pages of a woman's novel; far rarer than to meet with a
flesh-and-blood young lady in the pages of a man's. They are all
either prigs, ruffians, or curled darlings; each of whom a man longs
to kick. They are goody men of such exalted morality that Sir Galahad
himself might take a lesson from them. Or they are brutes with the
well-worn square jaw and beetling brow, who translate into the milder
action of modern life the savage's method of wooing a woman by first
knocking her senseless and then carrying her off. Or they are
impossible light-weights, with small hands and artistic
tendencies--men who moon about a good deal, and are sure to love the
wrong woman in a helpless, drifting sort of way, as if it were quite
the right and manly thing to do to let themselves fall under the
dominion of a passion which a little resolution could overcome.
Sometimes, for a difference, these light-weights are men of tremendous
pluck and quality of muscle, able to thrash a burly bargee twice their
weight and development with as much ease as a steel sword can cut
through one of pith. The female crowd of present novel-writers repeat
these four types with undeviating constancy, so that we have learnt
them all by heart; and after the first outline indicative of their
attributes, we can tell who they are as certainly as we can tell
Minerva by her owl, St. Catharine by her wheel, Jupiter by his
thunderbolts, or St. Sebastian by his arrows. But in what form soever
they elect to portray their hero, they are sure to make his love for
woman his best and his dominant quality.
Few women know anything of the intricacies of a man's life and
emotion, save such as are connected with love. Yet, though love is
certainly the strongest passion in youth, it is by no means all
powerful in maturity and middle age. But the lady's hero of fifty and
upwards is as much under the influence of his erotic fancies as if he
were a boy of eighteen; and life holds nothing worth living for if he
does not get the woman with whom he has fallen in love. It seems
impossible for a woman to understand the loftier side of a man's
nature. She knows nothing, subjectively, of the political aims, the
love for abstract truth, the desire for human progress, which take him
out of the narrow domestic sphere, and make him comparatively
indifferent to the life of sense and emotion altogether. And when she
sees this she does not tolerate it. When Newton used his lady's little
finger for a tobacco-stopper, he dug his grave in the female garden of
the soul; and women rarely appreciate either Dr. Johnson or Dean
Swift, because of the absence in the one of anything like romantic
tenderness and its perversion in the other. All they care for is that
men shall be tender and true to them; idealizing as lovers; as
husbands constant and indulgent; and for this they will condone any
amount of crookedness or meanness which does not make its way into the
home. If he is complying and caressing there, he may be what fate and
the foul fiend like to make him elsewhere, so long as he is not openly
unfaithful and never gets drunk.
All the false glitter of the Corsair school is due solely to the
capacity for loving ascribed to the heroes thereof. Though a man's
name be 'linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes,' the one
virtue, being love, outweighs the thousand crimes in the estimation of
women and of the more effeminate kind of poets; and so long as the
'heart is framed for softness,' it may be 'warped to wrong' without
doing any Conrad much injury with them. The absolute rightness and
justness of a man count for little in comparison with his tenderness;
and we know of no woman whose ideal man would be one neither a saint
nor a lover.
The reason why the men of a softer civilization are in general so
successful with the women of the harder and more northerly countries
is because of the comparative softness of their manners and the larger
place which love and love-making hold among them. All who know France
know the Frenchman's jealous hatred of Italian men; which hatred we
share here in England, only we add the Frenchman to the list. We
affect to despise the arts by which the men succeed and the women are
gained over; but we cannot deny their potency, nor shut our eyes to
the esteem in which they are held by women. This is not saying that
the chivalrous habit of deference taught by civilization is not a good
thing in itself, but it is saying that it is not worth the stronger
and more essentially masculine qualities. But to women the art of
love-making is worth all the other virtues in a lump; indeed, it
comprises them all, and without it the best are valueless. It is the
crown and glory of life--the one thing to live for; and where it is
not, there is no life worthy of the name. Not that women are
insensible to the charms of public fame. If a man has made himself a
great reputation, he may throw the handkerchief where he likes, and he
will find plenty of women to pick it up. In this case they are not too
rigid in their requirements; and if his ways are a little hard and
cold, they hold themselves indemnified for the loss of personal
tenderness by the glory which surrounds a name which is now theirs. A
woman must be exceptionally silly if she cannot take comfort in her
husband's public repute for her disappointment in his private manners.
