filing out of the long car as expeditiously as I could, considering that
I had to disentangle my feet from the heels of my fellow man, when a
stern being in the brass buttons of authority gave me an unnecessary
push, remarking briefly, "Hurry up!" Before I could wither him with a
glance, the red light at the back of the train was winking jocosely at
me, so there was nothing left to do but to follow my fellow sufferers,
swallow my resentment along with the bad air, and proceed to soar
upward.
Having recovered my mental balance I began to laugh. The awful majesty
of temporary power, from a protoplasm up!
It is indeed a curious fact that the world is not so much governed by
its ruling classes as by the lower ones, who exercise their temporary
tyranny--in whatever capacity it be--with a colossal arrogance that
leaves the arrogance of a higher sphere leagues behind. Who has not
seen great ladies, majestic beings in their own drawing-rooms, wait
patiently before a counter while the young "saleslady" finished an
interesting conversation with a colleague in imitation diamonds.
Possibly in private life the young "saleslady" was not at all proud; but
place her behind a counter, and it gives her a moral support that makes
her rise superior to the aristocracy and crush the middle classes.
Never shall I forget the pathetic sight of a distinguished general--one
who fought and won a battle in the American Civil War, that decided the
fortunes of the North--buying a pair of kid gloves from a superior young
person in a glove store. He waited a long time very patiently while she
exchanged a light badinage with an idle youth, splendid in the tallest
kind of a collar.
"If you please," the general ventured, seeing the talk was not of
business. The haughtiness with which she turned on him! "What do you
want?"
She leaned on the counter with both hands in that most delightfully
engaging and characteristic of shop attitudes. No, there was no
badinage for the poor general, and as he had no taste and no ideas, she
sold him the most dreadful yellow gloves, with which he was burdened
when we met at the door. He showed them to me rather piteously.
"They don't look right, somehow," he sighed. "Why don't you change
them?" I urged. "Because," the great man whispered, whose courage was
famous in the land, "because I'm afraid of her."
Oh, the terrible tyranny of the shopgirls, or, rather, as we live in a
democratic age and one is as good as the other, the shop young ladies.
When one of them waits on me, or, to be quite exact, when I grovel to
her, and she is very short and snappish and uninterested, I wonder what
can be the kind of superior being to whom she, so to speak, bends the
knee? Sometimes I think it must be the shopwalker, a great man, but
human, except perhaps at Christmas time, but then I suspect he also may
be afraid of her.
When she cries "sign" at the top of her penetrating voice, and I am
ignominiously proved to have bought nothing, I realise that I am
disgraced, and can hardly bear the united glances of the young lady's
scornful eye, and the milder but still reproachful glance of the
shopwalker. He catechises me firmly for reasons why I don't buy, and
offers me instead everything under the sun that I don't want. If my soul
ever presumes to rebel it is when the young lady, not having what I am
in search of, kindly advises me as to what I really do want--but even
the traditional worm has been known to turn.
There is a delicate difference between the English and the American
young saleslady. The American, being the daughter of the free, and
distinctly of the independent, and having the chance of being the future
wife, mother or mother-in-law of presidents, does not demean herself to
be on a sympathetic footing with the public. If the public wishes to
buy, she is willing to sell, but is perfectly indifferent. Look
wistfully into the American saleslady's perfectly cold eye, if you are a
wobbly lady and want some one to make up your mind for you, and you are
met by a wall of the bleakest ice; nor does she thaw when you have
bought for a large amount. She calls "kish" in a shrill, unmoved voice,
which summons a small boy or girl, who bears your money to the
counting-house. Thereupon she looks indifferently over your head while
you wait for the change, and you feel that in spite of everything you
have failed to please her.
The result of this admirable attitude of indifference is that America is
the paradise of "shoppers," ladies who have no intention whatever of
buying, but who do love to see new things. It lies really between you
and your conscience how many bales of goods you have unpacked without
the remotest idea of purchasing anything. If at the end you make a few
disparaging remarks and retire from the scene, the saleslady replaces
the goods, perfectly indifferent as to your having bought nothing.
