accustomed to, and as bad to dance in lightly as were the fiery
slippers of the naughty little girl in the German fairy-tale. Given a
large heart, generous instincts and an empty purse, and we have the
conditions of a real tragedy, both individual and social. For poverty
does not mean only that elemental want of food and clothing which we
generally associate with its name. Poverty may have two thousand a
year as well as only a mouldy crust and three shillings a week from
the parish; and poverty cursing its sore feet in a brougham is quite
as common as poverty, full of corns and callosities, blaspheming
behind a costermonger's barrow. The shoe may pinch horribly, though
there is no question of hunger or the 'twopenny rope;' for it is all a
matter of relative degree, and the means wherewith to meet wants. But
as poverty is not one of those fixed conditions of human life which no
human power can remove, we have not perhaps quite so much sympathy
with its grips and pinches as in other things less remediable. For
while there is work still undone in the world, there is gain still to
be had. The man whose energies stagnate now in a dry channel can, if
he will, turn them into one more fertile; and if he is making but a
poor business out of meal, it is his own fault if he does not try to
make a better out of malt. Where the shoe pinches hardest is in places
which we cannot protect and with a grip which we cannot prevent; but
we cannot say this of poverty as a necessary and inalienable
condition, and sympathy is so much waste when circumstances can be
changed by energy or will.
_SUPERIOR BEINGS._
Every now and then one comes across the path of a Superior Being--a
being who seems to imagine itself made out of a different kind of clay
from that which forms the coarser ruck of humanity, and whose presence
crushes us with a sense of our own inferiority, exasperating or
humiliating, according to the amount of natural pride bestowed upon
us. The superior being is of either sex and of all denominations; and
its superiority comes from many causes--being sometimes due to a wider
grasp of intellect, sometimes to a loftier standard of morals,
sometimes to better birth or a longer purse, and very often to the
simple conceit of itself which simulates superiority and believes in
its own apery. The chief characteristic of the superior being is that
exalted pity for inferiority which springs from the consciousness of
excellence. In fact, one of the main elements of superiority consists
in this sublime consciousness of private exaltation, and the immense
interval that separates it from the grosser condition it surveys.
Rivalry is essentially angry and contentious, but confessed
superiority can afford to be serene and compassionate. The little
people who live in that meagre sphere of theirs, mental and social,
with which not one point of its own extended circle comes in contact,
are deserving of all pity and are below anything like active
displeasure. That they should be content with such a meagre sphere
seems inconceivable to the superior being, as it contemplates its own
enlarged horizon with the complacency proper to a dweller in vastness.
Or it may be that its own world is narrow; and its superiority will
then be that it is high, safe, exclusive, while its pity will flow
down for those poor wayfarers who wander afield in broad latitudes,
and know nothing of the pleasure found in reserved places. In any case
the region in which a superior being dwells is better than the region
in which any other person dwells.
Take a superior being who has made up a private account with truth,
and who has, in his own mind at least, unlocked the gate of the great
mysteries of life, and got to the back of that eternal Why? for ever
confronting us. It does not in the least degree signify how the key is
labelled. It may be High Church or Low Church, Swedenborgianism or
Positivism. The name has nothing to do with the thing. It is the
contented certainty of having unlocked that great gate at which others
are hammering in vain which confers the superiority, and how the thing
has been done does not affect the result. Neither does it disturb the
equanimity of the superior being when he meets with opposing superior
beings who have also made up their private accounts with truth,
but in quite another handwriting and with a different sum-total at the
bottom of the page; who have also unlocked the gate of the great
mysteries, but with a key of contradictory wards, while the gate
itself is of another order of architecture altogether. But then
nothing ever does disturb the equanimity of the superior being; for,
as he is above all rivalry, so is he beyond all teaching. The meeting
of two superior beings of hostile creed is like the meeting of the two
blind kings in the story, each claiming the crown for his own and both
ignorant of the very existence of a rival. It may be that the superior
being has soared away into the cold region of spiritual negation,
whence he regards the praying and praising multitudes who go to church
and believe in Providence as grown people regard children who still
believe in ghosts and fairies. Or it may be that he has plunged into
the phosphorescent atmosphere of mysticism and an all-pervading
superstition; and then all who hold by scientific law, and who think
the test of common sense not absolutely valueless, are Sadducees who
know nothing of the glorious liberty of the light, but who prefer to
live in darkness and to make themselves the agents of the great Lord
of Lies.
