I suppose most men felt, as I felt, the reasonableness of Mr. Justice
Bray's remarks the other day on the preference of women for bags
instead of pockets. A case was before him in which a woman had gone
into a shop, had put down her satchel containing her money and
valuables, turned to pick it up a little later, found it had been
stolen, and thereupon brought an action against the owners of the shop
for the recovery of her losses. The jury were unsympathetic, found
that in the circumstances the woman was responsible, and gave a verdict
against her.
Of course the jury were men, all of them prejudiced on this subject of
pockets. At a guess I should say that there were not fewer than 150
pockets in that jury-box, _and not one satchel_. You, madam, may
retort that this is only another instance of the scandal of this
man-ridden world. Why were there no women in that jury-box? Why are
all the decisions of the courts, from the High Court to the coroner's
court, left to the judgment of men? Madam, I share your indignation.
I would "comb-out" the jury-box. I would send half the jurymen, if not
into the trenches, at least to hoe turnips, and fill their places with
a row of women. Women are just as capable as men of forming an opinion
about facts, they have at least as much time to spare, and their point
of view is as essential to justice. What can there be more ridiculous,
for example, than a jury of men sitting for a whole day to decide the
question of the cut of a gown without a single woman's expert opinion
to guide them, or more unjust than to leave an issue between a man and
a woman entirely in the hands of men? Yes, certainly madam, I am with
you on the general question.
But when we come to the subject of pockets, I am bound to confess that
I am with the jury. If I had been on that jury I should have voted
with fervour for making the woman responsible for her own loss. If it
were possible for women to put their satchels down on counters, or the
seats of buses, or any odd place they thought of, and then to make some
innocent person responsible because they were stolen, there would be no
security for anybody. It would be a travesty of justice--a premium
upon recklessness and even fraud. Moreover, people who won't wear
pockets deserve to be punished. They ask for trouble and ought not to
complain when they get it.
I have never been able to fathom the obduracy of women in this matter
of pockets. It is not the only reflection upon their common-sense
which is implicit in their dress. If we were to pass judgment on the
relative intelligence of the sexes by their codes of costume, sanity
would pronounce overwhelmingly in favour of men. Imagine a man who
buttoned his coat and waistcoat down the back, so that he was dependent
on someone else to help dress him in the morning and unfasten him at
night, or who relied on such abominations as hooks-and-eyes scattered
over unattainable places, in order to keep his garments in position.
You cannot imagine such a man. Yet women submit to these incredible
tyrannies of fashion without a murmur, and talk about them as though it
was the hand of fate upon them. I have a good deal of sympathy with
the view of a friend of mine who says that no woman ought to have a
vote until she has won the enfranchisement of her own buttons.
Or take high-heeled boots. Is there any sight more ludicrous than the
spectacle of a woman stumbling along on a pair of high heels, flung out
of the perpendicular and painfully struggling to preserve her
equilibrium, condemned to take finicking little steps lest she should
topple over, all the grace and freedom of movement lost in an ugly
acrobatic feat? And when the feet turn in, and the high heels turn
over--heavens! I confess I never see high heels without looking for a
mindless face, and I rarely look in vain.
But the puzzle about the pockets is that quite sensible women go about
in a pocketless condition. I turned to Jane just now--she was sitting
by the fire knitting--and asked how many pockets she had when she was
fully dressed. "None," she said. "Pockets haven't been worn for years
and years, but now they are coming in--in an ornamental way." "In an
ornamental way?" said I. "Won't they carry anything?" "Well, you can
trust a handkerchief to them." "Not a purse?" "Good gracious, no. It
would simply ask to be stolen, and if it wasn't stolen in five minutes
it would fall out in ten." The case was stranger than I had thought.
