The Champagne Standard Part 9

Now time may mean money for men, but who ever heard that time meant money for women? No one, for the simple reason that it does not. Time and trouble are of so little value to the average woman that she squanders the one and is prodigal of the other in the most appalling way. And by the average woman, are meant all such who do not earn their own living, no matter how modestly; nor those who have some serious purpose in life, though without the object of earning; nor those who, as wives and mothers, may estimate their time as of the value of a general servant's. But apart from these the rank and file of women, consist of the aimless ones--and there are all sorts of aimless ones: rich and poor, high and low,--who potter vaguely through life, through shops, through streets, through joy, through sorrow; think feebly, talk feebly, and feel feebly, and finally fade away, and cease to exist. Now think of the majority of men frittering away life like that!

For ten years I lived opposite an able-bodied, middle-aged woman who sat in a rocking-chair by the window, crocheting from luncheon time until dark, four mortal hours, and this for ten long years! Then she moved or died, I don't remember which. And yet, after all, how many of us sit with our hands folded, doing nothing, thinking nothing, but just mentally and physically limp, weighed down by empty, useless time, which we try to kill with yawning desperation.

We are adepts of the idle industries because our time is of no earthly consequence. Think of the miles of lace we crochet, the impossible embroideries we make, the countless odds and ends we construct, of no earthly use except to catch dust. Think of the hours we waste at the piano which no one wants to hear and which we never learn to play; think of the awful pictures we make, which no one wants to see; the innumerable things we do that are so much better done by some one else.

There may be male loafers, superabundant male loafers, but it seems to me as if their united numbers are as nothing compared to those worthy lady loafers who are perfectly respectable and perfectly idle. Why should a woman be permitted to loaf unreproved? Is idleness a feminine privilege?

The average man is trained to do some one thing as well as his intelligence and his industry will permit, but the average woman is trained to do nothing, at least nothing well--she cannot even keep house well. Her only object is to fill her aimless existence with something, anything, just to kill time.

In other days girls were carefully taught all domestic employments; they had to learn to keep house, to sew delicately, to cook, and, indeed, to do all those innumerable minor things which are of such vast importance.

The modern girl is only taught not to be illiterate, that is all. With this negative quality as a dowry, a pretty face and nice clothes, and some empty chatter, she is bestowed on a perfectly innocent young man in search of a helpmate.

Perhaps for the first time she has a little money--I speak, of course, of the respectable middle-cla.s.s woman, for the lowest and highest are of no account, meeting, as they often do, on the dead level of extravagance. Now what can we expect of a young middle-cla.s.s wife who has some money for the first time? That she wastes it when it should be saved, and saves it when it should be spent. She buys cheap food, but she decorates her baby with that white plush cloak and that awful plush cap which her middle-cla.s.s soul loves, and which bear witness to her prosperity. So her olive branch is carried about in plush while her husband has dismal retrospects of other days, hardly appreciated, when he took his luscious supper at a third-rate restaurant, which in remembrance seems a banquet fit for the G.o.ds.

To spend money in just proportion to one's income, however small, and not to spend too little--for there is such a thing!--requires a higher degree of intelligence than the aimless and the inexperienced possess, and the woman who earns money has a keener, juster knowledge of its value than the woman who gets it from the masculine head of the family under whose thumb she languishes. Also, as I have said before, she has to learn the value of time in the process of evolution from the harem to the ballot-box.

I have a dear friend, a woman with a ma.s.sive intellect, who is, however, not above economy. She has been in search of an ideal greengrocer, and, after much tribulation of spirit and waste of precious hours that mean literally pounds to her, she found him in Shepherd's Bush. Lured by the bucolic name, tempted by a vision of sprouts at "tuppence" per pound instead of "tuppence ha'penny," she made a pilgrimage there, wasted a whole precious morning, and joined a phalanx of other mistaken female economists who stood on wet flags in Indian file, each waiting her turn to be served. My intelligent friend waited twenty-five minutes, until she was finally rescued by a serving young man, and had the rapture of saving sevenpence.

She, naturally, returned home in triumph and in a 'bus, but she was so used up by her economy that it would have been flattery to call her a wreck. That night she had a chill, the doctor was summoned in hot haste, and he proceeded to attend her with that a.s.siduity which only adds another terror to illness. When to this is added the bills for a protracted visit to the seaside, my intelligent friend confessed that it hardly paid to save sevenpence.

