Millionaire-Bounder--and whether it arises out of his conscious
experience of the British, or his braggart conceit, must be left to
others to query or determine. Certain it is that he _does_ buy a good
deal, and that the owners of such things as he wants seem always ready
to sell. Famous estates are knocked down to him--manuscripts and
pictures which should be the preciously guarded property of the nation,
are easily purchased by him,--and, laughing in his sleeve at the
purblind apathy of the British Government, which calmly looks on while
he pockets such relics of national greatness as unborn generations
will vainly and indignantly ask for,--he congratulates himself on
possessing, as he says, “the only few things the old country has got
left worth having.” One can but look gloomily through the “Calendar of
Shakespearean Rarities,” collected by Halliwell Phillips, which were
offered to the wealthy city of Birmingham for £7,000, and reflect that
this same wealthy city disgraced itself by refusing to purchase the
collection and by allowing everything to be bought and carried away
from England by “an American” in 1897. We do not say this American was
a “Bounder”--nevertheless, if he had been a real lover of Shakespeare’s
memory, rather than of himself, he would have bought these relics for
Shakespeare’s native country and presented them for Shakespeare’s sake
to Shakespeare’s native people, who are not, as a People, to blame
for the parsimony of their Governments. They pay taxes enough in all
conscience, and at least they deserve that what few relics remain of
their Greatest Man should be saved and ensured to them.
But perhaps the American Millionaire-Bounder is at his best when he has
bought an English newspaper and is running it in London. Then he feels
as if he were running the Imperial Government itself--nay, almost the
Monarchy. He imagines that he has his finger on the very pulse of Time.
He hugs himself in the consciousness that the British people,--that
large majority of them who are not behind the scenes--buy his paper,
believing it to be a British paper, not a journal of “Am_urr_ican”
opinion, that is, opinion as ordered and paid for by one “Am_urr_ican.”
He knows pretty well in his own mind that if they understood that such
was the actual arrangement, they would save their pence. Unfortunately
the great drawback of the “man in the street” who buys newspapers, is
that he has no time to enquire as to the way in which the journals he
confides in are “run.” If he knew that the particular view taken of the
political situation in a certain journal, was merely the political view
_ordered_ to be taken by one “Am_urr_ican”--naturally he would not pin
his simple faith upon it. Perhaps the Man in the Street will some day
wake up to the realization that in many cases, (though not all) with
respect to journalism, he only exists to be “gulled.”
Like all good and bad things, the American Bounder, whether millionaire
or only shabby-genteel, has a certain height beyond which he can
no further go--a point where he culminates in a blaze of ultra
Bounder-ism. This brilliant apotheosis is triumphantly reached in the
Female of his species. The American Female Bounder is the quintessence
of vulgarity, and in every way makes herself so objectionable even
to her own people and country that Americans themselves view her
departure for “Yew-rope” with perfect equanimity, and hope she will
never come back. Once in what she calls “the old country” she talks
all day long through her quivering nose of “Lady This” and “Countess
That.” One of this class I recall now as I write, who spoke openly of
a “Mrs. Countess So-and-So”--and utterly declined to be instructed in
any other form of address. She was not content to trace her lineage
to such humble folk as the “Scroobys of Scrooby”--no indeed, not she!
Kings were _her_ ancestors; her “family tree” sprouted from Richard the
Lion-Heart, according to her own bombastic assertion, and she, with her
loud twanging voice, odious manners and insufferable impertinence, was
“genuine stock” of royallest origin. Of course it is quite possible
that, as in horticulture, a once nobly cultivated human plant may,
if left without wholesome or fostering influences, degenerate into a
weed--but that so rank a weed as the American Female Bounder should
be the dire result of the Conqueror’s blood is open to honest doubt.
