in a woman, but these elements of power are qualified by the ease
with which outside influences, often weak in themselves, can switch
her opinions from one line of thought to another. She will, on this
account, never be a literary force, like George Eliot, for instance,
or the Brontës. She has the audacity of her opinions rather than the
courage, for courage implies strength, and in opinion she is weak;
while even her prejudices, of which she has accumulated a plentiful
store, are always wavering. But this sensibility to influence is a
useful quality in the “realistic” novelist, though it may be damaging
to the literary artist. Now, Mrs. Talespinner is usually true in
observation and vivid in description, but this frailty in the matter
of opinion makes her uncertain in the selection of her material.
She is so afraid of being conventional that she will treat subjects
and include details which perhaps delicacy—not mere prudery—would
suppress, which, however scientifically interesting, may be contrary
to the first principle of art, namely, the producing of an impression
of beauty. Yet Mrs. Talespinner is a woman of personal refinement,
with a keen appreciation of the beauties of art and nature. As a
novelist, however, her _metier_ has so far been the startling of
sensitive temperaments by wonderfully vivid descriptions of unpleasant
characters amid unpleasant surroundings, without the omission of a
single repulsive or disagreeable detail which could help to realise the
story and its moral. For this reason there is a constant demand for
Mrs. Talespinner’s books. The newspaper critics may abuse them, but the
publishers keep a commercial eye upon them, and everybody reads them.
Therefore Mrs. Talespinner may regard herself as a success.
So far I have told you about my friend in her literary, or, I may say,
her public capacity only. But to really appreciate Mrs. Talespinner,
one must know her in her home, one must have enjoyed her frequent
companionship. Outsiders, who judge her only from the virile vigour of
her writings, and the audacity of her subjects and their treatment,
or those even who know her only through the daring frankness of her
conversation, can have no idea of the essential womanliness of her
nature. No woman, perhaps, ever so thoroughly got mentally on the
outside of herself, and lived intellectually apart from her own
womanhood. Thus she is a kind of female version of “Hyde and Jekyll,”
the Hyde being her literary personality, the Jekyll her sentimental
self. It is, therefore, very difficult to know her as she actually is.
She will, for instance, catch at some view of a subject which is in
direct opposition to that held by those with whom she is conversing,
and will obstinately argue it out, merely for the intellectual pleasure
she derives from the independence of the position she has assumed. She
may really be in exact accord with her hearers, but the delight to
her of saying startling things, and of warring with words, is similar
to that experienced by the skilful boxer in a bout with the gloves.
But she is not a good stayer, and she is frequently beaten by an
argumentative blow that is straight and strong, while she is honest
enough to own her defeat afterwards, though perhaps not immediately.
She always relies on her strength, but yet knows her weakness; for
she will frankly avow that she is easily influenced. In the course
of conversation, however, she will sometimes be carried away by
fine-sounding phrases which, analysed, are mere verbiage. She will
make statements which may be quite foreign to her real nature, and, to
those who do not know her, she will convey an entirely false impression
of her mental tone, though her mind will have flashed its vitality
before them like a heliograph. The essential qualities of her mind, in
fact, are catholicity of interest, active audacity, and the quickness
and vividness with which she receives an idea, or perceives a fact,
and passes it out again through the crucible of her own sentiency and
experience. It is the same whether she be conversing on any topic of
the day or writing one of her stories. The idyls and the epics of
life, the romantic love-story, the heroism of noble souls, interest
her without impelling her pen to activity; but her literary and
conversational enthusiasm is aroused by those sordid realities which
the daily journals bring to light, by those stories of life in which
the morality is crook-backed and twisted and the humanity limps with a
cloven hoof.
Yet Mrs. Talespinner herself has none of these moral twistings, though
it is through no fault of her own if opinions to the contrary get
abroad; for she has that perverse spirit which always prompts the
excursionist to walk in those places where he reads that “trespassers
will be prosecuted.” True, this very spirit dates from Eve herself, but
it is the key-note of the modern “realistic” novelist. Conventionality
writes up the warning, and the literary realist defiantly trespasses,
and takes the consequences, which are invariably notoriety and its
attendant commercial success.
