of insincerity, surface enthusiasm, a touch sometimes of covert satire
(or it would spoil), and just enough truth to mix the ingredients and
make them digest. This is administered in all grades of society with the
greatest success, and of it can be said, in the pathetic words of an
American advertisement of a preparation of medicine not usually popular
with childhood, castor-oil, "Even children cry for it."
Of the two classes, those who administer and those who swallow this
pleasant mixture, it is needless to say that in the lower class are
those who administer soft-soap. If in course of time the soft-soaper
proves that he is possessed of transcendent abilities he graduates after
hard, hard struggles, resigns his bucket, and proceeds to enjoy the
superior privilege of being soft-soaped in turn; and the curious fact is
that, after having administered it so long, when he comes to taste it
himself he does not recognise the familiar article at all. Of course
there are some soft-soapers who never advance and never aspire.
As one strolls observingly through society, one discovers it is some
people's mission in life to draw other people out. It is rare to find
two persons talking together who give and take with equal facility, who
contribute equally to the charm and brightness of the occasion. One of
the two is sure to lead the other into those conversational oases where
he loves to gambol--and very hard work it sometimes is!
Alas! the pioneers who soft-soap are usually women. You dear and
uncomplaining sex, how hard you have to work to be called charming by
that other sex that so greedily laps up the invention of the great
humourist! From artisans of soft-soap you have indeed become artists. To
you we owe those delightful multitudes of spoilt men who sulk or sniff
or shoulder their pretentious way through society. Yes, your product! If
society consisted only of men it would be quite sincere, even if rather
brutal, and as for soft-soap, it wouldn't exist. It would be
interesting to know the sex of that historical serpent in the Garden of
Eden!
A man, if he ever soft-soaps another man, does it for a definite object
and hardly realises his own insincerity, but a woman--well, it is a
woman's religion to make a man think her charming, and I am
afraid--desperately afraid--that she does this most successfully when
she makes him talk about himself. Women, poor things, are like the
heathen: first they create an idol, sometimes out of very common clay it
is to be feared, and then they proceed to worship it.
How often does a man turn over in his mind what subject of conversation
the woman will talk about best with whom accident has thrown him,
especially if she be plain and shy? Now, what about women, on the other
hand? Why, a man must be a great idiot indeed if he does not find some
woman to coo little nothings at him; to lead him tenderly out of narrow,
monosyllabic paths into the glowing buttercup and dandelion fields of
conversation where he can gambol joyfully. "I came out strong, by
Jove!" he congratulates himself proudly as they separate, and the goose
never realises, as he supports himself against his usual wall and stares
vacantly at the crowd, that the beguiling young thing, who smiled up at
him like a rising sun, laboured with him with an energy which would have
appalled a coal-heaver. Now, would a man fatigue himself as much to
chatter with an empty-headed unattractive girl? Hand on heart,
gentlemen, confess!
It was Thackeray who said that any woman not disfigured with a hump
might marry any man. It is presumption to contradict the immortal
master, but I don't believe it. Rather do I believe the words of wisdom
of our old family cook. She finished a dissertation on matrimony with
the following profound reflections:--
"Women ain't so particular as men. There ain't a man but'll find some
woman to have him! If every woman could get a man there wouldn't be so
many old maids. Down to our village there was a man who hadn't any arms
or legs, but goodness me! even he got a wife. She came to call with him
one day, and she'd fixed up a soap-box on wheels and was drawing him
along as comfy as you please, and she never made a cent out of him, for
he wa'ant a freak. Now I'd just like to see a man up and do that for a
woman, I guess! No, women ain't so particular."
Surely it holds good in society. If we don't drag around a gentleman
without the usual complement of arms and legs, we more often than not
support a gentleman without brains or manners, and we make him more
insufferable than he naturally is by giving him a false valuation, in
which he proceeds at once to believe, because, if there is one thing the
stupidest man can do, it is, he can get conceited. Indeed the weaker sex
has much to answer for, for she has created the twentieth century man,
who would be a dear if only the women would leave him alone.
