Though frugal by temperament, and instinctively aware that her sterling
nature was the bank in which the national wealth was surely deposited,
she was of benevolent disposition; and when, as occasionally happened,
a man in the street sold her one of those jumping toys for her
children, she would look at him and say:
“How much? You don’t look well!” and he would answer: “Tuppence, lidy.
Truth is, lidy, I’ve gone ’ungry this lawst week.” Searching his face
shrewdly, she would reply: “That’s bad--a sin against the body. Here’s
threepence. Give me a ha’penny. You don’t look well.” And, taking the
ha’penny, she would leave the man inarticulate.
Food appealed to her, not only in relation to herself, but to others.
Often to some friend she would speak a little bitterly, a little
mournfully, about her husband. “Yes, I quite like my ‘hubby’ to go
out sometimes where he can talk about art, and war, and things that
women can’t. He takes no interest in his food.” And she would add,
brooding: “What he’d do if I didn’t study him, I really don’t know.”
She often felt with pain that he was very thin. She studied him
incessantly--that is, in due proportion to their children, their
position in society, their Christianity, and herself. If he was her
“hubby,” she was his “hub”--the housewife, that central pivot of
society, that national pivot, which never could or would be out of
gear. Devoid of conceit, it seldom occurred to her to examine her own
supremacy, quietly content to be “integer vitæ, scelerisque pura”--just
the one person against whom nobody could say anything. Subconsciously,
no doubt, she _must_ have valued her worth and reputation, or she would
never have felt such salutary gusts of irritation and contempt toward
persons who had none. Like cows when a dog comes into a field, she
would herd together whenever she saw a woman with what she suspected
was a past, then advance upon her, horns down. If the offending
creature did not speedily vacate the field, she would, if possible,
trample her to death. When, by any chance, the female dog proved too
swift and lively, she would remain sullenly turning and turning her
horns in the direction of its vagaries. Well she knew that, if she
once raised those horns and let the beast pass, her whole herd would
suffer. There was something almost magnificent about her virtue,
based, as it was, entirely on self-preservation, and her remarkable
power of rejecting all premises except those familiar to herself. This
gave it a fibre and substance hard as concrete. Here, indeed, was
something one could build on; here, indeed, was the strait thing. Her
husband would sometimes say to her: “My dear, we don’t know what the
poor woman’s circumstances were, we really don’t, you know. I think
we should try to put ourselves in her place.” And she would fix his
eye, and say: “James, it’s no good. I can’t imagine myself in that
woman’s place, and I won’t. Do you think that _I_ would ever leave
_you_?” And, watching till he shook his head, she would go on: “Of
course not. No. Nor let you leave me.” And, pausing a second, to see
if he blinked, because men were rather like that (even those who had
the best of wives), she would go on: “She deserves all she gets. I have
no personal feeling, but, if once decent women begin to get soft about
this sort of thing, then good-bye to family life and Christianity, and
everything. I’m not hard, but there are things I feel strongly about,
and this is one of them.” And secretly she would think: “That’s why
he keeps so thin--always letting himself doubt, and sympathise, where
one has no right to. Men!” Next time she passed the woman, she would
cut her deader than the last time, and, seeing her smile, would feel
a sort of divine fury. More than once this had led her into courts of
law on charges of libel and slander. But, knowing how impregnable was
her position, she almost welcomed that opportunity. For it was ever
transparent to judge and jury from the first that she was that crown of
pearls, a virtuous woman, and so she was never cast in damages.
On one such occasion her husband had been so ill-advised as to remark:
“My dear, I have my doubts whether our duty does not stop at seeing to
ourselves, without throwing stones at others.”
“Robert,” she had answered, “if you think that, just because there’s a
chance that you may have to pay damages, I’m going to hold my tongue
when vice flaunts itself, you make a mistake. I always put your
judgment above mine, but this is not a matter of judgment--it is a
matter of Christian and womanly conduct. I can’t admit even your right
to dictate.”
