The Return of the Gentlewoman

IT is true she has not wholly left us, but her presence has grown rare, and at times she seems vanishing, as fringed gentians have a way of doing in favorite meadows, where once there were blue stretches of them, until a summer comes when the most diligent searcher is only rewarded by a scattered half-dozen.

To-day every New England town possesses localities in whose still stately mansions lived families spoken of as “ best.” These “ Best Families ” having diminished and faded away, their dwellings stand with closed blinds, or, it may be, have developed into homes for the aged, orphan asylums, schools, places where people lodge and board. Here and there a house retains its original character, and its mistress goes serenely in and out. She is surrounded by souvenirs of the past and the flowers of her garden, is much given to hospitality and the reading of good books, uses the most charming English we have ever heard, and has on all subjects views that are wise and witty and, withal, considerate and charitable. In brief, — a Gentlewoman.

But it is like the half-dozen fringed gentians in the meadow. Only now and then does one find her.

There is a descriptive word of dreary import formerly applied with freedom to a Gentlewoman in such moments of adversity as involved the loss of friends and fortune. In this sad situation one was apt to call her “ decayed,” exactly as if one were speaking of a fallen house or a ruined castle, instead of a sweet and gracious soul that would always be greater than anything that could happen to it.

Heaven be thanked, this word, in her connection, is becoming obsolete and not likely to be associated with her in the future. The modern Gentlewoman will have profited by the modern processes of life and learned how to defend herself against evil days.

The fashion of this world passeth, and it was no doubt decreed from the beginning that a number of things should cease to exist, that there should be a passing of the spare room, of the front dooryard, of the polite art of letter-writing, of the pleasant companionship of the horse in drives through town and country, of that receptacle, once so essential a part of a woman’s dress, the convenient pocket. The Gentlewoman is not a fashion of this world. She is of that world that was and is and ever shall be.

But when she comes again, what will be the conditions? Will she serve tea as of old in delicate heirloom china ? Will her pleasant rooms, hung with ancestral portraits, look into a well-kept garden, rose-planted, and shaded by ancestral fruit trees ? Possibly, since the title she bears implies wealth of years, and hence opportunities of inheriting things having the charm of years. Still the immediate ancestors of the Gentlewoman of the future are no longer home-makers in the sense that their own ancestors were. Many of them are birds of passage, flitting from one point to another, collecting memories and experiences in greater numbers than household treasures or plants in gardens. They board ; they live in apartments ; they spend six months here and six months there; they give away their old gowns and coats and hats, instead of packing them in attic chests to be taken out half a century later for use in charades and tableaux and private theatricals. Or if too much occupied, or not sufficiently well-informed concerning the need of their neighbors to distribute intelligently of their abundance, societies stand ready to do this for them, societies whose business it is not only to dispense thoughtfully the necessities of life, but also its feathers and ornaments and flowers ; as, for instance, that of the “ International Sunshine ” with its motto, —

which means, literally, if you have a ball dress, or a fan, or a volume of poems, or a piece of embroidery lying idle, send it to us and we will see that it gives pleasure elsewhere.

This habit of modern life, so essential to a Bird-of-Passage Person who has no hoarding-place save in the hired corner of a public storehouse, somewhat limits the future Gentlewoman’s chances of inheriting ancestral articles. However, all people of to-day are not birds of passage. Some there be who have built or bought themselves houses, and in making the latter habitable, followed the tendency of the age to put old wine into new bottles, that is to say, old furniture collected from the earth’s four corners into modern rooms. Having safely passed the unbeautiful period of parlor sets and chamber sets and vases in pairs, they thirst for unmatched pieces of antiquity. Go into a twentieth-century dwelling and you will find chairs and tables that must be enjoying a sensation of renewed youth, since in place of growing daily more venerable in native air, they have knocked about all over Bohemia, and are now making new acquaintances in a manner quite unusual with things of their day and generation. Here is a chair acquired yesterday at a sale of old colonial furniture from Virginia; here is a clock bought last summer in a Dutch fishing village; here is a dressing-table that once crossed the sea in that ship prepared, so the story runs, to rescue the unhappy Marie Antoinette, and finally obliged to set sail without her. Here is an old stool, carved and gilded, and a spinnet with some yellow music resting open upon it, — stool found in one town, spinnet in a second, and music in a third. If these things, with others, can be kept together until the future Gentlewoman, now a child, has herself grown old among them, her surroundings, in appearance at least, will in no wise greatly differ from those of the Gentlewomen of her ancestors. The difference will be in the history of her surroundings.

