Part 13 (1/2)

But when we do wake we find the world much what it was before, and pretty faces just as indolent and as provoking as they were, and a sort of ugly after-question cropping up in our minds whether we had exactly realized the meaning of our wish, or conceived the nature of a world in which all women were Miss Hominys. There is always a little difficulty in fancying the world other than we find it; but it is really worth a little trouble, before we enfranchise woman, to try to imagine the results of her enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, the Future of Woman. In the first place, it would amazingly reduce the variety of the world. As it is, we live in a double world, and enjoy the advantages of a couple of hemispheres. It is an immense luxury for men, when they are tired out with the worry and seriousness of life, to be able to walk into a totally different atmosphere, where nothing is looked at or thought about or spoken of in exactly the same way as in their own.

When Mr. Gladstone, for instance, unbends (if he ever does unbend), and, weary of the Irish question, asks his pretty neighbor what she thinks of it, he gets into a new world at once. Her vague idea of the Irish question, founded on a pa.s.sing acquaintance with Moore's Melodies and a wild regret after Donnybrook fair, may not be exactly adequate to the magnitude of the interests involved, but it is at any rate novel and amusing. It is not a House of Commons view of the subject, but then the great statesman is only too glad to be rid of the House of Commons.

Thoughtful politicians may deplore that the sentimental beauty of Charles I. and the pencil of Vand.y.k.e have made every English girl a Malignant; but after one has got bored with Rushworth and Clarendon, there is a certain pleasure at finding a great const.i.tutional question summarily settled by the height of a sovereign's brow.

It is a relief too, now and then, to get out of the world of morals into the world of woman; out of the hard sphere of right and wrong into a world like Mr. Swinburne's, where judgment goes by the beautiful, and where red hair makes all the difference between Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland. Above all, there is the delightful consciousness of superiority. The happiness of the blessed in the next world consists, according to Sir John Mandeville, in their being able to behold the agonies of the lost; and half the satisfaction men have in their own sense and vigor and success would be lost if they could not enjoy the delicious view of the world where sense and energy go for nothing.

Whether all this would be worth sacrificing simply to acquire a woman who could sympathize with, and support, a man in the stress and battle of life, is a question we do not pretend to decide; but it is certain that the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman would be the pa.s.sing of a social Act of Uniformity, and the loss of half the grace and variety of life. Here, as elsewhere, ”the low sun makes the color,” and the very excellences of Miss Hominy carry her aloft into regions of white light, where our eyes, even if dazzled, get a little tired with the monotony of the intellectual Haze.

The result of such a change on woman herself would be something far greater and more revolutionary. It is not merely that, as in the case of men, she would lose the sense and comfort of another world of thought and action, and of its contrast with the world in which she lives; it is that she would lose her own world altogether. Conceive, for instance, woman obliged to take life in earnest, to study as men study, to work as men work. The change would be no mere modification, but the utter abolition of her whole present existence. The whole theory of woman's life is framed on the hypothesis of sheer indolence. She is often charming, but she is always idle. There is an immense ingenuity and a perfect grace about her idleness; the efforts, in fact, of generations of cultivated women have been directed, and successfully directed, to this special object of securing absolute indolence without either the inner tedium or the outer contempt which indolence is supposed to bring in its train.

Woman can always say with t.i.tus, ”I have wasted a day,” but the confession wears an air of triumph rather than regret. A world of trivial occupations, a whole system of social life, has been laboriously invented that the day might be wasted gracefully and without boredom. A little riding, a little reading, a little dabbling with the paint-brush, a little strumming on the piano, a little visiting, a little shopping, a little dancing, and a general trivial chat scattered over the whole, make up the day of an English girl in town. Transplant her into the country, and the task of frittering away existence, though it becomes more difficult, is faced just as gallantly as before. Mudie comes to the rescue with the back novels which she was too busy to get through in the season; there is the scamper from one country house to another, there are the flirtations to keep her hand in, the pets to be fed, the cousins to extemporize a mimic theatre, the curate--if worst comes to worst--to try a little ritualism upon. With these helps a country day, what with going to bed early and getting up late, may be frittered away as aimlessly as a day in town.

Woman may fairly object, we think, to abolish at one fell swoop such an ingenious fabric of idleness as this. A revolution in the whole system of social life, in the whole conception and drift of feminine existence, is a little too much to ask. As it is, woman wraps herself in her indolence, and is perfectly satisfied with her lot. She a.s.sumes, and the world has at least granted the a.s.sumption, that her little hands were never made to do anything which any rougher hands can do for them. Man has got accustomed to serve as her hewer of wood and drawer of water, and to expect nothing from her but poetry and refinement. It is a little too much to ask her to go back to the position of the squaw, and to do any work for herself. But it is worse to ask her to remodel the world around her, on the understanding that henceforth duty and toil and self-respect are to take the place of frivolity and indolence and adoration.

