or she may stop short at the next stage in which she is enough of a
philosopher to recognize the great variety of temperaments to be met
with among her fellow-creatures, and to greet them all alike with
sympathy and interest. She may not reach the philosophic or really
sympathetic stage, she may remain in a third stage, where her mind
can coldly classify her fellow-creatures with critical discretion,
and laugh at them all cynically. Or she may not be able to perceive
clearly, but may be carried away perpetually by her own feelings and
sensations, in the fourth degree of unawakened ignorance. Lastly, she
may abandon the four regions of beautiful image making, sympathy,
perception, and sensation, and deliberately devote herself with
common-sense prudence to the patient task of getting her daily bread
and reproducing her species until she dies of it. On the other hand,
she may go mad, she may become silly, she may drown her disgust with
life in alcohol or drugs, or she may irritate her feeble dream-power
with novelettes. These states of degenerate imaginations are the worst
curses of the woman’s sphere as it is at present understood. Good hard
work, rewarded by a decent income, varied by motherhood and love, is
the best cure for these vapourings.
The men who have a good deal of womanhood in their natures suffer and
enjoy through their imaginations in the same way, and it is interesting
to observe that a really virile man has no trace of imaginative power
in his composition. He cares for nothing but tangible reality. When men
of imagination talk to him he has not the smallest conception of what
they mean. I think it was Goethe who said that he felt the universe in
his arms when he embraced a woman. What I am obliged to call a virile
man feels nothing of the kind, he is merely amusing himself like Don
Juan, or any cat or dog. However, Don Juan is a rarity.
It is very difficult to classify temperaments without alluding to
Weiningen’s _Sex and Character_. That book has been followed by other
classics on the subject by Forel and Bloch, but I only want to remind
my readers that in Weiningen’s book they will find, set out at length,
the ingenious theory that virile men and feminine women are the rarest
creatures on earth, and that the great majority of us are made up of
various proportions of the two sexes. He further suggests that happy
unions are those in which the proportions of sex in the two lovers
together make up one virile man and one feminine woman. For instance, a
man who was one-eighth feminine should marry a woman who was one-eighth
masculine.
I am told that Mr. Austen Chamberlain repeatedly made the very careless
statement that “men are men, and women are women,” in a speech
delivered in 1909. He evidently has not acquainted himself with the
elementary science of sex. Is it not time that the books alluded to
above should be made generally accessible? Then our younger statesmen,
at least, might come to the platform with some less absurd refrain than
that obsolete inaccuracy. Let me assure Mr. Chamberlain that German
science and research have proved that the contrary statement would be
rather more exact.
IX
EXPERIMENTS
We are all speculating about the changes to be brought about in this
century from which we women hope so much, and a great many people are
making practical experiments. Myself, I am of that tranquil nature
which willingly follows the advice of Punch when he says: “Never
practise what you preach, to do so is to hold up your opinions to
obvious ridicule.”
I must confess to an altogether selfish concern for my own comfort.
I dislike the home because it means that one has to live with people
who are privileged to behave without politeness in each other’s
company. Most of us share the feeling, I think, that we like to be the
worst-behaved person present. This can only be achieved satisfactorily
to all when one lives by oneself. My own experiments have mostly been
in the attempt to modify the solitary life with an exactly pleasant
proportion of social life. I was brought up in a large family until I
was twenty-three, and I lived the orthodox married life for four years,
so that I have given home and the family as much trial as seemed
necessary.
As a hermit with mitigating friends and enemies, and the various
societies I have helped to run, my life has been unusually full of
varied interests. I have no regrets, because my failures have been some
of my most valuable experiences, and my moments of bitterness have been
the cause of my greatest contentment.
At the same time, one is horribly afraid that one might induce courage
in some other person whose heart is too tender to get through trouble.
One is rather apt to dread the grey life of a patient woman without any
kind of artistic talent, who makes a muddle of her affairs because she
religiously practises instead of preaching.
Some people say that example is better than precept; but in the case
of social reform and the need of a real change in public opinion, my
experience shows me that precept is no good at all, if one is suspected
of inventing it to serve one’s own purposes of self-indulgence. I own
I have indulged myself by leading a solitary life as described above,
therefore I do not propose to try to destroy the home and family life.
Those who are suffering from the home want to do away with it. With
philosophic calm I can suggest improvements and ways of escape that
would make it bearable, but would not destroy it. As a matter of fact
the home is in a very poor way just at present. Public-houses, clubs,
restaurants, the servant difficulty are all devastating it. Still, it
does not do to say we are glad, so I register the fact with as long a
face as I can pull, and trust my readers will recognize the sad truth
in the same serious spirit.
But, to return to experiments, let us go back a little in time, and
we find that all gay societies, such as that under Louis XIV and XV
of France, The Empire and the Second Empire, practised every kind of
experiment. Yet one looks upon Rousseau, Mary Wolstonecraft, Shelley,
and Godwin as the real pioneers of experiment, because they made a kind
of religion of their protests against convention. Of late years it has
become the fashion to solemnly register a protest every time one omits
to register one’s marriage.
It is partly my stupid objection to public indecency that makes me
object to the advertisement of marriage, legal or illegal. One has to
clean one’s teeth, some people have to marry, but for the life of me
I cannot see the use of talking about either of these necessities.
