Chapter VI: Part 6

There is perhaps no emotion more elevating or more deceptive than that sudden uplifting of the heart and yearning of the senses which may be called “imaginary” Love. It resembles the stirring of the sap in the roots of flowers, thrilling the very ground with hints and promises of spring,--it is the unspeakable outcoming of human emotion and sympathy too great to be contained within itself,--the tremulous desire,--half vague and wholly innocent,--of the human soul for its mate. The lower grades of passion have not as yet ruffled the quivering white wings of this divinely sweet emotion, and the being who is happy enough to experience it in all its intensity, is, for the time, the most enviable on earth. Youth or maiden, whichever it be, the world is a fairyland for this chosen dreamer. Nothing appears base or mean,--God’s smile is reflected in every ray of sunshine, and Nature offers no prospect that is not pleasing. It is the season of glamour and grammarye,--a look over the distant hills is sufficient to engage the mind of the dreaming girl with brilliant fancies of gallant knights riding from far-off countries, with their lady’s colours pinned to their breasts “to do or die” for the sake of love and glory,--and the young boy, half in love with a pretty face he has seen on his way home from school or college, begins to think with all the poets, of eyes blue as skies, of loves and doves, and hearts and darts, in happy unconsciousness that his thoughts are not in the least original. Yet with all its ethereal beauty and gossamer-sense of pleasure, this “imaginary” love is often the most pathetic experience we have or ever shall have in life. It is answerable for numberless griefs,--for bitter disillusions,--occasionally, too, for broken hearts. It glitters before us, a brilliant chimera, during our very young days,--and on our entrance into society it vanishes, leaving us to pursue it through many phases of existence, and always in vain. The poet is perhaps the happiest of all who join in this persistent chase after the impossible,--for he frequently continues to imagine “imaginary” love with ecstasy and fervour to the very end of his days. Next in order comes the musician, who in the composition of a melancholy nocturne or tender ballad, or in the still greater work of a romantic opera, imagines “imaginary” love in strains of perfect sound, which waken in the hearts of his hearers all the old feverish longings, all the dear youthful dreams, all the delicious romances which accompanied the lovely white-winged Sentiment in days past and dead for ever. Strange to say, it often happens that the musician, while thus appeasing his own insatiable thirst for “imaginary” love, is frequently aware that he is arousing it in others; and could he probe to the very fibres of his thinking soul, he would confess to a certain keen satisfaction in the fact of his being able to revivify the old restless yearning of a pain which is sweeter to the lonely soul than pleasure.

Now this expression of the “lonely soul” is used advisedly, because, in sad truth, every human soul is lonely. Lonely at birth,--still more lonely at death. During its progress through life it gathers around it what it can in the way of crumbs of love, grains of affection, taking them tenderly and with tears of gratefulness. But it is always conscious of solitude,--an awful yet Divine solitude over which the Infinite broods, watchful yet silent. Why it is brought into conscious being, to live within a material frame and there perform certain duties and labours, and from thence depart again, it cannot tell. All is a mystery,--a strange Necessity, in which it cannot truly recognize its part or place. Yet it is,--and one of the strongest proofs of its separate identity from the body is this “imaginary” love for which it yearns, and which it never obtains. “Imaginary” love is not earthly,--neither is it heavenly,--it is something between both, a vague and inchoate feeling, which, though incapable of being reduced to any sort of reason or logic, is the foundation of perhaps all the greatest art, music and poetry in the world. If we had to do merely with men as they are, and women as they are, Art would perish utterly from the face of the earth. It is because we make for ourselves “ideal” men, “ideal” women, and endow these fair creations with the sentiment of “imaginary” love, that we still are able to communicate with the gods. Not yet have we lowered ourselves to the level of the beasts,--nor shall we do so, though things sometimes seem tending that way. Realism and Atheism have darkened the world, as they darken it now, long before the present time, and as defacements on the grandeur of the Universe they have not been permitted to remain. Nor will they be permitted now,--the reaction will, and must inevitably set in. The repulsive materialism of Zola, and others of his school,--the loose theories of the “smart” set, and the moral degradation of those who have no greater God than self,--these things are the merest ephemera, destined to leave no more mark on human history than the trail of a slug on one leaf of an oak. The Ideal must always be triumphant,--the soul can only hope to make way by climbing towards it. Thus it is with “imaginary” Love,--it must hold fast to its ideal, or be content to perish on the plane of sensual passion, which exhausts itself rapidly, and once dead, is dead for ever and aye.

With all its folly, sweetness, piteousness and pathos, “imaginary” love is the keynote of Art,--its fool-musings take shape in exquisite verse, in tales of romance and adventure, in pictures that bring the nations together to stand and marvel, in music that makes the strong man weep. It is the most supersensual of all delicate sensations,--as fine as a hair, as easily destroyed as a gnat’s wing!--a rough touch will wound it,--a coarse word will kill it,--the sneer of the Realist shuts it in a coffin of lead and sinks it fathoms deep in the waters of despair. Strange and cruel as the fact may seem, Marriage appears to put an end to it altogether.

