PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT
Description of all the Anglo-Saxon fads.
I loathe the domination of woman, but I ever crave for her influence,
and I believe that any man of refinement and thinking, that any lover
and admirer of woman, will echo this sentiment.
I know of one country only where the government by woman was given a
real trial, and that is New Zealand. The law was passed and the
experiment was made. The law, I believe, had to be repealed after six
months. The Government had taken such a tyrannical form that that
loveliest of spots on the earth was on the eve of a revolution, of a
desperate struggle for liberty.
Things were pretty badly managed in a small Ohio city when I was
visiting it four years ago. The following year women put up their names
as candidates for the City Council in every ward, and were all
returned. They did manage the city. The following year the experiment
had been made, and not one woman was returned again.
The American men are so busy, so long absent from home, that many of
their womankind have to find out a way of using the leisure time left
at their disposal, with results that are not always altogether
satisfactory. Some devote that time to literature, to the improvement
of their brilliant native intellect; some spend it in frivolities; some
indulge in all the fads of Anglo-Saxon life.
The women of good society in America are what they are everywhere
else--satisfied with their lot, which consists in being the adored
goddesses of refined households; but there exists in that country among
the middle--perhaps, what I should call in European parlance, lower
middle--classes, restless, bumptious, ever-poking-their-noses-everywhere
women, who are slowly, but surely and safely, transforming that great
land of liberty into a land of petty, fussy tyranny, and trying--often
with complete success--to impose on the community fads of every shape
and form.
If there is one country in the world where the women appear, in the
eyes of the foreign visitor, to enjoy all manner of privileges and to
have the men in leading-strings, that country is America. You would
imagine, therefore, that America should be the last country where the
New Woman was to be found airing her grievances. Yet she is flourishing
throughout the length and breadth of that huge continent. She is petted
by her husband, the most devoted and hardworking of husbands in the
world; she is literally covered with precious stones by him; she is
allowed to wear hats that would 'fetch' Paris in carnival time or start
a panic at a Corpus Christi procession in Paris or a Lord Mayor's Show
in London; she is the superior of her husband in education and almost
in every respect; she is surrounded by the most numerous and delicate
attentions, yet she is not satisfied.
The Anglo-Saxon New Woman is the most ridiculous production of modern
times, and destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century. She
is _par excellence_ the woman with a grievance, and self-labelled the
greatest nuisance of modern society. The New Woman wants to retain all
the privileges of her sex, and secure besides all those of man; she
wants to be a man and to remain a woman. She will fail to become a man,
but she may succeed in ceasing to be a woman.
And now, where is that New Woman to be found? Put together a hundred
women, intelligent and of good society; take out the beautiful ones;
then take out the married ones who are loved by their husbands and
their children, and kindly seek the New Woman among what is left--ugly
women, old maids, and disappointed and neglected wives.
Woman has no grievance against man. Her only grievance should be, I
admit, against Nature, which made her different from man, with duties
different, physically and otherwise, almost always to her disadvantage.
The world exists and marches on through love. I pity from the bottom of
my heart the good woman who is not to know the whispers of love of a
good husband or the caresses of little children, but I am not prepared
to see life become a burden for her sake.
There is no possibility of denying or ignoring the fact. The purpose,
the _raison d'etre_, of woman is to be a mother, as the _raison d'etre_
of a fruit-tree is to bear fruit. And woe to the next generations, for
everybody knows that _only_ the children of quiet and reposed women are
healthy and intelligent.
The woman question will only be solved by the partnership in life of
man and wife, as it exists in France, where, thank God! the New Woman
is unknown; by the equality of the sexes, but each with different,
well-defined duties to perform.
The New Woman is not to be found outside of Great Britain, where woman
is her husband's inferior, and of the United States, where she is his
superior.
The woman who devotes a good deal of her time to the management of
public affairs is a woman who is not required to devote much of it to
private ones.
Show me a woman of forty.
Look on this picture: Eyes bright, beaming with joy and happiness,
complexion clear, rosy, plump, not a wrinkle, mouth smiling. See her
lips bearing the imprint of holy kisses, and her neck the mark of her
little children's arms. She has no grievance. Ask her to join the New
Woman army. 'No, thanks,' she will say, with a smile of pity; 'the old
style is good enough for me.'
And on this: Thin, sallow complexion, eyes without lustre, wrinkled,
mouth sulky, haughty, the disgust of life written on every feature.
That woman will join the ranks of every organization which aims at
taking the cup of love away from the lips of every happy being.
But all this might take the shape of a long digression. Let us see how
some American women devote part of the time which they are not probably
wanted to devote at home.
I think that of all the grand fads indulged in by some women in
America, the palm should be given to the compulsory water-drinking
work. That is a colossal illustration of what women can do when left
entirely to their own resources.