Now is it not also the extravagance of pure economy that takes women to the "sales," where they buy all the things they do not want? Would there be sales-days if there were only men in the world? Did you ever see a man go from one shop to another to get a necktie "tuppence" cheaper? To be penny wise is indeed the supreme attribute of women! For the economical one it is a terrible ordeal to go shopping with a father or a brother; a lover is different, he is still full of temporary patience.

But husbands and fathers have no patience.

"If you like it, take it, but don't waste people's time," says the irate man, as if there weren't innumerable steps to be taken after the initial process of liking.

"I think I can get it a little nicer at Smith's," you urge, while your dear one looks at you cynically, for nicer means cheaper, and he knows it. "Come on then," and he bundles you into a cab, drives to Smith's, and lets the cab wait while you try to make up your mind. Those dreadful cabs, how they do make the economical woman suffer. Did you ever hear a woman declare that it is really cheaper in the end to take a cab? When does a woman ever think of the end? The average woman avoids a cab on principle. She feels it due to this same principle to draggle her skirts through the mud, to get her feet wet, and to come home an "object." But thank goodness, she has saved a cab fare, and you can get twelve quinine pills for tuppence.

Is it not also a part of our extravagant economy that makes women eat such queer things when they are by their lonely selves? What self-respecting man would lunch off a sultana cake, a tart, or an ice?

Show me the self-respecting woman who has not done it! Women know how to cook--some of them--but none of them know how to eat. A woman feels that to eat well and substantially is a sheer waste; there is nothing to show for it, but she would not hesitate a moment to spend even more in something that she can show. A man doesn't think twice about having a "ripping" good dinner and a bottle of extra good wine; he thinks it is money well spent, but he will be hanged before he would buy himself an ornamental waistcoat and sustain life on a penny bun.

What awful things we should eat if it were not for men! I am sure _table d'hote_ dinners were invented by some philanthropist to save women. "I cannot eat _a la carte_," said a friend of mine in a piteous burst of confidence: "it's just like eating money." So when her husband travels with her he always leads her to the _table d'hote_ if only to preserve her from starvation. When she is resigned to the cost, she has an excellent appet.i.te. I really think if it were not for men women would wrap themselves in sable and point lace and starve to death.

Is it not the woman who is the apostle of appearances? Go to a dinner party where the wines and the food are rather poor and well served, and you may be sure it is the fault of the dear female economist at the head of the table.

Who of us has not come across a gorgeous establishment where it takes three footmen and a butler to serve a tough chop of New Zealand lamb.

The presiding G.o.ddess afterwards drives out in the park in an equipage magnificent with coachman and footman, and horses shining like satin with care and good feeding. No, they are not fed on New Zealand lamb!

For some people it is a wildly extravagant economy to ride in a 'bus. I know of a family of girls who pine for a 'bus ride as we poor things do for a chariot and four. They can't afford it; it would ruin the family credit, which is only kept up by a magnificent carriage--unpaid for--and a superb coachman and footman whose wages are owing. If one of these girls were to be seen in a 'bus, it would mean their downfall in the eyes of the confiding tradesmen. No, not everybody can afford to ride in a 'bus. After all it is only the rich and great the world permits to be shabby.

I heard of a nice girl who "slums" and who lives in the East End, having shaken the dust of Mayfair from her feet. She has reduced self-sacrifice to a science, and her life is an orgie of self-denial, and she is a hollow-eyed, haggard young martyr, and keeps body and soul together on five shillings a week. My only criticism of this scheme of altruism is that every once in a while she neglects and starves herself into an awful fit of illness, and has to be taken back to Mayfair and brought to life, and then the good physician sends a thumping big bill to her parents, who never get any credit for charity. Now I think even a modern martyr ought to have just a grain of common sense.

There is a certain intellectual town in America where tramcars still issue return tickets at reduced rates. How well I remember two dear maiden ladies, armed with principles, walking up and down in the snow and sleet of a winter's night one whole hour waiting for the particular tram which would accept their tickets. They let unnumbered other trams jingle merrily past, while they paddled about in the slush, strong in their sense of economy. They each saved three cents, and one nearly died of pneumonia.

