Her Royal Highness Woman Part 3

I know men who dare not change the place of a picture in their own house, for fear of being sneered at by their wives. Let your husband 'potter' about his house to his heart's content. Let his study be a lovely picture of disorder, and every time you enter that room, don't begin to turn up your nose at the door, and look everywhere to see if there is a little dust on the furniture.

When you have decided to go in for the spring-cleaning of your house, choose your time well and see that it fits in with one when your husband can have a little holiday. Spring-cleaning indulged in indiscriminately has been the cause of more disturbance in temper and language than all the immorality of the world put together.

Let the man smoke and the children romp all over the place. Don't compel them to withdraw, like culprits, one in some underground den, the others in a nursery at the top of the house. If some stuck-up prig of your acquaintance should call on you and spread the report that your house is not kept on the strictest lines of order and propriety, plead guilty, and show that woman, to obtain 'extenuating circ.u.mstances,' the marks of the kisses of your husband and children engraven on your cheerful, happy face.

Don't lavish yourself too much on your husband. Always leave something to be desired. If you saturate him with love, he will get tired of you.

When lots of people require your attention in your house and you have to reply to all in succession, do not exhaust your stock of sweetness, patience and gentleness on your friends, your relatives, your children and your servants, so that, when your husband's turn comes, you may not have to say to him with a frown: 'Now, what is it?'

He should be served first and best. Perhaps he deserves it. If not, your consideration for him may put it into his head to try and deserve it.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GENTLE ART OF RULING A HUSBAND

The rule of women over men is the survival of the fittest.

The best thing that can happen to a man is to be ruled by his wife; but she should rule him so discreetly, so diplomatically, that he could almost boast that it is he who rules her. At all events, he should remain very undecided which of the two it is that rules the other. And when a man is not quite sure that it is he who rules his wife, you may take it for granted that it is she who rules him. Of course, I start from this indispensable, fundamental element, that there is love between husband and wife. Without love existing in matrimonial life, no rule can be laid down, no advice can be given on the subject.

How is the art of ruling a husband to be learned? The American and the French girls are at a good school; they have only to study how Mamma does it. I have travelled all over the world, and so far I have discovered two countries only in which the men are in leading-strings and the women are the leaders--my own beloved one and the United States of America. In these two privileged nations the women lead the men by the nose; but in America the women boast of it, and I do not think they should. In France the women do not boast of it, but they do it, and with a vengeance. Yet, before the people a Frenchwoman will always say: 'Oh, I do so and so because it pleases my husband.' Dear little humbug!

does she, though! b.u.t.ter would not melt in her mouth when she says that.

Now, the rule of the women over the men, both in France and in America, is simply the survival of the fittest, the power of the most keen and intelligent; but for all that, and perfectly as he may realize it, a man objects to his submission being obvious to everybody. In public he will let his wife pa.s.s first; in the elevator with her he will take off his hat; in the street car he will give her a seat and remain standing.

All this is not submission; it is merely politeness. He behaves, not like a henpecked husband, but only as a gentleman, and a man should always be as polite to his wife as he would to any lady he comes in contact with. A French gentleman, who meets his wife in the street and stops to speak to her, remains with his head uncovered until she begs him to put on his hat. A French son does the same to his mother.

This leads me to the first and the most important principle of the art of ruling a husband, and that is, never to allow him to do to her, or before her, what she knows he would never think of doing to or before any lady of his acquaintance--at any rate, without her permission. The day on which either a husband or a wife says, 'Oh, never mind; it's my husband,' or 'Oh, it's only my wife; I can do as I please,' on that day, that awful day, Cupid packs up his traps, and when that little fellow is gone he never comes back; he is too busy visiting.

To rule a husband it is not at all necessary that the wife should be the more clever of the two, unless by clever you mean intelligent, much less that she should possess a better education than he. The latter qualification would probably lead her to rule him in an a.s.sertive and aggressive manner, which would be fatal to their happiness. Very few marriages are happy when the wife is the superior of her husband. I know very clever men, scientific and literary men of prodigious ability, who are completely ruled by charming little geese who are fortunate enough to possess the most enviable of gifts--common-sense, delicacy, refinement, consideration, amiability, devotion, unselfishness, and a good temper. These men enjoy the rule of their wives thoroughly.

