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WOMAN—THROUGH A MAN’S EYEGLASS
WOMAN—THROUGH
A MAN’S EYEGLASS
BY MALCOLM C. SALAMAN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY DUDLEY HARDY
NEW YORK, 1892
PUBLISHED
BY
LOVELL, CORYELL & COMPANY
43, 45 AND 47 EAST TENTH STREET
_To_
_HER WHO FIRST TAUGHT ME THE
LOVABLENESS OF WOMAN_
_MY MOTHER_
_Several of these Ladies were informally and appropriately presented
by the “Gentlewoman.” In somewhat new attire, however, they make their
reappearance, joined by my Lady Fin-de-Siècle._
_CONTENTS_
PAGE
PREAMBLE 1
THE LITTLE WIDOW 14
MY MOTHER 26
THE SOCIALLY AMBITIOUS WOMAN 38
THE DOMESTIC WOMAN 51
A MODERN LADY-NOVELIST 64
THE DISAPPOINTED SPINSTER 75
THE INDIVIDUAL WOMAN 86
THE SUBMISSIVE WOMAN 98
THE “AWFULLY JOLLY” GIRL 109
THE NUN 120
THE CHEERY WOMAN 132
THE UNCONJUGAL WOMAN 144
THE BUSY-IDLE WOMAN 156
THE SKITTISH OLD MAID 166
THE “SMART” WOMAN 177
THE GAMBLING WOMAN 189
A SINGER—AND HER MOTHER 201
THE “DEAREST FRIEND” 213
A “FIN-DE-SIÈCLE” WOMAN 224
WOMAN—
THROUGH A MAN’S EYEGLASS
_PREAMBLE_
Without woman man is nought; and the proverb, _Cherchez la femme_,
though commonly urged with a cynical sneer, is as full of humane wisdom
as any saying of Solomon.
When I contemplate woman in the abstract, with all her divine
gentleness and sympathy, and her essential spirituality, I feel
that I must kneel and worship her from afar; but when I regard her
in the concrete, with all those little weaknesses and vanities and
sleight-of-mind tricks, which are as the electric wires through which
man is brought into familiar and continuous communion with her then I
feel that she is near to me, that we can meet on a common plane of
humanity, and that the privilege of loving her is not beyond my reach.
And to love woman is surely the highest privilege of life, and the
noblest duty.
It is but a shallow philosophy that underrates the married state, and
he who bids you avoid matrimony, because he has tried it and failed,
is a fool for his pains and deserved his fate, for he chose rashly and
without discrimination. “Wife and children,” as Bacon says, “are a
kind of discipline of humanity.” Your true philosopher will tell you
that the enduring companionship of a good woman is the most beautiful
influence in a man’s life, but it must be hoped for only after an
ample apprenticeship in love, through which alone a man can arrive at
any true knowledge of woman. Your wise man will never marry his first
love, for he knows that matrimony demands as much special education as
any of the learned professions. Yet the number of unqualified amateurs
who enter the matrimonial ranks every year is perfectly appalling to
contemplate, the Divorce Court annals recording but an infinitesimal
portion of the spoiled lives for which the lack of conjugal education
is responsible. And yet I am not inclined to set much store by the
wisdom of Thales, who, when asked, as one of the Seven Wise Men of
Greece, to prescribe the proper period for a man to marry, replied, “A
young man not yet; an elder man, not at all.” I only feel convinced
that incompatibility of temper with Mrs. Thales was at the root of his
wisdom, and gave it a false twist.
Does every man of us indeed deserve a wife? or rather, have we all
studied to understand a woman and to love her with comprehension? This
is not such an easy matter as we think, for when do we know exactly how
much of her love a woman expects to give for how much of ours? When
can we tell in what proportions she wants us to be severally husband,
lover and friend? For if we would maintain that illusion which alone
preserves real matrimonial happiness, we must never allow the relations
of lover and companion to appear lost in that of husband. The essence
of woman is in her love, the substance remains for domesticity; and
when the happy state of marriage proves a failure, be sure that there
has been misconception as to the relativeness of the one and the other.
After I shall have written that great work I have in contemplation,
to be entitled “The Wooing of Women: by a Practical Failure,” there
shall be no more unhappy marriages; for my readers will then learn
to recognise the adaptable wife and avoid the unsuitable, and the
wooing shall be conducted on such scientific principles that all
misunderstandings will be rectified in the probationary stage, and a
matrimonial millennium will set in. Then, perchance, the writers of
romance may look in vain to real life for their plots; but a grateful
posterity will write my epitaph, “He made true love run smooth.”
But you may ask, why have _I_ never married? Well, the answer is a
long story in many chapters; but perhaps I may summarise it in a
sentence. I have always loved too much. This statement will, no doubt,
be regarded as a confession of frequent infidelity, and perhaps I may
be misconstrued as a kind of gay Lothario. But I am really no such
thing. Though the names of my loves have been many, I have—paradoxical
as it may sound—loved the same woman all my life. She is only a fantasy
of the heart; yet I have sometimes thought that, after much seeking,
I had found the original in flesh and blood, and I have invested her
with all the attributes of the ideal woman, the wife of my dreaming,
the complement of myself. Then I have loved to idolatry, turned life
into a perpetual love-making, and suffered tortures of jealousy until
the real woman has revealed herself behind the image of the ideal, and
proved but another case of mistaken identity.
