carry the message which I myself have been glad to bear,--the message of the good hope of humanity, despite the faults and limitations of individuals.

That hope casts its light over the efforts of years that are past, and gilds for me, with ineffaceable glow, the future of our race.

The lecture, "Is Polite Society Polite?" was written for a course of lectures given some years ago by the New England Women's Club of Boston.

"Greece Revisited" was first read before the Town and Country Club of Newport, R.I. "Aristophanes" and "Dante and Beatrice" were written for the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord, Ma.s.s. "The Halfness of Nature" was first read before the Boston Radical Club. "The Salon in America" was written for the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia.

Is Polite Society Polite?

WHY do we ask this question? For reasons which I shall endeavor to make evident.

The life in great cities awakens a mult.i.tude of ambitions. Some people are very unscrupulous in following these ambitions, attaining their object either by open force and pushing, or by artful and cunning manuvres. And so it will happen that in the society which considers itself ent.i.tled to rank above all other circles one may meet with people whose behavior is guided by no sincere and sufficient rule of conduct.

Observing their shortcomings, we may stand still and ask, Are these people what they should be? Is polite society polite?

For this society, which is supposed to be nothing if not polite, does a.s.sume, in every place, to set up the standard of taste and to regulate the tone of manners. It aims to be what Hamlet once was in Ophelia's eyes--"the gla.s.s of fashion and the mould of form." Its forms and fashions change, of course, from age to age, and yet it is a steadfast inst.i.tution in the development of human civilization.

I should be sorry to overstate its shortcomings, but I wish I might help it to feel its obligations and to fulfil them.

What shall we accept in the ordinary sense of men as politeness? Shall we consider it a mere surface polish--an att.i.tude expressive of deference--corresponding to no inward grace of good feeling? Will you like to live with the person who, in the great world, can put on fine manners, but who, in the retirement of home, manifests the vulgarity of a selfish heart and an undisciplined temper?

No, you will say; give me for my daily companions those who always wear the best manners they have. For manners are not like clothes: you can mend them best when you have them on.

We may say at the outset that sincerity is the best foundation upon which to build the structure of a polite life. The affectation of deference does not impose upon people of mature experience. It carries its own contradiction with it. When I hear the soft voice, a little too soft, I look into the face to see whether the two agree. But I need scarcely do that. The voice itself tells the story, is sincere or insincere. Flattery is, in itself, an offence against politeness. It is oftenest administered to people who are already suffering the intoxication of vanity. When I see this, I wish that I could enforce a prohibitory ordinance against it, and prosecute those who use it mostly to serve their own selfish purposes. But people can be trained never to offer nor to receive this dangerous drug of flattery, and I think that, in all society which can be called good, it becomes less and less the mode to flavor one's dishes with it.

Having spoken of flattery, I am naturally led to say a word about its opposite, detraction.

The French have a witty proverb which says that "the absent are always in the wrong," and which means that the blame for what is amiss is usually thrown upon those who are not present to defend themselves. It seems to me that the rules of politeness are to be as carefully observed toward the absent as toward those in whose company we find ourselves.

The fact that they cannot speak in their own defence is one which should appeal to our nicest sense of honor. Good breeding, or its reverse, is as much to be recognized in the way in which people speak of others as in the way in which they speak to them.

Have we not all felt the tone of society to be lowered by a low view of the conduct and motives of those who are made the subjects of discussion?

Those unfortunate men and women who delight in talk of this sort always appear to me degraded by it. No matter how clever they may be, I avoid their society, which has in it a moral malaria most unwholesome in character.

I am glad to say that, although frivolous society constantly shows its low estimate of human nature, I yet think that the gay immolation of character which was once considered a legitimate source of amus.e.m.e.nt has gone somewhat out of fashion. Sheridan's "School for Scandal" gives us some notion of what this may once have been. I do think that the world has grown more merciful in later years, and that even people who meet only for their own amus.e.m.e.nt are learning to seek it without murdering the reputation of their absent friends.

There is a mean impulse in human nature which leads some people to toss down the reputation of their fellows just as the Wall Street bear tosses down the value of the investments whose purchase he wishes to command at his own price. But in opposition to this, G.o.d has set within us a power which reacts against such base estimates of mankind. The utterance of this false tone often calls out the better music, and makes us admire the way in which good springs up in the very footsteps of evil and effaces them as things of nought.

Does intercourse with great society make us more or less polite?

Elizabeth Browning says:--

First time he kissed me he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write, Which ever thence did grow more clean and white, Slow to world greetings, quick with its "Oh, list,"

When the angels speak.

This clearly expresses the sanctification of a new and n.o.ble interest.

How is it with those on whom the great world has set its seal of superior position, which is derived from a variety of sources, among which wealth, recognized talent, and high descent are the most important?

I must say in answer that this social recognition does not affect all people in the same manner. One pa.s.ses the ordeal unscathed, is as fresh in affection, as genuine in relation and intercourse, as faithful to every fine and true personal obligation in the fiery furnace of wealth and fashion and personal distinction as he or she was in the simple village or domestic life, in which there was no question of greatness or smallness, all being of nearly the same dimensions.

