dwell in our midst. It may be well to classify them at once, because,
unless I mistake many symptoms, the stubborn English may shortly snuff
out the sentimentalists who have raised up a plague among us. I may
say as a preliminary that in my opinion a shrew may be fairly defined
as "a female who takes advantage of the noblest impulses of men and
the kindliest laws of nations in order that she may claim the social
privileges of both sexes and vent her most wicked temper with
freedom." First, consider the doleful shrew. This is a person not
usually found among the classes which lack leisure; she is an
exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well
invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time
on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingratitude of
people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always
moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by
her generosity, the result is merely distracting. If the victim says,
"I allow that you have been very kind, and I am grateful," he commits
an error in tactics, for the torturer is upon him at once. "Oh, you do
own it then, and yet see how you behave!"--and then the torrent flows
on with swift persistence. If, on the contrary, the sufferer cries,
"Why on earth do you go on repeating what you have done? I owned your
kindness once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!" he is
still more clearly delivered into the enemy's hands. He lays himself
open to a charge of ingratitude, and the charge is pressed home with
relentless fluency. Then, as to the doleful one's influence on
children--the general modern tendency is towards making children
happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes
a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or
bodies of the young. Some dense people perhaps imagine that children
cannot suffer mental agony; yet the merest mite may carry a whole
tragedy in its innocent soul. We all know the wheedling ways of
children; we know how they will coax little luxuries and privileges
out of "papa" and "mamma," and most of us rather like to submit with
simulated reluctance to the harmless extortion. If I had heard a
certain tiny youth say, "Papa, when I'm a big man, and you're a little
boy, I shall ask you to have some jam," I should have failed entirely
to smother my laughter. Do you think the doleful one would have seen
the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or soul of
that devoted child? Nay. She would have whined about slyness, and
cunning hints, and greediness, and the probabilities of utter ruin and
disgrace overtaking underhand schemers, until that child would have
been stunned, puzzled, deprived of self-respect, and rendered entirely
wretched. Long ago I heard of a doleful one who turned suddenly on a
merry boy who was playing on the floor. "You're going straight to
perdition!" observed the dolorous one; and the light went out of that
boy's life for a time. A gladsome party of young folk may be instantly
wrecked by the doleful shrew's entrance; and, if she cannot attract
attention to herself amid a gathering even of sensible, cheerful
adults, she will probably break up the evening by dint of a well-timed
fit of spasms or something similar. Dickens made Mrs. Gummidge very
funny; but the Gummidge of real life is not merely a limp, "lorn"
creature--she is a woman who began by being unhealthily vain, and ends
by being venomously malignant. I do not think that many people have
passed through life very far without meeting with a specimen of the
dolorous shrew, and I hope in all charity that the creature is not in
the immediate circle of any one who reads this. In impassioned
moments, when I have reckoned up all the misery caused by this
species, I have been inclined to wish that every peculiarly malign
specimen could be secured at the public expense in a safe asylum.
The aggressive shrew is usually the wife of some phlegmatic man; she
insults him at all hours and on all subjects, and she establishes
complete domination over him until she happens to touch his conscience
fairly, and then he probably crushes her by the sudden exertion of
latent moral force. Shall I talk of the drunken shrew? No--not that!
My task is unlovely enough already, and I cannot inflict that last
horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say--if ever you
know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the
morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and
is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of
all whom she may meet, pray for that man.
The blue-blooded shrew is by no means uncommon. Watch one of this kind
yelling on a racecourse in tearful and foul-mouthed rage and you will
have a few queer thoughts about human nature. Then there is the
ladylike shrew. Ah, that being! What has she to answer for? She is
neat, low-spoken, precise; she can purr like a cat, and she has the
feline scratch always ready too. Pity the governess, the servant, the
poor flunkey whom she has at her mercy, for their bread is earned in
bitterness. "My lady" does not raise her voice; she can give orders
for the perpetration of the meanest of deeds without varying the
silken flow of her acrid tongue; but she is bad--very bad; and I think
that, if Dante and Swedenborg were at all near being true prophets,
there would be a special quarter in regions dire for the lady-like
shrew.
