University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
I AM INTRODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI.

A YOUNG man who commences life as a reformer, and
a leader in the party of progress, while saying the
best and most reasonable things in the world, and
advocating what appear to him the most needed reforms,
often finds himself, in consequence, in the condition of one
who has pulled the string of a very large shower-bath. He
wanted cold water, and he gets a deal more than he bargained
for; in fact, often catches his breath, and wonders
when this sort of thing is going to stop. My articles on
the “Modern Woman,” in the Milky Way, had brought me
into notice in certain enthusiastic circles, and I soon found
myself deluged with letters, appeals, pamphlets, newspapers,
all calling for the most urgent and immediate attention, and
all charging me on my allegiance to “the cause,” immediately,
and without loss of time, to write articles for said
papers gratuitously, to circulate said pamphlets, to give
favorable notices of said books, and instantly to find lucrative
situations for hosts of distressed women who were
tired of the humdrum treadmill of home-life, and who
wished to have situations provided where there was no
drudgery and no labor, but very liberal compensation. The
whole large army of the incapables,—the blind, the halt, the
lame, the weary, and the forlorn,—all seemed inclined to
choose me as their captain, and to train under my banner.
Because I had got into a subordinate position on the Great
Democracy, they seemed to consider that it was my immediate
business to make the Great Democracy serve their
wants, or to perish in the attempt.

My friend, Ida Van Arsdel, was a serious, large-minded,
large-brained woman, who had laid a deep and comprehensive
plan of life, and was adhering to it with a patient and
silent perseverance. Still she had no sympathy in that class
of society where her lot was cast. Her mother and her Aunt
Maria were women who lived and breathed merely in the
opinions of their set and circle, and were as incapable of
considering any higher ideal of life, or any unworldly purpose,
as two canary-birds. Mr. Van Arsdel, a quiet, silent
man, possessed a vein of good sense which led him to
appreciate his eldest daughter at her real worth; and he
was not insensible to the pleasure of having one feminine
companion who, as he phrased it, “understood business,”
and with whom he could talk and advise understandingly.
But even he had no sympathy with those larger views of the
wants and needs of womanhood, in view of which Ida was
acting. It followed very naturally that as Ida got no sympathy
in her own circle, she was led to seek it in the widening
sphere of modern reformers—a circle in which so much
that is fine and excellent and practical, is inevitably mixed
with a great deal that is crude and excessive.

At her request I accompanied her and Eva one evening to
a sort of New-Dispensation salon, which was held weekly
at the house of Mrs. Stella Cerulian. Mrs. Stella Cerulian
was a brilliant woman—beautiful in person, full of genius,
full of enthusiasm, full of self-confidence, the most charming
of talkers, and the most fascinating of women. Her
career from early life had been one of those dazzling successes
which always fall to the lot of beauty, seconded
by a certain amount of tact and genius. Of both these
gifts Mrs. Cerulian had just enough to bewilder the head
of any gentleman who made her acquaintance. She had
in her girlhood made the tour of Europe, shone as a star
in the courts of France and Russia, and might be excused
for a more than ordinary share of complacency in her
successes. In common with handsome women generally,
she had, during the greater part of her life, never heard

anything but flattery from gentlemen, and it always agreed
with her remarkably well. Her capacity far flattery was
like that of the French ladies for bon-bons. Any quantity
of it never produced dyspeptic symptoms. These beautiful
and attractive women, like gems of great price, are commonly
held to be things that must of necessity be bought
for money, and the buyer is not expected to offer a very
large share of any other coin. Mr. Cerulian was a man of
princely fortune, which was the essential requisite. In addition
to this, he was a worthy, kind-hearted sensible plain
man of business, and as such, much respected. He adored
his charming wife with a simple-minded devotion, greatly
amusing to all his male acquaintances. There was nothing
under heaven that he did not consider “my wife” competent
to do. That she did not write like Milton, or paint
like Raphael, or model like Michael Angelo, was simply
an accidental circumstance. He was perfectly convinced
that she could have done any one of these things if she
had given her mind to it. Of course, when the new era
of woman's rights dawned on the world, Mr. Cerulian
was an early and enthusiastic convert; because now, the
world would understand and appreciate “my wife.”

Mrs. Cerulian was in fact one of those women, with just
intellect and genius enough to render her impatient of the
mere common-place triumphs of beauty. She felt the intoxicating
power of the personal influence which she possessed,
and aspired to reign in the region of the mind as
well as to charm the senses.

The amount of real knowledge and education necessary
to make a brilliant conversationalist is very much smaller
than that which is necessary to control and guide the actual
forces of nature and of human life; and hence a brilliant
woman may easily mistake her triumphs, as a talker
in the salon, for ability to regenerate and reform the actual
workings of society, and she will find an abundance
of men her superiors in education, experience, and real
knowledge, who will profess themselves her disciples.

Mrs. Cerulian felt herself called to the modern work
of society regeneration, and went into it with all the
enthusiasm of her nature, and with all that certainty of
success which comes from an utter want of practical experience.

Problems over which grey-haired philanthropists shed
discouraged tears, which old statesmen contemplated with
perplexity, which had been the despair of ages, she took
up with a cheerful alacrity.

