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THE
GOOD ENGLISHWOMAN
BY
ORLO WILLIAMS, M.C.
Author of “Vie de Boheme: A Patch of Romantic Paris,”
“The Life and Letters of John Rickman,” etc.
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
ST MARTIN’S STREET
MDCCCCXX
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
TO BETTY
WHEN SHE IS OLDER
WITH THE SUPERFLUOUS INJUNCTION
NOT TO TAKE THIS BOOK
TOO SERIOUSLY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MAN IN THE SIDECAR 9
II. LITTLE GIRLS 29
III. BIG GIRLS 51
IV. THE ENGLISH WIFE 76
V. THE ENGLISH MOTHER 102
VI. THE ENGLISHWOMAN’S MIND 128
VII. THE ENGLISHWOMAN’S MANNERS 145
VIII. THE ENGLISHWOMAN AND THE ARTS 166
IX. THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN SOCIETY 187
X. THE ENGLISHWOMAN AT WORK 204
XI. THE ENGLISHWOMAN AT PLAY 219
XII. THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN PARLIAMENT 234
CHAPTER I
A FEW REMARKS FROM THE MAN IN THE SIDECAR
My uncle Joseph, a solitary man, once broke the silence of a country
walk by asserting with explosive emphasis: “I don’t see how any man can
understand women.” I assented vaguely, and he went on: “How can we ever
grasp their point of view, my dear boy, which is so totally different
from ours? How can we understand the outlook on life of beings whose
instincts, training, purpose, ambitions have so little resemblance to
ours? For my part I have given up trying: it is a waste of time. Never
let a woman flatter you into thinking that you understand her: she is
trying to make you her tool. The Egyptians gave the Sphinx a woman’s
face and they were right. Women are so mysterious.” And the south-west
wind took up his words and whispered them to the trees, which nodded
their heads and waved their branches, rustling “mysterious, mysterious”
in all their leaves.
I do not argue with my uncle Joseph, especially on a country walk
when the south-west wind is blowing. So I took out my pipe and lit
it in spite of the south-west wind, saying to myself: “You silly
wind, you silly trees, you know nothing of wisdom. You would catch up
anything that my uncle Joseph said and make it seem important.” And the
south-west wind solemnly breathed “important” into the ear of a little
quarry, in the tone of a ripe family butler. “There is just as much,
and just as little, mystery about men and women as there is about you.
It depends how much one wants to know. So far as there is any mystery,
as a matter of fact, it is much more on the side of men, who are far
more incalculable, far more complex than women in their motives and
reactions. But men are lazy, you silly old things, and it saves a lot
of trouble to invent a mystery and give it up rather than sit down
before a problem to study it. Men have thousands of other things to
think about besides women, but women, who have not the same variety,
are so devilish insistent, that they would keep men thinking about them
all their time if they could. So, in self-defence, men have pacified
the dear things by calling them mysterious, which is highly flattering,
and by giving them up for three-quarters of their days. Uncle Joseph
has probably been arguing unsuccessfully with Aunt Georgiana, as he
always will, because he never took the trouble to master her mental and
emotional processes. But that does not prove the general truth of his
proposition. His is just the mind which grows those weeds of everyday
thought the seeds of which thoughtless south-west winds blow about as
they do the seeds of thistles. Go off and blow those clouds away, you
reverberator of commonplaces.”
Throwing up his hands with a shriek of “commonplaces,” the wind flew up
over the hill ruffling its hair as he passed.
I think I was quite right not to answer my uncle Joseph and to rebuke
the south-west wind. People are so tiresomely fond of uttering
generalisations which they do not really believe and on which they
never act. It is surely no less foolish to say that women are complete
mysteries than to say that one understands them perfectly. Every
individual understands a few men and a few women, or life would be
impossible. Besides, understanding has its degrees which approach,
but never reach, perfection. Samuel Butler somewhere says that the
process of love could only be logically concluded by eating the loved
one—a coarse way of saying that perfect love would end in complete
assimilation: it is the same with the relation of knowledge. Happily
love between human beings of opposite sexes can exist without being
pushed to this voracious conclusion: so can understanding.
