extremes. She is not at war with mankind, like the nymph of bread and
butter; nor does mankind suspect her of subtle designs in her discourse
as it suspects the elder homilist. Her talk is just as easy and graceful
and natural as herself, and, moreover, it is always in season. She never
suffers a serious reflection to interfere with the whirl of town. She
quite sees the absurdity of a sermon at a five o'clock tea. No one is
freer from the boredom of a long talk when there is a chance of a boat
or a ride. But there are moments when one is too hot, or too tired, or
too lazy for chat or exertion, and such moments are the moments of the
Pretty Preacher. The first week of the holidays is especially her own.
There is a physical pleasure in doing, thinking, saying nothing. The
highest reach of human effort consists in disentangling a skein of silk
for her, or turning over Dore's hideous sketches for the Idyls. At such
a moment there is a freshness as of cool waters in the accents of the
Pretty Preacher. She does not plunge into the deepest themes at once.
She leads her listener gently on, up the slopes of art or letters or
politics, to the higher peaks where her purely dogmatic mission begins.
She is artistic, and she labors to wake the idler at her feet to higher
views of beauty and art. She points out the tinting of the distant
hills, she quotes Ruskin, she criticizes Millais. She crushes her
auditor with a sense of his ignorance, of the base unpoetic view of
things with which he lounged through the last Academy. What she longs
for in English art is nobleness of purpose, and we smile bitter scorn in
the sunshine at the ignoble artist who suffers a thought of his
butcher's bills to penetrate into the studio. If we could only stretch
the Royal Academicians beside us on the grass, what a thrill and an
emotion would run through those elderly gentlemen as they listened to
the indignation of the Pretty Preacher.
But art shades off into literature, and literature into poetry. We are
driven into a confession that we enjoy the frivolous articles that those
horrid papers have devoted to her sex. Is there nothing, the Pretty
Preacher asks us solemnly, to be said against our own? And the sun is
hot, and we are speechless. It was shameful of us to put down the
_Spanish Gipsy_, and let it return unfinished to Mudie's! Never did
rebuke so fill us with shame at our want of imagination and of poesy.
But already the Preacher has passed to politics, and is deep in Mr.
Mill's prophecies of coming events. She is severe on the triviality of
the House, or the quarrelsome debates of the past Session. She passes by
our murmured excuse of the weather, and dwells with a temperate
enthusiasm on the fact that the next will be a social Parliament. Do we
know anything about the Poor-laws or Education or Trades'-societies?
Have we subscribed to Mr. Mill's election? We plead poverty, but the
miserable plea dies away on the contemptuous air.
What our Pretty Preacher would like above all things would be to meet
that dear Mr. Shaw Lefevre, and thank him for his efforts to protect
woman. But she knows we are utterly heretical on the subject; she doubts
very much whether we take in the _Victoria Magazine_. We listen as the
Tory Mayor of Birmingham listened to Mr. Bright at his banquet. The
politics are not ours, and the literature is not ours, and the art is
not ours; but it is pleasant to lie in the sunshine and hear it all so
charmingly put by the Pretty Preacher. We own that sermons have a little
to say for themselves; above all, that the impossibility of replying to
them has its advantages in a case like this. It would be absurd to
discuss these matters with the Pretty Preacher, but it is delightful to
look up and see the kindling little face and listen to the sermon.
It is, however, as the theologian proper, as the moralist and divine,
that we love her most. She arrives at this peak at last. As a rule, she
chooses the tritest topics, but she gives them a novelty and grace of
her own. Even Thackeray's old "Vanity of Vanities" wakes into new life
as she dexterously couples it with the dances of the last season. We nod
our applause from the grass as she denounces the worthlessness and
frivolity of the life we lead. If the weather were cool enough we should
at once vow, as she exhorts us, to be earnest and great and good. Above
all, let us be noble. The Pretty Preacher is great on self-sacrifice.
She sent two of her spoilt dresses to those poor people in the East-end,
after listening to a whole sermon on their sufferings. The congregation
at her feet feels a twinge of remorse at the thought of his inhumanity,
and swears he will put down his segars and devote the proceeds to the
emigration fund. Does he ever read Keble? There is a slight struggle in
the unconverted mind, and a faint whisper that he now and then reads
Tupper; but it is too hot to be flippant, or to do more than swear
eternal allegiance to the _Christian Year_.
