for telling stories. They are keynotes which she strikes, and these
keynotes met with an extraordinary and most unexpected response. They
struck a sympathetic chord in women, which found expression in a
multitude of letters, and also in the sale of the book. An author can
hope for no happier fate than to receive letters which re-echo the tune
that he has discovered in his own soul. Those who have received them
know what pleasant feelings they call forth. We often do not know where
they come from, we cannot answer them, nor should we wish to do so if
we could. They give us a sudden insight into the hidden centre of a
living soul, where we can gaze into the secret, yearning life, which is
never lived in the sight of the world, but is generally the best part
of a person’s nature; we feel the sympathetic clasp of a friendly hand,
and our own soul is filled with a thankfulness which will never find
expression in words. The dark world seems filled with unknown friends,
who surround us on every side like bright stars in the night.
Mrs. Egerton had struck the fundamental chord in woman’s nature, and
her book was received with applause by hundreds of women. The critic
said: “The woman in ‘Keynotes’ is an exceptional type, and we can only
deal with her as such.” “Good heavens! How stupid they are!” laughed
Mrs. Egerton. Numberless women wrote to her, women whom she did not
know, and whose acquaintance she never made. “We are quite ordinary,
every-day sort of people,” they said; “we lead trivial, unimportant
lives; but there is something in us which vibrates to your touch, for
we, too, are such as you describe.” “Keynotes” took like wildfire.
There is nothing tangible in the book to which it can be said to
owe its significance. Notes are not tangible. The point on which it
differs from all other well-known books by women is the intensity of
its awakened consciousness as woman. It follows no pattern and is
quite independent of any previous work; it is simply full of a woman’s
individuality. It is not written on a large scale, and it does not
reveal a very expansive temperament. But, such as it is, it possesses
an amount of nervous energy which carries us along with it, and we must
read every page carefully until the last one is turned, not peep at the
end to see what is going to happen, as we do when reading a story with
a plot; we must read every page for its own sake, if we would feel the
power of its different moods, varying from feverish haste to wearied
rest.
II
Nearly a year afterwards, a book was published in Paris by Lemerre,
called “Dilettantes.” Instead of the author’s name there were three
stars, but a catalogue issued by a less illustrious publisher is
not so discreet. It mentions the bearer of a well-known pseudonym
as the author of the book; a lady who first gained a reputation by
translating Hungarian folk songs into French, for which she received
an acknowledgment from the _Académie Française_, and who afterwards
introduced Scandinavian authors to Paris, thereby deserving the thanks
of both countries. She has also made herself a name in literary circles
by her original and clever criticisms. Those who are behind the scenes
know that the translator’s pseudonym and the three stars conceal a lady
who belongs to the highest aristocracy of Austria, and who is herself
a “dilettante,” inasmuch as she writes without any pecuniary object,
and that, quite independent of her public, she writes and translates
what she pleases. Her social position has placed her among intellectual
people; on her mother’s side she is descended from one of the foremost
families among the Austrian nobility, and she has lived in Paris from
her childhood, where she has enjoyed the society of the best authors,
and acquired a French style which, for richness, beauty, and grace,
might well cause many an older French author to envy her. It is in
this French, which she finds more pliable than the homely Viennese
German, that this curious book is written.
I search high and low for words in which to describe the nature of
this book, but in vain. It is womanly to such an extent, and in such a
peculiar way, that we lack the words to express it in a language which
has not yet learned to distinguish between the art of man and the art
of woman in the sphere of production. It has the same effect upon us as
Mrs. Egerton’s “Keynotes.”