She generally has a “mission” to reform something or somebody,--she is
very often a “Christian science” woman, or a theosophist. Sometimes
she “takes up” Art as though it were a dustpan, and sweeps into it
under her “patronage” certain dusty and doubtful literary and musical
aspirants who want a “hearing” for their efforts. Fortunately for the
world, a “hearing” under the gracious auspices of the American Female
Bounder means a silence everywhere else. She is fond of “frocks and
frills”--and wears an enormous quantity of jewels, “stones” as she
calls them. She “pushes” herself in every possible social direction,
and wherever she sees she is not wanted, there, more particularly than
elsewhere, she contrives to force an entry. She embraces the game of
“Bridge” with passionate eagerness because she sees that by keeping
open house, with card-tables always ready, she can attract the loafing
“great ones of the earth,” and possibly persuade a “Mrs. Countess” to
befriend her. If she is fairly wealthy, she can generally manage to
do this. All Mrs. Countesses have not “that repose which stamps the
caste of Vere de Vere.” Some of them find the American Female Bounder
useful--and precisely in the manner she offers herself, even so they
take her. And thus it often happens that one frequently meets her
where she has no business to be. One is not surprised to find her at
Court, or in the Royal enclosure at Ascot, because so many of her
British sisters in the Bounder line are in these places, ready to give
her a helping hand--but one _is_ occasionally startled and in a manner
sorry to discover her making herself at home among certain “exclusive”
people who are chiefly distinguished for their good-breeding, culture
and refinement. In one thing, however, we can take much comfort, and
this is, that whatever the American Bounder, Male or Female, may
purchase or otherwise insidiously obtain in the Old World, neither
he nor she can ever secure respect. Driven to bay as the Britisher
may be by consummate and pertinacious lying, he can and does withhold
from the liars his honest esteem. He may sell a valuable manuscript or
picture to a “bounding” Yankee, out of sheer necessitous circumstance,
but he will never be “friends” with the purchaser. He will call him
“bounder” to the crack of doom, and Doomsday itself will not alter that
impression of him.
It may be, and it is I think, taken for granted that America itself
is very glad to get rid of its “bounders.” It regards them with as
much shame and distress as we feel when we see certain specimens of
“travelling English” disporting themselves upon the Continent in the
’Arry and Jemima way. We always fervently hope that our Continental
neighbours will not take these extraordinary roughs as bona-fide
examples of the British people, and in the same way America trusts all
the nations of Europe not to accept their “Bounders” as examples of
the real pith and power of the United States. The American People are
too great, too broad-minded, sane, and thorough, not to wish to shake
off these _aphides_ on their rose of life. They watch them “clearing
out” for “Yew-rope” with perfect satisfaction. Said a charming American
woman to me the other day--“What a pity it is that English people
_will_ keep on receiving Americans here who would not be tolerated for
a moment in New York or Boston society! It surprises us very greatly.
Sometimes indeed we cannot help laughing to see the names of women
figuring among your ‘haute noblesse’ who would never get inside a
decent house anywhere in the States. But more often we are sorry that
your social ‘leaders’ are so easily taken in!”
Here indeed is the sum total of the matter. If Great Britain--and other
countries in Europe--but Great Britain especially--did not “receive”
and encourage the American Bounder and Bounderess, these objectionable
creatures would never be known or heard of. Therefore it is our fault
that they exist. Were it not for our short-sighted foolishness, and
our proneness to believe that every “Am_urr_ican” with money must
be worth knowing, we should be better able to sort the sheep from
the goats. We should add to the pleasures of our social life and
intercourse an agreeable knowledge of the real American ladies, the
real American gentlemen; and though these are seldom seen over here,
for the very good reason that they are valued and wanted in their own
country, they could at least be certain, when they did come, of being
received at their proper valuation, and not set to herd with the
“Bounders” of their country, whom their country rejects. For one may
presume that there is some cogent reason why an American citizen of
the Greatest Republic in the world, should elect to desert his native
land and “settle down” under “rotten old monarchies.” People do not
leave the home of their birth for ever unless they find it impossible
to live there for causes best known to themselves. The poor are often
compelled to emigrate, we know, in the hope to find employment and
food in other countries--but when the rich “slope off” from the very
centres where they have made their capital, one may be permitted to
doubt the purity of their intentions. Anyway, surrounded as we are
to-day socially by American Bounders of every description,--American
Bounders who think themselves as good as any one else “and a darned
sight better”--American Bounders who declare that they are the “real
old British race renewed,”--American Bounders who “run” British
journals of “literary opinion” and so forth,--American Bounders who
thrust themselves into the company of unhappy kings and queens,--those
crowned slaves who in such earthquaking days as these have to be more
than common careful “not to offend,”--American Bounders who themselves
claim kinship with the blood royal,--the one straight and simple fact
remains--namely, that all the best Americans still live in America!
