Part 4

In the olden days, when fighting was the principal business of men, and the womenfolk had nought to do but stay at home and wait for the return of their lords, all feminine imagination, stimulated by the songs of minstrels, found vent in the weaving of storied tapestries or silken scarves for the warriors. But in these later days of peace and commerce and culture, when wives are individuals, and not merely rated among their husband’s personal effects, and the measured roll of the printing press is the voice of the civilised world, the imaginative woman wields the pen, and leaves the needle and the bodkin to her humbler-minded sisters. So we have the lady-novelist, who is really the most important and productive type of literary woman. But, when all is said and done, the ordinary lady-novelist, who turns out her three volumes in accordance with the stereotyped taste of the novel-reading _clientèle_ of the circulating libraries, is scarcely much more interesting as a personality than the fashionable _modiste_ who composes her costumes to suit the taste of her customers.

Mrs. Talespinner, however, is not of the ordinary type. She has a distinct personality of her own, and is altogether a remarkable woman. In every respect she stands apart from the brood of lady-novelists of the day; indeed, one might more aptly describe her as the lady-novelist of the day after to-morrow, so rapidly does she stride in advance of current feminine fiction. She belongs to the so-called realistic school and this has not yet been really invaded by women-writers, who are always more prone to conventionality than men, and as a rule, observe the sentimental association of facts rather than the facts themselves. Therefore, the appearance of a woman in the ranks of the “realists” attracted immediate attention, and the singularity of the position lent her works a _cachet_ which their intrinsic force and cleverness confirmed. Mrs. Talespinner is a woman of quite conspicuous ability and extraordinary application, but she is a curious compound of weakness and strength.

Her mental vigour and intellectual strength are remarkable, especially in a woman, but these elements of power are qualified by the ease with which outside influences, often weak in themselves, can switch her opinions from one line of thought to another. She will, on this account, never be a literary force, like George Eliot, for instance, or the Brontës. She has the audacity of her opinions rather than the courage, for courage implies strength, and in opinion she is weak; while even her prejudices, of which she has accumulated a plentiful store, are always wavering. But this sensibility to influence is a useful quality in the “realistic” novelist, though it may be damaging to the literary artist. Now, Mrs. Talespinner is usually true in observation and vivid in description, but this frailty in the matter of opinion makes her uncertain in the selection of her material. She is so afraid of being conventional that she will treat subjects and include details which perhaps delicacy—not mere prudery—would suppress, which, however scientifically interesting, may be contrary to the first principle of art, namely, the producing of an impression of beauty. Yet Mrs. Talespinner is a woman of personal refinement, with a keen appreciation of the beauties of art and nature. As a novelist, however, her _metier_ has so far been the startling of sensitive temperaments by wonderfully vivid descriptions of unpleasant characters amid unpleasant surroundings, without the omission of a single repulsive or disagreeable detail which could help to realise the story and its moral. For this reason there is a constant demand for Mrs. Talespinner’s books. The newspaper critics may abuse them, but the publishers keep a commercial eye upon them, and everybody reads them. Therefore Mrs. Talespinner may regard herself as a success.

So far I have told you about my friend in her literary, or, I may say, her public capacity only. But to really appreciate Mrs. Talespinner, one must know her in her home, one must have enjoyed her frequent companionship. Outsiders, who judge her only from the virile vigour of her writings, and the audacity of her subjects and their treatment, or those even who know her only through the daring frankness of her conversation, can have no idea of the essential womanliness of her nature. No woman, perhaps, ever so thoroughly got mentally on the outside of herself, and lived intellectually apart from her own womanhood. Thus she is a kind of female version of “Hyde and Jekyll,” the Hyde being her literary personality, the Jekyll her sentimental self. It is, therefore, very difficult to know her as she actually is. She will, for instance, catch at some view of a subject which is in direct opposition to that held by those with whom she is conversing, and will obstinately argue it out, merely for the intellectual pleasure she derives from the independence of the position she has assumed. She may really be in exact accord with her hearers, but the delight to her of saying startling things, and of warring with words, is similar to that experienced by the skilful boxer in a bout with the gloves. But she is not a good stayer, and she is frequently beaten by an argumentative blow that is straight and strong, while she is honest enough to own her defeat afterwards, though perhaps not immediately.

