WOMAN'S ENGLAND
The next day was Sunday, and of course Lord Chester went to church with
the Professor, who was always careful to observe forms.
The congregation was large, and principally composed of men. The service
was elaborate, and the singing good. Perhaps the incense was a little
too strong, and there was some physical fatigue in the frequent changes
of posture. Nothing, however, could have been more splendid than the
procession with banners, which closed the service; nothing sweeter than
the voices of the white-robed singing-girls. It was a large and
beautiful church, with painted glass, pictures having lights burning
before them; and the altar, on which stood the veiled figure of the
Perfect Woman, was heaped with flowers.
The sermon was preached by the Dean of Westminster, whose eloquence and
fervour were equalled by her scholarship. No one, except perhaps,
Professor Ingleby, was better read in ecclesiastical history, or knew
more about the beginnings of the New Religion. She had written a book,
showing from ancient literature how the germs of the religion were
dormant even in the old barbaric times of man's supremacy. Even so far
back as the Middle Ages men delighted to honour Woman. Every poet chose
a mistress for his devotion, and ignorantly worshipped the type in the
Individual. Every knight became servant and slave to one woman, in whose
honour his noblest deeds were done. Even the worship of the Divine Man
became, first in Catholic countries, and afterwards in England, through
a successful conspiracy of certain so-called 'ritualists,' the worship
of the Mother and Child. At all times the effigies of the virtues,
Faith, Hope, Love, had been figures of women. The form of woman had
always stood for the type, the standard, the ideal of the Beautiful. The
woman had always been the dispenser of gifts. The woman had always been
richly dressed. Men worked their hardest in order to pour their
treasures into the lap of woman. All the reverence, all the poetry, all
the imagination with which the lower nature of man was endowed, had been
freely spent and lavished in the service of woman. From his earliest
infancy, women surrounded, protected, and thought for men. Why, what was
this, what could this mean, but a foreshadowing, an indication, a
revelation, by slow and natural means, of the worship of the Perfect
Woman, dimly comprehended as yet, but manifesting its power over the
heart? The Dean handled this, her favourite topic, in the pulpit this
morning with singular force and eloquence. After touching on the
invisible growth of the religion, she painted a time of anarchy, when
men had given up their old beliefs and were like children--only children
with weapons in their hands--crying out with fear in the darkness. She
told how women, at last assuming their true place, substituted, little
by little, the true, the only faith--the Worship of the Perfect Woman,
the Feminine Divinity of Thought, Purpose, and Production. She pointed
out how, by natural religion, man was evidently marked out for the
second or lower creature, although, by the abuse of his superior
strength, he had wrested the authority and used it for his own purposes.
He was formed to execute, he was strong, he was the Agent. Woman, on the
other hand, was the mother--that is to say, the Creative Thought; that
is, the Sovereign Ruler. In the animal creation, again, it is the male
who works, while the female sits and directs. And even in such small
points as the gender of things inanimate, everything of grace,
usefulness, or beauty was, and always had been, feminine. Then she
argued from the natural quickness and intelligence of women, and from
the corresponding dullness of men, from the lower instincts of men
compared with the spiritual nature of women; and she showed how, when
women took their natural place in the government of the nation, laws
were for the first time framed on sound and economical principles, and
for the benefit of man himself. Finally, in a brilliant peroration, she
called upon her male hearers to defend, even to the death if necessary,
the principles of their religion; she warned the women that a spirit of
questioning and discontent was abroad; she exhorted the men to find
their true happiness in submission to authority; and she drew a vivid
picture of the poor wretch who, beginning with doubt and disobedience,
went on to wife-beating, atheism, and despair, both of this world and
the next.
The sermon lasted nearly an hour. The Dean never paused, never
hesitated, was never at a loss. Yet, somehow she failed to affect her
hearers. The women looked idly about them, the men stared straight
before them, showing no response, and no sympathy. One reason of this
apathy was that the congregation had heard it all before, and so often,
that it ceased to move them; the priestesses of the Faith, in their
ardour, endeavouring constantly to make men intelligent as well as
submissive supporters, overdid the preaching, and by continual
repetition ruined the effect of their earnest eloquence, and reduced it
to the level of rhetorical commonplace.
