"Aristophanes had been present. I assure you that all that he said in
his comedies called _Ecclesiazusae_ and _Lysistrata_ pale beside the
tumultuous scenes caused by the peroration of Mrs Pancake. Her threat
was in such drastic contrast to the stars and moon she personally could
exhibit to the desires of men, that the comic effect of it became at
times almost unbearable.
"While the pandemonium was at its height a stentorian voice invited
all present to another platform where another woman was holding forth
on Free Love and Free Marriage. I forthwith repaired to the place, and
heard what was in every way a most interesting speech delivered by a
woman who consisted of a ton of bones and an ounce of flesh. She was
between forty and seventy-nine. She talked in a tone of conviction
which seemed to come from every corner of her personal masonry. Her
gestures were, if I may say so, as strident as her voice, which came
out with a peculiar gust of pectoral wind, unimpeded, as it was, by the
fence of too numerous teeth. She said:
"'Gentlemen, all that you have heard over there from the platforms of
the suffragettes is, to put it mildly, the merest rubbish. We women do
not want the suffrage. What we want is quite another thing. All our
misery since the days of Eve comes from one silly, absurd, and criminal
institution, and from that alone. Abolish that cesspool of depravity;
that hotbed of social gangrene; that degradation of men and women; and
we shall be all happy and contented for ever.
"'That institution; that cancerous hotbed; that degradation is:
_Marriage_. As long as we shall endure this scandalous bondage and
prostitution of the most sacred sentiments and desires of human beings,
even so long will our social wretchedness last.
"'Abolish marriage.
"'It has neither sense, nor object, nor right; it is the most hapless
aberration of humanity. How can you uphold such a monstrous thing?
"'Just consider: I do not know, and do not care to know what other
nations are like; I only care for my great nation, for England, for
Englishmen. Now, can anyone here present (or here absent, for the
matter of that), seriously contend that an Englishman is by nature
or education fit for marriage? Why, not one in ten thousand has the
slightest aptitude for it.
"'An Englishman is an island, a solitary worm, morally a hermit,
socially a bear, humanly a Cyclop. He hates company, including his own.
The idea that any person should intrude upon his hallowed circles
for more than a few minutes is revolting to him. When he is ill he
suffers most from the inquiries of friends about his condition. When
he is successful he is too proud to stoop to talking with anyone under
the rank of a lord. When he is unsuccessful, he takes it for granted
that nobody desires to speak to him. He builds his house after his
own character: rooms do not communicate. He chooses his friends among
people that talk as little as possible and call on him once a year. Any
remark about his person he resents most bitterly. Tell him, ever so
mildly, that the colour of his necktie is cryingly out of harmony with
the colour of his waistcoat, and he will hate you for three years.
"'And you mean to tell me, gentlemen, that such a creature is fit for
marriage? That is, fit for a condition of things in which a person,
other than himself, claims the right to be in the same room with him at
any given hour of the day or the night; to pass remarks on his necktie,
or his cuffs, or even on his tobacco; to talk, ay, to talk to him for
an hour, to twit him, or chaff him--good heavens, one might just as
well think of asking the Archbishop of Canterbury by telephone whether
he would not come to the next bar round the corner for a glass of Bass.
"'And as to other still more personal claims of tenderness and intimacy
on the part of the wife, such as embraces and kisses, one shudders
to think how any woman may ever hope to attempt doing them without
imminent risk to her life.
"'Fancy a wife trying to kiss her legal husband! He, prouder of his
collar and cuffs than of his banking account, to stand calmly and
willingly an assault on the immaculate correctness of the said collar
and cuffs!
"'It passes human comprehension. The mere idea thereof is unthinkable.
"'Perhaps in the first few weeks of married life. But after six months;
after a year, or two--by what stretch of imagination shall one reach
the possibility of such an event? After six months, he is indifferent
to the entire astronomy of his wife; after a year or so, he hates her.
It is not so much that he wants another woman, or another man's wife,
or another wife's man; what he wants is to be left alone.
"'He has long since shaken off the State, the Church, the Army, and,
politically, the Nobility. Nothing can be more evident than that he
wants to shake off the last of the old shackles: Marriage. His motive
is: shekels, but no shackles.