COWARD ADAM
Among the numerous fascinating and delightful members of the male
sex whom I have the honour to count as friends, there is one very
handsome and devotedly attentive gentleman of four years old, who is
particularly fond of reciting to me in private the following striking
poem on the Fall of Man.
When Mister Sarpint did deceive
Poor little silly Missis Eve,
The Lord he spied an apple gone
From off the branch it hanged upon;
That apple was a heavy loss,
And so the Lord got very cross,
He searched the garden through and through,
And called “Hi Adam! where are you?”
But Mister Adam, he,
Clum up a tree.
There is something in this graphic narrative which appears to tickle my
young cavalier’s fancy immensely, for whenever he says “Mister Adam,
he, Clum up a tree,” he opens his big blue eyes very widely, claps his
tiny hands very loudly, and gives vent to ecstatic shrieks of laughter.
It is quite evident that he entirely understands and appreciates Adam’s
position. Young as he is, he has the instinctive knowledge within him
that when the time comes, he will likewise adopt the “Clum up a tree”
policy. For Adam is the same Adam still, and nothing will ever change
him. And when things are getting rather “mixed” in his career, and the
forbidden fruit he has so readily devoured turns out to be rather more
sour and tasteless than he had anticipated,--when his Garden of Eden
is being searched through and through for the causes of the folly and
disobedience which have devastated its original fairness, the same old
story may be said of him--“Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree.” Perhaps
if he only climbed a tree one might excuse him,--but unfortunately he
talks while climbing,--talks as though he were an old babbling grandam
instead of a lord of creation,--and grandam-like puts the blame on
somebody else. He says--“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me,
she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” Coward Adam! Observe how he
at once transfers the fault of his own lack of will and purpose to
the weaker, more credulous, more loving and trusting partner;--how he
leaves her defenceless to brave the wrath which he himself dreads,--and
how he never for one half second dreams of admitting himself to be the
least in the wrong! But there is always one great satisfaction to be
derived from the perusal of the strange old Eden story, and this is
that “Mister Sarpint” was of the male gender. Scripture leaves no room
for doubt on this point. It says: “Now the serpent was more subtil
than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And _he_ said
unto the woman----” So that a “he” tempted a woman, before “she” ever
tempted a “he.” Women should be duly thankful for the sex of “Mister
Sarpint,” and should also bear in mind that this particular “he” was
“more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.”
On many an occasion it will be found a salutary and useful fact to
remember.
Once upon a time, so we are told, there was an Age of Chivalry. The
word “chivalry” is stated in the dictionary to be derived from the
French “cheval” a horse, and “chivalrous” men were, in the literal
meaning of the term, merely men who rode about on horseback. But
chivalry has somehow come to imply respect, devotion, and reverence
for women. The “chivalrous” knight is supposed to have gone all over
the world, wearing the glove or the ribbon of his “ladye faire,” in
his helmet, and challenging to single combat every other knight that
dared to question the supremacy of her beauty and virtue. I confess
at once that I do not believe in him. If he ever existed he must have
been a most unnatural and abnormal product of humanity, as unlike his
first progenitor Adam as he could well be. For even in the “Round
Table” romances one finds an entire lack of chivalry in the so-called
chivalrous knights of King Arthur. Their moral principles left much to
be desired, and the conduct of Sir Meliagraunce who betrayed the loves
of Lancelot and the Queen was merely that of a common sneak. Coward
Adam spoke in him, as in many of the Arthurian heroes,--and that they
were more “chivalrous” than the modern male gossips who jeer away a
woman’s name and honour in their smoking and gaming rooms, is a legend
which like that of the Tree of Good and Evil itself, requires stronger
confirmation than history as yet witnesseth.
Coward Adam, taking him as he appears in the present day, has lately
shown himself off in various odd phases and lamentable positions.
