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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capitals were replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB
by
I. ZANGWILL
Author of "The Bachelor's Club," "The Big Bow Mystery," etc.
With Numerous Illustrations by F. H. Townsend
New York
Tait, Sons & Company
Union Square
Copyright, 1892,
By
United States Book Company,
[All rights reserved.]
INTRODUCTION.
THE READER MY BOOK.
MY BOOK THE READER.
[Illustration: THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB.
By the Author of The Bachelors' Club]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE, PLUS OTHER THINGS 9
II. THE HONORARY TRIER 19
III. THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK 27
IV. THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED 43
V. THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE 50
VI. THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE 86
VII. THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN 98
VIII. MORE ABOUT THE CHERUB 125
IX. OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES 133
X. THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED 147
XI. ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE 161
XII. THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE 188
XIII. THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE 198
XIV. THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW 224
XV. THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER 244
XVI. THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR 264
XVII. A MUSICAL BAR 277
XVIII. THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL 291
XIX. LA FEMME INCOMPRISE 308
XX. THE INAUGURAL SOIREE 319
THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB.
CHAPTER I.
THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE,
PLUS OTHER
THINGS.
[Illustration]
THE Old Maids' Club was founded by Lillie Dulcimer in her sweet
seventeenth year. She had always been precocious and could analyze her
own sensations before she could spell. In fact she divided her time
between making sensations and analyzing them. She never spoke Early
English--the dialect which so enraged Dr. Johnson--but, like John Stuart
Mill, she wrote a classical style from childhood. She kept a diary, not
necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication only. It
was labelled "Lillie Day by Day," and was posted up from her fifth year.
Judging by the analogy of the rest, one might construct the entry for
the first day of her life. If she had been able to record her thoughts,
her diary would probably have begun thus:--
"_Sunday, September 3rd:_ My birthday. Wept at the sight of the world in
which I was to be so miserable. The atmosphere was so stuffy--not at all
pleasing to the æsthetic faculties. Expected a more refined reception. A
lady, to whom I had never been introduced, fondled me and addressed me
as 'Petsie-tootsie-wootsie.' It appears that she is my mother, but this
hardly justifies her in degrading the language of Milton and
Shakespeare. Later on a man came in and kissed her. I could not help
thinking that they might respect my presence; and, if they must carry
on, continue to do so out of my sight as before. I understood later that
I must call the stranger 'Poppy,' and that I was not to resent his
familiarities, as he was very much attached to my mother by Act of
Parliament. Both the man and the woman seem to arrogate to themselves a
certain authority over me. How strange that two persons you have never
seen before in your life should claim such rights of interference! There
must be something rotten in the constitution of Society. It shall be one
of my life-tasks to discover what it is. I made a light lunch off milk,
but do not care for the beverage. The day passed slowly. I was
dreadfully bored by the conversation in the bedroom--it was so petty. I
was glad when night came. O, the intolerable _ennui_ of an English
Sunday! I divine already that I am destined to go through life
perpetually craving for I know not what, and that I shan't be happy till
I get it."
Lillie was a born heroine, being young and beautiful from her birth. In
her fourth year she conceived a Platonic affection for the boy who
brought the telegrams. His manners had such repose. This was followed by
a hopeless passion for a French cavalry officer with spurs. Every one
feared she would grow up to be a suicide or a poetess; for her earliest
nursery rhyme was an impromptu distich discovered by the nursery-maid,
running:
Woonded i crawl out from the battel,
Life is as hollo as my rattel.
And her twelfth year was almost entirely devoted to literary composition
of a hopeless character, so far as publishers were concerned. It was
only the success of "Woman as a Waste Force," in her fourteenth year,
that induced them to compete for her early manuscripts and to give the
world the celebrated compilations, "Ibsen for Infants," "Browning for
Babies," "Carlyle for the Cradle," "Newman for the Nursery," "Leopardi
for the Little Ones," and "The Schoolgirl's Schopenhauer," which,
together with "Tracts for the Tots," make up the main productions of her
First Period. After the loss of the French cavalry officer she remained
_blasée_ till she was more than seven, when her second grand passion
took her. It was a very grand passion indeed this time--and it lasted a
full week. These things did not matter while Lillie had not yet arrived
at years of indiscretion; but when she got into her teens, her father
began to look about for a husband for her. He was a millionaire and had
always kept her supplied with every luxury. But Lillie did not care for
her father's selections, and sent them all away with fleas in their ears
instead of kind words. And her father was as unhappy as his selections.
In her sixteenth year her mother, who had been ailing for sixteen years,
breathed her last, and Lillie more freely. She had grown quite to like
Mrs. Dulcimer, and it prevented her having her own way. The situation
was now very simple. Mr. Dulcimer managed his immense affairs and Lillie
managed Mr. Dulcimer.
