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diff --git a/41820-0.txt b/41820-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5671827 --- /dev/null +++ b/41820-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6144 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41820 *** + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + http://archive.org/details/champagnestandar00lanerich + + + + + +THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD + +by + +MRS. JOHN LANE + +Author of "Kitwyk," "Brown's Retreat," etc. + + + + + + + +London: John Lane, The Bodley Head +New York: John Lane Company +MDCCCCV + +Copyright, 1905, +by John Lane Company + +The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A. + + + + + TO THE PUBLISHER + MY GENIAL AND + SUGGESTIVE CRITIC + + + + +_My Preface_ + + +I was sitting alone with a lead-pencil, having a _tête-à-tête_ with a +sheet of paper. A brisk fire burned on the hearth, and through the +beating of the rain against the little, curved Georgian windows I could +hear the monotonous roll of the sea at the foot of the narrow street, +and the tear and crunching of the pebbles down the shingle as the waves +receded. + +I had been ordered to write a preface to explain the liberty I had taken +in making miscellaneous observations about two great nations, and then +putting a climax to my effrontery by having them printed. So here I was +trying, with the aid of a lead-pencil and a sheet of paper, to construct +a preface, and that without the ghost of an idea how to begin. Nor was +the dim electric light illuminating; nor, in the narrow street, the +nasal invocation of an aged man with a green shade over his eyes, arm +in arm with an aged woman keenly alive to pennies, somewhere out of +whose interiors there emanated a song to the words, "Glowry, glowry, +hallaluh!" + +In fact, all the ideas that did occur to me were miles away from a +preface. It was maddening! I even demanded that the ocean should stop +making such a horrid noise, if only for five minutes. And that set me +idly to thinking what would happen to the world if the tides should +really be struck motionless even for that short space of time. The idea +is so out of my line that it is quite at the service of any distressed +romancer, dashed with science, who, also, may be nibbling his pencil. + +I sat steeped in that profound melancholy familiar to authors who are +required to say something and who have nothing to say. Finally, in a +despair which is familiar to such as have seen the first act of _Faust_, +I invoked that Supernatural Power who comes with a red light and bestows +inspiration. + +"If you'll only help me to begin," I cried, "I'll do the rest!" For I +realised in what active demand his services must be. + +I didn't believe anything would happen. Nothing ever does except in the +first act of _Faust_, and I must really take this opportunity to beg +Faust not to unbutton his old age so obviously. Still, that again has +nothing to do with my preface! + +I reclined on a red plush couch before the fire and thought gloomily of +Faust's buttons, and how the supernatural never comes to one's aid these +material days, when my eyes, following the elegant outlines of the +couch, strayed to a red plush chair at its foot, strangely and +supernaturally out of place. And how can I describe my amazement and +terror when I saw on that red plush chair a big black cat, with his tail +neatly curled about his toes! A strange black cat where no cat had ever +been seen before! He stared at me, and I stared at him. Was he the Rapid +Reply of that Supernatural Power I had so rashly invoked? At the mere +thought I turned cold. + +"Are you a message 'from the night's Plutonian shore'?" I said, +trembling, "or do you belong to the landlady?" + +His reply was merely to blink, and indeed he was so black and the +background was so black that but for his blink I shouldn't have known he +was there. + +"If," I murmured, "he recognises quotations from _The Raven_, it will be +a sign that he is going to stay forever." Whereupon I declaimed all the +shivery bits of that immortal poem, which I had received as a Christmas +present. + +He was so far from being agitated that before I had finished he had +settled down in a cosy heap, with his fore-paws tucked under his black +shirt front, and was fast asleep, delivering himself of the emotional +purr of a tea kettle in full operation. For a moment I was appalled. Was +this new and stodgy edition of _The Raven_ going to stay forever? + +"'Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore,'" I +urged, but all he did was to open one lazy eye, and wink. For a moment I +was frozen with horror. Was I doomed to live forever in the society of a +strange black cat, of possibly supernatural antecedents? + +"'Take thy form from off my door,'" I was about to address him, but +paused, for, strictly speaking, he was not on my door. And just as I +was quite faint with apprehension, common-sense, which does not usually +come to the aid of ladies in distress, came to mine. Like a flash it +came to me that even if he stayed forever, _I_ needn't. I had only taken +the lodgings by the week. He was foiled. + +With a new sense of security I again studied him, and I observed a +subtle change. He was evidently a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of cat. I +became conscious of a complex personality. Though to the careless +observer he might appear to be only a chubby cat, full of purr, to me he +was rapidly developing into something more; in fact, mind was, as usual, +triumphing over matter, and presto! before I knew what he was about, he +had changed into an idea. + +"To call you only a cat!" I cried in fervent gratitude. "Only a cat, +indeed! You are much more than a cat--you are a miracle! You are a +preface!" And so, indeed, he was. + +Like one inspired I thought of his first illustrious ancestor, on four +legs, the one who had once so heroically looked at a king, with the +result that not only did he gain a perpetual permission for his race, +but he has passed into an immortal proverb. That was not his only +glorious deed, however, for it was he who first encouraged the Modest. +If it had not been for that historic cat, what would have become of +them! When the Modest want to say something, no matter how modestly, and +get frightfully snubbed, don't they always declare that "A cat may look +at a king"? Really, that illustrious cat has never had his due! Besides +heaps of other things, is he not the original type of the first true +Republican? I would like to know what the world would have done if he +hadn't looked at the king? Why, it was the first great Declaration of +Independence. + +Besides, don't we owe to him, though hitherto unacknowledged, those +underlying principles of that other glorious Declaration of +Independence, the happy result of which seems to be that tea is so +awfully dear in America? + +No, one doesn't hold with a cat's laughing at a king. No cat should +laugh at a king, for that leads to anarchy and impoliteness and things +going off. It is the cat who looks civilly at kings who has come to +stay, along with republics and free thought. But possibly that is the +one little drawback--thought is so dreadfully free! It used to be rather +select to think, but now everybody thinks, and kings and other important +things are not nearly as sacred as they used to be, and even the Modest +get a chance. I suppose it is the spirit of the Age. + +I had got so far and had to nibble again at my pencil for further +inspiration, when the door opened and my landlady appeared. She is a +worthy woman, and she holds her head on one side like an elderly +canary-bird. + +She spoke with a remnant of breath. + +"If you please, ma'am, we have lost our Alonzo the Brave." + +"You will probably," I replied with great presence of mind, considering +that I had no idea what she was talking about, "find him with the fair +Imogene." + +Here my landlady, with her eyes penetrating the corners, gave a cry of +rapture, "There he is! Glory be!" And she pounced on the black and +purring stranger, who rose and stretched his back to a mountainous +height and his jaws to a pink cavern. + +"This is our Alonzo the Brave," and she pressed his rebellious head +against the pins on her ample bosom. + +"Oh, indeed," I said politely; "and though he is your Alonzo the Brave, +I hope you won't mind his being my preface, will you? And may I ask what +does he like best in the world besides Imogene?" + +Alonzo the Brave had partly wriggled out of her ardent embrace, so that +he now hung suspended by his elastic body, while his legs dangled at +amazing length. + +"Me," and my landlady simpered. + +"I mean in the eating line," I explained. + +Catnip, said his biographer, was his favourite weakness. + +"Then get him a pennyworth of catnip and put it on my bill," I said +benevolently. For I thought as she carried him off struggling, even a +poor preface is cheap at a penny, and without Alonzo the Brave there +would have been no preface, and without his heroic ancestor the Modest +would never have had a chance! + +I do hope this explains the following pages. I have not, like Alonzo's +ancestor, strictly confined my observations to kings. I have, indeed, +ventured to look at all sorts of things, many of them very sublime, and +solemn and important, and some less so; and, as the following pages will +prove, I have availed myself freely of the privilege of the Modest. + +If the two greatest nations of the world have served me as "copy," it is +because they are very near and dear, and the Modest, like more +celebrated writers, have a way of using their nearest and dearest as +"copy," especially their dearest. + +In conclusion, I trust I have adequately explained, by help of Alonzo +the Brave, that it is the privilege of the Modest to make observations +about everything--whether anyone will ever read them, why--that's +another matter. + + +A. E. L. + +KEMPTOWN, January, 1906. + + + + +_Contents_ + + + _Page_ + + The Champagne Standard 1 + + American Wives and English Housekeeping 40 + + Kitchen Comedies 75 + + Entertaining 104 + + Temporary Power 130 + + The Extravagant Economy of Women 153 + + A Modern Tendency 171 + + A Plea for Women Architects 181 + + The Electric Age 188 + + Gunpowder or Toothpowder 196 + + The Pleasure of Patriotism 211 + + Romance and Eyeglasses 220 + + The Plague of Music 230 + + A Domestic Danger 245 + + A Study of Frivolity 259 + + On Taking Oneself Seriously 271 + + Soft-Soap 290 + + + + +_The Champagne Standard_ + + +The other evening at a charming dinner party in London, and in that +intimate time which is just before the men return to the drawing room, I +found myself tête-à-tête with my genial hostess. She leaned forward and +said with a touch of anxiety in her pretty eyes, "Confess that I am +heroic?" + +"Why?" I asked, somewhat surprised. + +"To give a dinner party without champagne." + +It was only then that I realised that we had had excellent claret and +hock instead of that fatal wine which represents, as really nothing else +does, the cheap pretence which is so humorously characteristic of Modern +Society. + +"You see," she said with a deep sigh, "I have a conscience, and I try to +reconcile a modest purse and the hospitality people expect from me, and +that is being very heroic these days, and it does so disagree with me to +be heroic! Besides, people don't appreciate your heroism, they only +think you are mean!" + +I realised at once the truth and absurdity of what she said. It does +require tremendous heroism to have the courage of a small income and to +be hospitable within your means, for by force of bad example hospitality +grows dearer year by year. The increasing extravagance of life is all +owing to those millionaires, and imitation millionaires, whose example +is a curse and a menace. They set the pace, and the whole world tears +after. Because solely of their wealth, or supposed wealth, they are +accepted everywhere, and it is they who have broken down the once +impassable barriers between the English classes, with the result that +the evil which before might have been confined to the highest, now that +extravagant imitation is universal, permeates all ranks even to the +lowest. + +The old aristocracy is giving place to the new millionaires, and it +gladly bestows on them its friendship in exchange for the privilege of +consorting with untold wealth and possible hints on how to make it. The +dignity that hedges about royalty is indeed a thing of the past, since a +bubble king of finance is said to have been too busy to vouchsafe an +audience to an emperor. + +There is nothing in the modern world so absolutely real and convincing +and universal as its pretence. It has set itself a standard of aims and +of living which can best be described as the Champagne Standard. + +To live up to the champagne standard you have to put your best foot +foremost, and that foot is usually a woman's. It is the women who are +the arbiters of the essentially unimportant in life, the neglect of +which is a crime. It is the women who have set the champagne standard. A +man who lays a great stress on the importance of trivialities has either +a worldly woman behind him, or he has a decided feminine streak in his +character. + +Yes, it is the champagne standard; for nothing else so accurately +describes the insincere, pretentious, and frothy striving after one's +little private unattainables. It is aspiration turned sour. Aspirations, +real and true, keep the world progressive, make of men great men and of +women great women; but it is the minor aspirations after what we have +not got, what the accident of circumstances prevents us from having, +which make of life a weariness and a profound disappointment. Not the +tragedies of life make us bitter, but the pin-pricks. + +In America, for instance, one does not need to be so very old to be +aware of the amazing changes in the ways of living, the result of an +unbalanced increase of wealth which has brought with it the imported +complexity of older and more aristocratic countries. It is the older +civilisation's retaliation against those blustering new millions that +have done her such incalculable harm. Indeed, it would have been well +for the great republic had she put an absolutely prohibitive tariff on +the fatal importation. The republican simplicity of our fathers is +slowly vanishing in the blind, mad struggle of modern life--in a +standard of living that is based on folly. It is easier to imitate the +old-world luxury than the old-world cultivation which mellows down the +crudeness of wealth and makes it an accessory and not the principal. +Unfortunately we judge a nation by those of its people who are most in +evidence, and do it the injustice of over-looking the best and finest +types among its wealthiest class: men and women who are the first to +regret and disown what is false and unworthy in their social life. We +assume that the blatant, self-advertising _nouveau riche_, with whom +wealth is the standard of success and virtue, is the national American +type, instead of the worst of many types, whose bad example is as well +recognised as a peril to character in America as in other countries. +Wealth in all nations covers a multitude of sins, but in America, to +judge from recent developments, it would seem to cover crimes. Is not +America now passing through a gigantic struggle, the result of the +hideous modern fight for wealth, in which the common man goes under, +while the reckless speculators who juggled with his hard-earned savings +use these same savings to fight justice to the bitter end? Possibly in +no other enlightened country in the world could such titanic frauds, +with such incalculably far-reaching effects, be so successfully +attempted, and that by a handful of men who had in their keeping the +hopes of countless unsuspecting people who trusted to their honesty and +uprightness. + +The race for wealth in America has become a madness--a disease. It is +not a love of wealth for what it will bring into life, of beauty and +goodness, but a love of millions pure and simple. Who has not seen the +effect of millions on the average human character? Who has not seen men +grow hard and rapacious in proportion as their millions accumulated? Who +has not seen the tendency to judge of deeds and virtue by the same false +standard? A shady transaction performed by a millionaire is condoned +because he is a millionaire and for no other reason. Without millions he +would be shunned, but with them he is regarded with the eyes of a most +benevolent charity. It is high time indeed that a prophet should arise +and preach the simple life, but let him not preach it from below +upwards. He must preach it to the kings of the world and the +billionaires and magnates, and above all to the lady magnates; and let +him be sure not to forget the lady magnates, for they are of the +supremest importance and set the fashion. Let him turn them from their +complicated ways. Now the ways of magnates and all who belong to them +are very instructive. The well-authenticated story goes that at a dinner +party the other night at a magnate's,--to describe his indescribable +importance it is sufficient to call a man a magnate--after the ladies +returned to the drawing-room, the hostess, her broad expanse tinkling +and glittering with diamonds, leaned back in a great tufted chair--just +like a throne _en déshabille_--and shivered slightly. A footman went in +search of the lady's maid. + +"Françoise," said the magnate's lady with languid magnificence, "I feel +chilly; bring me another diamond necklace." + +Yes, let the prophet first convert the magnate and the magnate's "lady" +to a simpler life, then the simple life will undoubtedly become the +fashion, for the small fry will follow soon enough. Are we not all like +sheep? And what is the use of arguing with sheep who are leaping after +the bellwether? + +There is one safeguard for the American republic, and that is, in +default of any other description, its ice-water-drinking class. In its +ice-water-drinking class lies its safety, for that represents the +backbone of the republic. It represents a class which, in spite of the +sanitary drawbacks of ice, is a national asset. It seems curious to +boast of the people who drink ice-water, and yet they represent American +life, simple, sincere, and untouched by the sophistries of the champagne +standard, and of a social ambition imported from abroad; decently well +off people, but not so well off but that the only heritage of their sons +will be a practical education. Already we are reaping the curse of +inherited wealth in America, where, unlike England, it has no duties to +keep the balance. The English aristocrat has inherited political duties +and responsibilities towards his country which, as a rule, he +faithfully performs, and which make of him a hard-working man. +Unfortunately it is the fashion for the rich American, in his race for +wealth and pleasure, or out of sheer indolence, to ignore politics and +all that is of vital importance in national life. And until the best +elements of the nation take a practical interest in the government of +their country and in the administration of its great institutions, the +nation cannot reach its highest development. Just now, unhappily, we +have a warning example of what happens in America to the second +generation that inherits instead of makes incalculable wealth. The +District Attorney of New York, in a case which has shaken the foundation +of all commercial rectitude, is quoted as saying of the still young man +whom the accident of inheritance placed in a position of despotic power +over millions of money and millions of modest hopes: "He is an excellent +type of the second generation." It is an epigram which should be a +warning, as the cause is a menace to American business methods. For did +not Emerson say, studying American ways more than a generation ago when +American life was simpler: "It takes three generations from +shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves." But in that warning there is hope, for +in the scattering of wealth lies America's chance of salvation. Plain +living and high thinking once characterised what was best in American +life, and the men and women whose thoughts were high and whose living +plain were mostly from that simple ice-water-drinking class that has +produced much of the nobility and patriotism of America. That ice-water +has helped to encourage dyspepsia, granted; but even a great virtue can +have its defects. + +How different was the America of our childhood! One remembers the +time when, if the honoured guest was not invited to quench his thirst +with ice-water at the hospitable board, he was, as a great treat, +furnished with cider. Claret was the drink of those adventurous souls +who had traditions and had been abroad. There was no champagne +standard--champagne only graced the table on solemn, state occasions. +But in these rapid days the hospitable people who would once have +offered you a serious glass of claret now give you champagne. And +because Smith, who can afford it, gives you good champagne, Jones, who +cannot afford it, gives you bad champagne. But the bad and the good +champagne are both tied up in white cloths, as if they had the +toothache, so how awfully lucky it is that when the label is fifth-rate, +Mrs. Jones, trusting in the shrouded shape, can offer bad champagne with +ignorant satisfaction. + +It is interesting to study the evolution of Jones. There was Jones's +father; he didn't pretend. He lived in a modest house and kept one +servant and had a fat bank account. Old Mrs. Jones, a charming woman +with the manners of a duchess, helped in the housework. Old Jones dined +all the days of his life at one o'clock, and had a "meat-tea" at six. At +ten every night he ate an apple, and then he went to bed at ten-thirty. +He left a handsome fortune to his children, who shared alike, which made +Jones, Jr., only comfortably off. Now young Jones and his wife began by +following in the footsteps of their parents, but Jones made money in +business, and the result was that Mrs. Jones had aspirations. +Aspirations are always a feminine attribute. So Jones bought a +fashionable house, and instead of one servant Mrs. Jones keeps four; +instead of a joint and pie, American pie, for which his simple appetite +longs, Jones has a six-course dinner at eight which gives him dyspepsia. +There is not the ghost of a doubt that Mrs. Jones is too afraid of the +servants to have a plain dinner. And it is also quite certain that she +goes to a fashionable church for a social impetus rather than divine +uplifting, and that she sends her only child, Petra Jones, to a +fashionable kindergarten so that the unfortunate child, who is at an age +when she ought to be making mud pies, shall be early launched into +fashionable friendships. Indeed, one day, in a burst of confidence, Mrs. +Jones described how Petra had been snubbed. It seems that the Jones's +child met another small school-fellow in the park in custody of the last +thing in French nurses. Being only six and still unsophisticated in the +ways of fashion, she rushed up to the young patrician and suggested +their playing together. + +"No, I can't play with you," the young patrician sniffed--"for my ma +don't call on your ma." + +Why is it that the pin-pricks of life are so much harder to bear than +its tragedies? Mrs. Jones mourned over this snub to the pride of Jones, +but she has no leisure to observe that Jones, her husband, is meanwhile +growing old and hollow-eyed with care and business worries and the +expense of aspiring. O champagne standard! O foolish Mrs. Jones! + +As long as we can be snubbed and suffer what is the use of telling us +that we are born free and equal? The only liberty we have is to breathe, +and our equality consists in that, plebeian and patrician alike, we are +permitted to take in as much air as our infant lungs can accommodate. +After that our equality ceases. + +When Mrs. Jones goes to the expense of giving a dinner party, does she +only invite her nearest and dearest, who are acquainted with the extent +of Jones's purse? Not a bit of it. She invites most of her enemies and +some strangers. There really should be a limit to the attention one +bestows on the stranger within his gates. + +There was dear old Mrs. Carter Patterson in the days of my youth. She +was a funny old woman with a nose like a beak, a rusty Chantilly lace +veil, and a black front. She stopped my mother in the street and +explained that she was in a tearing hurry as she was about to call on +Mrs. Mangles. + +"Why, I thought," and my simple mother hesitated, "I thought you said +you hated her." + +"So I do, my dear, so I do, but I always make a point of calling on my +enemies, it's no use calling on one's friends." + +Who has not studied the increasing difficulty of that surgical operation +called the launching of a young girl into modern society. Every year it +grows more and more difficult--society seems to form a kind of trust to +keep out the young girl, at least to judge from the extreme difficulty +of getting her in; and after she is in, the bitterness of it, and +vexation of spirit, only the young girl knows. The operation is +different in different countries, though one has heard of the agonies +endured in England during the process. In America the ceremony is as +expensive as a wedding. Because one girl has had a huge coming-out +reception, that shakes her pa's cheque book to its centre, why the other +girl must have a still bigger one. + +I have been a witness to the coming out of Maria's only child Nancy. The +education of Nancy was not so much to teach her anything, as to give her +the best opportunity of making fashionable acquaintances. It was my +privilege to study her mother's heroic efforts to get Nancy into a +fashionable dancing-school, the entrance to which gave the fortunate one +that supreme distinction which nothing else could. Twice "mother" +failed, and she wept in my presence in sheer weariness of soul, but the +third time Nancy got in--not triumphantly, but she slipped in by some +oversight of a fashionable matron whose duty it was to keep out +ineligible little children, and "mother" was happy, though the little +"400" boys in the round dances did neglect Nancy, who looked shyly and +wistfully about, a small melancholy wall-flower, with her eyes swimming +with tears, as the little boys wisely footed it with all the most +eligible of the "400" little girls. It is very instructive to see how +early the sense of worthy worldly wisdom develops itself! + +But Nancy had passed through all these stages of social martyrdom, and +had comfortably hardened. Talk of the Spartan boy with the fox nibbling +at his vitals! There are worse things than having a fox nibble at your +vitals--Nancy knew. + +When I met "mother" the morning of the coming-out of Nancy, she was +nearly in a condition of nervous prostration. The house was in the +clutches of florists and caterers, and father had fled to his office +with the strict injunction not to appear until late in the afternoon. +The awful problems were two: Would Nancy get as many bouquets as a rival +"bud"--the technical name for a debutante--who had reached the acme of +social distinction with two hundred and thirty-five, and would enough +people come to make a show? + +"I shall die if she doesn't get as many bouquets as that Bell girl," +"mother" cried in an ecstasy of nervous anguish, "but she has only got +two hundred and ten." + +"It's as bad as getting married," I cried sympathetically. + +"Quite," and Maria groaned; "and without any real result." + +Between a confusion of carpet covering and potted plants I went upstairs +in search of the "bud." + +"Only two hundred and ten bouquets," she cried in a tempest +of discontent, "and Betty Bell (the rival bud) is to have a +five-thousand-dollar ball and I am not! Mother says it isn't giving the +ball she'd mind, but it's people not coming. It's easy enough sending +out invitations, but the mean thing is, people accept and don't come. +That's the latest fashion," cried this bitter "bud." "Mother said she'd +be mortified to death to give a ball and have nobody but the waiters to +drink up the champagne. We're of just enough importance to have our +invitations accepted and thrown over if anything better turns up." + +Such was her perfectly justifiable wail. + +That afternoon at six I came again in my best clothes. A reception is +after all the simplest of social functions. It entails no obligations, +and is as democratic as an electric car. It is perhaps one of the few +functions in which even the noblest society may use its elbows, and as a +school for staring, the kind that sees through the amplest human body as +if it were mere air, nothing could be more useful and practical. It is +an interesting study to observe how the female lorgnette is on such +occasions so triumphant an impediment to sight. + +Well, the whole street proclaimed the coming-out of Nancy. Carriages +lined the curbstones and an awning announced the festive nature of the +occasion. A band, crowded into a cubby-hole usually sacred to "father's" +overcoats and umbrellas, tried vainly to penetrate the talk--there was a +dense crush of human beings, and over all there was a mixed aroma of hot +air, flowers, and coffee. At the top of the "parlour," before a bank of +flowers, and burdened with bouquets, stood Nancy, all in expensive white +simplicity, her face radiant, and supported by an utterly exhausted +mother. Six young men who served as ushers, in collars tall enough for +a giraffe, brought up relays of friends to be introduced to mother and +"bud"--all just like a wedding, only the hero was wanting, and for +"mother's" sake one did wish the occasion had had a hero. Last year's +"buds" were brought up and examined this year's "bud," and there was a +great deal of chatter and hand-shaking, of the pump-handle kind, and a +pushing past each other of magnificent matrons in the latest things in +hats. + +I was escorted up by one of the young giraffes, who solemnly introduced +me. A mighty different "bud" this from the one of the morning. + +"I've got two hundred and forty bouquets," she whispered triumphantly; +and just then I caught mother's weary eye and knew as absolutely as one +knows anything in this uncertain world that "father" had sent in thirty. +Really, there is nothing so loving, so generous and so weak in this wide +world as an American father. + +I was swept on by a crush of prosperous matrons accompanied by +expensively simple daughters--the matrons making obviously disparaging +mental criticisms about each other's daughters. For real simple, +unassuming jealousy there is nothing like rival mothers! So I was pushed +into the dining-room where the chief ornaments were four Gibson girls in +party frocks who, at a flower-laden centre-table, in the mellow light of +rose-shaded candles, dispensed glances, coffee, smiles, and tea, and +other frivolous afternoon refreshments. They had the best of it, these +beautiful young things at the table, especially when they could annex an +occasional man. + +At half past seven the last visitor had gone, the function was over and +Nancy was "out," and "mother" sat drearily on a couch which had the +demoralised air of furniture horribly out of place. Everything drooped +except those stalwart American beauty roses, so costly, so splendid, so +hard, and so unromantic. O national flower of Americans! + +I caught a glimpse of "father" vanishing down the front steps on his way +to the club. Nancy had flung herself into a big deep chair, and from +this point she looked coldly at "mother." + +"The Perkinses did not come," was all she said, but "mother" gave a +start and groaned. The Perkinses represented the bloom of the occasion, +and the Perkinses had not come. There was nothing further to be +said--Maria did remark that it was as expensive as a wedding. "And to +think it isn't dinner time yet," she added drearily. + +"At any rate Nancy is 'out,'" I said. + +"But it was horribly expensive." + +"Well, then, what did you have all this expense and bother for?" + +"One has to do it," she cried in stony despair; "it's our standard--" + +"Champagne standard," I interrupted. + +"I don't know what you mean." Maria has all the virtues, but no sense of +humour. + +"Then, for goodness' sake, why have her come out at all?" + +Maria shuddered and looked cautiously about. Nancy had vanished. + +"I'd die of mortification if she didn't marry. I won't have her turn on +me and say I hadn't given her a chance." + +"But, Maria, you married your good and prosperous Samuel without coming +out. That didn't frighten him away! The highest standard your parents +ever aspired to was cider, and that only on state occasions." + +"That is all changed," said my unhappy friend. "We have got to--" + +"Pretend; that's just it, Maria! But why don't you give up pretending +and be happy? Did our parents ever pretend? They didn't. Think of your +father's simple home and his big bank account, and then think of your +Samuel with all his expenses and his cares." + +But Maria was not to be convinced by argument--she was completely +crushed by the Perkinses not having come, and she declared obstinately +that her supreme duty in life was to get Nancy married--well if +possible, but at any rate married. + + * * * * * + +Maria is only a type, but she stands for aspirations in the wrong place, +and she is worn out with it. She has many virtues--that is, she has no +vices. Her whole soul is wrapped up in Nancy. Nancy is her religion. She +believes in Nancy, though she never took her Samuel seriously. She +married him in the simple period of her existence, and by the time she +began to aspire she had other ideals, and Samuel was more of a bore to +her than an ideal. Samuel did not take to her new aspirations as readily +as she. Men never do. Nancy constituted her romance; and yet she was an +impartial mother, for mothers can be divided in two classes, those who +are too partial and those who are impartial. Her mission in life was to +marry off Nancy. + +"I'd rather she'd be married unhappily than not at all," she said to me +one day when I saw her again. "A real unhappiness is more healthy to +bear than an imaginary one." + +Nancy herself furnished the particulars of her own private creed. + +"I'd rather be married even if I were unhappy. It's my own unhappiness, +and I want my own whatever it is." + +I suggested that there were other aims in life than getting married. + +"Perhaps," she said, "but I haven't any. I've been brought up to that. +Most girls are, only they don't tell. I haven't to earn my living and I +haven't any talent for anything. If I don't marry, Ma'll be mortified +to death and she'll show it and that'll make me mad. Father won't care +and he won't notice that I'm growing older, though we girls don't grow +old prettily. We get pinched, and our little hands--for we have little +hands--grow clawy, and our hair gets thin at the temples, and we have +too much gold in our front teeth. Of course we are real pretty when we +are happy. But think of spending life seeing father go to sleep after +dinner, and mother playing patience--ugh! I've told mother if she +doesn't take me abroad I'll go slumming. There's no chance here. Half +the men are too busy making money to get married and the others are +afraid." + +"So this is your education," I said later on to Maria; "I am glad you +have only one child." + +"So am I," said Maria wearily, "for two would kill me." + +Then in a burst of confidence: "She hangs fire. She isn't strikingly +plain nor strikingly beautiful, one's about as good as the other. She +has no accomplishments, and her golf is only so so. She isn't fast, nor +loud, nor smart. She is just an average girl and," Maria cried in +vexation, "there are such heaps of them. The luncheons and dinners and +theatre parties I have given without result! It is so tiresome for her +always to be bridesmaid. So we're going abroad. Father is willing to +live at the Club. Our men are too comfortable to get married. It's +simply wicked!" + +"Maria," I said from my inmost conviction, "you have manoeuvred, with +the result that you have frightened off the eligibles--struggling +eligibles, and those are sometimes the best. But what struggler would +dare to ask a champagne-standard girl to keep his "flat"? It's flats +these days. He wouldn't think of dragging a white-tulled angel from a +palatial residence to a flat and a joint! You have frightened off the +young men. Marriage is getting out of fashion, and so are the comforts +of a home. It's all your fault, you champagne-standard mothers!" + +Such was the coming-out of Nancy. + +Now in my young days there was certainly no formal coming-out. All I +remember is that one day I still wore my hair in two pigtails, and the +next day old Mrs. Barnett Pendexter called. She was a fumbly old woman +with her fingers, and by accident--my sisters always declared--she left +two cards instead of one. The fatal result was that my pigtails were +pinned up and I was dragged out by my mother when she made calls, for +she declared, being socially learned, that now I was undoubtedly out. It +was also a little surgical operation in a minor way, but compared to +these days how simple and how inexpensive. + +If one were asked which of the passions is the greatest force in modern +Society, one could safely reply "jealousy." Jealousy makes the world go +round. Don't we want what all our neighbours have, and don't we want it +with all our might and main? If we want it badly enough crime will not +stand in the way of getting it. Is it not at the bottom of most of our +defalcations, embezzlements, and commercial dishonesty in general? The +bank president who borrows the bank funds for his private use, the +cashier who falsifies the books, the little clerk who embezzles as the +result of expensive tastes,--are they not all the results of the +falsity and extravagance of modern life? Compared to the judicious +business man who keeps just within the border line that saves him from +the criminal law, and who lays traps for his credulous fellow-creatures +in the shape of alluring companies, the pickpocket, who runs some little +risk, is a blameless and worthy character. The champagne standard is the +whole world's measure, and even justice bows to it when it interprets +its laws for the rich and the poor. A company promoter, who in the +course of his career has wrecked thousands of lives, can, if he is only +rich enough, consort with the noblest and most virtuous of the land; but +of course he must be rich enough. Deny it who can? Be rich enough and +you are forgiven all crimes. O Champagne Standard! + +Last year a certain deceased millionaire was tried in London for +gigantic frauds, and all the newspapers described how pleasantly he +greeted his friends when he entered the court and took his seat behind +his counsel. Positively not a bit proud. There was also a sympathetic +description of his clothes! The moral is, be a scoundrel on a +magnificent scale and you are still respected; indeed, you even become a +hero in some people's eyes. Justice being blindfolded cannot see, which +is a great convenience. Besides, are we not taught that God helps those +who help themselves? + +In America there is no aristocracy yet, but God help it when the time +arrives, for it will be an aristocracy based on the most unworthy of +foundations--money. As for romantic traditions, well, it will take +several centuries to weave a halo of romance around a pork-packer, a +petroleum magnate, a railroad wrecker, or the company promoters who +flourish as the green bay tree. In centuries they may arrive at the +dignity of being ancestors--at present they are just what they are, and +are to be judged accordingly. + +There is a growing mania in America these days for ancestors. It is a +luxury which can be indulged in only after people have accumulated +money. If you are grubbing for your daily bread it is a matter of +profound indifference to you where you came from, seeing what you have +reached is so unsatisfactory. But when your bank-book bursts with +deposits and your greed for money is partly satisfied, it is natural +that you should look out for new fields for your aspirations. So wealthy +Americans are just now very busy unearthing ancestors, in spite of not +becoming parents, and getting their genealogical tree planted, and +rummaging in the dust of the past for possible forefathers, and buying +family portraits. Yes, there is a great trade in family portraits--the +dingier the better. At any rate it keeps the pot boiling for many a +worthy painter, and that is something. Not that one has a rooted +aversion to ancestors--they are not to be despised if they leave you an +honourable name, a nice old estate, and cash and some brains, but there +are ancestors of whom the less said the better, and whose only legacy +would appear to be a slanting forehead, a weak chin, and a tendency to +unlimited viciousness. + +The Herald's College could tell many a queer story of our sturdy +republicans in search of their forbears. An English woman told me that a +New York family had annexed a crusading forefather of her own, as well +as one who had had his head chopped off, and to whom they had no more +right than the grocer round the corner. She acknowledged that they were +a pretty bad lot (the ancestors), but she objected to have strangers +meddle with them. "You are funny republicans," she added genially, +"coming over here and grabbing our ancestors." + +Now there is nothing so frank as a frank Englishwoman. "What is the use +of celebrated ancestors," she added, "if your whole present family are +as dull as ditch-water and bore you to distraction? I'd swap off my +crusading ancestor and my chopped-off-head one any time for a cousin +with brains. But mind you, I don't want your American millionaires +grabbing 'em without leave." + +There are the Bedfords of New York. Susan and I went to school together. +Hitherto she has put on no airs with me, for I know the family +traditions, and that her excellent father began life as a cobbler. Then +he forsook cobbling and started a corset manufactory, which was a +distinguished success because he had invented a bone so like the +whale's that even that clever fish could not have proved it wasn't his; +and the deception made the old man's fortune. Thereupon he rose superior +and soared from corsets to real estate, and in real estate he made what +was briefly described as "mints." It was in the corset period that Susan +married Joe Bedford who was a drummer in the business, and though he +retired from corsets and went into real estate along with his +father-in-law, Susan was always conscious that he could never +accommodate himself to the grandeur of his new life. She had to do all +the aspiring, and it was she who passed a sponge over their previous +existence, and every time I saw them in New York she had added a new +lustre to their glory. The last time the door was opened to me by a +footman, brooded over, as it were, by the very noblest kind of English +butler. I saw at once that the whole family were afraid to death of