Chapter V: Part 5

Everything in America is colossal, stupendous and pre-eminent,--it follows, therefore, that the American “bounder” is the most colossal, stupendous and pre-eminent bounder in existence. None of his tribe can match him in “brass,”--none of his European forbears or connections can equal him in brag. He is an inflated bladder of man, swollen out well-nigh to bursting with the wind of the Yankee Doodle Eagle’s wing. His aim in life appears to be to disgrace his country by his manners, his morals and his conversation. He arrives in Europe with the air of laying Europe under a personal debt of obligation to Providence for having kindly permitted him to be born. As befits a son of the goddess Liberty, he sets his proud foot on the “worn out” soil of the Old World and prances there, even as the “wild ass” mentioned in Holy Writ. As a citizen of the greatest Republic over which any starred or striped flag ever flew, he extends his gracious patronage to tottering monarchies, and allows it to be understood that he tolerates with an amused compassion that poor, drivelling, aged and senile institution known as the Aristocracy. He alludes to “my friend the Duke,” casually, as one might speak of a blind beggar. He throws in a remark quite unexpectedly at times concerning “Betty--_you’ve_ heard of her surely? Countess Betty--the Countess of Hockyfield--oh yes!--you English snobs rather ‘kotow’ to her, but _I_ call her Betty!--she likes it!” He may frequently be found in residence on the fourth floor back of a swagger hotel, occupying a “bed-sitting room” littered with guide books, “yellow” journalism, and dubious French novels, with an impressionist sketch of the newest Paris “danseuse” in her most suggestive want of attire set conspicuously forward for inspection. If chance visitors happen to notice flowers on his table, he at once seethes into a simmering scum of self-adulation. “Charming, are they not!” he says--“So sweet! So dear of the Duchess to send them!--she knows how fond I am of Malmaisons!--did you notice that Malmaison?--the Duchess gathered it for me herself--it is from one of the Sandringham stock. Of course you know the carnation houses at Sandringham? Alex. delights in Malmaisons!” And when guileless strangers gasp and blink as they realize that it is England’s gracious Queen-Consort who is being spoken of as “Alex.” in the company of the soiled literature and the portrait of the Paris “danseuse” the Bounder is delighted. He feels he has made a point. He chortles cheerfully on--“What a rotten old country this is after all, eh? Just crawling alive with snobs! Everyone’s on their knees to a title, and the sight of a lord seems to give the average Britisher a fit. Now look at me! I don’t care a cent about your dukes and earls. Why should I? I’m always with ’em--fact is, they can’t bear to have me out of their sight! Lady Belinda Boomall--second daughter of the Duke of Borrowdom,--she’s just mad on me! She thinks I’ve got money, and I let her! It’s real fun! And as to the Marchioness Golfhouse--she’s up to some games _I_ tell you! _She_ knows a thing or two! My word!” Here he gives vent to a sound suggestive of something between a sneeze and a snigger which is his own particular way of rendering the laugh satirical. “I always get on with your blue-blooded girls!”--he proceeds; “I guess they’re pretty tired of their own men hulking round! They take to an Am_urr_ican as ducks take to water. See all those cards?”--pointing in a casual way to half a dozen or so of pasteboard slips littered on the mantelshelf, among which the discerning observer might certainly see one or two tradesmen’s advertisements--“They just shower ’em on me! I’ve got an ‘at home’ to-night and a ball afterwards--to-morrow I breakfast at Marlborough House;--then lunch with Lady Adelaide Sparkler,--she drives me in the Park afterwards--and in the evening I dine at St. James’ Palace and go to the Opera with the Rothschilds. It’s always like that with me! I never have a moment to myself. All these people want me. Lady Adelaide Sparkler declares she cannot possibly do without me! I ought to have been at Stafford House this afternoon--great show on there--but I can’t be bothered!--the Duchess is just too trying for words sometimes! Of course it’s all a question of connection;--they know who I am and all about my ancestors, and that makes ’em so anxious to have me. You know who my ancestors were?”

Now when the American Bounder puts this question, he ought to receive a blunt answer. Perhaps if Britishers were as rude as they are sometimes reported to be, one of them would give such an answer straight. He would say “No, I do not; but I expect you sprang from a convict root of humanity thrown out as bad rubbish from an over-populated prison and cast by chance into American soil beside an equally rank native Indian weed--and that in your present bad form and general condition, you are the expressive result of that disastrous combination.” But, as a rule, even the most truculent Britisher’s natural pluck is so paralysed by the American Bounder’s amazing capacity for lying, that in nine cases out of ten, he merely murmurs an inarticulate negative. Whereat the Bounder at once proceeds to enlighten him--“I am the direct descendant of the Scroobys of Scrooby in Yorkshire,”--he resumes--“_My_ name’s not Scrooby--no!--but that has nothing to do with it. The families got mixed. Scrooby of Scrooby went over to Holland in 1607 and joined the Pilgrim Fathers. He was quite a boy, but Elder Brewster took care of him! He held the Bible when Brewster first fell upon his knees and thanked God. So you see I really come from Yorkshire. Real old Yorkshire ham ‘cured’ into an Am_urr_ican!”

