[Illustration: 0007]
_Presenting in Outline the Comfortable and Well-Regulated Paradox over
which She Presides, and showing its Mental Elevation_
I suppose about the name there is no doubt. For sixty years we
have followed that gifted gadabout and gossip, Heine, and called it
Philistia. And yet, when one thinks of it, there may have been a mistake
after all. Artemus Ward used to say that he had been able, with effort,
to comprehend how it was possible to measure the distance between the
stars, and even the dimensions and candle-power, so to speak, of those
heavenly bodies; what beat him was how astronomers had ever found out
their names. So I find myself wondering whether Philistia really is the
right name for the land where She must be obeyed.
If so, it is only a little more the region of mysterious paradox and
tricksy metamorphosis. We think of it always and from all time as given
over to Her rule. We feel in our bones that there was a troglodyte Mrs
Grundy; we imagine to ourselves a British matron contemporary with the
cave bear and the woolly elephant But her very antiquity only makes it
more puzzling.
There is an old gentleman who always tries to prove to me that the
French are really Germans, that the Germans are all Slavs, and that the
Russians are strictly Tartars: that is to say, that in keeping-count
of the early races as they swarmed Westward we somehow skipped one, and
have been wrong ever since. There must be some such explanation of how
the domain which She sways came to be called Philistia.
I say this, because the old Philistia was tremendously masculine. It was
the Jews who struck the feminine note. They used to swagger no end when
they won a victory, and utilise it to the utmost limit of merciless
savagery; but when it came their turn to be thrashed they filled
the very heavens with complaining clamour. We got no hint that the
Philistines ever failed to take their medicine like men.
Consider those splendid later Philistines, the Norsemen. In all their
martial literature there is no suggestion of a whine. They loved
fighting for its own sake; next to braining their foes, they admired
being themselves hewn into sections. They never blamed their gods when
they had the worst of it. They never insisted that they were always
right and their enemies invariably wrong. They cared nothing about all
that. They demanded only fun. It was their victims, the Frankish and
Irish monks, who shed women’s tears and besought Providence to play
favourites.
And here is the paradox. The children of these Berserker loins are
become the minions of Mrs Grundy. By some magic she has enshrined
Respectability in their temples. In one division of her empire she makes
Mr Helmer drink tea; in another she sets everybody reading the _Buchholz
Family_; in her chosen island home her husband on the sunniest Sundays
carries an umbrella instead of a walking-stick. Fancy the wild delirium
of delight with which the old Philistines would have raided her
homestead, chopping down her Robert Elsmeres, impaling her Horsleys, and
making the skies lurid with the flames of her semi-detached villa! Yet
we call her place Philistia!
I know the villa very well. It is quite near to the South Kensington
Museum. The title “Fernbank” is painted on the gate-posts. How
well-ordered and comfortable does life beyond those posts remain! Here
are no headaches in the morning. Here white-capped domestics move with
neat alertness along the avenues of gentle routine, looking neither to
the policeman on the right nor fiery-jacketed Thomas Atkins on the left.
Here my friend Mr Albert Grundy invariably comes home by the Underground
to dinner. Here his three daughters--girls of a type with a diminishing
upper lip, with sharper chins and greater length of limb than of
old--lead deeply washed existences, playing at tennis, smiling in
flushed silence at visitors, feeding contentedly upon Mudie’s stores,
the while their mamma spreads the matrimonial net about the piano or
makes tours of inspection among her outlying mantraps on the lawn. Here
simpers the innocuous curate; here Uncle Dudley, who has seen life in
Australia and the Far West, watches the bulbs and prunes the roses, and,
I should think, yawns often to himself; here Lady Willoughby Wallaby’s
card diffuses refinement from the summit of the card-basket in the hall.
To this happy home there came but last week--or was it the week
before--a parcel of books. There were four complete novels in twelve
volumes--fruits of that thoughtful arrangement by which the fair reader
in Philistia is given three distinct opportunities to decide whether she
will read the story through or not. Mrs Albert is a busy woman, burdened
with manifold responsibilities to Church and State, to organised
charities, to popularised music, to art-work guilds and the Amalgamated
Association of Clear Starchers, not to mention a weather-eye kept at
all times upon all unmarried males: but she still finds time to open
all these packets of new books herself. On this occasion she gave to
her eldest, Ermyntrude, the first volume of a novel by Mrs --------. It
doesn’t matter what fell to the share of the younger Amy and Floribel.