She hated that expression, “The grey mare is the better horse”; it was
vulgar, and she would never recognise its truth in her own case--for a
wife’s duty was to submit herself to her husband, as she had already
said. After this little incident she took the trouble to go and open
her New Testament and look up the story of a certain woman. There was
not a word in it about women not throwing stones; the discouragement
referred entirely to men. Exactly! No one knew better than she the
difference between men and women in the matter of moral conduct.
Probably there _were_ no men without that kind of sin, but there were
plenty of women, and, without either false or true pride, she felt that
she was one of them. And there the matter rested.
Her views on political and social questions--on the whole, very
simple--were to be summed up in the words, “That _man_--!” and, so
far as it lay in her power, she saw to it that her daughters should
not have any views at all. She found this, however, an increasingly
hard task, and on one occasion was almost terrified to find her first
and second girls abusing “that man--,” not for going too fast, but
for not going fast enough. She spoke to William about it, but found
him hopeless, as usual, where his daughters were concerned. It was
her principle to rule them with good, motherly sense, as became a
woman in whose hands the family life of her country centred; and it
was satisfactory on the whole to find that they obeyed her whenever
they wished to. On this occasion, however, she spoke to them severely:
“The place of woman,” she said, “is in the home.” “The whole home--and
nothing but the home.” “Ella! The place of women is by the side of
man; counselling, supporting, ruling, but never competing with him.
The place of woman is in the shop, the kitchen, and--” “The--bed!”
“_Ella!_” “In the soup!” “Beatrice! I wish--I do wish you girls would
be more respectful. The place of woman is in the home. Yes, I’ve said
that before, but I shall say it again, and don’t you forget it! The
place of woman is--the most important thing in national life. If you
want to realise that, just think of your own mother; and--” “Our own
father.” “Ella! The place of woman is in the--!” She left the room,
feeling that, for the moment, she had said enough.
In disposition sociable, and no niggard of her company, there was one
thing she liked to work at alone--her shopping, an art which she had
long reduced to a science. The principles she laid down are worth
remembering: Never grudge your time to save a ha’penny. Never buy
anything until you have turned it well over, recollecting that the
rest of you will have turned it over too. Never let your feelings of
pity interfere with your sense of justice, but bear in mind that the
girls who sell to you are paid for doing it; if you can afford the
time to keep them on their legs, they can afford the time to let you.
Never read pamphlets, for you don’t know what may be in them about
furs, feathers, and forms of food. Never buy more than your husband can
afford to pay for; but, on the whole, buy as much. Never let any seller
see that you think you have bought a bargain, but buy one if you can;
you will find it pleasant afterward to talk of your prowess. Shove,
shove, and shove again!
In the perfect application of these principles, she had found, after
long experience, that there was absolutely no one to touch her.
In regard to meat, she had sometimes thought she would like to give
it up, because she had read in her paper that being killed hurt the
poor animals; but she had never gone beyond thought, because it was
very difficult to do that. Henry was thin, and distinctly pale; the
girls were growing girls; Sunday would hardly seem Sunday without;
besides, it did not do to believe what one read in the paper, and it
would hurt her butcher’s feelings--she was sure of that. Christmas,
too, stood in the way. It was one’s duty to be cheerful at that season,
and Christmas would seem so strange without the cheery butchers’ shops
and their appropriate holocaust. She had once read some pages of a
disgraceful book that seemed going out of its way all the time to
prove that _she_ was just an animal--a dreadful book, not at all nice!
And if she would eat those creatures if they were really her brother
animals, and not just sent by God to feed her. No; at Christmas she
felt especially grateful to the good God for his abundance, for all the
good things he gave her to eat. For all these reasons she swallowed
her scruples religiously. But it was very different in regard to dairy
produce; for here there was, she knew, a real danger--not, indeed, to
the animals, but to her family and herself. She was for once really
proud of the thoroughness with which she dealt with that important
nourishment--milk. None came into her house except in sealed bottles,
with the name of the cow, spiritually speaking, on the outside. Some
wag had suggested, in her hearing, that hens should be compelled to
initial their eggs when they were delivered, as well as to put the
dates on them. This she had thought ribald; one could go too far.
