The Champagne Standard Part 10

It is perhaps one of the most blessed dispensations of our frail human nature that we do not really know how we look; that when we gaze into a mirror we do not see the sober disillusioning reflection, but rather some fondly imagined image of ourselves. No woman is heroic enough to look her imperfections squarely in the face, or why do we see such curious apparitions? Why does that worn old face hide behind that white veil dotted with black? Because, when she sees her mistaken old features in the gla.s.s, then she sees what she longs to see, and when her old heart cannot pump up sufficient pink she dabs on that ghastly rose which has never yet deceived anyone.

Ah, yes, the twentieth century is distinctly reserved for youth--old age is not in it! It is a bad fashion set by that spoilt child of the world--America. The world pays the same deference to America that the average American parent pays to his obstreperous child. Yes, the American child rules the roost, and America rules the world; therefore, what wonder that age grows more and more unpopular.

The other day I saw in several papers that in a certain industry no workman would be employed in future who was more than forty. Put yourself in the place of a man of forty who is shelved and knows of no other way of earning his living! If he becomes a criminal, who can blame him? Recently I read a curious paragraph about the increasing use of hair-dye among working men. Not beer and tobacco, mind you, but just hair-dye! Why? Because employers do not want old workmen. So the men ward off the crime of growing old with hair-dye. Was there ever a more comic tragedy?

Alas! the world clamours for youth. White hairs compel no reverence. Age only suggests to brisk young things that the old people are not up with the times. What wonder, then, that the world caters for youth, and n.o.body takes the trouble any more to create fashions for old ladies?

If there is an inst.i.tution which more than others wards off the coming of age, it is certainly the great shops. Twice a year these arbiters of fashion sacrifice themselves for the good of the public. Then do they guilelessly re-mark the treasures of their warehouses with those tempting signs which produce on the British public the effect of _hasheesh_ on the native of India. Beware of those peaceful and alluring pirates of Oxford and Regent Streets, O frail women who draggle last year's chiffons in this year's mud, and go to the greengrocers in the shopworn glory of the year before last. During sale-days the British matron lives in a state of ecstasy. To buy is bliss; to buy cheap is rapture. Cotton laces intoxicate her, and so does chiffon. She buys summer dresses in winter, and furs when the July sun bakes the sweltering town. That nothing is of any earthly use is of no consequence. Nor is it of consequence that what she buys is youthful, and she is old. It is these enchanting sale-days that explain the Englishwoman's orgies of wax beads, picture hats, party frocks at the wrong time, paper-soled slippers and open-worked stockings in pouring rain.

"A strong race, these English," an envious American said to me the other day.

"That's because they kill the weak ones off," I explained. "To be a perfect Englishwoman you must be able to sit with your poor bare shoulders against an open window at a winter dinner-party, preferably in an icy draught, and you must smile. If you can survive that you are one of the elect. It ensures you a social position, because you cannot have a social position in England if you cover up your shoulders."

I wish I could offer up an earnest plea for covered shoulders, at least for the aged! It seems to me when a brave woman has imperilled her life for forty years, n.o.bly defying the cold blasts on the wrong side of the dining-table, and after she has got her young brood safely married, it does seem as if she then might retire to the well-earned comfort of a high dress without losing her position in society. But to cover up those poor melancholy shoulders is to announce the oldest kind of old age, and what woman has the courage for that?

There is no doubt that old age first went out of fashion when the bicycle came in, for age was no barrier to its keen enjoyment. But grandmother could not bicycle in a cap, and so she put on a billyc.o.c.k hat instead; necessity obliged her to show her ankles, and exhilaration led her to "scorch." It was then we asked in some perplexity for the first time, "Where have the aged gone?"

Still let us cling to youth, it is our modern prerogative as women; but only let us cling to it to a certain extent--to the extent that life amuses, but does not hurt. There are some of us who still have emotions at an age when, had we lived in our grandmothers' day, we should already have found permanent refuge in big frilled caps. We hardly realise the safeguard there was in a cap. It was the final chord to show that the symphony of youth had come to an end.

In the days of our grandparents it was the men who kept young, while the women were old at thirty-five; but in these days men are considered old in their prime, and it is the women who cling to eternal youth. Yes, indeed, the modern tendency requires readjustment. But after all, does it pay to try and keep young when one is really tired and scant of breath?

Let it go, even the loveliest youth, in its own good time. Have we not each had our turn at it? But one thing there is to which we should all cling with might and main, and that is a young heart, for a young heart has the only youth which is immortal. It will make of any woman, when the time comes, what is more rare and lovely than a young beauty, it will make her a charming old woman--and nothing in this wide world can be more charming, even if it is a little out of fashion.

_A Plea for Women Architects_

Now that it is the fashion, as well as the necessity, for women to earn their own living, and when they are crowding into all the employments. .h.i.therto sacred to men (and in some of which they are exceedingly out of place) one wonders that they so rarely take to a profession--or, rather, to one branch of it--which seems so distinctly adapted to their characteristic talents; and that is domestic architecture.