For herself she reserved the three volumes of the latest work of Mr
--------.
She tells me now that words simply can _not_ express her thankfulness
for having done so. It seems the selection was not entirely accidental.
She was attracted, she admits, by the charmingly dainty binding of
the volumes, but she was also moved by an instinct, half maternal
prescience, half literary recollection. She thought she remembered
having seen the name of this man-writer before. Where? It came to her
like a flash, she says. Only a while ago he had a hook called _A Bunch
of Patrician Ladies_ or something of that sort, which she almost made
up her mind not to let the girls read at all, but at last, with some
misgivings, permitted them to skim hastily, because though the morals
were rocky--perhaps that wasn’t her word--the society was very good.
But this new book of his had not even that saving feature. Respectable
people were only incidentally mentioned in it. Really it was quite _too_
low. The chief figure was a farm-girl who for the most part skimmed
milk or cut swedes in a field, and at other times behaved in a manner
positively unmentionable. Mrs Albert told me she had locked the volumes
up, after only partially perusing them. I might be sure _her_ daughters
never laid eyes on them. They had gone back to the library, with a note
expressing surprise that such immoral books should be sent into any
Christian family. What made the matter worse, she went on, was that
Ermyntrude read in some paper, at a friend’s house, that this man,
whoever he may be, was the greatest of English novelists, and that this
particular book of his was a tragic work of the noblest and loftiest
order, which dignified the language. She was sure she didn’t know what
England was coming to, when reporters were allowed to put things
like that in the papers. Fortunately she only took in _The Daily
Tarradiddle_, which one could always rely upon for sound views, and
which gave this unspeakable book precisely the contemptuous little
notice it deserved.
It was a relief, however--and here the good matron visibly brightened
up--to think that really wholesome and improving novels were still
produced. There was that novel by Mrs --------. Had I read it? Oh,
I must lose no time! Perhaps it was not altogether so enchanting as that
first immortal work of hers, which had almost, one might say, founded
a new religion. True, one of the girls in it worked altar-cloths for a
church, and occasionally the other characters broke out into religious
conversation; but there were no clergymen to speak of, and the charm
of the other’s ecclesiastical mysticism was lacking. “To be frank, the
first and last volumes were just a bit slow. But oh! the lovely second
volume! A young Englishman and his sister go to Paris. They stumble
right at the start into the most delightful, picturesque, artistic
set. Think of it: Henri Régnault is personally introduced, and delivers
himself of extended remarks----”
“I met an old friend of Regnault’s at the Club the other day,”
I interposed, “who complained bitterly of that. He said it was
insufferable impudence to bring him in at all, and still worse to make
him talk such blather as is put into his mouth.”
Mrs Albert sniffed at this Club friend and went on. That Paris part of
the book seemed to her to just palpitate with life. It was Paris to the
very letter--gay, intellectual, sparkling, and oh! so free! The young
Englishman at once set up a romantic establishment in the heart of
Fontainebleau Forest with a French painter-girl. His sister was almost
as promptly debauched by an elderly French sculptor. But you never lost
sight of the fact that the author was teaching a valuable moral lesson
by all this. Indeed, that whole part of the book was called “Storm
and Stress.” And all the while you saw, too, how innately superior the
national character of the young Englishman was to that of the French
people about him. One _knew_ that in good time _he_ would have a moral
awakening, and return to England, marry, settle down, and make money in
his business. Side by side with this you saw the entire hopelessness
of any spiritual regeneration in the French painter-girl or any of
her artistic set. And this was shown with such delicate art--it was so
_perfect_ a picture of the moral contrast between the two nations--that
the girls saw it at once.
“Then the girls,” I put in--“that is to say, you didn’t lock _this_ book
up?”
Mrs Albert lifted her eyebrows at me.
“How do you mean?” she asked. “Do you know who the author is? The idea!
Why, the papers print whole columns about _anything_ she writes. Every
day you may see paragraphs about the mere prospect of books she
hasn’t even begun yet. I suppose such blatant publicity must be very
distressing to her, but the public simply insist upon it. _The Daily
Tarradiddle_ devoted an entire leader to this particular book. I assure
you, all my friends are talking of nothing else--many of them people,
too, whom you would not suspect of any literary tastes whatever, and who
_never_ read novels as a rule. But they don’t regard _this_ as a novel.
