Walking-Stick Papers Part 8

X

WHY MEN CAN'T READ NOVELS BY WOMEN

George Moore once presented the idea that the only thing of interest and value about the creative art of a woman was the feminine quality of that art. The novels of Jane Austen come readily to mind as an argument in support of this provocative idea. Quite first among their charms, every one will admit, is the indisputable fact that no man could possibly have written them. They have the lightness, brightness, sparkle, perfume, flavour, grace, fun, sensitivity of a young feminine mind. No one more than Miss Austen has captivated the roarers among men. A man admires, say, Conrad. He--if he is a manly man--falls in love with Jane Austen. Very well.

Now, then, it is a curious and a paradoxical thing that no man of masculine character can read the novels written by women to-day, unless he has to; that is, unless he is a book-reviewer, publisher's reader, magazine editor, proofreader, or some such thing. And the reason he can't do it, in view of George Moore's idea and Miss Austen's renowned magnetism, is curious indeed. It is because of the peculiarly feminine att.i.tude of mind of our present women-novelists. At least, this is the arresting p.r.o.nouncement delivered with much robust eloquence by my leonine friend, Colonel Bludgeon.

The present writer (a pale, spectacled, middle-aged young man) is too conscious of the wondrous nature of women to question their ability in anything. But of one of whom he stands in greater awe than of anything else in the world he is a humble friend. The dictum of this my friend comes from a quite different character than myself. He is a great man; he has read everything; seen everything; known everybody. Exception to him could be taken only on one ground. He is perfectly awful. He belongs to an old school; splenetic, choleric. He is Sir-Anthony-Absolute-like; a critic in the spirit of the thundering days of William Ernest Henley. His face is like a beefsteak. His frame is like "a mountain walking." His voice, Johnsonian. He knows more about literature than probably any other living man.

"No, sir," he rumbled, "you cannot find to-day a cigar-smoking animal"

(though the Colonel is so erudite a man, his language is terrible) "who could be lured into the pages of our women novelists without snorts--snorts, sir--of disgust, or bellows of derisive mirth. Why?

Because these pages no longer contain an acute transcript of life as only a sensitive feminine mind would have the cunning to observe it, and of a form of human life in itself highly feminine in its character, but they now present a singularly insular travesty of man, an unconscious caricature of man as he could only appear to a feminine mind bound by the romantic limitations of s.e.x, a mind, that is, devoid of masculine understanding, unable to recognise by virtue of affiliation of instinct that which is fine in the male character and that which is false to type.

"Sir," continued the Colonel, "these pictures are coloured, on one hand, by ludicrous prejudice against masculine qualities which the feminine nature temperamentally feels to be antagonistic, or dangerous, to itself; and, on the other hand, by sentimental wors.h.i.+p of masculine attributes conceived to be desirable complements to the frailty of women. This amusing view of man springs not only from the element of s.e.x, as I have said, but from the very marrow of s.e.x. We do not get from the contemporary auth.o.r.ess creative literature at all; that is, a disinterested criticism of mankind; we get in each picture of a male character her instinctive, and intensely interested, feeling as to whether or not he is a man whom it would be desirable, and safe, for a young woman to marry. Paradoxically enough, it would seem that women have less and less knowledge of the world as they have contrived to see more of it; that as they have become more emanc.i.p.ated in liberty of action they have become more clannish in thought; and that as the range of their opportunities has widened and their interests have multiplied, their concern with the most elemental female instinct, their preoccupation with their immemorial business of the chase, has but intensified. By word of mouth the modern woman tells us that in her practical and intellectual capacities she has advanced far beyond her sisters of an earlier day; we chance to look into that pool of fiction wherein she mirrors her heart, and we find her the same self-centred huntress as of yore.

"Sir," cried the Colonel, jolting some tobacco ash off the ledge made by his abdomen, which he did by pounding the side of his torso with a bulky volume of the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini," "what is the theme of the most conspicuous portion of our fiction by feminine hands?