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife
He would have written sonnets to her all his life?

inquires Byron. He certainly would not. The “imaginary” love of Petrarch was the source of his poetic inspiration; if he had ever dragged it down to the level of the commonplace Actual, he would have killed his Muse. In a similar way the love of Dante for Beatrice was of the “imaginary” quality. Those who read the “Vita Nuova” will scarcely fail to see how the great poet hugs his love-fancies and feeds himself with delicious extravagances in the way of idealized and sublimated soul-passion. He dissects every fine hair of a stray emotion, and writes a sonnet on every passing heart-beat. Dante’s wife never became so transfigured in her husband’s love. Why? Alas, who can say! No reason can be given save that perchance “familiarity breeds contempt,” and that the Unattainable seems always more beautiful than the Attained. The delight of possession would appear to be as brief as the flowering of a rose. Lovers are in haste to wed,--but when the knot is once irrevocably tied, in nine cases out of ten they wish it could be untied again. They no longer imagine “imaginary” love! The glamour is gone. Illusions are all over. The woman is no longer the removed, the fair, the chaste, the unreachable,--the man ceases to be the proud, the strong hero endowed with the attributes of the gods. “Imaginary” love then resolves itself into one of two things,--a firm, every-day, close and tender _friendship_, or else a sick disappointment, often ending in utter disgust. But the divine emotion of “imaginary” love has died,--the Soul is no longer enamoured of its Ideal--and the delicate psychic passion which inspires the poet, the painter, the musician, turns at once to fresh objects of admiration and pursuit. For it is never exhausted,--unlike any purely earthly sense it knows no satiety. Deceived in one direction, it dies in another. Dissatisfied with worldly things, it extends its longing heavenwards,--there at least it shall find what it seeks,--not now, but hereafter! Age does not blunt this fine emotion, for, as may often be remarked with some beautiful souls in the decline of bodily life, the resigning of earthly enjoyments gives them no pain,--and the sweet placidity of expectation, rather than the dull apathy of regret, is their chief characteristic. “Imaginary” love still beckons them on;--what has not been found Here will be found There!

Happy, and always to be envied, are those who treasure this aerial sentiment of the spiritual brain! It is the dearest possession of every true artist. In every thought, in every creative work or plan, “imaginary” love goes before, pointing out wonders unseen by less enlightened eyes,--hiding things unsightly, disclosing things lovely, and making the world fair to the mind in all seasons, whether of storm or calm. Intensifying every enjoyment, adding a double thrill to the notes of a sweet song, lending an extra glow to the sunshine, an added radiance to the witchery of the moonlight, a more varied and exquisite colouring to the trees and flowers, a charm to every book, a delight to every new scene, “imaginary” love, a very sprite of enchantment, helps us to believe persistently in good, when those who love not at all, neither in reality nor in idealization, are drowning in the black waters of suicidal despair.

So it is well for us--those who can--to imagine “imaginary” love! We shall never grasp the Dream in this world--nevertheless let us fly after it as though it were a Reality! Its path is one of sweetness more than pain,--its ways are devious, yet even in sadness still entrancing. Better than rank, better than wealth is this talisman, which with a touch brings us into close communication with the Higher worlds. Let us “imagine” our friends are true; let us “imagine” we are loved for our own sakes alone,--let us “imagine,” as we welcome our acquaintances into our homes, that their smiles and greetings are sincere--let us imagine “imaginary” love as the poets do,--a passion tender, strong and changeless--and pursue it always, even if the objects, which for a moment its passing wings have brushed, crumble into dust beneath that touch of fire! So shall our lives retain the charm of constant Youth and Hope,--so shall the world seem always beautiful to us,--so shall the Unimaginable glory of the future Real-in-Love shine nearer every day in our faithful, fond pursuit of its flying Shadow!

THE ADVANCE OF WOMAN

Follow Light and do the Right--for man can half control his doom--
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb!
--TENNYSON, _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_.

Sixty years ago! To us of the present day it seems a very long time--a kind of “dark ages” period wherein we peer backward dubiously, wondering what everybody was like then. History, taking us by the hand, shows us, as in a magic glass, the Coronation of Victoria, one of the best Queens that the world has ever known, and tells us of the great men and masterly intellects of that past time, whose immortal works we still have with us, but whose mere mortal place knows them no more. Much may be seen in the backward glimpse that some of us may possibly regret and wish that we possessed again. Men of power and dominance, for example--great writers, great thinkers, great reformers--surely we lack these! Surely we need them sorely! But it seems to be a rule of Nature that if we gain in one direction we must lose in another, and whatever we have lost in that far-gone period, we have certainly gained much in the forward direction. One of the most remarkable changes, perhaps, that has taken place in the passing of the years is the different position assigned to Woman from that which she occupied when Dickens and Thackeray wrote their wonderful novels, and when Charlotte Brontë astonished the world by her woman’s genius, to be followed by the still more powerful and Scott-like display of brainpower in Mary Ann Evans (“George Eliot”). At that time men were still chivalrous. Woman was so rarely brilliant--or, shall we put it, she so rarely had the chance of asserting the brilliant qualities that are her natural endowment--that man was content to acknowledge any unusual talent on her part as an abnormal quality, infrequent enough to be safely admired. In this spirit, more or less, Sir Walter Scott paid tribute to Jane Austen, and Thackeray to Charlotte Brontë; but as time has progressed, and women have arisen one after another in the various departments of Art and Literature, men have begun to fall back and look askance, and somewhat threateningly, on the fair trespassers in their hitherto guarded domains. And the falling back and the looking askance continue in exact proportion to the swift and steady onward march of the white-robed Amazons into the Battle of Life. Braced with the golden shield of Courage, helmeted with Patience, and armed with the sword of Faith, the women-warriors are taking the field, and are to be seen now in massed ranks, daily marshalling themselves in more compact order, firm-footed and fearless, prepared to fight for intellectual freedom, and die rather than yield. They, too, will earn the right to live; they, too, will be something greater than the mere vessels of man’s desire--whether maids, wives, or mothers, they will prove themselves worthy to be all these three, and more than these, to the very utmost extent of their moral and intellectual being!