The English shopgirl, on the other hand, makes it a personal affront if
you do not buy; but there is excuse for her often enough, for in some
shops, unfortunately, it is the cruel regulation that if she misses a
certain number of sales she is discharged. Whether it pays to scare the
saleslady into terrorising her customers to death is a question;
personally, I avoid such shops; I cannot be lured twice into buying what
I don't want because of the frown of the young lady. Nor does it even
soothe my ruffled feelings when the shopwalker thanks me profusely as he
countersigns the bill.
Shopkeepers should be very particular as to their young saleslady's
nose; the very superior kind just crushes the public. England is a proof
that it is not the eye that is born to command, but the stately Roman
nose. It has given the world quite a wrong idea of Englishmen, who have
gone on their triumphant way in the wake of that majestic feature, to
the alarm and respect of the rest of the world. Had it been less
aggressive, the world might possibly now fear England less and love her
more. Yet such trivialities make history.
If you have a good conscience, the only wielder of temporary power who
appears mighty and yet mild is the policeman. To the bad conscience he
represents more the solid terrors of the law than the Lord Chief Justice
himself. He is the only creature from whom familiarity never takes away
any of his terrors.
We once had an old cook who put it in a nutshell. "Happy is he who can
look a policeman in the face," she declared. The wisdom of it! After
all, is not half the world running away from retributive justice? Think,
then, of the blessing of a legalised conscience. To be at peace with the
policeman! Think of the rapture of envy a poor, hunted-down burglar must
feel as he sees an ordinary citizen pass that awful being in a helmet
without a quake.
I take this opportunity of offering to the great and polite one my
little tribute of gratitude in the name of all the spinsters, widows,
nursemaids, and puppy dogs who cross the street in the security of his
outstretched hand. And of all maiden ladies, English and American, who
seek his advice and ask him perplexing questions, which he alone can
answer, for he is admittedly a combination of the street directory, the
dictionary, and the "Encyclopædia Britannica" up-to-date. I have often
wondered if he ever unbends? Does he ever take off his boots and his
helmet, or does he sleep in them? Does he ever sit down? It must be a
great joy and pride to be his wife, to be, as it were, on such friendly
terms with the traffic. I am sure that, if she loves him, she asks him
no questions.
Here, I really must digress just enough to say that until women can be
policemen, and can stand like magnificent statues in the turmoil of
vehicles and direct the tumult with one finger--without a moment's
confusion--not until then will I believe that they have been chosen by
destiny to do man's work. Bless the policeman! May his wages be
raised--he deserves it!
The temporary power of a cabman is often concentrated in a moment of
intense anguish for his fare when, if a four-wheeler, he rolls off his
box, stares at the money dropped into a very dirty paw, makes a speech
which ranges from reproach to vituperation, and follows you until a
beneficent front door closes on your anguish. He has it in his power to
take the bloom from the smartest toilette.
There is no one in the whole range of civilisation who has such a power
to inflict humiliation on one as a cabman! He has that delicate
perception that he knows just when his remarks will cut like a lash. He
always grumbles on principle, and you would rather give him your whole
fortune than have him make a spectacle of you before those other
temporaries, the footmen. As if he didn't know it, and as if he didn't
always choose the noblest of these as witnesses! You know that you have
overpaid him, and so does he, but he follows you with running remarks,
in the form of a soliloquy, which increase in virulence as you flee
before him, and which produce that peculiar contortion of face in the
well-bred footman, in which a grin battles with a countenance of stone.
Those awful footmen! I do believe that a cabby, in spite of his bad
language, is sometimes the prey of softer emotions. One knows by
observation that he often smokes a pipe, and from the way his chariot
leans up against the pavement of the nearest saloon, out of which he
comes with a frightfully red face and smacking his lips, one knows he is
not a "bigoted" total abstainer. One even pictures him as retired to a
mews, and in that peaceful retreat, with the family washing flapping
over his head, enjoying respite from timid fares in the bosom of his
family.
