Worldly Ways and Byways Part 8

No. 20--"The Treadmill."

A half-humorous, half-pathetic epistle has been sent to me by a woman, who explains in it her particular perplexity. Such letters are the windfalls of our profession! For what is more attractive than to have a woman take you for her lay confessor, to whom she comes for advice in trouble? opening her innocent heart for your inspection!

My correspondent complains that her days are not sufficiently long, nor is her strength great enough, for the thousand and one duties and obligations imposed upon her. "If," she says, "a woman has friends and a small place in the world--and who has not in these days?--she must golf or 'bike' or skate a bit, of a morning; then she is apt to lunch out, or have a friend or two in, to that meal. After luncheon there is sure to be a 'cla.s.s' of some kind that she has foolishly joined, or a charity meeting, matinee, or reception; but above all, there are her 'duty'

calls. She must be home at five to make tea, that she has promised her men friends, and they will not leave until it is time for her to dress for dinner, 'out' or at home, with often the opera, a supper, or a ball to follow. It is quite impossible," she adds, "under these circ.u.mstances to apply one's self to anything serious, to read a book or even open a periodical. The most one can accomplish is a glance at a paper."

Indeed, it would require an exceptional const.i.tution to carry out the above programme, not to mention the attention that a woman must (however reluctantly) give to her house and her family. Where are the quiet hours to be found for self-culture, the perusal of a favorite author, or, perhaps, a little timid "writing" on her own account? Nor does this treadmill round fill a few months only of her life. With slight variations of scene and costume, it continues through the year.

A painter, I know, was fortunate enough to receive, a year or two ago, the commission to paint a well-known beauty. He was delighted with the idea and convinced that he could make her portrait the best work of his life, one that would be the stepping-stone to fame and fortune. This was in the spring. He was naturally burning to begin at once, but found to his dismay that the lady was just about starting for Europe. So he waited, and at her suggestion installed himself a couple of months later at the seaside city where she had a cottage. No one could be more charming than she was, inviting him to dine and drive daily, but when he broached the subject of "sitting," was "too busy just that day." Later in the autumn she would be quite at his disposal. In the autumn, however, she was visiting, never ten days in the same place. Early winter found her "getting her house in order," a mysterious rite apparently attended with vast worry and fatigue. With cooling enthusiasm, the painter called and coaxed and waited. November brought the opera and the full swing of a New York season. So far she has given him half a dozen sittings, squeezed in between a luncheon, which made her "unavoidably late," for which she is charmingly "sorry," and a reception that she was forced to attend, although "it breaks my heart to leave just as you are beginning to work so well, but I really must, or the tiresome old cat who is giving the tea will be saying all sorts of unpleasant things about me." So she flits off, leaving the poor, disillusioned painter before his canvas, knowing now that his dream is over, that in a month or two his pretty sitter will be off again to New Orleans for the carnival, or abroad, and that his weary round of waiting will recommence.

He will be fortunate if some day it does not float back to him, in the mysterious way disagreeable things do come to one, that she has been heard to say, "I fear dear Mr. Palette is not very clever, for I have been sitting to him for over a year, and he has really done nothing yet."

He has been simply the victim of a state of affairs that neither of them were strong enough to break through. It never entered into Beauty's head that she could lead a life different from her friends. She was honestly anxious to have a successful portrait of herself, but the sacrifice of any of her habits was more than she could make.

Who among my readers (and I am tempted to believe they are all more sensible than the above young woman) has not, during a summer pa.s.sed with agreeable friends, made a thousand pleasant little plans with them for the ensuing winter,--the books they were to read at the same time, the "exhibitions" they were to see, the visits to our wonderful collections in the Metropolitan Museum or private galleries, cosy little dinners, etc.? And who has not found, as the winter slips away, that few of these charming plans have been carried out? He and his friends have unconsciously fallen back into their ruts of former years, and the pleasant things projected have been brushed aside by that strongest of tyrants, habit.

I once asked a very great lady, whose gracious manner was never disturbed, who floated through the endless complications of her life with smiling serenity, how she achieved this Olympian calm. She was good enough to explain. "I make a list of what I want to do each day. Then, as I find my day pa.s.sing, or I get behind, or tired, I throw over every other engagement. I could have done them all with hurry and fatigue. I prefer to do one-half and enjoy what I do. If I go to a house, it is to remain and appreciate whatever entertainment has been prepared for me. I never offer to any hostess the slight of a hurried, _distrait_ 'call,'

with glances at my watch, and an 'on-the-wing' manner. It is much easier not to go, or to send a card."