After this, there is nothing more to be said. Questions of course might be asked as to how the “Yorkshire ham” not being “Scrooby” now, ever started from “Scrooby” in the past, only it is not worth while. It never is worth while to try and certify an American Bounder’s claim to being sprung from a dead and gone family of English gentlemen. Regard for the dead and gone English gentlemen should save them from this affront to their honourable dust.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the American Bounder after his free and easy familiarities with “Bertie” (the King) “Alex.” (the Queen) and “Georgie and May” (the Prince and Princess of Wales) is his overweening, self-satisfied, complacent and arrogant ignorance. The most blatant little local tradesman who, through well-meaning Parliamentary short-sightedness in educational schemes, becomes a “governor” of a Technical School in the provinces, is never so blatantly ignorant as he. He talks of everything and knows nothing. He assumes to have the last word in science, art and literature. He will tell you he is “great chums” with Marconi and Edison, and that these famous discoverers and inventors always lay their heads on his bosom and tell him their dearest confidences. He knows just what is going to be done by everybody with everything. He is friends with the Drama too. Beerbohm Tree rings him up on the telephone at all manner of strange hours, thirsting for his advice on certain “scenes” and “effects.” He is--to use his own words--“doing a great thing” for Tree! Sarah Bernhardt is his very dearest of dear ones! She has fallen into his arms, coming off the stage at the side wings, exhausted, and exclaiming--“Toi, mon cher! Enfin! Maintenant, je respire!” Madame Réjane is always at home to him. In fact all Paris hails him with a joy too deep for tears. He would not be a true “Am_urr_ican” if _he_ did not love Paris, and if Paris did not love _him_.

But though he is completely “at one,” according to his own statement, with most of the celebrated personages of the day, if not all, he cannot tell you the most commonly known facts about them to save his life. And though--again according to his own statement--he has read every book ever published, visited every picture gallery, “salon” and theatre in Europe, he cannot pronounce the name of one single foreign author or artist correctly. His English is bad enough, but his French is worse. He seldom makes excursions into the Italian language--“Igh--talian” as he calls it, but it is quite enough for the merest beginner in the Tuscan tongue to hear him say “gondòla” to take the measure of his capacity. “Gòndola” is a word so easily learned and so often used in Italian, that one might think any child could master its pronunciation from twice hearing it--but the American Bounder makes the whole tour of Italy without losing a scrap of his own special nasal lingo, and returns in triumph to talk of the “gondòla” and the “bella ràgg-azza” (instead of ragàzza) till one’s ears almost ache with the hideous infliction of his abominable accent. In Switzerland he is always alluding to “Mount Blank”--the “Can_tone_ Gry-son”--“N_oo_-shatell”--and the “Mountain Vert”--and in Great Britain he has been heard to speak of Lo_che_ Kay-trine and Ben _Nee_vis, as well as of Con_iss_ton and Cornwàll. But it is quite “correct” he will tell you--it is only the English people who do not know how to talk English. The actual, true, pure pronunciation of the English language went over to the States with the Scroobys of Scrooby, and he their descendant and Bounder, has preserved it intact. Even Shakespeare’s river Avon becomes metamorphosed under the roll of his atrocious tongue. He will not pronounce it with the English A, as in the word “b_a_y,”--he calls it A’von, as the “a” is sounded in the word _av_arice--so that the soft poetic name of the classic stream appears to have been bitten off by him and swallowed like a pop-corn. But it would be of no use to argue with him on this or on any other point, because he is always right. No real American Bounder was ever wrong.

One cannot but observe what a close acquaintance the Bounder has with Debrett and various “County” Directories. His study of these volumes is almost as profound as that of Mr. Balfour must have been when writing “The Foundations of Belief.” Between Debrett and Baedeker he manages to elicit a certain useful stock of surface information which he imparts in a kind of cheap toy-cracker fashion to various persons, who, politely listening, wonder why he appears to think that they are not aware of facts familiar to them from their childhood. His modes of appearing “to know, you know!” are exceedingly simple. For example, suppose him to be asked to join a “house-party” in Suffolk. He straightway studies the “County Directory” of that quarter of England, and looks up the principal persons mentioned therein in various other books of handy reference. When, in due course, he arrives at the house to which he has been invited, he manages to faintly surprise uninitiated persons by his (apparently) familiar acquaintance with the pedigree and history of this or that “county” magnate, and his (apparently) intimate knowledge of such and such celebrated paintings and “objets d’art” as adorn the various historical mansions in the district--knowledge for which he is merely indebted to Baedeker. He is as loquacious as a village washerwoman. He will relate any number of scandalous stories in connection with the several families of whose ways and doings he pretends to have such close and particular information--and should any listener interrupt him with a mild “Pardon me!--but, having resided in this neighbourhood all my life I venture to think you must be mistaken”;--he merely smiles blandly at such a display of “native” ignorance. “Lived here all your life and not know that!” he exclaims--“My word! It takes an Am_urr_ican to teach you what’s going on in your own country!”