But this is only with recognized and fully successful heroes. As a
rule, no amount of manly virtues will excuse the want of the softer
graces; and the finest fellow that ever lived, the true _anax andrôn_
among men, must be content to be measured by women merely according to
his own estimate of them, and the power which the passion of love has
over him.
Nothing surprises men more than the odd ignorance of women concerning
them; and half the unhappiness in married life, at least in England,
springs from that ignorance. They cannot be made to understand the
differences between a man's nature and requirements and their own; and
they condemn all that they cannot understand. In those few rational
homes where men's sports and gatherings, undisturbed by the presence
of petticoats, are not made occasions for suspicion nor remonstrance,
the stock of love and happiness with which married life began is more
like the widow's cruse than elsewhere; but unfortunately for both
husbands and wives, these homes are rare; while those are common where
an extramural game of billiards in the evening is occasion for tears
or pouting, and deadly offence is taken at club dinners or a week's
shooting. The consequence of which is deceit or dissension; and
sometimes both.
The woman's ideal man has none of these erratic tendencies. His
business done, he comes home with the docility of a well-bred pointer
sent to heel, and finds energy enough after his hard day's work for a
variety of caressing cares which make him more precious in her eyes
than all the tact, the temper, the judgment, the uprightness he has
manifested in his dealings with the outside world. And the domesticity
which she claims from her husband she demands from her son. Latchkeys
are her abomination, and the 'gas left burning' is as a beacon-light
on the way of destruction. She has the profoundest suspicion of all
the men whom her boy calls his friends. She never knows into what
mischief they may lead him; but she is sure it is mischief if they
keep him away from his home in the evening. She would prescribe the
same social restraints and moral regimen for her son as for her
daughter, and she thinks the energies of masculine nature require no
wider field and no looser rein. But though she likes those tame and
tender men whom she can tie up close to her apron-strings and lovingly
imprison in the narrow domain of home, she succumbs without a struggle
to the square-jawed brute of the Rochester type, the man who dominates
her by the mere force of superior strength; and she is not too severe
on Don Juan, if only she can flatter herself that she is the best
loved--and the last. That these are the men most liked by women is
shown both by their own novels and by daily observation; and it seems
to us that, among the many subjects for extended study of late
proposed for women, a better acquaintance with men's minds, a higher
regard for the nobler kind of man and the ability to accept love as
only one of many qualities, and not always the strongest nor the most
praiseworthy of his impulses, would not be out of place.
_HOTEL LIFE IN ENGLAND._
If any one wants to see human nature stripped of certain conventional
disguises and reduced to some of its primitive elements, let him try a
boarding-house or family hotel for a while. If not always a
profitable, it is generally an amusing, exhibition of character; and
materials are never wanting to the student of human life. The
predominating quality of most people will be found to be selfishness.
There is a kind of fighting for self that goes on which is very funny,
because concentrated on such mean objects. Who shall have the most
comfortable chair, the best place at the window, the cosiest by the
fire--such are the favourite prizes to be gained by superior craft or
boldness; and the ladies chiefly interested have recourse to a series
of manoeuvres to circumvent their rivals, or steal a march on them
unprepared, more ingenious at times than well-bred. Then there is the
lady who appropriates the only footstool, and the lady who disputes
the appropriation and sometimes 'comes to words' on the same; the
couple who monopolize the bagatelle board, and the couple waiting
savagely for their turn, which comes only when the gong sounds for
dinner or the sky clears up for a walk. The quartet who settle
themselves to whist every evening as to a regular part of the business
of life, without caring to inquire whether others would like to cut in
or not, are more justified in their exclusiveness; else it may happen
that a Club man who can make his bad cards beat his opponent's good
ones is mated with a partner who inquires anxiously 'Is that the queen
to beat?' then, with the king in his hand, quietly drops the deuce,
and gives the adversaries the game. All these however, are regarded
with equally hostile feelings by the rest of the community; and sharp
sermons are administered on the sin of selfishness by the bolder sort,
with the application too evident to be misunderstood.
