Her Royal Highness Woman Part 12

Any law is bad that punishes, injures, or annoys thousands of good, innocent people in order to stop the mischief done by a few--a very few, after all--blackguards and scoundrels.

The Anglo-Saxon should, by all means, preach temperance, which means moderation, not total abstinence. What they preach overreaches the mark, and does no good. When you say that a country enjoys a _temperate_ climate, that does not mean that it has no climate at all, but enjoys a moderate one, neither too hot nor too cold.

These same Anglo-Saxons should not despise, but admire and envy, those who can enjoy, like men of understanding, like gentlemen, the glorious gifts of G.o.d to man without ever making fools of themselves. For these the law should be made.

If your husband or son, dear lady, would like to have a gla.s.s of wine or beer with his dinner, let him have it in your sweet and wholesome presence. Don't make a hypocrite of him. Don't compel him to go and hide himself in his club, or, worse, in a saloon, or, worse still, don't allow him to go and lose his manhood's dignity by crawling on all fours under the counter of a drug-store.

There is no virtue in compulsion. There is virtue only in liberty.

Ah! how I remember admiring in the hot days of blue-ribbonism in England that free Briton I once met who had a yellow ribbon in his b.u.t.ton-hole!

'What's that you have on?' I said to him.

'That's a yellow ribbon,' he replied. 'I belong to the Yellow-Ribbon Army.'

'Ah! and what is it the Yellow-Ribbon Army do?' I inquired.

'What do we do?' he said. 'Why, we eat what we likes, we drink what we likes, and we don't care a d---- for n.o.body!'

There are well-meaning, most highly estimable, and talented ladies who go about the world preaching temperance--that is to say, total abstinence, not moderation.

Now, as a rule, these ladies have special reasons for so doing. Very often they have led a life of sorrow and misery with wretched husbands, and they should be pitied. But hundreds of thousands of women have good husbands who have not to be cured of habits which they never in their lives indulged in, and who would be condemned to deny themselves every little luxury that helps make life cheerful when used with moderation and discretion, if the preachings of these often unfortunate ladies were to take the shape of laws.

I have often had to listen to self-confessed reformed drunkards who preached to me, who never was once drunk in my life. The thing is ludicrous.

There exist, among the Anglo-Saxons, people to whom the strains of Wagner and Beethoven's music say absolutely nothing, to whom the Venus of Milo is indecent. They declare music wicked, unless it is out of tune, dancing absolutely shocking, and the fine arts immoral, and if they had their way, they would close the concert-halls and the museums on every day of the week. Because their minds are distorted, they would condemn people with lofty and artistic minds to never hear a masterpiece of music or behold a masterpiece of painting or statuary. I have met people who declared they would never again set foot inside the walls of the Louvre and of the British Museum. And if the Anglo-Saxon fanatics, those arch-enemies of art, make a little more progress, the future of that great inst.i.tution is not safe.

As everybody knows, there exist in Great Britain and in America thousands of people who declare the stage to be a most wicked and immoral inst.i.tution. For them a theatre is so contaminated a place that they would not go inside one even to hear a Bishop preach a sermon from the stage. For instance, in several colonial cities I appeared in the princ.i.p.al theatre; but my manager, on a return visit, always made me appear in the town-hall, or some other place of the kind, to attract the portion of the population who would not have come to hear me lecture inside a theatre.

All these movements, headed by women, are in the wrong direction. They interfere with the liberties of a great people, and punish thousands and thousands of good, orderly, well-behaved people to reach a score or two of bad ones, whom they often fail to reach, and oftener still fail to cure. I repeat it: There are many thousands of good people in this world for a very few thousands of bad ones. The laws should aim at reaching the former and protecting them. This world is considerably better than the fanatics of all denominations and superst.i.tions would make us believe. For seventeen years I have travelled all over the world, and I have never met any but honourable people to deal with. For instance, I have given 2,300 lectures in my life, and only once did I come across a man who behaved dishonestly towards me. He ran away with the cash while I was speaking; but then it was on Sunday, and some good pious people said to me that Providence, in its wisdom, had punished me for my wickedness. I must say that I never could see very clearly why Providence, in its wisdom, should have allowed the thief to safely run away with the money; but the ways of Providence are inscrutable, and its decrees should not be discussed. I might add that the lecture was more of a harmless address--almost a little sermon--on the duty of cheerfulness; but two or three times it caused the audience to smile, and this is simply too awful to think of.

Yes, the world is good, very good, in spite of the calumnies that are constantly hurled at its face by the Pharisees of Anglo-Saxondom. Yes, full of good men, crammed with good women, and the excellent ladies of the philanthropic societies of America should take it for granted that there are many, many good and virtuous people besides themselves.

You don't cut down an apple-tree because there are two or three bad apples on it. You cut down the two or three bad apples, and all your efforts tend to see that the hundreds of good ones are made healthy, happy, and comfortable.

I have no hesitation in declaring, after six visits to that great and most hospitable country, that the American women of good society are probably the most intelligent, bright, and brilliant, and certainly the best educated and the most interesting, women in the world.

But when I see what some American women can do in public life, outside of the beautiful sphere in which they were intended to reign supreme, I feel ready to appreciate and echo the remark that Frederick the Great was wont to make when he met a woman alone in the streets of Berlin:

'What are you doing here? Go home and look after your house and your children!'

