Over the Fireside with Silent Friends Part 9

I never can understand why women immediately become "ruffled" when a mere man suggests that, if marriage be a serious business, the least a girl can do is to learn the business side of that business before she enters into partnership. But "ruffle" they do. Also they think that you have insulted the s.e.x, rather as if you had accosted a G.o.ddess with a "tickler," or stood before the Sphynx and, regarding her mysterious smile, said, "Give it up, old Bean!" For, after all, if the man has to pay the piper, it's up to the woman to know how to make a tune! As it is, so many husbands seem to make money for their wives to waste it. No wonder there are so many bachelors about, and no wonder there is an outcry to "tax them." Even then many men will pay the tax gladly, plus an entertainment tax if necessary--who knows? For elder people are so fond of drilling into the ears of youth the truism that pa.s.sion dies and that marriage, to be successful, must be founded upon something more enduring than a feeling of delirium under the stars. That is why a School for Wives would be so useful. After pa.s.sion is dead, it would be a poor creature of a husband who couldn't find comfort living in the same house with a woman who had obtained her certificate for economical housekeeping and sock-mending. You see, the home is the wife's part of the business. The husband only comes in on sufferance, to pay the bills, listen to complaints, and be a "man about the place," should a man be required. A happy home, a comfortable home, that is a wife's creation.

But she can't create the proper atmosphere merely by being an expert on Futurism in music, nor by possessing a back which it would be a crime of fashion not to lay bare. She has got to know the business side of housekeeping and home economics before an indifferent husband can be turned into a good one. You ask, why not a School for Husbands? Well, husbands have pa.s.sed their "final" when they have earned enough money to keep a wife. The husband provides the house and the wife makes the home.

But most wrecked homes are wrecked through ignorance, so why not let wisdom be taught? A well-run home is three parts of a happy one. And if the other part be missing--well, let's have a divorce. Easy divorce certainly encourages domestic mess-ups, but they are not half such a "mess" as the mess of a matrimonial "hash." The home is the other side of a man's business, the side which his wife runs. Well, as he has had to study to work up his side, why let hers be such a "jump in the dark,"

for him? Let the home become a study, even a science, and let not so many wives reach a forgivable level of domestic excellence on the "dead bodies" of so many unforgivable "bloomers." Remember that in matrimony, as in everything else it is the premier "bloomer" which blows up les chateaux en Espagne. Afterwards you have to use concrete--and build as you may.

_The Neglected Art of Eating Gracefully_

Were it not for the fact that we are usually eating at the same time, and so in no mood to criticise the mastication of others, I am sure that not half so many people would fall into love, nor be able to keep up the pa.s.sionate illusion when fate had pushed them into it. For to watch people eat is, as a rule, to see them at the same disadvantage as the housemaid sees them when she calls them in the morning. Very few people can eat prettily. The majority "munch" in a most unbecoming fashion.

For, say what you will, to eat may possibly be delightful, but it is certainly not a romantic episode of the everyday. True, restaurants have done their best to add glamour to our daily chewing. And the better the cuisine, the less time we have for regarding others. That is why hostesses are usually so hara.s.sed over their menus. Very few guests arrive really hungry. So she has to entice, as it were, the already replete stomach by delicacies which it really doesn't want, but is not too distended to enjoy. Thus they are kept busy all the time, and have no leisure to observe. But I always wish that part of our education included a course of lessons in the art of eating enough, and of eating it elegantly. Not one person in a hundred is anything but a monstrous spectacle in front of a plateful of stewed tripe. But, as I said before, we are, happily, so busy with our own plateful at the time that we have usually no leisure to regard their stuffing. Personally, I always think that the only way to enjoy a really good dinner is to eat it alone.

People are delightful over coffee, but I want only my dreams with salmon mayonnaise.

