As A c******n Saw Us

Chapter 4

THE AMERICAN WOMAN

The most remarkable feature of America is the women. Divest your mind of any woman you know in order to prepare yourself to receive my impressions. To begin with, the American woman ranks with her husband; indeed, she is his superior in that all men render her homage and deference. It is accounted a point of chivalry to stand as the defender of the weaker s*x. The American girl is educated with the boys in the public school, grows up with them, and studies their studies, that she may be their intellectual equal, and there is a strong party, led by masculine women, who contend for complete political rights for women. In some States they vote, and in nearly all may be elected to boards of various kinds and to minor offices. The Government departments are filled with women clerks, and all, from the lowest to the highest, are equal; hence, it is a difficult matter to find a native-born American who will become a servant. They all aspire to be ladies, and even aliens become salesladies, cook ladies, laundry ladies. They are on their dignity, and able to protect it from any point of attack.

The lower classes are particularly uninteresting, for they have no individuality, and ape the class above them, the result being a cheap, ludicrous imitation of a lady--an absurd abstraction. The women of the lower classes who are unmarried work in shops, factories, and restaurants, often in situations the reverse of sanitary; yet prefer this to good situations in families as servants, service being beneath their dignity and tending to disturb the balance of equality. I doubt if a native-born woman would permit herself to be called a servant; indeed, all the servants are Irish, Swedes, Norwegians, French, German, or n*****s; the American girls fill the factories and the sweat-shops of the great cities. When I refer these girls to the lower classes it is merely to classify them, as morally and intellectually they are sometimes the equal of the higher classes. The middle-class women or girls are an attractive type, well educated and often beautiful. You obtain an idea of them in the great shops and bazaars of the great cities, where they fill every conceivable position and receive from five to six dollars per week.

But it is with the higher classes that you will be most interested, and when I say that the American girl, the product of the first families, is at once beautiful, refined, cultured, charming physically and mentally, I have but faintly expressed it; yet the most pronounced characteristic is their "daring," or temerity. There is no word exactly to cover it. I frequently met women at dinners. With few exceptions, it appears impossible for the American girl to take one of our race, an Oriental, seriously. She can not conceive that he may be a man of intelligence and education, and I can not better describe her than to sketch in its detail a dinner to which I was invited by the ---- at Washington. The invitation was engraved on a small card and read "The ---- and Mrs. ---- request the honor of the presence of the ---- at dinner on Wednesday at eight o'clock, etc." I immediately sent my valet with an acceptance and a basket of orchids to the hostess, this being the mode among the men who are au fait.

A week later I went to the dinner, and was taken up to the dressing-room for men, where I found a dozen or more, all in the conventional evening dress I have described--now with tails, it being a ladies' affair. In a corner was a table, and by it stood a n***o, also in a dress suit, identical with that of the others. I was cordially greeted by a guest, who said, "Let me introduce you to our American minister to Ijiji and Zanzibar," and he presented me to the tall n***o, who was turning out some bottled "cocktail." I shook hands with him, and he laughed, showing a set of teeth like an elephant's tusks, and asked me "what I would have." He was a servant dealing out "appetizers," and this was an American joke. The perpetrator of this joke was a minor official in the State Department, yet the entire party apparently considered it a good joke. Fortunately, I could disguise my real feeling, and I merely relate the incident to give you an idea of the sense of the proprieties as entertained by certain Americans. All that winter the story of the American minister to Zanzibar was told at my expense without doubt.

Having been "fortified," and some of the men took two or three "cocktails" before they became "tuned up," we went down to the drawing-room, where I paid my respects to the host and hostess, who stood at the end of a beautiful room. As I approached the lady greeted me with a charming smile, extending her gloved hand almost on a direct line with her face, grasping it firmly, not shaking it, saying, "Very kind of you, ----. Delighted, I am sure. General"--turning to her husband--"you know the ----, of course," and the general shook my hand as he would a pump-handle, and whispered, "Our minister to Zanzibar treated you all right, eh?" and with a wink indescribable, closing the right eye for a second, passed me on. The story had got down-stairs before me. Americans of the official class have, as a rule, an absolute lack of savoir faire and social refinement; lack them so utterly as to become comical.

I now joined other groups of officers and officials, there being about thirty guests, half of whom were ladies. The latter were all in what is termed full dress. Why "full" I do not know. Here you see one of the most extraordinary features of American life--the dress of women. The Americans make claim to being among the most modest, the most religious, the most proper people in the world, yet the appearance of the ladies at many public functions is beyond belief. All the women in this house were beautiful and covered with jewels. They wore gowns in the French court fashion, with trains a yard or two in length, but the upper part cut so low that a large portion of the neck and shoulders was exposed. I was embarrassed beyond expression; such an exhibition in China could only be made by a certain class. These matrons were of the highest respectability. This remarkable custom of a strange people, who deluge China with missionaries from every sect under the sun and at home commit the grossest solecisms, is universal, and not thought of as improper. There was not much opportunity for introspective analysis, yet I could not but believe that such a custom must have its moral effect upon a nation in the long run.

