Tea-Table Talk

“It is very charming,” said the Woman of the World, “in itself. I have been admiring it. Though I confess I think you look even better in dark colours.”

“You are quite right,” replied the Old Maid; “myself, I hate it. But you know how it is. I seemed to have been all the morning in the shop. I felt so tired. If only – ”

The Old Maid stopped abruptly. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “I am afraid I’ve interrupted.”

“I am so glad you told us,” said the Philosopher. “Do you know that seems to me an explanation?”

“Of what?” asked the Girton Girl.

“Of how so many of us choose our views,” returned the Philosopher; “we don’t like to come out of the shop without something.”

“But you were about to explain,” continued the Philosopher, turning to the Woman of the World, “ – to prove a point.”

“That I had been talking nonsense,” reminded her the Minor Poet; “if you are sure it will not weary you.”

“Not at all,” answered the Woman of the World; “it is quite simple. The gifts of civilisation cannot be the meaningless rubbish you advocates of barbarism would make out. I remember Uncle Paul’s bringing us home a young monkey he had caught in Africa. With the aid of a few logs we fitted up a sort of stage-tree for this little brother of mine, as I suppose you would call him, in the gun-room. It was an admirable imitation of the thing to which he and his ancestors must have been for thousands of years accustomed; and for the first two nights he slept perched among its branches. On the third the little brute turned the poor cat out of its basket and slept on the eiderdown, after which no more tree for him, real or imitation. At the end of the three months, if we offered him monkey-nuts, he would snatch them from our hand and throw them at our head. He much preferred gingerbread and weak tea with plenty of sugar; and when we wanted him to leave the kitchen fire and enjoy a run in the garden, we had to carry him out swearing – I mean he was swearing, of course. I quite agree with him. I much prefer this chair on which I am sitting – this ‘wooden lumber,’ as you term it – to the most comfortable lump of old red sandstone that the best furnished cave could possibly afford; and I am degenerate enough to fancy that I look very nice in this frock – much nicer than my brothers or sisters to whom it originally belonged: they didn’t know how to make the best of it.”

“You would look charming anyhow,” I murmured with conviction, “even – ”

“I know what you are going to say,” interrupted the Woman of the World; “please don’t. It’s very shocking, and, besides, I don’t agree with you. I should have had a thick, coarse skin, with hair all over me and nothing by way of a change.”

“I am contending,” said the Minor Poet, “that what we choose to call civilisation has done little beyond pandering to our animal desires. Your argument confirms my theory. Your evidence in support of civilisation comes to this – that it can succeed in tickling the appetites of a monkey. You need not have gone back so far. The noble savage of today flings aside his clear spring water to snatch at the missionary’s gin. He will even discard his feathers, which at least were picturesque, for a chimney-pot hat innocent of nap. Plaid trousers and cheap champagne follow in due course. Where is the advancement? Civilisation provides us with more luxuries for our bodies. That I grant you. Has it brought us any real improvement that could not have been arrived at sooner by other roads?”

“It has given us Art,” said the Girton Girl.

“When you say ‘us,’” replied the Minor Poet, “I presume you are referring to the one person in half a million to whom Art is anything more than a name. Dismissing the countless hordes who have absolutely never heard the word, and confining attention to the few thousands scattered about Europe and America who prate of it, how many of even these do you think it really influences, entering into their lives, refining, broadening them? Watch the faces of the thin but conscientious crowd streaming wearily through our miles of picture galleries and art museums; gaping, with guide-book in hand, at ruined temple or cathedral tower; striving, with the spirit of the martyr, to feel enthusiasm for Old Masters at which, left to themselves, they would enjoy a good laugh – for chipped statues which, uninstructed, they would have mistaken for the damaged stock of a suburban tea-garden. Not more than one in twelve enjoys what he is looking at, and he by no means is bound to be the best of the dozen. Nero was a genuine lover of Art; and in modern times August the Strong, of Saxony, ‘the man of sin,’ as Carlyle calls him, has left undeniable proof behind him that he was a connoisseur of the first water. One recalls names even still more recent. Are we so sure that Art does elevate?”

“You are talking for the sake of talking,” told him the Girton Girl.