The evening deepens, and the sermon deepens with it. It is one of the
most disgusting points about the divine in the pulpit that he is always
boasting of himself as a man like as we are, and of the sins he
denounces as sins of his own. It is the special charm of the fair divine
above us that she is eminently a being not as we are, but one serene,
angelic, pure. It is the very vagueness of her condemnation that tells
on us--the utter ignorance of what is so familiar to us that the
vagueness betrays, the utter unskillfulness of the hits, and the purity
that makes them so unskillful. It is only when she descends to
particulars that we can turn round on the Pretty Preacher--only when a
burning and impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly softens
into the plaintive inquiry, "But, oh, Charlie, dear, what _are_ the
Cider Cellars?" So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of the
indefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the soft thunders roll
resistlessly overhead.
But then they are soft thunders. We feel almost encouraged, like Luther,
to "sin boldly" when the absolving fingers brush lightly over our
cousinly hair. Our censor, too, has faith in us, in our capacity and
will for better things, and it is amazingly pleasant to have the
assurance confirmed by a squeeze from the gentle theologian's hand. And
so night comes down, and preacher and penitent stroll pleasantly home
together, and mamma wonders where both can have been; and the Pretty
Preacher lays her head on her pillow with the sweet satisfaction that
her mission is accomplished, and that a reprobate soul--the soul, too,
of such a gentlemanly and agreeable reprobate--is won.
SPOILT WOMEN.
Like children and all soft things, women are soon spoilt if subjected to
unwholesome conditions. Sometimes the spoiling comes from
over-harshness, sometimes from over-indulgence; what we are speaking of
to-day is the latter condition--the spoiling which comes from being
petted and given way to and indulged, till they think themselves better
than everybody else, and as if living under laws made specially for them
alone. Men get spoilt too in the same manner; but for the most part
there is a tougher fibre in them, which resists the flabby influences of
flattery and exaggerated attention better than can the morale of the
weaker sex; and, besides, even arbitrary men meet with opposition in
certain directions, and the most self-contented social autocrat knows
that his humblest adherents criticise though they dare not oppose.
A man who has been spoilt by success and a gratified ambition, so that
he thinks himself a small Alexander in his own way, and able to conquer
any obstacles which may present themselves, has a certain high-handed
activity of will about him that does not interfere with his duties in
life; he is not made fretful and impatient and exigeant as a woman
is--as if he alone of all mankind is to be exempt from misfortune and
annoyances; as if his friends must never die, his youth never fade, his
circumstances run always smoothly, protected by the care of others from
all untoward hitch; and as if time and tide, which wait for no one else,
are to be bound to him as humble servants dutifully observant of his
wishes.
The useful art of "finding his level," which he learnt at school and in
his youth generally, keeps him from any very weak manifestation of being
spoilt; save, indeed, when he has been spoilt by women at home, nursed
up by an adoring wife, and a large circle of wife's sisters almost as
adoring, to all of whom his smallest wishes are religious obligations,
and his faintest virtues godly graces, and who vie with each other which
of them shall wait upon him most servilely, flatter him most
outrageously, pet and coax and coddle him most entirely, and so do him
the largest amount of spiritual damage, and unfit him most thoroughly
for the worth and work of masculine life. A man subjected to this
insidious injury is simply ruined so far as any real manliness of nature
goes. He is made into that sickening creature, "a sweet being," as the
women call him--a woman's man, with flowing hair and a turn for poetry,
full of highflown sentiment, and morbidly excited sympathies; a man
almost as much woman as man, who has no backbone of ambition in him, but
who puts his whole life into love, just as women do, and who becomes at
last emphatically not worth his salt.
