Rambles in Womanland
by Max O'Rell · English · Gutenberg #33416 · 370,899 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Rambles in Womanland
Author: Max O'Rell
Release date: August 12, 2010 [eBook #33416]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND ***
Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
RAMBLES
IN WOMANLAND
BY
MAX O'RELL
AUTHOR OF
'JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND,' 'H.R.H. WOMAN,' 'BETWEEN OURSELVES,' ETC
[Illustration]
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1903
CONTENTS
PART I
RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THOUGHTS ON LIFE IN GENERAL 1
II. OH, YOU MEN! 5
III. THE ROSE, THE LILY, AND THE VIOLET; OR, HOW DIFFERENT
METHODS APPEAL TO DIFFERENT WOMEN 10
IV. WOMEN LOVE BETTER THAN MEN 16
V. IS WOMAN A RESPONSIBLE BEING? 19
VI. RAMBLES IN CUPID'S DOMAIN 22
VII. WHICH SEX WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE? 28
VIII. RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND 32
IX. WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS 41
X. WOMAN'S MISSION IN THIS WORLD 49
XI. IS WOMAN INFERIOR TO MAN? 52
XII. WOMEN WHO ARE FOLLOWED AND ANNOYED IN THE STREET 55
XIII. DANGEROUS MEN 58
XIV. THE MAN WHO SMILES 60
XV. WOMEN AND DOLLS 63
XVI. MEN AS A RULE ARE SELFISH--TWO KINDS OF SELFISH MEN 68
XVII. EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES 71
XVIII. AMERICAN WOMEN IN PARIS 74
XIX. WOMEN WHO WALK BEST 77
XX. WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN 81
XXI. WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL 84
XXII. WOMEN AT SEA 87
XXIII. THE SECRET OF WOMAN'S BEAUTY 91
XXIV. THE DURATION OF BEAUTY 95
XXV. THE WOMAN 'GOOD FELLOW'--A SOCIETY TYPE 98
XXVI. THE WOMAN 'GOSSIP' 100
XXVII. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 103
XXVIII. THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN 106
XXIX. SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY? 111
XXX. ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN? 115
XXXI. A PLEA FOR THE WORKING WOMAN 118
XXXII. A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION 122
XXXIII. THE WORST FEATURE OF WOMEN AS A SEX 127
XXXIV. IS HOMOEOPATHY A CURE FOR LOVE? 131
XXXV. DOMESTIC TYRANTS AND THEIR POOR WIVES 135
PART II
RAMBLES IN MATRIMONY
I. ADVICE TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE 139
II. THE MATRIMONIAL PROBLEM 142
III. WOMEN SHOULD ASSERT THEMSELVES IN MATRIMONY 146
IV. RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--I. 150
V. RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--II. 154
VI. RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--III. 159
VII. THE START IN MATRIMONY, AND ITS DANGERS 162
VIII. 'OMELETTE AU RHUM' 166
IX. COQUETRY IN MATRIMONY 169
X. RESIGNATION IN MATRIMONY 173
XI. TIT FOR TAT 176
XII. THE IDEAL HUSBAND 179
XIII. MARRYING ABOVE OR BELOW ONE'S STATION 184
XIV. PREPARE FOR MATRIMONY, BUT DO NOT OVERTRAIN YOURSELVES 188
XV. ACTRESSES SHOULD NOT MARRY 191
XVI. A MATRIMONIAL BOOM 195
XVII. LOVE WITH WHITE HAIR 199
PART III
RAMBLES EVERYWHERE
I. LITTLE MAXIMS FOR EVERYDAY USE 203
II. DO THE BEST WITH THE HAND YOU HAVE 207
III. BEWARE OF THE FINISHING TOUCH 210
IV. THE SELFISHNESS OF SORROW 214
V. THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND 217
VI. WHAT WE OWE TO CHANCE 220
VII. WE NEEDN'T GET OLD 223
VIII. THE SECRET OF OLD AGE 226
IX. ADVICE ON LETTER-POSTING 229
X. ON PARASITES 232
XI. ADVICE-GIVING 234
XII. ON HOLIDAYS 237
XIII. EXTRACTS FROM THE DICTIONARY OF A CYNIC 240
XIV. VARIOUS CRITICISMS ON CREATION 243
XV. THE HUMOURS OF THE INCOME-TAX 246
XVI. HOW TO BE ENTERTAINING 250
XVII. WHAT IS GENIUS? 253
XVIII. NEW AND PIQUANT CRITICISM 256
XIX. ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE 259
XX. PLAGIARISM 262
XXI. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES 266
XXII. THOUGHTS ON HATS 270
XXIII. THOUGHTS ON EYE-GLASSES 273
XXIV. THOUGHTS ON UMBRELLAS 277
XXV. SOME AMERICAN TOPICS 280
XXVI. SOME AMERICANS I OBJECT TO 283
XXVII. PATIENCE--AN AMERICAN TRAIT 286
XXVIII. AMERICAN FEELINGS FOR FOREIGNERS 289
XXIX. SHOULD YOUNG GIRLS READ NOVELS? 292
XXX. NOW, WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH FATHER? 295
PART I
RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
CHAPTER I
THOUGHTS ON LIFE IN GENERAL
Cupid will cause men to do many things; so will cupidity.
* * *
I like economy too much as a virtue not to loathe it when it becomes a
vice.
* * *
Many virtues, when carried too far, become vices.
* * *
Envy is a vice which does not pay. If you let your envy be apparent, you
advertise your failure.
* * *
Nothing is less common than common-sense.
* * *
Whenever you can, pay cash for what you buy. A bill owing is like port
wine--it generally improves by keeping.
* * *
There are people whose signature has no more significance at the end of
a letter of insults than it has value at the bottom of a cheque.
* * *
The hardest thing to do in life is to make a living dishonestly for any
length of time.
* * *
The harm that happens to others very seldom does us any good, and the
good that happens to them very seldom does us any harm. People who are
successful are neither envious, jealous, nor revengeful.
* * *
Very often a man says, 'I have made a fool of myself!' who should only
accuse his father.
* * *
A contract is a collection of clauses signed by two honourable persons
who take each other for scoundrels.
* * *
Many people make a noise for the simple reason that, like drums, they
are empty. Many others think themselves deep who are only hollow.
* * *
Never have anything to do with women in whose houses you never see a
man. You may say what you like, but I have heard many women admit that
the presence of a man adds a great deal of respectability to a house.
* * *
If you cannot prevent evil, try not to see it. What we do not know does
not hurt us.
* * *
A self-conscious man is sometimes one who is aware of his worth; a
conceited man is generally one who is not aware of his unworthiness.
* * *
Many a saint in a small provincial town is a devil of a dog in the
Metropolis. Life in small towns is like life in glass-houses. The fear
of the neighbour is the beginning of wisdom.
* * *
Great revolutions were not caused by great grievances or even great
sufferings, but by great injustices.
* * *
Revolutions, like new countries, are often started by somewhat
objectionable adventurers. When they have been successful, steady and
honest people come in.
* * *
The good diplomatist is not the one who forces events, but the one who
foresees them, and, when they come, knows how to make the best of them.
The good diplomatist is not the one who successfully takes people in,
but the one who, when he has discovered who are his true friends, sticks
to them through thick and thin.
* * *
I prefer unrighteousness to self-righteousness. The unrighteous man may
see the error of his ways and improve. He may even be lovable. The
self-righteous man is unteachable, uncharitable, unloving, unlovable,
and unlovely.
* * *
You can judge the social standing of a woman from the way she sits down.
* * *
A woman may love a man she has hated, never one she has despised, seldom
one who has been indifferent to her.
* * *
A woman is seldom jealous of another on account of her intellectual
attainments, but if her bosom friend has on purpose or by mere chance
eclipsed her by her dress at a party, they will probably be no longer on
speaking terms.
* * *
Scientific men are generally the most honest of men, because their minds
are constantly bent on the pursuit of truth.
* * *
It requires a head better screwed on the shoulders to stand success than
to endure misfortune.
* * *
The world is not ruled by men of talent, but by men of character.
* * *
A vain man speaks either well or ill of himself. A modest man never
speaks of himself at all.
CHAPTER II
OH, YOU MEN!
The Paris _Presse_ had asked its male readers to mention which virtue
they most admire in women. Here is the result, with the number of votes
obtained by each virtue, and truly it is not an edifying result:
1. Faithfulness 8,278
2. Economy 7,496
3. Kindness 6,736
4. Order 5,052
5. Modesty 4,975
6. Devotion 4,782
7. Charity 4,575
8. Sweetness 4,565
9. Cleanliness 3,594
10. Patience 2,750
11. Maternal love 2,703
12. Industry 2,125
13. Courage 1,758
14. Discretion 1,687
15. Simplicity 1,580
16. Wisdom 1,417
17. Honesty 1,389
18. Amiability 1,273
19. Chastity 1,230
20. Propriety 969
21. Self-abnegation 868
Surely, here is food for reflections and comments. Economy, order, and
devotion head the list; chastity and self-abnegation figure at the
bottom. I should have imagined the last two virtues would have obtained
the maximum of votes.
And is it not wonderful that the most beautiful trait in a woman's
character--I mean Loyalty--should be altogether omitted from this list
of twenty-one most characteristic virtues in women? Are we to conclude
that loyalty is a virtue for men alone, such as willpower, magnanimity,
energy, bravery, and straightforwardness?
And Sincerity, that most indispensable and precious virtue, which is
supposed to make the friendship of men so valuable, is it not also a
virtue that we should value in women?
Do men mean to say that loyalty and sincerity should not be or could not
be expected to be found in women? Woman must be sweet, of course, and be
economical. She must charm men and keep their house on the principles of
the strictest order. Lovely!
I know men who allow their wives L1 a day to keep their houses in
plenty, and who spend L2 every day at their club. Whatever the husband
does, however, the wife must be faithful, and possess patience and
self-abnegation. She must be resigned, and, mind you, always amiable and
cheerful.
Poor dear fellow! the truth is, that when a man has spent a jolly
evening at his club with the 'boys,' it is devilishly hard on him to
come home at one or two in the morning and to find his wife not amiable,
not cheerful, but suffering from the dumps, and, maybe, not even patient
enough to have waited for him. Sometimes she does worse than this, the
wretch! She suffers from toothache or neuralgia. What of that? She
should be patient, resigned, amiable, and cheerful; _c'est son metier_.
Yes, on the threshold of the twentieth century we find man still
considering woman as a pet animal or a nice little beast of burden;
sometimes as both. I really should feel prouder of my sex if they would
only be kind enough to assert that men are not beings inferior to
monkeys and birds.
For monkeys have but one rule of morality for the manners of both sexes,
and birds share with their mates the duties of nest-building and feeding
the little ones. The latter even go further. When the female bird does
her little house duties in the nursery, the male entertains her with a
song in order to keep her cheerful.
Marriage will be a failure as long as men are of opinion that fidelity,
patience, devotion, amiability, cheerfulness, and self-abnegation are
virtues expected of women only; marriage will be a failure as long as it
is a firm, the two partners of which do not bring about the same capital
of qualities, as long as what is bad in the goose is not bad in the
gander.
Certainly I like to see in a man a more powerful will than in a woman; I
like to see more sweetness in a woman than in a man. In other words, I
like to see certain virtues or qualities more accentuated in a man,
others more accentuated in a woman; but, so far as fidelity, kindness,
order, patience, industry, discretion, courage, devotion,
self-abnegation, wisdom, honesty, sincerity, amiability, and loyalty are
concerned, I absolutely deny that they should be womanly virtues only.
They are virtues that a man should expect to find in a woman as well as
a woman in a man.
* * * * *
Oh, you men, most illogical creatures in the world! You call woman a
weak being, but, although you make laws to protect children, you make
none to protect women. Nay, on that woman whom you call weak you impose
infallibility. When you strong, bearded men get out of the path of duty
you say: 'The flesh is weak'; but when it is a woman who does there is
no indulgence, no mercy, no pity. No extenuating circumstances are
admitted.
What you most admire in women is chastity. If so, how dare you leave
unpunished the man who takes it away from them? How is it that you
receive him in your club, welcome him in your house, and not uncommonly
congratulate him on his good fortune?
I hear you constantly complain that women are too fond of dress, too
careless of the money that you make by the sweat of your brow, too
frivolous, too fond of pleasure, and that matrimony becomes, on that
account, more and more impossible.
Let me assure you that there are many young girls, brought up by
thoughtful mothers to be cheerful, devoted, and careful wives; but, as a
rule, you despise them. You are attracted by the best dressed ones, and
you go and offer your heart to the bird with fine feathers. You take the
rose, and disdain to look at the violet. How illogical of you to make
complaints! You only get what you want, and, later on, what you
deserve.
The law, made by man, and the customs exact virtue incarnate in woman.
She is to have neither weaknesses, senses, nor passions. Whatever her
husband does, she must be patient and resigned.
The laws and customs would be much wiser if, instead of demanding
infallibility of women, they were to make women's duties and virtues
easier by showing less indulgence for men, and by declaring that, in
matrimony, the same conjugal virtues are expected alike of men as of
women.
CHAPTER III
THE ROSE, THE LILY, AND THE VIOLET; OR, HOW DIFFERENT METHODS APPEAL TO
DIFFERENT WOMEN
The man butterfly is the most dangerous member of society. He is
generally handsome, amiable, persuasive, and witty. He may be in
succession cheerful, light-hearted, poetical, and sentimental.
If he comes to the rose, he says to her in his sweetest voice: 'You are
beautiful, and I love you tenderly, ardently. I feel I can devote my
whole life to you. If you can love me, I can reward your love with a
century of constancy and faithfulness.'
'Oh!' says the rose, with an air of incredulity, 'I know what the
faithfulness of the butterfly is.'
'There are all sorts of butterflies,' he gently intimates; 'I know that
some of them have committed perjury and deceived roses, but I am not one
of them. Of the butterfly I have only the wings, to always bring me back
to you. I am a one-rose butterfly; if the others are inconstant,
unfaithful, liars, I am innocent of their faults. I swear, if you will
not listen to me, I shall die, and in dying for you there will be
happiness still.'
The rose is touched, moved and charmed with this passionate language.
'How he loves me!' she thinks. 'After all, if butterflies are generally
perfidious, it is not his fault; he is not one of that sort.'
The rose yields; she gives up to him her whole soul, all her most
exquisite perfume. After he is saturated, he takes his flight.
'Where are you going?' asks the rose.
'Where am I going?' he says, with a protecting sneer. 'Why, I am going
to visit the other flowers, your rivals.'
'But you swore you would be faithful to me!'
'I know, my dear; a butterfly's oath, nothing more. You should have been
wiser, and not allowed yourself to be taken in.'
Then he goes in the neighbourhood of a beautiful, haughty, vain lily.
Meantime an ugly bumble comes near the rose and tries to sting her. She
calls the butterfly to her help, but he does not even deign to answer.
For him the rose is the past and the lily the present. He is no more
grateful than he is faithful.
WHEN HE MEETS THE LILY
With the lily, whom he understands well, he knows he has to proceed in
quite a different manner. He must use flattery.
'Imagine, lovely lily,' he says to her, 'that this silly and vain rose
thinks she is the queen of flowers. She is beautiful, no doubt, but
what is her beauty compared to yours? What is her perfume? Almost
insipid compared to your enchanting, intoxicating fragrance. What is her
shape compared to your glorious figure? Why, she looks like a pink
cabbage. Is not, after all, pure whiteness incomparable? My dear lady,
you are above competition.'
The vain lily listens with attention and pleasure. The wily butterfly
sees he is making progress. He goes on flattering, then risks a few
words of love.
'Ah!' sighs the lily, 'if you were not a fickle butterfly, I might
believe half of what you say!'
'You do not know me!' he exclaims indignantly. 'I have only the shape of
a butterfly; I have not the heart of one. How could I be unfaithful to
you if you loved me? Are you not the most beautiful of flowers? How
could it be possible for me to prefer any other to you? No, no; for the
rest of my life there will be but the lily for me.'
The vanity of the lily is flattered, she believes him, and gives herself
up to the passionate embrace of the butterfly.
'Oh, beloved one,' she exclaims in ecstasy, 'you will love me for ever;
you will always be mine as I am yours!'
'To tell you the truth, my dear lily,' says the butterfly coolly, 'you
are very nice, but your perfume is rather strong, a little vulgar, and
one gets tired of it quickly. I am not sure that I do not prefer the
rose to you. Now, be good, and let me go quickly. I am a butterfly. I
cannot help my nature; I was made like that. Good-bye!'
THE MODEST VIOLET
Then he flies towards a timid violet, modestly hidden in the ivy near
the wall. Her sweet odour reveals her presence. So he stops and says to
her:
'Sweet, exquisite violet, how I do love you! Other flowers may be
beautiful, my darling, but that is all. You, besides, are good and
modest; as for your sweet, delicious perfume, it is absolutely beyond
competition. I might admire a rose or a lily for a moment, lose my head
over them, but not my heart. You alone can inspire sincere and true
love. If you will marry me--for you do not imagine that I could ask you
to love me without at the same time asking you to be my wife--we will
lead a quiet, retired life of eternal bliss, hidden in the ivy, far from
the noise and the crowd.'
'This would be beautiful,' says the violet, 'but I am afraid you are too
brilliant for me, and I too modest and humble for you. I have been
warned against you. People say you are fickle.'
'Who could have slandered me so? Your modesty is the very thing that has
attracted me to you. I have crossed the garden without looking at any
other flower in order to come to you straight. What I want is a heart
like yours--tender, faithful--a heart that I may feel is mine for the
rest of my days.'
And he swears his love, always promising matrimony as soon as a few
difficulties, 'over which he has no control,' are surmounted. The poor
little violet is fascinated, won; she loves him, and gives herself to
him; but it is not long before he goes.
'Surely,' she says, with her eyes filled with tears, 'you are not going
to abandon me. You are not going to leave me to fight the great big
battle of life alone, with all the other flowers of the garden to sneer
at me and despise me! Oh no, dear; I have loved you with my modest soul;
I have given you all I have in the world. No, no, you are not going
away, never to return again! It would be too cruel! No, the world is not
so bad as that; you will return, won't you?'
'I feel very sorry for you, dear--really very sorry; but, you see, I
cannot. I am a gentleman, and I have my social position to think of. I
am sure you understand that. You say you are fond of me; then you will
put yourself in my place, and conclude that I have done the best I could
for you. Good-bye! Forget me as quickly as you can.'
The little violet commits suicide; and the butterfly, reading an account
of it in the following day's papers, has not even a tear to shed, no
remorse, no regret.
A SHINING SOCIAL LIGHT.
He is called by his club friends 'a devil of a fellow with the girls,'
and that is almost meant as a compliment. As for the women of the very
best society, he is thought rather enterprising and dangerous; but I
have never heard that, for his conduct, he has ever been turned out of a
respectable house or of a decent club.
There is one drawback to the perfect happiness of the butterfly: he is
generally in love with a worthless woman, who makes a fool of him.
CHAPTER IV
WOMEN LOVE BETTER THAN MEN
How many people understand what love means? How many appreciate it? How
many ever realize what it is? For some it is a more or less sickly
sentiment, for others merely violent desires.
Alas! it requires so many qualifications to appreciate love that very
few people are sufficiently free from some vulgarity or other to be
worthy of speaking of love without profanity.
Love requires too much constancy to suit the light-hearted, too much
ardour to suit calm temperaments, too much reserve to suit violent
constitutions, too much delicacy to suit people destitute of refinement,
too much enthusiasm to suit cool hearts, too much diplomacy to suit the
simple-minded, too much activity to suit indolent characters, too many
desires to suit the wise.