The same reason which makes it difficult to understand this Celtic
woman with the English pseudonym, makes it equally difficult to draw
an intelligible picture of this French-writing Austrian, with the
Polish and Hungarian blood mingled in her veins. But it is not the
cross between the races, nor, we might add, is it any cross between
soul and ideas which makes these two women so incomprehensible and
almost enigmatical; one is twice married, the other a girl, although
she is perhaps the more wearied and disillusioned of the two,--and yet
it is not the outer circumstances of their lives which render both
what they are, it is something in themselves, quite apart from the
experience which beautifies and develops a woman’s character; it is the
keynote of their being which retreats shyly to the background as though
afraid of the public gaze. It is the beginning of a series of personal
confessions at first hand, and forms an entirely new department in
women’s literature. Hitherto, as I have already said, all books, even
the best ones, written by women, are imitations of men’s books, with
the addition of a single high-pitched, feminine note, and are therefore
nothing better than communications received at second hand. But at last
the time has come when woman is so keenly alive to her own nature that
she reveals it when she speaks, even though it be in riddles.
I have often pointed out that men only know the side of our character
which they wish to see, or which it may please us to show them. If they
are thorough men, they seek the woman in us, because they need it as
the complement to their own nature; but often they seek our “soul,” our
“mind,” our “character,” or whatever else they may happen to look upon
as the beautifying veil of our existence. Something may come of the
first, but of the last nothing. Mrs. Egerton interpreted man from the
first of the above standpoints; she wrote of him, half in hate and half
in admiration; her men are great clowns. The author of “Dilettantes”
wrote from the opposite point of view; her man is the smooth-speaking
_poseur_, of whom she writes with a shrug of the shoulders and an
expression of mild contempt.
Both feel themselves to be so utterly different from what they
were told they were, and which men believe them to be. They do not
understand it at all; they do not understand themselves in the very
least. They interpret nothing with the understanding, but their
instinct makes them feel quite at home with themselves and leads them
to assert their own natures. They are no longer a reflection which man
moulds into an empty form; they are not like Galatea, who became a
living woman through Pygmalion’s kiss; they were women before they knew
Pygmalion,--such thorough women that Pygmalion is often no Pygmalion to
them at all, but a stupid lout instead.
It is a fearful disappointment, and causes a woman--and many a womanly
woman too--to shrink from man and scan him critically. “You?” she
cries. “No, it were better not to love at all!” But the day is coming--
And when the day has come, then woman will be as bad as Strindberg’s
Megoras, or as humorous as a certain poetess who sent a portrait of her
husband to a friend, with this inscription: “My old Adam;” or else she
may meet with the same fate as Countess Resa in the anonymous book of a
certain well-known authoress. She will commit suicide in one way or the
other. She will not kill herself like Countess Resa, but she will kill
a part of her nature. And these women, who are partly dead, carry about
a corpse in their souls from whence streams forth an odor as of death;
these women, whose dead natures have the power of charming men with a
mystery they would gladly solve,--these women are our mothers, sisters,
friends, teachers, and we scarcely know the meaning of the shiver down
our backs which we feel in their presence. A very keen consciousness is
needed to dive down deep enough in ourselves to discover the reason,
and very subtle, spiritual tools are necessary to grasp the process
and to reproduce it. The Austrian authoress possessed both these
requisites. But there is also a third which is equally indispensable
to any one who would draw such a portrait of themselves, and that is
the distinguished manner of a noble and self-confident nature, in which
everything can be said.
She has something besides, which gives the book a special attraction
of its own, and that is her extremely modern, artistic feeling, which
teaches how the laws of painting can be brought to bear upon the art
of writing, and gives her a keen appreciation of the value of sound in
relation to language.
There is a picture by Claude Monet,--pale, golden sunshine upon a
misty sea. There is scarcely anything to be seen beyond this faint
golden haze, resting upon the shimmering, transparent water, painted
in rainbow colors, pale as opal. There is just a faint suggestion of a
promontory, rising up from the warm, southern sea, and something which
looks like a squadron of fishing boats in the far distance. It is not
quite day, but it is already light,--one of those cool mornings which
precede a dazzling day. It is years since last I saw this picture,
but it charmed me so much that I have never forgotten it. It is in
consequence of this same sense for fine shades of color, applied in
this instance to the soul, that “Dilettantes” was written.
