remarks of Entréa. Plato smiled and made Sappho blush by reminding
her what the little ones had at all times said of her, although not
a tittle of truth was in it. "No ordinary citizen, nor his wife," he
added, "ever wants to know persons or things as they really are. They
only want to know what they imagine or desire to be the truth. This
is the reason why so many men before the public take up a definite
pose, the one demanded by the public. This they do, not out of sheer
fatuity, but of necessity. A king could not afford to sing in public,
no matter how well he sang; it does not fit the image the public likes
to form about a king. In fact, the better he sang, the more harm it
would do him. I have always impressed the little ones as a mystic, an
enthusiast, a blessed spirit, as you Goethe used to call me. Yet my
principal aim was Apollo, and not Dionysus; clearness, and not the
_clair-obscur_ of trances."
Alcibiades, whose beautiful head added to the charms of Venice, then
continued: "Nothing, O Plato, can be truer than your remark. My lady
friend was a living example of your statement. To me, after so many
hundreds of experiences, her made-up little mask was no hindrance,--I
saw through her within less than a week. She was, at heart, as dry,
as kippered, as intentionalist, and coldly self-conscious as the
driest of Egyptian book-keepers in a great merchant firm at Corinth.
Nothing really interested her; she was only ever running after what she
imagined to be the fashion of the moment. What she really wanted was
to be the earliest in 'the latest.' When she came to the bookshop,
at five in the afternoon, when all the others came, she would ask the
clerk after the latest fashion in novels. She did that so frequently,
and with such exasperating regularity, that one day the clerk, who
could stand it no longer, said to her: 'Madame, be seated for a
few moments--the fashion is just changing.' She, not in the least
disconcerted, eagerly retorted: 'I say, is that "the latest"?' The
clerk gave notice to leave!
"One day I found her in a very bad humour. When pressed for an
explanation, she told me that just at that moment an elegant funeral
was going on, at which she was most anxious to attend. 'Why, then, do
you not go?' I asked.
"'Because,' she replied, 'it is simply impossible. Just fancy, that
good woman died of heart failure!'
"'?'--
"'You cannot see? Heart failure? Can you imagine anybody to die
of heart failure, when the only correct thing to do is to die of
appendicitis? I telephoned in due time to her doctor, imploring him
to declare that she died of that smart disease. But he is a brute. He
would not do it. Now I am for ever compromised by the friendship of
that woman. Oh how true was the remark of your sage Salami, when he
said that nobody can be said to be happy before all his friends have
died!'"
Thereupon the gods and heroes congratulated Solon upon his change of
profession: having been a sage, he was now a sausage.
"The next time I saw my lady friend," Alcibiades continued, "I found
her in tears. Inquiring after the cause of her distress, I learnt:
"'Just imagine! You know my little pet-dog. I bought him of a
lady-in-waiting. He has the most exquisite tact and feels happy only
in genteel society. An hour ago my maid suddenly left my flat, and
expecting, as I did, a lady of very high standing, I did a little
dusting and cleaning in my room. When my Toto saw that; when he watched
me actually doing housemaid's work, he cried bitterly. He could not
bear the idea of my demeaning myself with work unfit for a lady. It
was really too touching for words. When I saw the refined sense of
genteeldom in Toto's eyes, I too began crying. And so we both cried.'
* * * * *
"When I had lived through several scenes of the character just
described, I could not help thinking that we Athenians were perhaps
much wiser than the modern men, in that we did not allow our women
to appear in society. They were, it is true, seldom interesting, nor
physically greatly developed. On the other hand they never bored us
with types of what these little ones call society ladies. I cannot
but remember the exquisite evenings which I spent at the house of
Critias, where one of our wittiest _hetairai_, or emancipated women,
imitated the false manners, hypocrisy and inane pomp of the society
ladies of Thebes in Egypt. We laughed until we could see no longer.
What Leontion, that _hetaira_, represented was exactly what I observed
in my lady friend in London. The same disheartening dryness of soul;
the same exasperating superficiality of intellect; the same lack of all
real refinement, that I found a few centuries later in society in the
times of the Roman Cæsars.