During the South African War he came out strong in some of our
generals, who put the blame of certain military mishaps on one another
like quarrelsome children, thereby losing dignity and offering a most
humiliating spectacle to the amazed British public. Coward Adam’s
policy, after making a blunder, is to adopt any lie, rather than say
frankly and boldly--“I did it!” He will eat dirt by the bushel in
preference to the nobler starvation act of singly facing his foes. He
is just now exhibiting himself to his usual advantage in the British
Parliament, while the nation looks on, waiting for the inevitable
finale of his various hesitations and inefficiencies--the “Mister
Adam, he, Clum up a tree.” For in most matters of social, political,
and moral progress, the great difficulty is to obtain an upright,
downright, honest and impartial opinion from any leading public man.
The nation may be drifting devilwards, but statesmen are judged to
be more statesmanlike, if they hold their tongues and watch it go.
They must not speak the truth. It would offend so many people. It
would upset so many interests. It would create a panic on the Stock
Exchange. It would throw Wall Street into hysterics. The world’s vast
public, composed of thinking, working, and more or less educated
and intelligent people, may and do crave for a bold utterance, a
truth openly enunciated and bravely maintained, but to the weavers
of political intrigue and the self-seeking schemers in Governmental
departments, the public is considered merely as a Big Child, to be
soothed with lollipop phrases and tickled by rattle promises. If the
Big Child cries and screams because it is hungry, they chirp to it
about Fair Trade,--if it complains that its ministers of religion
are trying to make it say its prayers backwards, they promise a full
“enquiry into recent abuses in the Church.” But fine words butter no
parsnips. Coward Adam always climbs up a tree as quickly as he can
when instead of fine words, fine deeds are demanded. Physical feats
of skill, physical gymnastics of all kinds he excels in, but a moral
difficulty always places him as it did in the Garden of Eden, in what
he would conventionally term “an awkward position.”
“Never kiss and tell” is I believe an “unwritten law of chivalry.”
This law, so I understand, Coward Adam does sometimes manage to obey,
albeit reluctantly. Because he would like to tell,--he would very much
like to tell,--if--if the story of the kiss did not involve himself
in the telling! But at this juncture “the unwritten laws of chivalry”
step in and he is saved. And chivalry is the tree up which he climbs,
chattering to himself the usual formula--“The woman whom thou gavest to
be with me,”--etcetera, etcetera. Alas, poor woman! She has heard him
saying this ever since she, in an unselfish desire to share her food
with him, gave him the forbidden apple. No doubt she offered him its
rosiest and ripest side! She always does,--at first. Not afterwards! As
soon as he turns traitor and runs up a tree, she takes to pelting him,
metaphorically speaking, with cocoa-nuts. This is quite natural on her
part. She _had_ thought him a man,--and when he suddenly changes into
a monkey, she doesn’t understand it. To this cause may possibly be
attributed some of the ructions which occasionally jar the harmonious
estate of matrimony.
Coward Adam does very well in America. He sees his position there
quite plainly. He knows that if he climbs his tree too often, hundreds
of feminine hands will pull him down. So he resigns himself to the
inevitable. He is not slow to repeat the customary whine--“The woman
whom thou gavest me”--but he says it quietly to himself between whiles.
Because he knows that _she_ knows all his share in the mischief!
So he digs and delves, and finds gold and silver and limitless oil
wherewith to turn into millions of dollars for her pleasure; he packs
pork, lays railway tracks, starts companies, organizes “combines”--and
strains every nerve and sinew to “do” every other Adam save himself
in his own particular line of business, so that “the woman” (or may
we say the women?) “whom thou gavest” may be clothed in Paris model
gowns, and wear jewels out-rivalling in size and lustre those of all
the kings and queens that ever made their sad and stately progress
through history. Indeed, Coward Adam, in the position he occupies as a
free citizen of that mighty Republic over which the wild eagle screams
exultingly, looks a little bit like a beaten animal. But he bears his
beating well, and is quite pleasant about it. In regard to “the woman
whom thou gavest me” he is nearer the imaginary code of “chivalry”
than his European brother. If the original Adam had learned the ways
of a modern American gentleman of good education and fine manners,
one can quite imagine him saying--“The woman whom thou gavest to be
with me generously offered me a share of the apple, and I did eat. But
the Serpent whom thou didst permit to tell lies to my amiable partner
concerning this special kind of fruit, was chiefly to blame.”