Mrs. Talespinner is, as a matter of fact, morally quite conventional,
though she indulges in conversational and literary unconventionalities.
But, fortunately, she has a husband who understands her as woman
while he admires her as writer, being able to distinguish between her
intellectual self and her sentimental. Thus he can sympathise with her
literary ambitions without necessarily approving the results, and thus
he finds happiness in his home, where a less discriminating and less
generous man might find only domestic unrest. For with Mrs. Talespinner
her literary work is the dominating interest of her life, though she
will tell you, and convince herself, that all her ambition is centred
in her little sons, whom she purposes educating with a view to their
one day being Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, as these, to quote
her own words are “the only professions which are not overcrowded.”
This is the extent of Mrs. Talespinner’s practical interest in her
nursery—the future careers of her baby sons. She does not spend much
time with them during the day, not that she is not very fond of them,
but children fidget her and interrupt her writing. When, however, she
does admit them to her presence, she does not attempt to play with
them, but talks to them seriously and grandly of her pride in their
progress towards high estates, and makes them promise, poor little
mites! to be Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors, and instructs them
prematurely in their duties. As to seeing to the details of their
nursery existence—well, they have an excellent and trustworthy nurse,
and their father enjoys that kind of thing. Hers is the pride and
privilege to care for them intellectually. She has made up her mind
that they shall be great men, that their greatness may reflect upon her
as their mother, and she candidly tells you that she only wishes to
write brilliantly and successfully enough for people in after years to
say, “No wonder they are such talented men—they had a clever mother.”
Mrs. Talespinner’s husband, by his perpetual patience, good-humour, and
large-mindedness, prevents his wife’s literary engrossment becoming
domestically aggressive. Like all women, when they undertake any
professional occupation, she is what one may call “shoppy.” She talks
continually about her works in process of composition, and regards
everything from the point of view of “copy.” Whenever she makes any new
acquaintance who perhaps is not conversant with her literary fame, she
soon insidiously alludes to her writings, and introduces quotations
from them; and then her husband, who is something of a wag in his way,
will seriously remark, “You may perhaps have gathered that my wife
writes a little,” and then there will be a general laugh, and Mrs.
Talespinner’s literary exuberance and self-advertisement will pass
as humorous, and become a source of interest instead of boredom to
her new acquaintances. And one special virtue of Mrs. Talespinner’s
is that she is quite as open to good-humoured chaff as to criticism,
and is as ready to laugh at herself as at any one else. She has the
_fin-de-siècle_ lack of reverence, and will hold nothing sacred from
a joke or a humorous analysis—not even the family dinner. Though she
can order as good a dinner as any one of my acquaintance, and has the
worldly wisdom to cultivate the constancy of an excellent cook by
allowing her to be the autocrat of the kitchen, she sometimes takes it
into her head to direct the tradesmen not to call for orders, as the
ringing of bells disturbs her flow of thought. Then she quite forgets
to send her directions until her husband comes home from the City and
hungrily suggests dinner, which is consequently two or three hours
late. But he, good-natured man, is quite satisfied to wait, so long as
his wife has been content with her day’s work.
Then her casual way of housekeeping occurs to them both as humorous,
and perhaps while they are still at dinner the printer’s proof of
some serial story she is writing for a newspaper will arrive, and the
rest of the meal will have to take care of itself. Surely her husband
can help himself to the pudding; besides some day his amiability and
devotion will furnish her with “copy,” and how can she, when she comes
to draw him as a character, describe his qualities with her customary
graphic power unless she tests them under all circumstances? And her
husband falling in with her literary humour, accepts all these things
with equanimity. For he knows her, not only in her moods of literary
enthusiasm or “shoppiness,” or when she is playing with paradoxes and
making sensational statements merely for bravado. He knows her when
she is wooed to gentler moods by the soft persuasive influence of the
twilight, when the evening star “washes the dusk with silver,” and the
realities of life lose themselves in the mystic poetry of the hour,
and every feeling sings in tune the divine melody of love, when the
realistic lady-novelist, as well as the woman of humble toil, mutely
realises that it is a good thing to be loved by a good husband and
sweet children. He knows her then, and both are content for always.
