set themselves afloat without sufficient means to carry them on;
finding themselves stranded in mid-career because they have made
no calculations and have forgotten the rule of subtraction. They find
themselves at a small Italian town, say, where the virtues of the
British banking system are unknown, and where their letters of credit
and circular notes are not worth more than the value of the paper they
are written on. More than one British matron of respectable condition
and weak arithmetic has found herself in such a plight as this, with
her black-eyed landlord perfectly civil and well-bred, but as firm as
a rock in his resolution that the Signora shall not depart out of his
custody till his little account is paid--a plight out of which she has
to scramble the best way she can, with the loss perhaps of a little
dignity and of more repute--at least in the locality where her solid
scudi gave out and her precious paper could not be cashed. This is the
same woman who offers an omnibus conductor a sovereign for a
three-penny fare; who gives the village grocer a ten-pound note for a
shilling's-worth of sugar; and who, when she comes up to London for a
day's shopping, and has got her last parcel made up and ready to be
put into her cab, finds she has not left herself half enough money to
pay for it--with a shopman whose faith in human nature is by no means
lively, and who only last week was bitten by a lady swindler of
undeniable manners and appearance, and not very unlike herself. She
has been known too, to go into a confectioner's and, after having made
an excellent luncheon, to find to her dismay that she has left
her purse in the pocket of her other dress at home, and that she has
not six-pence about her. In fact there is not an equivocal position in
which forgetfulness, want of method, want of foresight, and all the
other characteristics which make up scrambling in the concrete, can
place her, in which she has not been at some time or other. But no
experience teaches her; the scrambler she was born, the scrambler she
will die, and to the last will tumble through her life, all her ends
flying and deprecating excuses on her lips.
Scramblers are notoriously great for making promises, and as notorious
for not performing what they promise. Kindhearted as they are in
general, and willing to do their friends a service--going out of their
way indeed to proffer kindnesses quite beyond your expectations and
the range of their duties towards you, and always undertaking works of
supererogation; which works in fact lead to more than half their
normal scramble--they forget the next hour the promise on which you
have based your dearest hopes. Or, if they do not forget it, they find
it is crowded out of time by a multitude of engagements and prior
promises, of all of which they were innocently oblivious when they
offered to do your business so frankly, and swore so confidently they
would set about it now at once and get it out of hand without delay.
The oath and the offer which you took to be as sure as the best
chain-cable, you will find on trial to be only a rope of sand that
could not bind so much as a bunch of tow together, still less
hold the anchor of a life; and many a heart, sick with hope deferred
and wrung with the disappointment which might have been so easily
prevented, has been half broken before now from the anguish that has
followed on the failure of the kindhearted scrambler to perform the
promise voluntarily made, and the service earnestly pressed on a
reluctant acceptor.
This is the tragic side of the scrambler's career, the shadow thrown
by almost every one of the class. For all the minor delinquencies of
hurry and unpunctuality in social affairs it is not difficult to find
full and ample forgiveness; but when it comes to untrustworthiness in
graver matters, then the scrambler becomes a scourge instead of only
an inconvenience. The only safe way of dealing with the class is to
take them when we can get hold of them, and to accept them for what
they are worth; but not to rely on them, and not to attempt any
mortising of our own affairs with their promises. They are the froth
and foam of society, pretty and pleasant enough in the sunlight as
they splash and splutter about the rocks; but they are not the deep
waters which bear the burden of our ships and by which the life of the
world is maintained.
_FLATTERY._
Nothing is so delightful as flattery. To hear and believe pleasant
fictions about oneself is a temptation too seductive for weak mortals
to resist, as the typical legends of all mythologies and the private
histories of most individuals show; in consequence of which, home
truths, to one used to ideal portraiture, come like draughts of
'bitter cup' to the dram-drinker. And flattery is dram-drinking; and
yet not quite without good uses to balance its undeniable evil, if it
be only exaggeration and not wholly falsehood; that is, if it assumes
as a matter of course the presence of virtues potential to your
character but not always active, and praises you for what you might be
if you chose to live up to your best. Many a weak brother and weaker
sister, and all children, can be heartened into goodness by a little
dash of judicious praise or flattery where ponderous exhortation and
grave reproof would fail; just as a heavily-laden horse can be coaxed
up-hill when the whip and spur would lead to untimely jibbing. If, on
the contrary, the flattery is of a kind that makes you believe
yourself an exceptionally fine fellow when you are only 'mean
trash'--a king of men when you are nothing better nor nobler than a
moral nigger--making you satisfied with yourself when at your
worst--then it is an unmitigated evil; for it then becomes
dram-drinking of a very poisonous kind, which sooner or later does for
your soul what unlimited blue ruin does for your body. But this is
what we generally mean when we speak of flattery; and this is the kind
which has such a deservedly bad name from moralists of all ages.