It was a mystery to me how the upper part of some of the gowns was supported. In some instances there was no strap over the shoulders, the upper third of these alabaster torsos and arms being absolutely naked, save for a band of pearls, diamonds, or other gems, of a size rarely seen in the Orient; but I learned later that the bone or steel corset, which molds the form, constituted the support of the gown. I gradually became habituated to the custom, and did not notice it. My friend ----, an artist of repute, explained that it all depends on the point of view. "Our people are essentially artistic," he said. "There is nothing more beautiful than the divine female contour; the American women realize this, and sacrifice themselves at the altar of art." Yet the Americans are such jokers that exactly what my friend had in mind it was difficult to arrive at.

After being presented to these marvelously arrayed ladies we passed into the dining-room, where I found myself with one of the most charming of divinities, a woman famous for her wit and literary success. I have described the typical dinner, so I need not repeat my words. My companion held the same extraordinary attitude toward me that all American women do; amused, half laughing, refusing absolutely to take me seriously, and probing me with so many absurd questions that I was forced to ask some very pointed ones, which only succeeded in making her laugh. The conversation proceeded something as follows: "I am charmed that I have fallen to your Highness." "Equally charmed," I replied; "but my rank does not admit the adjective you do me the honor to apply." "No?" was the answer. "Well, I'll wager you anything that when the butler pours your wine in the first course he will call you Count, and in the next Prince. You see, they become exhilarated as the dinner progresses. But tell me, how many wives have you in China, you look very wicked?" Imagine this! But I rallied, and replied that I had none--a statement received with incredulity. Her next question was, "Have you ever been a highbinder?" Ministers of grace! and this from a people who profess to know more than any nation on earth! I explained that a highbinder ranked with a professional murderer in this country, whereupon she again laughed, and, turning to General ----, in a loud voice said, "General, I have been calling the ---- a highbinder," at which the company laughed at my expense. In China, as you know, a guest or a host would have killed himself rather than commit so gross a solecism; but this is America.

The second course was oysters served in the shell, and my companion, assuming that I had never seen an oyster [ignorant that our fathers ate oysters thousands of years before America was heard of and when the Anglo-Saxon was living in a cave], in a confidential and engaging whisper remarked, "This, your 'Highness,' is the only animal we eat alive." "Why alive?" I asked, looking as innocent as possible; "why not kill them?" "Oh, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will not permit it," was her reply. "You see, if they are swallowed alive they are immediately suffocated, but if you cut them up they suffer horribly while the soup is being served. How large a one do you think you can swallow?" Fancy the daring of a young girl to joke with a man twice her age in this way! I did not undeceive her, and allowed her to enlighten me on various subjects of contemporaneous interest. "It's so strange that the Chinese never study mathematics," she next remarked. "Why, all our public schools demand higher mathematics, and in the fourth grade you could not find a child but could square the circle."

In this manner this volatile young savage entertained me all through the dinner, utterly superficial herself, yet possessed of a singular sharpness and wit, mostly at my expense; yet she was so charming I forgave her. There is no denying that you become enraged, insulted, chagrined by these women, who, however, by a look, dispel your annoyance. I do not understand it. I found that while an author of a novel she was grossly ignorant of the literature of her own country, yet she possessed that consummate American froth by which she could convince the average person that she was brilliant to the point of scintillation. I fancy that any keen, well-educated woman must have seen that I was laughing at her, yet so inborn was her belief that a c******n must be an imbecile that she was ever joking at my expense. The last story she told me illustrates the peculiar fancy for joking these women possess. I had been describing a storm at Manchester-by-the-Sea and the splendor of the ocean. "Did you see the tea-leaves?" she asked, solemnly. "No," I replied. "That is strange," she said. "I fear you are not very observing. After every storm the tea-leaves still wash up all along Massachusetts Bay," alluding to the fact that loads of tea on ships were tossed over by the Americans during the quarrel with England before the Revolution.