The great world may boast of its jewels which no furnace blast can melt or dim, but they are rare. Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier seem to have been among these undimmed gems; so, also, was Madame de Sevigne, with a heart warm with love for her children and her friends in all the dazzle of a brilliant court. So I have seen a vessel of the finest gla.s.s, thin as paper, which a chemist left over his spirit-lamp, full of boiling liquid, and, returning the next day, found uninjured, so perfect was the temper of the gla.s.s. But for one such unspoiled world-favorite, I can show you twenty men and women who, at the first lift of fortune, forsake their old friends, neglect their near relations, and utterly ignore their poor ones.

Romance is full of such shameful action; and let me say here, in pa.s.sing, that in my opinion Romance often wears off our horror of what is wicked and heartless by showing it as a permanent and recognized element of society. This is the reverse of what it should do. But in these days it so exceeds its office in the hunt after the exhausted susceptibilities of a novel-reading public that it really thumps upon our aversion to vice until it wears it out.

De Balzac's novel called "Father Goriot" tells the story of a man of humble origin who grows rich by trade, educates his daughters for fashionable life, marries them to men of condition, portions them abundantly, and is in return kept carefully out of what the world knows of their lives. They seek him only when they want money, which they always do, in spite of the rich dowry settled on them at their marriage.

_Father Goriot_ sells his last piece of silver to help them, and dies in a low boarding-house, tended by the charity of strangers, tormented to the last by the bickering of his children, but not cheered for one moment by their affection.

I have heard on good authority that people of wealth and position in our large cities sometimes deposit their aged and helpless parents in asylums where they may have all that money can buy for them, but nothing of what grat.i.tude and affection should give them. How detestable such a course is I need not say; my present business is to say that it is far from polite.

Apropos of this suggestion, I remember that I was once invited to read this essay to a village audience in one of the New England States. My theme was probably one quite remote from the general thought of my hearers. As I went on, their indifference began to affect me, and my thought was that I might as well have appealed to a set of wooden tenpins as to those who were present on that occasion.

In this, I afterwards learned that I was mistaken. After the conclusion of the evening's exercise, a young man, well known in the community, was heard to inquire urgently where he could find the lecturer. Friends asked, what did he want of her? He replied: "Well, I did put my brother in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe, I suppose that I must take him out."

Need I say that I felt myself amply repaid for the trouble I had taken?

On the other hand, this same theme was once selected from my list by a lecture a.s.sociation in a small town buried in the forests of the far West. As I surveyed my somewhat home-spun audience, I feared that a discussion of the faults of polite society would interest my hearers very little. I was surprised after my reading to hear, from more than one of those present, that this lecture appeared to them the very thing that was most needed in that place.

There is to my mind something hideous in the concealment and disregard of real connections which involve real obligations.

If you are rich, take up your poor relations. a.s.sist them at least to find the way of earning a competence. Use the power you have to bring them within the sphere of all that is refining. You can embellish the world to them and them to the world. Do so, and you will be respected by those whose respect is valuable. On the contrary, repudiate those who really belong to you and the mean world itself will laugh at you and despise you. It is clever and cunning enough to find out your secret, and when it has done so, it will expose you pitilessly.

I have known men and women whose endeavors and successes have all been modelled upon the plane of social ambition. Starting with a good common-school education, which is a very good thing to start with, they have improved opportunities of culture and of desirable a.s.sociation until they stand conspicuous, far away from the sphere of their village or homemates, having money to spend, able to boast of wealthy acquaintances, familiar guests at fashionable entertainments.

Now sometimes these individuals wander so far away from their original belongings that these latter are easily lost sight of. And I a.s.sure you that they are left in the dark, in so far as concerns the actions of the friends we are now considering. Many a painstaking mother at a distance, many a plain but honest old father, many a sister working in a factory to help a brother at college, is never spoken of by such persons, and is even thought of with a blush of shame and annoyance.

Oh! shame upon the man or woman of us who is guilty of such behavior as this! These relatives are people to be proud of, as we should know if we had the heart to know what is true, good, and loyal. Even were it not so, were your relative a criminal, never deny the bond of nature. Stand beside him in the dock or at the gallows. You have ill.u.s.trious precedent for such a.s.sociation in one whom men worship, but forget to imitate.

Let me here relate a little story of my early years. I had a nursery governess when I was a small child. She came from some country town, and probably regarded her position in my father's family as a promotion. One evening, while we little folks gathered about her in our nursery, she wept bitterly. "What is the matter?" we asked; and she took me up in her lap, and said: "My poor old father came here to see me to-day, and I would not see him. I bade them tell him that he had mistaken the house, and he went away, and as he went I saw him looking up at the windows so wistfully!" Poor woman! We wept with her, feeling that this was indeed a tragical event, and not knowing what she could do to make it better.

But could I see that woman now, I would say to her: "If you were serving the king at his table, and held his wine-cup in your hand, and your father stood without, asking for you, you should set down the cup, and go out from the royal presence to honor your father, so much the more if he is poor, so much the more if he is old." And all that is really polite in polite society would say so too.

Now this action which I report of my governess corresponds to something in human nature, and to something which polite society fosters.