him. +But in spite of her grandeur, Susan herself saw me downstairs to the +front door, in the American fashion, though conscious of the profound +and stony disapproval of the English butler. As I came opposite the hat +rack I caught sight of a satin banner covered with cabalistic characters +floating gently over Joe's modest bowler that swung from a peg. + +"Our coat of arms," Susan explained by way of introduction. "Just come +home. It cost a great deal; everything costs so much. We have the same +arms as the Duke of Bedford. It is pleasant to have a duke in the +family." + +"Since when?" I asked, and stared in astonishment. + +"I found them in the dictionary six months ago. I had it done at +Tiffany's. It looks so stylish on the plates and the writing paper." + +"Come in here, Susan," and I led her into her own parlour, for I did not +wish to lower her in the estimation of that noble being who was +preparing his mighty mind to show me out. "Listen to me; you and Joe +haven't any more to do with the Duke of Bedford than the cat's foot. +Besides, his name isn't Bedford but Russell. For goodness' sake don't +make such an idiot of yourself." + +"I guess," and Susan was deeply offended, "I guess the young man at +Tiffany's knows more about it than you do. He engraves for the first +families, and he said it was all right." + +It was quite recently, too, that I crossed from Boston with three gentle +female pilgrims in search of an ancestor. The youngest was nearly +seventy, and we were barely out of sight of that famous tail of land +called "Cape Cod" when they told me their simple story. They came from +Cape Cod and their homestead stood on a sandhill and faced the sea. A +long straggling street up a sand bank culminated in a meeting-house with +a steeple as sharp as a toothpick. They were innocent and graphic old +ladies and they had only two vivid interests in life; one was a +Devonshire ancestor supposed to have died three hundred years before, +and the other, two cats called respectively Priscilla and John Alden. +The ancestor was the one romance of their placid lives, and it became a +question of going to find him, now or never; so here they were. They had +turned the key in the lock of their Cape Cod homestead and bidden a +long farewell to Priscilla and John Alden, and as they described their +grief I saw their three pairs of benevolent eyes fill with tears. + +"The sweetest cats that ever breathed," said the oldest, with a face +like a benediction. + +"What did you do with them?" I asked after a sympathetic pause. + +"We chloroformed them," said the dear old thing whose face was like a +benediction. + +I offered up an involuntary smile to the manes of these deceased +martyrs, Priscilla and John Alden, and I am absolutely sure the ancestor +wasn't worth the sacrifice. + +Fortunately or unfortunately, the champagne standard, like hotel +cooking, has no nationality. It is everywhere, and one studies it +according to one's experience, but it is undoubtedly the curse of an age +that only judges of success by material results. It is above everything +a menace to character. + +Modern life is the apotheosis of trivialities, and perhaps there is +nothing more curious and melancholy than to observe their exaggerated +importance to the world in general. One asks what is the use of such +childish fretting to people confronted by tragic realities. What is the +use of snubbing any one as if we were immortal? The truth is, each, in +his own estimation, is immortal. Who thinks of dying? Why, if we +expected to die at once, we certainly would not snub any one, and, in +the face of so tragic a probability, we would not notice being snubbed. +And yet there is absolutely nothing so absolutely certain as death, +before which every pretence, every ignoble aspiration, every sordid +ambition, stands naked and futile and, in some other world possibly, +ashamed. + +But one cannot help wondering what kind of a blissful place the world +would be without the champagne standard. How good and honest we should +be if we didn't pretend--how easy it would be to live! Are not most of +the trials of life, apart from its tragedies, its results? Most of our +harrowing anxieties usually have their rise in aiming at what is beyond +our reach. And yet what, in the name of common sense, what is it all +for? What is the use of pretending? What is the use of doing things +badly when it is so much easier not to do them at all? + +Yes, indeed, the greatest heroism in these days is to have the courage +of one's income. It is possibly a little awkward at first, but what a +relief to be able to say simply, "I can't afford it," and not lose +caste! But Modern Society is ruled over by "Appearances." Appearances +are a kind of Juggernaut which requires our happiness and peace and +contentment as a daily sacrifice--but not the wise and honourable +appearances, but the little, mean, false ones, and those are the most +common. + +One is inclined to think, however, that even the champagne standard may +yet find its Nemesis. For if the world goes on at its present rate all +its wealth will in time be swallowed up by the Trusts, and the Trusts +will in turn be swallowed up by the mighty maws of the few whom God, in +his righteous wrath, permits to plunder the earth, just as He once +permitted a deluge for the regeneration of the world. And the blessed +result will be that the whole wide world, being as poor as the +traditional church mouse, will come to its senses, and the first thing +that will happen will be the abolishing of the champagne standard. So +herein lies the world's salvation, to be saved it must be ruined; and +for the first time Trusts may be looked upon in the light of the +benevolent saviours of mankind. When we are all as poor as the most +plausible of them can make us, and that is saying a good deal, behold we +shall then finally cease to pretend. + +Of course each of us has his own ideal of the millennium, but with +multi-millionaires setting the pace, and all the rest of the world +racing after, it must be agreed that the millennium is not yet. But when +it does come, there will be no more champagne standard, and each person +will be judged after his honest value and not his purse. If he has a +noble soul nobody will mind if he is a bit shabby, and if he is a man of +brains he may even live at the wrong end of the town. In that happy day +everybody will have the courage of his income, no matter how small, and +when one is shown hospitality it will not be according to the champagne +standard, but according to a standard of honest kindness; and no matter +how simple it is, if it is only a crust of bread, no one will criticise, +and no one will apologise. If in that blissful time Jones dines in a +cut-away, why not? And yet is it not true in these days that Jones's +fine character is often enough overlooked in a disapproving +contemplation of his coat? + +However, the millennium has not arrived, and the simpler life, though +the fashion as a subject for sermons, is certainly not practised--as +yet. + +Recently a king of finance gave a great musical function--the gambols of +the rich and great are always called functions. There were so many +billionaires present that a modest millionaire was quite out of it. +Everything was of the costliest, the lighting was entirely by radium, +and the music provided was of an expense supremely worthy of even the +consideration of billionaires. The very greatest violinist had been +induced, by the offer of a small fortune, to play, and indeed, while he +played, the host and another billionaire intimate amused themselves +calculating the money value of each tone at the rate the great artist +demanded for playing. Just as they finished, and he finished, and a +languid murmur signified the approval of the glittering audience, the +young daughter of the billionaire host, who had, apparently, not +received the last polish in the school of unutterable wealth, put an +entreating hand on her father's arm: + +"Do please introduce me," and she mentioned a very famous name, "he does +play so divinely." + +"My child," and the magnate, who had started life peddling tripe, spoke +with haughty disfavour and drew his eyebrows together in a frown, "we +pay such people, but we don't know them." + +O Champagne Standard! + + + + +_American Wives and English Housekeeping_ + + +The clever woman who wrote _American Wives and English Husbands_, put +her Californian heroine in a position in which the one problem she was +not required to solve was English housekeeping. She might break her +heart over her English husband, but the author does not add to our pangs +by relating how her American bride, having first studied the +peculiarities of her Englishman, next varied her soul's trials by +"wrestling" with the lower but equally irritating problems prepared for +her by the English tradesmen. Under which general term are included all +the male and female creatures who, having helped to set up a brand-new +household, immediately proceed to hinder it from running. + +The problem of English husbands I leave to more gifted pens, but I may +perhaps be permitted to tell what the American woman experiences, who, +having "pulled up stakes," plants herself on English soil. This era of +international marriages is not at all confined to the daughters of +American millionaires who can afford the luxury of English dukes. Nor, +in giving my experiences, do I address the prospective Anglo-American +duchess, who would not be likely to spend several sleepless nights, +trying to decide whether she should or should not take her carpets or +the "ice-chest." However, it is well to give one little word of advice +to the American girl proposing to turn herself into an Englishwoman; and +that is, she must be very sure of her Englishman, because for him she +gives up friends and country, and he has to be that and more to her. + +America has a bad reputation for being a very expensive place in which +to live. The large earnings are offset, it is said, by expenses out of +proportion to the wages. Both facts are exaggerated; and, in contrasting +English and American housekeeping, one of the first reasons, I have +decided, why English living flies away with money is that the currency +itself tends to expense. + +To start with, the English unit of money value is a penny--the American +a cent, but observe that a penny is _two_ cents in value. I am asked +eightpence for a pound of tomatoes; I think "how cheap" until I make a +mental calculation, "sixteen cents, that's dear." It is the guileless +penny which, like the common soldier, does the mighty executions and +swells the bill. One looks on the penny as a cent, and that is the +keynote of the expense of living in London. + +To go farther into the coinage: there is the miserable half-crown--it is +more than half-a-dollar, and yet it only represents a half-dollar in +importance. "What shall I give him?" I ask piteously of my Englishman +when a fee is in question. "Oh, half-a-crown," is his reply. I obey, and +mourn over twelve-and-a-half cents thrown away with no credit to myself. + +Poor English people who have no dollar! Don't talk of four shillings! +Four shillings are a shabby excuse for two self-righteous half-crowns. +Oh, for a good simple dollar! Five dollars make a sovereign, roughly +speaking--that wretched and delusive coin which is no sooner changed +into shillings and half-crowns than it disappears like chaff before the +wind. Now good dollars would repose in one's purse, either in silver or +greenbacks (very dirty, but never mind!), and demand reflection before +spending. + +Think of the importance of a man's salary multiplied by dollars! The +wealth of France is undoubtedly due to her coinage--francs are the money +of a thrifty middle-class--the English coinage is intended for peers of +the realm and paupers. A hundred pounds a year is not a vast income, but +how much better it sounds in dollars--five hundred dollars; if, however, +you multiply it by francs, twenty-five hundred francs, why it sounds +noble! Count an Englishman's income by hundreds, and it does seem +shabby! Dollars, when you have four thousand to spend, represent a value +quite out of proportion to the eight hundred pounds they really are. + +Change your English coinage--don't have half-crowns or sovereigns, but +nice simple dollars (call them by any other name if you are too proud to +adopt dollars), and see the new prosperity that will dawn on the +middle-classes. A little tradesman struggling along on one hundred and +fifty pounds a year will feel like a capitalist on seven hundred and +fifty dollars. This is not straying from the subject, for it was my +first observation in English economics. + +On the other hand, the days have passed in America for the making of +sudden and great fortunes, nor are the streets paved with gold. The lady +from County Cork does not step straight from the steerage into a Fifth +Avenue drawing-room (unless by way of the kitchen), but there's work, +and there are good wages; and if the lady from County Cork and her +brothers and cousins would work as hard in Ireland as they do in the +United States, that perplexing island would bloom like a rose. That +their fences are always tumbling down, even over there, and their broken +windows stuffed with rags, is only an amiable national trait to which +the Irish are loyal even in America, just to remind them of home. + +"Everything is cheaper in England," they all said when the decisive step +whether to take or leave the contents of our large house had to be +taken. "It won't be worth packing, taking, and storing. Send everything +to auction." + +That was the advice. I compromised, and one day half of the dear +familiar household gods were trundled off to be sold--alas! and the +elect were left to be packed. Every American house has a grass-grown, +fenced-in space at the back of the house called a yard, for the drying +and bleaching of the laundry. Ours was invaded by three decent men and +piles of pine boards, and then the making of cases and the packing +began. + +The packing was contracted for. The chief of the firm came, looked +through each room, estimated, and gave us the price of the whole work +completed and placed on the freight steamer. One is told that the +English are the best packers in the world, but I have had more damage +done in two cases sent from Bristol to London than in eighty cases sent +from Boston to Liverpool. The three men worked three weeks, and then +took all the cases out of the house and put them on the freight steamer, +and the price of all this wonderful packing was about forty pounds. What +will surprise an English person is that not one of these men expected a +fee. My one ceaseless regret is that I did not take everything, from the +kitchen poker to the mouse-trap. + +On the arrival of our eighty cases in London, they were received by the +warehouse people, who sheltered them until the brand-new English house +was ready, which was not for a year. The packing, sending, and storing +of all this furniture was under one hundred pounds, which, with my +English experience, I knew would have bought nothing. I did question the +wisdom of bringing carpets, and I do not think it pays unless they are +very good and large--the remaking and cleaning cost too much to waste on +anything not very good. Having my furniture safely landed, the next step +was to get a house. + +One finds that the moderate rents asked for English houses is +misleading, for in addition the tenant is expected to pay the rates and +taxes, which add to the original rent one-third more, only somehow this +fact is ignored. Get a house for one hundred and fifty pounds, and you +can add fifty pounds to that by way of rates and taxes. Nor does that +enable you to get anything very gorgeous in the shape of a house, but +one obtainable for about the same price in New York or Boston, minus +those comforts which Americans have come to consider as a matter of +course, until they learn better in England. Only in flats are the rates +and taxes included in the rent, and when flats are desirable they are +expensive. + +Now, living in flats is undoubtedly the result of worrying servants, and +it is obtaining here as rapidly as the English ever accept a new +idea--but being impelled by despair they are becoming popular. Small +flats for "bachelor-maids" and childless couples are abundant and well +enough, but for families who decline to be trodden on by their nearest +and dearest these are nearly impossible, and when possible very dear. + +The "flat" contrived for the "upper middle classes" is a terror, and is +devoid of the comforts invented by American ingenuity and skill, and the +good taste which makes American domestic architecture and decoration so +infinitely superior to all. I do not wish to be misunderstood--if money +is no object one can be as comfortable in London as in New York, but I +am only addressing the "comfortably off." + +In New York I was taken to see a very inexpensive flat, which proved to +me that the average man can make himself thoroughly comfortable there. +It was in an "apartment house" near Central Park. The street was broad +and airy. To be sure the flat was up three flights, and there was no +lift--but that is nothing. It consisted of four rooms, besides a kitchen +and bathroom, and a servant's room. It was entirely finished in oak, and +the plumbing was all nickel-plated and open, and it was furnished with +speaking tubes. In the nice kitchen was an ice-box, and the kitchen +range was of the best. This model flat cost six pounds a month, +including heating, and could be given up at a month's notice. + +No model flat turning up here, we were reduced to take a house, for +which we were willing to give from one hundred and fifty to two hundred +pounds. The agony of that search, and the horror of the various mansions +offered! For the first time I recognised the wisdom of putting no +clothes-closets in London houses, when I think of the repositories of +dirt they would inevitably become. + +At that time I was not on such intimate terms with the climate as I have +since become, and did not understand that it is humanly impossible to +rise triumphant over fogs, smuts, and beetles. For my benefit, grim and +dingy caretakers rose out of the bowels of the earth as out of a +temporary tomb (always in bonnets), and showed us over awful houses in +which every blessed thing had been carried away, even to the door knobs +and the key-holes--that is of course the metal around the holes. + +Awful, closetless houses, guiltless of comfort, with dreary grates +promising a six months' shiver, and great gaunt windows rattling +forebodingly. As for the plumbing--but it is well to drop a curtain over +the indescribable. One does protest, however, against the people who +live in these houses--houses whose discomfort an American artisan would +not tolerate--looking with ineffable self-complacency on their methods, +and sniffing at our American ingenuity and our determination to make +life comfortable. + +Of course we got a house, thanks to no estate agent, but as we could not +rent it we had to buy it--or rather the thirty-eight years' remnant of a +lease--a mysterious arrangement to an American. It was rather hard to +feel that the house and all our little improvements would, after +thirty-eight years, revert to the Bishop of London, to whom the estate +belongs, but we thought that after thirty-eight years we might not be so +very keen about it. So we disturbed an aged woman in a dusty crape +bonnet, and some friendly beetles, and they left the premises +simultaneously. + +We took an architect on faith, who was to be our shield and protector +against the contractor; then we folded our hands, as it were, and +retired to an hotel and proceeded to recover from the horrors of +house-hunting. This interval was taken by the tradesmen of our new +neighbourhood to recommend themselves to me, whose address they +discovered by some miracle. They grovelled before me, they haunted me +with samples--eggs, cream, butter, bread, followed me to the ends of +England, and I finally succumbed to the most energetic. + +Gradually, one gets accustomed to "patronage" and "patron," rare words +in America, where the "I am as good as you" feeling still obtains. I am +becoming used to them as well as "tradesmen" and "class." I acquiesce in +a distinct serving class, conscious that not to be aware of the dividing +gulf would mean the profound scorn of those we have agreed to call our +inferiors. + +To return to the house. The architect and I looked it over--everything +was wanting. The plumbing was new, but clumsy and inadequate. In an +American house much less costly, there would be a hanging cupboard in +each room, thus dispensing with the clumsy and expensive wardrobes. The +plumbing would be pretty and nickel-plated, resisting the action of the +air, and easily kept clean. Here it is always brass or copper, clumsy +and easily tarnished. + +The architect suggested only the obvious, and with unwarranted faith I +hardly ventured to suggest anything; but when the summer brought an +American friend, who looked over the house, then approaching +completion, she sat on the solitary chair and shook her head. + +"He hasn't thought of a single thing," she cried. "Think of not having a +dumb-waiter (English: dinner-lift) in this unheated house. Stone walls +and cold blasts--don't invite me to your lukewarm repasts! Besides you +must have a hardwood floor" (parquet floor) "in your drawing-room" +(being an American she really said _parlor_). "Think of all the dirty +carpets it will save," she urged. "My dear, you don't mean to say that +you will live in this Bunker Hill Monument of a house"--(she comes from +Boston)--"without speaking tubes?" She was aghast. + +"What an architect! Supposing you want to speak to the cook, why you'd +have to run down four flights for a _tête-à-tête_; then supposing you +want coals up four flights--must the maid climb up four flights to find +out what you want before doing it? My dear, even an English servant has +human legs, and she can't stand it." + +I was convinced. I spoke to the architect, and he was politely +acquiescent, and as all these very necessary suggestions came late they +were doubly expensive, and now I have come to the conclusion that +domestic architecture is the proper field for a woman with ideas--a mere +man-architect does not know the meaning of comfort, ingenuity, resource, +and economy. + +As the house declined to get done, I braved the architect, the +contractor, and the workmen, and arrived one day in company with a bed, +a table, and a chair (also a husband), and took possession. + +I did have one treasure at the time--a caretaker. She saved my life, and +she protected my innocent self from the British tradesman, whilst she +gently taught me what the British servant will and will not do. She +informed me when I was paying twice as much as right to the obsequious +tradesman, and she regulated the (to me) perplexing fee. She was very +religious, and I think she looked upon me as her mission and that she +was to rescue me--which she did. Her wages were one pound a week +including her food, and to be just I could not have got such a treasure +in America at the price. + +The most obvious defect we discovered in our house was that it was very +cold--a universal English drawback--and the inadequate open fires seem +to accentuate the chill. + +Would that my feeble voice could do justice to the much-calumniated +American methods of heating! It does pay to be less prejudiced and more +comfortable! Possibly the furnace and steam heat may be a little +overdone, but not with moderate care. No one can make me believe that it +is healthy to sit shivering all over, or roasting on one side and +freezing on the other. Neither do I consider a red nose and chilblains +very ornamental. I admit that furnaces are not a crying need in England +all through the winter, but from December to March it is a pretence to +say you are comfortable, for you are not. There is no doubt but New +England has bad throat and lung troubles, yet so has Old England and the +hardening process does not save, if statistics are right. If I must take +cold and die, at least I prefer to do so comfortably. + +If there were a furnace I should not need gas-stoves (which are +certainly no more poetic than a register or a radiator, besides being +distinctly sham), nor would there be a perpetual procession of +coal-scuttles going upstairs, unless an open fire is desired for +additional warmth and cheerfulness. + +This brings one to the relative costs of coal, water, and gas. London +coal is greasy, soft, and dear. Where the hard coal is burned in the +States, it leaves white cinders and ashes. It burns slowly and is +therefore very profitable, and the price averages about twenty-four +shillings a ton. Must the cheek of English beauty always be adorned with +"blacks"? + +The water-rates here are just double those of Boston, where, O rapture! +we had two bathrooms, and where the "sidewalk" (American for pavement) +was thoroughly washed every morning. In Boston gas was charged for at +the rate of four shillings for one thousand cubic feet; here we pay +three shillings for the same, and yet for infinitely less gas used our +bills here are mysteriously larger. Our London electricity is both +expensive and poor; consumers are at the mercy of the companies, and a +little wholesome competition is very imperative. + +The English are reckoned a nation of grumblers, but one finds that the +grumbler ends in grumbling, though in moments of supreme anguish he +writes to _The Times_, which permits, with the impartiality of Divine +Providence, both the just and the unjust to disport in its columns. + +Considering the papering and painting of the house done--the painting +done very roughly from our point of view. Then the kitchen needed a new +range and so we got the most expensive of its kind--expensive for +America even--but the acknowledged solidity of English workmanship +(which sometimes becomes clumsiness) is well in place here. The +dinner-lift had been constructed for one flight, and was surprisingly +dear, while the parquet floor in the drawing-room cost twenty-seven +pounds where it would have cost fifteen pounds in America. + +This brings me to a point on which I wish to lay great stress: the +remarkable progress in America in all the applied and domestic arts +within the last ten years, which leaves England far behind. Our English +house was just old enough to be surprisingly ugly--it belongs to the +early Victorian period. Without wishing to spend too much money in its +decoration, we did feel that we ought to put away the funereal +mantel-pieces and set up something more æsthetic. + +Our architect--always obliging and never suggestive--took us to see +wooden mantel-pieces, and we found them expensive and clumsy. In this +strait my Englishman had an inspiration. "Buy them in New York"--we were +just going over--"and you will find them prettier, better, and cheaper +even if the freightage has to be added to the price." + +I would not believe him because I also was still labouring under the +delusion that England was cheap and America dear. However, we went to +New York and there we bought three wooden mantels--six feet high and six +feet wide--of the best quartered oak, of so simple and graceful a design +that they are always noticed and admired. These three were packed, sent, +and landed at our front door in London, and the price, all included, was +not much more than we should have paid for the only one in London of +which I approved. I feel convinced that there is a great market here +for American wood-work as well as leather, iron, and glass, for with +English excellence of workmanship they combine a taste which adapts the +best to its own uses. It would revolutionise the decoration of English +houses. + +The American has the advantage that he is not conservative where that +stands between him and progress. That something was good enough for his +ancestors is no reason why it should satisfy him. Because they chose to +freeze is no reason why he should. Somehow, one always comes back to the +inadequate heating, for as I write, my face is flaming while a lively +icicle penetrates my spine. + +The carpets being now down, I sent to the warehouse for the eighty +cases, and after a year again looked at my household goods. They were +very skilfully unpacked, but (here is the difference between the English +and the American workman) each one of the men expected a fee every time +he moved a box for me. Every time I went to the warehouse to open a +trunk one or two men had to be fee'd, and at the end it came to quite a +little sum. In America, this would not have been expected, even for +harder work done, and quite rightly, for the men were receiving proper +wages, and I was paying the Storage Company liberally. + +Our American furniture being cosmopolitan it was speedily at home in our +English rooms; only these high studded rooms have such a way of +devouring furniture! I thought piteously of that which I had rashly +flung into the Boston auction-room, and when it came to replacing it, +what did I find? That American furniture is much better and much +cheaper. My soul yearned even for the big black chest of drawers which I +had left behind, and it loathed the brand-new "art furniture," sticky +with paste and varnish. + +I demanded Chippendale and such--but, alas! their day is over, except +for millionaires! Praed Street, Brompton Road, Great Portland Street, +and Wardour Street should blush for the faked-up antiquities that ogle +the passerby. I have no prejudice against modern furniture if it is +good; nor do I love old furniture simply because it is old, but +undoubtedly the old taste was artistic and simple, and workmen had +plenty of leisure and used their hands. But when it comes to American or +English machine-made furniture I prefer the American because, it is in +better taste, is made of better wood, and is cheaper. + +I paid twenty-four shillings apiece for painted pine chests of drawers +for the servants. In New York I saw a pretty one, all of oak with brass +handles, for thirteen shillings. That is only a sample. Perhaps it is +ungenerous urging the importation of American wares that can, because of +English free trade, undersell the English manufacturer, but it remains +true that it can be done, and ought to be done, and competition will +improve the home produce, and there is room for improvement. + +Well, having finally got my dwelling into some kind of order, I and my +new British and old American household goods proceeded to keep house +together. + +This brings me to the question of English and American domestic service. +It is an article of faith that America being the home of the free (and +independent) will before long have no servants, but only "mississes." +It is not quite so bad, by any means. To be sure wages are much higher, +but the American servant does twice the work of an English servant. + +The average American family keeps two servants and a man who comes in +twice a day to "tend" the furnace--the central stove which heats the +entire house. The cook gets fifty pounds a year, the housemaid forty +pounds, and the man, who gets neither food nor lodging, eighteen pounds. +The total is one hundred and eight pounds, which includes the baking of +all the bread and the doing of the weekly laundry for the entire house; +the only additional expenses being for coal and soap. + +Now for the wages in an English family of the same standing:--Cook +thirty-five pounds, parlour-maid twenty-six pounds, housemaid twenty +pounds, char-boy eight pounds, and fifty pounds to the laundry for work +which is quite disgraceful. The sum total is one hundred and thirty-nine +pounds, which does not include the feeding of an additional person, and +a servant's board is a greater expense than her wages. Distinctly the +economy is on the American side. + +That the servant business is a trade was a fact impressed on me for the +first time by my very intelligent English cook. Each English servant has +her trade which she knows and she declines to meddle with what she does +not know, for which reason the dividing lines are rather strictly laid +down. It was something I had to learn so as not to call on one servant +to do the duties of another. Our American servants are more liberal, but +now I realise that a good English servant is not so much an amateur as +an American; but unless you wish to be unpleasantly enlightened as +mistress, you must learn her line of duty well. + +To keep house one must have servants, and in a strange place the first +problem is how to get them. Supposing no friend can recommend you one, +you are reduced either to advertising or the registry office. Registry +offices, through which the majority of sufferers get their "help," riot +in ungodly prosperity. They have managers and clerks, like a bank and, +like other corporations, they have no souls. If you are a meek lady +they snub you, and if you are undecided they give you bad advice. At any +rate the unscrupulous ones, and there are plenty of these, take your fee +whether you get a servant or not. + +It seems as if a certain amount of honesty should obtain even in this +business, and I protest against paying five shillings for the mere joy +of talking to a stately female, the presiding goddess in the generally +ill-ventilated temple, who pockets my money and, as soon as my fee is +safe, takes no further earthly interest in me. The methods of English +registry offices seem to me the brazenest kind of piracy. Why don't +English women rebel? Are they not the daughters and wives of grumblers, +and probably the mothers also? However, fate was kind to me, and I got +three servants, two of good village families, while the superior cook +was the legacy of a brilliant woman, a good deal of whose wisdom I have +since had at second-hand. + +In the economy of the universe I know that there is a serving class, but +we people of New England are not glib in the use of the word "servant." +Do we not (in the country) call them "helps" when the expression is +base flattery? Here, class distinctions have put the matter on a +practical footing--servants are servants and recognise themselves as +such, and have that outward and visible sign of well-trained domestics +which the Irish girl, direct from her paternal pig-sty, scorns in New +York. + +"You must not think," said my intelligent cook, "that we don't have our +feelings as much as you." There it was, and she put herself as a matter +of course on quite a different plane of human beings; the American +servant, on the other hand, would consider herself of the same class, +but ill-used by circumstances. A clever woman once said to me, "You +can't expect all the Christian virtues in the kitchen for five dollars a +week!" But we do! Perhaps the most precious gift I received when I left +Boston was this advice: "Don't see too much." + +Servants are like children; to keep them under control you must impress +them. They object to a mistress who is too clever with her hands, but +they like her praise. An American servant does not lose respect for a +mistress who, if necessary, can "lend a hand," but the English servant +sees in such readiness a distinct loss of dignity. Many a time have my +American servants seen me on the top of a step-ladder doing something +that required more intelligence than strength, and they have respected +my power to "do." Here something keeps me from the top of the +step-ladder--instinct probably. + +An American treats her servants more considerately than an Englishwoman. +I am conscious of saving my servants too much; often (I confess it with +shame) I run down a flight or two to meet them, and there is no doubt +that the more I do the more unwilling and ungrateful they become. + +With three English servants, besides a boy (not to speak of the +laundry), now doing the work of two American servants, I proceed. I have +mentioned a vital and nearly fatal subject--the laundry. In London it is +awful but inevitable, and one cannot wonder any more at the stupendous +dirt of the lower classes. Are their things ever washed, and if so who +pays? After much observation I have decided that they make up by a +liberal use of starch what they lack in soap and water and +"elbow-grease." + +Language fails an American direct from the land of clear skies, sunshine +and soap and water, when she contemplates the harrowing results of steam +laundries. Really the most expensive of luxuries in London is to keep +clean! When on Sunday afternoons one sees in Kensington Gardens a poor +infant with a terribly starched and dirty cap on its head (in the form +of a muffin), enveloped in an equally dirty and starched cape, and +carried by a small girl in fearfully starched and dingy petticoats, one +recognises maternal pride which rises superior to London dirt. + +I am the client of a "model" laundry which sends our linen back a +delicate pearl-grey. We call it affectionately the "muddle" laundry, and +it costs us one pound a week to keep up to the pearl-grey standard. I +wish we could go back to the days of chain-armour! What remedy? There is +none, except country laundries for the rich and great, and starch for +the poor! The only result of soft coal and dire necessity is the +excellence and cheapness of the cleansing establishments, without which +the long-suffering householder would indeed sit in sackcloth and ashes! + +The one aim in furnishing our little house has been to keep the rooms +free from all unnecessary draperies, which are merely traps for dust. It +is hard for me to curb my feminine taste, which runs to sofa cushions +and Oriental nooks lighted by Venetian lamps, but the exigencies of the +London climate make me strictly Colonial (New England Colonial), and I +can look into every corner--blessed privilege. The laundry being an +accepted evil, one institution I willingly proclaim cheap--the +scrub-woman who gets half a crown a day. Why don't all English +scrub-women emigrate to the States in a body? They would get from six to +eight shillings a day, overtime overpay. + +Coming to the details of housekeeping. The custom here is that tradesmen +call for orders. That also obtains in America, but many ladies there go +to the markets and select and order for themselves, which is distinctly +more economical. Here, as the result of inadequate storage room, the +expense of ice, and the by no means common use of the ice-box, there is +not much food kept in the house. Now the laying-in of a good supply once +or twice a week, if the mistress understands ordering and goes where she +pleases, is undoubtedly cheaper than a daily ordering of driblets. It is +the same with groceries, and these should be kept under lock and key! To +the American that is not only an impossibility, it is nearly an insult, +and I know of not a single American housekeeper who weighs out the +groceries and other articles to be used week by week. It seems to start +the mutual relationship of mistress and maid on a basis of suspicion. + +A tabulated list of values is useless where prices fluctuate. I simply +compare the differences as I have found them in my own little +housekeeping. Meat, with the exception of fillet and sirloin, is dearer +here, and so is poultry. Groceries average about the same, but coffee +and flour are dearer. So are butter and eggs. Milk is the same, but tea, +dear to the English heart, is so cheap that one can undermine one's +nervous system at a very small expense. Vegetables are good and cheap, +but there is little variety, while fruit is dear. + +How one does miss the ordinary cheap, good fruits, the California grapes +and the Concords with their clusters of deep blue berries, a five-pound +basket of which only costs a shilling. These were first grown in the old +New England town that Emerson made famous. As for apples, pears and +peaches, they are among the cheap fruits over the sea, and I maintain +their superiority to their English kin. + +What oranges equal the Floridas? The "forbidden-fruit" and the +"grape-fruit," are only just making their conquering way into the +English shops. If, as it is claimed, the one is the forbidden fruit of +the Garden of Eden, Eve is nearly justified! + +Yes, there are many good things in America and at reasonable prices. One +has only to think of the divine "sweet corn" and "squash" and "sweet +potatoes," and even the modest white bean from which all New England +makes its national dish of "pork and beans." + +Fish there is in great variety in London, but that also I find dear. +How is it possible for me to live in a land where lobsters and oysters +are a luxury and not a necessity? Only a housekeeper knows what a refuge +they are in trouble--when an unexpected visitor turns up. Is not the +"oyster stew" (a soup of milk and oysters) an American national dish? +But it could only reach perfection in that blessed land where to eat +oysters is not to suck a copper key, and where they exist in regal +profusion. I look with scorn at the measly, little lobsters for each of +which the fishmonger demands three ridiculous shillings instead of one +shilling and three pence. My heart longs for lobster _à la Newburg_ till +I remember that it takes three of these poor creatures to make the +dish--nine shillings! So I continue to yearn and keep my nine shillings. + +I cannot, however, leave the subject without expressing my admiration +for the beauty of the English fish shops and butcher shops. To see a +fish shop in London is to see a trade haloed with poetry. If I were a +fishmonger I would sit among my stock-in-trade and be inspired. The +fishmonger is an artist, he constructs pictures of still-life which +would have been revelations to the greatest of Dutch masters. In +America our fish shops are devoid of poetry--the only compensation being +to see the mountainous piles of oysters, ready to be opened, and +innumerable great red lobsters. + +To one item of American economy I wish to return with added stress; that +is, the baking of bread in each house. This household-bread, if well +made, is delicious, substantial, and economical. Usually the cook bakes +twice a week, and besides that she is expected to have ready for +breakfast either fresh baked "biscuits" (scones), "muffins," or +"pop-overs." The yearly allowance of flour for each person is one +barrel, and one reckons the expense to be about half what bread costs +here. The English "double-decker" is a fearful and wonderful production +that errs on the side of heaviness, just as the American baker's bread +errs on the side of frivolous lightness, and nourishes like froth. + +Whenever Americans proclaim the cheapness of a visit to London one finds +without exception that they live here as they would not dream of living +at home. Were they to take lodgings there in the same economic manner, +they could live quite as cheaply. + +Another inexpensive commodity--which becomes very expensive in the +end--is cabs. There is no doubt that they are cheap, and the fatal +result is that they are used to an extent which makes them a serious +item of expense to a family of moderate means. In America we pay two +shillings each for a short drive in that stately