"London desiccates; whereas Athens or Paris animates. When I gave
up my relation to Entréa, I met a woman of about thirty-four, whose
head was so perfect that Evænetus himself has never engraved a more
absolutely beautiful one. Her hair was not only golden of the most
lovely tint, but also full of waves, from long curls in Doric _adagio_,
to tantalising Corinthian _pizzicato_ frizzles all round. Her face was
a cameo cut in onyx, and both lovely and severe. Her loveliness was in
the upper part of her face; her severity round the mouth and the chin.
This strange reversal of what is usually the case gave her a character
of her own. Her stark blue eyes were big and cold, yet sympathetic and
intelligent-looking; and her ears were the finest shells that Leucothea
presented her mother with from the wine-coloured ocean, and inside the
shells were the most enchanting pearls, which the sea-nymph then left
in the mouth of the blessed babe as her teeth. She was not tall, but
very neatly made; a _fausse maigre_. She wrote bright articles, in
which from time to time she wrapped up a big truth in _bon-bon_ paper.
"There was in her the richest material for the most enchanting
womanhood; a blend of Musarion and Aspasia; or to talk modern style,
a blend of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse with Madame Récamier. She was
neither. Not that she made any preposterous effort to be, what Paris
calls, a Madame Récamier. But London desiccated her. From dry by
nature, she became drier still by London. Being as dry as she was, she
only cared for mystic things; for what is behind the curtain of things;
for the borderland of knowledge and dream. As sand can never drink in
enough rain, so dry souls want to intoxicate themselves with mystic
alcohol. In vulgarly dry persons that rain from above becomes--mud;
in refinedly dry souls it is atomised into an intellectual spray. Her
whole soul was athirst of that spray.
"When I told her that I was the son of Clinias, she wanted to know
first of all, what had been going on at the mysteries of Eleusis. I
told her that, like all the Hellenes, I had sworn never to reveal what
I had seen at the holy ceremonies. This she could not understand. In
her religion the priests are but too anxious to initiate anybody that
cares for it.
"'Initiate me--oh initiate me--I beg you,' she said, and looked more
beautiful than ever. Her arm trembled; her voice faltered. Even if
I did not respect my oath, I should not have told her the teachings
of Eleusis. They were far too simple for her mystery-craving soul.
So I told her of the Orphic mysteries, and the more she heard of the
extravagant and mind-shaking rites and tenets, the more interested she
became. Her mouth, usually so severe, swung again in pouty lines of
youthful timidity, and her voice got a 'cello down of mellowness.
"'Let us introduce Orphism into this country,' she exclaimed. 'Will you
be honorary treasurer?'
"I accepted," said Alcibiades. "Within three days Orphism was presented
as the _Orphic Science_. The members were called priestesses,
archontes, or acolytes, according to their degree. Within a month
there were 843 members. Jamblichus was sent for and made secretary.
Costumes were invented; pamphlets printed; cures promised; shares
offered. It was declared that trances and mystic shivers would be
procured 'while you wait'; dreams accounted for; inexplicables
explained; the curtain of things raised every Friday at five, after
tea. Finally the Orphics gave their first dinner at the Hotel Cecil.
"That was the worst blow. After that I abandoned Orphism."
FOURTH NIGHT
ALCIBIADES--CONTINUED
Hestia now interrupted Alcibiades with the question whether all the
women in nebulous Britannia were as grotesque as those that he had
described.
Alcibiades smiled and said:
"Not all of them, but all at times. Women must necessarily adapt
themselves to the nature of their men, as clerks do to that of their
patrons, or soldiers to that of their generals and officers. The
Englishman buys his liberty at the expense of much human capital;
which cannot but make him eccentric and grotesque. The women attune
themselves to him, although no foreigner has a clearer nor a more
depreciative idea of Englishmen's angularity than have English women.
As women they do not, as a rule, care for liberty at all, and hence
consider the sacrifices made by men for liberty as superfluous and
uncalled-for. A woman wants in all things the human note, which the
average Englishman hates. Hence the surprising power of Continental men
over English women. A hundred picked Greeks from Athens, Sicyon and
Syracuse could bring half of all English women to book--for Cytherea.
