It’s not altogether personal..... Until it is understood and admitted,
there is a darkness everywhere. The life of every man in existence, who
does not understand and admit it, is perfectly senseless. Until they
know they are all living in vain.
“What on earth did you mean?” she said as soon as the omnibus had
started.
He turned a startled musing face. He had _forgotten_.
“What have I said?”
“Kindly think.”
“Really I am at a loss.”
“When that woman collided with me, crossing the road.”
“Ah, ah, I remember. Well?”
“You pronounced an opinion.”
“It is not my opinion. It is a matter of ascertained fact.”
“Facts are invented by people who start with their conclusions arranged
beforehand.”
“Perhaps so.”
“Ah well; that is an admission.”
“The conclusion is amply verified.”
“Where?”
“I speak only of women in the mass. There are of course exceptions.”
“Go on, go on.”
“I see you are annoyed. Let us leave this matter.”
“Kindly go on.”
“There is nothing more to say.” He _laughed_. He was not even being
aware that it was a matter of life and death. He could go on serenely
living in an idea, that turned life into a nightmare.
“Oh if it amuses you.” He was silent. The moments went beating on. She
turned from him and sat averted. She would go now onward and onward till
she could get away over the edge of the world. There was nothing else to
do. There were no thoughts or words in which her conviction could take
shape. Even looking for them was a degradation. Besides, argument, if
she could steady herself to face the pain of it, would not, whatever he
might say, even dislodge his satisfied unconcern. He was uneasy; but
only about herself, and would accept reassurance from her, without a
single backward glance. But what did their personal fate matter beside a
question so all-embracing? What future could they have in unacknowledged
disagreement over central truth? And if it were acknowledged, what
peace?
The long corridor of London imprisoned her. Far away beneath her tumult
it was making its appeal, renewing the immortal compact. The irregular
façades, dull greys absorbing the light, bright buffs throwing it
brilliantly out, dadoed below with a patchwork of shops, and overhead
the criss-cross of telephone wires, shut her away from the low-hung soft
grey sky. But far away, unfailing, retreating as the long corridor
telescoped towards them, an obliterating saffron haze filled the vista,
holding her in her place.
The end of the journey brought them to grey streets and winding alleys
where the masts and rigging that had loomed suddenly in the distance,
robbing the expedition of its promise of ending in some strange
remoteness with their suggestion of blind busy worlds beyond London,
were lost to sight.
“This must be the docks,” she said politely.
With the curt permission of a sentinel policeman they went through a
gateway appearing suddenly before them in a high grey wall. Miriam
hurried forward to meet the open scene for one moment alone and found
herself on a little quay surrounding a square basin of motionless grey
water shut in by wooden galleries, stacked with mouldering casks. But
the air was the air that moves softly on still days over wide waters and
in the shadowed light of the enclosure, the fringe of green where the
water touched the grey stone of the quay gleamed brilliantly in the
stillness. She breathed in, in spite of herself, the charm of the scene;
an ordered completeness, left to itself in beauty; its lonely beauty to
be gathered only by the chance passer-by.
“This is a strange romantic place,” said Mr. Shatov conversationally by
her side.
“There is nothing,” said Miriam unwillingly, feeling her theme weaken as
she looked away from it to voice well-known words, “_Nothing_ that
reveals more completely the spiritual,” her voice gave over the word
which broke into meaninglessness upon the air, “the status of a man as
his estimate of women.”
“I entirely agree. I was a feminist in my college days. I am still a
feminist.”
Miriam pondered. The word was new to her. But how could anyone be a
feminist and still think women most certainly inferior beings?
“Ah,” she cried “you are one of the Huxleys.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh well. _He_, impertinent schoolboy, graciously suggested that women
should be given every possible kind of advantage, educational and
otherwise; saying almost in the same breath that they could never reach
the highest places in civilisation; that Nature’s Salic Law would never
be repealed.”
“Well, how is it to be repealed?”
“I don’t know I’m sure. I’m not wise enough to give instruction in
repealing a law that has never existed. But who is Huxley, that he
should take upon himself to say what are the highest places in
civilisation?”
“Miriam” he said, coming round to stand before her. “We are not going to
quarrel over this matter.” She refused to meet his eyes.
“It is not a question of quarrelling, or even discussion. You have told
me all I want to know. I see exactly where you stand; and for my part it
_decides_, many things. I don’t say this to amuse myself or because I
want to, but because it is the only thing I can possibly do.”
“Miriam. In this spirit nothing can be said at all. Let us rather go and
have tea.”
