_Author of “The Sorrows of Satan,” “The Mighty Atom,”
“Barabbas,” “A Romance of Two Worlds,” etc._
LONDON
HUTCHINSON AND CO.
34 Paternoster Row
MDCCCXCVI
*INTRODUCTORY NOTE*
The following slight and unelaborated sketch of a very commonplace and
everyday tragedy will, I am aware, meet with the unqualified disapproval
of the ‘superior’ sex. They will assert, with much indignant emphasis,
that the character of ‘Lord Carlyon’ is an impossible one, and that such
a ‘cad’ as he is shown to be never existed. Anticipating these remarks,
I have to say in reply that the two chief personages in my story,
namely, ‘Lord Carlyon’ and his wife, are drawn strictly from the life;
and, that though both the originals have some years since departed from
this scene of earthly contest and misunderstanding, so that my
delineation of their characters can no longer grieve or offend either,
the ‘murder of Delicia’ was consummated at the hands of her husband
precisely in the way I have depicted it.
There are thousands of such ‘murders’ daily happening among us—murders
which are not considered ‘cruelty’ in the eyes of the law. There are any
number of women who work night and day with brain and hand to support
useless and brainless husbands; women whose love never falters, whose
patience never tires, and whose tenderness is often rewarded only by the
most callous neglect and ingratitude. I do not speak of the countless
cases among the hard-working millions whom we elect to call the ‘lower
classes,’ where the wife, working from six in the morning till ten at
night, has to see her hard earnings snatched from her by her ‘better’
half and spent at the public-house in strong drink, despite the fact
that there is no food at home, and that innocent little children are
starving. These instances are so frequent that they have almost ceased
to awaken our interest, much less our sympathy. In my story I allude
principally to the ‘upper’ ranks, where the lazy noodle of an aristocrat
spends his time, first, in accumulating debts, and then in looking about
for a woman with money to pay them—a woman upon whose income he can
afterwards live comfortably for the rest of his worthless life. To put
it bluntly and plainly, a great majority of the men of the present day
want women to keep them. It is not a manly or noble desire; but as the
kind of men I mean have neither the courage nor the intelligence to
fight the world for themselves, it is, I suppose, natural to such
inefficient weaklings that they should,—seeing the fierce heat and
contest of competition in every branch of modern labour,—gladly sneak
behind a woman’s petticoats to escape the general fray. But the point
to which I particularly wish to call the attention of the more
thoughtful of my readers is that these very sort of men (when they have
secured the ignoble end of their ambition, namely, the rich woman to
live upon, under matrimonial sufferance) are the first to run down
women’s work, women’s privileges, women’s attainments and women’s
honour. The man who owes his dinner to his wife’s unremitting toil is
often to be heard speaking of the ‘uselessness’ of women, their
frivolity and general incapacity. And in cases where the woman’s
intellectual ability is brought into play, and where the financial
results of her brain work are such that they enable the husband to live
as he likes, surrounded with every ease and comfort, then it is that at
the clubs, or in any other place where he can give himself sublime airs
of independence, he will frequently express regret, in grandiloquent
terms, that there should be any women who ‘want to be clever’; they are
always ‘unsexed.’ This word ‘unsexed’ is always cast at brilliant women
by every little halfpenny ragamuffin of the press that can get a
newspaper corner in which to hide himself for the convenience of
throwing stones. The woman who paints a great picture is ‘unsexed’; the
woman who writes a great book is ‘unsexed’; in fact, whatever woman does
that is higher and more ambitious than the mere act of flinging herself
down at the feet of man and allowing him to walk over her, makes her in
man’s opinion unworthy of his consideration as woman; and he fits the
appellation ‘unsexed’ to her with an easy callousness, which is as
unmanly as it is despicable.
