Part 9
During the course of a fascinating study in which I reviewed everything at hand having relation to the life of this remarkable and much maligned woman, the world-old attitude of the Literary Libertine was projected afresh. The man who, in the name of gallantry, writes shame on the record of beauty, genius, and strength, merely because they chance to be the possession of a woman, stood before me in full stature.
Louise Labé, known as _La Belle Cordière_, was born at Lyons in the year 1526. Her real name, before her marriage with Ennemond Perrin, was probably Charlin; but she wrote over the signature of Louise Labé, and her poetry immortalized it. I do not feel like recommending any of her writings. They are historically and artistically interesting; but one finds them out-paganing the pagans in some most objectionable essentials. What attracts me in her behalf is a certain rudimentary foresay uttered by her, not so much in her literature as through her life, a foresay comprehending the modern feminine aspiration. Nor would I be understood to mean that I admire her attitude or her aim; many qualifications would be necessary; but she is attractive because she is a significant figure.
Her father was a _cordier_, or a ship-supply merchant, or both; at all events, he was rich and gave his daughter a most liberal education. Lyons at that time was a literary centre, one of those spots in the south of France made intellectually fertile by the residuary influence of Italian and Spanish residents of earlier days. Like Avignon, it was a singing station on the bank of the melodious Rhone, contributing its odes and ballads and chansons to the medley which went gayly on down through the hills to the Mediterranean at Les Bouches.
When Louise was sixteen, that is to say in the year 1542, Francis I. laid siege to Perpignan, which precisely a hundred years later became permanently a city of France. The siege was a dismal failure; but some daring deeds were done in its behalf. For hard fighting and distinguished personal valor honored those dying days of old chivalry. A striking figure, a youthful Captain Loys, all armored and lance-bearing, came into view at Perpignan.
This was Louise Labé, in her rôle of New Woman, an apparition sure to storm the hearts of men if not the salients of Perpignan. As she herself sings, she was seen—
“En armes fière aller, Porter la lance et bois faire aller, Le devoir faire en l’estour furieux, Piquer, volter le cheval glorieux.”
Cervantes might sneer in vain at this rich new bloom of knighthood. What would Sidney or Bayard have counted for at sixteen beside her in the burning imagination of the Midi? One of our American poets, a woman who sings of divine right, truly says—
“There is no sex in courage and in pain.”
Louise Labé had courage of the first order. Helmet and breastplate, steel boot and clinking spur decorated an embodied defiance when she rode down to the beleaguered stronghold. Captain Loys represented a revolt of girlhood against the sugar-coated sex-slavery of the times.
My cynical friend had some good ground for citing _La Belle Cordière_ as an example of disaster. Her campaign came to nothing; she returned to Lyons, married a rich rope-man, and went into the business of writing erotic verse. But why do so many women, and over and over again, commit this blighting mistake in the course of their battle for liberty? Must the New Woman inevitably get herself entangled in the meshes of the illicit? I think not. Good mothers, faithful wives, and healthy-minded sweethearts are not to be crowded out of the army of progress and reform; they are in to stay; but the Louise Labés are also a persistent element, and unfortunately the noisiest and apparently most influential, especially in the field of literature.
Woman must come to her own; she must have full freedom; would that to-morrow were the day of it; but not if she is to be like the wife in the “Heavenly Twins,” not if she must take pattern by a “Yellow Aster” heroine, a “Key-Notes” woman, a “Daughter of Music,” or any of the still worse models set up by the latest female propagandists of social and domestic reform. These writers of polemical fiction favoring the new order of social license are at present more in evidence than the rest of them. Man, brutal Man, would be quite justified in appealing to his superior muscle to prevent the arrival of this New Woman, or to hale her to prison, as an enemy of the race, should she prove clever enough to break through the masculine guard. One laughs, nevertheless, thinking how justly and effectively these decadent women might retort by wondering what manner of government and civilization we should have were the Tolstois, the Hardys, the Maupassants, the George Moores, the Zolas, the Ibsens, and the Hall Caines given the law-making and law-executing powers! A beautiful suggestion. I can think of no political absurdity so deep, no domestic calamity so comprehensively terrible. Perhaps our bluff American senator was inspired when he objected to “them literary fellers” being recognized as political possibilities, and I can fully realize the untainted unction with which the English judge sent a certain be-sunflowered æsthete to hard prison labor upon a recent occasion. The general principle is that an unsexed woman and an emasculate man ought to be considered as outlaws.
