We all know that there are certain conventional laws by which our
social doings and seemings are regulated; but what is the power which
compels the observance of these laws? There is no company police to
keep people moving on, no fines or other penalties; nobody but the
very outrageous need fear being turned out of the room; we have every
one of us strong inclinations and strong will: then, how comes it that
we get on so smoothly? Why are there no outbreaks of individual
character? How is it that we seem dovetailed into each other, as if we
formed a homogeneous mass? What is the influence which keeps up the
weak and keeps down the strong, and spreads itself like oil upon the
boiling sea of human passion? We have a notion of our own, that all
this is the work of an individual of the female sex; and, indeed, even
the most unconscious and unreflecting would appear to assign to that
individual her true position and authority, in naming her the Woman of
the World.
Society could never exist in a state of civilisation without the woman
of the world. The man of the world has his own department, his own
_métier_; but She it is who keeps up the general equilibrium. She is a
calm, quiet, lady-like person, not obtrusive, and not easily put out
of the way. You do not know by external observation that she is in the
room; you feel it instinctively. The atmosphere she brings with her is
peculiar, you cannot tell how. It is neither warm nor chill, neither
moist nor dry; but it is repressive. You do not move in it with
natural freedom, although you feel nothing that could be called
_gêne_. Her manner is generally sweet, sometimes even caressing, and
you feel flattered and elevated as you meet her approving eye. But you
cannot get into it. There is a glassy surface, beautiful but hard, of
which you can make nothing, and presently you feel a kind of
strangeness come over you, as if you were not looking into the eye of
a creature of your own kind. What you miss is sympathy.
It is to her want of sympathy the woman of the world owes her
position. The same deficiency is indispensable in the other
individuals--such as a great monarch, or a great general--who rule the
fate of mankind; but with this difference, that in them it is partial
and limited, and in her universal. In them, it bears relation to their
trade or mission; in her, it is a peculiarity of her general nature.
She is accused of inhumanity; of sporting with the feelings of those
about her, and rending, when they interfere with her plans, the
strings of the heart as ruthlessly as if they were fiddlestrings. But
all that is nonsense. She does not, it is true, ignore the existence
of strings and feelings; on the contrary, they are in her eyes a great
fact, without which she could do nothing. But her theory is, that they
are merely a superficial net-work surrounding the character, the
growth of education and other circumstances, and that they may be
twisted, broken, and fastened anew at pleasure by skilful fingers. No,
she is not inhumane. She works for others' good and her own greatness.
Sighs and tears may be the result of her operations; but so are they
of the operations of the beneficent surgeon. She dislikes giving pain,
and comforts and sustains the patient to the best of her power; but at
the most, she knows sighs are but wind, and tears but water, and so
she does her duty.
Although without sympathy, the woman of the world has great
sensitiveness. She sits in the room like a spider, with her web
fitting as closely to the whole area as the carpet; and she feels the
slightest touch upon the slightest filament. So do the company: not
understandingly like her, but instinctively and unconsciously, like a
fly who only knows that somehow or other he is not at freedom. The
thing that holds him is as soft and glossy and thin and small as silk;
but even while dallying with its smoothness and pleasantness, a misty,
indefinite sensation of impending danger creeps over him. Be quiet,
little fly! Gently--gently: slip away if you can--but no defiance, no
tugging, no floundering, or you are lost!
A mythic story is told of the woman of the world: how in early life
she was crossed in love; how she lost faith in feelings that seemed to
exist exceptionally only in her own solitary bosom; and how a certain
glassy hardness gathered upon her heart, as she sat waiting and
waiting for a response to the inner voices she had suffered to burst
forth--
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again!
But this is a fable. The woman of the world was never young--not while
playing with her doll. She grew just as you see her, and will suffer
no change till the dissolution of the elements of her body.
Love-passages she has indeed had like other women; but the love was
all on one side, and that side not hers. It is curious to observe the
passion thus lavished in vain. It reminds one of the German story of
the Cave of Mirrors, where a fairy damsel, with beckoning hand and
beseeching eyes, was reflected from a thousand angles. The pursuing
lover, endeavouring to clasp his mistress, flung himself from one
illusory image to another, finding only the sharp, polished,
glittering glass in his embrace, till faint, breathless, and bleeding,
he sank upon the ground.