Of course you _can_ eat _and_ talk, but only the exceptionally clever people can talk and enjoy what they eat. I always envy them. Many an excellent dinner have I lost to all intents and purposes because my companion insisted on being "lively," and expected a "certain liveliness"

on my front at the same moment. If you _must_ eat in company--then two is an ideal number. But don't place your companion opposite you. Many a "sweet nothing" has been lost in bitterness because the person to whom it was addressed saw inevitably a morsel of caviare preparing to become nourishment. No, the best place for a solitary companion at meals is, either on the right or on the left, never immediately in front. I have sat opposite some of the most handsome people, and wished all the time that I could have changed them into a "view of sheep"--even one of a brick wall would have been better than nothing. When you are talking to someone at your side, you can turn your face in their direction for the first few words, and then look at something else for the rest of the sentence. But if you turn your head away while talking to someone immediately in front of you--if not necessarily rude, it gives at least the impression that you are merely talking because to talk is expected of you, otherwise you are slightly bored. I know that the popular picture of an Ideal Dinner for Two is one of an exquisitely gowned woman sitting so close to the man-she-loves that only a spiral table decoration prevents their noses from rubbing; with a quart bottle of champagne reclining in a drunken att.i.tude in a bucket of ice, and a basket of choice fruit untouched on the table. But if you examine that picture of the ideal, you will always discover that the artist has missed the ugly foundations of his fancy, as it were, by jumping over the soup and fish, the joint, the entree, and the sweet, and has got his lovers to the coffee, the cigar-and-liqueur stage, when, if the truth be known, all the hurdles over which the "horse of disillusion" may come a nasty cropper have been pa.s.sed. So, if you be wise, sit on the side of your best-beloved until the nourishing part of your gastronomic "enfin seul"

is over; and then, if you must gaze into his eyes and he into yours, move your seat round--and your evening will probably end by both of you being in the same infatuated state in which you began it. It is only by the strictest attention to the most minor among the minor details of life, that a clever woman is able to keep up the reputation of charm and beauty among her closest intimates. She realises that Nature has given to very few people a "sneeze" which is not something of an offence, and that not even one possessing the loveliness of Ninon de l'Enclos can look anything but a monstrous spectacle when a crumb "goes down the wrong way." But there are other "pitfalls" which it is in the power of all of us to avoid, and the "pitfall" of eating ungracefully is not the least among them.

_Modern Clothes_

I often think that, if those "Old walls only could speak"--as the "tripper" yearns for them to do, because he can't think of anything else to remark at the moment--all they would say to him would be the words, "For G.o.d's sake, you guys, CLEAR OUT!" As a matter of fact, it is just as well that old walls can't talk, or they might tell us what they thought of us; and you can't knock out a stone wall--at least, not with any prospect of success--in a couple of rounds. For we must look very absurd in the eyes of those who have watched mankind get more absurd and more absurd-looking throughout the ages. Take, for example, our clothes.

No one could possibly call them comfortable, and, were we not so used to seeing them ourselves, we should probably call them ugly as well. In the autumn of 1914 we suddenly woke up to the fact that we belonged to a very good-looking nation. It was, of course, the cut of the uniform which effected this transformation. It not only showed off a man's figure, but it often showed it up--and that is the first and biggest step towards a man improving it. Sometimes it gave a man a figure who before possessed merely elongation with practically no width. But the days of khaki are over--thank G.o.d for the cause, but aesthetically it's a pity. We have returned to the drab and shoddy days of dress before the war, and men look more shoddy and more drab than ever.

Surely clothes are designed, apart from their warmth, to make the best show of the body which is in them. Having discovered that style in which the average man or woman looks his very best, it seemed so needlessly ridiculous to keep changing it. Beauty and comfort--that surely is the _raison d'etre_ of apparel--apart from modesty, which, however, a few fig leaves can satisfy. Fashion opens the gate, as it were, and we pa.s.s through it, one by one, like foolish sheep--without a sheep's general utility. Mr. Smith, who is short, fat, and podgy, dresses exactly like Mr. Brown, who is tall, muscular, and well proportioned. Mr. Smith would not look so dreadful if he wore a coat well "skirted" below the waist, with tight-fitting knickerbockers and stockings. Mr. Brown's muscles and fine proportions are very nearly lost in a coat and trousers, which only make his muscular development look like fat and his fine proportions merely breadth without much shape. Mrs. Smith, who is modelled on the lines of Venus, bares her back at the dictates of some obscure couturiere in Paris, and the result gives a certain aesthetic pleasure. Mrs. Brown, determined also to be in the fashion, valiantly strips herself, and looks like a bladder of not particularly fresh lard! Were she to wear a modified fashion of the mode 1760 she would probably look almost charming.

