THE SENTIMENTAL GIRL.
This is the girl who has "dear five hundred friends," to borrow a
phrase from Cowper, and whose friendship divided among so many yields
so small a part to each that Coleridge will not call it friendship, but
calls it "a feminine friendism."
This is the girl who kisses other girls with an indiscriminateness
which made a man say lately, "It makes men envious." To which--alack
and alas!--the answer made was, "It's meant to do that!"
This is the girl who uses words of the kind that Oliver Wendell Holmes
called "highly oxygenated," but which are, if the plain truth be said
of them, the weak expression of weak feeling.
This is the girl who, even when she is least impious, may forget that
only the Divinity should be adored; who is never without what a witty
woman writer has called "a gentle sorrow"; whose favourite words are
"so" and "oh"; and who writes at an early age a novel the heroine of
which--I quote from a manuscript beside me--has "hair of the colour of
Aventurine glass, of a lovely brownish-red tint with golden flashes in
it," which hair turns white with fright in a single night.
[Illustration: GOLDEN FLASHES]
This is the girl who sometimes lays herself open to the terrible charge
levelled by a writer on the emotions at Sterne and Byron and others of
the school of literature to which they belonged. Says Professor Bain,
"Some of the sentimental writers, such as Sterne and Byron, seem to
have had their capacities of tenderness excited only by ideal objects,
and to have been very hard-hearted towards real persons."
This is the girl who said dolefully the other day, "Oh, yes, one meets
heaps of men, but they don't propose!" Concerning which speech one can
only say that it might with advantage have been left unmade.
This, finally, is the girl whose letters show up the untenability of
Miss Bingley's rule, as set forth in Jane Austen's novel _Pride and
Prejudice_.
"It is a rule with me"--so said Miss Bingley--"that a person who can
write a long letter with ease cannot write ill."
The average sentimental girl can write a long letter with ease, and
can write ill. In a long letter by such a girl which has been placed
at my disposal, she constitutes herself petitioner for a poor family,
of which she writes, "They are getting into despair as to how to meet
their rent, much less food. It is a fearful idea of people in one's own
class wanting for food." The sentiment of that is rather narrow, and
the wording of it is execrable.
Tact is not always but is sometimes denied to the young sentimental
letter-writer. "I have been reading"--so wrote some little time ago
a girl to a novelist--"your last book, and have fallen in love with
you, and now the thought has come into my head, 'Could not I collect
together my feeble attempts at writing and publish them?'"
The writer who is informed that his work has suggested the collecting
together of feeble attempts and publishing them is made the recipient
of a dubious compliment.
Very often the inducement to do a thing as set forth by the
girl-sentimentalist is of a kind not calculated to weigh strongly with
persons less sentimental.
A lady of high accomplishments and keen relish of social intercourse
asserts that while on the staff of a London High School she suffered
for years from the invitations of young girls who, in imploring her to
accept their family's hospitality, never failed to emphasise the fact
that there would be "nobody else invited."
There is a very general idea that the girl-sentimentalist totally
ignores the practical side of life. That is not so.
"I have a short wait here," so writes a girl from the Welsh border.
"This letter is the last I shall write on English soil, and I want
it to be to you. In spite of good resolutions, I have cried without
ceasing since I left ---- Not even the evident amusement of a small
boy, my _vis-a-vie_" (spelling is not a strong point with this writer)
"could dry up those tears. Dignity doesn't help one to forget an aching
heart. I must fly now to see to my luggage."
The heart in a girl like that is balanced by the head, and the same
thing is true of the girl-writer of the next letter-extract:
"I look often at his picture upon my table, and wonder why it is
there. I am so exquisitely happy, and yet so keenly aware of my own
shortcomings. This great new thing that has come into my life makes me
feel my own unworthiness. Tell me of all my misspellings, please."
[Illustration: THIS GREAT NEW THING]
The misspellings of the average girl-sentimentalist are legion; in
fact, I have heard a schoolmistress say--the speech having been
addressed by her to a younger schoolmistress--"Put down sentimentality;
it leads to misspelling."
From this schoolmistress I have it that the girl who can spell
"parallel," "ridiculous," and "predilection," is rarely an incurable
sentimentalist.
My own experience has been that it is the sentimental girl who
writes--and says--"rearly" and "warfted," and the following curiosities
in spelling are culled from the--unpublished--works of girl-novelists:
"He had suffered the yolk of tyranny."
