Part 6

"'You have, ladies and gentlemen, heard some of the disadvantages that will inevitably be entailed upon you by not granting us what Justice, Equity and our Costume render a demand that none but barbarians can refuse. I am now going to give you just an inkling of what will befall you should you pertinaciously persist in your obdurate refusal of the franchise to women. We women have made up our minds to the exclusion of any imaginable hesitation, change, or vacillation. We shall be firm and unshakable.

"'We have done everything that could be done by way of persuading you. We have published innumerable pamphlets; we have trodden countless streets in countless processions; we have been wearing innumerable badges and carrying thousands of flags and standards; we have screamed, pushed, rowdied, boxed, scuffled, gnashed our teeth (even such as were not originally made for that purpose), and suffered our skirts to be torn to shreds; we have petitioned, waylaid, interpellated, ambushed, bullied and memorialised all the ministers, all the editors, all the clergymen, all the press-men; we have suffered imprisonment, fines, scorn, ridicule; we have done, with the exception of actual fighting, everything that men have done for the conquest of the suffrage.

"'Should all these immense sacrifices not avail us any; should it all be in vain; then we the women of this country, and I doubt not those of the other countries too, will, as a last resort, take refuge in the oldest and most powerful ally of our sex. Eternal Time has two constituents: Day and Night. The Day is man's. The Night is ours.'

"(Deadly silence--men begin looking very serious.)

"'The Night, I repeat it in the sternest manner possible, the Night is ours. We grant, indeed, that sixteen hours are man's; but the remaining eight are ours. The stars and the moon; the darkness and the dream--they are all ours. Should you men persist in refusing us the franchise, you will wake in vain for the moon and the stars and the dream. You will see stars indeed, but other ones than you expect. We shall be inexorable. No moon any more for you; neither crescent, half nor full moon; neither stars nor milky-way; neither galaxy nor gallantry.'

"(A salvationist: 'Let us pray!'--A soldier: 'Hope, m'um, that Saturdays will be off-days?'--Solicitors, teetotallers, and three editors of Zola's collected works: 'Disgraceful! shocking!'--A scholar: 'Madame, that's a chestnut, Aristophanes has long proposed that!'--General uproar--a band of nuns from Piccadilly hurrah the proposal and raise prices of tickets--Scotland Yard smiles--the _Daily Nail_ kodaks everybody and interviews Mrs Pancake on the spot--Mrs Guard, the famous writer, at once founds a counter-League, with the motto 'Astronomy for the people--Stars and Stripes free--the United Gates of Love'--the _Daily Crony_ has an attack of moral appendicitis.)

* * * * *

"I wish," continued Alcibiades, amidst the laughter of the immortals, "Aristophanes had been present. I assure you that all that he said in his comedies called _Ecclesiazusae_ and _Lysistrata_ pale beside the tumultuous scenes caused by the peroration of Mrs Pancake. Her threat was in such drastic contrast to the stars and moon she personally could exhibit to the desires of men, that the comic effect of it became at times almost unbearable.

"While the pandemonium was at its height a stentorian voice invited all present to another platform where another woman was holding forth on Free Love and Free Marriage. I forthwith repaired to the place, and heard what was in every way a most interesting speech delivered by a woman who consisted of a ton of bones and an ounce of flesh. She was between forty and seventy-nine. She talked in a tone of conviction which seemed to come from every corner of her personal masonry. Her gestures were, if I may say so, as strident as her voice, which came out with a peculiar gust of pectoral wind, unimpeded, as it was, by the fence of too numerous teeth. She said:

"'Gentlemen, all that you have heard over there from the platforms of the suffragettes is, to put it mildly, the merest rubbish. We women do not want the suffrage. What we want is quite another thing. All our misery since the days of Eve comes from one silly, absurd, and criminal institution, and from that alone. Abolish that cesspool of depravity; that hotbed of social gangrene; that degradation of men and women; and we shall be all happy and contented for ever.