“One can talk for the sake of thinking also,” reminded her the Minor Poet. “The argument is one that has to be faced. But admitting that Art has been of service to mankind on the whole, that it possesses one-tenth of the soul-forming properties claimed for it in the advertisement – which I take to be a generous estimate – its effect upon the world at large still remains infinitesimal.”

“It works down,” maintained the Girton Girl. “From the few it spreads to the many.”

“The process appears to be somewhat slow,” answered the Minor Poet. “The result, for whatever it may be worth, we might have obtained sooner by doing away with the middleman.”

“What middleman?” demanded the Girton Girl.

“The artist,” explained the Minor Poet; “the man who has turned the whole thing into a business, the shopman who sells emotions over the counter. A Corot, a Turner is, after all, but a poor apology compared with a walk in spring through the Black Forest or the view from Hampstead Heath on a November afternoon. Had we been less occupied acquiring ‘the advantages of civilisation,’ working upward through the weary centuries to the city slum, the corrugated-iron-roofed farm, we might have found time to learn to love the beauty of the world. As it is, we have been so busy ‘civilising’ ourselves that we have forgotten to live. We are like an old lady I once shared a carriage with across the Simplon Pass.”

“By the way,” I remarked, “one is going to be saved all that bother in the future. They have nearly completed the new railway line. One will be able to go from Domo d’Orsola to Brieg in a little over the two hours. They tell me the tunnelling is wonderful.”

“It will be very charming,” sighed the Minor Poet. “I am looking forward to a future when, thanks to ‘civilisation,’ travel will be done away with altogether. We shall be sewn up in a sack and shot there. At the time I speak of we still had to be content with the road winding through some of the most magnificent scenery in Switzerland. I rather enjoyed the drive myself, but my companion was quite unable to appreciate it. Not because she did not care for scenery. As she explained to me, she was passionately fond of it. But her luggage claimed all her attention. There were seventeen pieces of it altogether, and every time the ancient vehicle lurched or swayed, which on an average was once every thirty seconds, she was in terror lest one or more of them should be jerked out. Half her day was taken up in counting them and re-arranging them, and the only view in which she was interested was the cloud of dust behind us. One bonnet-box did contrive during the course of the journey to make its escape, after which she sat with her arms round as many of the remaining sixteen articles as she could encompass, and sighed.”

“I knew an Italian countess,” said the Woman of the World; “she had been at school with mamma. She never would go half a mile out of her way for scenery. ‘Why should I?’ she would say. ‘What are the painters for? If there is anything good, let them bring it to me and I will look at it. She said she preferred the picture to the real thing, it was so much more artistic. In the landscape itself, she complained, there was sure to be a chimney in the distance, or a restaurant in the foreground, that spoilt the whole effect. The artist left it out. If necessary, he could put in a cow or a pretty girl to help the thing. The actual cow, if it happened to be there at all, would probably be standing the wrong way round; the girl, in all likelihood, would be fat and plain, or be wearing the wrong hat. The artist knew precisely the sort of girl that ought to be there, and saw to it that she was there, with just the right sort of hat. She said she had found it so all through life – the poster was always an improvement on the play.”

“It is rapidly coming to that,” answered the Minor Poet. “Nature, as a well known painter once put it, is not ‘creeping up’ fast enough to keep pace with our ideals. In advanced Germany they improve the waterfalls and ornament the rocks. In Paris they paint the babies’ faces.”

“You can hardly lay the blame for that upon civilisation,” pleaded the Girton Girl. “The ancient Briton had a pretty taste in woads.”

“Man’s first feeble steps upon the upward path of Art,” assented the Minor Poet, “culminating in the rouge-pot and the hair-dye.”

“Come!” laughed the Old Maid, “you are narrow-minded. Civilisation has given us music. Surely you will admit that has been of help to us?”

“My dear lady,” replied the Minor Poet, “you speak of the one accomplishment with which Civilisation has had little or nothing to do, the one art that Nature has bestowed upon man in common with the birds and insects, the one intellectual enjoyment we share with the entire animal creation, excepting only the canines; and even the howling of the dog – one cannot be sure – may be an honest, however unsatisfactory, attempt towards a music of his own. I had a fox terrier once who invariably howled in tune. Jubal hampered, not helped us. He it was who stifled music with the curse of professionalism; so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate-money to watch games they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls listening to the paid performer. But for the musician, music might have been universal. The human voice is still the finest instrument that we possess. We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires. The musical world might have been a literal expression. Civilisation has contracted it to designate a coterie.”