Coward Adam, as he is seen and known among the lower classes, crops up
every day in newspapers, which duly chronicle his various acts, such
as promising marriage to poor working girls and robbing them of all
their little savings, as well as of their good names,--kicking his
wife, starving his children, and spending every penny he earns in the
public-house. But he is just as frequently met with in the houses of
the Upper Ten. He will wear the garb of a lord with ease, and, entering
the house of another lord, will cozen his host’s wife away from loyalty
to her husband in quite the manner “friendly.” He is likewise to be
found occasionally in the walks of literature, and where a woman is
concerned in matters artistic will “down” her if he can. He has always
done his best to hinder woman from receiving any acknowledgment for
superior intellectual ability. Notably one may quote the case of Madame
Curie, the discoverer of radium. Coward Adam says she discovered it by
“a fluke”--that is to say, by chance. Most great discoveries occur,
even to men, in the same way. In the present instance the “chance”
came to a woman. Why should she not therefore have all the honour due
to her?--the same honour precisely as would fall to the lot of a man
in her place? Columns upon columns of praise would be bestowed upon
her were she of Adam’s sex, and all the academies of science would
contend with each other as to which should offer her the best and
most distinctive award. But Coward Adam cannot abide the thought that
“the woman whom thou gavest” should take an occasionally higher rank
than his own among the geniuses of his age. He must have everything
or nothing. He tries to ignore the fact that woman is winning equal
honours with himself in University degrees; he would fain forget that
the two greatest monarchs Great Britain ever had were women--Elizabeth
and Victoria. There is a brave Adam, of course--a civilized creature
who owns and admits the brilliant achievements of woman with pride and
tenderness,--I am only just now speaking of the coward specimen. The
brave Adam does not turn tail or climb trees, and he appears to have
had nothing to do with the Garden of Eden. Very likely he was born
somewhere else. For _he_ says--“The woman whom thou gavest to be with
me is the joy of my life,--the companion of my thoughts. To her my soul
turns,--for her my heart beats--in her I rejoice,--her triumphs are my
pride,--her success is my delight! If danger threatens her, I will be
her defender, not her accuser,--should she be blamed for aught, I will
take her fault upon myself, and will serve as a strong shield between
her and calumny. This is the least I can do to prove my love towards
her--for without her I should be the worst of creatures,--a lonely soul
in an empty world!”
So says, or may say brave Adam! But his coward brother does not
understand such high-flown sentiments. Coward Adam’s main object in
life is to “avoid a scene” with either the Lord Almighty, Mister
Sarpint or Missis Eve. He likes to wriggle out of difficulties,
both public and private, in a quiet way. He does not understand the
“methods” of plain blunt people who tell him frankly what a sneak he
is. He is very ubiquitous, and much more frequently to be met with than
his braver twin. And if he should chance to read what I have here set
down concerning him, he will probably say as usual: “The woman whom
thou gavest” in various forms of anonymous vituperation. But his active
policy will remain the same as it ever was--“Mister Adam, he, Clum up a
tree!”
ACCURSËD EVE
When the masculine Serpent, “who was more subtil than any beast of the
field which the Lord had made,” tempted the mother of mankind to eat
of the forbidden fruit, the Voice in the Garden said to her--“I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow!” It can scarcely be denied that this curse
has been fulfilled. So manifold and incessant have been the sorrows
of Woman since the legendary account of the creation of the world,
that one cannot help thinking the whole business somewhat unfair,
if,--for merely being “beguiled” by a beast of the field who was known
to be more “subtil” than any other, and afterwards being “given away”
by Coward Adam,--Eve and all the descendants of her sex should be
compelled to suffer centuries of torture. The injustice is manifestly
cruel and arbitrary,--yet it would seem to have followed poor Accursëd
Eve from then till now. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” And
sorrow has been multiplied to such an aggravated and barbarous extent
upon her unfortunate head, that in the Jewish ritual to this very
day there is a part of the service wherein the men, standing in the
presence of women, individually say: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God,
King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman!” thus deliberately
insulting, in their very house of worship, the sex of their mothers!