"'Some incomprehensibly modest people have proposed marriage to last
ten years only. It appears, they contend, that the critical period of
the modern marriage shows itself at the end of ten years. The scandals
that are usually cropping up at the end of that period, they say, might
very well be avoided by terminating marriage legally at the end of the
tenth year. People proposing such stuff clearly manifest their utter
inability to see through the true character of modern marriage.
"'If marriages were to last only ten years, then be sure that the said
critical period with its inevitable scandals would set in at the end
of the fifth year. The cause, the real cause of these scandals is not
in the length of time, but in the very nature of marriage. If this
iniquitous and barbarous contract were to last only for five years,
then its critical period and its scandals would appear at the end of
two years. And by a parity of reasoning, if marriage were to last one
year only, it would by its inherent vice come to grief at the end of
six months.
"'The only cure for marriage is to abolish it. Does marriage not demand
the very quality that not one English person in a hundred thousand
possesses: yieldingness? Or can anyone deny that no English person has
ever really meant to admit that he or she was wrong?
"'They are all of them infallible. People write such a lot about the
hatred of Popery in English history. What nonsense. English people do
not hate Popery; they despise the idea that there should be only one
infallible Pope, whereas they know that in England alone there are at
present over thirty millions of such infallibles. This being so, how
can marriage be a success?
"'Or take it,' the Free Love lady continued, 'from another standpoint.
Most Englishmen enter married life with little if any experience of
womanhood. Only the other day a young man of twenty-five, who was just
about to marry, asked in my presence whether it was likely that a woman
gave birth to one child early in the month of May, and to the other in
the following month of June? He thought that _The Times_ instalment
system applied to all good things.
"'Other young men inquire seriously about the strategy of marriage, and
the famous song in the _Belle of New York_, in which the girl asks her
_fiancé_ "When we are married what will you do?" was possible only in
countries of Anglo-Saxon stock. In Latin countries the operette could
not have been finished in one evening on account of the interminable
laughter of the public. In London nobody turned a hair, as they say.
Half of the men present had, in their time, asked the same question of
themselves or of their doctors.
"'Now if there is one thing more certain than another in the whole
matter of marriage it is this, that the inexperienced _fiancé_
generally makes the worst husband. Being familiar only with the ways
and manners of men, he misunderstands, misconstrues, and misjudges most
of the actions or words of his young wife. He is positively shocked
at her impetuous tenderness, and takes many a manifestation of her
love for him as mere base flattery or as hypocrisy. Not infrequently
he ceases treating her as his wife, and goes on living with her as
his sister; and, since the wife, more loyal to nature, rarely omits
recouping herself, her husband acts the part of certain gentlemen of
Constantinople. It is thus that the famous _ménage à trois_ does not,
properly speaking, exist in England. In England it is always a _ménage
à deux_.
"'If, then, instead of continuing marriage; if, instead of maintaining
an institution so absurd and so contrary to the nature of an
Englishman, we dropped it altogether; if, instead of compulsory wedding
ceremonies, we introduced that most sacred of all things: FREE LOVE;
the advantages accruing to the nation as a whole, and to each person
constituting that nation, would be immense.
"'Free Love, ay: that is the only solution. Nature knows what she is
after. The blue-eyed crave the black-eyed ones; the fair-haired desire
the dark-haired; the tall ones the small; the thin ones the thick; the
unlettered ones the lettered unfettered ones. This is Nature.
"'If these affinities are given free scope, the result will be a nation
of giants and heroes. Affinities produce Infinities. Free Trade in
wedlock is the great panacea. Since the only justifiable ground for
marriage is--the child, how dare one marry anyone else than the person
with whom he or she is most likely to have the finest babe? That person
is clearly indicated by Nature. How, then, can Society, Law, or the
Church claim the right to interfere in the choice?
"'I know that many of you will say: "Oh, if men should take their wives
only from Free Love, they would take a different one every quarter."
But if you come to think of it, it is not so at all. If men took their
wives out of Free Love, they could not so much as think of taking
another wife every quarter. For, which other wife could they take?
There would be none left for them, since all the other women would,
by the hypothesis, long have been taken up by _their_ Free Lovers.
