We hear much of the human error which accepts what is sham and what is
real. But it is worth while to remember that with unfamiliar things
we often mistake what is real for what is sham. It is true that a very
young man may think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally
true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig.
Just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be
unnaturally neat and tidy. Everyone must have noticed the same thing in
the fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things, tropic
birds and tropic blossoms. Tropic birds look like staring toys out of
a toy-shop. Tropic flowers simply look like artificial flowers,
like things cut out of wax. This is a deep matter, and, I think, not
unconnected with divinity; but anyhow it is the truth that when we
see things for the first time we feel instantly that they are fictive
creations; we feel the finger of God. It is only when we are thoroughly
used to them and our five wits are wearied, that we see them as wild and
objectless; like the shapeless tree-tops or the shifting cloud. It is
the design in Nature that strikes us first; the sense of the crosses and
confusions in that design only comes afterwards through experience and
an almost eerie monotony. If a man saw the stars abruptly by accident he
would think them as festive and as artificial as a firework. We talk of
the folly of painting the lily; but if we saw the lily without warning
we should think that it was painted. We talk of the devil not being
so black as he is painted; but that very phrase is a testimony to the
kinship between what is called vivid and what is called artificial. If
the modern sage had only one glimpse of grass and sky, he would say that
grass was not as green as it was painted; that sky was not as blue as it
was painted. If one could see the whole universe suddenly, it would look
like a bright-colored toy, just as the South American hornbill looks
like a bright-colored toy. And so they are--both of them, I mean.
But it was not with this aspect of the startling air of artifice about
all strange objects that I meant to deal. I mean merely, as a guide to
history, that we should not be surprised if things wrought in fashions
remote from ours seem artificial; we should convince ourselves that nine
times out of ten these things are nakedly and almost indecently honest.
You will hear men talk of the frosted classicism of Corneille or of the
powdered pomposities of the eighteenth century, but all these phrases
are very superficial. There never was an artificial epoch. There never
was an age of reason. Men were always men and women women: and their two
generous appetites always were the expression of passion and the
telling of truth. We can see something stiff and quaint in their mode of
expression, just as our descendants will see something stiff and quaint
in our coarsest slum sketch or our most naked pathological play. But
men have never talked about anything but important things; and the next
force in femininity which we have to consider can be considered best
perhaps in some dusty old volume of verses by a person of quality.
The eighteenth century is spoken of as the period of artificiality, in
externals at least; but, indeed, there may be two words about that. In
modern speech one uses artificiality as meaning indefinitely a sort of
deceit; and the eighteenth century was far too artificial to deceive.
It cultivated that completest art that does not conceal the art. Its
fashions and costumes positively revealed nature by allowing artifice;
as in that obvious instance of a barbering that frosted every head with
the same silver. It would be fantastic to call this a quaint humility
that concealed youth; but, at least, it was not one with the evil pride
that conceals old age. Under the eighteenth century fashion people did
not so much all pretend to be young, as all agree to be old. The same
applies to the most odd and unnatural of their fashions; they were
freakish, but they were not false. A lady may or may not be as red as
she is painted, but plainly she was not so black as she was patched.
But I only introduce the reader into this atmosphere of the older and
franker fictions that he may be induced to have patience for a moment
with a certain element which is very common in the decoration and
literature of that age and of the two centuries preceding it. It is
necessary to mention it in such a connection because it is exactly one
of those things that look as superficial as powder, and are really as
rooted as hair.
In all the old flowery and pastoral love-songs, those of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries especially, you will find a perpetual reproach
against woman in the matter of her coldness; ceaseless and stale similes
that compare her eyes to northern stars, her heart to ice, or her bosom
to snow. Now most of us have always supposed these old and iterant
phrases to be a mere pattern of dead words, a thing like a cold
wall-paper. Yet I think those old cavalier poets who wrote about the
coldness of Chloe had hold of a psychological truth missed in nearly all
the realistic novels of today. Our psychological romancers perpetually
represent wives as striking terror into their husbands by rolling on the
floor, gnashing their teeth, throwing about the furniture or poisoning
the coffee; all this upon some strange fixed theory that women are what
they call emotional. But in truth the old and frigid form is much nearer
to the vital fact. Most men if they spoke with any sincerity would
agree that the most terrible quality in women, whether in friendship,
courtship or marriage, was not so much being emotional as being
unemotional.
There is an awful armor of ice which may be the legitimate protection of
a more delicate organism; but whatever be the psychological explanation
there can surely be no question of the fact. The instinctive cry of the
female in anger is noli me tangere. I take this as the most obvious and
at the same time the least hackneyed instance of a fundamental quality
in the female tradition, which has tended in our time to be almost
immeasurably misunderstood, both by the cant of moralists and the cant
of immoralists. The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live
in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we
will yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity. Whatever
else it is, it is the thing which a thousand poets and a million lovers
have called the coldness of Chloe. It is akin to the classical, and is
at least the opposite of the grotesque. And since we are talking here
chiefly in types and symbols, perhaps as good an embodiment as any of
the idea may be found in the mere fact of a woman wearing a skirt. It is
highly typical of the rabid plagiarism which now passes everywhere for
emancipation, that a little while ago it was common for an “advanced”
woman to claim the right to wear trousers; a right about as grotesque as
the right to wear a false nose. Whether female liberty is much advanced
by the act of wearing a skirt on each leg I do not know; perhaps Turkish
women might offer some information on the point. But if the western
woman walks about (as it were) trailing the curtains of the harem
with her, it is quite certain that the woven mansion is meant for
a perambulating palace, not for a perambulating prison. It is quite
certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it
can be proved by the simplest of all tests. No ruler would deliberately
dress up in the recognized fetters of a slave; no judge would appear
covered with broad arrows. But when men wish to be safely impressive, as
judges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes
of female dignity The whole world is under petticoat government; for
even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern.
*****