Do not blame me, Ladies, the fault lies with you. Every right-thinking
man is an universal lover; how could it be otherwise? You are so
diverse, yet each so charming of your kind; and a man’s heart is large.
You have no idea, fair Reader, how large a man’s heart is: that is his
trouble—sometimes yours.
May I not admire the daring tulip, because I love also the modest lily?
May I not press a kiss upon the sweet violet, because the scent of the
queenly rose is precious to me?
“Certainly not,” I hear the Rose reply. “If you can see anything in her,
you shall have nothing to do with me.”
“If you care for that bold creature,” says the Lily, trembling, “you are
not the man I took you for. Good-bye.”
“Go to your baby-faced Violet,” cries the Tulip, with a toss of her
haughty head. “You are just fitted for each other.”
And when I return to the Lily, she tells me that she cannot trust me.
She has watched me with those others. She knows me for a gad-about. Her
gentle face is full of pain.
So I must live unloved merely because I love too much.
My wonder is that young men ever marry. The difficulty of selection must
be appalling. I walked the other evening in Hyde Park. The band of the
Life Guards played heart-lifting music, and the vast crowd were basking
in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos the English toiler. I strolled
among them, and my attention was chiefly drawn towards the women. The
great majority of them were, I suppose, shop-girls, milliners, and others
belonging to the lower middle-class. They had put on their best frocks,
their bonniest hats, their newest gloves. They sat or walked in twos and
threes, chattering and preening, as happy as young sparrows on a clothes
line. And what a handsome crowd they made! I have seen German crowds, I
have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian crowds; but nowhere do you
find such a proportion of pretty women as among the English middle-class.
Three women out of every four were worth looking at, every other woman
was pretty, while every fourth, one might say without exaggeration, was
beautiful. As I passed to and fro the idea occurred to me: suppose I
were an unprejudiced young bachelor, free from predilection, looking for
a wife; and let me suppose—it is only a fancy—that all these girls were
ready and willing to accept me. I have only to choose! I grew
bewildered. There were fair girls, to look at whom was fatal; dark girls
that set one’s heart aflame; girls with red gold hair and grave grey
eyes, whom one would follow to the confines of the universe; baby-faced
girls that one longed to love and cherish; girls with noble faces, whom a
man might worship; laughing girls, with whom one could dance through life
gaily; serious girls, with whom life would be sweet and good,
domestic-looking girls—one felt such would make delightful wives; they
would cook, and sew, and make of home a pleasant, peaceful place. Then
wicked-looking girls came by, at the stab of whose bold eyes all orthodox
thoughts were put to a flight, whose laughter turned the world into a mad
carnival; girls one could mould; girls from whom one could learn; sad
girls one wanted to comfort; merry girls who would cheer one; little
girls, big girls, queenly girls, fairy-like girls.
Suppose a young man had to select his wife in this fashion from some
twenty or thirty thousand; or that a girl were suddenly confronted with
eighteen thousand eligible young bachelors, and told to take the one she
wanted and be quick about it? Neither boy nor girl would ever marry.
Fate is kinder to us. She understands, and assists us. In the hall of a
Paris hotel I once overheard one lady asking another to recommend her a
milliner’s shop.
“Go to the Maison Nouvelle,” advised the questioned lady, with
enthusiasm. “They have the largest selection there of any place in
Paris.”
“I know they have,” replied the first lady, “that is just why I don’t
mean to go there. It confuses me. If I see six bonnets I can tell the
one I want in five minutes. If I see six hundred I come away without any
bonnet at all. Don’t you know a little shop?”
Fate takes the young man or the young woman aside.
“Come into this village, my dear,” says Fate; “into this by-street of
this salubrious suburb, into this social circle, into this church, into
this chapel. Now, my dear boy, out of these seventeen young ladies,
which will you have?—out of these thirteen young men, which would you
like for your very own, my dear?”
“No, miss, I am sorry, but I am not able to show you our up-stairs
department to-day, the lift is not working. But I am sure we shall be
able to find something in this room to suit you. Just look round, my
dear, perhaps you will see something.”
