THE ENGLISHWOMAN AT PLAY
No recent development has been more remarkable than that of athletics
among women, particularly among Englishwomen. We are apt to forget
how short a time it is since George du Maurier drew his beautiful
young ladies elegantly disporting themselves in flounced skirts on the
tennis lawn, wielding racquets with diminutive heads and as taut as
landing nets with which they gently lobbed back the ball to a swain in
side-whiskers and knickerbockers. Women, of course, have always played.
Nausicaa and her maidens innocently tossed a ball to and fro before the
wondering eyes of shipwrecked Ulysses: the battledore and shuttlecock
are nearly as old as cork and feathers. Pastimes, too, which involved
no physical exertion have always been favourites with women. But it
has been left, one might almost say, to our own generation to see
women playing games involving strength and agility of body in the same
sense in which men play them, as real trials of skill and endurance,
quickeners of the blood, purgers of the body, with seriousness and
absorption as ends in themselves. No longer do we tolerate the merely
ladylike player who is afraid to perspire or get blisters on her
hands; even at croquet she must be strenuous and attentive: pretty
incompetence may still attract a certain kind of man in the drawing
room, but it is shunned on the field and on the lawn.
In this development Englishwomen have, beyond all doubt, played the
leading part, and in England, the home of field sports, it is right
that this should be so. Women of other nations are now following their
lead, which is all the better for them. We need not regret overmuch
that a girl from France should bear away a tennis championship, since
there is no sign of decadence among our own women, and it is well for
English people to be taught that they cannot have things eternally all
their own way. English speaking women still lead the world in sport
and games, and it is likely that they will continue to do so. Athletic
prowess is in itself a sign of independence, a virtue in which the
English woman has by far the longest tradition. All the same, she has
made such strides in this tradition lately that there seems little
room for her to go any further, since there are inevitable limits
to her muscular development. She has finally banished the fetish of
being “ladylike,” at all events, while she is playing games. She takes
off her coat with a vengeance and lets her limbs have full play. I
shudder to think what Mrs Grundy of even fifty years ago would have
said to a photograph of a lady champion delivering a smashing volley,
with one leg kicked up in the air and her knee-high skirt flying in
the wind. And the admirable Miss Pinkerton—I cannot conceive her
horror on beholding two teams of schoolgirls, in jerseys, perfunctory
skirts, most obvious knickers and shin-guards, facing one another for
a hockey match. Hunting she might have allowed—did not Sophia Western
hunt? A little archery, perhaps, set off the figure to advantage;
straightforward skating—but no figures, please—promoted grace, and
possibly bowls might be permitted, though this would not be desirable.
But the idea of a woman waving a cricket bat or a golfclub, or actually
letting off a horrible gun at a pheasant, or being seen at a billiard
table, or tearing along the road astride a motor bicycle, would have
seemed to women of that day the height of indecency.
Nobody could wish to return to those old days, though the question
may arise, for girls as well as for boys, whether in this country we
do not pay too much attention to athletics. I do not believe that in
girls’ schools athletic efficiency assumes the abnormal importance
which it assumes in the public schools for boys. Women, for one thing,
do not particularly worship athletic skill in their own sex, and, for
another, they have other little vanities of their own to keep this
particular vanity in a reasonable place. Still, there is a type of
girl in England who thinks of nothing but games and recreations from
the time of getting up to the time of going to bed. We could do very
well indeed without her. You will see her in the morning setting out
soon after breakfast in a gaudy woollen jumper, a short tweed skirt
and the thickest brogues she can find, for her daily round of golf.
She always tries to find a man to play with, by the way, and imitates
with exaggeration every trick of the masculine game. After lunch it
is either another round of golf or a spin in the motor, if she can
drive herself. Then hey! for a colossal tea and immediate bridge with
innumerable cigarettes till dinner. After dinner it must be more
bridge, billiards or dancing. She talks of nothing but games or sport
and men, and she thinks of nothing else. If she hunts, she looks down
her nose at those who don’t; if she favours winter sports, she has a
poor notion of those who cannot rush off to Switzerland as Christmas
comes round. And whatever she does, she is not a true sportsman, being
far too keenly concerned in her own advantage. She will manœuvre for
the most accomplished partner, whether it be at tennis or bridge,
and, if he be a man, she will ignore all other deficiencies on his
part, so long as he will help her to win and will gain her the kudos
of appearing remarkably accomplished in the public eye. She knows
nothing of the comradeship of sport, and will unblushingly give her
partner at the morning’s golf the cold shoulder at the evening’s
dance if some backboneless elegant, with as little muscle as he has
character, happens to show her off with greater effect at the jazz or
the fox-trot. She has never been known to play for her side, to make
light of a partner’s mistakes or to take a beating cheerfully. Games,
in her creed, are meant for the display of herself, and she holds any
partner who fails to assist her in this aim as simply contemptible. In
general, her only ideal in life is to have a good time, which means
continuous excitement and always varying pleasure. She has never given
up an hour’s pleasure voluntarily to do a kindness: she has never done
a stroke of genuine work, and never reads any book but a titillating
novel. Her conversation, unless you happen to be interested in one
of her many kinds of “shop,” is the abyss of dulness, and she would
immediately vote anyone a dreadful bore who endeavoured to lead her
thoughts beyond a ball, a card, a dance or a kiss. The war, indeed,
made her better in spite of herself. Finding that she had to enjoy
herself less, she did turn her thoughts to helping her country. But,
whether she drove an ambulance or became a V.A.D., self was not very
far away. Having a good time still remained her ideal, and many
opportunities she found of having it in company with young officers.