vehicle called a +"hack," and the price is prohibitive for an average family except on +"occasions." So cab fares are not a serious item in domestic expenses. + +From experience, I believe that America has a very unmerited reputation +for expense. Live well, even if not ostentatiously, in London, and it +costs fully as much as in New York or Boston. One does not judge by +millionaires or beggars, for both are independent of statistics, but by +the middle classes. Houses are here singularly devoid of comforts, and, +taking the same income, I should say a middle-class American family +could live there as cheaply as here, but with more comfort; and when it +comes to schooling for children, an item to which I have not alluded, +with infinitely greater advantages. + +In writing down these desultory reflections, I have been actuated by the +thought that what I have learned may be of use to some puzzled American +creature, who, having married an Englishman, proposes to live in England +with only American standards to guide her. She must not believe, as I +was told, that an American income will go one-third farther here. It +does not. She must be prepared to accept other methods, even if, +secretly, she modifies them a little to suit her American notions; but +she must not boast, for her well-meaning efforts will, at best, be +regarded with good-natured tolerance. + +How I wish I could clap a big, stolid, conservative, frost-bitten +English matron into a snug American house, with a furnace, and heaps of +closet (cupboard) room, and all sorts of bells and lifts and telephones, +and then force her to tell me the absolute, unvarnished truth! What +would she say? + +In conclusion, I wonder if I, as an exiled American sister, might make a +plea to my American brethren? It is that when they send their wedding +invitations, as well as others, printed on their swellest "Tiffany" +paper, they will kindly put on enough postage. Why should one have to +pay five-pence on each joyful occasion? On some, bristling with +pasteboard, I have even had to pay tenpence,--why add this pang to +exile? + + + + +_Kitchen Comedies_ + + +My superior cook had just given me notice, and I felt that the bottom +had dropped out of the universe. She was an ancient retainer, according +to twentieth-century standard, for she had been with me three months. + +Her claim to fame rested on her once having cooked for Lord Kitchener. +Whenever we had a trifling difference of opinion, which was seldom, +because I didn't dare, she always retorted that she had cooked for Lord +Kitchener, and, of course, I realised that I was but an unworthy +successor to that great man. I suffered a good deal from his lordship in +those days, and fervently pray that Fate will not throw in my blameless +path either his parlour-maid or his laundress. + +I had felt so safe, for cook lured me on with false hopes: she offered +to make marmalade, and she demanded a cat. This was tantamount to +staying for ever. She made the marmalade, and we scoured the +neighbourhood for a cat. + +It may be a digression, but I really must remark here on the scarcity of +any particular commodity of which one happens to stand in need. If the +world can be said to be overstocked by any one article it really might +be said to be cats; but had we been in search of a Koh-i-noor it could +not have been more hopeless. We waited three months for a cat to be made +to order, so to speak, and the very day his godmother left--we named him +in honour of our departed cook--he appeared in the person of a long, +lank, rattailed, ignominious tabby, on whom food made no earthly +impression. His name is Boxer--Mister Boxer. + +There is a great daily paper in London in whose columns the nobility and +gentry clamour for what the Americans delicately call "help." I have +myself pressed into four alluring lines a statement of the advantages I +had to offer, and have received no reply. I have answered thirty-five +advertising parlour-maids, enclosing stamped envelopes, and have had no +reply. My cook having retired from the scene, and there being nothing +left to remind me of her but Mister Boxer, I again sought solace in +those delusive columns. + +"What have I done," I cried in anguish, "that all cooks should avoid +me?" + +Just then my dearest friend was announced; at least, she is as dear as +distance will permit in London. + +"What's happened?" she asked at once. + +I explained mournfully that cook had gone. + +"Whenever we had company she always said it wasn't Lord Kitchener, +though I never said it was." + +"I wish to goodness," and my friend flung herself into the nearest +chair, "that my cook would go." + +For a moment I gasped; it sounded so audacious. + +"Give me a new cook every week," she cried, "but deliver me from eating +the same cooking for twenty-six years, as we have done. Adolphus says he +has eaten four thousand French pancakes filled with raspberry jam, in +that time, and that he'll die if he eats another one. I don't blame +him," she added gloomily, "but what are we to do? I've urged her to +better herself, but she won't. She quarrels with every servant who comes +into the house; she's as deaf as a post, and she cooks abominably unless +we have a dinner-party. If we weren't poor I'd pension her off; but we +can't afford it," and she gave a bounce of resignation. "So don't talk +to me of ancient family retainers; I'm sick of them!" + +"You don't know what you are talking about," I said solemnly. "Listen to +me. Last week I read an advertisement put in by a lady for her cook who +was leaving--a cook with all the Christian virtues. I decided to answer +it at once, but then I remembered the thirty-five who never replied to +my letters. Just then He came down, placid and smiling--you know his +way--and I explained to him that an Honourable Mrs. Smith was +advertising for a place for her cook, in whom she took a personal +interest. + +"'My dear,' he said, 'don't write! Hire an ambulance and fetch her back, +for a cook so recommended cannot be long for this world.' + +"I took his advice and flew there in a hansom, and I was so excited +that I forgot to watch the horse's ears. It was ten o'clock when I +reached the Honourable Mrs. Smith's, and it was just like a smart 'at +home.' At first I thought we had gone to the wrong house. Five ladies +were going in, and I passed six in the hall. There were several +reception-rooms and not a chair without a lady. A perplexed, willowy +creature without a hat, who turned out to be the Honourable Mrs. Smith, +led me to a seat under an imitation palm-tree, and said it was dreadful +and that she would never do it again. Her cook had received forty-five +letters and twenty wires; and fifteen messenger-boys and thirty-two +ladies had called. + +"There were twenty letters from persons of title. Of course, I thought +of Lord Kitchener, and felt it useless to stay, but as I had come the +Honourable Mrs. Smith advised me to wait; she was very civil. + +"Now, you know my three rules: I won't have mixed religions in the +kitchen because of squabbles; I won't take a servant out of a 'flat'; +and I don't want one who wears glasses. + +"When the paragon and I met under the imitation palm, I found she was +all I did not want. She questioned me severely, and said that she was a +Roman Catholic. I felt that the religion of a being for whom twenty of +the nobility were clamouring was no concern of mine, and I was surprised +when she asked me to leave my address. So little did I aspire to the +paragon that I did not even ask if she could cook. I passed ladies still +arriving, and I was so melancholy that I went home in a 'bus. + +"The next morning I had a letter, and I can truly say I never was so +flattered in my life, not even when HE asked me to marry him, for the +paragon had chosen me out of one hundred and sixty-five ladies, +exclusive of twenty of the nobility. + +"To be sure, she went against all my principles and I did not even know +if she could cook; but she had chosen me! + +"So she arrived in company of three cardboard bonnet-boxes and a +japanned tin trunk. + +"HE suggested that we should try her on a lunch, and we did. Thank +goodness, we only had four of his chums, or I should have died of +mortification. After all, a clever man is sometimes duller than the +dullest woman. + +"How she cooked! It was appalling! Our parlour-maid, who has lovely +manners, served a series of horrors as if they were a feast for the +gods. After luncheon I found cook had broken my best cut-glass salad +bowl, and two old Worcester plates, and then finished off with nervous +prostration on the kitchen floor. HE and I dined out that night; we had +had too much of the comforts of home. + +"The next morning the housemaid appeared with joy in her usually blank +eyes, and said cook had gone and taken her boxes. At first I thought she +had gone to High Mass. But no, she had really gone with her heavy tin +trunk and the three bandboxes. How she got them down at midnight over +four creaking flights of stairs without being heard, we shall never +know, but she did. We found out afterwards that the Honourable Mrs. +Smith had had this paragon just one month, and then she was anxious to +get rid of her in a hurry; so she advertised. It was cruel, wasn't it? +Really, you know, it is wicked of you to complain when a servant has +been faithful to you for twenty-six years." + +My friend, who had been made cynical through suffering, said her cook +wouldn't have been faithful if she could have got a better place. + +The servant problem is indeed a very sore subject and singularly serious +in England. For this there are two reasons: class distinctions, and also +because so many more servants are needed here to do a given amount of +work than anywhere else. Of course, a great leisured class means also a +great serving class, and this serving class is useless for others, +because it has been brought up to false standards of expenditure and to +a good deal of idleness. Take this class out of the supply, and also the +ever-increasing numbers to whom the smattering of Board School education +has taught just enough to make them good for very little, so that in +their proper pride they prefer to pass the weary years in cheap +department stores or starve on factory wages. Then it is very +conceivable that the servant supply does not equal the demand. + +The result is that the registry offices do a thriving trade in sending +out all sorts of undesirable and ignorant human beings to be thorns in +the flesh of unsuspecting housekeepers. + +There is something so pathetically reckless in our everyday life! How +little we know of the servants we take into our intimate lives out of +this terrible London with its vices and crimes, discovered and +undiscovered. Recommendations are simply the blind leading the blind. +The worst servant I ever had came with a glowing personal character. + +Why will not women tell the truth! Perhaps it is characteristic of the +weaker vessel to be more tactful, to put it delicately, than men. The +lack of truth is partly a desire not to be bothered and partly a rather +spiteful wish that the other woman may find out for herself, and also a +cowardly fear to do a poor girl an ill turn. I rejoice to say that I +found one honest woman who prevented my taking a burglar's assistant to +my heart. But she was more than a woman, for she was also a physician. +When a woman takes to a man's profession she at the same time takes on +something of a man's virtues. + +To this lady I went for a personal character of an ideal housemaid, who +said she had left her last place because the lady would not permit a +"follower." Thinking I might not be so bigoted in regard to followers, +human nature being human nature, I was prepared for an area romance, but +not for a shilling shocker. + +The ideal, so the lady told me honestly, was beloved by a job butler +next door. She had been a nice country girl, but London and the job +butler had proved her destruction. Area railings and bolts were as +nothing to them. The area bell was for ever ringing, and when, by +highest command, it remained unanswered, then did the job butler make a +constant practice of ringing the front-door bell at unearthly hours, +until finally the police had to interfere. Then, soured by the course of +true love running so far from smooth, the job butler broke in one night +and took things. Whether the loving housemaid was a party to the +burglary was not proved, but she was discharged at a moment's notice, +and it was then that she applied to me. + +"I couldn't let you take her with eyes closed," said this true +philanthropist, and so I declined the young burglar's assistant. + +In another article I have compared English and American servants. +Briefly repeated, the American servant will do twice the work of an +English servant, nor are her rules cast-iron. She is open to reason, +accepts new methods, and is not conservative. Conservatism, to a certain +point, wherever found, represents a caution that is wisdom; but the +conservatism of servants rests on colossal ignorance, the result of +experience gathered from innumerable "ladies," many quite as ignorant as +their servants. In these progressive days they keep them too short a +time to care to teach them anything, and are mostly glad enough to +"muddle along" any way. Never have servants been treated so well as now +and never have they as a rule been so bad. + +The world, in spite of its Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Rothschilds, is +made up of people with modest incomes, and it is these who suffer most +keenly under the mistaken aspiration of the servant class. The +impossibility of getting servants, makes them resigned to put up with +unbearable shortcomings, for complaints result in immediate notice being +given, and, after all, a bad servant is better than no servant. So the +servant never learns, and takes her faults to the next sufferer. + +The head of one of the most trustworthy of the London registry offices +told me that the decadence of servants had its rise during the first +Jubilee of Queen Victoria. There was such an influx of strangers in +London that country servants were imported at huge wages, while, on the +other hand, innumerable London servants threw up their situations simply +"to see the fun." Since then, she affirmed, they have become a restless +lot, changing from one place to the other without reason, except for the +sake of excitement, and generally demanding big establishments, less +work, and increasing wages. I have heard more complaints of servants in +England in a few years than in my whole life in America. + +The country servants' Mecca is London, and no sooner have they reached +it than they join that restless procession with the japanned tin trunks. +What becomes of them? Where do they finally go with their false +standards and blank faces! Those awful blank faces, as impenetrable as +that of the Egyptian Sphinx. + +Servants can be divided into two classes: those that aspire to serve the +nobility, and the others who circulate among the middle-classes. The +outward and visible distinctions of the former are the perfection of +menial smartness, the women's starched apron-bows cocked to an +impertinent angle, and their faces a blank. On the other hand, the +middle-class servant never really succeeds to a blank face, which is the +result of years of practice, and sometimes she even smiles. Also her +apron is often put on in a hurry, and much starch brazens out holes; +besides, her face invites "smuts." + +Then there is a kind of manservant who revolves in boarding-houses and +among certain kinds of distracted families, who is too awful to +contemplate. Those fatal, ill-fitting evening clothes that shine with +age and grease. He mostly comes from foreign parts, and, instead of +presenting to the spectator a blank wall of a face, he stares at you in +agonised misapprehension. As a foreigner, he is naturally despised by +his British fellow servants. Has not the Englishman a perfectly natural +conviction that Divine Providence is a British institution, and that the +heavenly language is English? + +The rest of the world (with the exception in these days of Americans) he +labels as foreigners, and foreigners he either tolerates, overlooks, or +despises. His main attitude is one of amiable indifference, which is, +indeed, his little weakness, for it blinds him to the possible strength +of what he does not consider worth guarding against. I asked a +distinguished Englishman if he often went abroad. "No," he said, quite +without humour, "I hate meeting so many foreigners." + +It is this British attitude which so endears him to the world at large, +already exasperated by a little way he has of appropriating to himself +nice, big slices of the earth. His enemies quite forget how he promptly +turns these nice, big slices into civilised lands, which he throws open +to the rest of the world. It is, possibly, as compensation, that the +world turns over to him its surplus hungry and idle population, who +gather up English pennies with which they later on return to their +various fatherlands, where they at once join the army of the bitter +Anglophobes. And is not the dingy foreign servant one of the innumerable +birds of prey that fill their poor, starved stomachs with English +victuals? No wonder the English are so unpopular! + +The English servant requires to be studied. The world's other servants +are mere amateurs, the English servant has a trade. As an American, I +proceeded to treat mine _à l'Americaine_, and I made my first blunder. A +sensible American is, if not friends with her servants, at least +friendly. The Englishwoman, if she is sensible, presents to her servants +a surface of perfect indifference, and then she has peace, for the +English servant despises a considerate and kindly mistress as not +knowing her place. + +The most difficult thing for a stranger to learn is that impalpable line +between the different servants' duties. If one does not enumerate what +one expects of them when they are hired, afterwards it is too late. They +have, however, a rough sense of honour and they generally do what they +agree to. + +According to the very common American custom, our house is furnished +with speaking-tubes, and these nearly lost me a very superior cook. She +was so superior that I was more polite to her than to any other human +being; only when I was quite sure she could not hear, then did I call +her by her pet name, Lady Macbeth. As I was looking timidly through the +larder one morning she gave me notice. I never had a servant who had +such lovely kitchen manners; her unfailing impudence was veneered by the +most perfect propriety. "It's the speaking-tubes; I've nothing else to +complain of; but I won't be talked to through the tubes. It's against my +dignity to have other servants listen." + +This time I pacified her, but later on I hurt her beyond forgiveness; I +had sent the housemaid to call her one morning when she was very late. +On my usual kitchen visit I found Lady Macbeth palpitating with +rage--she, a "cook-housekeeper," called by the housemaid; she gave +notice at once, and I realised then that there is no such snob as a +servant, and there is nothing more unyielding than kitchen etiquette. + +The terrors of etiquette below stairs! There once strayed into my employ +a housemaid whose career, hitherto, had been confined to lodging-houses. +Upstairs she always looked frightened, and her face had a great +attraction for "smuts"; but she was very willing and very incompetent. +It is my experience that the willing are mostly incompetent. It was in +the reign of Lady Macbeth, a tall, fair person, with blonde eyes and a +cast-iron jaw. + +"It is not for me to ask Madam to send Muggins away, but the rest of us +will go if Muggins stays. I don't know where she has lived-out before, +but she drinks out of her saucer and does not even know that we expect +her to be down in our sitting-room at half-past four, dressed in her +black, and ready to pour out the servants' tea." Of course, I gave +Muggins notice, recognising that the lodging-house was her proper +sphere, and in the month that followed I knew she suffered martyrdom. +She used to wipe her eyes stealthily, and as she was not proud I showed +her some sympathy. + +"They ain't nice to me downstairs like you are, Ma'am," she sobbed, +"though I'm doing my best. Cook says she won't wipe up the dishes for +the likes of me." + +"Never mind, Muggins; you'll be going soon and, after all, you have +learnt a good deal here," I consoled her. + +"I wish," said Muggins, "I was dead." Thus I discovered in Muggins an +unexpected and interesting note of tragedy, but she melted away as they +all do; one does not remember them as individuals but as materialised +qualities, good or bad. However, some months after, I again encountered +Muggins, looking like a bad imitation of a very middle-class young lady, +in a huge hat like a cart-wheel, nodding with plumes, beside her an +underdone youth, a bowler on the back of his head, so as to show the +fine, bold sweep of his shiny black hair. + +Muggins's smile showed that she had learnt a thing or two. Never more +would she drink tea out of a saucer, nor plunge her knife into a mouth +which, when we first met, was guiltless of front teeth. Now I at once +recognised the gloss of six brand-new "store teeth." On the strength of +what she had learnt in my service she had graduated to higher spheres, +where she could afford the luxury of a young man with whom to "walk +out." It seems a servant's aim and ambition is to set up a young man +with whom she walks out--the final goal being rarely matrimony; it only +means speechless strolls through Regent's Park or Kensington Gardens, or +the joyous revels at Earl's Court, if "she" stands treat. + +Oddly enough, the English lover of the lower class is always speechless +but very affectionate in public. The American of the same class is +publicly prudish. It is, therefore, rather startling, as a blushing +stranger, to see the loving couples that emerge out of the leafy paths +of Kensington Gardens, clasping each other's waists, holding hands, or +engaged in other miscellaneous fondling, which is probably the +safety-valve that nature provides for those whose general and business +expression is a total blank. + +In the course of time, Muggins was succeeded by Jane; Jane of the +Madonna face, a voice like a summer breeze, and her work divine. I +basked in unaccustomed joy until, unfortunately, one morning I asked +her to send off an important telegram for me. "No," she said, in her +sweet voice, "I won't go out this filthy morning." In the afternoon I so +far regained my scattered senses as to call up Jane and give her notice. +For an instant she turned white, then she recovered herself. + +"I beg your pardon, Madam," she said, with respectful effrontery, "I +shall not take your notice. Servants do not need to take any notice +after noon." + +"All the same you have had your notice; but I will, if you wish, repeat +it to-morrow morning," I said, rather amused. + +The next morning I had barely set my foot in the dining-room when Jane +flew in, "I wish to give you notice, Ma'am," she cried, in a gasp. I +recognised that I was defeated, for by some menial code of honour she +felt that she could tell her next lady that she had given me notice. +Whether the custom is legal or not, registry offices are not agreed, but +I am now careful to give notice before noon. + +The restlessness of the English servants, fanned by the Board Schools +and higher aspirations towards department stores, has produced the +temporary servant. She flits from one distressed family to the other, +and is at anyone's beck and call at a moment's notice; nor does she +harrow her lady's feelings by staying that awful last month, when having +done her worst she is invulnerable. + +She has, of course, her disadvantages, along with her advantages. She +takes naturally no earthly interest in her place (but none of them do!) +for she flits like a grubby butterfly from one area to the other; she +is, however, usually quite competent. Her example, on the other hand, is +bad, for she gets high wages, a varied existence, and plenty of +holidays, and, being temporary and independent, she does not work too +hard. + +There is really nothing so fatal as aspirations in the wrong place; to +them we owe the servant problem. Now, the average man will sniff at the +servant problem and, unless he has a great, broad mind, he will say to +the partner of some of his joys and all of his sorrows, "You don't know +how to treat your servants. My clerks don't bother me." + +As if that were the same thing at all! Men's places are easily filled, +and the average man is so anchored by domestic ties that he thinks +several times before he gives warning, as indeed would a servant if she +had a family depending on her earnings. But a servant usually has no +ties. Her clothes are in her tin trunk, and her hopes in the registry +office; thus, accompanied by the one and protected by the other, she +goes on her winding way. If she had an idle or sick husband and +half-a-dozen children to support, her attitude towards service would be +less lofty. + +Coming often from very poor homes, it is a curious fact that servants +are always extravagant, at any rate with other people's belongings. Lady +Macbeth, under whose dominion I languished for over three years, once +confessed to me that she prided herself on her economy, which, she said, +proved her to be of a different class from other servants. + +Once, in a gracious moment, she also told me she preferred being a good +cook rather than a poor nursery governess who, in the delicate and +unwritten code of service, is on a higher social scale, hovering, I +believe on the outskirts of the lady pinnacle. She was kind enough to +add that she would rather cook for some one she could look up to than +teach a lot of stupid young ones. I was highly flattered, and so was the +other member of my family, and we tried hard to live up to her good +opinion. But no man is a hero to his valet, and she never repeated the +compliment. + +It is unfortunately true that domestic troubles, like rheumatism, +toothache, and sea-sickness, from which one can suffer untold agonies, +never arouse a proper sympathy. A man takes his business seriously +enough, but he never takes his wife's housekeeping seriously. + +"What in the world do you do all day long?" is his kindly, scornful cry; +as if there were nothing to do! Yet it is that which gives women grey +hairs and nervous prostration, and forms an endless topic of +conversation among those who would gladly avoid the subject. It requires +cast-iron, steel-bound nerves to confront rebellion in the kitchen, +simply because of the terror of going from bad to worse. That awful +pilgrimage to the registry office, those hideous interviews, that +terrible month of probation--your probation as well as hers. I defy two +women to get together and not talk "servants" before the end of the +conversation. Not even intellect will save you the flight to that +inferno, the Registry Office. + +There is one figure the dramatist of the future will never again be able +to employ, and that is the ancient retainer. Never again will he follow +his unfortunate master and mistress into exile, or lay down his life for +them, or give up to them his humble earnings. Not only will the species +be extinct, but the very tradition of it will have passed away. + +The twenty-first century baby is destined to be rocked and cradled by +electricity, warmed and coddled by electricity, perhaps fathered and +mothered by electricity. Probably the only thing he will be left to do +unaided will be to make love; and yet, possibly, that also is another +form of electricity. At any rate, the ancient retainer is doomed, and it +is the ancient retainer's fault. He has shown his decreasing interest in +the family, so no wonder the family takes no further interest in him. +Job servants supply his place, and in illness a trained nurse does as +well, if not much better. + +Alas, it is a materialistic, utilitarian age and, if they did but know +it, neither master nor servant can afford to stifle what remains of +loyalty and affection. There are some things for which money will not +pay, strange though it may seem in these days when everything has its +price. The life which cultivates no feeling but indifference is to be +deplored both for master and man. + +There is something which makes of labour a higher thing than a mere +barter. If that something really existed, we would not have that +ceaseless, perpetually changing procession with tin trunks; personally, +I should not feel so much that I was keeping a boarding-house for +strangers, whom I pay instead of their paying me. If any of the old +spirit were still left, servants would not be sent adrift to shift for +themselves when their best days are over, and we should still see that +phenomenon, an old servant. + +What becomes of old servants? It is a mystery. Some possibly become +meek, and keep lodging-houses; others, meeker still, become caretakers. +Can human imagination conjure up a more dismal fate? To be the companion +of beetles and mice; to vegetate in a basement, gloomy with the abysmal +gloom of London, and silent with the monumental silence of a deserted +house! + +Why not think of the possible future, that giddy, independent day, when +to give notice, and feast on the consequent anguish, is a cool rapture? +Once only I met an ex-parlour maid who rose superior to fate. She had +become useful by the day. Then, unexpectedly, a subtle change came over +her--she also aspired. She couldn't give warning, which would have been +her natural outlet, but she felt that she owed something to her dignity +before the other servants. From henceforth, she announced, she would +really have to come in by the front door. I submitted, and the area +steps know her no more. + +It is a comfort not to be required to solve the problems of a future +generation. I saw, however, yesterday, the thin end of the wedge in the +form of a little red cart, in front of a house before which the usual +"Sidewalk Committee," as they call it in America, was gathered, lazily +critical. Rubber tubes led from the cart into the open windows of a +room, and a gentleman, apparently of elegant leisure, in uniform, +superintended proceedings. For a moment I suspected fire, but seeing the +calm, unruffled, unsoiled, unwatered appearance of everything, it +suddenly flashed through my mind that what I so often had predicted was +being fulfilled. Science was solving the domestic problem! + +If we can clean a house by air, without the presence of a servant, +before long some great man will teach us to cook in the same way. Some +day electricity will release us from bondage. A cook will then be as +unnecessary as a 'bus horse. Then let the young person, who now aspires +to the factory and the department stores, threaten; we shall not care. +Indeed, then may come our sweet time of revenge, for the department +stores will be undoubtedly overcrowded, and the young person with the +yellow tin trunk will then join a different procession in the days of +that happy millennium. + +Gladly would I have shaken hands with the gentleman who was +superintending the red cart, as the outward and visible promise of a +new liberty, but I feared he might not understand. + +If one might offer a suggestion to our great and glorious Republic +across the sea in regard to any possible change in her coinage, it would +be that, rather than the worthy lady with the Phrygian cap, it should +bear the figure of the new "vacuum-cleaner," with its attendant Man; +that represents something real, something up-to-date. The lady with the +cap and stars is a myth, but what have we poor sufferers to do with +myths? Let us, rather, give credit where credit is due. + +The other day there was sent to me a voluminous list of the eminent +scientists who are to lecture before the Royal Institution. As I read +their famous names it did seem to me that if these giants of science +would abstract their gaze from discovering new planets, new continents, +new gases, and new rays, and would bring their mighty intellects to bear +on what might be called kitchen science, the results would be +incalculable. + +Does not the old nursery wisdom declare, "Great oaks from little acorns +grow?" Invent an electrical cook, an electrical parlour-maid, an +electrical housemaid, and an electrical boy for the boots. Think of the +peace that will enter our homes; think of the just retribution that will +overtake those awful offices that pocket our fees and supply worse than +nothing! Think of the joy of millions of crushed housekeepers who, for +the first time in the history of the world, will be able to look a cook +squarely in the face and give her warning! Surely that is an aim which +should satisfy the greatest intellect, because the greatest intellect +(presumably a man, a brother, a father, or a husband) demands to be fed, +not only often, but well. + +Columbus was undoubtedly a great man, and the product of his time; was +he not the first to do that little egg trick, and did he not afterwards +discover the United States of America? But his fame, mighty and enduring +though it is, will pale before his, the product of our time, the product +of our dire necessity, who will give to the world what is greater even +than a new continent--and that is Peace. + +The greatest man of the future will be the Columbus of the Kitchen. + + + + +_Entertaining_ + + +I once met an Englishman in America who quite unconsciously explained to +me the vital difference between English and American society. + +He was so quiet, so gentlemanly, and so bored, and I had tried my best +to say things. At last I cried in despair, "You Englishmen are so hard +to entertain!" To which he replied, in slow surprise, "But we don't want +to be entertained!" and that is it! And as man moulds the woman, and the +woman makes society--therefore the English woman makes the society of +which her Englishman approves, just as the American makes a society +suitable for her "men folks." + +Society is an elusive expression, and the human beings who constitute it +are spread out in layers like the chocolate cake of our childhood, and +every layer aspires to be the top one with the sugar frosting. In a +kingdom the only ones who ever reach that sugar-coated eminence are of +course the august reigning family besides a very precious and select +few, who must be horribly bored at having reached an altitude where +there is no need of further aspiration. After all, it does add a zest to +life to triumph over one's dearest friends and snub them. Of course a +reigning family has the superlative privilege of snubbing, but they have +to take it out in that, for to them is denied the joy of "climbing." + +In America we are still in the beginning of things, and society is less +complex, though more so than formerly, as the unfortunate result of +increasing wealth. There was a golden age in America, when different +cities each required of its votaries different qualifications to enable +them to enter what is called "Society." In those days, it is pleasant to +testify, it was what a man had done, intellectually or morally, that +opened to him the iron-bound gates of Boston. You might be shabby and +poor, and rattle up to Society in an exceedingly inelegant vehicle +called a "herdic" (which shot you out like coal), but you were welcome +if you were literary or scientific, musician or philanthropist. Money +looked on respectfully at the great and shabby, and was distinctly +elbowed into a corner. + +Something grips at my heart as I recall those bygone days when, as a +very young girl, with a bump of reverence as high as the Himalayas, I +sat in the corner of a splendid, shabby Boston drawing-room, and watched +the great men and women, whose genius has left its imprint on American +history and literature. They talked to each other, like ordinary human +beings, and refreshed themselves with cold coffee and heavy cake, which +was passed by such of the younger generation as the wonderful hostess +could press into service. It is remembering this wonderful hostess that +I am impressed by the truth that entertaining is not a fine art, but +genius; it is not acquired, it is inborn. + +In this shabby old mansion, with its relics of a bygone splendour, I saw +for the first time the greatest hostess it has ever been my good fortune +to meet. She was neither beautiful, witty, nor young, but she had the +subtle quality which made you at once at home in her genial presence; +which made you feel that you were the one guest in whom she was +interested, and this impression she made on everybody. Such was her +magnetism that her spirit inspired every one, at least for the time +being; a charming intercourse was the result, a geniality among her +guests who, the very next day, in an overwhelming flood of shyness, +would cut each other dead. + +I have come to the conclusion that it is this abominable shyness which +makes human beings so repellent to each other. It is one of the minor +martyrdoms of existence resulting in an antagonistic attitude, not so +much because one doubts the eligibility of the other, but rather that +one doubts one's self. The agony of self-consciousness that surrounds +one as with a thin coating of ice, out of which frosty prison one +breathes ice. Did the other but know what one suffers! + +It is often very difficult to distinguish between shyness and reserve, +for one can be reserved without being shy, and one can be shy and in an +excess of shyness frightfully unreserved. Though the English are rightly +credited with having brought reserve and self-control--those +characteristics of the highest civilization as well as the lowest--to +the greatest mastery, yet some of their amazing silence and immobility I +believe to be shyness. It is a comfort to think so because, when one's +vivacious disposition occasionally hurls one against an icy obstacle, it +pains. + +The English self-control--the result of generations of self-controlled +ancestors--makes heroes in the battlefield, but sometimes it also makes +of its bravest officers but foolhardy leaders of men. On the other hand, +the national pride to suppress emotion retaliates on nature in a +perfectly legitimate way; the emotion one suppresses, like all unused +functions, ends by weakening, then disappearing. Not that the English +are without emotion, but compared to other nationalities, the average +Englishman's emotions are not easily stirred. Self-control is a very +inspiring quality, but it is not so wonderful when the nature exercising +it is tuned to a low key. English supremacy is so great that English +self-control is the fashion, but while an Englishman's self-control is +the icy covering to a quiet, placid mountain; the control a Frenchman or +an Italian assumes is the ice veneering a volcano. + +Human nature is, to a certain extent, everywhere the same, and its +simple and primal virtues are the same, only modified by race and +climate. A man may be panic-stricken in disaster, not through cowardice, +but because of uncontrolled imagination. No one will deny the +superlative bravery of the French, but it is equally impossible to deny +that in panics they sometimes lose their heads. In such circumstances +the Frenchman does not show to the same advantage as the Englishman, not +because of a lack of bravery, but because he possesses a fiery +imagination. A Frenchman sees not only the present disaster, but he sees +the results far into the dim future; the Englishman, with controlled +imagination, if any, applies himself to a hurried view of the situation, +and wastes no time on a thought of the future. + +I knew an American of English descent who found himself in a burning +German theatre one night. In the instant there was a panic, and a +frantic woman clung to his arms and implored him to save her. He was +very near-sighted, and in the confusion his eyeglasses had fallen off. +"I certainly will," he said, reassuringly, "if you will just let me put +on my glasses." Then he climbed upon the seat, calmly gauged a possible +chance of escape, and rescued his companion and himself. Yet the +imagination which in certain circumstances results in disaster, under +others gives a man a charm which makes his companionship a delight. + +We Americans are a composite race; we have the coolness of the English, +as well as the nervous tension of multiples of races, exaggerated by +that glowing air, which has been wittily called "free champagne." The +warring of these various elements promises results that cannot be +foreseen in a nation which boasts of being Anglo-Saxon, whatever that +may mean. + +Years ago I remember the wrecking of a little pleasure boat near a +famous island on the coast of Maine, and with what heroism the young men +of the party saved themselves; that is where the foreign element brought +with it a too active imagination. Now the atmosphere and the foreign +element in our blood make us a nervous, high-strung people, +aggressively entertaining, and clamouring to be entertained. + +In no way has the American invasion proved more triumphant than in the +subtle change it is producing in the new generation of English girls. +The English woman, like the clever antagonist she is, studies the +skilful weapons with which the other has established her captivating +supremacy, and is proceeding to use the same. + +The new English girl has a charm and a vivacity, when she is not +hampered by tradition, which must make the American girl look to her +laurels. It will, of course, take her some time to let her spirit +sparkle behind those statuesque features; still, she is undoubtedly on +the road to vivacity. But the unbending and expressionless matron and +immovable and monosyllabic young girl are still to the fore. A wintry +smile on the matron's lips, enough to chill the most cordial guest, and +the strangled remarks of the young girl and her slow, cold eyes, are the +triumphant results of the nation of the self-controlled. Those cold eyes +and that slow smile that have in them not the ghost of humour. To get +behind the eyes and the smile, to discover some inward fire! Is there +any? One looks with envy at those faces which, from the lowest up, +possess that in common that it is impossible to penetrate into the real +self. + +It must be confessed that what might be called the national manner is +not conducive to geniality of intercourse. + +The power a hostess has to blight a crowd of people with her own frost! +There is the hostess who greets you as if she had never seen you before, +and accepts your hand as if it were a slice of cold fish; there is the +haughty hostess who shakes hands limply while she looks over your head +at a superior guest; there is the vague hostess who smiles liberally, +but sees you not; then there is the hostess with the surface geniality, +who, with a hurried glance at you, gushes inquiries across you at the +nearest man. There are as many varieties of hostesses as there are +women, and they one and all drop you, and you merge into the army of +starers, sometimes saved by an introduction to some other shipwrecked +mariner