The Champagne Standard Part 14

I am quite sure that neither Mr. Whiteley, nor Mr. Harrod, nor the rest of the public-spirited gentlemen, whose only object in life is to make us beautiful, know what harm they are doing; or why do they portray a race of women to whose perfections mortal women must ever vainly aspire.

Your lovely syrens with their divine legs--there, the awful word is out!--never go shopping through the mud in the early morning! When they wear a dress it is called a "creation," and it is certainly not the year before last's best in reduced circ.u.mstances. When they lift their elegant robes, and show their sumptuous frills, it proves that they know nothing of the depravity of "model" laundries. Nor do I for a moment believe that their smiling babies--the smile inherited from their mother, sweet, but slightly vacant--know the agonies of teeth, nettle-rash or colic.

In fact, I refuse to believe that such perfect loveliness can exist. It is a poet's dream, evolved by those worthy gentlemen who only make life a greater trial for us by sending us quarterly reminders of what we ought to be, but what most of us are not. It is a crime to introduce into the bosom of contented families such presentments of too lovely women. Man _is_ weak, and when the wife of his heart comes home from shopping with her hat on one side, by accident, not coquetry, her ostrich plume limp and lank from a battle with the rain, a rent for the convenience of her nose, her _chaussures_ caked with mud to match her petticoats, and on her face an expression which is not bland as she hears shrieks proclaiming colic, how can he help but make sorrowful comparisons with a vision in his mind of a silent infant in a lace-smothered crib that smiles at him from Messrs. d.i.c.kins and Jones's alluring book?

Then is the harm done; the weak father falls a victim to his ideal, and his heart turns from his distracted, bedraggled wife to that lovely vision who entered a happy home through the innocent letter-box to the eternal destruction of its domestic peace. Thus "home," once the bulwark of the British nation, is rapidly becoming a mere mockery.

I ask, in the interest of society, why cannot the lovely beings in the fashion-papers and fashion-books be made less lovely? Whatever you are, and I commend this sentiment to all, as well as to distinguished haberdashers, be truthful. Be truthful! Chop off at least one foot and eight inches from those lovely ones who imperil our peace. Be realists at least occasionally; portray them with a rip, or a skirt which is short where it should be long; let their hair be out of curl, and b.u.t.tons off their boots--anything, only to prove that they also are human.

The postman has just brought another big, square, flat familiar parcel.

I shall destroy it; it is too entrancing. It portrays Her in a golden _coiffure_ crowned by a hat that breathes of spring. Clad in a perfect and appropriate "creation" she has climbed into an apple-tree, to which she clings with white gloved hands. Playfully and yet with perfect propriety she peeps through the cl.u.s.tering pink blossoms. It is the same smile, the same irreproachable nose, the same wave to her golden hair, the same great eyes. Now to put this vision of beauty and grace high up in a tree unflushed, unscratched, unruffled, untorn, is really too much to bear--besides, it is false to nature! The head of the house shall not look at her and make cruel comparisons, and decide in his ignorant masculine mind that all women can look so after they have climbed a tree. Then grow discontented when one tries to explain to him that they cannot. So then, before it is too late, here goes--into the fire! One domestic peace at least is saved.

Now I ask Mr. Whiteley, Mr. Harrod, Mr. Robinson, and all the rest of the gentlemen who stand for all that is best in the way of hats and clothes and things, and to whose benevolent guidance we women trust ourselves, be merciful as well as truthful, we beg, and do not make those beautiful creatures quite so beautiful!

It is the new invasion, compared to which the possible arrival of hordes of worthy yellow men is as nothing. The invasion, think, of too beautiful ideals into hitherto contented homes! Mr. Whiteley, you who have always provided everything, start a new branch,--give us peace!

Head a great movement which shall have as object to portray the fashions by less bewildering beauty. Earn what has probably no commercial value, and that is our grat.i.tude! Remember that we are not only women but customers.

Now supposing all your customers should revolt? What then?

_A Study of Frivolity_

After studying the veracious and thrilling works of our modern dramatists, one comes to the conclusion that the lady with a past, though she may suffer from nothing else, does suffer tortures from tight boots. Whatever situation they put her in, however harrowing, pathetic or revolting, when boots would seem to be the last consideration of a tortured conscience, yet hers have that exquisite, brand-new perfection which proves that, when she is not planning wickedness nor torn by remorse, she spends the rest of her time buying boots, and we all know that new boots hurt rather more than a bad conscience.