Bad as it is for a man to be _kowtowed_ by men, it is not so bad,
because not so weakening, as the domestic idolatry which sometimes goes
on when one man is the centre of a large family of women, and the only
object upon which the natural feminine instinct can expend itself. No
greater damage can be done to a man than is done by this kind of
domestic idolatry. But, in truth, the evil is too pleasant to be
resisted; and there is scarcely a man so far master of himself as to
withstand the subtle intoxication, the sweet and penetrating poison, of
woman's tender flattery and loving submission. To at certain extent it
is so entirely the right thing, because it is natural and instinctive,
that it is difficult to draw the line and map out exactly the division
between right and wrong, pleasantness and harmfulness, and where loving
submission ends and debasing slavishness begins.
Spoilt women are spoilt mainly from a like cause--over-attention from
men. A few certainly are to be found, as pampered daughters, with
indulgent mammas and subservient aunts given up wholly to ruining their
young charge with the utmost despatch possible; but this is
comparatively a rare form of the disease, and one which a little
wholesome matrimonial discipline would soon cure. For it is seldom that
a petted daughter becomes a spoilt wife, human affairs having that
marvellous power of compensation, that inevitable tendency to readjust
the balance, which prevents the continuance of a like excess under
different forms.
Besides, a spoilt daughter generally makes such a supremely unpleasant
wife that the husband has no inducement to continue the mistake, and
therefore either lowers her tone by a judicious exhibition of snubbing,
or, if she is aggressive as well as unpleasant, leaves her to fight with
her shadows in the best way she can, glad for his own part to escape the
strife she will not forego. One characteristic of the spoilt woman is
her impatience of anything like rivalry. She never has a female
friend--certainly not one of her own degree, and not one at all in the
true sense of the word. Friendship presupposes equality, and a spoilt
woman knows no equality. She has been so long accustomed to consider
herself as the lady-paramount that she cannot understand it if any one
steps in to share her honors and divide her throne.
To praise the beauty of any other woman, to find her charming, or to pay
her the attention due to a charming woman, is to insult our spoilt
darling, and to slight her past forgiveness. If there is only one good
thing, it must be given to her--the first seat, the softest cushion, the
most protected situation; and she looks for the best of all things as if
naturally consecrated from her birth into the sunshine of life, and as
if the "cold shade" which may do for others were by no means the portion
allotted to her. It is almost impossible to make the spoilt woman
understand the grace or the glory of sacrifice. By rare good fortune she
may sometimes be found to possess an indestructible germ of conscience
which sorrow and necessity can develop into active good; but only
sometimes. The spoilt woman _par excellence_ understands only her own
value, only her own merits and the absolutism of her own requirements;
and sacrifice, self-abnegation, and the whole class of virtues belonging
to unselfishness are as much unknown to her as is the Decalogue in the
original, or the squaring of the circle.
The spoilt woman as the wife of an unsuccessful husband or the mother of
sickly children is a pitiable spectacle. If it comes to her to be
obliged to sacrifice her usual luxuries, to make an old gown serve when
a new one is desired, to sit up all night watching by the sick bed, to
witness the painful details of illness, perhaps of death, to meet
hardship face to face, and to bend her back to the burden of sorrow, she
is at the first absolutely lost. Not the thing to be done, but her own
discomfort in doing it, is the one master idea--not others' needs, but
her own pain in supplying them, the great grief of the moment. Many are
the hard lessons set us by life and fate, but the hardest of all is that
given to the spoilt woman when she is made to think for others rather
than for herself, and is forced by the exigencies of circumstances to
sacrifice her own ease for the greater necessities of her kind.
All that large part of the perfect woman's nature which expresses itself
in serving is an unknown function to the spoilt woman. She must be
waited on, but she cannot in her turn serve even the one or two she
loves. She is the woman who calls her husband from one end of the room
to the other to put down her cup, rather than reach out her arm and put
it down for herself; who, however weary he may be, will bid him get up
and ring the bell, though it is close to her own hand, and her longest
walk during the day has been from the dining-room to the drawing-room.
It is not that she cannot do these small offices for herself, but that
she likes the feeling of being waited on and attended to; and it is not
for love--and the amiable if weak pleasure of attracting the notice of
the beloved--it is just for the vanity of being a little somebody for
the moment, and of playing off the small regality involved in the
procedure. She would not return the attention.