See what love requires to be properly and thoroughly appreciated, and
you will easily understand why it must be in woman's nature to love
better and longer than man.
Men can worship better than women, but women can love better than men.
Of this there can be no doubt.
Very often women believe that they are loved when they are only ardently
desired because they are beautiful, piquant, elegant, rich, difficult to
obtain, and because men are violent, ambitious, wilful, and obstinate;
and the more obstacles there are in their way, the more bent they feel
on triumphing over difficulties.
To obtain a woman men will risk their lives, ruin themselves, commit any
act of folly or extravagance which you care to name. Women are flattered
by these follies and extravagances due to motives of very different
characters; but they mistake passion for love.
Yet passion is very seldom compatible with true love. Passion is as
fickle as love is constant. Passion is but a proof of vanity and
selfishness.
Woman is only the pretext for the display of it. Singers, actresses,
danseuses, all women detached from that shade and mystery in which love
delights in dwelling, women who give to the public all the treasures of
their beauty, amiability, and talent are those who inspire in men the
most violent passions, but they are seldom truly loved unless they
consent to retire from the glare of the footlights and withdraw to the
shade.
Passion excites vanity, noise, envy: it plays to the gallery. Love seeks
retirement, and prefers a moss bank against some wall covered with ivy,
some solitude where silence is so perfect that two hearts can hear each
other beat, where space is so small that lips must forcibly meet.
The man who takes his bride to Paris for the honeymoon does not really
love her. If he loves truly he will take her to the border of a forest
in some secluded, picturesque spot, where nature will act as a church in
which both will fervently worship.
Now, with very few exceptions, women understand these things much better
than men. They are born with feelings of delicacy and refinement that
only few men can acquire or develop; they are more earnest, more
poetical, better diplomatists, and of temperaments generally more
artistic.
Besides--and it is in this that they are infinitely superior to
men--whereas many men see their love cooled by possession, all women see
theirs increased and sealed by it.
The moment a woman is possessed by the man she loves, she belongs to him
body, heart, and soul. Her love is the occupation of her life, her only
thought, and, I may add without the slightest idea of irreverence, her
religion.
She loves that man as she does God. If all men could only be
sufficiently impressed with this fact, how kind and devoted to women
they would be!
CHAPTER V
IS WOMAN A RESPONSIBLE BEING?
There are nations still in existence where women are denied the
possession of a soul; but these nations are not civilized. Now, Germany
and England are civilized nations, yet I am not sure that some Germans
and Englishmen really admit that women are beings possessed of a mind.
I have constantly heard Englishmen of 'the good old school' say: 'If a
man steals my horse, my dog, my poultry, I have him arrested, and he
gets a few months' imprisonment; if he steals my wife, he remains at
large, unmolested. Yet, is not my wife my most valuable property?' And
that good Englishman is absolutely persuaded that his argument is
unanswerable.
The other day, in a German paper, I read the following exquisitely
delicious remark: 'We have a treaty of extradition with Switzerland. If
the man Giron had stolen the least valuable horse of the Crown Prince of
Saxony, we could have had him arrested in Geneva and returned to us; but
as he only stole the wife of that prince, the mother of his children, we
can do nothing.'
From all this we are bound to conclude that, in the eyes of many
Germans and some Englishmen, a woman is like a horse or any other
animal, a thing, a 'brute of no understanding,' a being without a mind.
In my ignorance I thought that when women left their husbands to follow
other men, they were, rightly or wrongly, using their own minds, acting
on their own responsibility and on their own good or bad judgment.
In other words, I thought that they were thinking beings.
When a man steals a horse, he takes him by the mane or the mouth and
pulls him away with him. He does not say to the animal, 'I like you; I
will treat you better than your master; will you come with me?' He
steals him, as he would an inanimate thing.
When a man asks a woman to elope with him, he says to her: 'I love you,
I know you love me; leave your husband, who makes you unhappy, and come
with me, who will make you happy.' She reflects, and, through feelings
of despair, of love, of passion, she yields, and answers, 'Yes, I will.'
Now, her resolution may be most reprehensible, her conduct immoral; she
may be a fool, anything you like, but she is not carried off by force.
She acts of her own accord and free will, and is, I imagine, prepared to
meet the consequences of her actions.
I have heard an English magistrate say to a man whose wife was accused
of disorderly conduct: 'You should look after your wife better than you
do, and, in future, I will make you responsible for what she does.
To-day I will impose a fine of ten shillings. If you pay it, I will set
her free.'
Now, this argument would be fairly good if the accused had been a dog. I
should understand a magistrate saying to a man: 'Your dog is a nuisance
and a source of danger to your neighbours; if he causes any more damage,
if I hear again that he has killed your neighbour's cat, eaten his
poultry, or bitten his children, I will hold you responsible, and make
you pay the damages, _plus_ some compensation.' But a wife!--inasmuch
that, mind you, when a woman has committed a murder in England, it is
she who is hanged, not her husband.
I believe that women are quite prepared to accept the responsibility of
their actions. The emancipation of woman should be an accomplished fact
by the declaration that she can do evil as well as good. And I am sure
that if she wants credit for whatever good she does, she is also ready
to accept the consequences of the mischief, to herself or to others,
which she may make.
CHAPTER VI
RAMBLES IN CUPID'S DOMAIN
Love performs daily miracles. It causes people to see with closed eyes,
and to see nothing with open ones.
* * *
Women worship sacrifice to the extent of wishing us to believe (perhaps
they believe it themselves) that, even at the altar of love, they make a
sacrifice. Women in love have an irresistible craving for sacrifice.
* * *
I have heard of women being so much in love as to declare to their
husbands that they would not want a new hat for another month.
* * *
The world of love can boast a roll of demi-gods, heroes, martyrs, and
saints that would put into the shade those of Paradise and Olympus.
* * *
Love, after being conquered, has to be reconquered every day. Love is
like money invested in doubtful stock, which has to be watched at every
moment. Speculators know this; but married men and women too often
ignore it.
* * *
In love the hand lies much less than the lips and the eyes. A certain
pressing of the hand is often the most respectful and surest of proofs
of love.
* * *
The language of the hand is most eloquent. Who has not been able to
translate a pressure from a woman's hand by 'stay' or 'go'? How a woman
can say to you with her hand 'I love you' or 'I cannot love you'!
* * *
Whoever says that two kisses can be perfectly alike does not know the A
B C of love.
* * *
No two acts dictated, or even suggested, by love should ever be alike.
* * *
In love it is better to be a creditor than a debtor.
* * *
Think of the torrents of harmony which maestros have composed with seven
notes; the millions of thoughts which have been expressed with a score
of letters; think of all the exploits, deeds of valour, and crimes that
have been committed under the influence of love!
* * *
Love is not compatible with conceit; the love of self excludes all
other. Even injury cannot cure love; if it does, there was in the person
much more conceit than love.
* * *
When a man and a woman have pronounced together the three sacramental
words 'I love you,' they become priest and priestess of the same temple.
In order to keep the sacred fire alive, they must be careful not to
stifle it by an excess of fuel or to let it go out for want of air.
* * *
When you are in love, do not be over-sensitive, but always imagine that
the other is. Thus your susceptibility will never be wounded, nor will
that of your partner be.
* * *
Woe to people in love who satisfy all their desires in a week, in a
month, in a year! Two lovers, or married people, should die without
having drunk the cup of love to the last dregs.
* * *
Absence is a tonic for love only when men and women love with all their
heart and soul. When they do not, the ancient proverb is still true:
'Far from the eyes, far from the heart.'
* * *
A beautiful woman is jealous of no woman, not even of a George Sand, a
George Eliot, or of a queen; but a duchess may be jealous of a
chambermaid.
* * *
All the love-letters of a woman are not worth one of her smiles.
* * *
If a woman wants to know the secret for remaining loved a long time, let
her keep this recipe in mind: Give much, give more still, but be sure
that you do not give all. Cupid is a little ungrateful beast, who takes
his flight when expectations cease to whet his appetite.
* * *
For common mortals, desire engenders love, and love kills desire; for
the elect, love is the son of desire and the prolific father of a
thousand new desires.
* * *
To conquer a man is nothing for a woman to boast of, but to conquer a
woman is a real victory, because it requires in a man, to conquer a
woman, far more qualities than it requires in a woman to conquer a man.
* * *
There is a touching exchange of amiable services between the sexes. The
man of twenty often receives his first lesson in love from a woman of
forty; and the woman of twenty generally receives hers from a man of
forty.
* * *
The following are among the little tortures which people in love take
pleasure in inflicting upon themselves-:
'Amelia has been coughing twice to-day. I wonder if the poor darling is
consumptive? An aunt of hers died of consumption. She was an aunt only
by marriage, but when those confounded microbes enter a family, no one
knows the mischief they may do!'
'George did not notice I had a carnation, his favourite flower, on my
corsage the whole of last evening. He loves me no more.'
'Do I love Algy--do I adore him as he deserves? Am I worthy of him?
Shall I be able to keep the love of a man so handsome, so kind, so
clever? This morning he did not kiss me with the same ardour. Perhaps he
has not courage enough to confess that he does not love me as much as he
used to.'
'I am too happy. Something tells me it cannot last. I have a
presentiment that a great misfortune is going to happen. Our love cannot
possibly enjoy such bliss for long. I feel I am going to cry.'
And she bursts into hot tears.
'To-day Arthur met me at the appointed time to the minute. Formerly he
used to be in advance--always. I told him so, and he said, showing me
the time by his watch, that he was quite punctual. He ought to have been
pleased with my remark, and have answered otherwise. I wonder if there
is anything wrong?'
'He never notices my dresses as he used to. Yesterday I changed the bow
I had on, and he made no remark. I know all his cravats, every one of
them. I also know when he has tied them before a glass, and when he has
not. He does not love me as I love him.'
'I am quite happy when my hands are in his, but he is not satisfied with
that; he always wants to kiss me. He loves me with his senses, not with
his heart. They say all men are the same. I thought George was different
from all of them!'
'I have always heard that love is the most sublime joy on earth. I love
and I am loved; yet I want to cry, and I don't know why. Oh, why?'
'Why do I find that Angelina looks better in gray than in red? I ought
to admire her in whatever colour she has on. Should I make such a remark
if my love was intense? Was I a brute for making it before her? She has
been sad ever since. But why does she wear red? Red does not suit a
blonde. Red is for brunettes. Yet, can I tell her that? Of course, I
cannot. I must not imagine that she does not know that herself, and
besides, I should find her beautiful in anything. I am an ass, a silly
ass!'
CHAPTER VII
WHICH SEX WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE?
I once heard a Frenchman say, 'My wife could do without me, but I
couldn't do without her;' but, as a rule, the Frenchman who has had the
good fortune of marrying an intelligent wife becomes so dependent on
her, so much under her influence, that no general rule should be drawn
from the remark. When a man and wife have lived happily together, I
find, from my personal observations, that when one has gone, it is
generally the woman who can better do without the man than the reverse.
Of course, the question is very complex, and one which I would rather
ask than answer. If sexes could do one without the other, and resolved
to do it for fifty years, the world would put up its shutters. May not
the question resolve itself into the following: Of old bachelors and old
maids, which are the happier?
Even this question is not a fair one, because it must be admitted that
society, which is very lenient over the peccadilloes of unmarried men,
frowns unmercifully over those of unmarried women. Shall we then say, Of
old bachelors and old maids, who have led monachal lives, which have
been the happier, and would be the more ready to decline matrimony if
the opportunity were again offered to them? Now, can you answer the
question more easily? Well, if you can, I can't, and if you have
anything to say on the subject I shall be glad to hear it.
Personally, I think the question practically amounts to this: Which
would you rather be, a man or a woman?
Now, this is a question which my readers will find difficulty in
answering, and even in speaking about, with authority, as each of them
has only had the experiences of one sex.
Before answering it, we must indeed talk it over with some very intimate
and trustworthy friends of the other sex, and compare their sentiments
and sensations with our own. We must recall to our minds all the
observations which we have made on the lives of men and women whom we
have known. Let us not follow the example of the woman who would be a
man 'because men are free,' and the man who would be a woman 'because
women are admired,' for the reason that all men are not free, and women
are far from being all admired.
I have interviewed on the subject many men and many women, and I have
found an enormous majority of women who would elect to be men, and only
a very small minority of men who would elect to be women. Conclusion:
most people would elect to be men.
I am a man, and if I were to be born again and asked to make a choice, I
would elect to be a man; but the reason may be that I possess many
failings of which I am aware, and also a few qualities which the most
imperfect of us must necessarily possess who are not absolute objects of
perdition.
For let us say at once that sex suits character.
I love freedom and hate conventionalities; I am a man of action, and
must always be up and doing. I do not believe that I am in any way
tyrannical, yet I like to lead and have my own way. If the position of
first fiddle is engaged, I decline to form part of the orchestra. Most
of these characteristics are failings, perhaps even faults, but I
possess them, and I cannot help possessing them, and they naturally
induce me to prefer being a man.
I have made my confession, let my readers make theirs instead of taking
me to task. I hate to feel protected, to be petted, but I would love to
protect and pet a beloved one, whom I would think weaker than myself. I
am a born fighter, and I don't care for smooth paths, unless I can make
them smooth myself for my own use and also for the use of those who walk
through life by my side.
But, leaving aside personal characteristics which would lead me to elect
to be a man, there are many reasons which would cause me to make that
choice quite independent of my character. Nature has given women beauty
of face and figure, but there she stopped, and to make her pay for that
gift she has handicapped her in every possible way.
And when I consider that there are in this world more ugly women than
beautiful ones, and that an ugly woman is the abomination of desolation,
an anomaly, a freak, I altogether fail to see why ninety women out of a
hundred should return thanks for being women. I have no hesitation in
saying that the woman who is not beautiful has no _raison d'etre_, and
that only a few beautiful women are happy to be alive after they are
forty.
Women have terrible grievances, many of which society and legislation
(that is to say, in the second case, man) ought to redress. But the
greatest grievances of women are, to my mind, against nature. These
grievances cannot and will never be redressed.
In love woman has an unfair position. She gets old when a man of the
same age remains young. In every race she is handicapped out of any
chance of winning or even getting a dead heat. For these reasons
especially I should elect to be a man.
Ah, what a pity we cannot decide our fate in every phase of life! in
which case I would elect to be a beautiful woman from twenty to thirty,
a brilliant officer from thirty to forty, a celebrated painter from
forty to fifty, a famous poet or novelist from fifty to sixty, Prime
Minister of England or President of the United States from sixty to
seventy, and a Cardinal for the rest of my life.
CHAPTER VIII
RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
When a woman says of her husband, 'He is a wretch!' she may still love
him; probably she does. When she says, 'Oh, he is a good sort'--poor
fellow!
* * *
After bravery and generosity, tact and discretion are the two qualities
that women most admire in men; audacity comes next.
* * *
Speaking of his wife, a Duke says, 'The Duchess'; a man standing always
on ceremony, 'Mrs. B.'; a gentleman, 'My wife'; an idiot, 'My better
half'; a common man, 'The missus'; a working man, as a compliment, 'The
old woman'; a French grocer, 'La patronne'; a French working man, 'La
bourgeoise.' The sweet French word 'epouse' is only used now by Paris
concierges.
* * *
Women are roses. I always suspected it from the thorns.
* * *
In the good old times of poetry and adventures, when a man was refused
a girl by her parents, he carried her off; now he asks for another. But,
then, posting exists no longer except for letters, and there is no
poetry in eloping in a railroad car. Oh, progress! oh, civilization!
such is thy handicraft! Dull, prosaic times we are living in!
* * *
Woman is an angel who may become a devil, a sister of mercy who may
change into a viper, a ladybird who may be transformed into a
stinging-bee. Sometimes she never changes, and all her lifetime remains
angel, sister of mercy, ladybird, and sweet fragrant flower. It depends
a great deal on the gardener.
* * *
When a man is on the wrong path in life, it is seldom he does not meet a
woman who says to him, 'Don't go that way'; but when it is a woman who
has lost her way, she always meets a man who indicates to her the wrong
path.
* * *
The Lord took from man a rib, with which He made a woman. As soon as
this process was finished, woman went back to man, and took the rest of
him, which she has kept ever since.
* * *
The heart is a hollow and fleshy muscle which causes the blood to set in
motion. It appears that this is what we love with. Funny!
* * *
Circe was an enchantress who changed men into pigs. Why do I say was? I
don't think that she is dead.
* * *
Women were not born to command, but they have enough inborn power to
govern man who commands, and, as a rule, the best and happiest marriages
are those where women have most authority, and where their advice is
oftenest followed.
* * *
There are three ways for a man to get popular with women. The first is
to love them, the second to sympathize with their inclinations, and the
third to give them reasons that will raise them in their own estimation.
In other words, love them, love what they love, or cause them to love
themselves better. Love, always love.
* * *
A woman knows that a man is in love with her long before he does. A
woman's intuition is keener than her sight; in fact, it is a sixth sense
given to her by nature, and which is more powerful than the other five
put together.
* * *
Very beautiful, as well as very good, women are seldom very clever or
very witty; yet a beautiful woman who is good is the masterpiece of
creation.
* * *
A woman will often more easily resist the love which she feels for a
man than the love which she inspires in him. It is in the most beautiful
nature of woman to consider herself as a reward, but it is also,
unfortunately for her, too often her misfortune.
* * *
We admire a foreigner who gets naturalized in our own country, and
despise a compatriot who makes a foreigner of himself. If a man joins
our religion, we call him converted; if one of ours goes over to
another, we call him perverted. In the same way, we blame the
inconstancy of a woman when she leaves us for another, and we find her
charming when she leaves another to come to us.
* * *
The reputation that a woman should try to obtain and deserve is to be a
sensible woman in her house and an amiable woman in society.
* * *
Frivolous love may satisfy a man and a woman for a time, but only true
and earnest love can satisfy a husband and a wife. Only this kind of
love will survive the thousand-and-one little drawbacks of matrimony.
* * *
Men and women can no more conceal the love they feel than they can feign
the one which they feel not.
* * *
Love feeds on contrasts to such an extent that you see dark men prefer
blondes, poets marry cooks and laundresses, clever men marry fools, and
giants marry dwarfs.
* * *
God has created beautiful women in order to force upon men the belief in
His existence.
* * *
Like all the other fruits placed on earth for the delectation of men,
the most beautiful women are not always the best and the most delicious.
* * *
In the heroic times of chivalry men drew their swords for the sake of
women; in these modern prosaic ones they draw their cheques.
* * *
Women entertain but little respect for men who have blind confidence in
their love and devotion; they much prefer those who feel that they have
to constantly keep alive the first and deserve the second.
* * *
A woman can take the measure of a man in half the time it takes a man to
have the least notion of a woman.
* * *
There are three kinds of men: those who will come across temptations and
resist them, those who will avoid them for fear of succumbing, and those
who seek them. Among the first are to be found only men whose love for
a woman is the first consideration of their lives.
* * *
Young girls should bear in mind that husbands are not creatures who are
always making love, any more than soldiers are men who are always
fighting.
* * *
A love affair will interest even a very old woman, just as the account
of a race will always interest an old jockey. Habit, you see!
* * *
The friendship of women for women is very often less based on love, or
even sympathy, than on little indiscreet confidences which they may have
made to one another.
* * *
In order that love may be lasting, it must be closely allied with tried
friendship. One cannot replace the other, but so long as both march
abreast, living together, a man and a woman can find life delicious.
* * *
It is not matrimony that kills love, but the way in which many people
live in the state of matrimony. It may be affirmed, however, that only
intelligent diplomatists (alas! the select few!) can make love last long
in matrimonial life.
