10. Unselfish Gallantry

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_ X. UNSELFISH GALLANTRY

One day while lunching at an African foudak, half way between Tangier and Tetuan, I was led to moralize on the conjugal superiority of Mohammedan roosters to Mohammedan men. Noticing a fine large cock in the yard, I threw him a handful of bread-crumbs. He was all alone at the moment and might have easily gobbled them all up. Instead of doing such a selfish thing, he loudly summoned his harem with that peculiar clucking sound which is as unmistakable to fowls as is the word dinner or the boom of a gong to us. In a few seconds the hens had gathered and disposed of the bread, leaving not a crumb to their gallant lord and master. I need not add that the Sultan of a human harem in Morocco would have behaved very differently under analogous circumstances.

 

THE GALLANT ROOSTER

The dictionary makers derive the word gallant from all sorts of roots in divers languages, meaning gay, brave, festive, proud, lascivious, and so on. Why not derive if from the Latin _gallus_, rooster? A rooster combines in himself all the different meanings of the word gallant. He is showy in appearance, brave, daring, attentive to females, and, above all, chivalrous, that is, inclined to show disinterested courtesy to the weaker sex, as we have just seen. In this last respect, it is true, the rooster stands not alone. It is a trait of male animals in general to treat their females unselfishly in regard to feeding and otherwise.

 

UNGALLANT LOWER RACES OF MEN

If we now turn to human beings, we have to ascend many strata of civilization before we come across anything resembling the unselfish gallantry of the rooster. The Australian savage, when he has speared a kangaroo, makes his wife cook it, then selects the juiciest cuts for himself and the other men, leaving the bones to the women and dogs.

Ascending to the much higher Polynesians and American Indians we still find that the women have to content themselves with what the men leave. A Hawaiian even considers it a disgrace to eat at the same place as his wife, or with the same utensils.

What Kowney says of the Nagas of India--"she does everything the husband will not, and he considers it effeminate to do anything but fight, hunt, and fish"--is true of the lower races in general. An African Kaffir, says Wood (73), would consider it beneath his dignity to as much as lift a basket of rice on the head of even his favorite wife; he sits calmly on the ground and allows some woman to help his busy wife. "One of my friends," he continues,

"when rather new to Kaffirland, happened to look into a
hut and there saw a stalwart Kaffir sitting and smoking
his pipe, while the women were hard at work in the sun,
building huts, carrying timber, and performing all
kinds of severe labor. Struck with a natural
indignation at such behavior, he told the smoker to get
up and work like a man. This idea was too much even for
the native politeness of the Kaffir, who burst into a
laugh at so absurd a notion. 'Women work,' said he,
'men sit in the house and smoke.'"

MacDonald relates (in _Africana_, I., 35) that "a woman always kneels when she has occasion to talk to a man." Even queens must in some cases go on their knees before their husbands. (Ratzel, I., 254.) Caille gives similar testimony regarding the Waissulo, and Mungo Park describes the return of one of his companions to the capital of Dentila, after an absence of three years:

"As soon as he had seated himself upon a mat, by the
threshold of his door, a young woman (his intended
bride) brought a little water in a calabash, and
kneeling down before him, desired him to wash his
hands; when he had done this, the girl, with a tear of
joy sparkling in her eyes, drank the water; this being
considered as the greatest proof she could possibly
give him of her fidelity and attachment."

An Eskimo, when building a house, looks on lazily while his women carry stones "almost heavy enough to break their backs." The ungallant men not only compel the women to be their drudges, but slyly create a sentiment that it is disgraceful for a man to assist them. Of the Patagonian Indians Falkner asserts that the women are so rigidly "obliged to perform their duty, that their husbands cannot help them on any occasion, or in the greatest distress, without incurring the highest ignominy," and this is the general feeling, of which other illustrations will be given in later chapters. Foolish sentimentalists have tried to excuse the Indians on the ground that they have no time to attend to anything but fighting and hunting. But they always make the squaws do the hard work, whether there be any war and hunting or not. A white American girl, accustomed to the gallant attentions of her lover, would not smile on the red Dacota suitor of whom Riggs writes:

"When the family are abed and asleep, he often
visits her in her mother's tent, or he finds her
out in the grove in the day time gathering fuel.
She has the load of sticks made up, and when she
kneels down to take it on her back, possibly he
takes her hand and helps her up and then walks
home by her side. Such was the custom In the olden time."