How could it be otherwise? The animated, passionate, direct talk of a
Greek is something so novel to an English woman that she is as it were
hypnotised by it. She thinks it is she and her personality that has
given her Continental admirer that _verve_ of expression which she has
never before experienced in the men of her circle. This alone is such
flattery to her that she loses her head.
"If one resolutely goes on scraping off the man-made chalk from the
manners and actions of English women, one is frequently rewarded
with the pleasure of arriving at last at the woman behind the chalk.
This is more especially the case in women of the higher classes. The
only time in England I felt something of that painful bliss that
mortals call love, was in the case of a lady friend of mine who, under
mountains of London clay, hid away a passionate, loving woman. She
was tall and luxuriously built. Her hands were of perfect shape and
condignly continued by lovely arms, that attached themselves into
majestic shoulders with the ease of a rivulet entering a lake by a
graceful curve. Over her shoulders the minaret of her neck stood
watch. In charming contrast to the _legato cantabile_ of her body was
the _staccato_ of her mind. Her words pecked at things like birds.
Sometimes there appeared amongst the latter an ugly vulture or two; but
there were more colibris and magpies. I had met her for months before
I surmised that there was something behind that London clay. But when
the moment came and the bells began sobbing in her minaret, then I knew
that here was a heart aglow with true passion and with the dawn of hope
divine. Like all women that do truly love, she would not believe me
that I sincerely felt what I said. Doubt is to women what danger is to
men: it sharpens the delight of love. She never became really tender;
ay, she was amazed and moved to tears at my being so. Her heart was
uneducated; it was _gauche_ at the game of love.
* * * * *
"Amongst the persons dressed in female attire I also met a number of
beings whom, but for my long stay at Sparta, I should hardly have
recognised as women. A French friend of mine remarked of them: '_Ce ne
sont pas des femmes, ce sont des Américaines_.' The species is very
much in evidence in London. They reminded me violently of the Spartan
women. They are handsome, if more striking than beautiful. I noticed
that in contrast to European women, American females gain in years what
they lose in dress at night. They look older when undressed. They have
excellent teeth, and execrable hands; they jump well, but walk badly.
Their great speciality is their voice, which is strident, top-nasal,
_falsetto_, disheartening. The most beautiful amongst them is murdered
by her voice. It is as if out of the most perfect mouth, set in the
most charming face, an ugly rat would jump at one. That voice, the
English say, comes from the climate of America. (This I do not believe
at all; for I have noticed that in England everything is ascribed to
the climate, as to the thing most talked about by the people. Climate
and weather are the most popular subjects in England; the one that is
never out of fashion.) As a matter of fact it comes from the total lack
of emotionality in the Americans; just as amongst musical instruments
the more emotional ones, like the 'cello, have more pectoral tonality,
whereas the fife, for instance, having no deep emotions at all to
express, is high and thin toned.
"Nothing seemed to me more interesting than the way in which the
American female reminded me of the Spartans and the Amazons.
Could anything be more striking than the coincidence between two
conversations, one of which I had, far over two thousand years ago,
with the Queen of an Amazonian tribe in Thracia, and the other with
the wife of an American flour dealer settled in London? When I called
on Thamyris in her tent, one of her first questions was as to the
latest dramatic piece by Sophocles. I at once saw that the Queen
wanted to impress her _entourage_ with her great literary abilities. I
gave her some news about Sophocles, whereupon she turned round to her
one-breasted she-warriors and said with a superior smile:
"'You must know that Sophocles is the latest star in Athenian comedy.'
"She mixed you up, O Sophocles, with Aristophanes. With the American
flour dealer's wife my experience was as follows: He had made my
acquaintance in a bar-room, and invited me to his house. On the way
there he said to me:
"'My missus is quite a linguist. She talks French like two natives. Do
talk to her French.'
"When we arrived at the house and entered the drawing-room, a rather
handsome woman rose from an arm-chair, and stepping up to me said
something that sounded like '_Monsieur, je suis ravie de faire votre
connaissance_'; I thanked her, also in French, when suddenly she bowed
over me and whispered in American fifes:
"'Don't continue, that's all I know.'
"When I left, the husband accompanied me to the door. Before I took
leave, he twinkled with his right eye, and asked me with a knowing
look, 'Well, sir, what do you think of the linguistic range of my
madame?'