Poor little man, perhaps he was weary; troubled in this strange grey
corner of a country not his own, isolated with an unexpected anger. They
had tea in a small dark room behind a little shop. It was close packed
with an odorous dampness. Miriam sat frozen, appalled by the presence of
a negro. He sat near by, huge, bent snorting and devouring, with a huge
black bottle at his side. Mr. Shatov’s presence was shorn of its alien
quality. He was an Englishman in the fact that he and she could _not_
sit eating in the neighbourhood of this marshy jungle. But they were,
they had. They would have. Once away from this awful place she would
never think of it again. Yet the man had hands and needs and feelings.
Perhaps he could sing. He was at a disadvantage, an outcast. There was
something that ought to be said to him. She could not think what it was.
In his oppressive presence it was impossible to think at all. Every time
she sipped her bitter tea it seemed that before she should have replaced
her cup, vengeance would have sprung from the dark corner. Everything
hurried so. There was no _time_ to shake off the sense of contamination.
It _was_ contamination. The man’s presence was an outrage on something
of which he was not aware. It would be possible to make him aware. When
his fearful face, which she sadly knew she could not bring herself to
regard a second time, was out of sight, the outline of his head was
desolate, like the contemplated head of any man alive. Men ought not to
have faces. Their real selves abode in the expressions of their heads
and brows. Below, their faces were moulded by deceit......
While she had pursued her thoughts, advantage had fallen to the black
form in the corner. It was as if the black face grinned, crushing her
thread of thought.
“You see, Miriam, if instead of beating me, you will tell me your
_thoughts_, it is quite possible that mine may be modified. There is at
least nothing of the bigot in me.”
“It is not what people may be made to see for a few minutes in
conversations that counts. It is the conclusions they come to,
instinctively, by themselves.” He wanted to try and think as she did
...... “chose attendrissante; il me ressemblaient” ..... _life_ .. _was_
different, to everybody, even to intellectual male vain-boasters, from
everybody’s descriptions; there was nothing to point to anywhere that
exactly corresponded to spoken opinions. But the relieving truth of this
was only realised privately. The things went on being said. Men did not
admit their private discoveries in public. It was not enough to see and
force the admittance of the holes in a theory privately, and leave the
form of words going on and on in the world perpetually parroted,
infecting the sky. “Wise women know better and go their way without
listening,” is not enough. It is not only the insult to women; a
contempt for men is a bulwark against that, but introduces sourness into
one’s own life....... It is the impossibility of witnessing the pouring
on of a vast, repeating public life that is missing the significance of
everything.
Yet what a support, she thought with a sideways glance, was his own
gentleness ... gentilesse ... and humanity, to his own theory. He was
serene and open in the presence of this central bitterness. If she could
summon, in words, convincing evidence of the inferiority of man, he
would cheerfully accept it and go on unmaimed. But a private
reconstruction of standards in agreement with one person would not bring
healing. It was history, literature, the way of stating records,
reports, stories, the whole method of statement of things from the
beginning that was on a false foundation.
If only one could speak as quickly as one’s thoughts flashed, and
several thoughts together, all with a separate life of their own and yet
belonging, everybody would be understood. As it was, even in the most
favourable circumstances, people could hardly communicate with each
other at all.
“I have nothing to say. It is not a thing that can be argued out. Those
women’s rights people are the worst of all. Because they think women
have been “subject” in the past. Women never have been subject. Never
can be. The proof of this is the way men have always been puzzled and
everlastingly trying fresh theories; founded _on_ the very small
experience of women any man is capable of having. Disabilities, imposed
by law, are a stupid insult to women, but have never touched them as
individuals. In the long run they injure only men. For they keep back
the civilisation of the outside world, which is the only thing men can
make. It is not everything. It is a sort of result, poor and shaky
because the real inside civilisation of women, the one thing that has
been in them from the first and is not in the natural man, not made by
“things,” is kept out of it. Women do not need civilisation. It is apt
to bore them. _But_ it can never rise above their level. They keep it
back. That does not matter, to themselves. But it matters to men. And if
they want their old civilisation to be anything but a dreary-weary
puzzle, they must leave off imagining themselves a race of gods fighting
against chaos, and thinking of women as part of the chaos they have to
civilise. There isn’t any “chaos.” Never has been. It’s the principal
masculine illusion. It is not a truth to say that women must be
civilised. Feminists are not only an insult to womanhood. They are a
libel on the universe.” In the awful presence she had spoken herself
out, found and recited her best most liberating words. The little unseen
room shone, its shining speaking up to her from small things immediately
under her eyes. Light, pouring from her speech, sent a radiance about
the thick black head and its monstrous bronze face. He might have his
thoughts, might even look them, from the utmost abyss of crude male
life, but he had helped her, and his blind unconscious outlines shared
the unknown glory. But she doubted if she would remember that thoughts
flowed more easily, with surprising ease, as if given, waiting, ready to
be scanned and stated, when one’s eyes ceased to look outwards. If she
could remember it, it might prove to be the solution of social life.