Now I will lay down as a sort of principle that the 'temperance' woman
and the teetotaler are not to be found in refined society, and I don't
think that in saying so I shall run the risk of being contradicted. I
have often been a guest at the Union Club, the Union League Club, the
Manhattan, the Century, the Players, and many other good clubs. I have
dined in the best houses of the great American cities, and nowhere have
I met teetotalers in those circles of society. Refined, intelligent
people of good society, artists, literary men, are not teetotalers--that
will be granted by everybody. I don't mention politicians, even of the
best class, who have at times to be teetotalers to catch votes in a
democracy.
The smaller towns of America--and that is America proper--are ruled by
fussy, interfering faddists, fanatics of all sorts, old women of both
sexes, shrieking cockatoos, that will by-and-by make life well-nigh
intolerable to any man of self-respect, and make him wonder whether he
lives in a free country or not.
Take two lively illustrations. A few years ago I was in the town of
E---- (Kansas). There was a mayor who was married, and the happy pair
had a little boy. That little boy was a wicked little boy. One day he
was caught smoking a cigarette. Now, what should be done by sensible
parents to such a wicked little boy? Why, he should be turned over and
given a good hearty--you know. This is not at all what was done. The
mayor's wife called up a meeting of women, made a violent speech on the
pernicious habit of cigarette-smoking, and it was decided to petition
the mayor and ask him to forbid the sale of cigarettes within the
precincts of his jurisdiction. For the sake of peace and happiness at
home, the worthy mayor published an edict prohibiting the sale of
cigarettes in his district. However, cigarettes can be had in the town
of E----, but you have to walk nearly a mile, just outside the limits
of the mayor's jurisdiction, to find a store where a roaring trade in
cigarettes is done. All the same, you must admit that it is a nuisance
to be obliged to walk a mile in a free country to buy a little article
of luxury that you indulge in, without ever abusing it, because there
happens to be in the town a wicked little boy who once smoked a
cigarette.
When I was in the town of T----(Arkansas), I gave a lecture under the
auspices of 'temperance' ladies of the city. They called on me.
Being of a rather inquisitive turn of mind, I said to them: 'Now,
ladies, I understand I am in a prohibition State. How do you account
for your existence? Do you wish now to advocate the suppression of tea,
coffee, and ice-water, which, I must say, would go a long way towards
improving the complexion and the digestive apparatus of your
compatriots?'
'No,' they said; 'we find that, in spite of the law, there is liquor,
wine, and beer still sold in this town, and we want to put a stop to
it.'
I knew that such was the case, for I had, _proh pudor!_ a bottle of
lager-beer in my pocket which I had bought for my dinner, but which, I
am glad to say, was not discovered by the ladies under the auspices of
whom I was to lecture in the evening. I can do with ice-water, but in a
prohibition State I cannot. The evil spirit prompts me. I must have
beer or wine with my meals. I have never been drunk in my life; but if
ever I get drunk it will be in a prohibition State.
'Well,' said the lady president of the temperance society of the town
of T----, 'could you believe that a few days ago a poor woman of the
town and her children actually died of starvation, while every day her
husband got drunk with the wages he received?'
'But,' I mildly suggested, 'you should see that that man was punished,
not the innocent population of this town. Don't suppress the wine,
which is a gift of God. Punish--suppress, even, if you like--the
drunkard. It is not wine that makes a man drunk, it is vice. Don't
suppress the wine, suppress the vice or the vicious. Imprison a
drunkard, lynch him, hang, shoot him, quarter him, do what you like
with him, but allow hundreds of good, wise, temperate people who would
use wine in moderation to indulge in a habit that makes men moderate,
cheerful, and happy. Don't suppress wine because a few idiots use it to
get drunk.'
Every year there are men who use knives to stab fellow-creatures; but
there are millions who use their knives to eat their meals peacefully
with. The law punishes the criminals, but would not think of forbidding
the use of knives in orderly houses.
Any law is bad that punishes, injures, or annoys thousands of good,
innocent people in order to stop the mischief done by a few--a very
few, after all--blackguards and scoundrels.
The Anglo-Saxon should, by all means, preach temperance, which means
moderation, not total abstinence. What they preach overreaches the
mark, and does no good. When you say that a country enjoys a
_temperate_ climate, that does not mean that it has no climate at all,
but enjoys a moderate one, neither too hot nor too cold.
These same Anglo-Saxons should not despise, but admire and envy, those
who can enjoy, like men of understanding, like gentlemen, the glorious
gifts of God to man without ever making fools of themselves. For these
the law should be made.