Sometimes the superior being goes in for the doctrine of love and
impulse, as against reason or experience, holding the physiologist and
political economist as creatures absolutely devoid of feeling; and
sometimes his superiority is shown in the application of the
hardest material laws to the most subtle and delicate manifestations
of the mind. But on which side soever he ranks himself--as a
spiritualist to whom reason and matter are stumbling-blocks and
accursed, or as a materialist denying the existence of spiritual
influences at all--he is equally secure of his own superiority and
serene in his own conceit. That there should be two sides to any
question never seems to strike him; and that a man of another creed
should have as much right as himself to a hearing and consideration is
the one hard saying impossible for him to receive. With a light and
airy manner of playful contempt--sometimes with a heavy and Johnsonian
scorn that keeps no terms with an opponent--the superior being meets
all your arguments or batters down all your objections; sometimes,
indeed, he will not condescend even so far as this, but when you
express your adverse opinion just lifts up his eyebrows with a
good-humoured kind of surprise at your mental state, but lets you see
that he thinks you too hopeless, and himself too superior, to waste
powder and shot upon you. It is of the nature of things that there
should be moles and that there should be eagles; so much the worse for
the moles, who must be content to remain blind, not seeing things
patent to the nobler vision.
The superior being is sometimes a person who is above all the passions
and weaknesses of ordinary men; a philosopher, or an etherealized
woman dwelling on serene Olympian heights which no clouds obscure
and where no earth-fogs rise. The passions which shake the human soul,
as tempests shake the forest trees, and warp men's lives according to
the run of their own lines, are unknown to these Olympian personages
who cannot understand their power. They look on these tempestuous
souls with a curious analytical gaze, speculating on the geography of
their Gethsemane, and wondering why they cannot keep as calm and quiet
as they themselves are. They sit in scornful judgment on the
mysterious impulses regulating human nature--regulating and
disturbing--and think how perfect all things would be if only passions
and instincts were cut out of the great plan, and men and women were
left to the dominion of pure reason. But they do not take into account
the law of constitutional necessity, and they are utterly unable to
strike a balance between the good and evil wrought both by the
tempests of souls and by those of nature. They only know that storms
are inconvenient, and that for themselves they have no need of such
convulsions to clear off stagnant humours; nor are they made of
elements which kindle and explode at the contact of such or such
materials. And if they know nothing of all this, why then should
others? If they can sit on Olympian heights serene above all passion,
why should not the whole world sit with them, and fogs and fires,
earthquakes and deluges, be conditions unknown?
When this kind of superior being is a woman, there is something pretty
in the sublime assumption of her supremacy and the sweeping range
of her condemnation. Sheltered from temptation and secure from danger,
she looks out on life from the serene heights of her safe place, and
wonders how men can fail and women fall before the power of trials of
which she knows only the name. Her circulation is languid and her
temperament phlegmatic; and the burning desire of life which sends the
strong into danger, perhaps into sin, is as much unknown to her as is
the fever of the tropics to a Laplander crouching in his snow-hut. But
she judges none the less positively because of her ignorance; and, as
she looks into your quivering face with her untroubled eyes, lets you
see plainly enough how she despises all the human frailties under
which you may have tripped and stumbled. Sometimes she rebukes you
loftily. Your soul is sore with the consciousness of your sin, your
heart is weak with the pain of life; but the superior being tells you
that repentance cannot undo the evil that has been done, and that to
feel pain is weak.
The superiority which some women assume over men is very odd. It is
like the grave rebuke of a child, not knowing what it is that it
rebukes. When women take up their parable and censure men for the wild
or evil things they do, not understanding how or why it has come about
that they have done them, and knowing as little of the inner causes as
of the outer, they are in the position of superior beings talking
unmitigated rubbish. To be sure, it is very sweet and innocent
rubbish, and has a lofty air about it that redeems what else
would be mere presumption; but there is no more practical worth in
what they say than there is in the child's rebuke when its doll will
not stand upright on sawdust legs, nor eat a crumb of cake with waxen
lips. This is one reason why women of the order of superior beings
have so little influence over men; they judge without knowledge and
condemn without insight. If they could thoroughly fathom man's nature,
so as to understand his difficulties, they would then have moral power
if their aims were higher than his, their principles more lofty, their
practice more pure. As it is, they have next to none; and the very men
who seem to yield most go only so far as to conceal what the superior
being disapproves of; they do not change because of her greater weight
of doctrine.
Men show themselves as superior beings to women on another
count--intellectually, rather than morally. While women rebuke men for
their sins, men snub women for their follies; the one wields the
spiritual, the other the intellectual, weapon of castigation, and both
hold themselves superior, beyond all possibility of rivalry, according
to the chance of sex. The masculine view of a subject always imposes
itself on women as something unattainable by the feminine mind. Nine
times out of ten it brings them to a due sense of their own
inferiority, save in the case of the superior being, to whom of course
the masculine view counts for nothing against her own. But even when
women do not accept a man's opinions, they instinctively
recognize his greater value, his greater breadth and strength. Perhaps
they cry out against his hardness, if he is a political economist and
they are emotional; or against his lower morality if he goes in for
universal charity and philosophical latitudinarianism, and they are
enthusiasts with a clearly-defined faith and a belief in its
infallibility. These are wide tracts of difference between the two
minds, not to be settled by the _ipse dixit_ of even a superior being;
but in general the superiority of the man makes itself more felt than
the superiority of the woman. While one preaches, the other ridicules;
and snubbing does more than condemnation.
