Relating to Various Phenomena attending the Progress of the Sex along Lines of the Greatest Resistance
My own idea,” said Uncle Dudley, “is that women ought to be confined to barracks during elections just the same as soldiers.”
“I was quite prepared to find you entertaining views of that character,” remarked Miss Wallaby, with virginal severity. “Men who have wandered about the less advanced parts of the earth, and spent long periods of time in contact with inferior civilisations, quite generally do feel that way. Life in the Colonies, and in similar rude and remote regions, does produce that effect upon the masculine mind. But here in England, the nerve-centre of the English-speaking race, the point of concentration from which radiate all the impulses of refinement and culture that distinguish our generation, men are coming to see these matters in a different light. They no longer refuse to listen to the overwhelming arguments in favour of entire feminine equality——”
“Oh, I admit that at once,” broke in Uncle Dudley. “But do women nowadays believe in equality among themselves? In my youth they used to devote pretty well all their energies to showing how much superior they were to other women.”
“I spoke of the masculine attitude,” said Miss Wallaby, coldly. “Viewed intelligently, the gradations and classifications which we maintain among ourselves, at the cost of such infinite trouble and personal self-sacrifice, are the very foundation upon which rests the superstructure of British Society.”
“I admit that, too,” Uncle Dudley hastened to put in. “Really, we are getting on very nicely.”
Miss Wallaby ignored the interruption altogether. “The point is,” she went on, “that the male mind in England is coming—with characteristic slowness, no doubt, but still coming—to recognise the necessity of securing the very fullest and most complete participation of my sex in public affairs. As the diffusion of enlightenment progresses, men will more and more abandon the coarse and egoistic standards of their days of domination by brute force, and turn instead to the ideals of purity and sweetness which Woman in Politics typifies. It has been observed that one may pick out the future rulers of England in each coming generation by scanning the honour-lists of Oxford and Cambridge. How happy a day it will be for England, and civilisation, when this is said of Girton and Newnham as well!”
“I spent a summer in the State of Maine once, some years ago,” said Uncle Dudley. “That’s the State, you know, where they’ve had a Prohibition law now for nearly forty years. The excess of females over males is larger there, I believe, than it is anywhere else in the world—owing to the fact that all the young men who are worth their salt emigrate to some other State as soon as they’ve saved up enough for a railway-ticket. The men that you do see lounging around there, in the small villages, are all minding the baby, or sitting on the doorstep shelling peas, or out in the backyard, with their mouths full of clothes-pins, hanging up sheets and pillow-cases on the line to dry. The women there take a very active part in politics—and every census shows that Maine’s population has diminished. Shipbuilding has almost ceased, farms are being abandoned yearly, the State is mortgaged up to its eyebrows, and you get nothing but fried clams and huckleberry-pie for breakfast—but, of course, I suppose there is a good deal of purity and sweetness.”
Miss Wallaby rose and walked away from us; the black velvet riband around her neck, the glint of gas-light on her eyeglasses, the wearied haughtiness on her swarthy, high-nosed face, seemed to unite in saying to us that we were very poor creatures indeed.
“She’s been down to the Retired Licensed Victuallers’ Division of Surrey, you know,” exclaimed Uncle Dudley, “making speeches in favour of the sitting Member, old Sir Watkyn Hump.”
“Ah, that accounts for the milk in the cocoa-nut,” I remarked.
“Well, no,” my friend mused aloud, “I fancy young Hump accounts for that. See—she’s gone and cut him out from under the Timby-Hucks’s guns.”
It was at one of Mrs Albert Grundy’s evenings at home, and Uncle Dudley and I now had possession of a quiet corner to ourselves. From this pleasant vantage-ground we indolently surveyed the throng surrounding Mrs Albert at the piano end of the room, and stretching off through the open double doors into the adjoining chamber—a throng of dazzling arms and shoulders, of light-hued satins and fluffy stuffs, of waving feathers, and splendid piles of braided hair, and mostly comely faces wreathed in politic smiles. Here and there the mass of pinks and whites and creams was broken abruptly by a black coat with a hat under its sleeve. Dudley and I idly commented upon the fact that almost all these coats belonged to undersized elderly men, generally with spectacles and a grey beard, and we noted with placid interest that as they came in—announced in stentorian tones as Mr and Mrs So-and-so—their wives as a rule were several inches taller and many many years younger than themselves.