In large measure it is a peevish criticism of husbands. We have the popular creator of a type of husband held up to the scorn and ridicule of the sorority of her readers, remarking by way of commentary on her satirical pictures that there should be 'a school for husbands.' It is, apparently, this lady's complacent belief that the origin of the domestic difficulties of the world is in the inadequate training of husbands for their delicate office. One of 'the essential requirements' for marriage which 'men should go to school to learn' she mentions as 'understanding.' Wives, presumably, are born perfectly equipped for their functions and do not require to be made. At any rate, as the production of fiction nowadays is so largely a feminine industry, and as a dominant trait of the male, even when recording his observations, is his chivalrous point of view, there is little or no opportunity given us on the benches, as you might say, to catch a glimpse of life pointing a way for us to see it steadily and see it whole."

The Jovian Colonel blew a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke from out his ma.s.sive ebony beard, and sat for a moment looking like some portentous smouldering volcano; then continued:

"Men with hair on their chests would find the most agreeable society in the pages of our women novelists to be that of the horrible or, as the case may be, pitiful scoundrels at whom the authors themselves are most indignant. These miserable beings, generally amiable though rather purposeless spirits, are, as Colonel Harvey not long ago remarked of one of them, of a sort that almost all men like and hardly any woman can tolerate. Men are free to enjoy their engaging qualities because men are not subject to possible misfortune by reason of the corresponding infirmities of such characters, that is, men are not dependent upon them for their own safety. Women, on the other hand, fear such characters because instinct tells women that they could not trust their own comfortable security to them; and, consequently, women heartily dislike such as these and find them villainous, beings to be branded in any feminine discussion of life as enemies of the s.e.x.

"In the latest novel by one of our most prominent women novelists," the Colonel went on, "for months the best-selling book in the country, and also undoubtedly the work of an artist sincerely interpreting the world according to her lights, we are presented with a distressing scene, an incident holy horror at which would make a thrilling and delicious success of any tea party. An undisciplined young pup who is the husband comes home a bit late one night, and, as a man would describe it, somewhat 'lit up.' An earnest student of this story cannot find that this misguided youth was any worse than is ordinarily the case in such delinquencies. It is intimated, however, that he has been this way before. The horror, the loathing, which the humorous young scamp's weakness inspires in his wife, a young woman of thoroughly feminine loftiness of character, is dramatic indeed, and partakes of the nature of that which so frequently is occasioned by the nervous organism of women, a 'scene.' The total lack of large-hearted and intelligent 'understanding' of human nature displayed by the conduct of the young man would send any connubial craft on to the rocks."

The Colonel mopped his brow with a large bandanna handkerchief. "Sir,"

he resumed, "obnoxious as it is to a sensible man to do so, let us glance at the hero type of the most popular recent novels by women, the figure which strikes admiration into the feminine soul. Now," he roared (and I declare, my hair rose on end), "the most awful thing any n.i.g.g.e.r can call another is a 'n.i.g.g.e.r.' So we all rebel against what we feel to be the weaknesses of our own position. None so quick as the vulgar to denounce 'no gentleman.' And so on. Thus, as we see, there is nothing the weaker s.e.x so much despises in a man as weakness of character, and, as is consistent with all such reactions of feeling, nothing which so much attracts it as a firmness and strength of will beyond itself. Naturally, the adored figures in the popular women's fiction are always of the 'strong man' type, in feminine eyes. And here we come to a most extraordinary obliquity of the feminine eye.

"What," he demanded, "are the marks by which you are to know a 'strong man'--in the feminine picture? A strong man, of course, is a man with the bark on; polish is incompatible with rugged strength. An exhilarating air of brusqueness breathes from all strong men. They are as ignorant of manners as they are of the effete conventions of grammar. They have fought their way up, and no one can down them.

They can be depended upon absolutely as what are called 'good providers.' In short, by the written confession of her heart, woman's idea of a 'dear,' after several centuries more or less of civilisation, remains precisely the primitive conception that it was in the days when man wooed her by grabbing her by the hair and handing her one with a club."

