OPEN LETTERSOPEN LETTERS
OPEN LETTERS
To One who Thinks Women “Movement-Mad”
Dear Helen:
A cowardly fear of being funny silenced me last night, but, now, refreshed by sleep and by your absence, knowing that you are well on your road, I mount my slow nag, and, armored to be dull, come pricking after. I know that words are creatures of chance, subject to jeopardy from all the winds that blow, and that in writing I am only increasing the hazard of misunderstanding, “harnessing for a yet more perilous adventure,” but despite this I follow soberly behind, your own words upon my lips.
You said, in part, you may recall, that our little group, and especially the women among us, are movement-mad; that peaceful, esthetic conversation has been done to death by furious talk on wrongs and reforms; that the amenities of civilized society, so you said, have fallen beneath the ax of chop-logic; that even at dinners we women grow red and shrill over astonishing topics—eugenics, political nominees, prison menus, and woman suffrage; that art, “the world’s sweet inn,” has become a house of brawlers; that to speak of dancing is to bring up in a dance-hall, and to discuss a play is to become entangled in a wreckage of commandments. All of Pan’s gay world is silenced, you declared, shut off with a cordon of linked question marks; that the very laughter in our throats has become brazen and controversial—the derisive laughter of the Hebrew Scriptures; that, oh, dreadful climax, you will open your purse to no more reforms, unless it be to a Society for the Reformation of Manners.
When you quote Falstaff’s plaint that “It were better to be eaten to death with rust than scoured to nothing with perpetual motion,” I understand what you mean—that is my misfortune in debate. But are you really enamoured of rust? You, who would keep all talk in low relief, sweet, level, and cool as the heads on a Greek frieze, are you not turning from a world that is alive and alight to wander in a land of shades?
Esthetic ideals were shaped for us by the centuries that lie between us and Myron. What wonder that talk moves smoothly upon such age-worn ways! Slave-owning Greeks and subtle Italians wrought out, in sweat and toil, arts that were old when a social conscience was an amœba. In sweat and strife men and women are blazing new trails to-day; and the overcoming of inertia still generates heat. But, once more, something comes forth, shining, from the lustration of fire.
Smile down upon us from your tranquil bleacher! It is quite true that we are ravished by the dazzling, many-sided iridescence of what we take for a new Truth, hailing its radiance with our uncouth cries. We buffet hotly the ideas that each is driving toward his goal, but when, out of the rush and turmoil, some one scores a touchdown the whole field cheers.
When a new country is discovered—though it be a desert—the explorer plants his flag with a shout; and there is as high authority, in the authentic tribune of men’s hearts, for our passion as for your calm. The “lark of aspiration” must sing as it mounts.
A modern master of friendship has said that, after all, there are only two real subjects of conversation—love and conduct. As love is best in tête-à-tête, that leaves us morals. Thinking of it in cold blood, it seems as though we might be calmer talkers, but when have morals not been associated with heat, here or hereafter? The part of your charge that I find strangest is that this noisy super-heatedness, that you impute to us, is a new evil. Where is your memory, Girl? Mine takes up the thread about the year that you were born, when people were still talking back over the questionable morality of one set of men freeing the slaves of another set, and of the political right of the Southern States to secede. I see a room, a hollow square of books, the air blue with smoke, torn by lightning-jags of talk. Voices—raised voices, dear Lady—talked of Predestination and Free Will. They talked as we poor weaklings of this Laodicean age may never hope to talk, hurling Eternal Damnation at each others’ heads and imputations of blasphemy, in horrid whispers. Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the doctrine of one Thomas Paine were discussed; Darwin, in relation to the osteoplastic romance of Eve. Apostolic Succession, Infant Damnation, Predestination—these are some of the live-wires of another day. I never hear the echo of raised voices, down the long vista of my past, without realizing that real talk is going forward—morals, preferably with a dash of love.
To-day, we, true children of those senior wranglers, have inescapably, in our blood, the passion for moral research; “the invisible masters that reign in our innermost cells” have predetermined our choice. The names of all the protagonists have changed; the battleground has shifted from skyey metaphysics to the slum street; from Infant Damnation to Certified Milk for Babies; but we, too, are doing battle for our realities. In the hospitals and the settlement houses are the children and grandchildren of our old circuit-riders and militant bishops. The children of those who warred for righteousness still seek and serve.
Your quarrel is not with our little group of noisy talkers; your quarrel, Madam, is with the leaven of the world, that froths and foams and stirs because it is working. In the stormy schools of religious controversy—in that old, warm talk on morals, when the souls of men were the stake—we learned that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that idea, once generated, will be conserved, generation by generation, and the force of it will not be lost. As they strove to insure to men eternal life, their children strive that men may inherit the earth.
Our contention, yours and mine, is the old Hellenic-Hebraic clash of ideals.
“Beauty and Light!” you cry.
“Justice and Right!” comes the response.
We are both right, but my right is deeper and more elemental than yours. Yours exists for a few, happy, chosen spirits; mine for the whole, wide travailing world. Yoursrests upon mine; mine does not rest upon yours.
“Rest!” you jeer. “You people never rest, and you let no one else rest.”
“‘Restfulness,’” I cry, with inky vivacity, “Stevenson told us long ago that ‘restfulness is a quality for cattle.’”
“Ah, Chantecler! Chantecler!” I hear you murmur, “when will you learn the secret of the dawn.”
Well, you see I have given you the last word, at least.
As ever yours,Louise Herrick Wall.