Over the Fireside with Silent Friends Part 8

And this mention of the piano-crime among the munition-makers brings me to another fact--how utterly impossible it is for the majority of people to judge any big scheme without having regard to the particular instances which threaten its success. Because some working people are so utterly b.e.s.t.i.a.l that they are unfit to live in decent homes--so the majority of poor people are unworthy of better surroundings. You might just as well judge the ruling cla.s.ses by the few units who advertise their own extravagant tom-fooleries! In all questions of reform you have to work, as it were, up to the vision of an ideal. The real, however disappointing at the outset, will eventually reach the higher plane--of that I am certain. And in no question am I more certain of this than in the question of the working cla.s.ses. The heart of democracy, as I said before, is absolutely in the right place; only its "head" is as yet undeveloped. Its mental "view" is restricted--and no wonder! Everything that has so far been done has helped to restrict that view. This war has let more "light" into the "soul" of democracy than all the national so-called education which has ever been devised and made compulsory.

Confiscation of property and all those other tom-fool cries are but the screams of a handful of silly Bolsheviks. There is no echo in the heart of the real labouring men and women. If they applaud it, it is only that these cranks, at least, seem to be fighting for that human right to an equal share of the common good things of this life which ought to be the possession of all labour, however lowly. Take the education of the ma.s.ses out of the hands of the for the most part ignorant men and women who nowadays make it their profession to teach it; raise the standard of payment so that this all-important branch of citizenship will encourage educated and refined men and women to take up that duty--and give the working cla.s.ses decent homes, plenty of air, and the chance of healthful recreation close at hand, and you have solved the most vital labour problems of this old world of ours and laid the foundation stones of the new.

_How I came to make "History"!_

Only those who have worked in the offices of an important newspaper, know that the Power Behind the Throne--which is the Editorial Chair--is rarely the Church, scarcely ever the State, infrequently the Capitalist, and _never_ Labour,--but simply the Advertis.e.m.e.nt Department.

I was sitting the other afternoon--dreaming, as is my wont; and smoking cigarettes, which is one of my bad habits,--when the head-representative of this unseen Power rushed into my sanctum.

"Will you do something for me?" he demanded, with that beneficent smile on his face which, through experience, I have discovered to be the prelude of most disagreeable demands.

"Certainly," I answered, inwardly collecting my scattered brains preparatory to a brilliant defence. "What is it?"

Without more ado he, as it were, threw his bomb.

"Will you write me an Essay on Corsets?"

"On _what_?" I asked incredulously--knowing that he had been a distinguished soldier, and suspecting that he had suddenly developed what the soldiers describe as "a touch of the doolally."

"On _Corsets_!"

"But I don't know anything about them," I protested, "except that I should not like to wear them!"

"That doesn't matter," he answered rea.s.suringly. "All we want is a page of 'matter.'"

Then he proceeded to explain that he had secured several highly-paid advertis.e.m.e.nts from the leading corsetieres, and that his "bright idea"

was to connect them together by an essay ill.u.s.trated by their wares, in order that those who read might be attracted to buy.

Then he left me.

"Just write a history of corsets," he cried out laughing. Then, by way of decorating the "bitter pill" with jam, he added: "I'm _sure_ you'll do it _splendidly_!"

"Splendidly" I know I could not do it, but to do it--rather amused me.

After all, there is one benefit in writing of something you know nothing about (and you are certain that ninety-nine per cent. of your readers will not be able to enlighten you) the necessity for accuracy does not arise. And so, I settled myself down to invent "history," and, if my historical narrative is all invention, I can defend myself by saying that if it isn't _true_--it _might be_. And many historical romances cannot boast even that defence.

Most people who write about the early history of the world have to guess a good deal; so I don't see why I shouldn't state emphatically that, after years and years and years of profound research, the first corset "happened" when Eve suddenly discovered that she was showing signs of middle-age in the middle. So she plaited some reeds together, tied them tightly round her waist-line, and, sure enough, Adam had to put off making that joke about "Once round Eve's waist, twice round the Garden of Eden" for many moons. But Eve, I suppose, discovered later on, as many a woman has also discovered since her day, that, though a tight belt maketh the waistline small, the body bulgeth above and below eventually. So Eve began making a still wider plait--chasing, as it were, the "bulge" all over her body. In this manner she at last became encased in a belt wide enough to imprison her torso quite _un_comfortably, but "she kept her figure"--or thought she did--and thus easily pa.s.sed for one hundred and fifty years old when, in reality, she was over six hundred.