He made one last effort to get her to manage another man. He discovered
a young nobleman who seemed fond of her society and who was in the habit
of meeting her accidentally at the Academy. The gunpowder being thus
presumably laid, he set to work to strike the match. But the explosion
was not such as he expected. Lillie told him that no man was further
from her thoughts as a possible husband.
"But, Lillie," pleaded the millionaire, "not one of the objections you
have impressed upon me applies to Lord Silverdale. He is young, rich,
handsome----"
"Yes, yes, yes," answered Lillie, "I know."
"He is rich and cannot be after your money."
"True."
"He has a title, which you consider an advantage."
"I do."
"He is a man of taste and culture."
"He is."
"Well, what is it you don't like? Doesn't he ride or dance well?"
"He dances like an angel and rides like the devil."
"Well, what in the name of angels or devils is your objection then?"
"Father," said Lillie very solemnly, "he is all you claim, but----." The
little delicate cheek flushed modestly. She could not say it.
"But----" said the millionaire impatiently.
Lillie hid her face in her hands.
"But----" said the millionaire brutally.
"But I love him!"
"You what?" roared the millionaire.
"Yes, father, do not be angry with me. I love him dearly. Oh, do not
spurn me from you, but I love him with my whole heart and soul, and I
shall never marry any other man but him." The poor little girl burst
into a paroxysm of weeping.
"Then you _will_ marry him?" gasped the millionaire.
"No, father," she sobbed solemnly, "that is an illegitimate deduction
from my proposition. He is the one man on this earth I could never bring
myself to marry."
"You are mad!"
"No, father. I am only mathematical. I will never marry a man who does
not love me. And don't you see that, as I love him, the odds are that he
doesn't love me?"
"But he tells me he does!"
"What is his bare assertion--weighed against the doctrine of
probability! How many girls do you suppose Silverdale has met in his
varied career?"
"A thousand, I dare say."
"Ah, that's only reckoning English Society (and theatres). And then he
has seen Society (and theatres) in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Boston, a
hundred places! If we put the figure at three thousand it will be
moderate. Here am I, a single girl----"
"Who oughtn't to remain so," growled the millionaire.
"One single girl. How wildly improbable that out of three thousand
girls, Silverdale should just fall in love with me. It is 2999 to 1
against. Then there is the probability that he is not in love at
all--which makes the odds 5999 to 1. The problem is exactly analogous to
one which you will find in any Algebra. Out of a sack containing three
thousand coins, what are the odds that a man will draw the one marked
coin?"
"The comparison of yourself to a marked coin is correct enough," said
the millionaire, thinking of the files of fortune-hunters to whom he had
given the sack. "Otherwise you are talking nonsense."
"Then Pascal, Laplace, Lagrange, De Moivre talked nonsense," said Lillie
hotly; "but I have not finished. We must also leave open the possibility
that the man will not be tempted to draw out any coin whatsoever. The
odds against the marked coin being drawn out are thus 5999 to 1. The
odds against Silverdale returning my affection are 6000 to 1. As Butler
rightly points out, probability is the only guide to conduct, which is,
we know from Matthew Arnold, three-fourths of life. Am I to risk ruining
three-fourths of my life, in defiance of the unerring dogmas of the
Doctrine of Chances? No, father, do not exact this sacrifice from me.
Ask me anything you please, and I will grant it--oh! so gladly--but do
not, oh, do not ask me to marry the man I love!"
The millionaire stroked her hair, and soothed her in piteous silence. He
had made his pile in pig-iron, and had not science enough to grapple
with the situation.
"Do you mean to say," he said at last, "that because you love a man, he
can't love you?"
"He can. But in all human probability he won't. Suppose you put on a fur
waistcoat and went out into the street, determined to invite to dinner
the first man in a straw hat, and supposing he replied that you had just
forestalled him, as he had gone out with a similar intention to look for
the first man in a fur waistcoat.--What would you say?"
The millionaire hesitated. "Well, I shouldn't like to insult the man,"
he said slowly.
"You see!" cried Lillie triumphantly.
"Well, then, dear," said he, after much pondering, "the only thing for
it is to marry a man you _don't_ love."
"Father!" said Lillie in terrible tones.
The millionaire hung his head shamefacedly at the outrage his suggestion
had put upon his daughter.
"Forgive me, Lillie," he said; "I shall never interfere again in your
matrimonial concerns."
So Lillie wiped her eyes and founded the Old Maids' Club.
She said it was one of her matrimonial concerns, and so her father could
not break his word, though an entire suite of rooms in his own
Kensington mansion was set aside for the rooms of the Club. Not that he
desired to interfere. Having read "The Bachelors' Club," he thought it
was the surest way of getting her married.
The object of the Club was defined by the foundress as "the
depolarization of the term 'Old Maid'; in other words, the dissipation
of all those disagreeable associations which have gradually and most
unjustly clustered about it; the restoration of the homely Saxon phrase
to its pristine purity, and the elevation of the enviable class denoted
by it to their due pedestal of privilege and homage."