* * *
Women who suggest to the mind notes of interrogation are more
interesting than those, too perfect, who only suggest notes of
admiration.
* * *
Constant reproaches do not kill love so quickly and so surely as
constant reminders of what one has done to deserve gratitude. Why?
Simply because Cupid loves freedom, and lives on it. To ask for love as
a debt of gratitude is like forcing it, and the failure is fatal.
* * *
Women are all actresses. What makes actresses so fascinating and
attractive to men is that they are women twice over.
* * *
Woman is weak and man is strong--so we constantly hear, at any rate.
Then why, in the name of common-sense, do we expect to find in women
virtues that demand a strength of which we men are not capable?
* * *
There are women in the world who love with such ardour, such sincerity,
and such devotion, that, after their death, they ought to be canonized.
* * *
Love is a divine law; duty is only a human--nay, only a social--one.
That is why love will always triumph over duty; it is the greater of the
two.
* * *
Lovers are very much like thieves; they proceed very much in the same
way, and the same fate eventually awaits them. First, they take
superfluous precautions; then by degrees they neglect them, until they
forget to take the necessary ones, and they are caught.
* * *
A man who has been married enters the kingdom of heaven ex-officio,
having served his purgatory on earth; but if he has been married twice
he is invariably refused admittance, as the Sojourn of the Seraphs is no
place for lunatics.
* * *
As long as there is one woman left on the face of the earth, and one man
left to observe her, the world will be able to hear something new about
women.
* * *
A man may be as perfect as you like, he will never be but a rough
diamond until he has been cut and polished by the delicate hand of a
woman.
* * *
Middle-aged and elderly men are often embellished by characteristic
lines engraven on their faces, but women are not jealous of them.
* * *
A woman who marries a second time runs two risks: she may regret that
she lost her first husband, or that she did not always have the second
one. But, in the first case, her second husband may regret her first one
even more than she does, and tell her so, too.
* * *
Many men say that they marry to make an end; but they forget that if
marriage is for them an end, it is a beginning for the women, and then,
look out!
* * *
It is a great misfortune not to be loved by the one you love; but it is
a still greater one to be loved by the one whom you have ceased to love.
* * *
Love is like most contagious diseases: the more afraid you are of it,
the more likely you are to catch it.
* * *
Men and women have in common five senses; but women possess a sixth one,
by far the keenest of all--intuition. For that matter, women do not even
think, argue, and judge as safely as they feel.
* * *
Cupid and Hymen are brothers, but, considering the difference in their
temperaments, they cannot be sons by the same wife.
* * *
The motto of Cupid is, 'All or nothing'; that of Hymen, 'All and
nothing.'
* * *
Love is more indulgent than Friendship for acts of infidelity.
* * *
If men were all deaf, and women all blind, matrimony would stand a much
better chance of success.
CHAPTER IX
WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS
I sometimes wonder how some women dare go out when it is windy. Their
hats are fixed to their hair by means of long pins; their hair is fixed
to their heads by means of short ones, and sometimes it happens that
their heads are fixed to their shoulders by the most delicate of
contrivances. Yes, it is wonderful!
* * *
Fiction is full of Kings and Princes marrying shepherdesses and
beggar-maids; but in reality it is only the Grand-Ducal House of
Tuscany, which for nearly three hundred years has exhibited royal
Princesses running away with dancing masters and French masters engaged
at their husbands' courts.
* * *
A man in love is always interesting. What a pity it is that husbands
cannot always be in love!
* * *
Men who always praise women do not know them well; men who always speak
ill of them do not know them at all.
* * *
What particularly flatters the vanity of women is to know that some men
love them and dare not tell them so. However, they do not always insist
on those men remaining silent for ever.
* * *
The saddest spectacle that the world can offer is that of a sweet,
sensible, intelligent woman married to a conceited, tyrannical fool.
* * *
The mirror is the only friend who is allowed to know the secrets of a
woman's imperfections.
* * *
When a woman is deeply in love, the capacity of her heart for charity is
without limit. If all women were in love there would be no poverty on
the face of the earth.
* * *
The fidelity of a man to the woman he loves is not a duty, but almost an
act of selfishness. It is for his own sake still more than for hers that
he should be faithful to her.
* * *
Two excellent kinds of wine mixed together may make a very bad drink. An
excellent man and a very good woman married together may make an
abominable match.
* * *
Jealousy, discreet and delicate, is a proof of modesty which should be
appreciated by the very woman who should resent violent jealousy.
* * *
When you constantly hear the talent or the wit of a woman praised, you
may take it for granted that she is not beautiful. If she were, you
would hear her beauty praised first of all.
* * *
It is slow poison that kills love most surely. Love will survive even
infidelity rather than boredom or satiety.
* * *
Men study women, and form opinions, generally wrong ones. Women look at
men, guess their character, and seldom make mistakes.
* * *
All the efforts that an old woman makes to hide her age only help to
advertise it louder.
* * *
Of a man and a woman, it is the one who is loved, but who does not love,
that is the unhappier of the two.
* * *
Women often see without looking; men often look without seeing.
* * *
I know handsome men who are bald, and there are not a few, but many, who
derive distinction from this baldness. There are men--severe, stern
types of men--who are not disfigured, but improved, by spectacles. Just
imagine, if you can, the possibility of a bald woman with spectacles
inspiring a tender passion! So much for the infallibility of the
proverb, 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' so often
quoted by women when they are told that men can afford to do this or
that, but not they. Lady women-righters, please answer.
* * *
In the tender relations between men and women, novelty is a wonderful
attraction, and habit a powerful bond; but between the two there is a
bottomless precipice into which love often falls, never to be heard of
afterward. Happy those who know how to bridge over the chasm!
* * *
A woman never forgets, however old she may be, that she was once very
beautiful. Why should she? The pity is that she very often forgets that
she is so no longer. My pet aversion in society is the woman of sixty
who succeeds in making herself look fifty, thinks she is forty, acts as
if she were thirty, and dresses as if she were twenty.
* * *
I am not prepared to say that celibacy is preferable to marriage; it
has, however, this decided advantage over it: a bachelor can always
cease to be one the moment he has discovered that he has made a mistake.
* * *
Women are extremists in everything. Poets, painters and sculptors know
this so well that they have always taken women as models for War,
Pestilence, Death, Famine and Justice, Virtue, Glory, Victory, Pity,
Charity. On the other hand, virtues and vices, blessings and calamities
of a lesser degree are represented by men. Such are Work, Perseverance,
Laziness, Avarice, etc.
* * *
It is not given to any man or woman to fall in love more than once with
the same person. And although men and women may love several times in
succession, they can only once love to the fulness of their hearts.
* * *
Love does to women what the sun does to flowers: it colours them,
embellishes them, makes them look radiant and beautiful; but when it is
too ardent it consumes and withers them.
* * *
There are two terribly embarrassing moments in the life of a man. The
first is when he has to say 'all' to the woman he loves, and the second
when all is said.
* * *
If a man is not to a certain extent ill at ease in the presence of a
woman, you may be quite sure that he does not really love her.
* * *
A woman explains the beauty of a woman; a man feels it. A man does not
always know why a woman is beautiful; a woman always does.
* * *
The sweetest music in the ears of a woman is the sound of the praises of
the man whom she loves.
* * *
It is a mistake for a married couple to consider that marriage has made
them one. To be attractive to each other they should each preserve their
personality quite distinct. Marriage is very often dull because man and
wife are one, and feel lonely. Most people get bored in their own
company.
* * *
Happiness in matrimony is sober, serious, based on love, confidence, and
friendship. Those who seek in it frivolity, pleasure, noise, and passion
condemn themselves to penal servitude.
* * *
The great misfortune of mankind is that matrimony is the only vocation
for which candidates have had no training; yet it is the one that
requires the most careful preparation.
* * *
On the part of a husband, violent jealousy is an insult to his wife, but
delicate, discreet jealousy is almost a compliment to her, for it proves
his lack of self-confidence, and that sometimes he feels he is not good
enough for her, not worthy of her.
* * *
Most women have the hearts of poets and the minds of diplomatists. What
makes a wife so useful to an ambassador is that she adds her own power
of intuition to the five senses already possessed by her husband.
* * *
Love in matrimony can live only on condition that man and wife remain
interesting in each other's eyes. Devotion, fidelity, attention to duty,
and all the troop of domestic virtues will not be sufficient to keep
love alive.
* * *
Beauty is not the mother of Love. On the contrary, it is often love
which engenders beauty, gives brilliancy to the eyes, gracefulness to
the body, vibration to the voice. Love is the sun that hatches the
flowers of the soul. The face which reflects all the inner sentiments of
the heart betrays the love of its owner, and is beautiful.
* * *
Those who in good faith promise eternal love and those who believe in
such promises are dupes--the former of their hearts, the latter of their
vanity. Wine well taken care of improves by keeping, but not for ever;
it is destined to turn to vinegar sooner or later.
* * *
Love is a great healer. The worst characteristic traits of a man and of
a woman have been known to be cured by it.
* * *
Men and women do not love before they are thirty, men especially. Until
then it is little more than rehearsing. Fortunate are those who retain
for the play the same company they had engaged for the rehearsal.
CHAPTER X
WOMAN'S MISSION IN THIS WORLD
Naturalists make little difference between women and the other females
of the animal kingdom: they declare that the mission of woman is to be a
mother. Napoleon I., who was a naturalist, being asked to give a
definition of the best woman, answered: 'The one who bears most
children.' And as for him man was mere 'cannon flesh,' I am surprised he
did not say, 'The one who bears most boys.'
Moralists are kinder to women; they go so far as to grant that woman's
mission is twofold: that she is intended to be a wife and a mother; that
she is to be the guardian of the hearth, submissive and devoted to man,
her lord and master; to look after her household, and be absorbed by her
duties toward her husband and children.
No sinecure, this mission of woman, as you see--no joke either; but
moralists have no sense of humour--not a particle of it.
No doubt this double role of wife and mother is most respectable; it is
even sacred; but woman's nature demands something else. To restrict her
circle of activity and influence to her family is to misappreciate her
many faculties, her aspirations, her feelings, which, like those of men,
are entitled to respect; it amounts to not recognising that her mission
is not only familial, but social also.
I will not dwell on the part she is called upon to play in the family as
wife and mother. We men all know it, whether we are husbands or sons;
but we have also to consider what the role of woman is in that society
of which she is the great civilizing element as well as the greatest
ornament.
The most noble part that has been allotted to woman is that of the
flower in the vegetable kingdom. This role consists in throwing a spell
over the world, in making life more refined and poetical--in a word, in
spreading fragrance around her and imparting it to all who come in
contact with her. A wag once said that but for the women men could have
hoped for Paradise. Good! But what about this world? Is not woman the
direct or indirect motive for all our actions? Is she not the embodiment
of the beautiful, and therefore the mother of Art?
If she is sometimes the cause of a crime, is she not always the cause of
the most heroic deeds performed by man? Can we for a moment suppose
society without her? Why, without her it would fall into a state of
indolence and degradation, even of utter abjection. Would life be worth
living without the sweet presence of kind, cheerful, and amiable women?
Ah, my dear sir, make fun of woman in your club as much as you like;
crack jokes at her expense to your heart's content; but acknowledge
frankly that you are under her power--at least, I hope, under her
influence--and that you could no more do without her than without the
air which enables you to breathe.
Talk of woman's mission as wife and mother, as naturalists and moralists
do, but let all of us artists cry at the top of our voices that woman's
mission is to make life beautiful by the cultivation of her own beauty,
beauty of body, mind, and heart.
It is the duty of woman to look as beautiful as she can; it is her
imperious duty to charm the world by her sweetness and amiability. A
woman who neglects this duty is guilty toward her fellow-creatures, even
guilty toward her Maker, by not helping the destiny for which she was
created. Countries are civilized in proportion to the influence that
women have over men in them.
As long as gardens have flowers and the world has beautiful and amiable
women, so long will life be worth living.
CHAPTER XI
IS WOMAN INFERIOR TO MAN?
Many, many years ago a great council was held to discuss the question
whether women had souls. I forget the conclusion which that learned
assembly arrived at; but what is certain is that now most men do believe
that women have souls, although a great number of them are still of
opinion that woman is a being inferior to man.
They hold that man is the lord of creation, the masterpiece, the last
word of the Almighty.
Now, is this really the case? First, God made the earth, then light,
after which He created fishes, birds, and animals of all sorts. Then He
said: 'I will now create a being far above all the other animals.'
He took some mud; mark well, I say, some mud, and made Adam. In His
wisdom He thought that mud was not good enough to make woman out of, and
for her creation he took matter which had already been purified by His
Divine breath, and He took part of Adam, and out of it made Eve.
Now, surely, my dear fellow-men, you must own that either mud is better
stuff than yourself, or you must confess that woman has a nobler origin
than you. You can't get out of it.
Please notice the order of creation: Fish, birds, animals, man and
woman. If men do not admit that the Creator began by the least and
finished with the best, they will have to conclude that lobsters, eels,
crocodiles, sharks, owls, vultures, and mere sparrows are beings
superior to them.
If men do not recognise the superiority of these animals over them, they
will have to come to the conclusion that the work of creation is one of
improvement every day.
But man will say, woman is not so strong as we are. True enough; but
horses are stronger than men; elephants by trampling on them can make
marmalade of them. Stags are swifter than men. Camels can carry a weight
of 2,500 lb. on their backs. Birds can fly, and men are only trying
machines to help them do it.
Is man more intelligent than woman? Certainly not. Who ate the apple? I
know that Eve was the first to be disobedient, but she had an idea, at
all events before Adam had one.
Had he even the power of resistance? No. Did he even try to shield woman
after the offence was committed? No, he didn't, the coward. He turned
against her and accused her of being the cause of the whole evil done.
Poor beginning, a poor show, and a sad lesson by which men have
profited, and to this day they turn against the woman they have
deceived, and often abandon her. Man is still true to his origin.
My dear sirs, the proof that God was satisfied that, in creating woman,
He had said the last word of His Divine work, is that He entrusted her
with the most noble of missions, that of bearing the future generations,
of bringing children to the world, of guiding their first steps, of
cultivating their minds and inculcating in them the love of what is good
and right. In intending woman to be mother, God proclaimed the
superiority of women over the rest of the creation.
CHAPTER XII
WOMEN WHO ARE FOLLOWED AND ANNOYED IN THE STREET
I have constantly heard women complain, in Paris, in London, and in New
York, that they can seldom go out in the street without being followed
and annoyed by men, many of whom look like gentlemen.
And they express their complaint in tones of indignation not altogether
free from a little air of self-satisfaction that seems to say: 'Of
course a pretty woman like myself is bound to be noticed and stared at
by men.'
Well, I hate to say anything unpleasant to women, but there is an
illusion in which they too often indulge, and which I should like to
dispel at once.
There are women beautiful as they can be, who can walk in every city
perfectly unmolested and in perfect comfort and security, and who would
be unable to tell you whether any man or woman had noticed them.
We men are not so bold as many women believe, nor are we so silly. We
have instinct, and we know pretty well the woman who enjoys being
noticed and looked at, and even the one who seeks that enjoyment for
purpose of self-satisfaction or vanity.
I am over fifty years old, and any girl of twenty, I guarantee, will
make me feel as timid as she likes in her presence, not by words, but
simply by her attitude of dignity and reserve.
And I believe that practically the same might be said of every man who
is not an unmitigated scoundrel or blackguard.
In a word, I should like to prove that a woman, who is too often noticed
and followed in the street, should be offended by it, and have enough
conscience of her value to mention it as little as possible; she should
also exercise more control over herself and pay great attention to the
way she dresses, looks and walks when out in the street.
For if she is constantly followed, take it for granted that there is in
her appearance something, just a little something, that gives a wrong
impression of her.
Let women have simplicity in their toilette, dignity in their manner, a
severe gracefulness in their general attitude, and I guarantee you that
no man--I mean no fairly well-bred man--will ever turn round to look at
them.
Women should not call it success. They should feel humiliated to see
that some gloriously beautiful women do not obtain it. They should take
advice and seek a remedy with the earnestness of that cashier who,
returning home, could not even take notice of his wife and children,
much less kiss them, until he had discovered the cause of an error of a
penny in his accounts amounting to several thousands of pounds.
When a woman tells me that she cannot go out without men looking and
smiling at her, I have always a mind to say to her: 'Perhaps you wink at
them.'
CHAPTER XIII
DANGEROUS MEN
(A WARNING TO WOMEN)
Among the men who are the most dangerous for women must be reckoned
those whose advances of love generally prove unsuccessful. Women have no
idea of the harm that may be done to them by those parasites of their
homes.
A woman, young, amiable, and cheerful, welcomes such men in her house
without entertaining any suspicion. She invites them to her receptions,
her dinner-parties; she often finds them pleasant, witty, and then they
venture a few flattering compliments. She at first accepts them as the
current coin of society, and pays no attention to them.
As she is amiable to her guests, she is not on her guard, and she treats
them to the same smiles, which these fops of the purest water often
imagine are gracious smiles conferred on them only. Thus encouraged,
they go further, and venture compliments bordering on declarations of
love, or, at any rate, on expressions of deep admiration. The young
woman, used to compliments, takes no notice of our heroes, or pretends
to have understood nothing.
Her silence is then taken for a tacit acceptance, and the fops,
emboldened, make an open declaration of love. Now, a regular flirt or
coquette knows how to encourage or discourage a man with one glance, but
a perfectly good woman is taken unaware; she feels embarrassed, and,
thus apparently encouraged, these men get bolder and bolder, until the
young woman has to show them the door.
Then her troubles begin. These parasites will go to their clubs, and,
even in drawing-rooms, say that she is a heartless coquette who
encourages men to make love to her just to amuse herself. They abuse
her, watch her, and, if one day she should compromise herself in the
least, woe to her if the secret should fall into such men's hands! There
is no revenge of which they are not capable. A case of this sort was,
not long ago, investigated thoroughly, and it turned out that an
anonymous letter had been written to the husband of a most charming
society woman by a cur whom she had to turn out of her house for
offering her a worthless love.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MAN WHO SMILES
There is to be met in society a man who is particularly provoking and
supremely objectionable and offensive. He is about forty, very
gentlemanly, self-possessed, irreproachably dressed, well informed,
interesting talker, with a somewhat patronizing air, and an eternal
smile of self-satisfaction on his face.
This man has compromised more women than many a 'devil of a fellow.' If
you say before him, 'Mrs. X. is very beautiful, isn't she?' he says
nothing, but smiles complacently. So you look at him and add:
'Oh, you know her, then?' He smiles again. 'You don't say so!' you
remark. 'I should have thought her a woman above the breath of
suspicion.'
He smiles still. You become persuaded that he is, or has been, on the
most intimate terms with the lady in question.
Mention before him the name of any woman you like to choose, and if the
woman is in the least fashionable, or renowned for her beauty or
position, he smiles.
If at a ball he asks a lady to give him the pleasure of her partnership
for a waltz or a polka, he leans close toward her, smiling at her in
such a strange way that people believe he is telling her words of love,
or, worse, that he is granted permission to do so.
If he calls on a lady on her reception day, he has a way to salute her,
to kiss her hand, to look at her in a patronizing way that seems to say
to the other callers:
'See how ceremonious I am with her before other people, and what a good
comedian I am!'
And he smiles, smiles, and smiles.
Women are ill at ease in his presence. They hate him, but as he is
content with smiling, and goes no further, what are they to do? They
avoid him when they can, his smiles are so compromising.
And they are right. His smiles are more compromising than _bona fide_
slander and calumny.