However, it is not only men women soft-soap--they soft-soap each other
as well. The motives are twofold. Sometimes the wielder of the bucket
has an axe to grind, or she likes to be popular at a cheap price. She
always says something agreeable, and it is indeed a steel-clad heart
that can resist. How feel anything but friendly when a dear feminine
gusher declares that you have the loveliest clothes, the most wonderful
brains, the brightest eyes, the most agreeable husband, and the best
cook in the world! The chances are that you hated her as she swam up and
favoured your unyielding hand with cordial pumping; but she thought--no,
she didn't think, the process is automatic, she merely dropped a penny
in the slot of your evident antagonism on the chance of its possibly
resulting in a cool invitation to call, a crush tea or a lunch: nothing
is to be despised, for you never can tell!
When a woman decides to say something real nice she stops at nothing.
She even sacrifices her nearest and dearest.
"How is that handsome, brilliant boy of yours?" a devoted mother asked
me the other day. "How I wish my Jack were like him! But he's only just
a dear, good, ordinary boy who'll never set the Thames on fire; well, we
can't all be the mother of a genius!" Now, could one do anything else
than invite that truly discriminating woman to lunch?
As I said before, it is some people's mission to draw others out. Some
take everything hard, among other things, society. They hate to be among
their kind, but they hate just as much the dignity of solitude; so they
compromise matters by going about as dull and dreary as graven images,
surrounded by a private atmosphere of frost. Then there are the
adaptable ones who talk and laugh, while down in their souls they are
bored to death. But never mind about being bored, the crime is to look
bored. Adaptability is distinctly not an English national trait, rather
is it American, the race made up of all races, and for this reason
American society is, even if only on the surface,--and who in society
ever gets below the surface?--more amusing than English society.
Oh, the heavenly rest and comfort when you pause exhausted after having
pumped at a perfectly empty human being to find the process applied to
yourself, and after all you _do_ respond.
I was struck by it the other day when, in a roomful of English people
who had been talked to and trotted out and made to show their best paces
each in his own little field, there came to the charming, but
exhausted, hostess a Frenchman who proceeded to draw her out. The sweet
restfulness of it! She had not to originate a single idea, and I am
perfectly sure that every other man in the room was holding forth on
some subject originated by the woman he was talking to; he was likely to
talk till he had run down, and then she would have to wind him up with a
new subject. If she didn't he would go away and leave her mortified and
alone, and a woman can stand being bored, but she cannot stand looking
deserted. A lovely woman told me all about it once.
"The reason I am so popular," she said frankly, "is because I flatter
the men to the top of their bent. Vanity and love make the world go
round,--vanity first and love a long way after. Nothing else.
"Tell a woman she is perfect and she doubts you--sometimes. But tell a
man that (one can in all sorts of ways), why, he only thinks it is his
due--possibly he will think you are clever. Most men are stupid--I don't
mean their working brains, their bread-and-butter brains, but their
society brains. They swallow anything you tell them. They originate
everything in this blessed world--but conversation.
"If a man converses he discourses and he improves your mind. Now you
don't always want to have your mind improved! I don't say he doesn't
know how to make love; but that doesn't count, for after all, making
love is, often as not, silence _à deux_. So if he isn't improving your
mind or making love he is stranded, and that is where we women come in.
"I don't want my mind improved at an afternoon tea, nor do I wish to be
made love to over an uninspiring biscuit, and I should feel eternally
disgraced if either of us looked bored; so I give him leading questions
like sugar-plums, and while he nibbles away at each in turn till he has
sucked it up, I have learnt to look at him with all my eyes--a kind of
subdued rapture which I adjust according to the man, and then I detach
my mind and consider what the clever stupid can talk about next.
"It isn't necessary to do anything but to smile, especially if you have
nice teeth, as he does all the talking; but he'll think you are the
cleverest woman going. Possibly you are, only he doesn't really know
how clever you are! There are some women you have to treat in the same
way, and they are either very distinguished and spoilt or they are very
influential, or they have missions; but it's always a bore, and unless
you are 'on the make'--a very ill-bred expression, I think--it's
tiresome and doesn't pay. I don't mind being bored for the sake of a
man, but I really won't be bored for the sake of a woman.
