We are all familiar with the hoary old dictum that the public has no
concern with the private lives of the show folk. I must ask leave to
differ. I must insist that the public has a most serious interest in
the chastity of girls and the fidelity of wives. It is not good for
the public that its women be taught by conspicuous example that to
her who possesses a single talent, or any number of talents, a life
of shame is no bar to public adulation. Every young and inexperienced
woman believes herself to have some commanding quality which properly
fostered will bring her fame. If she knows that she can do nothing
else she thinks that she can write poetry. Is not the father mad who
shows his ambitious daughter how little men really care for virtue—how
tolerant they are of vice if it be gilded with genius? Worse and most
shameful of all, women who clutch away their skirts from contact with
some poor devil of a girl who having soiled herself is unable to sing
herself out of the mire, will take their pure young girls to see the
world worshiping at the feet of a wanton and her paramour because,
forsooth, both are gifted and one is beautiful. Let these tender
younglings lay well to heart the lesson in charity. Let them not forget
that in their parents’ judgment an uncommon physical formation, joined
with an exceptional talent, excuses an immoral life.
Talent? Beauty alone is all-sufficient. Was not the whole eastern half
of this continent, at one time, overhung with clouds of incense burned
at the shrine of Beauty unadorned with virtue? Did not the western
half give it hospitable welcome and set the wreath upon a brow still
reeking of a foreign lecher’s royal kisses and the later salutes of
an impossible gambler? She was not even an actress—she could play
nothing but the devil. The foundation of her fame and fortune was
scandal—scandal lacking even the excuse of love. She had the sagacity
to boast of a distinction that she enjoyed in common with a hundred
less thrifty dames. She knew the shortest cut to the American heart
and pocket. She knew that American fathers, husbands, brothers, sons
and lovers would be so base as to come and bring her gold, and that
American mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and sweethearts would be
bad enough to accompany them, to gaze without a blush at the posings of
a simpleton recommended by a prince. She gathered her sheaves and went
away. She came back to the re-ripening harvest, hoping that God would
postpone the destruction of a corrupt land until she could get out of
it.
Heaven forbid that I should set myself up as a censor of any offenders
save those who have the hardihood to continue infamous; I only beg to
point out that when Christ shielded the woman taken in adultery he did
not tell her that if she were a good singer she might go her way and
sin more. That is how I answer the ever-ready sneer about “casting
the first stone.” That is how I cast it. If the fallen woman, finding
herself possessed of a single talent, had gone into business as a show
without reforming her private morals Christ would not have been found
standing all night in line to buy tickets for himself and the Blessed
Virgin.
I am for preserving the ancient, primitive distinction between
right and wrong. The virtues of Socrates, the wisdom of Aristotle,
the examples of Marcus Aurelius and Jesus Christ are good enough to
engage my admiration and rebuke my life. From my fog-scourged and
plague-smitten morass I lift reverent eyes to the shining summits of
eternal truth, where they stand; I strain my senses to catch the law
that they deliver. In every age and clime vice and folly have shared
the throne of a double dominance, dictating customs and fashions. At
no time has the devil been idle, but his freshest work few eyes are
gifted with the faculty to discover. We trace him where the centuries
have hardened his tracks into history, but round about us his noiseless
footfalls awaken no sense of his near activity.
The subject is too serious to be humorously discussed. This
glorification of the world’s higher harlotage is one of the great
continental facts that no ingenuity, no sophistry, no sublimity of
lying can circumnavigate. It marks a civilization that is ripe and
rotten. It characterizes an age that has lost the landmarks of right
reason. These actors and actresses of untidy lives—they reek audibly.
We should not speak of going to see them; “I am going to smell Miss
Molocha Montflummery in ‘Juliet’”—that would adequately describe the
moral situation. Brains and hearts these persons have none; they are
destitute of manners, modesty and sense. The sight of their painted
faces, the memory of their horrible slang, their simian cleverness,
their vulgar “_aliases_,” their dissolute lives, half emotion and
half wine—these are a sickness to any cleanly soul.
Moreover, I advance the belief that any woman who publicly, for gain
or glory, charity or caprice, makes public exhibition of any talent
or grace that she may happen to have, maculates the chastity of her
womanhood, and is thenceforth unworthy of a manly love. No man of
sensibility but feels a twinge on reading his wife’s, or his sister’s,
or his daughter’s name in print; none but trembles to hear it upon
the lips of strangers. You might easily prove the absurdity of this
feeling; but she is the wisest, and cleanest, and sweetest, and best
beloved who is not at the pains to disregard it. Gentlemen, charge your
glasses—here’s a health to the woman that is not a show.
1893.