Not to have pockets was bad enough; but to have sham pockets! Think of
it! We have been at war for three and a half years, and women are now
beginning to wear pockets "in an ornamental way," not for use but as a
pretty fal-lal, much as they might put on another row of useless
buttons to button nothing. And what is the result? Jane (I have full
permission to mention her in order to give actuality to this moral
discourse) spends hours looking for her glasses, for her keys, for the
letter that came this morning, for her purse, for her bag, for all that
is hers. And we, the devoted members of the family, spend hours in
looking for them too, exploring dark corners, probing the interstices
of sofas and chairs, rummaging the dishevelled drawers anew,
discovering the thing that disappeared so mysteriously last week or
last month and that we no longer want, but rarely the article that is
the very hub of the immediate wheel of things.
Now, I am different. I am pockets all over. I am simply agape with
pockets. I am like a pillar-box walking about, waiting for the postman
to come and collect things. All told, I carry sixteen pockets--none of
them ornamental, every one as practical as a time-table--pockets for
letters, for watch, for keys, for handkerchiefs, for tickets, for
spectacles (two pairs, long and short distance), for loose money, for
note-wallet, for diary and pocket-book--why, bless me, you can hardly
mention a thing I haven't a pocket for. And I would not do without one
of them, madam--not one. Do I ever lose things? Of course I lose
things. I lose them in my pockets. You can't possibly have as many
pockets as I have got without losing things in them. But then you have
them all the time.
That is the splendid thing about losing your property in your own
pockets. It always turns up in the end, and that lady's satchel left
on the counter will never turn up. And think of the surprises you get
when rummaging in your pockets--the letters you haven't answered, the
bills you haven't paid, the odd money that has somehow got into the
wrong pocket. When I have nothing else to do I just search my
pockets--all my pockets, those in the brown suit, and the grey suit,
and the serge suit, and my "Sunday best"--there must be fifty pockets
in all, and every one of them full of something, of ghosts of
engagements I haven't kept, and duties I haven't performed, and friends
I have neglected, of pipes that I have mourned as lost, and half
packets of cigarettes that by some miracle I have not smoked, and all
the litter of a casual and disorderly life. I would not part with
these secrecies for all the satchels in Oxford Street. I am my own
book of mysteries. I bulge with mysteries. I can surprise myself at
any moment I like by simply exploring my pockets. If I avoid exploring
them I know I am not very well. I know I am not in a condition to face
the things that I might find there. I just leave them there till I am
stronger--not lost, madam, as they would be in your satchel, but just
forgotten, comfortably forgotten. Why should one always be disturbing
the sleeping dogs in the kennels of one's pockets? Why not let them
sleep? Are there not enough troubles in life that one must go seeking
them in one's own pockets? And I have a precedent, look you. Did not
Napoleon say that if you did not look at your letters for a fortnight
you generally found that they had answered themselves?
And may I not in this connection recall the practice of Sir Andrew
Clarke, the physician of Mr. Gladstone, as recorded in the
reminiscences of Mr. Henry Holiday? At dinner one night Sir Andrew was
observed to be drinking champagne, and was asked why he allowed himself
an indulgence which he so rigorously denied to his patients. "Yes," he
said, "but you do not understand my case. When I go from here I shall
find a pile of fifty or sixty letters awaiting answers." "But will
champagne help you to answer them?" asked the other. "Not at all,"
said Sir Andrew, "not at all; but it puts you in the frame of mind in
which you don't care a damn whether they are answered or not." I do
not offer this story for the imitation of youth, but for the solace of
the people like myself who have long reached the years of discretion
without becoming discreet, and who like to feel that their weaknesses
have been shared by the eminent and the wise.
And, to conclude, the wisdom of the pocket habit is not to be judged by
its abuse, but by its obvious convenience and safety. I trust that
some energetic woman will be moved to inaugurate a crusade for the
redemption of her sex from its pocketless condition. A Society for the
Propagation of Pockets Among Women (S.P.P.A.W.) is a real need of the
time. It should be a part of the great work of after-the-war
reconstruction. It should organise opinion, distribute leaflets and
hold meetings, with the Mayor in the chair and experts, rich in pockets
and the lore of the subject, to light the fire of rebellion throughout
the land. Women have won the vote from the tyrant man. Let them win
their pockets from the tyrant dressmaker.