Perhaps there is nothing more entertaining to the wit of a cultured and intelligent woman than the recurrent piping wail of man’s assertion that “woman has no creative power.” Her place, says the didactic male, is the kitchen, the nursery, and beside the cradle. _Certes_, she can manage these three departments infinitely better than he can, especially the cradle part of it, wherein his fractious disposition is generally well displayed the moment he starts in life. But, as a matter of fact, there is hardly any vocation in which she cannot, if she puts her mind to it, distinguish herself just as easily and successfully as he can if he will only kindly stand out of her way. He makes himself ludicrous by persistently “crying her down” when all the world _en masse_ beholds her taking the highest University honours over his head, and beating him intellectually on his own ground. In physical force he certainly outstrips her. Item,--he can kick her as heartily and skilfully as he can kick a football, _vide_ the daily police reports. Item,--he can eat and drink much more than she can, because he devotes a great deal more time and attention to the study of gastronomy. Item,--he can smoke more. Item,--he can indulge freely in unbridled licentiousness, and amply prove his original savage right to be considered a polygamous animal, without being banned from “good society,” or anything being said against his moral character. This a woman cannot do. If she has many lovers, her conduct is severely criticized. But if she has none, she is still more bitterly condemned, especially if she happens to be in the least good-looking. And why? Simply because her indifference “reflects” on the male sex generally. The ugliest of masculine creatures experiences a vague sense of offence when he meets a charming woman who neither seeks his advice nor his company. And here we have the gist of the whole matter: man is a vain animal and wants to be admired. Like the peacock, he struts forward and spreads out his glittering tail. The central feature of the landscape, as he considers himself, he waits for the pea-hen to worship him. If, instead of the humble pea-hen, he finds another sort of bird entirely--with not only a tail as brilliant as his own, but wings which will carry it over his head, he is mightily incensed, and his shrill cry of rage echoes through that particular part of the universe where he is no longer “monarch of all he surveys.” His “other world” must be pea-hens or none!

And yet Man’s delightful and utter want of the commonest logic is never more flagrantly exhibited than in this vital matter of his estimate of Woman, taking it all round in a broad sense. Daily, hourly, in the household and in the market-place, he may be heard cheapening her abilities, sneering at such triumphs as she attains, cracking stale jests at her “love of gossip,” “love of dress” (for he is seldom original even in a joke), and her “incessant tongue,” blissfully ignoring the fact that his own is wagging all the time; and yet no one can twist him so limply and helplessly round the littlest of her little fingers as she can. Moreover, throughout all the ages, so far as the keenest explorer or historical student can discover, his highest ideals of life have been depicted in the Feminine form. Fortune, Fame, Justice, the Arts and Sciences, are all represented by female figures lovingly designed by male hands. Evidently conscious in himself that a woman’s purity, honesty, fidelity, and courage are nobler types of these virtues than his own, Man apparently is never weary of idealizing them as Woman womanly. Thoroughly aware of the supreme sovereignty Woman can exercise whenever he gives her the chance, he, while endeavouring to bind and hold her intellectual forces by his various edicts and customs, takes ever an incongruous satisfaction in doing her full justice by the magnitude of his feminine ideals. The divine spirit of Nature itself, called “Egeria,” is always depicted by man as a woman. Faith, Hope and Charity, are represented as female spirits, as are the Three Graces. The Muses are women; so are the Fates. Hence, as all the virtues, morals, arts, and sciences are shown by the highest masculine skill as wearing woman’s form and possessing woman’s attributes, it is easy to see that man has always been perfectly aware in his inward intelligence of Woman’s true worth and right place in creation, though, by such laws as he has made for his own better convenience, he has put up whatever barriers he can in the way of the too swift advancement of so superior and victorious a creature. Now that she is beginning to take an important share in the world’s work and progress, he is becoming vaguely alarmed. In each art, in each profession he sees her gaining step by step to higher intellectual dominance. He watches her move from plane to plane of study, learning, as she goes, that the mere animalism of unthinking subservience to his passions is not her only heritage. And straightway the long-spoilt child begins to whimper. “A woman has no creative power!” he cries. “No imagination!--no originality!--no force of character! What she does in the Arts is so very little----!”