There is a monumental prejudice against four-wheelers. It is even
growing. Once I used to frolic about in them, flitting from one
afternoon tea to the other; now when I ask for one it is, if possible,
secretly, and always apologetically. Why is it? They cost nearly the
same as hansoms, but why are they so plebeian? Even a 'bus is not so
low. Servants respect you more even if they know that you get into a
'bus out of their sight than if they witness your downfall into a
four-wheeler. Kings have driven in hansoms, and Cabinet Ministers have
been tipped out of them; but who ever heard of a King or a Cabinet
Minister driving in a "growler"?
Of course, a 'bus is low, but you need not say you came in one, only you
must be careful! The other day old Lady Toppingham called and grew quite
eloquent on the levelling influences of 'buses; they might do for cooks
and tradespeople, she said, but her principles were such that she really
couldn't ride in one. All the time she was clutching a blue punched
'bus ticket on the top of her card-case with her relentless thumb. I
agreed with her, and said that I also never could nor would, and no
sooner had she gone than I was off to Whiteley's on top of a blue
Kensington. Still, it is levelling, and you should always pick off the
straws and never cling to the tickets.
However, the most ignoble conveyance is undoubtedly the "growler." To go
in one to a smart afternoon reception requires courage. I shall never
forget my last experience. It was an awful function, and both sides of
the street were lined with private carriages, and a double row of
footmen graced the _porte cochère_.
My four-wheeler was the only one in sight, and it was the forlornest of
its kind. It shook like jelly and rattled like artillery. A burly being
in sackcloth and dirt (instead of ashes) rolled off the box, and sixteen
perfectly equipped footmen had their features set to a preparatory grin.
I placed my foot on the dirtiest cab step in London, and from my
white-gloved hand I dropped a liberal fare into a grimy paw. To the joy
of the attendant footmen the owner of the paw said the most appalling
things. I stopped the hurricane with another shilling, and flew up the
steps and took refuge in extra haughtiness, and overdid it!
I was thankful when I was ushered into the drawing-room and cooled off
in the icy stare of the other guests--some thirty women and two men.
Nothing betrayed that I was a "growler" lady as I took the limp hand of
my hostess, who favoured me with a speechless smile. This she
temporarily detached from a superior man in superior garments, such as,
to do them justice, Englishmen only know how to wear. He was very
perfect, and in one of his blank eyes he wore a glass.
I don't know his name, but I shall never forget him. He was evidently
one of the lilies of the field who only know of four-wheelers by
hearsay. Whether our hostess stopped smiling long enough to murmur an
introduction I do not know, but we were quite lost among the furniture,
and as much thrown on each other's society as if we were on a desert
island. So when he uttered inquiringly something that sounded like
"yum," I said desperately, knowing it could strike no answering chord,
"I came in a four-wheeler; it requires a good deal of moral courage."
Then I stopped, blushing and embarrassed. How would he express his
scorn! I stepped aside to give him a chance to vanish out of my plebeian
neighbourhood; but, instead, said this gallant Englishman, bringing his
eyeglass to bear on me, "Ow--ow--really? So did I. Never drive in
anything else." Yes, there are heroes even in London drawing-rooms.
Has any one ever heard of a footman with wife and children? Can that
cast-iron countenance ever unbend? Does that vacant look hide mighty
thoughts, or does it hide nothing? Is a footman himself ever scorned? I
do hope he is, for he has made me suffer so much. I have sometimes
thought that if I owned a footman I should be too proud to live; yet on
studying the faces of my fellow men so blessed, I find that they are not
proud, but quite modest, and sometimes even shabby.
Yes, the owners of footmen are mostly less prosperous in appearance than
their servants, while the possessor of a butler and footmen galore
looks quite poor. But I do wonder where footmen go when they are old? I
never saw an old footman but once, and that was in a registry office, a
dim sanctuary, dotted by desks and ornamented by agitated ladies.
The awful temporary power of registry office clerks, how they do make
one quail! There was about the old footman a fictitious smartness, a
youthfulness so out of keeping with his haggard face that it gave me a
shock. For once I was sorry that the biter was bit, and that the
stony-hearted clerk behind his desk imparted his wisdom with such
brevity and disdain.