At meal times the same kind of odd fighting for self goes on. The
table is set as for a dinner party; but it is the hands of Esau and
the voice of Jacob. Instead of the silent waiting for one's turn, with
the quiet acceptance of fate in the shape of the butler and his
underlings, that belongs to a private dinner-table, here, at the
_table d'hôte_, there is an incessant call for this or that out of
time; an angry demand to be served sooner or better than one's
neighbours; a greedy 'taking care of number one' at the head of the
table that excites as greedy apprehensions in number two at the foot;
a running fire of criticism on the dishes--that does not help the
illusion of the private dinner-party; and, with people who live much
about in hotels, there is a continual comparison with this and that,
here and there, always to the disadvantage of the place and the thing
under present consideration.
Among the inmates are sure to be some who are fastidious and peevish
about their food; women who come down late and complain that things
are not as fresh as when first served up; men who always want fried
fish when the management has provided boiled, and boiled when the
_menu_ says fried; dyspeptic bodies who cannot eat bread unless it is
two days old, and bodies defiant of dyspepsia who will not eat it at
all unless it is hot from the oven; plain feeders who turn up their
noses at the made dishes, and dainty livers who call simple roast and
boiled coarse. And for all these societies the management has to cater
impartially; and probably miss the reward of thanks at the end.
The feelings of people are expressed with the same kind of defiant
individualism as are their tastes. There are the married people who
make love to each other in public, and the married people who make
anything but love; the women who sit and adore their husbands like
worshippers before a shrine, and who like the world to be conscious of
their devotion; the men who call their wives pet names for the benefit
of the whole table, and even indulge in playful little familiarities
which make the girls toss their heads and the young men laugh; and the
happy pair who quarrel without restraint, and say snappish and
disagreeable things to each other in audible voices, to the
embarrassment of all who hear them. There is the rakish Lothario who
neglects his own better half and devotes himself to some other man's,
with a lofty disregard of appearances; and there is the coquettish
little wife who treats her husband very much like a dog and very
little like her lord, and who carries on her flirtations in the most
audacious manner under his eyes, and apparently with his sanction.
And, having his sanction, she defies the world about her to take
umbrage at her proceedings.
As for flirtations indeed, these are always going on in hotel life.
Sometimes it is flirtation between a single man and a single woman,
against which no one has a word to say on the score of propriety,
though some think it will never come to anything and some think it
will, and all scan curiously the signs of progressive heating, or the
process of cooling off. Sometimes it is a more questionable matter;
the indiscreet behaviour of a young wife, unprotected by her husband,
who takes up furiously with some stranger met at the _table d'hôte_ by
chance, and of whose character or antecedents she is utterly ignorant.
This is the kind of things that sets the whole hotel by the ears. Prim
women ask severely, 'How long has Mrs. So-and-So known Major
Fourstars?' and their faces, when told, are a sufficient commentary on
the text. Others, in seeming innocence, call them by the same name,
and express intense surprise when informed they are not man and wife,
but acquaintances of only a week's standing. Others again say it is
shameful to see them, and wonder why some one does not write home to
the poor husband, and speak of doing that kind office themselves; and
others watch them with a cynical half-amused attention, interpreting
their actions by the broadest glossary, and carefully guarding their
wives or daughters from any association with either of the offenders.
Whatever else fails, this kind of vulgar hotel intrigue is always on
hand at sea-side places and the like; sometimes ending disastrously,
sometimes dying out in favour of a new flame, but always causing
discomfort while it lasts, and annoying every one connected therewith
save the sinners themselves.
