Part 20 (2/2)
A few pages back I cited the testimony of Morgan, who lived many years among the Indians and studied them with the intelligence of an expert ethnologist, that ”no attempts by the unmarried to please or gratify each other by acts of personal attention were ever made.” From this we can, once more, make a natural transition from the aboriginal American to the ancient Greek. The Greek men, says the erudite Becker (III., 335), ”were quite strangers to that considerate, self-sacrificing courtesy and those minute attentions to women which we commonly call gallantry,” Greek literature and all that we know of Greek life, bear out this a.s.sertion fully. It is true the Alexandrian poets and their Roman imitators frequently use the language of sentimental gallantry; they declare themselves the slaves of their mistresses, are eager to wear chains, to go through fire, to die for them, promising to take their love to the next world. But all these things are mere ”words, words, words”--adulation the insincerity of which is exposed as soon as we examine the actions and the motives of these poets, of whom more will be said in a later chapter. Their flatteries are addressed invariably to hetairai; they are conceived and written with the selfish desire to tickle the vanity of these wantons in the hope and expectation of receiving favors for which the poets, who were usually poor, were not able to pay in any other way. Thus these poets are below the Arabs, for these sons of the desert at least address their flatteries to the girls whom they are eager to marry, whereas the Greek and Roman poets sought merely to beguile a cla.s.s of women whose charms were for sale to anyone. One of these profligate men might cringe and wail and cajole, to gain the good will of a capricious courtesan, but he never dreamed of bending his knees to win the honest love of the maid he took to be his wife (that he might have male offspring.) Roman love was not romantic, nor was Greek. It was frankly sensual, and the gallantry of the men was of a kind that made them erect golden images in public places to honor Phryne and other prost.i.tutes. In a word, their gallantry was sham gallantry; it was gallantry not in the sense of polite attentions to women, springing from unselfish courtesy and esteem, but in the sinister sense of profligacy and amorous intrigue. There were plenty of gallants, but no real gallantry.
OVID'S SHAM GALLANTRY
While it is undoubtedly true that Ovid exercised a greater influence on mediaeval bards, and through them on modern erotic writers, than any other ancient poet, and while I still maintain that he antic.i.p.ated and depicted some of the imaginative phases of modern love (see my _R.L.P.B_., 90-92), a more careful study of the nature of gallantry has convinced me that I erred in finding the ”morning dawn of romantic love” in the counsels regarding gallant behavior toward women given in the pages of Ovid.[33] He does, indeed, advise a lover never to notice the faults of a woman whose favor he wishes to win, but to compliment her, on the contrary, on her face, her hair, her tapering fingers, her pretty foot; to applaud at the circus whatever she applauds; to adjust her cus.h.i.+on and put the footstool in its place; to keep her cool by fanning her; and at dinner, when she has put her lips to the wine-cup to seize the cup and put his lips to the same place. But when Ovid wrote this, nothing was farther from his mind than what we understand by gallantry--an eagerness to perform acts of disinterested courtesy and deference for the purpose of pleasing a respected or adored woman.
His precepts are, on the contrary, grossly utilitarian, being intended not for a man who wishes to win the heart and hand of an honest girl, but for a libertine who has no money to buy the favors of a wanton, and therefore must rely on flatteries and obsequious fawning.
The poet declares expressly that a rich man will not need his _Ars Amandi_, but that it is written for the poor, who may be able to overcome the greed of the hetairai by tickling their vanity. He therefore teaches his readers how to deceive such a girl with false flattery and sham gallantry. The Roman poet uses the word _domina_, but this _domina_, nevertheless, is his mistress, not in the sense of one who dominates his heart and commands his respect and affection, but of a despised being lower than a concubine, on whom he smiles only till he has beguiled her. It is the story of the cat and the mouse.
MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN GALLANTRY
How different this from the modern chivalry which in face of womanhood makes a gentleman even out of a rough California miner. Joaquin Miller relates how the presence of even an Indian girl--”a bud that in another summer would unfold itself wide to the sun,” affected the men in one of the camps. Though she seldom spoke with the miners, yet the men who lived near her hut dressed more neatly than others, kept their beards in shape, and s.h.i.+rt-bosoms b.u.t.toned up when she pa.s.sed by:
”On her face, through the tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maidenhood, the indescribable sacred something that makes a maiden holy to every man of a manly and chivalrous nature; that makes a man utterly unselfish and perfectly content to love and be silent, to wors.h.i.+p at a distance, as turning to the holy shrines of Mecca, to be still and bide his time; caring not to possess in the low, coa.r.s.e way that characterizes your common love of to-day, but choosing rather to go to battle for her--bearing her in his heart through many lands, through storms and death, with only a word of hope, a smile, a wave of the hand from a wall, a kiss, blown far, as he mounts his steed below and plunges into the night. That is love to live for. I say the knights of Spain, b.l.o.o.d.y as they were, were a n.o.ble and a splendid type of men in their day.”[34]
While the knights of Spain and other parts of mediaeval Europe doubtless professed sentiments of chivalry like those uttered by Joaquin Miller, there was as a rule nearly as much sham in their pretensions as in Ovid's rules for gallant conduct. In the days of militant chivalry, in the midst of deeds of extravagant homage to individual ladies, women in general were as much despised and maltreated as at any other time. ”The chivalrous spirit is above all things a cla.s.s spirit,” as Freeman wrote (V., 482):
”The good knight is bound to endless fantastic courtesies toward men, and still more toward women, of a certain rank; he may treat all below that rank with any degree of scorn and cruelty.”
This is still very far removed from the modern ideal; the knight may be considered to stand half-way between the boor and the gentleman: he is polite, at least, to some women, while the gentleman is polite to all, kind, gentle, sympathetic, without being any the less manly.
Nevertheless there was an advantage in having some conception of gallantry, a determination and vow to protect widows and orphans, to respect and honor ladies. Though it was at first only a fas.h.i.+on, with all the extravagances and follies usual to fas.h.i.+ons, it did much good by creating an ideal for later generations to live up to. From this point of view even the quixotic pranks of the knights who fought duels in support of their challenge that no other lady equalled theirs in beauty, were not without a use. They helped to enforce the fas.h.i.+on of paying deference to women, and made it a point of honor, thus forcing many a boor to a.s.sume at least the outward semblance and conduct of a gentleman. The seed sown in this rough and stony soil has slowly grown, until it has developed into true civilization--a word of which the last and highest import is civility or disinterested devotion to the weak and unprotected, especially to women.
In our days chivalry includes compa.s.sion for animals too. I have never read of a more gallant soldier than that colonel who, as related in _Our Animal Friends_ (May, 1899), while riding in a Western desert at the head of five hundred hors.e.m.e.n, suddenly made a slight detour--which all the men had to follow--because in the direct path a meadow lark was sitting on her nest, her soft brown eyes turned upward, watching, wondering, fearing. It was a n.o.bler deed than many of the most gallant actions in battle, for these are often done from selfish motives--ambition, the hope of promotion--while this deed was the outcome of pure unselfish sympathy.
”Five hundred horses had been turned aside, and five hundred men, as they bent over the defenceless mother and her brood, received a lesson in that broad humanity which is the essence of higher life.”
To this day there are plenty of ruffians--many of them in fine clothes--who are strangers to chivalrous feelings toward defenceless women or animals--men who behave as gentlemen only under compulsion of public opinion. The encouraging thing is that public opinion has taken so strong a stand in favor of women; that it has written _Place aux Dames_ on its s.h.i.+eld in such large letters. While the red American squaw shared with the dogs the bones left by her contemptuous ungallant husband, the white American woman is served first at table and gets the choicest morsels; she receives the window-seat in the cars, the lower berth in the sleeper; she has precedence in society and wherever she is in her proper place; and when a s.h.i.+p is about to sink, the captain, if necessary (which is seldom the case), stands with drawn revolver prepared to shoot any man who would ungallantly get into a boat before all the women are saved.