When Captain Loys rode down to Perpignan on her glorious war-horse, she doubtless sang many an amazonian battle-song foretasting from afar the triumph of the New Woman when she should mount to the bastion coping and fling out the banner of France. Some months later, riding homeward up the fertile valley of the Rhone, she changed her tune to a plaintive, backward-going wail for a lost lover who had proved untrue. Farewell to Roussillon, to dreams of military glory, to all the fierce throbs of war—and good-by to the stalwart, fickle soldier who broke her heart!
It is Captain Loys no longer; the lance lies back yonder somewhere under the curtain of Perpignan’s fort; the helmet is too heavy; the steel boots have tired the dainty feet, and the embossed shield is gone from the girl’s left arm. Pretty Louise Labé sits sidewise on a palfrey pacing gently up to Lyons; she is going home to marry, forlorn and loveless, an easy-going and rich _cordier_ with a luxurious home and a garden by the Rhone. The New Woman has tried to be a man, and a man has, by the ancient test, shown her the folly of it.
To a lusty youth a thing of that sort is filliped aside and forgotten; the girl lays it deep in her heart. He and she have met; he goes on his way whistling a troubadour catch, she loses faith in every soul under heaven; and likely enough the worst that passed between them was a tender word or two, possibly a kiss. You see God built us for different tasks; and the true New Woman knows it; she would like to be rid of the Labés. Yet somehow these Yellow Book Girls make all the noise, lead the van and get most of the attention.
“There is our weak point,” said a noble woman to me; she is one of the fine, strong spirits in the work of lifting her sex to true freedom; “there is our chief obstacle. The divorced women, or ‘grass widows,’ the drunkards’ wives, and the disappointed old maids, are assuming leadership, taking it by vulgar force. This sets the men against us and gives them that irresistible weapon, ridicule. The women we most need for leaders and followers are the happy wives and mothers. We want the women who have not lost faith in men, marriage, and maternity, the three great M’s. Not that we have no sympathy with our unfortunate and unhappy sisters; but the woman with a grievance, a moan of woe in her throat, and a score to settle with Fate, is not a vote-maker. She irritates the men, and they tell her that she should have had better luck. She seems to forget that it is from the men that our boom must come, and that they will never grant it while our dyspeptics are to the fore. Who, indeed, cares a straw for what an unsuccessful person screams to possess?”
Now, this good woman may have been too hard upon the class she was talking at, I dare say she was; but there was excellent political wisdom in her words. The Louise Labés are naturally somewhat jaundiced and hysterical; when the adventures of Captain Loys are over the next thing is a career against Fate and the limits of sex. But it is to those who already have plenty and to spare that fortune tumbles down her largest gifts, not to the empty-handed and greedy-eyed failures who have nothing but a song of dole to sing.
Louise Labé went the common road of the irresponsible New Woman in literature, the road so very popular to-day, which is paved with erotic poetry and the fiction of free love and marital infidelity, beginning her new life by posing as a victim bound in loveless marriage-chains on the altar of monstrous social injustice. Her poetry was super-Sapphic and addressed to the other man, not her husband, a man who presumably was above the trade of a _cordier_, and therefore irresistible to the low-born poetess.
