natural sequence of things. Men are always like that when the woman
loves them; when she don't, they behave much better. My dear, this is
just what is so annoying about love; the man's is always going slower
and slower towards a dead stop, as the woman's is "coaling" and getting
steam up. I borrow Papa's admirably accurate metaphor, nothing can be
truer. It is a great pity, but I suppose the fault is Nature's. _Entre
nous_, I don't think Nature ever contemplated marriage, any more than
she did crinolettes, pearl powder, or the electric light. There is
no doubt that Nature intended to adjust the thing on the butterfly
and buttercup system; on the _je reste, tu t'en vas_, principle. And
nothing would be easier or nicer, only there are children and poverty.
So the butterfly has to be pinned down by the buttercup. That is why
the Communists and Anarchists always abolish Property and Marriage
together. The one is evolved out of the other, just as the dear
scientists say the horse was evolved out of a bird, which I never can
see makes the matter any easier of comprehension; but, still--what
was I saying? Oh, I meant to say this: you are only lamenting, as a
special defalcation and disloyalty in San Zenone, what is merely his
unconscious and involuntary and perfectly natural alteration from a
lover into a husband. The butterfly is beginning to feel the pin, which
has been run through him to stick him down. It is not your fault, my
sweet little girl; it is the fault, if at all, of the world, which has
decreed that the butterfly, to flirt legitimately with the buttercup,
must suffer the corking pin. Now, take my advice: the pin is in, don't
worry if he writhe on it a little bit! It is only what the beloved
scientists again call automatic action. And do try and beat into your
little head the fact that a man may love you very dearly, and yet yearn
a little for the _petits théâtres_ in the silent recesses of his manly
breast. Of course, I know this sort of rough awakening from delightful
dreams is harder for you than it is for most, because you began at
such tremendous altitudes. You had your Ruy Blas and Petrarca, and
the mandoline and the moonlight, and the love-philtres, all mixed
up in an intoxicating draught. You have naturally a great deal more
disillusion to go through than if you had married a country squire, or
a Scotch laird, who would never have suggested any romantic delights.
One cannot go near Heaven without coming down with a crash, like the
poor men in the balloons. You have been up in your balloon, and you
are now coming down. Ah, my dear, everything depends on _how_ you come
down. You will think me a monster for saying so, but it will rest so
much in your own hands. You won't believe it, but it will. If you come
down with tact and good-humour, it will all be right afterwards; but
if you show temper, as men say of their horses, why, then, the balloon
will lie prone, a torn, empty, useless bag, that will never again
get off the ground. To speak plainly, dear, if you will receive with
resignation and sweetness the unpleasant discovery that San Zenone is
mortal, you won't be unhappy, and you will soon get used to it; but if
you perpetually fret about it, you won't alter him, and you will both
be miserable; or, if not miserable, you will do something worse; you
will each find your amusement in somebody else. I know you so well,
my poor, pretty Gladys; you want such an immense quantity of sympathy
and affection, but you won't get it, my dear child. I quite understand
that the Prince looks like a picture, and he has made life an erotic
poem for you for a month, and the inevitable reaction which follows
seems dull as ditch water, you would even say as cruel as the grave.
But it is _nothing new_. Do try and get that well in your mind. Try,
too, and be as light-hearted as you can. Men hate an unamusable woman.
Make believe to laugh at the French novels, if you can't really do it;
if you don't, dear, he will go to somebody else who will. Why do those
_demi-monde_ women get such preference over us? Only because they don't
bore their men. A man would sooner we flung a champagne glass at his
head than cried for five minutes. We can't fling champagne glasses;
the prejudices of our education are against it. It is an immense loss
to us; we must make up for it as much as we can by being as agreeable
as we know how to be. We shall always be a dozen lengths behind those
others who _do_ fling the glasses. By the way, you said in one of
your earliest notes that you wondered why our mother ever married. I
am not sufficiently _au courant_ with pre-historic times to be able
to tell you why, but I can see what she has done since she did marry.
She has always effaced herself in the very wisest and most prudent
manner. She has never begrudged Papa his Norway fishing, or his August
yachting, though she knew he could ill afford them. She has never bored
him _with_ herself, or _about_ us. She has constantly urged him to go
away and enjoy himself, and when he is down with her in the country
she always takes care that all the women he admires, and all the men
who best amuse him, shall be invited in relays, to prevent his being
dull or feeling teased for a moment. I am quite sure she has never
cared the least about her own wishes, but has only studied his. This
is what I call being a clever woman and a good woman. But I fear such
women are as rare as blue roses. Try and be like her, my dear. She was
quite as young as you are now when she married. But unfortunately,
in truth, you are a terrible little egotist. You want to shut up this
beautiful Roman all alone with you in a kind of attitude of perpetual
adoration--of yourself. That is what women call affection; you are
not alone in your ideas. Some men submit to this sort of demand, and
go about for ever held tight in a leash, like unslipped pointers. The
majority--well, the majority bolt. And I am sure I should if I were one
of them. I do not think you could complain if your beautiful Romeo did.