* * * * *
I must distinctly own that the genuine shrew endeavours to make life
more or less unhappy for both sexes. Usually we are apt to think of
the shrew as resembling the village scolds who used to be promptly
ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an
individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her
husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the
whip-snake--she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often
able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect.
The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot
match the reticent stabber who is always ready, out of sheer
wickedness, to thrust a venomed point into man, woman, or child. I
shall give my readers an extreme instance towards which they may
probably find it hard to extend belief. I am right however, and have
fullest warrant for my statement. I learn on good authority, and with
plenitude of proof, that trained nurses are rather too frequently
subjected to the tender mercies of the shrew. Nothing is more grateful
to a cankered woman than the chance of humiliating some one who
possesses superior gifts of any description, and a well-bred lady who
has taken to the profession of nursing is excellent "game." Thus I
find that delicate young women of gentle nurture have been sent away
to sleep in damp cellars at the back of great town-houses; they have
had to stay their necessarily fastidious appetites with cold broken
food--and this too after a weary vigil in the sick-room. Greatest
triumph of all, the nurses have been compelled to go as strangers to
the servants' table and make friends as best they could. It is not
easy to form any clear notion of a mind capable of devising such
useless indignities, because the shrew ought to know that her conduct
is contrasted with that of good and considerate people. The nurse
bears with composure all that is imposed on her, but she despises the
shabby woman, and she compares the behaviour of the acrid tyrant with
that of the majority of warm-hearted and generous ladies who think
nothing too good for their hired guests. I quote this extreme example
just to show how far the shrew is ready to go, and I wish it were not
all true.
Next let me deal with the mean shrew, who has one servant or more
under her control. The records of the servants' aid societies will
show plainly that there are women against whose names a significant
mark must be put, and the reason is that they turn away one girl after
another with incredible rapidity, or that despairing girls leave them
after finding life unendurable. I know that there are insolent,
sluttish, lazy, and incompetent servants, and I certainly wish to be
fair toward the mistresses; but I also know that too many of the
persons who send wild and whirling words to the newspapers belong
without doubt to the class of mean shrews. Whenever I see one of those
periodical letters which tell of the writer's lifelong tribulation, I
like to refresh my mind by repeating certain golden utterances of the
man whom we regard as one of the wisest of living Englishmen--"There
is only one way to have good servants--that is, to be worthy of being
well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and
rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the
quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are
their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened
mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a
knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have
friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as
with your child, not indulgence, but care." Substitute "mistress" for
"master" in this passage of John Ruskin's, and we have a little lesson
which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart--if she had any
heart. What is the kind of "care" which the mean one bestows on her
dependants? "That's my little woman a-giving it to 'Tilda," pensively
observed Mr. Snagsby; and I suspect that a very great many little
women employ a trifle too much of their time in "giving it to 'Tilda."
That is the "care" which poor 'Tilda gets. Consider the kind of life
which a girl leads when she comes for a time under the domination of
the mean shrew. Say that her father is a decent cottager; then she has
probably been used to plain and sufficient food, dressed in rough
country fashion, and she has at all events had a fairly warm place to
sleep in. When she enters her situation, she finds herself placed in a
bare chill garret; she has not a scrap of carpet on the floor, and
very likely she is bitterly cold at nights. She is expected to be
astir and alert from six in the morning until ten or later at night;
she is required to show almost preternatural activity and
intelligence, and she is not supposed to have any of the ordinary
human being's desire for recreation or leisure. When her Sunday out
comes--ah, that Sunday out, what a tragic farce it is!--she does not
know exactly where to go. If she is near a park or heath, she may fall
in with other girls and pass a little time in giggling and chattering;
but of rational pleasure she knows nothing. Then her home is the bare
dismal kitchen, with the inevitable deal table, frowsy cloth, and
rickety chairs. The walls of this interesting apartment are possibly
decked with a few tradesmen's almanacs, whereon Grace Darling is
depicted with magnificent bluish hair, pink cheeks, and fashionable
dress; or his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales assumes a heroic
attitude, and poses as a field-marshal of the most stern and lofty
description. Thus are 'Tilda's æsthetic tastes developed. The mean
shrew cannot give servants such expensive company as a cat; but the
beetles are there, and a girl of powerful imagination may possibly
come to regard them as eligible pets. Then the food--the breakfast of
weak tea and scanty bread; the mid-day meal of horrid scraps measured
out with eager care to the due starvation limit; the tasteless,
dreadful "tea" once more at six o'clock, and the bread and water for
supper! And the incessant scold, scold, scold, the cunning inquiries
after missing morsels of meat or potatoes, the exasperating orders! It
is too depressing; and, when I see some of the virtuous letters from
ill-used mistresses, I smile a little sardonically, and wish that the
servants could air their eloquence in the columns of great newspapers.