And every woman who is an "Eve" at heart has followed in her time the example of the mother of all of 'em. As they begin to fatten, so they begin to tighten, and the inevitable and consequential "bulge" is imprisoned as it "bulgeth" until no _corsetiere_ can do more for them than hint that men like their divinities a trifle plump in places. But to arrive at this--the last and only consolation--a woman has to become rigidly encased from her thighs almost to her neck. She can scarcely walk and she can hardly breathe, and the fat which must go somewhere has usually gone to her neck, but--thank Heaven!--"she has kept her figure"

(or she likes to think she has), and many a woman would sooner lose her character than lose her "line."

You may think that this only applies to frivolous and silly women, but you are wrong. It applied even to G.o.ddesses! Historians inform us that the haughty Juno, discovering that her husband, Jupiter, was going the way of all flesh and nearly every husband, borrowed her girdle from Venus, with the result that when Jupiter returned home that evening from business, he stayed with his wife--the club calling him in vain. Thus was Juno justified of her "tightness."

But then, many a wife has cause to look upon a well-cut corset as her best friend. And many a husband, too, has every reason to be grateful to that article of his wife's apparel which the vulgar _will_ call "stays."

In earlier days a husband used to lock his wife in a pair of iron-bound corsets when he went away from home, keeping the key in his pocket, and thus not caring a tinker's cuss if his home were simply overflowing with handsome gentleman lodgers! The poor wife couldn't retaliate by locking her husband in such a virtuous prison, because men never wore such things--which, perhaps, was one or the reasons why they didn't, who knows?

Also, the corset--or rather, the "bulge" of middle-age, which was the real cause of their ever being worn--has always strongly influenced the fashions. I don't know it as a positive fact, though I suspect it to be true nevertheless, that the woman of fashion who first discovered that no amount of iron bars could keep her from bulging in the right place, but to the wrong extent, suddenly, thought of the pannier and the crinoline and--well, that's where _she_ found that she was laughing. For almost any woman can make her waist-line small: her trouble only really comes when she has to tackle other parts of her anatomy which begin to show the thickening of Anno Domini. Panniers and the crinoline save her an enormous amount of mental agony. On the principle of "What the eye doesn't see, to the imagination looks beautiful"--the early Victorian lady was wise in her generation, and her modern sister, who shows the world most things without considering whether what she exhibits is worth looking at, is an extremely foolish person. One thing, however, which women have never been able to fix definitely, is _exactly where_ her waist should be. Men know where it is, and they put their arms round it instinctively whenever they get the chance. But women change their mind about it every few years. Sometimes it is down-down-down, and sometimes it is under their armpits. A few years ago a woman who had what is known as a "short waist" was referred to by other women as a "Poor Thing."

Then the short-waisted woman came into fashion--or rather, fashions fashioned themselves for her benefit--and her long-waisted sister had to struggle to make her waist look to be where really her ribs were. Only a few weeks back a woman's waist and bust and hips had all to be definitely defined. Nowadays they bundle them all, as it were, into clothes cut in a sack-line, and are the very last letter of the very latest word in fashion. I can well imagine that a few years hence women will be as severely corseted as they were a short time ago.

I can well remember the time when a woman who held "views" and discarded her stays sent a shudder through the man who was forced to dance with her--though whether they were pleasurable shudders or merely shuddery shudders I do not know. Nowadays, the woman who wears an out-and-out corset, tightly laced, is either a publican's wife or is just bursting with middle age. The corset of to-day is little more than the original plaited gra.s.s originated by Mother Eve--in width, that is; in texture it is of a luxury unimaginable in the Garden of Eden.

Women are not so concerned nowadays that their waist should be the eighteen inches of 1890 beauty as that their figure elsewhere should not presume their condition to be at once national and domestic. The modern corset starts soon and finishes quite early. Thus the cycle from Mother Eve is now complete. "As we were" has once more repeated itself.