She was, before all things, an altruist; and in nothing more so than
in her relations with her servants. If they did not do their duty,
they went. It was the only way, she had found, to really benefit
them. Country girls and town girls, they passed from her in a stream,
having learned, once for all, the standard that was expected from
them. She christened and educated more servants, perhaps, than any
one in the kingdom. The Marthas went first, being invariably dirty;
the Marys and Susans lasted, on an average, perhaps four months, and
then left for many reasons. Cook seldom hurried off before her year
was over, because it was so difficult to get her before she came, and
to replace her after she was gone; but when she did go it was in a
gale of wind. The “day out” was, perhaps, the most fruitful source
of disillusionment--girls of that class, no matter how much they
protested their innocence, seemed utterly unable to keep away from
man’s society. It was only once a fortnight that she required them to
exercise their self-control and self-respect in that regard, for on the
other thirteen days she took care that they had no chance, suffering
no male footstep in her basement. And yet--would you believe it?--on
those fourteenth days, she was never able to be easy in her mind.
But, however kindly and considerate she might be in her dealings with
those of lowly station, she found ever the same ingratitude, the same
incapacity, or, as she had reluctantly been forced to believe, the
same deliberate unwillingness to grasp her point of view. It was as if
they were always rudely saying to themselves: “What do you know of us?
We wish you’d leave us alone!” The idea! As if she could, or would!
As if it were not an almost sacred charge on her in her station, with
the responsibilities that attached to it, to look after her poorer
neighbours and see that they acted properly in their own interests.
The drink, the immorality, the waste amongst the poor was notorious,
and anything she could do to lessen it she always did, dismissing
servants for the least slip, and never failing to point a moral. All
that new-fangled talk about the rich getting off the backs of the poor,
about the law not being the same for both, about how easy it was to
be moral and clean on two thousand a year, she put aside as silly. It
was just the sort of thing that discontented people would say. In this
view she was supported daily by her newspaper and herself, wherever she
might be. No, no! If the well-to-do did not look after and control the
poor, no one would, which was just what they would like. They were, in
her estimation, incurable; but, so far as lay in her power, she would
cure them, however painful it might be.
A religious woman, she rarely missed the morning, and seldom went
to evening, service, feeling that in daylight she could best set an
example to her neighbours.
God knew her views on art, for she was not prodigal of them--her
most remarkable pronouncement being delivered on hearing of the
disappearance of the “Monna Lisa”: “Oh, that dreadful woman! I remember
her picture perfectly. Well, I’m glad she’s gone. I thought she would
some day.” When asked why, she would only answer: “She gave me the
creeps.”
She read such novels as the library sent, to save her daughters from
reading a second time those which did not seem to her suitable, and
promptly sent them back. In this way she preserved purity in her home.
As to purity outside the home, she made a point of never drawing
Frederick’s attention to female beauty; not that she felt she had any
real reason to be alarmed, for she was a fine woman; but because men
were so funny.
There were no things in life of which she would have so entirely
disapproved, if she had known about them, as Greek ideals, for she
profoundly distrusted any display of the bare limb, and fully realised
that, whatever beauty may have meant to the Greeks, to her and George
it meant something very different. To her, indeed, Nature was a
“hussy,” to be tied to the wheels of that chariot which she was going
to keep as soon as motor-cars were just a little cheaper and really
reliable.
It was often said that she was a vanishing type, but she knew better.
Pedantic fools murmured that Ibsen had destroyed her, but she had not
yet heard of him. Literary folk and artists, socialists and society
people, might talk of types, and liberty, of brotherhood, and new
ideas, and sneer at Mrs. Grundy. With what unmoved solidity she dwelt
among them! They were but as gadflies, buzzing and darting on the
fringes of her central bulk. To those flights, to that stinging she
paid less attention than if she had been cased in leather. In the
words of her favourite Tennyson: “They may come, and they may go,
but--whatever you may think--I go on forever!”