about fifty louis, so that her winnings are proportionately large, and
the stake is substantial enough to make the excitement keen. Once she
has placed her pieces, nothing else has any interest for her. She gives
herself up, body and soul, to the play. She knows nothing that goes on
around her. She takes no cognisance of the heartburnings, the awful
anxieties, or the intense pleasures that may reveal themselves in the
faces of other players. She only notices the _croupier_ and the table.
Some hopeless young man might have just lost the last penny of his
inheritance, and, unable to face ruin might be leaving her side with
despair on his face and desolation in his heart, to seek the shameful
death of the suicide. Another might have squandered a fortune he held
in trust for others—perhaps helpless children—and, having swerved
from the path of honesty, be doomed henceforth to a life of fraud and
degrading adventure. A wretched wife and mother might have played her
last stake, and thus lost her only chance of redeeming her wrecked
fortune and her husband’s credit, except at the price of her honour;
and these unhappy creatures might go their hopeless ways, as others,
sanguine or desperate, come and fill their places; but Mrs. Hazard does
not heed them. They have no existence for her, though at any other
time her heart would bleed for them, and she would talk of them with
deep womanly sympathy; now she only watches the numbers, and the little
roulette ball, and her gold pieces.
All the time she is playing, people come and go, and crowd
around—people of all kinds, and of every nationality, the Russian
prince, the English “milord,” the French _déclassée_, the German baron,
the American millionaire, and the Italian tenor; but they might all be
dummies for the notice she takes of them—and yet Mrs. Hazard is really
fond of studying character and types. A famous and beautiful English
actress stands perhaps just opposite to her, one who is proverbially
lucky at the tables, and a crowd of onlookers gather round merely to
watch her play, finding her infinitely more interesting when all her
sensibilities are actually involved in the chances of the roulette,
than when simulating the passions of a dramatic heroine. But though
Mrs. Hazard is devoted to the pleasures of the theatre, and generally
evinces the greatest interest in the personalities of the stage, she
now remains quite unconcerned as to the proximity of this distinguished
artist, whose very costume even would at any other time be an object
of lively interest to her. While the gaming fever is upon her she is
as one under a spell. She is as separate from her normal self as the
opium-eater when the drug is working upon him.
But it is not only at the foreign gambling-tables that Mrs. Hazard
finds vent for her speculative spirit. Unknown to her husband—who, by
the way, is never permitted to know what sums she really wins or loses,
for his steady-going business mind would be simply appalled at them—she
watches the money market with a close and keen interest, and increases
or diminishes her winnings at play by means of “flutters” on the Stock
Exchange. On one occasion she nearly came to financial and domestic
grief over these transactions, for she had been playing heavily, and
an unexpected crisis found her at settling-day with a balance on the
wrong side, greater than she was able to meet. She dared not go to her
husband for help; her luck at cards and on the racecourse was at the
time persistently against her—she is an inveterate poker-player and
backer of horses—and she was obliged to enlist the assistance of a
handsome and wealthy young man of her acquaintance.
The confidential notes that passed between them, and their unexplained
private meetings, at length aroused the suspicions of her husband,
and their conjugal relations were for a time exceedingly strained,
and I doubt if these two have ever been quite as completely trustful
since. One or two lucky wins at Epsom, and a few good nights at poker
at friends’ houses helped to put her on her financial feet again,
and the suspense and excitement of this experience afforded intense
gratification to her gambler’s spirit, but her husband still feels,
I think, that he was never told all the truth about her confidential
friendship with that seductive young man. He must often wonder,
too, how much his wife really wins after those long sittings at the
card-tables, but as he always protests against her winning money from
their friends, he must be conscious that she keeps a good deal from his
knowledge. At all events, her bank pass-book is a sealed book to him.
Mrs. Hazard is very keen about horse-racing. She was bred in Yorkshire,
and loves horses, and knows the Stud-book almost by heart. She studies
the Racing Calendar, and follows the careers of the racers with almost
professional interest. A racecourse to her is an Elysium, and among her
social set are many racing men, who give her “tips,” while their wives
invite her to accompany them to Sandown, Ascot, Kempton, and Epsom. Her
husband takes no interest in this kind of thing, but he does not hinder
her going, and she carefully omits to tell him the result of her day’s
betting.