Yet, though I were less than human, did I not feel some sort of sorrow
or disappointment at the first perception of my mistake, it has left
no bitterness, for the fault has been invariably my own. I had clothed
with my own ideas an entity sufficiently beautiful in herself, and
loved her, not for the woman that she was, but for the woman that I
wanted her to be. How, then, could there be perfect sympathy between
us? We were playing at cross-purposes. If she cared for me at all, it
was as one who loved her for herself; not as one who was endeavouring
to model her to the mould of his own mind, when he found that, after
all, she was a misfit. The misunderstanding was of my own making, for,
as I am beginning to find out, ideals are impracticable in the commerce
of life. To be happy, one must have no preconceived notions, but “catch
the joy as it flies,” and accept that which is for what it is.
Nevertheless, though my life has been a series of individual
disillusionings, and while I cannot but feel that an excellent
husband has been squandered in me, I have never loved in vain. Even
in my sorrowful awakenings to the fact that the One Woman is still a
Will-o’-the-Wisp to me, and that she whom I had permitted to personate
her, and had taken to my heart in her place, is, after all, hopelessly
separate from me, I have invariably felt the better for the experience.
Our natures always gain by love, even though it be fruitless; it opens
the pores of our souls, and lets in charity, which is the very sap
of society. And each fresh experience of love adds to one’s store of
sympathy, and increases one’s knowledge of “Womanity”—if I may be
allowed the term—and consequently one’s power of loving. “Appetite
grows by what it feeds on,” and so the more one loves the more one
needs to love, and it is very pleasant.
Who that has suffered much from love of woman would not willingly pay
double the price in heart-aches to buy back “love’s young dream?”
For my own part, I would sooner be miserable in love than happy out
of it; but then there are those with whom to love is as necessary as
to breathe. I am not ashamed to confess it is so with me, for is not
love the most beautiful element in life? Nor have I any sympathy with
those cynical-minded persons who regard absolute devotion to a woman
as feebly foolish. Though bachelorhood has become almost chronic with
me, I still never meet a woman without wondering whether she and I
could love each other under appropriate circumstances. And surely it
is this capacity to give and take in the matter of the affections that
preserves our youth for us; while we retain it, we can never grow old,
though our years may increase apace. When we feel that we are open to
no new sensations of love, then let us prepare for old age, and turn an
indifferent ear to the sound of funeral bells. But while one can say,
“What a charming woman; I believe I could love her,” one feels that
life is still worth living, and full of beautiful possibilities.
It has been a fashion in all ages to decry women, to call them false
and fickle, to say that their business is to deceive, that their spell
is that of the serpent, that they are vain and shallow and cruel. Poets
have railed against them in plausible verse; philosophers have said
bitter things about them; and many a wit has gained his reputation at
the expense of woman’s fame; all of which is as wickedly foolish as to
say that human nature is uniformly infamous. You will not find that
the great writers who live in the hearts of mankind ever stultified
or debased their genius by defaming woman; but, on the contrary, they
have created for us immortal types of pure and lovely womanhood. It
is the cheapest cynicism to discredit a whole sex; and misogyny and
misanthropy are merely the affectations of vain and egotistical minds.
When I hear a man say he does not believe in woman’s constancy or
woman’s virtue, I know that there is something wrong with that man: he
is either a libertine or a bully, and no woman will ever respect him,
however much he may ensnare her senses.
Belief in woman must be part of the religion of all men who are worthy
of their mothers. By this I do not mean that one must take for gospel
her every word and act, for the gift of dissimulation is a special
dispensation of Nature for her protection against what is aggressive
or destructive in man; just as to the female of the African butterfly
_Papilio merope_ is accorded the power of protecting herself, during
certain seasons, against the depredations of birds, by assuming the
colour of the malodorous _Amauris niavius_, which is particularly
obnoxious to the feathered tribes. And as we recognise the humour of
this comedy of the mimic butterfly and the cunningly duped bird,
so do we perceive, if we be true critics of the stage of life, that
nine-tenths of its comedy are due to the protective dissimulation of
woman in her relations with man. Else were it all drama, with an excess
of tragedy, and that were dreary. Woman is full of quaint conceit and
subtle humour, whether she know it herself or not, and we love her
all the more for this, especially since the laugh is often against
ourselves.
Confidence between man and woman must always be comparative, and
absolute trust a practicable impossibility, since the differences of
temperament preclude a perfect understanding. A man can never see a
woman entirely as she is, or as one of her own sex may see her, and
_vice versâ_. Yet a woman is more likely to comprehend a man and
his motives than he is to comprehend her; for a woman, while more
sensitively sympathetic, judges instantly by instinct, straight and
sure as the crow flies. A man, on the other hand, travels the railroad
of reason, where there are many shuntings, and a single mistaken signal
may upset the whole train of his logic. In judging a woman’s motives
and feelings a man argues from his own, and deduces conclusions which
are, more often than not, radically erroneous.