This brings me around to a subject which I believe is one of the causes of my correspondent's dilemma. I fear that she never can refuse anything. It is a peculiar trait of people who go about to amuse themselves, that they are always sure the particular entertainment they have been asked to last is going to "be amusing." It rarely is different from the others, but these people are convinced, that to stay away would be to miss something. A weary-looking girl about 1 A.M. (at a house-party) when asked why she did not go to bed if she was so tired, answered, "the nights I go to bed early, they always seem to do something jolly, and then I miss it."

There is no greater proof of how much this weary round wears on women than the acts of the few who feel themselves strong enough in their position to defy custom. They have thrown off the yoke (at least the younger ones have) doubtless backed up by their husbands, for men are much quicker to see the aimlessness of this stupid social routine. First they broke down the great New-Year-call "grind." Men over forty doubtless recall with a shudder, that awful custom which compelled a man to get into his dress clothes at ten A.M., and pa.s.s his day rushing about from house to house like a postman. Out-of-town clubs and sport helped to do away with that remnant of New Amsterdam. Next came the male revolt from the afternoon "tea" or "musical." A black coat is rare now at either of these functions, or if seen is pretty sure to be on a back over fifty. Next, we lords of creation refused to call at all, or leave our cards. A married woman now leaves her husband's card with her own, and sisters leave the "pasteboard" of their brothers and often those of their brothers' friends. Any combination is good enough to "shoot a card."

In London the men have gone a step further. It is not uncommon to hear a young man boast that he never owned a visiting card or made a "duty" call in his life. Neither there nor with us does a man count as a "call" a quiet cup of tea with a woman he likes, and a cigarette and quiet talk until dressing time. Let the young women have courage and take matters into their own hands. (The older ones are hopeless and will go on pushing this Juggernaut car over each other's weary bodies, until the end of the chapter.) Let them have the courage occasionally to "refuse"

something, to keep themselves free from aimless engagements, and bring this paste-board war to a close. If a woman is attractive, she will be asked out all the same, never fear! If she is not popular, the few dozen of "egg-sh.e.l.l extra" that she can manage to slip in at the front doors of her acquaintances will not help her much.

If this matter is, however, so vastly important in women's eyes, why not adopt the continental and diplomatic custom and send cards by post or otherwise? There, if a new-comer dines out and meets twenty-five people for the first time, cards must be left the next day at their twenty-five respective residences. How the cards get there is of no importance. It is a diplomatic fiction that the new acquaintance has called in person, and the call will be returned within twenty-four hours. Think of the saving of time and strength! In Paris, on New Year's Day, people send cards by post to everybody they wish to keep up. That does for a year, and no more is thought about it. All the time thus gained can be given to culture or recreation.

I have often wondered why one sees so few women one knows at our picture exhibitions or flower shows. It is no longer a mystery to me. They are all busy trotting up and down our long side streets leaving cards.

Hideous vision! Should Dante by any chance reincarnate, he would find here the material ready made to his hand for an eighth circle in his _Inferno_.

No. 21--"Like Master Like Man."

A frequent and naive complaint one hears, is of the unsatisfactoriness of servants generally, and their ingrat.i.tude and astonishing lack of affection for their masters, in particular. "After all I have done for them," is pretty sure to sum up the long tale of a housewife's griefs. Of all the delightful inconsistencies that grace the female mind, this latter point of view always strikes me as being the most complete. I artfully lead my fair friend on to tell me all about her woes, and she is sure to be exquisitely one-sided and quite unconscious of her position.

"They are so extravagant, take so little interest in my things, and leave me at a moment's notice, if they get an idea I am going to break up.

Horrid things! I wish I could do without them! They cause me endless worry and annoyance." My friend is very nearly right,--but with whom lies the fault?

The conditions were bad enough years ago, when servants were kept for decades in the same family, descending like heirlooms from father to son, often (abroad) being the foster sisters or brothers of their masters, and bound to the household by an hundred ties of sympathy and tradition. But in our day, and in America, where there is rarely even a common language or nationality to form a bond, and where households are broken up with such facility, the relation between master and servant is often so strained and so unpleasant that we risk becoming (what foreigners reproach us with being), a nation of hotel-dwellers. Nor is this cla.s.s- feeling greatly to be wondered at. The contrary would be astonishing.

From the primitive household, where a poor neighbor comes in as "help,"

to the "great" establishment where the butler and housekeeper eat apart, and a group of plush-clad flunkies imported from England adorn the entrance-hall, nothing could be better contrived to set one cla.s.s against another than domestic service.