"But, my dear, it is very fatiguing at best, and no wonder the women
crowd into retreats and nervine asylums. It isn't the pace that kills,
but the unearthly dulness. After I have talked to half a dozen men for
whom I make conversation I go home to bed, and the vitality I have left
wouldn't be enough for an able-bodied worm.
"Do I ever find a man who is interested in me if he is not in love with
me? Never! If he is in love with me; yes! That's another story. Then
everything about me interests him, but, perhaps, even then only because
I am his temporary ideal. I daresay it's only another form of
selfishness, bless him! The stupidity of men! That's the reason they
are so fatuous; they don't understand!
"Find me the man who isn't under the impression that some woman is
hopelessly in love with him; and only because she has taken such pains
to smile and coo at him, which she generally does to keep her hand in;
any man is to her an instrument on which she, as an artist, finds it
serviceable to play a few scales. To call men the ruling sex,"--and my
friend laughed till I saw every one of her beautiful teeth,--"they are
the ruled sex, and they get married by the women who want them most."
She evidently agreed with Thackeray. I don't, as I explained before.
"My dear, how many an innocent young thing has said 'Yes' when 'he' has
had no earthly intention of asking for anything--certainly not for her
dear little hand.
"'May I?' was possibly all he said, but he looked three thrilling
volumes. 'Yes,' she whispered innocently, 'but do first ask papa.' How
can he explain to her that the question trembling on his lips was
whether he should bring her a lemon-squash or a strawberry-ice. He asked
papa and they lived happily ever after, and it answered just as well.
Now what I wonder is," she concluded, "which is the stupider--he or
she?"
One hasn't time to soft-soap one's relatives. For its successful use
there is required a certain exhilaration of spirits which familiarity
does not encourage. It is more easy to be charming to one's
acquaintances or intimate enemies than to the bosom of one's family. One
can be kinder to one's own, but more charming to the outside world,
alas!
A woman doesn't go on for ever coquetting with her husband--it is a
pity, but it's true. Perhaps if it were less true there would be fewer
divorces. When, in the happy past, your husband was your lover and he
looked at you with adoring eyes, why, then you could be charming,--at
least for a few hours, because to be charming longer gets on one's
nerves. Later, when you are married and he won't get up in the morning,
and you say to him severely, "Samuel, are you never going to get up?
It's nine o'clock, and cook says she'll give notice, for she can't and
she won't live in such a late family," and your Samuel grunts, turns
over, and hurriedly takes forty more winks, how can you possibly be
charming just then?
Nor can you murmur to your Samuel that he is the most interesting man
you ever met, and that his brain is superior to all other brains. He
doesn't care a rap what you think about his brains, and he'd much rather
you wouldn't bother him but go downstairs; and so you do go downstairs
in that very unbecoming frock of your pre-married days in which you
wouldn't have had him see you for worlds. But now it has come again to
the fore, ever since the time Samuel said pleasantly--he certainly has
no talent for soft-soap--that after people have been married a year
neither knows how the other looks. This from your Samuel, for whose sake
you ran up an awful dressmaker's bill in other days. So you unearth your
hideous frock with a desperate sigh.
But you always know how your Samuel looks, and when he wears an
unbecoming necktie you grieve and nag and give him no peace. Perhaps it
were well, after all, if a bit of soft-soap could be bottled up during
courting-time and labelled "To be used after marriage."
When men soft-soap men it is in devious ways. One of the most subtle, if
you are a little man and you wish to flatter a great man, is to disagree
with him. He is much impressed by your independence, and he is sorry for
you too, because you own up to your awful presumption, and by inference
you can soft-soap him up and down just as they whitewash a wooden fence.
And he says he likes your independence, and he shakes hands with you and
knows you the next time you meet, and calls you "My independent young
friend," and invites you to luncheon. Now, had you agreed with every
word he said you would have been only one of the usual job-lot of
admirers, and he wouldn't have remembered you from Adam.
Of course you have to administer disagreement with great caution,
because when a man reaches the highest eminence there is nothing that
makes him so mad as contradiction. The first sign of real greatness
shows itself when you decline to be contradicted. If, as it is stated,
Lord Beaconsfield never contradicted his Queen, then did he well
deserve her most loyal friendship. The bliss of never being
contradicted! for that alone it is worth being a queen; but of course
that is essentially a royal prerogative. It is said that there are
people who by the exercise of this great negative gift have worked their
way up from being quite modest members of society until they are now
shining social lights.