Moreover, if a man takes a wife out of Free Love, he sticks to her just
because he loves her. Had he not loved her, he would not have taken
her; and if he should cease loving her, he would find no other woman to
join him, owing to his proved fickleness.
"'Last, not least, women and men would form elaborate societies for
the prevention of frivolous breaches of faith. At present no woman has
a serious interest in watching another woman's man. It would be quite
different in Free-Love-Land. The unofficial supervision and control of
men and women would be as rigorous as in monastic orders. As a man
will pay off debts contracted at a card-table with infinitely greater
anxiety than any ordinary debt of his to a tailor or a grocer, just
because such gambling debts are not actionable; even so conjugal debts
would, in Free-Love-Land, be discharged with a punctuality that now is
practically unknown.
"'The commonplace assertion that legal marriage preserves men and women
in a virtuous life has been refuted these six thousand years. To the
present day one is not able to deny the truth of what once a Turkish
woman replied to a Christian lady. The latter asked the Oriental: "How
can you tolerate the fact that your husband has at the same time and
in the same house three other wives of his?" The Turkish lady replied:
"Please, do not excite yourself unduly. The only difference between me
and you is this, that I know the names of my rivals, and you do not."
"'In Free-Love-Land alone is there virtue. Men and women select freely,
obeying only the dictates of infallible Nature. The result is order,
health, joy, and efficiency. How can any person of sense believe in the
present marriage systems, when one considers the countless lives of old
maids sacrificed to the Moloch of modern legal monogamy?
"'In England there are about four times more old maids than in any
other country; except in New England, in the United States, where every
second woman is born an old maid. Has anybody ever seriously pondered
over the great danger to Society and State implied in an excessive
number of old maids? I leave it to you, and I dare say to everyone of
you who has, no doubt, bitterly suffered at the hands of some one old
maid in his or her family.
"'Old maids are either angels of goodness, or devils in human form;
the real proportion of either must be left to the Lord Chancellor
to decide. But who, or what produces old maids? Our legal monogamy.
Give us Free Love, and you shall have heard the last word of old
maids. Refuse Free Love, and we shall have to form our old maids
into regiments and send them against the Germans. Plato said that
the unsatisfied womb of a woman wanders about in all her body like
a ravenous animal and devours everything on his path. Our present
marriage system makes more victims than victors.'
* * * * *
"The good bag of bones wanted to continue in the same strain, but was
stopped by a young policeman who threatened to take her into custody
unless she discontinued her oratory. She threatened to love him freely;
whereupon he ran away as speedily as he could manage, but was at once
followed by the valiant she-orator, who nearly overtook him, crying
all the time 'I love you freely'--'I love you freely.' The whole crowd
followed, howling, screaming, laughing, and singing songs of Free Love.
So ended the discourse on Free Love.
* * * * *
"A few weeks later," continued Alcibiades, "I made the acquaintance
of what they call a society lady. She was, of course, a specialist.
She had found out that her physical attractions were of a kind to show
off best at the moment of entering a crowded room. She was, to use the
phraseology of the _chef_, an _entrée_ beauty. Her name was Entréa. At
the moment she entered a _salon_, she gave, just for a few minutes, the
impression of being strikingly handsome. She walked well, and the upper
part of her head, her hair, forehead, and eyes were very pretty. She
knew that on entering a room, the upper part of the head is precisely
the one object of general attention. This she utilised in the most
methodic manner. She entered with an innocent smile and lustrous eyes.
The effect was decidedly pretty.
"In order to heighten it she always came late. Her cheeks, which were
ugly; her shoulders, which were uglier; her arms, which were still
uglier, were all cleverly disguised or made to appear secondary, and
as if dominated by her big eyes. She was very successful. Most men
considered her beautiful; and women were happy that her principal
effect did not last very long. She knew some fifteen phrases by heart,
which were meant to meet the conversation of the fifteen different
species into which she had, for daily use, divided the different men
she met in society. Each of these phrases gave her the appearance of
much _esprit_ and of an intelligent interest in the subject. She did
not understand them at all; but she never mixed them up, thanks to her
instinct, which was infallible.