For instance, a man kisses the woman he loves, and she responds to his
caress. He believes it is in the same passionate spirit, but really the
impulse is subtly different. He kisses her to satisfy his own yearning;
she kisses him because she knows it will make him happy, and to make
him happy is the active spirit of her love. And it is just the failure
of man to distinguish and accept this beautiful spirituality in woman’s
relations with him, which necessitates that protective dissimulation
which becomes her second nature. For example, here the woman must
simulate the passion of her lover, for he would not be satisfied with
the delicate impulse of her responsive caress; so is he permitted
to believe that she feels as he does, reasoning only from his own
emotions, while she instinctively knows that their feelings are running
in different channels, though they meet in the broad ocean of love. How
true to womanhood is that passage in the journal of that extraordinary
girl, Marie Bashkirtseff, where, relating how, in response to the
passionate protestations of a youthful lover, she kissed him, she adds,
“I did it more for his sake than mine.” Did the young man think it was
for his sake? Not a bit of it. He thought it was a passionate impulse
for her own gratification, as any man in his place would have thought.
But what must be the result of all this misunderstanding if the lover
be one of your unqualified amateurs? After marriage the wife, happy
in the possession of the husband she loves, believes that all is
mutual trust, and she ceases to practise that beautifully innocent
dissimulation by which she held him as a lover. Then he begins to
misunderstand, and her love seems not the same to him, though it has
been unchanged all the while; so his love grows colder as he becomes
consequently dissatisfied and irritable, and, with this rift within the
lute, the music of matrimony sounds out of tune and grates upon their
ears, and the lovers drift into mere husband and housewife—lovers no
more.
But I am getting serious and psychological, and what has an
incorrigible bachelor like me to do with the psychology of woman? I
have but to glance round my companionless room, and a photograph on
the mantelpiece, a picture on the wall, a book on the shelf, a faded
letter-case on the table, will remind me how little I really know of
it all; else, perhaps, who knows? the wife of my dreams might even now
be sitting in that chair yonder, where those books and newspapers rest
in such confusion, and the sweet, happy voices of children might be
waking the slumbering soul of the room to joyous laughter, and I should
not want an excuse to fling away my pen, and romp on the floor with the
little ones, and play with their toys, while _she_ smiled happily, and
called me a “great baby.”
No; let me believe that I know nothing of woman now, as I knew nothing
then—how long ago? Is it years, months, weeks, days—what matter? Regret
is for the failures of marriage, and time a matter for the Benedicts.
I can dream a whole life’s happiness between waking and bedtime,
and choose my bride from any age or clime I will. Helen of Troy or
Guinevere of Camelot shall be she if I dream it so, and I’ll snap
my fingers at Paris or Lancelot, and yet remain a free man, with an
undisputed smile for the young lady who sells me my morning paper. So
let me be a dreamer still, and woman a beautiful fantasy.
But some memories are pleasant, so if you, my reader, care to listen,
as we sit together in the hush of the twilight, I will sketch you
portraits of some typical women I have known—not necessarily loved;
and if I chance to dip my brush in cynicism, I pray you stop me, for
I would not be a caricaturist, but if I happen to lay the tint of
tenderness on my canvas a little too thickly, forgive it, since the
subject is a woman.
_THE LITTLE WIDOW_
A little widow is a dangerous thing; but is there not always a
fascination in dangerous things? A little learning, for instance, gives
a sparkling flavour to life, whereas much learning oppresses it. Now a
little widow is perilously fascinating, as a great, tall widow rarely
is; her very littleness constitutes an element of danger, since it
coaxingly compels sympathy, and when one sympathises with a widow, when
one says “Poor little woman!”—one is lost. Though one may not marry
her, one is nevertheless her slave. Little Mrs. Willoweed is the most
irresistible woman I ever met. I defy any man not to fall in love with
her, be it for a day, a week, a year; and it must be always a sudden
fall. He is heart-whole one day, and desperately in love the next. It
is magnetic and mysterious.
When it happened to me, for the life of me I could not tell how it
came about, or why I was in love. I only knew there was a kind of
spell in the atmosphere. We were together up the river, the afternoon
tea-basket had done its duty, the rest of our party had scattered
in different directions, and Mrs. Willoweed and I had wandered into
a cornfield, where we discussed Shelley and plucked poppies in the
soft sunny haze of an August afternoon. Whether it was the passionate
suggestiveness of the poppies, or whether it was the influence of
“Epipsychidion,” I know not; but it seemed to me on a sudden that Mrs.
Willoweed was the only being worth living for, and, as our hands were
drawn by some mysterious impulse to the same poppy, I took her hand
instead of the flower and held it. She did not take it away, but let it
rest in mine almost caressingly, while she said, with a bewitchingly
mischievous smile “Isn’t this a little ridiculous?” The incongruity
of the remark and the action completely captured me. What could I do
but justify my impulse with a declaration of love? She listened with a
pretty, feigned surprise, and said exactly the things which experience
no doubt had taught her would drive her victory home. You see she was a
little widow, and was consequently a complete compendium of the art of
love. That is why little widows are so dangerous. They not only know
their own sex, but they know ours too, and knowledge is power.