_THE DISAPPOINTED SPINSTER_
Though I have always disputed the truth of the proverb that “the tailor
makes the man”—since the more fashionably I am dressed the less I feel
of my individual manhood—I am perfectly sure that the lover, not the
dressmaker, makes the woman. As he pulls the strings of her heart,
so can he shape her life, and according as he makes her love react
upon herself with joy or sorrow, so can he develop the tendencies of
her temperament, and, through all circumstances, bring out the sweet
or the sour in her nature. Disappointment in love will embitter the
cynical-minded woman as no mere loss of fortune could, and make her
constantly aggressive in her attitude towards both her own and the
opposite sex; whereas, to the woman of gentle faith, it will simply
lend the crown of patient sisterhood with all men and all women, nor
will it in the least destroy her faith in the beautiful beneficence
of the natural order of marriage. If you hear a spinster who has
passed her thirtieth year inveighing in set and bitter terms against
the joys and advantages of the married state, be sure she has had her
matrimonial opportunity and missed it, while she gave the love of her
girlhood to a “detrimental.”
“Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken;
Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be overtaken.”
Miss Singleton is in the “fallen leaf” age, for the sweet blossom-time
of girlhood has long since passed her by, and she has now seen some
thirty-five summers. Yet in many respects she is as young as ever,
and when she goes out to a dance she has no lack of partners—and the
best dancers too, mind you—while on the tennis court she is always
in much demand. For she plays tennis with an activity and a style
that would put “sweet seventeen” to the blush, and the rhythm and the
vigour of her waltzing have outlived the practical admiration of almost
two decades of partners. Indeed, not having the natural stress of
motherhood to bear, like those women who are wives, Miss Singleton’s
physical energy and need of active excitement still find vent in these
pursuits, perhaps with more zest even than in the days of her girlhood.
See her on the tennis court. She is completely absorbed in the game,
mentally and physically, and any mistake on her own part, or bad
stroke on the part of her partner, provokes her to irritability. It is
something more than a mere game to her, it is the supreme life-interest
of the moment. She must play up with all her might and main; for life
is long and youth is fleeting, and while she can still run about,
and make swift, sure strokes with her racquet, she can make-believe
to herself that she is not getting _passée_; but to give up dancing
and tennis would be to confess herself at once an old maid—horrible
thought, and quite absurd.
[Illustration]
Why, look at her as she enters a ball-room. Perhaps there is just a
suspicion of weariness and contemptuous discontent in her countenance,
but, the moment she is recognised, a crowd of youths collect around
her clamouring for her card, and soon she is all aglow with the
excitement of the dance and the amusing admiration of the dancing men.
They are only ingenuous youths, though, you will observe, or men who
regard women’s society as a mere pastime. They are not the marrying
men, not men who are seeking the companionship and comfort of a wife.
Those are to be found dancing with or talking to the young girls,
whose characters are not yet formed by time and experience, who are
therefore the more malleable for the magnanimities of marriage, its
responsibilities, its sacrifices, and its necessity for mutual give
and take. There is no sign of malleability about Miss Singleton; there
might have been once, ere the gentleness of hopeful girlhood had been
turned to the hardness of disappointed womanhood. But now men do not
think of her as a possible wife, or if they do it is negatively. “I
like that Miss Singleton; she dances splendidly, and can give you an
answer back; says devilish smart things too, but I pity any one who
married her: she would soon let him see who was master, and it wouldn’t
be he.”
Yes, Miss Singleton would require a very clever, strong, and determined
man to bring her into matrimonial harmony now. She has acquired too
much of the habit of self-reliance and self-assertion; a long course
of fruitless flirtation, in which she has fenced both with experts and
with amateurs, has caused her to assume towards men always an attitude
of defiant defence, besides, the restlessness born of an unsatisfied
life has become chronic with her. She is never content to remain at
home: her craving for amusement and excitement is unceasing, and
strangers rather than those who belong to her home-circle always claim
her first attention.