Unlike the Eastern women, who wait on their lords, hand and foot, and
who place their highest honor in their lowliest service, the spoilt
woman of Western life knows nothing of the natural grace of womanly
serving for love, for grace, or for gratitude. This kind of thing is
peculiarly strong among the _demi-monde_ of the higher class, and among
women who are not of the _demi-monde_ by station, but by nature. The
respect they cannot command by their virtues they demand in the
simulation of manner; and perhaps no women are more tenacious of the
outward forms of deference than those who have lost their claim to the
vital reality.
It is very striking to see the difference between the women of this
type, the _petites maitresses_ who require the utmost attention and
almost servility from man, and the noble dignity of service which the
pure woman can afford to give--which she finds, indeed, that it belongs
to the very purity and nobleness of her womanhood to give. It is the old
story of the ill-assured position which is afraid of its own weakness,
and the security which can afford to descend--the rule holding good for
other things besides mere social place.
Another characteristic of the spoilt woman is the changeableness and
excitability of her temper. All suavity and gentleness and delightful
gaiety and perfect manners when everything goes right, she startles you
by her outburst of petulance when the first cross comes. If no man is a
hero to his valet, neither is a spoilt woman a heroine to her maid; and
the lady who has just been the charm of the drawing-room, upstairs in
her boudoir makes her maid go through spiritual exercises to which
walking on burning ploughshares is the only fit analogy. A length of
lace unstarched, a ribbon unsewed, a flower set awry, anything that
crumples only one of the myriad rose-leaves on which she lies, and the
spoilt woman raves as much as if each particular leaf had become
suddenly beset with thorns.
If a dove was to be transformed to a hawk the change would not be more
complete, more startling, than that which occurs when the spoilt woman
of well-bred company manners puts off her mask to her maid, and shows
her temper over trifles. Whoever else may suffer the grievances of life,
she cannot understand that she also must be at times one of the
sufferers with the rest; and if by chance the bad moment comes, the
person accompanying it has a hard time of it. There are spoilt women
also who have their peculiar exercises in thought and opinion, and who
cannot suffer that any one should think differently from themselves, or
find those things sacred which to them are accursed. They will hear
nothing but what is in harmony with themselves, and they take it as a
personal insult when men or women attempt to reason with them, or even
hold their own without flinching.
This kind is to be found specially among the more intellectual of a
family or a circle; women who are pronounced "clever" by their friends,
and who have been so long accustomed to think themselves clever that
they have become spoilt mentally as others are personally, and fancy
that minds and thoughts must follow in their direction, just as eyes and
hands must follow and attend their sisters. The spoilt woman of the
mental kind is a horrid nuisance generally. She is greatly given to
large discourse; but discourse of a kind that leans all to one side, and
that denies the right of any one to criticise, doubt, or contradict, is
an intellectual Tower of Pisa under the shadow of which it is not
pleasant to live.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Words in italics in the original are surrounded by _underscores_.
The following words appear with and without hyphens. They have been left
as in the original.
ball-room ballroom
business-like businesslike
hearth-rug hearthrug
house-keeper housekeeper
house-keeping housekeeping
man-like manlike
now-a-days nowadays
over-head overhead
Variations in spelling have been left as in the original. Examples
include the following:
center/centre
learned/learnt
spoiled/spoilt
The following corrections have been made to the text:
Page xi: INTRODUCTION, 13[original has 5]
Page 48: slink away from a bantam[original has bantum] hen
Page 67: you[original has vou] go in for this sort
Page 129: sheer force of genius[original has genuis]
Page 161: some out-of-the-way[original has out-of-the way]
corner
Page 220: exhausts itself in a declaration[original has
delaration] of revolt
Page 269: ignorant of contemporary[original is split across
lines after con but hyphen is missing] fashions
Page 303: following the [original has the the] same
extravagance
Page 332: torture it until it[original has is] has about as
much life
The following words use an oe ligature in the original:
manoeuvred
outmanoeuvring
Oedipus
Phoenician
In the phrase, "white-armed, large-limbed Here", the original has
macrons over both of the vowels in "Here".
Ellipses match the original.
End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Women and What is Said of Them, by Anonymous