The Passing of the Chaperon

NANCY and I are middle-aged, and I am a member of a college faculty. We have lived most of our lives in a college town; we have seen a good deal of social life as it flourishes academically in the Mississippi Valley. For twenty years or more, we averaged about two social gatherings a week during the season; and because we liked going out and knew a good many young people and could dance pretty well, we have played the rôle of chaperon not infrequently.

We have ‘kept up’ pretty well, too, with the rapidly changing fashions in dancing and dress; not ‘clear up,’ perhaps, but we have never been very far behind the procession, and we have never been looked upon as back numbers, wedded to the waltz and the schottische and cotton stockings. We have never been extreme, but we have been through the two-step and the tango and the fox-trot, from the Virginia reel to the toddle.

In the early days, — that is, twenty years ago, — when an organization or a college class or a group of young people asked us to chaperon a dance, and we consented, the young people seemed to consider our acceptance a real event. They even boasted about it. We were their guests; our presence gave them pleasure; and nothing seemed to them too good for us. We were spoken to by everyone, we were hovered over and asked to dance and handed punch and treated as if we were royalty or were being rushed by a sorority.

The cab that was to take us to the party was always waiting at the door at the exact time agreed upon, and someone prominent in the organization or the class called for us and accompanied us to the dance-hall. When the time came for refreshments, everyone stood back until we were ushered into the dining-room, and no one was seated until we had found our places. We were among the first to arrive at the party and the last to leave it. It was a pleasant state of affairs, which brought us a good many friends and a good deal of pleasure. The young people seemed to like it, and it broadened our interests and widened our acquaintance, while it gave them social poise.

‘What thoughtful, carefully trained, polite young people they are!’ I often remarked to Nancy, when, after returning from an evening’s pleasure, we talked over the details.

Then we were away for a year or two, studying and traveling; and on our return, when we again took up our social activities, things were not quite the same. The particular form of dancing fashionable at the moment was not quite what we had been familiar with; but we took a few lessons, watched our step, and were soon in line again.

There was no denying the fact, however, that the attention we received was not what it had been; the men were a little cruder, the women less thoughtful and not quite so punctilious. We were still treated with a reasonable courtesy, and our dance programmes were always filled; but we noticed that it was frequently the Freshmen at a fraternity dance whose names we found on our programmes, and we suspected that it was not entirely from choice, but rather by direction, that they had singled us out. Not infrequently it was suggested that perhaps we were tired, and might like to leave before the last dance; and I was not always certain that this meant consideration for our comfort. Occasionally, though not often, our presence was entirely ignored by someone present, even when he knew us perfectly well.

‘I don’t believe you spoke to me the other night at the Beta dance,’ I would say to Simons when he dropped in at my office a few days later. ‘ I felt rather slighted in not getting to meet that young lady you were with.’

‘Did n’t I speak to you?’ he would say, half-apologetically. ‘Well, you see I got in rather late, and I just did n’t get around to it.’ But he did n’t seem to worry a great deal over his dereliction or to correct his fault the next time we met him.

Once, a little later, I recall, when we were at a Chi Sigma dance, everybody forgot all about us at supper-time. When refreshments were announced, all the young people made a scramble for the dining-room and we were left, with some of the other guests, sitting in cold isolation in the hall. Fortunately, somebody ‘came to’ before the first course was wholly dispatched and rushed back, crimson with shame and garrulous with apologies, to look up the lost chaperons.

On rare occasions some organization which had invited us forgot to come for us, and we sat at home during the evening, ‘all dressed up and nowhere to go’; and I remember one dance, at which we were seated in a cold dark corner under a sloping roof and left to our own devices during the entire evening. But these experiences were rather rare and did not impress us then as indicative of changing customs. We laughed about them and let it go at that.

‘I believe chaperons are going out of style,’ I said to Nancy one night, just before the war, after we had returned from a formal dance. ‘No one seemed just crazy to see us this evening, and I felt more like an interloper or a man breaking into a dinner-party uninvited, than a guest.’

‘Oh, you’re tired,’ Nancy replied. ‘You ’ll feel better in the morning.’

But I did n’t feel any better when I thought it over next day, and I had had a good sleep, too. I felt irritated. It was a big dance, it was true, and it took considerable time for the young people to pass down the reception line; but that was their social obligation, I argued. They all owed us the scant courtesy of speaking to us, at least. I have a good memory for faces, I am told, and I knew that at least a third of them had shied at the line. Was the chaperon passing?

I recalled then that the cab had been late, and that it was a drafty, ill-smelling open car, with side-curtains flopping loosely in the December breeze. They had given us the worst. No one but the taxi-driver had come for us, so that we had been forced to find our way alone to the dressingrooms, and from there to the room where the dance was being held. There were a lot of people whom I knew well who had not come near our corner. Hawley had fox-trotted by, with a town girl dressed in rather bizarre fashion. A dozen couples had skidded over in our direction as they danced past the chaperons’ booth, as if they were going to stop long enough to speak; but they thought better of it and hurried on. Powers, a fraternity brother of mine, smiled at me and loosed his hold on the girl whose face was pressed against his cheek, long enough to wave me a friendly hand in passing; but that was as far as he went.