The war over, her relapse into the old habits did not take long, and
she is now with us again in all her graceful insolence. Her only
salvation is to marry and have children, lots of them. This will give
her something to do at last, and she will learn, unwillingly, the
inevitable self-denials which parenthood entails even for the most
selfish.
This, unfortunately, is an essentially English type, but among English
women it is in a minority, though a too conspicuous one. The majority,
like their men, manage to combine games, as healthy recreations worthy
of serious endeavour, with useful work and more important aims in life.
On the whole they are far less self indulgent in this respect than
men, even the most hard-working of whom seem, as a rule, to find an
orgy of games or sport necessary on their holiday, cutting themselves
off from all but a minute section of their fellows as surely as if
they remained in their offices. Also, Englishwomen in general do not
become maniacs about their favourite form of sport, unless they hunt,
and all who hunt regard that sport as a solemn profession rather than
a recreation. Women do not care twopence about the achievements of
professional players of games over whose performances men waste so
much time and breath, nor do they learn Wisden’s Almanac by heart in
their youthful enthusiasm. In short, they take a more reasonable view
of games than English men, giving them no more than their proper place
in the whole scheme of values and rating athletic ability no higher
than it deserves. Personally, though I admit that this is little more
than prejudice, I do not think the more violent games are suitable for
women: and if a more than usually robust member of her sex should rise
and say: “Men play this and that, why should not we?” I can only answer
“Why not, indeed?” and point out in extenuation of my old-fashioned
ideas that feminine graces are not the same as masculine ones, and that
it is a pity to diminish them by rough usage. It is all very well for
women to play cricket among themselves or the mixed cricket of country
houses whereat the men use broomhandles left-handed, but they have not
the strength or the hardness of body to play the game properly, so why
should they trouble to learn it?
And for women’s football there is absolutely no justification. It is
only a game for young men who can face bodily injury with equanimity
and recover from it quickly. A woman kicks as feebly as she throws, and
she may be well content to put up with these limitations. Besides, what
can look more idiotic than the sight to which the illustrated papers
occasionally treat us, of twenty-two more or less knock-kneed young
females in shirts and shorts ambling about a football field? If they
only realised how hideous they looked they would run to the pavilion
and hide themselves at once. Football, however, is not common, but
hockey is. Well, hockey is a good game, healthy and not too physically
exacting, but no wise man ever plays mixed hockey. The truth is that a
woman’s self-control in games is not proof against more than a certain
degree of excitement. When that degree is passed, she will fling rules
and safety to the winds in her passion to win victory or avoid defeat.
In the clash of hockey sticks the intensity of excitement cannot be
limited: opponents with dangerous weapons in their hands come into
close physical contact, and the results may be appalling. In any case,
I doubt if hockey enhances any of the feminine graces. Let the girls
play it at their schools if they must, but do not let them ask us to
admire the hockey stoop, with sunk chests and rounded shoulders, which
many of them will acquire and which only a long course of carrying
waterpots on their heads could ever cure. If men who, from playing
games, get kinks in their brains are to be censured, so are women who
get kinks in their bodies.
Then there is another question. Should women delight to kill? We all
know, of course, that Diana was a huntress and that Atalanta helped
to kill the boar: but Diana was a very chilly young goddess who did
little to increase the cheerfulness of mortals, and Atalanta’s boar
was a public nuisance. Killing is such a small element in the joy of
fox-hunting that it would be absurd to look askance at the women who,
for the delight of riding across country and of managing a horse with
skill, adorn the hunting field and join with ardour in the chase.
Fishing, too, is catching rather than killing. But when it comes to
shooting, then killing for its own sake is the primary aim. This aim
is not a natural one for women. They are by nature the fosterers and
the originators of life, and it must surely appear to most of them a
perversion of all their natural instincts to take life violently and
gratuitously from any living creatures, simply for the pleasure of
doing so. Lady Nimrod, therefore, will go without praise from me, for
all her prowess in the covert or the trophies of her big game shoots.