The Professor and her pupil walked gravely homewards.
'I think,' said Lord Chester, 'that I could preach a sermon the other
way round.'
'You mean----'
'I mean that I could just as well show how natural religion intended man
to be both agent and contriver.'
'I think,' said the Professor, 'that such a sermon had better not be
preached, at least, just yet. It was _rather_ a risky thing to make that
remark of yours about the ballad which you sang yesterday. Such a sermon
as you contemplate would infallibly land its composer--even Lord
Chester--in a prison--and for life.'
Lord Chester was silent.
'Do you speculate often,' asked his tutor, 'in these theological
matters?'
'Of late,' he replied. 'Yes, this perpetual admonition about Authority
worries me. Why should we accept statements on Authority? I have been
looking through the text-books, and I conclude----'
'Pray do not tell me,' she interrupted laughing. 'For the present, let
me not know the nature of your conclusions. But, Lord Chester, for your
own sake, for every one's sake, be guarded--be silent,' She pressed his
arm; he nodded gravely, but made no reply. When they reached home they
learned that the Chancellor herself was waiting to see Lord Chester. She
wished to see the Professor as well.
The Chancellor was in a great worry and fidget--as if this unhappy
business of the Appeal was not enough for her--because, whatever
decision was arrived at by the House, she would have to defend her own,
and there was little doubt that her enemies would not lose so good a
chance of attacking her; and now the boy must needs get saying things
which were repeated in every club in London.
'I must say, Lord Chester,' she began irritably, 'that a little
respect--I say a little respect--is due to a person who holds my office.
I have been waiting for you a good quarter of an hour.'
'Had I known your ladyship's wish to see me, I would have saved you the
trouble of coming here, and waited upon you myself. I have but just
returned from church.'
'Church!' she repeated in mockery; 'what is the good of people going to
church if they fly in the face of all religion? Do not answer me, pray.
Your lordship thinks yourself, I know, a privileged person. You are to
say, and to do, anything you please. But I am the Chancellor, remember,
and your guardian. Now, sir, I learn that you make dangerous,
revolutionary remarks--you made one yesterday--openly, on the
impossibility of a young man marrying a woman older than himself.'
'Pardon me,' said Lord Chester; 'I did not say the impossibility of
marrying, but of loving, a woman twenty years his senior.'
'The distinction shows the unhappy condition of your mind. To marry a
woman is to love her. What would the boy want? what would he have?
Professor Ingleby, have you anything to advise? He is your pupil. You
are, in fact, partly responsible for this deplorable exhibition of
wilfulness.'
'With your ladyship's permission,' replied the Professor softly, 'I
would venture to suggest that, considering recent events, it would be
much better for Lord Chester to be out of London as soon as possible.'
'What is the use of talking about leaving town when Lady Boltons is
ill?'
'If your ladyship will entrust your noble ward to my care,' continued
the Professor, 'I will undertake the charge of him at my own house for
the next three months.'
The Chancellor reflected. The plan seemed the best. Since Lady Boltons
was ill, there was really no one to look after the young man, while, at
the present moment of excitement, it seemed most desirable that he
should be out of town. If the boy was to go on talking in this way about
old women and young men, there was no telling what might not happen; and
the Duchess would be pleased with such an arrangement. That
consideration decided her.
'If you really can take charge of him--you could draw on Lady Boltons
for whatever you like, in reason,--it does seem the best thing to do.
Yes--he would be safer out of the way. When can you start?'
'To-morrow.'
'Very good; then we will settle it so. You will accompany Professor
Ingleby, Lord Chester; you will consider her as your guardian--and--and
all that. And for Heaven's sake, let us have no more folly!'
She touched his fingers with her own, bowed slightly to the Professor,
and left them.
'My dear boy,' said the Professor, when the door was shut, 'I foresee a
great opportunity. And as for that sermon you spoke of----'
'Well, Professor?'