Tell a man how great he is and will he come to tea? for there are crowds
dying to meet him; why, of course he will come. Who has ever yet met a
really celebrated recluse. One has heaps of recluses who professed to
like solitude, but only in a crowd, but there was never one, however
famous, who chose to exile himself in a desert island without the
morning paper.
It is said of a famous poet, whose footsteps were much dogged by the
enterprising tourist, that he complained bitterly and wrathfully of his
inability to have even his own privacy; but that his bitterness and
wrath were as nothing to what he felt when the blameless tripper was
discovered to be paying no attention to him whatever. One wonders if
this innocent form of soft-soap is out of fashion, or are the poets less
great? How many pious pilgrims wandered to the old Colonial house in
Cambridge, America, where Longfellow lived, and looked with awe at his
front windows. Did not pilgrims by the car-load go to Concord to catch a
glimpse of the great Emerson, while they leaned reverently across the
philosopher's white picket-fence?
The poets of the past were accustomed to this innocent worship; what
about the poets of to-day? Do they also walk along the streets haughtily
(like the illustrious Mr. and Mrs. Crummles) whilst admiring passers-by
stop and say with bated breath, "This is the great Smith!" or is that
involuntary form of flattery out of fashion, or haven't the new poets
grown up yet?
Perhaps an ardent admirer might suggest Miss Marie Corelli as one to
whom the twentieth century pilgrim makes pilgrimages; but that isn't
fair, for how can any one distinguish her pilgrims from Shakespeare's
pilgrims? Pilgrims are not labelled like trunks. One hardly ventures to
say so, but it seems to me that in this Miss Corelli has taken an
unfair advantage of Shakespeare and the other poets.
There is nothing so democratic as true greatness, and this is a
democratic age, and everybody exhibits to the public. We are either a
great orator or we loop the loop, or we are a transcendent poet, or we
walk from Cheapside to the Marble Arch on a wager. But do we do all
these great things alone, unseen or unheard of by the world? No, we
don't! Not a bit of it! It is not praise we want--we want more. We
clamour for soft-soap; we demand it at the point of the bayonet.
It is an age of coarse effects, an age of advertisement. A poet could
not conscientiously sing now about a rose left to bloom unseen, for
excursion trains would be sure to be arranged there at reduced rates. It
is a confidential age, and we demand a confidant as much as a matter of
course as the heroine of the old-fashioned Italian opera,--in fact we
demand the undivided attention of the whole world.
We sing our songs and listen greedily for the applause of the gallery;
we meet with domestic misfortune, and we weep on the bosom of the
divorce court, and the daily papers weep with us. We do not do good by
stealth, but rather in such a way that we get a baronetcy or a
decoration; so when you see a man all tinkley with little stars and
things, you will know that he is always a very great and charitable man
indeed, and charity is not only alms bestowed on the poor. It is the
beauty of charity that it is not bigoted.
We put our breaking hearts under a microscope and make "copy" out of
them and money and notoriety,--and notoriety in these days pays much
better than mere celebrity, and what therefore so fitting a tribute to
notoriety as soft-soap? Ah me! it is enough to make the cat laugh! I
really have never understood this curious fact in natural history,
though I know how hard it is to make a cat laugh; this whole morning I
spent trying to make Mr. Boxer laugh (Mr. Boxer being the purry
commander-in-chief of our mouse-holes), and did not succeed.
Our modern world is a hippodrome, and we demand hippodrome effects and
thunders of applause, because ordinary applause cannot be heard. Watch
the next painted face you see, and observe how familiarity with the
process has coarsened it. Not that one has any objection to paint if it
is well done. It is a woman's duty to look her best; and if paint makes
her more beautiful, let her put it on--but, one does implore, not with
the trowel.
The other night there was a great unbecoming function, but then all
great functions are unbecoming by reason of the presence of woman's
arch-enemy--electricity. It is quite certain that the first electrician
was not only deplorably ignorant of the social virtues of soft-soap, but
he was, besides, a jilted and misanthropic old bachelor who avenged his
wrongs by harnessing electricity to a lamp, and cynically rejoiced when,
for the first time, he turned its cruel light on the wrinkles, the
hair-dye, and the dull jaded eyes of Society, and changed the pink of
art into an unconvincing blue.