The flatteries of men to women, and those of women to men, are very
different in kind and direction. Men flatter women for what they
are--for their beauty, their grace, their sweetness, their
charmingness in general; while a woman will flatter a man for what he
does--for his speech in the House last night, of which she understands
little; for his book, of which she understands less; or for his
pleading, of which she understands nothing at all. Not that this
signifies much on either side. The most unintellectual little woman in
the world has brains enough to look up in your face sweetly, and
breathe out something that sounds like 'beautiful--charming--so
clever,' vaguely sketching the outline of a hymn of praise to which
your own vanity supplies the versicles. For you must have an
exceptionally strong head if you can rate the sketch at its real value
and see for yourself how utterly meaningless it is.
You may be the most mystical poet of the day, suggesting to your
acutest readers grave doubts as to your own power of comprehending
yourself; or you may be the most subtle metaphysician, to follow
whom in your labyrinth of reasoning requires perhaps the rarest
order of brains to be met with; but you will nevertheless believe
any narrow-browed, small-headed woman who tells you in a low sweet
voice, with a gentle uplifting of her eyes and a suggestive curve
of her lip, that she has found you both intelligible and charming,
and that she quite agrees with you and shares your every sentiment.
If she further tells you that all her life long she has thought in
exactly the same way but was wholly unable to express herself, and
that you have now supplied her want and translated into words her
vague ideas, and if she says this with a reverential kind of
effusiveness, you are done for, so far as your critical power goes;
and should some candid friend, whom she has not flattered, tell you
with brutal frankness that your bewitching little flatterer has
neither the brains nor the education to understand you, you will set
him down as a slanderer, spiteful and malignant, and call his candour
envy because he has not been so lucky as yourself.
The most subtle form of flattery is that which asks your advice with
the pretence of needing it--your advice, particularly--yours above
that of all other persons, as the wisest, best, most useful to be
obtained. This too is a form that belongs rather to women in their
relations with men than the converse; though sometimes men will
pretend to want a woman's advice about their love affairs, and
will perhaps make-believe to be guided by it. Not unfrequently,
however, asking one woman's opinion and advice about another is a
masked manner of love-making on its own account; though sometimes it
may be done for flattery only, when there are reasons. Of course not
all advice-asking is flattery; but when intended only to please and
not meant to be genuine, it is perhaps one of the most potent
instruments of the art to be met with.
But if seeking advice be the most subtle form of flattery, the most
intoxicating is that which pretends to moral elevation or reform by
your influence. The reformation of a rake is a work which no woman
alive could be found to resist if the rake offered it to her as his
last chance of salvation; and to lead a pretty sinner back to the ways
of picturesque virtue by his own influence only is a temptation to
self-reliance which no man could refuse--a flattery which not Diogenes
nor Zeno himself could see through. The pretensions of any one else
would be laughed at cruelly enough; but this is one of the things
where personal experience and critical judgment never go in harness
together--one of the manifestations of flattery which would overcome
the calmest and bewilder the wisest.
Priests of all denominations are especially open to this kind of
flattery; not only from pretty sinners who have gone openly out of the
right line, but from quite comely and respectable maids and matrons
who have lived blamelessly so far as the broad moral distinctions
go, yet who have not lived the Awakened Life until roused thereunto by
this peculiarly favoured minister. It is a tremendous trial of a man's
discernment when such flattery is offered to him. How much of this
pretended awakening is real? How much of this sudden spiritual insight
is true, and not a mere phrasing, artfully adopted for pleasantness
only? These are the cases where we most want that famous spear of
Ithuriel to help us to a right estimate, for they are beyond the power
of any ordinary man to determine.
But if priests are subject to these delusions of flattery on the one
hand, they know how to practise them on the other. Take away the
flattery which, mingled with occasional rebuke, forms the great
ministerial spur, and both Revivalism and Ritualism would flag like
flowers without 'the gentle dews.' Scolded for their faults in dress,
for their vanity, extravagance and other feminine vices, are not women
also flattered as the favourites of heaven and of the Church? Are they
not told that they are the lilies of the ecclesiastical garden? the
divinely appointed missionaries for the preservation of virtue and
godly truth in the world? without whom the coarser race of men would
be given over to inconceivable spiritual evil, to infidelity and all
immorality. We may be very sure of this, that if humanity, and
especially feminine humanity, were not flattered as well as chastened,
clerical influence would not last for a day.