'You may begin to compose it as soon as you please, and on the road I
will help you. Meantime, hold your tongue.'
With these enigmatic words the Professor left him.
* * * * *
There was really nothing very remarkable in Lord Chester's leaving
London even at the height of the season. Most of the athletic meetings
were over; it was better to be in the country than in town: a young man
of two-and-twenty is not supposed to take a very keen delight in
dinner-parties. Had it not been for the Appeal and the way in which
people occupied themselves in every kind of gossip over Lord
Chester--what he said, how he looked, and what he hoped--he might have
left town without the least notice being taken. As it was, his departure
gave rise to the wildest rumours, not the least wild being that the
Duchess, or, as some said, the Countess, intended to follow and carry
him off from his country house.
Without troubling themselves about rumours and alarms of this kind, the
Professor and her pupil drove away in the forenoon of Monday. The air
was clear and cool; there was a fresh breeze, a warm sun, and a sky
flecked with light clouds. The leaves on the trees were at their best,
the four horses were in excellent condition. What young fellow of
two-and-twenty would have felt otherwise than happy at starting on a
holiday away from the restraints of town, and in such weather?
'There is only one thing wanting,' he said, as they finally cleared the
houses, and were bowling along the smooth highroad between hedges bright
with the flowers of early summer.
'What is that?' asked the Professor.
'Constance,' he replied boldly; 'she ought to be with us to complete my
happiness.'
The Professor laughed.
'A most unmanly remark,' she said. 'How can you reconcile it with the
precepts of morality? Have you not been taught the wickedness of
expressing, even of allowing yourself to feel an inclination for any
young lady?'
'It is your fault, my dear Professor. You have taught me so much, that I
have left off thinking of unmanliness and immodesty and the copy-book
texts.'
'I have taught you,' she replied gravely, 'things enough to hang myself
and send you to the Tower for life. But remember--remember--that you
have been taught these things with a purpose.'
'What purpose?' he asked.
'I began by making you discontented. I allowed you to discover that
everything is not so certain as boys are taught to believe. I put you in
the way of reading, and I opened your mind to all sorts of subjects
generally concealed from young men.'
'You certainly did, and you are a most crafty as well as a most
beneficent Professor.'
'You have gradually come to understand that your own intellect, the
average intellect of Man, is really equal to the consideration of all
questions, even those generally reserved and set apart for women.'
'Is it not time, therefore, to let me know this mysterious purpose?'
Professor Ingleby gazed upon him in silence for a while.
'The purpose is not mine. It is that of a wiser and greater being than
myself, whose will I carry out and whom I obey.'
'Wiser than _you_, Professor? Who is she? Do you mean the Perfect Woman
herself?'
'No,' she replied; 'the being whom I obey and reverence is none other
than--my own husband.'
Lord Chester started.
'Your husband?' he cried. '_You obey your husband?_ This is most
wonderful.'
'My husband. Yes, Lord Chester, you may now compose that sermon which
shall show how Man is the Lord and Master of all created things,
including--Woman. I told you I would help you in your sermon. Listen.'
* * * * *
All that day they drove through the fair garden, which we call England.
Along the road they passed the rustics hay-making in the fields; the
country women were talking at their doors; the country doctor was
plodding along her daily round; the parson was jogging along the
wayside, umbrella in hand, to call upon her old people; the country
police in blue bonnets, carrying their dreaded pocket-books, were
loitering in couples about cross-roads; the farmer drove her cart to
market, or rode her cob about the fields; little girls and boys carried
dinner to their fathers. Here and there they passed a country-seat, a
village with its street of cottages, or they clattered through a small
sleepy town with its row of villas and its quiet streets, where the men
sat working at the windows in hopes of getting a chat or seeing
something to break the monotony of the day.
The travellers saw, but noted nothing. For the Professor was teaching
her pupil things calculated to startle even the Duchess, and at which
Constance would have trembled--things which made his cheek to glow, his
eyes to glisten, his mouth to quiver, his hands to clench;--things not
to be spoken, not to be whispered, not to be thought, this Professor
openly, boldly, and without shame, told the young man.