The conditions of membership, drawn up by Lillie, were:
1. Every candidate must be under twenty-five. 2. Every candidate
must be beautiful and wealthy, and undertake to continue so. 3.
Every candidate must have refused at least one advantageous
offer of marriage.
The rationale of these rules was obvious. Disappointed, soured failures
were not wanted. There was no virtue in being an "Old Maid" when you had
passed twenty-five. Such creatures are merely old maids--Old Maids (with
capitals) were required to be in the flower of youth and the flush of
beauty. Their anti-matrimonial motives must be above suspicion. They
must despise and reject the married state, though they would be welcomed
therein with open arms.
Only thus would people's minds be disabused of the old-fashioned notions
about old maids.
The Old Maids were expected to obey an elaborate array of by-laws, and
respect a series of recommendations.
According to the by-laws they were required:
1. To regard all men as brothers. 2. Not to keep cats, lap-dogs,
parrots, pages, or other domestic pets. 3. Not to have less than
one birthday per year. 4. To abjure medicine, art classes, and
Catholicism. 5. Never to speak to a Curate. 6. Not to have any
ideals or to take part in Woman's Rights Movements, Charity
Concerts, or other Platform Demonstrations. 7. Not to wear caps,
curls, or similar articles of attire. 8. Not to kiss females.
In addition to these there were the
GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS:
Never refuse the last slice of bread, etc., lest you be accused
of dreading celibacy. Never accept bits of wedding cake, lest
you be suspected of putting them under your pillow. Do not
express disapproval by a sniff. In travelling, choose smoking
carriages; pack your umbrellas and parasols inside your trunk.
Never distribute tracts. Always fondle children and show marked
hostility to the household cat. Avoid eccentricities. Do not
patronize Dorothy Restaurants or the establishments of the
Aerated Bread Company. Never drink cocoa-nibs. In dress it is
better to avoid Mittens, Crossovers, Fleecy Shawls, Elastic-side
Boots, White Stockings, Black Silk Bodies, with Pendent Gold
Chains, and Antique White Lace Collars. One-button White Kid
Gloves are also inadvisable for afternoon concerts; nor should
any glove be worn with fingers too long to pick up change at
booking-offices. Parcels should not be wrapped in whitey-brown
paper and not more than three should be carried at once. Watch
Pockets should not be hung over the bed, sheets and mattresses
should be left to the servants to air, and rooms should be kept
in an untidy condition.
Refrain from manufacturing jam, household remedies, gossip or
gooseberry wine. Never nurse a cold or a relative. It is
advisable not to have a married sister, as she might decease and
the temptation to marry her husband is such as no mere human
being ought to be exposed to. For cognate reasons eschew
friendship with cripples and hunchbacks (especially when they
have mastered the violin in twelve lessons), men of no moral
character, drunkards who wish to reform themselves, very ugly
men, and husbands with wives in lunatic asylums. Cultivate
rather the acquaintance of handsome young men (who have been
duly vaccinated), for this species is too conceited to be
dangerous.
On the same principle were the rules for admitting visitors:
1. No unmarried lady admitted. 2. No married gentlemen admitted.
If they admitted single ladies there would be no privilege in being a
member, while if they did not admit single gentlemen, they might be
taunted with being afraid that they were not fireproof. When Lillie had
worked this out to her satisfaction she was greatly chagrined to find
the two rules were the same as for "The Bachelors' Club." To show their
club had no connection with the brother institution, she devised a
series of counterblasts to their misogynic maxims. These were woven on
all the antimacassars; the deadliest were:
The husband is the only creature entirely selfish. He is a low
organism, consisting mainly of a digestive apparatus and a rude
mouth. The lover holds the cloak; the husband drops it. Wedding
dresses are webs. Women like clinging robes; men like clinging
women. The lover will always help the beloved to be helpless. A
man likes his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his
cleverness and just stupid enough to admire it. Women who catch
husbands rarely recover. Marriage is a lottery; every wife does
not become a widow. Wrinkles are woman's marriage lines; but
when she gets them her husband will no longer be bound.
The woman who believes her husband loves her, is capable of
believing that she loves him. A good man's love is the most
intolerable of boredoms. A man often marries a woman because
they have the same tastes and prefer himself to the rest of
creation. If a woman could know what her lover really thought of
her she would know what to think of him. Possession is nine
points of the marriage law. It is impossible for a man to marry
a clever woman. Marriages are made in heaven, but old maids go
there.
Lillie also painted a cynical picture of dubious double-edged
incisiveness. It was called "Latter-day Love," and represented the ill
hap of Cupid, neglected and superfluous, his quiver full, his arrows
rusty, shivering with the cold, amid contented couples passing him by
with never an eye for the lugubrious legend, "Pity the Poor Blind."
The picture put the finishing touch to the rooms of the Club. When
Lillie Dulcimer had hung it up, she looked round upon the antimacassars
and felt a proud and happy girl.
The Old Maids' Club was now complete. Nothing was wanting except
members.
[Illustration: _Latter-Day Love._]