[Illustration]
Of course I wanted to marry Mrs. Willoweed, because she declared she
would never marry again; and day after day I would exercise all my
persuasive ingenuity in arguing her into a matrimonial frame of mind.
But she was obdurate; a second husband presented no attraction to her.
She had tasted the sweets of wedded life, she knew all about conjugal
bliss, but somehow single blessedness, decked in the latest _môde_ of
widow’s weeds, offered her a more alluring programme than a revival of
the marriage vows. So, although she accepted my devotion along with
the rest, she persisted in saying me nay; but she said it in such a
fascinating manner that I was never tired of listening to it. She would
always veil her “No!” with a delicate gauzy suggestion of “Yes!” She
would keep a distant chance of an affirmative hovering in the air, as
it were, and I consequently never broached the subject without that
sort of sensation which a gambler experiences at a roulette table, or
that which excited the members of the Suicide Club when the president
used to deal the fateful cards; and while she kept me hovering on
the brink of matrimony she would play upon my affections with the
most exquisite science. She would assert her positive incapacity to
be constant, which to a man of sentiment and spirit, as I trust I am,
was of course a positive challenge to prove her otherwise. Constancy
has always been one of woman’s proudest boasts, whether truthfully or
not is a question of individual experience, and therefore for a woman
to urge her probable inconstancy as an excuse for not marrying a man
who asked her, was only to make him more ardent in his suit. Then,
again Mrs. Willoweed would tell me quite frankly that to be engaged
to me would make her uninteresting in the eyes of all her other male
acquaintances, while her women friends would cease to be jealous of
her. Perhaps this latter reason was not very complimentary to me, but
it had the intended effect, it made me still more demonstrative in my
devotion.
Little Mrs. Willoweed has the science of flirtation at her finger-tips,
she has reduced the teasing of hearts to a mathematical system, and
she sets herself problems merely for the pleasure of solving them, and
judging the effect upon her own vanity. Her flirtation is as different
from that of the _ingénue_, or the experienced spinster, or even the
flighty married woman, as a complex algebraical equation is from a
simple rule-of-three sum. With all the experience of married life she
has the sense of perfect freedom and irresponsibility; consequently
her flights in flirtation are as daring as they are without fear or
reproach.
But let it not be thought that Mrs. Willoweed has ever flown defiantly
into the face of Mrs. Grundy, though that estimable lady keeps her
hawk-eyes wide open and constantly fixed upon Mrs. Willoweed’s
movements. Naturally the unfettered and unchaperoned conditions of
her life invite gossip, but nobody has ever been able to say a word
against her morality. They certainly whisper, here and there, that a
little more circumspection might be advisable, but then whose life
would be worth living encased in cast-iron conventionalities and
pinioned by prudery? Mrs. Willoweed enjoys her life, she revels in her
freedom, and captures as many heart-slaves as she can; but she never
trips. She can always look society in the face without a blush, she can
always laugh in the face of propriety without offence.
Though I no longer want to marry Mrs. Willoweed, having lived to learn
all her little ways through watching her practise her experiments
on those others whom I had once thought my rivals, I will yet yield
to none in my admiration for her, and I am prepared to champion her
through thick and thin. She is a delightful little creature, and it
is not her fault if men will fall in love with her; she only helps
them to do it pleasantly. And there is a great charm in loving a woman
who is versed in the lore of love, and who is practised in all the
sleight-of-heart tricks of it. The woman who merely subjects herself to
a man’s love, and adds no fresh fuel from her own sentimental activity,
soon wearies him so that the flame dies out; but the woman who employs
her arts in feeding the love of a man, who knows by instinct and
experience when to tease and when to coax, when to starve and when to
feast, may keep that love as long as she cares to.
This is the secret of Mrs. Willoweed’s supremacy. She knows all this,
and never makes a mistake. This is how she keeps so many of her old
admirers. Life is to her a game of cards, in which hearts are always
trumps; and she plays the game so prettily that, even though she
never loses, there is never a whisper of unfairness. Perhaps if she
were a little more cautious not to let outsiders see so much of the
game, it would be none the worse for her; but, with all her skill at
heart-conjuring, she is a very guileless little person.
Her own heart is open as the day to melting sympathy, and she is as
innocent as daylight. She never hides anything, she never does anything
to hide; she only tries to live cheerily and pleasantly, and make as
many people happy as possible. Why should she be condemned to wear
moral sackcloth and ashes all her life because she is a widow and does
not choose to marry again? She does not concern herself about the
goings-on of other women; why should they be so anxious to catch her
tripping, why should they be always on the watch? Of course she never
means to give them the chance, but, nevertheless, it is irksome to feel
that every woman’s eye is open against her, every woman’s ear ready to
catch the faintest suggestion of an echo of a rumour. Why is it?
Surely it is not because Mrs. Willoweed is exceedingly pretty and
remarkably accomplished, for other women have been equally so, and
yet have failed to awaken the suspicions of their sex and to keep
Mrs. Grundy on the _qui vive_. It cannot be because Mrs. Willoweed
dresses so beautifully, that, whether in walking costume, tea-gown,
or ball-dress, she looks as though the art of attire has reached on
her its climax of perfection, for there be as good dresses in Bond
Street as ever came out of it, and all beautiful women are made to be
well-dressed—Mrs. Willoweed has no monopoly.
