Concerning Women

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Title:     Concerning Women
Author: Myrtle Reed [More Titles by Reed]

In order to be happy, a woman needs only a good digestion, a satisfactory complexion, and a lover. The first requirement being met, the second is not difficult to obtain, and the third follows as a matter of course.

[Sidenote: Nagging]

He was a wise philosopher who first considered crime as disease, for women are naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The shrew and the scold are to be reformed only by a physician, and as for nagging, is it not allopathic scolding in homeopathic doses?

A well woman is usually a happy one, and incidentally, those around her share her content. The irritation produced by fifteen minutes of nagging speaks volumes for the personal influence which might be directed the other way, and the desired result more easily obtained.

[Sidenote: Diversions]

The sun around which woman revolves is Love. Her whole life is spent in search of it, consciously or unconsciously. Incidental diversions in the way of "career" and "independence" are usually caused by domestic unhappiness, or, in the case of spinsters, the fear of it.

If all men were lovers, there would be no "new woman" movement, no sociological studies of "Woman in Business," no ponderous analyses of "The Industrial Condition of Women" in weighty journals. Still more than a man, a woman needs a home, though it be but the tiniest room.

Even the self-reliant woman of affairs who battles bravely by day in the commercial arena has her little nook, made dainty by feminine touches, to which she gladly creeps at night. Would it not be sweeter if it were shared by one who would always love her? As truly as she needs her bread and meat, woman needs love, and, did he but know it, man needs it too, though in lesser degree.

[Sidenote: The Verity and the Vision]

Lacking the daily expression of it which is the sweet unction of her hungry soul, she seeks solace in an ideal world of her own making. It is because the verity jars upon her vision that she takes a melancholy view of life.

One of woman's keenest pleasures is sorrow. Her tears are not all pain. She goes to the theatre, not to laugh, but to weep. The clever playwright who closes his last scene with a bitter parting is sure of a large clientage, composed almost wholly of women. Sad books are written by men, with an eye to women readers, and women dearly love to wear the willow in print.

Women are unconscious queens of tragedy. Each one, in thought, plays to a sympathetic but invisible audience. She lifts her daily living to a plane of art, finding in fiction, music, pictures, and the stage continual reminders of her own experience.

Does her husband, distraught with business cares, leave her hurriedly and without the customary morning kiss? Woman, on her way to market, rapidly reviews similar instances in fiction, in which this first forgetting proved to be "the little rift within the lute."

The pictures of distracted ladies, wild as to hair and vision, are sold in photogravure by countless thousands--to women. An attraction on the boards which is rumoured to be "so sad," leads woman to economise in the matter of roasts and desserts that she may go and enjoy an afternoon of misery. Girls suffer all their lives long from being taken to mirthful plays, or to vaudeville, which is unmixed delight to a man and intolerably cheerful to a woman.

[Sidenote: Woman and Death]

Woman and Death are close friends in art. Opera is her greatest joy, because a great many people are slaughtered in the course of a single performance, and somebody usually goes raving mad for love. When Melba sings the mad scene from Lucia, and that beautiful voice descends by lingering half-notes from madness and nameless longing to love and prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer delight and clutch the hands of their companions in an ecstasy of pain.

In proportion as women enjoy sorrow, men shrink from it. A man cannot bear to be continually reminded of the woman he has loved and lost, while woman's dearest keepsakes are old love letters and the shoes of a little child. If the lover or the child is dead, the treasures are never to be duplicated or replaced, but if the pristine owner of the shoes has grown to stalwart manhood and the writer of the love letters is a tender and devoted husband, the sorrowful interest is merely mitigated. It is not by any means lost.

[Sidenote: "The Eternal Womanly"]

Just why it should be considered sad to marry one's lover and for a child to grow up, can never be understood by men. There are many things in the "eternal womanly" which men understand about as well as a kitten does the binomial theorem, but some mysteries become simple enough when the leading fact is grasped--that woman's song of life is written in a minor key and that she actually enjoys the semblance of sorrow. Still, the average woman wishes to be idealised and strongly objects to being understood.