It was on that same occasion that I became deeply impressed by the tiara
of Great Britain, which, it appears, is a National Institution, worn by
the Aged instead of caps, only caps are much more comfortable. I also
discovered that it need have nothing in common with the rest of the
toilet; at any rate one worthy lady so adorned had a little
breakfast-shawl about her shoulders.
If it is true that the ladies of the United States have recently plucked
up enough courage to adopt the tiara of Great Britain, and should any
one perhaps insinuate that this is inconsistent with austere republican
principles, a sufficient and crushing reply is that in America every
woman is a "lady," and every "lady" is a queen.
To return to her of the tiara and the breakfast-shawl. One did wonder
what illusion she laboured under when she fastened that diamond
structure to the thin bandeaux of her faded hair, where it swayed
insecurely. Did some one send the poor soul away from home and tell her
she looked lovely, and as she trundled off in her brougham did fifty
years slide temporarily from her old shoulders? After all, soft-soap has
its virtues; it is just the thing for the aged!
What are illusions but soft-soap self-administered, and what would life
be without illusions? Show me the heroic soul who can look into a
mirror and who sees what she really sees! O self-administered soft-soap!
what does she really see?
Upon my word, I have come to the conclusion that a certain measure of
soft-soap is not only a social necessity, it is more, it is a social
duty; only one would like to offer a plea, just a little plea, for a
fair division of labour! It is _so_ hard always to say delightful
things, especially if you don't mean them! It is being a thirsty
Ganymede at the feast of the gods.
O, great humourist of soft-soap, you made two mistakes when you invented
your wonderful lubricator of social intercourse; not only, like patent
medicine, does the dose require to be constantly increased, but you
forgot to insist on what is most vital--a periodic change of parts.
My plea is that the soft-soaped one should occasionally be obliged to
step down from his pedestal and turn his own insincere admiration, his
surface enthusiasm, and the countless and well-meant lies with which he
helps to make the existence of the soft-soaped so pleasant, upon that
unwearied and energetic prevaricator, whose mission it is to praise, no
matter how untruthfully.
Yes, even "little tin gods on wheels" should be made to step down from
high Olympus and, in turn, serve their thirsting and patient Ganymede.
* * * * *
KITWYK
BY MRS. JOHN LANE
With numerous illustrations by Albert Sterner, Howard Pyle, and George
Wharton Edwards.
_SOME PRESS OPINIONS_
"Mrs. Lane has succeeded to admiration, and chiefly by reason of being
so much interested in her theme herself that she makes no conscious
effort to please. She just tells her tales with no more artifice than
one might use in narrative by word of mouth, and she keeps the reader's
interest as keenly alive as if he were really listening to an amusing
story of what had once actually happened. Every one who seeks to be
diverted will read 'Kitwyk' for its obvious qualities of
entertainment."--_Times._
"Dip where one will into her startling pages one is certain to find
entertainment, and the charm is much assisted by the delightful
illustrations."--_Daily Telegraph._
"'Kitwyk' is destined to be in fiction what an old Dutch master painter
is in painting--a work at once typical of kind, unique of entity. The
design of this charming book is original. All the people are alive in
the not wonderful but strangely engrossing story, which is so comical
and pathetic, so quaint and 'racy of the soil,' so wide in sympathy, so
narrow of stage. All the drawings are excellent."--_World._
"Very charming. Admirers will say, not without reason, that 'Kitwyk'
recalls 'Cranford.'"--_Standard._
"A charming book; resting to read. It has style, and is written with a
whimsical humour which gives it distinction."--_Westminster Gazette._
"There is delicious humor, not only of incident, but of phrase and
expression. We should be glad of a second series."--_Literary World._
"'Kitwyk' is the daintiest morsel of idyllic fiction we have had since
Mr. Barrie opened that wonderful window in 'Thrums.' Few books are so
exquisitely wrought; so cunningly polished."--_Mr. James Douglas in The
Star._