with whom you escape to the tea-room. + +The American fashion of dispensing afternoon tea is very pretty, and +should be introduced here. Instead of leaving the serving of light +refreshments to the servants, the American hostess chooses several of +the prettiest girls she knows, and gives them the task of pouring out +the tea, coffee, and chocolate at a centre table decorated with flowers, +lighted candles, and all that coquettish art of which the American woman +is past-mistress. The table should accommodate four girls, who, in their +smartest party toilettes, are at once ornamental and useful, and the +centre of attraction. They take away something of the stiffness which is +inevitable among a crowd of people, many of whom are strangers to each +other. Having to ask for a cup of tea from a pretty girl instead of a +servant is pleasant, and generally leads to conversation, and it is +considered the greatest compliment a hostess can confer if she asks you +to "pour" for her. The more original the hostess, the more charming can +she make her "teas," and what is usually a rather dreary function may be +made entertaining and graceful. + +The English hostess, ignoring her pretty chance, leaves the tea-table, +if there are many guests, to her servants. I once invited an English +girl to "pour" tea for me, and she discomfited me exceedingly by asking +why I did not get the servants to do it! And I had meant to pay her a +compliment! + +What a social comfort a hat is! It gives one so much moral courage. It +is less terrible to encounter society in a hat; one can take refuge in +it from the coldest blast. But in the evening, garlanded with roses and +deserted, so to speak, by God and man, society is a trial. + +There is no greater martyrdom for the middle-aged than baring their +shoulders to the bitter air and transporting them to an evening +function. To shiver for an instant in the smile of the hostess, and then +subside against the wall, while the young and ardent flirt about with +members of the other sex; or if they don't flirt, they appear to, which +is just as well. A very beautiful woman once confessed to me in a moment +of sincerity that she would be ashamed to be seen talking to another +woman at an evening party. "I would rather be with the most idiotic +man, and look as if I were flirting hard, than talk to the most +brilliant woman in the room. I always avoid women at parties." + +It is not an age for conversation; our small-talk is soon exhausted, and +for a woman to talk at length, labels her as a rock to be avoided. How +can we have _salons_, we who cannot converse? We are the products of the +daily papers, and our conversation is like their familiar small-talk +column. So we have to have artificial aids to entertaining. + +We are recited to, sung to, played to, and there being nothing so +"cussed" as human nature, no sooner are we played to and recited to than +our "cussedness" will out, and we are seized with a wild longing to +talk, and talk we do at the top of our voices. Universal resentment is +expressed towards the blameless arts that temporarily check our +interchange of what it would be flattery to call ideas, but, in my own +experience, when some stray man and I have stood together speechless, no +sooner did the piano break into our appalling silence than ideas seemed +to inundate us. The dumb man spoke as if by magic, and I, who hitherto +had nothing to say, couldn't talk fast enough. + +The divine arts are too good to be wasted in a twentieth century +drawing-room! Such conversation as there is, is amply accompanied by the +pianola and the gramophone. These two awful inventions are to music what +the chromo is to painting. They make music as vulgar as machine-made +lace. + +My first experience of the pianola was at the Universal Provider's. It +was Christmas time, and I was so tired and harassed that I stood quite +still in the surging crowd, oblivious of the sharp elbows of my shopping +sisters, oblivious of dust and microbes, only conscious that I was dizzy +with fatigue. Suddenly through the crowd I heard the familiar strains of +the great romantic polonaise of Chopin--the one introduced by the +exquisite _Andante Spianato_. It is a mediæval romance without words, of +chivalry, tournaments, gallant cavaliers, and beautiful women; all this +I heard in the piano department of the Universal Provider. + +I couldn't understand it! What great artist could so far forget himself +as to play this divine work for a passing, heedless, irritable crowd. I +pushed my way past my sisters, and possibly used my elbows. As I came +nearer I grew confused by something exasperatingly perfect in the sound. +The humanity of a single false note was wanting. I reached the crowd +about the piano--well, everybody has seen a pianola! An imitation artist +(he had long fair hair) steered the music and pumped in the expression +at the proper place, while the indefatigable instrument ejected miles of +punctured paper. + +Never did anything so get on my nerves! I nearly wept. It is, perhaps, +needless to say that the pianola and other instruments of its kind are +of American origin, and, like all American inventions, they are +labour-saving. You can be a Paderewski while you wait, but, thank +Heaven! no ingenious American has yet invented a mechanical Joachim! + +The first modest invention, the grandparent of the pianola, was +exhibited in Boston (America) years and years ago, and was a modest +little box, with only a small appetite for punctured paper. One of the +judges of the musical instruments at the exhibition showed me this +curious music-box, to which, because of its ingenuity, they had decided +to give a prize. Now the instrument has waxed greater and greater, and +no one is safe from it, no, not if you go to the farthest desert or +highest mountain. It graces afternoon teas, while the guests refresh +themselves in stunned silence, or shriek at the top of their voices in +vain rivalry, until they melt into the street, where the turmoil of +cabs, carts, vans, and motors is soothing and peaceful by comparison. + +For a stranger to penetrate into typical English social circles is often +a blighting experience. If the hostess is a woman of the world, she +comes to your assistance; but if she is the woman of an island, you find +yourself stranded, unintroduced, and surrounded by more or less handsome +and statuesque creatures, who would possibly be delighted to talk to you +if you were introduced--or possibly not. + +Oh, the debatable question of introduction! One sometimes thinks that in +England people go into society just to avoid each other; at least so it +would appear from the ardent way in which they decline to be introduced. +Conventional smart English society does not introduce, and that sets the +fashion. + +Society knows too many people, and refuses to know more; and its young +men, having at their command only two feet apiece, also refuse to be +introduced, for they cannot extend the field of their activities. The +young man's toil consists largely in duty dances, for the only way he +can pay a worried mother for a dinner-party is by dancing with her +daughter, who still hangs fire. So his path is not always strewn with +roses. Still his is easier than the "gal's," for he can decline to be +introduced to her, and he does this often with the little caprices and +insolence of a society belle. + +"Do let me introduce you to my cousin," said a generous young soul to +her partner, "she is such a nice 'gal.'" + +"Please don't; I should have to dance with her, and I am full up," +replied the youth, and so it is. Not that all girls are so generous, far +from it. It is the exception when they overstep the bounds and +introduce an attractive girl to a young man. The result is that society +is made up of cliques, wheels within wheels, and the cliques keep +rigidly to themselves, and the loveliest young creatures outside +languish against the wall, and no one takes pity on them. + +Many are the complicated stratagems to introduce the young girl into the +"smart set" of English society, and if the commander-in-chief ("mother") +is not blessed with the best steel-covered nerves, she had better not +undertake it. The commander-in-chief, of course a rich and great lady, +borrows a list of unknown young men from other hostesses and invites +them to her ball. Presumably grateful youths pay for this entertainment +by dancing with the "gal," but not always. + +After all, smart society is alike all over the world; like hotel +cooking, it has no nationality. So America is ceasing to introduce, but +this repression is not universal yet. All do not yet languish under +self-inflicted boredom. A perfect American hostess makes her guests +known to each other if they are strangers, and though fashion may +protest, this is after all the only way to make a crowd of mutually +unknown people comfortable and not awkward. People, except those of +great ease of manner, will not speak to each other unless introduced, +and to talk to some one without the faint guide-post of a name is not +very interesting. You may be talking to a very dull stranger, and turn +away bored, when, had you but known that he was a great and shining +light, how interested you would have been, and how deftly you would have +turned the conversation into the one channel the great one always +loves--himself. + +Possibly Americans overdo the introducing; they are rather apt to overdo +everything; it is the fault of a high-strung, nervous temperament; but +of two evils let me rather be torn away from an interesting conversation +every few minutes by a vivacious hostess, than be stranded in a corner +looking blankly at my fellow man, for all the world as if I had strayed +into a 'bus in a party gown. Blessed will the day be when the American +invasion will temper English society with its own possibly rather +effusive geniality. + +The fundamental difference between the two nationalities is that +Americans love strangers, and the English hate them. The Englishman +looks with suspicion on any one he doesn't know, root and branch; the +American loves him until he hears of something to his disadvantage, or +until he gets tired of him--which happens. + +The Englishman's aversion to strangers does not include the American, +curiously enough. He does not call him a foreigner, and he likes him. He +likes him partly because he really can't help it, and partly out of +policy, and he looks charitably at his curious and original ways just as +a big dog watches the gambols of a frolicsome puppy. He always remembers +that that puppy is his puppy, and that some day he will grow into a big +dog of his own breed, and--well, he respects the breed. + +Not that the American man is in England as popular as the American +woman; he is not. The charming American woman is the product of +generations of hard-working fathers and husbands who have toiled for +her, and toil for her, and the result is that in cultivation and +attraction she has left her creator rather behind. When you add to this +his strenuous habits of business life, in which "devil take the +hindmost" is the motto, and a very confident belief in his own ability, +and his country's unmistakable destiny to "whip the universe," it +produces a rather aggressive personality. So he is not as popular as his +charming women, because, also, he represents a prophecy which is not +unlike a menace. Yet the big dog watches the gambols of the little dog +with tolerant good-nature. + +Another factor in favour of the American woman is that she can be +charming on two continents--the Englishwoman still confines her efforts +to one--and she can be charming in the language of the two greatest +nations in the world. Is this not a magnificent opportunity for her +social genius? Descended, usually, from all sorts of races, America +makes her what she is, and then boastfully sends the perfected article +across the water to the old countries to ally herself with the best or +the worst of their aristocracy. That it is rarely the case of King +Cophetua and the beggar-maid one admits; but, after all, everything has +its price in this world, and coronets come dear, except, of course, to +that one privileged class--the ladies of the variety theatres. + +In speaking of the American man's aggressiveness, one does not wish to +imply that the Englishman is not aggressive; far from it. There is no +one so aggressive as an Englishman, but the difference is that the +American is boastfully aggressive, and the Englishman quietly so, as one +so sure of himself and his belongings that boasting is superfluous; +which makes him all the more aggravating. The summit and climax of this +aggravation is that the Englishman does not know that he is aggressive, +and even resents it in his beloved Americans, and never suspects that +his own want of popularity may be due to that same cause. + +Years ago it was the Englishman who was the spoilt darling of nations; +now he is making way for the American. But his early prestige was +immense--it is still great, but it is a tempered greatness. + +In those days when he went to America to harvest dollars (he rarely went +for any other reason), he was received with a rapturous humility which +was pathetic. We grovelled before him, we suffered his peculiar +manners, which had they been our own we should sometimes have labelled +as bad, as the eccentricities of a superior being. We were flattered +when our resemblance to him was pointed out, and to increase it we +created that particularly obnoxious type, the Anglicised American; for, +like all imitations, it is the caricature of the most unpleasant +features of a resemblance. + +In those days we took him to our hearts, to our homes, and to our clubs, +and when sometimes we came to London to enjoy his return civilities, we +had to be satisfied with very modest crumbs of entertainment indeed. But +perhaps the Englishman said, in the subtle French tongue, "_Je paye de +ma personne_." That explains it. + +We spoiled the errant Englishman most abominably; our idol got bad +manners and a swelled head, and it always took him some time on his +return to a nation that, after all, consists of Englishmen, to find his +level again. The wife of a very distinguished man complained to me of +the demoralised condition in which her husband--who had gone to America +to lecture--had been sent back to her. "It will take me years to +unspoil him," she cried. "It's all the fault of your women, who flatter +them to death! And that is the reason," she added, with some bitterness, +"that Englishmen think they are so charming and clever." + +Now that the Englishman has ceased to be so rare a bird in America, we +receive him with less tumultuous rejoicing, and yet we still spoil him +if he is distinguished or has a title. As for money, it is no object to +us as credentials--we leave that to the English. A title? Oh, yes, we +love a title! Why shouldn't we? Does not the Englishman, according to +Thackeray, love a lord? With all it represents of tradition, romance, +and history, is it a more ignoble passion for the snob than the worship +of dollars, or more fatal to republican principles? + +The American money-kings are as surely creating a class apart as ever +did the English possessors of titles, and there is no greater nobility +in a duke, by the grace of a gamble on the stock exchange, than a duke +by the grace of tradition or history. Both may be represented by very +poor creatures, but the duke of history has, at all events, the +traditions of his ancestry to excuse the interest he still excites. + +Occasionally one hears of an aspiring American, who, captivated by the +poetry of sound, buys himself a title, and ornaments his republican +breast with decorations--the fitting reward of dollars and cents; but +such a one has lost, if not his country, at least his sense of humour. + +Still, it is not our republican money-dukes who will make or mar our +nation; its stability rests on something nobler. Nor will it turn a +great republic finally into a kingdom that we like titles as a child an +unaccustomed toy. Is it not dinned into our ears that we are rich, and +that the best is not too good for us? Is not the best in the world for +us? + +"The finest jewels are kept for the American market," a famous jeweller +once told me. Are not the very best imitations of the old masters sold +to us? We are willing to pay, and money in this world can buy everything +except just one trifle--contentment. Apart from contentment, money buys +everything. It is a credential for virtue and a good name. A millionaire +must be good, or Divine Providence would not so have prospered him, and +for this all-sufficient reason London takes him to its innocent and +gushing heart. Of course sometimes the millionaire is not a real +millionaire, but no one knows until he is found out; but the next best +thing to being a real, honourable millionaire, is to have unlimited +credit. Blessed is the man who has credit, for some day he may promote a +company that will enable him to pay his bills. + +Yes, America is being rewarded for all the entertainments she has +lavished on bygone Englishmen. She cannot these days complain of a lack +of English hospitality. Columbia has a "real good time," and she drops +the almighty dollar as she goes on her triumphant way, to the rapture of +the English shopkeeper. + +She worships English history, English titles, and English cathedrals. +She gushes over all things great and good, and often she props up a +rickety aristocrat with the splendid strength of her great gold dollars, +and not the stiffest British matron dares sniff at her. She will +introduce and she will entertain, and she will be entertaining. She is +often beautiful, and generally clever,--even if frothily clever. + +Of all the American invasion she is the most subtly dangerous. You may +keep off the American men with your fleets, and all the terrors of your +newest million pounders, but how defend yourself from the American girl, +who borrows a bow and arrow from a naughty little boy lightly dressed in +two wings and a blush, and shoots right into your--heart! + + + + +_Temporary Power_ + + +It was in the "tuppeny tube" that the idea first came to me. I was +filing out of the long car as expeditiously as I could, considering that +I had to disentangle my feet from the heels of my fellow man, when a +stern being in the brass buttons of authority gave me an unnecessary +push, remarking briefly, "Hurry up!" Before I could wither him with a +glance, the red light at the back of the train was winking jocosely at +me, so there was nothing left to do but to follow my fellow sufferers, +swallow my resentment along with the bad air, and proceed to soar +upward. + +Having recovered my mental balance I began to laugh. The awful majesty +of temporary power, from a protoplasm up! + +It is indeed a curious fact that the world is not so much governed by +its ruling classes as by the lower ones, who exercise their temporary +tyranny--in whatever capacity it be--with a colossal arrogance that +leaves the arrogance of a higher sphere leagues behind. Who has not +seen great ladies, majestic beings in their own drawing-rooms, wait +patiently before a counter while the young "saleslady" finished an +interesting conversation with a colleague in imitation diamonds. +Possibly in private life the young "saleslady" was not at all proud; but +place her behind a counter, and it gives her a moral support that makes +her rise superior to the aristocracy and crush the middle classes. + +Never shall I forget the pathetic sight of a distinguished general--one +who fought and won a battle in the American Civil War, that decided the +fortunes of the North--buying a pair of kid gloves from a superior young +person in a glove store. He waited a long time very patiently while she +exchanged a light badinage with an idle youth, splendid in the tallest +kind of a collar. + +"If you please," the general ventured, seeing the talk was not of +business. The haughtiness with which she turned on him! "What do you +want?" + +She leaned on the counter with both hands in that most delightfully +engaging and characteristic of shop attitudes. No, there was no +badinage for the poor general, and as he had no taste and no ideas, she +sold him the most dreadful yellow gloves, with which he was burdened +when we met at the door. He showed them to me rather piteously. + +"They don't look right, somehow," he sighed. "Why don't you change +them?" I urged. "Because," the great man whispered, whose courage was +famous in the land, "because I'm afraid of her." + +Oh, the terrible tyranny of the shopgirls, or, rather, as we live in a +democratic age and one is as good as the other, the shop young ladies. +When one of them waits on me, or, to be quite exact, when I grovel to +her, and she is very short and snappish and uninterested, I wonder what +can be the kind of superior being to whom she, so to speak, bends the +knee? Sometimes I think it must be the shopwalker, a great man, but +human, except perhaps at Christmas time, but then I suspect he also may +be afraid of her. + +When she cries "sign" at the top of her penetrating voice, and I am +ignominiously proved to have bought nothing, I realise that I am +disgraced, and can hardly bear the united glances of the young lady's +scornful eye, and the milder but still reproachful glance of the +shopwalker. He catechises me firmly for reasons why I don't buy, and +offers me instead everything under the sun that I don't want. If my soul +ever presumes to rebel it is when the young lady, not having what I am +in search of, kindly advises me as to what I really do want--but even +the traditional worm has been known to turn. + +There is a delicate difference between the English and the American +young saleslady. The American, being the daughter of the free, and +distinctly of the independent, and having the chance of being the future +wife, mother or mother-in-law of presidents, does not demean herself to +be on a sympathetic footing with the public. If the public wishes to +buy, she is willing to sell, but is perfectly indifferent. Look +wistfully into the American saleslady's perfectly cold eye, if you are a +wobbly lady and want some one to make up your mind for you, and you are +met by a wall of the bleakest ice; nor does she thaw when you have +bought for a large amount. She calls "kish" in a shrill, unmoved voice, +which summons a small boy or girl, who bears your money to the +counting-house. Thereupon she looks indifferently over your head while +you wait for the change, and you feel that in spite of everything you +have failed to please her. + +The result of this admirable attitude of indifference is that America is +the paradise of "shoppers," ladies who have no intention whatever of +buying, but who do love to see new things. It lies really between you +and your conscience how many bales of goods you have unpacked without +the remotest idea of purchasing anything. If at the end you make a few +disparaging remarks and retire from the scene, the saleslady replaces +the goods, perfectly indifferent as to your having bought nothing. + +The English shopgirl, on the other hand, makes it a personal affront if +you do not buy; but there is excuse for her often enough, for in some +shops, unfortunately, it is the cruel regulation that if she misses a +certain number of sales she is discharged. Whether it pays to scare the +saleslady into terrorising her customers to death is a question; +personally, I avoid such shops; I cannot be lured twice into buying what +I don't want because of the frown of the young lady. Nor does it even +soothe my ruffled feelings when the shopwalker thanks me profusely as he +countersigns the bill. + +Shopkeepers should be very particular as to their young saleslady's +nose; the very superior kind just crushes the public. England is a proof +that it is not the eye that is born to command, but the stately Roman +nose. It has given the world quite a wrong idea of Englishmen, who have +gone on their triumphant way in the wake of that majestic feature, to +the alarm and respect of the rest of the world. Had it been less +aggressive, the world might possibly now fear England less and love her +more. Yet such trivialities make history. + +If you have a good conscience, the only wielder of temporary power who +appears mighty and yet mild is the policeman. To the bad conscience he +represents more the solid terrors of the law than the Lord Chief Justice +himself. He is the only creature from whom familiarity never takes away +any of his terrors. + +We once had an old cook who put it in a nutshell. "Happy is he who can +look a policeman in the face," she declared. The wisdom of it! After +all, is not half the world running away from retributive justice? Think, +then, of the blessing of a legalised conscience. To be at peace with the +policeman! Think of the rapture of envy a poor, hunted-down burglar must +feel as he sees an ordinary citizen pass that awful being in a helmet +without a quake. + +I take this opportunity of offering to the great and polite one my +little tribute of gratitude in the name of all the spinsters, widows, +nursemaids, and puppy dogs who cross the street in the security of his +outstretched hand. And of all maiden ladies, English and American, who +seek his advice and ask him perplexing questions, which he alone can +answer, for he is admittedly a combination of the street directory, the +dictionary, and the "Encyclopædia Britannica" up-to-date. I have often +wondered if he ever unbends? Does he ever take off his boots and his +helmet, or does he sleep in them? Does he ever sit down? It must be a +great joy and pride to be his wife, to be, as it were, on such friendly +terms with the traffic. I am sure that, if she loves him, she asks him +no questions. + +Here, I really must digress just enough to say that until women can be +policemen, and can stand like magnificent statues in the turmoil of +vehicles and direct the tumult with one finger--without a moment's +confusion--not until then will I believe that they have been chosen by +destiny to do man's work. Bless the policeman! May his wages be +raised--he deserves it! + +The temporary power of a cabman is often concentrated in a moment of +intense anguish for his fare when, if a four-wheeler, he rolls off his +box, stares at the money dropped into a very dirty paw, makes a speech +which ranges from reproach to vituperation, and follows you until a +beneficent front door closes on your anguish. He has it in his power to +take the bloom from the smartest toilette. + +There is no one in the whole range of civilisation who has such a power +to inflict humiliation on one as a cabman! He has that delicate +perception that he knows just when his remarks will cut like a lash. He +always grumbles on principle, and you would rather give him your whole +fortune than have him make a spectacle of you before those other +temporaries, the footmen. As if he didn't know it, and as if he didn't +always choose the noblest of these as witnesses! You know that you have +overpaid him, and so does he, but he follows you with running remarks, +in the form of a soliloquy, which increase in virulence as you flee +before him, and which produce that peculiar contortion of face in the +well-bred footman, in which a grin battles with a countenance of stone. + +Those awful footmen! I do believe that a cabby, in spite of his bad +language, is sometimes the prey of softer emotions. One knows by +observation that he often smokes a pipe, and from the way his chariot +leans up against the pavement of the nearest saloon, out of which he +comes with a frightfully red face and smacking his lips, one knows he is +not a "bigoted" total abstainer. One even pictures him as retired to a +mews, and in that peaceful retreat, with the family washing flapping +over his head, enjoying respite from timid fares in the bosom of his +family. + +There is a monumental prejudice against four-wheelers. It is even +growing. Once I used to frolic about in them, flitting from one +afternoon tea to the other; now when I ask for one it is, if possible, +secretly, and always apologetically. Why is it? They cost nearly the +same as hansoms, but why are they so plebeian? Even a 'bus is not so +low. Servants respect you more even if they know that you get into a +'bus out of their sight than if they witness your downfall into a +four-wheeler. Kings have driven in hansoms, and Cabinet Ministers have +been tipped out of them; but who ever heard of a King or a Cabinet +Minister driving in a "growler"? + +Of course, a 'bus is low, but you need not say you came in one, only you +must be careful! The other day old Lady Toppingham called and grew quite +eloquent on the levelling influences of 'buses; they might do for cooks +and tradespeople, she said, but her principles were such that she really +couldn't ride in one. All the time she was clutching a blue punched +'bus ticket on the top of her card-case with her relentless thumb. I +agreed with her, and said that I also never could nor would, and no +sooner had she gone than I was off to Whiteley's on top of a blue +Kensington. Still, it is levelling, and you should always pick off the +straws and never cling to the tickets. + +However, the most ignoble conveyance is undoubtedly the "growler." To go +in one to a smart afternoon reception requires courage. I shall never +forget my last experience. It was an awful function, and both sides of +the street were lined with private carriages, and a double row of +footmen graced the _porte cochère_. + +My four-wheeler was the only one in sight, and it was the forlornest of +its kind. It shook like jelly and rattled like artillery. A burly being +in sackcloth and dirt (instead of ashes) rolled off the box, and sixteen +perfectly equipped footmen had their features set to a preparatory grin. +I placed my foot on the dirtiest cab step in London, and from my +white-gloved hand I dropped a liberal fare into a grimy paw. To the joy +of the attendant footmen the owner of the paw said the most appalling +things. I stopped the hurricane with another shilling, and flew up the +steps and took refuge in extra haughtiness, and overdid it! + +I was thankful when I was ushered into the drawing-room and cooled off +in the icy stare of the other guests--some thirty women and two men. + +Nothing betrayed that I was a "growler" lady as I took the limp hand of +my hostess, who favoured me with a speechless smile. This she +temporarily detached from a superior man in superior garments, such as, +to do them justice, Englishmen only know how to wear. He was very +perfect, and in one of his blank eyes he wore a glass. + +I don't know his name, but I shall never forget him. He was evidently +one of the lilies of the field who only know of four-wheelers by +hearsay. Whether our hostess stopped smiling long enough to murmur an +introduction I do not know, but we were quite lost among the furniture, +and as much thrown on each other's society as if we were on a desert +island. So when he uttered inquiringly something that sounded like +"yum," I said desperately, knowing it could strike no answering chord, +"I came in a four-wheeler; it requires a good deal of moral courage." + +Then I stopped, blushing and embarrassed. How would he express his +scorn! I stepped aside to give him a chance to vanish out of my plebeian +neighbourhood; but, instead, said this gallant Englishman, bringing his +eyeglass to bear on me, "Ow--ow--really? So did I. Never drive in +anything else." Yes, there are heroes even in London drawing-rooms. + +Has any one ever heard of a footman with wife and children? Can that +cast-iron countenance ever unbend? Does that vacant look hide mighty +thoughts, or does it hide nothing? Is a footman himself ever scorned? I +do hope he is, for he has made me suffer so much. I have sometimes +thought that if I owned a footman I should be too proud to live; yet on +studying the faces of my fellow men so blessed, I find that they are not +proud, but quite modest, and sometimes even shabby. + +Yes, the owners of footmen are mostly less prosperous in appearance than +their servants, while the possessor of a butler and footmen galore +looks quite poor. But I do wonder where footmen go when they are old? I +never saw an old footman but once, and that was in a registry office, a +dim sanctuary, dotted by desks and ornamented by agitated ladies. + +The awful temporary power of registry office clerks, how they do make +one quail! There was about the old footman a fictitious smartness, a +youthfulness so out of keeping with his haggard face that it gave me a +shock. For once I was sorry that the biter was bit, and that the +stony-hearted clerk behind his desk imparted his wisdom with such +brevity and disdain. + +I shall never forget the insinuating wistfulness with which the old man +leaned across the desk, and, gracefully using his well-brushed silk hat +as shield, described how bad times were, and that he would be glad to +take any place at all, at any wages; all he wanted was a home. He would +even go into the country--even in the country! It was too pitiful, and +my heart ached for him as I recognised in the shabby smartness of his +well-fitting clothes one who had "valeted" in higher spheres. By the +way he held his top hat I saw how perfectly he had studied the outside +of manners. + +The cruelty of the beefy clerk was colossal. "We can't place old +footmen, nobody wants 'em." He spoke like a machine. "But I'll take your +name." The old man tripped out with a pathetic lightness as if to prove +to us all by a sample how active his legs still were. So it seems that +even the proudest footman should not be too proud. + +I am not so afraid of butlers as I am of footmen. I have never met with +an affable footman, but I have known one or two butlers who were quite +fatherly. With one, in particular, I always long to shake hands. I +admire his clothes so much. Never for an instant would any one take them +for a gentleman's evening clothes. The magnificent girth of his ample +tail coat shadows the most respectable of black trousers; they pretend +to no higher sphere, but are perfect for the state of society in which +they move. A rather fine head, like a respectable Roman Emperor's (if +such a personage ever existed), completes an impressive personality. + +I don't know what he thinks about me, but when he vouchsafes me +something that is a smile and yet isn't a smile, I feel gratified. I +always thought that his ancestors fought for my friends' ancestors in +the battle of Agincourt, but, on inquiry, find he has been with them six +months. The temporary owner of this great man is quite modest. + +One of the funniest exhibitions of temporary power I once observed in +America--in a church. Two of us had gone to hear a great American +preacher, and we had been invited to sit in the pew of a friend, in a +church to which we were strangers. We came early, and waited patiently +just within the church door to be shown to the seat. Only a few +stragglers had arrived, and all were waiting humbly for that important +functionary--the sexton. + +Now the American sexton--the verger--is a very mighty man indeed. +Parsons come and go, but the sexton stays for ever. If he is not very +tall and dignified in black broad-cloth, he is generally fat and fussy +in the same. He picks out waiting sinners and seats them according to +his boundless caprice. He knows just the kind of stray sinner who may be +ushered into a charitable pew, and he knows the pews that decline to +receive stray sinners under any consideration. + +It is curious what courage it takes to penetrate into a strange pew; it +is being a kind of Sabbath burglar. Never does a right-minded sexton +usher an out-at-elbow sinner into the pew of the rich and great. That +they are presumably addressing the same Divine Power is no reason. This +explains the Roman Catholic hold on the people. If you are a Roman +Catholic, you enter God's house and pray anywhere; but if you are a +Protestant, what shy pauper would dare to stray into an expensive pew +for a communion with his God? + +My American sexton had, in the meantime, bustled down the centre aisle. +He looked the little crowd over haughtily, and he refused to catch my +wistful eye--my companion was getting very tired. At last I ventured, +"Would you kindly show us to Judge ----'s pew?" "Can't now, I'm busy; my +young men will come presently," and he darted off. + +His young men did not come, and I looked vainly about for succour, for +the pews were filling up. Suddenly the great swing-door at the entrance +opened, and in came a tall commanding figure, a man of advanced years, +whose name is a household word in the land, the great preacher himself. +He pulled off his battered slouch hat, and I saw his kind, keen eyes as +they rested on the white hair and tired face of my friend. "Why are you +waiting here, what can I do for you?" he asked. + +"We are waiting to be shown to Judge ----'s pew," I explained. + +"I will show you, come with me." This he did, and left us the richer by +the kindliest smile in the world. + +Different countries, different exercise of temporary power. The English +railway guard is not impressive nor much in evidence. The American +railroad conductor, on the other hand, is a great man, but he exercises +his power genially, and in the intervals of collecting tickets he is +approachable. He generally takes up his abiding place at the end of one +of the "cars," and puts his legs on the seat opposite and talks with a +much flattered chosen one. He sees a good deal of the world, not being +shut into a cubby-hole like his English brother. In the course of years +of travel along a particular route his popularity becomes so great that +it culminates in gifts, and many a popular conductor blazes in the light +of a huge diamond "bosom pin," or carries under his arm at night a +gorgeous presentation lantern. No man is so great but he feels flattered +at his notice, and he really is not very proud, considering, and his +power is benign. + +In England his namesake, the 'bus conductor, has often made me feel the +blight of his authority. There was once a misanthrope who took to +keeping a light-house; if I were a misanthrope I would become a 'bus +conductor. It must, of course, be awfully irritating, that temporary +support he gives to beautiful ladies as they topple off; but it is +compensated for, to some extent, by wrenching the arms of the lovely +creatures as he hauls them on the foot-board of the 'bus before it +stops. This, they say, he does out of pure benevolence, so that the poor +'bus horses shall not have to start up the cumbersome machine +unnecessarily. Still, one ventures to ask if we poor women are not of +as much consequence as a 'bus horse? + +Last year a benevolent conductor nearly dislocated my arm as he pulled +me up, and I ached for two months after. I protest against this +misplaced tenderness! It is said that an Englishman may ill-treat his +wife with more impunity than his dog, but I don't believe it. I am not +afraid of the conductor unless I get in or out of his 'bus; but the haul +he gives me in, which sends me reeling against the other passengers, and +the pull he gives me out when I recline for a moment, without any +gratitude, against his outstretched arm, makes him unpopular with me. + +There is an American product which, with the American invasion, has, +alas and alas! taken root here, and that is the American hotel clerk, +real and imitated. He has come with the great caravanserais, and, like +the American plumber, he is the target for American wit. + +There is no doubt that it takes a cool and composed personality to +"wrastle" with the travelling public, and yet the travelling public is +not half so terrible as the cool and composed hotel clerk. He has +brought insolence to the level of a fine art, and as he is answerable +only to a corporation, that means that he is answerable to no one. He +always puts you into a room you don't want, and having no pecuniary +interest in the matter, it is to him of no earthly consequence whether +you stay or not. + +Complain to him, and you complain to deaf ears. He apparently has +nothing to do but to loll behind the office counter and improve his +finger-nails. Tumultuous rings of various bells leave him unmoved; +passionate telephonic appeals he only answers when he chooses. He turns +to an agonised public a face like carved wax and eyes like agate, and it +recoils. The parting of his hair is a monument to his industry. + +When I call on a guest at a big hotel I deliver up my card with hope, +because, as the poet rashly sang, "Hope springs eternal in the human +breast." Then I sit down and wait as near the office as possible, and +wistfully watch the elegant leisure of the great man behind the counter. +My card has disappeared in the custody of a small boy with a salver, +and the chances are that before I see him again he will be a man grown. + +After having waited half an hour I venture to intrude on the peace +behind the counter, and I am received with a _hauteur_ which puts me in +my right place at once. The guest, being merely a number, excites no +earthly interest, but the clerk wearily sends another infant in search +of the first, and then turns his immaculate back on me, and I am +permitted to admire the shiny smoothness of his back hair. I again +subside, and in my indignation I make up my mind to complain to the +daily Press: Is thy servant a doormat that he should be so downtrodden? + +Do not preach about the ancient tyrannies of kings and emperors, and +other estimable folks, about whom history has probably told a good many +lies, and to these add the further lie that I am happy because I am free +and independent. I am not free and independent! Instead, I languish +under the tyranny of a hundred thousand tyrants, before whom I grovel +and quake. Several of them sleep on my top floor and treat me with much +severity. + +Instead of thousands of tyrants, give me, rather, one tyrant; I can +accommodate existence to him, and it is distinctly more interesting and +less complicated. + +The problem of existence is its multitude of tyrants. Indeed, how +delightful life would be if we were not so tyrannised over by the +downtrodden! + + + + +_The Extravagant Economy of Women_ + + +The trouble with women is that they do not know how to spend money. The +great majority never have any money, or they are at the mercy of some +grim masculine creature, be he father or husband, who demands items--now +think of an average man bothering himself about items! It must be a +survival of the time when we inhabited harems, or when we were beautiful +dames to whom our true knights gave undying love but nothing more +substantial; or we rejoiced the souls of the ancient patriarchs though +we did not succeed in extracting any cash. + +I don't for a moment believe that the lovely Hebrew damsel, Rebecca, had +a penny of her own, nor that the peerless Guinevere had half-a-crown (or +whatever the coinage was) to buy her Launcelot a love token. And though +Scheherazade--that peerless, self-contained, circulating library of a +thousand and one volumes--told enough stories to her Sultan to have made +the fortune of a modern publisher, she could hardly have made less even +if she had had the felicity to write a modern novel. The favourite of +the harem would, it is certain, have found a purse a hollow mockery. + +Now we modern women are the descendants, more or less remote, of +Rebecca, Guinevere, and Scheherazade, and our greatest resemblance to +our fair ancestresses is that most of us have no money to spend, and +those of us who have do not know how to spend it. Heredity is an excuse +for being what might be called the stingy sex. + +What would the world have been like had the purse-strings of time been +held by women? More comfortable, possibly, but, probably, much less +beautiful. It takes the great, splendid masculine spendthrifts in high +places to glorify the world with treasures of priceless art. But it was +an immortal maiden queen who inspired the greatest poet of all time, and +as the production of poetry has always been cheap, so poetry was the +splendid and inexpensive contribution to the glory of her reign made by +a not too extravagant queen. It is the men who keep alive the +extravagance, the beauty, and the ideality of life. But little credit to +them who have always been able to put their hands in their trousers +pockets and jingle the pennies. + +Now time may mean money for men, but who ever heard that time meant +money for women? No one, for the simple reason that it does not. Time +and trouble are of so little value to the average woman that she +squanders the one and is prodigal of the other in the most appalling +way. And by the average woman, are meant all such who do not earn their +own living, no matter how modestly; nor those who have some serious +purpose in life, though without the object of earning; nor those who, as +wives and mothers, may estimate their time as of the value of a general +servant's. But apart from these the rank and file of women, consist of +the aimless ones--and there are all sorts of aimless ones: rich and +poor, high and low,--who potter vaguely through life, through shops, +through streets, through joy, through sorrow; think feebly, talk +feebly, and feel feebly, and finally fade away, and cease to exist. Now +think of the majority of men frittering away life like that! + +For ten years I lived opposite an able-bodied, middle-aged woman who sat +in a rocking-chair by the window, crocheting from luncheon time until +dark, four mortal hours, and this for ten long years! Then she moved or +died, I don't remember which. And yet, after all, how many of us sit +with our hands folded, doing nothing, thinking nothing, but just +mentally and physically limp, weighed down by empty, useless time, which +we try to kill with yawning desperation. + +We are adepts of the idle industries because our time is of no earthly +consequence. Think of the miles of lace we crochet, the impossible +embroideries we make, the countless odds and ends we construct, of no +earthly use except to catch dust. Think of the hours we waste at the +piano which no one wants to hear and which we never learn to play; think +of the awful pictures we make, which no one wants to see; the +innumerable things we do that are so much better done by some one else. +There may be male loafers, superabundant male loafers, but it seems to +me as if their united numbers are as nothing compared to those worthy +lady loafers who are perfectly respectable and perfectly idle. Why +should a woman be permitted to loaf unreproved? Is idleness a feminine +privilege? + +The average man is trained to do some one thing as well as his +intelligence and his industry will permit, but the average woman is +trained to do nothing, at least nothing well--she cannot even keep house +well. Her only object is to fill her aimless existence with something, +anything, just to kill time. + +In other days girls were carefully taught all domestic employments; they +had to learn to keep house, to sew delicately, to cook, and, indeed, to +do all those innumerable minor things which are of such vast importance. +The modern girl is only taught not to be illiterate, that is all. With +this negative quality as a dowry, a pretty face and nice clothes, and +some empty chatter, she is bestowed on a perfectly innocent young man in +search of a helpmate. + +Perhaps for the first time she has a little money--I speak, of course, +of the respectable middle-class woman, for the lowest and highest are of +no account, meeting, as they often do, on the dead level of +extravagance. Now what can we expect of a young middle-class wife who +has some money for the first time? That she wastes it when it should be +saved, and saves it when it should be spent. She buys cheap food, but +she decorates her baby with that white plush cloak and that awful plush +cap which her middle-class soul loves, and which bear witness to her +prosperity. So her olive branch is carried about in plush while her +husband has dismal retrospects of other days, hardly appreciated, when +he took his luscious supper at a third-rate restaurant, which in +remembrance seems a banquet fit for the gods. + +To spend money in just proportion to one's income, however small, and +not to spend too little--for there is such a thing!