”AN INSULT TO WOMAN”
This change from the primitive selfishness described in the preceding pages, this voluntary yielding by man of the place of honor and of the right of the strongest, is little less than a miracle; it is the grandest triumph of civilization. Yet there are viragoes who have had the indecency to call gallantry an ”insult to woman.” There is indeed a kind of gallantry--the Ovidian--which is an insult to women; but true masculine gallantry is woman's chief glory and conquest, indicating the transformation of the savage's scorn for woman's physical weakness into courteous deference to her as the n.o.bler, more virtuous and refined s.e.x. There are some selfish, sour, disappointed old maids, who, because of their lack of feminine traits, repel men and receive less than their share of gallant courtesy. But that is their own fault. Ninety-nine per cent. of all women have a happier lot to-day than at any previous time in history, and this change is due to the growth of the disinterested courtesy and sympathy known as gallantry. At the same time the change is strikingly ill.u.s.trated in the status of old maids themselves. No one now despises an unselfish woman simply because she prefers to remain single; but formerly old maids were looked on nearly everywhere with a contempt that reached its climax among the Southern Slavs, who, according to Krauss (Ploss, II., 491), treated them no better than mangy dogs. No one a.s.sociated with them; they were not tolerated in the spinning-room or at the dances; they were ridiculed and derided; were, in short, regarded as a disgrace to the family.
SUMMARY
To sum up: among the lower races man habitually despises and maltreats woman, looking on her as a being made, not for her own sake, but for his comfort and pleasure. Gallantry is unknown. The Australian who fights for his family shows courage, not gallantry, for he is simply protecting his private property, and does not otherwise show the slightest regard for his women. Nor does the early custom of serving for a wife imply gallantry; for here the suitor serves the parents, not the maid; he simply adopts a primitive way of paying for a bride.
Sparing women in battle for the purpose of making concubines or slaves of them is not gallantry. One might as well call a farmer gallant because, when he kills the young roosters for broilers, he saves the young hens. He lets these live because he needs eggs. The motive in both cases is utilitarian and selfish. Ovidian gallantry does not deserve such a name, because it is nothing but false flattery for the selfish purpose of beguiling foolish women. Arabic flatteries are of a superior order because sincere at the time being and addressed to girls whom the flatterer desires to marry. But this gallantry, too, is only skin deep. Its motives are sensual and selfish, for as soon as the girl's physical charm begins to fade she is contemptuously discarded.
Our modern gallantry toward women differs radically from all those att.i.tudes in being unselfish. It is synonymous with true chivalry--disinterested devotion to those who, while physically weaker, are considered superior morally and esthetically. It treats all women with polite deference, and does so not because of a vow or a code, but because of the natural promptings of a kind, sympathetic disposition. It treats a woman not as a toper does a whiskey bottle, applying it to his lips as long as it can intoxicate him with pleasure and then throwing it away, but cherishes her for supersensual attributes that survive the ravages of time. To a lover, in particular, such gallantry is not a duty, but a natural impulse. He lies awake nights devising plans for pleasing the object of his devotion. His gallantry is an impulse to sacrifice himself for the beloved--an instinct so inbred by generations of practice that now even a child may manifest it. I remember how, when I was six or seven years old, I once ran out the school-house during recess to pick up some Missouri hailstones, while others, large as marbles, were falling about me, threatening to smash my skull. I gave the trophies to a dark-eyed girl of my age--not with a view to any possible reward, but simply because I loved her more than all the other girls combined and wanted to please her.
A SURE TEST OF LOVE
Black relates in his _Things Chinese_, that after the wedding ceremony
”the bride tries hard ... to get a piece of her husband's dress under her when she sits down, for if she does, it will insure her having the upper hand of him, while he tries to prevent her and to do the same thing himself.”
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