_Lady Smart._ Well, ladies; now let us have a cup of discourse to
ourselves.
_Lady Answerall._ Tea and tattle! That is all the men used to think us
fit for.
_Lady Sparkish._ But how times have changed--above stairs!
_Lady Smart._ Fie! Say rather _below_ stairs, Lady SPARKISH.
Up and down are arbitrary or relative terms after all, in the universe.
And I'm sure there are no fine drawing-room manners in the modern
modish world.
_Miss Notable._ Heigho! Methinks, nevertheless, I would fain take the
air of a London Season once again, however fallen off from the dear
dead days of Mr. SPECTATOR.
_Lady Answerall._ Hush, child! What would Charon say if he heard you?
Though in truth I am much of your mind myself.
_Lady Sparkish._ Better their vivid vulgarity than our vapid gentility!
_Miss Notable._ La, yes! Our vaporous "fine manners" give me the
vapours.
_Lady Smart._ They do not have "vapours" now, above--well t'other side
the Styx, let us say.
_Lady Answerall._ Indeed, no, nothing so simple and womanly, i' faith.
_They_ have substituted neurotic pessimism--and chloral.
_Lady Smart._ Worse far than our occasional sly sippings of--strong
waters!
_Lady Answerall._ What said the dear satiric Dean?
"Now all alone poor madam sits
In vapours and hysteric fits;
A dreadful interval of spleen
How shall we pass the time between?
Here, BETTY, let me take my drops,
And feel my pulse, I know it stops;
This head of mine, lord, how it swims
And such a pain in all my limbs!"
_Miss Notable._ Whereas now it would be:--
"Now sad and sole poor madam lies,
Insomnia holding wide her eyes:
'Past ten, and not a single wink.
Though I turned in at four, I think!
If I don't get some hours of sleep,
To-day's appointments can I keep?
And 'tis the Prince's garden-party!
Oh! to be buxom, hale, and hearty
Like some mere milkmaid, who can drowse
After a frolic and a bowse,
Upon a tumbled truss of hay!
I _must_ have sleep. BETTY, I say,
Bring me the cognac and the choral!'
--You may supply the modern moral!"
_Lady Sparkish._ La, child, you are as much a blue-stocking as the
modish she-scribblers of the century-end. _We_ used to leave all that
sort of thing to Grub Street.
_Miss Notable._ Tilly-vally! Grub Street has been made genteel since
the ladies took to haunting it. 'Tis now no shabby Alsatia, but a
swell sanctuary. Faith, one o' these odd-cum-shortlies--as we used to
say--I'll e'en write "The Journal of a Modern Lady" (in imitation of
the Dean) up-to-date, for 1895, instead of 1728, to wit.
_Lady Smart._ Have a care, child! Already you simper like a furmety
kettle, and slop over like an ill-made junket. Soon you'll be as smug
and self-conscious as a new member of "The Souls," if you be not
watchful.
_Miss Notable._ Well, but now the men are away, what really think you,
_entre nous_, of the New Woman movement?
_Lady Answerall._ Why, that 'tis older than MARY
WOOLSTONECROFT, and, in fact, originated about the time when
EVE took the first bite at the first apple.
_Miss Notable._ Heigho! 'Tis fine to sit here in the Shades, and say
so; but I own I should like well enough to ruffle it in new-fangled
clubs and select coteries, to be the talk of the town as APHRA
BEHN was, only in the irreproachable company of popular _savants_
and Bishops' sons; to see my niminy-piminy neuroticisms go into their
tenth edition, have my anti-matrimonial mouthings discussed in monthly
magazines and religious newspapers, and--have a free slap at the
monster, Man, whose best voluntary treatment of us means, at bottom,
nothing better than a golden cage and a silken gag.
_Lady Sparkish._ "Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em!"--as the
Dean said concerning Chief Justice WHITSHED'S coach-motto.
_Miss Notable._ Humph! Did he not also say, in dealing with _The
Furniture of a Woman's Mind_--
"For conversation well endued
She calls it witty to be rude"?
_Lady Sparkish._ What _do_ you mean, Miss?
_Miss Notable._ Ha! ha! ha! Not much. But, as Lady ANSWERALL
used to say, when we had a dish of tea and tittle-tattle together in
the sweet, solid, wicked, bewitching old modish days, "You know I'm old
Tell-truth, and love to call a spade a spade."
_Lady Sparkish._ Oh, I see. As the dear old Dean also said--
"Say, foolish females, bold and blind,
Say, by what fatal turn of mind,
Are you on vices most severe
Wherein yourselves have greatest share?"
[_Here arises a general criss-cross clatter of contradictions, and the
gentlemen come in to join the ladies._
_Mr. Neverout_ (_quoting_)--
"Now voices over voices rise,
While each to be the loudest vies;
They contradict, affirm, dispute,
No single tongue one moment mute;
All mad to speak and none to hearken,
They set the very lap-dog barking."
We were disputing, ladies, as to whether these lines were
SWIFT'S or another's. Can _you_ settle the point?
_Miss Notable_ (_snappishly_). Oh, ask a policeman--or a New Woman!!!
* * * * *