The Champagne Standard Part 16

However, it is not only men women soft-soap--they soft-soap each other as well. The motives are twofold. Sometimes the wielder of the bucket has an axe to grind, or she likes to be popular at a cheap price. She always says something agreeable, and it is indeed a steel-clad heart that can resist. How feel anything but friendly when a dear feminine gusher declares that you have the loveliest clothes, the most wonderful brains, the brightest eyes, the most agreeable husband, and the best cook in the world! The chances are that you hated her as she swam up and favoured your unyielding hand with cordial pumping; but she thought--no, she didn't think, the process is automatic, she merely dropped a penny in the slot of your evident antagonism on the chance of its possibly resulting in a cool invitation to call, a crush tea or a lunch: nothing is to be despised, for you never can tell!

When a woman decides to say something real nice she stops at nothing.

She even sacrifices her nearest and dearest.

"How is that handsome, brilliant boy of yours?" a devoted mother asked me the other day. "How I wish my Jack were like him! But he's only just a dear, good, ordinary boy who'll never set the Thames on fire; well, we can't all be the mother of a genius!" Now, could one do anything else than invite that truly discriminating woman to lunch?

As I said before, it is some people's mission to draw others out. Some take everything hard, among other things, society. They hate to be among their kind, but they hate just as much the dignity of solitude; so they compromise matters by going about as dull and dreary as graven images, surrounded by a private atmosphere of frost. Then there are the adaptable ones who talk and laugh, while down in their souls they are bored to death. But never mind about being bored, the crime is to look bored. Adaptability is distinctly not an English national trait, rather is it American, the race made up of all races, and for this reason American society is, even if only on the surface,--and who in society ever gets below the surface?--more amusing than English society.

Oh, the heavenly rest and comfort when you pause exhausted after having pumped at a perfectly empty human being to find the process applied to yourself, and after all you _do_ respond.

I was struck by it the other day when, in a roomful of English people who had been talked to and trotted out and made to show their best paces each in his own little field, there came to the charming, but exhausted, hostess a Frenchman who proceeded to draw her out. The sweet restfulness of it! She had not to originate a single idea, and I am perfectly sure that every other man in the room was holding forth on some subject originated by the woman he was talking to; he was likely to talk till he had run down, and then she would have to wind him up with a new subject. If she didn't he would go away and leave her mortified and alone, and a woman can stand being bored, but she cannot stand looking deserted. A lovely woman told me all about it once.

"The reason I am so popular," she said frankly, "is because I flatter the men to the top of their bent. Vanity and love make the world go round,--vanity first and love a long way after. Nothing else.

"Tell a woman she is perfect and she doubts you--sometimes. But tell a man that (one can in all sorts of ways), why, he only thinks it is his due--possibly he will think you are clever. Most men are stupid--I don't mean their working brains, their bread-and-b.u.t.ter brains, but their society brains. They swallow anything you tell them. They originate everything in this blessed world--but conversation.

"If a man converses he discourses and he improves your mind. Now you don't always want to have your mind improved! I don't say he doesn't know how to make love; but that doesn't count, for after all, making love is, often as not, silence _a deux_. So if he isn't improving your mind or making love he is stranded, and that is where we women come in.

"I don't want my mind improved at an afternoon tea, nor do I wish to be made love to over an uninspiring biscuit, and I should feel eternally disgraced if either of us looked bored; so I give him leading questions like sugar-plums, and while he nibbles away at each in turn till he has sucked it up, I have learnt to look at him with all my eyes--a kind of subdued rapture which I adjust according to the man, and then I detach my mind and consider what the clever stupid can talk about next.

"It isn't necessary to do anything but to smile, especially if you have nice teeth, as he does all the talking; but he'll think you are the cleverest woman going. Possibly you are, only he doesn't really know how clever you are! There are some women you have to treat in the same way, and they are either very distinguished and spoilt or they are very influential, or they have missions; but it's always a bore, and unless you are 'on the make'--a very ill-bred expression, I think--it's tiresome and doesn't pay. I don't mind being bored for the sake of a man, but I really won't be bored for the sake of a woman.

"But, my dear, it is very fatiguing at best, and no wonder the women crowd into retreats and nervine asylums. It isn't the pace that kills, but the unearthly dulness. After I have talked to half a dozen men for whom I make conversation I go home to bed, and the vitality I have left wouldn't be enough for an able-bodied worm.

"Do I ever find a man who is interested in me if he is not in love with me? Never! If he is in love with me; yes! That's another story. Then everything about me interests him, but, perhaps, even then only because I am his temporary ideal. I daresay it's only another form of selfishness, bless him! The stupidity of men! That's the reason they are so fatuous; they don't understand!

"Find me the man who isn't under the impression that some woman is hopelessly in love with him; and only because she has taken such pains to smile and coo at him, which she generally does to keep her hand in; any man is to her an instrument on which she, as an artist, finds it serviceable to play a few scales. To call men the ruling s.e.x,"--and my friend laughed till I saw every one of her beautiful teeth,--"they are the ruled s.e.x, and they get married by the women who want them most."

She evidently agreed with Thackeray. I don't, as I explained before.