Mrs. Willoweed is a pretty little widow, and there is the gist of the
matter. Like Hester Prynne, she carries about her a scarlet letter,
though visible only to the mental eye of women with husbands and
brothers and lovers, and that letter is D, which stands for Dangerous.
You see there is no barrier of ingenuousness to be broken down, no
safeguard of a husband-in-law. She is experienced, accessible, and
free, and withal fatally fascinating. She is a dead shot with Cupid’s
arrow, and never misses her mark. It is not, therefore, to be wondered
that women with susceptible male belongings fear to trust them within
the magic sphere of Mrs. Willoweed, and that their fears are apt to
get the better of their reason and their charity. But, after all,
poor little Mrs. Willoweed is entirely innocent of the matrimonial or
amorous designs that are placed to her charge in such a sweeping and
illogical fashion.
She has a handsome competence of her own, and therefore has no
mercenary motives for marriage; and, indeed, she has no intention of
binding any man to her for life—she always puts it that way, as it
sounds kinder and more philanthropic—but really she has no desire to
part with her liberty again. She is very happy as she is.
She cannot live without lovers, but she never lets them get out of
their depth, she always keeps them in check, so that she can pull them
back into the safer waters of friendship whenever she will. Some women
cannot have a man friend without wishing him to be a lover, and when he
is a lover, wishing him to be a friend again. Mrs. Willoweed is one of
these. Like this grand little kingdom of ours, she has a passion for
conquest and empire, but, once the conquest is assured, the annexation
completed, and the excitement of the contest over, she sets herself to
the task of establishing friendly relations of an enduring character.
That is why you never hear a man say an unkind or severe thing about
Mrs. Willoweed, dainty, delightful butterfly though she be.
She never quarrels with her admirers, but makes them all feel that it
is a privilege to love her, and when we can feel that about a woman,
we may be sure there is a great deal of good in her, and we need not
be surprised to find there is more chivalrous feeling in us than we
gave ourselves credit for. Truly, an innocently frank flirt, like Mrs.
Willoweed, can open the valves of a man’s heart, and purge it of much
unhealthy sentimentality.
Mrs. Willoweed enjoys existence. She lives in an atmosphere of
prettiness and lightness, and treads a rosy path with almost winged
feet. Wherever she goes she casts her spell of fascination, and she
is always the centre of the pleasantest group. Where she is, there
will gather the brave, the gallant, the witty, and, where these are,
beauty is drawn as by magnetic attraction, however jealous it may be
of the original magnet—the little widow. Haughty beauty may sneer,
and Mrs. Grundy may put on her spectacles, and gather her skirts
close, but little Mrs. Willoweed—bright, innocent, playful little Mrs.
Willoweed—is the queen of the hour. All the men love her, and “she is
such fun.”
See her dispensing afternoon tea in her own dainty drawing-room, with
its bizarre Orientalism suggesting the boudoir of some Eastern princess
in the “Arabian Nights”; she is clad in a picturesque tea-gown, which
is itself quite a poem in drapery, while her graceful movements are
its rhythm. Can you wonder at that group of admirers sitting around
her, each seeming most anxious for the departure of the others? It is a
pleasant spell to be under; I would not be out of its reach for worlds.
Why, Mrs. Willoweed’s busy talk is a mental tonic, and her laugh is as
exhilarating as sparkling wine. To drink tea with her _tête-à-tête_ of
an afternoon is a delightful privilege; and there is always the added
excitement of fearing the intrusion of other visitors. Unfortunately,
there are always so many candidates for this pleasure.
You see, Mrs. Willoweed is not a woman with a mission of any kind; she
has plenty of money, plenty of leisure, and nothing to do, and she
devotes her life to doing it as delightfully as possible. A little
widow may be a dangerous thing, but the danger is harmless; at least, I
am sure it is so with little Mrs. Willoweed.
_MY MOTHER_
This is my birthday, and it is not unnatural that I should be thinking
of my mother. Let me talk to you of her, for in all the world of women
I know of none so near perfection. I say this in no mere boastful
spirit. It is my firm conviction, the result of a life’s experience;
and I say it, moreover, in the full consciousness that there are
millions of men ready to challenge my statement in favour of their own
mothers. And it is well that it should be so. I am glad to think it,
for good mothers, by their very love-worthiness, preserve the moral
equilibrium of the world. Therefore, I am happy to believe that other
men think their mothers superior to mine though I have the advantage
of them, for they do not know mine as I do, in the relation of mother
and son. That makes all the difference. To every man worthy of the name
his mother must be an angel of goodness, the object of his holiest
devotion. Why, the very word suggests the most sacred sentiments of
humanity; it is a beautiful word, and one that most readily inspires
all that is tender and gentle and pure in feeling. What, for instance,
could be more tender than those lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s, most
passionate, intemperate, and truly poetic of poets?
“Because I feel that, in the heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of ‘mother.’”