The great pa.s.sion which knits the two s.e.xes together presents a yet stronger difficulty. To men, busy with the work of the world, there is no doubt that, however delightful, love takes the form of a mere interruption of their real life. They allow themselves the interval of its indulgence, as they allow themselves any other holiday, simply as something in itself temporary and accidental; as life, indeed, grows more complex, there is an increasing tendency to reduce the amount of time and attention which men devote to their affections. Already the great philosopher of the age has p.r.o.nounced that the pa.s.sion of love plays far too important a part in human existence, and that it is a terrible obstacle to human progress.

The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mr. Mill. The enthusiastic votary who has been pouring his vows at the feet of his mistress consoles himself, as he leaves her, with the thought that engagements cannot last for ever, and that he shall soon be able to get back to the real world of business and of life. He presses his beloved one, with all the eloquence of pa.s.sion, to fix an early day for their union, but the eloquence has a very practical bearing. While Corydon is piping to Phyllis, he is anxious about the engagements he is missing, and the distance he is losing in the race for life. But Phyllis remains the nymph of pa.s.sion and poetry and romance.

Time has no meaning for her; she is not neglecting any work; she is only idle, as she always is idle. But love throws a new glory and a new interest around her indolence. The endless little notes with which she worries the Post-Office and her friends become suddenly sacred and mysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into confidential whispers.

Every crush through the season, becomes the scene of a reunion of two hearts which have been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours.

Love, in fact, does not in the least change woman's life, or give it new earnestness or a fresh direction; but it makes it infinitely more interesting, and it heightens the enjoyment of wasting a day by a new sense of power. For that brief s.p.a.ce of triumph Phyllis is able to make Corydon waste his day too. The more he writhes and wriggles under the compulsion, the more lingering looks he casts back on the work he has quitted, the greater her victory.

He cannot decently confess that he is tired of the little comedy in which he takes so romantic a part, and certainly his fellow actress will not help him to the confession. By dint of acting it, indeed, she comes at last to a certain belief in her _role_. She really imagines herself to be very busy, to have sacrificed her leisure as well as her heart to the object of her devotion. She scolds him for his backwardness in not more thoroughly sacrificing his leisure to her. Work may be very important to him, but it is of less importance to the self-sacrificing being who hasn't had one moment to finish the third volume of the last sensational novel since she plighted her troth to this monster of ingrat.i.tude! Of course a man likes to be flattered, and does as much as he can in the way of believing in the little comedy too; in fact, it is all amazingly graceful and entertaining on the one side and on the other. Our only doubt is whether this graceful and entertaining mode of interrupting all the serious business of life will not be treated rather mercilessly by enfranchised woman. How will the enchantment of pa.s.sion survive when the object of our adoration can only spare us an hour from her medical cases, or defers an interview because she is choked with fresh briefs? One of two results must clearly follow. Either the great Westminster philosopher is right, and love will play a far less important part than it has done in human affairs, or else it will concentrate itself, and take a far more intense and pa.s.sionate character than it exhibits now.

We can quite conceive that the very difficulty of the new relations may give them a new fire and vigor, and that the women of the future, looking back on the old months of indolent coquetry, may feel a certain contempt for souls which can fritter away the grandeur of pa.s.sion as they fritter away the grandeur of life. But even the gain of pa.s.sion will hardly compensate us for the loss of variety. All this playing with love has a certain pretty independence about it, and leaves woman's individuality where it found it. Pa.s.sion must of necessity whirl both beings, in the unity of a common desire, into one. And so we get back to the old problem of the monotony of life. But it is just this monotonous ident.i.ty to which civilization, politics, and society are all visibly tending. Railways will tunnel Alps for us, democracy will extinguish heroes, and raise mankind to a general level of commonplace respectability; woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt will level the social world, and leave between s.e.x and s.e.x the difference--even if it leaves that--of a bonnet.

COSTUME AND ITS MORALS.

Nothing is more decisively indicative of the real value or necessity of a thing than the fact that, while its presence is hardly noticeable, it is immediately missed and asked for when it disappears; and it is thus that the paramount importance of clothing a.s.serts itself by the conspicuousness of its absence. Of course the first purpose of dress is, or should be, decency, and for this, quant.i.ty rather than quality is looked for. But, as with the little cloud no larger than a man's hand, so from the primary fig-leaf or first element of dress, how great things have arisen! In respect of amplification, dress may be said to have attained its maximum when men wore ruffs which nearly concealed their heads, and shoes a quarter of a yard longer than their feet; but ”fas.h.i.+on” has its day, and now dress threatens to dwindle into something not far from its original or fig-leaf dimensions.

Another perfectly legitimate object of dress is attractiveness, so that by its aid our persons may be set off to the best advantage; dress should also be individual and symbolic, so as to indicate clearly the position and character which we desire to obtain and hold. It is not of men's attire that we have now to speak; that has been settled for them by the tailors' strike, which practically ordained that he that was shabby should be shabby, or even shabbier still, and he that had allowed himself to be thrust into the straitened trousers and scanty coatee of last year should continue to exhibit his proportions long after the grotesqueness of his figure had been recognised even by himself.