“No, sir, I cannot show you the stock in the next room, we never take
that out except for our very special customers. We keep our most
expensive goods in that room. (Draw that curtain, Miss Circumstance,
please. I have told you of that before.) Now, sir, wouldn’t you like
this one? This colour is quite the rage this season; we are getting rid
of quite a lot of these.”
“_No_, sir! Well, of course, it would not do for every one’s taste to be
the same. Perhaps something dark would suit you better. Bring out those
two brunettes, Miss Circumstance. Charming girls both of them, don’t you
think so, sir? I should say the taller one for you, sir. Just one
moment, sir, allow me. Now, what do you think of that, sir? might have
been made to fit you, I’m sure. _You prefer the shorter one_.
Certainly, sir, no difference to us at all. Both are the same price.
There’s nothing like having one’s own fancy, I always say. _No_, sir, I
cannot put her aside for you, we never do that. Indeed, there’s rather a
run on brunettes just at present. I had a gentleman in only this
morning, looking at this particular one, and he is going to call again
to-night. Indeed, I am not at all sure—Oh, of course, sir, if you like
to settle on this one now, that ends the matter. (Put those others away,
Miss Circumstance, please, and mark this one sold.) I feel sure you’ll
like her, sir, when you get her home. Thank _you_, sir. Good-morning!”
“Now, miss, have _you_ seen anything you fancy? _Yes_, miss, this is all
we have at anything near your price. (Shut those other cupboards, Miss
Circumstance; never show more stock than you are obliged to, it only
confuses customers. How often am I to tell you that?) _Yes_, miss, you
are quite right, there _is_ a slight blemish. They all have some slight
flaw. The makers say they can’t help it—it’s in the material. It’s not
once in a season we get a perfect specimen; and when we do ladies don’t
seem to care for it. Most of our customers prefer a little faultiness.
They say it gives character. Now, look at this, miss. This sort of
thing wears very well, warm and quiet. You’d like one with more colour
in it? Certainly. Miss Circumstance, reach me down the art patterns.
_No_, miss, we don’t guarantee any of them over the year, so much depends
on how you use them. _Oh yes_, miss, they’ll stand a fair amount of
wear. People do tell you the quieter patterns last longer; but my
experience is that one is much the same as another. There’s really no
telling any of them until you come to try them. We never recommend one
more than another. There’s a lot of chance about these goods, it’s in
the nature of them. What I always say to ladies is—‘Please yourself,
it’s you who have got to wear it; and it’s no good having an article you
start by not liking.’ _Yes_, miss, it _is_ pretty and it looks well
against you: it does indeed. Thank you, miss. Put that one aside, Miss
Circumstance, please. See that it doesn’t get mixed up with the unsold
stock.”
It is a useful philtre, the juice of that small western flower, that
Oberon drops upon our eyelids as we sleep. It solves all difficulties in
a trice. Why of course Helena is the fairer. Compare her with Hermia!
Compare the raven with the dove! How could we ever have doubted for a
moment? Bottom is an angel, Bottom is as wise as he is handsome. Oh,
Oberon, we thank you for that drug. Matilda Jane is a goddess; Matilda
Jane is a queen; no woman ever born of Eve was like Matilda Jane. The
little pimple on her nose—her little, sweet, tip-tilted nose—how
beautiful it is. Her bright eyes flash with temper now and then; how
piquant is a temper in a woman. William is a dear old stupid, how
lovable stupid men can be—especially when wise enough to love us.
William does not shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man.
William’s chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard
looks well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our
eyelids once again. Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep by us.
Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking of? You have given the bottle to
Puck. Take it away from him, quick. Lord help us all if that Imp has
the bottle. Lord save us from Puck while we sleep.
Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your lotion as an eye-opener, rather than
as an eye-closer? You remember the story the storks told the children,
of the little girl who was a toad by day, only her sweet dark eyes being
left to her. But at night, when the Prince clasped her close to his
breast, lo! again she became the king’s daughter, fairest and fondest of
women. There be many royal ladies in Marshland, with bad complexion and
thin straight hair, and the silly princes sneer and ride away to woo some
kitchen wench decked out in queen’s apparel. Lucky the prince upon whose
eyelids Oberon has dropped the magic philtre.