"I did not quite know what to reply. At last I said: 'Like a true
soldier she fights on the borderland.'
"One of the strangest things to note in London society is the
fascination exercised by American women on Englishmen. Many of the
really intelligent men among the English are practically lost as
soon as the American woman begins playing with the little lasso of
thin ropes which she carries about her in the shape of an acquired
brightness and a studied vivacity. The most glaring defects of those
women do not seem to exist for the average Englishman. He takes her
loud brightness for French _esprit_ dished up to him in intelligible
English. Her total lack of self-restraint and modesty he takes for a
charming _abandon_. The real fact is that he is afraid of her. She
may have many a bump: she certainly has not that of reverence. Her
irreverent mind makes light of the _grandezza_ of Englishmen, and thus
cows him by his fear of making himself ridiculous.
"The first American woman (--_sit venia verbo_, as you would say, O
Cicero--) I met in London was one married to an English lord. She was
tall, well-built, with rich arms and hips, an expressive head, very
fond of the arts, more especially of music. Even her head, which was
a trifle square, indicated that. When she learnt that I really was the
famous Alcibiades, her excitement knew no bounds. She was good enough
to explain it to me:
"'Just fancy that! Alcibiades! (They pronounce my name Elkibidees.) I
am simply charmed! I have so far every year introduced some new and
striking personage into drawing-rooms, in order to stun the natives of
this obsolete island. I have brought into fashion one-legged dancers;
three-legged calves; single-minded thought-readers; illusionists;
disillusionists; disemotionists; dancers classical, mediæval, and
hyper-modern; French lectures on the isle of Lesbos, after a series of
discourses on the calves of the legs of Greek goddesses in marble; not
to forget my unique course of lectures given at the drawing-room of the
dearest of all duchesses, on the history of _décolletage_.
"'This year, to be quite frank with you, Mr Elkibidees, I meant to
arrange in the magnificent drawing-room of an Oriental English lady,
the uniquest and at the same time the boldest exhibition ever offered
to the dear nerves of any class of women. I cannot quite tell you what
it was going to be. I can only faintly indicate that it was to be a
collection of all the oldest as well as latest inventions securing the
tranquillity of enjoying just one child in the family. This, I have no
doubt, would have been the greatest sensation of the season.
"'The city of Manchester and the town of Leeds would have publicly
protested against so "immoral" an exhibition. Of course their
councillors would have done so after careful study of the things
exhibited. Three bishops would have threatened to preach publicly in
Hyde Park; while five archdeacons would have volunteered to be the
honorary secretaries of so interesting an exhibition.
"'I communicated the idea to Father Bowan, a virulent Jesuit, who
in the creepiest of _capucinades_, delivered on most Sundays during
the season, gives us the most delightful shivers of repentance, and
likewise many an inkling of charming vice of which we did not know
anything before we learned it from his pure lips. He was delighted.
"Do, my lady, do do it. I am just a little short of horrors, and your
exhibition will give me excellent material for at least four Sundays.
I hope you have not forgotten to illustrate by wax figures certain
methods, far more efficient than any instrument can be, and most
completely enumerated and described in the works of members of our
holy Order, such as Suarez, Sanchez, Escobar, and others. Should you
not have these works, I will send you an accurate abridgment of their
principal statements of facts."
"'When I heard the Rev. Father talk like that, I could scarcely control
myself with enthusiasm in anticipating the huge sensation my exhibition
was sure to make. It would have been the best fed, the best clad, and
the most enlightened sensation ever made in England since the battle of
Hastings. I really thought that nothing greater could be imagined.
"'And yet, when I now come to think what a draw you will be, Mr Elki,
if properly taken in hand, duly advertised, adroitly paragraphed,
constantly interviewed, and occasionally leadered,--when I think of
all that, I cannot but think that I shall have in you the greatest
catch that has ever been in any country under any sun. In fact, I have
my plan quite ready.