It may be true that women have quicker intuitions than men, though only
over a limited range of subjects: but men, on the other hand, are more
widely and studiously observant, besides being far more interested in
the attainment of truth as the result of observation. Patient induction
is, after all, an excellent substitute for brilliant guessing. Women
would be extremely disappointed if men really acted on the “mystery”
theory and took to thinking or writing as little about woman as the
majority think or write about the problem of existence. Nothing,
however, will prevent men from talking and thinking about women, and
a glance at any bookshelf will prove that they do not always do so in
complete ignorance of their subject. Balzac, who was no magician, was
not entirely beside the mark in creating the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
and Lady Teazle is a recognizable being. George Meredith’s Diana seems
to have human substance: Mr Shaw’s Anne in “Man and Superman” and Mr
Wells’ Anne Veronica, though founded on masculine observations, are
admitted by women to be reasonable creations. The laziness of men,
I repeat, and the vanity of women are responsible for the legend of
woman’s inviolable mystery. The laws of gravitation were a mystery
till Newton used his observation: the mystery still remains, but the
experiments of Newton and other physicists has driven it further back.
So it is with the human soul. Each one is a mystery, but observation
and familiarity can penetrate a number of its veils, leaving only
some of the intimate recesses unexplored, and even these recesses are
threatened with exposure as our knowledge of telepathy and of the
subconscious elements increases.
There are certain experiences of women which a man cannot share,
certain aspirations and fears at whose poignancy he can only guess,
certain instinctive impulses of which he is not directly conscious: but
he can surmount the barriers in some measure by the use of his eyes
and ears. If, therefore, he choose to record what his eyes and ears
tell him, he is not exceeding the limits of masculine capacity. My
uncle Joseph could hardly deplore so unpretentious a line of approach.
A mere man may be content to leave Miss Dorothy Richardson and Miss
May Sinclair delving gloomily in the jungles of feminine psychology
where he would fear to follow them, and yet feel that, without
presumption, he may hold some views about his natural complement.
The question is what views are right and what are wrong. The war has
changed many things, and man’s views about his natural complement
among them. Most people, with that useful faculty of oblivion for
which we thank Providence, have forgotten what they thought in 1914:
if there were such a thing as a mental gramophone which could record
their thoughts of five years ago, they would be extremely surprised.
Things that seemed absurd then have now been taken for granted, and
it is possible that many things taken for granted then may be shown
to have become absurd. It has certainly become ridiculous to speak
of the “weaker sex,” except in a strictly muscular sense. Women have
revealed capacities for organisation and disciplined effort in large
bodies, especially in this country, for which the epithet “surprising”
is but feeble. Has this fact alone not caused a revolution of ideas?
If we have not all accepted it yet, we shall all soon have to accept
the principle that, in all but purely physical exertion, men and women
have equal potential abilities. The potential ability of women is still
in need of development, for they are starting some centuries behind
the men, but the inevitable result will be the recognition of “equal
opportunity.” To what sociological crisis this may lead, I do not know,
and as this is not a sociological treatise, I need not prophesy: but it
is an element that must count heavily in any review of old ideas.
Another element which must count is the franchise, which will, of
course, be extended in the near future till there is no inequality
between the sexes in this respect. Women are political beings with vast
possibilities of becoming a political force. They will play a more and
more important part in the history of the nation. They will dance a new
dance in the ballet of humanity. That recently so familiar figure in a
short skirt of khaki and close-fitting cap, seated firmly but not too
gracefully astride a motor bicycle rushing with its side-car, and often
its male passenger, through the traffic is more than a phenomenon, it
is a symbol. The air has whipped her cheeks pink and blown loose a
stray lock above her determined eyes. What beauties she has of form or
feature are none of them hid. She is all the woman that the world has
known, but with a new purpose and a new poise. For good or ill she has
entered the machine, and we came to look on her with an indifferent and
familiar eye. But what will she do, what will she think, whither will
she carry us in that side-car of hers? To all her ancient qualities she
has added a new one: object of desire, mother of children, guardian
of the hearth, mate of man or virgin saint, she has now another
manifestation, that of fellow-combatant; some say, also of adversary.