They think of it--I quote Lady Willoughby Wallaby’s exact words--as an
exposition of those Christian principles which make our England what it
is.”
_Setting forth the Untoward Circumstances under which the Right Tale was
Unfolded in the Wrong Company_
Much has been written about that variety of “cab-wit” which occurs to
a man on his way home from dinner: the brilliant sallies he might have
made, the smart retorts which would so bravely have reversed the balance
of laughter had they only come in time. We are less frank about the
other sort. No one dwells in type upon the manner in which we marshal
our old jokes and arrange our epigrams as we drive along to the house of
feasting.
No doubt the practice of getting up table-talk is going out. The
three-bottle men took it to the grave with them, along with the
snuff-box, and the toupee, and the feather-bed, and other amenities
of the Regency. There never was but one diner-out in the London of my
knowledge who was at pains to prepare his conversations, each for its
special occasion and audience, and he, poor man, broke down under
the strain and disappeared from view. The others are too lazy, too
indifferent, too cocksure of themselves, to go to all this bother. The
old courtly sense of responsibility to the host is perished from among
them. But none the less, the least dutiful and diligent of all their
number does ask himself questions as the whirling rubber tyres bear him
onward, and the cab-mirror shows him the face of a man to whom people
ought to listen.
The question I asked myself, as I drove past the flaring shop windows
of Old Brompton Road the other evening, was whether the Grundys would
probably like my story of Nate Salsbury and the Citizen of South Bend,
Indiana. A good deal depended upon the decision. It was a story which
had greatly solidified my position in other hospitable quarters; it
could be brought in _apropos_ of almost anything, or for that matter of
quite nothing at all; it had never been printed, so far as I know, in
any of those American comic papers which supply alike the dining-rooms
of Mayfair and the editorial offices of Fleet Street with such humour
as they come into possession of; and I enjoyed telling it. On the other
hand, the Grundys were old friends of mine, who would never suspect that
they had missed anything if I preserved silence on the subject of South
Bend, and who would go on asking me to dinner whether I told new tales
or not; moreover, their attitude towards fresh jokes was always a
precarious quantity, and I had an uneasy feeling that if I told my story
to them and it failed to come off, so to speak, I should never have the
same confidence in it again.
When I had entered the drawing-room of Fernbank, shaken hands with
Mrs Albert Grundy and Ermyntrude, and stolen a little glance about the
circle as I walked over to the fireplace, it had become clear that the
story was not to be told. Beside the half-dozen of the family, including
the curate, there was a tall young man with a very high collar,
shoulders that sloped down like a Rhine-wine bottle, and a stern
expression of countenance. Uncle Dudley whispered to me, as we held our
hands over the asbestos, that he was a literary party, and the son of
old Sir Watkyn Hump, who was a director in one of Albert’s companies.
The other guests were a stout and motherly lady in a cap and a purplish
smile, and a darkling young woman with a black velvet riband around her
thin neck, and a look of wearied indifference upon her face. This effect
of utter boredom did not visibly diminish upon my being presented to
Miss Wallaby.
I have an extremely well-turned little brace of sentences with which to
convey the intelligence to a young lady that the honour of taking her
down to dinner has fallen upon me--sentences which combine professions
of admiring pleasure with just a grateful dash of respectful
playfulness; they brought no new light into Miss Wallaby’s somewhat
scornful _pince-nez_. Decidedly I would not tell my South Bend story
_that_ night!
But all the same I did. What led up to it I hardly know. It was at the
ptarmigan stage, I remember--or was it a capercailzie?--and young Mr
Hump had commented upon the great joy of living in England, where one
could enjoy delicious game all the year round, instead of in a country
like America, where the inhabitants notoriously had nothing but fried
salt pork to eat for many months at a time. Perhaps it was not worth
while, but I ventured the correcting remark that there was no season of
the year when one couldn’t have eighteen edible varieties of wild birds
in America for every one that England has ever heard of. Mr Hump preened
his chin about on the summit of his collar and smiled with superior
incredulity. The others looked grave. Mrs Grundy whispered to me
warningly, over her left shoulder, that Mr Hump had made America his
special subject, and wrote most vigorous and comminatory articles about
it almost every week. I was painfully conscious that Miss Wallaby’s cold
right shoulder had been still further withdrawn from me.