The men hate him, too, but they feel as powerless as the women do. They
would like to slap his face, but you cannot say to a man:
'I slap your face because I saw you smile on hearing my wife's name.'
No, that would be too absurd. He knows it, and that is why he goes on
smiling. He is safe.
When he hears a bit of gossip on a woman, he immediately takes her
defence, but in such a weak manner, and with such a smile on his face
all the time, that people immediately come to the conclusion that 'it
must be all true.'
What is most provoking is that the man has not a bad reputation. He has
never been openly mixed in any intrigue, and even his intimate friends
have never heard of any love affair connecting him with any woman. For
some people he is an enigma, for others a clever comedian, a maniac, a
bore, or a fop.
For men who justly hold that women should be treated with such respect
that no act of man should cause anyone to even breathe a light remark on
their character, the man who smiles is a cur.
CHAPTER XV
WOMEN AND DOLLS
The love of little girls for their dolls is a very serious love; it
absolutely amounts to maternal tenderness. I have watched little girls
nurse their dolls, and detected in their eyes that almost divine glance
that you can see in devoted mothers tending their little children. For
that matter a little girl is only a woman in miniature. A young boy has
none, or very few, of the characteristics of a man; but a young girl
has, at ten years of age, all the characteristics of a woman.
I have known little girls of ten and twelve who were perfect flirts,
little coquettes, careful housekeepers, and, toward their dolls, most
devoted mothers. I remember one who sternly refused to accompany us to a
most tempting party, because her doll had a cold and she felt she must
stay at home to nurse it. She was absolutely serious over it, and found
even great delight in remaining at home all the time by the bedside of
her doll. I remember another who had spent the whole morning cleaning
her doll's house from top to bottom. When it was all over she drew a
great sigh of relief. 'At last,' she said, 'the house is clean; that's
comfort, anyway.' A good, dutiful, bourgeois housewife would not have
expressed herself otherwise. Have you not, some of you, even seen little
girls give medicines to their dolls, rock them to sleep, put them to
bed, tuck them in most carefully, and see that the bedclothes did not
choke them and cause them to have nightmares? I have, many times.
A man very often shows inclinations, tastes, and all sorts of
characteristic traits which his parents never discovered in him when he
was a young boy; but a woman of thirty is what she was when she was ten,
only a little more so. A bad boy may become a very good man, and I have
known very good boys become very bad men; but a caressing, loving little
girl will surely make a loving wife and a tender mother; a cold and
uncaressing little girl will become a heartless woman, an indifferent
wife and mother. A boy is a boy! a little girl is a little woman.
This is so true that women, many women at all events, who treated their
dolls as if they were children, treat their children as if they were
dolls. It is the survival of the little girl in the woman. I have known
women allow the hair of their boys to fall down their backs in long
curls because they looked prettier and more like dolls, although they
must have known that the sap of their young bodies was feeding hair at
the expense of other far more important parts of their anatomy. When you
see a woman most attentive to her baby, insisting on washing it,
dressing it herself, you say: 'She is a most dutiful mother; she would
trust no one but herself to attend her little child.' But it is not only
the satisfaction of a duty performed that makes that woman look so
happy, it is also the pleasure she derives from it. And the odds are ten
to one that this very woman will play at doll with her child a great
deal too long, and that the day on which she will be compelled to allow
the child to have some liberty and become independent of her, she will
resent it.
There is not, I believe, a single elderly woman that does not prefer the
child of her daughter to her daughter herself, who has become now an
unmanageable doll who dresses and undresses without the help of anybody.
And if this daughter does not allow her mother to do with the grandchild
just as she likes, there will be trouble, caused by jealousy. There will
be two women now to play at dolls. Why does a grandmother indulge a
young child, give it sweets and candies? Is it to give that child a good
digestion? No; it is to play at dolls. Do they dress little girls like
the 'principal boys' of pantomimes in the palace scene, in order to make
them acquire modest tastes and sensible notions? No; it is to play at
dolls.
Woman plays at dolls to the end of her life, with her toys, with her
children, with her grandchildren, and with herself.
I have never heard women have a good word to say of daughters-in-law who
had not given children to their sons. Poor, dear old ladies! They
certainly were under the impression that their sons had only one object
in view when they contemplated matrimony, that of presenting 'Grannie'
with dolls to play with. I quite understand that grandmothers should be
admired, that children should bless them, and even advise other children
to 'get some,' when they have not got any, but I do not think that
grandmothers should be held up to the world as models, because more than
nine times out of ten they spoil children, and derive pleasure not from
duties performed to the child, but from the satisfaction of playing at
dolls. I have very often met sensible mothers, but grandmothers seldom;
they generally are incorrigible sinners--and proud of it, too.
Alphonse Karr, in his 'Reminiscences,' relates how he used to meet in
society a young and charming woman who always behaved towards him in a
very cool manner. Unable to understand the reason, he one day took a
chair by her side, made himself particularly pleasant, and point-blank
asked her why she did not seem pleased to meet him, and inquired whether
he might have unconsciously done anything to cause her displeasure. For
a long time she defended herself, assuring him that her coldness towards
him was only in his imagination; but, as he insisted, she at last said
to him: 'Well, I will tell you. It was thirty-five years ago. One
afternoon you called on us, and I was in the drawing-room. Being invited
to take a seat by my mother, you chose an arm-chair on which my doll was
asleep. You removed it, and quite unceremoniously laid it on a table,
head downwards, at the risk of hurting it. In fact, you damaged its
nose. I conceived for you a perfect hatred, and, upon my word, I do not
think that I am now capable of forgiving you altogether.'
MORAL.--If you want to get into the good graces of a woman, praise her
baby; if you want a little girl to love you, admire her dolls and treat
them with respect.
CHAPTER XVI
MEN AS A RULE ARE SELFISH--TWO KINDS OF SELFISH MEN
There are in the world men who are devotion and self-abnegation
personified; there are women who are the embodiment of selfishness. From
this we cannot lay down a rule any more than we could if, in landing in
New York, we saw a red-haired woman, and said at once:
'The Americans are a red-haired people.'
But as, during my life, I have known more men who are selfish than
unselfish, and more women who are unselfish than selfish, I am prepared
to conclude that man is more selfish than woman.
I have known men of small income (and in their way good men they were)
belong to two or three clubs, dine at expensive restaurants, and smoke
excellent cigars all day long.
Their daughters had to give lessons in order to obtain the money that
was necessary for dressing decently, and the house had to be kept on
most economical lines.
I have known others, not worse than those I have just mentioned, allow
nothing but water on their family table, and take champagne for dinner
at the club or the restaurant.
I could divide selfish men into two classes: the man with good redeeming
features, and the execrably selfish man.
The former is good-hearted and fairly sensitive. He hates nobody,
because hatred disturbs sleep and rest. He avoids emotions for his own
comfort; he is learnedly selfish.
If you are unhappy, in distressed circumstances, don't bother him about
it. He is sorry, he cannot help it, and he would rather not hear of it.
If you are ill, do not expect a visit from him; the sight of pain or
grief affects him. If you are in want, he may send you a L5 note, but he
does not want to see you. He seeks the company of cheerful and happy
people only.
He has an income of L6,000 a year, and will tell you that nobody dies of
starvation except in novels.
He turns his head from wretches shivering with cold in the street, and
is of opinion that a good Government should suppress paupers and all
sorts of people who disturb the peace and happiness of the rich. His
friends call him 'a good fellow.'
The other type is execrable. The miseries of other people increase his
happiness. When he sees a starving-looking man or a sick one, he returns
thanks that he is rich and healthy.
He does not avoid the unfortunate: he almost seeks them. The more
horrible tales you tell him of poverty, sorrows, disease, wretchedness,
the happier he is to feel that he runs no danger of ever encountering
such calamities.
Well wrapped up in furs in a good carriage, the sight of a beggar,
benumbed with cold, sitting on the stone steps of an empty house,
doubles his comfort. He finds his carriage better suspended, and his
furs warmer.
He almost believes that the abject poor were invented to make him
appreciate his good fortune better. He is not unlike those fanatics of a
certain school who believe that the greatest bliss reserved for the
elect in heaven is to see their less fortunate brethren burn in hell. As
I have said, this type of selfish man is execrable.
CHAPTER XVII
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
THE RIGHT AND WRONG IN THE CASE OF A ROYAL PRINCESS
Since the escapade of the Royal Princess of Saxony with the French tutor
Giron, many have asked me, 'Do you approve or forgive her? Do you not
think that a woman who can no longer endure life with a sullen and
unsympathetic husband has a right to break away from the social
conventionalities of life and go her own way in search of happiness?'
The question is not easy to answer. There may be, or there may not be,
extenuating circumstances in the conduct of a woman who deserts her
husband, or a man who leaves his wife.
First of all, let me say that I place the consideration of duty far
higher than that of personal happiness. Therefore, a man or a woman who
abandons a home where there are children of a tender age, children who
require the protection of a father and the affection of a mother, which
no one can replace, is a coward that should be placed under the ban of
society.
I don't care how much a woman may fall in love with a man, or a man
with a woman, the duty of either is to remain by the side of their
children, to watch over their education, and to see them launched in
life. If they shirk this duty, there is no excuse, no atonement for
their conduct, which closely borders on crime.
When there are no children, I admit that there may be circumstances in
which I would forgive a man or a woman who leaves a home in which life
has become unendurable, in order to seek happiness in the company of a
partner who has given proof of love, devotion, and disinterestedness. I
might also be prepared to forgive if the children were grown up and able
to support themselves.
On no account, however, could I approve, or even forgive, a man who
leaves a wife with whom life may have become as intolerable as you like
without duly providing for her comfort, even if by so doing he should
have nothing left for himself, and be obliged to start life afresh.
I do not admit that anyone, man or woman, has a right to shirk
responsibilities imposed by solemn promises. Let them set this right
first of all. After that, let them solve the problem of happiness as
best they can.
No doubt there are drawbacks in holding royal honours, but I believe in
the old motto, _Noblesse oblige_; and if _noblesse_ does, surely royalty
should. Royalty nowadays is not of much use, except when it gives to
the people over which it rules the example of all virtues, of all
domestic virtues especially.
When people are born in the purple, they are born with responsibilities.
If they fling them to the four winds of the earth, there is no use for
royalty: the reason for its existence has ceased to exist.
CHAPTER XVIII
AMERICAN WOMEN IN PARIS
Every year in Paris, in springtime, we see the American women reappear
with the regularity of the swallow. We expect them, we watch for their
arrival, and we are delighted when we hear them say, with their singing
voices, that they have come for our season, which begins in April and
goes on till 'The Grand Prix' is run during the second week of June.
The American woman is not only received, but eagerly sought in our most
aristocratic society. Her amiability and brilliancy have forced open the
doors of our most exclusive mansions. She affords so much pleasure that
she is indispensable. We are dull without her, because she is not only
beautiful and a feast for the eyes, but she is bright, brilliant, witty,
unconventional, and a feast for the mind. It is thanks to all these
qualities, far more than to her dollars, that the American woman is
to-day part and parcel of what is called 'Tout Paris.' And, indeed,
there is no woman in the world so attractive as the fair daughter of
Uncle Sam. Her physical, moral, and intellectual charms make her the
most interesting woman one may wish to meet.
The English woman is very often beautiful. Her freshness is exquisite,
her figure excellent when she knows how to enhance its beauty by
well-made garments. She is, perhaps, beyond competition when she is
really beautiful, but her beauty is too often statuesque, and lacks
lustre and piquancy. The French woman is supple and graceful, but she is
more fascinating by her manner, by her chic, than by the beauty of her
complexion, the regularity of her features, and the proportions of her
figure. The German is often fine, but generally heavy, compact, and
lacking elegance.
The American woman is an altogether. She has the piquancy, the
fascinating manner, the elegance, the grace, and the gait of the
Parisienne; but, besides, she often possesses the eyes of a Spaniard,
the proud figure of a Roman, and the delicate features of an English
woman. If, during the Paris season, you walk in the Champs-Elysees
district, where all the best Americans are settled, you will admire
those women looking radiant with intelligence, cheerful, independent,
who, you can see, have the consciousness of their value.
The education which she has received has developed all her faculties.
The liberty she always enjoyed, the constant attentions she has received
from father, brother, husband, and all her male friends, have made her
feel safe everywhere, and she goes about freely, with a firm step that
stamps her American. Thanks to her finesse, her power of observation,
her native adaptability, she can fit herself for every station of life.
If one day she finds herself mistress of the White House or Vice-Queen
of India, she immediately feels at home. She may be ever so learned, she
is never a pedant. She is, and remains, a woman in whose company a man
feels at once at his ease; a sort of fascinating good fellow, with all
the best attributes of womanhood; a little of a coquette, with a
suspicion of a touch of blue-stocking--but so little. She loves dresses,
and none puts them on better than she does. English women, even the most
elegant ones at home, seldom favour us, when they visit us, but with all
the worst frumps and frippery they can find in their wardrobe. The
American women are considerate enough to try and do their best for us,
and we appreciate the compliment. And thus they brighten our theatres,
our promenades, our balls and dinner-parties, our fashionable
restaurants, and Paris, which loves them, could not now do without
them.
CHAPTER XIX
WOMEN WHO WALK BEST
A few weeks ago I was watching the church parade in Hyde Park, London,
between the statue of Achilles and Stanhope Gate, when I met an American
lady of my acquaintance. We walked together for awhile, and then sat
down in order to watch the fashionable crowd more closely.
It is said that, although Americans and Englishmen think a great deal of
one another nowadays, you seldom hear American women praise the women of
England, and more seldom still hear English women say a good word of
American women.
So I was tickled to know what my American lady friend thought of the
crowd that was performing before us, and I asked her to give me her
impressions.
'Well,' she said, 'it is as good as, if not better than, anything that
New York could produce. Possibly on some special occasion Fifth Avenue
might turn out a few lovelier dresses, but the London average is above
the New York average. You see fewer absolute failures here among the
women, while the men are quite unapproachable--surely Londoners are the
best-dressed men in the world.'
'And the New Yorkers the most brand-newly dressed men,' I interrupted.
'But you are right. I like to think that a coat has been worn just more
than once. But please go on.'
'The days when the London girl was really badly dressed are dead and
gone. We have educated her, we Americans, until she has all but reached
our standard. Just think what the London shops were fifteen and even ten
years ago! Something awful! But now I can buy in them everything I want
just as easily as though I were in Paris or New York.
'I don't know whether the supply of pretty dresses and dainty _et
ceteras_ made the demand, or whether it was the other way about, but, at
any rate, there has been a change within the last decade that is almost
a revolution. The London woman of to-day dresses quite as well as her
sister across the Channel or the Atlantic.'
I was getting sadly disappointed, for my lady friend is a critic and a
wit, and I was expecting a few amusing remarks on English women. So I
ventured:
'So you think that now English women can obtain in London dresses just
as pretty as women can in Paris and New York?
'Certainly,' she replied. 'Yet they never look so well, because, you
see, when they get these pretty dresses, these poor English women don't
know how to put them on. The English girl's education is not yet
completed. She has not learned how to carry herself as we have in
America, both at home and at school. You know the splendid air and prima
donna effects that American women can bring off when they choose. These
young English women have hardly a suspicion of them.
'In taste for the delicate things of dress the Londoner is now just
about where she should be; but she has not yet learned how to wear a
dress. A French woman or an American would make fifty per cent, more of
it than the English woman knows how to do; and if this is to be
remedied, English girls will first have to be taught how to walk and how
to hold themselves.'
And no doubt my American friend had hit on the national defect of
English women--their bad way of walking and holding themselves.
One's thoughts naturally fly to Spain, where every member of the
feminine sex, from the little girl of four to the old woman, who in
England would be bent and tottering, knows how to carry herself as if
she were a queen.
If it is true that this result is achieved by the Spanish custom of
carrying everything on the head instead of on the back or in the hand,
it is a pity the English do not make their girls begin at once to carry
their school-satchels in a way that will make them hold their heads up
instead of down, and accentuate gracefully their lines both behind and
in front.
When I was in South Africa I invariably admired the manner in which the
Kaffir and Zulu women walked and held themselves. On watching them I
often exclaimed: 'If English women could only walk and carry themselves
as these women do, with their pretty faces and figures, with their
beautiful skin and complexion, they would have few rivals in the world.'
It is by walking barefooted and carrying everything on their heads that
the women of Kaffirland and Zululand learn to walk so well, to hold
their heads up, to bring their chests forward, to throw back their
shoulders, and give to their gait that gentle swing which is so dainty
and graceful.
American women obtain the same result by being drilled at school, for it
is incontestable, and, I believe, incontested, that they are the best
walking women, and also those who, with the Parisiennes, know best how
to put on their dresses.
CHAPTER XX
WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN
Heller, who has collected the greatest number of instances of extreme
long life, found 1,000 persons who lived from 100 to 110, 60 from 110 to
120, 30 from 120 to 130, 15 from 130 to 140, 6 from 140 to 150, and one
who lived to be 169 years of age.
French writes that from 1881 to 1890, in Massachusetts, there were 203
deaths of persons past the age of 100. Of these 153 were women and 50
were men. Let us add that the parts of the world which have supplied, in
proportion to their population, the greatest number of centenarians, are
New England, Scotland, and Brittany.
All these centenarians, without exception, have been found among the
humbler classes, and most of them among peasants--that is to say, among
the workers of the community who lead quiet, regular, and busy lives.
It is worthy of note that just those very principles which were laid
down by the Founder of the Christian religion as best for the eternal
welfare of the soul have been proved by the passing years to be best for
the body also.
It is not those who are clad in purple and fine linen and fare
sumptuously every day who are strong enough to climb to the clear
heights of a great age. Neither titles nor wealth keep the feet from
wearying of the uphill path of life.
They who would have their days long in the land must honour their great
mother, Nature. They must walk in her ways. Nature does not rejoice in
sluggards, therefore they must work, and the more steadily they work the
longer they live.
Men of thought have always been distinguished for their age. Solon,
Sophocles, Pindar, Anacreon, and Xenophon were octogenarians. Kant,
Buffon, Goethe, Fontenelle, and Newton were over eighty. Michael Angelo
and Titian were eighty-nine and ninety-nine respectively. Harvey, the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood, lived to be eighty.
Victor Hugo was over eighty. Gladstone, who worked every minute of his
life, always in search of new subjects to master, and who took his
recreation in bodily work--gardening, cutting down his trees--died at
eighty-eight.
Sidney Cooper, the English animal painter, whose work of last year will
be exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, this year, died at
ninety-nine, practically with his brushes in his hands.
The preponderance of females over males in the matter of long life is a
striking fact. It is also constant. All authorities agree in this, that
more women than men live to be very old. The more fragile pitcher is
not so soon broken at the fountain. Why?
One would hardly expect woman, with all the dangers and sufferings
attending motherhood, to last longer than man. Yet undoubtedly she does.
I know in Brittany a peasant woman who is now ninety-seven. She does her
sewing without spectacles; she walks a couple of miles every day; goes
to bed at eight, rises at six in the winter and at five in the summer.
She eats and sleeps well, and is in the enjoyment of perfect health. She
had seventeen children. The healthiest trees are those which bear fruit
every year.
The reason for woman's longevity is not far to seek. Women lead more
careful, regular, and sheltered lives than men. It is the man who has to
fight daily with the world, and how hard and trying the fight often is
none but the fighter himself can tell.
He succumbs to more temptations than woman, because more come his way.
It is the man who is often called upon to undermine his bodily vigour by
earning his bread at unhealthy occupations. It is he who goes down the
mines, to sea, and to the battlefield.
