Who Killed the Chaperon?

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

A WRITER in the April Atlantic, in lamenting the passing of the chaperon, proves that he has ‘kept up’ with the modern generation. I, as one of that much discussed generation, am grateful to him for putting aside the question ol morals. Because not everyone is able to draw the line between morals and manners. We — I am speaking for myself and for the ‘young people5 I know, and we flatter ourselves we are fairly typical — we resent being told that our morals have gone, because we consider it a proof of morals that a chaperon is unnecessary.

But we have to admit that we do lack manners. It’s not that we mean to be rude — it’s just that, among ourselves, the war and the business of modern life have made us go straight, to the point without ‘little touches and attentions.’ We understand each other perfectly, and we are not a bit sensitive. At a dance, if a girl is not popular, no one considers it his duty to make her so; she does not resent being ignored; she takes care of herself, or stops going to dances. So, when we are with older people, we simply forget that they are not used to our lunch-counter ways. In fact, we are apt to forget, that older people exist.

I have visited families which are ‘old-fashioned,’ and the quiet consideration and — yes — refinement of the girls and boys of my own age are equal to any other generation’s manners. There are loads of ‘young people’ who combine frankness among themselves with a consideration and a real liking for older people. They are the ones who pay attention to the lonely chaperons. And they are quite as popular as the other kind. We are n’t a generation that does n’t appreciate manners. We just forget them. And why?

Well, I think manners are usually supposed to be the result of the way one is ‘brought up.’ It certainly seems a little unfair to throw the responsibility upon the older generation for a lack which they deplore in us. But how have we been brought up?

We are certainly instructed in tabicmanners and in the rules of ‘please’ and thank you.’ Then, at the age of sixteen or thereabouts, when the time would be ripe for us to learn the ideals and standards and refinements of the older generation, we are sent to boarding-school. The principle which our ciders apply is ‘Youth to youth.’ They are more indulgent, more open-minded, and far more sensible than the strict parents of years ago. They are convinced that a parent’s duty is not to ‘influence’ his child, but to expose the child to good influences and let him develop along his own lines. So we go to boarding-school. What happens there?

Imagine a lot of healthy girls, from the ages of fifteen to nineteen, grouped together in an informal pleasant atmosphere, with a few elderly people to keep guard over them. They are full of life. They enjoy it. They have their own student government, their own dramatics. They live in a world made for youth, where only their ‘own affairs ’ interest them. What wonder they forget that there are sensitive people, elderly people, people who have suffered? Manners are nothing more or less than consideration for others; refinement consists of a sensitiveness for others. We are young barbarians when we are at boarding-school, and we learn to acquire poise among a society whose motto is ‘every man for himself.’ At the most, we can only pity those who have not lived through our own struggles and shared our own fun.

I do not blame boarding-schools for our lack of manners, entirely. Boarding-schools are convenient, and certainly prepare their students for the bangs and whacks of life. And there are plenty of young people who have not been to boarding-school who still lack that refinement which I have noticed in some of my friends.

But I know that those of my friends who are considerate, sympathetic, refined, and a little less crude than the rest of us, are those who, through accident rather than intention, have come into contact with their parents and the ‘elderly people.’ Perhaps they have not gone to boarding-school, camp, college, or ‘come out’ in a society of young people. Perhaps sickness or poverty or isolation has kept them from turning their homes into hotels in the summer and their parents into kind but intangible guardian angels. Perhaps, after college, they have not ‘worked in New York,’ or married, but have found that a need for them existed at home.

With the rest of us it is different. We are busy with ourselves. We have been ready to take responsibility and interest, but the ‘elderly people’ have not shared it with us, because they respect our youth; so we have found it elsewhere. In ‘the good old days’ the line between young and old was not so sharp. The young worked with, and learned from, the old.

‘When I was your age,’ said Aunt Elsie to her flapper daughter, ‘I was cooking for our whole family.’ Yet Aunt Elsie would treat it as a joke if Cousin Mary were to leave her physical-training school to stay at home and cook. And if Cousin Mary were asked to spend a vacation on a house party, Aunt Elsie would hate to suggest her staying at home. But it is possible that Mary would enjoy the thought that she was needed, and it might give her a chance to learn that Aunt Elsie is not so far behind the times as she may seem. Is Mary to pick up manners from the rest of us?

We don’t mind things as they are. We enjoy ourselves; we don’t miss refinement. At fifteen we would have liked to enter into our families responsibilities, and to meet our mothers friends; now we don’t miss them, and we get along very well. But, of course, since we have lived among ourselves so long, there is no point to a chaperon. A chaperon is the last link between us and the elder generation. We hardly understand her; we pity her, she seems so bored and bewildered among us. She is passing, and we young people are letting her pass. We have forgotten her, as we have forgotten manners.

Who is responsible? I think I have shown the system in modern life which keeps us from appreciating the chaperon — the chaperon, a symbol of the connection between young and old. And there are advantages to boardingschools and camps and debutantes and colleges and house parties and all the other things that keep us away from the older generation. Yet I think it is these things which have made us forget the older generation. If the older generation regrets being forgotten, perhaps they should remember us before we are snatched away. A little responsibility thrust upon us; a little contact with people wiser than we, but still sympathetic; a little need for us to consider the trouble which the chaperon undertakes for our benefit, is all we need. And who could give that to us except our own fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles, who think we are still the children they sent away?

A YOUNG BARBARIAN.¹