One might almost say that, bending over the handle-bars of her machine,
with her body curved and her legs planted firmly on the footboard
she mimes the very mark of interrogation which her changes of social
posture present. A living query in khaki, she is a challenge to the
prophet and the philosopher. One who is neither will let the challenge
pass, sure only of one thing—that develop as she may and carry us where
she will, the tradition of the good Englishwoman is safe in her keeping.
“The good Englishwoman,” an untranslatable phrase—I beseech our French
neighbours not to translate it _la bonne anglaise_—is an expression
which has a corresponding reality. We all know it, in our flesh, in our
bones, in our minds and in our souls. The Englishwoman is a definite
person to all of us in England: she is not merely the female of the
species living in these isles, she has a significance in the world
at large. We love her and we honour her, but we do not often reflect
what it is that we love and honour. It is a mental occupation which
might be more frequently indulged in, were we not such indifferent
reflectors. The ingenious Henry Adams, that enlightened but pensive
American, whose death has just given us one of the most fascinating
books of modern times, spent his whole life in reflecting on his
countrymen, with results which are stimulating if not encouraging. He
did not spend so much time reflecting on his countrywomen, though he
said that he owed more to them than to any man, but his reflections
on that head resolved themselves into a question which no Englishman
would formulate in similar circumstances. Henry Adams used to invite
agreeable and witty people to dine,[1] and, at an unexpected moment,
to propound to the “brightest” of the women the question: “Why is the
American woman a failure?” He meant a failure as a force rather than
as an individual, but it was an irritating question all the same,
nor is it surprising that it usually drew the answer: “Because the
American man is a failure.” The Englishman would be too chivalrous to
ask such a question of his guests, but he would not even formulate it.
The Englishman, even a considerably sophisticated one, could never
think of the Englishwoman as a failure, whether as an individual, a
force or an inspiration. He is bound by his experience, his upbringing
and his instincts to think of her as a success. Let us then put the
question “Why is the Englishwoman a success?” We shall get no very
good impromptu answers, nor do I suggest that “Because the Englishman
is a success” would be the correct one. We should be the last to take
so much credit to ourselves. We are justly proud of the Englishwoman,
but what is it of which we are proud? Of all the approving epithets
that have been applied to women, which do we choose for our own? Is
our pride in their beauty, their brilliance, their courage, their wit,
their tact, their energy, their endurance, their sagacity, their skill
in handicraft, their devotion to their young, their taste in art and
dress, their grace of movement, the sweetness of their speech or the
greatness of their minds? Are they only an attraction or an independent
force? Are they better mistresses or mothers? When Henry Adams lived
in this country as a young man he found that "Englishwomen, from the
educational point of view, could give nothing until they approached
forty years old. Then they become very interesting—very charming—to the
man of fifty." What do we say to such a criticism from so acute a mind?
[1] See _The Education of Henry Adams_, p. 442
It is easier to ask questions than to answer them, and I propose to
shirk the harder part of the task. Questions cannot be satisfactorily
answered for other people, and, where everyone has to make up his or
her mind, the mere asking of questions is in itself an aid to their
solution. Each reader will answer the questions I have asked in a
different way: having done so, he must pass to another consideration.
We are proud of the Englishwoman, but we criticise her, again each one
of us differently. We must consider the grounds of our criticism. She
dresses badly, some will say; her hair is always untidy, say others;
foreigners assert that she is proud and stupid; Englishmen, secretly
glad that she is proud, try to forget that she is poorly educated. That
she walks gracefully, none will say, but as an athlete she is second to
none: it would be rash to say that her taste in the home is remarkable,
but the atmosphere of home, which not even the most hideous decoration
can kill nor the most beautiful create, emanates from her alone. As a
housewife she has her glories and her failings. She has not the almost
brutish industry of the German nor the avaricious acuteness of the
French _bourgeoise_; she is, in general, neither expert in household
industry nor in business. Nevertheless, the Englishman is only really
contented in a household presided over and served by Englishwomen,
and that is not only because they understand his wants, but because
they are genial and simple, neither servile nor imperious, good
comrades who do not expect too little or exact too much. Fearless in
her actions, the Englishwoman is timid in her ideas: what she may do
in the future is incalculable, her possibilities are unbounded; but
there seem to be limits to the expansion, except by imitation, of her
power of thought. As an administrator she will find no superior, but
the political thinkers, as well as the artists, will for the most
part come from other nations. These are but random criticisms which,
among others, will occur to any mind that reflects upon the subject.