She always relies on her strength, but yet knows her weakness; for she will frankly avow that she is easily influenced. In the course of conversation, however, she will sometimes be carried away by fine-sounding phrases which, analysed, are mere verbiage. She will make statements which may be quite foreign to her real nature, and, to those who do not know her, she will convey an entirely false impression of her mental tone, though her mind will have flashed its vitality before them like a heliograph. The essential qualities of her mind, in fact, are catholicity of interest, active audacity, and the quickness and vividness with which she receives an idea, or perceives a fact, and passes it out again through the crucible of her own sentiency and experience. It is the same whether she be conversing on any topic of the day or writing one of her stories. The idyls and the epics of life, the romantic love-story, the heroism of noble souls, interest her without impelling her pen to activity; but her literary and conversational enthusiasm is aroused by those sordid realities which the daily journals bring to light, by those stories of life in which the morality is crook-backed and twisted and the humanity limps with a cloven hoof.

Yet Mrs. Talespinner herself has none of these moral twistings, though it is through no fault of her own if opinions to the contrary get abroad; for she has that perverse spirit which always prompts the excursionist to walk in those places where he reads that “trespassers will be prosecuted.” True, this very spirit dates from Eve herself, but it is the key-note of the modern “realistic” novelist. Conventionality writes up the warning, and the literary realist defiantly trespasses, and takes the consequences, which are invariably notoriety and its attendant commercial success.

Mrs. Talespinner is, as a matter of fact, morally quite conventional, though she indulges in conversational and literary unconventionalities. But, fortunately, she has a husband who understands her as woman while he admires her as writer, being able to distinguish between her intellectual self and her sentimental. Thus he can sympathise with her literary ambitions without necessarily approving the results, and thus he finds happiness in his home, where a less discriminating and less generous man might find only domestic unrest. For with Mrs. Talespinner her literary work is the dominating interest of her life, though she will tell you, and convince herself, that all her ambition is centred in her little sons, whom she purposes educating with a view to their one day being Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, as these, to quote her own words are “the only professions which are not overcrowded.” This is the extent of Mrs. Talespinner’s practical interest in her nursery—the future careers of her baby sons. She does not spend much time with them during the day, not that she is not very fond of them, but children fidget her and interrupt her writing. When, however, she does admit them to her presence, she does not attempt to play with them, but talks to them seriously and grandly of her pride in their progress towards high estates, and makes them promise, poor little mites! to be Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors, and instructs them prematurely in their duties. As to seeing to the details of their nursery existence—well, they have an excellent and trustworthy nurse, and their father enjoys that kind of thing. Hers is the pride and privilege to care for them intellectually. She has made up her mind that they shall be great men, that their greatness may reflect upon her as their mother, and she candidly tells you that she only wishes to write brilliantly and successfully enough for people in after years to say, “No wonder they are such talented men—they had a clever mother.”

Mrs. Talespinner’s husband, by his perpetual patience, good-humour, and large-mindedness, prevents his wife’s literary engrossment becoming domestically aggressive. Like all women, when they undertake any professional occupation, she is what one may call “shoppy.” She talks continually about her works in process of composition, and regards everything from the point of view of “copy.” Whenever she makes any new acquaintance who perhaps is not conversant with her literary fame, she soon insidiously alludes to her writings, and introduces quotations from them; and then her husband, who is something of a wag in his way, will seriously remark, “You may perhaps have gathered that my wife writes a little,” and then there will be a general laugh, and Mrs. Talespinner’s literary exuberance and self-advertisement will pass as humorous, and become a source of interest instead of boredom to her new acquaintances. And one special virtue of Mrs. Talespinner’s is that she is quite as open to good-humoured chaff as to criticism, and is as ready to laugh at herself as at any one else. She has the _fin-de-siècle_ lack of reverence, and will hold nothing sacred from a joke or a humorous analysis—not even the family dinner. Though she can order as good a dinner as any one of my acquaintance, and has the worldly wisdom to cultivate the constancy of an excellent cook by allowing her to be the autocrat of the kitchen, she sometimes takes it into her head to direct the tradesmen not to call for orders, as the ringing of bells disturbs her flow of thought. Then she quite forgets to send her directions until her husband comes home from the City and hungrily suggests dinner, which is consequently two or three hours late. But he, good-natured man, is quite satisfied to wait, so long as his wife has been content with her day’s work.

Then her casual way of housekeeping occurs to them both as humorous, and perhaps while they are still at dinner the printer’s proof of some serial story she is writing for a newspaper will arrive, and the rest of the meal will have to take care of itself. Surely her husband can help himself to the pudding; besides some day his amiability and devotion will furnish her with “copy,” and how can she, when she comes to draw him as a character, describe his qualities with her customary graphic power unless she tests them under all circumstances? And her husband falling in with her literary humour, accepts all these things with equanimity. For he knows her, not only in her moods of literary enthusiasm or “shoppiness,” or when she is playing with paradoxes and making sensational statements merely for bravado. He knows her when she is wooed to gentler moods by the soft persuasive influence of the twilight, when the evening star “washes the dusk with silver,” and the realities of life lose themselves in the mystic poetry of the hour, and every feeling sings in tune the divine melody of love, when the realistic lady-novelist, as well as the woman of humble toil, mutely realises that it is a good thing to be loved by a good husband and sweet children. He knows her then, and both are content for always.

