PAGE
WHO WOULD BE A CHAPERONE? _Frontispiece_
HE WOULD FLING HIMSELF ON HIS KNEES BEFORE HER, 14
NEVER NOTICING THE DOG
I LEFT THEM AT IT 16
HE WENT WITH HER AND MADE HIMSELF RIDICULOUS AT THE 20
DRESSMAKER’S
WHY SHOULD WE SEEK TO EXPLAIN AWAY ALL THE 26
BEAUTIFUL THINGS OF LIFE?
ARE WE SO SURE THAT ART DOES ELEVATE? 38
THE ARTIST KNEW PRECISELY THE SORT OF GIRL THAT 42
OUGHT TO BE THERE
A MAN’S WORK ’TIS TILL SET OF SUN, BUT A WOMAN’S 52
WORK IS NEVER DONE!
DOES THE LADY OUT SHOPPING EVER FALL IN LOVE WITH 56
THE WAITER AT THE BUN-SHOP?
WOMAN HAS BEEN APPOINTED BY NATURE THE TRUSTEE OF 58
THE CHILDREN
COMPARING HIMSELF THE WHILE WITH MOLIÈRE READING TO 80
HIS COOK
THE SINGER MAY BE A HEAVY, FLESHY MAN WITH A TASTE 84
FOR BEER
IT IS THE FOOL WHO IMAGINES HER INHUMAN 100
IT SEIZED A NATURAL HUMAN PASSION AND TURNED IT TO 104
GOOD USES
SHE SUGGESTED THAT POETS AND NOVELISTS SHOULD TAKE 106
SERVICE FOR A YEAR IN ANY LARGE DRAPERY OR
MILLINERY ESTABLISHMENT
WHO IS IT SUCCEEDS IN ESCAPING THE LAW OF THE HIVE? 126
I
“THEY are very pretty, some of them,” said the Woman of the World; “not
the sort of letters I should have written myself.”
“I should like to see a love-letter of yours,” interrupted the Minor
Poet.
“It is very kind of you to say so,” replied the Woman of the World. “It
never occurred to me that you would care for one.”
“It is what I have always maintained,” retorted the Minor Poet; “you have
never really understood me.”
“I believe a volume of assorted love-letters would sell well,” said the
Girton Girl; “written by the same hand, if you like, but to different
correspondents at different periods. To the same person one is bound,
more or less, to repeat oneself.”
“Or from different lovers to the same correspondent,” suggested the
Philosopher. “It would be interesting to observe the response of various
temperaments exposed to an unvaried influence. It would throw light on
the vexed question whether the qualities that adorn our beloved are her
own, or ours lent to her for the occasion. Would the same woman be
addressed as ‘My Queen!’ by one correspondent, and as ‘Dear Popsy Wopsy!’
by another, or would she to all her lovers be herself?”
“You might try it,” I suggested to the Woman of the World, “selecting, of
course, only the more interesting.”
“It would cause so much unpleasantness, don’t you think?” replied the
Woman of the World. “Those I left out would never forgive me. It is
always so with people you forget to invite to a funeral—they think it is
done with deliberate intention to slight them.”
“The first love-letter I ever wrote,” said the Minor Poet, “was when I
was sixteen. Her name was Monica; she was the left-hand girl in the
third joint of the crocodile. I have never known a creature so
ethereally beautiful. I wrote the letter and sealed it, but I could not
make up my mind whether to slip it into her hand when we passed them, as
we usually did on Thursday afternoons, or to wait for Sunday.”
“There can be no question,” murmured the Girton Girl abstractedly, “the
best time is just as one is coming out of church. There is so much
confusion; besides, one has one’s Prayer-book—I beg your pardon.”
