to the breed of horses and incidentally to the people who look
on--is continually being made by writers who should know something of
the subject. A few delusions of the respectable sort are considered
necessary in the life of a people, and the decent efforts of sporting
authorities to keep these delusions alive are not treated with
disrespect. But any one who wishes to discover the real facts can
easily do so. The public who support racing care as much for improving
the breed of horses, as they do for civilising the Solomon Islanders,
or for christianising the Chinese--as much and no more. The horse
is emphatically not the thing; he is not the end; he can hardly be
called the means to the end; he is merely a useful pawn in the great
and insidious gambling game. In this game there are certain rules
which have to be observed. That is to say, they must not be broken in
too open, or too defiant, or too glaring a manner. But under cover
of these rules, and under pretext of observing them, every one does
his best to swindle every one else. The owner begins by deceiving the
public; the trainer, if it is sufficiently worth his while, misleads
the owner; the jockey scores repeatedly off the trainer; the bookmaker
does his best to make a profit out of the other three. The people who
pay in the last resort are the public. It is all very interesting,
and very _expensive_. The atmosphere of speculation is buoyant and
breezy, and, for the time being, exhilarating. Yet for all except those
who have learned how to move about in it--for all except the owners,
and, trainers, and jockeys, and bookmakers, and a few others--it is
decidedly unhealthy. While it is possibly advisable to have national
amusements, it is an advantage to understand what we are doing. The
man in Mrs Thurston’s novel, who keeps talking about “nerves,” when he
means opium, becomes, after a time, an infliction. And the individual
who is always referring to “sport,” when he means horse-racing, is in
danger of growing tedious.
The continent has its athletic games, although none of these can be
called national in the sense that racing is national. Not even cricket.
The Englishman sees more of Australian cricketers than he does of
Australian horses, and may be inclined to think that a country which
has beaten him at Lords, while it has been unable to raise a decent
gallop at Epsom, must perforce pay more attention to cricket than it
does to horse-racing. The idea, if it exists, is amusingly erroneous.
How do the attendances at Club cricket compare with the attendances
at local race meetings? How does the sprinkling of enthusiasts at
the one fixture look beside the tens of thousands, who, week in and
week out, follow the racing game in every centre of population in the
Commonwealth? An international cricket match will always draw a crowd;
but international cricket matches are few and far between. The truth is
that the speculation fever, the gambling fever, the fever to which the
horse acts as the main irritant, runs in the blood of the people. The
other excitements are transitory, and merely endemic.
In the realm of sport, to use the generic word, there is nothing that
the people will not attempt, nothing on which they have not turned
a roving eye. They play football, golf, tennis, croquet, hockey,
lacrosse, bridge, ping-pong, and a great deal else. They indulge in
skating on artificial ice, and, in the middle of a tropic summer,
struggle with dumplings and roast beef. They seek amusement everywhere.
In the mass, they are far more impressed by skill at some kind of game
than by any intellectual achievements. The hero-worship goes out, in
the first place, to the successful cricketer, and in the next place,
to the leading jockey, with the politician an indifferent third, and
the local poet or _litterateur_ entirely out of the running. It is an
undeniable fact that his countrymen were more proud of that amiable and
pleasant youth, Mr Victor Trumper, after his English season of 1902,
than they have ever been of any Prime Minister, actor, author, singer,
poet, or professor of metaphysics in the land.
In the world of sport and of recreation, just as in the world of the
stage, there is the tendency to borrow, and to borrow again. The games
that are played in England are played here, just as the kind of drama
that is acted in England is acted here. It matters little whether the
climate and temperament and other conditions are suitable, or the
reverse. The initiative faculty is stronger than its surroundings.
To watch a game of Rugby football in progress at Charters Towers, or
at Brisbane, is to wonder whether a new race of Salamanders, gifted
with tireless energy and some marvellous kind of asbestos physique,
has struck the earth. There is only one thing that may in the end
kill the initiative faculty, and that is the national dislike for too
much exertion. There are not wanting faint indications that Australia
is beginning to find the strain of these more strenuous pastimes too
severe, that it is slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that
training for football and for sculling matches necessitates more
sustained effort than the result is worth. It may be all very well
for the Englishman to keep himself warm by vigorous exercise. His
climate requires heroic treatment. The Australian, though still ready
to abase himself before the successful athlete, is slowly working
round to the conviction that certain pursuits are better adapted for
the Northern Hemisphere than for his own. The day is coming, and may
not be far distant, when the Australian people will revolt from their
Christmas dumplings, and abandon their Rugby football; when they will
be content, from North to South, with backing unreliable steeds on a
race-course, with playing poker in a shady room, and with watching from
the stalls of a theatre, the swaying forms of lightly clad heroines,
and the graceful movements of dancing feet.