The daring of the American woman impressed me. This same lady asked me not to remain with the men to smoke but go on the veranda with her, where t**--t** she produced a gold cigarette-case and offered me a cigarette. This I found not uncommon. American women of the fast sets drink at the clubs; an insidious drink--the "high-ball"--is a common one, yet I never saw a woman under the influence of wine or liquor. The amount of both consumed in America, is amazing. The consumption per head in the United States for beer alone is ten and a half gallons for each of the eighty millions. My friend, a prohibitionist, a member of a political party whose object is to ruin the wine industry of the world, put it stronger, and, backed by facts, said that if the wine, beer, whisky, gin, and alcoholic drinks of all kinds and the tea and coffee drank yearly by the Americans could be collected it would make a lake two miles square and ten feet deep. The alcoholic drinks alone if collected would fill a canal one hundred miles long, one hundred feet wide, and ten feet deep. May their saints propitiate this insatiate thirst!

It would amuse you to hear the American women of literary tendency boast of their schools, yet when educational facilities are considered the average American is ignorant. They are educated in lines. Thus a girl graduate will speak French with a good accent, or she will converse in Milwaukee German. She can prove her statement in conic sections or algebra, but when it comes to actual knowledge she is deficient. This is due to the ignorance of the teachers in the public schools and their lack of inborn culture. No better test of the futility of the American public-school education can be seen than the average girl product of the public school of the lower class in a city like Chicago or New York. Americans affect to despise Chinese methods because the Chinese girl or boy is not crammed with a thousand thoughts of no relative value. China has existed thousands of years; her people are happy; happiness and content are the chief virtues, and if China is ever overthrown it will be not because, as the Americans put it, she is behind the times, but because the fever of unrest and the craze for riches has become a contagion which will react upon her. The development of China is normal, that of America hysterical. Our growth has been along the line of peace; that of other nations has been entirely opposed to their own religious teaching, showing it to be farcical and pure sophistry.

If I should tell you how many American women asked me why Chinese women bandage their feet you would be amazed; yet every one of these submitted to and practised a deformity that has seriously affected the growth and development of the race. I am no iconoclast, but listen to the story of the American woman who, with one hand, deforms her waist in the most barbarous fashion, while waving the other in horror at her Chinese sister with the bound feet. American women change their fashions twice a year or more. Fashions are in the hands of the middle classes, and the highest lady in the land is completely at their mercy; to disobey the mandates of fashion is to become ridiculous. The fashion is set in Paris and various cities by men and women who have skilled artists to draw patterns and paint pictures showing the new mode. These are published in certain papers and issued by millions, republished in America, and no woman here would have the temerity to ignore them. The laws of the Medes and Persians are not more inexorable.

It is not a suggestion but an order, a fiat, a command, so we see this free nation really truckling to or dominated by a class of tradesmen. The object of the change of style is to create a sale for new goods, give work for laborers, and enable the producer to reach the pocketbook of the rich man; but the "fashions" have become so fixed, so thoroughly a national feature, that they affect rich and poor, and we have the spectacle of every woman studying these guides and conforming to them with a servility beyond belief. I once said to a lady, "The Chinese lady dresses richer than the American, but her styles have been very much the same for thousands of years," but I believe she doubted it. It would be futile, indeed impossible, for me to explain the extravagances of American fashion. Their own press and stage use it as a standard butt. At the present time tablets or plates of fashion insist upon an outline which shows the form completely, the antipodes of a Chinese woman; and this is intensified by some of the women who, when in the street, grasp the skirt and in an ingenious way wrap it about so that the outline of the American divinity is sufficiently well defined to startle one. Such a trick in China could but originate with the demimonde, yet it is taken up by certain of the Americans who are constantly seeking for variety. There can be no question but that the middle-class fashion designer revenges himself upon the beau monde. They will not receive him socially, so he forces them to wear his clothes.

Some years ago women were made to wear "hoops," pictures of which I have seen in old publications. Imagine, if you can, a bird-cage three feet high and four feet across, formed of bone of the whale or some metal. This was worn beneath the dress, expanding it on either side so that it was difficult to approach a lady. A later order was given to wear a camel-like "hump" at the base of the vertebral column, which was called the "bustle"--a contrivance calculated to unnerve the wearer, not to speak of the looker-on; yet the American woman adopted it, distorted her body, and aped the gait of the kangaroo, the form being called the "Grecian bend." This lasted six months or more; first adopted by the aristocracy, then by the common people, and by the time the latter had it well in hand the bon ton had cast it aside and were trying something else.

A close study of this mad dressing shows that there is always a "hump." At one time it went all around; later appeared only behind, like an excrescence on a bilbol-tree. At the present time the designer has drawn his picture showing it as a pendent bag from the "shirtwaist," like the pouch of the bird pelican. A few years ago the designer, in a delirium, placed the humps on the tops of the sleeves, then snatched them away and tipped them upside down. Finally he appeared to go utterly mad with the desire to humiliate the woman, and created a fashion that entailed dragging the skirt on the ground from one to two feet.

