The Monstrous Regiment of Women
Descend, my muse!
Raymond had been invited by one of his fellow-guests to make a visit
at his house, and this was backed up on the morning after his return
by a letter containing a full invitation to both himself and his
wife. He never liked what he called "doing nothing in other
people's houses," but he thought any sacrifice needful that might
break up Cecil's present intimacies, and change the current of her
ideas; and his mother fully agreed in thinking that it would be well
to being a round of visits, to last until the Session of Parliament
should have begin. By the time it was over Julius and Rosamond
would be in their own house, and it might be easier to make a new
beginning.
The friends whom he could reckon on as sure to welcome him and his
bride were political acquaintances of mark, far above the Dunstone
range, and Cecil could not but be gratified, even while Mrs.
Duncombe and her friend declared that they were going to try to
demoralize her by the seductions of the aristocracy.
After all, Cecil was too much of an ingrained Charnock to be very
deeply imbued with Women's Rights. All that she wanted was her own
way, and opposition. Lady Tyrrell had fascinated her and secured
her affection, and she followed her lead, which was rather that of
calm curiosity and desire to hear the subject ventilated than actual
partisanship, for which her ladyship was far too clever, as well as
too secure in her natural supremacy. They had only seemed on that
side because other people were so utterly alien to it, and because
of their friendship with the really zealous Mrs. Duncombe.
The sanitary cause which had become mixed with it was, however,
brought strongly before their minds by Mrs. Tallboys' final lecture,
at which she impressed on the ladies' minds with great vehemence
that here they might lead the way. If men would not act as a body,
the ladies should set the example, and shame them, by each doing her
very utmost in the cleansing of the nests of disease that reeked in
the worn-out civilization of the cities of the old country. The
ladies listened: Lady Tyrrell, with a certain interest in such an
eager flow of eloquence; Eleonora, with thoughts far away. Bessie
Duncombe expressed a bold practical determination to get one
fragment, at least, of the work done, since she knew Pettitt, the
hair-dresser, was public-spirited enough to allow her to carry out
her ideas on his property, and Cecil, with her ample allowance, as
yet uncalled for, in the abundance of her trousseau, promised to
supply what the hair-dresser could not advance, as a tangible proof
of her sincerity.
She held a little council with Mrs. Duncombe at the working society,
when she resigned her day into that lady's hands on going away. "I
shall ask Mrs. Miles Charnock," said that lady. "You don't object?"
"Oh no, only don't ask her till I'm gone, and you know she will only
come on condition of being allowed to expound."
"We must have somebody, and now the thing has gone on so long, and
will end in three months, the goody element will not do much harm,
and, unluckily, most women will not act without it."
"You have been trying to train Miss Moy."
"I shall try still, but I can't get her to take interest in anything
but the boisterous side of emancipation."
"I can't bear the girl," said Cecil; "I am sure she comes only for
the sake of the horses."
"I'm afraid so; but she amuses Bob, and there's always a hope of
moving her father through her, though she declares that the Three
Pigeons is his tenderest point, and that he had as soon meddle with
it as with the apple of his eye. I suppose he gets a great rent
from that Gadley."
"Do you really think you shall do anything with her?" said Cecil,
who might uphold her at home, but whose taste was outraged by her.
"I hope so! At any rate, she is not conventional. Why, when I was
set free from my school at Paris, and married Bob three months
later, I hadn't three ideas in my head beyond horses and balls and
soldiers. It has all come with life and reading, my dear."
And a very odd 'all' it was, so far; but there was this difference
between Bessie Duncombe and Cecil Charnock Poynsett, that the
'gospel of progress' was to the one the first she had ever really
known, and became a reaching forward to a newly-perceived standard
of benevolence and nobleness: to the other it was simply
retrograding, and that less from conviction than from the spirit of
rivalry and opposition.
Lady Tyrrell with her father and sister were likewise going to leave
home, to stay among friends with whom Sir Harry could hunt until the
London campaign, when Eleonora was to see the world. Thus the
bazaar was postponed until the return of the ladies in the summer,
when the preparations would be more complete and the season more
suitable. The church must wait for it, for nothing like a
sufficient amount of subscription had been as yet promised.