I can see you so exactly, with your pretty, little, grave face, and
your eyes that have such a fatal aptitude for tears, and your solemn
little views about matrimony and its responsibilities, making yourself
quite odious to this mirthful Apollo of yours, and innocently believing
all the while that you are pleasing Heaven and saving your own dignity
by being so remarkably unpleasant! Are you _very_ angry with me? I am
afraid so. Myself, I would much sooner have an unfaithful man than a
dull one; the one may be bored _by_ you, but the other bores _you_,
which is immeasurably worse.'
_From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to the Lady
Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg._
"DEAR GWEN,--How can you _possibly_ tell what Mamma did when she was
young? I daresay she fretted dreadfully. Now, of course, she has got
used to it--like all other miserable women. If people marry only to
long to be with other people, what is the use of being married at all?
I said so to Piero, and he answered, very insolently, "_Il n'y a point!
Si on le savait!_" He sent for some more dreadful French books, Gyp's
and Richepin's and Gui de Maupassant's, and he lies about reading them
all day long when he isn't asleep. He is very often asleep in the
daytime. He apologises when he is found out, but he yawns as he does
so. You say I should amuse him, but I _can't_ amuse him. He doesn't
care for any English news, and he is beginning to get irritable because
I cannot talk to him in Italian, and he declares my French detestable,
and there is always something dreadful happening. There has been such
a terrible scene in the village. Four of the Coombe Bysset men, two
blacksmiths, a carpenter, and a labourer, have ducked Toniello in
the village pond on account of his attention to their womenkind; and
Toniello, when he staggered out of the weeds and the slime, drew his
knife on them and stabbed two very badly. Of course, he has been taken
up by the constables, and the men he hurt moved to the county hospital.
The magistrates are furious and scandalised; and Piero!--Piero has
nobody to play billiards with him. When the magistrates interrogated
him about Toniello, as, of course, they were obliged to do, he got into
a dreadful passion because one of them said that it was just like a
cowardly Italian to carry a knife and make use of it. Piero absolutely
_hissed_ at the solemn old gentleman who mumbled this. "And your
people," he cried, "are they so very courageous? Is it better to beat
a man into a jelly, or kick a woman with nailed boots, as your English
mob does? Where is there anything cowardly? He was one against four.
In my country there is not a night that goes by without a _rissa_ of
that sort, but nobody takes any notice. The jealous persons are left to
fight it out as best they may; after all, it is the women's fault."
And then he said some things that really I cannot repeat, and it was
a mercy that, as he spoke in the most rapid and furious French, the
old gentleman did not, I think, understand a syllable. But they saw
he was in a passion, and that scandalised them, because, you know,
English people always think that you should keep your bad temper for
your own people at home. Meantime, of course, Toniello is in prison,
and I am afraid they won't let us take him out on bail, because he has
hurt one of the blacksmiths dreadfully. Aunt Carrie's solicitors are
doing what they can for him, to please me, but I can see they consider
it all _peines perdues_ for a rogue who ought to be hanged. "And to
think," cries Toniello, "that in my own country I should have all the
populace with me. The very carabineers themselves would have been
with me! _Accidente a tutti quei grulli_," which means, "may apoplexy
seize these fools." "They were only the women's husbands," he adds,
with scorn; "they are well worth making a fuss about, certainly!" Then
Piero consoles him, and gives him cigarettes, and is obliged to leave
him sobbing and tearing his hair, and lying face downward on his bed
of sacking. I thought Piero would not leave the poor fellow alone in
prison, and so I supposed he would give up all idea of going from here,
and so I began to say to myself, "_A quelque chose malheur est bon._"
But to-day, at luncheon, Piero said "_Sai carina!_ It was bad enough
with Toniello, but without him, I tell you frankly, I cannot stand
any more of it. With Toniello one could laugh and forget a little.
But now--_anima mia_, if you do not wish me to kill somebody, and be
lodged beside Toniello by your worthy law-givers, you must really let
me go to Trouville." "Alone!" I said; and I believe it is what he did
mean, only the horror in my voice frightened him from confessing it.
He sighed and got up. "I suppose I shall never be alone any more," he
said impatiently. "If only men knew what they do when they marry--_on
ne nous prendrait jamais_. No--no. Of course, I meant that you will, I
hope, consent to come away with me somewhere out of this intolerable
place, which is made up of fog and green leaves. Let us go to Paris
to begin with; there is not a soul there, and the theatres are _en
rélache_, but it is always delightful, and then in a week or so we will
go down to Trouville, all the world is there." I couldn't answer him
for crying. Perhaps that was best, for I am sure I should have said
something wicked, which might have divided us for ever. And then what
would people have thought?'
_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to the
Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset._
'MY POOR LITTLE DEAR,--Are you already beginning to be miserable about
what people will think? Then, indeed, your days of joy are numbered.
If I were to write to you fifty times I could only repeat what I have
always written. You are not wise, and you are doing everything you
ought not to do. _Of two people who are married, there is always one
who has the delusion that he or she is necessary and delightful to
the life of the other. The other generally thinks just the contrary._
The result is not peace. This gay, charming, handsome son of Rome has
become your entire world, but don't suppose for a moment, my child,
that you will ever be his. It is not in reason, not in Nature, that
you should be. _If_ you have the intelligence, the tact, and the
forbearance required, you _may_ become his friend and counsellor,
but I fear you never will have these. You fret, you weep, and you
understand nothing of the masculine temperament. "I see snakes," as
the Americans observe; and you will not have either the coolness or the
wisdom required to scotch a snake, much less to kill it. Once for all,
my poor pet, go cheerfully to Paris, Trouville, and all the pleasure
places in the world. Affect enjoyment if you feel it not, and try to
remember, beyond everything, that affection is not to be retained or
revived by either coercion or lamentation. Once dead, it is not to be
awakened by all the "crooning" of its mourner. It is a corpse, for ever
and aye. Myself, I fail to see how you could expect a young Italian,
who has all the habits of the great world, and the memories of his _vie
de garçon_, to be cheerful or contented in a wet June in an isolated
English country house, with nobody to look at but yourself. Believe
me, my dear child, it is the inordinate vanity of a woman which makes
her imagine that she can be sufficient for her husband. Nothing but
vanity. The cleverer a woman is, the more fully she recognises her own
insufficiency for the amusement of a man, and the more carefully (if
she be wise) does she take care that this deficiency in her shall never
be forced upon his observation. Now, if you shut a man up with you in
a country house, with the rain raining every day, as in Longfellow's
poem, you do force it upon him most conspicuously. If you were not his
wife, I daresay he would not tire of you, and he might even prefer a
grey sky to a blue one. But as his wife!--oh, my dear, why, why don't
you try and understand what a terrible penalty-weight you carry in
the race? Write and tell me all about it. I shall be anxious. I am so
afraid, my sweet little sister, that you think love is all moonlight
and kisses, and forget that there are clouds in the sky and quarrels
on earth. May Heaven save you from both. _P.S._--Do remember that this
same love requires just as delicate handling as a cobweb does. If a
rough touch break the cobweb, all the artists in the world can't mend
it. There is a wholesome truth for you. If you prevent his going to
Paris now, he will go in six months' time, and perhaps, then, he will
go without you. You are not wise, my poor pet; you should make him feel
that you sympathise with his pleasures, not that you and his pleasures
are enemies. But it is no use to instil wisdom into you; you are very
young, and very much in love. You look on all the natural distractions
which he inclines to, as on so many rivals. So they may be, but _we
don't beat our rivals by abusing them_. The really wise way is to
tacitly show that we can be more attractive than they; if we cannot be
so, we may sulk or sigh as we will, we shall be vanquished by them. You
will think me very preachy-preachy, and, perhaps, you will throw me in
the fire unread; but I must say just one word more. Dear, you are in
love with Love, but underneath Love there is a real man, and real men
are far from ideal creatures. Now, it is the real man that you want to
consider, to humour, to study. If the real man be pleased, Love will
take care of himself; whereas if you bore the real man, Love will fly
away. If you had been wise, my poor pet, I repeat, you would have found
nothing so delightful as Gyp and Octave de Mirbeau, and you would have
declared that the Paris asphalte excelled all the English lawns in the
world. He does not love you the less because he wants to be _dans le
mouvement_, to hear what other men are saying, and to smoke his cigar
amongst his fellow-creatures.'
_From the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Hotel des Roches Noires,
Trouville, France, to the Principe di San Zenone, Coombe
Bysset, Luton, Beds., England._
'Poor flower, in your box of wet moss, what has become of you? Are you
dead, and dried in your wife's _hortus siccus_? She would be quite
sure of you _then_, and I daresay much happier than if you were set
forth in anybody else's bouquet. I try in vain to imagine you in that
"perfectly proper" atmosphere (is not that correct English, "perfectly
proper"?) Will you be dreadfully changed when one sees you again? There
is a French proverb which says that "the years of joy count double."
The days of _ennui_ certainly count for years, and give us grey hairs
before we are five-and-twenty. But you know I cannot pity you. You
_would_ marry an English girl because she looked pretty sipping her
tea. I told you beforehand that you would be miserable with her, once
shut up in the country. The episode of Toniello is enchanting. What
people!--to put him in prison for a little bit of _chiasso_ like that!
You should never have taken his bright eyes and his mandoline to that
doleful and damp land of precisians. What will they do with him? And
what can you do without him? The weather here is admirable. There are
numbers of people one knows. It is really very amusing. I go and dance
every night, and then we play--usually "bac" or roulette. Everybody is
very merry. We all talk often of you, and say the _De Profundis_ over
you, my poor Piero. Why did your cruel destiny make you see a _Sainte
Nitouche_ drinking tea under a lime tree? I suppose _Sainte Nitouche_
would not permit it, else, why not exchange the humid greenness of your
matrimonial prison for the Rue des Planches and the Casino?'
_From the Principe di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to the
Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Trouville._
'CARISSIMA MIA,--I have set light to the fuse! I have frankly declared
that if I do not get out of this damp and verdant Bastile, I shall
perish of sheer inanition and exhaustion. The effect of the declaration
was for the moment such, that I hoped, actually hoped, that she was
going to get into a passion! It would have been so refreshing! After
twenty-six days of dumb acquiescence and silent tears, it would have
been positively delightful to have had a storm. But, no! For an instant
she looked at me with unspeakable reproach; the next her dove's eyes
filled, she sighed, she left the room! Do they not say that feather
beds offer an admirable defence against bullets? I feel like the
bullet which has been fired into the feather bed. The feather bed is
victorious. I see the Rue des Planches through the perspective of the
watery atmosphere; the Casino seems to smile at me from the end of the
interminable lime tree avenue, which is one of the chief beauties of
this house; but, alas! they are both as far off as if Trouville were in
the moon. What could they do to me if I came alone? Do you know what
they could do? I have not the remotest idea, but I imagine something
frightful. They shut up their public-houses by force, and their
dancing places. Perhaps they would shut up me. In England, they have a
great belief in creating virtue by Act of Parliament. In myself, this
enforced virtue creates such a revolt that I shall _tirer sur le mors_,
and fly before very long. The admired excellence of this beautiful
estate is that it lies in a ring-fence. I feel that I shall take a leap
over that ring-fence. Do not mistake me, _cara mia Teresina_, I am
exceedingly fond of my wife. I think her quite lovely, simple, saintly,
and truly womanlike. She is exquisitely pretty, and entirely without
vanity, and I am certain she is immeasurably my superior morally, and
possibly mentally too. But--there is always such a long and melancholy
"but" attached to marriage--she does not amuse me in the least. She is
always the same. She is shocked at nearly everything that is natural
or diverting. She thinks me unmanly because I dislike rain. She buttons
about her a hideous, straight, waterproof garment, and walks out in a
deluge. She blushes if I try to make her laugh at _Figaro_, and she
goes out of the room when I mention Trouville. What am I to do with a
woman like this? It is an admirable type, no doubt. Possibly if she had
not shut me up in a country-house in a wet June, with the thermometer
at 10 R., and the barometer fixedly at the word _Rainy_, I might have
been always charmed with this S. Dorothea-like attitude, and never have
found out the monotony of it. But, as it is--I yawn till I dislocate my
neck. She thinks me a heathen already. I am convinced that very soon
she will think me a brute. And I am neither. I only want to get out,
like the bird in the cage. It is a worn simile, but it is such a true
one!'
_From the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Roches Noires, Trouville,
to the Principe di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset._
'PIERO MIO,--In marriage, the male bird is always wanting to get out
when the female bird does not want him to get out; also, she is for
ever tightening the wires over his head, and declaring that nothing
can be more delightful than the perch which she sits on herself. Come
to us here. There are any quantities of birds here who ought to be
in their cages, but are not, and manage to enjoy themselves _quand
même_. If only you had married Nicoletta! She might have torn your
hair occasionally, but she would never have bored you. There is only
one supreme art necessary for a woman: it is to thoroughly understand
that she must never be a _seccatura_. A woman may be beautiful,
admirable, a paragon of virtue, a marvel of intellect, but if she be
a _seccatura--addio_! Whereas, she may be plain, small, nothing to
look at in any way, and a very monster of sins, big and little, but if
she know how to amuse your dull sex, she is mistress of you all. It is
evident that this great art is not studied at Coombe Bysset.'
_From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to the Lady
Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg._
'OH, MY DEAR GWEN,--It is too dreadful, and I am so utterly wretched. I
cannot tell you what I feel. He is quite determined to go to Trouville
by Paris at once, and just now it is such exquisite weather. It has
only rained three times this week, and the whole place is literally
a bower of roses of every kind. He has been very restless the last
few days, and at last, yesterday, after dinner, he said straight out,
that he had had enough of Coombe, and he thought we might be seen at
Homburg or Trouville next week. And he pretended to want every kind of
thing that is to be bought at Paris and nowhere else. Paris--when we
have been together just twenty-nine days to-day! Paris--I don't know
why, but I feel as if it would be the end of everything! Paris--we
shall dine at restaurants; we shall stay at the Bristol; we shall go
to theatres; he will be at his club, he belongs to the Petit Cercle
and the Mirliton; we shall be just like anybody else; just like all
the million and one married people who are always in a crowd! To take
one's new-born happiness to an hotel! It is as profane as it would be
to say your prayers on the top of a drag. To me, it is quite horrible.
And it will be put in _Galignani_ directly, of course, that the "Prince
and Princess San Zenone have arrived at the Hotel Bristol." And then,
all the pretty women who tried to flirt with him before will laugh, and
say: "There, you see, she has bored him already." Everybody will say
so, for they all know I wished to spend the whole summer at Coombe.
If he would only go to his own country I would not say a word. I am
really longing to see his people, and his palaces, and the wonderful
gardens with their statues and their ilex woods, and the temples
that are as old as the days of Augustus, and the fire-flies and the
magnolia groves, and the peasants who are always singing. But he won't
go there. He says it is a _seccatura_. Everything is a _seccatura_. He
only likes places where he can meet all the world. "Paris will be a
solitude, too, never fear," he said, very petulantly; "but there will
be all the _petits théâtres_ and the open-air concerts, and we can
dine in the Bois and down the river, and we can run to Trouville. It
will be better than rain, rain, rain, and nothing to look at except
your amiable aunt's big horses and big trees. I adore horses, and
trees are not bad if they are planted away from the house, but, viewed
as eternal companions, one may have too much of them." And I am his
eternal companion, but it seems already I don't count! I have not said
anything. I know one oughtn't. But Piero saw how it vexed me, and it
made him cross. "_Cara mia_," he said, "why did you not tell me before
we married that you intended me to be buried for ever in a box under
wet leaves like a rose that is being sent to the market? I should
have known what to expect, and I do not like wet leaves." I could not
help reminding him that he had been ever, ever so anxious to come to
Coombe. Then he laughed, but he was very cross too. "Could I tell,
_anima mia_," he cried, "that Coombe was situated in a succession of
lagoons, contains not one single French novel, is seven miles asunder
from its own railway station, and is blessed with a population of sulky
labourers? What man have I seen since I have been here except your
parish priest, who mumbles, wears spectacles, and tries to give me a
tract against the Holy Father? In this country you do not know what
it is to be warm. You do not know what sunshine is like. You take an
umbrella when you go in the garden. You put on a waterproof to go and
hear one little, shivering nightingale sing in a wet elder bush. I tell
you I am tired of your country, absolutely tired. You are an angel. No
doubt you are an angel; but you cannot console me for the intolerable
emptiness of this intolerable life, where there is nothing on earth to
do but to eat, drink, and sleep, and drive in a dog-cart." All this he
said in one breath, in a flash of forked lightning, as it were. Now
that I write it down, it does not seem so very dreadful; but as he,
with the most fiery scorn, the most contemptuous passion, said it, I
assure you it was terrible. It revealed, just as the flash of lightning
would show a gravel pit, how fearfully bored he has been all the time I
thought he was happy!'
_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to the
Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset._
'Men are very easily bored, my dear, if they have any brains. It is
only the dull ones who are not.'
_From the Principessa di San Zenone to the Lady Gwendolen
Chichester._
'If I believed what your cynical letter says, I should leave him
to-morrow. I would never live through a succession of disillusions and
of insults.'
_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester to the Principessa di San
Zenone._