--requires a higher +degree of intelligence than the aimless and the inexperienced possess, +and the woman who earns money has a keener, juster knowledge of its +value than the woman who gets it from the masculine head of the family +under whose thumb she languishes. Also, as I have said before, she has +to learn the value of time in the process of evolution from the harem to +the ballot-box. + +I have a dear friend, a woman with a massive intellect, who is, however, +not above economy. She has been in search of an ideal greengrocer, and, +after much tribulation of spirit and waste of precious hours that mean +literally pounds to her, she found him in Shepherd's Bush. Lured by the +bucolic name, tempted by a vision of sprouts at "tuppence" per pound +instead of "tuppence ha'penny," she made a pilgrimage there, wasted a +whole precious morning, and joined a phalanx of other mistaken female +economists who stood on wet flags in Indian file, each waiting her turn +to be served. My intelligent friend waited twenty-five minutes, until +she was finally rescued by a serving young man, and had the rapture of +saving sevenpence. + +She, naturally, returned home in triumph and in a 'bus, but she was so +used up by her economy that it would have been flattery to call her a +wreck. That night she had a chill, the doctor was summoned in hot haste, +and he proceeded to attend her with that assiduity which only adds +another terror to illness. When to this is added the bills for a +protracted visit to the seaside, my intelligent friend confessed that it +hardly paid to save sevenpence. + +Now is it not also the extravagance of pure economy that takes women to +the "sales," where they buy all the things they do not want? Would there +be sales-days if there were only men in the world? Did you ever see a +man go from one shop to another to get a necktie "tuppence" cheaper? To +be penny wise is indeed the supreme attribute of women! For the +economical one it is a terrible ordeal to go shopping with a father or a +brother; a lover is different, he is still full of temporary patience. +But husbands and fathers have no patience. + +"If you like it, take it, but don't waste people's time," says the irate +man, as if there weren't innumerable steps to be taken after the initial +process of liking. + +"I think I can get it a little nicer at Smith's," you urge, while your +dear one looks at you cynically, for nicer means cheaper, and he knows +it. "Come on then," and he bundles you into a cab, drives to Smith's, +and lets the cab wait while you try to make up your mind. Those dreadful +cabs, how they do make the economical woman suffer. Did you ever hear a +woman declare that it is really cheaper in the end to take a cab? When +does a woman ever think of the end? The average woman avoids a cab on +principle. She feels it due to this same principle to draggle her skirts +through the mud, to get her feet wet, and to come home an "object." But +thank goodness, she has saved a cab fare, and you can get twelve quinine +pills for tuppence. + +Is it not also a part of our extravagant economy that makes women eat +such queer things when they are by their lonely selves? What +self-respecting man would lunch off a sultana cake, a tart, or an ice? +Show me the self-respecting woman who has not done it! Women know how to +cook--some of them--but none of them know how to eat. A woman feels that +to eat well and substantially is a sheer waste; there is nothing to show +for it, but she would not hesitate a moment to spend even more in +something that she can show. A man doesn't think twice about having a +"ripping" good dinner and a bottle of extra good wine; he thinks it is +money well spent, but he will be hanged before he would buy himself an +ornamental waistcoat and sustain life on a penny bun. + +What awful things we should eat if it were not for men! I am sure _table +d'hôte_ dinners were invented by some philanthropist to save women. "I +cannot eat _à la carte_," said a friend of mine in a piteous burst of +confidence: "it's just like eating money." So when her husband travels +with her he always leads her to the _table d'hôte_ if only to preserve +her from starvation. When she is resigned to the cost, she has an +excellent appetite. I really think if it were not for men women would +wrap themselves in sable and point lace and starve to death. + +Is it not the woman who is the apostle of appearances? Go to a dinner +party where the wines and the food are rather poor and well served, and +you may be sure it is the fault of the dear female economist at the head +of the table. + +Who of us has not come across a gorgeous establishment where it takes +three footmen and a butler to serve a tough chop of New Zealand lamb. +The presiding goddess afterwards drives out in the park in an equipage +magnificent with coachman and footman, and horses shining like satin +with care and good feeding. No, they are not fed on New Zealand lamb! + +For some people it is a wildly extravagant economy to ride in a 'bus. I +know of a family of girls who pine for a 'bus ride as we poor things do +for a chariot and four. They can't afford it; it would ruin the family +credit, which is only kept up by a magnificent carriage--unpaid for--and +a superb coachman and footman whose wages are owing. If one of these +girls were to be seen in a 'bus, it would mean their downfall in the +eyes of the confiding tradesmen. No, not everybody can afford to ride in +a 'bus. After all it is only the rich and great the world permits to be +shabby. + +I heard of a nice girl who "slums" and who lives in the East End, having +shaken the dust of Mayfair from her feet. She has reduced self-sacrifice +to a science, and her life is an orgie of self-denial, and she is a +hollow-eyed, haggard young martyr, and keeps body and soul together on +five shillings a week. My only criticism of this scheme of altruism is +that every once in a while she neglects and starves herself into an +awful fit of illness, and has to be taken back to Mayfair and brought to +life, and then the good physician sends a thumping big bill to her +parents, who never get any credit for charity. Now I think even a modern +martyr ought to have just a grain of common sense. + +There is a certain intellectual town in America where tramcars still +issue return tickets at reduced rates. How well I remember two dear +maiden ladies, armed with principles, walking up and down in the snow +and sleet of a winter's night one whole hour waiting for the particular +tram which would accept their tickets. They let unnumbered other trams +jingle merrily past, while they paddled about in the slush, strong in +their sense of economy. They each saved three cents, and one nearly died +of pneumonia. + +One wonders how many of us die because of our reckless economy? Are we +not for ever doing things for which we have neither the strength nor +the capacity, just to save a few pennies, and do not many of us repent +all our life long? I well remember a lady who to save hiring a man, +lifted her piano to slip a rug under. When I saw her, she had, in +consequence, been a helpless invalid for years with an incurable spine +complaint. + +Are not cheap servants another favourite female economy? I have seen a +sensible woman rejoice because she had captured a cheap servant as if, +what with aggravation of spirits and broken crockery, a cheap servant +does not take it out of one in nervous prostration. Not to mention that +the incompetent eat just as much as the competent! + +Did I not read this very day how two delightful female economists, +waiting for the opening of a certain theatre, sat on camp-stools from +nine in the morning till seven in the evening of a cold, damp winter day +for a chance to dive into the pit, and so to save a shilling or two. Was +there ever a more cheering example of feminine wisdom and thrift? + +I knew a woman who had the economical fad to get double service out of a +match, but she found it awfully expensive. She went upstairs one night +to dress for dinner. A doorway, hung with a frail, floppy art-curtain, +connected her bedroom and her dressing-room. As she entered, she heard +shrieks of "fire" in the street, and tearing open the window she found +the house opposite in flames, and in an instant fire-engines came +clattering through the crowd. She was a kind soul, but she did enjoy +herself immensely, watching it comfortably from her window. It was over +in no time, and as she looked at the chaos of fire-engines and firemen +the thought struck her how convenient it would be if there were another +fire just then in the street, for here they all were ready to put it +out! + +Whereupon she lighted the gas, and, true to her principles, carried the +burning match to her dressing-room, through the floppy art-curtain. The +next instant it was all in a blaze, and she was hanging out of the +window shrieking "fire." They broke down her front door, trailed miles +of dirty oozing hose upstairs, and finally left her gazing drearily at +the black ceiling, the sodden furniture, the dirty water pouring +downstairs, and a hideous burnt wall where the fatal art-curtain had +been. + +"At any rate," she said to herself, as she took a great, long breath, +"it was convenient." + +But since then she has never used a match twice. + +How we all do love to save at the spiggot even if it does pour out at +the bung-hole! Who of us has not seen a woman grow thin and sharp and +old, in the struggle to save pennies while her open-handed husband +throws away pounds? It takes a big, broad-minded woman to know when to +open her purse-strings, and perhaps even a bigger and more strong-minded +one to keep them always comfortably ajar. + +At what early age can the girl-child be taught that what is too cheap is +usually very dear? The majority of women never learn it. How many a +woman goes out to buy a warm woollen frock and returns home with a +be-chiffoned tissue-paper silk, because it was cheap and looked so +"smart." That ghastly, temporary smartness which is a kind of whited +sepulchre! There is no doubt that the Englishwomen--and I include the +Americans--are the most extravagant in the world. + +A Frenchwoman once expressed her amazement to me at the enormous amount +of money Englishwomen spend on what is as useless as froth. Chiffon is +the bane of the Englishwoman; she drapes herself in cheap chiffons while +a Frenchwoman puts her money in a bit of good lace. She adorns herself +with poor furs where a Frenchwoman would buy herself a little thing, but +a good little thing. Finally, when the thrifty Frenchwoman has gathered +together quite a nice collection of lace and fur, the Englishwoman has +nothing to show for her money but a mass of torn and dirty chiffon whose +destination is the rag-bag. After all it is an age of wax beads and +imitation lace, and they represent as well as anything our extravagant +economy. + +Is not our middle-class cooking a monument to our extravagance? A +British housewife has it in her power to take away the stoutest appetite +with her respectable joint, her watery vegetable, and the pudding or +tart that should lie as heavy on her conscience as they do on the +stomach. If the Englishwoman would only take to the chiffons of cooking +instead of the chiffons of clothes! It is an extravagance to cook badly; +it is an extravagance to buy things because they are cheap; it is an +extravagance to waste time in doing what someone else can do better (if +one can afford it). After all it is only fair to employ others when one +has the means. Don't we all want to live? Suppose editors wrote the +whole contents of their papers, and publishers only published their own +immortal works! What then? + +The other day I had to buy some china to replace what had been broken. +"They break it so quickly," I said to the polite salesman, in a burst of +grief. "But if they didn't, what should we do?" he asked. It really had +not occurred to me before, so a polite salesman taught me a lesson. + +It belongs to the economy of the universe that neither we nor anything +else should last for ever. Nature herself is methodically economical, +witness the regular passing of the seasons. And does she not utilise one +in the making of the next? + +Yes, what we women need most of all is to be taught unextravagant +economy, which includes the value both of money and of time, for the day +is coming when women's time will really be worth something. Probably it +will work a political economical revolution, but that cannot be helped, +and, after all, the world's progress is punctuated by revolutions. If +women enter men's sphere, the men will have to do something else. Still, +women are barred by their very weakness from innumerable employments, +and though they demand to vote, one never hears a very enthusiastic plea +on their part to fight. + +So let women earn, or at all events let them be given money as a right +and not as a begrudged charity, and it will be cheaper for men in the +end, with the result that our economy will become less irresponsibly +extravagant. Possibly we will not save much, but we may live better, +and, joy of joys, the doctors' bills will undoubtedly grow beautifully +less, for I am sure that the immense prosperity of that learned and +disinterested profession is mainly due to our extravagant economy. + + + + +_A Modern Tendency_ + + +Where are the aged gone? At any rate the aged women? The fact is, there +are no aged women; for, behold! the hairdresser, the milliner and the +dressmaker have all decreed that there shall be no old age--and, lo! the +miracle is performed; and our venerable grandmothers who once were old +are now only strenuous copies, perhaps a trifle overdone, of our more or +less youthful selves. + +Who has not been told that she looks most lovely in a hat in which her +last grain of common sense must clamour aloud that she really looks like +a fright? Have not each of us, my suffering sisters, had relays of awful +hats tried on our unoffending heads till we look like tortured ghosts, +crowned by a wreath of roses or cabbages, and loomed over by a terrible +young person in black satin? How that young person--well--prevaricated, +and how the cold irony of her eye cut us to the quick! + +I am dreadfully afraid to say so, but there are no serving young ladies +who are so cruel as the milliners' young ladies. They are of course not +all perfectly beautiful, but their wonderful tresses are always built up +in such an artful way that they never fail to nestle in the nooks and +crevices of the most unearthly creations. But they always say "It just +suits Madam," even when they cannot possibly reconcile it to their +conscience! + +One asks why do all the big shops employ, for the destruction of the +public, those tall sylph-like creatures who float about like denizens of +a higher sphere, in their wonderful black satins. These satin robes have +such an air that the white pins which occasionally hold together a rip +look only like an eccentric ornament. The divine lengths of those +graceful figures! + +They are a serious unbending race to whom all things are becoming. So +when they trail up and down what may be termed the trial halls of +fashion to show off to a short, stout customer a garment to which she +mistakenly aspires, no wonder that, struck by a temporary insanity, she +succumbs. She is convinced that her five feet by an equal breadth will +look like a five-foot ten inches, which is, besides, so attenuated that +it is a problem how the young person can dispose of anything even so +ethereal as a penny bun. Why not be merciful and employ a dumpy lot for +dumpy customers! + +It is a terrible thing in these days that there is no growing old. No +happy time comes when the tired features are at liberty to sink into +comfortable wrinkles, and nobody cares. The supreme joy of taking one's +well-earned rest saying, "Behold, I am old! Age also has its beauties +and compensations." The trouble is that nobody really believes it to be +a joy. + +There is probably no parting so painful as the parting from the days of +one's youth; even if the outside be ever so youthful there is a knell in +one's heart that tolls to the burial. One of the surest signs of age is +when one begins to think of the past. Youth dreams of the future, middle +age lives in the present, but old age dreams of the past. But whoever +acknowledges dreaming of the past now that old age is out of fashion! + +Years and years ago, when our mothers were very young, there was a +distinct fashion for elderly people; certain colours were sacred to +them, certain fashions, certain fabrics and certain jewels. What young +creature would have foolishly decked herself in either purple or yellow? +Youth rejoicing in sparkling eyes, resigned diamonds to its elders, and +all aglow with hope and illusions left point lace to deck the stately +shoulders of age along with velvet. + +Now fashion is a republic and the only arbiter is a bank balance or +credit, and young things frisk it in diamonds, velvet, point lace and +sables, and their old grandmothers shiver along in _mousseline de soie_ +and chiffon, roses wreathe their golden locks, red locks, black locks, +as the case may be, but never their grey locks, and the winds of heaven +fan their ageing shoulder-blades. The art of growing old gracefully is +so rare that no wonder we cling to the hairdresser and the dressmaker +with pathetic hands, just to postpone the evil hour; sometimes we think +we have escaped the evil hour altogether. How we do cheat ourselves! + +It is perhaps one of the most blessed dispensations of our frail human +nature that we do not really know how we look; that when we gaze into a +mirror we do not see the sober disillusioning reflection, but rather +some fondly imagined image of ourselves. No woman is heroic enough to +look her imperfections squarely in the face, or why do we see such +curious apparitions? Why does that worn old face hide behind that white +veil dotted with black? Because, when she sees her mistaken old features +in the glass, then she sees what she longs to see, and when her old +heart cannot pump up sufficient pink she dabs on that ghastly rose which +has never yet deceived anyone. + +Ah, yes, the twentieth century is distinctly reserved for youth--old age +is not in it! It is a bad fashion set by that spoilt child of the +world--America. The world pays the same deference to America that the +average American parent pays to his obstreperous child. Yes, the +American child rules the roost, and America rules the world; therefore, +what wonder that age grows more and more unpopular. + +The other day I saw in several papers that in a certain industry no +workman would be employed in future who was more than forty. Put +yourself in the place of a man of forty who is shelved and knows of no +other way of earning his living! If he becomes a criminal, who can blame +him? Recently I read a curious paragraph about the increasing use of +hair-dye among working men. Not beer and tobacco, mind you, but just +hair-dye! Why? Because employers do not want old workmen. So the men +ward off the crime of growing old with hair-dye. Was there ever a more +comic tragedy? + +Alas! the world clamours for youth. White hairs compel no reverence. Age +only suggests to brisk young things that the old people are not up with +the times. What wonder, then, that the world caters for youth, and +nobody takes the trouble any more to create fashions for old ladies? + +If there is an institution which more than others wards off the coming +of age, it is certainly the great shops. Twice a year these arbiters of +fashion sacrifice themselves for the good of the public. Then do they +guilelessly re-mark the treasures of their warehouses with those +tempting signs which produce on the British public the effect of +_hasheesh_ on the native of India. Beware of those peaceful and alluring +pirates of Oxford and Regent Streets, O frail women who draggle last +year's chiffons in this year's mud, and go to the greengrocers in the +shopworn glory of the year before last. During sale-days the British +matron lives in a state of ecstasy. To buy is bliss; to buy cheap is +rapture. Cotton laces intoxicate her, and so does chiffon. She buys +summer dresses in winter, and furs when the July sun bakes the +sweltering town. That nothing is of any earthly use is of no +consequence. Nor is it of consequence that what she buys is youthful, +and she is old. It is these enchanting sale-days that explain the +Englishwoman's orgies of wax beads, picture hats, party frocks at the +wrong time, paper-soled slippers and open-worked stockings in pouring +rain. + +"A strong race, these English," an envious American said to me the other +day. + +"That's because they kill the weak ones off," I explained. "To be a +perfect Englishwoman you must be able to sit with your poor bare +shoulders against an open window at a winter dinner-party, preferably in +an icy draught, and you must smile. If you can survive that you are one +of the elect. It ensures you a social position, because you cannot have +a social position in England if you cover up your shoulders." + +I wish I could offer up an earnest plea for covered shoulders, at least +for the aged! It seems to me when a brave woman has imperilled her life +for forty years, nobly defying the cold blasts on the wrong side of the +dining-table, and after she has got her young brood safely married, it +does seem as if she then might retire to the well-earned comfort of a +high dress without losing her position in society. But to cover up those +poor melancholy shoulders is to announce the oldest kind of old age, and +what woman has the courage for that? + +There is no doubt that old age first went out of fashion when the +bicycle came in, for age was no barrier to its keen enjoyment. But +grandmother could not bicycle in a cap, and so she put on a billycock +hat instead; necessity obliged her to show her ankles, and exhilaration +led her to "scorch." It was then we asked in some perplexity for the +first time, "Where have the aged gone?" + +Still let us cling to youth, it is our modern prerogative as women; but +only let us cling to it to a certain extent--to the extent that life +amuses, but does not hurt. There are some of us who still have emotions +at an age when, had we lived in our grandmothers' day, we should already +have found permanent refuge in big frilled caps. We hardly realise the +safeguard there was in a cap. It was the final chord to show that the +symphony of youth had come to an end. + +In the days of our grandparents it was the men who kept young, while the +women were old at thirty-five; but in these days men are considered old +in their prime, and it is the women who cling to eternal youth. Yes, +indeed, the modern tendency requires readjustment. But after all, does +it pay to try and keep young when one is really tired and scant of +breath? + +Let it go, even the loveliest youth, in its own good time. Have we not +each had our turn at it? But one thing there is to which we should all +cling with might and main, and that is a young heart, for a young heart +has the only youth which is immortal. It will make of any woman, when +the time comes, what is more rare and lovely than a young beauty, it +will make her a charming old woman--and nothing in this wide world can +be more charming, even if it is a little out of fashion. + + + + +_A Plea for Women Architects_ + + +Now that it is the fashion, as well as the necessity, for women to earn +their own living, and when they are crowding into all the employments +hitherto sacred to men (and in some of which they are exceedingly out of +place) one wonders that they so rarely take to a profession--or, rather, +to one branch of it--which seems so distinctly adapted to their +characteristic talents; and that is domestic architecture. + +The longer I live in England the more I am struck by the singular +inconvenience of the average English house; its supreme aim seems to be +to make the occupier as uncomfortable as possible. I do not, of course, +speak of palaces which rejoice in a majestic dreariness, nor of the +homes of the brand-new rich, who, being unencumbered by ancestors or +ancestral castles, can start fresh with all the newest improvements, so +new, indeed, that they are still quite sticky with varnish. I speak of +the average person, who has a moderate income, and who, without +pretension, would yet like to get the most comfort out of life. + +I am well aware that when it comes to a consideration of the defects of +English architecture I shall be completely crushed by a reference to +English cathedrals, to which the American makes adoring pilgrimages. It +is true they are glorious. We do not live in cathedrals, however, but in +houses, and the English houses are far, far behind the English +cathedrals. + +In America we are on the high road to perfection in domestic +architecture, owing, possibly, to the acknowledged supremacy of our +women. Where a woman reigns supreme, it is the end and aim of her men to +make her comfortable and happy. Now the American architect, being a man, +and belonging most likely to some woman, makes it his pride to provide +for her--or her sex which she represents--the most comfortable, +convenient and pretty house to adorn with her taste and her presence +until she moves. We have no legacies of famous cathedrals; but, O! we do +have absolute comfort in our houses! + +A woman is not wasteful in small things, but a man is; who then is so +adapted to utilise the small space which constitutes the average house? +A house can be the visible expression of all her cleverness, her +economy, her taste and her common sense; it will give her an opportunity +to be great in the minor aspirations. Possibly she might fail if she +tried to build a cathedral--as she has failed in the highest expression +of any of the arts--but she is undoubtedly created to bring that into +the world which stands for comfort and for happiness, and where can she +so fully prove her homely genius as at her own fireside? + +Ah me, the fireside reminds me of how one shivers through an English +winter! A man does not realise how terribly cold a woman can be, a mere +man architect who rushes about all day long with twice as much clothing +on as the average woman wears, and who, besides, never undergoes the +ordeal of a low-necked dress! + +It really would seem as if the male architect of houses can only +construct the obvious; his imagination declines to soar. If he is an +Englishman he firmly believes in the methods of his ancestors more or +less remote, and that explains why the Victorian house with all its bad +taste, and inconvenience still remains the popular town dwelling-place. +So common is it, that an enterprising burglar having "burgled" one, can +find his way safely over half the houses of London, and be positively +bored by their monotony! Now these houses are the creations of men +architects, who have seen nothing else, and who lack that architectural +intuition which can make them evolve what they have never seen, and +enables them to immortalise in brick and mortar the vagaries of a dream. + +Therefore it is high time for women to come to the front! A woman has +intuitions, and when she really doesn't know it is her proud boast that +she can guess, and, surely, that does quite as well. When she builds a +house she will feel it, as a poet does his poem. She will put herself in +the place of that other woman whose destiny it is to live there. She +will create for her all the delightful things she wants herself. She +will warm that house comfortably, because she herself hates to shiver. +She will put in plenty of cupboards, because without cupboards life is +not worth living (to a woman)! Her kitchen will be in just proportion to +the size of the house, and not a kind of baronial hall in which even the +beetles look lonely. Having pity on mere human legs she will cease to +build Towers of Babel. + +Then, her genius being for detail, she will see that the interior work +of the house is well and delicately finished. What impresses me most in +comparing the work of an English and an American workman is that the +American is more careful and deft. He leaves no dabs of paint, or seams +of coarse cement. The Englishman is distinctly clumsier in his methods +and his results. + +The woman architect will pay especial attention to the plumbing, not +only to its sanitary, but also to its ornamental aspect, which leaves +much to be desired. And she will, if it is humanly possible, construct a +bathroom for those of the household who need it most--the servants; and +when she has done all this, then she has only done what is common in +American houses built for families of comfortable, but not large +incomes. + +Further, the woman architect will study the economical use of +electricity. She will not (being a woman) waste it by putting too much +of it in impossible and unbecoming places, and yet at the same time she +will know just where to place an artful lamp so that her long-suffering +sister will at last be able to see, even at night, how her dress hangs. +She will not be extravagant; for extravagance she leaves to her brother +architects, who understand neither the value of space nor the wise +economy of exertion. For this reason I urge that women should become +architects, but only domestic architects. They must not meddle with +cathedrals! + +The more comfortable and convenient the houses are the more pleasant the +daily life, and what that means as an influence on the temper of a +nation cannot be over-estimated. It may do for peace what the Hague +Conference has so magnificently failed to do. So we shall inevitably +become a better and happier people when the minor problems of life are +solved once for all: the carrying of coal upstairs; the freezing in +winter, because the heating methods are inadequate; and the shielding +of one's wardrobe from the festive moth in a space already overflowing +with other garments. + +No, women should never build cathedrals; but I am quite sure it is their +destiny to build what is possibly of even greater importance, and that +is the homes of the people. + + + + +_The Electric Age_ + + +The American contribution to the characteristics of nations is hurry, +and it is so contagious that the whole world has caught the +infection--the whole world is in a hurry! + +The modern man has as much emotion and variety crammed into a year of +his life as would have sufficed to leaven generations of lives two +hundred years ago. Now as we can only eat so much with comfort, in the +same way our brains will only assimilate so many impressions, and our +hearts will only bear a certain amount of emotion. If we have too many +impressions we go mad, and if our hearts are too full they break, only +we are told there is no such thing as a broken heart. But there is. + +It goes without saying that impressions, both on the heart and the +brain, which are as rapid and broken as the biograph, must be of +infinitesimal duration. It is therefore a foregone conclusion that the +modern man is not only in a perpetual hurry from his cradle to that +final rest where all hurry ceases, but his memory, being limited to a +certain number of photographic plates, while the impressions are +unlimited, has but an infinitesimal space for each. The appeals made to +our understanding in those limited years we call a lifetime are simply +maddening. We have the entire daily history of the world dished up hot +for a ha'penny innumerable times a day, and when it is a day old it is +ancient history fit only to do up bundles with or light the fire. + +It is perhaps not one of the least terrors of life that the world is +growing so small, cruelly linked together by the copper coils of the +cable, that before long there will not be left a nook or cranny where +the soul can escape to solitude. There will be nothing left to discover +in this little world, and if the astronomers do not come to our aid +where will the outlet be for eager adventurers? + +The world expects so infinitely much, that what constituted a great +explorer fifty years ago and set the world talking, is the common +experience of numberless young fellows, with much money and leisure, who +go to darkest Africa in search of big game, and hardly think it worth +while to mention it. + +Everybody does something; the world is on a tiresome level of universal +ability! Everybody writes books: whether they are read is a secret no +publisher will disclose. Art is pursued with frantic haste, but is being +rapidly overtaken by the biograph. Music stuns the air and machine music +proves its superior ability, and in the United States education has +developed into a kind of decorous mental orgie. Even religion we get in +a rush when, as a stray sinner, we wander into a hall and are tossed +into a possible harbour on the crest of a rollicking hymn. Peace to the +soul that finds a harbour, however gained, only the fact remains that it +is often gained in a desperate hurry. + +Statistics prove, we are told, that human life is longer now than in the +past, what with the new hygiene and better nourishment; and yet the +working days of a man's life have so pitifully shrunk together that a +man of forty is shelved in these electric days as he once was at sixty. +No wonder then that the world is in a tearing haste, seeing how soon a +man gets over his practical usefulness, which means how soon he gets to +the end of his life, for life is work; after that it does not count. + +It is the new creed, and it comes from America along with the hurry. It +is the creed of a people who in their mad haste are losing their sense +of humour, for if a man has a touch of humour certain phases of American +life must, in the vernacular, "tickle him to death." + +Minerva is undoubtedly the patron goddess of America; did she not spring +full panoplied from the head of Jove? She took no time to be born; she +had no leisure for celestial teething nor whooping-cough. Education, +under her fostering care, does not come by degrees. + +Yesterday the great grubbing material city was intellectually a desert; +to-day it possesses a university in full swing, endowed with millions, +boasting the last "cry" of the most modern of brains. Hastily elbowing +its way along the path which the old universities trod in impressive +silence for centuries, it arrives shoulder to shoulder with them, still +rather fresh in the way of varnish because it is so new, breathing hard +because of the speed, and wanting only what is, of course, of no earthly +consequence--tradition and the memory of what was both good and great. +This seems to be the only thing with which a university cannot be +endowed! + +All over the States universities spring up like magnificent +mushrooms--over-night--and what with the men's universities, the women's +colleges, university extension lectures and Chautauqua, not to mention +educational schemes of a more modest nature, the United States may be +said to be getting educated by electricity. + +It takes a stranger in America some time to get accustomed to the mental +pace. I shall never forget the German director of a rather famous Art +museum there, who came to us in a towering rage and blurted out his +indignation. He had been in America only a few months and the sober +methods of the Fatherland still clung to him. + +"These Americans, O these Americans!" and he tore his long hair. "I haf +a letter this morning from a young man, and he ask me--Gott im Himmel, +is it conceivable?--he ask me can I--I--I--what you call +it?