The longer I live in England the more I am struck by the singular inconvenience of the average English house; its supreme aim seems to be to make the occupier as uncomfortable as possible. I do not, of course, speak of palaces which rejoice in a majestic dreariness, nor of the homes of the brand-new rich, who, being unenc.u.mbered by ancestors or ancestral castles, can start fresh with all the newest improvements, so new, indeed, that they are still quite sticky with varnish. I speak of the average person, who has a moderate income, and who, without pretension, would yet like to get the most comfort out of life.

I am well aware that when it comes to a consideration of the defects of English architecture I shall be completely crushed by a reference to English cathedrals, to which the American makes adoring pilgrimages. It is true they are glorious. We do not live in cathedrals, however, but in houses, and the English houses are far, far behind the English cathedrals.

In America we are on the high road to perfection in domestic architecture, owing, possibly, to the acknowledged supremacy of our women. Where a woman reigns supreme, it is the end and aim of her men to make her comfortable and happy. Now the American architect, being a man, and belonging most likely to some woman, makes it his pride to provide for her--or her s.e.x which she represents--the most comfortable, convenient and pretty house to adorn with her taste and her presence until she moves. We have no legacies of famous cathedrals; but, O! we do have absolute comfort in our houses!

A woman is not wasteful in small things, but a man is; who then is so adapted to utilise the small s.p.a.ce which const.i.tutes the average house?

A house can be the visible expression of all her cleverness, her economy, her taste and her common sense; it will give her an opportunity to be great in the minor aspirations. Possibly she might fail if she tried to build a cathedral--as she has failed in the highest expression of any of the arts--but she is undoubtedly created to bring that into the world which stands for comfort and for happiness, and where can she so fully prove her homely genius as at her own fireside?

Ah me, the fireside reminds me of how one shivers through an English winter! A man does not realise how terribly cold a woman can be, a mere man architect who rushes about all day long with twice as much clothing on as the average woman wears, and who, besides, never undergoes the ordeal of a low-necked dress!

It really would seem as if the male architect of houses can only construct the obvious; his imagination declines to soar. If he is an Englishman he firmly believes in the methods of his ancestors more or less remote, and that explains why the Victorian house with all its bad taste, and inconvenience still remains the popular town dwelling-place.

So common is it, that an enterprising burglar having "burgled" one, can find his way safely over half the houses of London, and be positively bored by their monotony! Now these houses are the creations of men architects, who have seen nothing else, and who lack that architectural intuition which can make them evolve what they have never seen, and enables them to immortalise in brick and mortar the vagaries of a dream.

Therefore it is high time for women to come to the front! A woman has intuitions, and when she really doesn't know it is her proud boast that she can guess, and, surely, that does quite as well. When she builds a house she will feel it, as a poet does his poem. She will put herself in the place of that other woman whose destiny it is to live there. She will create for her all the delightful things she wants herself. She will warm that house comfortably, because she herself hates to shiver.

She will put in plenty of cupboards, because without cupboards life is not worth living (to a woman)! Her kitchen will be in just proportion to the size of the house, and not a kind of baronial hall in which even the beetles look lonely. Having pity on mere human legs she will cease to build Towers of Babel.

Then, her genius being for detail, she will see that the interior work of the house is well and delicately finished. What impresses me most in comparing the work of an English and an American workman is that the American is more careful and deft. He leaves no dabs of paint, or seams of coa.r.s.e cement. The Englishman is distinctly clumsier in his methods and his results.

The woman architect will pay especial attention to the plumbing, not only to its sanitary, but also to its ornamental aspect, which leaves much to be desired. And she will, if it is humanly possible, construct a bathroom for those of the household who need it most--the servants; and when she has done all this, then she has only done what is common in American houses built for families of comfortable, but not large incomes.

Further, the woman architect will study the economical use of electricity. She will not (being a woman) waste it by putting too much of it in impossible and unbecoming places, and yet at the same time she will know just where to place an artful lamp so that her long-suffering sister will at last be able to see, even at night, how her dress hangs.

She will not be extravagant; for extravagance she leaves to her brother architects, who understand neither the value of s.p.a.ce nor the wise economy of exertion. For this reason I urge that women should become architects, but only domestic architects. They must not meddle with cathedrals!

The more comfortable and convenient the houses are the more pleasant the daily life, and what that means as an influence on the temper of a nation cannot be over-estimated. It may do for peace what the Hague Conference has so magnificently failed to do. So we shall inevitably become a better and happier people when the minor problems of life are solved once for all: the carrying of coal upstairs; the freezing in winter, because the heating methods are inadequate; and the shielding of one's wardrobe from the festive moth in a s.p.a.ce already overflowing with other garments.