“By the way,” said the Woman of the World, “talking of music, have you heard that last symphony of Grieg’s? It came in the last parcel. I have been practising it.”

“Oh! do let us hear it,” urged the Old Maid. “I love Grieg.”

The Woman of the World rose and opened the piano.

“Myself, I have always been of opinion – ” I remarked.

“Please don’t chatter,” said the Minor Poet.

III

“I never liked her,” said the Old Maid; “I always knew she was heartless.”

“To my thinking,” said the Minor Poet, “she has shown herself a true woman.”

“Really,” said the Woman of the World, laughing, “I shall have to nickname you Dr. Johnson Redivivus. I believe, were the subject under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of the Furies. It would occur to you that it must have been naturally curly.”

“It is the Irish blood flowing in his veins,” I told them. “He must always be ‘agin the Government.’”

“We ought to be grateful to him,” remarked the Philosopher. “What can be more uninteresting than an agreeable conversation I mean, a conversation – where everybody is in agreement? Disagreement, on the other hand, is stimulating.”

“Maybe that is the reason,” I suggested, “why modern society is so tiresome an affair. By tabooing all difference of opinion we have eliminated all zest from our intercourse. Religion, sex, politics – any subject on which man really thinks, is scrupulously excluded from all polite gatherings. Conversation has become a chorus; or, as a writer wittily expressed it, the pursuit of the obvious to no conclusion. When not occupied with mumbling, ‘I quite agree with you’ – ‘As you say’ – ‘That is precisely my opinion’ – we sit about and ask each other riddles: ‘What did the Pro-Boer?’ ‘Why did Julius Cæsar?’”

“Fashion has succeeded where Force for centuries has failed,” added the Philosopher. “One notices the tendency even in public affairs. It is bad form nowadays to belong to the Opposition. The chief aim of the Church is to bring itself into line with worldly opinion. The Nonconformist Conscience grows every day a still smaller voice.”

“I believe,” said the Woman of the World, “that was the reason why Emily never got on with poor dear George. He agreed with her in everything. She used to say it made her feel such a fool.”

“Man is a fighting animal,” explained the Philosopher. “An officer who had been through the South African War was telling me only the other day: he was with a column, and news came in that a small commando was moving in the neighbourhood. The column set off in the highest of spirits, and after three days’ trying work through a difficult country came up with, as they thought, the enemy. As a matter of fact, it was not the enemy, but a troop of Imperial Yeomanry that had lost its way. My friend informs me that the language with which his column greeted those unfortunate Yeomen – their fellow countrymen, men of their own blood – was most unsympathetic.”

“Myself, I should hate a man who agreed with me,” said the Girton Girl.

“My dear,” replied the Woman of the World, “I don’t think any would.”

“Why not?” demanded the Girton Girl.

“I was thinking more of you, dear,” replied the Woman of the World.

“I am glad you all concur with me,” murmured the Minor Poet. “I have always myself regarded the Devil’s Advocate as the most useful officer in the Court of Truth.”

“I remember being present one evening,” I observed, “at a dinner-party where an eminent judge met an equally eminent K. C.; whose client the judge that very afternoon had condemned to be hanged. ‘It is always a satisfaction,’ remarked to him genially the judge, ‘condemning any prisoner defended by you. One feels so absolutely certain he was guilty.’ The K. C. responded that he should always remember the judge’s words with pride.”

“Who was it,” asked the Philosopher, “who said: ‘Before you can attack a lie, you must strip it of its truth’?”

“It sounds like Emerson,” I ventured.

“Very possibly,” assented the Philosopher; “very possibly not. There is much in reputation. Most poetry gets attributed to Shakespeare.”

“I entered a certain drawing-room about a week ago,” I said. “‘We were just speaking about you,’ exclaimed my hostess. ‘Is not this yours?’ She pointed to an article in a certain magazine lying open on the table. ‘No,’ I replied; ‘one or two people have asked me that same question. It seems to me rather an absurd article,’ I added. ‘I cannot say I thought very much of it,’ agreed my hostess.”