Offensive as is this more or less ordinary type of American Bounder who makes his “home in Yew-rope” on fourth floors of fashionable hotels, a still worse and more offensive specimen is found in the Starred-and-Striped Bounding Millionaire. This individual--who has frequently attained to a plethora of cash through one of two reprehensible ways--either by “sweating” labour, or by fooling shareholders in “trust” companies,--comes to Great Britain with the fixed impression that everything in the “darned old place” can be bought for money. Unfortunately he is often right. The British--originally and by nature proud, reserved, and almost savagely tenacious of their freedom and independence--have been bitten by the Transatlantic madness of mere Greed, and their blood has been temporarily poisoned by infection. But one may hope and believe that it is only a passing malady, and that the old healthy life will re-invest the veins of the nation all the more strongly for partial sickness and relapse. In the meantime it occasionally happens that the “free” Briton bows his head like a whipped mongrel cur to the bulging Bank-Account of the American Millionaire-Bounder. And the American Millionaire-Bounder plants his flat foot on the so foolishly bent pate and walks over it with a commercial chuckle. “You talk of your ‘Noblesse oblige,’ your honour, your old historic tradition and aristocratic Order!” he says, sneeringly--“Why there isn’t a man alive in Britain that I couldn’t buy, principles and all, for fifty thousand pounds!”

This kind of vaunt at Britain’s expense is common to the American Millionaire-Bounder--and whether it arises out of his conscious experience of the British, or his braggart conceit, must be left to others to query or determine. Certain it is that he _does_ buy a good deal, and that the owners of such things as he wants seem always ready to sell. Famous estates are knocked down to him--manuscripts and pictures which should be the preciously guarded property of the nation, are easily purchased by him,--and, laughing in his sleeve at the purblind apathy of the British Government, which calmly looks on while he pockets such relics of national greatness as unborn generations will vainly and indignantly ask for,--he congratulates himself on possessing, as he says, “the only few things the old country has got left worth having.” One can but look gloomily through the “Calendar of Shakespearean Rarities,” collected by Halliwell Phillips, which were offered to the wealthy city of Birmingham for £7,000, and reflect that this same wealthy city disgraced itself by refusing to purchase the collection and by allowing everything to be bought and carried away from England by “an American” in 1897. We do not say this American was a “Bounder”--nevertheless, if he had been a real lover of Shakespeare’s memory, rather than of himself, he would have bought these relics for Shakespeare’s native country and presented them for Shakespeare’s sake to Shakespeare’s native people, who are not, as a People, to blame for the parsimony of their Governments. They pay taxes enough in all conscience, and at least they deserve that what few relics remain of their Greatest Man should be saved and ensured to them.

But perhaps the American Millionaire-Bounder is at his best when he has bought an English newspaper and is running it in London. Then he feels as if he were running the Imperial Government itself--nay, almost the Monarchy. He imagines that he has his finger on the very pulse of Time. He hugs himself in the consciousness that the British people,--that large majority of them who are not behind the scenes--buy his paper, believing it to be a British paper, not a journal of “Am_urr_ican” opinion, that is, opinion as ordered and paid for by one “Am_urr_ican.” He knows pretty well in his own mind that if they understood that such was the actual arrangement, they would save their pence. Unfortunately the great drawback of the “man in the street” who buys newspapers, is that he has no time to enquire as to the way in which the journals he confides in are “run.” If he knew that the particular view taken of the political situation in a certain journal, was merely the political view _ordered_ to be taken by one “Am_urr_ican”--naturally he would not pin his simple faith upon it. Perhaps the Man in the Street will some day wake up to the realization that in many cases, (though not all) with respect to journalism, he only exists to be “gulled.”

Like all good and bad things, the American Bounder, whether millionaire or only shabby-genteel, has a certain height beyond which he can no further go--a point where he culminates in a blaze of ultra Bounder-ism. This brilliant apotheosis is triumphantly reached in the Female of his species. The American Female Bounder is the quintessence of vulgarity, and in every way makes herself so objectionable even to her own people and country that Americans themselves view her departure for “Yew-rope” with perfect equanimity, and hope she will never come back. Once in what she calls “the old country” she talks all day long through her quivering nose of “Lady This” and “Countess That.” One of this class I recall now as I write, who spoke openly of a “Mrs. Countess So-and-So”--and utterly declined to be instructed in any other form of address. She was not content to trace her lineage to such humble folk as the “Scroobys of Scrooby”--no indeed, not she! Kings were _her_ ancestors; her “family tree” sprouted from Richard the Lion-Heart, according to her own bombastic assertion, and she, with her loud twanging voice, odious manners and insufferable impertinence, was “genuine stock” of royallest origin. Of course it is quite possible that, as in horticulture, a once nobly cultivated human plant may, if left without wholesome or fostering influences, degenerate into a weed--but that so rank a weed as the American Female Bounder should be the dire result of the Conqueror’s blood is open to honest doubt. She generally has a “mission” to reform something or somebody,--she is very often a “Christian science” woman, or a theosophist. Sometimes she “takes up” Art as though it were a dustpan, and sweeps into it under her “patronage” certain dusty and doubtful literary and musical aspirants who want a “hearing” for their efforts. Fortunately for the world, a “hearing” under the gracious auspices of the American Female Bounder means a silence everywhere else. She is fond of “frocks and frills”--and wears an enormous quantity of jewels, “stones” as she calls them. She “pushes” herself in every possible social direction, and wherever she sees she is not wanted, there, more particularly than elsewhere, she contrives to force an entry. She embraces the game of “Bridge” with passionate eagerness because she sees that by keeping open house, with card-tables always ready, she can attract the loafing “great ones of the earth,” and possibly persuade a “Mrs. Countess” to befriend her. If she is fairly wealthy, she can generally manage to do this. All Mrs. Countesses have not “that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.” Some of them find the American Female Bounder useful--and precisely in the manner she offers herself, even so they take her. And thus it often happens that one frequently meets her where she has no business to be. One is not surprised to find her at Court, or in the Royal enclosure at Ascot, because so many of her British sisters in the Bounder line are in these places, ready to give her a helping hand--but one _is_ occasionally startled and in a manner sorry to discover her making herself at home among certain “exclusive” people who are chiefly distinguished for their good-breeding, culture and refinement. In one thing, however, we can take much comfort, and this is, that whatever the American Bounder, Male or Female, may purchase or otherwise insidiously obtain in the Old World, neither he nor she can ever secure respect. Driven to bay as the Britisher may be by consummate and pertinacious lying, he can and does withhold from the liars his honest esteem. He may sell a valuable manuscript or picture to a “bounding” Yankee, out of sheer necessitous circumstance, but he will never be “friends” with the purchaser. He will call him “bounder” to the crack of doom, and Doomsday itself will not alter that impression of him.