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LIBERTY OF ANGLO-SAXON WOMEN

The mistakes made by foreigners--Misconstructions--Educational systems--Girls do not lose their charm by independence.

Continental men visiting England and the United States do not, as a rule, understand the comparative familiarity with which they are treated by women to whom they have been properly introduced. They are often in danger of misinterpreting their kindness of manner, and regarding as affectionate advances or invitations to flirt what are meant as only polite attentions.

This awkward error is one into which not only Frenchmen, but all men of Continental Europe, are very apt to fall, unless they happen to be men of fine perceptions, in other words, perfect gentlemen. Young girls in France are kept so much to themselves, and young men are so completely separated from them, that when one of the latter finds himself, through some accident or fault of supervision, alone in presence of one of the former, he feels called upon as a man to make himself particularly pleasant, if not actually to make a declaration of love.

Of course, there is not in France anyone, not even the most conservative provincial mother, who does not admire, above all in America, that sweet liberty which is enjoyed by the women, married or unmarried. There is not one of those French mothers who would not like to give that same liberty to her own daughters. But how can she? Who shall be the first to do it?

It takes many generations to accept such a revolution in a system of education. People will have it that this Anglo-Saxon system would never do in France. Others even affirm that French people are incapable of shaking off perpetual thought of the relations between the s.e.xes; that in France men are always thinking about women and women about men--in fact, that it is in the blood. The proof that these people are wrong is that young men and girls, sons and daughters of French fathers and mothers, but educated from a tender age either in England or America, do behave absolutely like English or American youths. It is not in the blood: the different systems of education alone account for those different modes of thought.

And what a difference between the French girls of my boyhood and the French girls of the present day! Not that they are yet 'Daisy Millers,'

but at any rate they are no longer 'Eugenie Grandets.' Thirty years ago, a French girl well advanced in her twenties could not have, even in the early morning, gone across the street to see a friend or buy a pair of gloves without being accompanied by an elderly lady of the family or a lady's-maid. Thirty years ago, in my little native Brittany town, where a child of tender years would have been absolutely safe, an unmarried woman between forty and fifty would always be accompanied by a servant, even in daytime.

It was the correct thing to do. Indeed, a woman not married would always act in this manner as long as she thought that she was fit to be looked at by men. And very few women make up their minds to the loss of their charms. It even takes some of them a long time to become aware of that loss.

The French girl of thirty years ago, who was only allowed to read children's books, and never to set foot inside a theatre, now reads M.

Zola's novels, and goes to see the plays of Alexandre Dumas fils, and as she discusses these plays she comes to the conclusion that they are very clever and interesting, but hardly such as to take her mother to.

French women are now getting freer every day, and, with the use of liberty, will lose the little defect they sometimes possess--affectation.

They will become more and more natural and unaffected, and they will acquire that most charming and eminently American quality in a woman--unconventionality. They are now moving, not in the direction of innocent frivolity, but in that of greater independence. The time is soon coming when French girls will cease to regard marriage as a sort of emanc.i.p.ation, and will perhaps look upon it, as an American lady novelist of my acquaintance does, as a rather hard way of making a living.

Those French girls will not lose their charms by the enjoyment of greater liberty and independence. The American women have thus improved theirs.

CHAPTER XXIX

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN WOMEN HAVE NO LOVE TO SPARE FOR ONE ANOTHER

England and America are two branches of a family who once quarrelled--For their common interests they may make it up, but there will never be any love lost--There are no such quarrels to patch up as family ones.

I have heard a great deal about 'our kith and kin,' 'our cousins across the Atlantic,' 'blood is thicker than water,' 'the Anglo-Saxon race,'

'the English-speaking people,' 'the Anglo-American alliance,' and other more or less venerable plat.i.tudes with which music-hall managers in England have for some time succeeded in bringing down the gallery, on Sat.u.r.day nights especially. I have heard all that, and, in company with most Americans, I have laughed in my sleeve.

During their war with Spain, the Americans were grateful for English sympathy and moral support.

During the Transvaal War, the English, finding themselves isolated and blamed by the whole of Europe, hoped for American sympathy.

'I scratched your back, you scratch mine.'

This sympathy the English did not obtain, or, if they did, in a very small measure, and only among the inhabitants of Fifth Avenue and the 'Four Hundred' of a few large Eastern cities. I was in America for three months at the beginning of last year, and everywhere, from New York to New Orleans, I found ninety-nine Americans out of every hundred sympathizing with the Boers in their plucky and determined struggle for liberty and independence. Their skill and bravery appealed to a nation who, some hundred years ago, themselves fought successfully for their freedom.

Yet, as I had many times the opportunity of telling American audiences, 'In the Anglo-Boer struggle, it is not the Boers, but the English who are fighting for what your ancestors fought for so successfully during the War of Independence--the liberty of the citizen and good and honest government. I have sympathy for the Boers on account of their ignorant patriotism and bravery; but, for the sake of humanity and civilization, I hope the English will win.'

It is true that I got applause for this statement, it is true that the presidents of many American universities thanked me for putting the truth and the facts of the question plainly before the students; but I am afraid I made very few converts to the pro-English cause, although I believe I was more successful on the platform in America than in France, where I got enthusiastically hissed and had several narrow escapes of being mobbed for expressing my rather pro-English sentiments.

The more charitable of my compatriots said it was only fair for a Frenchman who had long enjoyed the hospitality of the English to speak well of them abroad. Some went so far as to suggest that I was probably in the pay of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.