There was still, however, to come that select dinner-party at Mrs.
Duncombe's, to which Julius, moved by her zeal and honesty, as well
as by curiosity, had promised his presence with Rosamond, "at his
peril," as she said.
They were kept so long at the door of Aucuba Villa that they had
begun to doubt if they had not mistaken the day, until the Sirenwood
carriage crashed up behind them; and after the third pull at the
bell they were admitted by an erect, alert figure,--a remnant of
Captain Duncombe's military life.
He marshalled them into the drawing-room, where by dim firelight
they could just discern the Professor and a certain good-natured
horsey friend of the Captain's, who sprang up from easy-chairs on
the opposite sides of the fire to greet them, while the man hastily
stirred up the fire, lighted the gas, dashed at the table, shutting
up an open blotting-book that lay on it, closing an ink-bottle, and
gathering up some torn fragments or paper, which he would have
thrown into the scrap-basket but that it was full of little books on
the hundred ways of dressing a pumpkin. Then he gave a wistful look
at the ami de la maison, as if commending the guests to him, and
receiving a nod in return, retired.
"I fear we are too early," said Lady Tyrrell.
"Fact is," said the familiar, whose name Julius was trying to
remember, "there's been a catastrophe; cook forgot to order the
turkey, went to bed last night in hysterics, and blew out the gas
instead of turning it off. No, no"--as the guests expecting fatal
consequences, looked as if they thought they had better remove
themselves: "she came round, and Duncombe has driven over to
Backsworth to bring home the dinner. He'll soon be back."
This not appearing greatly to reassure the visitors, the Professor
added, "No, no, ladies. Mrs. Duncombe charged me to say that she
will be perfectly fixed in a short time, and I flatter myself that
my wife is equal to any emergency."
"It is very kind in her," said Lady Tyrrell.
"I confess," said Professor Tallboys, "that I am not sorry that such
an occasion should occur of showing an American lady's domestic
powers. I flatter myself they do not discredit her cause."
Just then were heard the wheels of the drag, and in rushed one of
the boys, grasping Eleonora's skirts, and proclaiming, "We've got
the grub! Oysters and a pie! Oh my!"
"Satisfactory!" said the friend. "But let go, Ducky, you are
rumpling Miss Vivian."
"She's coming to see the quarion! You promised, Lena! Here's a
jolly crayfish! He'll pinch!"
There was a small conservatory or glazed niche on one side of the
room, into which the boy dragged Lenore, and Julius followed, dimly
sensible of what the quarion might be, and hoping for a word with
the young lady, while he trusted to his wife to occupy her sister.
The place contained two desolate camellias, with leaves in the same
proportion as those on trees in the earlier ages of illumination,
and one scraggy, leafless geranium, besides a green and stagnant
tank, where a goldfish moved about, flapping and gasping, as the boy
disturbed it in his search for the crayfish. He absorbed all the
conversation, so that Julius could only look back into the room,
where an attempt at artistic effect was still dimly visible through
accumulated litter. The Venus of Milo stood on a bracket, with a
riding-whip in her arms, and a bundle of working society tickets
behind her, and her vis-a-vis, the Faun of Praxiteles, was capped by
a glove with one finger pointing upwards, and had a ball of worsted
tangled about his legs; but further observation was hindered by the
man-servant's voice at the outer door, "Master Ducky, where are you?
Your ma says you are to go to bed directly."
"No, no, I'll put myself to bed!"
"Come, sir, please do, like a good boy--Master Pinney won't go
without you, and I must put him to bed while they are dishing up.
Come, sir, I've got a mince-pie for you."
"And some oysters--Bobby said I should have some oysters!"
"Yes, yes; come along, sir."
And Master Ducky submitted to his fate, while Julius looked his
wonder, and asked, "Is he nursery-maid?"
"Just now, since the bonne went," said Lenore. "He is a most
faithful, attached servant, who will do anything for them. _She_
does attach people deeply when the first shock is over."
"I am coming to believe so," he answered. "There seem to me to be
excellent elements."
"I am so glad!" said Lenore; "she is so thorough, so true and frank;
and much of this oddness is really an inconsistent struggle to keep
out of debt."