It may be, and it is I think, taken for granted that America itself is very glad to get rid of its “bounders.” It regards them with as much shame and distress as we feel when we see certain specimens of “travelling English” disporting themselves upon the Continent in the ’Arry and Jemima way. We always fervently hope that our Continental neighbours will not take these extraordinary roughs as bona-fide examples of the British people, and in the same way America trusts all the nations of Europe not to accept their “Bounders” as examples of the real pith and power of the United States. The American People are too great, too broad-minded, sane, and thorough, not to wish to shake off these _aphides_ on their rose of life. They watch them “clearing out” for “Yew-rope” with perfect satisfaction. Said a charming American woman to me the other day--“What a pity it is that English people _will_ keep on receiving Americans here who would not be tolerated for a moment in New York or Boston society! It surprises us very greatly. Sometimes indeed we cannot help laughing to see the names of women figuring among your ‘haute noblesse’ who would never get inside a decent house anywhere in the States. But more often we are sorry that your social ‘leaders’ are so easily taken in!”

Here indeed is the sum total of the matter. If Great Britain--and other countries in Europe--but Great Britain especially--did not “receive” and encourage the American Bounder and Bounderess, these objectionable creatures would never be known or heard of. Therefore it is our fault that they exist. Were it not for our short-sighted foolishness, and our proneness to believe that every “Am_urr_ican” with money must be worth knowing, we should be better able to sort the sheep from the goats. We should add to the pleasures of our social life and intercourse an agreeable knowledge of the real American ladies, the real American gentlemen; and though these are seldom seen over here, for the very good reason that they are valued and wanted in their own country, they could at least be certain, when they did come, of being received at their proper valuation, and not set to herd with the “Bounders” of their country, whom their country rejects. For one may presume that there is some cogent reason why an American citizen of the Greatest Republic in the world, should elect to desert his native land and “settle down” under “rotten old monarchies.” People do not leave the home of their birth for ever unless they find it impossible to live there for causes best known to themselves. The poor are often compelled to emigrate, we know, in the hope to find employment and food in other countries--but when the rich “slope off” from the very centres where they have made their capital, one may be permitted to doubt the purity of their intentions. Anyway, surrounded as we are to-day socially by American Bounders of every description,--American Bounders who think themselves as good as any one else “and a darned sight better”--American Bounders who declare that they are the “real old British race renewed,”--American Bounders who “run” British journals of “literary opinion” and so forth,--American Bounders who thrust themselves into the company of unhappy kings and queens,--those crowned slaves who in such earthquaking days as these have to be more than common careful “not to offend,”--American Bounders who themselves claim kinship with the blood royal,--the one straight and simple fact remains--namely, that all the best Americans still live in America!

COWARD ADAM

Among the numerous fascinating and delightful members of the male sex whom I have the honour to count as friends, there is one very handsome and devotedly attentive gentleman of four years old, who is particularly fond of reciting to me in private the following striking poem on the Fall of Man.

When Mister Sarpint did deceive
Poor little silly Missis Eve,
The Lord he spied an apple gone
From off the branch it hanged upon;
That apple was a heavy loss,
And so the Lord got very cross,
He searched the garden through and through,
And called “Hi Adam! where are you?”
But Mister Adam, he,
Clum up a tree.