“I can’t help it,” said the Old Maid. “I shall always dislike a girl who deliberately sells herself for money.”

“But what else is there to sell herself for?” asked the Minor Poet.

“She should not sell herself at all,” retorted the Old Maid, with warmth. “She should give herself, for love.”

“Are we not in danger of drifting into a difference of opinion concerning the meaning of words merely?” replied the Minor Poet. “We have all of us, I suppose, heard the story of the Jew clothier remonstrated with by the Rabbi for doing business on the Sabbath. ‘Doing bithness!’ retorted the accused with indignation; ‘you call thelling a thuit like that for eighteen shillings doing bithness! By, ith’s tharity!’ This ‘love’ for which the maiden gives herself – let us be a little more exact – does it not include, as a matter of course, material more tangible? Would not the adored one look somewhat astonished on discovering that, having given herself for ‘love,’ love was all that her lover proposed to give for her. Would she not naturally exclaim: ‘But where’s the house, to say nothing of the fittings? And what are we to live on’?”

“It is you now who are playing with words,” asserted the Old Maid. “The greater includes the less. Loving her, he would naturally desire – ”

“With all his worldly goods her to endow,” completed for her the Minor Poet. “In other words, he pays a price for her. So far as love is concerned, they are quits. In marriage, the man gives himself to the woman as the woman gives herself to the man. Man has claimed, I am aware, greater liberty for himself; but the claim has always been vehemently repudiated by woman. She has won her case. Legally and morally now husband and wife are bound by the same laws. This being so, her contention that she gives herself falls to the ground. She exchanges herself. Over and above, she alone of the twain claims a price.”

“Say a living wage,” corrected the Philosopher. “Lazy rubbish lolls in petticoats, and idle stupidity struts in trousers. But, class for class, woman does her share of the world’s work. Among the poor, of the two it is she who labours the longer. There is a many-versed ballad popular in country districts. Often I have heard it sung in shrill, piping voice at harvest supper or barn dance. The chorus runs —

A man’s work ’tis till set of sun,But a woman’s work is never done!

“My housekeeper came to me a few months ago,” said the Woman of the World, “to tell me that my cook had given notice. ‘I am sorry to hear it,’ I answered; ‘has she found a better place?’ ‘I am not so sure about that,’ answered Markham; ‘she’s going as general servant.’ ‘As general servant!’ I exclaimed. ‘To old Hudson, at the coal wharf,’ answered Markham. ‘His wife died last year, if you remember. He’s got seven children, poor man, and no one to look after them.’ ‘I suppose you mean,’ I said, ‘that she’s marrying him.’ ‘Well, that’s the way she puts it,’ laughed Markham. ‘What I tell her is, she’s giving up a good home and fifty pounds a year, to be a general servant on nothing a week. But they never see it.’”

“I recollect her,” answered the Minor Poet, “a somewhat depressing lady. Let me take another case. You possess a remarkably pretty housemaid – Edith, if I have it rightly.”

“I have noticed her,” remarked the Philosopher. “Her manners strike me as really quite exceptional.”

“I never could stand any one about me with carroty hair,” remarked the Girton Girl.

“I should hardly call it carroty,” contended the Philosopher. “There is a golden tint of much richness underlying, when you look closely.”

“She is a very good girl,” agreed the Woman of the World; “but I am afraid I shall have to get rid of her. The other woman servants don’t get on with her.”

“Do you know whether she is engaged or not?” demanded the Minor Poet.

“At the present moment,” answered the Woman of the World, “she is walking out, I believe, with the eldest son of the ‘Blue Lion.’ But she is never adverse to a change. If you are really in earnest about the matter – ”

“I was not thinking of myself,” said the Minor Poet. “But suppose some young gentleman of personal attractions equal to those of the ‘Blue Lion,’ or even not quite equal, possessed of two or three thousand a year, were to enter the lists, do you think the ‘Blue Lion’ would stand much chance?”

“Among the Upper Classes,” continued the Minor Poet, “opportunity for observing female instinct hardly exists. The girl’s choice is confined to lovers able to pay the price demanded, if not by the beloved herself, by those acting on her behalf. But would a daughter of the Working Classes ever hesitate, other things being equal, between Mayfair and Seven Dials?”