I would rather she had many scalps of men than one skin of a tiger
tracked and slain by herself. There is so much saving of life still
to be done in the world, and women are so admirably constituted for
this end, that it is not unreasonable to prefer their developing this
side of their energies to their adding themselves to the forces of
destruction. Lady Nimrods, however, are few and likely to be fewer. As
civilisation spreads, hunting, which, after all, is an artificial relic
of an earlier state of society, is bound to disappear, with all its
advantages and its drawbacks. The world will become too small for it.
Nevertheless, even if the more violent contests and deliberate killing
are to be deprecated as recreations for women, there are plenty of
games and sports left which they can and do adorn—golf, tennis, squash
racquets, croquet, lacrosse, skating, skiing, tobogganing, badminton,
and the rest. At all of these they can, if they begin young enough,
hold their own with men. Few women keep sufficient suppleness to attain
a very high degree of graceful accomplishment in any game which they
take up in maturer years, as the painful and awkward swing of many lady
golfers bears witness, but nothing is more beautiful than the action of
an agile girl driving at golf or serving overhand at lawn tennis. It
would be an inestimable advantage to the nation if more of our girls
had the time and opportunity to cultivate athletics in their youth, for
we should then see less of those anæmic frequenters of cinemas among
our girl-workers. But the lesson is being learnt; physical exercises
are now practised in every school, and large employers of labour are
coming to recognise the wisdom of providing healthy recreation in the
open air for female as well as male employees: so that the time may
come perhaps when every Englishwoman will have an upright carriage and
when the shambling shuffle which too often appears in city streets has
given place to a free, easy gait.
In youth, certainly, nothing purges the humours like exercise in
recreation, and it is wonderful to think of the good sense and sanity
which the young ladies of Miss Austen’s day were able to maintain on
walking of a very gentle kind. Emma Woodhouse was a charming person,
but she must occasionally have felt the desire to hit something very
hard, though there is no record of her hitting anything but the _amour
propre_ of poor Miss Bates; and Jane Eyre would have toned her nerves
better for a few games of tennis. But, when the days of high spirits
and superfluous energy are over, women seem better able to settle
down than men, who are rather like children in their dependence on
amusement. Women, on the whole, may be thankful that they escape the
tyranny of habitual exercise in later years and can compose themselves
to a reasonable, healthy life without the need for continually
perspiring and violently exercising their muscles. Many a wife, I often
think, must look with indulgent wonder on her middle-aged husband
who, if he is to keep cheerful and contented, must pass at least half
the hours when he is not working in playing at something or other.
What she can attain with a mild walk, a little gardening, and a bout
of stitching he can only compass after propelling for hours a ball
about a field or up against a wall or across a table; or else he must
be watching somebody else do these things and becoming ludicrously
excited in large crowds at cup-ties and test matches, the importance
of which to humanity at large is, to say the least, problematical.
Yet, with exquisite forbearance she refrains from exercising her
humour at his expense, and even pretends to acknowledge the importance
of these things for him, though he would be the first to admit that
they had no importance for her. She will hardly complain, though well
she might, at the amount of his leisure which he spends on himself
alone, for men are unthinkingly extravagant in what they spend in time
and money on amusing and feeding themselves. No doubt she is wise in
making these accommodations, seeing how men are constituted, but it
would be only graceful on the men’s part to acknowledge that they are
in need of them. They might be sadly embarrassed if they had to cast
up a comparative account of their own and their wife’s expenditure on
amusement, and the best they could say for themselves would be that
men, as machines, were more expensive to maintain in good running order
than women.
However, we need not labour the little difference too hard. English
men and women, as a rule, are good sportsmen, the one to the other.
They can play together as well as they can work together, without
unnecessary ceremony or condescension; and if the man can play the
woman off her feet, she can dance him off his legs. Unlike most other
nations, English men and women, wherever they go, take their games
with them as part of the good fellowship which they spread in the
out-of-the-way corners of the world. In India, in Africa, in South
America, in ports of call and in remote islands, no British colony
settles long before its sporting club is started, where its members
may meet one another daily for friendly intercourse and friendly
emulation. It is the great bulwark against loneliness, the focus of
simple gaiety in the whole station, and, even if it fosters overmuch
our insular solidarity, it encourages healthiness and counteracts the
potent denaturalising force which other continents are apt to exercise
over the European. The picture of Saigon which Claude Farrère draws
in his novel “Les Civilisés” is not a pleasant one, nor one that
any Englishman could draw of an English colony. As a nation we keep
as hard and as healthy abroad as we keep at home, and for this our
English amusements are partly to be thanked. The result might possibly
be attained with less expense of time and energy, but at least it is
attained. Our respect for a good playmate is, perhaps exaggerated, but
it is genuine, and the conception of a good playmate, if it does not
exhaust the virtues, is not a mean one. Above all, our men and women
apply this conception to one another, as a strong attachment between
the sexes added to that of nature. Long therefore, may English men and
women play together, since thereby they will know one another, respect
one another and help one another more thoroughly.