CHAPTER XXI
WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL
Nothing is more difficult to define than beauty. It is not something
absolute, like truth; it differs according to times, countries, races,
and individual tastes. Greek beauty is not Parisian beauty, English
beauty is pretty well the opposite of Italian beauty.
A European beauty might strike a Chinaman as very ugly, and a Chinese
beauty would find no admirer in Europe, except, perhaps, among blase
people with the most fastidious tastes and ever in search of novelty.
The Buddha of the Hindoos has nothing in common with the Jupiter of the
Greeks. Ancient art differs entirely from modern art.
In Antiquity, beauty consists in the harmony of the proportions, the
purity of the lines, the nobility of form and attitude, the sobriety of
the figure, and the coldness of the expression. In modern times, beauty
consists in gracefulness, piquancy, intelligence, sentiment, vivacity,
and exuberance of form.
But there are two kinds of beauty in women: that which is natural to
them, and that which they can acquire by carefully studying what suits
them best to wear, and how they can use to advantage their style of
face and figure.
I have seen women absolutely transformed by the hands of a skilful
dressmaker or a clever hairdresser.
The natural beauty is that happy ensemble of lines and expression which
attract and charm the eyes. It is not at all indispensable that this
ensemble should be harmonious. On the contrary, contrasts are often less
cold and monotonous than perfect harmony, and the statuesque beauty
generally leaves us unmoved.
The woman who looks amiable and cheerful is naturally beautiful--far
more so than a woman with irreproachable sculptural outlines and
features so regular that she makes you wish she had some redeeming
defect or other. Perfection was attractive in ancient Greece; it is not
now.
Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look
intelligent--brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a
turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee,
and we like it.
I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame
Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to
look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the
Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and
her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit,
and gaiety.
A small, piquante brunette, with small, keen eyes, thick lips, thin,
alert; a blonde dishevelled, like a spaniel, with glorious form, will
excite admiration--both are beautiful.
But the other beauty, the one that can be obtained of art, is at the
disposal of every woman. In fact, the woman who knows how to put on her
dress and do her hair well, who has on a becoming hat, pretty shoes, and
neat gloves, who has good taste in furniture, who speaks pleasantly,
smiles cheerfully and good-naturedly, who has elegance of manners and a
pretty voice, who has a bright conversation--that woman will be declared
pretty, even beautiful, far more readily and unanimously than the real
beauty, one who fails to pay attention to her dress and manners, who has
no consciousness of her power and her value, and who constantly forgets
that good surroundings are to her what a handsome frame is to a picture.
Practically every woman can obtain this result, and that is why I have
entitled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'
CHAPTER XXII
WOMEN AT SEA
Of all the pitiful sights, of all the pathetic figures in the world,
there is none to compare to women at sea.
Is it possible that these dejected, abject-looking bundles of misery
only yesterday were the bright, proud, elegant, queenly fashion-plates
whom I saw on Fifth Avenue? _Quantum mutatae ab illis!_ What a
metamorphosis!
Poor things! Even the most terrible home ruler is satisfied with the
lower berth, and gives her husband a chance to look down upon her. She
is meek and grateful, she is submissive, and her imploring eyes beg the
most hen-pecked husband not to take advantage of his temporary
superiority.
She arrived on board flamboyant, with her most bewitching finery on, or
a most becoming yachting-suit. She meant to 'fetch' all the men on deck.
She went radiant to the saloon and examined the lovely flowers which had
been sent to wish her _bon voyage_. _Bon voyage!_ What irony!
These flowers are the very emblem of all that is going to happen to
her--bright, fresh, and erect as the boat starts; wet, withered,
drooping, and dripping, with no life left, twenty-four hours later.
She is present at the first meal, and declares to her neighbours that
things at sea are not so bad as some people pretend, and the Atlantic is
too often libelled. Besides, she is used to travelling, and she knows a
remedy for sea-sickness.
Before sailing she doctored herself. She took an infallible drug--a
rather unpleasant one, it is true; but what is that compared to the
benefit derived from it? Yes, an infallible remedy--at any rate, one
that succeeds nine times out of ten. Alas! this time is going to be the
tenth.
You get outside the harbour, and leave Sandy Hook behind you. She has
taken soup and fish. Somehow she now feels she has had enough. Her
appetite is satisfied, and she goes on deck. When you see her again, she
is lying on an easy-chair, packed as carefully and tightly as a valuable
clock that is to be sent to the Antipodes.
There she now lies, motionless, speechless, helpless, and hopeless,
wondering if the infallible remedy is going to fail. The yachting-cap is
no longer roguish and cocky, but hanging over her eyes, or her beautiful
hat is replaced by a tam-o'-shanter. The damp air has already taken away
all her curls, and her hair, straight as drum-sticks, is hanging in
front and behind, and, worse than all, she doesn't care. Provided you
don't speak to her, don't shake her, and don't ask her to move, she
doesn't care.
The boat is heaving. All the different parts of her anatomy go up with
the boat, but they all come down again one by one, and she has to gather
them together. She is at sea with a vengeance! Her husband is all right,
the brute! so is pretty Miss So-and-So, who is chatting with him, the
cat!
Their smiles and insulting pictures of health are more than she can
bear. She is a good Christian, but if only that girl could be sick, too!
What business has she to be well?
Of course, her husband has packed her up, tucked her in most carefully,
and placed grapes and iced soda-water within her reach. He has done his
duty, and now he makes himself scarce. Maybe he is flirting on the
weather side, maybe he is in the smoke-room having a game of piquet or
poker.
Anyway, he is all right, having a good time. Why isn't he sick, too?
For six or seven days, that bright American woman, who runs household,
husband, children, and servants with one glance of the eye, is at the
mercy of everyone who belongs to her, suffering agonies, tortures of
body and mind, and you would imagine that a boat sees her on the
Atlantic for the last time.
You would think that all the beauties of American scenery, its
seashores, lakes, and mountains, will attract her next season. Not a bit
of it. In order to be seen at the dreary funereal functions of Mayfair
and Belgravia, she will cross again. She goes where duty calls her. She
has to be 'in it' first, in the hope of soon being 'of it.'
And, in order to secure her social standing on a sure basis, twice a
year she will pack her belongings and suffer death agonies. The pluck
and power of endurance of women is perfectly prodigious.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SECRET OF WOMAN'S BEAUTY
The secret of a woman's beauty is not to be discovered in her
dressing-room, as cynics might intimate; it is not obtained by the use
of cosmetics, pomade, magic waters, and ointments; by the application of
red, white, and black, neither by painting nor dyeing; the real secret
of woman's beauty lies in resplendent health and a cheerful mind.
It was only a few days ago that I said to a lady, an intimate friend of
mine, who has just been promoted to the dignity of a grandmother: 'Won't
you make up your mind one of these days to look over thirty years of
age?' My lady friend is very beautiful, and she knows it; but she
carries her beauty without any affectation and bumptiousness.
She is simplicity personified, and if you were to talk to her about her
looks she would smile, and immediately beg you to kindly change the
subject of conversation. But we are old friends, and when I asked her to
tell me what she did, that I might tell others how she succeeded in
remaining young, fresh, and beautiful, she allowed me to insist.
'Well,' she said, 'let me tell you at once that I do not spend fifty
shillings a year in perfumery. I have always retired and risen early; I
have always done as much good as I have been permitted to do; I have
always frequented cheerful and happy people, read cheerful books, and
seen cheerful plays; I have always taken healthy exercise and indulged
in plenty of fresh air by day and night.
'But I should add: I have had the good luck of being born with a
cheerful disposition, and of being brought up by cheerful and happy
parents. I have always dearly enjoyed humour, and have always been able
to appreciate it. I am a philosopher.
'You say that I look thirty--well, I am forty-five; but if my body is
young, my mind is younger still, and I am perfectly sure that, when I am
a great-grandmother, I shall enjoy playing with a doll as much as any of
my little great-grand-daughters.'
And she went on giving me advice in minute details. Here are a few hints
which my lady readers might hear with profit:
HINT NO. 1
_Never expose your shoulders and arms to cold. When you leave a hot room
to go out in the open air, cover them most carefully so as to create on
your body an increase of temperature exactly equal to the difference
there exists between the indoor temperature you leave and the outdoor
one._
HINT NO. 2
_Avoid beds too soft and too much bed-clothing, which cause nightmares,
develop nervous irritation, and conduce to stoutness. Never have round
your beds curtains, except as an ornament, if you like, at the head; but
draw them in such a way that fresh air can circulate freely round your
head. Renew the air of your bedroom several times a day, and during the
night, however cold it may be, have one window slightly open, even if
you should be compelled to keep a fire all night._
HINT NO. 3
Your bedroom should never be at a temperature above sixty-five degrees.
HINT NO. 4
_A woman enjoying good health should sleep eight hours, nine at most,
and never less than seven. Sleep is a repairing balm which gives rest to
the muscles, the nerves, and all the organs. Late evening and night
sleeps are refreshing, but not so the sleep you may indulge in in the
morning, or the nap you may have in the afternoon. What you want is
uninterrupted sleep from eleven at night till seven in the morning. No
other sleep will keep you fresh and well._
HINT NO. 5
_Never go to bed hungry, although you wait till your indigestion is well
over. If you are hungry take some very light refreshment that you will
digest at once and without any difficulty._
HINT NO. 6
_No sleep is thoroughly sound and good unless your face assumes a
perfectly serene expression. To attain this end, do not allow your brain
to work at night, or your mind to be besieged by painful thoughts. Do or
read nothing exciting. Go to bed with pleasant thoughts and a quiet
mind._
I am sure my lady friend is right; for, consulting advice on hygiene in
a book written by a famous physician, I see that this great doctor
advises the following:
Substantial and digestible meals at regular times.
Very little liquids at meals, if any.
Well-aired rooms and cool bedrooms.
Plenty of fresh air and cold water.
Warm but light clothing.
Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
A contented mind.
A cheerful disposition.
Indulgence in deeds of generosity and charity.
Plenty of genial occupation.
Such is certainly the secret of health and cheerfulness, and the secret
of beauty, which is the reflection of both.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DURATION OF BEAUTY
Descartes, Montesquieu, Scribe, Stahl, and many other famous writers of
modern times, not to speak of philosophers of antiquity, have decried
beauty, and warned mankind against its illusions, and especially its
short duration, without succeeding, I must say, in disgusting the world
out of it. True, beauty does not last for ever; but who would think of
singing the praises of ugliness because it does last? And, for that
matter, I am of opinion that beauty does last. I have known men quite
handsome at sixty, and women quite beautiful at the same age. And even
if it did not last, what of that? Are we not to admire the sun because
it is followed by night and obscurity? Are we to despise spring because
it is followed by winter one day?
Wise parents say to young men: 'Be sure you do not marry a woman for the
sake of her beauty. Marry a woman for her lasting qualities, not for
such an ephemeral one as beauty.' Upon my word, to hear some people
talk, you would imagine that the beauty of a woman is a thing that lasts
a year at most. The beauty of a happy woman who loves and is loved
lasts thirty years at least, and the beauty of some women is such that
if it only lasted a year, it would be sufficient to leave about a man
for his life a fragrance that all the roses of the world put together
could give but a faint idea of.
Nobody complains that peaches are not as big as pumpkins, and therefore
do not last so long. Some peaches arrived at their full maturity are so
excellent that, although they only make two 'swallows,' you not only
enjoy eating them, but you long remember the beautiful taste they had.
I must say that nobody is the dupe of all the diatribes which are hurled
at beauty, women still less than men. It has always been, and still is,
and always will be, the wish of women to be beautiful, and the wish of
men to see women beautiful. Even Ernest Renan, whom nobody would have
ever accused of frivolity, joined the ranks, and said that the first
duty of woman was to try and look beautiful. Let a woman hear that, in
speaking of her, you have said that she was bad-tempered, giddy, silly,
extravagant, everything you like, but that you have acknowledged that
she was exceedingly beautiful, and I will warrant that you have not made
an enemy of that woman. She may keep a grudge against you, but not for
long. But let that woman hear that you have owned that she was sweet,
dutiful, clever, devoted, and possessed of all the domestic virtues, but
that she was far from being beautiful, you will discover you have made
a bitter enemy for the rest of your natural life.
The great attributes of a woman are the beauty of her face and figure,
the brilliancy of her mind, and the qualities of her heart. But when a
woman is not beautiful, other women will never discuss the good opinion
you may have of her mental attainments and sweet disposition. They will
leave her in peaceful possession of all these qualities; but if you
praise her beauty in terms of ecstasy before them--lo, they will form
the square and fight until the last cartridge is used. It is beauty, not
cleverness or virtue, that makes women jealous of other women. And when
the beauty of a woman is perfectly indisputable, and it is almost
impossible for them to find the slightest fault either with her face or
her figure, then they declare that, unfortunately, her beauty is one
which will not last. The dear women! how they wish they could possess
that beauty, were it but for a day!
CHAPTER XXV
THE WOMAN 'GOOD FELLOW'--A SOCIETY TYPE
The woman who belongs to the 'jolly good fellow' type is frank and
sincere, and as steady in her friendships as the most perfect gentleman.
In love, she is disappointing, if not absolutely a fraud. Indeed, the
idea of her possibly falling in love would seem to her quite as funny as
it would to other people. She is of a cool temperament.
In friendship, her heart is set in the right place; in love, it is deaf
and dumb.
She is fond of good living and of gaieties of all sorts, both in town
and country. She prefers the society of men to that of women. She is no
coquette, but has no objection to flirting--in fact, she enjoys it, and
all the more that she knows it cannot make her run the least danger. 'It
amuses men,' she thinks, 'and it doesn't hurt me.'
She sleeps, eats, drinks, dresses, rides, drives, dances, smokes, talks,
laughs, and throws her money out of every window from the garret to the
cellar.
People enjoy her society because she is cheerful and gay, a bright
conversationalist, generally pretty, always elegant and fashionable,
and most exquisitely dressed. She is unconventional, and the men like
her for it; she seldom indulges in silly gossip, and the women are
grateful to her for it. In fact, she is popular with men and women
alike, because neither of them has anything to fear from her. The hearts
of men and the reputations of women are safe in her hands; she does no
damage to either.
Most people think that this type of woman is the happiest. As a girl,
yes, perhaps; but not after twenty-five. The woman 'jolly fellow' very
often makes all that noise in order to shake off her thoughts. If her
heart is unable to speak and unable to hear, the reason often is that it
is dead.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE WOMAN 'GOSSIP'
Men and women who retail slander, whether it has any foundation or not,
ought to be unmercifully boycotted by all decent people; and, to be
just, I will say that there is as much gossip, and of the worst kind,
too, going on in men's club smoking-rooms as there is at afternoon
tea-gatherings. Great, though scarce, is the woman who can keep other
people's secrets as safely as her own. And how watchful women should be,
and constantly be on their guard, always mindful that not more than one
man out of ten can keep a secret. I mean _his own_.
There are many women who gossip and retail scandal, not out of
wickedness or with the intention of hurting anyone, but for the mere
sake of being entertaining at the dinner-table or round the tea-tray.
When she makes her appearance people welcome her, and say: 'Oh, here is
Mrs. A----; she is so amusing; we'll hear some good story.' Knowing that
she has a reputation to sustain, she prepares her stories before
starting on her visits, and gives them an artistic and piquant finishing
touch that will make them go down successfully. Being fairly
good-hearted, she begins by warning you that she is only repeating what
is 'going on,' and 'does not know for certain.' She only wishes to be
amusing and entertaining, you understand, and does not mean to do injury
to any woman. Oh dear, no! she is a bit of an actress in an amateurish
sort of way, and if she exaggerates she asks you to put it down to the
account of Art. As long as people are entertained by gossip there will
be people to gossip for their benefit. Now, men and women who repeat
scandal which is true do harm enough, goodness knows, but the most
dangerous ones are those who repeat what they have heard, which gossip
will be repeated and 'improved' until it gets to gigantic proportions.
Slander generally takes refuge behind such platitude as, 'Of course, I
have not seen it; I only repeat what I have heard.'
Who says those things?--Why, everybody.
Everybody?--Everybody; that's enough.
Please mention a name.--Well, I am afraid I can't.
But where have you heard such a thing?--Everywhere.
Can't you be precise? Is it in a private house?--I forget.
In a restaurant?--I don't know.
At a cafe? At a club? Perhaps in a theatre?--Yes, I think it was in a
theatre.
What a cure--temporary, at least, if not to last for ever--to look the
'gossip,' man or woman, straight in the face, and say: 'Scandal-mongers
are the most despicable parasites and scoundrels of society!' and you
may be sure that, at least, is a statement which the 'gossip' will not
repeat.
There is a law of libel practically in every civilized country to
protect people against having their character stained at the will and
for the pleasure of their fellow-creatures, but for the life of me I
cannot see why libel should be libel, and thus punishable by law, only
when it is published in a newspaper or written on a postcard. The worst
libel, the one that does most injury, is the one that goes from house to
house by word of mouth. To say a libellous thing is quite as bad as to
write it down; it is even worse, because what is written often escapes
notice, and the law should reach the libeller whether he has committed
the offence with his mouth or with his pen.
CHAPTER XXVII
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
We all of us have heard of people falling madly in love at first sight,
men especially. No doubt there are men who are exceedingly susceptible,
passionate, artistic, and ardent natures, who may take a violent fancy
for a woman on seeing her for the first time; but I decline to call such
a fancy love, and woe to the woman who marries such a man, for there is
no guarantee for her that he will not many times again take such violent
fancies for other women; indeed, there is every probability that he
will.
I would always advise a woman, or at all events always wish her, to
marry a lover and admirer of her sex, but a man who madly falls in love
with women at first sight, never. There is no steadiness in that man, no
solidity, no reliability, no possible fidelity in him. He is erratic and
unmanly. He may be a good poet, a talented artist, a very good actor,
but certainly he will never be a good husband, not even a decent one.
There are women who are proud to say that they inspired ardent love at
first sight. They should not be proud of it, for it is only the love of
a reflecting, lofty man that should make a woman proud. Men may feel
immediate admiration for a woman.
In the presence of certain beautiful women I have felt ready to fall
into ecstasies of admiration, as I have in the presence of Niagara
Falls, Vesuvius in eruption, the Venus of Milo, or any other grand
masterpiece of nature and art; but I have never felt that I could, or
must, right away implore them to marry me or let me die at their feet.
To fall in love at first sight is a great proof of weakness of mind, of
utter absence of self-control, and of wretched unmanliness. I believe I
may affirm, without the fear of contradiction, that love at first sight
has never proved to be love of long duration.
How can we imagine that a solid affection can be the result of a caprice
felt for a person whom you had never seen before, and of whose character
you are absolutely ignorant? In certain cases affection may follow a
first impression, but only when she can inspire as much affection by her
merit as she could produce a good impression by her charms. Only in this
case can love become sincere and profound. To form at once a charming
impression of a woman is not to fall madly in love with her.
How much preferable is that love gradually increasing through the better
knowledge of the beloved one! It is no longer an ephemeral fancy, but a
solid affection. In order to love well and truly, you must know well and
thoroughly. There must be between people in love that blind confidence,
that complete _abandon_, which can only be born of the sweet habit to
constantly see each other and to understand each other better and better
every day. With such love you can brave all obstacles, but with a
caprice it vanishes at the first violent storm.
Sincere, serious love is never love at first sight. When one look--and
the first one, too--binds a man and a woman, you may be sure that one
single word will soon be sufficient to unbind them. Lasting love comes
slowly, progressively. Heart alone has never been particularly
successful unless in partnership with that sober and wise counsellor
that is called Reason. No love is placed on a solid basis which is not
governed by reason as well as by the heart.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN
I have just digested a most interesting book by M. Novicow, entitled
'L'Affranchisement de la Femme.' This is a very serious subject, and I
feel sure that I need not apologize for treating it with all the
earnestness of which I am capable.