There is something in this graphic narrative which appears to tickle my young cavalier’s fancy immensely, for whenever he says “Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree,” he opens his big blue eyes very widely, claps his tiny hands very loudly, and gives vent to ecstatic shrieks of laughter. It is quite evident that he entirely understands and appreciates Adam’s position. Young as he is, he has the instinctive knowledge within him that when the time comes, he will likewise adopt the “Clum up a tree” policy. For Adam is the same Adam still, and nothing will ever change him. And when things are getting rather “mixed” in his career, and the forbidden fruit he has so readily devoured turns out to be rather more sour and tasteless than he had anticipated,--when his Garden of Eden is being searched through and through for the causes of the folly and disobedience which have devastated its original fairness, the same old story may be said of him--“Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree.” Perhaps if he only climbed a tree one might excuse him,--but unfortunately he talks while climbing,--talks as though he were an old babbling grandam instead of a lord of creation,--and grandam-like puts the blame on somebody else. He says--“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” Coward Adam! Observe how he at once transfers the fault of his own lack of will and purpose to the weaker, more credulous, more loving and trusting partner;--how he leaves her defenceless to brave the wrath which he himself dreads,--and how he never for one half second dreams of admitting himself to be the least in the wrong! But there is always one great satisfaction to be derived from the perusal of the strange old Eden story, and this is that “Mister Sarpint” was of the male gender. Scripture leaves no room for doubt on this point. It says: “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And _he_ said unto the woman----” So that a “he” tempted a woman, before “she” ever tempted a “he.” Women should be duly thankful for the sex of “Mister Sarpint,” and should also bear in mind that this particular “he” was “more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” On many an occasion it will be found a salutary and useful fact to remember.

Once upon a time, so we are told, there was an Age of Chivalry. The word “chivalry” is stated in the dictionary to be derived from the French “cheval” a horse, and “chivalrous” men were, in the literal meaning of the term, merely men who rode about on horseback. But chivalry has somehow come to imply respect, devotion, and reverence for women. The “chivalrous” knight is supposed to have gone all over the world, wearing the glove or the ribbon of his “ladye faire,” in his helmet, and challenging to single combat every other knight that dared to question the supremacy of her beauty and virtue. I confess at once that I do not believe in him. If he ever existed he must have been a most unnatural and abnormal product of humanity, as unlike his first progenitor Adam as he could well be. For even in the “Round Table” romances one finds an entire lack of chivalry in the so-called chivalrous knights of King Arthur. Their moral principles left much to be desired, and the conduct of Sir Meliagraunce who betrayed the loves of Lancelot and the Queen was merely that of a common sneak. Coward Adam spoke in him, as in many of the Arthurian heroes,--and that they were more “chivalrous” than the modern male gossips who jeer away a woman’s name and honour in their smoking and gaming rooms, is a legend which like that of the Tree of Good and Evil itself, requires stronger confirmation than history as yet witnesseth.

Coward Adam, taking him as he appears in the present day, has lately shown himself off in various odd phases and lamentable positions. During the South African War he came out strong in some of our generals, who put the blame of certain military mishaps on one another like quarrelsome children, thereby losing dignity and offering a most humiliating spectacle to the amazed British public. Coward Adam’s policy, after making a blunder, is to adopt any lie, rather than say frankly and boldly--“I did it!” He will eat dirt by the bushel in preference to the nobler starvation act of singly facing his foes. He is just now exhibiting himself to his usual advantage in the British Parliament, while the nation looks on, waiting for the inevitable finale of his various hesitations and inefficiencies--the “Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree.” For in most matters of social, political, and moral progress, the great difficulty is to obtain an upright, downright, honest and impartial opinion from any leading public man. The nation may be drifting devilwards, but statesmen are judged to be more statesmanlike, if they hold their tongues and watch it go. They must not speak the truth. It would offend so many people. It would upset so many interests. It would create a panic on the Stock Exchange. It would throw Wall Street into hysterics. The world’s vast public, composed of thinking, working, and more or less educated and intelligent people, may and do crave for a bold utterance, a truth openly enunciated and bravely maintained, but to the weavers of political intrigue and the self-seeking schemers in Governmental departments, the public is considered merely as a Big Child, to be soothed with lollipop phrases and tickled by rattle promises. If the Big Child cries and screams because it is hungry, they chirp to it about Fair Trade,--if it complains that its ministers of religion are trying to make it say its prayers backwards, they promise a full “enquiry into recent abuses in the Church.” But fine words butter no parsnips. Coward Adam always climbs up a tree as quickly as he can when instead of fine words, fine deeds are demanded. Physical feats of skill, physical gymnastics of all kinds he excels in, but a moral difficulty always places him as it did in the Garden of Eden, in what he would conventionally term “an awkward position.”

“Never kiss and tell” is I believe an “unwritten law of chivalry.” This law, so I understand, Coward Adam does sometimes manage to obey, albeit reluctantly. Because he would like to tell,--he would very much like to tell,--if--if the story of the kiss did not involve himself in the telling! But at this juncture “the unwritten laws of chivalry” step in and he is saved. And chivalry is the tree up which he climbs, chattering to himself the usual formula--“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me,”--etcetera, etcetera. Alas, poor woman! She has heard him saying this ever since she, in an unselfish desire to share her food with him, gave him the forbidden apple. No doubt she offered him its rosiest and ripest side! She always does,--at first. Not afterwards! As soon as he turns traitor and runs up a tree, she takes to pelting him, metaphorically speaking, with cocoa-nuts. This is quite natural on her part. She _had_ thought him a man,--and when he suddenly changes into a monkey, she doesn’t understand it. To this cause may possibly be attributed some of the ructions which occasionally jar the harmonious estate of matrimony.