And so we might go on citing examples and improvements until we had tabulated and docketed every human being. For an absolute proof that the present mode of dressing for both men and women is generally wrong, is, that the men and women who look best in it are those who possess bones without flesh, length with just that one suggestion of a curve common to all humanity. And think how much more interesting the world would be were each of us to dress in that style which showed our good points to advantage. For, after all, what is the object of clothes, apart from modesty and warmth--which a blanket and a few safety pins could satisfy--if it be not to create an effect pleasant to the eye. And why, when once we have discovered a style which certainly makes the majority of people look their best, should we wilfully discard it and return to the unimaginative and drab? We complain that the world of to-day, whatever may be said in its favour, cannot possibly be called picturesque. Well let us _make_ it picturesque! And having made it more beautiful--for Heaven's sake let us _KEEP_ it beautiful. Let it be a sign of cowardice--not one of the greatest signs of courage of the age--to fail to put on overalls, if we look our best in them! After all, every reform is in our own hands. But most people seem so entirely helpless to do anything but, metaphorically speaking, flick a fly off their own noses, that they leave reformation to G.o.d, and look upon their own unbeautiful effect and the unbeautiful effect of other men as an act of blind destiny. So we, as it were, sigh "Kismet"--in front of garments which a monkey, with any logic or reason in his composition, would not deign to wear. Yes, certainly, if "these old walls could only speak,"

they would tell us a few home truths. Our ears would surely burn at their eloquence.

_A Sense of Universal Pity_

Nearly everybody can "feel sorry"--some, extremely so! Lots of people can exclaim, "How ghastly!" in front of a mangled corpse--and then pa.s.s shudderingly on their way with a prayer in their hearts that the dead body isn't their own, nor one belonging to their friends and acquaintances. But very few people, it seems to me, possess what I will call a sense of universal pity, which is the intuition to know and sympathise with people "who have never had a chance"; with men and women who have never had "their little day"; with the poor, and hungry, and needy; with those whom the world condemns, and the righteous consider more worthy of censure than of pity. That is to say, while nearly everybody can sympathise with a tragedy so palpable that a dog could perceive it, there are very few people who can sympathise with the misery which lies behind a smiling face, that sorrow of the "soul" which would sooner die than be found out. They can realise the tragedy of a broken back, but they cannot realise the tragedy of a broken heart, still less of a broken spirit. And if that heart and that spirit struggle to hide their unshed tears behind a mask of cheerfulness, or bravado, or a.s.sumed--and sometimes very real--courage, they neither can perceive it nor realise it, and the well-spring of their sympathy, should it be pointed out to them, is a very faint and uncertain trickle indeed. Most of us like to take the sorrows of other people merely at their face value, and if the face be cheerful our imagination does not pierce behind that mask to take, as it were, the secret sorrow in its all-loving arms.

But personally, to my mind, the easiest sorrows of all to bear are the sorrows which need not be hidden, which, maybe, cannot be hidden, and which bring all our friends and neighbours around us in one big echoing wail. The sorrows which are the real tragedies are the sorrows which we carry in our hearts every hour of our lives, which stalk beside us in our days of happy carelessness, and add to the misery of our days of woe. We do not speak of them--they are too personal for that. We could not well describe them--their history would be to tell the whole story of our lives. But we know that they are there nevertheless. And the men or women who are our intimates, if they do not perceive something of this shadow behind our smiles, can never call themselves our friends, although we may live in the same house with them and exist side by side on the most friendly terms. That is why, if we probe deep down into the hearts of most men and women, we discover that, in spite of all their gaiety and all their outward courage, inside they are very desolate, and in their hearts they are indescribably lonely.