"Well! at any rate I am thankful to her for this opportunity of
seeing you," said Julius. "We have both been longing to speak our
welcome to you."
"Thank you. It is so kind," she fervently whispered; "all the
kinder for the state of things that is insisted on--though you know
that it can make no real difference," she added, apparently
addressing the goldfish.
"Frank knows it," said Julius, in a low voice.
"I trust he does, though I cannot see him to assure him--you will?"
she added, looking up at him with a shy brightness in her eye and a
flush on her cheek.
"Yes, indeed!" he said, laying his hand on hers for a moment. "I
fear you may both have much to pull through, but I think you are of
a steadfast nature."
"I hope so--I think I am, for none of my feelings seem to me ever to
change, except that I get harder, and, I am afraid, bitterer."
"I can understand your feeling that form of trial."
"Oh, if you could, and would help me!"
"As a brother; if I may."
Again she laid a hand on his, saying, "I have longed to talk openly
to you ever since we met in the cow-shed; but I could not make any
advance to any of you, because," she whispered in haste, "I thought
it my duty to hold back from Frank. And now, till we go away,
Camilla watches me and occupies me every minute, will not even let
me ride out with papa. I wonder she lets me talk to you now."
"We know each other," said Julius, shortly.
It was so. Once, in the plain-spoken days of childhood, Miles and
Julius had detected Camilla Vivian in some flagrant cheating at a
game, and had roundly expressed their opinion. In the subsequent
period of Raymond's courtship, Miles had succumbed to the
fascination, but Julius had given one such foil, that she had never
again attempted to cajole him.
"I have seen that you did from the first," said Lenore. "And it
would make it much easier to talk to you than to any outsider, who
would never understand, even if it were possible for me to explain,
how hard it is to see which way my duty lies--especially filial."
"Do you mean in general, or in this special matter?"
"Both. You see, in her hands he is so different from what he was
before she came home, that I don't feel as if I was obeying him--
only her; and I don't think I am bound to do that. Not in the great
matter, I am clear. Nobody can meddle with my real sincere pledge
of myself to Frank, nobody!" she spoke as if there was iron in her
lips. "But as far as overt acts go, they have a right to forbid me,
till I am of age at least, and we must bear it."
"Yes, you are right there."
"But there are thousands of other little cases of right and wrong,
and altogether I have come to such a spirit of opposition that I
find it easier to resist than to do anything with a good grace."
"You cannot always tell when resistance is principle, and when
temper or distaste."
"There's distaste enough always," said poor Lenore.
"To gaieties?" he said, amazed as one habituated to his wife's
ravenous appetite for any sort of society or amusement.
"Of course," she answered sadly. "A great deal of trouble just for
a little empty babble. Often not one word worth remembering, and a
general sense of having been full of bad feelings."
"No enjoyment?" he asked in surprise.
"Only by the merest chance and exception," she answered, surprised
at his surprise; "what is there to enjoy?"
The peculiar-looking clergyman might have seemed more likely to ask
such a question than the beautiful girl, but he looked at her
anxiously and said, "Don't nourish morbid dislike and contempt, my
dear Lena, it is not a safeguard. There are such things as perilous
reactions. Try to weigh justly, and be grateful for kindness, and
to like what is likeable."
At that moment, after what had been an interval of weary famine to
all but these two, host and hostess appeared, the lady as usual,
picturesque, though in the old black silk, with a Roman sash tied
transversely, and holly in her hair; and gaily shaking hands--
"That's right, Lady Rosamond; so you are trusted here! Your husband
hasn't sent you to represent him?"
"I'm afraid his confidence in me did not go so far," said Rosamond.
"Ah! I see--Lady Tyrrell, how d'ye do--you've brought Lena? Well,
Rector, are you prepared?"
"That depends on what you expect of me."
"Have you the convinceable spot in your mind?"
"We must find it. It is very uncommon, and indurates very soon, so
we had better make the most of our opportunity," said the American
lady, who had entered as resplendent as before, though in so
different a style that Rosamond wondered how such a wardrobe could
be carried about the world; and the sporting friend muttered,
"Stunning! she has been making kickshaws all day, and looks as if
she came out of a bandbox! If all women were like that, it might
pay."