It is a very quiet book, and just as there is not a single strong
color in Monet’s picture, so there is not a single high note in this
book. We feel like gazing down into the water which glides and glides
along, carrying with it seaweed, dead bodies, and men, but always in
silence,--a most uneventful book. But beneath this almost lethargical
stillness is enacted a tragedy in which a life is at stake, and the
stake is lost, and death is the consequence. The deadliest blow
against another’s soul is caused, not by words, but by deafness and
indifference, by neglect at the moment when the heart yearns for love,
and the bud is ready to blossom into flower beneath a single breath
of sympathy. Next morning, when you go to look at it, you find it
withered; it is then too late for your warm breath and willing fingers
to force it open; you only make it worse, and at last the buds fall to
the ground.
The famous unknown has called her book “Dilettantes,” although there
is but one lady in it to whom the name applies. Can it be that, by her
use of the plural, she meant to include herself with the heroine? The
supposition seems not unlikely.
She introduces us to a colony of artists in Paris, amongst whom is
Baron Mark Sebenyi, an Hungarian magnate, who is a literary dilettante.
At the house of the old Princess Ebendorf he makes the acquaintance
of her niece, Theresia Thaszary, and feels himself drawn towards her
as his “twin soul.” During the Princess’s long illness, they become
engaged, and when the Princess dies he continues his visits to the
Countess as though her aunt were still alive, and he spends his hours
of literary work in her house, because, as he says, her presence is an
indispensable source of inspiration to him. Countess Resa is one of
those whom a life of constant travel has rendered cosmopolitan. Her
life is passed in a state of mental torpor which is more general, and,
I should like to add, more normal, among young girls than men imagine
or married women remember; she was neither contented nor discontented
while she lived with her aunt, and she continues the same now, with
Mark continually beside her. She is glad to have him with her; she
feels a certain attraction in his manly and sympathetic presence, and
his behavior towards herself is so decorous that it seldom happens that
so much as a pressure of the hand passes between them. She knows that
Mark has relations with other women, but that fact does not enter into
her womanly consciousness at all.
All goes well until a fashionable friend of hers, a rather vulgar
lady, asks her when she means to marry Mark, and persuades her to go
into society, although she has no desire to do so, and is perfectly
content with the sameness of her life. In society she finds that her
friendship with Mark attracts observation, and this is the first shock
which leads to an awakening. In the long winter hours, while she is
sitting still in the room where he is writing, she suddenly realizes
the situation, and feels that it is like a lover’s _tête-à-tête_. His
behavior in society irritates her in a hundred little ways, because she
knows that he is not true to his real nature, and that he gives way
to his vanity as an author and poses in public. Mark has no intention
of marrying her; he is quite content with matters as they stand.
Cold-hearted, and probably aged before his time, he feels drawn towards
her by a kind of distant, erotic feeling, and he seeks her society for
the sake of the drawing-room where he can make himself thoroughly at
home and bring his artist friends; he likes her because he is not bound
to her, and he has never tired of her because she was never his.
Spring comes. They make expeditions round about Paris, and are
constantly together; she is in a state of nervous excitement, and the
more she feels drawn towards him the more she tries to avoid him. There
are moments when he too feels his hand tremble, if by chance it comes
into contact with hers. Their friendship with one another has become
a hindrance to any greater friendship between them; and he is too
much taken up with himself, too accustomed to have her always busily
attending to him, to notice the change which is gradually taking place
in her. Her love dwindles beneath the cold influence of doubt, which
increases the more as she feels herself rejected by the man she loves.
Ignorant though she be, she is possessed of an intuitive knowledge
which is the heritage of many generations of culture, which enables
her to read him through and through, until she conceives an antipathy
for him,--the man whose love she desires,--an antipathy which makes
him appear contemptible and almost ridiculous in her sight. Still she
clings to him. She has no one else; she is alone among strangers. He
belongs to her and she to him. This fact of their belonging to each
other makes her tire of his company, and one day, when he and his
literary friends are preparing to hold lectures in her drawing-room,
she flies from the house to escape from their æsthetic chatter.