_The Few_

But just a few people seem to be enabled to see beneath the surface of things. Around them they seem to shed an extraordinary kind of understanding sympathy. They are not entirely the "people in trouble"

who appeal to them; rather they seem able to perceive the misery of a "state of life"--something which obtains no sympathy because people either condemn it or fail to realise the steps which led up to it--in the long, long ago. To them, everybody unfortunate--whether it be by their own fault or by the economic, moral, or social laws of the country--arouses their sympathy. It would seem as if Nature had given them the gift of intuition into another's sorrow--especially when that sorrow is not apparent to the outside world. You will find these people working, for the most part, among the poor and needy, in the slums of big cities, in the midst of men and women whose life is one long, hard struggle to keep both ends meeting until death releases them from the treadmill which is their life. They do not advertise themselves nor their philanthropy. One often never hears of them at all--until they are dead. They do not seek to hide their light under a bushel, because to them all self-advertis.e.m.e.nt is indecent. They do not realise that what they do is "light" at all. But the world does not realise all that it owes to these unknown men and women, whose sympathies are so wide, so all-absorbing, that they can give up their lives to minister to the sorrows and hardships of others--and, in succouring them, find their only reward. I have known one or two of these people in my life, and they have given me a clearer insight into the n.o.bility inherent in human nature than all the saints whose virtues were ever chronicled, than all the wealthy philanthropists whose gifts and generosity were ever overpraised.

_The Great and the Really Great_

I always think that one of the most amusing things (to watch), in all life, is what I term the "Kaiser-spirit" in individuals. Nearly everyone mistakes the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of greatness for the real article, and most people would sooner expire than not be able to flaunt these wrappings, or the rags or them, before somebody's eyes. And this spirit exists in individuals in almost every grade of society; until you get to the rock bottom of existence, when the immediate problems of life are so menacing that men and women dare not play about with the gilded imitations. This "Kaiser-spirit"--or the spirit which, if it can't inspire homage, will buy the "props" of it and sit among the hired gorgeousness in the full belief that their own individual greatness has deserved it--is everywhere. Very few men and women are content to be simply men and women. They all seek strenuously to be mistaken for Great Panjandrums.

The woman who takes a little air in the park in the afternoon with two full-grown men sitting up, straight-backed and impa.s.sive, on the box of the carriage, is one example of this. The chatelaine of a jerry-built villa, who is pleased to consort with anybody except servants and the cla.s.s below servants, is another. The majority of people need money, not in order to live and be happy, but in order to impress the crowd that they are of more value than those who are thereby impressed. The drama which goes on around and around the problem of whom to "call upon" and whom to "cut," fills the lives of more men and women than the problem of how to make the best of life and pave one's way to the hereafter. If Christ came back to earth, He would have to choose one set or another--Belgravia, Bayswater, or Brixton.

_Love "Mush"_

I was standing outside a music shop the other day, gazing through the windows at the songs "everybody is singing." Their t.i.tles amused me.

Not a single one promised very much real sense. They were all what I will call love "mush"--"If you were a flowering rose," and "Come to my garden of love," were two typical examples. The remainder of the verses--with which the suburban sopranos will doubtless break the serenity of the suburban nights this summer--were of a "sloppy"

sentimentality combined with a kind of hypers.e.xual idiocy unparalleled except in an English ballad of the popular order. On such belief, I said to myself, are young lovers brought up. Well, I suppose it would be difficult for a youthful soprano to put "her soul" into a song which asked, "What shall I give my dear one every morning for his breakfast?"

