Women as Snobs.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5124, 6 November 1891, Page 4

Women as Snobs.

(Ife* York Truth.) Here, in this greatest towu of the greatest existing Republic, a plaintive protest is often heard nowadays against the vulgar, plutocratic drift of all organised and definite society. Every protest of this sort has the man as its object. We hear of the millionaire and his raids with respect to an entrance among the Four Hundred. It is deplored that the railway magnate of yesterday has become the drawing-room magnate of to-day. 'This or that successful stockbroker has pushed his way, we hear, into a Patriarchs' Ball. "Who on earth, it is queried, is .Tones from the South ? who on earth is Brown from the West, that they should be seen at the Assemblies last evening, and have their names printed in newspapere as thus shining among the social anointed ? And so the chronicle goes on. It is nearly always the recorded success of the male victor. If a woman succeeds it is always attributed to the dollars of her husband.. This, in nine cases out of ten is quite untrue, and yet in nine cases out of ten the husband would never dream of trying to storm the doors of society l>y means of his doilare if his wife or his daughters did not so desire. For all the snobbery of New York, society women are to blame. It is they, and not the men. who are hungry for that "exclusiveness" which is laughed at by other nations when they witness its ludicrous ferments here. The very fact of the superior grace and felicity which women show at our balls, dinners, and receptions clearly proves how far their zeal and relish for pretence and display exceed that of men. They are mostly robed with great taste ; they have briaht things to say, and they know how to smile aptly, to cirry themselves with a dainty air. even to be uncivil with a sort of dainty suavity. The majority of the men who "go out" kno»v little of these arts. They are rarely high-bred in manner, and are very often fatally young. Bat they are the best that the women can get, and the women cover them, as it were, with a glamor of gentility. Our maidens are perfectly well aware that they must pick and choose (or shall we say be picked and chosen) from just this rather shabby assemblage of males, and they accept the alternative with a charming resignation. Our matrons, young and •old, assist and encourage them in.this diplomatic course. The women thoroughly understand that if they should falter in their devotion to caste it would cite of inanition. So they form a pretty square (and. alas, a most hollow one!) determined 1 that the "position" shall only perish with the hist armed foe. Usually they are triumphant. Many a brother would never dream of making himself droll by efforts to become a *' swell" if his sisters, the prey <>f false and silly creeds, had not influenced him since his school days.. Many a husband would btdp,contented with his fireside comforts if bis wife's longing for admiration did not drag him among trie follies dear tt> frivolous cliques. Of the canvas-back or the terrapin-stew served served long past midnight many a bored elderly father, with pepttcs that are senescent, if not effete. may truly declare, "The woman tempted me and I ate." One is sometimes prone to think that if it "had not been for the women, "royalty would long ago have died away from all civilised lands. Let a prince, a real incontestable prince, come to these shores, and who bends to kiss his boot-toe Hie men i A few, perhaps, and nearly all of them effeminate ones. But the women I oh, with what dainty and exquisite pertinacity they ogle him, grovel before him, besiege him with saccharine flatteries, and too often, perhaps, inform him that he is a creature of far finer fibre than their own husbands. If any of the future kings of England should ever marry an American girl, the match will be brought about l>va woman—and probably one born three «>r four thousand mites west of Buckingham Palace. Our men, as a rule, are rather cold to Europeans of rank. The best New York clubs givo them but three days on their invitation cards, where before it was seven. Lord Adolphus or the Comte Bots-de-Boulogne may be revered by certain coxcombs, when they come to us. but the real men are shy of them. And yet with what idolatry do the women give them greeting I If there is a live nobleman in any <>f_ our drawing rooms, you an always tell him by the rustle of petticoats in his vicinity. There is no woman present, young, miutlle-aeed. or old, whom he cannot captivate with a glance. If he be unmarried hts conquest is all the more facile. The most aged crone with ten times as many wrinkles as her fan, will secretly venerate him in the light of an idea. And that idea means—he has the almost celestial power of conferring a title on the woman he marries. Not long ago a charming woman said in London to the present writer: " I have tried all kind 3 of English society, and I find no department of it so agreeable as Upper Bohemia." Her expression. Upper I?o----hemia, meant that large class of well-bred people who render London the most socially attractive town in the whole world. Women are snobs there as they are snobs everywhere : and yet they have the inherited good sense to discover that their snobbery wQI avail them little since England, as it has before now been called, is a man's country, and its men will not tolerate the absurdities of a Ifith century kind of talon rutttje. The American female snob, who rules the roast here, achieves nothing except dreary proj vincialism. One can count 011 one's fingers the solid and sensible men who go into society, and are " seen out" after they are bachelors of five-and-thirty. In Loudon it would be very hard to count such bachelors of five-and-thirty in a like way, unless one had the mythic fingers of a Briareus. The truth is simply this, when it comes to any comparison between the two countries : England is doing iter very best quietly to disencumber herself from the curse of an aristocracy, and we in America (and especially in New York) are doing our very best to make a plutocracy aristocratic. Women are in both cases at the root of the whole turbid transition. Over seas they have set themselves against a wholesale change, and fail with that graceful kind of surrender which they alone (God bless them!) know how to manifest. Here they are striving tooth and nail to create and perpetuate a most unwelcome change, and with fair apparent chances of success. There is no Upper Bohemia in New York. There is merely a droll struggle of millionaires to outdo one another in a series of "splurges." Foreigners come to us and marvel that they never meet our "distinguished" people anywhere, except in their libraries and studios. It is doubtful if the late General Sherman, one of the most brilliant soldiers who ever lived, was ever even invited to a Patriarchs' ball in his life, and it is equally doubtful whether he would have cone to one if invited : for among his many virtues General Sherman was surely a man who abhorred gilded braggadocia. What the women who are spoiling all society here will not or cannot see, is that no society which ts not " mixed " can fail of being hopelessly narrow and even parochial. It is that very " mixture " which is the vital essence of ail noteworthy assemblages. From the days of Pericles down to the last garden party at Marlborough Houseail society worth the name has revealed just those varied elements which oarhigh-nosed Fifth A venue damsels and matrons affect to detect. But this kind of snobbery among women is trivial enough when compared with the sad matrimonial evils which it produces. How many a young girl is to-day sternly coerced into marrying without a spark of love,

without even a spark of respect for him to whom she gives the mockery of her virgin vows, and solely because an ambitious mother has brought about the miserable match. Countless divorces, with all the bitter agonies they entail, can yearly be traced to the snobbery of women. It is no less amazing than horrible to consider how much the influence of women upon their daughters, sisters, and nieces incessantly has to do with the forlorn and abortive marriages which for ever swell the list of human griefs. From his cradle to his grave man is swayed by feminine rule. To deny that this rule is often salutary would be to delve among the platitudes of mere idle cynicism.