The only novelty which belongs to to-day is that _men_ are wearing corsets more than ever. A well-known _corsetiere_ has opened a special branch for her male customers alone. Their corsets, too, are of a most beautiful and elaborate description--ranging from the plain belt of the famous athlete to the brocade, rosebud-embroidered "confection" of a well-known general. Perhaps--say fifty years hence--my grandson will be writing of male lingerie, and men will rather lose their reputations than lose their figure. Well, well! if we live in a topsy-turvy world--as they say we do--let's all be topsy-turvy!

_The Glut of the Ornamental_

How strange it is that human endeavour is, for the most part, always expended upon accomplishing something for which no one has any particular use, while the things which, as it were, are simply begging to be done, are usually among the great "undone" for which we ask forgiveness every Sunday morning in church--that is, presuming we go to church. While there is a world shortage of cooks, the earth is stuffed with lady typists far beyond repletion. Whereas you can always buy a diamond necklace (if you have the money), you can hardly find a tiny house, even if you throw "love" in with the payment. Where you may find a hundred people to do what you don't want, you will be extremely lucky if you come across even one ready and willing to do what you really require done.

n.o.body seems to like to be merely useful; they would far sooner be ornamental--and starve. Where a man can have the choice of a thousand girls who can't even st.i.tch a b.u.t.ton on a pillow-case, the feminine expert in domestic economy will go on economising all by herself, until the only man who takes any real interest in her is the undertaker! It is all very strange, and very unaccountable. But I suppose it will forever continue thuswise until the world ceases to lay its laurels at the foot of Mary and to give Martha the "go by."

I never can quite understand why the bank clerk who marries a chemist's "lady" a.s.sistant is not considered to marry very much beneath him, whereas if he elopes with a cook we speak of it as a complete mesalliance. But the cook would, after all, prove extremely useful to him, whereas the chemist's "lady" a.s.sistant could only make use other knowledge to poison him one evening without pain. In the same way, if a bankrupt "Milord" takes in "holy matrimony" a barmaid with a good business head, the world wonders what heaven was doing to make such an appalling match. Should, however, he marry "a lady of t.i.tle" who is ent.i.tled to nothing under the will of her late father, the Duke of Poundfoolish-pennywise, and can't earn anything herself, the marriage is spoken of as a romance, and the Church blesses it--and so does the most exclusive society in Balham. Utility seems never to be wanted. The world only asks for ornaments.

It is the same in the drama, where Miss Peggy Prettylegs of the Frivolity Follies will draw the salary of a Prime Minister for showing her surname, while Miss Georgiana de Montmorency, the actress who knows Shakspere so intimately that she mutters "Dear old Will" in her sleep, is resting so long in her top flat in Bloomsbury that if she lived on the ground floor she would inevitably take root.

It is the same in literature, where "Burnt Out Pa.s.sion" runs through sixty editions and dies gloriously in a cheap edition with a highly-coloured cover on the railway book-stalls, while Professor I.

Knowall's wonderful treatise on "What is the Real Origin of Life?" has to be bought by subscription, with the Professor's rich wife as princ.i.p.al purchaser.

It is the same in love, where the worst husbands have the most loving wives, and a good wife lives for years with a positive "horror," and is never known really to smile until she lies dead in her bed!

It is the same in art . . . and yet it is not quite the same here, because the picture which "sells," and is reproduced on post cards, generally inculcates a respectable moral, even though the sight of it sends the artistic almost insane. And yet, where you can find a hundred houses the interiors of which are covered in wallpapers which make you want to scream, you will find only a comparative few who prove by their beauty of design just exactly why they were chosen--and these rooms, in parenthesis, are never let as lodgings.

Not that there seems any cure for this world-wide rage for the useless.

We have just to accept it as a fact--and _wonder_! Meanwhile we have to make the best of the men and women who, metaphorically speaking, would far sooner sit dressed in the very latest fashion, underclothed in cheap flannelette, than buy dainty, real linen "undies," and make last year's "do-up" do for this year's "best."

_On Going "to the dogs"_

I always secretly wonder what people mean when they say they are "going to the dogs." Do they mean that they are going to enjoy themselves thoroughly, with h.e.l.l at the end of it?--or do they mean that they are going to raise h.e.l.l in their neighbourhood and prevent everybody else from enjoying themselves? Personally, I always think that it is a very empty threat--one usually employed by disillusioned lovers or children.