“I was saved the trouble of deciding,” continued the Minor Poet. “On
Thursday her place was occupied by a fat, red-headed girl, who replied to
my look of inquiry with an idiotic laugh, and on Sunday I searched the
Hypatia House pews for her in vain. I learnt subsequently that she had
been sent home on the previous Wednesday, suddenly. It appeared that I
was not the only one. I left the letter where I had placed it, at the
bottom of my desk, and in course of time forgot it. Years later I fell
in love really. I sat down to write her a love-letter that should
imprison her as by some subtle spell. I would weave into it the love of
all the ages. When I had finished it, I read it through and was pleased
with it. Then by an accident, as I was going to seal it, I overturned my
desk, and on to the floor fell that other love-letter I had written seven
years before, when a boy. Out of idle curiosity I tore it open; I
thought it would afford me amusement. I ended by posting it instead of
the letter I had just completed. It carried precisely the same meaning;
but it was better expressed, with greater sincerity, with more artistic
simplicity.”
“After all,” said the Philosopher, “what can a man do more than tell a
woman that he loves her? All the rest is mere picturesque amplification,
on a par with the ‘Full and descriptive report from our Special
Correspondent,’ elaborated out of a three-line telegram of Reuter’s.”
“Following that argument,” said the Minor Poet, “you could reduce ‘Romeo
and Juliet’ to a two-line tragedy—
Lass and lad, loved like mad;
Silly muddle, very sad.”
“To be told that you are loved,” said the Girton Girl, “is only the
beginning of the theorem—its proposition, so to speak.”
“Or the argument of the poem,” murmured the Old Maid.
“The interest,” continued the Girton Girl, “lies in proving it—why does
he love me?”
“I asked a man that once,” said the Woman of the World. “He said it was
because he couldn’t help it. It seemed such a foolish answer—the sort of
thing your housemaid always tells you when she breaks your favourite
teapot. And yet, I suppose it was as sensible as any other.”
“More so,” commented the Philosopher. “It is the only possible
explanation.”
“I wish,” said the Minor Poet, “it were a question one could ask of
people without offence; I so often long to put it. Why do men marry
viragoes, pimply girls with incipient moustaches? Why do beautiful
heiresses choose thick-lipped, little men who bully them? Why are old
bachelors, generally speaking, sympathetic, kind-hearted men; and old
maids, so many of them, sweet-looking and amiable?”
“I think,” said the Old Maid, “that perhaps—” But there she stopped.
“Pray go on,” said the Philosopher. “I shall be so interested to have
your views.”
“It was nothing, really,” said the Old Maid; “I have forgotten.”
“If only one could obtain truthful answers,” the Minor Poet, “what a
flood of light they might let fall on the hidden half of life!”
“It seems to me,” said the Philosopher, “that, if anything, Love is being
exposed to too much light. The subject is becoming vulgarised. Every
year a thousand problem plays and novels, poems and essays, tear the
curtain from Love’s Temple, drag it naked into the market-place for
grinning crowds to gape at. In a million short stories, would-be comic,
would-be serious, it is handled more or less coarsely, more or less
unintelligently, gushed over, gibed and jeered at. Not a shred of
self-respect is left to it. It is made the central figure of every
farce, danced and sung round in every music-hall, yelled at by gallery,
guffawed at by stalls. It is the stock-in-trade of every comic journal.
Could any god, even a Mumbo Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among its
votaries? Every term of endearment has become a catchword, every caress
mocks us from the hoardings. Every tender speech we make recalls to us
even while we are uttering it a hundred parodies. Every possible
situation has been spoilt for us in advance by the American humorist.”
“I have sat out a good many parodies of ‘Hamlet,’” said the Minor Poet,
“but the play still interests me. I remember a walking tour I once took
in Bavaria. In some places the waysides are lined with crucifixes that
are either comic or repulsive. There is a firm that turns them out by
machinery. Yet, to the peasants who pass by, the Christ is still
beautiful. You can belittle only what is already contemptible.”
“Patriotism is a great virtue,” replied the Philosopher: “the Jingoes
have made it ridiculous.”
“On the contrary,” said the Minor Poet, “they have taught us to
distinguish between the true and the false. So it is with love. The
more it is cheapened, ridiculed, employed for market purposes, the less
the inclination to affect it—to be in love with love, as Heine admitted
he was, for its own sake.”