Stop, oh Man! You have had a very long, long innings, remember! From the time of Abraham, and ages before that worthy patriarch ever turned Hagar out into the wilderness, you have been setting Woman alongside your cattle, and curling your whip with a magnificent carelessness round both at your pleasure, yea! even offering both with indifferent readiness for sale and barter. You have enjoyed centuries of liberty; it is now woman’s turn to taste the sweets of freedom. She does very little in the Arts, you say? I grant you that in the first of them, Poetry, she does little indeed. I do not think we shall ever have a female Shakespeare, for instance. But, at the same time, I equally do not think we shall ever again have a male one! Yet it is to be admitted that none of the leading women poets can compare for an instant with the leading men in that most divine and primæval of Arts. But I should not like to assert that the great woman-Dante or woman-Shelley may not yet arise, for it is to be borne in mind that woman’s education and woman’s chances have only just begun. In Music, again, she is deemed deficient. Yet we are confronted at the present day by the fact that many of the most successful and charming of song writers are women. And the following appears in the Dresden _Neueste Nachricten_ (October 18, 1902):--

“Up to the present date we have always entertained the opinion that the composition of music was a gift denied to the female sex, elegant trifles (as exceptions) only confirming our doubts. And now an English lady appears on the scene, amazing the musical world of Dresden. She was as a young girl already a distinguished artist, a virtuoso on the piano, and played--as ‘Miss Bright,’--under the direction of Dr. Wullner, a piano concerto of her own composition, with extraordinary success. Then marriage separated her from her art for several years. Now (after the death of her husband), the young widow, Mrs. Knatchbull, has composed an opera--text, music, and instrumentation all being her own work--and has brought it with her to Dresden. The music is so captivating, and above all, holds one so strongly that one exclaims in astonishment, ‘Can this be the work of a woman?’ It is more than probable that the opera will be produced at the Dresden Opera House.”

Here followeth an instructive story:--A recent opera performed with considerable success at Monte Carlo and other Continental resorts is the work of a woman, stolen by a man. The facts are well known, as are the names of the hero and heroine of the sordid tragedy. A little love-making on the part of the male composer, who could show nothing of ability save the composition of a few amorous drawing-room songs--a confiding trust on the part of the woman-genius, whose brain was full of God-given melody--these were the motives of the drama. She played the score of her opera through to him--he listened with admiration--with words of tender flattery, precious to her who was weak enough to care for such a rascal; and then he took it away to be “transcribed,” as he said, and set out for the orchestra. He loved her, so the poor credulous soul thought!--and she trusted him--such an old story! He copied her opera in his own manuscript--stole it, in short, and left for the Continent, where he had it produced as his own composition. Had she complained, the law would have gone against her. She had no proof save that of her love. Before a grinning, jesting court of law she would have had to publish the secret of her heart. People would have shaken their heads and said, “Poor thing! A case of self-delusion and hysteria!” He himself would have shaken his dirty pate and said, “Poor soul! Mad--quite mad! Many women have had their heads turned likewise for love of me!” So it chances that only those “in the know” are aware of the story, and the man-Fraud is left unmolested; but it is a curious and suggestive fact that he produces no more operas.

There is one thing that women generally, in the struggle for intellectual free life, should always remember--one that they are too often apt to forget--namely, that the Laws, as they at present exist, are made _by_ men, _for_ men. There are no really stringent laws for the protection of women’s interests except the Married Woman’s Property Act, which is a great and needful boon. But take the following instances of the eccentricities of English law, both of which have come under my own knowledge as having occurred to personal friends. A certain foreign nobleman residing in England made a will leaving all his fortune to his mistress. His legitimate children were advised to dispute the will, as under the law of his native country he could not dispossess his lawful heirs of their inheritance. He had not naturalized himself at any time as a British subject, and the plain proof of this was, that but a year before his death, he had applied to the Government of his own country for permission to wear a certain decoration, which permission was accorded him. The nature of his application proved that he still considered himself a subject of his own native land. The case came before an English judge, who had apparently eaten some very indigestible matter for his luncheon. With an apoplectic countenance and an injured demeanour, the learned gentleman declined to go into any of the details of the case, and administered “justice” by deciding the whole thing on “a question of domicile”--namely, that as the man had lived in England twenty-five years, he was, naturalized or unnaturalized, a British subject and could make his will as he liked. The fortune was, therefore, handed over to his mistress, and the legal wife and legitimately-born children were left out in the cold! Another case is that of a lady, well-born and well-educated, who married a man with a fortune of some twenty thousand a year. After the expiration of about fifteen years, when she had borne her husband three children, he suddenly took a fantastic dislike to her, and an equally fantastic liking for a chorus girl. He promptly sought a divorce. As there was no ground for divorce, he failed to obtain it. He, therefore, adopted a course of action emanating entirely from his own brilliant brain. Starting for a cruise on board his yacht, in company with the bewildering chorus girl, he left orders with his solicitor to have the whole of his house dismantled of its furniture and “cleared.” This was promptly done, the wife and children being left without so much as a bed to lie upon, or a chair to sit upon. The unfortunate lady told her story to a court, and applied for “maintenance.” This, of course, the recalcitrant husband was forced to pay, but the sum was cut down to the smallest possible amount, under the supervision of the blandly approving court, with the result that this man’s wife, accustomed from her girlhood to every home comfort and care, now lives with her children in a condition of genteel penury more degrading than absolute poverty. _There is no remedy for these things._ One welcomes heartily the idea of women lawyers, in the hope that when their keen, quick brains learn to grasp the huge, unwieldy, and complex machinery of the muddle called Legal Justice, they may, perhaps, be able to effect some reforms on behalf of their own sex. As matters at present stand, the unbridled and extravagant licentiousness of men, and the consequent degradation of women, are _protected_ by law. Even a fraudulent financial concern is so guarded by “legal” advice that it would take the lifetime’s earning of an honest man to bring about any exposure. We want women-lawyers--Portias, with quick brains, to see the way out of a difficulty into which men plunge only to flounder more hopelessly. “Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”