It was true. Mrs. Tallboys was one of those women of resource whose
practical powers may well inspire the sense of superiority, and with
the ease and confidence of her country.
The meal was a real success. That some portion had been procured,
ready dressed, at Backsworth, was evident, but all that had been
done at home had a certain piquant Transatlantic flavour, in which
the American Muse could be detected; and both she and her husband
were polished, lively, and very agreeable, in spite of the twang in
their voices. Miss Moy, the Captain and his friend, talked horses
at one end of the table, and Rosamond faltered her woman's horror
for the rights of her sex, increased by this supposed instance.
When the ladies rose at dessert, Mrs. Duncombe summoned him: "Come,
Rector!--come, Professor! you're not to sit over your wine."
"We rise so far above the ordinary level of manhood!" said Julius,
obediently rising.
"Once for all, Mr. Charnock," said Mrs. Duncombe, turning on him
with flashing eyes and her Elizabethan majesty, "if you come
prepared to scoff, we can have nothing to do with you."
Rosamond's eyes looked mischievous, and her brow cocked, but Julius
answered in earnest, "Really, I assure you I have not come in a
spirit of sarcasm; I am honestly desirous of hearing your
arguments."
"Shall I stay in your stead?" added Miss Moy. "They'll be much more
amusing here!"
"Come, Gussie, you're on your good behaviour," said Mrs. Duncombe.
"Bob kept you to learn the right way of making a sensation."
As they entered the drawing-room two more guests arrived, namely,
Joanna Bowater, and Herbert, who walked in with a kind of grim
submission, till he saw Lady Tyrrell, when he lighted up, and, on a
little gracious gesture with her hand, he sat down on the sofa
beside her; and was there solaced by an occasional remark in an
undertone; for indeed the boy was always in a trance wherever she
was, and she had a fair amount of by-play wherewith to entertain
herself and him during the discussion.
"You are just in time, Jenny," said Rosamond; "the great question is
going to be started."
"And it is--?"
"The Equality of the Sexes," pronounced Mrs. Duncombe.
"Ex cathedra?" said Julius, as the graceful Muse seated herself in a
large red arm-chair. "This scene is not an easy one in which to
dispute it."
"You see, Bessie," said Mrs. Tallboys, "that men are so much afraid
of the discussion that they try to elude it with empty compliment
under which is couched a covert sneer."
"Perhaps," returned Julius, "we might complain that we can't open
our lips without compliments and sneers being detected when we were
innocent of both."
"Were you?" demanded Mrs. Tallboys.
"Honestly, I was looking round and thinking the specimens before us
would tell in your favour."
"What a gallant parson!" cried Miss Moy.
But a perfect clamour broke out from others.
"Julius, that's too bad! when you know--"
"Mr Charnock, you are quite mistaken. Bob is much cleverer than I,
in his own line--"
"Quite true, Rector," affirmed Herbert; "Joan has more brains than
all the rest of us--for a woman, I mean."
"For a woman!" repeated Mrs. Tallboys. "Let a human being do or be
what she will, it is disposed of in a moment by that one verdict,
'Very well for a woman!'"
"How is it with the decision of posterity?" said Jenny. "Can you
show any work of woman of equal honour and permanence with that of
men?"
"Because her training has been sedulously inferior."
"Not always," said Jenny; "not in Italy in the cinque cento, nor in
England under Elizabeth."
"Yes, and there were names--!"
"Names, yes, but that is all. The lady's name is remembered for the
curiosity of her having equalled the ordinary poet or artist of her
time, but her performances either are lost or only known to curious
scholars. They have not the quality which makes things permanent."
"What do you say to Sappho?"
"There is nothing of her but a name, and fragments that curious
scholars read."
"Worse luck to her if she invented Sapphics," added Herbert.
"One of womankind's torments for mankind, eh?" said his neighbour.
"And there are plenty more such," asserted Mrs. Duncombe, boldly
(for these were asides). "It is only that one can't recollect--and
the men have suppressed them."