Well, it was at this grotesquely inauspicious moment that I told my
story. It is easy enough now to see that it was sheer folly, madness
if you like, to do so. I was only too bitterly conscious of that when I
reviewed the events of the evening in my homeward cab. It was _apropos_
of nothing under the wide sky. But at the moment, I suppose, I hoped
that it would relieve the situation. In one sense it did.
Baldly summarised, this is the tale. Years ago the admirable Nate
Salsbury was on a “one-night-stand” tour with his bright little company
of comedians through the least urban districts of Indiana, and came upon
South Bend, which is an important centre of the wagon-making industry,
but is not precisely a focussing point of dramatic traditions and
culture.
In the vestibule of the small theatre that evening there paced up and
down a tall, middle-aged, weasel-backed citizen, his hands plunged deep
in his pockets, doubt and irresolution written all over his face. As
others paid their money and passed in he would watch them with obvious
longing; then he would go and study once more the attractive coloured
bill of the Company, with its bevy of pretty girls in skirts just short
enough to disclose most enticing little ankles; then once more he would
resume his perplexed walk to and fro. At last he made up his mind, and
approached Salsbury with diffidence. “Mister,” he said, “air you the
boss of this show?” “What can I do for you?” asked Nate. “Well--no
offence meant--but--can I--that is to say--will it be all right to
bring a lady to your show?” “That, sir, depends!” responded the manager
firmly. “Well,” the citizen went on, “what I was gittin’ at is this--can
I be perfectly safe in bringin’ _my wife_ here?”
“Sir,” said Salsbury with dignity, and an eye trained to abstain from
twinkling, “it is no portion of my business to inquire whether she is
your wife or not, but if she comes in here she’s got to behave herself!”
A solitary note of laughter fell upon the air when I had told this
story, and on the instant Uncle Dudley, perceiving that he had made
a mistake, dropped his napkin, and came up from fishing for it on the
floor red-faced and dumb. All else was deadly silence.
“I--I suppose they really weren’t married at all?” said the curate,
after a chilling pause.
“Marriage, I regret to say, means next to nothing in most parts of
America,” remarked Mr Hump, judicially. “The most sacred ties are there
habitually made the subject of ribald jests. I have been assured by
a person who spent nearly three weeks in the United States some years
since that it is an extremely rare experience to meet an adult American
who has not been divorced at least once. This fact made a vivid
impression on my mind at the time, and I--ahem!--have written frequently
upon it since.”
“I suppose the trouble arises from their all living in hotels--having no
home life whatever,” said Mrs Albert, with a kindly air of coming to my
rescue.
“Who on earth told you that?” I began, but was cut short.
“I confess,” broke in Miss Wallaby, with frosty distinctness of tone and
enunciation, “that the assumption upon which the incident just related
is based--the assumption that the la--woman referred to would probably
misconduct herself in a place of public resort--seems to me startlingly
characteristic of the country of which it is narrated. It has been truly
said that the most valuable test of a country’s actual, as distinct
from its assumed, worth, is the respect it pays to its women. Both at
Cheltenham and at Newnham the idea is steadily inculcated--I might
say insisted upon as of paramount importance--that the nation’s real
civilisation rests upon the measure, not alone of chivalrous deference,
but of esteem and confidence which my sex, by its devotion to duty, and
its intellectual sympathy with broad aims and lofty purposes, is able to
inspire and command.”
“But I assure you,” I protested feebly, “the story I told was a joke.”
“There are some subjects,” interposed Lady Willoughby Wallaby, the
fixed smile lighting up with an angry, winter-sunset glow her inflamed
countenance--“there are some subjects on which it is best not to joke.”
As she spoke she wagged a mitted thumb at her hostess, and on the
instant the ladies rose. Mr Hump hastened round to hold the door open
as they filed out, their heads high in air, their skirts rustling
indignantly over the threshold. Then he followed them, closing the door
with decision behind him.
“Gad, Albert,” said Uncle Dudley, reaching over for the port, “I don’t
wonder that the pick of our young fellows go in for marrying American
girls.”
“Pass it along!” remarked the father of Mrs Albert’s three daughters, in
a voice of confirmed dejection.
_Annotating Sundry Points of Contact found to exist between the Lady and
Contemporary Art_