One wonders how many of us die because of our reckless economy? Are we not for ever doing things for which we have neither the strength nor the capacity, just to save a few pennies, and do not many of us repent all our life long? I well remember a lady who to save hiring a man, lifted her piano to slip a rug under. When I saw her, she had, in consequence, been a helpless invalid for years with an incurable spine complaint.

Are not cheap servants another favourite female economy? I have seen a sensible woman rejoice because she had captured a cheap servant as if, what with aggravation of spirits and broken crockery, a cheap servant does not take it out of one in nervous prostration. Not to mention that the incompetent eat just as much as the competent!

Did I not read this very day how two delightful female economists, waiting for the opening of a certain theatre, sat on camp-stools from nine in the morning till seven in the evening of a cold, damp winter day for a chance to dive into the pit, and so to save a shilling or two. Was there ever a more cheering example of feminine wisdom and thrift?

I knew a woman who had the economical fad to get double service out of a match, but she found it awfully expensive. She went upstairs one night to dress for dinner. A doorway, hung with a frail, floppy art-curtain, connected her bedroom and her dressing-room. As she entered, she heard shrieks of "fire" in the street, and tearing open the window she found the house opposite in flames, and in an instant fire-engines came clattering through the crowd. She was a kind soul, but she did enjoy herself immensely, watching it comfortably from her window. It was over in no time, and as she looked at the chaos of fire-engines and firemen the thought struck her how convenient it would be if there were another fire just then in the street, for here they all were ready to put it out!

Whereupon she lighted the gas, and, true to her principles, carried the burning match to her dressing-room, through the floppy art-curtain. The next instant it was all in a blaze, and she was hanging out of the window shrieking "fire." They broke down her front door, trailed miles of dirty oozing hose upstairs, and finally left her gazing drearily at the black ceiling, the sodden furniture, the dirty water pouring downstairs, and a hideous burnt wall where the fatal art-curtain had been.

"At any rate," she said to herself, as she took a great, long breath, "it was convenient."

But since then she has never used a match twice.

How we all do love to save at the spiggot even if it does pour out at the bung-hole! Who of us has not seen a woman grow thin and sharp and old, in the struggle to save pennies while her open-handed husband throws away pounds? It takes a big, broad-minded woman to know when to open her purse-strings, and perhaps even a bigger and more strong-minded one to keep them always comfortably ajar.

At what early age can the girl-child be taught that what is too cheap is usually very dear? The majority of women never learn it. How many a woman goes out to buy a warm woollen frock and returns home with a be-chiffoned tissue-paper silk, because it was cheap and looked so "smart." That ghastly, temporary smartness which is a kind of whited sepulchre! There is no doubt that the Englishwomen--and I include the Americans--are the most extravagant in the world.

A Frenchwoman once expressed her amazement to me at the enormous amount of money Englishwomen spend on what is as useless as froth. Chiffon is the bane of the Englishwoman; she drapes herself in cheap chiffons while a Frenchwoman puts her money in a bit of good lace. She adorns herself with poor furs where a Frenchwoman would buy herself a little thing, but a good little thing. Finally, when the thrifty Frenchwoman has gathered together quite a nice collection of lace and fur, the Englishwoman has nothing to show for her money but a ma.s.s of torn and dirty chiffon whose destination is the rag-bag. After all it is an age of wax beads and imitation lace, and they represent as well as anything our extravagant economy.

Is not our middle-cla.s.s cooking a monument to our extravagance? A British housewife has it in her power to take away the stoutest appet.i.te with her respectable joint, her watery vegetable, and the pudding or tart that should lie as heavy on her conscience as they do on the stomach. If the Englishwoman would only take to the chiffons of cooking instead of the chiffons of clothes! It is an extravagance to cook badly; it is an extravagance to buy things because they are cheap; it is an extravagance to waste time in doing what someone else can do better (if one can afford it). After all it is only fair to employ others when one has the means. Don't we all want to live? Suppose editors wrote the whole contents of their papers, and publishers only published their own immortal works! What then?

The other day I had to buy some china to replace what had been broken.

"They break it so quickly," I said to the polite salesman, in a burst of grief. "But if they didn't, what should we do?" he asked. It really had not occurred to me before, so a polite salesman taught me a lesson.

It belongs to the economy of the universe that neither we nor anything else should last for ever. Nature herself is methodically economical, witness the regular pa.s.sing of the seasons. And does she not utilise one in the making of the next?

