believed not to be altogether an impartial historian; and it is felt in
many drawing-rooms that what is wanted on this occasion, at the
telegraph offices, is a sound and resolute Madame Reuter, to correct the
deviations of M. Reuter's compass. In default of all trustworthy
telegraphic intelligence, Englishwomen are compelled to fall back on
their vivid imagination, and to construct a picture of what is
happening from the depths of their own moral consciousness. And several
things their moral consciousness tells them are clear and certain. The
first is, that the Empress Eugenie is an injured and interesting victim.
She has made a vow, under the very touching circumstances of measles in
the Imperial nursery, to pay a visit to the Pope; and Cabinet Ministers
like M. Lavalette, who throw suspicion on the binding nature of such a
holy maternal obligation, are worse than "S. G. O." In the second place,
she has set her heart upon going. Even if a vow were not binding, this
is. It is mere nonsense to say that her pilgrimage would interfere with
politics. A woman's fine tact is often of considerable use in politics,
and the sight of the Prince Imperial in his mother's arms might exercise
the most beneficial influence on the Pope's mind.
Pio Nono has held out hitherto in the most inexplicable manner against
the Prince Imperial's photograph, but he never could resist a sight of
the original. And, thirdly, if a wife and a mother may not have her own
way about going to see the Head of her own Church, when is she ever to
have her way at all, and where is the line to be drawn? The next
downward step in a husband's declension will be to prevent her from
frequenting all religious exercises, or, still worse, from selecting her
own balls and evening parties. This is what English ladies feel, and
feel keenly. It is some consolation to them to learn that, if the
Empress Eugenie is discomfited, she will not have been discomfited
without a struggle. Of course there will be no evening reception on the
New Year at the Tuileries. No lady with a proper sense of what was due
to her own dignity would receive under such circumstances. But till the
most authentic news arrive, it will still be possible to hope and to
believe that victory will eventually, and in spite of all appearances,
declare itself upon the side of right and of propriety, and that her
Majesty will not be interfered with merely to satisfy the idle caprices
of a Foreign Office.
The question of the proper limits of feminine influence is one which
such universal enthusiasm forces naturally on one's notice. Not even the
most rigid cynic can deny that women ought to have some influence on the
mind and judgment of the opposite sex, and the only difficulty is to
know how far that influence ought to go. Every one will be ready to
concede that sound reasoning is worth hearing, whether it comes from a
woman or a man; and that, so far as a lady argues well, she has as much
claim on our attention as Diotima had on the attention of Socrates.
This, however, is not precisely the point which is so difficult to
settle. The problem is to know how much influence a woman ought to have
when she does not argue well; and further, what are the matters on which
her opinion, whether it be based on argument or instinct, is of value.
One of the most important subjects on which women have some, and always
want to have a great deal of power, is religion. This is one part of the
supposed mission of the Empress upon which feminine observers look with
especial sympathy, and on which experienced masculine observers, on the
other hand, look with some awe. The correspondents of the daily papers,
whose pleasure and privilege it is to be able to instruct us in all the
secrets of high life, have given us recently to understand that, for
some time back, Her Majesty has been hard at work on the Emperor's soul.
Every thoughtful woman likes to be at work on her husband's soul. Young
ladies enjoy the prospect before they are married, and no novel is so
thoroughly popular among them as one in which beauty is the instrument
in the hands of Providence for the conversion of unbelief. And it is
partly because the Empress Eugenie is discharging this high missionary
duty, that she is an object of particular admiration just at this
moment. When Englishwomen hear that she is very active in favor of the
Pope, and couple this news with the fact that the Emperor's soul is
uneasy, they sniff--if we may be forgiven the expression--the battle
from afar. Their education in respect of theology and religious opinion
is very different from that of men.
They have been brought up to believe strongly and heartily what they
have been told, and they do not understand the half-sceptical way of
regarding such things which is the result of larger views and more
liberal education. It appears to them a terrible thing that the men they
care for should be hesitating and doubtful about subjects where they
themselves have been trained only to believe one view possible. And they
set to work in the true temper of missionaries, with profound eagerness
and energy, and narrowness of grasp. Many genuine prayers and tears are
worthily spent in the effort to tether some truant husband or a son to a
family theological peg, and to prevent him from roving. And, up to a
certain point, men continually give in. They find it easier and more
comfortable to lower their arms, and not always to be maintaining a
barren controversy. They have not the slightest wish to convince their
affectionate feminine disputant, to take from her the sincere and
positive dogmas on which her happiness is built, and to substitute for
these a phase of doubt and difficulty for which her past intellectual
life has not fitted her. Accordingly, they indulge in a thousand little
hypocrisies of a more or less harmless kind.
