I have had a morning of domestic details with the Average Woman. I
don’t quite know whether one ought to write about such things, or
whether one ought to draw a veil; I have not yet formed a precise
opinion as to the function of the commonplace in matter intended for
publication. But surely no one should scorn domestic details, which
make our universal background and mainstay of existence. Theories and
abstractions serve to adorn it and to give us a notion of ourselves:
but we keep them mostly for lectures and sermons, the monthly reviews,
the original young man who comes to tea. All would be glad to shine
at odd times, but the most luminous demonstration may very probably
be based upon a hatred of cold potatoes and a preference for cotton
sheets. And of course no one would dare to scorn the average woman; she
is the backbone of society. Personally I admire her very humbly, and
respect her very truly. For many of us, to become an average woman is
an ambition. I think I will go on.
Besides, Thalia interrupted us, and Thalia will always lend herself to
a chapter.
The Average Woman is not affectionate but she is solicitous, and there
was the consideration of my original situation and my tiresome health.
Then she perceived that I had a garden and that it was a pretty garden.
I said, indifferently, that people thought so; I knew it was a subject
she would not pursue unless she were very much encouraged, and there
was no reason at all why she should pursue it; she would always be a
visitor in such a place, whereas there were many matters which she
could treat with familiar intelligence. I was quite right; she wandered
at once into tins of white enamel, where it seemed she had already
spent several industrious hours. We sympathized deeply over the extent
to which domestic India was necessarily enamelled, though I saw a look
of criticism cross her face when I announced that I hoped one day to
be rich enough not to possess a single article painted in that way--not
a chair, not a table. I think she considered my declaration too
impassioned, but she did not dissent from it. That is a circumstance
one notes about the Average Woman: she never dissents from anything.
She never will be drawn into an argument. One could make the most wild
and whirling statement to her, if one felt inclined, and it is as
likely as not that she would say “Yes indeed,” or “I think so too,” and
after a little pause of politeness go on to talk about something else.
I can’t imagine why one never does feel inclined.
We continued to discuss interior decoration, and I learned that she was
preparing a hearth seat for her drawing-room, one of those low square
arrangements projecting into the room before the fire, upon which two
ladies may sit before dinner and imagine they look picturesque, while
the rest of the assembled guests, from whom they quite cut off the
cheerful blaze, wonder whether they do. The Average Woman declared
that she could no longer live without one.
“As time goes on one notices that fewer and fewer average women can,” I
observed absently, and hastily added, “I mean, you know, that of course
very portly ladies--”
“Oh, I _see_,” said she. “No, of course not.”
“So long,” I went on, pursuing the same train of thought, “as one can
sit down readily upon a hearth seat, and especially so long as one can
clasp one’s knees upon it, one is not even middle-aged. To clasp one’s
knees is really to hug one’s youth.”
“I had _such_ a pretty one in Calcutta,” said the Average Woman. “So
cosy it looked. Everybody admired it.”
“But in Calcutta,” I exclaimed with astonishment, “it is always so
hot--and there are no fireplaces.”
“Oh, that didn’t matter,” replied she triumphantly, “I draped the
mantelpiece. It looked just as well.” And yet there are people who say
that the Average Woman has no imagination.
“Talking of age,” she continued, “how old do you suppose Mrs. ---- is?
Somebody at tiffin yesterday _who knew the family_ declared that she
could not be a day under thirty-seven. I should not give her more than
thirty-five myself. My husband says thirty-two.”
“About a person’s age,” I said, “what can another person’s husband
know?”
“What _should_ you say?” she insisted. I am sorry to have to underline
so much, but you know how the average woman talks in italics. It is
as if she wished to make up in emphasis--but I will not finish that
good-natured sentence.
“Oh,” said I, “you cannot measure Mrs. ----’s age in years! She is as
old as Queen Elizabeth and as young as the day before yesterday. Parts
of her date from the Restoration and parts from the advent of M. Max
Nordau--” At that moment Thalia arrived. “And that is the age of all
the world,” I finished.