In the gallery of a minor Continental town I have forgotten, hangs a
picture that lives with me. The painting I cannot recall, whether good
or bad; artists must forgive me for remembering only the subject. It
shows a man, crucified by the roadside. No martyr he. If ever a man
deserved hanging it was this one. So much the artist has made clear.
The face, even under its mask of agony, is an evil, treacherous face. A
peasant girl clings to the cross; she stands tip-toe upon a patient
donkey, straining her face upward for the half-dead man to stoop and kiss
her lips.
Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but _under_
the face, under the evil outside? Is there no remnant of manhood—nothing
tender, nothing, true? A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him: no
evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love is blind-aye, to our faults.
Heaven help us all; Love’s eyes would be sore indeed if it were not so.
But for the good that is in us her eyes are keen. You, crucified
blackguard, stand forth. A hundred witnesses have given their evidence
against you. Are there none to give evidence for him? A woman, great
Judge, who loved him. Let her speak.
But I am wandering far from Hyde Park and its show of girls.
They passed and re-passed me, laughing, smiling, talking. Their eyes
were bright with merry thoughts; their voices soft and musical. They
were pleased, and they wanted to please. Some were married, some had
evidently reasonable expectations of being married; the rest hoped to be.
And we, myself, and some ten thousand other young men. I repeat
it—myself and some ten thousand other young men; for who among us ever
thinks of himself but as a young man? It is the world that ages, not we.
The children cease their playing and grow grave, the lasses’ eyes are
dimmer. The hills are a little steeper, the milestones, surely, further
apart. The songs the young men sing are less merry than the songs we
used to sing. The days have grown a little colder, the wind a little
keener. The wine has lost its flavour somewhat; the new humour is not
like the old. The other boys are becoming dull and prosy; but we are not
changed. It is the world that is growing old. Therefore, I brave your
thoughtless laughter, youthful Reader, and repeat that we, myself and
some ten thousand other young men, walked among these sweet girls; and,
using our boyish eyes, were fascinated, charmed, and captivated. How
delightful to spend our lives with them, to do little services for them
that would call up these bright smiles. How pleasant to jest with them,
and hear their flute-like laughter, to console them and read their
grateful eyes. Really life is a pleasant thing, and the idea of marriage
undoubtedly originated in the brain of a kindly Providence.
We smiled back at them, and we made way for them; we rose from our chairs
with a polite, “Allow me, miss,” “Don’t mention it, I prefer standing.”
“It is a delightful evening, is it not?” And perhaps—for what harm was
there?—we dropped into conversation with these chance fellow-passengers
upon the stream of life. There were those among us—bold daring
spirits—who even went to the length of mild flirtation. Some of us knew
some of them, and in such happy case there followed interchange of pretty
pleasantries. Your English middle-class young man and woman are not
adepts at the game of flirtation. I will confess that our methods were,
perhaps, elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle noisy as the
evening wore on. But we meant no evil; we did but our best to enjoy
ourselves, to give enjoyment, to make the too brief time, pass gaily.
And then my thoughts travelled to small homes in distant suburbs, and
these bright lads and lasses round me came to look older and more
careworn. But what of that? Are not old faces sweet when looked at by
old eyes a little dimmed by love, and are not care and toil but the
parents of peace and joy?
But as I drew nearer, I saw that many of the faces were seared with sour
and angry looks, and the voices that rose round me sounded surly and
captious. The pretty compliment and praise had changed to sneers and
scoldings. The dimpled smile had wrinkled to a frown. There seemed so
little desire to please, so great a determination not to be pleased.
And the flirtations! Ah me, they had forgotten how to flirt! Oh, the
pity of it! All the jests were bitter, all the little services were
given grudgingly. The air seemed to have grown chilly. A darkness had
come over all things.
And then I awoke to reality, and found I had been sitting in my chair
longer than I had intended. The band-stand was empty, the sun had set; I
rose and made my way home through the scattered crowd.
Nature is so callous. The Dame irritates one at times by her devotion to
her one idea, the propagation of the species.
“Multiply and be fruitful; let my world be ever more and more peopled.”
For this she trains and fashions her young girls, models them with
cunning hand, paints them with her wonderful red and white, crowns them
with her glorious hair, teaches them to smile and laugh, trains their
voices into music, sends them out into the world to captivate, to enslave
us.