I shall never forget the insinuating wistfulness with which the old man
leaned across the desk, and, gracefully using his well-brushed silk hat
as shield, described how bad times were, and that he would be glad to
take any place at all, at any wages; all he wanted was a home. He would
even go into the country--even in the country! It was too pitiful, and
my heart ached for him as I recognised in the shabby smartness of his
well-fitting clothes one who had "valeted" in higher spheres. By the
way he held his top hat I saw how perfectly he had studied the outside
of manners.
The cruelty of the beefy clerk was colossal. "We can't place old
footmen, nobody wants 'em." He spoke like a machine. "But I'll take your
name." The old man tripped out with a pathetic lightness as if to prove
to us all by a sample how active his legs still were. So it seems that
even the proudest footman should not be too proud.
I am not so afraid of butlers as I am of footmen. I have never met with
an affable footman, but I have known one or two butlers who were quite
fatherly. With one, in particular, I always long to shake hands. I
admire his clothes so much. Never for an instant would any one take them
for a gentleman's evening clothes. The magnificent girth of his ample
tail coat shadows the most respectable of black trousers; they pretend
to no higher sphere, but are perfect for the state of society in which
they move. A rather fine head, like a respectable Roman Emperor's (if
such a personage ever existed), completes an impressive personality.
I don't know what he thinks about me, but when he vouchsafes me
something that is a smile and yet isn't a smile, I feel gratified. I
always thought that his ancestors fought for my friends' ancestors in
the battle of Agincourt, but, on inquiry, find he has been with them six
months. The temporary owner of this great man is quite modest.
One of the funniest exhibitions of temporary power I once observed in
America--in a church. Two of us had gone to hear a great American
preacher, and we had been invited to sit in the pew of a friend, in a
church to which we were strangers. We came early, and waited patiently
just within the church door to be shown to the seat. Only a few
stragglers had arrived, and all were waiting humbly for that important
functionary--the sexton.
Now the American sexton--the verger--is a very mighty man indeed.
Parsons come and go, but the sexton stays for ever. If he is not very
tall and dignified in black broad-cloth, he is generally fat and fussy
in the same. He picks out waiting sinners and seats them according to
his boundless caprice. He knows just the kind of stray sinner who may be
ushered into a charitable pew, and he knows the pews that decline to
receive stray sinners under any consideration.
It is curious what courage it takes to penetrate into a strange pew; it
is being a kind of Sabbath burglar. Never does a right-minded sexton
usher an out-at-elbow sinner into the pew of the rich and great. That
they are presumably addressing the same Divine Power is no reason. This
explains the Roman Catholic hold on the people. If you are a Roman
Catholic, you enter God's house and pray anywhere; but if you are a
Protestant, what shy pauper would dare to stray into an expensive pew
for a communion with his God?
My American sexton had, in the meantime, bustled down the centre aisle.
He looked the little crowd over haughtily, and he refused to catch my
wistful eye--my companion was getting very tired. At last I ventured,
"Would you kindly show us to Judge ----'s pew?" "Can't now, I'm busy; my
young men will come presently," and he darted off.
His young men did not come, and I looked vainly about for succour, for
the pews were filling up. Suddenly the great swing-door at the entrance
opened, and in came a tall commanding figure, a man of advanced years,
whose name is a household word in the land, the great preacher himself.
He pulled off his battered slouch hat, and I saw his kind, keen eyes as
they rested on the white hair and tired face of my friend. "Why are you
waiting here, what can I do for you?" he asked.
"We are waiting to be shown to Judge ----'s pew," I explained.
"I will show you, come with me." This he did, and left us the richer by
the kindliest smile in the world.
Different countries, different exercise of temporary power. The English
railway guard is not impressive nor much in evidence. The American
railroad conductor, on the other hand, is a great man, but he exercises
his power genially, and in the intervals of collecting tickets he is
approachable. He generally takes up his abiding place at the end of one
of the "cars," and puts his legs on the seat opposite and talks with a
much flattered chosen one. He sees a good deal of the world, not being
shut into a cubby-hole like his English brother. In the course of years
of travel along a particular route his popularity becomes so great that
it culminates in gifts, and many a popular conductor blazes in the light
of a huge diamond "bosom pin," or carries under his arm at night a
gorgeous presentation lantern. No man is so great but he feels flattered
at his notice, and he really is not very proud, considering, and his
power is benign.