It is also the happy destiny of this lady to wear the most superlatively beautiful clothes, and when, in moments of guilty emotion, she swishes her train about, we have a vision of petticoats which only she, indifferent to the voice of conscience and laundry charges, dares to wear; and still more d.a.m.ning witness than her petticoats to her evil conscience is the elegance of her feet. Your real hardened adventuress on the stage always wears the most delicious slippers, no matter how inappropriate to the occasion, but she wears them prophetically as it were, for she alone knows that she is destined to die in the fifth act, with her feet to the footlights.

To the social philosopher there is no more interesting sight than the window of a fashionable shoemaker's, there to make mental notes of the destiny of all those charming little shoes and slippers that confront one in all the coquetry of commerce. The only thing needed is a band to make them frisk about in all their gold, white, scarlet and bronze frivolity. The sophisticated curve of the satin heel and the tiny pointed satin toe are still innocent of worldly knowledge. Care, even in the shape of the daintiest foot, has not touched them yet, they have not been danced in, nor kicked off, nor made love to; in fact, they have not been born.

There is, however, a destiny for slippers as well as other things, and there is a certain slipper, long and slender, with arched instep and Louis XV heel which, so instinct tells us, is inevitably destined to belong to a lady with a past. Virtue never wears anything so subtle nor so pretty, for, indeed, it is only conscious rect.i.tude that dares to dispense with coquetry, and wears her boots boldly down at the heel.

Given a woman's shoe, and one can easily evolve out of it her entire emotional history, just as a naturalist reconstructs from a bone the entire animal to which it once belonged. Not long ago I saw a famous German actress as Beata in Sudermann's play "The Joy of Living." It is a fine melodramatic part. She has a lover and a husband--familiar combination--but the sin is in the past, and they have all three reached that comfortable middle age when people are supposed to know better.

Unfortunately at the eleventh hour the husband discovers the secret of his wife's old faithlessness and his best friend's treachery. At a dinner in the last act Beata drinks a toast to "The Joy of Living," and promptly solves the riddle of existence by staggering into the next room and poisoning herself. It was as she staggered away that the German actress deprived me of all my illusions for, as she lifted her dress rather high in her anguish, she exhibited a pair of broad, flat boots, with patent leather tips, and the kind of heels only virtue wears, broad and flat and low. I thought I saw side elastics, but that may have been the effect of a perturbed vision.

However, from that moment I lost all belief in Beata's trials. A woman with such boots never takes her own life, never has a lover, never has a past, but she has a good sensible husband who falls asleep after dinner, and while he snores she knits him golf stockings. The audience was under the impression that Beata had killed herself in the next room, but I knew better. No, those feet were not made for tragedy, even Sudermann's art could not convince me, and so a pair of German boots spoiled my illusions.

It is not often that we poor philistines have the privilege of studying at close range the lady who may be truly described as the pet of the stage, and when we do so we owe it entirely to our kind dramatists; and find however much she and her sisters may differ in the details of their interesting careers, they have in common the transcendent charms of their toilettes and the fascination of their slippers.

When one sees how uninteresting the play would be without her, how often virtue is rather fatiguing and not nearly so well dressed, and how the dramatist gives his favourite the most interesting talk and the most dramatic situations, one realises her importance, and that she is quite indispensable to the stage, whatever she is in real life. One only regrets, when society is a little fatiguing, that she is not occasionally permitted to pa.s.s through in her gorgeous toilette and her immoral slippers, and that bewitching side glance which one only sees on the stage, just to make society, like the stage, a little more thrilling.

Now in the days of the older dramatists when much was left to what in this material age is fast dying out, that is the imagination, if the dungeon of Lord de Smyth was wanted, the scene-painter nailed up a sign-post with the simple notice, "This is the Dungeon of Lord de Smyth," and the audience were as much thrilled as if they could hear the clanking of the fetters.

In these days we refuse to take our dungeons so absolutely on faith, and, still, if we see a too beautiful creature in red hair (fascinating crime always has red hair), gorgeous clothes, and slippers with Louis XV heels--that estimable monarch was responsible for so much sinfulness combined with singular good taste--and an opera cloak all lace and allurement, the kind for which virtue has neither the money nor the taste, then we can settle down to a good three hours' thrill, for those perfect garments are as much an indication of the dramatist's intentions as in less sophisticated days the sign-post which announced the dungeon of the de Smyths.

We have learnt by experience that certain kinds of clothes always come to a bad end, though never until the fifth act; while virtue, without any nice clothes to comfort her, has a very bad time for at least four acts and a half. One could wish the dramatists would give virtue a better chance!