"'That institution; that cancerous hotbed; that degradation is: _Marriage_. As long as we shall endure this scandalous bondage and prostitution of the most sacred sentiments and desires of human beings, even so long will our social wretchedness last.

"'Abolish marriage.

"'It has neither sense, nor object, nor right; it is the most hapless aberration of humanity. How can you uphold such a monstrous thing?

"'Just consider: I do not know, and do not care to know what other nations are like; I only care for my great nation, for England, for Englishmen. Now, can anyone here present (or here absent, for the matter of that), seriously contend that an Englishman is by nature or education fit for marriage? Why, not one in ten thousand has the slightest aptitude for it.

"'An Englishman is an island, a solitary worm, morally a hermit, socially a bear, humanly a Cyclop. He hates company, including his own. The idea that any person should intrude upon his hallowed circles for more than a few minutes is revolting to him. When he is ill he suffers most from the inquiries of friends about his condition. When he is successful he is too proud to stoop to talking with anyone under the rank of a lord. When he is unsuccessful, he takes it for granted that nobody desires to speak to him. He builds his house after his own character: rooms do not communicate. He chooses his friends among people that talk as little as possible and call on him once a year. Any remark about his person he resents most bitterly. Tell him, ever so mildly, that the colour of his necktie is cryingly out of harmony with the colour of his waistcoat, and he will hate you for three years.

"'And you mean to tell me, gentlemen, that such a creature is fit for marriage? That is, fit for a condition of things in which a person, other than himself, claims the right to be in the same room with him at any given hour of the day or the night; to pass remarks on his necktie, or his cuffs, or even on his tobacco; to talk, ay, to talk to him for an hour, to twit him, or chaff him--good heavens, one might just as well think of asking the Archbishop of Canterbury by telephone whether he would not come to the next bar round the corner for a glass of Bass.

"'And as to other still more personal claims of tenderness and intimacy on the part of the wife, such as embraces and kisses, one shudders to think how any woman may ever hope to attempt doing them without imminent risk to her life.

"'Fancy a wife trying to kiss her legal husband! He, prouder of his collar and cuffs than of his banking account, to stand calmly and willingly an assault on the immaculate correctness of the said collar and cuffs!

"'It passes human comprehension. The mere idea thereof is unthinkable.

"'Perhaps in the first few weeks of married life. But after six months; after a year, or two--by what stretch of imagination shall one reach the possibility of such an event? After six months, he is indifferent to the entire astronomy of his wife; after a year or so, he hates her. It is not so much that he wants another woman, or another man's wife, or another wife's man; what he wants is to be left alone.

"'He has long since shaken off the State, the Church, the Army, and, politically, the Nobility. Nothing can be more evident than that he wants to shake off the last of the old shackles: Marriage. His motive is: shekels, but no shackles.

"'Some incomprehensibly modest people have proposed marriage to last ten years only. It appears, they contend, that the critical period of the modern marriage shows itself at the end of ten years. The scandals that are usually cropping up at the end of that period, they say, might very well be avoided by terminating marriage legally at the end of the tenth year. People proposing such stuff clearly manifest their utter inability to see through the true character of modern marriage.

"'If marriages were to last only ten years, then be sure that the said critical period with its inevitable scandals would set in at the end of the fifth year. The cause, the real cause of these scandals is not in the length of time, but in the very nature of marriage. If this iniquitous and barbarous contract were to last only for five years, then its critical period and its scandals would appear at the end of two years. And by a parity of reasoning, if marriage were to last one year only, it would by its inherent vice come to grief at the end of six months.

"'The only cure for marriage is to abolish it. Does marriage not demand the very quality that not one English person in a hundred thousand possesses: yieldingness? Or can anyone deny that no English person has ever really meant to admit that he or she was wrong?

"'They are all of them infallible. People write such a lot about the hatred of Popery in English history. What nonsense. English people do not hate Popery; they despise the idea that there should be only one infallible Pope, whereas they know that in England alone there are at present over thirty millions of such infallibles. This being so, how can marriage be a success?