“See how beautiful she is, my lad,” says the cunning old woman. “Take
her; build your little nest with her in your pretty suburb; work for her
and live for her; enable her to keep the little ones that I will send.”
And to her, old hundred-breasted Artemis whispers, “Is he not a bonny
lad? See how he loves you, how devoted he is to you! He will work for
you and make you happy; he will build your home for you. You will be the
mother of his children.”
So we take each other by the hand, full of hope and love, and from that
hour Mother Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles come; let our
voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts die out; let
the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put behind us for ever
creep back to us, bringing unkindness and indifference, angry thoughts
and cruel words into our lives. What cares she? She has caught us, and
chained us to her work. She is our universal mother-in-law. She has
done the match-making; for the rest, she leaves it to ourselves. We can
love or we can fight; it is all one to her, confound her.
I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught. In business we
use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another. The
shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and affability, he
might put up his shutters were he otherwise. The commercial gent, no
doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass, but refrains from telling
him so. Hasty tempers are banished from the City. Can we not see that
it is just as much to our interest to banish them from Tooting and
Hampstead?
The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he wrapped
the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside him. And
when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang from
his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he was very comfortable
where he was. And she! She had laughed at his jokes; they were not very
clever jokes, they were not very new. She had probably read them herself
months before in her own particular weekly journal. Yet the harmless
humbug made him happy. I wonder if ten years hence she will laugh at
such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such clumsy pains to put
her cape about her. Experience shakes her head, and is amused at my
question.
I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married
couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of pupils.
The husbands would recommend their wives to attend, generously offering
to pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife would be indignant at the
suggestion of good money being thus wasted. “No, John, dear,” she would
unselfishly reply, “you need the lessons more than I do. It would be a
shame for me to take them away from you,” and they would wrangle upon the
subject for the rest of the day.
Oh! the folly of it. We pack our hamper for life’s picnic with such
pains. We spend so much, we work so hard. We make choice pies, we cook
prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix with loving
hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with every delicacy we can
think of. Everything to make the picnic a success is there except the
salt. Ah! woe is me, we forget the salt. We slave at our desks, in our
workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our pleasures, we
give up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we
render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha’porth of salt—for want
of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a
touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.
Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till
twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a
woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating. Her
rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well
dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting.
Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and everybody wretched.
My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but the
most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are letting to
rack and ruin for want of a little pains. You will find it in your own
room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror. It is getting shabby
and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish is rubbed off it,
Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm. Do you remember when he
first brought it home, how proud he was of it? Do you think you have
used it well, knowing how he valued it? A little less care of your pots
and your pans, Madam, a little more of yourself were wiser. Polish
yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty wit once, a pleasant laugh, a
conversation that was not confined exclusively to the short-comings of
servants, the wrong-doings of tradesmen. My dear Madam, we do not live
on spotless linen, and crumbless carpets. Hunt out that bundle of old
letters you keep tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau
drawer—a pity you don’t read them oftener. He did not enthuse about your
cuffs and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning. It was your
tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen it for
some years, Madam—the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, I presume), your
little hands, your rosebud mouth—it has lost its shape, Madam, of late.
Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and practise a laugh once a day:
you might get back the dainty curves. It would be worth trying. It was
a pretty mouth once.
Who invented that mischievous falsehood that the way to a man’s heart was
through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it for truth, has
let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen. Of
course, if you were foolish enough to marry a pig, I suppose you must be
content to devote your life to the preparation of hog’s-wash. But are
you sure that he _is_ a pig? If by any chance he be not?—then, Madam,
you are making a grievous mistake. My dear Lady, you are too modest. If
I may say so without making you unduly conceited, even at the
dinner-table itself, you are of much more importance than the mutton.
Courage, Madam, be not afraid to tilt a lance even with your own cook.
You can be more piquant than the sauce _à la Tartare_, more soothing
surely than the melted butter. There was a time when he would not have
known whether he was eating beef or pork with you the other side of the
table. Whose fault is it? Don’t think so poorly of us. We are not
ascetics, neither are we all gourmets: most of us plain men, fond of our
dinner, as a healthy man should be, but fonder still of our sweethearts
and wives, let us hope. Try us. A moderately-cooked dinner—let us even
say a not-too-well-cooked dinner, with you looking your best, laughing
and talking gaily and cleverly—as you can, you know—makes a pleasanter
meal for us, after the day’s work is done, than that same dinner, cooked
to perfection, with you silent, jaded, and anxious, your pretty hair
untidy, your pretty face wrinkled with care concerning the sole, with
anxiety regarding the omelette.