A very charming woman regretfully confessed to me that the old proverb, that virtue is its own reward, is distinctly discouraging. She felt, with a perfectly blameless existence behind her, that she had a right to demand of fate jewels more precious than imitation pearls, and a mode of transit more patrician than a 'bus or the "tube," or a four-wheeler on state occasions. Her bitterness was enhanced by a picture in the "tube-lift" of a lovely creature ablaze with diamonds, who advertises a firm of philanthropists from whom one can get one's Koh-i-noors on the instalment plan.

If ever a young person looks as if she had had a chequered past, it is this young person, so radiant, so self-satisfied, and so prosperous. She is a painful satire on virtue in a mackintosh with a dripping umbrella, who has no earthly hope of diamonds, no matter how she may long for them, and who stares drearily at the lovely being until she is bounced out upon terra firma, and then pushed into the rain by other virtues with umbrellas and very sharp elbows. The charming woman further declared that virtue should be offered a more substantial reward than imitation pearls these days when the shoemakers, dressmakers and dramatists form a "combine" for the exclusive glorification of the lady in question.

But it is not only the eloquence of slippers, but the eloquence of petticoats! Are not our shop windows the Frenchiest of French novels, divided not into chapters, but into petticoats? Do they not form flamboyant rainbows behind those glittering plate-gla.s.s fronts? That there is no one inside of them takes nothing away from their charm. To see them out-spread against a window--a bewildering chaos of colours, frilly, fluffy and fantastic, is the outward and visible sign of an inarticulate poet who lives sonnets in silk without putting them on paper. How much more satisfactory to live poems than merely to write them!

So every shop window proclaims that this is the age of petticoats. Who buys them, who wears them? Why are they never seen again? Yet well may we ask what sylph can worthily wear those coquettish fantasies? It must be conceded, though it will hurt out national pride, that only the women of one nation have that sovereign right.

It is the Frenchwoman alone who can lift her skirts with that supreme elegance which turns even the worst mud puddle into an instrument for the display of her exquisite grace. She is the artist of the petticoat--and if she lifts her skirts rather high, it is because she does not feel it her duty to help the County Council to sweep the streets with the tail of a draggled gown.

Now when an English woman lifts her skirt, she does it as one on business bent; coquetry is not in it. She makes a frantic clutch at the back of her skirt, grabs a solid handful, and drags it uncompromisingly forward until she outlines herself with simple, cruel distinctness. Her silhouette is a curious study in angles.

Though she has no coquetry about her feet or her petticoats, the fatality of fate ordains that she should always wear high-heeled slippers and cobweb stockings in that downpour which Divine Providence reserves exclusively for the English nation. This opportunity she also takes to wear those lace petticoats which, having survived the terrors of the British laundry, succ.u.mb to British mud. Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has denied to the Anglo-Saxons and Teutons that subtle turn of the wrist which makes the lifting of a skirt a fine art.

Even the American woman, conqueror though she be of dukes and lesser things, has never yet conquered that Latin grace.

Now who buys those silken rainbows in the shops? Get the sphinx to answer that riddle if you can. Do they vanish into s.p.a.ce, or are they bought by those radiant beings who flit about in electric landaulettes, and whom we never meet, because we flit about in 'buses?

If the rainbow ever touches earth it is on exceptional occasions which only prove the rule. And it is always when virtue, always elderly and stout, with big, flat feet in cloth boots, lifts her skirt and exhibits to the eye of the public a yellow or scarlet silk confection which hangs limp and dejected. Its melancholy flop and want of rustle plainly show its consciousness of being misunderstood and in a false position. The irreproachable petticoat, sacred to the eminently respectable, is usually black and of a material of the nature of horsehair. No shop boasts of it, and it is always pulled out of an ign.o.ble pile when required, and is quite Spartan in its unadorned simplicity.

That virtue is best adorned by itself we concede; still virtue is a little handicapped. I put it to the dramatists: Why not give her better clothes and let her for once triumph in the second act? The dramatists, inspired photographers of manners though they are, have a great deal to answer for! At best they give her a white dress, a blue sash, ankle-ties and no conversation. One asks how is she to compete with a stately creature with dramatic red hair and that sinuous and glittering costume fraught with tragic situations? What a fatal contrast when studied by the youth of our land who have been taught to regard the stage as an educator!

The stage is conceded to be a great educational and moral force, and yet I beg of those excellent gentlemen who provide the lessons that the stage so eloquently recites not to lavish on the lady in question that bewildering wardrobe which must give her a sense of peace and calm security that even a good conscience cannot bestow. For once put her into a bargain coat and skirt left over from a sale at Tooting, adorn her with a tam o'shanter, the kind with a quill that sticks out in front, and put on her feet the boots of a perfect propriety, always short and broad, then see if the pit will adore her!