In a society organized in conformity with the nature of things, woman
will be brought up, from infancy, with the same object in view as
man--that is to say, in order to learn how to live by her work. And so
it should be, since work is the universal law of biology. Every living
creature, from the invisible microbe to the most powerful animal, works
unceasingly to assure its existence. Work being the law of Nature, to
remain idle is to resist that law and to be immoral.
Woman must become an independent economic unity. There is nothing
revolutionary in this; on the contrary, it is a most conservative idea.
The leisure class does not represent one-thousandth part of society, and
999 out of every 1,000 women have, or should have, to work to support
themselves or help to support their families.
From time immemorial women have worked in families, in manufactures,
offices, in the fields, either as mistresses of houses, as helps, or as
servants.
If woman has to be recognised as an independent economic unity, her
education should enable her to earn her living, and, whether she gets
married or not, she ought always to be ready to support herself without
the help of man. Knowledge of every description should be placed at her
disposal by the State, as well as at the disposal of man.
This is not all. Not only should she receive an education enabling her
to make a livelihood, but also one enabling her to direct her steps in
life in the right direction. She should be told the mysteries of life,
and the role she is called upon to play in life. In our times the ideal
young girl is the one who knows nothing. This ideal is absolutely false,
and creates the greatest source of danger in existence that stares women
in the face. This ideal was created by the monstrous selfishness of man,
who reserved to himself the satisfaction, the pleasure (only a rake's
pleasure) of teaching her in one moment what, little by little, without
shock, she should learn without astonishment.
It is innocence that disarms women and hands them over, defenceless, to
the most odious and revolting attempts to corrupt them. When we suppose
nowadays that a girl knows too much of the mysteries of love, we think
she is depraved; but degradation does not come from the knowledge of
certain things--it comes from the mysterious and unhealthy way in which
that knowledge is sometimes imparted.
If she were told openly, in full daylight, all she should know of the
role Nature has given her to play, she would not be depraved.
When a young girl shall have received from a rational society an
education that will enable her to live independently by her work, and to
behave to the best of interests, what will she do?
Well, she will do exactly what men do. The rich ones will manage their
own fortune, and will engage in pursuits, civil, political, and
intellectual. They will embrace professions, be writers, lawyers,
artists, doctors, professors, and so on. All the careers will be open to
them. In humbler stations of life, she will be clerk, shop-woman,
work-woman, servant, labourer, etc. In fact, no woman will be prevented
from entering a career for which she has aptitude, and, by so doing, no
intellectual force will be lost to society.
For instance, we have lately heard, in Europe, of a young American girl
passing a brilliant examination for naval engineering, who presented the
model of a ship far superior to anything known up to date. With the new
system a woman will not be prevented from building ships for the State
because she is a woman. This will not only be justice to woman, but
justice to society, which has a right to benefit by the genius of all
its members, whether they be men or women.
Now let us examine what will become of society if all these
transformations take place. When all the liberal professions and
political functions are exercised by men and women alike, women will be
members of Parliament, of chambers of commerce, of literary and
scientific academies, and will sit by the side of men, as, in America,
at schools and colleges, girls sit by the side of boys. On this account
America will be the first country to get quickly reconciled to the new
state of things.
The activity of women will be as indispensable to nations and their
success as that of men. But I see other consequences. Women being no
longer dependent on men, people will be no more concerned about the
private life of an unmarried man. A woman who has committed
indiscretions will not be called a woman with a past, but, may be, one
with experience.
It is even just possible that men will feel more flattered to be chosen
by them. They will repeat the word of Balzac, that a woman loves any
first man who makes love to her, and that there is nothing in this to
make a man feel proud; and Alphonse Karr goes as far as Ninon de Lenclos
when he says that the only love that a man may feel proud of is that of
a 'woman of experience.'
Another thing, and a very important point. Woman, in this future system,
will be so busy with her occupations as a bread-winner that she will
have very little time to devote to love.
'Woman lives by love and for love' will be thought an absurdity. She
will come across love in her way through life. She will stop or pass on,
according to her fancy, just as man does at present. She will not be
taught early that woman was born to be a mother, and that she has
constantly to keep her artillery in good order so as to bring down a
man.
For that matter, it is just possible that, in those days, it will be
women who will propose to men. I should not regret to see it for the
sake of the happiness of mankind, because I maintain that woman is a far
keener individual than man, and that a woman is much better able to
choose the right husband than a man the right wife.
Of course, the frivolous woman, the doll, will have ceased to exist, and
the woman will cease to be considered what she is in Turkey and Persia,
an instrument of pleasure.
The author assures us that when his system is put into practice, it will
work so well that society will discover that it has reached a climax,
the advent of happy and perfect civilization.
* * * * *
Well, if it does, all I can say is that what consoles me for getting old
is the thought that I shall not be there to see it.
CHAPTER XXIX
SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?
This momentous question has been asked, and is daily answered, in a
Paris paper called _La Fronde_, on the staff of which all the writers
are women. This is a very delicate question to ask, and I am not sure
that it is particularly politic to do so on the part of women.
That women take love more seriously than men is a fact which, I believe,
is incontestable; but what would become of women if men were to decide
in the negative and answer that love should not be taken seriously?
Their only protection, their only weapon would be taken away from them.
See what happens in countries, not civilized, I must quickly add, where
men do not take love seriously.
In these countries there is practically no difference between a woman
and a slave, and even a beast of burden. The Arab, the Kaffir, the Zulu,
the Soudanese, can be seen on horseback, or walking majestically with a
blanket slung over his shoulder, while his womankind are following,
carrying a baby on their backs, a pail of water or a cask of beer on
their heads, and the rest of the burden in their hands.
These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as
women, and their greatest source of amusement is to see a white man
carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man!
* * *
They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these
men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women
think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would
probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not
subject, and even enslave, us to women.
Indeed, this would be our right--our Divine right--and women, I repeat,
are very impolitic to compel us to remind them of what happened at the
beginning.
We men have a Divine right to rule over women, and if we use that power
given to us only with the greatest moderation, it is because we love
women seriously.
This love for you, ladies, is your only safeguard. See how imprudent of
you it is to come and ask us if we take love seriously.
Not only do we take love seriously, but I believe that there is nothing
else in this world that is taken so seriously.
Love is the only universally serious thing in the world. Ask scientists
what they think of actors. They will tell you that there is no such
despicable profession in the world. Yet actors--and rightly, too--take
their art seriously.
Literature and music appear to those who cultivate them the most
absolutely serious things in existence, yet men of business, whose chief
object in life is money-making, shrug their shoulders, and feel ready to
say, like a London Lord Mayor to his son, who wanted to devote his life
to literature: 'I will be very much obliged to you if you will decide on
choosing an honest and respectable calling.'
What is serious to some is not to others. There is nothing in this world
which is universally serious--that is to say, recognised as serious by
all the civilized members of the human race, except bread and love.
The mission of man is to keep it alive with bread, and we perpetuate it
with love. When we have eaten and when we have loved, we have fulfilled
our mission. All the rest is accessory, and only more or less serious.
Poets and artists, who help make life beautiful, are not indispensable;
they are not serious. Scientists, who make great discoveries, help make
life more comfortable; they protect us against disease; they drug us;
they cure us, but they are not indispensable--the world would go on
without them; they are not serious.
* * *
Only as long as there is bread and there is love will the world go on
and the earth continue to be inhabited by the human race; bread and love
are serious.
I fear that I may have offended many people who think that they are
indispensable and that their vocation is serious. Well, I am very
sorry--very sorry indeed--but I cannot help it. The world was made thus,
and when it was made I was not consulted.
Put aside a few men and women, most of them to be found in the leisure
class or among the parasites of society, for whom love is a pastime, and
you will find that love is taken very seriously by men, if not quite in
the same way as it is taken by women, who are more delicate and refined
psychologists than men generally are.
But, my dear ladies, as long as we men are only too proud and happy to
fight the battle of life for you, to live for you, and, when occasion
arises, sometimes die for you, please thank the progress of
civilization, which has made us forget the origin of our relations
toward each other; do not give us reasons for reminding you of it, and,
for Heaven's sake! when we have spent years working twelve hours a day,
providing you with all the comforts, and often the luxuries, of life,
reared and settled in the world a large family of boys and girls, do not
come and ask us if we take love seriously. You are adding insult to
injury. Yes, indeed, we take love seriously, and matrimony too.
CHAPTER XXX
ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN?
'You are often writing about women,' fair correspondents keep writing to
me, 'sometimes praising them, often criticising them. Couldn't you now
and then tell us something of what you think of men, especially in their
relations with women? We know you to be fair, sometimes generous, always
good-humoured. Now, do have a try.'
The invitation is tempting and intended to be pleasant, and I yield to
it, not only without any reluctance, but with a good deal of pleasure.
To plunge _in medias res_, Are men fair to women? The laws, which are
made by men, the usages--everything is calculated to cause men to reduce
to a minimum the qualities, the intelligence, and the influence of
women.
For instance, let a woman make a reputation in art or literature, and
men begin to smile and shrug their shoulders: they dispute her talent.
I maintain, without much fear of contradiction, that a woman, in order
to succeed in a profession, must have ten times more talent than a man,
inasmuch as a man will have friends and comrades to help him, and a
woman only difficulties put in her way by man to surmount.
Man receives encouragements from all sides. If he is successful, he even
knows that his talent will receive official recognition. In France he
may become a member of the French Academy; in England, of the Royal
Academy. Orders will be given him by rich patrons, and 'orders'
conferred on him by sovereigns and statesmen.
Why should not women get all this? Why, simply because man, being both
'verdict' and 'execution,' has kept everything for himself. Personally,
I have no great liking for female genius--to my prejudiced mind a female
genius is a freak; but what I like or do not like is quite out of the
question. Here I state facts, and why women should not have as much
chance to prove their genius as men I should like to know.
Everybody knows that the famous School of Alexandria, in the fifth
century, had as orators and teachers the greatest philosophers and
theologians of the time, such men as St. Jerome, St. Cyril, etc.
Among these sublime intellects rose a young girl, twenty years old,
pure, radiantly beautiful, who modestly said to them:
'Please make room for me--hear me. I want my place in the glorious sun.'
She ascended the famous chair and began to explain before an
enthusiastic crowd the works of Plato and Aristotle. Her talent, her
learning, her eloquence astonished the people who thronged to hear young
and fair Hypatia, daughter of Theo.
Now, do you believe that all those learned, bearded philosophers and
theologians encouraged her, applauded her? No. History tells us they lay
in wait in a street where she used to pass, and when she appeared in her
chariot, resplendent with youth, beauty, and glory, acclaimed by the
crowd, they--St. Cyril and his companions--seized her, killed her, cut
her body in hundreds of pieces, which they threw to the four winds of
the earth.
Now, modern Hypatias are not treated quite so roughly by men, who
content themselves with turning them to ridicule, although I have heard
of some who did not hesitate in disposing of successful women's
reputations as the learned doctors of Alexandria disposed of the body of
Hypatia.
Women, perhaps unfortunately, cannot all be intended to be mothers, or
spend their lives mending socks and attending to spring house-cleaning.
Such women, who have received a high education, may not feel inclined to
be shop-girls, ladies'-maids, or cooks. If they feel that they have
talent, and can paint or write successfully, every man ought to give
them a helping hand.
CHAPTER XXXI
A PLEA FOR THE WORKING WOMAN
'There are too many men in the world,' once exclaimed H. Taine. This
was only a joke, but there is a great deal of truth in it. There are,
in France especially, far too many men engaged in official Government
offices, in professional occupations, and in stores; too many doctors
without patients; too many lawyers without briefs; too many
functionaries, each doing little or nothing, and the others seeing that
he does it; too many men in stores showing women dresses, silks, and
gloves.
And the woman hater exclaimed: 'No wonder men cannot find a living to
make; all the occupations that once were filled by men are now
monopolized by women. The hearth is deserted, the street crowded--that's
the triumph of modern feminism.'
On the other hand some feminists, more royalist than the King, exclaim:
'Woman should be kept in clover, the protegee of humanity, and never be
allowed to work.'
And, taken between two fires, poor women are ready to shout at the top
of their voices, 'Save us from our friends as well as from our enemies!'
It is a fact that at a recent congress of Socialists an orator declared
himself in favour of the suppression of work for women.
But women do want to work, and many of them married, too. If what
husbands earn is not enough to maintain the family or keep it in
comfort, they are partners, and they wish to contribute to the revenue.
If they are not married, they want to support themselves or help to keep
aged parents. Many of them prefer their independence to matrimony, which
not uncommonly turns out to be about the hardest way for a woman to get
a living.
Women have a right to work as they have a right to live, and every work
which is suitable for women should be open to them. And when I see
Lancashire make girls work in the coal-mines I may ask, 'What work is
there that women cannot do?'
God forbid that I should be in favour of women working in the mines, but
this is not necessary. There are so many men who do a kind of work that
women should do, and could do just as well, if not better, that there
should be no question of any kind of work done by women which men could
do better.
The earth was meant to keep her children, and she would if everybody,
man or woman, was in his or her right place. The supply is all there and
all right, but it is its distribution which is all wrong. The same may
be said of work.
There should be in this world work for all and bread for all, men or
women, only the poor inhabitants of this globe have not yet been able to
obtain a proper division of the goods which they have inherited from
nature.
Thanks to the discoveries of science and the openings of new markets,
opportunities for work increase every day, but men and women are like
children in a room full of toys--they all make a rush for those which
tempt them most, and fight and die in order to obtain them. In the
presence of all the careers open to them, they rush toward the most easy
to follow or the most brilliant.
Agriculture is forsaken by men who prefer swaggering in towns with
top-hats and frock-coats, instead of imitating in their own country the
virile, valiant men of the new worlds who fell forests, reclaim the
land, and are the advanced pioneers of civilization. They prefer being
clerks or shop assistants.
Instead of taking a pickaxe, working a piece of land and making it their
own, they prefer taking a pen and adding from 9 a.m. till 5 or 6 p.m.
pounds and shillings which do not belong to them. The result is that
they overcrowd the cities, and women can often obtain no work except on
condition that they accept it for a smaller remuneration than would be
offered to men, or, in other words, submit to being sweated.
Is it a manly occupation to be assistant in a draper's store, to be a
hairdresser, copyist, to make women's dresses, hats, corsets? When I see
in dry goods stores a great big man over six feet high measure ribbons
or lace, instead of tilling the soil or doing any other kind of manly
work, I want to say to him, 'Aren't you a man?'
Europe is full of men doing such work. I know America is not, although I
have many times seen in the United States positions filled by men which
would be filled equally well by women, and often better.
Many writers maintain that woman was intended to tread on a path of
roses, to be tended, petted--I may have been myself guilty of holding
views somewhat in this direction--but women are not all born in
'society'; millionaires are very few, and people whom you may call rich
form after all but a very small minority in the whole community. The
path of roses can only exist for the very few, and, besides, there are
women whose aim in life is not to be petted. In fact, some absolutely
object to being petted.
I tell you the time is coming, and coming at giant strides, when every
child--boy or girl--will be made early to choose the kind of work he or
she best feels ready to undertake to make a living. The time is coming
when no poverty will stare in the face the woman who can and is willing
to work.
Maybe the time is coming when a woman who bravely earns a good living
will be considered not only most respectable--she is that now--but will
be envied for her 'social standard' by the frivolous, useless women who,
from morning to night, yawn and wonder how they could invent anything to
make them spend an hour usefully for their good or the good of their
fellow-creatures.
CHAPTER XXXII
A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
The women's-righters are so often accused, and justly, too, of trying to
disturb the equilibrium of happiness in family life, that they should
immediately be praised when they do something likely to establish it on
a firmer basis.
In Paris they have just succeeded in starting, under the best and
happiest auspices, schools where girls will be taught how to bring up
babies and how to keep house. When it is considered that, out of about a
million children which are born annually, over 260,000 die before the
age of five, it calls for the utmost care in the watchfulness and habits
of parents with regard to young children.
Of all European countries, it is perhaps in France that mortality among
babies is largest. France is being depopulated, or at least is not
increasing her population. Enough children are born, but not enough are
brought to grown-up age. This problem, over the solution of which our
legislators are very anxious, is vital to France. It will not be solved
by laws enacted, congresses held, and leagues founded. It will be
solved by a reform in the manners and habits of the people, by making
marriage easier, by marrying for love more often, and by teaching French
women that the first duty of a mother is to raise her children herself,
and the second to know how to do it. This new school, just established
in France, will help in the right direction.
The teaching of household duties will also tend to make marriages
happier by enabling wives to be more clever and economical. If we
consider that in England and France, which each has a population of
about 40,000,000, only about 100,000 men in each country have an income
of more than L500 a year, it will soon be clear that the great problem
of happiness can only be solved by the good management of wives.
Girls will be taught family hygiene, domestic economy, and the art of
cooking, including that of utilizing the remnants of a previous meal.
They will be taught how to 'shop' intelligently; that is to say, to
distinguish good material from shoddy, and thus obtain the worth of
their money. They will, I hope, also be taught how to make a bargain, a
talent which I must say is practically inborn in every French woman of
the middle and lower classes. No woman in the world knows as she does
how to bring down the price of things to what she wants it to be, in
Paris especially.
Perhaps they will advise her to do what I would advise every visitor to
Italy. I take it that you do not speak Italian. Never mind that; three
words will serve your purpose perfectly. When you are in an Italian
shop and you ask the price of an article you wish to buy, say to the man
'_Quanto_?' (how much?); as soon as he has named it, say '_Troppo_' (too
much). Then he will say something else. Just remark '_Mezzo_' (half
that), and then pay, and you will find that the shopkeeper has still 40
or 50 per cent. profit.
When I consider that women's-righters, as a rule, complain bitterly of
men for being of opinion that the only thing which young girls should
think about is to prepare to become one day good wives and mothers, I
believe that great credit should be given to them for having had the
idea of starting schools where young girls will be taught all the duties
of attentive mothers and economical wives.
* * *
I had the privilege of being present at one lecture on the training of
children, and among all the good things which I heard on the occasion I
will quote the following, which may be of great use, even to my English
readers.
1. Never threaten children with punishments you may not be able or feel
inclined to carry out. Don't let your 'yea' mean 'nay,' nor your 'nay'
'yea.' You must never be fickle or wavering in your dealing with them,
but always firm, just, and reliable, though kind and indulgent. Don't
punish them, and then regret it, and afterwards fondle them as if to ask
for their pardon. If you do, you will run the risk of having your child
say to you: 'Ah, you see, mamma, you are sorry for what you have done.
Instead of scolding me, I think you ought to thank God for giving me to
you!'
2. Don't make mountains of molehills, or be constantly down upon
children for little breaches of every-day discipline; don't be fidgety
and fussy. Never offer them a piece of candy, a bun, or an orange as a
reward for virtues, or as a bribe to cease being naughty.
Then came a few pieces of advice of a higher order, and which I thought
were sound in their philosophy. Among these I cull the following:
1. Do not expect your children to become a joy to you in your old age if
you have failed to be a joy to them in their early life and training. Do
not expect them to support you when you are old. You had a fair start of
them in life, and you should be able to provide for yourselves. They
will very likely have families of their own. Children are often sadly
thrown back through having to look after parents who, had they taken
time by the forelock, would have been able to look after themselves, and
to have given their children a nudge onward into the bargain. For that
matter, never have to be grateful to your children, except for the
happiness they may procure you by their affection and the successes
which they meet with in life, thanks to the education, money, advice,
and what not which you may have given to them.