"I think men praised them," said Jenny, "and that we remember the
praise, not the works. For instance, Roswitha, or Olympia Morata,
or Vittoria Colonna. Vittoria's sonnets are extant, but we only
value them as being hers, more for what she _was_ than for their
intrinsic merit."
"And," added Eleonora, "men did not suppress Hannah More, or Joanna
Baillie. You know Scott thought Miss Baillie's dramas would rank
with Shakespeare's."
Mrs. Tallboys was better read in logic and mathematics than in
history, and did not follow Jenny, but she turned her adversary's
argument to her own advantage, by exclaiming, "Are the gentlemen
present familiar with these bright lights?"
"I confess my ignorance of some of them," said Julius.
"But my youngest brother knows all that," said Rosamond at a brave
venture.
"Macaulay's school-boy," murmured Lady Tyrrell, softly.
"Let us return to the main point," said Mrs. Tallboys, a little
annoyed. "It is of the present and future that I would speak, not
of the past."
"Does not the past give the only data on which to form a
conclusion?" said Julius.
"Certainly not. The proposition is not what a woman or two in her
down-trodden state may have exceptionally effected, but her natural
equality, and in fact superiority, in all but the physical strength
which has imposed an unjust bondage on the higher nature."
"I hardly know where to meet you if you reject all arguments from
proved facts," said Julius.
"And the Bible. Why don't you say the Bible?" exclaimed his wife in
an undertone; but Mrs. Tallboys took it up and said, "The precepts
of Scripture are founded on a state of society passed away. You may
find arguments for slavery there."
"I doubt that," said Julius. "There are practical directions for an
existing state of things, which have been distorted into sanction
for its continuance. The actual precepts are broad principles,
which are for all times, and apply to the hired servant as well as
to the slave. So again with the relations of man and wife; I can
nowhere find a command so adapted to the seclusion and depression of
the Eastern woman as to be inapplicable to the Christian matron.
And the typical virtuous woman, the valiant woman, is one of the
noblest figures anywhere depicted."
"I know," said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently been waiting
impatiently again to declaim, "that men, even ministers of religion,
from Paul if you like downwards, have been willing enough to exalt
woman so long as they claim to sit above her. The higher the
oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor.
Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but only as their own
appendage, adorning themselves; and while society with religious
ministers at the head of it call on woman to submit, and degrade the
sex, we shall continue to hear of such disgraces to England as I see
in your police reports--brutal mechanics beating their wives."
"I fear while physical force is on the side of the brute," said
Julius, "no abstract recognition of equality would save her."
"Society would take up her cause, and protect her."
"So it is willing to do now, if she asks for protection."
"Yes," broke in Rosamond, "but nothing would induce a woman worth
sixpence to take the law against her husband."
"There I think Lady Rosamond has at once demonstrated the higher
nature of the woman," said Mrs. Tallboys. "What man would be
capable of such generosity?"
"No one denies," said Julius, "that generous forbearance, patience,
fortitude, and self-renunciation, belong almost naturally to the
true wife and mother, and are her great glory; but would she not be
stripped of them by self-assertion as the peer in power?"
"Turning our flank again with a compliment," said Mrs. Duncombe.
"These fine qualities are very convenient to yourselves, and so you
praise them up."
"Not so!" returned Julius, "because they are really the higher
virtues!"
"Patience!" at once exclaimed the American and English emancipators
with some scorn.
"Yes," said Julius, in a low tone of thorough earnest. "The
patience of strength and love is the culmination of virtue."
Jenny knew what was in his mind, but Mrs. Tallboys, with a curious
tone, half pique, half triumph, said, "You acknowledge this which
you call the higher nature in woman--that is to say, all the passive
qualities,--and you are willing to allow her a finer spiritual
essence, and yet you do not agree to her equal rights. This is the
injustice of the prejudice which has depressed her all these
centuries."
"Stay," broke in Jenny, evidently not to the lady's satisfaction.
"That does not state the question. Nobody denies that woman is
often of a higher and finer essence, as you say, than man, and has
some noble qualities in a higher degree than any but the most
perfect men; but that is not the question. It is whether she have
more force and capacity than man, is in fact actually able to be on
an equality."