In Medicine, women have made more than a decided mark of triumph. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the priceless value of the work done by women doctors and women surgeons in the harems of India and Turkey, where the selfishness and jealousy of the Eastern sybarite would give his women over to cruel agonies of disease and death, rather than suffer them to be so much as looked upon by another of his own sex. Yet, though perfectly conscious that Woman’s work in this branch of science is day by day becoming more and more precious to suffering humanity, we have quite recently been confronted by the spectacle of a number of men deciding to resign their appointments at a certain hospital, rather than suffer a woman to be nominated house-surgeon. Her skill and efficiency were as great as theirs, and she had all the qualifications necessary for the post; but no! sooner than honour a woman’s ability, they preferred to resign. Comment on this incident is needless, but it is one of the straws that show which way the wind blows.

Much excellent work is done, and remains yet to be done by women, as inspectors of schools. They alone are really fitted for the task of ascertaining the conditions under which children are made to study, and they are not likely, while examining infant classes, to make such ponderous statements as that passed by a certain male inspector, who, according to an amusing story told me by Sir John Gorst, found the babies (not above five years old) “deplorably deficient in mental arithmetic!” It takes a man to deplore “lack of mental arithmetic” in a baby. A woman would never be capable of such weighty stupidity. Perhaps it will be just as well to glance casually at the state of things in this country respecting the education of mere infants, as arranged by certain laws drawn up by men, laws in which women, who are the mothers of the race, are not allowed to have a voice.

1. The law _allows_ them to enter at three years old, and _compels_ them to enter at five years old.

2. Men inspectors constantly examine children of four years old in arithmetic, and the “mental arithmetic of the baby class,” is constantly mentioned in reports.

3. Needlework is taught before five years old; two to three hours form the staple instruction. Needlework injures the eyesight at such a tender age, and two or three hours are a cruelty and a waste of time for tiny children.

4. Desks, blackboards, slates and books are everywhere in excess of “Kindergarten” occupations, and the “development of the spontaneous activity in the child” is twisted into the development of uniformity. To differ from the usual is to be naughty; every one must do the same thing at the same time. Every one must build a like house, a like table, a like chair; each brick must be on the table at the same minute.

5. Despite male inspectors, the babies sleep. They fall off their seats and bump their foreheads against the desks, and their spines are twisted and crooked as they lie on their arms, heads forward, upon the hard supports. Curvature must be produced in many cases, solely from these causes.

6. To maintain order, corporal punishment is habitual, and “fear” the chief motive for right-doing. To quote from a letter of Sir John Gorst’s:--

“The reform of this system is not a matter of sentiment. These babies are the future scholars of our improved schools that the Education Act is intended to produce, and the future citizens by whom our Imperial position is to be maintained. If we prematurely addle their intellects by schooling--for which their tender years are unfit; if we cripple their bodies by cooping them up in deforming desks; if we destroy their sight by premature needlework, and confuse their senses by over-study of subjects which they are too young to understand, we shall neither have fit scholars for our future schools, nor fit citizens to uphold the Empire.”

Starting on these premises it will surely be acknowledged that women have an indisputable right to be inspectors of schools. They have the natural instinct to know what is best for the health and well-being of children, and they are also capable of correctly judging by that maternal sympathy which is their inherited gift, how a child’s mental abilities should best be encouraged and trained.

I have often been asked if I would like to see women in Parliament. I may say frankly, and at once, that I should detest it. I should not like to see the sex, pre-eminent for grace and beauty, degraded by having to witness or to take part in such “scenes” of heated and undignified disputation as have frequently lowered the prestige of the House of Commons. On the same lines I may say that I do not care to see women playing “hockey” or indulging in any purely “tom-boy” sports and pastimes. They lose “caste” and individuality. One of the many brilliant and original remarks of mankind concerning the female sex is that women should be cooks and housekeepers. So they should. No woman is a good housekeeper unless she understands cooking, nor can she be a good cook unless she be a good housekeeper. The two things are inseparable, and combine to make comfort with economy. A woman should know how to cook and keep house for _herself_, not only for man. Man says to her: “Be a cook,”--because of all things in the world he loves a good dinner; loves it better than his wife, inasmuch as he will often “bully” the wife if the dinner fails. But a woman must also eat, and she should learn to cook _for her own comfort_, quite apart from his. In the same way she should study housekeeping. If she lives a single life, she will find such knowledge eminently useful. But to devote all her energy and attention to cooking and housekeeping, as most men would have her do, would be a waste of power and intelligence. As well ask a great military hero to devote his entire time to the canteen.