2. Don't let your vanity cheat you into the belief that your children
are wonders and exceptional phenomena, and that Nature's ordinary rules
are not applicable to them.
In the nursery lecture on baby culture I retained two or three pieces of
advice which seemed to me remarkably good, although my ignorance would
not have enabled me to give them. Young mothers, please listen:
1. Don't squeeze your baby's head.
2. Never allow your child to go to bed in a bad temper.
3. Never encourage it to gaze into the fire, and never tell it
ghost stories, at night especially.
4. Do not allow a rocking-horse before the age of five.
5. Never startle a child by sudden shrieks or any other noises.
6. In fact, quiet and diet will be the making of a child strong
in mind and body.
I could fill several pages of this book with all the good things I heard
on the occasion of my visit to that useful school.
Maybe, one day such schools will be started in other countries. I
recommend this to the women's-righters of the United States.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE WORST FEATURE OF WOMEN AS A SEX
Only a few days ago, while calling on a lady of my acquaintance, the
conversation fell on a lady singer whom the public admired and applauded
for many years, and whose private character made her also a great
favourite in society. She left the operatic stage a good many years ago,
and went on the concert platform under the management of her husband,
who was a well-known _impresario_. One day her voice failed her, and so
did her husband, who, realizing there was no more money in his wife,
thought that the best thing he could do now was to leave her. With this,
however, he was not satisfied. A so-called London society paper, having
published a paragraph to the effect that he had left his wife without
any provision, this unspeakable cur wrote to all the papers denying that
he had ever been married to that beautiful woman, who for years had
loved him, who had not only been faithful to him and devoted to him, but
had entirely supported him.
People in England were so indignant that I remember the man had
immediately to leave all the clubs he was associated with, and that
the beautiful and talented woman, who had been so shamefully deceived,
inspired such keen sympathy that she was more than ever sought in
society, where her reputation was so firmly established that the letters
written to the papers could not put a stain on her character. In spite
of my reminding my lady friend of all the incidents of the case, the
only sympathy I could extract from her was the following remark, 'She
should have expected all this,' almost to the tune of, 'She only got
what she deserved.' Then, starting to philosophize, she added: 'A woman
should know that the man who wickedly wrongs her does not mean to marry
her; and if a woman will live with a man without being his wife, she
must be prepared to bear the consequences of her folly, and to be one
day left in the lurch.'
'But,' I rejoined, 'do you mean to tell me that a woman who, purely out
of love, devotes her life to a man, has not a right to expect that man
to devote his life to her, to protect her, to make her future safe, and
all the more so because they are not married? I am afraid that what
makes those acts of desertion so frequent is the leniency shown by
society towards them, and the supreme contempt which women who are
legally married have for those who are not, and who are just as
respectable as they are, and very often a good deal more so.'
I am in business with many people who always had such confidence in me,
and I such confidence in them, that there were never any contracts
signed between us, and I do not think they are more afraid of my
breaking my engagements with them, because they have not my signature,
than I am of their breaking their promise to me, because I have in my
hands no contract duly signed, stamped, and witnessed.
Men who deceive men, who break with them contracts made only by word,
are ostracized from society. Why should men who deceive women be
received by it with open arms?
There are men of honour in the world, thank Heaven! and if men are
expected to act honourably towards their fellow-men, can you explain to
me why women should be found who think it quite natural that these same
men should not behave honourably, not even decently, towards women who
have placed their trust in them to the extent of not exacting their
signature on a contract?
The worst feature of women as a sex is the absence of free-masonry among
them. They stick together only for the redress of more or less imaginary
grievances; perhaps the only one really momentous to their sex--I mean
the desertion of trusting women by treacherous men--scarcely appeals to
them. The woman who has fallen through love and confidence will get no
sympathy from women, not even from the one who should give it to her--I
mean the one who has given herself to a man, not because she loved him,
but because he offered her money and matrimony.
Women who have in hand a contract of marriage signed, stamped, and
witnessed, are so inexorable towards their sex that they will--I am
ashamed to say it for them--rather take the part of men betrayers than
that of poor women betrayed.
CHAPTER XXXIV
IS HOMOEOPATHY A CURE FOR LOVE?
Since the publication of 'Her Royal Highness Woman' and 'Between
Ourselves,' some people, I am afraid, have somehow been under the
impression that I keep open a sort of Dr. Cupid's office, in which I
hold consultations on questions referring to love and matrimony; and I
have received many letters--far too many to answer--in which fair
correspondents in trouble have written for advice.
Only quite recently I received a letter from a lady, who writes: 'I am
madly in love with a man whom I cannot marry, but whom I have to see on
business almost every day; what should I do to be cured? Should I marry
another man who is now seeking my hand, who can offer me a very good
position, but whom I do not love?'
Now, here is a problem if you like: Can matrimony be administered as an
antidote? If so, in what doses?
To tell you the truth, I rather believe in homoeopathy--that is to
say, in the cure of the like by the like. You want to be cured of your
love for a man--why, love another; it is as simple as possible. Yes,
but the lady tells me she cannot love that other, yet she seems
inclined to 'swallow' him as an antidote. At any rate, she suggests that
she might do so, and I suppose she wants me to tell her whether she is
likely to be successful, if the cure will be effective and lasting.
Of course, there is more chance of happiness in a marriage which is
contracted between a man who loves a woman and a woman who does not love
him than in one contracted between a woman who loves a man and a man who
does not love her. Under the circumstances, a man, after entering
matrimonial life, is much more likely to win his wife's love than a
woman her husband's. I believe this to be so true as to be almost taken
for granted.
But, my dear lady correspondent, are you going to tell that man honestly
on what terms you are going to marry him? Are you going to trust to his
intelligence, his tact, his love, his devotion, to win your affections?
And are you going to do your utmost to help him? Surely you are not
going to deceive him, let him think you love him, and prepare for him
and for yourself a life of misery and wretchedness, and thus build your
married life on contempt and deceit, which will lead you to hate your
husband.
But enough of awful suppositions, for, between you and me, I can declare
that your case is much more hopeful than you think. The disease from
which you suffer--or, rather, from which you imagine that you
suffer--is quite curable, and is cured every day without having to
resort to such extreme measures as you suggest, for, dear lady, do you
not say to me that you love that man 'madly'?
Fireworks, shells, volcanic eruptions, and mad love have this in common:
they may do harm, cause suffering, but they last a short time only. And,
pray, why do you see the man on business every day? Is he your
confessor, your doctor, your music-teacher, your dancing-master? Has a
royal escapade of recent date, like a 'penny dreadful,' created a
disturbance in your otherwise well-balanced mind?
And why can't you marry him? Oh, I see, he is married already.
Now, are you aware that we never fall in love madly except with people
whom we cannot marry? You say you did not know that. I tell you you have
no idea how simple your case is, and how common.
By the way, would not, perchance, that man be the 'juvenile lead' who
acts in the romantic drama which is being played every day in your city?
Oh, you matinee girl! Are you aware that matinee girls invariably love
madly? Yes, as madly and as idiotically as do in the play the heroes
whom they worship.
Now, do not take tragically, or even seriously, such little clouds as
'mad love.' Do not use big words for very little things. Mad love is the
easiest love to cure. Change your doctor or your dancing-master, or--if
I have otherwise guessed right--patronize another theatre. Go and see
'Hamlet'--that will cure you of 'Romeo.'
Then look more carefully at that very sensible man who offers you
marriage and a good position, and if you realize that you can make him
happy, and you are sure you are not madly in love with him, marry him.
And if you study him very closely and discover in him qualities and
attainments that may lead you to fall in love with him madly, don't tell
him: he might believe you.
Men are so silly!
CHAPTER XXXV
DOMESTIC TYRANTS AND THEIR POOR WIVES
The domestic tyrant has redeeming features. As a rule he does not beat
his wife.
He feeds her well, clothes her decently, and is faithful to her. When
she is ill he sends for the doctor, and does not grumble unless her
convalescence should last too long. He does not want her to die, because
she consents to be his housekeeper without wages and allows him to get
out of her all the work that can possibly be extracted from one being
who does not claim the protection of the 'eight-hour' law.
He has enough self-control to resist the temptation of insulting her. He
treats her coolly, patronizingly, and keeps her at a respectful
distance, lest she should take liberties with him.
He is dull, solemn, conceited and selfish. When he joins the family
circle, wife and children have to be busy and silent, the only noise
allowed being the rustling of the newspaper he reads. He takes the lamp,
the only one on the table, and places it just behind his shoulder, so as
to light his paper well. His wife--poor cat! who has to see in the
dark--goes on with her sewing as best she can. The children remain
motionless and speechless until it is time to go to bed. Then they
smile, say good-night, and run away like culprits.
When he goes out the children speak above a whisper, and the women of
the family breathe and express an opinion among themselves, an act of
audacity which they would never think of indulging in in his presence;
and life goes merrily until someone, with a face a yard long, rushes in
and announces 'Father is coming!' The domestic tyrant is invariably
called 'Father' by the wife as well as by the children, and the word is
spelt with a capital 'F,' and the 'a' is sounded as if there were a
dozen French circumflex accents on the top of it.
The domestic tyrant is neither a lazy man nor a drunkard, nor anything
that is bad. On the contrary, he is a moral man. As a rule he does not
even smoke, and that is what makes him so powerful against reproach.
What can you say to a man who is steady, sober, intelligent,
hard-working, stingy perhaps, but asks forgiveness for that on the plea
that he has a large family to secure the future of? Outside of his house
he has a very good reputation; he is invariably called a good husband
and a good father. He invariably speaks well of his wife. Before
strangers, before friends and relatives, in her very presence, he will
sing her praises and extol her virtues, and will constantly repeat that
for industry he does not know a woman who could compete with her. That
is the way he encourages her in the path of duty. The domestic tyrant
is particularly great on duty, and when he and his wife are alone, and
there is nobody else to hear him, he tells her that he fulfils his
duties, and that surely he can expect 'females' to perform theirs. For
him, women are 'females.' His wife alone can tell you what he really is,
and on the subject this is the information you will receive from her:
'I have to be his slave for twenty-four hours a day, work for him,
humour him, and, most especially, I must never complain of being ill,
or even mention that I am tired. I have never had from him a word of
pity, of condolence, or even of sympathy. I have never received
encouragements. I have never heard a word of praise from his lips.
'On the other hand, it takes very little to discourage him and make him
lose his high spirits. If anything has gone wrong with his business
during the day, he comes home frowning, snarling, quarrelsome, looking
for more trouble and grievances. He does not use me as a consoling
companion in the hour of misfortune or as a comforter in moments of
annoyance. No; he looks upon me as a target at which he can aim all his
bitterness.'
And she will tell you much more than that. She will probably tell you
that the larger the family gets, the more he is pleased, because it
gives her less and less chance of finding time to leave her home.
He goes out when he likes, where he likes, and would never think of
asking her, 'Won't you come along?' You never see them out together.
Poor thing! life would be tolerable to her if they were never in
together.
It would never enter the domestic tyrant's mind to ask his wife if she
is able to do her work alone, whether he can help her in this or that,
or simply inquire, in a sympathetic manner, whether she doesn't feel
tired after her day's work.
If he should hear complaints from her he has a beautiful phrase ready
for an answer: 'What did my mother do? What did your mother do? I am
sure you are not worse off than they were.'
This moral man, the domestic tyrant, is not uncommonly dyspeptic, and
bad digestion has been the cause of more unhappy marriages than all the
immorality of the world put together.
PART II
RAMBLES IN MATRIMONY
CHAPTER I
ADVICE TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE
The great art, the great science of happiness, in matrimony especially,
is never to expect of life more than it can give. Therefore, prepare
your nest in such a way that the provisions will not be exhausted in a
few weeks. From the very beginning, put on the brake, or the car will go
too fast, and will get smashed.
* * * * *
Economize your caresses, rule your passions so as never to make more
promises than you can keep. You cannot always work unless now and then
you take a rest, a holiday; neither can you always love unless you
proceed quietly and occasionally take a holiday. Be sure that a holiday
is as necessary to make you enjoy blissful times as it is to make you
endure hard ones.
* * * * *
Do not for a moment believe that happiness in matrimony can go on for
ever and ever without calculation, without a great display of diplomacy
on the part of both husband and wife. Avoid being too constantly the
lover of your wife, because the lover-husband is such a revelation to a
woman that when the day arrives--the fatal day!--on which the husband
remains alone and the lover has ceased to exist, your wife will forget
everything you may have done for her: your constant attentions, your
assiduity to your profession or business, your forethought for her
future and that for her children--all that will count for nothing when
she realizes that the lover is gone.
* * * * *
Never allow a third person to interfere with your private affairs. Never
confide your little troubles and grievances to anybody. Beware of the
advising lady who would say to you: 'If I were in your place, I would
not allow him to do this or to do that.' First of all, she is not in
your place; secondly, she cannot be in your place, because she is
neither in your heart nor in that of your husband.
* * * * *
You are the best judge--in fact, you are the only judge--of what is best
for you to do in the presence of the many little difficulties that arise
in married life. Whether you are happy or unhappy, keep the secrets of
your married life to yourself; neither your happiness nor your
misfortune will cause you to increase the number of your friends.
Indeed, if you are perfectly happy, it is only by remaining silent
about it that you will get people to forgive you your happiness.
* * * * *
Accept a life of abnegation and devotion. There is in devotion a bliss
which is unsurpassed. Devotion is perhaps the most refined and lofty
form of selfishness; it raises you so much in your own estimation! It
enslaves so surely the hearts of those whom you love! Devotion is not a
sacrifice; it is a halo.
* * * * *
If I were a woman, I would give all the pleasures of life to witness the
smile of my husband on a sick-bed as I entered the room to come and sit
by his side with his hand in mine. In health, the man loves to feel that
he is the protector of his wife; in sickness, there is no such arbour
for him as the arms of the woman he loves.
CHAPTER II
THE MATRIMONIAL PROBLEM
From inquiries which I have made right and left I have arrived at this
conclusion--that, out of a hundred couples who have got married, fifty
would like to regain their freedom after six months of matrimonial life,
twenty have come to the same opinion after a couple of years, ten more
after a longer period, and about twenty are satisfied, though, in the
last case, it often amounts to making the best of it. Not ten of them
spend their leisure time in returning thanks that they got
married--perhaps ten, but certainly not more.
And I will add this--that, among my friends and acquaintances, the
couples who live most happily together are, without exception, those who
made up their minds to be married most quickly, and did not attempt,
during years and years of engagement, to try and learn how to know
something of each other. I do not give this as a piece of advice to
those about to marry. I simply state a fact, although I am prepared to
admit that long engagements have never been the proper way of preparing
for matrimony.
In my opinion, the majority of marriages will have a chance of turning
out happily when the following will have become customs and laws:
1. Before a man makes love to a woman with the intention of asking her
to become his wife, and before a woman allows a man to speak love to
her, certainly before she accepts his offer of matrimony, both will have
ascertained that there is no disease, moral or physical, of an
hereditary nature in either family; that the man has been a good and
devoted son, a cheerful brother, and an honest man in all his dealings,
well spoken of by his employers or his acquaintances; that the girl is
not an extravagant woman, and has, among her friends, the reputation of
being amiable, cheerful, and a favourite at home; that both will have
sufficient means to support themselves.
I will go further. I will say that it should not only be a custom to
make inquiries about the antecedents of the parties, and their financial
position, but a law, and a strict law, too, that would prevent couples
from marrying who were likely to present society with undesirable
children, or become a burden to the community. I believe that no
emigrant is allowed to land in America who cannot prove that he
possesses some means of existence. No couples should be allowed to enter
the 'State of Union' who cannot prove that they possess means to support
themselves, and are healthy in mind and in body.
2. Girls will be told, like in the past, that their destiny is to be
one day wives and mothers, but they will be intelligently prepared for
both noble vocations. They will come out of school able to keep a house,
cook a good, palatable meal, and make their own dresses. They will know
how to get their money's worth when they go a-shopping. They will have
learned how to attend to babies, and have played with live dolls. They
will have listened to, and profited by, lectures on hygiene. They will
know all these things, besides possessing the accomplishments which are
only meant to be dessert in matrimonial life.
Boys who have never been once told that their destiny is to become one
day husbands and fathers will be prepared to be tolerably good ones.
They will be taught the consideration that man should always show to
woman. They will be taught to take off their hats to women and young
girls, and advised to do the same one day to their own wives when they
meet them. When they get to be eighteen or twenty, they will be informed
of women's characteristic traits. They will be told that a woman who
accepts an offer of matrimony does a man more honour than he conferred
on her by making the offer.
When men and women shall by early training be made, the former less
selfish and conceited, the latter less frivolous and extravagant, the
chances of happiness in matrimony will be greatly increased.
Still, the problem will not be solved.
You will never prevent matrimony being a lottery. Take your ticket
and--your chance.
After all, matrimony is like a mushroom. The only way to ascertain
whether it is the genuine article or poison that you have got is to
swallow it--and wait.
CHAPTER III
WOMEN SHOULD ASSERT THEMSELVES IN MATRIMONY
A cynic once said that in this world men succeed through the qualities
which they do not possess. By this he meant to say that to cope with the
pushing crowd, you must not be too scrupulous, or you will let everybody
pass before you.
A worse cynic, one of the blackest type and deepest dye, went as far as
to say: 'The way to succeed is to have unbounded impudence, popular
manners, absence of scruple, and complete ignorance of everything.'
But, then, take it for granted that this cynic was only a disappointed
failure. You will constantly hear the man who has failed in life
exclaim: 'Oh, if I had not always wished to remain perfectly honest, I
could have succeeded like many others I know.'
Just as you hear women who fail to get engagements on the stage or the
concert platform remark: 'If I had had no objection to obtaining
engagements in the way some women do, I would have made my mark--but I
am not one of that sort.'
At the risk of appearing paradoxical, and even cynical, I will venture
to say that in love, and in matrimony especially, certain great
qualities are more detrimental to the happiness of women than many of
their defects. And if this is a correct statement, to what shortcoming
of man are we going to attribute it?
I know that on reading this some women will exclaim: 'Shame on you to
say such a thing!' Very well, will you listen to me? Look around you,
among all your circles of friends and acquaintances, of relatives even,
and tell me if, as a rule, the young girl who is vain, selfish,
coquettish, a flirt even, has not better chances of marriage, and is not
sought after rather than the simple, unaffected, devoted, intellectual
girl? Tell me if the bumptious rose does not generally carry the day
over the modest, retiring violet?'
Of course, I know that you will say to me, 'You may be right; men--I
mean most men--are caught, like mackerel, by shining bait; but when a
man is married, surely he is not slow to recognise which of the two is
the right one to have as a wife, and to appreciate all the qualities and
virtues of the second one.'
Well, you are wrong--wrong as can be. Look around you again, study now
the married couples that you know, and you will have to confess that the
wife who is coquettish, frivolous, clever, will know how to make herself
respected, and even feared, by her husband much more than the other.
That husband will pay to her his best attentions, will be proud of her,
and will work like a slave in order to meet all the expenses required
for the adornment of her beauty without once venturing to make a
remark.
I tell you that if I had a marriageable daughter, whom I wanted to get
rid of, I would tell her to put all her retiring ways in the cloak-room
and to assert herself, and, after the wedding ceremony, I would whisper
in her ears:
'My dear child, never make yourself the slave of your husband; be good,
faithful and devoted to him, but do not forget that man is a strange
animal, who seldom appreciates what he does not pay for. In this respect
men are like those people who listen breathlessly to music in a hall or
theatre where they have paid a guinea for their seats, and who, as
guests in a drawing-room, take the very best music as a signal for
entering into general conversation. If you want your husband to listen
to your music, make him pay for his seat.'