They show, once more, that the essence of the Englishwoman or of her
goodness is not a simple one. She is therefore an excellent topic for a
conversation that should be provocative and stimulating. If I sustain
one part, the reader will mentally sustain the other. Let us continue
it.
It is hardly necessary to say that any criticism of the Englishwoman
in these pages is not an attack upon her: nor is any approbation to
be considered a defence. At least I pay this much respect to my uncle
Joseph that no woman shall flatter me into defending her: she is more
than capable of doing this for herself. But, beyond this, I quite
fail to understand what a friend of mine meant when he suggested that
I should write in defence of women. “Against whom or against what?”
I asked, but his explanation was not lucid. I gathered that he had
in mind the complaint sometimes heard that women have ceased to be
women in order to become inferior men; that they are getting hard and
conceited; that they turn up their noses at the domestic virtues,
at marriage and the whole conception of life as duty, and that they
think only of having “a good time.” The isolated instances given as
grounds for this complaint are, I am convinced, not typical. That women
have developed and broken through the far too narrow restrictions of
a hundred years ago is only a matter for thankfulness: something is
always lost in every adjustment, but more is gained if the adjustment
is natural. The flighty girl whom most grumblers of this kind have
in mind is only a fraction, and a very imperfect fraction, of the
Englishwoman. A far more serious line was taken by Henry Adams towards
the end of his life, when he became finally convinced that he was a man
of the eighteenth century living in an unfamiliar world whose guiding
forces he could not fathom. Musing over the enormous mass of new forces
put into the hand of man by the end of the nineteenth century, he
wondered what should be the result of so much energy turned over to
the use of women, according to the scientific notions of force. He
could not write down the equation. The picture of the world that he
saw was of man bending eagerly over the steering wheel of a rushing
motor car too intent on keeping up a high speed and avoiding accidents
to have leisure for any distractions. The old attraction of the woman,
one of the most powerful forces of the past, had become a distraction,
and woman, no longer able to inspire men, had been forced to follow
them. Woman had been set free: as travellers, typists, telephone girls,
factory hands, they moved untrammelled in the world. But in what
direction were they moving? After the men, said Henry Adams; discarding
all the qualities for which men had no longer any interest or pleasure,
they too were bending over the steering wheel in the same rapid career.
Woman the rebel was now free and there was only one thing left for her
to rebel against, maternity, or the inertia of sex, to speak in terms
of force. Inertia of sex, the philosopher truly remarked, could not
be overcome without extinguishing the race, yet an immense force was
working irresistibly to overcome it. What would happen? Henry Adams
gave up the riddle, grateful for the illusion that woman alone of all
the species was unable to change.
Superficial observers might say that this movement has been accelerated
by the war. Hundreds of homes have loosened their ties in the stress of
war, thousands of unrebellious daughters have left their narrow walls
at the call of patriotism and are now unwilling to return to them. They
have learnt to live in the herd with their own sex, and prefer it to
living with their own sex in the pen; physical danger and discomfort
are no longer bogeys to frighten them; they have been “on their own,”
and “on their own” they intend to stay. All very true, no doubt, with
the added complication of serious competition between the sexes in a
restricted labour market. At the same time, these superficial observers
forget that there has been an extraordinary return to the traditional
relations between men and women during the war. The inspiration of the
woman has never been stronger; once more, after many years, men have
fought for their women and the women have regarded their champions with
gratitude; women have tended and worked for men in greater numbers
and with greater alacrity than ever before in the history of the
world; the comradeship between the sexes has grown warmer and stronger
without destroying the still more natural relation, for marriage as an
institution has enjoyed a season of abnormal popularity. In a country
at war, especially in a country invaded, men and women return to the
relations of extreme antiquity; the men fight to protect the home and
the family, which they alone can do. If they are beaten, the home is
destroyed and the women are ravished.