In breaking her rusty fetters, and stepping out into the glorious liberty of the free, Woman has one great thing to remember and to strive for,--a thing that she is at present, in her newly emancipated condition, somewhat prone to forget. In claiming and securing intellectual equality with Man, she should ever bear in mind that such a position is only to be held by always maintaining and preserving as great an Unlikeness to him as possible in her life and surroundings. Let her imitate him in nothing but independence and individuality. Let her eschew his fashions in dress, his talk and his manners. A woman who wears “mannish” clothes, smokes cigars, rattles out slang, gambles at cards, and drinks brandy and soda on the slightest provocation, is lost altogether, both as woman and man, and becomes sexless. But the woman whose dress is always becoming and graceful, whose voice is equable and tender, who enhances whatever beauty she possesses by exquisite manner, unblemished reputation, and intellectual capacity combined, raises herself not only to an equality with man, but goes so far above him that she straightway becomes the Goddess and he the Worshipper. This is as it should be. Men adore what they cannot imitate. Therefore when men are drunken, let women be sober; when men are licentious, let women be chaste; when men are turf-hunters and card-players, let women absent themselves from both the race-course and the gambling-table; and while placing a gentle yet firm ban on laxity in morals and disregard of the binding sanctity of family life, let them silently work on and make progress in every art, every profession, every useful handicraft, that they may not be dependent for home or livelihood on man’s merely casual fancy or idle whim. The mistake of Woman’s progress up to the present, has been her slavish imitation of Man’s often unadmirable tastes, and a pathetic “going down” under his lofty disdain. Once grasp the fact that his disdain is not “lofty” but merely comic, and that his case is only that of the Distressful Peacock, hurt by indifference to his tail, things will right themselves. Nature has already endowed Woman with the contrasting elements of beauty, delicacy, and soft charm, as opposed to man’s frequent ugliness and roughness; let Woman herself continue to emphasize the difference by bringing out her original and individual qualities in all she does or attempts to do. Of course for a long time yet, Man will declare “feminine individuality” to be non-existent; but as we know the quality is as plain and patent as “masculine individuality,” we have only to insist upon it and assert it, and in due course it will be fully admitted and acknowledged. Meantime, while pressing on towards the desired goal, Woman must learn the chief lesson of successful progress, which is, not to copy Man, but to carefully preserve her beautiful Unlikeness to him in every possible way, so that, while asserting and gaining intellectual equality with him, she shall gradually arrive at such ascendancy as to prove herself ever the finer and the nobler Creature.

THE PALM OF BEAUTY

It would seem, according to the society press, that beauty is a very common article. Indeed, if we are to accept the innocent ebullitions of the callow youths who drink beer and play skittles in the Social-Paragraph line of journalism, and who in their soft guilelessness are taken in and “used” by certain ladies of a type resembling Miss Skeggs and Lady Blarney in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, we are bound to believe that beautiful women are as common as blackberries, only more so. In the columns devoted by newspaper editors to the meanderings of those intelligent persons, male and female, who sign themselves as Onlookers, Observers, Butterflies, Little Tomtits, and what may be called “I Spys!” generally, one hardly ever sees the name of a lady without the epithet “beautiful” tacked on to it, especially if the lady happens to have money. This is curious, but true. And supposing the so-called Beautiful One has not only money, commonly speaking, but heaps of money, mines of money, she is always stated to be “young” as well. The heavier the bullion, the more assured the youthfulness. If unkind Time shows her to be the mother of a family where the eldest sprout is some twenty odd years of age, the complaisant “I Spy” is equal to the occasion and writes of her thus--“The beautiful Mrs. Juno-Athene brought her eldest girl, looking more like her sister than her mother.” Whereat Mrs. Juno-Athene is satisfied,--everybody smiles, and all things are cosy and comfortable. If any one should dare to say, especially in print, that Mrs. Juno-Athene is not “beautiful” at all, nor “youthful” in either looks or bearing, there would be ructions. Somebody would get into trouble. The “I Spy” might even be dismissed from his or her post of social paragraphist to the Daily Error. Heaven forbid that such a catastrophe should happen through the indiscretion of a mere miserable truth-monger! Let Mrs. Juno-Athene be beautifully and eternally young, by all means, so long as she can afford to pay for it. The humbug of it is at any rate kindly and chivalrous, and does nobody any harm, while it puts money in the purse of the hardworking penster, who is compelled to deal delicately with these little social matters sometimes, or else ruminate on a dinner instead of eating it.

Nevertheless, despite the “I Spys,” and the perennial charms of Mrs. Juno-Athene, beauty is as rare and choice a thing as ever it was in the days of old when men went mad for it, and Greeks and Trojans fought for Helen, who, so some historians say, was past forty when her bewitching fairness set the soul of Troy on fire. A really beautiful woman is scarcely ever seen, not even in Great Britain, where average good looks are pleasantly paramount. Prettiness,--the prettiness which is made up of a good skin, bright eyes, soft and abundant hair, and a supple figure,--is quite ordinary. It can be seen every day among barmaids, shop girls, and milliners’ _mannequins_. But Beauty--the divine and subtle charm which enraptures all beholders,--the perfect form, united to the perfect face in which pure and noble thought is expressed in every feature, in every glance of eye, in every smile that makes a sweet mouth sweeter,--this is what we may search for through all the Isles of Britain, ay, and through Europe and America and the whole world besides, and seldom or never find it.