The Colonel was breathing heavily with the exertion of animated speech as he added: "In real life a man of any stability of judgment would be decidedly suspicious of the hero of a modern woman's novel if one should walk into his office, or, doubtless, he would observe this whimsical caricature with something of the amus.e.m.e.nt he would find in the ludicrously false comic Irishman of the vaudeville stage. This irreverent flight of fancy on our part, however, is yanking the strong man from his appropriate and supporting setting, where paste is given the glow of an authentic stone; in the sympathetic pages created by feminine intuition he dominates the machine. When the heroine takes into her own hands the right of the individual to a second chance for happiness," the Colonel declaimed with a demoniac grin, "she turns to experience with such a one perfect love, as the honoured wife of a splendid and prosperous man and the mother of beautiful children.

"The ethics of that engrossing theme of divorce," the Colonel went on, lighting another corpulent and very black cigar, "as decided by the Supreme Court of our contemporary women novelists suggests that justly celebrated principle of perfect equity: 'What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.' Listen," he demanded; "listen (as the author of 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' was wont to introduce his lectures) to the story of the unfolding of a woman's heart through marriage, as it is unfolded in the recent book of a novelist whom both the million-headed crowd and shoals of reviewers, of very uneven critical equipment, place 'well forward among America's novelists.' A penniless young woman brought up amid the standards of very common people marries for money, and comes to face the collapse of her dreams.

She realises that she is tied to a man for whom she cares nothing.

Also he is a brute, a typical bad egg of a husband from the extensive though rather monotonous stock of this article dealt in by our women novelists. Is it right for this young woman to throw away the chances of her whole life for happiness--and so on? It certainly should not seem so to readers of the book. And it is natural enough, as her husband has totally failed to hold her, that this young woman's mind, and heart, too, should convince her that she may make what she regards as a wiser disposition of her life.

"The inevitable strong man whom she eventually marries seems unfortunately to have a bit of a flaw in his granite character; at any rate, something is wrong with him, as the heroine fails to hold him altogether, and matters even begin to look as though she might lose him. But with her great happiness had come a new standard of honour, and a distrust of divorce as the solution of any marital problem.

Would it be right for her to lose a husband who has tired of her? Not by a long shot! Marriage is the one vow we take before G.o.d. It is a contract. Is it not against all moral law to break a contract? And all the rest of it. So feminine logic disposes of what is described as one of the great problems of the day."

Suddenly the Colonel broke into a terrifying smile. "This novelist of whom we have just been speaking," he said, "somewhere remarked in an interview that it was too bad about poor George Gissing--where she picked up Gissing, G.o.d only knows--as, writing away all his life at stuff people didn't care for, he was one of the tragedies of literature. Well, Gissing may be dead and gone, but his works stick on. I could tell her"--the Colonel glared as he pawed his enormous hand through his mane--"of a more profound tragedy of literature."

XI

THE DESSERT OF LIFE

Birds of a feather flock together, you can tell a dog by its spots, a man is known by the company he keeps--and all that sort of thing.

It is quite astonis.h.i.+ng that n.o.body has before been struck by what I have in my eye. People go round all the while writing about Old Greenwich Village, the harbour, the Ghetto, the walk uptown. Coney Island, the Great White Way, the subway ride, Riverside Drive, the spectacle of Fifth Avenue, the Night Court, the "lungs" of the metropolis, the "cliff dwellers," "faith, hope, and charity" on University Heights--a cathedral, a university, and a hospital, "lobster palace society," the "grand canons" of lower Manhattan, and about every other part of and thing in New York except this most entertaining section which I am about to discuss.

Now, I never lived on Mars----

You know "Sunday stories" in the newspapers are continually bringing a gentleman resident on Mars to marvel, with his fresh vision, at the wonders of this world.

As I say, I never lived on Mars, but, what amounts to the same thing in this case, perhaps, I did live all of my New York life, up to a short time ago, below Forty-second Street. I gathered from reading and conversation that there were districts of the city above this where people dwelt and went about their daily affairs, just, I supposed, as fish do at the bottom of the ocean, and beasts in the jungle. But I knew that I could not breathe at the bottom of the ocean, nor be comfortable in the jungle.