'I might have guessed it,' he said. 'I had already half guessed it. And
this--this is the reason why we are kept in subjection!--this is the LIE
they have palmed upon us!'
'Hush! calm yourself. The thing was not done in a day. The system was
not invented by conscious hypocrites and deceivers; it grew, and with it
the new religion, the new morality, the new order of things. Blame no
one, Lord Chester, but blame the system.'
'You have told me too much now,' he said; 'tell me more.'
She went on. Each word, each new fact, tore something from him that he
would have believed part of his nature. Yet he had been prepared for
this day by years of training, all designed by this crafty woman to arm
him with strength to receive her disclosures.
'What you see,' she said, as they drove through a village, 'seems calm
and happy. It is the calmness of repression. Those men in the fields,
those working men sitting at the windows--they are all alike unhappy,
and they know not why. It is because the natural order has been
reversed; the sex which should command and create is compelled to work
in blind obedience. You will see, as we go on, that we, who have usurped
the power, have created nothing, improved nothing, carried on nothing.
It is for you, Lord Chester, to restore the old order.'
'If I can--if I can find words,' he stammered.
'I have trusted you,' the Professor went on, 'from the very first. _Bon
sang ne peut mentir._ Yet it was wise not to hurry matters. Your life,
and my own life too, if that matters much, hang upon the success of my
design. Nothing could have happened more opportunely than the Duchess's
proposal. Why? on the one hand, a sweet, charming, delightful girl; and
on the other, a repulsive, bad-tempered old woman. While your blood is
aflame with love and disgust, Lord Chester, I tell you this great
secret. We have three months before us. We must use it, so that in less
than two we shall be able to strike, and to strike hard. You are in my
hands. We have, first, much to see and to learn.'
Their first halt was Windsor. Here, after ordering dinner, the Professor
took her pupil to visit Eton. It was half-holiday, and the girls were
out of school. Some were at the Debating Society's rooms, where a
political discussion was going on; some were strolling by the river
under the grand old elms; some were reading novels in the shade; some
were lying on the bank talking and laughing. It was a pleasant picture
of happy school life.
'Look at these buildings,' said the Professor, taking up a position of
vantage. 'They were built by one of your ancestors, beautified by
another, repaired and enlarged by another. This is the noblest of the
old endowments--for boys.'
The Earl looked round him in wonder.
'What would boys do with such a splendid place?' he asked.
'Have my lessons borne so little fruit that you should ask that
question?' The Professor looked disappointed. 'My dear boy, they played
in the playing-fields, they swam and rowed in the river, they studied in
the school, they worshipped in the chapel. When it was resolved to
divide the endowments, women naturally got the first choice, and they
chose Eton. Afterwards the boys' public schools fell gradually into
decay, and bit by bit they were either closed or became appropriated by
girls. There was once a famous school at a place called Rugby. That
died. The Lady of the Manor, I believe, gradually absorbed the revenues.
Harrow and Marlborough fell in, after a few years, for girls. You see,
when once mothers realised the dangers of public school life for boys,
they naturally left off sending them.'
'Yes--I see--the danger that----'
'That they would become masterful, Lord Chester, like yourself; that
they would use their strength to recover their old supremacy; that they
would discover'--here she sank her voice, although they were not within
earshot of any one--'that they would discover how strength of brain goes
with strength of muscle.'
She led the young man back across the river to the Windsor side. On the
way they passed an open gate; over the gate was written 'Select school
for young gentlemen.' Within was a gymnasium, where a dozen boys were
exercising on parallel bars swinging with ropes, and playing with
clubs.
'As for your education,' said the Professor, 'we have discovered that
the best chance for the world is for a boy to be taught three things. He
must learn religion--_i.e._ submission, and the culture of Perfect
Womanhood; he must learn a trade of some kind, unless he belongs to the
aristocracy, so as not to be necessarily dependent; and he must be made
healthy, strong, and active. History will credit us with one thing, at
least; we have improved the race.'
It wanted an hour of dinner. The Professor, who was never tired, led her
pupil over such portions of the old Castle as could still be
visited--the great tower and one or two of the terraces.