VIII
THE ETERNAL FEMININE
“But still I see the tenor of man’s woe
Holds on the same, from woman to begin.”
“From man’s effeminate slackness it begins,
(Said the Angel) who should better hold his place.”
If a writer were always able to put down on canvas his earlier and
more enthusiastic impressions, he might draw a pretty picture of the
Australian woman. She should be the crown and glory of every Southern
landscape; she should have the dawn in her eyes, and the sun upon her
hair. In a street along which the heat waves were dancing with a joyous
and unrestrained fervour; in a ball-room which echoed and re-echoed to
rhythms of music; on a lawn that was decked with hundreds of sun-shades
and fringed with myriads of garden flowers; by the shade of trees,
on the brink of rivers, in the starlight of conservatories, on the
slopes of undulating plains, whenever and wherever the scene wanted a
touch of life to add to its romantic interest, she would be the subtle
something imparting to the new and matter-of-fact continent a tinge of
the colour of dreams. She should be all this and more, if one could put
the clock back to the days before the fiery sword of experience laid
bare the garden of imagination; if one could, by dint of any mental,
metaphysical, or chemical process, gather up and refurnish the snows of
a year ago.
On a subject of this kind it is easy to adopt one or other of two
contrasted veins: either the idealistic vein of that thin-spun
romanticist, Mr Richard le Gallienne, or the critical vein of that
earnest searcher after paradox, Mr Crosland. Is the Australian girl
to be idealised? She would hardly thank you. Is she to be satirised?
She would thank you less. Is the truth to be told about her? She would
meet you with Pilate’s question, and ask you to say where it is to be
found. Of all tasks, that of idealising is the least profitable, and in
some respects, the most dangerous. You are liable to suffer in your own
estimation and in hers, by finding at some later stage that you have
idealised the Australian woman for the qualities of which she possesses
least, and for which she has no kind of sympathy. She prides herself
on her modernity, and on her knowledge of the world. She boasts--and
it is her most frequent boast, though it is quite unjustified--that
she is not sentimental. She declares that she wishes only to know the
truth; and the truth, despite what Mr le Gallienne and Mr Crosland may
write to the contrary, it should be the business of every conscientious
chronicler to tell.
It is necessary to say something about the position of women in the
social and public life of Australia. It is a position in many respects
enviable. In this country, be it understood, we have shaken ourselves
free of sex prejudices. It is undeniable that there are a certain
number of rich but respectable people who would fain rescue the public
life of the continent from the threatening danger of a feminine
invasion. These individuals for the most part occupy seats in a
Legislative Council, and own warehouses in Flinders Lane, and run wool
stores along Circular Quay: but they do not represent public opinion.
There are only enough of them to fill one or two Houses of Parliament.
Being in a hopeless minority, they may be left, for purposes of the
present discussion, on one side.
The public sense of the community is represented by the man about town,
and this man, in theory, at any rate, is free of sex prejudices. He is
much more free of them than is the average Englishman or the typical
European--if there is such a type--or the male biped of the yellow, or
brown, or any coloured variety. He is on a level with the progressive
American; even, so far as the question of the franchise is concerned,
ahead of him. He does not deny the fairness of admitting women to the
learned professions. He is seldom willing to stand up and assert, with
the blatant unwisdom that is the heritage of past centuries, that they
are mentally or otherwise unfitted to exercise a vote at elections.
Liberty, equality, freedom for both sexes, are ideals that he can
understand. In theory he is an emancipator, a reformer. Such prejudices
as he possesses do not take the shape of definite views and opinions;
they are the unconscious relics of custom working down through the
ages. Theoretically he believes in woman’s advancement; but practically
he has no desire to see his bride-elect, or any one of his feminine
relations, declaiming politics from a platform, or laying down the law
to judges, or teaching logic to a school of metaphysicians. He is in
no danger of becoming infatuated with the women who do these things;
but neither would he be any party to an arbitrary edict forbidding that
they should be done.
It goes without saying that the feminine type most sought after in
this country, or in other countries, is the picturesquely foolish
type. As it happens, the Australian woman is by no means foolish; on
the contrary, she is unusually clever. Nothing comes amiss to her;
there is no part that she could not play if called upon to do so. With
the unusual gift of perception that is part of her mental equipment,
she understands always what _rôle_ is calculated to make her most
attractive in the eyes of the world. She knows that the average man,
despite his occasional glimmerings of reason and of intelligence, is
rendered _uneasy_ by too much cleverness in a woman, just as a mediocre
piano player is alarmed by the display of virtuosity in a rival. For
various reasons, the average woman finds it still to her interest
to placate the average man. She sets to work accordingly. In the
great game of make-believe she has no equals. She is full of quaint
and illogical surprises. For dissimulation she has the prettiest art
imaginable. She will always plume herself--more especially in those
moments of confidence that are shared with you and the stars--on the
precise qualities that are not hers. If she happens to be a brilliant
University student, she will talk mainly of her performances with a
sewing-machine. If she is a high-class musician, and has no literary
faculty whatever, she will talk, not of her interpretations of Brahms
and Chopin, but of some journalistic composition that a mendacious
editor thought fit to praise. If she is ignorant of the difference
between a flat-iron and a rolling-pin, she will tell you of an
imaginary confection of hers that excited the raptures of a fictitious
gathering of _gourmands_. If she is intensely practical she will play
very dexterously for your amusement on a sentimental string. The
artistic sense in her is not dulled by a prosaic adherence to facts.