At last she can stand it no longer, and whilst her guests are engaged
in discussing a work of Mark’s, she goes downstairs and out into
the night. She scarcely knows what she is doing; her pulse beats
feverishly, her nerves are quite unstrung. She walks down the street
towards the Champs Elysées, and there she meets a man coming towards
her. She perceives that she is alone in the empty street, and she is
overcome with a nameless fear. Seized with a sudden impulse to hide
herself, she jumps into the nearest cab, which is standing at the door
of a café. The driver asks, “Where to?” and when she does not reply,
he gets angry. At this juncture the man appears at the door of the
carriage, and she recognizes Imre Borogh, a friend of Mark’s, who was
on his way to call on her. She still cannot say where she wishes to
go, but feeling herself under the protection of a friend, she allows
him to get in. They drive and drive. She perceives the compromising
nature of the situation, but is too stupefied to put an end to it. He
talks to her after the manner of an emotional young man, whose feelings
have gained the mastery over him. At last he tells the driver to stop
in front of a café. She is half unconscious, but he assists her to get
out. And the nervous strain of these many long months results in a
misunderstanding with this stranger, even greater than would have been
the case with Mark.
She comes very quietly home. She takes hold of Mark’s portrait, as she
has so often done before, and compares it with her own image in the
looking-glass. She throws it away. She burns his letters and all the
little mementos which she has of him, then--while she is searching in
her drawers--she comes upon a revolver....
Mark was very much moved at the funeral, and he cherished her memory
for long afterwards.
Nowhere in the book is there any attempt made to describe men. The
authoress only shows them to us as they are reflected in her soul. In
this she not only shows an unusual amount of artistic talent, but also
a new method. Woman is the most subjective of all creatures; she can
only write about her own feelings, and her expression of them is her
most valuable contribution to literature. Formerly women’s writings
were, for the most part, either directly or indirectly, the expression
of a great falsehood. They were so overpoweringly impersonal, it was
quite comic to see the way in which they imitated men’s models, both
in form and contents. Now that woman is conscious of her individuality
as a woman, she needs an artistic mode of expression; she flings aside
the old forms, and seeks for new. It is with this feeling, almost
Bacchanalian in its intensity, that Mrs. Egerton hurls forth her
playful stories, which the English critics judged harshly, but the
public bought and called for in fresh editions; and this was how the
Austrian lady wrote her story, which has the effect of a play dreamed
under the influence of the sordine. Both books are honest. The more
conscious a woman is of her individuality, the more honest will her
confession be. Honesty is only another form of pride.
III
Another characteristic is beginning to make itself felt, which was
bound to come at last. And that is an intense and morbid consciousness
of the ego in women. This consciousness was unknown to our mothers and
grandmothers; they may have had stronger characters than ours, as they
undoubtedly had to overcome greater hindrances; but this consciousness
of the ego is quite another thing, and they had not got it.
Neither of these women, whose books I have been reviewing, are authors
by profession. There is nothing they care for less than to write books,
and nothing that they desire less than to hear their names on every
one’s lips. Both were able to write without having learned. Other
authoresses of whom we hear have either taught themselves to write, or
have been taught by men. They began with an object, but without having
anything to say; they chose their subjects from without.
Neither of these women have any object. They do not want to describe
what they have seen. They do not want to teach the world, nor do they
try to improve it. They have nothing to fight against. They merely put
themselves into their books. They did not even begin with the intention
of writing; they obeyed an impulse. There was no question of whether
they wished or not; they were obliged. The moment came when they were
forced to write, and they did not concern themselves with reasons or
objects. Their ego burst forth with such power that it ignored all
outer circumstances; it pressed forward and crystallized itself into
an artistic shape. These women have not only a very pronounced style
of their own, but are in fact artists; they became it as soon as they
took up the pen. They had nothing to learn, it was theirs already.