_THE DISAPPOINTED SPINSTER_

Though I have always disputed the truth of the proverb that “the tailor makes the man”—since the more fashionably I am dressed the less I feel of my individual manhood—I am perfectly sure that the lover, not the dressmaker, makes the woman. As he pulls the strings of her heart, so can he shape her life, and according as he makes her love react upon herself with joy or sorrow, so can he develop the tendencies of her temperament, and, through all circumstances, bring out the sweet or the sour in her nature. Disappointment in love will embitter the cynical-minded woman as no mere loss of fortune could, and make her constantly aggressive in her attitude towards both her own and the opposite sex; whereas, to the woman of gentle faith, it will simply lend the crown of patient sisterhood with all men and all women, nor will it in the least destroy her faith in the beautiful beneficence of the natural order of marriage. If you hear a spinster who has passed her thirtieth year inveighing in set and bitter terms against the joys and advantages of the married state, be sure she has had her matrimonial opportunity and missed it, while she gave the love of her girlhood to a “detrimental.”

“Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken; Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be overtaken.”

Miss Singleton is in the “fallen leaf” age, for the sweet blossom-time of girlhood has long since passed her by, and she has now seen some thirty-five summers. Yet in many respects she is as young as ever, and when she goes out to a dance she has no lack of partners—and the best dancers too, mind you—while on the tennis court she is always in much demand. For she plays tennis with an activity and a style that would put “sweet seventeen” to the blush, and the rhythm and the vigour of her waltzing have outlived the practical admiration of almost two decades of partners. Indeed, not having the natural stress of motherhood to bear, like those women who are wives, Miss Singleton’s physical energy and need of active excitement still find vent in these pursuits, perhaps with more zest even than in the days of her girlhood.

See her on the tennis court. She is completely absorbed in the game, mentally and physically, and any mistake on her own part, or bad stroke on the part of her partner, provokes her to irritability. It is something more than a mere game to her, it is the supreme life-interest of the moment. She must play up with all her might and main; for life is long and youth is fleeting, and while she can still run about, and make swift, sure strokes with her racquet, she can make-believe to herself that she is not getting _passée_; but to give up dancing and tennis would be to confess herself at once an old maid—horrible thought, and quite absurd.

Why, look at her as she enters a ball-room. Perhaps there is just a suspicion of weariness and contemptuous discontent in her countenance, but, the moment she is recognised, a crowd of youths collect around her clamouring for her card, and soon she is all aglow with the excitement of the dance and the amusing admiration of the dancing men. They are only ingenuous youths, though, you will observe, or men who regard women’s society as a mere pastime. They are not the marrying men, not men who are seeking the companionship and comfort of a wife. Those are to be found dancing with or talking to the young girls, whose characters are not yet formed by time and experience, who are therefore the more malleable for the magnanimities of marriage, its responsibilities, its sacrifices, and its necessity for mutual give and take. There is no sign of malleability about Miss Singleton; there might have been once, ere the gentleness of hopeful girlhood had been turned to the hardness of disappointed womanhood. But now men do not think of her as a possible wife, or if they do it is negatively. “I like that Miss Singleton; she dances splendidly, and can give you an answer back; says devilish smart things too, but I pity any one who married her: she would soon let him see who was master, and it wouldn’t be he.”

Yes, Miss Singleton would require a very clever, strong, and determined man to bring her into matrimonial harmony now. She has acquired too much of the habit of self-reliance and self-assertion; a long course of fruitless flirtation, in which she has fenced both with experts and with amateurs, has caused her to assume towards men always an attitude of defiant defence, besides, the restlessness born of an unsatisfied life has become chronic with her. She is never content to remain at home: her craving for amusement and excitement is unceasing, and strangers rather than those who belong to her home-circle always claim her first attention.

However charming and amusing she may be in society, at home she keeps everything in a ferment, and she is contented with nothing. She domineers over her parents, as well as over her brothers and sisters, her cousins, and intimate friends. She captiously criticises whatever they do, and wishes to rearrange and direct everything. She is jealous of her relatives and friends who marry, though she constantly avers that nothing would ever induce her to take unto herself a husband, that the idea of a woman giving up her personal independence and freedom to a man is absolutely repulsive to her, while she professes a sort of contemptuous pity for all those who do voluntarily fall into this degrading condition. “Marriage is a snare for the weak-minded, and a delusion for fools,” she will tell you, and she will pretend that she believes it.