Some time ago there was a case in which a perfectly rich shrew went
away from home from Saturday morning till Monday night, leaving one
shilling to provide all food for two young women. This person of
course needed fresh servants every month, and was no doubt surprised
at the ingratitude of the starvelings who perpetually left her. I call
up memories of homes, refuges, emigration-agencies, and so forth, and
do most sternly and bitterly blame the mean shrew for mischief which
well-nigh passes credence. There is nothing more delightful than to
watch the dexterous, healthy, cheerful maids in well-ordered
households where the mistress is the mother; but there is very little
of the mother about the mean shrew--she is rather more like the
slave-driver. "Stinted means," observes some tender apologist. What
ineffable rubbish! If a woman is married to a man of limited means,
does that give her any right to starve and bully a fellow-creature?
How many brave women have done all necessary housework and despised
ignoble "gentility"! No, I cannot quite accept the "stinted means"
excuse; the fact is that the mean shrew is hard on her dependants
solely because her nature is not good; and we need not beat about the
bush any longer for reasons. A domestic servant under a wise,
dignified, and kind mistress or housekeeper may live a healthy and
happy life; the servant of the mean shrew does not live at all in any
true sense of the word. No rational man can blame girls for preferring
the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of
domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses,
then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the
other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet
eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret
Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred
years ago? There is a problem. That girl's letters to her mistress are
simply throbbing with passionate love and gratitude; and the phrases
"My beloved mistress," "My dear, dear mistress," recur like sobs.
Margaret would have become a fiend under the mean shrew; but the holy
influence of a good lady made a noble woman of her, and she became a
pattern of goodness long after one rash but blameless freak was
forgotten. All Margaret's race now rise up and call her blessed, and
her spirit must have rejoiced when she saw her brilliant descendant
appearing in England two years ago as representative of a mighty
colony.
What shall I say about the literary shrew? Let no one be mistaken--we
have a good many of them, and we shall have more and more of them.
There are kind and charming lady-novelists in plenty, and we all owe
them fervent thanks for happy hours; there are deeply-cultured ladies
who make the joy of placid English homes; there are hundreds on
hundreds of honest literary workers who never set down an impure or
ungentle line. I am grateful in reason to all these; but there is
another sort of literary woman towards whom I pretend to feel no
gratitude whatever, and that is the downright literary shrew, who
usually writes, so to speak, in a scream, and whose sentences resemble
bursting packets of pins and needles. She is what the Americans would
call "death on man," and she likes to emphasize her invectives by
always printing "Men" with a capital "M." She is however rigidly
impartial in her distribution of abuse, and she finds out at frequent
intervals that English women and girls are going year by year from bad
to worse. That the earth does not hold a daintier, purer, more
exquisitely lovable being than the well-educated, well-bred English
girl, is an opinion held even by some very cynical males; but the
literary shrew rattles out her libels, and, in order to show how very
virtuous she is, she usually makes her articles unfit to be brought
within the doors of any respectable house. Not that she is ribald--she
is merely so slangy, so audacious, and so bitter that no "prudent" man
would let his daughters glance at a single article turned out by our
emphatic shrew. As to men--well, those ignoble beings fare very badly
at her hands. I do not know exactly what she wants to do with the poor
things, but on paper and on the platform she insists that they shall
practically give up their political power entirely, for women, being
in an immense majority, would naturally outvote the inferior sex.