“Let me ask you one,” chimed in the Girton Girl. “Would a bricklayer hesitate any longer between a duchess and a scullery-maid?”

“But duchesses don’t fall in love with bricklayers,” returned the Minor Poet. “Now, why not? The stockbroker flirts with the barmaid – cases have been known; often he marries her. Does the lady out shopping ever fall in love with the waiter at the bun-shop? Hardly ever. Lordlings marry ballet girls, but ladies rarely put their heart and fortune at the feet of the Lion Comique. Manly beauty and virtue are not confined to the House of Lords and its dependencies. How do you account for the fact that while it is common enough for the man to look beneath him, the woman will almost invariably prefer her social superior, and certainly never tolerate her inferior? Why should King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid appear to us a beautiful legend, while Queen Cophetua and the Tramp would be ridiculous?”

“The simple explanation is,” expounded the Girton Girl, “woman is so immeasurably man’s superior that only by weighting him more or less heavily with worldly advantages can any semblance of balance be obtained.”

“Then,” answered the Minor Poet, “you surely agree with me that woman is justified in demanding this ‘make-weight.’ The woman gives her love, if you will. It is the art treasure, the gilded vase thrown in with the pound of tea; but the tea has to be paid for.”

“It all sounds very clever,” commented the Old Maid; “yet I fail to see what good comes of ridiculing a thing one’s heart tells one is sacred.”

“Do not be so sure I am wishful to ridicule,” answered the Minor Poet. “Love is a wondrous statue God carved with His own hands and placed in the Garden of Life, long ago. And man, knowing not sin, worshipped her, seeing her beautiful. Till the time came when man learnt evil; then saw that the statue was naked, and was ashamed of it. Since when he has been busy, draping it, now in the fashion of this age, now in the fashion of that. We have shod her in dainty bottines, regretting the size of her feet. We employ the best artistes to design for her cunning robes that shall disguise her shape. Each season we fix fresh millinery upon her changeless head. We hang around her robes of woven words. Only the promise of her ample breasts we cannot altogether hide, shocking us not a little; only that remains to tell us that beneath the tawdry tissues still stands the changeless statue God carved with His own hands.”

“I like you better when you talk like that,” said the Old Maid; “but I never feel quite sure of you. All I mean, of course, is that money should not be her first consideration. Marriage for money – it is not marriage; one cannot speak of it. Of course, one must be reasonable.”

“You mean,” persisted the Minor Poet, “you would have her think also of her dinner, of her clothes, her necessities, luxuries.”

“It is not only for herself,” answered the Old Maid.

“For whom?” demanded the Minor Poet.

The white hands of the Old Maid fluttered on her lap, revealing her trouble; for of the old school is this sweet friend of mine.

“There are the children to be considered,” I explained. “A woman feels it even without knowing. It is her instinct.”

The Old Maid smiled on me her thanks.

“It is where I was leading,” said the Minor Poet. “Woman has been appointed by Nature the trustee of the children. It is her duty to think of them, to plan for them. If in marriage she does not take the future into consideration, she is untrue to her trust.”

“Before you go further,” interrupted the Philosopher, “there is an important point to be considered. Are children better or worse for a pampered upbringing? Is not poverty often the best school?”

“It is what I always tell George,” remarked the Woman of the World, “when he grumbles at the tradesmen’s books. If Papa could only have seen his way to being a poor man, I feel I should have been a better wife.”

“Please don’t suggest the possibility,” I begged the Woman of the World; “the thought is too bewildering.”

“You were never imaginative,” replied the Woman of the World.

“Not to that extent,” I admitted.

“‘The best mothers make the worst children,’” quoted the Girton Girl. “I intend to bear that in mind.”

“Your mother was a very beautiful character – one of the most beautiful I ever knew,” remarked the Old Maid.

“There is some truth in the saying,” agreed the Minor Poet, “but only because it is the exception; and Nature invariably puts forth all her powers to counteract the result of deviation from her laws. Were it the rule, then the bad mother would be the good mother and the good mother the bad mother. And – ”

“Please don’t go on,” said the Woman of the World. “I was up late last night.”

“I was merely going to show,” explained the Minor Poet, “that all roads lead to the law that the good mother is the best mother. Her duty is to her children, to guard their infancy, to take thought for their equipment.”