Proverbs have grown out of it in every language. "No man is a hero to his valet," and "familiarity breeds contempt," are clear enough. Our comic papers are full of the misunderstandings and absurdities of the situation, while one rarely sees a joke made about the other ways that the poor earn their living. Think of it for a moment! To be obliged to attend people at the times of day when they are least attractive, when from fatigue or temper they drop the mask that society glues to their faces so many hours in the twenty-four; to see always the seamy side of life, the small expedients, the aids to nature; to stand behind a chair and hear an acquaintance of your master's ridiculed, who has just been warmly praised to his face; to see a hostess who has been graciously urging her guests "not to go so soon," blurt out all her boredom and thankfulness "that those tiresome So-and-So's" are "paid off at last," as soon as the door is closed behind them, must needs give a curious bent to a servant's mind. They see their employers insincere, and copy them.

Many a mistress who has been smilingly a.s.sured by her maid how much her dress becomes her, and how young she is looking, would be thunderstruck to hear herself laughed at and criticised (none too delicately) five minutes later in that servant's talk.

Servants are trained from their youth up to conceal their true feelings.

A domestic who said what she thought would quickly lose her place.

Frankly, is it not asking a good deal to expect a maid to be very fond of a lady who makes her sit up night after night until the small hours to unlace her bodice or take down her hair; or imagine a valet can be devoted to a master he has to get into bed as best he can because he is too tipsy to get there unaided? Immortal "Figaro" is the type! Supple, liar, corrupt, intelligent,--he aids his master and laughs at him, feathering his own nest the while. There is a saying that "horses corrupt whoever lives with them." It would be more correct to say that domestic service demoralizes alike both master and man.

Already we are obliged to depend on immigration for our servants because an American revolts from the false position, though he willingly accepts longer hours or harder work where he has no one around him but his equals. It is the old story of the free, hungry wolf, and the well-fed, but chained, house-dog. The foreigners that immigration now brings us, from countries where great cla.s.s distinctions exist, find it natural to "serve." With the increase in education and consequent self-respect, the difficulty of getting efficient and contented servants will increase with us. It has already become a great social problem in England. The trouble lies beneath the surface. If a superior cla.s.s accept service at all, it is with the intention of quickly getting money enough to do something better. With them service is merely the means to an end. A first step on the ladder!

Bad masters are the cause of so much suffering, that to protect themselves, the great brother-hood of servants have imagined a system of keeping run of "places," and giving them a "character" which an aspirant can find out with little trouble. This organization is so complete, and so well carried out, that a household where the lady has a "temper,"

where the food is poor, or which breaks up often, can rarely get a first- cla.s.s domestic. The "place" has been boycotted, a good servant will sooner remain idle than enter it. If circ.u.mstances are too much for him and he accepts the situation, it is with his eyes open, knowing infinitely more about his new employers and their failings than they dream of, or than they could possibly find out about him.

One thing never can be sufficiently impressed on people, viz.: that we are forced to live with detectives, always behind us in caps or dress- suits, ready to note every careless word, every incautious criticism of friend or acquaintance--their money matters or their love affairs--and who have nothing more interesting to do than to repeat what they have heard, with embroideries and additions of their own. Considering this, and that nine people out of ten talk quite oblivious of their servants'

presence, it is to be wondered at that so little (and not that so much) trouble is made.

It always amuses me when I ask a friend if she is going abroad in the spring, to have her say "Hush!" with a frightened glance towards the door.

"I am; but I do not want the servants to know, or the horrid things would leave me!"

Poor, simple lady! They knew it before you did, and had discussed the whole matter over their "tea" while it was an almost unuttered thought in your mind. If they have not already given you notice, it is because, on the whole your house suits them well enough for the present, while they look about. Do not worry your simple soul, trying to keep anything from them. They know the amount of your last dressmaker's bill, and the row your husband made over it. They know how much you would have liked young "Croesus" for your daughter, and the little tricks you played to bring that marriage about. They know why you are no longer asked to dine at Mrs. Swell's, which is more than you know yourself. Mrs. Swell explained the matter to a few friends over her lunch-table recently, and the butler told your maid that same evening, who was laughing at the story as she put on your slippers!

Before we blame them too much, however, let us remember that they have it in their power to make great trouble if they choose. And considering the little that is made in this way, we must conclude that, on the whole, they are better than we give them credit for being, and fill a trying situation with much good humor and kindliness. The lady who is astonished that they take so little interest in her, will perhaps feel differently if she reflects how little trouble she has given herself to find out their anxieties and griefs, their temptations and heart-burnings; their material situation; whom they support with their slowly earned wages, what claims they have on them from outside. If she will also reflect on the number of days in a year when she is "not herself," when headaches or disappointments ruffle her charming temper, she may come to the conclusion that it is too much to expect all the virtues for twenty dollars a month.