So long as women's education continues to differ from that of men as
widely as it does in England, this flexibility on the part of the latter
under the influence of the former is not always amiss. It is better that
the husband should be yielding than that he should hold aloof from all
that interests and moves the wife, as is the case in countries where the
one sex may be seen professing to believe in nothing, while the other as
implicitly believes in everything. It is, however, easy to conceive of
cases in which this feminine influence that seems so innocent, is in
reality injurious. It may perhaps be the business of the husband to take
a public part in the affairs of his time. Conscience tells him that he
should be sincere, uncompromising, logical, even to the point of
disputing conclusions which good and pious people consider essential
and important. Or he may be a religious preacher, or a religious
reformer of his day, bound, in virtue of character, to maintain truth at
the risk of being unpopular; or, it may be, to prosecute inquiries and
reforms at the risk of shocking weaker brethren.
There are many who could tell us from their experience how terribly at
such a time they have been perplexed and hampered in their duty by the
affectionate ignorance, the tears, and the piety of women. Protestant
clergymen in particular are sometimes taunted with their conservative
tendencies, their indifference to the new lights of science, or of
history, and their disinclination to embark on perilous voyages in quest
of truth. Part of their conservatism arises from the fact that their
practical business is generally to teach what they do know, rather than
to inquire into what they do not know. Part of it comes, as we suspect,
from the fact that they are married. A wife is a sort of theological
drag. It serves no doubt to keep some of us from rolling too rapidly
down hill. It impedes equally the progress of others over ordinarily
level ground.
The importance of a social position to women is a thing which affects
their influence upon men no less materially than does their religious
sensibility. As a rule, they have no other means of measuring the
consideration in which they are held by the world, or the success in
life of those to whose fortunes they are linked, than by using a trivial
and worthless social standard. Men, whose training is wider, estimate
both their male and their female friends pretty fairly according to
their merits. But the majority of women, from their youth up, seldom
think of anybody without contrasting his or her social status with their
own. Success signifies to them introduction to this or that feminine
circle, admission to friendships from which they have been as yet
excluded, and visiting cards of a more distinguished appearance than
those which at present lie upon their table. They are unable to enjoy
even the ordinary intercourse of society without an _arriere pensee_ as
to their chance of landing themselves a step higher on the social
ladder. From such absurdities the best and most refined women of course
are free, but the mass of Englishwomen seldom meet without wondering who
on earth each of the others is, and to which county family she belongs.
Humorous as is the spectacle of a crowd of English ladies, each of whom
is employed in eyeing the lady next her and asking who she is, and
comical as the point of view appears to any one who reflects on the
shortness of human life and the littleness of human character, the
effect of these feminine weaknesses is one which no one can be sure of
escaping. We are afraid that half of the Englishmen who are snobs are
made so by Englishwomen. It is impossible for the female portion of any
domestic circle to be perpetually dwelling on their own social
aspirations without communicating the infection to, or even forcing it
upon the male. Wives and daughters become dissatisfied with their
husbands' or their fathers' friends. They want to meet and to associate
with people whom it is a social credit to know, and who in turn may
help them to know somebody beyond. Every fresh acquaintance of
distinction, or of fashion, is a sort of milestone, showing the ground
that has been travelled over by the family in the direction of their
hopes. This sort of fever is very catching. But though men often catch
it, they generally catch it from the other sex. And even when they are
not impregnated with it themselves, the effect of feminine influence
upon them is that they accept their lot with placidity, and acquiesce in
the social struggle through which they are dragged.
No man in his senses can wish or hope to order the social life of his
belongings according to his own sober judgment. He is compelled to allow
them a free rein in the matter, and to abstain from even expressing the
astonishment he inwardly feels. Perhaps the world of women is a new
world to him, and he feels incapable of regulating any of its movements;
or perhaps, if he is wise, he is content with the reflection that little
foibles do not altogether spoil real nobility of nature, and takes the
bad side of a woman's education with the good. But there are innumerable
matters in respect of which he cannot withdraw himself from the feminine
influence about him. By degrees he comes to sympathize with the little
social disappointments of his family group, and to take pleasure in
their little social triumphs, which appear to be so productive of
satisfaction and enjoyment to those to whom they fall. But the effect on
his character is not usually wholesome. His eye is no longer single.
Feminine influence has engrafted on his nature the defects of feminine
character, without engrafting on it also its many virtues.
Women usually fail in communicating to men their self-devotion, their
gentleness, their piety; all that they manage to communicate amounts to
little more than a respect for the observances of religion, and a
nervous sensibility to social distinctions.
While the mental development of women continues to be so little studied,
it is not surprising that the intellectual influence of the sex should
be almost _nil_, or that such a modicum of it as they possess should be
exerted within a very narrow sphere. It is the fault, no doubt, of our
systems of female education that the mental power of the cleverest women
really comes in England to very little. In its highest form it amounts
to a capacity for conversation on indifferent matters, a genius for
music or some other fine art, a turn for talking about the poets of the
day, and perhaps for imitating their style with ease, coupled, in
exceptional cases, with a talent for guessing double acrostics. To be
able to do all this, and to be charming and religious too, is the whole
duty of young women.
