Speaking to me of women one day, she said: "Certainly they are
_vainqueurs des vainqueurs de la terre_ in any sense they choose; but
the pity of it is that they do not choose to exercise their power for
good to any great extent. I agree with Madame Bernier--if it were
Madame Bernier--who said: _'L'ignorance où les femmes sont de leurs
devoirs, l'abus qu'elles font de leur puissance, leur font perdre le
plus beau et le plus précieux de leurs avantages, celui d'être
utiles.'_ But hundreds of other quotations will occur to you, written
by thoughtful men and women in all ages, and all to the same effect;
it is impossible to over-estimate their restraining and refining
influence as the companions and mothers of men--and almost equally
impossible to make them realise their responsibility or care to use
their strength. I would have every woman feel herself a power for good
in the land--and if only half of them did, what a world of difference
it would make to everybody's health and happiness! But women should,
as a rule, be silent powers. There are, of course, occasions when they
_must_ speak--and all honour to those who do so when the need
arises--but our influence is most felt when it is quietly persistent
and unobtrusive. There is no social reform that we might not
accomplish if we agreed among ourselves to do it, and then worked,
each of us using her influence to that end in her own family, and
among her own friends, only. I once induced some ladies to try a
little experiment to prove this. At that time the gentlemen of our
respective families were all wearing a certain kind of necktie. We
agreed to banish the necktie, and in a month it had disappeared, and
not one of those gentlemen was ever able to tell us why he had given
it up. We don't deserve much credit for our ingenuity, though," she
added, lightly. "Men are so easily managed. All you have to do is to
feed them and flatter them."
"I think that hardly fair," I commented.
"What? The feeding and flattering?"
"No, the conspiracy."
"Well, that occurred to me too--afterwards, when it was too late to do
anything but repent. At the time, I own, I thought of nothing but the
success of the experiment as an example and proof of our will-power."
"You considered one side of the subject only, as per usual, when you
are eager and interested," I softly insinuated.
She frowned at me thoughtfully; then, after a pause, she resumed: "Ah,
yes! You may be sure there is a great deal of good motive power in
women, but most of it is lost for want of knowledge and means to apply
it. It works like the sails of a windmill not attached to the
machinery, which whirl round and round with incredible velocity and
every evidence of strength, but serve no better purpose than to show
which way the wind blows."
This question of the position of women in our own day occupied her a
good deal.
"The women of my time," she said to me once, "are in an unsettled
state, it may be a state of transition. Much that made life worth
having has lost its charm for them. The old interests pall upon them.
Occupations that used to be the great business of their lives are now
thought trivial, and are left to children and to servants. Principles
accepted since the beginning of time have been called in question.
Weariness and distrust have taken the place of peace and content, and
doubt and dissatisfaction are the order of the day. Women want
something; they are determined to have it, too; and doubtless they
would get it if only they knew what it is that they want. They are
struggling to arrive at something, but opinions differ widely as to
what that something ought to be; and the result is that they have
divided themselves into three classes, not exactly distinct: they
dovetail into each other so nicely that it is hard to say where the
influence of the one set ends and the other begins. There are, first of
all, the women who in their struggles for political power have done so
much to unsex us. They have tried to force themselves into unnatural
positions, and the consequence has been about as pleasing and edifying
as an attempt to make a goose sing. They clamour for change, mistaking
change for progress. But don't let the puzzling dovetail confuse you.
The people I speak of are not those who have so nobly devoted
themselves to the removal of the wrongs of women, though they work
together. But the object of all this class is good. They wish to raise
us, and what they want, for the most part, is a little more common
sense--as is shown in their system of education, for instance, which
cultivates the intellectual at the expense of the physical powers,
girls being crammed as boys (to their great let and hindrance also) are
crammed, just when nature wants all their strength to assist their
growth; the result of which becomes periodically apparent when a number
of amiable young ladies are let loose on society without hair or teeth.
But the thing they clamour for most is equality. There is a great deal
to be said in favour of placing the sexes on an equal footing, and if
social conventions are stronger and more admirable than natural
instincts--and doubtless they are--the thing should be done; but the
innate perversity of women make it difficult--for, I know this, that
whatever the position of a true woman, and however much she may clamour
for equality with men in general, the man she herself loves in
particular will always be her master.
"But such ridicule as this party has brought upon itself would not have
mattered so much had nothing worse come of it. Unfortunately, there
seems to be no neutral ground for us women: we either do good or harm;
and I hold that first class responsible for the existence of those
people who clamour for change of any kind, regardless of the
consequences. Their ideas, shorn of all good intention, have resulted
in the production of a new creature; and have made it possible for
women who have the faults of both sexes and the virtues of neither to
mix in society. The bad work done by the influence of this second class
is only too apparent. It is to them we owe the fact that there is less
refinement, less courtesy, less of the really good breeding which shows
itself in kindness and consideration for others, and, Heaven help us!
even less modesty among us now than there was some years ago."
"These are the women, too, who spend their time and talents on the
production of cleverly written books of the most corrupt tendency.
Their works are a special feature of the age, and are doubly dangerous
because they have the art of making the worst ideas attractive, by
presenting them in forms too refined and beautiful to shock even the
most delicate."
"Besides these two classes there is the third, which is more difficult
to define. It is the one on which our hope rests. The women who belong
to it are dissatisfied like the others, but they are less decided, and
therefore their dissatisfaction takes no positive shape. They also want
something, and go this way and that as if in search of it, but they are
not really trying for anything in particular. They do good and evil
indiscriminately, and for the same motive: they find distraction in
doing something--anything. But the desire to do good is latent in all
of them; show them the way, and it will make itself apparent."
"But what is the reason of all this dissatisfaction?" I asked. "Why
don't you go to your husbands and brothers to be set right, as of old?"
"Ah! when you ask me that, you get to the first cause of the trouble,"
she answered. "The truth is that we have lost faith in our men. They
claim some superiority for themselves, but we find none. The age
requires people to practise what they preach, and yet expects us to be
guided by the counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered
them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to
go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually--
either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death
of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon
ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature.
Do you wonder that some of us ask: Why should we keep ourselves pure if
impurity is to be our bedfellow? You make us breathe corruption, and
wonder that we lose our health."
"But why do you talk of the death of manliness? Men have as much
courage now as they ever had."
"Oh, of course--mere animal courage; there is plenty of that, but that
is nothing. A cat will fight for her kittens. It is moral courage that
makes a man, and where do you find it now? Are men self-denying? Are
they scrupulous to a shadow of the truth? Are they disinterested? How
many _gentlemen_ have you met in the course of your life? I know about
half a dozen."
"What do you call a gentleman, then?" I asked in surprise. "What makes
a man one?"
"Why, truth and affection, of course," she answered; "the one is the
most ennobling, and the other the most refining quality. As a child I
used to think ladies and gentlemen never told stories; it was only the
common people who were dis-honourable, and that was what made them
common. _Hélas_! one lives and learns!"
"I don't think the world is worse than it ever was," I said, drily.
"Not worse, when we know so much better!" she answered with scorn.
"Not worse when we have learnt to see so clearly, and most of us
acknowledge that
It is our will
Which thus enchains us to permitted ill!
It is nearly two thousand years since Christianity began its work, and
it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all
this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical
joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for
States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by
making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a
rod, when necessary--a rod that is held over them always _in terrorem_!
We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you
will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour
only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old
as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you
suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly
companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that
even their reverence for the purity of women is a sham. For why do
they keep us pure? Is it not to make each morsel more delicious for
themselves, that sense and sentiment may be satisfied together, and
their own pleasure made more complete? Individuals may be in earnest,
but the great bulk of mankind is a hypocrite. When the history of this
age is written, moral cowardice and self-indulgence will be found to
have been the most striking characteristics of the people. There is no
truth to be found in the inward parts."
But Ideala did not often adopt this tone, and she would herself check
other people who were preparing to assume it. She had a favourite
quotation, adroitly mangled, to suit such occasions. "When we begin to
inculcate morality as a science, we must discard moralising as a
method," she declared; and she would also beg us to stop the hysteria.
"It is the mortal malady of all well-beloved measures," she said; "and
it spreads to an epidemic if the infected ones are not suppressed at
once to prevent contagion."
But, although she spoke so positively when taken out of herself by the
interest and importance of a subject, she had no very high opinion of
her own judgment and power to decide. A little more self-esteem would
have been good for her; she was too diffident, "I have not come across
people on whose knowledge I could rely," she told me. "I have been
obliged to study alone, and to form my opinions for myself out of such
scraps of information as I have had the capacity to acquire from
reading and observation. I am, therefore, always prepared to find
myself mistaken, even when I am surest about a thing--for
What am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry!
In practice, too, she frequently, albeit unconsciously, diverged from
her theories to some considerable extent; as on one occasion, when,
after talking long and earnestly of the sin of selfishness, she
absently picked up a paper I had just cut with intent to enjoy myself,
took it away with her to the drawing-room, and sat on it for the rest
of the morning--as I afterwards heard.