--guarantee--that he can became a portrait painter in three months! +It is to grow mad!" + +But not only the Fine Arts. A young doctor was explaining to me how +thorough and broad his medical education had been (he was from the +West), and as impressive and conclusive evidence he added, "I've even +taken an extra term on the eye." Now a term is three months. + +Alas, it is all owing to the electric age. Why will inventors invent so +many time and labour-saving machines? Heaven forgive them! The more +intelligent the machine the more machine-like the man who runs it, or is +run by it, if the work it leaves him to do is limited and monotonous. +Inevitably his outlook on life must become very narrow, and he must lose +all ambition, all sense of mental responsibility. Think of spending the +days of one's life making eyelet-holes! Many people do. + +What good is all this deadly haste to the world? What real good is it +doing the labourers and the lower middle-class men, of whom the world +mostly consists, if cables and wireless telegraphy make them, so to +speak, the next-door neighbours of an estimable yellow man in China? +What help to them if they know the daily tragedies of the uttermost +corners of the earth the same day rather than never? What use to them +the knowledge of how to murder their fellow men scientifically in a war +with all the modern improvements? What help to them if a million +inventions make their patient hands useless, but provide them with +luxuries they cannot afford? + +Every day thousands of new companies are promoted to exploit inventions +that have for their end and aim the doing of something in the greatest +possible hurry with the least possible aid from mere men. Some day the +lower classes will become perfectly unnecessary, like 'bus horses. The +world will then be full of the only people who really count, and who can +afford to be in a hurry: kings and queens, the rich and great, and above +all, those golden calves the world worships, who rule the trusts, who in +turn rule and ruin the world. + +The question is, will the world be as well off if it has reached the +summit and apex of hurry? In those days there will be no more +contentment, for the electric age is, of all things, the enemy of +contentment. Yes, by that time the whole world will be discontented, and +the universal characteristic of nations will be that they are +tired--tired--tired. Then, of course, men will die in their early youth, +worn out and old, for, after all, they are only men and not gods. +Besides, have not the gods always had a bad reputation for jealousy, and +have they not always punished the presumptuous mortals who tried to +steal their divine fire? + +Even the Electric Age cannot escape its Nemesis. + + + + +_Gunpowder or Toothpowder_ + + +Why are the English, admittedly the apostles of the tub, so indifferent, +as a rule, to the condition of their teeth? If they would do only an +infinitesimal bit as much for their preservation as they do for the +preservation of their monuments, it might possibly have a momentous +influence on English history. + +Why the inside of a man's mouth should be of no importance compared to +his outer man is a riddle; but so it is, and a man who would feel quite +disgraced to be seen with dirty hands, leaves his teeth in a condition +which is quite appalling. If, as it is said, bad teeth are a sign of the +degeneracy of a race, then are the sturdy English in a very bad way, and +melancholy indeed is their deterioration since the days of their +ancestors of that prehistoric age whose relics are found in Cornwall and +Somerset. + +It is a comfort to learn that not only common sense, but vanity, is as +old as the hills, for among those ancient remains were found some +rouge, and a mirror, all of which can be verified in the museum at +Glastonbury. My heart went out to the prehistoric lady who used the +rouge; it brought her very near with its suggestion of frailty and +feminine vanity, and I am quite sure that the mirror as well was her +property. I lingered over the rouge, the mirror, a tooth, a prehistoric +safety-pin, and some needles, and let the others bother themselves about +such really unimportant details as weapons and utensils. As I strolled +on I saw a skull two thousand years older than any recorded history, and +it grinned cheerfully at me with as perfect a set of teeth as ever +rejoiced the heart of a dentist. I could not help thinking what a shabby +exhibition we should make in similar circumstances! + +There is no doubt that our over-civilisation deteriorates our teeth, +which is proved whenever prehistoric remains are discovered. The last +were, I believe, found in Cornwall by a lucky man who bought a strip of +land, or, properly, sand, on which to build himself a cottage, and, on +proceeding to dig a cellar, found it already occupied by the remains of +prehistoric human beings. Some of the skeletons were still in the same +curious attitude in which they had been buried, and the superior ones +among them (socially!) had the right sides of their skulls smashed in to +prevent the restless spirit from seeking re-admittance. + +It was the most melancholy sight in the world, these bones which even +the alchemy of thousands of years had not resolved into merciful dust. +The immortal skeleton was there nearly intact, while brilliant, as if +brushed that very morning, grinned those splendid prehistoric teeth, +white as the kernel of a nut, impervious to decay. + +A big glass case against the wall of the little museum, which has been +built on the spot by the fortunate discoverer of the "bones," was full +of carefully preserved teeth which had been found there, and their +beauty and perfection would have rejoiced the heart of that artist in +teeth _par excellence_, the American dentist. + +The room was crowded by middle-class excursionists, who, with a +middle-class joy of horrors, even if prehistoric, in default of anything +fresher, stared round-eyed at the skeletons, skulls, shinbones and +other impedimenta of decease, and I was struck by the solemnity and +dignity of those poor old bones compared to the commonplaceness of the +empty faces gazing at them. + +"Oh, I say, don't you wish you had them teeth," I heard a young thing in +a scarlet tam o'shanter and a fringe giggle to the youth by her side, +with an imitation panama tilted back from his receding forehead. I +understood the gentle innuendo, as he promptly stuck his cane into his +mouth and sucked. + +There was something very magnificent and tragic in those lonely graves +of a humanity, already extinct when ancient history began, resting under +the roll of the Cornish sand dunes, where the sullen cliffs stand +sentinels against the seas. Until the twentieth century they had rested +forgotten, and then an undignified chance betrayed them. + +It was a gold mine for the enterprising proprietor, whose moderate +charge for a sight is only threepence a head. He is a man of engaging +humour, and he is not only on intimate terms with his "bones," but with +the eminent scientists who still wage a bitter but bloodless feud over +the remains, whose biography so far is only written in sand. + +That he is not only a cheerful but a witty man is greatly to his credit, +for he lives a lonely life on his sand hills, with only the cliffs as +his neighbours and the roar of the ocean and the whistle of the wind to +break the silence. For labour he excavates his graveyard, and for +relaxation he catalogues his bones. His free and easy comments on his +subject (or subjects, rather) are really very exhilarating to the +philosophic tourist, and indeed it was he who first drew my attention to +the deterioration of English teeth. + +The eccentricity of the Early Victorian teeth was for decades the pet +subject of the Continental caricaturist, the peculiarity being generally +ascribed to the British female, her male companion merely rejoicing in +hideous plaids, abnormal side-whiskers, and a fearful helmet decorated +with a flowing puggaree. Times have changed. The British teeth have +ceased to protrude, and, indeed, they now veer around to the other +extreme, and instead of prominent front teeth the Englishman now often +rejoices in no front teeth at all, or between none and the ordinary +number nature intends there are countless variations. + +I have been waiting for a genial caricaturist to seize on this simple +and unostentatious national trait. If bad teeth are a common sign of +ill-health, then alas for the English masses who form the strength of +the nation, for their neglected teeth are a menace and a warning. + +There is no emotion in the world, except the fear of death, that will +not succumb to an aching tooth. A villain with the toothache is more +villainous than without it; while a lover with the toothache does not +exist, for a lover with the toothache ceases to be a lover. The +toothache is so exquisite a pain that it demands the undivided attention +of the brain, with a persistency so nagging that no other pain enjoys. +It will even wreck a man's career. What man can write a great poem or +win a battle with an ulcerated tooth tearing at his nerves! Should we +investigate, it will be discovered that the greatest men in the world +who made history, art, and science, never had toothache, which first of +all kills the imagination. Mathematicians might survive, for such +imagination as they have is riveted in facts. + +In addition to the other disabilities, toothache is undignified; there +is nothing interesting or romantic about it! It is one of the first +pains impartial nature bestows on her children, and which is the only +common heritage that justifies that misleading clause in the American +Constitution that all men are born free and equal. That pain and what +was in our childhood euphoniously called "tummy ache" lead the revolt in +nurseries. + +There is hardly a bodily ache which literature has not idealised, but an +aching tooth has yet to find its dramatic poet. In fact, there is about +it a touch of the ludicrous which its concentrated anguish does not +justify. It is curious that so intense a suffering should be so +undramatic, but it is the one agony which does not desert us this side +of the grave, and which even the genius of a Shakespeare would hesitate +to bestow on his hero or heroine. Anguish comes to them in many ways, +but the great poet discreetly avoids teeth. + +The only historical reference to teeth I have ever noticed is when the +sacred Inquisition, always original and playful, tears them one by one +out of the mouths of heretics and Jews as being gently conducive to +confession. But even this undoubted torture is singularly undramatic, +and has, I believe, never been used by a tragic poet. + +It is one of the aggravations of toothache that it inspires but lukewarm +sympathy; even your parents know you will not die of it. The greatest +concession to your suffering is that you may stay away from school, and, +if you are very bad, mother ties a big handkerchief about your face, +which is something, but not much. But even parents are strangely +inconsiderate, and I realised even in my infant days that had these same +sufferings been situated more favourably in my body I should have been +promoted to bed and the family doctor. + +A very famous American dentist met the English husband of an American +friend of mine with the genial congratulation, "My dear sir, I wish you +joy! You have married a first-rate, A1 set of teeth." + +Possibly the tribute was too professional, but it really meant so much. +Indeed, one of the most promising signs of the future of the American +people is the importance they attach to good teeth. The American dentist +is the greatest in the world. His deft skill constructs those delicate +and complicated instruments that help him to repair the ravages of time +and ill-health. Not only does he produce an exact copy of nature, but +his is the only instance known to science where human ingenuity excels +nature's--his teeth do not ache! It is also required of the modern +dentist not only that he should be a consummate mechanic, but he must be +a doctor and surgeon as well, to be able to cure the cause behind the +damage. + +When I see so many people here who have bad teeth--which to say the +least is a blemish--it is a prophecy that the next generation will have +even worse, which means a deterioration in health, therefore in +intelligence and ambition. So in due course England will lose her proud +position as the greatest nation in the world, simply because England +would not go to the dentist; which is a curious neglect for a people +whose morning tub is much less likely to be neglected than their morning +prayers. + +If I were one of the powers that be I should require all Board Schools +to furnish their pupils with tooth-brushes and toothpowder, and the +morning session should be opened with a general brushing of teeth. Not +only that, but I would have a dentist attached to each school district, +whose duty it should be to attend to the children's teeth free of +charge. If England wants good war material (and there has been some +adverse criticism of the quality of her soldiers) she must cultivate it, +and it is her duty to step in where the parent fails. A day labourer +with a large family does his best if he and they keep body and soul +together. It is for the State to step in and rescue the young teeth from +premature decay, thus undoubtedly increasing the health of the growing +body, and at the same time teaching the young things those cleanly +habits which make for self-respect and health. + +The English have not the habit of going to the dentist; money paid to +him they consider wasted--there is nothing to show for it. It is like +putting new drains into the house, only not so necessary. They still +have teeth taken out rather than stopped (filled), as being cheaper, and +when they are all out they replace them on too slight a provocation by +what American humour calls "store teeth." + +Nor are the English supersensitive. Their complacency, which upholds +them in more important things, inclines them to believe that if their +fathers muddled along with bad teeth so can they. It does not take away, +they think, from the charms of their best girl if she smiles at them +with a gap in her teeth, or if in colour they shade into the darkest of +greys. As for a man, he can always lie in ambush behind his moustache, +or at worst he can draw down his upper lip and leave the unseen a +mystery. + +Still, there is hope for the future, and England shows signs of +awakening! A truly progressive member of a certain board of guardians +recently had the temerity to demand tooth-brushes for the pauper +children. The worthy mayor who presided at the meeting was nearly +paralysed at the audacity of the request. He not only sternly refused, +but he denounced it as pampered luxury and extravagance, and he was so +roused by the outrageous proposal that he taunted his brother guardians, +and said they themselves had probably not indulged in the sinful luxury +of a tooth-brush for forty-five years. Possibly, but at any rate it +proves that England is really awakening, and that even an infant pauper +may some day look forward to the rapture of possessing a tooth-brush! + +Yet even bad teeth sometimes find their Nemesis! A very important public +position was recently vacant for which there were some two hundred +applicants. These slowly resolved themselves down to two--one an able +man, and the other an exceptionally able man. They had to have a +deciding interview with the arbiter of their fate, so great a man that +he is called a personage, and he gave the position to the able man +rather than the exceptionally able man. His explanation for his curious +choice was quite simple, "He really had such horrid teeth that I could +not bear to have him always about." + +Has any historian left his testimony as to the teeth of the ancient +Romans, when that great nation fell into decadence? Statues all testify +that the deterioration did not affect their noses, but I feel sure that +if their rigid marble lips could open we should find the first cause of +their historic downfall. + +As the extinction of a nation is foreordained in its very inception, so +the fall of America is possibly already predestined. Well, it may be +owing to trusts, but it will not be owing to teeth. All over the +American land is heard the busy wheel of the dentist. Hundreds of +thousands of dentists are forever filling and scraping and pulling +American teeth, and the American people emerge from their dentist chairs +and smile broadly, a source of joy to the beholder and not pain. They +pay their dentists, if not with rapture, at least with resignation, +because they know that their children will inherit good teeth, and it +will be a pleasure to kiss them from their cradle on, at all stages. Nor +when their young men go out to war will they be declared by the medical +examiners unfit because of their bad teeth. Instead, they will clench +their good teeth and fight right pluckily, as only those can who attend +strictly to business, undisturbed by pain. + +One hears England called the freeest republic in the world, and that +here, as nowhere else, every man has his chance. Well, England may be, +to all intents and purposes, a republic, but to rise from the ranks is +only for the man of commanding talent, and for him there is always room +at the top--everywhere--all over the world. But for the ordinary man who +has ordinary abilities, and yet is not without ambition, America is the +land. + +He may start as a day labourer and have luck and his son may one day be +President of the United States; or he may grace any one of those +innumerable offices which are in the gift of a grateful party! That +keeps self-respect lively in a man, and is what makes him know not only +his own trade, but just a little more. How one suffers because the +British workman only does what he is obliged to--and not that. How often +one rebels because the subordinate English official knows just what he +is obliged to know, and not a hair's breadth more! That same man set +down in America will learn to the fullest extent of his intelligence. + +Tooth-brushes make for health, health makes for intelligence, and it is +the intelligent man the world wants and pays for; which proves the +incalculable importance of tooth-brushes in the progress of the world. +Possibly the atmosphere of a republic is more conducive to good teeth; +but, really, England should make a supreme effort to save her waning +power from falling into the grasp of the great republic, which it is +inevitably bound to do if England does not go to the dentist. + +In the political economy of nations the tooth-brush is of much more +importance than the sword, and toothpowder is infinitely more important +than gunpowder. As England never considers the millions she annually +spends in gunpowder, why does she not pause in her martial career and +spend a few thousand pounds in toothpowder? + + + + +_The Pleasure of Patriotism_ + + +In the way of rulers there is nothing quite so nice as a king. A king +focuses one's patriotism, and being above everybody in his kingdom is +probably the only person in it who arouses no envy. The fact is he +inspires in us a sense of proud proprietorship. We rejoice that he has +the loveliest of queens, and the lovelier she looks the more we are +gratified, just as if she were one of the family. So when the king's +diplomacy wins a bloodless victory we are as proud as if most of the +credit belonged to us. + +Indeed, one realises the intimate pleasures of patriotism most on coming +from an impersonal republic to a kingdom where the royal family is a +vital part of the national life. We republicans are nothing if not +patriotic, but while we are loyal to the broader aspects of patriotism +we miss perhaps its little intimate pleasures. + +It is, for example, rather difficult to feel a deep sense of personal +loyalty towards the man whom the freak of fortune places for four years +at the head of the nation, and of whom one knows very little. The +personal interest one takes in him and his family is quite artificial. +Opposed to him in politics, one doubts his fitness for his great +position; and if one is of his party one favours him with that frank +criticism which one naturally feels for the man who yesterday was no +better than oneself, and who in four years will come down from his +exalted height with the rapidity of a sky-rocket, only to join the army +of the "forgotten" so delightfully characteristic of republics. + +A republic is a worthy and useful institution, but there is a monotony +in a country that consists entirely of kings and queens. It is very nice +for all to be born free and equal, but it is not interesting, and there +is some comfort in knowing it is not true, for Nature hurls us into the +world a living contradiction to that rash statement of the Declaration +of Independence. + +It is only since I have lived in England that I have recognised the +value of the lesser patriotism. Without being in any way disloyal to my +own country, I must confess that I am conscious of quite new emotions +in this at least partial possession of a king. One feels a critical +sense of ownership. The Houses of Parliament belong to me, and +Westminster Abbey, and the Horse Guards. A whole troop of these +clattered past me in Oxford Street to-day, and, though they didn't know +it, I reviewed them from the top of a 'bus. I own the sentries before +Buckingham Palace, and I take a personal interest in the new gilding of +the great railings, for so much gilding must impress visiting +royalities, and visiting royalities ought to be impressed! + +Now our American Government not only declines to impress foreigners, but +takes unnecessary pains to remind us that Benjamin Franklin appeared in +homespun and wollen stockings at the Court of France. Times have changed +since then, and though we have discarded wollen stockings in our +intercourse with foreign Courts, our republic, in her consistent +encouragement of an out-of-date Spartan simplicity, leaves her +ambassadors to pay her legitimate little bills themselves, with the +result that she limits her choice of representatives to men who are not +only distinguished, but also rich enough to pay the heavy and necessary +expenses of their great position, which should by right be covered by an +adequate salary. + +It is not that our Government is impecunious; it is only pennywise. Now +for the first time in our history America has an embassy in London +worthy of her greatness, thanks not to our Government, but to the +princely munificence of her new Ambassador. Perhaps he will never know +the impetus he has given to the lesser patriotism, nor with what +innocent pride we have contemplated his residence from every point of +view, and with what patriotic rapture we watched the erection of that +splendid marquee destined for the welcome of his fellow-countrymen. + +For the first time I realised that this was _our_ embassy and _our_ +marquee, and I was proud of my country. These were the outward and +visible sign of our great prosperity. Perhaps our Ambassador thinks he +is the temporary owner of this stately splendour. It is a pardonable +mistake, but the fact is we are the owners, we Americans who have +strayed into this crowded and lonely London by way of Cook's tours, and +floating palaces, and who are, many of us, homesick for the sight of +something "real American." + +Last Saturday we celebrated that famous Fourth of July which England is +so courteous as to forgive. For the first time we penetrated into our +embassy. We were aliens no more, we were, so to speak, on our native +heath, we could not be crushed even by those magnificent footmen in +powder and plush--our footmen--who, as beseems the footmen of a free and +independent people, were quite affable. + +How proudly we patriots filed up the marble stairs and stared at the +pictures and at each other, and acknowledged with a genuine glow of +pride how well we were all dressed. I guess! + +"We are a prosperous nation," I exulted, as I had some republican +refreshment in the marquee under a roof of green-and-white striped +bunting. How good the lemonade tasted! A patriotic lady, with a huge bow +of stars and stripes tied in her buttonhole, said enthusiastically, +"There is nothing like American lemonade!" + +For once one rose superior to the English. One longed to recite to them +the Declaration of Independence. I swelled with pride, it was all so +well done, and it was my embassy, my marquee, my ices, and my +Ambassador. For the first time one revelled in the joy of a worthy +possession. For once the English accent was relegated where it +belonged--to the background--and we Americans talked unreproved with all +those delightful and familiar intonations which eighty millions of +people have stamped as classic. + +My only other experience of a Fourth of July reception, though there +have been many distinguished and hospitable American Ministers since, +was years ago. Two of us, urged on by patriotism, chartered a +four-wheeler, and were deposited before a modest house, which was so +dark inside, compared to the glare outside, that we stumbled up the dim +stairs behind other ardent republicans, and groped for the hand of our +hostess, who had apparently mislaid her smile early in the day. Then we +blinked our way into a dark drawing-room, where a circle of patriots +stared coldly at us. + +In our search for our Minister we attached ourselves to a little +procession that filed into the next room, and we found him talking with +delightful affability to an Englishman. To an Englishman, and on this +day of all days! To an enemy of that great country which paid him his +inadequate salary, while we, his own people, stood meekly about waiting +until it should suit him to notice us, and bestow on us that handshake +which is the inexpensive entertainment of all republican functions. + +First we stood on one foot, and then we stood on the other, and then we +coughed--a deprecating, appealing cough--and finally our Minister took a +lingering, fond farewell of his Englishman, and then turned to us, with +a frost-bitten expression of resignation which did not encourage us to +linger. We shook his limp hand, and then we jostled each other into the +dining-room. + +We were filled with an acute resentment, but far from declining to break +bread in his house we decided to take it out of him in refreshments; but +the unobtrusive simplicity of the preparations foiled our unworthy +designs. + +Those were simpler days, and enthusiastic republicans arrived in every +variety of attire. Most popular of all was that linen "duster" with +which in all its creases the travelling American loved to array himself. +Sometimes he wore a coat under it and sometimes he didn't. Those were +the days of paper collars and "made-up" ties, and on state occasions a +cluster diamond "bosom pin." It was a stifling hot day, and we passed +into the small dining-room, where a long table imprisoned three waiters. +It was a question of each for himself, and I remember the father of a +family clutching a plate of what we Americans call "crackers," and +refusing the contents to all but his own offspring. + +How we struggled for tea, and what a mercy it was that the waiters were +protected from bodily assault by the table! One bestowed on me a +tablespoonful of ice cream, densely flavoured with salt. For a moment I +hated my country. Republican elbows poked me in every direction, and +while I stood helpless in the crush I saw an elderly and stout +compatriot pour the tea she had captured into the saucer, and with a +placid composure proceed to drink it in that simple way. + +"To think of it," a voice cried into my ear in pained and shocked +surprise, "and she a relation of Longfellow's!" + +Exhausted I found myself in the street in a chaos of frantic +republicans, part of whom clamoured to get into the house, and part +struggled to get out. + +If our great Government would only realise that there is nothing so good +for the soul as a thrill of patriotism! It is worth cultivating. We +cannot all lay down our lives for our country, but there are lesser acts +of loyalty which are of infinite value. It belongs to the lesser +patriotism to show other folks that we are just as good as they are, if +not a bit better. It is our patriotic duty to wear good clothes, to look +prosperous, and to prove to foreigners that the star-spangled banner is +quite at home even when floating over a palace. It is really worth while +going down Park Lane just to say "Our Embassy!" + +When I told the cabman to drive to the American Embassy, and for the +first time in history he positively knew the way, I thrilled with +patriotic pride. It marked an epoch. + + + + +_Romance and Eyeglasses_ + + +It is curious to observe that even the greatest realists do not venture +to bestow eyeglasses on their heroines. It is rather odd too, seeing how +many charming women do in real life wear them, nor are they debarred by +them from the most dramatic careers and the most poignant emotions. But +while the modern novelist has bestowed eyeglasses on everybody else he +has not yet had the hardihood to put them on the nose of his heroine. +Why? + +It is a problem which again shows the unquestionably undeserved and +superior position of man, for a novelist does not hesitate to put him +behind any kind of glasses, and leave him just as fascinating and +dangerous as he was before. Eyeglasses are so much the common lot of +humanity these degenerate days that babies are nearly born with them, to +judge at least from the tender age of the bespectacled infants one sees +trundled past in their perambulators. And there is no doubt that the +time will come, if the strain on the hearing increases from the diabolic +noises in the streets, that the next generation's hearing will be as +much affected as our eyes are now. The result will be that all the world +will be using ear-trumpets, and the novelist of the future, the +accredited historian of manners, will be obliged, if he is at all +accurate, to have his love-sick hero whisper his passion to the heroine +through an ear-trumpet. However it is a comfort not to be obliged to +solve the riddles of the future. + +Still if it is inevitable that the future deaf hero will have to fall in +love with a deaf heroine, why should not the present astigmatic hero in +novels be permitted to fall in love with a beautiful creature in +glasses? He certainly does it often enough in real life. Of course it +would not do for a heroine to have a wooden leg, I grant, and yet I have +met a hero with a wooden leg, and I am quite sure I know several who +have lost an arm; why then should it be required of us poor women to be +so perfect? If a man can wear spectacles without forfeiting his position +as a hero of romance, I demand the same right for a woman. Why, a man +can even be bald and she will love him all the same! Now I ask would the +hero love her under the same circumstances? There is no use arguing, for +that very fact proves that there are laws for men and laws for women. + +The truth is she will love him under every objectionable kind of +circumstance, both in real life and in novels. Has not a thrilling +romance of recent years produced a hero without legs, and made him all +the more hideously captivating to the patron of the circulating library? +Now what novel reader would, even under the auspices of so gifted a +novelist, take any stock in a heroine similarly afflicted? Yes I fear, +though it is neither here nor there, that men also have it their own way +in literature. + +To be sure there are instances of blind heroines inspiring a passion, +and also, I believe, of lame heroines limping poetically through the +pages of a novel, as well as burdened with other disabilities which +apparently never take away from their charms; but I know of no heroine +whom the novelist has endowed with a _pince-nez_. Now why are glasses +in literature so incompatible with romance in a woman while they never +damage a man? + +Why can a man look at the object of his passionate adoration through all +the known varieties of glasses and yet not lose for an instant the +breathless interest of the most gushing of novel readers? His eyeglasses +may even grow dim with manly tears, and the lady readers' own eyes will +be blurred with sympathetic moisture. But let the heroine weep behind +her glasses and the most inveterate devourer of novels will close the +book in revolt. It is no use to describe how the heroine's great brown +eyes looked yearningly at the hero behind her glasses, nor how they swam +in tears behind those same useful articles, the reader refuses to read, +and even if the heroine is only nineteen and bewitchingly beautiful, she +is at once divested of any romance. + +What a mercy for the novelist in this age of perpetual repetition, of +twice told tales, if he might give his heroine a new attribute! One +feels sure that if eyeglasses and their variations were permitted they +would produce quite a new kind of heroine, to the immense advantage and +relief of literature. Of course the novelist has to keep up with the +times; it is as imperative for him as for the fashion-books, for it is +from him alone that future generations will learn how we lived, dressed +and looked, and what were our favourite sufferings. So the novelist +cannot of course ignore what is so common as eyeglasses and he has in +turn bestowed them on all his characters except his heroines. One can +understand his hesitation when one tries oneself to put glasses on the +noses of one's own literary pets, and then realises how they war with +romance. Put a pair on the nose of the loveliest Rosalind who ever +wandered through the enchanted forest of Arden, or let the most pathetic +Ophelia look through them at Hamlet with grief-stricken eyes, and I am +quite sure that even Shakespeare's poetry would not survive the shock. + +But if eyeglasses are tabooed by novelists, what shall we say of +spectacles? What gallery would accept a Juliet with spectacles? For a +woman in literature to wear spectacles is to put her out of the pale of +romance at once. Even in real life spectacles are a problem, but to the +heroine of a novel they are impossible. No novelist with any regard for +his publisher or his sales would venture to give his heroine gold +spectacles. The only ones I remember as the property of a heroine of +fiction belonged to the heroine when she repented, and they more than +anything else proved the sincerity of her remorse, and these were the +famous blue spectacles in "East Lynne" that worked such an amazing +transformation upon that erring and repentant lady. + +Yes, a heroine can be repentant behind spectacles, but I defy her to be +alluring. I was struck by their sobering effect on studying the head of +the Venus de Medici decorated with a pair in the window of an inspired +optician. They so changed her expression that she might have +successfully applied for a position in a board-school. + +It is possibly a digression, but I should like to know why opticians and +corset-makers look upon the young Augustus and Clytie, who loved Apollo +the sun-god, as especially created to exhibit their wares? It seems but +a pitiful ending to the career of a Roman Emperor to show the passing +multitude how to wear spectacles, or to prove the superior excellence of +a certain kind of green shade for weak eyes. And why should Clytie, with +her face shyly downbent, as well it may be, be obliged to appear in the +newest things in stays, in Great Portland Street? I wonder. + +To return to glasses. Perhaps the only thing in glasses on which a rash +novelist might venture is the monocle. I have not yet met a feminine +monocle in fiction, but we all know its entrancing effect when worn by a +man. We even realise its power in real life. It gives a man a kind of +moral support and even changes his character. I have seen meek and +rather ordinary men stick in a monocle, and it at once gave them that +fictitious fascination, that, so to speak, go-to-the-devil impudence +which is so irresistible. It is the aid to sight essentially of the +upper classes, or of the best imitation, and as such it naturally +inspires the confidence of society. + +Of course the feminine monocle is not adapted to all costumes, but there +is about it a rakishness, a coquetry particularly suited to a +riding-habit. The suggestion is quite at the service of any harassed +novelist. It may be quite as much a help to sight as spectacles, but, O, +the difference! A woman buries her youth behind spectacles, but she can +coquet to the very end behind a monocle. + +A charming creature used to pass my window every day on horseback. I had +a distant vision of a rounded figure in the perfection of a habit, a +silk hat at just the right angle and a monocle. I wove romances about +her; she was Lady Guy Spanker and all the rest of those mannish and +dangerous coquettes of whom I had read. Yesterday we met at a mutual +greengrocer's. She was elderly, and she had discarded the monocle for a +pair of working eyeglasses with black rims, through which she studied +the vegetables with the eye of experience. She also wore a wig, a black +wig. I was so aghast that I stared speechlessly at the greengrocer who +patiently offered me cabbages at "tuppence" a piece. "It can't be," I +said, still staring. "I beg your pardon, Madam," he said, quite +offended, "it's the usual price." "It must be the monocle," and I +pursued my train of thought aloud. "No," the greengrocer retorted with +some impatience, "it's a Savoy." + +But it is only the monocle which has that rejuvenating effect. The other +day I called on the loveliest woman I know, and who has always seemed to +me the picture of exquisite and immortal youth. She looked up from the +corner of a couch sumptuous with brilliant cushions. She had been +reading, and she laid aside her book and something else. I followed her +hand and felt as guilty as if I had been caught eavesdropping. There lay +a pair of gold spectacles and I saw a red line across the bridge of her +lovely nose. Those wicked spectacles! How they took away the bloom of +her youth. To me she will never seem young again, only well-preserved, +alas! How tragic to think that even beauty comes to spectacles at last! +Now how different it is with men. If they do have to wear spectacles +they do it boldly, and not on the sly, and yet they always find some one +to love them, so the novelists prove, and they ought to know. + +But a heroine with spectacles, that is a different thing. What novelist +has the courage for such an innovation? Even realism, which we know +usually stops at nothing, does draw the line there. + +Now I do ask in all seriousness, are eyeglasses in fiction really so +incompatible with romance? + + + + +_The Plague of Music_ + + +Yesterday as I strolled through this little Hampshire village, I passed +a woman with a baby in her arms, followed by a chubby boy of about +three, whose little trousers had only just emerged from the petticoat +stage. He lingered behind his mother, and drew across his pursed-up lips +and his puffed-out red cheeks the instrument called a mouth harmonica, +and drank in rapturously his own celestial harmonies. + +"Come 'long with your mewsic," his mother remarked briefly over her +shoulder. And he came. + +I looked smilingly after that young disciple of what may be truly +described as the most offensive of the fine arts, and meditated on the +poverty of language which describes by the same word the art of +Beethoven and the tooting of a penny whistle--at least in the vernacular +of the people. + +There is, perhaps, no common characteristic more unfortunate than the +sheep-like habit human beings have of imitating each other. As infants, +the howling of one baby certainly encourages any evilly disposed infant +in the neighbourhood to imitation, and a group of roaring youngsters +rejoice in their rivalling shrieks. + +As we grow older this artless love of noise is of necessity controlled, +but human nature must have vent, so by a kind of common consent we give +way to our natural exuberance in what, for lack of other description, we +are pleased to call "music." Music is the only divine art we are +promised in Heaven, and it is certainly the only divine art with which +we are tortured on earth. + +The nerves of the ear must be the most sensitive of the whole nervous +system, for they have it in their power to inflict the most exquisite +torture. The silent arts, no matter how outrageously presented, cannot +possibly make one quiver in agony, nor set one's teeth on edge with the +sharp lash of a discord. Eyes are long-suffering, and they look at what +is discordant with indifference, possibly with resignation, and at most +with impatience; nor have these silent discords the power to leave the +human being distinctly the worse for his experience. + +No other art is able to inflict such merciless suffering! Under the name +of music we are afflicted with every variety of noise, including the +hand organ, the bagpipes, the German band, the man who toots the cornet +in the street, the harp man, the lady who has seen better days and who +sings before our house in the evening, the active piano-organ invented +by a heartless genius, the musical box and all its amazing progenies, +the gramophone and the pianola. Not to mention the millions of pianos +and the millions of fiddles that never cease being thumped and scratched +all the world over night and day. The contemplation of such collective +discord is truly appalling. + +Unfortunately for us we live in an inventive and imitative age, and one +is inclined to think that the devil is the patron saint of inventors, or +why has the blameless spinet waxed great and blossomed into a piano? Why +should the resources of a modern orchestra be at the disposal of every +infant whose mistaken mother plumps it down on the piano-stool and lets +it thump the keys to keep it quiet! One would so much rather hear its +natural shrieks than that other noise which is supposed to be a harmless +substitute! Why music, of all the fine arts, with its power for +inflicting untold anguish, should be the most common, passes my +understanding. + +The printed page is undoubtedly long-suffering, but it is silent. It is +of course true that to be an author, nothing is necessary but a sheet of +paper and a pencil, but I defy the most energetic author to read his +work to ears that refuse to hear. Now with music it is different, one +simply _can't_ get away from it, because cruel inventions--I do not +think I am exaggerating?--have brought its exercise within reach, I will +not say of the poor only, for the thumping of the rich and great is +equally horrid, but of the mistaken poor. + +I do not urge that the infant mind, in the process of being cultivated, +should be turned to literature, for it is bad enough already owing to +benevolent publishers who, in the praiseworthy desire not to allow any +light to be hidden under a bushel, emulate each other in trying to +illuminate the world with farthing tallow-dips! It would, indeed, be +ghastly to listen to the literary outpourings of every infant one met, +and equally ghastly never to be able to flee from the rendering of +masters of literature as interpreted by the intellect of three years up. +Thank heaven, we are spared this in literature if not in music, but, I +ask, if we must have a fine art to trifle with, why not take to +painting? Painting is _so_ inoffensive. + +It was the English who, before they became so musical, dallied for a +while with painting. There was a time, if we may believe those +biographers of manners, the novelists, when all England sketched, and so +gave vent to all its superabundant emotion in paint. There was no +landscape safe from the emotional Englishwoman. Instead of strumming +false notes on the hotel piano she went out with a paint-box and +sketched the uncomplaining landscape. At any rate the long-suffering +landscape made no sound. + +It cannot be denied that one suffers less from a bad picture than from a +bad anything else, the agony also is short, nor is it necessary in the +process of painting to inflict pain. Painting is an exceedingly silent +art, and its results are easily disposed of as wedding presents, because +the recipient cannot possibly rebel. + +There is, also, that delightful alternative of decorating one's house +with one's own immortal works. I was recently shown a lovely picture +gallery entirely hung with the work of its owner. I emerged from the +experience smiling and quite calm. Now what would have been my condition +had the good lady insisted on reciting to me eighty of her poems (there +were eighty pictures), or, more harrowing still, had she insisted on +playing to me eighty compositions of her own, or even eighty +compositions of others, with stiff and reluctant hands? For which reason +I maintain that painting is the most inoffensive of the arts and +deserves to be encouraged. + +But seriously, why should every child be taught to play the instrument +quite irrespective of its having any talent or taste for music? Why in +the world, where martyrdom is usually the price of living, should a +select little army of martyrs suffer a double martyrdom? Why draw them +by the hairs of their inoffensive heads to the piano-stool and make, as +it were, at one fell swoop, two martyrs, the one at the piano and the +wretch who, on the other side of the wall, gives the lie to Congreve, +who mistakenly declared that "Music has charms to soothe a savage +breast"? Had Congreve lived now he would have hesitated to make so rash +a statement. + +In Congreve's day the piano, the greatest instrument of torture of +modern times, had not been evolved. Its ancestor, the spinet, tinkled +plaintively away under its breath like a musical mosquito with a cold on +its chest, and was--alas, how happily!