The women who dress to excess are balanced by the women who do not
dress at all. The first are the walking advertisements of fashion, the
last might be mistaken for the canvassers of old clothes' shops. The
one class oppress by their magnificence, the other disgust by their
dowdiness; and each ridicules the other to the indifferent third
party, who, holding the scales of justice evenly, condemns both alike.
Then there are the ugly women who manifestly think themselves
attractive, and the pretty women who are too conscious of their
charms. To be sure there are also ugly women who are content to know
themselves unpersonable, as there are pretty women who are content to
know that they are pretty, just as they know that they are alive, but
who think no more about it, and never trouble themselves nor their
neighbours by their affectations. There are the dear motherly women
beyond middle age, scant of breath and incapable of exertion, who sit
in the drawing-room, placid and asthmatic, and to whom every one pays
an affectionate reverence; and there are the elderly women who chirrup
about like young things, and skip up and down steep places with
commendable agility, and who are by no means disposed to let old age
have the victory for many a year to come. There are the mothers who
make their lumpish children sick with a multiplicity of good things,
and the mothers who never give a moment's thought to the comfort nor
the well-being of theirs; the mothers who fidget their little ones and
every one else by their over-anxiety, their over caution, their
incessant preoccupation and fear, and the mothers who let theirs
wander, and who take it quite comfortably if they do not come in even
at night-fall; the mothers who prank their children out like Mayday
Jacks and Jills, and the mothers who let theirs go free in rags and
dirt, till you are puzzled to believe them better born than the
gutter. And with all this there is the plague of the children
themselves--the babies who cry all night; the two-year-olds who scream
all day; the rampaging boys who haunt the stairs and passages and who
will slide down the banisters on a wet afternoon; the clattering
little troop playing at horses before your bedroom door, while you are
lying down with a sick headache; and the irruption into the
drawing-room of the young barbarians who have no nursery of their
own.
Quite recent widows with fluffy heads and no sign of their bereaved
state, come to the hotel flanked by those of a couple of years'
standing, still dressed in the deepest weeds, with the significant cap
cherished as a sacred symbol. Brisk young widows appeal to men's
admiration by their brightness, and languid young widows excite
sympathy by their despair. Pretty young widows of small endowment,
whose chances you would back at long odds, are handicapped against
plain-featured widows, whose desolation you know no one would ever ask
to relieve were it not for those Three per cents. with which they are
credited. And the widows of hotel life are always a feature worth
studying. There are many who do so study them;--chiefly the old
bachelor of well-preserved appearance and active habits, who has
constituted himself the squire of dames to the establishment, and who
takes up first with one and then another of the unprotected females as
they appear, and escorts them about the neighbourhood. He never makes
friends with men, but he is hand-in-glove with all the pretty women;
and his critical judgment on them on their first appearance is
considered final. As a rule he does not care to attach himself so
exclusively to one, be she maid, wife, or widow, as to get himself
talked about; but sometimes he falls into the clutches of a woman of
more tenacity than he has bargained for, and, man of irreproachable
respectability as he is, drifts into a flirtation which the hotel
takes to mean an offer or an intrigue, according to the state of the
lady concerned. As the hotel-life bachelor is generally a man of
profound selfishness, the discomfort that ensues does no great harm;
and it sometimes happens that it is diamond cut diamond, which is a
not unrighteous retribution.