She had one simple remedy for the reconstruction of
society about whose immediate application she saw not
the slightest difficulty. It was simply and only to be
done by giving the affairs of the world into the hands of
women, forthwith. Those who only claim equality for
women were, in Mrs. Cerulian's view, far behind the age.
Woman was the superior sex, the divine sex. Had not
every gentleman of her acquaintance, since she could remember,
told her this with regard to herself? Had they
not always told her that she could know everything without
study, simply by the divine intuitions of womanhood;
that she could flash to conclusions without reasoning, simply
by the brilliancy of her eyes; that her purity was incorruptible
in its very nature; that all her impulses were
heavenly and God-given? Naturally enough, then, it was
her deduction that all that was wanting to heal the woes and
wants of society was that she and other such inspired beings
should immediately take to themselves their power, and
reign. All the wounds of this suffering world would immediately
then be healed with court-plaster. And all the
weary and heavy-laden would lay down their burdens; and
all the foul places of society would be immediately sprinkled
with rose-water.

Such was a general sketch of Mrs. Cerulian's view of the
proper method of introducing the millennium. Meanwhile,
she did her part in it by holding salons once a week, in
which people entertaining similar views met for the purpose,
apparently, of a general generation of gas, without

any particular agreement as to the method in which it should
be applied. This was the company of people to whom Eva
rather pathetically alluded in one of her conversations once,
as such nice people, who were so very puzzling to her,
because no two of them ever seemed to think alike on any
subject; and all agreed in opening their eyes very wide in
astonishment if anybody quoted the Bible to them as an
authority in faith and practice.

Ida was much courted and petted by this circle. And
sensible, good girl as she was, she was not wholly without
pleasure in the admiration they showed for her. Then,
again, there were, every evening, ventilated in this company
quantities of the most splendid and heroic ideas possible
to human beings. The whole set seemed to be inspired
with the spirit of martyrdom, without any very precise idea
of how to get martyred effectually. It was only agreed that
everything in the present state of society was wrong, and was
to be pulled down forthwith. But as to what was to come
after this demolition, there were as many opinions in the
circle as there were persons, and all held with a wonderful
degree of tenacity. A portion of them were of opinion that
a new dispensation fresh from the heavenly realms was
being inaugurated by means of spiritualistic communications
daily and hourly conveyed to privileged individuals.
It was, however, unfortunate that these communications
were, very many of them, in point-blank opposition to each
other; so that the introduction of revelations from the invisible
world seemed only likely to make the confusion
worse confounded. Then again, as to all the existing relations
of life, there was the same charming variety of opinion.
But one thing seemed to be pretty generally conceded
among the whole circle, that in the good time coming,
nobody was ever to do anything that he did not want to
do, or feel at the moment just like doing. The great object
of existence apparently was to get rid of everything that
was disagreeable and painful. Thus, quite a party of them
maintained that all marriage relations ought to drop, from

the moment that either party ceased to take pleasure in
them, without any regard to the interest of the other party
or the children; because the fundamental law of existence
was happiness—and nothing could make people happy but
liberty to do just as they had a mind to.

I must confess that I found my evening at Mrs. Cerulean's
salon a very agreeable one; the conversation of thoroughly
emancipated people has a sparkling variety to it which is
exactly the thing to give one a lively, pleasant evening.
Everybody was full of enthusiasm, and in the very best of
spirits. And there appeared to be nothing that anybody
was afraid to say. Nobody was startled by anything. There
was not a question, as it appeared, that had been agitated
since the creation of the world, that was not still open to
discussion.

As we were walking home after spending an evening,
she asked me:

“Now, Mr. Henderson, what do you think of it?”

“Well, Miss Ida,” said I, “after all, I'm a believer in the
old-fashioned Bible.”

“What, really, Mr. Henderson?”

“Really and squarely, Miss Ida. And never more so
than when I associate with very clever people who have
given it up. There is, to my mind, a want of common
sense about all theories of life that are not built on that.”

“Well,” said Ida, “I have long since made up my mind,
for my own part, that if the cause of woman is to be
advanced in this world, it is not so much by meeting together
and talking about it, as by each individual woman
proposing to herself some good work for the sex, and setting
about it patiently, and doing it quietly. That is rather my
idea; at the same time, I like to hear these people talk,
and they certainly are a great contrast to the vapid people
that are called good society. There is a freshness and earnestness
of mind about some of them that is really very
interesting; and I get a great many new ideas.”

“For my part,” said Eva, “to be sure I have been

a sad idler, but if I were going to devote myself to any
work for women, it should be in the church, and under the
guidance of the church. I am sure there is something we
can do there. And then, one's sure of not running into all
sorts of vagaries.”

“Now,” said Ida, “all I want is that women should do
something; that the lives of girls, from the time they leave
school till the time they are married, should not be such a
perfect waste as they now are. I do not profess to be
certain about any of these theories that I hear; but one
thing I do know: we women will bear being made a great
deal more self-sustaining and self-supporting than we
have been. We can be more efficient in the world, and we
ought to be. I have chosen my way, and mean to keep to it.
And my idea is that a woman who really does accomplish a
life-work is just like one that cuts the first path through a
wood. She makes a way where others can walk.”

“That's you, Ida,” said Eva; “but I am not strong
enough to cut first paths.”

I felt a little nervous flutter of her hand on my arm as she
said this. It was in the dark, and involuntarily, I suppose,
my hand went upon hers, and before I thought of it I felt
the little warm thing in my own as if it had been a young
bird. It was one of those things that people sometimes
do before they know it. But I noticed that she did not
withdraw her hand, and so I held it, querying in my
own mind whether this little arrangement was one of the
privileges of friendship. Before I quite resolved this question
we parted at the house-door.