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Man’s New Humility
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (December 18, 1909) : 27
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
 

      The men have suddenly decided, apropos of the trend of the times, that they will be everlastingly disappointed if the women descend from their great heights and become the equals of the men. This begging us to stay where we were put is heard on all sides, and it renders us amazed, humble, protesting. The men must not think so little of themselves. If they are a worthless lot we refuse to hear of it, and on no account will we believe a word they say regarding themselves. This we have decided, and if underneath our shocked surfaces we are aching to hear the men enlarge upon the subject of their unworthiness, it is a feeling that comes in spite of the repulses of our better judgment, and it need have no hope of receiving any recognition from us.
      The development could hardly have been more unexpected, the dear creatures imploring us not to be as bad as they are, we expostulating and insisting that they be not a jot less than we always supposed they were, which was of a bigness. It is Castilian, the prettiest exhibition of manners that has appeared in a long time, at a period when graceful flourishes have been more or less forgotten, and beautifully enough in a country where elaborate compliments are by the speed of things made to appear hearty hulloes. England, for all the present activity on the part of her women, can present nothing half so picturesque, and we only hope that she is taking account of the amusingly courtly capers we seem to be cutting.
      Perched on our pinnacles, we have had up to now no idea of the altitude we had reached, and we are to be excused any consequent light-headedness. It proves to be not the near-by projects that interest us, but a novel and wholly engrossing diversion. It is nothing more dignified than a perilous leaning over the railings that surround us, a mere hanging by the heels, in our anxiety to see what is happening among those people so immeasurably below us. We indulge, it is regretfully admitted, in all the audacities of a person looking down on a crowd from an inaccessible height. We feel ourselves to be on the rear platform of an express balloon, and we permit ourselves all the liberties of our enviable position. We wave handkerchiefs, sure of not being recognized; we even, with jeering grimaces and egged on by the knowledge that our invitation cannot be accepted, ask those beneath us why they, too, do not come up.
      All this verges on misbehavior, but we are more or less intoxicated by the pathetic humor of our predicament. For what does it mean, but that for centuries men and women, both feeling an imperative need of ideals, accommodatingly consented to be each the ideal of the other, and now there is a deplorable scrambling off pedestals which every one is trying to prevent, a forceful holding on to people about to leap; so that shortly the two sexes will find themselves inconsolable over the fact that they are both standing on the same level, and any differences of height that may exist will be purely individual. For what does it mean, but that for centuries men and women, both feeling an imperative need of ideals, accommodatingly consented to be each the ideal of the other, and now there is a deplorable scrambling off pedestals which every one is trying to prevent, a forceful holding on to people about to leap; so that shortly the two sexes will find themselves inconsolable over the fact that they are both standing on the same level, and any differences of height that may exist will be purely individual. The vexation attached to the situation is perfectly obvious. Everything was arranged so nicely before. “Ah, it is so difficult to believe in indefinite theories; I’d much prefer something concrete, like you. If you’ll let me believe anything I like regarding you I’ll promise not to ask what you are really like,” was expressed on both sides, and a compact made out of it. It was a plan that had its advantages, and the men are naturally excessively put out. They cannot be expected to like this convulsion of nature. Taking a fresh start, with the world as old as it is, is no light matter. Some one may be injured. It is going to interrupt every one’s work and take up every one’s time. The men thought they had the women put out of the way on the very top shelf, to be taken down at will, and suddenly they have popped out of their boxes and are running all over the place. One is unwillingly reminded of the Devil’s remark that he would as soon keep track of a peck of fleas as of one woman. Of course, the men find it annoying. It is, to be frank, an unmitigated nuisance, or so the men seem to feel; but consider the side of the women.
      They were quite as anxious to stay on high as any one could be to have them stop there. For some time they have been keeping up a brave pretence that the pedestals opposite were occupied; even when the things were so openly vacated as to make anything but acknowledgment ridiculous, they still refrained from saying a word. Disillusionment was easy to stand; it is boredom that has proven their undoing. When the heights were found to be so unadulteratedly feminine that death from ennui was imminent, the heights were vacated. And though we know that the men do not want us as their equals, and are rather by way of refusing us a welcome, we beg that they will not be too humble or dwell too blackly on their calibre, for, though they are too stupid to see it, it will reflect so lamentably on us from now on. With abandoned pedestals behind us, it is rather discouraging to have the creatures measure too accurately the distance we have come, or allude to it even softly as a “cropper.” We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused any one, but if the men insist that the ground they are on is no place for us to be, then all we have to say is that we will meet them on a better one. We are rather uncertain as to its exact location, but in all this upheaval one will surely present itself. Anyway, if we have to go back to those pesky pedestals, we declare now that we will be hanged if we will go alone.

      With Parsifal promised for all the more important holidays, it seems the time for one to remind oneself happily of Ravello, that curious crumbling hill town where Wagner wrote the Flower Music. Over-hanging the Mediterranean, it is reached by an almost perpendicular road that winds by terraced vineyards past La Scala, where they say, who say so many detached suggestive things, Judas Iscariot was born, on to an entry into a city buried in winds and mists. The masonry of Ravello is as ragged as though gnawed by rats, the beautiful hard cutting of marble escutcheons standing out whitely over entrances leading nowhere. Princesse Lombard roses cling to the broken tracery of tower windows and between the cobbles in the street stone crop spreads a pink border. Through an aisle of cypresses one passes up a roofless nave, with peach trees and artichokes growing in the dimly outlined side chapels. The terrace of the Palazzo Rufolo is the Flower Music. It was not a question of being inspired to climb heights, but of attentive listening, and then, when one was part of the harmonious whole, of taking down what the place so openly dictated. A garden that was once a great hall with half a cloister and a dank cistern serves an antechamber to the real garden of the Palazzo Rufolo, which is not a garden, but a terrace rippling with flowers, over-looking an opalescent world below; and here, so they again charmingly say, Wagner wrote the Flower Music. After taking in the perfection of his having done so, one changes allegiance from the musician to the garden and knows that he clearly could not have helped himself. The terrace of the Palazzo Rufolo is the Flower Music. It was not a question of being inspired to climb heights, but of attentive listening, and then, when one was part of the harmonious whole, of taking down what the place so openly dictated. With white marguerites billowing from the masonry, a lily-pond reflecting the blue of the sky, roses rampant, Amalfi but behind one, the road to Cava binding the indented shore, a man carolling in a ladder garden beneath one, training his vines against a pink tower with a somnolent bell, distance, space, the mountain tops and the clouds all laved in shimmering color, sea and air warmed until they have become fluctuating mother-of-pearl, with nothing real but you and the allure of the world, the Flower Music and Ravello are synonyms for the same beauty.
 

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