or, "Who'll soothe your brow when the Income Tax is due, dear?" And yet, sooner or later, she will be faced with some such problems, and then her beloved won't ask her if she be a flowering rose or invite her into his garden of love unless she can find an answer which will carry them both over to the next difficulty fairly successfully. But to live in an eternal state of love-mush is what young people are brought up to regard as matrimony. The plain facts of matrimony are carefully hidden from them, as either being too "prosaic" or too indelicate. The most responsible position in all life for a man and a woman is entered upon by them with an ignorance and an irresponsibility which are neither dignified nor likely to be satisfactory. A woman goes in for several years' training before she can become a cook; a worker in every grade of life has to go through a long period of initiation before she can be said to be really fit for her "job." But any girl thinks she is fit to become a wife, with no other qualification except that she is a woman, and can return endearment for endearment when required. She is not expected to know or do anything else. But her husband expects many and more important things from her if he is not to live to regret his bargain. He may not know it when he is asking her to live with him in his garden of love, but he will realise it a few years later, especially if she has turned that garden of love into a wilderness of expensive weeds.

_Wives_

The wife of a poor man really can be a helpmate, but the wife of a rich man is so often only asked to be a mistress who can bear her husband legitimate children. Everything which a woman can do, a rich woman pays other women to do for her, while she graces the results of their labour with a studied charm which receives its triumph in the envy of her husband's male friends. No wonder there are so many wild and discontented wives among the middle and upper cla.s.ses. Where a man or a woman has no "ideal," where they have nothing to do which is really worth doing, they always approach the primitive in morals. We may pretend to spurn the _cocotte_--but to look as nearly as she looks, to live as nearly as she lives, to resemble her and yet to place that resemblance on a legal and, consequently, secure foundation, is becoming more and more the life-work of that feminine "sc.u.m" which the war stirred up and peace has caused to overflow. Beneath it all I know there is a strata of the Magnificent, but the surface-ground is weedier than ever. I am not a prude (I think!), but the eternally amus.e.m.e.nt-seeking and irresponsible lives led by many of the rich, and the really appalling looseness of morals now being led by girls without a qualm, bode very seriously ill for the future of that New World which we were promised the war would make safe for--well, I believe we were told it was to be Democracy, but the Government official and the profiteer still seem the most firmly dug in of us all. I go to the fashionable West-end haunts, and I see the crowds of wealthy women getting as near the nude as they and their dressmakers can manage; I go to the poor parts of London, and I am really shocked by the immense number of girls, some only children, who are practically and _voluntarily_ on the streets. These may only be the minority of women and girls, I admit, but they are a minority which is having, and is going to have, a very sinister influence on the future--and the peace and beauty of that future. For the out-and-out prost.i.tute one can feel understanding, and with understanding there is a certain respect; but these amateur "syrens" are a menace and a disgrace to the "homes" which breed them so carelessly, and look after them so ill.

_Children_

I suppose the most absurd fetish of modern so-called democratic politics is that fetish of the liberty of the subject. In theory it is ideal--let there be complete liberty of ideas by all means; but when that liberty, as is nearly always the case, means that the liberty of one man is gained by the sacrifice of another--then it is the enemy of humanity as well as of nature. I always consider that, in the really Socialistic state, children will not entirely belong to their parents, but will also be guarded and looked after as an a.s.set to the world. This will, of course, give complete liberty to _good_ parents, but it will prevent _bad_ parents from wrecking the lives of their children, as is the case to-day, unless the parents' wickedness is so disgracefully bad that they come under the eye of the N.S.P.C.C. But the law always shields the wrong-doer. We are far more concerned that mothers and fathers should have complete control of their children even when they have proved themselves unfit to bring up children, than that the children themselves should be protected. We are far more concerned that the drunkard should be given complete freedom to go out and get drunk than that the misery which his drunkenness causes to innocent people should be punished, or prevented. The helpless must always suffer for the selfishness of other people--that is one of the "divine" laws of civilisation. The liberty of the subject is not only a farce, but a crime, when the liberty jeopardises the lives of the minority. The liberty to harm others will be a "liberty" punishable by law in the state which is anything more than democratic, except as a political catchword.