It would be difficult possibly to fit out an English young lady with the
various practical accomplishments that are of use in matrimony, and to
make her at the same time an intellectual equal of the other sex. But it
would surely be possible to train her to understand more of the general
current of the world's ideas, even if she could not devote herself to
studying them in detail. What woman has now any notion of the broad
outline of history of human thought? All philosophy is a sealed book to
her. It is the same with theology and politics. She has not the wildest
conception, as a rule, of the grounds on which people think who think
differently from herself; and all through life she is content to play
the part of a partisan or a devotee with perfect equanimity.
While, however, feminine influence in intellectual subjects is, as it
deserves to be, infinitesimal, in practice and in action women are proud
of being recognized as useful and sound advisers. As outsiders and
spectators they see a good deal of the game, have leisure to watch
narrowly all that is going on about them, and a subtle instinct teaches
them to tread delicately over all dangerous ground. It is curious how
many enemies women make amongst themselves, and yet how many enemies
they prevent men from making. They seem to have less of self-control or
prudence as far as their own strong feelings and fortunes are concerned,
than they have of tact and temper in managing the fortunes and
enterprises of others.
There can, for example, be no doubt whatever that the parson who aims at
being a bishop before he dies ought to marry early. The great strokes of
policy which bring him preferment or popularity are pretty sure to have
been devised in moments of happy inspiration, or perhaps during the
watches of the night, by a feminine brain. Good mothers make saints and
heroes, says the proverb, and beyond a doubt wise wives make bishops.
Their influence is not the less real because, unlike that of Mrs.
Proudie, it is exerted chiefly behind the scenes. It is possibly because
the influence possessed by women is so intangible, depending as it does
less on the reason than on the sentiment, affection, and convenience of
the other sex, that women are so jealous to assert and to protect it.
PIGEONS.
Every now and then, as the fashionable season comes round, in some
corner of its space the daily press records a wholesale slaughter of the
pigeon species. The world is informed of a series of sweepstakes, in
which guardsmen and peers and foreigners of distinction take part. So
many birds are shot at, so many are killed, so many get away. The
quality of the birds and the skill of the shooters is specified. As the
minutest details of the sport are interesting, we are even told who
supplies the birds, and whether the day of their massacre was bright or
cloudy. This is quite as it should be. The British public can never hear
too much of the doings of its gilded youth. Sweet to it is sporting
news, but "aristocratic sporting news" is sweeter still.
And apart from this twofold source of interest, an element of deeper
satisfaction mingles in the complacency with which it gloats over these
pigeon holocausts. It is something to know that, in the last resort, we
have these high-born and fashionable marksmen to protect our hearths and
homes from the French invader and the irrepressible Beales. The nervous
householder sleeps in his bed with a greater sense of security after
reading of the awful havoc which Captain A. and the Earl of B. are
making of the feathery tribe. In the accuracy of their aim he sees a
guarantee of order, and of the maintenance of his glorious Constitution.
Foreign menace and internal discord lose something of their terrors for
him as often as his eyes light upon the significant little paragraph to
which we have referred. Here is an item of intelligence for the haughty
Prussian and the dashing Zouave to ponder. Here is something for the
mole-like Fenian and the blatant Leaguesman to put in their pipes and
smoke.
The fate of the pigeons awaits all who would violate our shores, or
light up the flame of sedition in the land. If, as some philosophers
aver, the pigeon does not all die, but in some tranquil limbo flutters
on in an eternity of innocent cooing, it must console the poor bird to
reflect that, however cheap he may be held, he has not perished
altogether in vain. To serve a useful purpose is the great economy of
things, to point a warning, at the cost of one's heart's blood, to
England's foes and traitors--to the plotter in Munster as well as the
safer conspirator of the Parks--might content even a greater ambition
than that which animates the gentle bosom of a fantail.
But suppose some vindictive pouter to survive his less lucky comrades,
and, escaping among the birds who are duly chronicled as "getting away,"
to perch, full of resentment at the probable extinction of his species,
in the fashionable quarter of London. He would there witness a grand act
of retaliation. He would learn how Belgravia avenges Hornsey and
Shepherd's Bush. He would see the very men from whom his relatives had
received their quietus flying to their clubs for shelter, and calling on
their goddesses of the _demi-monde_ to cover them. He would perceive, by
an unerring instinct, that a contest was afoot in which the conditions
of that suburban sweepstakes at which he had involuntarily assisted were
exactly reversed. He would see those self-same sportsmen converted into
the target, the flutterers of the dovecot themselves in a flutter. And
he would be more than pigeon if he could repress a thrill of savage glee
at the spectacle of the enemies of his race realizing by experience all
the difference between shooting and being shot at.