“Is the necessity to love born in us,” said the Girton Girl, “or do we
practise to acquire it because it is the fashion—make up our mind to
love, as boys learn to smoke, because every other fellow does it, and we
do not like to be peculiar?”
“The majority of men and women,” said the Minor Poet, “are incapable of
love. With most it is a mere animal passion, with others a mild
affection.”
“We talk about love,” said the Philosopher, “as though it were a known
quantity. After all, to say that a man loves is like saying that he
paints or plays the violin; it conveys no meaning until we have witnessed
his performance. Yet to hear the subject discussed, one might imagine
the love of a Dante or a society Johnny, of a Cleopatra or a Georges
Sand, to be precisely the same thing.”
“It was always poor Susan’s trouble,” said the Woman of the World; “she
could never be persuaded that Jim really loved her. It was very sad,
because I am sure he was devoted to her, in his way. But he could not do
the sort of things she wanted him to do; she was so romantic. He did
try. He used to go to all the poetical plays and study them. But he
hadn’t the knack of it and he was naturally clumsy. He would rush into
the room and fling himself on his knees before her, never noticing the
dog, so that, instead of pouring out his heart as he had intended, he
would have to start off with, ‘So awfully sorry! Hope I haven’t hurt the
little beast?’ Which was enough to put anybody out.”
[Picture: He would fling himself on his knees before her, never noticing
the dog]
“Young girls are so foolish,” said the Old Maid; “they run after what
glitters, and do not see the gold until it is too late. At first they
are all eyes and no heart.”
“I knew a girl,” I said, “or, rather, a young married woman, who was
cured of folly by the homoeopathic method. Her great trouble was that
her husband had ceased to be her lover.”
“It seems to me so sad,” said the Old Maid. “Sometimes it is the woman’s
fault, sometimes the man’s; more often both. The little courtesies, the
fond words, the tender nothings that mean so much to those that love—it
would cost so little not to forget them, and they would make life so much
more beautiful.”
“There is a line of common sense running through all things,” I replied;
“the secret of life consists in not diverging far from it on either side.
He had been the most devoted wooer, never happy out of her eyes; but
before they had been married a year she found to her astonishment that he
could be content even away from her skirts, that he actually took pains
to render himself agreeable to other women. He would spend whole
afternoons at his club, slip out for a walk occasionally by himself, shut
himself up now and again in his study. It went so far that one day he
expressed a distinct desire to leave her for a week and go a-fishing with
some other men. She never complained—at least, not to him.”
“That is where she was foolish,” said the Girton Girl. “Silence in such
cases is a mistake. The other party does not know what is the matter
with you, and you yourself—your temper bottled up within—become more
disagreeable every day.”
“She confided her trouble to a friend,” I explained.
“I so dislike people who do that,” said the Woman of the World. “Emily
never would speak to George; she would come and complain about him to me,
as if I were responsible for him: I wasn’t even his mother. When she had
finished, George would come along, and I had to listen to the whole thing
over again from his point of view. I got so tired of it at last that I
determined to stop it.”
“How did you succeed?” asked the Old Maid, who appeared to be interested
in the recipe.
“I knew George was coming one afternoon,” explained the Woman of the
World, “so I persuaded Emily to wait in the conservatory. She thought I
was going to give him good advice; instead of that I sympathised with him
and encouraged him to speak his mind freely, which he did. It made her
so mad that she came out and told him what she thought of him. I left
them at it. They were both of them the better for it; and so was I.”
[Picture: I left them at it]
“In my case,” I said, “it came about differently. Her friend explained
to him just what was happening. She pointed out to him how his neglect
and indifference were slowly alienating his wife’s affections from him.
He argued the subject.
“‘But a lover and a husband are not the same,’ he contended; ‘the
situation is entirely different. You run after somebody you want to
overtake; but when you have caught him up, you settle down quietly and
walk beside him; you don’t continue shouting and waving your handkerchief
after you have gained him.’
“Their mutual friend presented the problem differently.”