We must distinctly agree with Sainte-Beuve, who chivalrously acquits Louise Labé of actual personal dishonor. This thing of dressing up a literary effigy and labelling it with the lyrical egotism as self-expression is an old poetic ruse, a fiction of the Muses. Louise was good enough for her time and place. She imagined herself a sociologist, and somehow got it in mind that the only purpose of sociology is by hook or crook to get rid of the sanctity of the marriage relation. Indeed, if we may judge the New Woman, from Louise’s time to now, by her poems and fictions, we must inevitably conclude that she would define sociology as the science of making the social evil appear harmlessly attractive; or that, like some of our contemporaries, she would travel all the way to Russia to get the pattern of Tolstoi’s trousers, having in mind a stunning new bicycle suit, or a lecture upon dress-reform. She is not humorous; but she makes a good deal of fun for the men.
After all it may be that the New Woman is a recurring decimal, as the arithmeticians would say, appearing at certain intervals with a constantly shifting value to civilization. If she persists in being rather ornamental than useful, taken as a noun of multitude, we are all the more her debtor on the side of romance, which—
“Loves to nod and sing,”
and which, if it cannot always get “sweetness and light” to charm itself withal, gladly accepts sweetness and chic instead. Half way between a grotesque gargoyle and a dainty flower-ornament of our social and domestic structure, there is, perhaps, a mean at which the New Woman is aiming; at all events she means to be decorative, as she always has been, and down the ages ahead of us she will doubtless continue to charm, amuse, and marry man, proving herself to him a great luxury, but notably expensive.
The Return of the Girl
_By_ Maurice Thompson
THE RETURN OF THE GIRL
ταδε νυν ἑταἱραις ταἱς εμαισι τερπνα καλως ἁεἱσω —SAPPHO, _Frag. II._
[Greek: tade nyn hetairais tais emaisi terpna kalôs haeisô.]
TO begin with, a girl is, generally speaking, an interesting organism, and a perfect specimen finds prompt welcome in any cabinet. The type is not paleozoic; at all events no fossil remains have yet been discovered in any of the rocks; but Jane Austen may serve in that stead, duly pinned and labelled archeparthenos.
Not of grizzled spinsters dully staring, in the mummy stage of existence, out of vitreous eyes furnished by the taxidermist, but of plump, sound, hearty young girls do we now wish some scientific notes. Let the withered type-specimens remain in their glass cases for the benefit of Professor Shelfdust and the English novelists: our heroine is yet under twenty years of age; she has never heard of sociology and is marvellously ignorant of the ethics of elopement; but she is as clever as she is fascinating.
Sappho knew the value of her sex in the bud, when perfect girl nature was just beginning to let go its charming essentials upon the air.
“τἱς δ’ αγροιωτἱς τοι θἑλγει νοον ουκ επισταμενα τα βρακε’ εγκην επι των σφνρων?”
“[Greek: tis d’ agroiôtis toi thelgei noon ouk epistamena ta brake’ enkên epi tôn sphyrôn?]”
“What rustic lass can win your heart Without a touch of girlish art?”
Or literally: “What rustic maiden, even, can captivate your mind, if she is not clever at drawing her skirts around her ankles?” There shows the brush of genius, a fine stroke, like the circle of Giotto, projecting a complete figure; and it is warm with life. The girl is pretty, brown as a berry, smiling, and lissomely graceful. Her sophistication is altogether hereditary. Sidney had her in mind when he wrote:—
“Gay hair, more gay than straw when harvest lies, Lips red and plump as cherries’ ruddy side, Eyes fair and great, like fair great ox’s eyes, . . . . . . Flesh as soft as wool new dressed, And yet as hard as brawn made hard by art.”
Like a bird in a bush, the strong, healthy girl shows her decorations with enthusiastic willingness, yet shyly, flitting betimes and keeping quite out of reach, while apparently not thinking of danger. Even the wild lass, saucing Daphnis from the doorway of her cave, knew perfectly well that he would hang his head and pass by. She was σὑνοφρυς κὁρα [Greek: synophrys kora]; that is, her eyebrows ran together across her nose, which was not as unfortunate as Herrick’s sort of girl, who was—
“One of those That an acre hath of nose.”