My poor Martha, be not troubled about so many things. _You_ are the one
thing needful—if the bricks and mortar are to be a home. See to it that
_you_ are well served up, that _you_ are done to perfection, that _you_
are tender and satisfying, that _you_ are worth sitting down to. We
wanted a wife, a comrade, a friend; not a cook and a nurse on the cheap.
But of what use is it to talk? the world will ever follow its own folly.
When I think of all the good advice that I have given it, and of the
small result achieved, I confess I grow discouraged. I was giving good
advice to a lady only the other day. I was instructing her as to the
proper treatment of aunts. She was sucking a lead-pencil, a thing I am
always telling her not to do. She took it out of her mouth to speak.
“I suppose you know how everybody ought to do everything,” she said.
There are times when it is necessary to sacrifice one’s modesty to one’s
duty.
“Of course I do,” I replied.
“And does Mama know how everybody ought to do everything?” was the second
question.
My conviction on this point was by no means so strong, but for domestic
reasons I again sacrificed myself to expediency.
“Certainly,” I answered; “and take that pencil out of your mouth. I’ve
told you of that before. You’ll swallow it one day, and then you’ll get
perichondritis and die.”
She appeared to be solving a problem.
“All grown-up people seem to know everything,” she summarized.
There are times when I doubt if children are as simple as they look. If
it be sheer stupidity that prompts them to make remarks of this
character, one should pity them, and seek to improve them. But if it be
not stupidity? well then, one should still seek to improve them, but by a
different method.
The other morning I overheard the nurse talking to this particular
specimen. The woman is a most worthy creature, and she was imparting to
the child some really sound advice. She was in the middle of an
unexceptional exhortation concerning the virtue of silence, when Dorothea
interrupted her with—
“Oh, do be quiet, Nurse. I never get a moment’s peace from your
chatter.”
Such an interruption discourages a woman who is trying to do her duty.
Last Tuesday evening she was unhappy. Myself, I think that rhubarb
should never be eaten before April, and then never with lemonade. Her
mother read her a homily upon the subject of pain. It was impressed upon
her that we must be patient, that we must put up with the trouble that
God sends us. Dorothea would descend to details, as children will.
“Must we put up with the cod-liver oil that God sends us?”
“Yes, decidedly.”
“And with the nurses that God sends us?”
“Certainly; and be thankful that you’ve got them, some little girls
haven’t any nurse. And don’t talk so much.”
On Friday I found the mother in tears.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” was the answer; “only Baby. She’s such a strange child.
I can’t make her out at all.”
“What has she been up to now?”
“Oh, she will argue, you know.”
She has that failing. I don’t know where she gets it from, but she’s got
it.
“Well?”
“Well, she made me cross; and, to punish her, I told her she shouldn’t
take her doll’s perambulator out with her.”
“Yes?”
“Well, she didn’t say anything then, but so soon as I was outside the
door, I heard her talking to herself—you know her way?”
“Yes?”
“She said—”
“Yes, she said?”
“She said, ‘I must be patient. I must put up with the mother God has
sent me.’”
She lunches down-stairs on Sundays. We have her with us once a week to
give her the opportunity of studying manners and behaviour. Milson had
dropped in, and we were discussing politics. I was interested, and,
pushing my plate aside, leant forward with my elbows on the table.
Dorothea has a habit of talking to herself in a high-pitched whisper
capable of being heard above an Adelphi love scene. I heard her say—
“I must sit up straight. I mustn’t sprawl with my elbows on the table.
It is only common, vulgar people behave that way.”
I looked across at her; she was sitting most correctly, and appeared to
be contemplating something a thousand miles away. We had all of us been
lounging! We sat up stiffly, and conversation flagged.
Of course we made a joke of it after the child was gone. But somehow it
didn’t seem to be _our_ joke.
I wish I could recollect my childhood. I should so like to know if
children are as simple as they can look.