But I am not going to dilate upon the merits of mothers generally. I
only want to tell you what manner of mother mine is, and how happy I am
to be able to say _is_ and not _was_, like so many poor bachelors of my
acquaintance. For a man who is growing old, with neither wife nor child
to bring him loving greetings on his birthday, I can conceive nothing
more awful than to have no mother who shall say, “Bless you, my son!”
while in so doing she happily remembers, in a gentle autumn mood of
love, all that full flowering summer love with which she greeted him
on that first birthday of his. In a man’s youth, when all the world
is opening before him, with its exuberant growth of possibilities
tempting him in all directions, and when the gaudy butterflies of
passion are leading him a chase through brakes and brambles with their
deep wounding prickles and nettles that sting, his mother ceases for
a time to be the guiding star of his life as she had been in his
childhood, for there are so many other lights that flash across his
way, and one serves as well as another to illuminate his onward course.
But when he retraces his steps, wounded and weary, and longing for
rest, he seeks again the steady starlight of a mother’s love. A man
who has known any sorrow or disappointment or disillusioning, turns
childlike, by instinct to the repose and the solace of his mother’s
bosom, where there is always a fount of love as fresh as in the days
when he would come to her to stop his floods of childish tears with
those caresses that only a mother can give to her child.
[Illustration]
Yes, it is my birthday, and I am happy; but last night I was in a
melancholy mood, and wandered aimlessly through green lanes and over
a bridge, while across the moonlit river, which looked so peacefully
beautiful, there came from a riverside house, whose lights gleaming
through the grey leafy curtains of the willows gave it the appearance
of some enchanted palace, sounds of jovial choruses. And these jarred
upon me, for I was lonely, and I was mourning the dead years and their
buried opportunities. Then I wandered on till I came to the wall of
a graveyard, and large trees stood on either side of the road and
darkened my way with their shadows, and I would not walk onwards, for
those black shadows seemed to me like the ghosts of future years, and
I was alone among them, quite alone. So I retraced my steps, and the
moonlight was over the churchyard, and I stopped and gazed at the
tombs, all mystic in the moonlight, and they seemed to look at me so
piteously and enviously, for they were the records of dead lives and
dead hopes, and I was still living, I still had love and hope. Then
I looked up into the starry heavens, and they were very sweet, and I
fancied the stars were so disposed as to spell the word “mother.” And
then a pure and gentle joy stole through my soul, and I felt that I
was not alone, that though many a mother lay cold and dead in that
churchyard, my own dear little mother lived, lived cheerful, happy, and
full of love. So last night’s melancholy passed away at the thought
of her, and to-day I feel in the mood to bless all the world and
everything in it that I have a mother, and such a mother, too.
And still, you will say, I have not described her to you. Well, how can
a man describe his own mother? She is just—my mother, and that is all
I can tell you. That must convey to you a picture of ideal goodness,
common sense, and unselfish love—in fact, as I said before, motherhood
in perfection.
Somebody told me the other day that a woman cannot possibly devote
herself equally to her husband and her children; that one must give way
to the other, and she—it was a woman who said this—instanced the cases
of several devotedly domestic women of our mutual acquaintance. And,
when we came to examine facts, I was bound to admit that she was right
in every case she had cited; but this did not convince me that her
argument held good invariably. I refuted it at one fell swoop with my
mother.
I am absolutely certain that my father—God bless him!—would bear me
out in this, after all his forty odd years of wedded life, and I can
confidently count upon the confirmatory evidence of my brothers and
sisters. Never have we or my father had the slightest reason to be
jealous of one another on account of my mother’s attention to the
other. She has the most marvellous power of dividing her devotion
equally between her husband and her children, and this supremely
womanly virtue has enabled her always to preserve an equilibrium of
happiness between her husband, her children, and herself. It makes
me so angry to hear cynics sneering at the possibility of enduring
happiness in married life, when I think of my father and mother sitting
together in their old age as cheerfully as when the romance of life
was still fresh for them, and urging folks to matrimony because it is
the happier state. To see him at his piano, pouring out in melodious
reverie the emotions that are ever fresh in him, while she sits close
by in her armchair, revelling in love stories that would set the hearts
of romantic schoolgirls aflame, is, I think, one of the most beautiful
sights in the world, and it makes one feel that a burden of seventy or
eighty years may be borne lightly and easily if only love be there to
keep the heart young.
In childhood one’s mother seems always such a distance off in the
matter of age, but when one has reached middle life, and the wheels of
existence need oiling with the encouragement of affection, one’s mother
comes nearer, and seems younger and less sophisticated than ourselves.
For instance, to-day I feel a kind of Methuselah, and, as I think of
my mother and all her little ways, I can scarcely believe that she is
so much older than I. I think of her now as she was when we were all
children; I recall the fairy stories she used to tell us to keep us
good and quiet, while my father was busily occupied with his music, and
quiet was absolutely necessary for him to produce work that satisfied
him. So did she maintain a practical sympathy with his pursuits, while
she rejoiced our young minds. So has she ever been; in sickness or in
health she has never sacrificed her husband or her children for each
other, but considered them equally.
I remember once when I was seriously ill, and my father was taken ill
at the same time, how she would spend her whole time equally between
the two sickrooms, yet never allow either to feel the slightest want.