The other day I heard some one say, alluding to the death of an aged relative, “ She was the last gentlewoman of our family.” It was as if the speaker had said, “ The last princess of a royal line ; there will never be another.”

And it may be that never again shall we see Gentlewomen like those now going from us, as it may be that never again will there be a field white and gold and fragrant in exactly the same manner as the one through which we walked last June, never again a summer night like that of last July, when the evening primroses, little sisters to the moon, were shining along the garden path ; but the memory of the afternoon in June and of the evening in the midsummer garden is ours to keep forever, and each of us has a heritage bequeathed by the Gentlewoman we loved, also to keep forever, if we can, — a heritage that has nothing in common with real estate or the safety deposit bank, that is not subject to damage by fire or flood and yet demands more care than ever material possessions.

Each year of living means more rush and more haste, and less time for thinking, since the main thing seems to be to arrive, and to do that one must run faster and faster. It is well to arrive, and advisable. It is also well to make one’s haste after the fashion recommended by the German proverb, “ Eile mit Weile,” even at the risk of not arriving at all. It is safer for the heritage left us by the Gentlewoman we loved. In the breakneck speed of modern life there are so many chances of accidents to things other than limbs.

Happening to call upon a friend the other evening at the moment of a dinner party, I was shown into the presence of the young son and daughter of the house, aged fourteen and thirteen. They gave me cordial greeting, and after I had been told the names of the guests in the dining-room, and we had somewhat discussed them and wondered how much longer they would sit at the table, and talked of the animals at the Zoo and the birds in the Park and the books we liked best, the children showed me a picture that had been occupying their attention when I entered.

It was a large colored print of a Christy girl playing golf.

“ I am going to have it framed for my room,” said Ruth. “ What do you think of it ? Oh! I forgot,” she added, “you don’t approve of the modern girl.”

There was a pretty apology in her voice, and nothing in her manner to give the impression that a person in the state of mind she had indicated might be unreasonable or unnatural or otherwise objectionable. But Richard arose, asking in a voice that sounded like a challenge, “ Not approve of her, — why not ? ”

“ Well,” I said, “ I don’t exactly know. It’s a sort of feeling. Of course it does n’t include every modern girl. It would never include Ruth. The young woman in the picture is certainly bewitching, but I should n’t think of giving such a picture to Ruth for her room ; or at least I might give one, but not a whole row of them, there are so many other pictures to give her ” —

Under Richard’s clear and questioning gaze I was growing confused, when Ruth spoke for me.

“ You see, Richard,” she said, “ you were not with us last August, but there was a girl who used to come into the dining - room with such a stride! and she always wore her sleeves stripped up above her elbows, and her arms had got fearfully burned ; in fact, they were quite black, and she was so proud of them ; but of course they did n’t look very well, especially at dinner with pretty dresses; and her hair was rather wild, and she never wore a hat, not even when she went into the business part of the town ; and she knew a good deal of slang, but she was a very nice girl, and ” — Just here the dinner party was heard wending its way into the drawing-room, and we three being invited to join it, the strain of the situation ended.

What makes a Gentlewoman ? Put the question in another form. Who made the Gentlewoman ? God made her. To say that He made the Society Woman, and the Club Woman, and the Sportswoman with her sisterhood, would be not unlike saying that He made the town and the steam cars and green carnations and gray roses. But we may be quite sure that He made the Gentlewoman, and that with every generation adopting the best of things new and keeping the best of things old, she will return in all her sweet dignity to add to the joy of the world.

Harriet Lewis Bradley.