Nine-tenths of the women who are styled “beautiful” by the society paragraphist, possess merely the average good looks;--the rest are generally more particularly distinguished by some single and special trait which may perchance be natural, and may equally be artificial, such as uncommon-coloured hair (which may be dyed), a brilliant complexion (which may be put on), or a marvellously “svelte” figure (which may be the happy result of carefully designed corsets, well pulled in). Most of the eulogized “beauties” of the Upper Ten to-day, have, or are able to get, sufficient money or credit supplied to them for dressing well,--and not only well, but elaborately and extravagantly, and dress is often the “beauty” instead of the woman. To judge whether the woman herself is really beautiful without the modiste’s assistance, it would be necessary to see her deprived of all her fashionable clothes. Her bought hair should be taken off and only the natural remainder left. She should be content to stand _sans_ paint, _sans_ powder, _sans_ back coil, _sans_ corsets, in a plain white gown, falling from her neck and shoulders to her feet, and thus cheaply, yet decently clad, submit herself to the gaze of her male flatterers in full daylight. How many of the “beautiful” Mrs. Juno-Athenes or the “lovely” Lady Spendthrifts could stand such a test unflinchingly? Yet the simplest draperies clothe the Greek marbles when they are clothed at all, and jewels and fripperies on the goddess Diana would make her grace seem vulgar and her perfection common. Beauty, real beauty, needs no “creator of costume” to define it, but is, as the poets say, when unadorned, adorned the most.

Now it is absolutely impossible to meet with any “unadorned” sort of beauty in those circles of rank and fashion where the society paragraphist basks at his or her pleasure. On the contrary, there is so much over-adornment in vogue that it is sometimes difficult to find the actual true colour and personality of certain ladies whose charms are daily eulogized by an obliging press. Layers of pearl enamel picked out with rouge, entirely conceal their human identity. It is doubtful whether there was ever more face-painting and “faking up” of beauty than there is now,--never did beauty specialists and beauty doctors drive such a roaring trade. The profits of beauty-faking are enormous. Some idea of it may be gained by the fact that there is a certain shrewd and highly intelligent “doctor” in Paris, who, seeing which way the wind of fashion blows, brews a harmless little mixture of rose-water, eau-de-cologne, tincture of benzoin and cochineal, which materials are quite the reverse of costly, and calling it by a pretty _sobriquet_, sells the same at twenty-five shillings a bottle! He is making a fortune out of women’s stupidity, is this good “doctor,” and who shall blame him? Fools exist merely that the wise may use them. One has only to read the ladies’ papers, especially the advertisements therein, to grasp a faint notion of what is being done to spur on the “beauty” craze. Yet beauty remains as rare and remote as ever, and often when we see some of the ladies whose “exquisite loveliness” has been praised for years in nearly every newspaper on this, or the other side of the Atlantic, we fall back dismayed, with a sense of the deepest disappointment and aggravation, and wonder what we have done to be so deceived?

Taken in the majority, the women of Great Britain are supposed to hold the palm of beauty against all other women of the nations of the world, and if the word “beauty” be changed to prettiness, the supposition is no doubt correct. It is somewhat unfortunate, however, that either through the advice of their dressmakers or their own erroneous conceptions of Form, they should appear to resent the soft outlines and gracious curves of nature, for either by the over-excess of their outdoor sports, or the undue compression of corsets, they are gradually doing away with their originally intended shapes and becoming as flat-chested as jockeys under training. No flat-chested woman is pretty. No woman with large hands, large feet, and the coarse muscular throat and jaw developed by constant bicycle-riding, can be called fascinating. The bony and resolute lady whose lines of figure run straight down without a curve anywhere from head to heel, may possibly be a good athlete, but her looks are by no means to her advantage. Men’s hearts are not enthralled or captured by a Something appearing to be neither man nor woman. And there are a great many of these Somethings about just now. I am ignorant as to whether American women go in for mannish sports as frequently and ardently as their British sisters, but I notice that they have daintier hands and feet, and less pronounced “muscle.”

At the same time American women on an average, are not so pretty as British women on the same average. The American complexion is unfortunate. Often radiant and delicate in earliest youth, it fades with maturity like a brilliant flower scorched by too hot a sun, and once departed returns no more. The clear complexion of British women is their best feature. The natural rose and white skin of an English, Irish or Scottish girl,--especially a girl born and bred in the country, is wonderfully fresh and lovely and lasting, and often accompanies her right through her life to old age. That is, of course, if she leaves it alone, and is satisfied merely to keep it clean, without any “adornment” from the beauty doctor. And, though steadily withholding the divine word “beauty” from the greater portion of the “beauties” at the Court of King Edward VII. it is unquestionably the fact that the prettiest women in the world are the British. Americans are likely to contest this. They will, as indeed in true chivalry they must, declare that their own “beauties” are best. But one can only speak from personal experience, and I am bound to say that I have never seen a pretty American woman pretty enough to beat a pretty British woman. This, with every possible admission made for the hard-working society paragraphist, compelled to write of numerous “beautiful” Ladies So-and-So, and “charming” Mrs. Cashboxes, who, when one comes to look at them are neither “beautiful” nor “charming” at all.

