Occupations for the Rich : Part 4

Girls and Women
by Harriet E. Paine

(Page 9 of 19)

Many young women who would hesitate to take the whole responsibility of one child may find useful and pleasant employment for themselves by teaching a class of children of the poor. They can teach them to sew or to read, they can provide simple pleasures for them, and supplement the work of the public schools in a hundred ways necessary in cases where there is no adequate home life.

There is another great work to be done by rich women - that of giving a higher tone to society. I knew a delicate woman who went to live in a large and rapidly growing Western city. On account of her wealth and connections all the leading people in the place called upon her at once, and her house became a center of society. She used her good taste in making her home really beautiful - not showy or fashionable. Then she opened it freely to congenial friends. Some of her visitors were society people, but many were not. There were thoughtful teachers, clever young collegians who had gone West to seek a fortune and had found drudgery awaiting them instead, half a dozen unknown musicians and artists, and a few educated Germans and Swedes whom fate had stranded far from home.

These people were welcome every day and at all hours. For this lady, who had intellectual tastes, had been forced by the weakness of her eyes to get her education from people rather than from books. So a perpetual salon was a pleasant thing to her. All who were invited to her home had some moral or intellectual gift which made their company desirable, not only to the hostess but to the other guests. The rich and poor met together there, but not the cultivated rich and the uncultivated poor, or the uncultivated rich and the cultivated poor.

Consequently, the conversation was real. A young professor would come in with the "Atlantic Monthly," begging leave to read an article to her, and the reading would begin without any superfluous remarks about the weather. Others would come in, but the reading would go on and the discussion it suggested. An artist would bring a new picture, and the conversation would turn in a new direction. A musician would sing an air, and a quiet German would be led to spoke of his life in the Fatherland.

But with all her leisure, my friend found it a burden to keep up the round of merely formal calls required of her. She did not wish to hurt the feelings of any one, so she persevered for a while. She set apart one day in a fortnight for a reception day. (You may be sure none of her bright and interesting friends came then.) And once a fortnight she took her card-case in hand and drove rapidly about the city, returning calls. But she seldom called formally on anybody who had once been asked to her salon. These were the people, she said to herself, who could understand.

Her delicate health excused her from giving parties. Coffee and cakes were always at hand for refreshment, and any caller was welcomed to lunch or dinner if he happened to be at the house when the bell rang. The dinners were always good, but no change was made for a visitor. She always refused to go to parties or receptions, which she thought insufferable except when there was dancing. But she could not escape the burden of party calls. The difficulty in carrying out her plans was that there was no definite line between her sheep and goats. There were some with whom she had to be both formal and informal, and she knew it could not be right for her to drop totally everybody whom she did not fancy.

Many other women had felt the same burdens too heavy to be borne, but had seen no escape. She suggested a club-house for ladies in some central part of the city which they all often passed in shopping. It should be a comfortable resting-place, with restaurant, reading-room, etc. It should always be open, but one afternoon in the week should be considered a special reception day. That would give ladies a chance to see each other with very little trouble. When a stranger came into town, if it was thought she would be a congenial acquaintance, two members were to call upon her and invite her to the club, and see that she was properly introduced.

Then she was considered one of their number, and was free from the bondage of calls ever after. There were many other regulations emancipating the members from the tyranny of unsocial society. Of course many ladies objected to all this. Their idea of society was the conventional one, and they continued to live on that basis. Most of them were welcomed at the club, but its members did not call upon them, or go to their parties, or give them parties in return, always excepting parties with an object like music and dancing. Parties had given place to informal gatherings like my friend's salon, where something real could be said.

Now in an old city such a change could not be brought about so quickly. It could only be made by a large number of leaders of society joining to make it. No stranger nor young person could do much except to make her own part of any conversation as worthy as possible. But the mothers can lead the daughters, and the daughters, starting from a higher point, can go on in the same way.

These are some of the many unproductive occupations in which rich women may use their time well, without finding it necessary to compete with their poorer sisters in earning money.

Copyright, 1890 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., All rights reserved.