And, after all, why should she tell him? It would only annoy him, and
the excitement of the racing is over. She _must_ bet and gamble, or
life would be mere stagnation to her. The rearing of children, the
display of the domestic affections, the shallow pleasures of Society,
and the charms of culture, are not alone sufficient to satisfy the
cravings of her nature, though they may be for many women. She can
enjoy all these, but she must have in addition the intoxicating
delights of chance and risk.
_A SINGER—AND HER MOTHER_
Miss Euterpe Diatone is a concert-singer of average talent and
popularity, if you will take my word for it; but if you prefer to
accept her own version of the matter, you will learn that her genius
excites the jealousy of the entire musical profession, also that if the
public could only get their rights and the complete satisfaction of
their musical desires, they would never hear any woman sing other than
Miss Euterpe Diatone. But the concert-agents and the _entrepreneurs_
are, as she will tell you, so venal and obtuse, and so easily
influenced by the jealousy of the other vocalists, who cotton to them,
and bribe them, maybe—who knows? Anyhow, Miss Diatone can tell you of
numbers of instances where other singers, of less ability and fame than
herself, have had engagements which ought to have been offered to her;
and she knows for a fact that the concert-givers cut their own throats
by this policy, for friends of her own actually stayed away from those
concerts, only because she was not engaged to sing.
Of course all this is conveyed in a tone of becoming modesty, and if
you want confirmation of these blatant facts, you have but to ask Miss
Diatone’s mother, Madame Brown-Smith. Though, if you value my advice
in any particular, you will be content with the daughter’s statement,
for Madame Brown-Smith has always much to say on the subject of her
daughter; and beautiful as motherly devotion undoubtedly is, the
professional enthusiasm of the vocalist’s mother is apt to become a
little oppressive. She is a veritable touter, regarding her daughter’s
voice as the commercial traveller looks upon the article of his trade,
and “pushing” it accordingly. As you listen to her depreciating every
vocalist in turn, and telling you how Euterpe was encored so many times
at such a concert, whereas every other performer “finished without a
hand,” and how Euterpe was paid so much by such a publisher for singing
a certain song, which is really such rubbish you have wondered how any
one could have had the impertinence even to print it, you begin almost
to wonder whether music is a “divine art” after all, and not a trade
on a par with the selling of patent pills, soap, or grey shirtings.
Truly the modern singer—and her mother—are terrible disillusioners.
[Illustration]
When we think of all that music is, and all it means, its magic
influence, its mighty power, and when we reflect that, through its
medium, as the rhythmic expression of all unspoken emotion, the singer
or the player may soothe a single heart or move a multitude, awaken
a soul to love or rouse a nation to patriotism, what can we say of
the musician who, with this splendid gift of song, merely turns it to
sordid account? And yet singers must live. That is the difficulty, for
in these days art must suffer that artists may prosper.
Miss Diatone is not one to starve for the sake of art, nor is her
mother one to let her, for Madame Brown-Smith has something personal
to say in the matter. Did she not pay for her daughter’s musical
education out of the slender means her husband left her, and is it
not fair that she should now enjoy the profits? But if her daughter
studied the interests of art before popularity, the profits would be
slight indeed. The fact is, it pays to sing commonplace songs, and
the “royalty system” therefore provides an important portion of Miss
Diatone’s income. Moreover, Miss Diatone urges that she must sing what
the public want to hear, and when she sings songs of the pretty-pretty
order now in vogue, she is vociferously encored. Moreover, she
receives a fee from the publishers of the song as well as from the
concert-giver, whereas, if she were to sing any really artistic song,
which, of course, she will pretend she would much prefer doing, her
audience would, she believes, be sure to find it “above their heads”
and would applaud her faintly, and the publishers would not find it
worth while to give her a “royalty.” The encore and the “royalty” seem
indeed to be the goals of the modern concert-singers’ ambition, and for
these they will sell their artistic souls.
I do not know how it is, but as soon as the commercial aspect of the
musical profession takes hold on the artist’s life, it seems to narrow
the soul, to prevent that true _camaraderie_ which exists amongst all
other artists than musicians, and to promote self-serving and jealousy.