Still, there is a germ of gallantry here. The Dacota at least helps to load his human donkey, while the Kaffir refuses to do even that.

Colonel James Smith, who had been adopted by the Indians, relates (45) how one day he helped the squaws to hoe corn. They approved of it, but the old men afterward chid him for degrading himself by hoeing corn like a squaw. He slyly adds that, as he was never very fond of work, they had no occasion to scold him again. We read in Schoolcraft (V., 268) that among the Creeks, during courtship, the young man used to help the girl hoe the corn in her field, plant her beans and set poles for them to run upon. But this was not intended as an act of gallant assistance; it had a symbolic meaning. The running up of the beans on the poles and the entwining of their vines was "thought emblematical of their approaching union and bondage." Morgan states expressly in his classical work on the Iroquois (332) that "no attempts by the unmarried to please or gratify each other by acts of personal attention were ever made." In other words the Indians knew not gallantry in the sense of disinterested courtesy to the weaker sex--the gallantry which is an essential ingredient of romantic love.

Germs of gallantry may perhaps be found in Borneo where, as St. John relates (I., 161), a young Dyak may help the girl he wants to marry in her farm work, carrying home her load of vegetables or wood, or make her presents of rings, a petticoat, etc. But such a statement must be interpreted with caution.

The very fact that they make the women do the field work and carry the wood habitually, shows that the Dyaks are not gallant. Momentary favors for the sake of securing favors in return, or of arranging an ephemeral Bornean "marriage," are not acts of disinterested courtesy to the weaker sex. The Dyaks themselves clearly understand that such attentions are mere bids for favors. As a missionary cited by Ling Roth (1., 13.1) remarks:

"If a woman handed to a man betel-nut and sirah to
eat, or if a man paid her the smallest attention,
such as we should term only common politeness,
it would be sufficient to excuse a jealous husband
for striking a man."

It is the same in India.

"The politeness, attention, and gallantry which
the Europeans practise toward the ladies, although
often proceeding from esteem and respect, are
invariably ascribed by the Hindoos to a different
motive."

(Dubois, I., 271.) Here, as everywhere in former times, woman existed not for her own sake but for man's convenience, comfort, and pleasure; why, therefore, should he bother to do anything to please her? In the _Kaniasoutram_ there is a chapter on the duties of a model wife, in which she is instructed to do all the work not only at home but in garden, field, and stable. She must go to bed after her husband and get up before him. She must try to excel all other wives in faithfully serving her lord and master. She must not even allow the maid-servant to wash his feet, but must do it with her own hands. The _Laws of Manu_ are full of such precepts, most of them amazingly ungallant. The horrible maltreatment of women in India, which it would be an unpardonable euphuism to call simply ungallant, will be dwelt on in a later chapter.

It has been said a thousand times that the best measure of a nation's civilization is its treatment of women. It would be more accurate to say that kind, courteous treatment of women is the last and highest product of civilization. The Greeks and Hindoos had reached a high level of culture in many respects, yet, judged by their treatment of women, the Greeks were barbarians and the Hindoos incarnate fiends. Scholars are sometimes surprisingly reckless in their assumptions. Thus Hommel (1., 417) declares that woman must have held an honored position in Babylonia,[32] because in the ancient texts that have come down to us the words mother and wife always precede the words father and husband. Yet, as Dubois mentions incidentally, the Brahmin texts also place the feminine word before the masculine, and the Brahmins treat women more cruelly than the lowest savages treat them.

[FOOTNOTE 32: How capable of honoring women the Babylonians were may be inferred from the testimony of Herodotus (I., ch. 199) that every woman had to sacrifice her chastity to strangers in the temple of Mylitta.]