Why will the thought of berries come up? Dear old Suckling gave vent to it thus:—
“No grape that’s kindly ripe could be So round, so plump, so soft as she, Nor half so full of juice.”
No wonder that it has been a persistent dream of masculine poets to—
“Journey along With an armful of girl and a heart full of song!”
We older folk, who were brought up and educated in the sweet provincial ways, can see that it has been the atrabilious old maids and the matronly flirts who have banished the dear, delicious girl from artistic consideration. The woman of thirty, and upwards, by persistent manœuvring, has got between us and sweet sixteen. What we have to show for the change is the feminine novel of nasty morals. Of course many of these flabby romances about over-mature heroines are written by men; but they are mostly men of a beardless style with much complaint to make against their ancestors. A sound man naturally loves a healthy young girl and wants to be her father, her brother, or her lover, according to propriety. He is, moreover, lenient towards the elderly unmarried females, when they do not insist upon the superiority of an Isabella-colored complexion; but at best they are not girls; in which they differ from happily married women, who keep to themselves a girlish charm late into life.
We all have our misfortunes for which we are not in the least to blame. The single woman whose bloom is gone is interesting as an embodied pathos, but not thrilling as a sweetheart; she looks dry as a heroine of romance; she spoils a love-song. No wonder that the realists cannot fit their art to girlhood while their theory of life excludes sweetness and health. It is a pursuit of love within discouraging limitations when some middle-aged man, with gray in his whiskers, limps rheumatically on the track of a stout lady in her thirties, and with a picture of such a race is pessimism best represented.
But the healthy and natural girl, apple-cheeked and merry-eyed, sweet-voiced—παρθενον αδυφονον [Greek: parthenon adyphonon]—a girl of girls, is what charms mankind in life and literature. Her ways are like thistledown in a summer breeze; they suggest idyllic dreams and make us believe in all manner of delightful human happiness. We are all poets when she engages our imagination; we are all young when she loves us; we are all good in her presence,—holy-minded at thought of her.
Perhaps the surest sign of decadence in art is the appearance of the dame in the space naturally occupied by the lass; for it proves that taste is no longer an elemental impulse, but rather a matter of fashion, or of illicit influence. We do not find Madame Bovary appealing to the ever-fresh wells of our manhood. We could not be glad of having her for mother, wife, daughter, sister, or sweetheart. She poisons our imagination and repels our interest. It is a delight to turn away from her to the blushing young heroine who loves purely and with all her heart,—a girl as fresh and sound as a May strawberry.
Of all unnatural things none can seem quite so unjust as ill health falling upon a girl. Balzac, in one of his hideously interesting romances, pictures to the minutest line a poor child stricken with disease and robbed of her season of bud and bloom. I have always felt that the story was an unpardonable piece of writing. We sometimes see such pitiful and appealing objects in the street, or at some country place; but why should they be put into books written for our delectation?
Once upon a time a friend and I, upon archery intent, tramped together for a fortnight among the hills of North Carolina, in a region given over to the race of mountaineers. It was saddening to observe the lean, vacant, bloodless faces of the girls in the cabins. As a rule, however, activity of body and a certain limberness go with these desiccated-looking countenances, and now and again you find a flower of rustic loveliness wasting its sweetness and ignorance on the mountain air. An instance comes to mind. We were having luncheon at a spring under the hill, upon which an ancient cabin nestled amid its peach-trees.
Down a zig-zag path worn into the brick-yellow clay and rotten slate of the declivity came a maiden bearing on her head a cedar noggin. She stepped briskly and nimbly, not deigning to touch the noggin with her hand, but with scarcely perceptible head-movements kept it at perfect equilibrium on her crown. Barefooted, her coarse blue petticoat very scant and short, a wonderful brush of pale gold hair crinkling over her perfect shoulders, her arms half bare, a throat like a bird’s, and a face-flower full of happy lights, she made just that sudden impression of æsthetic surprise which comes with the poet’s rarest phrase and most unexpected rhyme.