She is anything but what she seems.
It is something more than a coincidence that both the churches and
the theatres in Australia should be mainly supported by women. Both
institutions go beyond the region of commonplace realities; both appeal
to the finer sense--the sense of something that is not prosaic. It is
melancholy to think what might happen to ecclesiastical institutions
in Australia if women did not go to church. It is interesting to
reflect that there are more stage-struck girls in the community than in
any other of the same size on earth. Those who cannot act behind the
footlights, act at home and in the houses of their neighbours. They
carry into the walks of everyday life the histrionic faculty, without
which grace is a thing unknown, and unadorned human nature is painfully
crude and severe. The man is seldom an adept in these matters. As a
rule he has no skill at concealing his deficiencies. He flounders badly
amid uncongenial surroundings. The Australian girl, on the other hand,
will adapt herself with great readiness to any set of circumstances,
will look happy when she is feeling exasperated, will smile cordially
on women she detests, will listen with charming and intelligent
sympathy to monologues on subjects for which she cares not at all, will
be intensely Bohemian or rigidly conservative just as she thinks is
required.
There are certain types that have latterly been attracting attention,
and one of these is the political woman. With her natural talent for
experimenting the Australian woman has paid some attention to politics,
and she has found the pastime moderately interesting, so long as
nothing more intrinsically important has been to hand.
There are two recognised kinds of political women on the continent.
One of these, and by far the more numerous, is the dilettante, the
feminine dabbler. She has a pretty, graceful way of deprecating too
much knowledge of her subject. She rarely comes into prominence except
at election times. She is convinced that Smith is a better man for
the country than Jones, but she is far from pretending to know what
Smith’s views are on the fiscal question, whether he is a single taxer,
a preferential trader, or a person of secret anarchical tendencies. If
you ask her why she supports Smith she will probably tell you that she
dislikes Jones. She is an expert and resourceful canvasser; like the
_pallida mors_ of the Roman poet she knocks impartially at the huts
of the poor and the mansions of the rich. She goes to the poll if a
conveyance is handy, or if it is not too far to walk, and she wins, or
helps to win, many elections.
Unlike her is the other type of political woman--the intensely
serious, aggressive type. This type is not numerous, but what there
is of it is formidable. It is the very latest thing in Australian
public life. It is determined to regenerate the world by the _deus
ex machina_ of the ballot box. It has a mania for contesting seats
in Parliament. Its opinion of the opposite sex is quite unfit for
publication--nevertheless it is often published. The type of this
description is unusual and rather abnormal, yet there are not wanting
indications that it is growing in numbers.
Another kind of woman often met with has made a special cult of
æstheticism. With the sex in Australia, æstheticism and theosophy
usually go together. The writer has been unable to discover what
difference, if any, exists between the two, or where the one
begins and the other leaves off. It is surprising to think what a
number of girls, particularly during recent years, have taken to
professing themselves theosophists. The Anglican curate and the
young non-Conformist preacher have but a modified social success
in Australia. They are not the toys and darlings of any but a
very limited sisterhood. On the other hand, the man who can talk
mysticism, and quote Plato or Edwin Arnold, can be sure of a wide
and growing feminine _clientèle_. If, in addition, he can play
the violin, he leaps at once into a blaze of popularity. It is an
interesting phrase of the feminine temperament, this leaning towards
a spiritualistic-cum-theosophic-cum-Buddhist-cum-æsthetic School. The
underlying principle, the subtle essence pervading the whole, is a
yearning for the higher life. This yearning is not actually expressed
in common words “understanded” by the vulgar, but is implied in certain
lines borrowed from _The Light of Asia_, in certain names taken from
the Sacred Books of the Vedas, in a certain transcendentalism of
appearance, a certain intensity of manner, a certain trick of the
voice, now and then in a certain severe simplicity in arranging the
hair.