In England his namesake, the 'bus conductor, has often made me feel the
blight of his authority. There was once a misanthrope who took to
keeping a light-house; if I were a misanthrope I would become a 'bus
conductor. It must, of course, be awfully irritating, that temporary
support he gives to beautiful ladies as they topple off; but it is
compensated for, to some extent, by wrenching the arms of the lovely
creatures as he hauls them on the foot-board of the 'bus before it
stops. This, they say, he does out of pure benevolence, so that the poor
'bus horses shall not have to start up the cumbersome machine
unnecessarily. Still, one ventures to ask if we poor women are not of
as much consequence as a 'bus horse?
Last year a benevolent conductor nearly dislocated my arm as he pulled
me up, and I ached for two months after. I protest against this
misplaced tenderness! It is said that an Englishman may ill-treat his
wife with more impunity than his dog, but I don't believe it. I am not
afraid of the conductor unless I get in or out of his 'bus; but the haul
he gives me in, which sends me reeling against the other passengers, and
the pull he gives me out when I recline for a moment, without any
gratitude, against his outstretched arm, makes him unpopular with me.
There is an American product which, with the American invasion, has,
alas and alas! taken root here, and that is the American hotel clerk,
real and imitated. He has come with the great caravanserais, and, like
the American plumber, he is the target for American wit.
There is no doubt that it takes a cool and composed personality to
"wrastle" with the travelling public, and yet the travelling public is
not half so terrible as the cool and composed hotel clerk. He has
brought insolence to the level of a fine art, and as he is answerable
only to a corporation, that means that he is answerable to no one. He
always puts you into a room you don't want, and having no pecuniary
interest in the matter, it is to him of no earthly consequence whether
you stay or not.
Complain to him, and you complain to deaf ears. He apparently has
nothing to do but to loll behind the office counter and improve his
finger-nails. Tumultuous rings of various bells leave him unmoved;
passionate telephonic appeals he only answers when he chooses. He turns
to an agonised public a face like carved wax and eyes like agate, and it
recoils. The parting of his hair is a monument to his industry.
When I call on a guest at a big hotel I deliver up my card with hope,
because, as the poet rashly sang, "Hope springs eternal in the human
breast." Then I sit down and wait as near the office as possible, and
wistfully watch the elegant leisure of the great man behind the counter.
My card has disappeared in the custody of a small boy with a salver,
and the chances are that before I see him again he will be a man grown.
After having waited half an hour I venture to intrude on the peace
behind the counter, and I am received with a _hauteur_ which puts me in
my right place at once. The guest, being merely a number, excites no
earthly interest, but the clerk wearily sends another infant in search
of the first, and then turns his immaculate back on me, and I am
permitted to admire the shiny smoothness of his back hair. I again
subside, and in my indignation I make up my mind to complain to the
daily Press: Is thy servant a doormat that he should be so downtrodden?
Do not preach about the ancient tyrannies of kings and emperors, and
other estimable folks, about whom history has probably told a good many
lies, and to these add the further lie that I am happy because I am free
and independent. I am not free and independent! Instead, I languish
under the tyranny of a hundred thousand tyrants, before whom I grovel
and quake. Several of them sleep on my top floor and treat me with much
severity.
Instead of thousands of tyrants, give me, rather, one tyrant; I can
accommodate existence to him, and it is distinctly more interesting and
less complicated.
The problem of existence is its multitude of tyrants. Indeed, how
delightful life would be if we were not so tyrannised over by the
downtrodden!
_The Extravagant Economy of Women_
The trouble with women is that they do not know how to spend money. The
great majority never have any money, or they are at the mercy of some
grim masculine creature, be he father or husband, who demands items--now
think of an average man bothering himself about items! It must be a
survival of the time when we inhabited harems, or when we were beautiful
dames to whom our true knights gave undying love but nothing more
substantial; or we rejoiced the souls of the ancient patriarchs though
we did not succeed in extracting any cash.