--within reach of only the few. In +those days, when its feeble tinkle was a mere whisper, house-walls were +made of such stupendous thickness that not even the turmoil of a modern +orchestra in the next room could have penetrated. + +But now, in these unhappy days, when every family is obliged to have a +piano or be despised, and when in apartment-houses each floor quivers to +a piano of its own, the architect and contractor--a terrible combination +for evil!--have conspired together to erect walls like tissue paper, +behind which the harassed householder cowers, mercilessly exposed to +musical scales as practised on an instrument powerful enough to have +cast down the walls of Jericho. And here he vainly seeks for a peaceful +retreat from the noise of cabs, 'buses, motors, traction-engines, +electric trams, and all the other ear-splitting sounds which, +apparently, follow in the relentless march of progress. + +It is very appalling to consider that at this very moment the children +of the entire civilised world are, with few exceptions, engaged in +playing false notes on a variety of musical instruments. It is not too +much to say that in this respect the uncivilised have a colossal +advantage over the civilised. + +In a certain familiar oratorio innumerable pages and much time are taken +up in an endless reiteration of the words, "All we like sheep." I beg to +ask if the worthy sopranos, altos, tenors and the rest, ever did realise +the profound truth of that over-repeated and rather monotonous +statement? We _are_ all like sheep! We do what our neighbours do; we +think what they think and we wear what they wear. In fact, we are +tailor-made inside and out; no, we are worse than tailor-made, we are +ready-tailor-made, for we are made by the gross. + +If there is a thing the world shudders at and resents it is originality. +If a human being cannot be classified as belonging to a certain cut of +trousers, coat or waistcoats, let him beware, for he is a misfit human +being, and we all know the cheap end of all misfits! It is as +embarrassing to have anything obtrusive in one's mental make-up as in +one's physical. Happy is he who is on a dead level! + +One would like to offer up a meek plea for originality were one not +aware how unpopular it would be. To be original is only next worse thing +to being a genius. We do resign ourselves to sporadic cases of genius, +but a world peopled by genius (for we all know what that is akin to) is +more than we could stand. It is about the same with originality. So the +next time we sing "All we like sheep," let us consider well the meaning +of these inspiring but misunderstood words, and greatly rejoice. + +This train of thought is the result of my landlady's little boy, +separated from me only by a thin lath partition of a wall, playing +five-finger exercises in halting rhythm and with innumerable false +notes. The instrument is one in which the flight of years has left a +tone like a discontented nutmeg-grater. If the little boy had the legs +of a centipede and played his chosen instrument with these instead of +two dingy little hands, he could not perpetrate more false notes. + +The number of false notes that can be evolved through the medium of +eight fingers and two thumbs is simply appalling! The little boy, a pale +child in a long pinafore and big white ears, hates his chosen instrument +as much as I do, and so we meet on a level of mutual affliction. I +loathe hearing him, and he hates his instrument; now, in the name of +good common sense, why must he be offered up as a sacrifice? + +His mother is a poor woman, and the tinkling cottage piano with the +plaited faded-green front represents the chops and many other wholesome +things she has not eaten, and what she allows the young lady in +third-floor back, who takes her board out in piano lessons, is a serious +sacrifice. Now, I ask, what for? + +Why is all the world playing an unnecessary piano? + +Marriage has a fatal effect on music. For some occult reason as soon as +a girl is married, the piano--the grave of so much money and +time--retires out of active life, and swathed in "art draperies," +burdened by vases, cabinet photographs and imitation "curios," serves +less as a musical instrument than a warning. But like all warnings it +passes unheeded, for no sooner are the next generation's legs long +enough to dangle between the key-board and the pedals, than the echoes +awaken to the same old false notes that serve no purpose unless an hour +of daily martyrdom over a tear-splashed key-board is an excellent +preparation for the trials of life. + +Music, as it is taught, is not so much a fine art as a bad habit. Alas, +we have got into the habit of learning to play the piano, and the bad +habit of playing on the violin is fatally on the increase. Seriously +now: why? Because it is considered both uncultivated and quite +unfashionable not to be fond of music or to pretend to be. Why? The +answer, "All we like sheep." + +I know of only one man who has the courage to say that he hates music. +It is his misfortune, not his fault, and without doubt there is +something wrong about his inner ear. Still, I always wonder why his +frank and honest confession is received with a kind of pitying contempt, +as if he had writ himself down to be both a brute-beast and a heathen. + +Love music, and for some unexplained reason you at once have a profound +scorn for all such as do not. My friend who hates music understands and +loves both pictures and poetry, and, goodness knows, there are plenty +who do not! And yet I have never heard him inveigh against those who +love neither. Yes, music may be a divine art, but it is certainly not a +charitable art. + +Even as long as one can remember, the study of music and the making of +musical instruments have been terribly on the increase. Mediocrity, that +might do excellent work in other fields, strums away at the piano or +scratches away at the violin, or with quavering voice sings those songs +which have inspired the poet to write: + + I am saddest when I sing, + And so are those who hear me! + +The world is full of music schools, that turn out thousands of young +musicians every year, who take to music instead of dressmaking or +plumbing or any other useful employment, and these are let loose on a +foolish world and proceed in turn to make martyrs of the defenceless +infants of our land. And it is curious, too, and instructive to observe, +considering the vast sums of money and the amount of time spent in the +pursuit of music, how rarely one can find any one who plays or sings +well enough to give even a little pleasure. + +The possible reason may be that the standard of mediocrity has become so +terribly high! For the halting amateur of to-day might have served as a +Paderewski of the past. Our ears have grown hopelessly fastidious. + +No more is the afternoon caller regaled with _The Happy Farmer_, as +performed by the talented child of the house, and listened to with real +pleasure by unsophisticated grandparents. We know too much to listen to +the talented child, and as for the talented child it generally +developes into a young person who has nervous prostration at the mere +idea of playing before anyone. For what purpose, then, these hours of +five-finger agony and those enormous bills which might have been paid +for so much better results? + +Then, too, consider the awful competition to which the present votary of +music is subjected--pitted, as it were, against the pianola, the Æolian, +the gramophone, and the other countless mechanical devices, which so +successfully prove that human ingenuity can create everything but a +soul. Wet blankets they are to all musical aspiration, for what musical +aspiration can successfully compete against steel fingers without +nerves? + +I do not think one would feel so acutely about the matter if music were +a silent art, and if it did not represent such a waste of money and +energy which, turned to other uses, might have been of such value. + +Let us have the courage to say, when it is the truth, that we dislike +music. It is nothing to boast of, but neither is it a crime nor a +disgrace. If your blessed Sammy bedews the piano keys with tears of +anguish, and if, after a time, you discover that his soul is not +amenable to the poetry of sound, then earn the fervid gratitude of your +neighbour on the other side of that jerry-built wall, and release the +young sufferer. + +Be merciful! + + + + +_A Domestic Danger_ + + +There are certain times of the year when the shops, the acute arbiters +of fashion, send broadcast those entrancing picture-books which advise +the wavering woman what to buy, what to wear, and how to wear it; and +every year the lovely creatures portrayed grow more lovely. Once my +dream was to be a queen in a black velvet garment, that hid my pinafore, +and a spiky crown--the kind as old as fairy stories. While waiting for +the real article I practised with a bed sheet and crowned myself with a +brass jardiniere that leaked, but was very imposing, though upside down. +I have had other aspirations since, and my very last has just come by a +discontented postman because it would not go into the letter-box. + +One goes through all stages of dreams until one comes to the conclusion, +but that is always very late in life, that one must resign oneself to +the inevitable; even science cannot turn one's nose down, when nature +has turned it up, and no longing for five feet ten will help one whom +nature has finished off at five feet two, though shops have been known +to succeed where nature and science have failed, and it is owing mainly +to them that this is the age of tall women. Why the men do not keep pace +is partly a physiological riddle and partly because the shops are not +interested in mere men. But it is a common sight these days to see a +great blonde goddess with gigantic feet and hands, which she takes no +trouble to conceal, having in tow a little man just tall enough to +tickle her shoulder with his moustache. It is perhaps a merciful +dispensation of Divine Providence that extremes not only meet, but +evidently like to meet. + +Yes, one's ideals in the process of living change. However, one feels +convinced that the feminine ideal is always connected with clothes, and +whatever the Venus of Milo may be to men I am quite sure that with her +generous waist and rudimentary costume she has never been the ideal of a +feminine dreamer. It is not so much the impropriety of having on few +clothes that disturbs the female mind as it is the having on no real +nice clothes. The old ideals are getting so dreadfully old-fashioned! A +Greek goddess at an afternoon tea would have nothing in common with the +new ideal but her height; her ample waist and her heroic simplicity +would be out of it in an age which is trying to live up to the new +standard of beauty as set by those infallible connoisseurs--the +dry-goods stores. The enchanting books which these send out at the +beginning of each season represent as nothing else the world's ideal of +perfect feminine beauty. I will not discuss men's beauty, because a more +gifted pen than mine has been at quite unnecessary pains to increase +their already alarming vanity. But I must confess that now my own +standard of womanly loveliness veers like a weather-cock to the wind, as +I study the pictorial production commercial generosity stuffs into my +letter-box. Once I wanted to be a queen with a real crown, now I want to +be just like the beauteous creature on that paper cover. + +Once I thought to be perfectly beautiful was to be broad at the +shoulders and pinched at the knees; then it was the other way about. +Finally I was educated--literature helped the delusion--to think that to +be acceptable one had to be a tiny thing stopping just where "his" manly +heart throbbed. I have seen shopworn feminine articles left over from +that bygone season, and how ridiculous they do look! + +I am sorry these days for a short girl, for the man with the throbbing +heart is always on the look-out for a young giantess, into whose lovely +eyes he can only gaze by standing on a step-ladder. + +Yes, I really want to look just like that enchanting creature who gazes +at me from the book Mr. Whiteley, in his subtle study of my weak mind, +sent me yesterday. Who is the divine original? Apart from wearing such +beautiful clothes, what has she done to be so perfectly lovely? She +cannot be less than seven feet tall, and crowned by a dream of a hat. +Her eyes are so big and brown and trustful, and her mouth is the +traditional rosebud, while her nose--a feature to which in real life +nature is usually most unkind--is so small that fashions for +pocket-handkerchiefs must soon go out. Her shoulders are so broad, and +yet her waist is so attenuated, that I wonder if--well--if she has any +organs, or does she rise superior to organs? I ask in the spirit of +serious inquiry, for I should not like to be misunderstood. And then +when it comes to that which society, in its exquisite propriety, blushes +to mention, I do believe that under those frilly petticoats, Nature, +ever considerate and bountiful to her, has provided her with telescopic +stilts, and not the other thing. At least that is the only explanation I +have ever found for her divine length! So what wonder if one sits at +one's dressmaker's day in and day out, while that patient woman produces +volume after volume representing perfect beauty combined with perfect +taste, that the average woman is crushed at the impossibility of +reaching such a standard of perfection? + +If I were a man, my only aim in life would be to find the original of +that superb creature, and lay at her feet my heart, my life and my +purse. The last is very necessary, for she needs all those innumerable +and fascinating things with which Mr. Whiteley, Mr. Harrod, Mr. Barker, +and all the rest of those well-meaning but cruel tempters fill up the +pages of their catalogues. These catalogues are really a biography in +pictures, in which the beautiful She is shown to the world from the most +intimate undress up, and in every phase she is lovely and dignified. Her +perfect propriety in "combinations"--for which occasion she evidently +discards stilts!--her _svelte_ and sinuous grace in corsets, while in +petticoats one hardly knows which to admire most, her frills or her +bland unconsciousness, and as for her dresses, from the one in which she +is thrillingly pictured as pouring out a slow cup of coffee, she cannot +fail to arouse in each the jealousy of the most generous of her sex. + +Her characteristics are always dignity, vacancy, and a smile not always +appropriate to the occasion, I am free to confess, for I have seen her +smile, by mistake of course, in the heaviest of widow's weeds. But +perhaps that was because her head is always supremely unconscious of +what the rest of her is doing. It is the unconsciousness of a great +artist who is attending strictly to business; for she has not even a +touch of vulgar feminine coquetry. + +If she fascinates the weak-minded man who idly turns the leaves of the +fashion-book, it is in spite of herself. When she stands confessed in, +say, corsets--an attitude which must be trying in the cold eye of the +public--she does not look embarrassed, she only looks dignified. She is, +in fact, the direct modern descendant of the Vestal Virgins who +sacrificed their beauty to religion, only she sacrifices her beauty to +business. The comfort for a tired man to come home to her placid, +well-dressed society! That she never loses her temper her exquisitely +dressed head amply proves, for you can't lose your temper and preserve +the serenity of your back hair! The rapture of a man and a father to +come home to his perfectly dressed, silent infant which smiles sweetly +from the latest thing in lace cribs, while She bends over him in a +toilette which expresses as nothing else can maternal solicitude +combined with perfect taste. + +Then to see her play tennis, unflushed, unruffled, with her adorable +hair still intact; skipping with such ladylike activity, and always +smiling. What rapture for a loving man! The delight of golfing with her +and her numerous sisters--such a family resemblance!--unexcited, +ladylike, the linen collar about her swan like throat never wilted, but +a monument to some celestial laundress, and delivering her strokes into +the landscape with that inconsequential feebleness which men love, say +what they will. + +Then, too, to see her listening, in full dress, to the touching strains +of the pianola, as performed by a soul-inspired being in the last thing +in party frocks and a flower-crowned _coiffure_, is a study of +controlled emotion. She _is_ moved, but too much emotion might ruffle +what the poetry of commerce has so sweetly named her "transformation." +So she controls her feelings, and looks with calm and thoughtful eyes at +the back of the "artiste's" marvellous toilette, and possibly wonders, +to the strains of the "Largo" of Händel, how she got into her +"creation." But that is a dead and awful secret only known to Mr. Harrod +or possibly to Messrs. Derry and Toms. + +How many a time have I watched her in a paper-garden-party mingling with +other lovely beings of her own sex, for her sense of propriety never +allows her to mingle with those gallant gentlemen in frock-coats and +evening dress we admire in the tailors' windows. The landscape is--if I +may say so--of a most ladylike nature. Mud is absent, for the fair +beings meander about in a landscape which nature has apparently cleaned +with a tooth-brush. I suppose their need for amusement is amply +satisfied with staring at their lovely sisters or offering them fans or +bouquets--for I have rarely seen them do anything else, though once the +artist who portrayed them became dramatic, and introduced two young +things of their kind playing at battledore and shuttlecock in the +background. + +The greatest innovation was when She was pictured as pouring tea in a +baronial hall. The exquisite grace with which she "poured" was a lesson, +though I had a terrible doubt as to whether there was anything in that +perfect teapot. She wore a tea-gown which was the last "cry" in +fluffiness, and the friends about her were gorgeous, in attitudes which +did more justice to their toilettes than their manners, for the way they +turned their flat backs on each other might, in other society, have +given offence. Another innovation in the picture was a perfect footman, +a perfect page-boy, and a perfect butler, a noble being like an +Archbishop, but much more serious. It was well that no other mere man +was present even on paper, for the combination of loveliness was +overpowering. + +Ah, yes, indeed, if the usual run of mothers and wives were like these, +then would there need to be no outcry against the selfish bachelor who +refuses to marry. Instead, the bachelor in his five hundred horse-power +motor, defying speed limit, palpitating with eagerness, would fly to lay +himself at her exquisitely shod feet. For what does man care for beauty +unadorned! As for intellect, well, intellect has never been in it! + +I am quite sure that neither Mr. Whiteley, nor Mr. Harrod, nor the rest +of the public-spirited gentlemen, whose only object in life is to make +us beautiful, know what harm they are doing; or why do they portray a +race of women to whose perfections mortal women must ever vainly aspire. + +Your lovely syrens with their divine legs--there, the awful word is +out!--never go shopping through the mud in the early morning! When they +wear a dress it is called a "creation," and it is certainly not the year +before last's best in reduced circumstances. When they lift their +elegant robes, and show their sumptuous frills, it proves that they know +nothing of the depravity of "model" laundries. Nor do I for a moment +believe that their smiling babies--the smile inherited from their +mother, sweet, but slightly vacant--know the agonies of teeth, +nettle-rash or colic. + +In fact, I refuse to believe that such perfect loveliness can exist. It +is a poet's dream, evolved by those worthy gentlemen who only make life +a greater trial for us by sending us quarterly reminders of what we +ought to be, but what most of us are not. It is a crime to introduce +into the bosom of contented families such presentments of too lovely +women. Man _is_ weak, and when the wife of his heart comes home from +shopping with her hat on one side, by accident, not coquetry, her +ostrich plume limp and lank from a battle with the rain, a rent for the +convenience of her nose, her _chaussures_ caked with mud to match her +petticoats, and on her face an expression which is not bland as she +hears shrieks proclaiming colic, how can he help but make sorrowful +comparisons with a vision in his mind of a silent infant in a +lace-smothered crib that smiles at him from Messrs. Dickins and Jones's +alluring book? + +Then is the harm done; the weak father falls a victim to his ideal, and +his heart turns from his distracted, bedraggled wife to that lovely +vision who entered a happy home through the innocent letter-box to the +eternal destruction of its domestic peace. Thus "home," once the bulwark +of the British nation, is rapidly becoming a mere mockery. + +I ask, in the interest of society, why cannot the lovely beings in the +fashion-papers and fashion-books be made less lovely? Whatever you are, +and I commend this sentiment to all, as well as to distinguished +haberdashers, be truthful. Be truthful! Chop off at least one foot and +eight inches from those lovely ones who imperil our peace. Be realists +at least occasionally; portray them with a rip, or a skirt which is +short where it should be long; let their hair be out of curl, and +buttons off their boots--anything, only to prove that they also are +human. + +The postman has just brought another big, square, flat familiar parcel. +I shall destroy it; it is too entrancing. It portrays Her in a golden +_coiffure_ crowned by a hat that breathes of spring. Clad in a perfect +and appropriate "creation" she has climbed into an apple-tree, to which +she clings with white gloved hands. Playfully and yet with perfect +propriety she peeps through the clustering pink blossoms. It is the same +smile, the same irreproachable nose, the same wave to her golden hair, +the same great eyes. Now to put this vision of beauty and grace high up +in a tree unflushed, unscratched, unruffled, untorn, is really too much +to bear--besides, it is false to nature! The head of the house shall not +look at her and make cruel comparisons, and decide in his ignorant +masculine mind that all women can look so after they have climbed a +tree. Then grow discontented when one tries to explain to him that they +cannot. So then, before it is too late, here goes--into the fire! One +domestic peace at least is saved. + +Now I ask Mr. Whiteley, Mr. Harrod, Mr. Robinson, and all the rest of +the gentlemen who stand for all that is best in the way of hats and +clothes and things, and to whose benevolent guidance we women trust +ourselves, be merciful as well as truthful, we beg, and do not make +those beautiful creatures quite so beautiful! + +It is the new invasion, compared to which the possible arrival of hordes +of worthy yellow men is as nothing. The invasion, think, of too +beautiful ideals into hitherto contented homes! Mr. Whiteley, you who +have always provided everything, start a new branch,--give us peace! +Head a great movement which shall have as object to portray the fashions +by less bewildering beauty. Earn what has probably no commercial value, +and that is our gratitude! Remember that we are not only women but +customers. + +Now supposing all your customers should revolt? What then? + + + + +_A Study of Frivolity_ + + +After studying the veracious and thrilling works of our modern +dramatists, one comes to the conclusion that the lady with a past, +though she may suffer from nothing else, does suffer tortures from tight +boots. Whatever situation they put her in, however harrowing, pathetic +or revolting, when boots would seem to be the last consideration of a +tortured conscience, yet hers have that exquisite, brand-new perfection +which proves that, when she is not planning wickedness nor torn by +remorse, she spends the rest of her time buying boots, and we all know +that new boots hurt rather more than a bad conscience. + +It is also the happy destiny of this lady to wear the most superlatively +beautiful clothes, and when, in moments of guilty emotion, she swishes +her train about, we have a vision of petticoats which only she, +indifferent to the voice of conscience and laundry charges, dares to +wear; and still more damning witness than her petticoats to her evil +conscience is the elegance of her feet. Your real hardened adventuress +on the stage always wears the most delicious slippers, no matter how +inappropriate to the occasion, but she wears them prophetically as it +were, for she alone knows that she is destined to die in the fifth act, +with her feet to the footlights. + +To the social philosopher there is no more interesting sight than the +window of a fashionable shoemaker's, there to make mental notes of the +destiny of all those charming little shoes and slippers that confront +one in all the coquetry of commerce. The only thing needed is a band to +make them frisk about in all their gold, white, scarlet and bronze +frivolity. The sophisticated curve of the satin heel and the tiny +pointed satin toe are still innocent of worldly knowledge. Care, even in +the shape of the daintiest foot, has not touched them yet, they have not +been danced in, nor kicked off, nor made love to; in fact, they have not +been born. + +There is, however, a destiny for slippers as well as other things, and +there is a certain slipper, long and slender, with arched instep and +Louis XV heel which, so instinct tells us, is inevitably destined to +belong to a lady with a past. Virtue never wears anything so subtle nor +so pretty, for, indeed, it is only conscious rectitude that dares to +dispense with coquetry, and wears her boots boldly down at the heel. + +Given a woman's shoe, and one can easily evolve out of it her entire +emotional history, just as a naturalist reconstructs from a bone the +entire animal to which it once belonged. Not long ago I saw a famous +German actress as Beata in Sudermann's play "The Joy of Living." It is a +fine melodramatic part. She has a lover and a husband--familiar +combination--but the sin is in the past, and they have all three reached +that comfortable middle age when people are supposed to know better. + +Unfortunately at the eleventh hour the husband discovers the secret of +his wife's old faithlessness and his best friend's treachery. At a +dinner in the last act Beata drinks a toast to "The Joy of Living," and +promptly solves the riddle of existence by staggering into the next room +and poisoning herself. It was as she staggered away that the German +actress deprived me of all my illusions for, as she lifted her dress +rather high in her anguish, she exhibited a pair of broad, flat boots, +with patent leather tips, and the kind of heels only virtue wears, broad +and flat and low. I thought I saw side elastics, but that may have been +the effect of a perturbed vision. + +However, from that moment I lost all belief in Beata's trials. A woman +with such boots never takes her own life, never has a lover, never has a +past, but she has a good sensible husband who falls asleep after dinner, +and while he snores she knits him golf stockings. The audience was under +the impression that Beata had killed herself in the next room, but I +knew better. No, those feet were not made for tragedy, even Sudermann's +art could not convince me, and so a pair of German boots spoiled my +illusions. + +It is not often that we poor philistines have the privilege of studying +at close range the lady who may be truly described as the pet of the +stage, and when we do so we owe it entirely to our kind dramatists; and +find however much she and her sisters may differ in the details of their +interesting careers, they have in common the transcendent charms of +their toilettes and the fascination of their slippers. + +When one sees how uninteresting the play would be without her, how often +virtue is rather fatiguing and not nearly so well dressed, and how the +dramatist gives his favourite the most interesting talk and the most +dramatic situations, one realises her importance, and that she is quite +indispensable to the stage, whatever she is in real life. One only +regrets, when society is a little fatiguing, that she is not +occasionally permitted to pass through in her gorgeous toilette and her +immoral slippers, and that bewitching side glance which one only sees on +the stage, just to make society, like the stage, a little more +thrilling. + +Now in the days of the older dramatists when much was left to what in +this material age is fast dying out, that is the imagination, if the +dungeon of Lord de Smyth was wanted, the scene-painter nailed up a +sign-post with the simple notice, "This is the Dungeon of Lord de +Smyth," and the audience were as much thrilled as if they could hear +the clanking of the fetters. + +In these days we refuse to take our dungeons so absolutely on faith, +and, still, if we see a too beautiful creature in red hair (fascinating +crime always has red hair), gorgeous clothes, and slippers with Louis XV +heels--that estimable monarch was responsible for so much sinfulness +combined with singular good taste--and an opera cloak all lace and +allurement, the kind for which virtue has neither the money nor the +taste, then we can settle down to a good three hours' thrill, for those +perfect garments are as much an indication of the dramatist's intentions +as in less sophisticated days the sign-post which announced the dungeon +of the de Smyths. + +We have learnt by experience that certain kinds of clothes always come +to a bad end, though never until the fifth act; while virtue, without +any nice clothes to comfort her, has a very bad time for at least four +acts and a half. One could wish the dramatists would give virtue a +better chance! + +A very charming woman regretfully confessed to me that the old proverb, +that virtue is its own reward, is distinctly discouraging. She felt, +with a perfectly blameless existence behind her, that she had a right to +demand of fate jewels more precious than imitation pearls, and a mode of +transit more patrician than a 'bus or the "tube," or a four-wheeler on +state occasions. Her bitterness was enhanced by a picture in the +"tube-lift" of a lovely creature ablaze with diamonds, who advertises a +firm of philanthropists from whom one can get one's Koh-i-noors on the +instalment plan. + +If ever a young person looks as if she had had a chequered past, it is +this young person, so radiant, so self-satisfied, and so prosperous. She +is a painful satire on virtue in a mackintosh with a dripping umbrella, +who has no earthly hope of diamonds, no matter how she may long for +them, and who stares drearily at the lovely being until she is bounced +out upon terra firma, and then pushed into the rain by other virtues +with umbrellas and very sharp elbows. The charming woman further +declared that virtue should be offered a more substantial reward than +imitation pearls these days when the shoemakers, dressmakers and +dramatists form a "combine" for the exclusive glorification of the lady +in question. + +But it is not only the eloquence of slippers, but the eloquence of +petticoats! Are not our shop windows the Frenchiest of French novels, +divided not into chapters, but into petticoats? Do they not form +flamboyant rainbows behind those glittering plate-glass fronts? That +there is no one inside of them takes nothing away from their charm. To +see them out-spread against a window--a bewildering chaos of colours, +frilly, fluffy and fantastic, is the outward and visible sign of an +inarticulate poet who lives sonnets in silk without putting them on +paper. How much more satisfactory to live poems than merely to write +them! + +So every shop window proclaims that this is the age of petticoats. Who +buys them, who wears them? Why are they never seen again? Yet well may +we ask what sylph can worthily wear those coquettish fantasies? It must +be conceded, though it will hurt out national pride, that only the women +of one nation have that sovereign right. + +It is the Frenchwoman alone who can lift her skirts with that supreme +elegance which turns even the worst mud puddle into an instrument for +the display of her exquisite grace. She is the artist of the +petticoat--and if she lifts her skirts rather high, it is because she +does not feel it her duty to help the County Council to sweep the +streets with the tail of a draggled gown. + +Now when an English woman lifts her skirt, she does it as one on +business bent; coquetry is not in it. She makes a frantic clutch at the +back of her skirt, grabs a solid handful, and drags it uncompromisingly +forward until she outlines herself with simple, cruel distinctness. Her +silhouette is a curious study in angles. + +Though she has no coquetry about her feet or her petticoats, the +fatality of fate ordains that she should always wear high-heeled +slippers and cobweb stockings in that downpour which Divine Providence +reserves exclusively for the English nation. This opportunity she also +takes to wear those lace petticoats which, having survived the terrors +of the British laundry, succumb to British mud. Heaven, in its +inscrutable wisdom, has denied to the Anglo-Saxons and Teutons that +subtle turn of the wrist which makes the lifting of a skirt a fine art. +Even the American woman, conqueror though she be of dukes and lesser +things, has never yet conquered that Latin grace. + +Now who buys those silken rainbows in the shops? Get the sphinx to +answer that riddle if you can. Do they vanish into space, or are they +bought by those radiant beings who flit about in electric landaulettes, +and whom we never meet, because we flit about in 'buses? + +If the rainbow ever touches earth it is on exceptional occasions which +only prove the rule. And it is always when virtue, always elderly and +stout, with big, flat feet in cloth boots, lifts her skirt and exhibits +to the eye of the public a yellow or scarlet silk confection which hangs +limp and dejected. Its melancholy flop and want of rustle plainly show +its consciousness of being misunderstood and in a false position. The +irreproachable petticoat, sacred to the eminently respectable, is +usually black and of a material of the nature of horsehair. No shop +boasts of it, and it is always pulled out of an ignoble pile when +required, and is quite Spartan in its unadorned simplicity. + +That virtue is best adorned by itself we concede; still virtue is a +little handicapped. I put it to the dramatists: Why not give her better +clothes and let her for once triumph in the second act? The dramatists, +inspired photographers of manners though they are, have a great deal to +answer for! At best they give her a white dress, a blue sash, ankle-ties +and no conversation. One asks how is she to compete with a stately +creature with dramatic red hair and that sinuous and glittering costume +fraught with tragic situations? What a fatal contrast when studied by +the youth of our land who have been taught to regard the stage as an +educator! + +The stage is conceded to be a great educational and moral force, and yet +I beg of those excellent gentlemen who provide the lessons that the +stage so eloquently recites not to lavish on the lady in question that +bewildering wardrobe which must give her a sense of peace and calm +security that even a good conscience cannot bestow. For once put her +into a bargain coat and skirt left over from a sale at Tooting, adorn +her with a tam o'shanter, the kind with a quill that sticks out in +front, and put on her feet the boots of a perfect propriety, always +short and broad, then see if the pit will adore her! + +No, the pit will not adore her at all, for say what you will, it is the +clothes that sway the earnest and indiscriminating lover of the drama. +For once put virtue in a gossamer _peignoir_, the clinging, fascinating +kind, and slip her number six feet into a number three satin slipper, +and how the pit will rise at her as one man, as they have never done +before, and take her to their hearts, for human nature is as yielding as +putty to grief that wears nice clothes and is well scrubbed. +Unfortunately the world is full of undramatic tragedies that are all the +more tragic because of a dire need of soap and water. + +As the educator of a public swayed by the eloquence of a slipper and +moved to tears by the pathos of a petticoat, one can but beg and implore +our dramatists, even at the risk of making their dramas less thrilling, +to give virtue a tiny bit of a chance--for a change. + + + + +_On Taking Oneself Seriously_ + + +Never has mediocrity been so triumphantly successful as now, and that is +the reason we take ourselves so seriously. Never before has it attained +such a high level of excellence, and if, for that reason, we miss those +grand and lonely peaks that represent the supreme glory of the past, we +can at least cheer ourselves by the comfortable reflection that we are +each a glorious little peak. That being conceded it goes without saying +that, occupied as we are with ourselves, we really have too much to do +to bother about the greatness of our friends. + +In the past the great man was surrounded by a band of ardent worshippers +who circled about him and trumpeted forth his praise. In these +degenerate days if there is a great man, he is not surrounded by +satellites, for the satellites are practically employed circling about +themselves. So the great man girds up his loins and wisely proclaims his +own greatness. + +Then, too, it is a bother to chant another man's praises if you are +quite convinced, and you are probably right, that he is no greater than +you are, so you abstain from the folly of it and devote all your +energies to blowing your own little trumpet with seraphic vigour. In the +past the little bands of ardent worshippers were quite disinterested, a +merit to which the occasional ardent worshipper of the present cannot +always lay claim. Our modern attitude is one of doubt, and so when we +hear a pæan of praise we close one eye and ask "Why?" The fact is we +decline to take anyone else seriously, but we make up for that by taking +ourselves with redoubled seriousness. In previous ages there were no +newspapers who took upon themselves the role of Fame, poising aloft a +laurel wreath ready to drop it on the head of the best-advertised +genius. In those blissful days, so little appreciated now, when the +world could neither read nor write, hero worship was so popular that the +lauded one found it unnecessary to take himself too seriously, for +others kindly did it for him. + +This is undoubtedly an age of emphasis and capitals. If you don't see +the capitals in print you are sure to see them in the attitude. Woman, +Millionaire, Poet, Statesman, Composer, Dramatist, Novelist, Artist--to +mention only a few--may not be spelled with a capital, but one never has +the honour of meeting any of these worthy people without recognising the +capital in their haughty intercourse with their fellow men. + +Possibly it even permeates the lower strata of society, but one can only +judge by the experience that comes in one's modest way. The gentlemen, +who are at this moment shovelling in our winter coal, may take +themselves seriously. Possibly the one with the coal-sack lightly twined +across his shoulders has his own opinion as to the superior way in which +he shovels the coal down the hole. It is more than probable that the +plumber who came this morning to screw up a leaking tap takes himself +seriously. I think he does for he left a small boy and his tools to +remind me of him, and he has proudly retired from the scene. Still I +really think that the disorder generally attacks those who work with +what "the reverend gentleman is pleased to call his mind," and it is +most fatal where, besides dollars and cents, the sufferer demands the +tribute of instant applause. + +Supposing the greatest singer in the world were to sing to stolid faces +and dead silence and were to receive no applause for two or three years; +her attitude towards the public would become one of praiseworthy +modesty. It is this frantic, ill-considered admiration which gives the +good lady such a mistaken sense of her own importance. + +If the last work of the last great mediocrity in the way of novelists +were to be ignored, and only reviewed a couple of years after its +publication, many an estimable gentleman and lady would step down from +their pedestal and walk quite modestly on a level with their fellow +beings. + +If the poets received their meed of praise long after they were nicely +buried instead of at afternoon teas, they would write better, indeed +they would. Weak tea praise has never been good for the mental stamina, +and it is awfully misleading. Because a gushing thing with an ardent eye +protests over a tea-cup that your poems are the most beautiful poems +she has ever read, it is not necessary to believe her. Do not on the +strength of that go home and snub your old mother who, to her sorrow, +has been educated to believe that among her goslings she has hatched a +swan. Gosling or swan in these days at best you can reach no higher +altitude than to be called a minor poet. + +One wonders who was the first reviewing misanthrope who called the +modern singers "minor poets"? Why should that branch of the writing Art +have evoked his particular animosity? Do we say minor historian, minor +novelist, minor painter, minor composer? Why should we belittle an +artist who may be infinitely greater than all these, and damn his art +with an adjective? It is not for us to judge if a poet be minor or +major. That is usually the business of the future, and there is no +prophet among us able to prophesy which of our poets will join the +immortals. Thank Heaven, advertising is only a temporary product, and +has no influence on immortality. + +The misfortune of our age is that the tools for the divine arts have +became so cheap and handy. Literature, especially, is at the mercy of +every irresponsible infant with ambition and a penny to spare. Why, the +snub-nosed board-school youngster down there skipping joyfully along the +gutter has a sheet of paper and a lead-pencil, the excellence of which +were beyond the imagination of Shakespeare. It is this cheap and fatal +luxury which makes such triumphant mediocrity and so little greatness, +and it is the fault of the newspapers, the publishers, too much +education, and afternoon teas. May they all be forgiven! + +The truth is the poets should not be published, nor should the +newspapers be permitted to crown the singer with a laurel-wreath still +dripping with printers' ink. The poet should be handed down as was old +Homer and sung in the market place; if then in the future there is +enough of him left to be considered at all, let him then be considered +seriously, but let him not, O let him not, do it for himself +prematurely, for fear. Remember the famous and classic tragedy of Humpty +Dumpty who sat on a wall. + +Once I came upon an editor--a great editor!