The struggle for existence in the musical world would too often appear
to be opposed to magnanimity of mind and generosity of soul, for those
who exhibit these qualities in their professional lives and in their
art-work, are not, as a rule, among the prosperous. It is a small
world, not the world of song, mark you, but the world of professional
singers, and it is full of the littleness of small communities. Of
course there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule.
Miss Diatone lives in the midst of this narrow world, with its warped
personal interests and its jealousies, so opposed to the great world
of art, which concerns itself with all humanity, but somehow she does
not appear to realise that it is so. It has not yet been borne in upon
her that the professionally musical community is not the centre of
the universe, and that she is not the actual axis on which it turns.
If such a knowledge were likely to come to her from any quarter, her
mother would be in time to prevent it, for Madame Brown-Smith is her
daughter’s Barnum. By the way, why she is called “Madame” Brown-Smith
is a mystery, unless she considers that her daughter’s _status_ in
the musical profession confers that distinction upon her as a right.
There is often a good deal of mystification among musical artists on
the subject of these prefixes. They would seem to regard the use of
“Madame” as a sort of artistic degree, and many vocalists’ mothers,
adopting it in place of plain “Mrs.,” appear to hold the title in trust
for their daughters till they become too old to be styled “Miss” any
longer.
Without any disrespect to mothers, for as a class I reverence them, I
cannot help thinking how much pleasanter many vocalists I wot of would
be if they had no mothers, or, rather, if they had not the mothers
Providence has provided them withal. Now, Miss Euterpe Diatone would
be quite a nice, companionable girl if it were not for that mother of
hers. Of course, Diatone is only a pseudonym, adopted for professional
purposes, but as Euterpe Brown-Smith—when her father was alive, and
before her mother discovered that she was worth working as a means of
income—she was unaffected, and quite popular among her school-friends,
though somewhat inclining to personal vanity. Then she began to
develop a singing voice of a quality beyond anything known in their
social circle—Mr. Brown-Smith, by the way, travelled in something
or other, and they lived at Peckham Rye—and the fullest musical
resources of the local High School were called into requisition for the
cultivation of her voice. Then she was sent to one of the academies
of music, and became quite popular in the parlours of Peckham Rye and
its vicinity. She was greatly in demand for penny readings, choral
meetings, and social gatherings of all kinds; and, of course, with her
went her mother, who shone with her accomplished daughter’s reflected
light, posed as the mother of the local _prima donna_, and made social
capital out of the position.
Now Mrs. Brown-Smith, as she was then called, always had an eye to
business, and, when her husband died, she bethought her of Euterpe’s
singing powers for support; so, by fanning her daughter’s vanity
in every particular, she encouraged her to study hard and win
scholarships, until at the students’ concert she attracted the notice
of the professors, the press, and the concert-agents, and thereupon
obtained her first professional engagement. She was a success with the
public, and gradually her engagements became more frequent, and of a
better and more lucrative class, until her name has now become familiar
in concert-halls and drawing-rooms.
And now Miss Euterpe Diatone and her mother reside in a flat in the
West-end, and give pleasant “afternoon teas,” and are seen in many
places honoured of Society. Miss Diatone is really a bright and
engaging girl in her way, and if she wears her profession perpetually
on her sleeve, so to speak, perhaps she finds it consistent with her
advancement. But though Miss Diatone be welcome in many drawing-rooms,
both socially and professionally, the same can hardly always be said of
her mother; yet poor Euterpe is in the same case with Mary who had a
little lamb, for wherever Miss Diatone goes her mother is sure to go.
If they happen to be on a visit at a country house, and a driving party
is being made up for the young folk, while the elderly ladies are to
stay at home, Madame Brown-Smith disconcerts everybody by asking where
she is to sit, and, of course, she takes the very seat which had been
set apart for the belle of the party. Then Miss Diatone has quietly to
apologise for “poor Ma, who does so love the country,” the while she
is boiling with indignation that her mother has probably spoiled her
chance of a future invitation. Yes, her mother is certainly a trial;
but if Euterpe attempted to protest that people may invite a young
singer without necessarily wanting her mother, Madame Brown-Smith would
only accuse her of ingratitude and want of feeling. What then can she
do? But they have frequent quarrels, owing to Miss Diatone’s egotism
and her mother’s aggressiveness, which come into conflict.