From the casual study I have made of the authorised "dogs," I find them unutterably boring "bow-wows." Of course, I am not exactly a canine expert. Like most men, I have ventured near the kennels once or twice, and made good my escape almost at the first sound of a real bark. People who are habitually immoral, who make a habit of breaking all the Commandments, are rarely any other than very wearisome company. What real lasting joy is there in a "wild night up West" if you have a "head"

on you next morning that you would pay handsomely to get rid of, and a "mouth"? . . . "Oh, my dear, _such a_ 'mouth'! Appalling!" Besides, the men and women who are in the race with you are usually such dreary company. Either they are so naturally bad that they do not possess the attraction of contrast or variety, or else they are so bitterly repentant that one has to sit and endure from them long stories proving that they are more sinned against than sinning, or that they all belong to old "county families," or are the left-handed offspring of real earls. In any case, one must needs open yet another bottle to endure the fiction to the end.

No, I have long since come to the conclusion that most people don't really enjoy themselves a bit when they are _determined_ to do so. They only have a thoroughly "good time" unexpectedly, or when they oughtn't to have it. Of course, there is always the question whether people are most happy when they don't _look so_, and whether they are usually most miserable when apparently smiling their delight. At any rate, if there be one day, or days, in the whole year when all England looks utterly miserable, it is on a fine Bank Holiday or at a picnic. Of course, the newspapers will tell you, for example, that Hampstead Heath was positively pink with happy, smiling faces. But if you did find yourself in the midst of the Bank Holiday crush, you would be struck by the hot, irritated, bored, and weary look of this "happy crowd." Even at the Derby, the only people you see there who, if they are not happy, at least look so, are those who have just come out of the saloon bar.

Occasionally, someone here or there will let the exuberance of his "spirits" overflow, but he won't get much encouragement from the rest of his listeners squashed together in the same char-a-banc. At the most they will look at each other and smile in a half-discouraging manner, as if to say, "Yes, dear, he _is_ very funny. But what a common man!" It is all rather depressing. Only a street accident or standing in a queue will make the majority of English people really animated. No wonder that foreigners believe that we take our pleasures sadly. They only observe us when we are out to enjoy ourselves. But if they could see us at a funeral, or when we're suffering from cold feet, then they'd see us smiling and singing! No wonder the French have never really recovered from the gaiety of the British soldier as he went into battle. But if they really want to see the average Britisher looking every bit as phlegmatic as his Continental reputation, they should look at him when he's out for a day's gaiety. No wonder that men, when they "go to the dogs," go to Paris. "The dogs" at home are too much like a moral purge to make a long stay in the "kennel" anything but a most determined effort of the will. We possess, as a nation, so strangely the joie de mourir without much knowledge of the joie de vivre.

_A School for Wives_

All marriage is a lottery--that is why the modern tendency is to examine both sides of the hedge before you ask someone to jump over it with you.

A single man may be said to have his own career in his own hands; but once married, he runs the risk of having to begin all over again, and recommence with a load on his back. A good wife can make a man, but a bad wife can undo a saint. And how's he to know if she be a good wife or a bad 'un _until she's his wife_, which is just too late, as the corpse said to the tax collector. You see, a man has nothing to go on, except to look at what might be his mother-in-law. A girl is far more fortunate. If a man can afford to keep a wife, he's already pa.s.sed the examination as a "highly recommended." He, at any rate, has to take marriage seriously. No man wants to put his hard-earned savings into a purse with a hole at the bottom, nor live with a woman who begins to "nag" the moment she ceases to snore. If only women were brought up with the idea that marriage is a very serious business, and not merely the chance to c.o.c.k-a-snook at Mamma, marriage would be far less often a failure. But most girls are brought up to regard the serious business of matrimony from the problematical point of view of whether her husband will earn enough money to give her a "good time." If it be a "serious business," as Mamma and Papa and the parish priest a.s.sert it to be, then let her begin as she would begin a business, by starting to learn it. I don't see why there shouldn't be a School for Wives, and no girl be allowed to marry until she has at least pa.s.sed the fourth standard.

After all, it is only fair on the man that he should know that with the sweetest-dearest-loveliest-little-darlikins-in-the-whole-world he is also getting a woman who knows how to boil an egg, and make an old mutton bone and a few potatoes go metaphorical _miles_. The knowledge would be a great comfort to him when his little "darlikins'" feet-of-clay began to show through her silk stockings. As it is, marriage to him is little but a supreme example of buying a pig in a poke, followed by an immediate slump in his own special purchase.