'This was once yours,' she said. 'This is the castle of your ancestors.
Courage, my lord; you shall win it back.'
It was in a dream that the young man spent the rest of the evening. The
Professor had ordered a simple yet dainty dinner, consisting of a Thames
trout, a Châteaubriand, quails, and an omelette, with some Camembert
cheese, but her young charge did scanty justice to it. After dinner,
when the coffee had been brought, and the door was safely shut, the
Professor continued the course of lectures on ancient history, by which
she had already upset the mind of her pupil, and filled his brain with
dreams of a revolution more stupendous than was ever suspected by the
watchful bureau of police.
Their next day's drive brought them to Oxford. It was vacation, and the
colleges were empty. Only here and there a solitary figure of some
lonely Fellow or Lecturer, lingering after the rest had gone, flitted
across the lawns. The solitude of the place pleased the Professor. She
could ramble with her pupil about the venerable courts and talk at her
ease.
'Here,' she said, 'in the old days was once the seat of learning and
wisdom.'
'What is it now?' asked her disciple, surprised. 'Is not Oxford still
the seat of learning?'
'You must read--alas! you would not understand them--the old books
before you can answer your own question. What is their political
economy, their moral philosophy, their social science--of which they
make so great a boast--compared with the noble scholarship, the science,
the speculation of former days? How can I make you understand? There was
a time when everything was advanced--by men. Science must advance or
fall back. We took from men their education, and science has been
forgotten. We cannot now read the old books; we do not understand the
old discoveries; we cannot use the tools which they invented, the men of
old. Mathematics, chemistry, physical science, geology--all these exist
no longer, or else exist in such an elementary form as our ancestors
would have been ashamed to acknowledge. Astronomy, which widened the
heart, is neglected; medicine has become a thing of books; mechanics are
forgotten----'
'But why?'
'Because women, who can receive, cannot create; because at no time has
any woman enriched the world with a new idea, a new truth, a new
discovery, a new invention; because we have undertaken the impossible.'
The Professor was silent. Never before had Lord Chester seen her so
deeply moved.
'Oh, Sacred Learning!' she cried, 'we have sinned against thee! We poor
women in our conceit think that everything may be learned from books: we
worship the Ideal Woman, and we are content with the rags of learning
which remain from the work of Man. Yes, we are contented with these
scraps. We will accept nothing that is not absolutely certain. Therefore
we blasphemously and ignorantly say that the last word has been said
upon everything, and that no more remains to be learned.'
'Mankind is surrounded,' the Professor went on as if talking to herself,
'by a high wall of black ignorance and mystery. The wall is for ever
receding or closing in upon us. The men of the past pushed it back more
and more, and widened continually the boundaries of thought, so that the
foremost among them were godlike for knowledge and for a love of
knowledge. We women of the present are continually contracting the wall,
so that soon we shall know nothing, unless--unless you come to our
help.'
'How can I help to restore knowledge,' asked the young man, 'being
myself so ignorant?'
'By giving back the university to the sex which can enlarge our bounds.'
Always the same thing--always coming back to the one subject.
There was a university sermon in the afternoon, being the feast of St
Cecilia; they looked in, but the church was empty. In vacation time one
hardly expects more than two or three resident lecturers with their
husbands and boys, and a sprinkling of young men from the town. The
sermon was dull--perhaps Lord Chester's mind was out of sympathy with
the subject; it treated on the old well-worn lines of Woman as the
Musician.
'I will show you at Cambridge,' said the Professor when they came out,
'some of the music of the past. What are the feeble strains, the
oft-repeated phrases of modern music, compared with the grand old music
conceived and written by men? Women have never composed great music.'
They left Oxford the next day and proceeded north.
'I think,' said the Professor as they were driving smoothly along the
road, 'that they did wrong in not trying to maintain the old railways.
True there were many accidents, and sometimes great loss of life; yet it
must have been a convenience to get from London to Liverpool in five
hours. To be sure the art of making engines is dead: such arts could not
survive when their new system of separate labour was introduced.'