G.o.d save you, my dear fellow-man, from the conceited woman who cannot do wrong! You will find that you cannot live up to that. If the day after you are married you discover that your wife is perfect, run away for your life. Perfection in a woman ought to be a cause for divorce.

In fact, never have anything to do with angels this side of the grave.

How I do love that simple, fascinating little woman who gently puts her arms round her husband's neck, kisses him, and confesses that she was wrong! What a brute that man is if he does not at once take that dear creature in his arms and make all the apologies he is capable of for behaving in such an ungentlemanly way as to force his wife to acknowledge that she was in the wrong! That man, if he is a gentleman, a man even, will spend weeks and weeks after such a confession attending to the smallest wishes of his wife. I would lay all I am worth in this world at the feet of a woman who would acknowledge that she was in the wrong. Most of them will argue and talk you deaf, dumb, blind, and lame, until, for peace' sake, you will say: 'Yes, dear, you are right, of course. How could I imagine for a single moment that you were not?' Then a ray of satisfaction flashes across her face, which seems to say to you: 'I knew you would have to acknowledge it.'

To rule your husband, my dear lady, do exactly as you please, but always pretend that you do as he pleases. That is where your ability comes in.

Men are ruled, as children are, by the prospect of a reward. The reward of your husband is your amiability, your sweetness, your devotion, and your beauty, of which you should take a constant care. Love has to be fed constantly. And always let him suppose that it is for him only that you wish to remain beautiful.

The woman who believes that she is a.s.serting her independence every time she puts on a hat particularly displeasing to her husband is as intelligent and clever as the Irishman who buys a return ticket at a railway office, and, on entering his compartment, says to his fellow-pa.s.sengers: 'I have played a good joke on the company, I have bought a return ticket--but I don't mean to return.'

CHAPTER IX

ART IN LOVE

Pleasure and happiness--Love is the poetry of the senses--The artistic temperament--The instrument and the instrumentalist--The defence of monogamy on artistic principles--Polygamy _versus_ monotony.

Pleasure is a pa.s.sing sensation. What the soul craves for is a permanent state. Pleasure is the satisfaction of the moment; happiness is the security of the morrow. Nothing but happiness gives satisfaction to the soul.

Thomas Carlyle spent his life in scolding the human race for trying to be happy. His diatribes should have been aimed only at those who are foolish enough to try to find happiness in pleasure.

Happiness is to be found in congenial work, in a regular and well-spent life, in obscurity and retirement, in sound and true friends.h.i.+p, and especially in the love of a man and a woman who thoroughly appreciate each other.

For instance, Carlyle abused money-making, that chief occupation of modern life which most people pursue in order to attain the great end, happiness. But men may find pleasure in money-grubbing, not happiness.

Carlyle mistook pleasure for happiness. His dyspeptic state prevented him from enjoying any pleasure, and his sour disposition any happiness; and, just as a man who cannot eat a dinner loves to lecture another who enjoys a good digestion, he scolded and snarled. Now, mankind has never been improved by scolding, and that is why his writings have pa.s.sed over the heads of the human race and done no good. Man has ever been, is, and ever will be, in search of the solution of the great problem of life, happiness; and what they want is thinkers, writers who will help them to find it. Carlyle treated the human race very much as he treated his wife: he wrote beautiful love-letters to her, but never said a kind or sweet word to her which might have helped to make her happy.

There is always something very unsatisfactory and inconclusive about a blind man discoursing on colour, or a dyspeptic one on pleasure and happiness.

No doubt the greatest source of happiness in this world is to be found in the love and devotion of a man and a woman. You may find it in every sphere of life, but more particularly in that little cottage covered with ivy, jasmine, and honeysuckle which seldom attracts the attention of the pa.s.ser-by. Happy the one whose nest is hidden far from the crowd!