"The last time she had done or said anything spontaneously or
naively was on the day she left her nursery. Ever since she was
the mere manager of her words and acts. In everything there was a
cool intention. As a matter of fact she was meant by Nature to be a
salesgirl at Whiteley's. Failing this, she sold her presence, her
smiles, her manners to the best social advantage. A rabid materialist,
she always pretended to live for nothing but ideals. Sickened by music,
she always gave herself out to be an enthusiast for Wagner. Like many
women that have no natural talent for intellectual pursuits, she was
most eager to read serious books, to attend serious lectures, and to
engage a conversation on philosophy.
"I met her in my quality as Prince of Syracuse. She first thought
that Syracuse was the name of my father; when I had explained to her
that Syracuse was the name of a famous town in Sicily, she asked me
whether I belonged to the great family whose motto was _qui s'excuse,
s'iracuse_.
"On my answering in the negative, she exclaimed: 'But surely you belong
at least to the Maffia? Oh do, it would be so interesting!' In order
to please her I at once belonged to that society of secret assassins.
However, I soon noticed that she thought the Maffia was the Sicilian
form of a society for patriotic Mafficking.
"When we became a little more intimate, she told me that I was
never to speak of anything else than Syracuse. That would give me a
certain _cachet_, as she put it, and distinguish me from the others.
Accordingly I placed all my stories and occasional sallies of talk
at Syracuse. I was the Syracusan. She swore my accent was Syracusan,
and that my entire personality breathed Syracusan air. In society she
presented me as a member of a curious race, the Syracusans, in Sicily,
close to the Riviera.
"One day she surprised me with the question whether the men of Syracuse
were still in the habit of marrying two women at a time. She had read
in some book of the double marriage of Dionysus the Elder in the fourth
century B.C. I calmed her in that respect. I said that since that time
things had changed at Syracuse.
"On the other hand, I was unable to make out whether she was a divorced
virgin, or a deceased sister's wife. It was not clear at all. When
conversing with me alone, she was as dry as a Nonconformist; but in a
drawing-room, full of people, she showered upon me all the sweets of
passionate flirtation.
"One day I told her that I had won great victories in the chariot races
at Olympia. She looked at me with a knowing smile and said: 'Come,
come, why did I not read about it in the _Daily Nail_?' and, showing me
the inside of her hat, she pointed at a slip of paper in it, on which
was printed: 'I am somewhat of a liar myself.' I assured her that I had
really won great prizes at Olympia.
"'Were they in the papers?' she asked.
"I said, we had no papers at that time.
"'No papers?' she exclaimed. 'Why, were you like the negroes? No
papers! What will you tell me next? Had you perhaps no top-hats either?
Do you mean to tell me that this great poet of yours--what you call
him?--ah, Lord Homer, had no top-hat?'
"I assured her that we had no hats whatever.
"'Oh, I see,' she said, 'you were founded like the blue boys,--I see.
But surely you wore gloves?'
"On my denying it, she turned a little pale.
"'No gloves either? Then I must ask you only one more thing: had you no
shoes either?'
"'No,' I said, calmly, 'some of us, like Socrates, went always
barefoot, others in sandals.'
"She smiled incredulously. I told her that in the heyday of Athens men
in the streets went about over one-third nude. She did not mind the
nude, but she stopped at the word heyday.
"She asked me: 'On which day of the year fell your heyday?'
"I did not quite know what to say, until it flashed upon my mind that
she meant 'hay-day.' I soon saw I was right, because she added:
"'Does going barefoot cure hay-fever? And is that the reason why so
many people still talk of Socrates?'
"I stared at her. Was it really possible that she did not know who
Socrates was? I tried to give a short sketch of your life, O Socrates,
but I could not go beyond the time before you were born. For, when I
said that your mother had been a midwife, my lady friend recoiled with
an expression of terror.
"'What,' she exclaimed, 'he was the son of a midwife?--a
midwife?--Pray, do not let us talk about such people! I hoped he was at
least the son of a baronet. How could you ever endure his company?'
"'That was just it,' said I, 'I could not. His charm was so great, that
for fear of neglecting everything else I fled from him like a hunted
stag.'
"'But pray,' she retorted, 'what charm can there be in a son of a
midwife? I can imagine some interest in a clever midwife,--but in her
son? Oh, that is too absurd for words!'