This is not only a new phase in the work of literary production, it
is also a new phase in woman’s nature. Formerly, not only all great
authoresses, but likewise all prominent women, were--or tried to
be--intellectual. That also was an attempt to accommodate themselves to
men’s wishes. They were always trying to follow in the footsteps of the
man. Man’s ideas, interests, speculations, were to be understood and
sympathized with. When philosophy was the fashion, great authoresses
and intelligent women philosophized. Because Goethe was wise, Rahel
was filled with the wisdom of life. George Eliot preached in all
her books, and philosophized all her life long after the manner of
Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. George Sand was the receptacle for
ideas--men’s ideas--of the most contradictory character, which she
immediately reproduced in her novels. Good Ebner-Eschenbach writes as
sensibly, and with as much tolerance, as a right worthy old gentleman;
and Fru Leffler chose her subjects from among the problems which were
being discussed by a few well-known men. None of their writings can
be considered as essentially characteristic of women. It was not an
altogether unjust assertion when men declared that the women who wrote
books were only half women.
Yet these were the best. Others, who wrote as women, had no connection
with literature at all; they merely knitted literary stockings.
Mrs. Egerton and the author of “Dilettantes” are not intellectual, not
in the very least. The possibility of being it has never entered their
brain. They had no ambition to imitate men. They are not in the least
impressed by the speculations, ideas, theories, and philosophies of
men. They are sceptics in all that concerns the mind; the man himself
they can perceive.
They perceive his soul, his inner self,--when he has one,--and they
are keenly sensitive when it is not there. The other women with the
great names are quite thick-headed in comparison. They judge everything
with the understanding; these perceive with the nerves, and that is an
entirely different kind of understanding.
They understand man, but, at the same time, they perceive that he is
quite different from themselves, that he is the contrast to themselves.
The one is too highly cultured; the other has too sensitive a nervous
system to permit the thought of any equality between man and woman. The
idea makes them laugh. They are far too conscious of being refined,
sensitive women. They do not concern themselves with the modern
democratic tendencies regarding women, with its levelling of contrasts,
its desire for equality. They live their own life, and if they find it
unsatisfying, empty, disappointing, they cannot change it. But they do
not make any compromise to do things by halves; their highly-developed
nerves are too sure a standard to allow of that. They are a new race of
women, more resigned, more hopeless, and more sensitive than the former
ones. They are women such as the new men require; they have risen up on
the intellectual horizon as the forerunners of a generation who will be
more sensitive, and who will have a keener power of enjoyment than the
former ones. Among themselves these women exchange sympathetic glances,
and are able to understand one another without need of confession.
They, with their highly-developed nerves, can feel for each other with
a sympathy such as formerly a woman only felt for man. In this way they
go through life, without building castles in the air, or making any
plans for the future; they live on day by day, and never look beyond.
It might be said that they are waiting; but as each new day arrives,
and the sand of time falls drop by drop upon their delicate nerves,
even this imperceptible burden is more than they can bear; the strain
of it is too much for them.
IV
I have before me a new book by Mrs. Egerton, and two new photographs.
In the one she is sitting curled up in a chair, reading peacefully. She
has a delicate, rather sharp-featured profile, with a long, somewhat
prominent chin, that gives one an idea of yearning. The other is a
full-length portrait. A slender, girlish figure, with narrow shoulders,
and a waist, if anything, rather too small; a tired, worn face, without
youth and full of disillusion; the hair looks as though restless
fingers had been passed through it, and there is a bitter, hopeless
expression about the lines of the mouth. In her letters--in which we
never wholly possess her, but merely her _mood_--she comes to us in
various guises,--now as a playful kitten, that is curled up cosily, and
sometimes stretches out a soft little paw in playful, tender need of a
caress; or else she is a worried, disappointed woman, with overwrought
and excitable nerves, sceptical in the possibility of content, a
seeker, for whom the charm lies in the seeking, not in the finding. She
is a type of the modern woman, whose inmost being is the essence of
disillusion.