Now, what will especially help a man and woman to find happiness in love? Many, many things will help, but most especially the artistic temperament--that temperament which can be cultivated and developed, and which will cause the man and the woman to always look for the beautiful, for the enjoyment of the soul and the heart at the same time as that of the body.

Love is the poetry of the senses. It reveals its secrets and its ecstasies only to those who can so mingle their thoughts, their hearts, their souls, as to transform two beings into one--only to people of refinement and of artistic disposition.

The French, for example, are neither more moral nor more immoral than the English or the Americans: they are different in their morality, different in their immorality, as they are in their tastes, customs, and habits. But what I am perfectly sure of is that they are the happiest people on earth, simply because of their artistic temperament, which makes them take all their pleasures in discreet moderation, like epicures, and, by making the companions.h.i.+p of man and woman most pleasant and attractive, enables them to enjoy domestic relations in all their beautiful fulness.

But, some people will say, is not an artistic temperament conducive to unfaithfulness? Will not a man with an artistic temperament, for example, constantly have new 'artistic' aspirations, and constantly fall in love with beauty? Not at all necessarily. If you will allow me to repeat an expression, of which I cannot say I am particularly proud, but the truth of which I insist on, that woman is a beautiful instrument and man a good or a bad instrumentalist, I will answer: No, not at all necessarily. I am not aware that Sarasate or Joachim require more than one violin to give their marvellous performances on, and I know that when Paderewski goes on tour, he insists on always playing on the same piano, which follows him everywhere.

It is not only on moral but on artistic grounds that I object to polygamy, and that I advocate monotony--I mean monogamy. And on this subject another question might be put: Should a woman prefer to marry a man to whom woman is an enigma? I know that most people who belong to the retinue of Mrs. Grundy will at once exclaim: Most decidedly a woman should expect to find the man as he expects to find her. There goes again the old saying: 'What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.'

Well, there is something in that; but when I consider that the whole happiness of a married life may depend on the start, I would fain reply: Remember that the first time a man whispers words of love he is a fearful stammerer.

Mrs. Grundy is a very moral person for whom I cannot help feeling some respect; but she is the cause of a great deal of happiness being missed in Anglo-Saxon lands. My greatest grudge against that lady is that she is the bitter, implacable enemy of the artistic, the beautiful, and the truthful, of which she has succeeded in denuding art, literature, and life itself. Anglo-Saxon intelligence--'the intellectuals,' as we call them in France, are dead against her, loathe her, but the ma.s.ses of the people are crawling on their knees before her. All the conventionalities of English life have been invented to suit her tastes, and to please her the most innocent pleasures have had to be transformed into funereal functions. Everything suggests impropriety and indecency to her distorted mind, and she is the cause that, in England, and also to some extent in America, art, literature, and life, have to lie in order to avoid running the risk of deserving her frowns.

CHAPTER X

SORE TRIALS FOR PEOPLE IN LOVE--WILL LOVE TRIUMPH OVER THE AFFLICTIONS OF THE BODY?

A pathetic story--Could you whisper words of love through an ear-trumpet?--The case presented on the stage--Take care of the woman you love.

The following reflections were suggested to me by a pitiful story that I heard a few days ago only. A young, beautiful girl, belonging to the best society, was engaged to be married. During her lover's absence she had typhoid fever. She recovered and is now quite well, but (the 'but'

is terrible) she has not a single hair left on her head. Of course, she wears a wig, but she has tried every possible thing, consulted the most eminent specialists, to no avail. Her lover is returning very soon. He knew she was ill, but does not know the terrible misfortune which has befallen his beautiful _fiancee_. Will he marry her? Will his love be powerful enough to overlook the loss of woman's best ornament on his sweetheart's head? Will he be able to behold her with the wig off, and say to her: 'I love you just the same?' In a melodrama he would, but will _he_? I dare not answer the question. We do not live in heroic times nowadays, and you must not ask too much of man.

As physical beauty is an appanage far more precious to a woman than a man, the question may perhaps be better put in the following manner: If a man loves a woman, will her disfigurement--the loss of a limb, the loss of her hair, deafness, blindness, or any other calamity of this sort which may afflict her--destroy the love of that man for that woman?