Did the American woman resent the insult; did she refuse to adopt a custom not only disgusting but really filthy, one that a Chinese lady would have died rather than have accepted? By no means; she seized upon it with the ardor of a child with a new toy, and for a year the side-paths of the great cities of the country were swept by women's skirts, clouds of dust following them. The press took up the question, but without effect; the fashion dragged its nauseating and frightful course from rich and poor, and I was told by an official that it was impossible to stop it or to force a glimmer of reason into the minds of these women. Then they gave it up, and passed a law making it a statutory offense, with heavy fines, for any one to "expectorate" on the sidewalk or anywhere else where the saliva could be swept up by the trains of the women of nearly all classes who followed the fashion. The American woman, as I have said, looks askance at the footgear of the Chinese--high, warm, dry, sanitary, yet revels in creations which cramp the feet and distort the anatomy. The shoes are made of leather, inflexible, pointed; and to enable them to deceive the men into the belief that they have high insteps (a sign of good blood here) the women wear stilt-like heels, which throw the foot forward and elevate the heel from two to three inches above the ground.

But all this is but a bagatelle to the fashions in deformity which we find among nearly all American women. There are throughout the country numbers of large manufactories which make "corsets"--a peculiar waist and lung compressor, used by nearly every woman in America. These men are as dogmatic as the designers of the fashion-plates. They also issue plates or guides showing new changes, and the women, like sheep, adopt them. The American woman believes that a narrow waist enhances her beauty, and the corset-maker works upon the national weakness and builds creations that put to shame and ridicule the bound feet of the aristocratic Chinese woman. The corset is a lace and ribbon-decorated armor, made either of steel ribs or whale-bone, which fits the waist and clings to the hips. It is laced up, and the degree of tightness depends upon the will or nerve of the wearer. It compresses the heart and lungs, and wearing it is a most barbarous custom--a telling argument against the assumption of high intelligence on the part of the Americans, who, in this respect, rank with the flat-headed Indians of the northwest American coast, whose heads I have seen in their medical offices side by side with a diagram showing the abnormal conditions caused by the corset.

A year ago the fiat went forth that the American woman must have wide hips. Presto! there appeared especially devised machinery, advertised in all the journals, accomplishing the condition for those whom nature had not well endowed. Now the dressmaker has decided that they must be narrow-hipped, and half a million dollars in false hips, rubber pads, and other properties are cast aside. No extravaganza is too absurd for these people who are abject slaves to the whimsicalities of the designer, who is a wag in his way, as has been well shown in a story told to me. The designers for a famous man dressmaker in Paris had a habit of taking sketches of the latest creations to their club meetings. One evening a clever caricaturist took a caricature of a fashion showing a woman with enormous and outlandish sleeves. It created a laugh. "As impossible as it is," said the artist, "I will wager a dinner that if I present it seriously to a certain fashion paper they will take it up." This is said to be the history of the "big-sleeve" fashion that really amazed the Americans themselves.

The customs of women here are so at variance with those of China that they are not readily understood. Our ways are those culled from a civilization of thousands of years; theirs from one just beginning; yet they have the temerity to speak of China as effete and behind the times. In writing, the women affect the English round hand and write across from left to right, and then beginning at the left of the page again. They are fond of perfumes, especially the lower classes, and display a barbaric taste for jewels. It is not uncommon to see the wife of a wealthy man wear half a million pounds sterling in diamonds or rubies at the opera. I was told that one lady wore a $5,000 diamond in her garter. The utterly strange and contradictory customs of these women are best observed at the beach and bath. In China if a woman is modest she is so at all times; but this is not true with some Americans, who appear to have the desire to attract attention, especially that of men, by an appeal to the beautiful in nature and art; at least this is the impression the unprejudiced looker-on gains by a sojourn in the great cities and fashionable resorts. If you happen to be riding horseback, or walking in the street with a lady, and any accident occurs to her costume whereby her neck, her leg, or her ankle is exposed, she will be mortified beyond expression; yet the night previous you might have sat in the box with her at the opera, when her d****** gown had made her the mark for hundreds of lorgnettes. Again, this lady the next morning might bathe with me at the beach and lie on the sand basking in the sun like a siren in a costume that would arrest the attention of a St. Anthony.

Let me describe such a costume: A pair of skin-tight black stockings, then a pair of tights of black silk and a flimsy black skirt that comes just to the knee; a black silk waist, armless, and as low in the neck as the moral law permits, beneath which, to preserve her contour, is a water-proof corset. Limbs, to expose which an inch on the street were a crime, are blazoned to the world at Newport, Cape May, Atlantic City, and other resorts, and often photographed and shown in the papers. To explain this manifest contradiction would be beyond the powers of an Oriental, had he the prescience of the immortal Confucius and the divination of a Mahomet and Hilliel combined.