No, the pit will not adore her at all, for say what you will, it is the clothes that sway the earnest and indiscriminating lover of the drama.

For once put virtue in a gossamer _peignoir_, the clinging, fascinating kind, and slip her number six feet into a number three satin slipper, and how the pit will rise at her as one man, as they have never done before, and take her to their hearts, for human nature is as yielding as putty to grief that wears nice clothes and is well scrubbed.

Unfortunately the world is full of undramatic tragedies that are all the more tragic because of a dire need of soap and water.

As the educator of a public swayed by the eloquence of a slipper and moved to tears by the pathos of a petticoat, one can but beg and implore our dramatists, even at the risk of making their dramas less thrilling, to give virtue a tiny bit of a chance--for a change.

_On Taking Oneself Seriously_

Never has mediocrity been so triumphantly successful as now, and that is the reason we take ourselves so seriously. Never before has it attained such a high level of excellence, and if, for that reason, we miss those grand and lonely peaks that represent the supreme glory of the past, we can at least cheer ourselves by the comfortable reflection that we are each a glorious little peak. That being conceded it goes without saying that, occupied as we are with ourselves, we really have too much to do to bother about the greatness of our friends.

In the past the great man was surrounded by a band of ardent worshippers who circled about him and trumpeted forth his praise. In these degenerate days if there is a great man, he is not surrounded by satellites, for the satellites are practically employed circling about themselves. So the great man girds up his loins and wisely proclaims his own greatness.

Then, too, it is a bother to chant another man's praises if you are quite convinced, and you are probably right, that he is no greater than you are, so you abstain from the folly of it and devote all your energies to blowing your own little trumpet with seraphic vigour. In the past the little bands of ardent worshippers were quite disinterested, a merit to which the occasional ardent worshipper of the present cannot always lay claim. Our modern att.i.tude is one of doubt, and so when we hear a paean of praise we close one eye and ask "Why?" The fact is we decline to take anyone else seriously, but we make up for that by taking ourselves with redoubled seriousness. In previous ages there were no newspapers who took upon themselves the role of Fame, poising aloft a laurel wreath ready to drop it on the head of the best-advertised genius. In those blissful days, so little appreciated now, when the world could neither read nor write, hero worship was so popular that the lauded one found it unnecessary to take himself too seriously, for others kindly did it for him.

This is undoubtedly an age of emphasis and capitals. If you don't see the capitals in print you are sure to see them in the att.i.tude. Woman, Millionaire, Poet, Statesman, Composer, Dramatist, Novelist, Artist--to mention only a few--may not be spelled with a capital, but one never has the honour of meeting any of these worthy people without recognising the capital in their haughty intercourse with their fellow men.

Possibly it even permeates the lower strata of society, but one can only judge by the experience that comes in one's modest way. The gentlemen, who are at this moment shovelling in our winter coal, may take themselves seriously. Possibly the one with the coal-sack lightly twined across his shoulders has his own opinion as to the superior way in which he shovels the coal down the hole. It is more than probable that the plumber who came this morning to screw up a leaking tap takes himself seriously. I think he does for he left a small boy and his tools to remind me of him, and he has proudly retired from the scene. Still I really think that the disorder generally attacks those who work with what "the reverend gentleman is pleased to call his mind," and it is most fatal where, besides dollars and cents, the sufferer demands the tribute of instant applause.

Supposing the greatest singer in the world were to sing to stolid faces and dead silence and were to receive no applause for two or three years; her att.i.tude towards the public would become one of praiseworthy modesty. It is this frantic, ill-considered admiration which gives the good lady such a mistaken sense of her own importance.

If the last work of the last great mediocrity in the way of novelists were to be ignored, and only reviewed a couple of years after its publication, many an estimable gentleman and lady would step down from their pedestal and walk quite modestly on a level with their fellow beings.

If the poets received their meed of praise long after they were nicely buried instead of at afternoon teas, they would write better, indeed they would. Weak tea praise has never been good for the mental stamina, and it is awfully misleading. Because a gushing thing with an ardent eye protests over a tea-cup that your poems are the most beautiful poems she has ever read, it is not necessary to believe her. Do not on the strength of that go home and snub your old mother who, to her sorrow, has been educated to believe that among her goslings she has hatched a swan. Gosling or swan in these days at best you can reach no higher alt.i.tude than to be called a minor poet.