Then it was entertaining, too, to watch Mrs Albert shake hands with these newcomers. She knew just at what angle each preferred that ceremony, keeping her knuckles well down in welcoming the more sophisticated and up-to-date people from about Cromwell Road and the Park, but elevating them breast-high to greet those from around Brompton way, and hoisting them quite up to the chin-level with the guests from beyond Earl’s Court, who were still in the toils of last year’s fashions.
“Smart woman, that sister of mine!” said Uncle Dudley. “See the way she’s manoeuvred her shoulder around in front of the Timby-Hucks’s nose, so as to head her off from getting in and being introduced to the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn. And—hello! by George, she’s won!—there’s the Dowager Countess of Thames-Ditton coming in! You’ll never know the anguish, my boy, that was caused by the uncertainty whether she would come or not. Emily hasn’t been able to eat these past four days, expecting every moment the knock of the postman bringing her ladyship’s refusal to come. The only thing that enabled her to keep up, she said, was fixing her mind resolutely on the fact that the aristocracy are notoriously impolite about answering invitations. But now, happy woman—her cup is fairly running over. This is a great night for Fernbank. And—look!—hanged if that girl isn’t trying to edge her way in there, too! See how prettily Emily managed that? Oh, Timby-Hucks! Timby-Hucks! you’ve put your foot in it this time. You’ll never figure on the free-list for this show again.”
Misfortune indeed claimed Miss Timby-Hucks for its very own. Mrs Albert had twice adroitly interposed her well-rounded shoulders between that enterprising young woman and social eminence—the second time with quite obvious determination of purpose. And there, too, behind the door, young Mr Hump bent his sloping shoulders and cliff-like collar humbly over Miss Wallaby’s chair, listening with all his considerable ears to her selected monologues. Ah, the vanity of human aspirations!
Casting an heroic glance over the field of defeat, Miss Timby-Hucks’s eye lighted upon our corner, and on the instant her two upper front teeth gleamed in a smile of relief. At all events, we were left—and she came towards us with a decisive step.
“I’ve hardly seen you since the Academy,” she said in her sprightly way to me, after we had all shaken hands, and she had seated herself between us on the sofa.
“And how did your article come out?” I asked politely.
“Oh, it never came out at all,” she replied. “It seems it got left over too long. The editor said it was owing to the pressure of interesting monkey-language matter upon his columns; but I believe it was just because I’m a lady journalist, and so does the cousin of Mrs Umpelbaum, the proprietor’s wife. It must have been that—because, long after the editor gave this excuse, there were the daily papers still printing their criticisms, ‘Eleventh Notice of the Royal Academy,’ ‘The Spring Exhibitions—Fourteenth Article,’ and so on. I taxed him with it—told him I heard they had some still left, that they were going to begin printing again after the elections were over—but he said it was different with dailies. All they needed were advertisements and market reports, and police news, and telegrams about the Macedonian frontier, and they could print art criticisms and book reviews whole years after they should have appeared, because nobody ever read them when they were printed—but weeklies had to be absolutely up to date.”
“Evil luck does pursue you!” I said, compassionately. “So you haven’t got into print at all?”
“O I’m not a bit cast down,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks, with jaunty confidence. “There’s no such word as fail in my book. The way to succeed is just to keep pegging away. I know of one lady-journalist who went every day for nine weeks to interview the Countess of Wimps about her second son’s having been warned off Newmarket Heath. Every day she was refused admittance—once she got into the hall and was put out by a brutal footman—but it never unnerved her. Each morning she went again. And she would have succeeded by this time, probably—only the Countess suddenly left England to spend the summer in Egypt.”
“Yes, Wady Halfa has its advantages, even in July,” said Uncle Dudley. “It is warm, and there are insects, but one is allowed by law to kill them—in Egypt.”