"'My charming friend,' I answered, 'Socrates was, as he frequently
remarked it, himself a sort of midwife, who never pretended to be
parent to a thought, but only to have helped others to produce them.'
"'Oh, is that it,--' she said dryly, 'Socrates did manual services in
midwifery? How lost to all shame your women must have been to engage a
man in their most delicate moments. I now see why so many of my lady
friends deserted a man who had announced lectures on Plato. He also
talked about Socrates, and when it became known that Socrates was a
wretched midwife's clerk, we left the lecture-hall in indignation.
Fancy that man said he talked about Plato, and yet in his discourses
he talked about nurseries, teetotalism, Christian Science and all such
things as date only of yesterday, and of which Plato could have known
nothing.'
"'But my lovely Entréa,' I interrupted, 'Plato does talk of all these
things, and with a vengeance.'
"'How _could_ he talk of them?' she triumphantly retorted. 'Did he ever
read the _Daily Nail_ or _Ladies' Wold_?'
"'No,' I said, 'he never did, which is one of the many reasons of his
divine genius. But he does speak of temperance, and simple life, and
the superman, and all the other so-called discoveries of this age,
with the full knowledge of a sage who has actually experienced those
eccentricities.'
"My fascinating friend could stand it no longer. Interrupting me she
said:
"'Why, every child knows that Plato talked of nothing else than of
Platonic love. We all expected to hear about nothing else than that
curious love which all of us desire, if it is not too long insisted
upon. We went to the course to revive in ourselves long-lost shivers
not only of idealism, but even of bimetallism, or as it were the double
weight of it.
"'We thought, since Plato is evidently named after platinum, which we
know to be the dearest of precious metals, his philosophy must treat of
such emotions as cost us the greatest sacrifice.
"'Platonic love is the most comfortable of subjects to talk or think
about. It makes you look innocent, and yet on its brink there are such
nicely dreadful possibilities of plunging into delightful abysses. Each
thing gets two values; one Platonic, the other,--the naughty value. A
whole nude arm may be Platonic; but a voluptuous wrist peeping out of
fine laces may be only--a tonic.
"'Now these are precisely the subjects of which we desired to hear
in those lectures. Instead of which the man said nothing about them,
nothing about that dear Platonic love; in fact, he said that Plato
never speaks of what is now called Platonic love. And that man calls
himself a scholar? Why, my very chamber-maid knows better. The other
day she saw the lecturer's photo in a paper and, smiling in an
embarrassed way, she said to the cook: "That's the man what talks at
Cliradge's about miscarriages." Was she not right? Is not Platonic love
the cause of so many miscarriages, before, during, or after the wedding
ceremony?
"'And then,' she added with a gasp, 'we all knew that Plato was a
mystic, full of that shivery, half-toney, gruesomely something or other
which makes us feel that even in everyday life we are surrounded by
asterisks, or, as they also call them, astral forces. Was not Plato
an intimate friend of Mrs Blavatsky, the sister of Madame Badarzewska,
who was the composer of "A Maiden's Prayer"? There! why then did that
lecturer not talk about palmistry, auristry, sorcery, witchcraft, and
other itch-crafts? Not a word about them! We were indignant.
"'A friend of mine, Mrs Oofry Blazing, who talks French admirably,
and whose teeth are the envy of her nose, declared: "_Cet homme est
un fumiste_." Of course, he sold us fumes, instead of perfumes. One
amongst us, an American woman of the third sex, told the man publicly
straight into his face, and with inimitable delicacy of touch: "Sir,
what are you here for?" Quite so; what _was_ he there for? We wanted
Plato, and nothing but Plato. One fairly expected him to begin every
sentence with P's, or Pl's. Instead of that he wandered from one
subject to another. One day he talked about the general and the
particular; the other day about the particular and the general. But
what particular is there in a general, I beg of you? Is an admiral not
much more important? We do not trouble about the army at all. And then,
and chiefly, what has a general to do with Plato? The lectures were
not on military matters, but on the most immaterial matters, which yet
matter materially. But, of course, now that you tell me that Socrates,
Plato's master, was a he-midwife, I can very well understand that his
modern disciples are philosophical miscarriages!'"
* * * * *