Most devoted and skilful of sick nurses, her gentle cheerfulness, her
little touches of humour, especially when there is any noxious physic
to be swallowed, and her undemonstrative sympathy, make her presence by
the invalid couch a sweet restorative in itself. How many weary hours
of illness has she solaced for me, from childhood to manhood! One says
confidently to the woman one loves that life without her would be empty
and unbearable; and it is a beautiful dispensation that the emotion of
love can make one feel this. But let the man who has known a mother’s
devotion through life, imagine what it would mean to be rett of that.
_I_ dare not, and why should I? My mother is as young a woman for her
seventy-five years as you would wish to meet, and as her grandchildren
come, she seems to grow younger for her joy of them. For she loves
children, and understands them, and she knows how to win their love and
make them happy. I do not believe there was ever so scientifically
sympathetic a tender of babies as my mother. She seems to divine their
dumb eloquence, and know exactly what they feel and want to express.
My mother is brimming over with humanity, and her indignation is easily
aroused by anything approaching to injustice. She cannot sit quietly
in a theatre during the performance of a play wherein children are
ill-treated, but must loudly give vent to her indignation. If she
sees two boys fighting in the street, she will promptly push her way
through the encouraging crowd, and threaten to “call a policeman” if
they do not desist; and if she comes across a woman who is chastising a
naughty child, or a man who is correcting an obstreperous animal, she
will not hesitate to stop and “give it to them well,” as she calls the
delivering of a reprimand. She is actively compassionate towards all
suffering, sympathetic with all sorrow, and pityingly tolerant of any
error arising from that ignorance which is the heritage of poverty or
the disadvantages of birth. But, on the other hand, she is aggressively
intolerant of all cant and its consequences; she is a sworn foe to
humbug in any shape or form, and candour is personified in her
attitude towards all men and all women.
Occasionally my father will be carried away by that beautiful credulity
and enthusiasm which belong to the idealist nature, but my mother’s
common-sense view of the case will, after some discussion, invariably
prove to be the true one. If this result in any disappointment
concerning the character of a friend, or the gratitude of a _protégé_,
my father will console himself with the reflection that there must
always be exceptions, and he will continue to believe in universal
goodness and the Providence that watches over it. But my mother will
become shrewder in the future, and so her common-sense will act as a
brake upon my father’s idealism. Not that she is matter offact, beyond
realising the fact that the world is made to live in, as well as dream
in, and that living is an obligation, whilst dreaming is a luxury.
With her the _desiderata_ of life have always been peace and quiet;
and her ideal of pleasure is to live in a cottage in the country, with
a rose-covered porch, and a garden in which every imaginable flower,
fruit, or vegetable may be cultivated, in which her grandchildren
may have ample scope to play and enjoy themselves, and her husband
and children may also find joy and comfort. She is never so happy as
when in the country, where, freed from the cares of housekeeping, she
is able to ramble about with a little grandson or granddaughter for
companion, and gather ferns, or tend flowers, or feed birds. These
simple pleasures are absolute delights to her; there is no humbug about
them, no chance of their disturbing the calm with troublous argument.
How my memory goes back to those days of childhood, when we would all
go to the seaside or to some country place in the summer months, and my
mother would speedily become the beloved of the country folk by reason
of her simple love of Nature, as well as by her sympathetic interest
in their lives of toil, or her skill in suggesting remedies for the
rheumatic aged or the ailing young. Wherever my mother has been she has
always carried love and gratitude with her. And if this be so among
strangers, what must it be with us who have known her love all our
lives? Ah, we, her children, have indeed a store of gratitude, which
it is the highest, most blessed privilege to feel. It is on a man’s
birthday that he pauses to think of all this; to calculate the amount
of love that is his, and the amount of love and gratitude that he
gives in return, and when he can include a living mother’s love in the
balance, he is blessed indeed. That is why I feel so happy to-day; my
mother greets me, and you know that she is the sweetest, the—well, she
is my mother, God bless her!
_THE SOCIALLY AMBITIOUS WOMAN_
Although there is little or nothing about Mrs. Vere Veneer that
connoisseurs would mistake for Vere de Vere, to the casual observer
and the Society “outsider” she presents quite an imposing appearance
from the social point of view. Whenever she is present at any social
function, the “Society papers” duly chronicle the gown she wore,
and sometimes even the subject of her conversation as they imagine
it to have been. She makes it her business to be seen everywhere,
and she spares herself no fatigue. If she gives an “At Home,” eager
paragraph-mongers, insidiously invited for the purpose, deluge the
editors with elaborate accounts of the party, the decorations, the
dresses, and the refreshments. Her public importance is, in fact,
the manufacture of the Society Press. But why it should be so is one
of those problems which I must leave for discussion till I write my
treatise on the “Anatomy of Society.” Then, I believe, I shall be
able to satisfactorily prove that nobody is anybody, in a relative
sense; but in the meanwhile, of course, everybody is somebody, in a
journalistic sense.