There is one kind of flattery which is common to both men and women,
and that is the expressed preference of sex. Thus, when men want to
flatter women, they say how infinitely they prefer their society to
that of their own sex; and women will say the same to men. Or, if they
do not say it, they will act it. See a set of women congregated
together without the light of a manly countenance among them. They may
talk to each other certainly; and one or two will sit away together
and discuss their private affairs with animation; but the great mass
of them are only half vitalized while waiting the advent of the men to
rouse them into life and the desire to please. No man who goes up
first from the dinner-table, and earlier than he was expected, can
fail to see the change which comes over those wearied, limp,
indifferent-looking faces and figures so soon as he enters the room.
He is like the prince whose kiss woke up the Sleeping Beauty and all
her court; and can any one say that this is not flattery of the most
delightful kind? To be the Pygmalion even for a moment, and for the
weakest order of soul-giving, is about the greatest pleasure that a
man can know, if he be susceptible to the finer kinds of flattery.
Some women indeed, not only show their preference for men, but openly
confess it, and confess at the same time to a lofty contempt or
abhorrence for the society of women. These are generally women who
are, or have been, beauties; or who have literary and intellectual
pretensions; or who despise babies and contemn housekeeping, and
profess themselves unable to talk to other women because of their
narrowness and stupidity. But for the most part they are women who, by
their beauty or their position, have been used to receive extra
attention from men; and thus their preference is not flattery so much
as _exigence_. Women who have been in India, or wherever else they are
in the minority in society, are of this kind; and nothing is more
amazing to them when they first come home than the attentions which a
certain style of Englishwoman pays to men, instead of demanding and
receiving attentions from them.
There are also those sweet, humble, caressing women who flatter you
with every word and look, but whose flattery is nothing but a pretty
dress put on for show and taken off when the show is done with.
Anything serves for an occasion with these people. Why, the way in
which certain unmarried women will caress a child before you is an
implied flattery; and they know it. If only they would be careful to
carry these pretty ante-nuptial ways into the home where nothing is to
be gained by them but a humdrum husband's happiness! But too often the
woman whose whole attitude was one of flattering devotion before her
end was gained, gives up every shred of that which she had in such
profusion, when she has attained her object, and lets the home go bare
of that which was so beautiful and seductive in the ball-room and the
flirting corner.
Some men however, want more home flattery to keep them tolerably happy
and up to the mark than any woman with a soul to be saved by truth can
give. Poets and artists are of this kind--men who literally live on
praise, without which they droop and can do nothing. With them it is
absolutely necessary that the people with whom they are associated
should be of appreciative and sympathetic natures; but the burden
comes heavy when they want, as they generally do, so much more than
this. For, in truth, they want flattery in excess of sympathy; and if
they do not get it they hold themselves as the victims of an unkind
fate, and fill the world with the echo of their woes. This is
nine-tenths of the cause why great geniuses are so often unhappy in
married life. They demand more incessant flattery than can be kept up
by one woman, unless she has not only an exceptional power of love but
also an exceptional power of self-suppression. They think that by
virtue of their genius they are entitled to a Benjamin's mess of
devotion double that given to other men; and when they get only
Judah's share, they cry out that they are ill-used, and make the world
think them ill-used as well.
But though a little home flattery helps the home life immeasurably,
and greases the creaking domestic wheels more than anything else can,
a great deal is just the most pernicious thing that can be offered.
The belief prevalent in some families that all the very small and
commonplace members thereof are the world's wonders and greater
than any one else--that no one is so clever as Harry, no one so pretty
as Julia, that Amy's red hair is of a more brilliant gold than can be
found elsewhere, and Edward's mathematical abilities about equal to
Newton's--this belief, nourished and acted on, is sure to turn out an
insufferable collection of prigs and self-conceited damsels who have
to be brought down innumerable pegs before they find their own level.
But we often see this; especially in country places where there is not
much society to give a standard for comparative measurement; and we
know that those fond parents and doting relations are blindly and
diligently sowing seeds of bitterness for a future harvest of sorrow
for their darlings. These young people must be made to suffer if they
are to be of any good whatever in the world; and finding their level,
after the exalted position which they have been supposed to fill so
long, and being pelted with the unsavoury missiles of truth in
exchange for all the incense of flattery to which they have been used,
will be suffering enough. But it has to be gone through; this being
one of the penalties to which the unwisdom of love so often subjects
its objects.
The flattery met with in society is not often very harmful save to
coarse or specially simple natures. You must be either one or the
other to be able to believe it. Lady Morgan was perhaps the most
unblushing and excessive of the tribe of social flatterers; but that
was her engine, the ladder by which she did a good part of her
climbing. We must not confound with this kind of flattery the
impulsive expression of praise or love which certain outspoken people
indulge in to the last. You may as well try to dam up Niagara as to
make some folks reticent of their thoughts and feelings. And when one
of this kind sees anything that he or she likes, the praise has to
come out, with superlatives if the creature be prone to exaggeration.