At the opposite pole from the æsthetic, is the athletic woman. This
latter type is very often to be met with. Considering the languorous
and enervating climate that she has, for the most part, to contend
against, her performances are more than creditable. She sweeps a wide
gamut of athletic achievement. Golf is one of her specialties, but it
does not operate to the exclusion of other things. She plays tennis
with a tremendous amount of energy, more particularly when it is a
question of a ladies’ four, and the masculine onlooker or player is
absent. In the curious and indefinite pastime known as “mixed doubles,”
she is a perpetual source of astonishment, alternating between sudden
fits of energy and a graceful quiescence in the middle of the court.
Her partner is never quite sure whether she is secretly wild with rage
at him for taking her shots, or whether she is disgusted with his
laziness in leaving so much to her. The athletic woman will also row
vigorously, walk untiringly, play hockey till she is red in the face,
and dance the strongest male partner off his feet. In the ordinary
course of things she is independent of companionship, and has no use
whatever for a chaperone. The least attractive feature about her is
her language. In this respect she can out-Herod Herod, and out-slang
the slangiest barracker at the most exciting football match that was
ever played on the Australian field. Even Professor Morris has no clue
to certain of the terms which she evolves either from the recesses
of her memory, or from the depths of her inner consciousness. It is
stated that she can, on occasion, skip lightly across the border of
colloquialism into the stormy regions of profanity. That may be so.
In any case, there is not a great deal to choose between the lady who
sometimes borrows an Australia curse word, and her whose ready-money is
the aforesaid awful vernacular.
Yet another type is the scholastic woman. The lingering mediævalism of
Oxford and Cambridge would be surprised if it knew to what an extent
in Australia masculine prerogative in the matter of higher education
has broken down. We teach our girls everything from classics to
metaphysics, from the theory of music to the practice of medicine,
from botany to jurisprudence, from dressmaking to trigonometry, from
cookery to architecture, from domestic economy to Egyptology, from
plain sewing to conic sections. There is nothing in which they are not
being perpetually instructed; and for the result you have only to look
around. The erudite woman is everywhere. Sometimes she teaches in a
High School or College; sometimes she is to be encountered at home,
just returned from a finishing tour to Europe, half shuddering at the
prospect of contact with numerous illiterate and unfinished persons,
half inclined to envy her sister the loaves and fishes of common
domestic life. This scholarly woman--not the one who possesses merely a
smattering of scholarship, but the one who has used her cleverness in a
sustained attempt to acquire knowledge--the one who has taken degrees
and passed examinations by the dozen--is usually unattractive to the
eye. She is inclined to be pale, inclined to be angular, inclined to
wear spectacles. She has learned too much to have any illusions. She
has worked too hard to have much feminine fancy remaining. It is
impossible for her to make a hero of a man, because through a long
course of scientific and experimental observations she has become
perfectly well acquainted with his thousand weaknesses, vices, physical
failings, and mental limitations. The man knows that he stands before
her like an open book. Knowing this, he trembles, as he has every
reason to do.
As a matter of fact no one of these four types, nor all four together,
nor any others that might be given a place in the category, represents,
in any general sense, the Australian woman. There is reason for
believing that most, if not all the phases of activity just mentioned,
together with others that might be mentioned, are sublimely insincere,
are magnificently built up on shams. The political woman does not
really care for politics. The æsthetic woman is only interested in the
picturesque side of æsthetics. The athletic girl considers fame at
golf or lawn tennis as at best a means to an end. The lady graduate
is not in love with her degree. The woman has not yet been identified
who can lay her hand on her heart, and swear that the study of higher
mathematics, or even a profound analysis of the Latin poets, is an
altogether satisfying pursuit. The age is one of experimentalism,
so far as the Australian woman is concerned. She is attempting many
things; she is looking for new interests in many directions; she has
taken to playing several fresh parts; she has learned quite a number of
new tricks. Yet there is a suspicion that they are only tricks after
all.
The Australian girl--with the accent on the definite article--remains
yet to be defined. Some of her attributes, or accomplishments, or
phases are readily enough made out, but many of these are merely
incidental modes of the moment; others are to be regarded as streaks of
colour on an always variegated landscape; they are not the landscape
itself. We know well enough that certain things will invariably take
her fancy. A love of dress, a fondness for jewellery, a passion for
display, a taste for theatres, a tendency to gush, a dislike for
solitude, a mania for admiration--all these are manifestations that
are continually meeting the eye of the casual observer. But they
are not peculiar to the Australian woman, or to the sex in any one
country. And, on the other hand, there are discernment, subtlety,
artistic sensibility, grace of movement, warmth of temperament,
quickness of sympathy, and much else that could be mentioned. These
latter qualities, for all that is known to the contrary, may be in the
majority of cases more outward than inward. That is to say, they may
be dexterously woven into the garment for purposes of effect. In any
case, it does not matter. If the resulting product can please the eye
and satisfy the sense it is foolish to begin raising doubts about its
precise texture or its wearing capabilities.