"'Or take it,' the Free Love lady continued, 'from another standpoint. Most Englishmen enter married life with little if any experience of womanhood. Only the other day a young man of twenty-five, who was just about to marry, asked in my presence whether it was likely that a woman gave birth to one child early in the month of May, and to the other in the following month of June? He thought that _The Times_ instalment system applied to all good things.

"'Other young men inquire seriously about the strategy of marriage, and the famous song in the _Belle of New York_, in which the girl asks her _fiancé_ "When we are married what will you do?" was possible only in countries of Anglo-Saxon stock. In Latin countries the operette could not have been finished in one evening on account of the interminable laughter of the public. In London nobody turned a hair, as they say. Half of the men present had, in their time, asked the same question of themselves or of their doctors.

"'Now if there is one thing more certain than another in the whole matter of marriage it is this, that the inexperienced _fiancé_ generally makes the worst husband. Being familiar only with the ways and manners of men, he misunderstands, misconstrues, and misjudges most of the actions or words of his young wife. He is positively shocked at her impetuous tenderness, and takes many a manifestation of her love for him as mere base flattery or as hypocrisy. Not infrequently he ceases treating her as his wife, and goes on living with her as his sister; and, since the wife, more loyal to nature, rarely omits recouping herself, her husband acts the part of certain gentlemen of Constantinople. It is thus that the famous _ménage à trois_ does not, properly speaking, exist in England. In England it is always a _ménage à deux_.

"'If, then, instead of continuing marriage; if, instead of maintaining an institution so absurd and so contrary to the nature of an Englishman, we dropped it altogether; if, instead of compulsory wedding ceremonies, we introduced that most sacred of all things: FREE LOVE; the advantages accruing to the nation as a whole, and to each person constituting that nation, would be immense.

"'Free Love, ay: that is the only solution. Nature knows what she is after. The blue-eyed crave the black-eyed ones; the fair-haired desire the dark-haired; the tall ones the small; the thin ones the thick; the unlettered ones the lettered unfettered ones. This is Nature.

"'If these affinities are given free scope, the result will be a nation of giants and heroes. Affinities produce Infinities. Free Trade in wedlock is the great panacea. Since the only justifiable ground for marriage is--the child, how dare one marry anyone else than the person with whom he or she is most likely to have the finest babe? That person is clearly indicated by Nature. How, then, can Society, Law, or the Church claim the right to interfere in the choice?

"'I know that many of you will say: "Oh, if men should take their wives only from Free Love, they would take a different one every quarter." But if you come to think of it, it is not so at all. If men took their wives out of Free Love, they could not so much as think of taking another wife every quarter. For, which other wife could they take? There would be none left for them, since all the other women would, by the hypothesis, long have been taken up by _their_ Free Lovers. Moreover, if a man takes a wife out of Free Love, he sticks to her just because he loves her. Had he not loved her, he would not have taken her; and if he should cease loving her, he would find no other woman to join him, owing to his proved fickleness.

"'Last, not least, women and men would form elaborate societies for the prevention of frivolous breaches of faith. At present no woman has a serious interest in watching another woman's man. It would be quite different in Free-Love-Land. The unofficial supervision and control of men and women would be as rigorous as in monastic orders. As a man will pay off debts contracted at a card-table with infinitely greater anxiety than any ordinary debt of his to a tailor or a grocer, just because such gambling debts are not actionable; even so conjugal debts would, in Free-Love-Land, be discharged with a punctuality that now is practically unknown.

"'The commonplace assertion that legal marriage preserves men and women in a virtuous life has been refuted these six thousand years. To the present day one is not able to deny the truth of what once a Turkish woman replied to a Christian lady. The latter asked the Oriental: "How can you tolerate the fact that your husband has at the same time and in the same house three other wives of his?" The Turkish lady replied: "Please, do not excite yourself unduly. The only difference between me and you is this, that I know the names of my rivals, and you do not."

