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Wandering Spinsters, Etc.
Harper’s Weekly (May 29, 1909) : 29
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
 

      This is a subject requiring much delicacy. One searches for a phrase equivalent to the hand before the mouth and a dry cough of mingled modesty and nervousness. Needless to say, the phrase cannot be found. Spinsters, as a topic, cause more skittishness on the part of a gallant-minded author than anything else at the moment remembered. To speak of them at all proves one to have an uncontrollable interest in hot pennies.
      Spinsters, a word redolent of the faint odor of dauguerrotypes, had been chosen to describe that large body of — but that comes later — women who fill every stray corner of the world, for the exceptionally good reason that Britishers still use the word spinster, and all spinsters become after a time temperamentally British. We must, it would seem, have spinsters in America. A generation ago they were maiden aunts; in a decade or two they will be leading citizens. In the meantime they surely are spinsters. But it is not in America that they are realized; it is on the Continent. Perhaps a train could not start without a spinster in every other compartment. We would not be surprised to hear that this is so. Else why are the spinsters always there? A certain old woman said, on seeing the ocean, “Thank Heaven, there’s enough of one thing for every one.” But she had not given her attention to spinsters or she would have seen that England’s prodigality in the matter gives every one a chance. Think of leaving a sufficient number in each village in the whole world, and yet being able to lavishly supply the pensions. It’s a stupendous thing to contemplate. The understanding of why more girl babies than boy babies are born comes with a rush. If the numbers were the same and there were no spinsters, who would travel, who would offer one part of the extremely complete contents of their well-worn lunch-baskets? It is these dear, dowdy, unattached ladies who have been everywhere, and who know an amount about travelling that married women need never hope to attain.
      So much is heard about marriage gradually losing ground that we take it to be a tale to frighten babies with, but while travelling the real danger of the situation is shown one. If a great many marriages are not arranged at once all the world will go a-travelling and, with never a home to hold any one, the population of this earth will roll about madly and be pulled as the sea is, until a human tide rises and falls grumbling and wondering how its ancestors managed their charming custom of settling down. It is a dreadful future, a rattling, restless future. One wearies at the thought and wonders what can be done. It is possible that Providence knows what she is about and has arranged her pleasantest life for these her favorites. She (Providence) has bothered them as little as possible, she permits them to visit every spot of her enchanting earth, she gives them a malady or two merely to make them realize that life is not all play, and then she places them prominently in public places that married, worried folk may see how humorous, lean, placid, how cosmopolitan, how above thoughts on hats or husbands are these ladies of a certain age. She has bothered them as little as possible, she permits them to visit every spot of her enchanting earth, she gives them a malady or two merely to make them realize that life is not all play, and then she places them prominently in public places that married, worried folk may see how humorous, lean, placid, how cosmopolitan, how above thoughts on hats or husbands are these ladies of a certain age. That is only one facet of this many-sided subject. One runs around it in a frenzy of uncertainty. Where shall we take our stand? Some sides are not as lovely as the first, yet they have interest and surprise. The thought, for instance, that men, being in disgrace in high quarters, are denied the right to marry these particularly bricky women, and for their past sins are forced to take, well, what they now have. Or, on the other hand, was a damnation put upon these women, a milder form of that the gypsies suffer under, and is it their awful fate to wander, wander with trunks tied to their heels, and the food of the country eternally disagreeing with them? They catch glimpses of people living in a state of beautiful permanency, bothered within an inch of their happy lives by responsibilities, and the spinsters settling down in a near-by hotel, thinking to perhaps imitate her neighbor, finds a time-table thrust into her hands and pitilessly, thinking she likes it, she is forced to spend the winter in some distant country.

      What madness was it that permitted the growth of more than one language, who was tricked into allowing it, and what imp is bad enough to have conceived the idea? It is like taking a nightmare seriously, continuing it in one’s waking hours and trying to be brave and cheery in the face of its horrors. If, after a bothersome day, one dreams that forever after one will have to walk about in the sitting position, does one patiently study how to do it, and plan one’s life accordingly? Not at all. One exclaims, “I’ll be blessed if I will,” and shrieks for help, which comes in the form of a hurried awakening. But without a murmur we put up with countless obstructions in the shape of languages, and permit intercourse with half the world to be denied us. It is not as though Syrian gentlemen were thinking thoughts beyond our comprehension. If this were the case, we, in our humility, would not say a word, but that silent dark-eyed young man across the compartment has nothing more concealed in his brain than a grumble against the cinders and a controlled hope that the train will leave the track if the journey refuses to be broken in any other way. Almost the first day of one’s existence, in fact, when it is discovered that the language one brought into the world is not at all understood by the willing, positively eager, but quite stupid people who hover about and do the wrong things with a knowing air that is wholly exasperating.These are thoughts that you share, vehemently, yet neither of you can as much as say, “S’welp me, Thomas, I’ll never take this train again,” and make your fellow voyager understand. Now you know that’s absurd. It is unreasonable. Any one would be perfectly justified in demanding a change. Two ordinary humans, both thinking, “Food at last, thank Heaven!” and yet quite unable to join in a chant of praise, and obliged, for lack of one universal language, to maintain a churlish silence. Its words fail one, it’s unspeakable. Think of the trains one has almost missed because you did not know that both you and the policeman were saying “two turns to the right.” It is a jest that quickly ceases to be funny, and one’s smile grows tight in the very beginning. Almost the first day of one’s existence, in fact, when it is discovered that the language one brought into the world is not at all understood by the willing, positively eager, but quite stupid people who hover about and do the wrong things with a knowing air that is wholly exasperating. So nervous and mentally dishevelled does every one become that in the undignified flurry one addresses one’s own countrymen in French, saves one’s English for Spaniards, and gesticulates mutely to the members of one’s own family. If this does not prove anything force must be resorted to.
 

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