If your husband or son, dear lady, would like to have a glass of wine
or beer with his dinner, let him have it in your sweet and wholesome
presence. Don't make a hypocrite of him. Don't compel him to go and
hide himself in his club, or, worse, in a saloon, or, worse still,
don't allow him to go and lose his manhood's dignity by crawling on all
fours under the counter of a drug-store.
There is no virtue in compulsion. There is virtue only in liberty.
Ah! how I remember admiring in the hot days of blue-ribbonism in
England that free Briton I once met who had a yellow ribbon in his
button-hole!
'What's that you have on?' I said to him.
'That's a yellow ribbon,' he replied. 'I belong to the Yellow-Ribbon
Army.'
'Ah! and what is it the Yellow-Ribbon Army do?' I inquired.
'What do we do?' he said. 'Why, we eat what we likes, we drink what we
likes, and we don't care a d---- for nobody!'
There are well-meaning, most highly estimable, and talented ladies who
go about the world preaching temperance--that is to say, total
abstinence, not moderation.
Now, as a rule, these ladies have special reasons for so doing. Very
often they have led a life of sorrow and misery with wretched husbands,
and they should be pitied. But hundreds of thousands of women have good
husbands who have not to be cured of habits which they never in their
lives indulged in, and who would be condemned to deny themselves every
little luxury that helps make life cheerful when used with moderation
and discretion, if the preachings of these often unfortunate ladies
were to take the shape of laws.
I have often had to listen to self-confessed reformed drunkards who
preached to me, who never was once drunk in my life. The thing is
ludicrous.
There exist, among the Anglo-Saxons, people to whom the strains of
Wagner and Beethoven's music say absolutely nothing, to whom the Venus
of Milo is indecent. They declare music wicked, unless it is out of
tune, dancing absolutely shocking, and the fine arts immoral, and if
they had their way, they would close the concert-halls and the museums
on every day of the week. Because their minds are distorted, they would
condemn people with lofty and artistic minds to never hear a
masterpiece of music or behold a masterpiece of painting or statuary. I
have met people who declared they would never again set foot inside the
walls of the Louvre and of the British Museum. And if the Anglo-Saxon
fanatics, those arch-enemies of art, make a little more progress, the
future of that great institution is not safe.
As everybody knows, there exist in Great Britain and in America
thousands of people who declare the stage to be a most wicked and
immoral institution. For them a theatre is so contaminated a place that
they would not go inside one even to hear a Bishop preach a sermon from
the stage. For instance, in several colonial cities I appeared in the
principal theatre; but my manager, on a return visit, always made me
appear in the town-hall, or some other place of the kind, to attract
the portion of the population who would not have come to hear me
lecture inside a theatre.
All these movements, headed by women, are in the wrong direction. They
interfere with the liberties of a great people, and punish thousands
and thousands of good, orderly, well-behaved people to reach a score or
two of bad ones, whom they often fail to reach, and oftener still fail
to cure. I repeat it: There are many thousands of good people in this
world for a very few thousands of bad ones. The laws should aim at
reaching the former and protecting them. This world is considerably
better than the fanatics of all denominations and superstitions would
make us believe. For seventeen years I have travelled all over the
world, and I have never met any but honourable people to deal with. For
instance, I have given 2,300 lectures in my life, and only once did I
come across a man who behaved dishonestly towards me. He ran away with
the cash while I was speaking; but then it was on Sunday, and some good
pious people said to me that Providence, in its wisdom, had punished me
for my wickedness. I must say that I never could see very clearly why
Providence, in its wisdom, should have allowed the thief to safely run
away with the money; but the ways of Providence are inscrutable, and
its decrees should not be discussed. I might add that the lecture was
more of a harmless address--almost a little sermon--on the duty of
cheerfulness; but two or three times it caused the audience to smile,
and this is simply too awful to think of.
Yes, the world is good, very good, in spite of the calumnies that are
constantly hurled at its face by the Pharisees of Anglo-Saxondom. Yes,
full of good men, crammed with good women, and the excellent ladies of
the philanthropic societies of America should take it for granted that
there are many, many good and virtuous people besides themselves.
You don't cut down an apple-tree because there are two or three bad
apples on it. You cut down the two or three bad apples, and all your
efforts tend to see that the hundreds of good ones are made healthy,
happy, and comfortable.
I have no hesitation in declaring, after six visits to that great and
most hospitable country, that the American women of good society are
probably the most intelligent, bright, and brilliant, and certainly the
best educated and the most interesting, women in the world.
But when I see what some American women can do in public life, outside
of the beautiful sphere in which they were intended to reign supreme, I
feel ready to appreciate and echo the remark that Frederick the Great
was wont to make when he met a woman alone in the streets of Berlin:
'What are you doing here? Go home and look after your house and your
children!'