The subject of young men is one perhaps most fruitful of quarrels.
Euterpe Diatone, though she finds much pleasure and gratification in
the applause of the public, and much profit to boot, is essentially
a woman, and her vanity cries also for the satisfaction of personal
conquest. Consequently there is no over-looking the fact that she is an
unconscionable flirt of a kind that is very popular with men, while at
the same time she always keeps an eye open to the chances of matrimony,
and to the advancement of her popularity. She has a very taking manner
with both men and women, but with men she will assume a sauciness that
leads them to suppose they may be familiar. Then she will at once
stand on her dignity, and command their personal respect, after which
she will relapse again, and completely puzzle them.
By this means she keeps her admirers at beck and call, and they all
agree that she is “as clever as she knows how”—what odious expressions
they do use nowadays!—but that “you have to mind your P’s and Q’s with
her,” for she puts out her bristles of propriety at the least alarm.
Still they do not propose marriage, and that is a subject of perennial
annoyance to her. But perhaps Madame Brown-Smith may be in some measure
accountable for this lapse of connubial courtesy on the part of Miss
Diatone’s admirers. To tell the truth, she has an unmistakable way of
intimating that any one who married Euterpe would find to his cost that
mother and daughter were inseparable; though I cannot help thinking,
from my personal observation of the young vocalist herself, that after
marriage she would take an entirely different view of the matter from
her mother. In the meanwhile, she realises with undisguised irritation
that this mother of hers is spoiling all her matrimonial chances in
her enthusiastic endeavours to further her daughter’s professional
interests, and perhaps, in a greater degree, her own comforts.
It must not be supposed that Euterpe is not fond of her mother, or
that she does not pay her sufficient attention; but she has acquired
a habit of egotism, perhaps from the practice of constantly standing
alone upon the platform, and facing the public on her own merits. When,
therefore, Madame Brown-Smith’s idea of her own importance increases
with her daughter’s professional and social status, and she monopolises
the conversation with “_my_ daughter” this, and “_my_ daughter” that,
and “_my_ daughter” the other, Euterpe feels that she could create
so much more favourable an impression concerning her own doings with
the personal persuasion of her “I.” As the Americans would say, she
wants “to run her own show.” And what concert-agent, what composer,
what publisher, or even what conscientious critic, would not be more
inclined to listen favourably to the autobiographical details of a
fair and winning egotist, with all her charm of personality, than to
the obvious advertising and touting of the young artist’s aggressive
mother? If Miss Euterpe Diatone makes herself amiable to us with
an eye to business—knowing us to be in a position to assist her
professionally, we amiably fall in with her views because, though one
eye be to business, the other is to ourselves, and both are pretty.
We are only men, after all. But with the mother, it is quite another
thing. We respect her maternal solicitude and her business assiduity,
but she is a bore—brutal though it sound to say so. Moreover, without
her for show-woman I verily believe Euterpe Diatone would have been a
truer artist and a nicer woman.
_THE “DEAREST FRIEND”_
Among women, I venture to think, friendship is not temperamental, it is
an accomplishment; and, at the risk of bringing down upon my devoted
head an avalanche of feminine contradiction, I make bold to say that
real friendship, as understood by men, is rare between women, though
nearly every woman cherishes a “dearest friend.”
A woman’s “dearest friend” is her familiar gossip, her partisan, but
seldom, if ever, the companion of her soul, the true confidante of
her inner self. Of course, both she and her “dearest friend” would
indignantly repudiate this assertion, and vow that they severally tell
each other _everything_, that their confidence is mutual and complete;
but then dissimulation is so inherent in women that they are not aware
of it. They are not analysing creatures as a rule, and they would
as soon admit their natural dissimulation, or their incapacity for
friendship with their own sex, from a man’s point of view, as any of
us would own to lacking a sense of humour, or being no connoisseurs in
matters of art.