_FEMININE AMENITIES._
A man's foes are those of his own household, and the keenest enemies
of women are women themselves. No one can inflict such humiliation on
a woman as can a woman when she chooses; for if the art of high-handed
snubbing belongs to men, that of subtle wounding is peculiarly
feminine, and is practised by the best-bred of the sex. Women are
always more or less antagonistic to each other. They are gregarious in
fashions and emulative in follies, but they cannot combine; they never
support their weak sisters; they shrink from those who are stronger
than the average; and if they would speak the truth boldly, they would
confess to a radical contempt for each other's intellect--which
perhaps is the real reason why the sect of the 'emancipated' commands
so small a following.
Half a dozen ordinary men advocating 'emancipation' doctrines would do
more towards leavening the whole bulk of womankind than any number of
first-class women. Where these do stand by each other it is from
instinctive or personal affection rather than from class solidarity.
And this is one of the most striking distinctions of sex, and one
cause, among others, why men have the upper hand, and why they are
able to keep it. Certainly there are reasons, sufficiently good, why
women do not more readily coalesce; and one is the immense difference
between the two extremes--the silly being too silly to appreciate the
wise, and the weak too weak to bear the armour of the strong. There is
more difference between outsiders among women than there is among men;
the feminine characteristic of exaggeration making a gap which the
medium or average man fills. The ways of women with each other more
than all else show the great difference between their _morale_ and
that of men. They flatter and coax as men could not do, but they are
also more rude to each other than any man would be to his fellow. It
is amazing to see the things they can do and will bear--things which
no man would dream of standing and which no man would dare to attempt.
This is because they are not taught to respect each other, and because
they have no fear of consequences. If one woman is insulted by
another, she cannot demand satisfaction nor knock the offender down;
and it is unladylike to swear and call names. She must bear what she
can repay only in kind; but, to do her justice, she repays in a manner
undeniably effective and to the point.
There is nothing very pronounced about the feminine modes of
aggression and retaliation; and yet each is eloquent and sufficient
for its purpose. It may be only a stare, a shrug, a toss of the
head; but women can throw an intensity of disdain into the simplest
gesture which answers the end perfectly. The unabashed serenity and
unflinching constancy with which one woman can stare down another is
in itself an art that requires a certain amount of natural genius, as
well as careful cultivation. She puts up her eyeglass--not being
shortsighted--and surveys the enemy standing two feet from her, with a
sublime contempt for her whole condition, or with a still more sublime
ignoring of her sentient existence, that no words could give. If the
enemy be sensitive and unused to the kind of thing, she is absolutely
crushed, destroyed for the time, and reduced to the most pitiable
state of self-abasement. If she be of a tougher fibre, and has had
some experience of feminine warfare, she returns the stare with a
corresponding amount of contempt or of obliviousness; and from that
moment a contest is begun which never ceases and which continually
gains in bitterness. The stare is the weapon of offence most in use
among women, and is specially favoured by the experienced against the
younger and less seasoned. It is one of the instinctive arms native to
the sex; and we have only to watch the introduction of two girls to
each other to see this, and to learn how even in youth is begun the
exercise which time and use raise to such deadly perfection.
In the conversations of women with each other we again meet with
examples of their peculiar amenities to their own sex. They never
refrain from showing how much they are bored; they contradict
flatly, without the flimsiest veil of apology to hide their rudeness;
and they interrupt ruthlessly, whatever the subject in hand may be.
One lady was giving another a minute account of how the bride looked
yesterday when she was married to Mr. A., of somewhat formidable
boudoir repute, with whom her listener had had sundry tender passages
which made the mention of his marriage a notoriously sore subject.
'Ah! I see _you_ have taken that old silk which Madame Josephine
wanted to palm off on me last year,' said the tortured listener
brusquely breaking into the narrative without a lead of any kind. And
the speaker was silenced. In this case it was the interchange of
doubtful courtesies, wherein neither deserved pity; but to make a
disparaging remark about a gown, in revenge for turning the knife in a
wound, was a thoroughly feminine manner of retaliation, and one that
would not have touched a man. Such shafts fall blunted against the
rugged skin of the coarser creature; and the date or pattern of a bit
of cloth would not have told much against the loss of a lover. But as
most women passionately care for dress, their toilet is one of their
most vulnerable parts. Ashamed to be unfashionable, they tolerate
anything in each other rather than shabbiness or eccentricity, even
when picturesque; hence a sarcastic allusion to the age of a few yards
of silk as a set-off against a grossly cruel stab was a return wound
of considerable depth cleverly given.
