The Women of the French Salons by Amelia Ruth Gere Mason
page 151 of 311 (48%)
page 151 of 311 (48%)
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life, habits of daily intercourse, and manners formed upon an
ideal of generosity, amiability, loyalty, and urbanity; consider, also, the fact that the journals and the magazines, which are so conspicuous a feature of modern life, were practically unknown; that the salons were centers in which the affairs of the world were discussed, its passing events noted--and the power of these salons may be to some extent comprehended. The reason, too, why it is idle to dream of reproducing them today on American soil will be readily seen. The forms may be repeated, but the vitalizing spirit is not there. We have no leisure class that finds its occupation in this pleasant daily converse. Our feverish civilization has not time for it. We sit in our libraries and scan the news of the world, instead of gathering it in the drawing rooms of our friends. Perhaps we read and think more, but we talk less, and conversation is a relaxation rather than an art. The ability to think aloud, easily and gracefully, is not eminently an Anglo-Saxon gift, though there are many individual exceptions to this limitation. Our social life is largely a form, a whirl, a commercial relation, a display, a duty, the result of external accretion, not of internal growth. It is not in any sense a unity, nor an expression of our best intellectual life; this seeks other channels. Men are immersed in business and politics, and prefer the easy, less exacting atmosphere of the club. The woman who aspires to hold a salon is confronted at the outset by this formidable rival. She is a queen without a kingdom, presiding over a fluctuating circle without homogeneity, and composed largely of women--a fact in itself fatal to the true esprit de societe. It is true we have our literary coteries, but they are |
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