 

EGYPTIAN LOVE

I have not been able to find evidence of a gallant, chivalrous, magnanimous attitude toward women in the records of any ancient nation, and as romantic love is inconceivable without such an attitude, and a constant interchange of kindnesses, we may infer from this alone that these nations were strangers to such love. Professor Ebers makes a special plea for the Egyptians. Noting the statements of Herodotus and Diodorus regarding the greater degree of liberty enjoyed by their women as compared with the Greek, he bases thereon the inference that in their treatment of women the Egyptians were superior to all other nations of antiquity. Perhaps they were; it is not claiming much. But Professor Kendrick notes (I., 46) that although it may be true that the Egyptian women went to market and carried on trades while the men remained at home working at the loom, this is capable of receiving quite a different interpretation from that given by Ebers. The Egyptians regarded work at the loom more as a matter of skill than the Greeks did; and if they allowed the women to do the marketing, that may have been because they preferred to have them carry the heavy burdens and do the harder work, after the fashion of savages and barbarians.

If the Egyptians ever did show any respect for women they have carefully wiped out all traces of it in modern life. To-day,

"among the lower classes and in rural districts the wife is her husband's servant. She works while he smokes and gossips. But among the higher classes, too, the woman actually stands far below the man. He never chats with her, never communicates to her his affairs and cares. Even after death she does not rest by his side, but is separated from him by a wall." (Ploss, II., 450.)

Polygamy prevails, as in ancient times, and polygamy everywhere indicates a low position of woman. Ebers comments on the circumspection shown by the ancient Egyptians in drawing up their marriage contracts, adding that "in many cases there were even trial marriages"--a most amazing "even" in view of what he is trying to prove. A modern lover, as I have said before, would reject the very idea of such a trial marriage with the utmost scorn and indignation, because he feels certain that his love is eternal and unalterable. Time may show that he was mistaken, but that does not affect his present feeling. That sublime confidence in the eternity of his passion is one of the hall-marks of romantic love. The Egyptian had it not. He not only sanctioned degrading trial marriages, but enacted a barbarous law which enabled a man to divorce any wife at pleasure by simply pronouncing the words "thou art expelled." In modern Egypt, says Lane (I., 247-51), there are many men who have had twenty, thirty, or more wives, and women who have had a dozen or more husbands. Some take a new wife every month. Thus the Egyptians are matrimonially on a level with the savage and barbarian North American Indians, Tasmanians, Samoans, Dyaks, Malayans, Tartars, many negro tribes, Arabs, etc.

 

ARABIAN LOVE

Arabia is commonly supposed to be the country in which chivalry originated. This belief seems to rest on the fact that the Arabs spared women in war. But the Australians did the same, and where women are saved only to be used as slaves or concubines we cannot speak of chivalry. The Arabs treated their own women well only when they were able to capture or buy slaves to do the hard work for them; in other cases their wives were their slaves. To this day, when the family moves, the husband rides on the camel while the wife trudges along on foot, loaded down with kitchen utensils, bedding, and her child on top. If a woman happens to ride on a camel she must get off and walk if she meets a man, by way of showing her respect for the superior sex. (Niebuhr, 50.) The birth of a daughter is regarded as a calamity, mitigated only by the fact that she will bring in some money as a bride. Marriage is often little more than a farce. Burckhardt knew Bedouins who, before they were fifty years old, had been married to more than fifty different women. Chavanne, in his book on the Sahara, gives a pathetic picture of the fate of the Arab girls:

"Usually wedded very young (the marriage of a youth
of fourteen to a girl of eleven is nothing unusual),
the girl finds in most cases, after five or six years,
that her conjugal career is at an end. The husband
tires of her and sends her back, without cogent
reasons, to her parents. If there are no parents to
return to, she abandons herself, in many cases, to
the vice of prostitution."

If not discarded, her fate is none the less deplorable. "While young she receives much attention, but when her charms begin to fade she becomes the servant of her husband and of his new wife."

Chavanne gives a glowing description of the ravishing but short-lived beauty of the Arab girl; also a specimen of the amorous songs addressed to her while she is young and pretty. She is compared to a gazelle; to a palm whose