“We were wondering,” said the Average Woman, “how old Mrs. ---- is.”
“_You_ were wondering,” I corrected her.
“What does it matter?” said Thalia, which was precisely what I should
have expected her to say. What _does_ it matter? Why should the average
woman excite herself so greatly about this particularly small thing?
How does it bear upon the interest or the attractiveness or the value
of any woman to know precisely how many years she counts between thirty
and forty, at all events to another of her sex? Yet to the average
woman it seems to be the all-important fact, the first thing she must
know. She is _enragée_ to find it out, she will make the most cunning
enquiries and take the most subtle means. Much as I appreciate the
average woman, I have in this respect no patience with her. It is as
if she would measure the pretensions of all others by recognized rule
of thumb with a view to discovering the surplus claim and properly
scoring it down. It is surely a survival from days when we were much
more feminine than we are now; but it is still very general, even among
married ladies, for whom, really, the question might have an exhausted
interest.
“What does it matter?” said Thalia. “I see your fuchsias, like me, have
taken advantage of a fine day to come out. What a lot you’ve got!”
“Yes,” I said, without enthusiasm, “they were here when we came.”
“Oh, don’t you like them?” exclaimed the Average Woman, “I think the
fuchsia such a graceful, pretty flower.”
“It is graceful and it is pretty,” I assented. There are any number
of fuchsias, as Thalia said, standing in rows along the paling under
the potato-creeper; the last occupant must have adored them. They
remain precisely in the pots in which they were originally cherished.
Knowing that the first thing I do for a flower I like is to put it
in the ground where it has room to move its feet and stir about at
night, and take its share in the joys of the community, Tiglath-Pileser
says compassionately of the fuchsia, “It is permitted to occupy a
pot;” but I notice that he does not select it for his button-hole
notwithstanding.
Thalia looked at me suspiciously. “What have you got against it?” she
demanded, and the Average Woman chorussed, “Now tell us.”
I fixed a fuchsia sternly with my eye. “It’s an affected thing,”
I said. “Always looking down. I think modesty can be an overrated
virtue in a flower. It is also like a ballet-dancer, flaunting short
petticoats, which doesn’t go with modesty at all. I like a flower to be
sincere; there is no heart, no affection, no sentiment about a fuchsia.”
Thalia listened to this diatribe with her head a little on one side.
“You are _full_ of prejudices,” said she, “but there is something in
this one. Nobody could say ‘My love is like a fuchsia.’”
“It depends,” I said; “there are ladies not a hundred miles from here
who thrill when they are told that they walk like the partridge and
shine like the moon. I shouldn’t care about it myself.”
“No, indeed,” said the Average Woman. “That bit beyond the mignonette
seems rather empty. What are you going to put in there?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said.
“I don’t know,” remarked Thalia combatively, “when there are so many
beautiful things in the world, why you should discriminate in favour of
nothing.”
“Yes, why?” said the Average Woman.
“Well,” I replied defiantly, “that’s my spare bedroom. You’ve got to
have _some_where to put people. I don’t like the feeling that every
border is fully occupied and not a square inch available for any one
coming up late in the season.”
You can see that Thalia considers that while we are respected for our
virtues our weaknesses enable us to enjoy ourselves. She accepts them
as an integral and intentional part of us and from some of them she
even extracts a contemplative pleasure. The Average Woman looks down
upon such things and I did not dare to encounter her glance of reserved
misunderstanding.
Thalia smiled. I felt warmed and approved. “Alas!” said she, “my garden
is all spare bedrooms.” She lives, poor dear, on the other side of the
Jakko and has to wait till September for her summer. “I see you keep
it aired and ready.”
As a matter of fact Atma had freshly turned the earth. I hold to that
in the garden; it seems to me a parallel to good housekeeping. The
new-dug mould makes a most enhancing background; and an empty bed, if
it is only freshly made, offers the mind as much pleasure as a gay
parterre. It is the sense, I suppose, of effort expended and care
taken, and above all it is a stretch of the possible, a vista beyond
the realized present which is as valuable in a garden as it is in life.