For instance, the other night I went to Mrs. Vere Veneer’s party at
her large and sumptuously appointed house in Cromwell Road, and to-day
I read in a descriptive paragraph that “everybody who is anybody was
there.” It is a triumphant phrase from the hostess’ point of view; it
is a seductive phrase to those whose ambition is social importance,
for evidently to be seen at one of Mrs. Vere Veneer’s crushes is to be
stamped with personal distinction. Well, certainly till I read this
paragraph I had no idea I was “anybody,” nor, to tell the truth, had I
any idea that Mrs. Vere Veneer herself—by the way, she was plain Mrs.
Veneer in the old days—was anybody in particular. But there is a magic
power of transformation in the pens of your Society journalists; they
confer their own patent of notoriety.
But let me recall the motley assembly of the other night. There was
a musical countess of Bohemian predilections, who was a centre of
attraction to a number of professional musicians of more or less
competence—often less—and an exuberance of manner. There was a funny
little actor, who, finding himself for a few minutes unnoticed,
skilfully revived attention by some impromptu buffoonery with a bust
of a negro in the corner. Then a languid vocalist, who during the
evening rapturously whispered his own mystical melodies, was sitting in
a corner absorbed in the conversation of an enthusiastic young girl,
while many mothers of families, some of them ladies of title, seemed to
be jealously watching an opportunity to lure the fascinating singer to
themselves. And when one or two of them succeeded, how comic were their
fawning attitudes of triumph.
[Illustration]
Then there were some lady-novelists, attended at a respectful distance
by their weary husbands, all alert to talk about their works; other
writers who found everybody else overrated, and professed to despise
popularity, or to regard it as a deadly microbe; critics who grumbled
at being expected to criticise things they were unaccustomed to, and
others who protested that life was too short for anything to be endured
which they didn’t like; and ladies who, while industriously making
notes of the costumes of the guests, talked largely of the claims of
literature and the power of the Press. There were one or two A.R.A.’s
run to seed, and two or three members of the Emancipated Art League,
who held that it was a higher testimony to true artistic merit to be
laughed at by the _Times_ than praised by Ruskin. There was a bountiful
supply of “entertainers,” amateur and professional, all ready to
sing, recite, ventriloquise, or perform card-tricks on the slightest
provocation.
There were a few civic dignitaries, doctors, lawyers, and divines with
a penchant for the stage; some “Society Actresses” to give the affair
style; an Irish member or two, more or less connected with newspapers,
the usual sprinkling of men-about-town, who go “everywhere,” and
women of fashion, as reflected by the ladies’ journals, together with
an indistinguishable crowd of persons whose evening’s enjoyment
appeared to consist of asking, “Who is that?” and flattering themselves
that they were in the company of genius and greatness. And this was
“everybody who is anybody,” while Mrs. Vere Veneer was the Madame
Recamier of this latter-day _salon_ of small “somebodies.”
To many of her acquaintances who delight to be her guests, Mrs. Veneer
is merely a social mushroom. They did not observe her social growth
till she was a full-fledged hostess, giving “At Homes,” to which they
were ready to accept invitations. They know nothing of the patient
struggle from obscurity; they saw not the persistent progress, step by
step, towards the attainment of her ambition. To “get into Society”
is, among the middle classes, the ruling passion in the average female
breast, just as money-making is in the male. By getting into “Society”
I do not mean necessarily being admitted into Court circles but the
attainment of a more important social rating than the people next door,
or being invested with a certain definite distinction that lifts one’s
name above the crowd.
Now Mrs. Veneer began by being nobody, socially speaking. Her husband
was a Midland manufacturer, in a fair way of business, and she had no
knowledge of London Society and Bond Street dressmakers, save through
the medium of the ladies’ journals, which she devoured in discontent.
But there came a season of much profit to her husband’s factory; his
foreman of works had introduced a novelty which became the fashion, and
by aid of much advertising the fortune of the Veneers was made. Then
they opened a branch house in the Metropolis, and Mrs. Veneer insisted
that their home should henceforth be in London. Provincial life was
ridiculous, she would say, nobody knew anything in the country. She
yearned for society. She knew she was pretty, and could wear a good
gown with grace. She knew that she had a bright intelligence, and
that she was accomplished enough to be able to patronise the arts and
artists without betraying her provincialism. So her husband, being well
trained and not too assertive, assented to the change of residence, and
tried hard to be content.
At first they had very few acquaintances, but among them was one little
woman, who was a host in herself. She was an officer’s widow, and
though her means were limited, her social connection was extensive.
Her gentility was unimpeachable, and she had the _entrée_ into many
good houses, for she was a genial little soul, and everybody was
sorry for her, though no one knew exactly why. She always seemed to
be working at something in somebody else’s interest, and was largely
and energetically engaged in promoting bazaars and balls in aid of
philanthropic institutions, so that the sympathy she evoked on their
behalf appeared somehow to cling to herself. Besides, a busy woman
with a mission, especially a philanthropic one, always commands a
certain amount of respect. Now this little person added to her other
energetic impulses a persistent passion for introducing people to one
another. That anybody of any kind of personality should be introduced
to her set, or be in her set, except through her medium, was a personal
vexation, even a sorrow, to her; therefore she made it her business to
know everybody, and always to be on the alert for introductions.