However charming and amusing she may be in society, at home she keeps
everything in a ferment, and she is contented with nothing. She
domineers over her parents, as well as over her brothers and sisters,
her cousins, and intimate friends. She captiously criticises whatever
they do, and wishes to rearrange and direct everything. She is jealous
of her relatives and friends who marry, though she constantly avers
that nothing would ever induce her to take unto herself a husband, that
the idea of a woman giving up her personal independence and freedom
to a man is absolutely repulsive to her, while she professes a sort
of contemptuous pity for all those who do voluntarily fall into this
degrading condition. “Marriage is a snare for the weak-minded, and a
delusion for fools,” she will tell you, and she will pretend that she
believes it.
But it was not always so. When I first knew Kate Singleton she was
a bright, sympathetic girl of eighteen, and I envied the man who
should some day call her his wife. She had certainly both will and
character, but these were tempered by true womanly sensibility, and a
good and magnanimous man’s love might have helped her to develop into
a delightful woman and an excellent wife. Unfortunately, however, the
romantic element in her nature was appealed to by the fascinations
of a man who was not good, though he understood women’s weaknesses
fatally well, and knew how to simulate the qualities that would most
readily appeal to any particular girl. The cynical would perhaps
excuse him with that cheap and common plea which covers so much of
the wrong done in this world: “He was no worse than other men.” He
had certainly committed no crime; only he had lived fast, perhaps
a little faster than most men of his age. But he was a handsome
young man, with a very engaging manner, a generous income, and many
temptations; so, of course, it did not take him long to spend his
patrimony, though he enjoyed its full value in luxurious pastimes and
dissipation. Then, having nothing but debts and a rake’s reputation to
his name, he endeavoured to make matrimonial capital out of his good
looks and personal fascination. He met Kate Singleton, whose father
he had understood would give her a handsome dowry, and perceiving the
vulnerable place in her affections, he appealed to her sympathies
through the story of his troubles and temptations. He worked with such
infinite care and such insidious art, while he simulated the reckless,
generous impulses of a simple-minded, honest-hearted hero of melodrama,
that she gave her entire love to him, and became his promised wife. Her
parents opposed the marriage, seeing facts with the eyes of experience,
but she held to her determination, defiantly proclaimed her faith in
the man of her choice, and fought in defence of her love as fiercely
as a lioness defends her cubs. Then all her womanhood was aroused,
and mind and feeling put forth their strength for love had waked the
heroine in her, and the spirit of romance exercised its magic influence
upon her life.
But the truth broke upon her with sudden cruelty. In an unguarded
moment of anxiety concerning her wedding portion, should she succeed
in obtaining her parents’ consent, the lover revealed the mercenary
motive of his wooing. Her pride was wounded, her love insulted, and by
this lightning-shock all her better, truer self was blighted in its
growth. All the taunts that she had endured in defence of her love, all
the sanctity of feeling laid bare to the callous stare of this man,
recoiled upon her like the backwash of a wave of bitter waters, turning
all her sweetness sour. Then she grew to mistrust all men because of
the falseness of that one, and for a time she really set her face
against marriage, and that, too, when her face had yet the bloom of
girlhood upon it.
After a while, however, there came in her life an Indian summer of
love-longings and marriage-hopes, but by that time the bitterness of
doubt and disappointment had hardened the tone of her voice, drawn her
mouth to a set sternness, and tainted her mind with cynicism. So now,
though there be plenty to flirt with her, there be none who strive to
lure back the softness of her nature through the gentle persuasion of
love, and no doubt she has recognised this, for she always pretends to
laugh at sentiment, and to regard emotion as a species of hysteria.
But once I chanced to notice her while a girl, with a voice that
sounded like the very incarnation of music—she was singing a simple,
pathetic little folk-song.