"My dear, how many an innocent young thing has said 'Yes' when 'he' has had no earthly intention of asking for anything--certainly not for her dear little hand.

"'May I?' was possibly all he said, but he looked three thrilling volumes. 'Yes,' she whispered innocently, 'but do first ask papa.' How can he explain to her that the question trembling on his lips was whether he should bring her a lemon-squash or a strawberry-ice. He asked papa and they lived happily ever after, and it answered just as well.

Now what I wonder is," she concluded, "which is the stupider--he or she?"

One hasn't time to soft-soap one's relatives. For its successful use there is required a certain exhilaration of spirits which familiarity does not encourage. It is more easy to be charming to one's acquaintances or intimate enemies than to the bosom of one's family. One can be kinder to one's own, but more charming to the outside world, alas!

A woman doesn't go on for ever coquetting with her husband--it is a pity, but it's true. Perhaps if it were less true there would be fewer divorces. When, in the happy past, your husband was your lover and he looked at you with adoring eyes, why, then you could be charming,--at least for a few hours, because to be charming longer gets on one's nerves. Later, when you are married and he won't get up in the morning, and you say to him severely, "Samuel, are you never going to get up?

It's nine o'clock, and cook says she'll give notice, for she can't and she won't live in such a late family," and your Samuel grunts, turns over, and hurriedly takes forty more winks, how can you possibly be charming just then?

Nor can you murmur to your Samuel that he is the most interesting man you ever met, and that his brain is superior to all other brains. He doesn't care a rap what you think about his brains, and he'd much rather you wouldn't bother him but go downstairs; and so you do go downstairs in that very unbecoming frock of your pre-married days in which you wouldn't have had him see you for worlds. But now it has come again to the fore, ever since the time Samuel said pleasantly--he certainly has no talent for soft-soap--that after people have been married a year neither knows how the other looks. This from your Samuel, for whose sake you ran up an awful dressmaker's bill in other days. So you unearth your hideous frock with a desperate sigh.

But you always know how your Samuel looks, and when he wears an unbecoming necktie you grieve and nag and give him no peace. Perhaps it were well, after all, if a bit of soft-soap could be bottled up during courting-time and labelled "To be used after marriage."

When men soft-soap men it is in devious ways. One of the most subtle, if you are a little man and you wish to flatter a great man, is to disagree with him. He is much impressed by your independence, and he is sorry for you too, because you own up to your awful presumption, and by inference you can soft-soap him up and down just as they whitewash a wooden fence.

And he says he likes your independence, and he shakes hands with you and knows you the next time you meet, and calls you "My independent young friend," and invites you to luncheon. Now, had you agreed with every word he said you would have been only one of the usual job-lot of admirers, and he wouldn't have remembered you from Adam.

Of course you have to administer disagreement with great caution, because when a man reaches the highest eminence there is nothing that makes him so mad as contradiction. The first sign of real greatness shows itself when you decline to be contradicted. If, as it is stated, Lord Beaconsfield never contradicted his Queen, then did he well deserve her most loyal friends.h.i.+p. The bliss of never being contradicted! for that alone it is worth being a queen; but of course that is essentially a royal prerogative. It is said that there are people who by the exercise of this great negative gift have worked their way up from being quite modest members of society until they are now s.h.i.+ning social lights.

Tell a man how great he is and will he come to tea? for there are crowds dying to meet him; why, of course he will come. Who has ever yet met a really celebrated recluse. One has heaps of recluses who professed to like solitude, but only in a crowd, but there was never one, however famous, who chose to exile himself in a desert island without the morning paper.

It is said of a famous poet, whose footsteps were much dogged by the enterprising tourist, that he complained bitterly and wrathfully of his inability to have even his own privacy; but that his bitterness and wrath were as nothing to what he felt when the blameless tripper was discovered to be paying no attention to him whatever. One wonders if this innocent form of soft-soap is out of fas.h.i.+on, or are the poets less great? How many pious pilgrims wandered to the old Colonial house in Cambridge, America, where Longfellow lived, and looked with awe at his front windows. Did not pilgrims by the car-load go to Concord to catch a glimpse of the great Emerson, while they leaned reverently across the philosopher's white picket-fence?

The poets of the past were accustomed to this innocent wors.h.i.+p; what about the poets of to-day? Do they also walk along the streets haughtily (like the ill.u.s.trious Mr. and Mrs. Crummles) whilst admiring pa.s.sers-by stop and say with bated breath, "This is the great Smith!" or is that involuntary form of flattery out of fas.h.i.+on, or haven't the new poets grown up yet?

Perhaps an ardent admirer might suggest Miss Marie Corelli as one to whom the twentieth century pilgrim makes pilgrimages; but that isn't fair, for how can any one distinguish her pilgrims from Shakespeare's pilgrims? Pilgrims are not labelled like trunks. One hardly ventures to say so, but it seems to me that in this Miss Corelli has taken an unfair advantage of Shakespeare and the other poets.