They passed the old tracks of the railways from time to time, now long
canals grass-grown, and now high embankments covered with trees and
bushes. There were black holes, too, in the hill-sides through which the
iron road had once run.
'The country in the nineteenth century,' said the Professor, 'was
populous and wealthy; but it would be at first terrible for one of us to
see and to live in. From end to end there were great factories driven by
steam-engines, in which men worked in gangs, and from which a perpetual
black cloud of smoke rose to the sky; trains ran shrieking along the
iron roads with more clouds of smoke and steam. The results of the work
were grand; but the workmen were uncared for, and killed by the long
hours and the foul atmosphere. I talk like a woman'--she checked herself
with a smile,--'and I want to talk so that you shall feel like a man--of
the ancient type.
'There is one point of difference between man's and woman's legislation
which I would have you bear in mind. Man looks to the end, woman thinks
of the means. If man wanted a great thing done, he cared little about
the sufferings of those who did that thing. A great railway had to be
built; those who made it perished of fever and exposure. What matter?
The railway remained. A great injustice had to be removed; to remove it
cost a war, with death to thousands. Man cared little for the deaths,
but much for the result. Man was like Nature, which takes infinite pains
to construct an insect of marvellous beauty, and then allows it to be
crushed in thousands almost as soon as born. Woman, on the other hand,
considers the means.'
They came, after three days' posting, to Manchester. They found it a
beautiful city, situated on a clear sparkling stream, in the midst of
delightful rural scenery, and regularly built after the modern manner
in straight streets at right angles to each other: the air was
peculiarly bright and bracing. 'I wanted very much,' said the Professor,
'to show you this place. You see how pretty and quiet a place it is; yet
in the old times it had a population of half a million. It was
perpetually black with smoke; there were hundreds of vast factories
where the men worked from six in the morning until six at night. Their
houses were huts--dirty, crowded nests of fever; their sole amusements
were to smoke tobacco and to drink beer and spirits; they died at thirty
worn out; they were of sickly and stunted appearance; they were habitual
wife-beaters; they neglected their children; they had no education, no
religion, no hopes, no wishes for anything but plentiful pipe and beer.
See it now! The population reduced to twenty thousand; the factories
swept away; the machinery destroyed; the men working separately each in
his own house, making cotton for home consumption. Let us walk through
the streets.'
These were broad, clean, and well kept. Very few persons were about. A
few women lounged about the Court, or gathered together on the steps of
the Town Hall, where one was giving her opinions violently on politics
generally; some stood at the doorways talking to their neighbours; in
the houses one could hear the steady click-click of the loom or
spinning-jenny, as the man within, or the man and his sons, sat at their
continuous and solitary labour.
'This is beautiful to think of, is it not?'
'I do not know what to say,' he replied. 'You ask me, after all that
you have taught me, to admire a system in which men are slaves. Yet all
looks well from the outside.'
'It began,' the Professor went on, without answering him directly, 'with
the famous law of the "Clack" Parliament--that in which there were three
times as many women as men--which enacted that wives should receive the
wages of their husbands on Monday morning, and that unmarried men,
unless they could be represented by mothers or sisters, or other female
relations of whom they were the support, should be paid in kind, and be
housed separately in barracks provided for the purpose, where discipline
could be maintained. It was difficult at first to carry this legislation
into effect: the men rebelled; but the law was enforced at last. That
was the death-blow to the male supremacy. Woman, for the first time, got
possession of the purse. What was done in Manchester was followed in
other places. Young man, the spot you stand on is holy, or the reverse,
whichever you please, because it is the birthplace of woman's
sovereignty.
'Presently it began to be whispered abroad that the hours were too long,
the work too hard, and the association of men together in such large
numbers was dangerous. Then, little by little, wives withdrew their
husbands from the works, mothers their sons, and set them up with
spinning-jennies and looms at home. Hand-made cotton was protected; the
machine-made was neglected. Soon the machines were silent and the
factories closed; in course of time they were pulled down. Then other
improvements followed. The population was enormously diminished, partly
by the new laws which forbade the marriage of unhealthy or deformed men,
and only allowed women to choose husbands when they had themselves
obtained a certificate of good health and good conduct. Formerly the men
married at nineteen; by the new laws they were compelled to wait until
four-and-twenty; then, further, to wait until they were asked; and
lastly, if they were asked, to obtain a certificate of soundness and
freedom from any complaint which might be transmitted to children.