The poor little woman who follows to the letter all the lectures she has
heard on matrimony, at home and at church wedding ceremonies, will soon
find the irreparable mistake she has made. In this role of devoted slave
she will lose her beauty, her intelligence, her very mind, and will
wither rapidly.
Devoting herself, body and soul, forgetting herself always in order to
increase the welfare of her husband she will work, wear herself out,
until, when her beauty is gone, her husband will feel for her nothing
but indifference, if not, alas! sometimes contempt.
If one of the two must endure a privation in order that the other may
have more comfort, it should be the man, always the man: first, because
hard work and privations do not hurt a man as they can hurt a woman,
physically and mentally; secondly, because a woman is far more apt to
appreciate self-abnegation in a man than a man in a woman.
All this does not mean that men are all brutes--no; although it must be
admitted that there is something brutal in their very nature which is
ever fascinated by what is piquant, and never excited by a devotion
which they feel is, above all, the duty of the stronger toward the
weaker.
Let women gently, diplomatically, but firmly, assert themselves on the
very threshold of matrimony, or all the concessions which they make at
the beginning will soon be considered by their husbands as their due. In
matrimonial life, as in the government of nations, you can never take
back concessions or privileges granted too quickly and without enough
consideration.
Women who start married life as slaves will never be able to assert
themselves or enjoy the slightest influence over their husbands; and
bear in mind that no marriage has ever proved to be happy where the
influence of woman, though sweet and gentle, has not been paramount.
CHAPTER IV
RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--I
I have many times been asked the question, Who are the best subjects for
matrimony? I believe (kindly mark that I do not say I am sure) that the
best subjects for matrimony are people with simple tastes, equable
tempers, no very great aspirations, satisfied with doing little and
being little. These, at all events, are the kind of people most likely
to be happy in matrimony, far more likely than, say, for instance, the
'intellectuals,' who are ever in search of the pathway that leads to the
higher walks of life, who have ambitions to satisfy and many inducements
to divert their minds from the peaceful ways of contentment and happy
matrimony. Little things please little minds, and those couples, whom we
have all met in life, who know nothing, who dream of nothing above what
they have got, who are perfect mutual admiration societies, are the best
subjects for matrimony. These people, snoring under the same curtain,
eating out of the same plate, as it were, having the same tastes,
persuaded that no one is blessed with such children as they have,
satisfied with all they do, sure that the religion they follow is the
only true one in the world, spend a peaceful and happy life in the
exchange of familiarities which, for them, constitute love. They respect
and enjoy each other; they echo each other's sentiments; and their
beings are coupled together, trotting along, like two dogs well looked
after. Their discussions at home are never on any higher questions than
whether green peas are better with duck than Brussels sprouts. They are
cheerful, smiling. She calls him Smith or Brown, and he never speaks of
her but as 'my good lady.' Before the children they call each other
'father' and 'mother.' They may be grocers, fruiterers--I don't care
what they are; they are happy, perfect subjects for matrimony.
* * *
What divers and strange unions are sanctioned by matrimony, to be sure!
By the side of resigned couples, harnessed together and painfully
dragging the plough, those who have never been able to understand each
other, through want of space, because they were too near to make proper
observations; those who, alas! understand each other too well; sweet,
amiable women of poetic dispositions, chained to matter-of-fact, brutal
men; honest, saving, hard-working men fastened for life to silly,
thoughtless, extravagant women; romantic women married to men who see no
difference between Vesuvius in eruption and the smoking chimneys of
Pittsburg or Birmingham; women of a keen, humorous disposition living
with dullards unable to see a joke; Wagnerians having for wives women
who prefer the music of 'The Casino Girl' to that of 'Lohengrin':
almost everywhere tragedy or comedy.
* * *
Matrimony is a very narrow carriage. If you want to be comfortable in it
you have to be careful, or one will soon be in the way of the other. To
put yourself to a little inconvenience now and then is the only way of
making the other comfortable. To believe that love alone, without
careful study, will resist all the shocks and will be all the more
durable that it is ardent is the greatest mistake one can make in the
world. Violent passion may be compared to Hercules, who might have
enough strength to raise a palace on his shoulders, but not enough to
stand a cold in his head. It is the thousand and one little drawbacks of
matrimonial life that undermine it. Love will survive a great
misfortune, but will be killed by the little miseries of conjugal
partnership. In matrimony it is the little things that count and which,
added up, make a terrible total. The waning love of a wife will not be
revived by the present of a thousand pound pair of ear-rings, but it may
be kept up by the daily present of a penny bunch of violets, which
reminds her that you think of her every day of your life. It is not the
great sacrifices that appeal to her as do constant little concessions.
Many men would sacrifice their lives who would not give up smoking or
their too frequent visits to their clubs for their wives. Many women
will be the incarnation of devotion and self-abnegation who will not do
their hair as their husbands beg them to.
* * *
Surely matrimony ought to procure happiness, for the greatest bliss on
earth should be to love in peaceful security with the guarantee of the
morrow. Matrimony is all right. So are the symphonies of Beethoven--when
they are performed by orchestras who play in time and in tune.
The worst--indeed, the only serious--drawback to matrimony is that it is
an everyday meal which, palatable as it may be, runs the risk of
becoming insipid, and of making fastidious the people who have to
partake of it. True, but then let people who are intelligent and
thoughtful supply seasoning which will whet the appetite and combat
Habit, that demon which is their deadliest enemy.
It is folly, rank folly, to believe that it is wise, even prudent, to
exhaust all at once the sum of happiness, illusion, and love with which
one enters the state of matrimony, and to give one's self body and soul
until, soon satiated and by-and-by tired of each other, both will turn
their heads away in disgust, and may, later on, lose them in despair.
CHAPTER V
RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--II
There was a time, and I can remember it myself, when men as well as
women wore wedding-rings. It was, I think, a very pretty custom. The
wedding-ring ought to be worn by both husband and wife, not only as a
constant reminder of faith sworn, but also as a talisman; it should be a
cherished jewel given to the husband by the wife, as well as one given
to the wife by the husband, and given in each case with a loving,
earnest kiss impressed upon it. The wedding-ring is such a priceless
jewel in the eyes of loving women that I have heard of some who became
insane on losing it. Why should it not be priceless in the eyes of a man
who loves his wife?
* * *
Every time that two beings who live together are not of the same opinion
or of the same taste, a concession on the part of the one or of the
other has to be made, or trouble will follow. This is a rule without
exception. In conjugal parlance Concession is another name for Duty.
Concessions should even be made in everyday conversation, and long
discussions most carefully and invariably avoided. Discussions are
generally useless; they never lead to conviction, and may cause you to
run a dangerous risk--that of losing your control over your good temper.
In a wild desire to prove that he is right, a man will blurt out words
that he will be sorry to have uttered, betray thoughts which he always
meant to keep to himself, and when the discussion is over those words
remain and the harm is done.
The moment a discussion takes too lively a form, one of the two should
have enough self-control to stop adding fuel to it and remain silent,
even at the risk of letting the other suppose that his (or her)
arguments are unanswerable. Of course, this silence should be kind,
discreet; not that odious silence of ill-assorted couples, which is a
silence of disgust and hatred. If both man and wife are quick-tempered
and unable to avoid a heated discussion, they should leave off at once;
they should even separate and go, he to light a cigar in his library or
in the garden, she to touch her piano or take up a novel, until both
have forgotten all about it.
* * *
A mistake made by a great many married couples is to avoid speaking of
money matters. But the most loving couples cannot altogether live on
love and the air of the atmosphere; it is not given to all of them--in
fact, it is given to only very few of them--to spend without having to
count. A man and a wife are two friends, two partners, who should
constantly hold pleasant little committee meetings of two in order to
discuss all matters of pecuniary interest and balance their budget of
receipts and expenditure. Once a week at least, they should employ an
hour in this way, hand in hand, like the best of friends. Thus it is
that by mutual confidence each will encourage the other to think of the
future, and little by little both will soon find themselves possessing
the nucleus of a small fortune, in which they will take more and more
interest, and which one day, to their surprise, will be found quite snug
and bearing an interest that will add considerably to their annual
revenue.
A married woman should never consent to receive so much a week for
household expenses, so much a month for her dress, and to be treated, so
to speak, as a dependent person. It should be left to her to decide
whether, considering what the financial situation is, she can afford two
new hats or one only. The suggestion, much less the order, should not
come from her husband, but from herself.
I like the French system, where a man consults his wife in all important
matters of financial interest, such as the investment of savings, etc.;
but from the day she is married, the French wife begins to be taught by
her husband the details of his profession or business, and the best and
safest investments of the day, and she immediately and invariably is
appointed by him secretary of the treasury--among the masses of the
people, anyway--and that is why I have not the least hesitation is
asserting the fortune of France is so stable and steady. It is because,
thanks to the influence of the wife, French families have their money
invested in the safest Government securities. So long as they can work,
they are satisfied with a very small interest for their capital, in
order to be quite sure that when the days of rest will become a
necessity, that capital will be there to keep them, if not in wealth, at
all events in comfort and complete independence.
* * *
When married couples have nothing better to do, they should amuse
themselves making all sorts of plans for the future. They should plan
journeys to distant countries, build castles in the air, buy country
houses, and consult each other and decide how they shall furnish them
and lay out the grounds. These plans are like barricades--they mask the
future; besides, they cause you amusement and cost nothing. And--who
knows?--among those many plans perhaps there will be one of your
predilections that you will actually be able to realize. What happens
then? Plans are akin to caresses--they go together hand in hand; they
are the gratuitous pleasures of sweet intimacy.
* * *
Young married people should avoid being too demonstrative, not only in
public, but in private, in the first years especially. They should
constantly remember that they enter the state of matrimony with a
certain capital of love. They must not squander that capital, but live
on the interest of it only.
* * *
There are young people who too often feel the want of manifesting their
love by exaggerated proofs of tenderness, such as the administration to
each other of names of birds and pet quadrupeds, of showers of kisses,
of little pats on the face. The exaggerated frequency of such acts
produces a reaction, and often a slight sensation of enervation, that
should never be born of caresses. And as these outward shows of love run
the risk of diminishing in number and fervour, there is danger of their
thus becoming a sign or a proof of decline in tenderness.
In public these demonstrations are ridiculous and vulgar; they put other
people ill at ease, who smile and sneer, and even remark, 'They will
soon get over it.'
CHAPTER VI
RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--III
To marry a beautiful woman for the mere love of her beauty is to
undertake to dwell in a country that has a temperature of 100 in the
shade without being provided with clothes that will enable you to stand
a winter of 50 below zero when it comes.
* * *
In the relations between men and women it is, after all, beauty that
makes woman particularly attractive to man. For this reason, the love of
a man is more sensual, more jealous, than that of a woman, which is more
affectionate, more confiding, and more faithful. As a rule, the passion
of a husband goes on diminishing as that of his wife goes on increasing.
A man exacts of his wife her first love; a woman exacts of her husband
his last. Only the select few can manage their matrimonial affairs with
such clever diplomacy as to make these different elements of happiness
and sources of danger work together with success.
* * *
Married people would live more happily together if they could now and
then forget that they are tied together for life. Any little scene that
may help them to forget it should be enacted by them.
* * *
Happiness in matrimony is more solid when it is founded on friendship
through thick and thin than when it is merely on love.
* * *
In love a moment of bliss is nothing; it is only the morrow which
purifies and sanctifies it. How many married couples would be happy if
they would only think of the morrow!
* * *
The husband who knows how to always keep something in store for his wife
has solved the great problem of happiness in matrimonial life.
* * *
Cupid introduces men and women into that enclosure which is called
matrimony, and then discreetly and almost immediately retires. What a
pity it is he does not make their acquaintance later, in order to remain
with them for ever!
* * *
Marriages would be very much happier if women preferred marrying men who
love them to those whom they love.
* * *
Matrimony would be a glorious institution if women would take as much
care of themselves for their husbands as they do when they expect guests
at their dinner-parties and receptions.
* * *
Women should devote all their best attentions to learning how to grow
old in time and gradually, and in remembering that tears make them
unattractive, and angry looks hideous.
* * *
One of the greatest dangers to happiness in matrimony is not want of
love, but too much of it, at the beginning especially. Love dies of
indigestion more quickly than of any other disease. Never satiate your
wife--or your husband--with love. Do not live on L10,000 the first year
of your married life, and be obliged to reduce your income by L1,000 or
L2,000 every year. Begin gently, quietly, and let your revenue, like
your love, slowly but steadily increase. There lies your only chance.
With self-control you have it at your disposal.
* * *
All vocations require preparation and apprenticeship. Matrimony is the
only one which men and women can enter into without knowing anything
about it. Alas!
CHAPTER VII
THE START IN MATRIMONY, AND ITS DANGERS
In matrimony it is not 'All is well that ends well'; it is 'All is well
that begins well, but not too well.' Starting from this principle, I
have often advised young husbands to control themselves, and to be
careful to avoid putting all their smartest dialogue and strongest
situations in the first act of the comedy of matrimony, for fear lest
the interest should go on flagging steadily to the end.
I have advised them to see that their wives do not get their own way in
everything at once, and not to make themselves their abject slaves,
because, just as no government has ever been known to successfully
suppress, or even reduce, any liberty or privilege previously granted to
the people, just so will no husband be able to recover one inch of the
ground he has surrendered if he capitulates on the threshold of
matrimony.
In fact, let young husbands and young wives behave toward each other in
such a way that their friends will not smile and say: 'Lovely, but too
good to last, I'm afraid.'
The dangers against which I have attempted to warn men exist for
women--devoted, loving women who wish to start matrimony by trying to do
the impossible in order to please their husbands, or, if not the
impossible, at all events, what it may not be in their power to do for
ever, or even for a long time.
One of these dangers is that of economy.
'My dear,' remarked a shrewd friend to a bride of a few weeks' standing,
'you will make a terrible mistake if you let your husband think that you
can keep house on nothing.'
Young wives are sometimes pitifully anxious to be credited with
remarkable cleverness as house-mistresses. The more they love their
husbands, the less they like the idea of their toiling and moiling.
Hence they are keenly anxious to prove themselves helpmeets in the
literal sense of the word.
Not only will they name a far smaller sum as housekeeping money than
their husbands can well afford to give them, but they will actually save
out of that sum enough for their own clothes and petty cash expenses.
All this self-sacrifice is not only charming, but beautiful, when there
is necessity for rigid economy. Young couples who wisely marry on small
incomes, instead of wasting the sweetness of their youth over an endless
engagement, must make a study of ways and means, and the wife who will
cajole a shilling into doing duty for a five-shilling piece is a jewel
beyond price.
Again, when times are bad, when the bread-winner falls ill, and the
treasury runs dry, there is no more pathetic and lovely sight than the
brave little wife who struggles and succeeds in keeping the wolf out of
the house.
But in instances where no serious demand of this kind need be made upon
a wife's ingenuity, she is a very short-sighted woman indeed who does
not see the dangers and realize the evils of overzealous economy.
There would be fewer complaints of marriages that result in the wife
being merely an unpaid servant or housekeeper, who cannot give notice to
leave, if brides began as they meant to go on, for no one save those who
have lived through the process knows how difficult it is to introduce a
new regime when once its opposite had been inaugurated and accepted.
'You said you would find L3 10s. a week ample a month ago. Why in the
world do you want L5 now?' asks the husband, whose wife has been
foolishly anxious to impress him with her cleverness as an economist,
and finds she cannot keep up the farce beyond the limit of a few weeks.
Economy may be carried too far from choice. There are women who simply
love saving. They neglect their intellectual life, and abandon all
attempts to keep in the movement, all in order to grind down the weekly
bills. No reward awaits them.
The women who believe themselves perfect because they are economical,
and consider the spring-cleaning of their house the greatest event of
the year, grow old before their time, and are never the companions
modern wives should be to their husbands.
Be good, but never overdo it, I will say to any woman who has the sense
of humour.
CHAPTER VIII
'OMELETTE AU RHUM'
When you are dining with an intimate friend, and an _omelette au rhum_
is served, what do you do? Without any ceremony, you take a spoon, and,
taking the burning liquid, you pour it over the dish gently and
unceasingly. If you are careless, and fail to keep the pink and blue
flame alive, it goes out at once, and you have to eat, instead of a
delicacy, a dish fit only for people who like, or are used to have,
their palates scraped by rough food. If you would be sure to be
successful, you will ask your friend to help you watch the flame, and
you will even ask him to lift the omelette gently so that the rhum may
be poured all over it until the whole of the alcohol contained in the
liquor is burned out.
This _omelette au rhum_ is a fairly good symbol of matrimony.
In the earliest stage of married life the eggs have just been broken,
beaten, and strewn with sugar, a light has been set, and everything is
burning and perfectly beautiful. The young partakers of the matrimonial
repast are intoxicated with their new life, their new emotions, their
new sensations; they require no indulgence toward each other, no
special cleverness or diplomacy to please each other; there are no
concessions to make--neither of them can go or do wrong; the flame burns
of itself.
I do not mean to say that the flame can be kept burning for ever and
ever--alas! no, not any more than life can be made to eternally animate
your body. The flame must go out one day, as some illness must one day
end your life. But, just as hygiene teaches how to keep our good health
prolonged by precautions of all sorts, just so does common-sense, aided
by diplomacy and skill, help us to keep alive the flame of love between
the man and the woman who have kindled it.
And let no woman accuse me of manly conceit if I say that, clever and
attentive as the man must be, the woman has to be more clever and
attentive still, and that simply because it is a fact--an uncontradicted
fact (call it psychological if you like, or physiological if you
prefer)--that the love or passion of a woman goes on naturally
increasing in married life, whereas that of a man goes on just as
gradually and steadily decreasing.
In marriage the flame of love has been known to keep long alive through
the intelligence of the wife, and even without any effort in that
direction on the part of the husband; but the contrary has never been
known to be successful.
Woman is a divine delicacy who has to tempt the appetite of man; but the
most exquisite delicacy may become insipid if served every day with the
eternally same sauce. This is plain common-sense, and let me tell you
this: that no married life (not one) has a shadow of chance to be happy
for long unless the woman clearly understands and quickly realizes that,
if moral duties are the same for men and women, Nature has made their
temperaments absolutely different.
CHAPTER IX
COQUETRY IN MATRIMONY
No coquetry in matrimony? Who is the Philistine who dares utter such
blasphemy? Good heavens! if half the curling-pins, which are used by
women at night in order to be beautiful the following day and attract
the attention and admiration of strangers, were used by them in the
morning, so that they might be beautiful the same day, and draw the
attention and admiration of their husbands, there would be happiness in
matrimony, and the world would go much better than it does.
The greatest, the most dangerous enemy of happiness in matrimony is
habit which engenders monotony. You get too much accustomed to each
other, and love fades, as a flower which falls off its stem before it
has lived its natural life, owing to some insect which destroys it.
That insect in matrimony is habit, which devours everything without your
being aware of its presence. Destroy that insect before it has had time
to do any harm, and you will have saved your dual happiness.
A grave error committed by many women is to believe that they must look
their best for the friends, acquaintances and strangers who visit them,
but that they need not take much trouble for their husbands.
But the fact is that a woman ought to ever appear before her husband
at her very best, whether it is in a morning negligee or in a full
afternoon or evening toilette.
Your husband, my dear lady, ought to see in you more than he could see
in any other woman. All comparisons ought to be to your advantage. It is
not at all necessary that you should have an expensive gown on at
breakfast-time. Your hair well fixed, and a nice-fitting dressing-gown
may make
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