But it is of the dress of our women that we are compelled to testify, and it can hardly be denied that at the present moment it offends grievously in three particulars. It is inadequate for decency; it lacks that truthfulness which is, and should be, the base of all that is attractive and beautiful; and in its symbolism it is in the highest degree objectionable, for it not only aims at what is unreal and false, but it simulates that which is positively hateful and meretricious, so that it is difficult now for even a practised eye to distinguish the high-born maiden or matron of Belgravia from the Anonymas who haunt the drive and fill our streets.

This indictment is, it may be said, a severe one; but if we examine, so far as male critics may venture to do, the costume of a fas.h.i.+onable woman of the day, it can hardly be said to be unjust. The apparent object of modern female dress is to a.s.similate its wearers as nearly as possible in appearance to women of a certain cla.s.s--the cla.s.s to which it was formerly hardly practicable to allude, and yet be intelligible to young ladies; but all that is changed, and the habits and customs of the women of the _demi-monde_ are now studied as if they were indeed curious, but exceptionally admirable also, and thus a study unseemly and unprofitable has begotten a spirit of imitation which has achieved a degrading success.

”Our modest matrons meet,” not ”to stare the strumpet down,” but to compare notes, to get hints, and to engage in a kind of friendly rivalry--in short, to pay that homage to Vice, and in a very direct way too, which Vice is said formerly to have paid to Virtue. Paint and powder are of course the first requisites for the end in view, and these adjuncts have to be laid on with such skill as the _debutante_ or her toilette-maid possesses, which is sometimes so small as to leave their handiwork disgustingly coa.r.s.e and apparent.

There are pearl-powder, violet-powder, rouge, bistre for the eyelids, belladonna for the eyes, whitelead and blacklead, yellow dye and mineral acids for the hair--all tending to the utter destruction of both hair and skin. The effect of this ”diaphanous” complexion and ”aurified” hair (we borrow the expressions) in a person intended by nature to be dark, or swarthy, is most comical; sometimes the whitelead is used so unsparingly that it has quite a blue tint, which glistens until the face looks more like a death's head anointed with phosphorus and oil for theatrical purposes than the head of a Christian gentlewoman. It may be interesting to know, and we have the information from high, because _soi-disant_ fas.h.i.+onable authority, that the reign of golden locks and blue-white visages is drawing to a close, and that it is to be followed by bronze complexions and blue-black hair--_a l'Africaine_ we presume.

When fas.h.i.+onable Madame has, to her own satisfaction, painted and varnished her face, she then proceeds, like Jezebel, to tire her head, and, whether she has much hair or little, she fixes on to the back of it a huge nest of coa.r.s.e hair generally well baked in order to free it from the parasites with which it abounded when it first adorned the person of some Russian or North-German peasant girl. Of course this gives an unnaturally large and heavy appearance to the cerebellar region; but nature is not exactly what is aimed at, still less refinement.

If this style be not approved of, there is yet another fas.h.i.+on--namely, to cut the hair short in a crop, _creper_ it, curl it, frizzle it, bleach it, burn it, and otherwise torture it until it has about as much life in it as last year's hay; and then to shampoo it, rumple it, and tousle it, until the effect is to produce the aspect of a madwoman in one of her worst fits. This method, less troublesome and costly than the other, may be considered even more striking, so that it is largely adopted by a number of persons who are rather disreputable, and poor. As is well known, not all of the asinine tribe wear a.s.ses' ears; nevertheless some of these votaries of dress find their ears too long, or too large, or ill-placed, or, what comes to the same thing, inconveniently placed, but a prettier or better-shaped pair are easily purchased, admirably moulded in gutta-percha or some other plastic material; they are delicately colored, fitted up with earrings and a spring apparatus, and they are then adjusted on to the head, the despised natural ears being of course carefully hidden from view.

It is long enough since a bonnet meant shelter to the face or protection to the head; that fragment of a bonnet which at present represents the head-gear, and which was some years ago worn on the back of the head and nape of the neck, is now poised on the front, and ornamented with birds, portions of beasts, reptiles, and insects. We have seen a bonnet composed of a rose and a couple of feathers, another of two or three b.u.t.terflies or as many beads and a bit of lace, and a third represented by five green leaves joined at the stalks. A white or spotted veil is thrown over the visage, in order that the adjuncts that properly belong to the theatre may not be immediately detected in the glare of daylight; and thus, with diaphanous tinted face, large painted eyes, and stereotyped smile, the lady goes forth looking much more as if she had stepped out of the green room of a theatre, or from a Haymarket saloon, than from an English home.

But it is in evening costume that our women have reached the minimum of dress and the maximum of bra.s.s. We remember a venerable old lady whose ideas of decorum were such that in her speech all above the foot was ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every looker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest liberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, ”nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same.” Not very long ago two gentlemen were standing together at the Opera. ”Did you ever see anything like that?” inquired one, with a significant glance, directing the eyes of his companion to the uncovered bust of a lady immediately below. ”Not since I was weaned,” was the suggestive reply.