Nature's Ladies

A YOUNG woman remonstrated with her sister upon her choice of a costume in which she was to meet a stranger of importance. “Why do you wear a shirt-waist ?” she asked. “Don’t you want to look like a lady ? ”

“I’m a self-made lady,” the sister replied. “I’m one of Nature’s ladies.”

Now the question as to whether Nature can turn out ladies as she is said to furnish gentlemen is one open to discussion. One will say that she does; that a feminine creature of good moral character, of gentle manners, of careful grammar, and irreproachable turnovers cannot help being a lady. This appears a broad-minded and reasonable statement; but there will be found dissenters.

“My daughter-in-law is a horror,” complained a matron recently, “but I ought to be thankful I suppose, — she is a perfect lady.” A perfect lady who is a horror seems a little of a paradox at first glance. But we have all met people — mostly young men perhaps — who assert that perfect ladies often fill them with a sensation which, from their description of it, may well be classified as a sort of horror. This would hardly be the effect of the simple feminine creature of our definition; and we must conclude that the horror produced in the young man’s breast is akin to that feeling we all have when we see certain circus or vaudeville performers: they are like ourselves in the number and arrangement of their limbs and features; but they are doing things so alien to our familiar human tastes and powers, twisting themselves into such abnormal and difficult positions, that their resemblance to ourselves only makes them the more repellant and embarrassing.

This is perhaps an extreme illustration, and seems to throw a reproach on the other difficult (and admirable) art of being a lady, which should be far from the thoughtful mind. But it brings us to the point of view opposite to that of the simple definition with which we started.

This other view is that a lady is a product of education, — a creation of art, as a violinist is, as a fencer is; and that she could n’t by any possibility be the result of unschooled genius, even assisted by a gentle voice and perfect turnovers. The practicing of a code till it becomes ingrained is expensive and laborious, like the high French polish of a piece of mahogany; but it gains that sense of security and calm which only ritual can give its devotees, and which a lady must have before she can gently overwhelm and crush her neighbor, as we know ladies sometimes have to do.

I know what’s manners in Dubuque,” coldly said a little lady of mine, when an elderly person from Brooklyn, not her mother, presumed to correct her. Until you lose faith in the manners of Dubuque, the Faubourg St. Germain can have no terrors for you.

There are then so many varieties of ladies, and ladies are, of their nature, so indefinite, elusive, and chameleonic, that we may study them more coolly perhaps by examining preserved specimens — the dear dead women of fiction.

Emma Woodhouse is very elegantly and delightfully a lady for art’s sake. Her character may lack largeness, her habit of mind be intriguing, but her manner is never at fault. She is never too surprised, or too hurried, or too agitated, to keep her poise, to think “without a thud,” and to express herself with decision and simple elegance. When Mrs. Elton invades the quiet of Highbury with her horses and carriages and family very much on her mind, Emma entertains her with dignity and poise, but recognizes her as “an insufferable woman” with the swiftness and sureness of an expert. She navigates the troubled waters of unsuccessful matchmaking, a false love affair, and (a much more trying test for a lady’s manners) a real affaire de cœur, and arrives at the end of the volume serenely successful, and in love and charity with rival, rejected suitor, false lover, and betrothed. “Good God, this has been a most unfortunate mistake ” is all the sharpest anguish can wring from her, and this is hardly a stronger expression than “Great Scott” would be on the lips of a young lady of to-day, for she employs it on several occasions, without great provocation.

Emma’s technique is so finished, her polish so high, that she would be a safe and delightful addition to any small dinner party. She would feel, in countless vibrations, a kinship with the grand vague ladies of George Meredith, even the swimming and hill-climbing ones who must have been trying to live with. No inmate of the House of Mirth could exchange calls with her; but oh! the doors of King’s Port would open to her at once. Mrs. St. Michael and Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael would be conquered at their first visit of curiosity. She would detect Hortense Rieppe as an insufferable woman indeed, and she would contrive to let her see it. She might have a little difficulty in pardoning the Ladies’ Exchange, for her code would not admit of young ladies selling things across a counter; but she would ultimately swallow Lady Baltimore with grace, and admit that Eliza La Heu was a fully qualified member of the mystic order, and moreover a match for herself with the foils. There is a sweetness and a depth in John Mayrant’s character that she would admire, while appreciating clearly that none of it was in her own, and she would entertain them agreeably at a house party at Hartfield (should they visit England), to which the sprightly Frank Churchill would be invited; and who would blame her if Mrs. Elton was not, or if “Lady Baltimore” was never mentioned at the Knightleys’ dinners ?