I believe that men can teach women friendship, though, perhaps, not
until they have learnt the great lesson of love, for which they have
a natural intuition. Then, women may be the friends of men, and very
true and enduring friends too; but between woman and woman I doubt, as
a rule, whether you would find the same kind of friendship as between
man and man, or even as between man and woman, for women seldom trust
each other entirely—of course, always taking into consideration the
necessary proof of exceptions. But of “dearest friends” there is no
lack—indeed some women occupy this position in a kind of wholesale
way. They make “dearest friendship” the business of their lives, and
prosecute it in quite a professional fashion; and, of course, those who
are “dearest friends” to a large _clientèle_ become obviously better
and more comprehensive gossips.
Mrs. Meanwell is one of these; she is a general favourite, and
carries with her an amiability as alluring as it is indiscriminate
and universal. As a “dearest friend,” therefore, she is in constant
and general demand, and consequently she is a veritable Pantechnicon
of personal gossip. This vocation has been hers since her earliest
schooldays, when she was the recipient of all the other little
girls’ confidences in rotation, and, though uniformly cheery and
good-tempered, she was often the cause of heart-burning in others. For,
how could she be expected to respect the secrets of her quondam friends
when they had quarrelled with her “dearest friend” of the moment?
Some people mysteriously inspire confidences, and Mrs. Meanwell has
always done so, and even more now that she is a woman-of-the-world
than when she was an unsophisticated school-girl. She has an amazing
gift of dissimulation, which would be invaluable to an actress or a
diplomatist, but which is of immense aid in cultivating that reputation
for sympathy which is essential to the vocation of a “dearest friend.”
She is able absolutely to absorb herself—to all outward appearance—in
conversation with the person who is her companion for the time being,
to seem to be interested in nothing else in the world beyond the topic
of their talk, while all the time, perhaps, she is really calculating
the favourable impression she has made upon the other person, and
deciding how uncongenial that other is to her. But her stock of gossip
and her range of personal experience have increased the while, as her
sympathetic influence has widened. She has prepared the way to be
“dearest friend” to her recent companion, if she chose, and though she
may have no desire for this, she is content with the sense of her power.
[Illustration]
I have often watched Mrs. Meanwell with infinite curiosity and
amusement, and seen her, within brief periods, receiving the voluminous
confidences of two women I knew to be jealous foes, and I have wondered
how she was able to maintain such intimate and seemingly affectionate
relations with both. But the secret lies in her pliable temperament,
which she can temporarily assimilate to the idiosyncrasies of any
person with whom she comes in contact. I have seen her apparently
interested by men and women from whose tedious society I would commit
almost any enormity to escape, and, I must say, from a philanthropic
point of view, I have admired Mrs. Meanwell for this comprehensive
amiability which could rescue these people from the awful consequences
of their own boredom. I have admired it in the same way that I admire
women who nurse the sick and solace the afflicted. She is a kind of
Florence Nightingale among the dull and the bored, and a beautiful
beneficence is hers—mentally cheering those who through their own
inherent dulness cannot possibly cheer themselves. But, just as you
hear hospital nurses and workers in the slums say they actually love
their work, so does Mrs. Meanwell really find amusement even among
the bores. She is, of course, fond of hearing herself talk—who is not
that has anything to say?—and she certainly glories in extending her
popularity.
It will be seen, therefore, that Mrs. Meanwell is naturally fitted to
fill the position of “dearest friend” to all kinds and conditions of
women, and, certainly, her experience has been as varied as are her
qualifications. Therefore, it could hardly be expected that she would
confine her sympathetic offices to one friend, or be content with a
single stock of confidences. At the same time she is an enthusiastic
partisan, and if any of her “dearest friends” be involved in any
social squabbles, matrimonial troubles, or financial difficulties, she
is on the warpath at once. She is like an Indian scout, and carries
intelligence from camp to camp. Mrs. Meanwell has codes of loyalty
of her own, and she is her own arbiter in the matter, women being
proverbially unable to bind themselves arbitrarily to one code as men
must do. For that reason we never talk of a woman of honour as we talk
of a man of honour; it would be too unfair. Women have quite enough
restrictions and responsibilities to bear without having to trouble
themselves with an exacting code of loyalty towards each other. So a
little elasticity in this matter is, perhaps, excusable—at all events,
since feminine custom stales its infinite variety.