We in England have escaped this last simplification: we have been
lucky, but we have lost the directness of the lesson. Nevertheless,
it is patent enough to thoughtful people. War has revealed men and
women pretty much as they always have been, and the revelation will
not be forgotten. The apprehensions of a Henry Adams, after the five
years of war, do, in fact, appear to be exaggerated. The futility of
all that vast array of mechanical force which so appalled him has been
thoroughly exposed: ideas have come to their own again as the only
things that matter. In his search for ideas and in their application
man can well afford to listen to women: nor will he be backward in
doing so. For my part, I cannot see him racing towards the future alone
in an evil-looking 120-horse-power car, leaving women dustily in the
distance. I prefer to come back to the khaki figure on a motor-bicycle
with a man in the side-car, the woman guiding but in the service of the
man, the man a passenger but in transit to his work. And the picture
is not, as it may seem at first sight, an inversion of older relations,
for it has always been the woman who drives. Men can attract women,
seduce them, bully them, desert them and hypnotize them, but they
cannot drive them; yet a wise woman can drive almost any man. This art
is not likely to be lost by the sex in this or any other country, it is
therefore important that the driving should be in the right direction.
This is the chief responsibility that the future lays on the
Englishwoman: she must have good hands and a clear head, and it would
perhaps be well if she could improve her head without spoiling her
hands. Man, regarded not as a passenger but as an animal, is spirited
but docile. If the women of this country ever made up a corporate mind
to secure any desirable end, they could drive the men towards it with
ease, provided they chose the right bits and bridles: and those bits
and bridles will be the old patterns. It is the women who think there
is no need to drive with skill but trust to their power to progress by
themselves on their own machines that make the mistake. When it comes
to a tug of war they find their inferiority to the stronger animal.
But, my dear ladies, there need be no tug-of-war if you use the forces
which are already in your hands. You would have got the suffrage long
ago if you had all really wanted it. And when you did get it, it was
not by assaulting policemen in small sections and chaining a few of
yourselves to Cabinet Ministers’ railings; you got it by exercising an
old force, the force of admiration. Your services in the war won you
the admiration of all Englishmen, and what an Englishman will not do
for women he admires cannot be imagined.
The future of England, or more than half of it, lies in your hands. You
are the great reproductive force and the great educative force: you can
divert the masculine forces to worthy or unworthy ends by your powers
of attraction and inspiration. You are as yet inexperienced in the
forum, but in every other place of propaganda—the home, the theatre,
the lawn, the beach, the garden, the club and even the press—your voice
can make itself heard continuously and without interruption. You can
approach man when he is at his weakest, when he is no longer encased in
his armour of business, but when he is tired, when he wants sympathy,
when he is disposed to be affectionate, when he is comfortable, when
he is well fed, when his chivalry deprives him of effective repartee,
when he must either listen or run ignominiously away. Who can save a
man from a woman but another woman? That was why Madame de Warens gave
herself to Rousseau. A man is a bore at his peril, but a woman can be
tiresome with impunity. Jeanne d’Arc was tiresome, so was Florence
Nightingale: but they got their way. A man has only one reason for
being listened to, that what he says is intelligible and advantageous
to his hearer: unless he is a clergyman in a pulpit he is bound to
persuade his audience that his matter possesses these qualities. But
you have a hundred other reasons for being listened to. If you have
beauty, that is enough; if you are well dressed, that is also enough;
if you are beloved, your speech will sound as music; if you are a wife,
a mother, a sister, you have an audience of husband, sons, brothers
by natural right; if a man has misunderstood you, he will hear you
humbly; if you have understood him, your words will be wisdom. You can
preach when you pour out tea, and make proselytes at the dinner table;
at rising up and lying down the word is with you. With a whisper and
a sigh, or a sally and a smile, you can accomplish more than an hour
of oratory in Parliament: make a man feel a brute and he is soil for
your seed; make him feel wise and he will praise your wit; make him
feel a god and he will graciously hear your prayer. Irritate him and
your cause is lost, your sex betrayed. What need you more of arts or
opportunities? Pray rather for ideas to be given to you. Man is the
chief inventor of ideas, and is likely to remain so, but he is a wise
inventor who gets woman to stand for his invention. The ideas for which
you, as a body, choose to stand will prevail: heaven send that you
choose them wisely.