“These things are all matters of opinion. Whereas it is a matter of
indisputable _fact_ that in the past women have been subject.”
“If you believe that it is impossible for us to associate. Because we
are living in two utterly different worlds.”
“On the contrary. This difference is a most excellent basis for
association.”
“You think I can cheerfully regard myself as an emancipated slave, with
traditions of slavery for memory and the form of a slave as an
everlasting heritage?”
“Remember that heredity is cross-wise. You are probably more the
daughter of your father ...”
“_That_ won’t help you, thank you. If anything I am my mother’s son.”
“Ah--ah, what is this, you are a _son_. Do you see?”
“That’s a piece of English feudalism.”
“The demands of feudalism do not explain a woman’s desire for sons.”
“That is another question. She hopes _they_ will give her the
understanding she never had from their father. In that I _am_ my
mother’s son for ever. If there’s a future life, all I care for is to
meet _her_. If I could have her back for ten minutes I would gladly give
up the rest of my life..... Is heredity really criss-cross? Is it
proved?”
“Substantially.”
“Oh yes. Of course. I know. To prevent civilisation going ahead too
fast! I’ve seen that somewhere. Very flattering to men. But it proves
there’s no separate race of men and women.”
“Exactly.”
“Then how have men the face to go on with their generalisations about
women?”
“You yourself have a generalisation about women.”
“That’s different. It’s not about brains and attainments. I can’t make
you see. I suppose it’s Christianity.”
“What is Christianity? You think Christianity is favourable to women? On
the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the
prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world. It is
only in Christian countries that I find the detestable spectacle of men
who will go straight from association with loose women into the society
of innocent girls. That I find unthinkable...... With Jews womanhood has
always been sacred. And there can be no doubt that we owe our
persistence as a race largely to our laws of protection for women; _all_
women. Moreover in the older Hebrew civilisation women stood very high.
You may read this. To-day there is a very significant Jewish wit which
says that women make the best wives and mothers in the world.”
“There you are. No Englishman would make a joke like that.”
“Because he is a hypocrite.”
“No. He may, as you say, think one thing and say another; but long long
ago he had a jog. It _was_ Christianity. Something happened. Christ was
the first man to see women as individuals.”
“You speak easily of Christianity. There is no Christianity in the
world. It has never been imagined, save in the brain of a Tolstoy. And
he has shown that if the principles of Christianity were applied,
civilisation as we know it would at once come to an end.”
“There may not be much Christianity. But Christianity has made a
difference. It has not given things to women that were not there before.
Nothing can do that. But it has shed a light on them _which_ the best
women run away from. Never imagine I am speaking of myself. I’m as much
a man as a woman. That’s why I can’t help seeing things. But I’m not
really interested. Not inside myself. Now look here. You prefer
Englishwomen to Jewesses. I can’t bear Jewesses, not because they are
not really like other women, but because they reflect the limitations of
the Jewish male. They talk and think the Jewish man’s idea of them. It
has nothing to do with them as individuals. But they are waiting for the
light to go up.”
“I speak always of these assimilated and half-assimilated English
Jewesses. Certainly to me they are most inimical.”
“More so than the Germans?”
“In a different way. They have here less social disabilities. But they
are most absolutely terre-à-terre.”
“Why are Russian Jewesses different?”
“Many of them are idealist. Many live altogether by one or two ideas of
Tolstoy.”
“Why do you smile condescendingly?”
“These ideas can lead only to revolution. I am not a revolutionary.
While I admire everywhere those who suffer for their ideals.”
“You admit that Tolstoy has influenced Russian Jewesses. _He_ got his
ideas from Christ. So you say. I did not know he was religious.”
“It is a later development. But you remember Levin. But tell me, do you
not consider that wife and mother is the highest position of woman?”
“It is neither high nor low. It may be anything. If you define life for
women, as husbands and children, it means that you have no consciousness
at all where women are concerned.”
“There is the evidence of women themselves. The majority find their
whole life in these things.”
“That is a description, from outside, by men. When women use it they do
not know what they say.”