It was out in a garden on a summer’s night, “and music and moonlight
and feeling were one,” and, as Kate Singleton sat in the shadow of a
tree, the tears rolled down her cheek, and I am sure that a sympathetic
wooer might then have struck the vein of true womanliness in her with
all the old softness, all the old lovableness of girlhood. But the
melting mood was brief, for soon afterwards, in the gaslight of the
drawing room, there were no traces of tears on her face, no gentle
signs in her voice of a recent “session of sweet silent thought.” She
was busily challenging to flirtation a man whom she had artfully taken
from the side of a pretty young girl to whom his words were as honey.
It was a petty episode quite unworthy of her, for at best the conquest
would be but for an evening, while it would cause the young girl a
real heart-pang. But this was one of the atoms of excitement that make
her life tolerable to her; her dominant desire is to make men feel the
pangs of unreturned love, or, failing that, her pleasure is to flirt
with them up to a point and then to turn round and snub them. This
affords her amusement as well as vent for bitterness of feeling.
Some unmarried women can soothe their solitary souls with charity of
act and feeling, and bless other people’s lives with their benevolence,
thus directing the love and sympathy that one man has missed into the
wider channel of philanthropy. But these, possibly, have never been
crossed in love, or, if they have, they are the women of whom the
silent, uncomplaining martyrs of the world are made. Miss Singleton,
however, is none of these. She cannot forgive, especially as she finds
it impossible to forget.
But, after all, what is to be Miss Singleton’s ultimate aim in
life? She cannot fill her whole existence with dances, tennis, and
flirtations, for time will have something serious to say on that
subject. Say she is five-and-thirty now; in another five years she
will have leisure from her present pastimes to realise her want of new
interests. She may not personally feel that age is creeping on apace,
but she will be made sensible of the fact by all kinds of external
signs. She will find that, though the marriages of her brothers and
sisters, and other contemporaries of her girlhood, at first made
little difference in their attitude towards her, the increasing and
growing-up of their families make a very great difference, and,
naturally, the interest that is taken in herself must under these
conditions become gradually lessened. A new generation of girls will
have ousted her from the arena of flirtation, for the spinster of forty
stands but little chance against the girl of twenty, though her wit be
twenty times as great, and her charms be all the more telling for long
practice. And then her interests will become narrower as her field of
interest is reduced in dimensions by the encroachments of time and its
consequences, until an utter sense of loneliness and uncaredforness
sets in, and then—God help her!
But I would let Miss Singleton’s story point a moral for all spinsters.
Because one man gave her a bitter draught to swallow, she allowed
herself to believe, until too late, that there was no more sweetness in
the world; because one man proved false, she withdrew her faith from
all men; and so she has missed the blessings of domestic love, the
wife’s happiness, the mother’s joys, and so some good man has missed a
good wife.
_THE INDIVIDUAL WOMAN_
Miss Strongith’will believes in herself and has the courage of her
individuality. She is no advertising advocate of Woman’s Rights, as
spelt with a capital W and a capital R; but she quietly asserts the
right of woman to live her own life, to mould her own mind, to shape
her own destiny, on equal terms with man, but in her own womanly way.
She does not proclaim aloud from a platform that she has a mission; she
makes no attempt at public philanthropy, and works among no paupers;
she does not wear a divided skirt and ride far afield for notoriety;
she does not lecture at learned societies; nor does she run about
the world looking at loathsome diseases, and wheedling guileless
journalists into writing her down a heroine. She is simply a woman who
believes that woman’s life can be quite complete without man, and she
acts up to that belief by trying to make her own life self-contained
and independent. To Miss Strongith’will the mere fact of being
married or not is an extraneous circumstance, a matter of accident,
opportunity, or inclination, which has nothing to do with a woman’s
individualism. She can assert her own entity, whether she has a husband
or not. At least, this is Miss Strongith’will’s theory, and she does
not pretend to belong to the profession of strong-minded women. She has
no sympathy with them; to her they are an impertinence, not because
their minds happen to be strong, or perhaps unfeminine, but because
they label themselves, and profess to despise any other brand.