No, women should never build cathedrals; but I am quite sure it is their destiny to build what is possibly of even greater importance, and that is the homes of the people.

_The Electric Age_

The American contribution to the characteristics of nations is hurry, and it is so contagious that the whole world has caught the infection--the whole world is in a hurry!

The modern man has as much emotion and variety crammed into a year of his life as would have sufficed to leaven generations of lives two hundred years ago. Now as we can only eat so much with comfort, in the same way our brains will only a.s.similate so many impressions, and our hearts will only bear a certain amount of emotion. If we have too many impressions we go mad, and if our hearts are too full they break, only we are told there is no such thing as a broken heart. But there is.

It goes without saying that impressions, both on the heart and the brain, which are as rapid and broken as the biograph, must be of infinitesimal duration. It is therefore a foregone conclusion that the modern man is not only in a perpetual hurry from his cradle to that final rest where all hurry ceases, but his memory, being limited to a certain number of photographic plates, while the impressions are unlimited, has but an infinitesimal s.p.a.ce for each. The appeals made to our understanding in those limited years we call a lifetime are simply maddening. We have the entire daily history of the world dished up hot for a ha'penny innumerable times a day, and when it is a day old it is ancient history fit only to do up bundles with or light the fire.

It is perhaps not one of the least terrors of life that the world is growing so small, cruelly linked together by the copper coils of the cable, that before long there will not be left a nook or cranny where the soul can escape to solitude. There will be nothing left to discover in this little world, and if the astronomers do not come to our aid where will the outlet be for eager adventurers?

The world expects so infinitely much, that what const.i.tuted a great explorer fifty years ago and set the world talking, is the common experience of numberless young fellows, with much money and leisure, who go to darkest Africa in search of big game, and hardly think it worth while to mention it.

Everybody does something; the world is on a tiresome level of universal ability! Everybody writes books: whether they are read is a secret no publisher will disclose. Art is pursued with frantic haste, but is being rapidly overtaken by the biograph. Music stuns the air and machine music proves its superior ability, and in the United States education has developed into a kind of decorous mental orgie. Even religion we get in a rush when, as a stray sinner, we wander into a hall and are tossed into a possible harbour on the crest of a rollicking hymn. Peace to the soul that finds a harbour, however gained, only the fact remains that it is often gained in a desperate hurry.

Statistics prove, we are told, that human life is longer now than in the past, what with the new hygiene and better nourishment; and yet the working days of a man's life have so pitifully shrunk together that a man of forty is shelved in these electric days as he once was at sixty.

No wonder then that the world is in a tearing haste, seeing how soon a man gets over his practical usefulness, which means how soon he gets to the end of his life, for life is work; after that it does not count.

It is the new creed, and it comes from America along with the hurry. It is the creed of a people who in their mad haste are losing their sense of humour, for if a man has a touch of humour certain phases of American life must, in the vernacular, "tickle him to death."

Minerva is undoubtedly the patron G.o.ddess of America; did she not spring full panoplied from the head of Jove? She took no time to be born; she had no leisure for celestial teething nor whooping-cough. Education, under her fostering care, does not come by degrees.

Yesterday the great grubbing material city was intellectually a desert; to-day it possesses a university in full swing, endowed with millions, boasting the last "cry" of the most modern of brains. Hastily elbowing its way along the path which the old universities trod in impressive silence for centuries, it arrives shoulder to shoulder with them, still rather fresh in the way of varnish because it is so new, breathing hard because of the speed, and wanting only what is, of course, of no earthly consequence--tradition and the memory of what was both good and great.

This seems to be the only thing with which a university cannot be endowed!

All over the States universities spring up like magnificent mushrooms--over-night--and what with the men's universities, the women's colleges, university extension lectures and Chautauqua, not to mention educational schemes of a more modest nature, the United States may be said to be getting educated by electricity.

It takes a stranger in America some time to get accustomed to the mental pace. I shall never forget the German director of a rather famous Art museum there, who came to us in a towering rage and blurted out his indignation. He had been in America only a few months and the sober methods of the Fatherland still clung to him.

"These Americans, O these Americans!" and he tore his long hair. "I haf a letter this morning from a young man, and he ask me--Gott im Himmel, is it conceivable?--he ask me can I--I--I--what you call it?--guarantee--that he can became a portrait painter in three months!

It is to grow mad!"

But not only the Fine Arts. A young doctor was explaining to me how thorough and broad his medical education had been (he was from the West), and as impressive and conclusive evidence he added, "I've even taken an extra term on the eye." Now a term is three months.

Alas, it is all owing to the electric age. Why will inventors invent so many time and labour-saving machines? Heaven forgive them! The more intelligent the machine the more machine-like the man who runs it, or is run by it, if the work it leaves him to do is limited and monotonous.

Inevitably his outlook on life must become very narrow, and he must lose all ambition, all sense of mental responsibility. Think of spending the days of one's life making eyelet-holes! Many people do.