It turned out that this strong young thing was as ignorant and empty as she was beautiful and healthy; but when she spoke to us her voice had the _timbre_ of a hermit thrush’s and she gave us a glimpse of teeth incomparably white and even. She was not timid, not bold, but natural. Took hold of my yew bow, which rested against a tree, and inquired about it, fingered my arrows and quiver, asked my companion whither we were going. All this time the cedar noggin on her sunny head wagged gently, but kept its place, until presently she took it off, and, with a melodious souse in the spring, filled it, replaced it aloft and walked back up the hill, hands down and absolutely sure of foot.
“Well,” said my companion, in a breathless tone, “if I didn’t think for a moment that you meant to shoot her! A regular wood nymph.”
As for myself I did not like the term wood nymph applied to a girl like that. She was as pretty, as pure, and as ignorant as a wild blue violet, and evidently as happy as a lark in a meadow. I felt the better for having seen her, and, as we trudged on, there was a new fragrance in my imagination.
The streets and suburban lanes of our little Western towns and cities offer great facilities for the study of happy girlhood, large thanks to the bicycle. During my summer walks and drives I meet whisps and flocks and bevies of lasses, or they pass me at scorching speed. They put the “bicycle-face” to shame with their rippling countenances and merry chatter. I shall never, I hope, forget one little maid of fifteen who drove her wheel as straight and steady as a flying quail, with her arms folded on her breast, and her lithe body poised inimitably. She looked at me with big round eyes, as if to say: “Do you see how I can do this?”
Indeed, my enjoyment of the frank sweetness in the air where girls are at play would be perfect were it not for the “Little Lord Fauntleroy” so often in evidence; but for him, all becurled and beruffled, I have a supreme and stony aversion. If some ruddy, ragged urchin, of the true Adamic race, would but down him and bedaub him with mud! If some girl would spank him and send him home; but the girl seems actually to like the self-conscious and unnatural little scamp. She smoothes his collar and pulls down his velvet jacket, hugs him and calls him pet names. He is the fellow who will grow up to be gun-shy, and inclined to marry a double-divorced actress, much to the girl’s disgust.
It was Madame de Staël, I believe, who said: “Let my children be not girls; for a woman’s life is so sad.” Even she, however, did not find girlhood unhappy, and the preventive to be used against the misery of womanhood would be to hold on to girlish simplicity, faith, and sanity as long as possible. We grow like what we contemplate, and the question is, do we now-a-days give adequate contemplation to the true, the beautiful, and the good, whose symbol and measure is the heart of a healthy girl? Our civilization must luxuriate in what maidenhood can safely assimilate, or it must grovel at the feet of the yellow woman, tough and _passée_.
There is encouraging evidence, visible just now, of a desire on the public’s part to get rid of Old Mrs. Woman, and take up once more with her granddaughter, the not wholly unsophisticated, but yet quite innocent and undesigning maiden. Men of the right sort have always felt that the happy married woman should be sheltered from publicity, and that the unhappy wife’s sorrows are sacred; but the love of a youth and a maid, that is something for the delight of the whole world. We are tired of this rank immorality tricked out in the toggery of love,—and the lovers married to other folk,—this rank immorality of the old blasé hero and the adroit, conscienceless and time-battered heroine.
A return to the insipid pastoral of the early centuries would be tolerable, if no better shift can be had, as breach full and wide with the feminine party of faded spinsterhood and preposterous sociology, of tirades against marriage and of the sainthood of grass widows. Let in the young girl of sound body and merry heart; give her another chance; the whole world is ready to welcome her. Her smile will banish the yellow dust of the faded asters; her presence will hush even the whisper of brutalities.
The other day I wrote to a distant friend and put to him Horace’s light question:—
“Quæ circumvolitas agilis thyma?”
Back came the answer: “I am running races with my three little girls. What is there better to do?” A man of gravity and distinction playing with his little daughters has what a politician would call a “pull” upon the gods for the highest joy of existence. From that play-ground he bears away the nectar of incomparable flowers, and the pollen on his thighs will freshen the whole hive of the world.