The introduction of the womankind belonging to a favourite male
acquaintance of somewhat lower social condition affords a splendid
opportunity for the display of feminine amenity. The presentation
cannot be refused, yet it is resented as an intrusion. 'Another
daughter, Mr. C.! You must have a dozen daughters surely,' a peeress
said disdainfully to a commoner whom personally she liked, but whose
family she did not want to know. The poor man had but two; and this
was the introduction of the second.
Very painful to a high-spirited gentlewoman must be the way in which a
superior creature of this kind receives her, if not of the same set as
herself. The husband of the inferior creature may be adored, as men
are adored by fashionable women who love only themselves, and care
only for their own pleasures. Artist, man of letters, _beau sabreur_,
he is the passing idol, the temporary toy, of a certain circle; and
his wife has to be tolerated for his sake, and because she is a lady
and fit to be presented, though an outsider. So they patronize her
till the poor woman's blood is on fire; or they snub her till she has
no moral consistency left in her, and is reduced to a mere mass of
pulp. They keep her in another room while they talk to her husband
with their other intimates; or they admit her into their circle, where
she is made to feel like a Gentile among the faithful, for either they
leave her unnoticed altogether or else speak to her on subjects quite
apart from the general conversation, as if she were incapable of
understanding them on their own ground. They ask her to dinner without
her husband, and take care that there is no one to meet her whom she
would like to see; but they ask him when they are at their grandest,
and express their deep regret that his wife (uninvited) cannot
accompany him. They know every turn and twist that can humiliate her
if she has pretensions which they choose to demolish. They praise her
toilet for its good taste in simplicity, when she thinks she is one of
the finest on an occasion on which no one can be too fine. They tell
her that pattern of hers is perfect, and made just like the dear
duchess's famous dress last season, when she believes that she has
Madame Josephine's last, freshly imported from Paris. They celebrate
her dinner as the very perfection of a refined family dinner without
parade or cost, though it has all been had from the crack
confectioner's, and though the bill for the entertainment will cause
many a day of family pinching. These are the things which women say to
one another when they wish to pain and humiliate; things which pain
and humiliate some more than would a positive disgrace. For some women
are distressingly sensitive about these little matters. Their lives
are made up of trifles, and a failure in a trifle is a failure in
their object of life.
Women can do each other no end of despite in a small way in society,
not to speak of mischief of a graver kind. A hostess who has a grudge
against one of her more famous lady-guests can always ensure her
a disappointing evening under cover of doing her supreme honour and
paying her extra attention. If she sees the enemy engaged in a
pleasant conversation with one of the male stars, down she swoops, and
in the sweetest manner possible carries her off to another part of the
room, to introduce her to some school-girl who can only say yes or no
in the wrong places--'who is dying for the honour of talking to you,
my dear;' or to some unfledged stripling who blushes and grows hot and
cannot stammer out two consecutive sentences, but who is presented as
a rising genius and to be treated with the consideration due to his
future. As her persecution is done under the guise of extra
friendliness, the poor victim cannot cry out, nor yet resist; but she
knows that whenever she goes to Mrs. So and So's she will be seated
next the stupidest man at table, and prevented from talking to any one
she likes in the evening; and that every visit to that lady is made in
some occult manner unpleasant to her. And yet what has she to complain
of? She cannot complain in that her hostess trusts to her for help in
the success of her entertainment, and moves her about the room as a
perambulating attraction which she has to dispense fairly among her
guests, lest some should be jealous of the others. She may know that
the meaning is to annoy; but who can act on meaning as against manner?
How crooked soever the first may be, if the last is straight the case
falls to the ground, and there is no room for remonstrance.
Often women flirt as much to annoy other women as to attract men
or amuse themselves. If a wife has crossed swords with a friend, and
the husband is in any way endurable, let her look out for retaliation.
The woman she has offended will take her revenge by flirting more or
less openly with the husband, all the while loading the enemy with
flattery if she be afraid of her, or snubbing her without much
disguise if she feel herself the stronger. The wife cannot help
herself, unless things go too far for public patience. A jealous woman
without proof is the butt of her society, and brings the whole world
of women like a nest of wasps about her ears. If wise, she will ignore
what she cannot laugh at; if sensitive, she will fret; if vindictive,
she will repay. Nine times out of ten she does the last, and, may be,
with interest; and so goes on the duel, though all the time the
fighters appear to be intimate friends and on the best possible terms
together.