But this is not flattery; it is merely a certain childlike
expansiveness which lasts with some into quite old age. Unfortunately,
very few understand this childlike expansiveness when they see it.
Hence it subjects its possessor to misrepresentation and unfriendly
jibes, so soon as his or her back is turned, and the explosion of
exaggerated but perfectly sincere praise is discussed critically by
the uninterested part of the audience.
_LA FEMME PASSÉE._
Without doubt it is a time of trial to all women, more or less painful
according to individual disposition, when they first begin to grow old
and lose their good looks. Youth and beauty make up so much of their
personal value, so much of their natural final cause, that when these
are gone many feel as if their whole career were at an end, and as if
nothing were left to them now that they are no longer young enough to
be loved as girls are loved, or pretty enough to be admired as mature
sirens are admired. For women of a certain position have so little
wholesome occupation, and so little ambition for anything save indeed
that miserable thing called 'getting on in society,' that they cannot
change their way of life with advancing years. Hence they do not
attempt to find interest in things outside themselves, and independent
of the personal attractiveness which in youth constituted their whole
pleasure of existence.
This is essentially the case with fashionable women, who have staked
their all on appearance, and to whom good looks are of more account
than noble deeds; and, accordingly, the struggle to remain young
is a frantic one with them, and as degrading as it is frantic.
With the ideal woman of middle age--that pleasant She with her calm
face and soft manner, who unites the charms of both epochs, retaining
the ready responsiveness of youth while adding the wider sympathies of
experience--with her there has been no such struggle to make herself
an anachronism. Consequently she remains beautiful to the last--far
more beautiful than all the pastes and washes in Madame Rachel's shop
could make her. Sometimes, if rarely in these latter days, we meet her
in society, where she carries with her an atmosphere of her own--an
atmosphere of honest, wholesome truth and love, which makes every one
who enters it better and purer for the time. All children and all
young persons love her, because she understands and loves them. For
she is essentially a mother--that is, a woman who can forget herself;
who can give without asking to receive; and who, without losing any of
the individualism which belongs to self-respect, can yet live for and
in the lives of others, and find her best joy in the well-being of
those about her. There is no exaggerated sacrifice in this; it is
simply the fulfilment of woman's highest duty--the expression of that
grand maternal instinct which need not necessarily include the fact of
personal maternity, but which, with all women worthy of the name, must
find utterance in some line of unselfish action.
The ideal woman of middle age understands the young because she has
lived with them. If a mother, she has performed her maternal duties
with cheerfulness and love. There has been no giving up her nursery to
the care of a hired servant who is expected to do for so many pounds a
year things which the tremendous instinct of a mother's love could not
find strength to do. When she had children, she attended to them in
great part herself, and learnt all about their tempers, their
maladies, and the best methods of management. As they grew up she was
still the best friend they had--the Providence of their young lives
who gave them both care and justice, both love and guidance. Such a
manner of life has forced her to forget herself. When her child lay
ill, perhaps dying, she had no heart and no time to think of her own
appearance, and whether this dressing-gown was more becoming than
that: and what did the doctor think of her with her hair pushed back
from her face?--and what a fright she must have looked in the morning
light after her sleepless night of watching! The world and all its
petty pleasures and paltry pains faded away in the presence of the
stern tragedy of the hour; and not the finest ball of the season
seemed to be worth a thought compared to the all-absorbing question of
whether her child slept after his draught and whether he ate his food
with better appetite. And such a life, in spite of all its cares, has
kept her young as well as unselfish; we should rather say, young
because unselfish. As she comes into the room with her daughters,
her kindly face unpolluted by paint, her dress picturesque or
fashionable according to her taste, but decent in form and consistent
in tone with her age, it is often remarked that she looks more like
the sister than the mother of her girls. This is because she is in
harmony with her age, and has not therefore put herself in rivalry
with them; and harmony is the very keystone of beauty. Her hair is
thickly streaked with white; the girlish firmness and transparency of
her skin have gone; the pearly clearness of her eye is clouded; the
slender grace of line is lost--but for all that she is beautiful, and
she is intrinsically young. What she has lost in outside material
charm--in that mere _beauté du diable_ of youth--she has gained in
character and expression; and by not attempting to simulate the
attractiveness of a girl, she keeps what nature gave her--the
attractiveness of middle age. And as every epoch has its own
beauty--if women would but learn that truth--she is as beautiful now
as a matron of fifty, because in harmony with her years, as she was
when a maiden of sixteen.
This is the ideal woman of middle age, met with even yet at times in
society--the woman whom all men respect; whom all women envy, and
wonder how she does it; and whom all the young adore, and wish they
had for an elder sister or an aunt. And the secret of it all lies in
truth, in love, in purity, and in unselfishness.