5. American Duchesses

Every American woman is by birth a duchess.

There, you see, I have taken you in. When you saw the heading, "American
Duchesses," you thought I was going to purvey some piquant scandal about
high-placed ladies; and you straightway began to read my essay. That
shows I rightly interpreted your human nature. There's a deal of human
nature flying about unrecognised. Yet when I said duchesses, I actually
meant it. For the American woman is the only real aristocrat now living
in America.

These remarks are forced upon me by a brilliant afternoon on the
Promenade des Anglais. All Nice is there, in its cosmopolitan butterfly
variety, flaunting itself in the sun in the very ugly dresses now in
fashion. I don't know why, but the mode of the moment consists in making
everything as exaggerated as possible, and sedulously hiding the natural
contours of the human figure. But let that pass; the day is too fine for
a man to be critical. The band is playing Mascagni's last in the Jardin
Public; the carriages are drawn up beside the palms and judas-trees that
fringe the Paillon; the _sous-officiers_ are strolling along the wall
with their red caps stuck jauntily just a trifle on one side, as though
to mow down nursemaids were the one legitimate occupation of the _brav'
militaire_. And among them all, proud, tall, disdainful, glide the
American duchesses, cold, critical, high-toned, yet ready to strike up,
should opportunity serve, appropriate acquaintance with their natural
equals, the dukes of Europe.

"And the American dukes?"--There aren't any. "But these ladies' husbands
and fathers and brothers?"--Oh, _they're_ business men, working hard for
the duchesses in Wall Street, or on 'Change in Chicago. And that's why I
say quite seriously the American woman is the only real aristocrat now
living in America. Everybody who has seen much of Americans must have
noticed for himself how really superior American women are, on the
average, to the men of their kind. I don't mean merely that they are
better dressed, and better groomed, and better got up, and better
mannered than their brothers. I mean that they have a real superiority
in the things worth having--the things that are more excellent--in
education, culture, knowledge, taste, good feeling. And the reason is
not far to seek. They represent the only leisured class in America. They
are the one set of people from Maine to California who have time to
read, to think, to travel, to look at good pictures, to hear good music,
to mix with society that can improve and elevate them. They have read
Daudet; they have seen the Vatican. The women thus form a natural
aristocracy--the only aristocracy the country possesses.

I am aware that in