Coward Adam does very well in America. He sees his position there quite plainly. He knows that if he climbs his tree too often, hundreds of feminine hands will pull him down. So he resigns himself to the inevitable. He is not slow to repeat the customary whine--“The woman whom thou gavest me”--but he says it quietly to himself between whiles. Because he knows that _she_ knows all his share in the mischief! So he digs and delves, and finds gold and silver and limitless oil wherewith to turn into millions of dollars for her pleasure; he packs pork, lays railway tracks, starts companies, organizes “combines”--and strains every nerve and sinew to “do” every other Adam save himself in his own particular line of business, so that “the woman” (or may we say the women?) “whom thou gavest” may be clothed in Paris model gowns, and wear jewels out-rivalling in size and lustre those of all the kings and queens that ever made their sad and stately progress through history. Indeed, Coward Adam, in the position he occupies as a free citizen of that mighty Republic over which the wild eagle screams exultingly, looks a little bit like a beaten animal. But he bears his beating well, and is quite pleasant about it. In regard to “the woman whom thou gavest me” he is nearer the imaginary code of “chivalry” than his European brother. If the original Adam had learned the ways of a modern American gentleman of good education and fine manners, one can quite imagine him saying--“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me generously offered me a share of the apple, and I did eat. But the Serpent whom thou didst permit to tell lies to my amiable partner concerning this special kind of fruit, was chiefly to blame.”

Coward Adam, as he is seen and known among the lower classes, crops up every day in newspapers, which duly chronicle his various acts, such as promising marriage to poor working girls and robbing them of all their little savings, as well as of their good names,--kicking his wife, starving his children, and spending every penny he earns in the public-house. But he is just as frequently met with in the houses of the Upper Ten. He will wear the garb of a lord with ease, and, entering the house of another lord, will cozen his host’s wife away from loyalty to her husband in quite the manner “friendly.” He is likewise to be found occasionally in the walks of literature, and where a woman is concerned in matters artistic will “down” her if he can. He has always done his best to hinder woman from receiving any acknowledgment for superior intellectual ability. Notably one may quote the case of Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium. Coward Adam says she discovered it by “a fluke”--that is to say, by chance. Most great discoveries occur, even to men, in the same way. In the present instance the “chance” came to a woman. Why should she not therefore have all the honour due to her?--the same honour precisely as would fall to the lot of a man in her place? Columns upon columns of praise would be bestowed upon her were she of Adam’s sex, and all the academies of science would contend with each other as to which should offer her the best and most distinctive award. But Coward Adam cannot abide the thought that “the woman whom thou gavest” should take an occasionally higher rank than his own among the geniuses of his age. He must have everything or nothing. He tries to ignore the fact that woman is winning equal honours with himself in University degrees; he would fain forget that the two greatest monarchs Great Britain ever had were women--Elizabeth and Victoria. There is a brave Adam, of course--a civilized creature who owns and admits the brilliant achievements of woman with pride and tenderness,--I am only just now speaking of the coward specimen. The brave Adam does not turn tail or climb trees, and he appears to have had nothing to do with the Garden of Eden. Very likely he was born somewhere else. For _he_ says--“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me is the joy of my life,--the companion of my thoughts. To her my soul turns,--for her my heart beats--in her I rejoice,--her triumphs are my pride,--her success is my delight! If danger threatens her, I will be her defender, not her accuser,--should she be blamed for aught, I will take her fault upon myself, and will serve as a strong shield between her and calumny. This is the least I can do to prove my love towards her--for without her I should be the worst of creatures,--a lonely soul in an empty world!”

So says, or may say brave Adam! But his coward brother does not understand such high-flown sentiments. Coward Adam’s main object in life is to “avoid a scene” with either the Lord Almighty, Mister Sarpint or Missis Eve. He likes to wriggle out of difficulties, both public and private, in a quiet way. He does not understand the “methods” of plain blunt people who tell him frankly what a sneak he is. He is very ubiquitous, and much more frequently to be met with than his braver twin. And if he should chance to read what I have here set down concerning him, he will probably say as usual: “The woman whom thou gavest” in various forms of anonymous vituperation. But his active policy will remain the same as it ever was--“Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree!”

ACCURSËD EVE

When the masculine Serpent, “who was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord had made,” tempted the mother of mankind to eat of the forbidden fruit, the Voice in the Garden said to her--“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” It can scarcely be denied that this curse has been fulfilled. So manifold and incessant have been the sorrows of Woman since the legendary account of the creation of the world, that one cannot help thinking the whole business somewhat unfair, if,--for merely being “beguiled” by a beast of the field who was known to be more “subtil” than any other, and afterwards being “given away” by Coward Adam,--Eve and all the descendants of her sex should be compelled to suffer centuries of torture. The injustice is manifestly cruel and arbitrary,--yet it would seem to have followed poor Accursëd Eve from then till now. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” And sorrow has been multiplied to such an aggravated and barbarous extent upon her unfortunate head, that in the Jewish ritual to this very day there is a part of the service wherein the men, standing in the presence of women, individually say: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman!” thus deliberately insulting, in their very house of worship, the sex of their mothers!