However, it's this way. The person to whom I am married declared that she could not live below Forty-second Street; said that that was not done at all, n.o.body "lived" below Forty-second Street. So the matter was settled. I moved "uptown." Of course, by stealth I continue to visit the neighbourhood of Gramercy Park, as a dog, it is said, will return to that which is not nice.

The beauties and the advantages of the region in which I now live have been pointed out to me. It is quite true that everything hereabout is new and "clean." Here the streets are not infested by "old b.u.ms" as those are in that dirty old downtown. Here one is just between the beautiful Drive on the one hand and our handsome Central Park on the other. Here there is fresh air. Here Broadway is a boulevard, and, further, it winds about in its course like the roads, as they call them there, in London, and does not have that awful straight look of everything in that checker-board part of town. Here everybody is well dressed. And even the grocers' and butchers' shops are quite smart.

All this is indisputable.

But all this is a description of the physical aspects of this part of town. What I purpose to do is an esoteric thing. Through the outward aspects of this part of town, its vestments, the features of its physiognomy, I will show, as through a gla.s.s, the beatings of its heart. I will exhibit the soul of it, interpret its spirit, make plain for him that runs its inner, hidden meaning.

The part of town that I mean may be said to begin at Seventy-second Street; it runs along Broadway, and comprises the neighbourhood of Broadway, to, say, a bit above One Hundred and Tenth Street. Now we shall see what we shall see.

You remember what a celebrated irascible character said about a circulating library in a town. Be that as it may. As you stroll along Broadway, up from Seventy-second Street, you observe, being a person of highly alert mind, an astonis.h.i.+ng number of circulating libraries, devoted exclusively to the latest fiction. And you note that all corner drug stores and all stationers' shops present a window display of "50-cent fiction." Ah! refinement. Reading people are nice people; they are not rough people. There is, you feel at once, an air, there is taste--how shall I say?--selectness, about this part of town. It is not as other parts of town are.

You perceive, as you continue your stroll with a brightened and a more perfumed mind, that there are no shoe stores here. Shoo stores!!

"Booteries," these are. Combined with "hosieries." Countless are the smart hat shops for women. That is to say, the establishments of "chapeaux importers." In the miniature parlours framed by the windows'

gla.s.s these chic and ravis.h.i.+ng creations, the chapeaux, rise in a row high upon their slim and lovely stems. This one is the establishment of Mlle. Edythe, that of Mme. Vigneau. Countless, too, are the terrestrial heavens devoted to "gowns." Headless they stand, these symphonies in feminine apparel, side by side here in the windows of the Maison la Mode, there of the Maison Estelle. Frequent are the places where the figure is cultivated with famous corsets, the retreats of "corsetieres"; this one before you bears the name Fayette; it is where the model "Madame Pompadour" is sold. And numerous are shops luxuriating in waists, "blouses," lingerie, and "novelties" of dress.

Conspicuous among them, the "Dolly Dimple Shop." The many "furriers"

here all deal in "exclusive" furs and their names all end in "sky."

And there are roses, roses all the way. That is to say, "roseries,"

"violeteries," and the like--what we call florists' shops, you know.

Spots of gorgeous colour and intense fragrance, heaped high with orchids, violets, roses, gardenias, or, in some cases, "artificial flowers."

See! the luscious wax busts in the window. With their grandes coiffures. And their pink and yellow bosoms resplendent with gems. It is a hair-dresser's, just as in London, with a gentlemen's parlour at the back. "Structures" are made here in human hair, and "marcel waving" is done, not, however, we may suppose, for gentlemen. Here may be had an "olive oil shampoo," and a "facial ma.s.sage." One could be "manicured" in the stroll you are taking every ten minutes or so, if one wished. And "hair cutting" is done along this way by artistes from various lands. There is, for instance, the Peluqueria Espanola.

"Service," too, is offered "at residence." Beauty here is held in esteem as it was among the Greeks. Upon one side of the "chemist's"

window "toilet requisites" are announced for sale. The "valet system"

is extensively advertised. The industry of "dry cleansing" nourishes, and the "shoe renovator" abounds. And hats are "renovated," and "blocked," and "ironed," in places without number.

