Boston
Little, Brown and Company
1922
NOT so long ago Cooper's Leather Stocking Tales were being widely read in Germany, and quoted as authority on life and manners in America. To Dickens, on his famous tour, we seemed a nation of backwoodsmen and river pilots. So recently as 1896 Kipling found a city as important as Buffalo a source of amusement, looked at from the standpoint of culture.
And in a way, Europe has been right.
It is a very wonderful thing— this democracy of ours in which a Lincoln could make his way from the pioneer log cabin to the White House— in which a John J. Davis may still rise from an iron mill to the cabinet. But we are a nation of pioneers. We have the virtues of the pioneer, but we have, also, his limitations. Some of us have been too busy pushing out the frontiers of an empire to study the niceties of social life. Beauty and fineness in our living we have had to sacrifice to endurance and steadfastness of purpose.
But now we have outgrown our callow youth; wealth we have, and young maturity and leisure. We shall not, God willing, lose our sturdier virtues in our pursuit of culture— rather let us sweep aside the mist of crudeness which hides them from the world. Let us add to our courage and our idealism and our kindliness a love of beauty and harmony in ourselves and our surroundings. Let us learn to express our pioneer virtues through the medium of charming manners. Then, indeed, we shall have made a lasting contribution of culture to the world.
If we are to accomplish this ideal, here in our new world, we must not scorn the small details which after all make up the sum of living. We must look for teachers where they are to be found. Because we do not like the tangles of European secret diplomacy, we must not refuse to learn, from the countries where daily living has been made an art, as much of that art as is compatible with energy and honesty of spirit. The wise man is he who draws knowledge from whatever source he may, and applies it to his need.
There is a humorous little story which H. G. Wells told me once about himself— and yet it is a poignant little story too— because it is the sort of thing we are always doing in life— all of us. There are so many things to learn. Mr. Wells, at one time in his life, struggling against hardship and poverty, conceived the desire to own a set of solid silver fish knives. They became to him, as it were, the symbol of his ambition to acquire the surroundings and the atmosphere of culture— a whole set of solid silver fish knives. By dint of hard-earned literary dollars, there came a day, of course, when he was the proud owner of the fish knives. And then Wells, the toiler, was invited to dine at the table of a duke: a table where every item of service would establish a precedent in England. He was not awed by the gorgeous array of the footmen, nor by the great hall with its priceless contents, nor by the magnificent banquet room in which some of the history of England had been enacted. But the foundations of his poise were shaken when the fish course was set before him. There were no fish knives: fish was eaten at the tables of dukes (even as in America!) with a fork and a piece of bread.
"I went home," said Wells, "and hunted up a friend who was getting married, and who longed for silver fish knives. He had not dined with a duke— and I made him happy."
This seems a trivial thing, and yet it is the trivial things that make or mar the happiness of daily living. It is only when the details of social intercourse have been mastered that we can forget them, and cultivate in peace of mind the bigger things that minister to mental and spiritual growth.
THE story of The Log-Cabin Lady is one of the annals of America. It is a moving record of the conquest of self-consciousness and fear through mastery of manners and customs. It has been written by one who has not sacrificed the strength and honesty of her pioneer girlhood, but who added to these qualities that graciousness and charm which have given her distinction on two continents.
I have been asked to tell how the story of The Log-Cabin Lady came to be written. At a luncheon given at the Colony Club in 1920, I was invited to talk about Madame Curie. There were, at that table, a group of important women.
When I had finished the story of the great scientist, whose service to humanity was halted by lack of laboratory equipment, and of the very radium which she had herself discovered, one guest asked: "Why do you spend your life with a woman's magazine when you could do big work like serving Madame Curie?" "I believe," I replied, "that a woman's magazine is one of the biggest services that can be rendered in this country."
My challenge was met with scorn by one of the women upon whose education and accomplishments a fortune had been spent. "It is stupid," she said, "to print articles about bringing up children and furnishing houses, setting tables and feeding families— or whether it is good form for the host to suggest another service at the dinner table."
"There are twenty million homes in America," I answered. "Only eight per cent of these have servants in them. In the other ninety-two per cent the women do their own housework; bring up their own children, and take an active part in the life and growth of America. They are the people who help make this country the great nation that it is."
After luncheon one of the guests, a woman of great social prominence, distinguished both in her own country and abroad, asked me to drive downtown with her. When we entered her car she said, with much feeling— "You must go on with the thing you are doing."
Believing she referred to the Curie campaign, I replied that I had committed myself to the work and could not abandon it.
"I was not referring to the Curie campaign," she replied, "but to the Delineator. You are right; it is of vital importance to serve the great masses of people. I know. It will probably surprise you to learn that when I was fourteen years old I had never seen a table napkin. My family were pioneers in the Northwest and were struggling for mere existence. There was no time for the niceties of life. And yet, people like my family and myself are worth serving and saving. I have known what it means to lie awake all night, suffering with shame because of some stupid social blunder which had made me appear ridiculous before my husband's family or his friends."
This was a most amazing statement from a woman known socially on two continents, and famed for her savoir faire.
There were tears in her eyes when she made her confession. She was stirred by a very real and deep emotion. It had been years, she said, since the old recollections had come back to her, but she had been moved by my plea for service to home women and to the great mass of ordinary American people.
She told me that while living abroad she had often met American girls— intelligent women, well bred, the finest stuff in the world— who suffered under a disadvantage, because they lacked a little training in the social amenities.
"It has been a satisfaction and a compensation to me," she added, "to be able sometimes to serve these fellow country-women of mine."
And right there was born the idea which culminated in the writing of this little book. I suggested that a million women could be helped by the publishing of her own story.
The thought was abhorrent to her. Her experience was something she had never voiced in words. It would be too intimate a discussion of herself and her family. She was sure her relatives would bitterly oppose such a confession.
It took nearly a year to persuade this remarkable woman to put down on paper, from her recollections and from her old letters home, this simple story of a fine American life. She consented finally to write fragments of her life, anonymously. We were pledged not to reveal her identity. A few changes in geography and time were made in her manuscript, but otherwise the story is true to life, laden with adventure, spirit and the American philosophy. She has refused to accept any remuneration for the magazine publication or for royalties on the book rights. The money accruing from her labor is being set aside in The Central Union Trust Company of New York City as a trust fund to be used in some charitable work. She has given her book to the public solely because she believes that it contains a helpful message for other women, It is the gracious gift of a woman who has a deep and passionate love for her country, and a tender responsiveness to the needs of her own sex.
MARIE M. MELONEY.
September 1, 1922.