"'I will announce a big reception, "to meet" you. Some ladies will,
by request, arrive in Greek dress. The public orator of one of the
great Universities will address you in Greek, and you will reply in
the same language. Then three of the prettiest daughters of earls and
marquesses will dance the dance of the Graces, after which there will
be a dramatic piece made by Hall Caine and Shaw, each of them writing
alternate pages, the subject of which will be the Thirty Years' War, in
which you excelled so much.'
"I interrupted her," said Alcibiades, "remarking that the Thirty Years'
War was two thousand years after my time; my war was the Peloponnesian
War.
"'Very well,' she exclaimed, 'the Peloponnesian War. I do not care
which. Hall Caine will praise everything in connection with war, in his
best _Daily Nail_ style. He is, you know, our leading light. He always
wants to indulge in great thoughts, and would do so too, but for the
awkward fact that he cannot find any.
"'Shaw, on the other hand, will cry down in choicest Gaelic all the
glories of war. It will be the biggest fun out.
"'And then, _entre nous_, could you not bring with you a Lais, a Phryne
or two, in their original costumes as they allured all you naughty
Greeks in times bygone? It would be charmingly revolting. When I dimly
represent to myself how the young eagles of society will tremble with
pleasure at the thought of adding to their lists of conquests, in pink
and white, a Corinthian or Athenian _demi-mondaine_ of two thousand
years ago, I feel that I am a Personality.
"'If I could offer such an unheard-of opportunity I should get first
leaders in the _Manchester Guardian_ and mild rebukes, full of secret
zest, in the godly _Guardian_; let alone other noble papers read by the
goody-goody ones. The _Record_ would send me a testimonial signed by
the leading higher critics. I should be the heroine of the day and of
the night.'"
The gods and heroes encouraged Alcibiades by their gay laughter to tell
them all that happened at the "At Home" of his American lady friend,
and he continued as follows:
"When the evening of the Greek _soirée_ came, I went to the
drawing-room in company with Phryne and Lais, who were most charmingly
dressed as flute-girls. When we entered the large room we saw a vast
assembly of women and men, mostly dressed in the preposterous fashion
of the little ones. The women looked like zoological specimens, some
resembling Brazilian butterflies, others reptiles, others again snakes
or birds of prey. The upper part of their bodies was uncovered,
no matter whether the rest of the body had gone through countless
campaigns enlivened by numerous capitulations, or whether it had just
expanded into the buds of rosy spring. The men looked like the clowns
in our farces. They wore a costume that no Greek slave would have
donned. It was all black and all of the same cut. Instead of looking
enterprising, they all looked like undertakers. Each of them made
a nervous attempt to appear as inoffensive, and as self-effacing as
possible; just like undertakers entering the house where a person had
died.
"When we entered the room the whole assembly rose and cried:
'Cairo--Cairo!' (they were told to cry _Chaire_--but in vain). I
could distinctly hear remarks such as these: 'How weird!'--'Is it not
uncanny?'--'It makes me feel creepy!' After a few minutes there was
a deep silence, and an elderly gentleman came up through the middle
of the room and, bowing first to us and then to the people assembled,
stepped up to the platform and began a speech in a strange language,
which I vaguely remembered having heard before.
"Phryne suddenly began to giggle, and so irresistible was her laughter
that both Lais and I could not but join her, especially when in words
broken by continuous laughter she told us:
"'The old gent pretends to speak Athenian Greek!'
"It was indeed too absurd for words. There was especially that vulgar
sound _i_ constantly recurring where we never dreamt of using such a
sound; and our beautiful _ypsilon_ (γ) he pronounced like the English
_u_, which is like serving champagne in soup-plates. When he stumbled
over an _ou_, he pronounced it with a sound to which dentists are
better accustomed than any Athenian ever was, and our deep and manly
_ch_ (χ) he castrated down to a lisping _k_. I remember Carians in
Asia Minor who talked like that. Our noble and incomparable language,
orchestral, picturesque, sculptural, became like the Palace of Minos
which they are excavating at present: in its magnificent halls, eaten
by weather and worm, one sees only poor labourers and here and there a
directing mind.
"I imagined that the good man meant by his speech to welcome me back
into the world, and so when my turn to answer him came, I got up and,
leaning partly on Phryne and partly on Lais, who stood near me, I
replied as follows, after speaking for a little while in Attic, in the
language of the country: