good reason, bad words. It is a pure convention; it has little or
nothing to do with the actual meaning, because for every one of these
bad words there is a paraphrase or synonym considered to be quite
suitable for polite ears. Hence the feeblest creature can always produce
a sensation by breaking the taboo. But women are learning how to undo
this error of theirs now. The word 'damn,' for instance, is, I hear,
being admitted freely into the boudoir and feminine conversation; it is
even considered a rather prudish thing to object to this word. Now, men,
especially feeble men, hate doing things that women do. As a
consequence, men who go about saying 'damn' are now regarded by their
fellow-men as only a shade less effeminate than those who go about
saying 'nasty' and 'horrid.' The subtler sex will not be long in
noticing what has happened to this objectionable word. When they do they
will, of course, forthwith take up all the others. It will be a little
startling perhaps at first, but in the end there will be no swearing
left. I have no doubt there will be those who will air their petty wit
on the pioneer women, but where a martyr is wanted a woman can always be
found to offer herself. She will clothe herself in cursing, like the
ungodly, and perish in that Nessus shirt, a martyr to pure language. And
then this dull cad swearing--a mere unnecessary affectation of
coarseness--will disappear. And a very good job too.
"There is a pretty department of the subject which I might call grace
swearing. 'Od's fish,' cried the king, when he saw the man climbing
Salisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it--no one else shall do
it.' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od's
bodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the
British Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his own
particular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and his
bookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly
into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his
pictures--a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes
thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed
with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft red
leather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthday
book, or a pocket diary--'Daily Invocations.'
"Coming back to wrathy swearing, I must confess I am sorry to see it
decay. It was such a thoroughly hygienic and moral practice. You see, if
anything annoying happens to a man, or if any powerful emotion seizes
him, his brain under the irritation begins to disengage energy at a
tremendous rate. He has to use all his available force of control in
keeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of his
face and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work,
some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action so
that he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him a
stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, it
may rise at last to flood-level, and you will have violent assaults, the
breaking of furniture, 'murther' even. For all this energy a good
flamboyant, ranting swear is Nature's outlet. All primitive men and most
animals swear. It is an emotional shunt. Your cat swears at you because
she does not want to scratch your face. And the horse, because he cannot
swear, drops dead. So you see my reason for regretting the decay of
this excellent and most wholesome practice....
"However, I must be getting on. Just now I am travelling about London
paying cabmen their legal fares. Sometimes one picks up a new variant,
though much of it is merely stereo."
And with that, flinging a playful curse at me, he disappeared at once
into the tobacco smoke from which I had engendered him. An amusing and
cheerful person on the whole, though I will admit his theme was a little
undesirable.
DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY
The story of Dunstone is so slight, so trivial in its cardinal
incidents, such a business of cheap feathers and bits of ribbon on the
surface, that I should hesitate to tell it, were it not for its
Inwardness, what one might call the symbolism of the thing. Frankly, I
do not clearly see what that symbolism is, but I feel it hovering in
some indefinable way whenever I recall his case. It is one of those
things that make a man extend his arm and twiddle his fingers, and say,
blinking, "Like _that_, you know." So do not imagine for one moment that
this is a shallow story, simply because it is painted, so to speak, not
in heart's blood but in table claret.
Dunstone was a strong, quiet kind of man--a man of conspicuous
mediocrity, and rising rapidly, therefore, in his profession. He was
immensely industrious, and a little given to melancholia in private
life. He smoked rather too many cigars, and took his social occasions
seriously. He dressed faultlessly, with a scrupulous elimination of
style. Unlike Mr. Grant Allen's ideal man, he was not constitutionally a
lover; indeed, he seemed not to like the ordinary girl at all--found her
either too clever or too shallow, lacking a something. I don't think
_he_ knew quite what it was. Neither do I--it is a case for extended
hand and twiddling fingers. Moreover, I don't think the ordinary girl
took to Dunstone very much.
He suffered, I fancy, from a kind of mental greyness; he was all subtle
tones; the laughter of girls jarred upon him; foolish smartness or
amiable foolishness got on his nerves; he detested, with equal
sincerity, bright dressing, artistic dabbling, piety, and the glow of
health. And when, as his confidential friend--confidential, that is, so
far as his limits allowed--I heard that he intended to marry, I was
really very much surprised.
I expected something quintessential; I was surprised to find she was a
visiting governess. Harringay, the artist, thought there was nothing in
her, but Sackbut, the art critic, was inclined to admire her bones. For
my own part, I took rather a liking to her. She was small and thin, and,
to be frank, I think it was because she hardly got enough to eat--of the
delicate food she needed. She was shabby, too, dressed in rusty
mourning--she had recently lost her mother. But she had a sweet, low
voice, a shrinking manner, rather a graceful carriage, I thought, and,
though she spoke rarely, all she said was sweet and sane. She struck me
as a refined woman in a blatant age. The general effect of her upon me
was favourable; upon Dunstone it was tremendous. He lost a considerable
proportion of his melancholia, and raved at times like a common man. He
called her in particular his "Dear Lady" and his "Sweet Lady," things
that I find eloquent of what he found in her. What that was I fancy I
understand, and yet I cannot say it quite. One has to resort to the
extended arm and fingers vibratile.
Before he married her--which he did while she was still in
half-mourning--there was anxiety about her health, and I understood she
needed air and exercise and strengthening food. But she recovered
rapidly after her marriage, her eyes grew brighter, we saw less of
Sackbut's "delicious skeleton." And then, in the strangest way, she
began to change. It is none of my imagining; I have heard the change
remarked upon by half a dozen independent observers. Yet you would think
a girl of three-and-twenty (as she certainly was) had attained her
development as a woman. I have heard her compared to a winter bud, cased
in its sombre scales, until the sun shone, and the warm, moist winds
began to blow. I noticed first that the delicate outline of her cheek
was filling, and then came the time when she reverted to colour in her
dress.
Her first essays were charitably received. Her years of struggle, her
year of mourning, had no doubt dwarfed her powers in this direction;
presently her natural good taste would reassert itself. But the next
effort and the next were harder to explain. It was not the note of
nervousness or inexperience we saw; there was an undeniable decision,
and not a token of shame. The little black winter bud grew warm-coloured
above, and burst suddenly into extravagant outlines and chromatic
confusion. Harringay, who is a cad, first put what we were all feeling
into words. "I've just seen Dunstone and his donah," he said. Clearly
she was one of those rare women who cannot dress. And that was not all.
A certain buoyancy, hitherto unsuspected, crept into her manner, as the
corpuscles multiplied in her veins--an archness. She talked more, and
threw up a spray of playfulness. And, with a growing energy, she began
to revise the exquisite æsthetic balance of Dunstone's house. She even
enamelled a chair.
For a year or so I was in the East. When I returned Mrs. Dunstone amazed
me. In some odd way she had grown, she had positively grown. She was
taller, broader, brighter--infinitely brighter. She wore a diamond
brooch in the afternoon. The "delicious skeleton" had vanished in
plumpness. She moved with emphasis. Her eye--which glittered--met mine
bravely, and she talked as one who would be heard. In the old days you
saw nothing but a rare timid glance from under the pretty lids. She
talked now of this and that, of people of "good family," and the
difficulty of getting a suitable governess for her little boy. She said
she objected to meeting people "one would not care to invite to one's
house." She swamped me with tea and ruled the conversation, so that
Dunstone and I, who were once old friends, talked civil twaddle for the
space of one hour--theatres, concerts, and assemblies chiefly--and then
parted again. The furniture had all been altered--there were two "cosy
nooks" in the room after the recipe in the _Born Lady_. It was plain to
me, it is plain to everyone, I find, that Mrs. Dunstone is, in the sun
of prosperity, rapidly developing an extremely florid vulgarity. And
afterwards I discovered that she had forgotten her music, and evidently
enjoyed her meals. Yet I for one can witness that five years ago there
was _that_ about her--I can only extend my arm with quivering digits.
But it was something very sweet and dainty, something that made her
white and thoughtful, and marked her off from the rest of womankind. I
sometimes fancy it may have been anæmia in part, but it was certainly
poverty and mourning in the main.
You may think that this is a story of disillusionment. When I first
heard the story, I thought so too. But, so far as Dunstone goes, that is
not the case. It is rare that I see him now, but the other day we smoked
two cigars apiece together. And in a moment of confidence he spoke of
her. He said how anxious he felt for her health, called her his "Dainty
Little Lady," and spoke of the coarseness of other women. I am afraid
this is not a very eventful story, and yet there is _that_----That very
convenient gesture, an arm protruded and flickering fingers, conveys my
meaning best. Perhaps you will understand.
EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT
Euphemia has great ideas of putting people at their ease, a thousand
little devices for thawing the very stiffest among them with a home-like
glow. Far be it from me to sing her praises, but I must admit that at
times she is extremely successful in this--at times almost too
successful. That tea-cake business, for instance. No doubt it's a genial
expedient to make your guests toast his own tea-cake: down he must go
upon his knees upon your hearthrug, and his poses will melt away like
the dews of the morning before the rising sun. Nevertheless, when it
comes to roasting a gallant veteran like Major Augustus, deliberately
roasting him, in spite of the facts that he has served his country nobly
through thirty irksome years of peace, and that he admires Euphemia with
a delicate fervour--roasting him, I say, alive, as if he were a
Strasburg goose, or suddenly affixing a delicate young genius to the
hither end of a toasting-fork while he is in the midst of a really very
subtle and tender conversation, the limits of social warmth seem to be
approaching dangerously near. However, this scarcely concerns Euphemia's
new entertainment.