Now, to turn to the other side of the medal; let us see what are the
occupations man graciously permits to woman without affronting her by
this opprobrious epithet. In the first place, he is chiefly willing to
see her on the stage. And he generally prefers the music-hall stage as
the best one fitted to her ‘poor’ abilities. It is no particular ‘fun’
to him to see her rise to the histrionic height of a Rachel or a Sarah
Bernhardt—the sublimity of tragedy in her eyes does not specially move
him—the simulation of heartbreak in her face may possibly awake in him a
curious emotion, divided between pity and astonishment,—but it does not
amuse him. Nor does the exquisite grace of the finished ‘comedienne’
delight him entirely,—her pretty airs and graces, and her ringing laugh,
are fascinating in a way, but in the huge amount of _amour-propre_,
which swells the head of the smallest masculine noodle about town, he
has an uncomfortable, lurking suspicion that she may all the while,
under her charming stage-feigning, be really laughing at him and the
whole of his sex generally. No! Neither the height of tragedy nor
comedy in the woman on the stage really satisfy men so much as the happy
medium,—the particular ‘no-man’s-land’ of art, where nothing is demanded
of her but—Body and Grin. A beautiful Body, trained to walk and look
well—an affable Grin, expanding at the sight of champagne and other
mundane delicacies,—these are all that is necessary. Now, if this
beautiful Body be well-nigh stripped to man’s gaze night after night on
the boards, he will never call the woman who so exposes herself
‘unsexed,’ nor will he apply the word to her if she drinks too much wine
and brandy. But if another woman, with quite as beautiful a body,
instead of exhibiting herself half nude on the music-hall stage, prefers
to keep her woman’s modesty, and execute some great work of art which
shall be as good and even better than anything man can accomplish, she
will be dubbed ‘unsexed’ instantly. And I ask—Why is it that man elects
to compass woman’s degradation rather than her up-lifting and
sanctification? It is a wrong course to adopt,—an evil course; and one
that carries with it a terrible retribution in the lives of the coming
generation.
I think, as I write, of a certain individual, living at the present
moment in one of the most fashionable quarters of London,—a man who is
generally looked upon with a considerable amount of respect by the
monied and titled classes. Some years ago he married a bright little
American woman for her money, and since that time he has made her life
an hourly misery. She loved him,—more’s the pity!—and though he does
not scruple to insult her before others with an insolent brutality which
is as shameful as it is disgusting,—though he will upbraid her before
his servants and his guests at dinner with the harshness one might
expect of a slave-driver, she endures his cruelty with patience—and why?
For her children’s sake. Her womanly idea is, that they should respect
their father, and to that end she puts her own injuries aside and does
her best and bravest to keep the household straight. Her money it is
that pays for all the costly dinners and entertainments with which her
husband glorifies himself before his acquaintances each London ‘season,’
pushing her into the background at every turn, and hanging on to the
skirts of the newest fashionable _demi-mondaine_ instead; and through
her and her constant bounty alone he has attained the social position he
holds. This is only one instance out of many where men, indebted to
women for every honour and advancement they possess, turn and rend their
‘good angels,’ or torture them by every conceivable means of private
malice and wickedness, which cannot come under the jurisdiction of the
law. And love is so much the best part of a good woman’s nature, that
when she once truly gives her whole heart and soul away to a man, she
finds it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to uproot that deep
affection and understand that it has been, or is wasted upon him. This
was the trouble and incurable wound of ‘Delicia’; it is the trouble and
incurable wound of thousands of women to-day.
It is perhaps scarcely necessary to touch on another grievous and
ignoble phase of modern manhood which is constantly exhibited among us
at the present time,—namely, the miserable position voluntarily held by
certain ‘noblemen’ who, because they have placed themselves in the
unnatural and unbecoming condition of owing everything to their wives’
money, permit those wives to play fast and loose with their honour and
good name, and apparently shut their eyes to the shameless infidelities
which make them the by-word and contempt of all self-respecting
‘commoners.’ It would be a wholesome and refreshing stimulus to society
if such ‘blue-blooded’ lacqueys could awake to the fact that manhood is
better than money, and would by their own free will and choice go out to
hard labour in the gold-fields or elsewhere and earn their own
livelihood bravely and independently, instead of lounging and frittering
their days away, the silent and inactive spectators of their wives’ open
and wanton degradation.