But from the earliest times, if we are to accept historical testimony, the Jews of the ancient world appear to have treated women in the majority as “Something worser than their dog, a little lower than their horse.” Save and except those rare cases where the Jewish woman suddenly found out her latent powers and employed them to advantage, the Jewish man made her fetch and carry for him like a veritable beast of burden. He yoked her to his plough with oxen,--he sold and exchanged her with his friends as freely as any other article of commerce,--his “base uses” of her were various, and seldom to his credit,--while, such as they were, they only lasted so long as they satisfied his immediate humour. When done with, she was “cast out.” The kind of “casting out” to which she was subjected is not always explained. But it may be taken for granted that in many instances she was either killed immediately, or turned adrift to die of starvation and weariness. The Jews in their Biblical days were evidently not much affected by her griefs. They were God’s “chosen” people,--and the fact that women were the mothers of the whole “chosen” race, appeared to call for no claim on their chivalrous tenderness or consideration.

Looking back through the vista of time to that fabled Eden, when she listened to the tempting of the “subtil” one, the wrongs and injustices endured by Accursëd Eve at the hand of Coward Adam make up a calendar of appalling, almost superhuman crime. Man has taken the full licence allowed him by the old Genesis story (which, by the way, was evidently invented by man himself for his own convenience). “Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” And among all tribes, and in all nations he _has_ ruled with a rod of iron! The Christian dispensation has interfered somewhat with his former reign of tyranny, for with the birth of Christ came, to a certain extent, the idealization and beatification of womanhood. The Greeks and Romans, however, had a latent glimmering idea of what Woman in all her glory should be, and of what she might possibly attain to in the future,--for all their grandest symbols of life, such as Truth, Beauty, Justice, Fortune, Fame, Wisdom, are always represented by their sculptors clothed in the female form divine. It is a curious fact, that in those early periods of civilization, when Literature and Art were just dawning upon the world, man, though aggregating to his own Ego nearly everything in the universe, paused before representing himself as a figure of Justice, Mercy or Wisdom. He evidently realized his unfitness to stand, even in marble, before the world as a symbol of moral virtue. He therefore, with a grace which well became him in those “pagan” days, bent the knee to all noble attributes of humanity as represented in Woman. Her fair face, her beauteous figure, greeted him in all his temples of worship;--as Venus and Diana she smiled upon him; as the goddess of Fortune or Chance, she accepted his votive wreaths,--as Fame or Victory, she gave him blessing whenever he went to war, or returned in triumph from the field;--and all this was but the embryo or shadowing-forth of woman’s higher future and better possibilities, when the days of her long and cruel probation should be accomplished, and her “curse” in part be lifted. There are signs and tokens that this happy end is in sight. Accursëd Eve is beginning to have a good time. And the only fear now is, lest she should overstep the mark of her well-deserved liberty and run headlong into licence. For Eve,--with or without curse,--is naturally impulsive and credulous; and being too often forgetful of the little incident which occurred to her in the matter of the Tree of Good and Evil, is still far too prone to listen to the beguiling of “subtil” personages worse “than any beast of the field which the Lord hath made.”

Accursëd Eve, having broken several of her old-time fetters, and beginning to feel her feet as well as her wings, just now wants a word in politics. As one of her cursëd daughters, I confess I wonder that she should wish to put herself to so much unnecessary trouble, seeing that she has the whole game in her hands. Politics are generally hustled along by Coward Adam,--unless, by rarest chance, Brave Adam, his twin brother, suddenly steps forth unexpectedly, when there ensues what is called a “collapse of the Government.” In any question, small or great, Accursëd Eve has only to offer Coward Adam the apple, and he will eat it. Which metaphor implies that even in politics, if she only moves him round gradually to her own views in that essentially womanly way which, while persuading, seems not to persuade, he is bound to yield. Personally speaking, I do not know any man who is not absolutely under the thumb of at least one woman. And I will not believe that there is any woman so feeble, so stupid, so lost to the power and charm of her own individuality, as not to be able to influence quite half a dozen men. This being the case, what does Accursëd Eve want with a vote? If she is so unhappy, so ugly, so repulsive, so deformed in mind and manners as to have no influence at all on any creature of the male sex whatever, neither father, nor brother, nor uncle, nor cousin, nor lover, nor husband, nor friend,--would the opinion of such an one be of any consequence, or her vote of any value? I assert nothing,--I only ask the question.

Speaking personally as a woman, I have no politics, and want none. I only want the British Empire to be first and foremost in everything, and I tender my sincerest homage to all the men of every party who will honestly work towards that end. These being my sentiments, I deprecate any strong separate parliamentary attitude on the part of Accursëd Eve. I say that she has much better, wider work to do than take part in tow-rows with the rather undignified personages who often make somewhat of a bear-garden of the British House of Commons. That she would prove a good M.P. were she a man, I am quite sure; but as a woman I know she “goes one better,” in becoming the wife of an M.P.

Accursëd Eve! Mother of the world! What higher thing does she seek? Mother of Christianity itself, she stands before us, a figure symbolic of all good, her Holy Child in her arms, her sweet, musing, prayerful face bending over it in gravely tender devotion. From her soft breast humanity springs renewed,--she represents the youth, the hope, the love of all mankind. Wronged as she has been, and as she still is, her patience never fails. Deceived, she “mends her broken shell with pearl,” and still trusts on. Her sweet credulousness is the same as ever it was;--the “subtil” one can always over-reach her through her too ready confidence in the idea that “all things work together for good.” Her “curse” is the crime of loving too well,--believing too much. Should a “subtil” one say he loves her, she honestly thinks he does. When he turns out, as often happens, to be looking after her money rather than herself, she can scarcely force her mind to realize that he is not so much hero as cad. When she has to earn her own living in any of the artistic professions, she will frequently tell all her plans, hopes and ambitions to “subtil” ones with the most engaging frankness. The “subtil” ones naturally take every advantage of her, and some of them put a stopgap on her efforts if they can.