_One of the Minor Tragedies_

One of the minor tragedies of life (or is it one of the _major_?) is the way we grow out of things--often against our will, sometimes against our better judgment. I don't mean only that we grow out of clothes--that, after all, is nothing very serious, unless you have no younger brother to whom to hand them on; but we also grow out of desires, out of books, out of pictures, out of places, friendships, even love itself--oh, yes, most often out of love itself. You never seem to be able to say to yourself and the world: "There! this is what I yearn for; this is what I desire; this is what I adore; this is what I shall never tire of--shall always appreciate, to which I shall always show my devotion." Or rather, you _do_ say this in all sincerity _at the moment_. Only the pa.s.sing of time shows you that you were wrong. You seem to grow out of everything which is within your reach, and are only faithful to those things which have just eluded your grasp. It is human nature, I suppose; but it is a dreadful bore, all the same! It would seem as if the brain could not stand the same mental impression for very long; it becomes wearied, eventually seeking to throw off the impression altogether. They tell us that everything we do, or hear, or say--every thought, in fact--is photographed, as it were, on the brain as a definite picture. And if this be true, the same impression must affect the same part of the brain--that part of the brain which becomes tired of this same impress, until it eventually seeks to throw it off as the body throws off disease.

Take a very simple instance--that of a popular song. Experience has taught you to realise that, although the melody haunts you deliciously at first, you will eventually grow to hate it, and the tune which once sent you swaying to its rhythm will at last bore you to the point of anaesthesia. I often wonder why that is so? The answer must be physical, since the melody is just the same always--and, if it be really physical, then that surely is the answer to the weariness which always comes with repet.i.tion of even the greatest blessings of life in both people as well as things. If only we understood the psychology of boredom we might attain the eternal delight of never being bored, and what we loved once we should always love, until the end of our life's short chapter. And that would simplify problems exceedingly, wouldn't it?

The "Glorious Dead"

For a long time past people have been--and, I suppose, for a long time hence people will be--dusting their imaginations in order to discover the most fitting tribute their and other people's money can erect to the memory of the sailors and soldiers who died so that they and their children might live. And yet it seems to me that in most of these tributes the wishes of the "Glorious Dead," or what might easily be regarded as their wishes, have rarely been consulted. The wishes of the living have prevailed almost every time. Thus the "Glorious Dead" have, as it were, paid off church debts, erected stained-gla.s.s windows in places of worship which are beautified considerably thereby, paid for statues of fallen warriors which have been placed in the middle of open market-places to attract the pa.s.sing attention of pedestrians and the very active attention of small birds. A thousand awkward debts have been wiped out by the money collected for the memory of deeds which for ever will be glorious, and yet, it seems to me, in most of the cases the wishes of the wealthy living--and of a very narrow circle of the living--were at all times the primary, albeit the unconscious, object which lay behind the tribute. And the worst of it is that so many of these memorials to "Our Glorious Dead" are as "dead" as the heroes whom they wish to commemorate. In ten years' time they will, for all practical purposes be ignored. Maybe some little corner of the world is more lovely for their being, but the world, the new and better world, for which the "Glorious Dead" died, is just as barren as ever it was.

Rarely, only rarely, have these memorials been at all worthy of the memory which they desire to keep alive. And these rare instances have not been popular among the wealthy and the Churchmen, whose one cry was that "something must be done"--something beautiful, but useless, for preference. Mostly, they const.i.tute some wing added to a hospital; hostels for disabled soldiers; alms-houses, and other purely practical benefits which afford nothing to gape at and not very much to talk about.

People infinitely prefer some huge ungainly statue or some indifferently stained gla.s.s window, any seven-days' wonder in the way of marble, granite, or gla.s.s. They would like the Cenotaph to fill St. James's Park, and fondly believe that the "Glorious Dead" would find pride and pleasure in such a monstrosity. But it seems to me that any memorial to the dead heroes falls short of its ideal which does not, at the same time, help the living in some real practical and unsectarian way. Heroes didn't die so that the parish church should have a new window or the market place a pump; they died so that the less fortunate of this world should have a better chance, find a greater health, a greater happiness, a wider s.p.a.ce in the new world which the sacrifice of their fathers, brothers, and chums helped to found.