Therefore as few of the Manchester workmen were quite free from some
form of disease, the population rapidly decreased.'
'But,' said Lord Chester, 'is that wrong? A man ought to be healthy.'
That was, indeed, the creed in which he had been brought up.
'I am telling you the history of the place,' replied the Professor.
'Marriage being thus almost impossible, the Manchester women emigrated
and the workmen stayed where they were, and gradually the weakly ones
died out. As for the present Manchester man, you shall see him on Sunday
when he goes to church.'
They stayed in this pleasant and countrified town for some days. On
Sunday they went to the cathedral, and attended the service, which was
conducted by the Bishop herself and her principal clergy. As the Bishop
preached, Lord Chester looked about him, and watched the men. They were
mostly a tall and handsome race, though, in the middle-aged men, the
labour at the spindles had bowed their shoulders and contracted their
chests. Their faces, however, like those of the London congregation,
were listless and apathetic; they paid little heed to the sermon, yet
devoutly knelt, bowed, and stood up at the right places. They seemed
neither to feel nor to take any interest in life. Some of the women
looked as if they interpreted the law of marital obedience in the
strictest, even its harshest manner possible.
Lord Chester looked with a certain special curiosity at a regiment of
young unmarried workmen. He had often enough before watched such a
regiment passing to and from church, but never with such interest. For
in these boys he had now learned to recognise the masters of the future.
They were mostly quite young, and naturally presented a more animated
appearance than their married elders. Those of them who came from the
country, or had no parents, were kept in a barrack under strict rule and
discipline, having prescribed hours for gymnastics, exercises, and
recreation, as well as for labour.
They were not all boys. Among them marched those whom unkind Nature or
accident had set apart as condemned to celibacy. These were the
consumptive, the asthmatic, the crippled, the humpbacked, the deformed;
those who had inherited diseases of lung, brain, or blood; the
unfortunates who could not marry, and who were, therefore, cared for
with what was officially known as kindness. These poor creatures
presented the appearance of the most hopeless misery. At other times
Lord Chester would have passed them by without a thought. He knew now
how different would have been their lot under a government which did not
call itself maternal. Neither boys nor incurables received pay, and the
surplus of their work was devoted to the great Mother's Sustentation
Fund, or, as it was called for short, the Mother's Tax. This was
intended to supplement the wages earned by the husband at home in case
of insufficiency. But the wives were exhorted and admonished to take
care of their husbands, and keep them constantly at work.
'They do take care of them,' said the Professor. 'They make them clean
up house, cook meals, and look after the children, as well as carry on
their trade; while they themselves wrangle over politics in the street
or in some of the squabble-halls, which are always open. The men never
go out except on Sundays; they have no friends; they have no
recreation.'
'But formerly they were even worse off, according to your own showing.'
'No; because if they were slaves to their wheels, they were slaves who
worked in gangs, and they sometimes rose from the ranks. These men are
solitary slaves who can never rise.'
'Is there nothing good at all?' cried the young man. 'Would you make a
revolution, and upset everything? As for religion----'
'Say nothing,' said the Professor, 'about religion till I have shown you
the old one. Yes; there was once something grander than anything you
can imagine. We women, who have belittled everything, have even spoiled
our religion.'
They passed a couple of young men wending their way to the gymnasium
with racquets in their hands.
'They are the sons of the doctor or lawyer, I suppose,' said the
Professor looking after them. 'Fine young fellows! But what are we to do
with them? The law says that every boy, except the son of a peeress,
shall learn a trade. No doubt these boys have learned a trade, but they
do not practise it. They stay at home idle, or they spend their days in
athletics. Some time or other they will marry a woman in their own rank,
and then the rest of their lives will be devoted to managing the house
and looking after the children, while their wives go to office and earn
the family income.'