"She carried a little book, with guilt edges, a prayer-book."
[Illustration: THE YOLK OF TYRANNY]
The girl who describes a prayer-book as a book with "guilt" edges is
almost guilty of profanation. Tell her this, and so far is this sort
of girl from being a hardened sinner that the strong likelihood is
that she will never again commit this error. An appeal to her heart is
always better than an appeal to her head. This fact was realised by
the Israelite who said to a young maiden of this type who had written
"sinagog" for "synagogue," "You must not spell the name of our temple
like that. It is not only incorrect, but very unkind spelling."
"I will never spell so again," was the young maiden's answer.
Sometimes the defence of her spelling put forward by the girl
of sentimental rather than logical bias is very remarkable.
"'Court-material,'" said recently a young English damsel who had
written "court-material" for "court-martial," "makes quite as much
sense to me as 'court-martial.'"
The objection to this form is, of course, that it does not make quite
as much sense to other people.
It may be asked now, Does the non-sentimental girl experience no
difficulties in connection with spelling? Certainly she does. She was
heard the other day saying that the word assassination had been a
standing difficulty to her until another girl told her that it began
with "two asses" as thus, ass-ass-ination. The non-sentimental girl has
also been known to say, looking up from a book--
[Illustration: UNDER A BAD SPELL]
"Hullo, here's 'wobble' spelt not with an 'o' but with an
'a'--'wabble.' Now I wonder which is the right spelling."
This is perhaps the place in which to say that there is nothing more
difficult than to determine what forms the line of demarcation between
the sentimental and the non-sentimental girl. There are persons who
assert that a girl who uses the interjection Hullo! may be safely
termed non-sentimental, but that is so far from being true that among
the girl-readers of this paper there will be one with whom Hullo! is a
favourite expletive, and who said, this summer, as a full-blown rose
which she was presenting to a person greatly loved by her fell in a
shower of petals to the ground, "Even the roses fall at your feet."
That was surely the language of sentiment.
Others assert that girls who wear men's collars with men's neckties may
safely be dubbed non-sentimental, but it was a girl in boy's attire to
the waist whom the writer of this paper heard say in reference to a
beautiful woman to whom she gave the whole homage of the girl's heart
that beat under the boyish garb that she favoured, "She is ordered by
her doctor to Buxton to drink the waters. Happy waters!"
That was surely the language of sentiment.
If there be aught in a name, it is to be regretted that Angelina is
no longer a name much given in baptism, and that no poet of this day
follows him who sang in praise of "the dear Amanda." Not that Angelina
or Amanda is the best possible name for a sentimental girl. No; such a
girl should be called Delia. Mr. Henley has given the reason why--
"Sentiment hallows the vowels in Delia."
To return to the sentimental girl as writer. Misspellings, it has been
stated, are legion with her. Of other marks by which you shall know her
a leading one is that she has a tendency to write all abstract nouns,
starting with "love," with capital initials; she writes impassioned
postcards, favours such obscure phrasing as "farewell, but not
good-bye," has been known to bring a letter to a close with the words,
"Ever yours always lovingly," and to send "much best love."
To sum up, however, the sentimental girl must not be too harshly
condemned. To one and other of us she has signed herself "Yours ever"
and has been ours for a day; this has made us feel bitter. To one and
other of us she has said, using words which are used by Shakespeare,
who, one feels quite certain, heard them from a girl-sentimentalist,
"I love thee best, oh, most best, believe it," and, having said that
to us, has been heard by us saying that to another; this has made us
feel jealous. In bitterness and in jealousy we are apt to misjudge the
girl-sentimentalist, thinking hard thoughts of her, saying harsh things
of her, instead of being right happy to be of those to whom she makes
her Shakespearian protestations. Shakespeare is very good in print, but
he is very much better from young lips.
Some people are greatly alarmed by the spectacle of a girl who appears
to be without sentiment. This girl's heart is wrapped in a cool outer
shell, like the world, but, like the world, it has, be sure, a hot
nucleus. One could not be a girl, worth the name of girl, and this
thing be different. To have a heart full of love in one's body is not
to be sentimental. To be sentimental is to have a heart full of loves
and likes, and to wear it on one's sleeve.
(_To be continued._)
"OUR HERO."
A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.
BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of "Sun, Moon and Stars," "The Girl at the
Dower House," etc.