There is nothing so democratic as true greatness, and this is a democratic age, and everybody exhibits to the public. We are either a great orator or we loop the loop, or we are a transcendent poet, or we walk from Cheapside to the Marble Arch on a wager. But do we do all these great things alone, unseen or unheard of by the world? No, we don't! Not a bit of it! It is not praise we want--we want more. We clamour for soft-soap; we demand it at the point of the bayonet.

It is an age of coa.r.s.e effects, an age of advertis.e.m.e.nt. A poet could not conscientiously sing now about a rose left to bloom unseen, for excursion trains would be sure to be arranged there at reduced rates. It is a confidential age, and we demand a confidant as much as a matter of course as the heroine of the old-fas.h.i.+oned Italian opera,--in fact we demand the undivided attention of the whole world.

We sing our songs and listen greedily for the applause of the gallery; we meet with domestic misfortune, and we weep on the bosom of the divorce court, and the daily papers weep with us. We do not do good by stealth, but rather in such a way that we get a baronetcy or a decoration; so when you see a man all tinkley with little stars and things, you will know that he is always a very great and charitable man indeed, and charity is not only alms bestowed on the poor. It is the beauty of charity that it is not bigoted.

We put our breaking hearts under a microscope and make "copy" out of them and money and notoriety,--and notoriety in these days pays much better than mere celebrity, and what therefore so fitting a tribute to notoriety as soft-soap? Ah me! it is enough to make the cat laugh! I really have never understood this curious fact in natural history, though I know how hard it is to make a cat laugh; this whole morning I spent trying to make Mr. Boxer laugh (Mr. Boxer being the purry commander-in-chief of our mouse-holes), and did not succeed.

Our modern world is a hippodrome, and we demand hippodrome effects and thunders of applause, because ordinary applause cannot be heard. Watch the next painted face you see, and observe how familiarity with the process has coa.r.s.ened it. Not that one has any objection to paint if it is well done. It is a woman's duty to look her best; and if paint makes her more beautiful, let her put it on--but, one does implore, not with the trowel.

The other night there was a great unbecoming function, but then all great functions are unbecoming by reason of the presence of woman's arch-enemy--electricity. It is quite certain that the first electrician was not only deplorably ignorant of the social virtues of soft-soap, but he was, besides, a jilted and misanthropic old bachelor who avenged his wrongs by harnessing electricity to a lamp, and cynically rejoiced when, for the first time, he turned its cruel light on the wrinkles, the hair-dye, and the dull jaded eyes of Society, and changed the pink of art into an unconvincing blue.

It was on that same occasion that I became deeply impressed by the tiara of Great Britain, which, it appears, is a National Inst.i.tution, worn by the Aged instead of caps, only caps are much more comfortable. I also discovered that it need have nothing in common with the rest of the toilet; at any rate one worthy lady so adorned had a little breakfast-shawl about her shoulders.

If it is true that the ladies of the United States have recently plucked up enough courage to adopt the tiara of Great Britain, and should any one perhaps insinuate that this is inconsistent with austere republican principles, a sufficient and crus.h.i.+ng reply is that in America every woman is a "lady," and every "lady" is a queen.

To return to her of the tiara and the breakfast-shawl. One did wonder what illusion she laboured under when she fastened that diamond structure to the thin bandeaux of her faded hair, where it swayed insecurely. Did some one send the poor soul away from home and tell her she looked lovely, and as she trundled off in her brougham did fifty years slide temporarily from her old shoulders? After all, soft-soap has its virtues; it is just the thing for the aged!

What are illusions but soft-soap self-administered, and what would life be without illusions? Show me the heroic soul who can look into a mirror and who sees what she really sees! O self-administered soft-soap!

what does she really see?

Upon my word, I have come to the conclusion that a certain measure of soft-soap is not only a social necessity, it is more, it is a social duty; only one would like to offer a plea, just a little plea, for a fair division of labour! It is _so_ hard always to say delightful things, especially if you don't mean them! It is being a thirsty Ganymede at the feast of the G.o.ds.

O, great humourist of soft-soap, you made two mistakes when you invented your wonderful lubricator of social intercourse; not only, like patent medicine, does the dose require to be constantly increased, but you forgot to insist on what is most vital--a periodic change of parts.

My plea is that the soft-soaped one should occasionally be obliged to step down from his pedestal and turn his own insincere admiration, his surface enthusiasm, and the countless and well-meant lies with which he helps to make the existence of the soft-soaped so pleasant, upon that unwearied and energetic prevaricator, whose mission it is to praise, no matter how untruthfully.

Yes, even "little tin G.o.ds on wheels" should be made to step down from high Olympus and, in turn, serve their thirsting and patient Ganymede.

KITWYK

BY MRS. JOHN LANE

With numerous ill.u.s.trations by Albert Sterner, Howard Pyle, and George Wharton Edwards.

_SOME PRESS OPINIONS_

"Mrs. Lane has succeeded to admiration, and chiefly by reason of being so much interested in her theme herself that she makes no conscious effort to please. She just tells her tales with no more artifice than one might use in narrative by word of mouth, and she keeps the reader's interest as keenly alive as if he were really listening to an amusing story of what had once actually happened. Every one who seeks to be diverted will read 'Kitwyk' for its obvious qualities of entertainment."--_Times._