Yes, what we women need most of all is to be taught unextravagant economy, which includes the value both of money and of time, for the day is coming when women's time will really be worth something. Probably it will work a political economical revolution, but that cannot be helped, and, after all, the world's progress is punctuated by revolutions. If women enter men's sphere, the men will have to do something else. Still, women are barred by their very weakness from innumerable employments, and though they demand to vote, one never hears a very enthusiastic plea on their part to fight.

So let women earn, or at all events let them be given money as a right and not as a begrudged charity, and it will be cheaper for men in the end, with the result that our economy will become less irresponsibly extravagant. Possibly we will not save much, but we may live better, and, joy of joys, the doctors' bills will undoubtedly grow beautifully less, for I am sure that the immense prosperity of that learned and disinterested profession is mainly due to our extravagant economy.

_A Modern Tendency_

Where are the aged gone? At any rate the aged women? The fact is, there are no aged women; for, behold! the hairdresser, the milliner and the dressmaker have all decreed that there shall be no old age--and, lo! the miracle is performed; and our venerable grandmothers who once were old are now only strenuous copies, perhaps a trifle overdone, of our more or less youthful selves.

Who has not been told that she looks most lovely in a hat in which her last grain of common sense must clamour aloud that she really looks like a fright? Have not each of us, my suffering sisters, had relays of awful hats tried on our unoffending heads till we look like tortured ghosts, crowned by a wreath of roses or cabbages, and loomed over by a terrible young person in black satin? How that young person--well--prevaricated, and how the cold irony of her eye cut us to the quick!

I am dreadfully afraid to say so, but there are no serving young ladies who are so cruel as the milliners' young ladies. They are of course not all perfectly beautiful, but their wonderful tresses are always built up in such an artful way that they never fail to nestle in the nooks and crevices of the most unearthly creations. But they always say "It just suits Madam," even when they cannot possibly reconcile it to their conscience!

One asks why do all the big shops employ, for the destruction of the public, those tall sylph-like creatures who float about like denizens of a higher sphere, in their wonderful black satins. These satin robes have such an air that the white pins which occasionally hold together a rip look only like an eccentric ornament. The divine lengths of those graceful figures!

They are a serious unbending race to whom all things are becoming. So when they trail up and down what may be termed the trial halls of fashion to show off to a short, stout customer a garment to which she mistakenly aspires, no wonder that, struck by a temporary insanity, she succ.u.mbs. She is convinced that her five feet by an equal breadth will look like a five-foot ten inches, which is, besides, so attenuated that it is a problem how the young person can dispose of anything even so ethereal as a penny bun. Why not be merciful and employ a dumpy lot for dumpy customers!

It is a terrible thing in these days that there is no growing old. No happy time comes when the tired features are at liberty to sink into comfortable wrinkles, and n.o.body cares. The supreme joy of taking one's well-earned rest saying, "Behold, I am old! Age also has its beauties and compensations." The trouble is that n.o.body really believes it to be a joy.

There is probably no parting so painful as the parting from the days of one's youth; even if the outside be ever so youthful there is a knell in one's heart that tolls to the burial. One of the surest signs of age is when one begins to think of the past. Youth dreams of the future, middle age lives in the present, but old age dreams of the past. But whoever acknowledges dreaming of the past now that old age is out of fashion!

Years and years ago, when our mothers were very young, there was a distinct fashion for elderly people; certain colours were sacred to them, certain fashions, certain fabrics and certain jewels. What young creature would have foolishly decked herself in either purple or yellow?

Youth rejoicing in sparkling eyes, resigned diamonds to its elders, and all aglow with hope and illusions left point lace to deck the stately shoulders of age along with velvet.

Now fashion is a republic and the only arbiter is a bank balance or credit, and young things frisk it in diamonds, velvet, point lace and sables, and their old grandmothers shiver along in _mousseline de soie_ and chiffon, roses wreathe their golden locks, red locks, black locks, as the case may be, but never their grey locks, and the winds of heaven fan their ageing shoulder-blades. The art of growing old gracefully is so rare that no wonder we cling to the hairdresser and the dressmaker with pathetic hands, just to postpone the evil hour; sometimes we think we have escaped the evil hour altogether. How we do cheat ourselves!