What a delightful tea-room is this! With its woodwork, its panelling, and its little window lattices, all in beautiful enamelled white.

_That_ is not a tea-room! I'm 'sprised at you. That is a laundry. A laundry? Shades of Hop Loo! It is even so. There are a variety of types of laundry in this part of the world, but the great point of them all is their "sanitary" character. All things are sanitary here; the shaving brushes at the barber's are proclaimed sanitary; "sanitary tailoring" is announced; and the creameries of this district, it would seem, go beyond anything yet achieved elsewhere in the way of sanitation. It might be imagined from a study of window signs that a perverse person bent upon procuring un-"pasteurized" milk in this part of town would be frustrated of his design.

I was sent to what my understanding conceived to be the "bakery" in our immediate neighbourhood, on an errand. This place, I found, was called the "Queen Elizabeth." I was dreadfully abashed when I got inside. I was afraid that there might be some bit of mud on my shoes which would soil the polished floor; and I became keenly conscious that my trowsers were not perfectly pressed. I should, of course, have worn my tail-coat. There were several ladies there receiving guests that afternoon. I had a tete-a-tete with one of these, who gossiped pleasantly about the cakes--I was to get some cakes. The nicest cakes at the "Queen Elizabeth," it seems, are of two kinds: "Maids of Court"

and "Ladies in Waiting." Our neighbourhood is rich in shops given to "pastry," "sweets," "bon bons." Shops of charming names! There is the "Ambrosia Confection Shop," and the place of the "Patisserie et Confiserie."

In our neighbourhood there are, too, a vast number of "caterers" and "fruiterers," and, particularly, delicatessen shops. Delicatessen shops in our neighbourhood are described upon the windows as places dealing in "fancy and table luxuries." I have heard my wife say that many people "just live out of them." They are certainly handsome places. Why, you wouldn't think there was any food in them.

Everything is so dressed up that it doesn't look at all as if it were to eat, it is so attractive.

Restaurants hereabouts are commonly named "La Parisienne," or something like that, or are called "rotisseries." There are some just ordinary restaurants, too, and many immaculate, light-lunch rooms. "Afternoon Tea" is a frequent sign, and one often sees the delicate suggestion in neat gilt, "Sandwiches." Grocers in this part of town, it would seem, handle only "select," "fancy," and "choice" groceries, and "hot-house products." There are a number of fine "markets" in this district, very fine markets indeed. In the season for game, deer and bears may be seen strung up in front of them; all their chickens appear to come from Philadelphia, their ducks are "fresh killed Long Island ducks," and they make considerable of a feature of "frogs' legs." These markets are usually called the "Superior Market," or the "Quality Market," or something like that. Great residential hotels here bear the name of "halls," as "Brummel Hall" on the one hand and "Euripides Hall" on the other.

You will by now have begun to perceive the note, the flair, of my part of town. Its care is for the graces, the things that sweeten life, the refinements of civilisation, the embellishments of existence. Nothing more clearly, strikingly, bespeaks this than the proofs of its extraordinary fondness for art--I have mentioned literature. Painting and sculpture, music, the drama, and the art of "interior decoration,"

these things of the spirit have their homes without number along this stretch of Broadway.

"Art" shops and art "galleries" are on every hand. In the windows of these places you will see: innumerable French mirrors; stacks of empty picture frames of French eighteenth-century design, at an amazingly cheap figure each; remarkably inexpensive reproductions in bright colours of Sir Joshua, Corot, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, some Italian Madonnas; an a.s.sortment of hunting prints, and prints redolent of Old English sentiment; many wall "texts," or "creeds"; a variety of the kind of coloured pictures technically called, I believe, "comics"; numerous little plaster casts of anonymous works and busts of standard authors; frequently an ambitious original etching by an artist unknown to you; and an occasional print of the "September Morn" kind of thing; together with many "art objects" and a great deal of "bric-a-brac."