"And, I say," returned Mrs. Tallboys, "that man has used brute force
to cramp woman's intellect and energy so long, that she has learnt
to acquiesce in her position, and to abstain from exerting herself,
so that it is only where she is partially emancipated, as in my own
country, that any idea of her powers can be gained."
"I am afraid," said Julius, "that more may be lost to the world than
is gained! No; I am not speaking from the tyrant point of view. I
am thinking whether free friction with the world way not lessen that
sweetness and tender innocence and purity that make a man's home an
ideal and a sanctuary--his best earthly influence."
"This is only sentiment. Innocence is worthless if it cannot stand
alone and protect itself!" said Mrs. Tallboys.
"I do not mean innocence unable to stand alone. It should be strong
and trustworthy, but should have the bloom on it still, not rubbed
off by contact or knowledge of evil. Desire of shielding that bloom
from the slightest breath of contamination is no small motive for
self-restraint, and therefore a great preservative to most men."
"Women purify the atmosphere wherever they go," said the lady.
"Many women do," returned Julius; "but will they retain that power
universally if they succeed in obtaining a position where there will
be less consideration for them, and they must be exposed to a
certain hardening and roughening process?"
"If so," exclaimed Mrs. Tallboys, "if men are so base, we would soon
assert ourselves. We are no frail morning glories for you to guard
and worship with restraint, lest forsooth your natural breath should
wither us away."
As she spoke the door opened, and, with a strong reek of tobacco, in
came the two other gentlemen. "Well, Rector, have you given in?"
asked the Captain. "Is Lady Rosamond to mount the pulpit
henceforth?"
"Ah! wouldn't I preach you a sermon," returned Rosamond.
"To resume," said Mrs. Tallboys, sitting very upright. "You still
go on the old assumption that woman was made for you. It is all the
same story: one man says she is for his pleasure, another for his
servant, and you, for--for his refinement. You would all have us
adjectives. Now I defy you to prove that woman is not a
substantive, created for herself."
"If you said 'growed,' Mrs. Tallboys, it would be more consistent,"
said Jenny. "Her creation and her purpose in the world stand upon
precisely the same authority."
"I wonder at you, Miss Bowater," said Mrs. Tallboys. "I cannot
understand a woman trying to depreciate her sex."
"No," thrust in Gussie Moy; "I want to know why a woman can't go
about without a dowager waddling after her" ("Thank you," breathed
Lady Tyrrell into Herbert's ear), "nor go to a club."
"There was such a club proposed in London," said Captain Duncombe,
"and do you know, Gussie, the name of it?"
"No!"
"The Middlesex Club!"
"There! it is just as Mrs. Tallboys said; you will do nothing but
laugh at us, or else talk sentiment about our refining you. Now, I
want to be free to amuse myself."
"I don't think those trifling considerations will be great
impediments in your way," said Lady Tyrrell in her blandest tone.
"Is that actually the carriage? Thank you, Mrs. Tallboys. This is
good-bye, I believe. I am sorry there has not been more time for a
fuller exposition to-night."
"There would have been, but I never was so interrupted," said Mrs.
Tallboys in an undertone, with a displeased look at Jenny at the
other end of the room.
Declamation was evidently more the Muse's forte than argument, but
her aside was an aside, and that of the jockey friend was not. "So
you waited for us to give your part of the lecture, Miss Moy?"
"Of course. What's the use of talking to a set of women and
parsons, who are just the same?"
Poor Herbert's indignant flush infinitely amused the party who were
cloaking in the hall. "Poor Gussie; her tongue runs fast," said
Mrs. Duncombe.
"Emancipated!" said Jenny. "Good-bye, Mrs. Duncombe. Please let us
be educated up to our privileges before we get them."
"A Parthian shot, Jenny," said Julius, as they gave her a homeward
lift in the carriage. "You proved yourself the fittest memberess
for the future parliament to-night."
"To be elected by the women and parsons," said Jenny, with little
chuckle of fun. "Poor Herbert!"
"I only wish that girl was a man that I might horsewhip her," the
clerical sentiment growled out from Herbert's corner of the
carriage. "Degradation of her sex! She's a standing one!"