Oh no, not as valuable. In life it is the most precious thing, and
it is sparingly accorded. Thalia has it, I know, but I looked at the
Average Woman in doubt. Thalia, whatever else she does, will have high
comedy always for her portion, and who can tell in what scenes she will
play or at what premières she will assist? But the Average Woman,--can
one not guess at the end of ten years what she will be talking about,
what she will have experienced, what she will have done? I looked
at the Average Woman and wondered. She was explaining to Thalia the
qualities of milk tea. I decided that she was probably happier than
Thalia, and that there was no need whatever to be sorry for her. She
stayed a long time; I think she enjoyed herself; and when she went away
of course we talked about her.
We spoke in a vein of criticism, and I was surprised to learn that the
thing about the Average Woman to which Thalia took most exception was
her husband. I had always found the poor patient creatures entirely
supportable, and I said so. “Oh, yes,” replied Thalia impatiently,
“in themselves they’re well enough. But didn’t you hear her? ‘_George
adores you in “Lady Thermidore.”_’ Now that annoys me.”
“Does it?” said I. “Why shouldn’t George adore you in _Lady Thermidore_
if he wants to, especially if he tells his wife?”
“That’s exactly it,” said Thalia. “If he really did he wouldn’t tell
her. But he doesn’t. She just says so in order to give herself the
pleasure of imagining that I am charmed to believe that George--her
George--”
“I see,” I said, sympathetically.
“They are always offering their husbands up to me like that,” continued
Thalia, gloomily. “They expect me, I suppose, to blush and simper. As
if I hadn’t a very much better one of my own!”
“They think it the highest compliment they can pay you.”
“Precisely. That’s what is so objectionable. And besides it’s a
mistake.”
“I shall never tell you that Tiglath-Pileser adores you,” I stated.
“My dear, I have known it for ages!” said Thalia, _en se sauvant_, as
they do in French novels.
Perhaps the Average Woman is a little tiresome about her husband. She
is generally charged with quoting him overmuch. I don’t think that;
his opinions are often useful and nearly always sensible, but she
certainly assumes a far too general interest for him as a subject upon
which to dwell for long periods. Average wives of officials are much
more distressingly affected in this way than other ladies are; it is
quite a local peculiarity of bureaucratic centres. They cherish the
delusion, I suppose, that in some degree they advance the interests
of these unfortunate men by a perpetual public attitude of adoration,
but I cannot believe it is altogether the case. On the contrary, I am
convinced that the average official husband himself would find too
much zeal in the recounting of his following remarkable traits. His
obstinate and absurd devotion to duty. “In _my_ husband the Queen
has a good bargain!” His remarkable youth for the post he holds,--I
remember a case where my budding affection for the wife of an Assistant
Secretary was entirely checked by this circumstance. The compliments
paid him by his official superiors, those endless compliments. And more
than anything perhaps, his extraordinary and deplorable indifference
to society. “I simply can_not_ get my husband out; I am positively
ashamed of making excuses for him.” When her husband is served up to me
in this guise I feel my indignation rising out of all proportion to
its subject, always an annoying experience. Why should I be expected to
accept his foolish idea that he is superior to society, and admire it?
Why should I be assumed to observe with interest whether he comes out;
why indeed, so far as I am concerned, should he not eternally stay in?
It comes to this that one positively admires the woman who has the
reticence to let her husband make his own reputation.
What offends one, I suppose, is the lack of sincerity. A very different
case is that of the simple soul who says, “Tom will not allow me to
have it in the house,” or “Jim absolutely refuses to let me know her.”
One hears that with the warm thrill of mutual bondage; one has one’s
parallel ready--the tyranny I could relate of Tiglath-Pileser! The note
of grievance is primitive and natural; but the woman who butters her
husband in friendly council, what excuse has she?