I have purposely selected the case of ‘Delicia’ from several more or
less similar ones as a type of the fate frequently meted out by men to
the women who have by their own intellectual attainments succeeded in
winning fame and fortune. There are three radical errors chiefly made
by the ‘superior’ sex in their hasty estimation of what are called
‘clever’ women;—the first on the question of heart; the second in the
matter of permanence; and the third on the always momentous
consideration of good looks. If a woman does anything out of the common
in the way of art or literature, she is immediately judged by men as
being probably without tenderness, without permanence in her work, and
certainly without personal beauty. Now, as far as tenderness goes, a
woman who thinks, who has read much and has studied human life in its
various wonderful and often sad aspects, is far more able to realise the
rareness and the worth of true love than the woman who has never thought
or studied at all. She,—the woman thinker,—understands with full pathos
the real necessity there is for being kind, patient and forbearing one
with the other, since at any moment Death may sever the closest ties and
put an end to the happiest dreams; and in her love—if she does
love—there must needs be far more force, truth and passion than in the
light emotion of the woman who lives for society alone, and flits from
pleasure to pleasure like a kind of moth whose existence and feeling are
but for a day. On the question of permanence in her work, she is the
equal of man, as permanence in both ambition and attainment depends
chiefly on temperament. A man’s work or fame may be as unstable as that
of any weak woman if he himself is unstable in nature. But put man and
woman together,—start them both equally with a firm will and a
resoluteness of endeavour, the woman’s intellect will frequently
outstrip the man’s. The reason of this is that she has a quicker
instinct and finer impulses. And lastly, on the subject of good
looks,—it is not a _sine qua non_ that a clever woman must be old and
must be ugly. It sometimes happens so,—but it is not always so. She
may be young and she may be lovely; nevertheless, men prefer to run
after the newest barmaid or music-hall dancer, who is probably painted
up to the eyes, and whose figure is chiefly the result of the
corset-maker’s art, under the impression that in such specimens alone of
our sex will they find true beauty. Were they told that a certain
artist who painted a certain great picture was a young and beautiful
woman, they would never believe it; if someone volunteered the
information that the sculptor whose massive marble group of classic
figures adorns one of the galleries in Rome was a woman whose smile was
ravishing and whose figure was a model for Psyche, they would shrug
their shoulders incredulously. ‘No, no!’ they would say, ‘Clever women
are always ‘unsexed,’—give me the barmaid—the shop-girl—the dancer—the
‘living picture’—the aerial gymnast—give me anything rather than a pure,
finely-cultured, noble-natured woman to be the mother of my sons!’
Thus things drift; badly for England, if we are to believe all we are
told by scientific physiologists,—and whether these wiseacres and
doom-prophets are wrong or right in their prognostications, it is
certain that the true intention of Woman’s destiny has not yet been
carried out. She is fighting towards it,—but, if I may venture to say
so, she is using her weapons wildly and in various wrong directions. It
is not by opposing herself to man that she can be his real
helpmeet,—neither is it by supporting him on her money, whether such
money be earned or inherited. She will never make a true man of him
that way. And it is not by adopting his pastimes or apeing his manners.
It is by cultivating and cherishing to the utmost every sweet and sacred
sentiment of womanhood,—every grace, every refinement, every beauty; by
taking her share in the world’s intellectual work with force, as well as
with modesty, and by showing a faultless example of gentle reserve and
delicate chastity. When she is like this, it is of course highly
probable that she will be ‘murdered’ often as ‘Delicia’ was;—but the
death of many martyrs is necessary to the establishment of a new creed.
When man begins to understand that woman is not meant to be a toy or a
drudge, but a comrade,—the closest, best and truest that God has given
him,—then the clouds will clear; and marriage will be a blessing instead
of (as it too often proves) a curse,—and there will be few, if any,
‘Delicias’ to be slain, inasmuch as there will be few, if any men left,
so unworthy of their manhood as to play coward and traitor to the women
who trust them.