"'In Free-Love-Land alone is there virtue. Men and women select freely, obeying only the dictates of infallible Nature. The result is order, health, joy, and efficiency. How can any person of sense believe in the present marriage systems, when one considers the countless lives of old maids sacrificed to the Moloch of modern legal monogamy?

"'In England there are about four times more old maids than in any other country; except in New England, in the United States, where every second woman is born an old maid. Has anybody ever seriously pondered over the great danger to Society and State implied in an excessive number of old maids? I leave it to you, and I dare say to everyone of you who has, no doubt, bitterly suffered at the hands of some one old maid in his or her family.

"'Old maids are either angels of goodness, or devils in human form; the real proportion of either must be left to the Lord Chancellor to decide. But who, or what produces old maids? Our legal monogamy. Give us Free Love, and you shall have heard the last word of old maids. Refuse Free Love, and we shall have to form our old maids into regiments and send them against the Germans. Plato said that the unsatisfied womb of a woman wanders about in all her body like a ravenous animal and devours everything on his path. Our present marriage system makes more victims than victors.'

* * * * *

"The good bag of bones wanted to continue in the same strain, but was stopped by a young policeman who threatened to take her into custody unless she discontinued her oratory. She threatened to love him freely; whereupon he ran away as speedily as he could manage, but was at once followed by the valiant she-orator, who nearly overtook him, crying all the time 'I love you freely'--'I love you freely.' The whole crowd followed, howling, screaming, laughing, and singing songs of Free Love. So ended the discourse on Free Love.

* * * * *

"A few weeks later," continued Alcibiades, "I made the acquaintance of what they call a society lady. She was, of course, a specialist. She had found out that her physical attractions were of a kind to show off best at the moment of entering a crowded room. She was, to use the phraseology of the _chef_, an _entrée_ beauty. Her name was Entréa. At the moment she entered a _salon_, she gave, just for a few minutes, the impression of being strikingly handsome. She walked well, and the upper part of her head, her hair, forehead, and eyes were very pretty. She knew that on entering a room, the upper part of the head is precisely the one object of general attention. This she utilised in the most methodic manner. She entered with an innocent smile and lustrous eyes. The effect was decidedly pretty.

"In order to heighten it she always came late. Her cheeks, which were ugly; her shoulders, which were uglier; her arms, which were still uglier, were all cleverly disguised or made to appear secondary, and as if dominated by her big eyes. She was very successful. Most men considered her beautiful; and women were happy that her principal effect did not last very long. She knew some fifteen phrases by heart, which were meant to meet the conversation of the fifteen different species into which she had, for daily use, divided the different men she met in society. Each of these phrases gave her the appearance of much _esprit_ and of an intelligent interest in the subject. She did not understand them at all; but she never mixed them up, thanks to her instinct, which was infallible.

"The last time she had done or said anything spontaneously or naively was on the day she left her nursery. Ever since she was the mere manager of her words and acts. In everything there was a cool intention. As a matter of fact she was meant by Nature to be a salesgirl at Whiteley's. Failing this, she sold her presence, her smiles, her manners to the best social advantage. A rabid materialist, she always pretended to live for nothing but ideals. Sickened by music, she always gave herself out to be an enthusiast for Wagner. Like many women that have no natural talent for intellectual pursuits, she was most eager to read serious books, to attend serious lectures, and to engage a conversation on philosophy.

"I met her in my quality as Prince of Syracuse. She first thought that Syracuse was the name of my father; when I had explained to her that Syracuse was the name of a famous town in Sicily, she asked me whether I belonged to the great family whose motto was _qui s'excuse, s'iracuse_.

"On my answering in the negative, she exclaimed: 'But surely you belong at least to the Maffia? Oh do, it would be so interesting!' In order to please her I at once belonged to that society of secret assassins. However, I soon noticed that she thought the Maffia was the Sicilian form of a society for patriotic Mafficking.