Suppose, further, that curious to watch the operations of "aristocratic
sport," the intelligent bird, following the precedent of Edgar Poe's
Raven, should alight, unseen and uninvited, on some object of art in a
fashionable ballroom. Here he would find himself at once in the thick of
the brilliant competition. He would see a row of lovely archers, backed
by a second row of older and more experienced markswomen. And in the
human pigeons now cowering before their combined artillery he would
recognise the heroes so lately engaged in dispatching thousands of the
feathered branch of the family to oblivion. At first sight it might
strike an animal of his well-known gallantry that there was nothing so
very terrible in their impending fate. To fall slain by bright eyes, and
with the strains of Coote and Tinney lingering on the ear, to sigh out
one's soul over a draught of seltzer and champagne or the sweet poison
of a strawberry ice, might seem to the winged spectator a blissful
ending.
The doorway of the perfumed saloon might seem but the portal of a
Mahomedan paradise, in which young and beautiful houris are deporting
themselves under the guardian eye of the older and less beautiful
houris. To the denizen of the air all, save the want of oxygen, might
appear divine. But when he surveyed more closely that sexual row of
sportswomen, he would know at once that he beheld the true avengers of
his race. In their stony glare, in the cold glitter of their diamonds,
in the ample proportions of their well-developed shoulders, in their
sliding scale of manners, now adjusted to a sugary smile and now to a
stare of annihilation, he would read a deadly purpose. Nor would the
diversities of skill which this fringe of amazons exhibited in the use
of their weapons escape his notice. He would see some whom success had
made affable, and others whom failure had made desperate; some who
covered their victim with an aim of pitiless precision, and others who
spoilt their chances by bungling audacity. Conspicuous among them he
would observe a giddy sexagenarian, whose random attempts to share in
the sport made her the laughing-stock of the circle.
And as he surveyed the _battue_ he would gradually discern its tactics.
The beautiful beings in tulle he would feel, by instinct, were a lure
and a decoy. Once within reach of their victims, these lovely
skirmishers would be seen to inflict on them a sudden wound, leaving
them to be despatched by the heavy reserve in _moire_ and lace. As he
watched the terror which these formidable beings inspired, and the
business-like manner in which they addressed themselves to their task,
as he noticed the jaunty destroyers of his race succumbing one by one to
fate, or ignominiously attempting to "get away," he would feel that the
"irony of the situation" was complete. In a vague way he would grasp the
fact--hitherto undreamt of in his dove's philosophy--that, if the pigeon
is preyed upon by man, man in his turn is preyed upon by the dowager.
There is, however, this difference between the fate of the pigeon and
his human analogue, that, whereas the former is slain outright, the
latter is often subjected to the prolonged agony of being plucked
feather by feather. Not that he thinks it agony; on the contrary, he
decidedly likes it, which is a wonderful proof of his simplicity, and
the difference in people's tastes. But in order to pluck a human pigeon
at leisure, you must first catch him. May is a good month for this
operation. About now he begins to resort to the Opera and the park, and
in the purlieus of either a fine specimen may be flashed. A clever
sportswoman will get the earliest possible information about his
movements. Much depends on forestalling her competitors.
A youthful pigeon, just emerging from his minority, or freshly alighted
from the grand tour, is easily captured. There are two principal
contrivances for catching human pigeons. The first is the matrimonial
snare. This is worked by the dowager, in concert with her daughter,
somewhat on the following plan. The daughter throws herself, as if by
chance, in the pigeon's way. The brilliancy of her charms naturally
attracts him. Small-talk ensues, in which an extraordinary similarity
between her tastes and his is casually revealed. The simple pigeon,
suspecting nothing, is delighted to find so congenial a soul. Is he
musical? she adores the divine art. A gourmand? she owns to the
possession of a cookery-book. Ritualistic? it was but the other day that
she was at St. Alban's. Turfy? He must throw his eyes over her book for
the Derby. Even if his pet pastime, like the Emperor Domitian's, were
killing flies, she would profess her readiness to join him in it. Or she
tries another dodge, and, putting on the airs of a pretty monitress,
asks him with tender interest to confide in her.
The great point is never to lose sight of him; to follow him to balls,
concerts, or races, to cleave to him like his shadow. Then, when he is
fairly caught in the toils of her encircling sympathy, the elder and
more experienced ally appears on the scene. Her task is to cut off his
retreat. Upon her firmness and accuracy in calculating the resisting
power of her pigeon, success depends. Seizing an opportunity when he is
least prepared, she sternly informs him that the time for dalliance is
over, that he has said and done things of a very marked kind, and that
there is only one course open to him as a pigeon of honor. And under
this sort of compulsion the simple creature, with his rent-roll,
Consols, family diamonds, and all, hops with a fairly good grace into
the matrimonial toils.