The woman of the world, though a dangerous mistress, is an agreeable
friend. She is partial to the everyday married lady, when presentable
in point of dress and manners, and overwhelms her with little
condescending kindnesses and caresses. This good lady, on her part,
thinks her patroness a remarkably clever woman; not that she
understands her, or knows exactly what she is about; but somehow or
other she is _sure_ she is prodigiously clever. As for the everyday
young lady, who has a genius for reverence, she reveres her; and these
two, with their male congeners, are the dress-figures the woman of the
world places about her rooms like ivory pieces on a chessboard.
This admirable lady is sometimes a mother, and she is devotedly fond
of her children, in their future. She may be seen gazing in their
faces by the hour; but the picture that is before her mind's eye is
the fulfilment of their present promise. An ordinary woman would
dawdle away her time in admiring their soft eyes, and curly hair, and
full warm cheeks; but the woman of the world sees the bud grown into
the expanded flower, and the small cradle is metamorphosed into the
boudoir by the magic of her maternal love. And verily, she has her
reward: for death sometimes comes, to wither the bud, and disperse the
dream in empty air. On such an occasion, her grief, as we may readily
suppose, is neither deep nor lasting, for its object is twined round
her imagination, not her heart. She regrets her wasted hopes and
fruitless speculations; but the baby having never been present in its
own entity, is now as that which has never been. The unthinking call
her an unnatural mother, for they make no distinction. They do not
know that death is with her a perfectly arranged funeral, a marble
tablet, a darkened room, an attitude of wo, a perfumed handkerchief.
They do not consider that when she lies down to rest, her eyes, in
consequence of over-mental exertion, are too heavy with sleep to have
room for tears. They do not reflect that in the morning she breaks
into a new consciousness of reality from the clinging dreams of her
maternal ambition, and not from the small visionary arms, the fragrant
kiss, the angel whisper of her lost babe. They do not feel that in
opening upon the light, her eyes part with the fading gleam of gems
and satin, and kneeling coronets, and red right hands extending
wedding-rings, and not with a winged and baby form, soaring into the
light by which it is gradually absorbed, while distant hymns melt and
die upon her ear.
The woman of the world is sometimes prosperous in her reign over
society, and sometimes otherwise. Even she submits, although usually
with sweetness and dignity, to the caprices of fortune. Occasionally,
the threads of her management break in such a way, that, with all her
dexterity, she is unable to reunite them: occasionally, the strings
and feelings are too strong to rend; and occasionally, in rending, the
whole system falls to pieces. Her daughter elopes, her son marries the
governess, her husband loses his seat in parliament; but there are
other daughters to marry, other sons to direct, other honours to win;
and so this excellent woman runs her busy and meritorious career. But
years come on at last, although she lingers as long as she can in
middle life; and, with her usual graceful dignity, she settles down
into the reward the world bestows on its veterans, an old age of
cards.
Even now, she sometimes turns round her head to look at the things and
persons around her, and to exult in the reputation she has earned, and
the passive influence her name still exercises over society; but, as a
rule, the kings and queens and knaves take the place of human beings
with this woman of genius; the deepest arcana of her art are brought
into play for the odd trick, and her pride and ambition are abundantly
gratified by the circumvention of a half-crown.
The woman of the world at length dies: and what then? Why, then,
nothing--nothing but a funeral, a tablet, dust, and oblivion. This is
reasonable, for, great as she was, she had to do only with the
external forms of life. Her existence was only a material game, and
her men and women were only court and common cards; diamonds and
hearts were alike to her, their value depending on what was trumps.
She saw keenly and far, but not deeper than the superficial net-work
of the heart, not higher than the ceiling of the drawing-room. Her
enjoyments, therefore, were limited in their range; her nature, though
perfect in its kind, was small and narrow; and her occupation, though
so interesting to those concerned, was in itself mean and frivolous.
This is always her misfortune, the misfortune of this envied woman.
She lives in a material world, blind and deaf to the influences that
thrill the bosoms of others. No noble thought ever fires her soul, no
generous sympathy ever melts her heart. Her share of that current of
human nature which has welled forth from its fountain in the earthly
paradise is dammed up, and cut off from the general stream that
overflows the world. None of those minute and invisible ducts connects
it with the common waters which make one feel instinctively, lovingly,
yearningly, that he is not alone upon the earth, but a member of the
great human family. And so, having played her part, she dies, this
woman of the world, leaving no sign to tell that an immortal spirit
has passed: nothing above the ground but a tablet, and below, only a
handful of rotting bones and crumbling dust.