A little more human interest, my good friends, a little more indulgence, and you will not risk finding yourself in the position of the lady who wrote me that last summer she had been obliged to keep open house for "'Cook' tourists!"

No. 22--An English Invasion of the Riviera

When sixty years ago Lord Brougham, _en route_ for Italy, was thrown from his travelling berline and his leg was broken, near the Italian hamlet of Cannes, the Riviera was as unknown to the polite world as the centre of China. The _grand tour_ which every young aristocrat made with his tutor, on coming of age, only included crossing from France into Italy by the Alps. It was the occurrence of an unusually severe winter in Switzerland that turned Brougham aside into the longer and less travelled route _via_ the Corniche, the marvellous Roman road at that time fallen into oblivion, and little used even by the local peasantry.

During the tedious weeks while his leg was mending, Lord Brougham amused himself by exploring the surrounding country in his carriage, and was quick to realize the advantages of the climate, and appreciate the marvellous beauty of that coast. Before the broken member was whole again, he had bought a tract of land and begun a villa. Small seed, to furnish such a harvest! To the traveller of to-day the Riviera offers an almost unbroken chain of beautiful residences from Ma.r.s.eilles to Genoa.

A Briton willingly follows where a lord leads, and Cannes became the centre of English fashion, a position it holds to-day in spite of many attractive rivals, and the defection of Victoria who comes now to Cimiez, back of Nice, being unwilling to visit Cannes since the sudden death there of the Duke of Albany. A statue of Lord Brougham, the "discoverer"

of the littoral, has been erected in the sunny little square at Cannes, and the English have in many other ways, stamped the city for their own.

No other race carry their individuality with them as they do. They can live years in a country and a.s.similate none of its customs; on the contrary, imposing habits of their own. It is just this that makes them such wonderful colonizers, and explains why you will find little groups of English people drinking ale and playing golf in the shade of the Pyramids or near the frozen slopes of Foosiyama. The real inwardness of it is that they are a dull race, and, like dull people despise all that they do not understand. To differ from them is to be in the wrong. They cannot argue with you; they simply know, and that ends the matter.

I had a discussion recently with a Briton on the p.r.o.nunciation of a word.

As there is no "Inst.i.tute," as in France, to settle matters of this kind, I maintained that we Americans had as much authority for our p.r.o.nunciation of this particular word as the English. The answer was characteristic.

"I know I am right," said my Island friend, "because that is the way I p.r.o.nounce it!"

Walking along the princ.i.p.al streets of Cannes to-day, you might imagine yourself (except for the climate) at Cowes or Brighton, so British are the shops and the crowd that pa.s.ses them. Every restaurant advertises "afternoon tea" and Ba.s.s's ale, and every other sign bears a London name.

This little matter of tea is particularly characteristic of the way the English have imposed a taste of their own on a rebellious nation. Nothing is further from the French taste than tea-drinking, and yet a Parisian lady will now invite you gravely to "five o'clocker" with her, although I can remember when that beverage was abhorred by the French as a medicine; if you had asked a Frenchman to take a cup of tea, he would have answered:

"Why? I am not ill!"

Even Paris (that supreme and undisputed arbiter of taste) has submitted to English influence; tailor-made dresses and low-heeled shoes have become as "good form" in France as in London. The last two Presidents of the French Republic have taken the oath of office dressed in frock-coats instead of the dress clothes to which French officials formerly clung as to the sacraments.

The munic.i.p.alities of the little Southern cities were quick to seize their golden opportunity, and everything was done to detain the rich English wandering down towards Italy. Millions were spent in transforming their cramped, dirty, little towns. Wide boulevards bordered with palm and eucalyptus spread their sunny lines in all directions, being baptized _Promenade des Anglais_ or _Boulevard Victoria_, in artful flattery. The narrow mountain roads were widened, casinos and theatres built and carnival _fetes_ organized, the cities offering "cups" for yacht- or horse-races, and giving grounds for tennis and golf clubs. Clever Southern people! The money returned to them a hundredfold, and they lived to see their wild coast become the chosen residence of the wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, and the rocky hillsides blossom into terrace above terrace of villa gardens, where palm and rose and geranium vie with the olive and the mimosa to shade the white villas from the sun. To-day, no little town on the coast is without its English chapel, British club, tennis ground, and golf links.

On a fair day at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the prevailing conversation is in English, and the handsome, well-dressed sons of Albion lounge along beside their astonishing womankind as thoroughly at home as on Bond Street.