But it was not always so. When I first knew Kate Singleton she was a bright, sympathetic girl of eighteen, and I envied the man who should some day call her his wife. She had certainly both will and character, but these were tempered by true womanly sensibility, and a good and magnanimous man’s love might have helped her to develop into a delightful woman and an excellent wife. Unfortunately, however, the romantic element in her nature was appealed to by the fascinations of a man who was not good, though he understood women’s weaknesses fatally well, and knew how to simulate the qualities that would most readily appeal to any particular girl. The cynical would perhaps excuse him with that cheap and common plea which covers so much of the wrong done in this world: “He was no worse than other men.” He had certainly committed no crime; only he had lived fast, perhaps a little faster than most men of his age. But he was a handsome young man, with a very engaging manner, a generous income, and many temptations; so, of course, it did not take him long to spend his patrimony, though he enjoyed its full value in luxurious pastimes and dissipation. Then, having nothing but debts and a rake’s reputation to his name, he endeavoured to make matrimonial capital out of his good looks and personal fascination. He met Kate Singleton, whose father he had understood would give her a handsome dowry, and perceiving the vulnerable place in her affections, he appealed to her sympathies through the story of his troubles and temptations. He worked with such infinite care and such insidious art, while he simulated the reckless, generous impulses of a simple-minded, honest-hearted hero of melodrama, that she gave her entire love to him, and became his promised wife. Her parents opposed the marriage, seeing facts with the eyes of experience, but she held to her determination, defiantly proclaimed her faith in the man of her choice, and fought in defence of her love as fiercely as a lioness defends her cubs. Then all her womanhood was aroused, and mind and feeling put forth their strength for love had waked the heroine in her, and the spirit of romance exercised its magic influence upon her life.

But the truth broke upon her with sudden cruelty. In an unguarded moment of anxiety concerning her wedding portion, should she succeed in obtaining her parents’ consent, the lover revealed the mercenary motive of his wooing. Her pride was wounded, her love insulted, and by this lightning-shock all her better, truer self was blighted in its growth. All the taunts that she had endured in defence of her love, all the sanctity of feeling laid bare to the callous stare of this man, recoiled upon her like the backwash of a wave of bitter waters, turning all her sweetness sour. Then she grew to mistrust all men because of the falseness of that one, and for a time she really set her face against marriage, and that, too, when her face had yet the bloom of girlhood upon it.

After a while, however, there came in her life an Indian summer of love-longings and marriage-hopes, but by that time the bitterness of doubt and disappointment had hardened the tone of her voice, drawn her mouth to a set sternness, and tainted her mind with cynicism. So now, though there be plenty to flirt with her, there be none who strive to lure back the softness of her nature through the gentle persuasion of love, and no doubt she has recognised this, for she always pretends to laugh at sentiment, and to regard emotion as a species of hysteria. But once I chanced to notice her while a girl, with a voice that sounded like the very incarnation of music—she was singing a simple, pathetic little folk-song.

It was out in a garden on a summer’s night, “and music and moonlight and feeling were one,” and, as Kate Singleton sat in the shadow of a tree, the tears rolled down her cheek, and I am sure that a sympathetic wooer might then have struck the vein of true womanliness in her with all the old softness, all the old lovableness of girlhood. But the melting mood was brief, for soon afterwards, in the gaslight of the drawing room, there were no traces of tears on her face, no gentle signs in her voice of a recent “session of sweet silent thought.” She was busily challenging to flirtation a man whom she had artfully taken from the side of a pretty young girl to whom his words were as honey. It was a petty episode quite unworthy of her, for at best the conquest would be but for an evening, while it would cause the young girl a real heart-pang. But this was one of the atoms of excitement that make her life tolerable to her; her dominant desire is to make men feel the pangs of unreturned love, or, failing that, her pleasure is to flirt with them up to a point and then to turn round and snub them. This affords her amusement as well as vent for bitterness of feeling.

Some unmarried women can soothe their solitary souls with charity of act and feeling, and bless other people’s lives with their benevolence, thus directing the love and sympathy that one man has missed into the wider channel of philanthropy. But these, possibly, have never been crossed in love, or, if they have, they are the women of whom the silent, uncomplaining martyrs of the world are made. Miss Singleton, however, is none of these. She cannot forgive, especially as she finds it impossible to forget.