Part 2 (1/2)

A highly educated American woman of my acquaintance once employed a French tutor in Paris to a.s.sist her in teaching Latin to her little grandson. The Frenchman brought with him a Latin grammar, written in his own language, with which my friend was quite pleased, until she came to a pa.s.sage relating to the masculine gender in nouns, and claiming grammatical precedence for it on the ground that the male s.e.x is the n.o.ble s.e.x,--”_le s.e.xe n.o.ble_.” ”Upon that,” she said, ”I burst forth in indignation, and the poor teacher soon retired. But I do not believe,”

she added, ”that the Frenchman has the slightest conception, up to this moment, of what I could find in that phrase to displease me.”

I do not suppose he could. From the time when the Salic Law set French women aside from the royal succession, on the ground that the kingdom of France was ”too n.o.ble to be ruled by a woman,” the claim of n.o.bility has been all on one side. The State has strengthened the Church in this theory, the Church has strengthened the State; and the result of all is, that French grammarians follow both these high authorities. When even the good Pere Hyacinthe teaches, through the New York ”Independent,” that the husband is to direct the conscience of his wife, precisely as the father directs that of his child, what higher philosophy can you expect of any Frenchman than to maintain the claims of ”_le s.e.xe n.o.ble_”?

We see the consequence, even among the most heterodox Frenchmen. Rejecting all other precedents and authorities, the poor Communists still held to this. Consider, for instance, this translation of a marriage contract under the Commune, which lately came to light in a trial reported in the ”Gazette des Tribunaux:”--

FRENCH REPUBLIC.

The citizen Anet, son of Jean Louis Anet, and the _citoyenne_ Maria Saint; she engaged to follow the said citizen everywhere and to love him always.--ANET. MARIA SAINT.

Witnessed by the under-mentioned citizen and _citoyenne._--FOURIER.

LAROCHE.

PARIS, April 22, 1871.

What a comfortable arrangement is this! Poor _citoyenne_ Maria Saint, even when all human laws have suspended their action, still holds by her grammar, still must annex herself to _le s.e.xe n.o.ble_. She still must follow citizen Anet as the feminine p.r.o.noun follows the masculine, or as a verb agrees with its nominative case in number and in person. But with what a lordly freedom from all obligation does citizen Anet, representative of this n.o.bility of s.e.x, accept the allegiance! The citizeness may ”follow him,” certainly,--so long as she is not in the way,--and she must ”love him always;” but he is not bound. Why should he be? It would be quite ungrammatical.

Yet, after all is said and done, there is a brutal honesty in this frank subordination of the woman according to the grammar. It has the same merit with the old Russian marriage consecration: ”Here, wolf, take thy lamb,”

which at least put the thing clearly, and made no nonsense about it. I do not know that anywhere in France the wedding ritual is now so severely simple as this, but I know that in some French villages the bride is still married in a mourning-gown. I should think she would be.

THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR GRANDMOTHERS

Every young woman of the present generation, so soon as she ventures to have a headache or a set of nerves, is immediately confronted by indignant critics with her grandmother. If the grandmother is living, the fact of her existence is appealed to: if there is only a departed grandmother to remember, the maiden is confronted with a ghost. That ghost is endowed with as many excellences as those with which Miss Betsey Trotwood endowed the niece that never had been born; and just as David Copperfield was reproached with the virtues of his unborn sister who ”would never have run away,” so that granddaughter with the headache is reproached with the ghostly perfections of her grandmother, who never had a headache--or, if she had, it is luckily forgotten. It is necessary to ask, sometimes, what was really the truth about our grandmothers? Were they such models of bodily perfection as is usually claimed?

If we look at the early colonial days, we are at once met by the fact, that although families were then often larger than is now common, yet this phenomenon was by no means universal, and was balanced by a good many childless homes. Of this any one can satisfy himself by looking over any family history; and he can also satisfy himself of the fact,--first pointed out, I believe, by Mrs. Ball,--that third and fourth marriages were then obviously and unquestionably more common than now. The inference would seem to be, that there is a little illusion about the health of those days, as there is about the health of savage races. In both cases, it is not so much that the average health is greater under rude social conditions, as that these conditions kill off the weak, and leave only the strong. Modern civilized society, on the other hand, preserves the health of many men and women--and permits them to marry, and become parents--who under the severities of savage life or of pioneer life would have died, and given way to others.

On this I will not dwell; because these primeval ladies were not strictly our grandmothers, being farther removed. But of those who were our grandmothers,--the women of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary epochs,--we happen to have very definite physiological observations recorded; not very flattering, it is true, but frank and searching. What these good women are in the imagination of their descendants, we know. Mrs.

Stowe describes them as ”the race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat New England kitchens of olden times;” and adds, ”This race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things.”

What, now, was the testimony of those who saw our grandmothers in the flesh? As it happens, there were a good many foreigners, generally Frenchmen, who came to visit the new Republic during the presidency of Was.h.i.+ngton. Let us take, for instance, the testimony of the two following.

The Abbe Robin was a chaplain in Rochambeau's army during the Revolution, and wrote thus in regard to the American ladies in his ”Nouveau Voyage dans l'Amerique Septentrionale,” published in 1782:--

”They are tall and well-proportioned; their features are generally regular; their complexions are generally fair and without color....

At twenty years of age the women have no longer the freshness of youth. At thirty-five or forty they are wrinkled and decrepit. The men are almost as premature.”

Again: The Chevalier Louis Felix de Beaujour lived in the United States from 1804 to 1814, as consul-general and _charge d'affaires;_ and wrote a book, immediately after, which was translated into English under the t.i.tle, ”A Sketch of the United States at the Commencement of the Present Century.”

In this he thus describes American women:--