--who in a moment of frenzy +was sincere. I was looking respectfully at that tomb of fame, his +wastepaper basket. + +"Did you pass a fellow going down?" and he threw a scowl after the +departed one. "That is Jones." He really didn't say Jones, but he +mentioned a name so famous in literature that the tramcars proclaim it +along with the best brands of whiskies, soap, corsets, and sapolio, and +it adorns sandwich men in the gutter by the dozens; hoardings bellow it +forth silently, and the newspapers devote pages to it as if it were the +greatest thing in patent medicine. + +"I made him," and the editor thumped his sacred desk. "I boomed him and +I printed his first confounded rot," and he strode up and down the room +with a full head of steam on. + +"I've always said it is the advertising that does it, not the stuff one +advertises. Proved it, too, and then sat back and watched their heads +swell. He is the last. A year ago he sat in that very chair and gurgled +obsequious thanks. Last week we invited him to dinner and he forgot to +come. To-day he came in just to say if I don't pay him just double the +rate I've been giving him he'll take his stuff to the "Rocket," for the +"Rocket" editor has made him an offer. And this to me who boomed him and +made him out of nothing. O, by Jove!" + +"That is only the artistic temperament," I said soothingly. + +"Artistic temperament! There is no such thing. It's only another name +for d----d bad manners and a swelled head." + +I was greatly interested in this artless definition of the artistic +temperament, and I went off deeply pondering as to what constitutes a +swelled head. + +Now swelled head and taking yourself seriously are much the same, only +that swelled heads are common in all grades of society. I once had a +butcher who had it, being convinced that he was most beautiful to look +upon. He used to put a great deal of his stock-in-trade on his curling +brown locks. He was not a bit proud of the inside of his head, to do him +justice, but he was so absolutely sure of the effect of his shiny hair, +his big black moustache, his red cheeks and his round brown eyes. + +He was a very happy man. Now you may take yourself seriously, but in a +crevice of your mind you can still have the ghost of a doubt. But a +swelled head never has a doubt. I have been told by those who have had +an opportunity of studying, that swelled heads are not uncommon among +shop-walkers, literary people, butlers and members of Parliament, and +that musicians even are not all as great as they think they are. The +last fiddler I had the joy of hearing scratched with so much temperament +and so out of tune! What a mercy it is that so many people do not know a +false note when they hear it! + +It has even been whispered that some painters who paint very great +pictures (in size) are really not so wonderful as they think they are. +But if anyone is excusable for a too benevolent opinion of himself it is +surely a painter who stands before an acre of canvas, and squeezes a +thousand dear little tubes, and daubs away and has the result hung on +the line. Then we go to the private view, turn our backs on it and say, +"Isn't it sublime--did you ever!" Ah, me, it is no use being modest in +this world! + +Take yourself seriously, and clap on a swelled head and you will impress +all such as have time to attend to you. Have we not come across the +pretty third-rate actress who puts on the airs of the great, and refers +to her wooden impersonations as "Art"? O art, art, what sins have been +committed in thy name! Have we not met the pet of the papers, the +celebrated lady novelist? How did she get her exalted position? Goodness +knows! She sweeps through society with superb assurance, and she is +really so rude at afternoon teas that that alone proves how great she +is; she only relents when she meets editors and reviewers. She coos at +them, and well she may for she is crowned with the laurel-wreath of the +best up-to-date advertising. + +Once I met a little politician who thought he was a statesman. A rare +instance of course. Circumstances made me helpless, so to speak, and so +he inflicted on me all the speeches he did not make in the "House." He +gave me to understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer consulted him +on all intricate matters of finance; that he was in fact the power +behind the throne. Now the truth was, and he knew it, and I knew it, +that his serious work consisted in paying those little tributes his +constituency demanded, to subscribe bravely to drinking fountains, +almshouses, and fairs--the kind with the merry-go-rounds--and, in his +enlightened patriotism, to open bazaars, and also to dance for the good +of his party. His supreme glory was to write M.P. after his name, which +made him much sought after at innocent dinner-parties that aspired to +shine with reflected glory. On such occasions he was often in great form +and delivered extracts from those tremendous speeches he never made. But +everybody was deeply impressed and it was rumoured in the suburbs that +he would certainly be in the next Cabinet. + +If you have a grain of humour you can't take yourself too seriously, for +then you do realise how desperately unimportant you are. The very +greatest are unimportant; what then about the little bits of ones who +constitute the huge majority? Was there ever anyone in the world who was +ever missed except by one or two, and that not because he was great or +even necessary, but only because he was beloved by some longing, aching +heart? The waters of oblivion settle over a memory as quickly as over a +puddle which is disturbed by a pebble thrown by a careless hand. Alas! + +Perhaps the most tremendous instance of the unimportance of the greatest +was Bismarck's discharge by his Emperor, with no more ceremony, indeed +less, than a housewife employs to discharge her cook. The greatest man +of his time, the creator of an empire, the inspirer of a nation! To whom +in his very lifetime statues were erected, north, south, east and west. +To whom the ardent hearts of the young went forth in adoration; whose +possible death could only be reckoned on as a misfortune that would +leave the country in chaos, when that iron hand should drop the reins. +Then one memorable day he dropped the reins, not because death was +greater than he, but simply because a young, untried man wished to do +the driving himself. So he was discharged. What happened? Nothing. Since +then who can believe in the importance of anyone? If the world can do +perfectly well without such a giant, why take yourselves so seriously, +you little second-rate people who have written a little book that is +dead as a door nail in three months, you little second-rate spouters of +talk on the stage, forgotten as soon as the light is turned out, you +little second-rate musicians with your long hair, your bad nerves and +your greed for adulation! Why, there have been greater folks than all of +you put together, and they have been forgotten as a summer breeze is +forgotten. Then what about you? Why even shop-walkers, and butlers and +parlour maids, though undoubtedly very important, should think of +Bismarck and not be so dreadfully haughty! + +Then, too, how many people think themselves great who are only lucky, +vulgarly lucky. There is that solemn puffed-up one! Would he be so +important if he had not married a rich wife who can pay the bills? And +there is that other dull piece of prosperity who owes all his success to +his pretty and clever wife who knows just how to wheedle good things out +of the really great. And yet how seriously he takes himself! There is +the lucky parson who thinks he attracts such shoals of worshippers to +God's house. Why it is not he at all, but a royal princess who has +strayed in and whom the dear, unworldly sheep are following. Yet how +seriously he takes his reverend self! + +There is the great medical light, who, while curing an eminent personage +of nothing in particular, interspersed a few racy anecdotes that made +him roar. No wonder his waiting-room overflows, and that he is called in +consultation all over the land. He is bound to be knighted. Why? +Goodness knows. + +There is the popular M.P. "I am the great I am," he all but says as he +comes in. Once he was a modest man with modest friends, now he thinks he +is a great man, and he wisely turns his back on his modest friends +because he realises that he can serve his country best in the higher +social circles. The first time I ever saw a real live M.P. was in +America, and I held my breath I was so impressed. + +We were even stirred by an Englishman who came over and who only aspired +to be an M.P. He talked of nothing but himself and his political views, +and he used to point out the majesty of his own intellect. That was +possibly the result of the American atmosphere; it is rather given to +that! He is not yet an M.P., and over here he has lucid intervals of +modesty. In a fit of humility a real M.P. once confessed to me that it +would answer all practical purposes if he sent his footman to that +magnificent building on the Thames, where the English legislator covers +his gigantic intellect with that silk hat, which represents nothing if +not perfect propriety. + +One curious phase of taking ourselves so seriously is the enormous +increased importance of the Interesting. Society bristles with the +Interesting. Sometimes one wonders where the uninteresting go? Modern +society demands that you should be something or do something or say +something, or at least pretend to. You elbow your way through the other +struggling mediocrities, and behold you arrive and that proves that you +are interesting, whereupon you are invited to luncheon and dinner and +things to meet the other Interestings. Now I ask, as one perplexed, are +you ever invited to meet the thoroughly uninteresting? And yet don't +the uninteresting want to meet people and eat things? Of course they do, +but the world does not want them at any price! + +Is there, perhaps, a dreary corner of the earth where the uninteresting, +one is not invited to meet, come together, and from this modest refuge +wistfully watch the Interesting asked out to breakfast and other revels? +But, really, have we the courage these days to invite anybody without +asking an "interesting" person to meet them? Have we the moral courage +to invite anyone to meet only--oneself? Of course a stray uninteresting +may wander into the haunts of the other kind. One does sometimes meet a +human being at a terribly intellectual afternoon tea or at a serious +dinner party, whose conversation does not absolutely thrill one's +pulses. + +Fortunately the world's standard of what is interesting varies, or there +would be an appalling monotony in its circles, but it is understood that +you must be celebrated, or notorious, or well advertised or cheeky and +even dishonest, if it is on a magnificent scale. At any rate you must +take yourself seriously and get a swelled head. + +Each Interesting carries about with him his own barrel organ on which he +grinds out his little tune, not always so great a tune as he honestly +thinks, but still it is his very own. You may have all the virtues +enumerated in the dictionary, but if you have not done something, or +said something, or been something, and if you are only a well-meaning, +law-abiding citizen and regularly pay your bills, a humdrum virtue which +the hard-up Interesting occasionally ignores, then you had better give +up and retire to the dull society to which you belong. + +In studying the Interesting, one discovers that they do not always carry +their credentials on the outside. Sometimes, it is humiliating to +confess it, one nearly mistakes them for the other kind; still, it is +always an honour to sit on the outskirts of a Great Mind, and humbly +wonder in what forgotten corner genius has so triumphantly hidden +itself. However, an uninteresting celebrity is quite a different affair +from the uninteresting pure and simple, who are never asked to meet +anybody and certainly not to meals. + +There was once, so we were taught at school, an age of stone and an age +of iron. After much study I have decided that we have arrived at the age +of Lions. Not the four-legged, dangerous kind, but the two-legged ones +who drink tea and nibble biscuits. The analogy is even more solemnly +striking for they both have enormous heads. The lion is evolved from the +Interesting. First you have to be interesting, and then you must +practise roaring, modestly at first, but not too modestly; then louder +and louder until society simply can't ignore you, you make so much +noise, and so you become a lion, and in these days it must be a very +pleasant business to be a lion, the only drawback being that the supply +rather exceeds the demand. However, no matter how excellent a thing is, +there is sure to be some trifling drawback. + +Even when you take yourself seriously the effect you produce if not +irritating is often so delightfully funny! But one ought to be thankful +for that, for the world owes a debt of gratitude even to the +unconscious humourist. It is so much easier to make people cry than to +make them laugh! We are all little ready-made tragedians; do we not come +into the world with a cry? I feel convinced that it is easier to write a +great tragedy than a great comedy. Life's keynote is minor. We can turn +on tears at short notice, but humour is not every man's province. + +"Our customers," the courteous attendant of a circulating library said +to me recently, "don't like funny books and so we don't stock them." +Perhaps for this reason the discouraged humourist in search of +amusement, seizes rejoicing on those refreshing people who take +themselves seriously. It adds indeed the last epicurean touch to his +delight that they don't know how awfully funny they are. + + + + +"_Soft-Soap_" + + +It takes a great deal of heroism to tell an unpleasant truth, but it +takes a great deal more of heroism to hear it. The privilege of telling +an unpleasant truth is strictly confined to one's familiar friends, +one's family, or one's enemies, which is probably the reason that no one +is a hero to any of these, and that he sometimes likes his familiar +friends and his family quite as much as he does his enemies. It is, +after all, an exceptional person who has a great opinion of himself; +even the most conceited has, I feel sure, his quarter hours when he sits +in sackcloth and ashes and contemplates his failures. No one rises +superior to a compliment, and without such and other little amenities of +life how the world's machinery would creak! I admire all those Spartan +souls who declare that they love the truth, and it is humiliating to +confess that I don't love the truth unless it is a pleasant one. + +Everybody is, I do believe, his own best critic, and there is hardly +any thing unpleasant your family can tell you about yourself that you +have not known long before; but it is an added humiliation to see +yourself betrayed to the world. For example, it is the exception for the +creator of any work which is in reality poor, but which the voice of the +people acclaims (and the people are about the poorest critics going), if +he does not realise down in his doubting heart, that his stuff is poor +stuff. It is that which keeps the human balance, or some of our greatest +ones, or rather our noisiest ones, would be inflated to the +danger-point. There is a right standard in every heart, even if warped +by circumstances, and the excuse, "He knew no better," hardly holds good +out of a lunatic asylum. + +It is always our humourists who have tackled truth, and who have shown +with a laugh that touches perilously near a sob (a little way of +humourists!) that a standard of pure unvarnished truth has never been +popular in this erring world; at least not since some of out forefathers +scalped their brother forefathers, and the ladies and gentlemen who +dwelt in caves took their afternoon tea in the shape of a cosy nibble at +the bones of their foes. It is not the bones of our foes we nibble in +these enlightened days! + +It was an immortal humourist who, having discovered that truth is not +what we want,--unless like a pill in sugar,--provided the world with a +substitute--soft-soap. It is really soft-soap which makes social +intercourse so delightfully easy, and we therefore owe our humorous +benefactor a heavy debt of gratitude. + +Nothing is, however, perfect, and if this blessed discovery has one +little defect, it is that, like patent medicine, the more you swallow +the more you want; so it occasionally happens that the great ones of +this world have finally to have it administered in buckets where once +they were grateful for only a sip. + +The philosophic mind will discover that society can be quite simply +divided into two classes,--one soft-soaps and the other permits itself +to be soft-soaped. The humourist who invented the precious substitute +for truth hardly realised the value of what he did; for had he taken +out a patent he would have rivalled in wealth the great Rockefeller +himself, who has been so divinely blessed in that other oily +article--petroleum. + +When soft-soap was invented it was constructed out of the best materials +of insincerity, surface enthusiasm, a touch sometimes of covert satire +(or it would spoil), and just enough truth to mix the ingredients and +make them digest. This is administered in all grades of society with the +greatest success, and of it can be said, in the pathetic words of an +American advertisement of a preparation of medicine not usually popular +with childhood, castor-oil, "Even children cry for it." + +Of the two classes, those who administer and those who swallow this +pleasant mixture, it is needless to say that in the lower class are +those who administer soft-soap. If in course of time the soft-soaper +proves that he is possessed of transcendent abilities he graduates after +hard, hard struggles, resigns his bucket, and proceeds to enjoy the +superior privilege of being soft-soaped in turn; and the curious fact is +that, after having administered it so long, when he comes to taste it +himself he does not recognise the familiar article at all. Of course +there are some soft-soapers who never advance and never aspire. + +As one strolls observingly through society, one discovers it is some +people's mission in life to draw other people out. It is rare to find +two persons talking together who give and take with equal facility, who +contribute equally to the charm and brightness of the occasion. One of +the two is sure to lead the other into those conversational oases where +he loves to gambol--and very hard work it sometimes is! + +Alas! the pioneers who soft-soap are usually women. You dear and +uncomplaining sex, how hard you have to work to be called charming by +that other sex that so greedily laps up the invention of the great +humourist! From artisans of soft-soap you have indeed become artists. To +you we owe those delightful multitudes of spoilt men who sulk or sniff +or shoulder their pretentious way through society. Yes, your product! If +society consisted only of men it would be quite sincere, even if rather +brutal, and as for soft-soap, it wouldn't exist. It would be +interesting to know the sex of that historical serpent in the Garden of +Eden! + +A man, if he ever soft-soaps another man, does it for a definite object +and hardly realises his own insincerity, but a woman--well, it is a +woman's religion to make a man think her charming, and I am +afraid--desperately afraid--that she does this most successfully when +she makes him talk about himself. Women, poor things, are like the +heathen: first they create an idol, sometimes out of very common clay it +is to be feared, and then they proceed to worship it. + +How often does a man turn over in his mind what subject of conversation +the woman will talk about best with whom accident has thrown him, +especially if she be plain and shy? Now, what about women, on the other +hand? Why, a man must be a great idiot indeed if he does not find some +woman to coo little nothings at him; to lead him tenderly out of narrow, +monosyllabic paths into the glowing buttercup and dandelion fields of +conversation where he can gambol joyfully. "I came out strong, by +Jove!" he congratulates himself proudly as they separate, and the goose +never realises, as he supports himself against his usual wall and stares +vacantly at the crowd, that the beguiling young thing, who smiled up at +him like a rising sun, laboured with him with an energy which would have +appalled a coal-heaver. Now, would a man fatigue himself as much to +chatter with an empty-headed unattractive girl? Hand on heart, +gentlemen, confess! + +It was Thackeray who said that any woman not disfigured with a hump +might marry any man. It is presumption to contradict the immortal +master, but I don't believe it. Rather do I believe the words of wisdom +of our old family cook. She finished a dissertation on matrimony with +the following profound reflections:-- + +"Women ain't so particular as men. There ain't a man but'll find some +woman to have him! If every woman could get a man there wouldn't be so +many old maids. Down to our village there was a man who hadn't any arms +or legs, but goodness me! even he got a wife. She came to call with him +one day, and she'd fixed up a soap-box on wheels and was drawing him +along as comfy as you please, and she never made a cent out of him, for +he wa'ant a freak. Now I'd just like to see a man up and do that for a +woman, I guess! No, women ain't so particular." + +Surely it holds good in society. If we don't drag around a gentleman +without the usual complement of arms and legs, we more often than not +support a gentleman without brains or manners, and we make him more +insufferable than he naturally is by giving him a false valuation, in +which he proceeds at once to believe, because, if there is one thing the +stupidest man can do, it is, he can get conceited. Indeed the weaker sex +has much to answer for, for she has created the twentieth century man, +who would be a dear if only the women would leave him alone. + +However, it is not only men women soft-soap--they soft-soap each other +as well. The motives are twofold. Sometimes the wielder of the bucket +has an axe to grind, or she likes to be popular at a cheap price. She +always says something agreeable, and it is indeed a steel-clad heart +that can resist. How feel anything but friendly when a dear feminine +gusher declares that you have the loveliest clothes, the most wonderful +brains, the brightest eyes, the most agreeable husband, and the best +cook in the world! The chances are that you hated her as she swam up and +favoured your unyielding hand with cordial pumping; but she thought--no, +she didn't think, the process is automatic, she merely dropped a penny +in the slot of your evident antagonism on the chance of its possibly +resulting in a cool invitation to call, a crush tea or a lunch: nothing +is to be despised, for you never can tell! + +When a woman decides to say something real nice she stops at nothing. +She even sacrifices her nearest and dearest. + +"How is that handsome, brilliant boy of yours?" a devoted mother asked +me the other day. "How I wish my Jack were like him! But he's only just +a dear, good, ordinary boy who'll never set the Thames on fire; well, we +can't all be the mother of a genius!" Now, could one do anything else +than invite that truly discriminating woman to lunch? + +As I said before, it is some people's mission to draw others out. Some +take everything hard, among other things, society. They hate to be among +their kind, but they hate just as much the dignity of solitude; so they +compromise matters by going about as dull and dreary as graven images, +surrounded by a private atmosphere of frost. Then there are the +adaptable ones who talk and laugh, while down in their souls they are +bored to death. But never mind about being bored, the crime is to look +bored. Adaptability is distinctly not an English national trait, rather +is it American, the race made up of all races, and for this reason +American society is, even if only on the surface,--and who in society +ever gets below the surface?--more amusing than English society. + +Oh, the heavenly rest and comfort when you pause exhausted after having +pumped at a perfectly empty human being to find the process applied to +yourself, and after all you _do_ respond. + +I was struck by it the other day when, in a roomful of English people +who had been talked to and trotted out and made to show their best paces +each in his own little field, there came to the charming, but +exhausted, hostess a Frenchman who proceeded to draw her out. The sweet +restfulness of it! She had not to originate a single idea, and I am +perfectly sure that every other man in the room was holding forth on +some subject originated by the woman he was talking to; he was likely to +talk till he had run down, and then she would have to wind him up with a +new subject. If she didn't he would go away and leave her mortified and +alone, and a woman can stand being bored, but she cannot stand looking +deserted. A lovely woman told me all about it once. + +"The reason I am so popular," she said frankly, "is because I flatter +the men to the top of their bent. Vanity and love make the world go +round,--vanity first and love a long way after. Nothing else. + +"Tell a woman she is perfect and she doubts you--sometimes. But tell a +man that (one can in all sorts of ways), why, he only thinks it is his +due--possibly he will think you are clever. Most men are stupid--I don't +mean their working brains, their bread-and-butter brains, but their +society brains. They swallow anything you tell them. They originate +everything in this blessed world--but conversation. + +"If a man converses he discourses and he improves your mind. Now you +don't always want to have your mind improved! I don't say he doesn't +know how to make love; but that doesn't count, for after all, making +love is, often as not, silence _à deux_. So if he isn't improving your +mind or making love he is stranded, and that is where we women come in. + +"I don't want my mind improved at an afternoon tea, nor do I wish to be +made love to over an uninspiring biscuit, and I should feel eternally +disgraced if either of us looked bored; so I give him leading questions +like sugar-plums, and while he nibbles away at each in turn till he has +sucked it up, I have learnt to look at him with all my eyes--a kind of +subdued rapture which I adjust according to the man, and then I detach +my mind and consider what the clever stupid can talk about next. + +"It isn't necessary to do anything but to smile, especially if you have +nice teeth, as he does all the talking; but he'll think you are the +cleverest woman going. Possibly you are, only he doesn't really know +how clever you are! There are some women you have to treat in the same +way, and they are either very distinguished and spoilt or they are very +influential, or they have missions; but it's always a bore, and unless +you are 'on the make'--a very ill-bred expression, I think--it's +tiresome and doesn't pay. I don't mind being bored for the sake of a +man, but I really won't be bored for the sake of a woman. + +"But, my dear, it is very fatiguing at best, and no wonder the women +crowd into retreats and nervine asylums. It isn't the pace that kills, +but the unearthly dulness. After I have talked to half a dozen men for +whom I make conversation I go home to bed, and the vitality I have left +wouldn't be enough for an able-bodied worm. + +"Do I ever find a man who is interested in me if he is not in love with +me? Never! If he is in love with me; yes! That's another story. Then +everything about me interests him, but, perhaps, even then only because +I am his temporary ideal. I daresay it's only another form of +selfishness, bless him! The stupidity of men! That's the reason they +are so fatuous; they don't understand! + +"Find me the man who isn't under the impression that some woman is +hopelessly in love with him; and only because she has taken such pains +to smile and coo at him, which she generally does to keep her hand in; +any man is to her an instrument on which she, as an artist, finds it +serviceable to play a few scales. To call men the ruling sex,"--and my +friend laughed till I saw every one of her beautiful teeth,--"they are +the ruled sex, and they get married by the women who want them most." + +She evidently agreed with Thackeray. I don't, as I explained before. + +"My dear, how many an innocent young thing has said 'Yes' when 'he' has +had no earthly intention of asking for anything--certainly not for her +dear little hand. + +"'May I?' was possibly all he said, but he looked three thrilling +volumes. 'Yes,' she whispered innocently, 'but do first ask papa.' How +can he explain to her that the question trembling on his lips was +whether he should bring her a lemon-squash or a strawberry-ice. He asked +papa and they lived happily ever after, and it answered just as well. +Now what I wonder is," she concluded, "which is the stupider--he or +she?" + +One hasn't time to soft-soap one's relatives. For its successful use +there is required a certain exhilaration of spirits which familiarity +does not encourage. It is more easy to be charming to one's +acquaintances or intimate enemies than to the bosom of one's family. One +can be kinder to one's own, but more charming to the outside world, +alas! + +A woman doesn't go on for ever coquetting with her husband--it is a +pity, but it's true. Perhaps if it were less true there would be fewer +divorces. When, in the happy past, your husband was your lover and he +looked at you with adoring eyes, why, then you could be charming,--at +least for a few hours, because to be charming longer gets on one's +nerves. Later, when you are married and he won't get up in the morning, +and you say to him severely, "Samuel, are you never going to get up? +It's nine o'clock, and cook says she'll give notice, for she can't and +she won't live in such a late family," and your Samuel grunts, turns +over, and hurriedly takes forty more winks, how can you possibly be +charming just then? + +Nor can you murmur to your Samuel that he is the most interesting man +you ever met, and that his brain is superior to all other brains. He +doesn't care a rap what you think about his brains, and he'd much rather +you wouldn't bother him but go downstairs; and so you do go downstairs +in that very unbecoming frock of your pre-married days in which you +wouldn't have had him see you for worlds. But now it has come again to +the fore, ever since the time Samuel said pleasantly--he certainly has +no talent for soft-soap--that after people have been married a year +neither knows how the other looks. This from your Samuel, for whose sake +you ran up an awful dressmaker's bill in other days. So you unearth your +hideous frock with a desperate sigh. + +But you always know how your Samuel looks, and when he wears an +unbecoming necktie you grieve and nag and give him no peace. Perhaps it +were well, after all, if a bit of soft-soap could be bottled up during +courting-time and labelled "To be used after marriage." + +When men soft-soap men it is in devious ways. One of the most subtle, if +you are a little man and you wish to flatter a great man, is to disagree +with him. He is much impressed by your independence, and he is sorry for +you too, because you own up to your awful presumption, and by inference +you can soft-soap him up and down just as they whitewash a wooden fence. +And he says he likes your independence, and he shakes hands with you and +knows you the next time you meet, and calls you "My independent young +friend," and invites you to luncheon. Now, had you agreed with every +word he said you would have been only one of the usual job-lot of +admirers, and he wouldn't have remembered you from Adam. + +Of course you have to administer disagreement with great caution, +because when a man reaches the highest eminence there is nothing that +makes him so mad as contradiction. The first sign of real greatness +shows itself when you decline to be contradicted. If, as it is stated, +Lord Beaconsfield never contradicted his Queen, then did he well +deserve her most loyal friendship. The bliss of never being +contradicted! for that alone it is worth being a queen; but of course +that is essentially a royal prerogative. It is said that there are +people who by the exercise of this great negative gift have worked their +way up from being quite modest members of society until they are now +shining social lights. + +Tell a man how great he is and will he come to tea? for there are crowds +dying to meet him; why, of course he will come. Who has ever yet met a +really celebrated recluse. One has heaps of recluses who professed to +like solitude, but only in a crowd, but there was never one, however +famous, who chose to exile himself in a desert island without the +morning paper. + +It is said of a famous poet, whose footsteps were much dogged by the +enterprising tourist, that he complained bitterly and wrathfully of his +inability to have even his own privacy; but that his bitterness and +wrath were as nothing to what he felt when the blameless tripper was +discovered to be paying no attention to him whatever. One wonders if +this innocent form of soft-soap is out of fashion, or are the poets less +great? How many pious pilgrims wandered to the old Colonial house in +Cambridge, America, where Longfellow lived, and looked with awe at his +front windows. Did not pilgrims by the car-load go to Concord to catch a +glimpse of the great Emerson, while they leaned reverently across the +philosopher's white picket-fence? + +The poets of the past were accustomed to this innocent worship; what +about the poets of to-day? Do they also walk along the streets haughtily +(like the illustrious Mr. and Mrs. Crummles) whilst admiring passers-by +stop and say with bated breath, "This is the great Smith!" or is that +involuntary form of flattery out of fashion, or haven't the new poets +grown up yet? + +Perhaps an ardent admirer might suggest Miss Marie Corelli as one to +whom the twentieth century pilgrim makes pilgrimages; but that isn't +fair, for how can any one distinguish her pilgrims from Shakespeare's +pilgrims? Pilgrims are not labelled like trunks. One hardly ventures to +say so, but it seems to me that in this Miss Corelli has taken an +unfair advantage of Shakespeare and the other poets. + +There is nothing so democratic as true greatness, and this is a +democratic age, and everybody exhibits to the public. We are either a +great orator or we loop the loop, or we are a transcendent poet, or we +walk from Cheapside to the Marble Arch on a wager. But do we do all +these great things alone, unseen or unheard of by the world? No, we +don't! Not a bit of it! It is not praise we want--we want more. We +clamour for soft-soap; we demand it at the point of the bayonet. + +It is an age of coarse effects, an age of advertisement. A poet could +not conscientiously sing now about a rose left to bloom unseen, for +excursion trains would be sure to be arranged there at reduced rates. It +is a confidential age, and we demand a confidant as much as a matter of +course as the heroine of the old-fashioned Italian opera,--in fact we +demand the undivided attention of the whole world. + +We sing our songs and listen greedily for the applause of the gallery; +we meet with domestic misfortune, and we weep on the bosom of the +divorce court, and the daily papers weep with us. We do not do good by +stealth, but rather in such a way that we get a baronetcy or a +decoration; so when you see a man all tinkley with little stars and +things, you will know that he is always a very great and charitable man +indeed, and charity is not only alms bestowed on the poor. It is the +beauty of charity that it is not bigoted. + +We put our breaking hearts under a microscope and make "copy" out of +them and money and notoriety,--and notoriety in these days pays much +better than mere celebrity, and what therefore so fitting a tribute to +notoriety as soft-soap? Ah me! it is enough to make the cat laugh! I +really have never understood this curious fact in natural history, +though I know how hard it is to make a cat laugh; this whole morning I +spent trying to make Mr. Boxer laugh (Mr. Boxer being the purry +commander-in-chief of our mouse-holes), and did not succeed. + +Our modern world is a hippodrome, and we demand hippodrome effects and +thunders of applause, because ordinary applause cannot be heard. Watch +the next painted face you see, and observe how familiarity with the +process has coarsened it. Not that one has any objection to paint if it +is well done. It is a woman's duty to look her best; and if paint makes +her more beautiful, let her put it on--but, one does implore, not with +the trowel. + +The other night there was a great unbecoming function, but then all +great functions are unbecoming by reason of the presence of woman's +arch-enemy--electricity. It is quite certain that the first electrician +was not only deplorably ignorant of the social virtues of soft-soap, but +he was, besides, a jilted and misanthropic old bachelor who avenged his +wrongs by harnessing electricity to a lamp, and cynically rejoiced when, +for the first time, he turned its cruel light on the wrinkles, the +hair-dye, and the dull jaded eyes of Society, and changed the pink of +art into an unconvincing blue. + +It was on that same occasion that I became deeply impressed by the tiara +of Great Britain, which, it appears, is a National Institution, worn by +the Aged instead of caps, only caps are much more comfortable. I also +discovered that it need have nothing in common with the rest of the +toilet; at any rate one worthy lady so adorned had a little +breakfast-shawl about her shoulders. + +If it is true that the ladies of the United States have recently plucked +up enough courage to adopt the tiara of Great Britain, and should any +one perhaps insinuate that this is inconsistent with austere republican +principles, a sufficient and crushing reply is that in America every +woman is a "lady," and every "lady" is a queen. + +To return to her of the tiara and the breakfast-shawl. One did wonder +what illusion she laboured under when she fastened that diamond +structure to the thin bandeaux of her faded hair, where it swayed +insecurely. Did some one send the poor soul away from home and tell her +she looked lovely, and as she trundled off in her brougham did fifty +years slide temporarily from her old shoulders? After all, soft-soap has +its virtues; it is just the thing for the aged! + +What are illusions but soft-soap self-administered, and what would life +be without illusions? Show me the heroic soul who can look into a +mirror and who sees what she really sees! O self-administered soft-soap! +what does she really see? + +Upon my word, I have come to the conclusion that a certain measure of +soft-soap is not only a social necessity, it is more, it is a social +duty; only one would like to offer a plea, just a little plea, for a +fair division of labour! It is _so_ hard always to say delightful +things, especially if you don't mean them! It is being a thirsty +Ganymede at the feast of the gods. + +O, great humourist of soft-soap, you made two mistakes when you invented +your wonderful lubricator of social intercourse; not only, like patent +medicine, does the dose require to be constantly increased, but you +forgot to insist on what is most vital--a periodic change of parts. + +My plea is that the soft-soaped one should occasionally be obliged to +step down from his pedestal and turn his own insincere admiration, his +surface enthusiasm, and the countless and well-meant lies with which he +helps to make the existence of the soft-soaped so pleasant, upon that +unwearied and energetic prevaricator, whose mission it is to praise, no +matter how untruthfully. + +Yes, even "little tin gods on wheels" should be made to step down from +high Olympus and, in turn, serve their thirsting and patient Ganymede. + + * * * * * + +KITWYK + +BY MRS. JOHN LANE + +With numerous illustrations by Albert Sterner, Howard Pyle, and George +Wharton Edwards. + + +_SOME PRESS OPINIONS_ + +"Mrs. Lane has succeeded to admiration, and chiefly by reason of being +so much interested in her theme herself that she makes no conscious +effort to please. She just tells her tales with no more artifice than +one might use in narrative by word of mouth, and she keeps the reader's +interest as keenly alive as if he were really listening to an amusing +story of what had once actually happened. Every one who seeks to be +diverted will read 'Kitwyk' for its obvious qualities of +entertainment."--_Times._ + +"Dip where one will into her startling pages one is certain to find +entertainment, and the charm is much assisted by the delightful +illustrations."--_Daily Telegraph._ + +"'Kitwyk' is destined to be in fiction what an old Dutch master painter +is in painting--a work at once typical of kind, unique of entity. The +design of this charming book is original. All the people are alive in +the not wonderful but strangely engrossing story, which is so comical +and pathetic, so quaint and 'racy of the soil,' so wide in sympathy, so +narrow of stage. All the drawings are excellent."--_World._ + +"Very charming. Admirers will say, not without reason, that 'Kitwyk' +recalls 'Cranford.'"--_Standard._ + +"A charming book; resting to read. It has style, and is written with a +whimsical humour which gives it distinction."--_Westminster Gazette._ + +"There is delicious humor, not only of incident, but of phrase and +expression. We should be glad of a second series."--_Literary World._ + +"'Kitwyk' is the daintiest morsel of idyllic fiction we have had since +Mr. Barrie opened that wonderful window in 'Thrums.' Few books are so +exquisitely wrought; so cunningly polished."--_Mr. James Douglas in The +Star._ + +"The Dutch kingdom is enchanting, and Mrs. John Lane's charming book +will help to make the fact more widely known."--_Gentlewoman._ + +"We have only faintly indicated what a vein of jest and humour Mrs. John +Lane possesses."--_The Echo._ + +"This is a most graceful and altogether charming Dutch version of Auld +Licht Idylls. If such a village and such people, and such quaint causes +of laughter and of tears do indeed exist, then Kitwyk were well worth +visiting, but the next best thing is to read Mrs. John Lane's prettily +bound and illustrated little volume."--_Scotsman._ + + * * * * * + +PETERKINS: + +THE STORY OF A DOG + +Translated from the German of Ossip Schubin + +by MRS. JOHN LANE + +With numerous illustrations by T. COTTINGTON TAYLOR and DONALD MAXWELL + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41820 *** |