This new entertainment is modelling in clay. Euphemia tells me it is to
be quite the common thing this winter. It is intended especially for the
evening, after a little dinner. As the reader is aware, the evening
after a little dinner is apt to pall. A certain placid contentment
creeps over people. I don't know in what organ originality resides; but
it's a curious thing, and one I must leave to the consideration of
psychologists, that people's output of original remarks appears to be
obstructed in some way after these gastronomic exercises. Then a little
dinner always confirms my theory of the absurdity of polygonal
conversation. Music and songs, too, have their drawbacks, especially gay
songs; they invariably evoke a vaporous melancholy. Card-playing
Euphemia objects to because her uncle, the dean, is prominent in
connection with some ridiculous association for the suppression of
gambling; and in what are called "games" no rational creature esteeming
himself an immortal soul would participate. In this difficulty it was
that Euphemia--decided, I fancy, by the possession of certain really
very becoming aprons--took up this business of clay-modelling.
You have a lump of greyish clay and a saucer of water and certain small
tools of wood (for which I cannot discover the slightest use in the
world) given you, and Euphemia puts on a very winning bib. Then,
moistening the clay until it acquires sufficient plasticity, and
incidentally splashing your cuffs and coat-sleeves with an agreeably
light tinted mud, you set to work. At first people are a little
disgusted at the apparent dirtiness of the employment, and also perhaps
rather diffident. The eldest lady says weakly deprecatory things, and
the feeblest male is jocular after his wont. But it is remarkable how
soon the charm of this delightful occupation seizes hold of you. For
really the sensations of moulding this plastic matter into shape are
wonderfully and quite unaccountably pleasing. It is ever so much easier
than drawing things--"anyone can do it," as the advertisement people
say--and the work is so much more substantial in its effects. Technical
questions arise. In moulding a head, do you take a lump and fine it
down, or do you dab on the features after the main knob of it is shaped?
So soon as your guests realise the plastic possibilities before them, a
great silence, a delicious absorption comes over them. Some rash person
states that he is moulding an Apollo, or a vase, or a bust of Mr.
Gladstone, or an elephant, or some such animal. The wiser ones go to
work in a speculative spirit, aiming secretly at this perhaps, but quite
willing to go on with that, if Providence so wills it. Buddhas are good
subjects; there is a certain genial rotundity not difficult to attain,
and the pyramidal build of the idol is well suited to the material. You
can start a Buddha, and hedge to make it a loaf of bread if the features
are unsatisfactory. For slender objects a skeletal substructure of bent
hairpins or matches is advisable. The innate egotism of the human animal
becomes very conspicuous. "His tail is too large," says the lady with
the fish, in self-criticism. "I haven't put his tail on yet--that's his
trunk," answers the young man with the elephant.
[Illustration]
It's a pretty sight to see the first awakening of the artistic passion
in your guests--the flush of discovery, the glow of innocent pride as
the familiar features of Mr. Gladstone emerge from the bust of Clytie.
An accidental stroke of the thumbnail develops new marvels of
expression. (By the bye, it's just as well to forbid deliberate attempts
at portraiture.) And I know no more becoming expression for everyone
than the look of intent and pleasing effort--a divine touch almost--that
comes over the common man modelling. For my own part, I feel a being
infinitely my own superior when I get my fingers upon the clay. And,
incidentally, how much pleasanter this is than writing articles--to see
the work grow altogether under your hands; to begin with the large
masses and finish with the details, as every artist should! Just to show
how easy the whole thing is, I append a little sketch of the first work
I ever did. I had had positively no previous instruction. Unfortunately
the left ear of the animal--a cat, by the bye--has fallen off. (The
figure to the left is the back view of a Buddha.)
However, I have said enough to show the charm of the new amusement. It
will prove a boon to many a troubled hostess. The material is called
modelling-clay, and one may buy it of any dealer in artists' materials,
several pounds for sixpence. This has to be renewed at intervals, as a
good deal is taken away by the more careless among your guests upon
their clothes.
FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING
THE DISCOVERY OF AN ART
It is curious that people do not grumble more at having to spell
correctly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value
of orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of
artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some
elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet
naturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does not
often hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation. Dealers in small
talk, of the less prolific kind, are continually falling back upon the
silk hat or dress suit, or some rule of etiquette or other convention as
a theme, but spelling seems to escape them. The suspicion seems quaint,
but one may almost fancy that an allusion to spelling savoured a little
of indelicacy. It must be admitted, though where the scruples come from
would be hard to say, that there is a certain diffidence even here in
broaching my doubts in the matter. For some inexplicable reason spelling
has become mixed up with moral feeling. One cannot pretend to explain
things in a little paper of this kind; the fact is so. Spelling is not
appropriate or inappropriate, elegant or inelegant; it is right or
wrong. We do not greatly blame a man for turn-down collars when the
vogue is erect; nor, in these liberal days, for theological
eccentricity; but we esteem him "Nithing" and an outcast if he but drop
a "p" from opportunity. It is not an anecdote, but a scandal, if we say
a man cannot spell his own name. There is only one thing esteemed worse
before we come to the deadly crimes, and that is the softening of
language by dropping the aspirate.
After all, it is an unorthodox age. We are all horribly afraid of being
bourgeois, and unconventionality is the ideal of every respectable
person. It is strange that we should cling so steadfastly to correct
spelling. Yet again, one can partly understand the business, if one
thinks of the little ways of your schoolmaster and schoolmistress. This
sanctity of spelling is stamped upon us in our earliest years. The
writer recalls a period of youth wherein six hours a week were given to
the study of spelling, and four hours to all other religious
instruction. So important is it, that a writer who cannot spell is
almost driven to abandon his calling, however urgent the thing he may
have to say, or his need of the incidentals of fame. Yet in the crisis
of such a struggle rebellious thoughts may arise. Even this: Why, after
all, should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literary
merit? For it is less fatal for an ambitious scribe to be as dull as
Hoxton than to spell in diverse ways.
Yet correct spelling of English has not been traced to revelation; there
was no grammatical Sinai, with a dictionary instead of tables of stone.
Indeed, we do not even know certainly when correct spelling began, which
word in the language was first spelt the right way, and by whom. Correct
spelling may have been evolved, or it may be the creation of some master
mind. Its inventor, if it had an inventor, is absolutely forgotten.
Thomas Cobbett would have invented it, but that he was born more than
two centuries too late, poor man. All that we certainly know is that,
contemporaneously with the rise of extreme Puritanism, the belief in
orthography first spread among Elizabethan printers, and with the
Hanoverian succession the new doctrine possessed the whole length and
breadth of the land. At that time the world passed through what
extension lecturers call, for no particular reason, the classical epoch.
Nature--as, indeed, all the literature manuals testify--was in the
remotest background then of human thought. The human mind, in a mood of
the severest logic, brought everything to the touchstone of an orderly
reason; the conception of "correctness" dominated all mortal affairs.
For instance, one's natural hair with its vagaries of rat's tails,
duck's tails, errant curls, and baldness, gave place to an orderly wig,
or was at least decently powdered. The hoop remedied the deficiencies of
the feminine form, and the gardener clipped his yews into
respectability. All poetry was written to one measure in those days, and
a Royal Academy with a lady member was inaugurated that art might become
at least decent. Dictionaries began. The crowning glory of Hanoverian
literature was a Great Lexicographer.
In those days it was believed that the spelling of every English word
had been settled for all time. Thence to the present day, though the
severities then inaugurated, so far as metre and artistic composition
are concerned, been generously relaxed--though we have had a Whistler, a
Walt Whitman, and a Wagner--the rigours of spelling have continued
unabated. There is just one right way of spelling, and all others are
held to be not simply inelegant or undesirable, but wrong; and
unorthodox spelling, like original morality, goes hand in hand with
shame.
Yet even at the risk of shocking the religious convictions of some, may
not one ask whether spelling is in truth a matter of right and wrong at
all? Might it not rather be an art? It is too much to advocate the
indiscriminate sacking of the alphabet, but yet it seems plausible that
there is a happy medium between a reckless debauch of errant letters and
our present dead rigidity. For some words at anyrate may there not be
sometimes one way of spelling a little happier, sometimes another? We do
something of this sort even now with our "phantasy" and "fantasie," and
we might do more. How one would spell this word or that would become, if
this latitude were conceded, a subtle anxiety of the literary exquisite.
People are scarcely prepared to realise what shades of meaning may be
got by such a simple device. Let us take a simple instance. You write,
let us say, to all your cousins, many of your friends, and even, it may
be, to this indifferent intimate and that familiar enemy, "My dear
So-and-so." But at times you feel even as you write, sometimes, that
there is something too much and sometimes something lacking. You may
even get so far in the right way occasionally as to write, "My dr.
So-and-so," when your heart is chill. And people versed in the arts of
social intercourse know the subtle insult of misspelling a person's
name, or flicking it off flippantly with a mere waggling wipe of the
pen. But these are mere beginnings.