But British feminine prettiness would be infinitely more captivating than it is, if it were associated with a little extra additional touch of vivacity and intelligence. When it is put in the shade, (as frequently happens,) by the sparkling allurements of the Viennese coquette, the graceful _savoir faire_ of the French _mondaine_, or the enticing charm of lustrous-eyed sirens from southern Italy, it is merely because of its lack of wit. It is a good thing to have a pretty face; but if the face be only like a wax mask, moveless and expressionless, it soon ceases to attract. The loveliest picture would bore us if we had to stare at it dumbly all day. And there is undeniably a stiffness, a formality, and often a most repellent and unsympathetic coldness about the British fair sex, which re-acts upon the men and women of other more warm-hearted and impulsive nations, in a manner highly disadvantageous to the ladies of our Fortunate Isles. For it is not _real_ stiffness, or _real_ formality after all,--nor is it the snowy chill of a touch-me-not chastity, by any means,--it is merely a most painful, and in many cases, most absurd self-consciousness. British women are always more or less wondering what their sister women are thinking about them. They can manage their men all right; but they put on curious and unbecoming airs directly other feminine influences than their own come into play. They invite the comment of the opposite sex, but they dread the criticism of their own. The awkward girl who sits on the edge of a chair with her feet scraping the carpet and her hands twiddling uneasily in her lap, is awkward simply because she has, by some means or other, been made self-conscious,--and because, in the excess of this self-consciousness she stupidly imagines every one in the room must be staring at her. The average London woman, dressed like a fashion-plate, who rustles in at afternoon tea, with her card-case well in evidence, and her face carefully set in proper “visiting lines,” offers herself up in this way as a subject for the satirist, out of the same disfiguring self-consciousness, which robs her entirely of the indifferent ease and careless grace which should,--to quote the greatest of American philosophers, Emerson,--cause her to “repel interference by a decided and proud choice of influences,” and to “inspire every beholder with something of her own nobleness.” She is probably not _naturally_ formal,--she is no doubt exceedingly constrained and uncomfortable in her fashionable attire,--and one may take it for granted that she would rather be herself than try to be a Something which is a Nothing. But Custom and Convention are her bogie men, always guarding her on either side, and investing her too often with such deplorable self-consciousness that her eye becomes furtive, her mouth hard and secretive, her conversation inane, and her whole personality an uncomfortable exhalation of stupidity and dullness.

Nevertheless, setting Custom and Convention apart for the nonce, and bidding them descend into the shadows of hypocrisy which are their native atmosphere, the British woman remains the prettiest in the world. What a galaxy of feminine charms can be gathered under the word “British”! England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland offer all together such countless examples of woman’s loveliness, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to give the prize for good looks to one portion of Britain more than to the other. America, so far as her samples have been, and are, seen in Europe, cannot outrival the “Old Country” in the prettiness of its women. But it is prettiness only; not Beauty. Beauty remains intrinsically where it was first born and first admitted into the annals of Art and Literature. Its home is still in “the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung.”

Nothing that was ever created in the way of female loveliness can surpass the beauty of a beautiful Greek woman. True, she is as rare as a butterfly in a snow storm. True, the women of Athens and of Greece generally, taken in the rough majority, are not on an average, even pretty. Nevertheless the palm of beauty remains with them--because there are always two,--or may be three of them, who dawn year by year upon the world in all the old perfection of the classic models, and who may truly be taken for newly-descended goddesses, so faultlessly formed, so exquisitely featured are they. They are not famed by the paragraphist, and they probably will never get the chance of moving in the circles of the British “Upper Ten” or the American “Four Hundred.” But they are the daughters of Aphrodite still, and hold fast their heavenly mother’s attributes. It is easy to find a hundred or more pretty British and American women for one beautiful Greek--but when found, the beautiful Greek eclipses them all. She is still the wonder of the world,--the crown of womanly beauty at its best. She shows the heritage of her race in her regal step and freedom of movement,--in the lovely curves of her figure, in the classic perfection of her face with its broad brows, lustrous eyes, arched sweet lips and delicate contour of chin and throat, and perhaps more than all in the queenly indifference she bears towards her own loveliness. So,

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine,
On Suli’s bank and Parga’s shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there perhaps some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own!

And there still, may be found the perfection of womanhood--the one rare Greek lily, which blossoming at few and far intervals shows in its exquisite form and colouring what Woman should be at her fairest. To her, therefore, must be given the Palm of Beauty. But after the lily, then the rose!--or rather the roses, multitudinous, varied, and always sweet--of the Fortunate Isles of Britain.

THE MADNESS OF CLOTHES

To dress well is a social duty. Every educated self-respecting woman is bound to clothe her person as neatly, as tastefully and becomingly as she can. But just as a virtue when carried to excess develops into a vice, so the art of dressing well, when allowed to overstep its legitimate uses and expenditure, easily runs into folly and madness. The reckless extravagance of women’s dress at the present day is little short of criminal insanity. A feverish desire to outvie one another in the manner and make of their garments appears to possess every feminine creature whose lot in life places her outside positive penury. The inordinately wealthy, the normally rich, the well-to-do middle class and the shabby genteel are all equally infected by the same hysterical frenzy. And it is a frenzy which is humoured and encouraged on all sides by those who should have the sense, the intelligence and the foresight to realize the danger of such a tendency, and the misery to which in many cases it is surely bound to lead.