For the most part the people haunting hotels and living at
_tables d'hôte_ are not specially charming, but among them may
sometimes be met men and women of broad views and liberal minds,
cultivated and thoughtful, whose association time ripens into
friendship. They stand out in bold relief among the vulgar people who
talk loud, stare hard, ask impertinent questions, and discuss the
dinners and the company in a broad provincial accent; among the silent
people who sit gloomily at table as if oppressed with debt or
assisting at a funeral; among the betting-men who flood the house at
race-time, making it echo with the jargon of the Turf and the stable;
among the quarrelsome people who snap and snarl at every subject
started, like dogs growling over a bone; among the religious people
who will testify in season and out of season, and the political people
who will argue; the stupid people who have not two ideas, and the
ignorant people who do not understand anything beyond the educational
range of a child or a peasant; the conventional people who oppress one
with their strained proprieties, and the doubtful people of whom no
one knows anything and every one suspects all. Among the _oi polloi_
of hotel life the really nice people shine conspicuous: and more than
one pleasant friendship which has lasted for life has been begun over
the soup and fish of a _table d'hôte_.
_OUR MASKS._
We should do badly, as things are ordered, if we went about the world
with our natural moral faces. Even stopping short of the extravagance
of betraying our most important secrets, as in a Palace of Truth, and
frankly telling men and women that we think them fools or bores, it is
difficult for the most honest person in society to do without
something of a mask in regard to minor matters. The old quarrel
between nature and art, and where the limits of each should extend,
has not yet got itself arranged; and it is doubtful whether it will
during the present dispensation. It may be put to rights in some
future state of human development, when the spiritualists will have it
all their own way and tell us exactly what we ought to do; but pending
this forecast of the millennium, we are obliged to have recourse to
art for the better concealment of our natural selves, and especially,
for the maintenance of that queer bundle of compromises and
conventions which we call society.
The oddest consequence of the artificial state in which we find
ourselves obliged to live is that nature looks like affectation, and
that the highest art is the most like nature of anything we know. It
is in drawing-rooms as on the stage. A thoroughly inartificial actor
would be a mere dummy, just as in the Greek theatre a man with his
natural face would have seemed mean and insignificant to the
spectators accustomed to fixed types of heroic size and set intention.
But he whose acting brings the house down because of its truth to
nature is he whose art has been the most profoundly studied, and with
whom the concealment of art has therefore been the most perfectly
attained. So in society. A man of thoroughly natural manners passes as
either morose or pert according to his mood--either stupid because
disinclined to exert himself, or obtrusive because in the humour to
talk. He means no offence, honest body! but he makes himself
disagreeable all the same. Such a man is the pest of his club, and the
nuisance of every drawing-room he enters. It matters little whether he
is constitutionally boorish or good-natured; he is natural; and his
naturalness comes like an ugly patch of frieze on the cloth of gold
with which the goddess of conventionality is draped.
Natural women too, may be found at times--women who demonstrate on
small occasions, sincerely no doubt, but excessively; women who skip
like young lambs when they are pleased and pout like naughty children
when they are displeased; who disdain all those little arts of dress
which conceal defects and heighten beauties, and who are always at war
with the fashions of the day; who despise those conventional graces
of manner which have come to be part of the religion of society,
contradicting point-blank, softening no refusal with the expression of
a regret they do not feel, yawning in the face of the bore, admiring
with the _naïveté_ of a savage whatever is new to them or pleasing.
Such women are not agreeable companions, however devoid of affectation
they may be, however stanch adherents to truth and things as they are,
according to their boast. The woman who has not a particle of
untrained spontaneity left in her and who has herself in hand on all
occasions, who gives herself to her company and is always collected,
graceful, and at ease, playing her part without a trip, but always
playing her part and never letting herself drop into uncontrolled
naturalness--this is the woman whom men agree to call, not only
charming, but thoroughly natural as well.
On the other hand, the untrained woman who speaks just as she thinks,
and who cares more to express her own sensations than to study those
of her companions, is sneered at as silly or underbred, as the current
sets; or perhaps as affected; her transparency, to which the world is
not accustomed and to which it does not wish to get accustomed,
puzzling the critics of their kind. Social naturalness, like perfect
theatrical representation, is everywhere the result of the best art;
that is, of the most careful training. It simulates self-forgetfulness
by the very perfection of its self-control, while untrained nature is
self-assertion at all corners, and is founded on the imperious
consciousness of personality.