Sometimes, when the shrew is more than usually capricious and enraged
with her own sex, she may magnanimously propose to disfranchise huge
numbers of women; but, as a rule, she is bent on mastering the
enemy--Man. If you happen to remark that it would be rather awkward if
a majority of women should happen to bring about a war in which
myriads of men would destroy each other, we rather pity you; that
argument always beats the shrew, and she resorts to the literary
equivalent for hysterics. If the controversialist ventures to ask some
questions about the share which women have had in bringing about the
great wars known to history, he draws on himself more and more
hysterical abuse. What a strange being is this! Her life is one long
squabble, she is the most reckless and violent of fighters, and yet
she is always crying out that Men are brutal and bloodthirsty, and
that she and her sisters would introduce the elements of peace and
goodwill to political relations. We may have a harmless laugh at the
literary shrew so long as she confines herself to haphazard
scribbling, because no one is forced to read; but it is no laughing
matter when she transfers her literary powers to some public body, and
inflicts essays on the members. Her life on a School Board may be
summarised as consisting of a battle and a screech; she has the bliss
of abusing individual Men rudely--nay, even savagely--and she knows
that chivalry prevents them from replying. But she is worst when she
rises to read an essay; then the affrighted males flee away and rest
in corners while the shrew denounces things in general. It is
terrible. Among the higher products of civilisation the literary shrew
is about the most disconcerting, and, if any man wants to know what
the most gloomy possible view of life is like, I advise him to attend
some large board-meeting during a whole afternoon while the literary
shrew gets through her series of fights and reads her inevitable
essay. He will not come away much wiser perhaps, but he will be
appreciably sadder.
And so this long procession of shrews passes before us, scolding and
gibbering and dispensing miseries. Is there no way of appealing to
reason so that they may be led to see that inflicting pain can never
bring them anything but a low degree of pleasure? No human creature
was ever made better or more useful by a shrew, for the very means by
which the acrid woman tries to secure notice or power only serves to
belittle her. Take the case of a vulgar schoolmistress who is
continually scolding. What happens in her school? She is mocked,
hated, tricked, and despised; real discipline is non-existent; the
bullied assistants go about their work without heart; and the whole
organisation--or rather disorganisation--gradually crumbles, until a
place which should be the home of order and happiness becomes an ugly
nest of anarchy. But look at one of the lovely high schools which are
now so common; read Miss Kingsley's most fervent and accurate
description of the scholars, and observe how poorly the scolding
teacher fares in the comparison. Who ever heard of a girl being
scolded or punished in a good modern high school? Such a catastrophe
is hardly conceivable, for one quiet look of reproach from a good
teacher is quite sufficient to render the average girl inconsolable
until forgiveness is granted. This illustrates my point--the shrew
never succeeds in doing anything but intensifying the fault or evil
which she pretends to remove. The shrew who shrieks at a drunkard only
makes him dive further into the gulf in search of oblivion; the shrew
who snaps constantly at a servant makes the girl dull, fierce, and
probably wicked; the shrew who tortures a patient man ends by making
him desperate and morose; the shrew who weeps continually out of
spite, and hopes to earn pity or attention in that fashion, ends by
being despised by men and women, abhorred by children, and left in the
region of entire neglect. Perhaps if public teachers could only show
again and again that the shrew makes herself more unhappy, if
possible, than she makes other people, then the selfish instinct which
is dominant might answer to the appeal; but, though I make the
suggestion I have no great hope of its being very fruitful.
After all, I fear the odious individual whose existence and attributes
we have discussed must be accepted as a scourge sent to punish us for
past sins of the race. Certainly women had a very bad time in days
gone by--they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude
that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their
revenge in true servile fashion. This line of thought would carry me
back over more ages than I care to traverse; I am content with knowing
that the shrews are in a minority, and that the majority of my
countrywomen are sweet and benign.
X.
ARE WE WEALTHY?
Among the working-classes shrewd men are now going about putting some
very awkward questions which seem paradoxical at first sight, but
which are quite understood by many intelligent men to whom they are
addressed. The query "Are we wealthy?" seems easy enough to answer;
and of course a rapid and superficial observer gives an affirmative in
reply. It seems so obvious! Our income is a thousand millions per
year; our railways and merchant fleets can hardly be valued without
putting a strain on the imagination; and it seems as if the atmosphere
were reeking with the very essence of riches. A millionaire gives
nearly one thousand pounds for a puppy; he buys seventeen baby horses
for about three thousand pounds apiece; he gives four thousand guineas
for a foal, and bids twenty thousand pounds for one two-year-old
filly; his house costs a million or thereabouts. Minor plutocrats
swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available
kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be
answered--"Are we wealthy?" We may give the proletarians good advice
and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures;
but there is the new disposition, and we cannot get away from it. I
take no side; the poor have my sympathy, but I endeavour to understand
the rich, and also to face facts in a quiet way. Supposing that a ball
is being given that costs one thousand pounds, and that within sound
of the carriages there are twenty seamstresses working who never in
all their lives know what it is to have sufficient food--is not that a
rather curious position? The seamstresses are the children of mighty
Britain, and it seems that their mother cannot give them sustenance.
The excessive luxury of the ball shows that some one has wealth, but
does it not also seem to show that some one has too much? The clever
lecturers who talk to the populace now will not be content with the
old-fashioned answer, and an awkward deadlock is growing more nearly
imminent daily. Suppose we take the case of the sporting-man again,
and find that he pays three guineas per week for the training of each
of his fifty racers, we certainly have a picture of lavish display;
but, when we see, on the other hand, that nearly half the children in
some London districts never know what it is to have breakfast before
they go to school, we cannot help thinking of the palaces in which the
horses are stabled and the exquisite quality of the animal's food.
There is not a good horse that mother England does not care for, and
there are half a million children who rarely can satisfy their hunger,
and who are quartered in dens which would kill the horses in a week.
These crude considerations are not-presented by us as being
satisfactory statements in economics; but, when the smart mob orator
says, "What kind of parent would keep horses in luxury and leave
children to hunger?" "Is this wealthy England?" his audience reply in
a fashion of their own. Reasoning does not avail against hunger and
privation. I am forced to own that, for my part, the awful problem of
poverty seems insoluble by any logical agent; but the man of the mob
does not now care for logic than ever he did before, and he has
advisers who state to him the problems of life and society with
passionate rhetoric which eludes reason.
The whole world hangs together, and Chicago may be called a mere
suburb of London. English people did not understand the true history
of the genesis of poverty until the developments of society in America
showed us with terrific rapidity the historical development of our own
poverty. The fearful state of things in American cities was brought
about in a very few years, whereas the gradual extension of our
poverty-stricken classes has been going on for centuries. To us
poverty, besides being a horror, was more or less of a mystery; but
America exhibited the development of the gruesome monster with lurid
distinctness. In the old countries the men who first were able to
seize the land gradually sublet portions either for money or warlike
service; the growth of manufactures occupied a thousand years before
it reached its present extent; and with the rising of manufacturing
centres came enormous new populations which were finally obliged to
barter their labour for next to nothing--and thus we have the
appalling and desolating spectacle of our slums. All that took place
in America with the swiftness of a series of stage-scenes; so that men
now living have watched the inception and growth of all the most
harrowing forms of poverty and the vices arising from poverty. And now
the cry is, "Go back to the Land--the Land for the Nation!" Matters
have reached a strange pass when such a political watchword should be
chosen by thousands in grave and stolid England, and we shall be
obliged to compromise in the end with those by whom the cry is raised.
I believe that a compromise may be arranged in time, but the leaders
of the poor will have to teach their followers wisdom, self-restraint,
and even a little unselfishness, impossible as the teaching of that
last may seem to be. We have begun a great labour war, in which
battles are being lost and won by opposing sides around us every day.
The fighting was very terrible at the beginning; but we shall be
forced at last to adopt a system of truces, and then the question "Are
we wealthy?" may find its answer. At this moment, however much an
optimist may point to our wealth, the logical opponent of established
things can always point to the ghastly sights that seem to make the
very name of wealth a cynical mockery.