'What would you do with them?'
'Nay, Lord Chester; what will _you_ do for them? That is the question.'
The next day they left Manchester, and proceeded on their journey. At
Liverpool they saw seven miles of splendid old docks, lining the banks
of the river; but there were no ships. The trade of the old days had
long since left the place: it was a small town now with a few fishing
smacks. The Professor enlarged upon the history of the past.
'But were the men happy?'
'I do not know. That is nowhere stated. I imagine there used to be
happiness of a kind for men in forming part of a busy hive. At least
the other plan--our plan--does not seem to produce much solid
happiness....'
Gradually Lord Chester was being led to think less of the individual and
more of his work. But it took time to eradicate his early impressions.
At Liverpool they visited the convict-prison--the largest prison in
England. It was that prison specially devoted to the worst class of
criminals--those undergoing life sentences for wife-beating. They found
a place surrounded by a high wall and a deep ditch; they were admitted,
on the Professor showing a pass, through a door at which a dozen female
warders were sitting on duty. One of them was told off to conduct them
round the prison. The convicts, coarsely clad in sackcloth, were engaged
in perpetually doing unnecessary and profitless work--some dug holes
which others filled up again; some carried heavy weights up ladders and
down again,--there was the combined cruelty of monotony, of uselessness,
and of excessive toil. In this prison--because physical force is
necessary for men of violence--they had men as well as women for
warders. These were stationed at intervals, and were armed with loaded
guns and bayonets. It was well known that there was always great
difficulty in persuading men to take this place, or to keep them when
there. Mostly they were criminals of less degree, who purchased their
liberty by becoming, for a term of years, convict-warders.
'No punishment too bad for wife-beaters,' said the Professor when they
came away. 'What punishment is there for women who make slaves of their
husbands, lock them up, kill them with work? or for old women who marry
young men against their will?'
'You must clear out that den,' she went on, after a pause. 'A good many
men are imprisoned there on the sole unsupported charge of their
wives--innocent, no doubt; and if not innocent, then they have been
punished enough.'
Lord Chester was being led gradually to regard himself, not as an
intending rebel, but as a great reformer. Always the Professor spoke of
the future as certain, and of his project, yet vague without a definite
plan, as of a thing actually accomplished.
They left the dreary and deserted Liverpool, with its wretched
convict-prison. They drove first across the country, which had once been
covered with manufacturing towns, now all reduced to villages; they
stopped at little country inns in places where there yet lingered
traditions of former populousness; they passed sometimes gaunt ruins of
vast brick buildings which had been factories; the roads were quiet and
little used; the men they met were chiefly rustics going to or returning
from their work; there was no activity, no traffic, no noise upon these
silent highways.
'How can we ever restore the busy past?' asked Lord Chester.
'First release your men; let them work together; let them be taught; the
old creative energy will waken again in the brains of men, and life will
once more go forward. It will be for you to guide the movement when you
have started it.'
As their journey drew to a conclusion, the Professor gave utterance, one
by one, to several maxims of great value and importance:--
'Give men love,' she said; 'we women have killed love.'
'There is no love without imagination. Now the imagination cannot put
forth its flowers but for the sake of young and beautiful women.'
'No true work without emulation; we have killed emulation.'
'No progress without ambition; we have killed ambition.'
'It is better to advance the knowledge of the world one inch than to win
the long-jump with two-and-twenty feet.'
'Better vice than repression. A drunken man may be a lesson to keep his
fellows sober.'
'Nothing great without suffering.'
'Strong arm, strong brain.'
'When women begin to invent they will justify their supremacy.'
'The Higher Intelligence is a phrase that must be transferred, not lost
sight of.'
'Men who are happy laugh--they must laugh. Women, who have never felt
the necessity of laughter, have killed it in men.'
'The sun is masculine--he creates. The moon is feminine--she only
reflects.'
And so, with many other parables, dark sayings, and direct teachings,
the wise woman brought her disciple to her own house at Cambridge.