Nancy and I had danced together a few times, had found our way with the other chaperons, unattended, to the refreshment. room, and when it was time to go home had looked out for our own cab.

As I thought it over, it seemed to me that we were being sent to the sidelines. I thought about, it a good deal at intervals, as the months passed; and while I was thinking, the war came on and changed everything.

There were not many formal or conventional social functions during the war, and there was not much demand for the chaperon. Everybody seemed perfectly capable of looking after himself, and many of the customs and conventions which we had always considered rock-bound and unchangeable were quickly forgotten. For some of these oblivion is just, as well.

I had not thought much about the status of the chaperon until, a few weeks ago, Nancy and I were invited to the annual Sophomore cotillion of the college. It is one of the big functions of the college year, and it seemed rather pleasant to get back into things again. So Nancy got a new gown, and we accepted.

The invitations had been printed — and rather badly printed, too; and down in one corner of the card was the request, ‘Please reply.’ It irritated me.

We had heard that social conditions were not quite what they once were — that customs were changing, that new styles, such as thin eyebrows and bobbed hair and highly colored complexions were being worn now; and the rumor was correct. We had heard, too, from some of our friends who had suffered, that the chaperon was not the respected citizen she had once been; that she often sat alone in a remote corner of the room, neglected and forgotten.

We had arrived late, partly through the fault of the taxi-driver and partly through our own kindness of heart. The cab had come forty minutes after the time that it should have come; and then to oblige the driver we had made a detour of several miles, consuming another half-hour of time, to pick up another belated couple, middle-aged like ourselves, who had been invited to look after the social amenities of the dance.

Things were in full swing when we arrived; the dance had been going on for an hour. Our absence had not been noticed and our coming attracted no attention. During the evening a halfdozen couples, perhaps, of the three hundred present, dropped into our booth and shook hands with us perfunctorily. The chairman of the committee in charge of the dance paid his respects to us for five minutes or less, and disappeared for the rest of the evening. If other members of the committee were in attendance, they did not reveal their identity.

I was not especially annoyed; I was not even surprised, except at not being surprised. I realized fully that the chaperon had passed; she was a backnumber, she had gone out with the war, she now belonged to another generation, like the horse and the tablecloth and the pickle-caster. I accepted the situation and early in the evening we stole quietly home.

I was going to Peoria on the train the next day, when a pretty young girl sitting in front of me turned round and recognized me. She was a daughter of a classmate of mine — and a very nice girl. She is going to college herself somewhere in New England, I believe.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked, ‘and where arc you going?’

‘Oh, I was at the Sophomore cotillion last night,’ she said. ‘It was a beautiful dance. One of the fellows from home asked me down.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I was there, too. In fact, Nancy and I were chaperons.’

‘Oh! she said; but the tone had nothing in it of apology, nothing of regret for any dereliction on her part. It did n’t occur to her that she had made a social error in not speaking to us. Her tone was rather one of amazement, of sympathy, of pity that we were so stupid and out of style as to accept the rôle of chaperon. It was as if she had asked, ‘How did you happen to do it? I could see that my confession had made her think less of me.

I am not one who thinks that the passing of the chaperon marks a distinct moral decline. Our young people have less reserve than they once had; they conceal less that is physical and mental than they once did. They lay quite bare, in fact, without batting an eyelash, what they are and think and feel; but I cannot see that this has affected their morality in any way.

Nor do I fear for the safety of the unchaperoned young woman in society. It is not a question of protecting her from evil or from assault. The modern young woman knows the ways of the world. She is self-reliant and resourceful, she still has ideals and principles of her own, in spite of her scanty clothing, her bobbed hair, and her rouged cheeks; and she is quite able to look after her social affairs. If she were not, I still have faith enough in men to think that the days of gallantry are not yet quite passed, and that, if the girl were not wise enough to take care of herself, the average young man would still do it for her.

It is not because the girl is unsafe, or because she is less modest, that I am sorry to see the passing of the chaperon; it is because she is a little less refined. Going to a dance now is like eating at a lunch counter, where the food may be as varied and as savory as at a well-ordered and carefully served dinner, but where there are lacking the little refinements of napery and cutlery, and the little touches and attentions which mean quite as much as the food itself.

The unchaperoned girl gives an impression of strength and independence, it is true, but she seems cruder, less polished. Her laugh is louder than it used to be. She lacks a certain graciousness, an appealing finesse and poise which characterized her older sister. She is not quite a lady, as we were once wont to define the term. She has gained something, perhaps, but at the same time she has lost something. And I am sorry.