How many times men have tried to steal away the honour of a woman’s name and fame in literature need not here be chronicled. Of how many books, bearing a woman’s name on the title-page it is said--“Her husband helped her,”--or “She got Mr. So-and-So to write the descriptive part!” “George Eliot” has often been accused of being assisted in her novels by Mr. Lewes. A little incident,--touching enough to my mind,--is related in the memoirs of Charlotte Brontë. After her marriage, and when she was expecting the birth of her child, she was reading some of the first chapters of an intended new novel to her husband,--who, as he listened, said in that peculiarly encouraging way which is common to men who have gifted women to deal with--“You seem to be repeating yourself. You must take care not to repeat yourself.” Poor little soul! She never “repeated” herself,--she just died. No one can tell how her husband’s thoughtless phrase may have teazed or perplexed her sensitive mind in a critical condition of health, and helped to hasten the fatal end.

Edward Fitzgerald’s celebrity as a scholar is not, and never will be wide enough to blot out from remembrance his brutal phrase on hearing of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning--

“Mrs. Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more Aurora Leighs!”

While, far more creditable to Algernon Charles Swinburne than his own praise of himself now unfortunately affixed to the newly collected edition of his works, is the praise he bestows on this noble woman-genius in his preface to her great poem. I quote one line of it here--

“No English contemporary poet by profession has left us work so full of living fire.”

For once, and in this particular instance, Accursëd Eve in literature has, in such a verdict, won her merited literary honours.

But as a rule honours are withheld from her, and the laurel is filched from her brows by Coward Adam ere she has time to wear it. One flagrant case is well known, of a man who having lived entirely on a woman’s literary earnings for years, went about in the clothes her pen had paid for, among the persons to whom, through her influence, he had been introduced, boasting that he assisted her to write the greater part of her books. To their shame be it said, a great many people believed him; and not till he was dead, and the woman went on writing her books as before, did they even begin to see the wrong they had done her. They would not have dared to calumniate the false boaster as they calumniated the innocent hard worker. The boaster was a man,--the worker was a woman;--therefore the dishonour of passing off literary work not one’s own, must, so they imagined, naturally belong to Accursëd Eve,--not to Coward Adam! Of their humiliation when the real truth was known, history sayeth nothing.

Yet with all the weight of her curse more or less upon her, and with all her sorrows, shattered ideals, wrecked hopes, and lost loves, Accursëd Eve is still the most beautiful, the most perfect figure in creation. Her failings, her vanities, her weaknesses, her sins, arise in the first place from love--even if afterwards, through Coward Adam’s ready encouragement, they degenerate into vice and animalism. Her first impulse in earliest youth is a desire to please Adam,--the same impulse precisely which led her to offer him the forbidden apple in the first days of their mutual acquaintance. She wishes to charm him,--to win his heart,--to endear herself to him in a thousand tender ways,--to wind herself irretrievably round his life. If she succeeds in this aim, she is invariably happy and virtuous. But if she is made to feel that she cannot hold him on whom her thoughts are centred,--if his professed love for her only proves weak and false when put to trial,--if he finds it easy to forget both sentiment and courtesy, and is quick to add insult to injury, then all the finer and more delicate emotions of her nature become warped and unstrung,--and though she endures her suffering because she must, she resents it and takes vengeance when she can. Of resentfulness against wrong and revenge for injustice, come what are called “bad women.” Yet I would humbly venture to maintain that even these “bad” were not bad in the first instance. They were born in the usual way, with the usual Eve impulse,--the desire to please, not themselves, but the opposite sex. If their instinctive efforts have been met with cruelty, oppression, neglect, desertion and sometimes the most heartless and cowardly betrayal, they can scarcely be blamed if they play the same tricks on the unloving, disloyal churls for whom they have perhaps sacrificed the best part of their lives. For innocent faith and trusting love _are_ the best part of every woman’s life; and when these are destroyed by the brutalizing touch of some Coward Adam, the woman may well claim compensation for her soul’s murder.

Accursëd Eve! Still she loves,--to find herself fooled and cheated; still she hopes, even while hope eludes her,--still she waits, for what she may never win,--still she prays prayers that may never be answered,--still she bears and rears the men of the future, wondering perchance whether any of them will ever help to do her justice,--will ever place her where she should be, as the acknowledged queenly “help-meet” of her stronger, but less enduring partner! Beautiful, frail, trusting, loving, Accursëd Eve! She bends beneath the curse,--but the clouds are lifting!--there is light in the sky of her future dawn! And it may be that a worse malediction than the one pronounced in Eden, will fall on those who make her burden of life heavier to bear!

“IMAGINARY” LOVE

My love
Is as the very centre of the earth
Drawing all things to it.
--_Troilus and Cressida._