“‘You must hold what you have won,’ she said, ‘or it will slip away from
you. By a certain course of conduct and behaviour you gained a sweet
girl’s regard; show yourself other than you were, how can you expect her
to think the same of you?’
“‘You mean,’ he inquired, ‘that I should talk and act as her husband
exactly as I did when her lover?’
“‘Precisely,’ said the friend; ‘why not?’
“‘It seems to me a mistake,’ he grumbled.
“‘Try it and see,’ said the friend.
“‘All right,’ he said, ‘I will.’ And he went straight home and set to
work.”
“Was it too late,” asked the Old Maid, “or did they come together again?”
“For the next mouth,” I answered, “they were together twenty-four hours
of the day. And then it was the wife who suggested, like the poet in
Gilbert’s _Patience_, the delight with which she would welcome an
occasional afternoon off.”
“He hung about her while she was dressing in the morning. Just as she
had got her hair fixed he would kiss it passionately and it would come
down again. All meal-time he would hold her hand under the table and
insist on feeding her with a fork. Before marriage he had behaved once
or twice in this sort of way at picnics; and after marriage, when at
breakfast-time he had sat at the other end of the table reading the paper
or his letters, she had reminded him of it reproachfully. The entire day
he never left her side. She could never read a book; instead, he would
read to her aloud, generally Browning’ poems or translations from Goethe.
Reading aloud was not an accomplishment of his, but in their courting
days she had expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he
took care, in his turn, to remind her. It was his idea that if the game
were played at all, she should take a hand also. If he was to blither,
it was only fair that she should bleat back. As he explained, for the
future they would both be lovers all their life long; and no logical
argument in reply could she think of. If she tried to write a letter, he
would snatch away the paper her dear hands were pressing and fall to
kissing it—and, of course, smearing it. When he wasn’t giving her pins
and needles by sitting on her feet he was balancing himself on the arm of
her chair and occasionally falling over on top of her. If she went
shopping, he went with her and made himself ridiculous at the
dressmaker’s. In society he took no notice of anybody but of her, and
was hurt if she spoke to anybody but to him. Not that it was often,
during that month, that they did see any society; most invitations he
refused for them both, reminding her how once upon a time she had
regarded an evening alone with him as an entertainment superior to all
others. He called her ridiculous names, talked to her in baby language;
while a dozen times a day it became necessary for her to take down her
back hair and do it up afresh. At the end of a month, as I have said, it
was she who suggested a slight cessation of affection.”
[Picture: He went with her and made himself ridiculous at the
dressmaker’s]
“Had I been in her place,” said the Girton Girl, “it would have been a
separation I should have suggested. I should have hated him for the rest
of my life.”
“For merely trying to agree with you?” I said.
“For showing me I was a fool for ever having wanted his affection,”
replied the Girton Girl.
“You can generally,” said the Philosopher, “make people ridiculous by
taking them at their word.”
“Especially women,” murmured the Minor Poet.
“I wonder,” said the Philosopher, “is there really so much difference
between men and women as we think? What there is, may it not be the
result of Civilisation rather than of Nature, of training rather than of
instinct?”
“Deny the contest between male and female, and you deprive life of half
its poetry,” urged the Minor Poet.
“Poetry,” returned the Philosopher, “was made for man, not man for
poetry. I am inclined to think that the contest you speak of is somewhat
in the nature of a ‘put-up job’ on the part of you poets. In the same
way newspapers will always advocate war; it gives them something to write
about, and is not altogether unconnected with sales. To test Nature’s
original intentions, it is always safe to study our cousins the animals.
There we see no sign of this fundamental variation; the difference is
merely one of degree.”
“I quite agree with you,” said the Girton Girl. “Man, acquiring cunning,
saw the advantage of using his one superiority, brute strength, to make
woman his slave. In all other respects she is undoubtedly his superior.”
“In a woman’s argument,” I observed, “equality of the sexes invariably
does mean the superiority of woman.”
“That is very curious,” added the Philosopher. “As you say, a woman
never can be logical.”
“Are all men logical?” demanded the Girton Girl.
“As a class,” replied the Minor Poet, “yes.”