Surely the whole object of modern civilization is to conceal the fact
that we are animals. It is true that we have begun to make a public
art of eating, but although we permit ourselves to munch in public,
we disguise the nature of our food, and we have sternly suppressed
the more ancient freedoms of the dinner-table. We no longer think it
polite to go about when we suffer from catarrh, and it is seldom that
we encounter unpleasant expectorations, except in the immediate haunts
of admittedly hooligan circles.
They say that nowadays it is possible to talk of any subject as long
as one does so with sufficient delicacy and avoids the words of the
gutter and the club smoking-room. Still, I admit that it is difficult
to explain that just as we feel that every other necessary function
of nature should be performed without attracting attention to it,
so I feel that I would rather not be informed every time the bold
experimenters in marriage see fit to take a partner.
When outspokenness is for the public good, when a “hushed-up disease”
becomes disastrous simply because it is “hushed up,” then there is some
meaning in making a gospel and parade of the truth. But I really think
it is time we accepted the convention that men and women seek each
other’s society in order to exchange ideas.
Strangely enough it is often the case. A woman has only to talk and
listen well, and she will find that the less she desires love the more
friendliness she will receive from men. Saint Teresa of Spain was an
excellent example of this. I suppose she had more warmly affectionate
friendships with men, without a shadow of scandal, than any other
woman. A perfectly frank woman will generally keep men as her friends,
they will not dare to be her lovers unless she deliberately ceases to
be frank.
Unfortunately experimenters have to be original in order to be
successful. The people for whom I am sorry are those who are led into
making experiments which are unnatural to them by the hypnotic power of
seductive example.
Save us from our imitators is the cry of all great poets; and the only
valuable advice one can give is, if you must experiment be careful that
you lead the way and are not seduced by the example of anyone else.
If by nature you must follow, it is a sign that you are a gregarious
animal, and had better remain with the main body of the herd. The real
experimenters are quite ready for solitude, and when they have found
fair country and good pasture the rest of the herd will come over in a
body with one accord. It is no use perishing with cold on the way to
the Pole, unless you have the capacity to find it. Much better stop at
home by the fireside.
X
THE SAVAGE, THE BARBARIAN, THE CIVILIZED
The stately Spaniard, graceful as a tree swaying in its dance with the
wind, savage and noble.
The Nihilist Russian, watching in her lair, instinctive and ready to
kill. Her hatred of government marking her as the free barbarian.
The Parisian, knowing the correct convention of a funeral or an
adultery, civilized and logical to her glove-tips.
Of the three women the two first are simple, but civilization is
complex, and it may mean to be cultivated with regard to intellect like
the Jesuits, art like the Greeks, morals like the Irish, or religion
like the Arab.
In which way will the women of the future develop? Will she strive
like the frequenters of the _salon_ of Madame de Rambouillet to excel
in intellect, or like Saint Teresa of Spain as a religious mystic? We
have seen both these types, and I have no doubt that we shall see many
shining examples of morality, but at the moment I cannot think of any
conspicuous woman of whom no one has whispered scandal. For in these
days if people do not trip in one direction, it is said it is because
they prefer to trip in another; and soon it will be taken as a sign
of evil life that one should live in a desert on bread and water. I
mention in passing that our late Queen is usually admitted to have been
conspicuously moral. In the arts we have seen, and hope to see again,
great women novelists and actresses. In history we have an array of
splendid uncivilized women immortalized from all time--Medea, Electra,
the Roman empresses, Queen Maive of Connaught, the Russian heroines.
Whether they excelled most as noble savages or as gloriously barbaric
haters of ordered life, I cannot stay to consider.
For I want the women who read this book not to dwell upon the past, but
to look forward to the great century that is waiting for their alchemy,
to transmute its life by giving it a more intent purpose. Are we going
to be like the very badly dressed lady of title, whom we heard the
other day imploring us to behave ourselves like other people, just as
we dressed like other people, in order not to be conspicuous! Or are we
really going to make something out of this brilliant opportunity given
us by the “refusal of the vote,” and the quickly spreading passion of
enthusiasm which is moving the women of all nations to make a fight
against the patriarchal faith of the goat-worshippers.
Mr. Gorst says that the object of life is making (moral) love. I think
the object of our life is to make experiments, as gardeners make
experiments in floriculture. I quarrel with absorption in the family
because family jealousy is a bar to that kind of social intercourse
which is the only education worth having, and the only experience which
can lead to any result worth having. They say in France, “Love is a
play in which the acts last five minutes, and the _entr’actes_ for any
time you like.” If it filled the whole of life it would only mean that
life would be as short as that of the ephemeral winged creatures of
the insect world. Family love cannot absorb us if we wish to survive.
We are complicated, and our possibilities of social and political
intercourse are a subject of endless interest and inquiry. Let us then
start again on our voyages of discovery, this time with a little more
purpose in our method and delight in our hearts.
Women want the vote, it is true, but what they want more, and what they
are getting, is strength to hammer through the prisons which have kept
them for many centuries packed away conveniently for use on occasion.
They are all coming out into the daylight for the first time within our
memory, and now the real movement of life begins.
We want to change public opinion about divorce, contagious diseases,
and forethought with regard to breeding. We want married women to
recognize the various proportions of sexuality in each sex, to make
allowance for the passionate, and to admit that we are greatly indebted
for our culture to individuals who do not desire to be parents.
In conclusion, all I can say is, “Talk! talk! talk!” We are more moved
by one conversation than by many eloquent discourses. After all, what
is so permanently delightful as communion of ideas? So once again I
say, “Go on talking until the savage, the barbarian, and the civilized
women have found out all they can learn from each other. Plenty of men
will be glad to help them in their discoveries.”
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