"When we became a little more intimate, she told me that I was never to speak of anything else than Syracuse. That would give me a certain _cachet_, as she put it, and distinguish me from the others. Accordingly I placed all my stories and occasional sallies of talk at Syracuse. I was the Syracusan. She swore my accent was Syracusan, and that my entire personality breathed Syracusan air. In society she presented me as a member of a curious race, the Syracusans, in Sicily, close to the Riviera.

"One day she surprised me with the question whether the men of Syracuse were still in the habit of marrying two women at a time. She had read in some book of the double marriage of Dionysus the Elder in the fourth century B.C. I calmed her in that respect. I said that since that time things had changed at Syracuse.

"On the other hand, I was unable to make out whether she was a divorced virgin, or a deceased sister's wife. It was not clear at all. When conversing with me alone, she was as dry as a Nonconformist; but in a drawing-room, full of people, she showered upon me all the sweets of passionate flirtation.

"One day I told her that I had won great victories in the chariot races at Olympia. She looked at me with a knowing smile and said: 'Come, come, why did I not read about it in the _Daily Nail_?' and, showing me the inside of her hat, she pointed at a slip of paper in it, on which was printed: 'I am somewhat of a liar myself.' I assured her that I had really won great prizes at Olympia.

"'Were they in the papers?' she asked.

"I said, we had no papers at that time.

"'No papers?' she exclaimed. 'Why, were you like the negroes? No papers! What will you tell me next? Had you perhaps no top-hats either? Do you mean to tell me that this great poet of yours--what you call him?--ah, Lord Homer, had no top-hat?'

"I assured her that we had no hats whatever.

"'Oh, I see,' she said, 'you were founded like the blue boys,--I see. But surely you wore gloves?'

"On my denying it, she turned a little pale.

"'No gloves either? Then I must ask you only one more thing: had you no shoes either?'

"'No,' I said, calmly, 'some of us, like Socrates, went always barefoot, others in sandals.'

"She smiled incredulously. I told her that in the heyday of Athens men in the streets went about over one-third nude. She did not mind the nude, but she stopped at the word heyday.

"She asked me: 'On which day of the year fell your heyday?'

"I did not quite know what to say, until it flashed upon my mind that she meant 'hay-day.' I soon saw I was right, because she added:

"'Does going barefoot cure hay-fever? And is that the reason why so many people still talk of Socrates?'

"I stared at her. Was it really possible that she did not know who Socrates was? I tried to give a short sketch of your life, O Socrates, but I could not go beyond the time before you were born. For, when I said that your mother had been a midwife, my lady friend recoiled with an expression of terror.

"'What,' she exclaimed, 'he was the son of a midwife?--a midwife?--Pray, do not let us talk about such people! I hoped he was at least the son of a baronet. How could you ever endure his company?'

"'That was just it,' said I, 'I could not. His charm was so great, that for fear of neglecting everything else I fled from him like a hunted stag.'

"'But pray,' she retorted, 'what charm can there be in a son of a midwife? I can imagine some interest in a clever midwife,--but in her son? Oh, that is too absurd for words!'

"'My charming friend,' I answered, 'Socrates was, as he frequently remarked it, himself a sort of midwife, who never pretended to be parent to a thought, but only to have helped others to produce them.'

"'Oh, is that it,--' she said dryly, 'Socrates did manual services in midwifery? How lost to all shame your women must have been to engage a man in their most delicate moments. I now see why so many of my lady friends deserted a man who had announced lectures on Plato. He also talked about Socrates, and when it became known that Socrates was a wretched midwife's clerk, we left the lecture-hall in indignation. Fancy that man said he talked about Plato, and yet in his discourses he talked about nurseries, teetotalism, Christian Science and all such things as date only of yesterday, and of which Plato could have known nothing.'

"'But my lovely Entréa,' I interrupted, 'Plato does talk of all these things, and with a vengeance.'

"'How _could_ he talk of them?' she triumphantly retorted. 'Did he ever read the _Daily Nail_ or _Ladies' Wold_?'