[Sidenote: "Tears, Idle Tears"]

Woman's tears mean no more than the sparks from an overcharged dynamo; they are simply emotional relief. Married men gradually come to realise it, and this is why a suspicion of tears in his sweetheart's eyes means infinitely more to a lover than a fit of hysterics does to a husband.

We are wont to speak of woman's tenderness, but there is no tenderness like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more auspicious time, has in his hands the talisman of domestic felicity.

If by any chance the lachrymal glands were to be dried up, woman's life would lose a goodly share of its charm. There is nothing to cry on which compares with a man's shoulder; almost any man will do at a critical moment; but the clavicle of a lover is by far the most desirable. If the flood is copious and a collar or an immaculate shirt-front can be spoiled, the scene acquires new and distinct value. A pillow does very well, lacking the shoulder, for many of the most attractive women in fiction habitually cry into pillows--because they have no lover, or because the brute dislikes tears.

When grief strikes deep, a woman's eyes are dry. Her soul shudders and there is a hand upon her heart whose icy fingers clutch at the inward fibre in a very real physical pain. There are no tears for times like these; the inner depths, bare and quivering, are healed by no such balm as this.

A sudden blow leaves a woman as cold as a marble statue and absolutely dumb as to the thing which lies upon her heart. When the tears begin to flow, it means that resignation and content will surely come. On the contrary, when once or twice in a lifetime a man is moved to tears, there is nothing so terrible and so hopeless as his sobbing grief.

Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry for each other. It never occurs to a married woman that a spinster may not care to take the troublous step. An ideal lover in one's heart is less strain upon the imagination than the transfiguration of a man who goes around in his shirt-sleeves and dispenses with his collar at ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

[Sidenote: The Unknown Country]

If fiction dealt pleasantly with men who are unmindful of small courtesies, the unknown country beyond the altar would lose some of its fear. If the way of an engaged girl lies past a barber shop,--which very seldom has a curtain, by the way,--and she happens to think that she may some day behold her beloved in the dangerous act of shaving himself, it immediately hardens her heart. One glimpse of one face covered with lather will postpone one wedding-day five weeks. Many a lover has attributed to caprice or coquetry the fault which lies at the door of the "tonsorial parlour."

[Sidenote: Other Feminine Eyes]

A woman may be a mystery to a man and to herself, but never to another woman. There is no concealment which is effectual when other feminine eyes are fixed upon one's small and harmless schemes. A glance at a girl's dressing-table is sufficient for the intimate friend--she does not need to ask questions; and indeed, there are few situations in life in which the necessity for direct questions is not a confession of individual weakness.

If fourteen different kinds of creams and emollients are within easy reach, the girl has an admirer who is fond of out-door sports and has not yet declared himself. If the curling iron is kept hot, it is because he has looked approval when her hair was waved. If there is a box of rouge but half concealed, the girl thinks the man is a fatuous idiot and hourly expects a proposal.

If the various drugs are in the dental line, the man is a cheerful soul with a tendency to be humorous. If she is particular as to small details of scolding locks and eyebrows, he probably wears glasses. If she devotes unusual attention to her nails, the affair has progressed to that interesting stage where he may hold her hand for a few minutes at a time.

If she selects her handkerchief with extreme care,--one with an initial and a faint odour of violet--she expects to give it to him to carry and to forget to ask for it. If he makes an extra call in order to return it, it indicates a lesser degree of interest than if he says nothing about it. The forgotten handkerchief is an important straw with a girl when love's capricious wind blows her way.

It is not entirely without reason that womankind in general blames "the other woman" for defection of any kind. Short-sighted woman thinks it a mighty tribute to her own charm to secure the passing interest of another's rightful property. It does not seem to occur to her that someone else will lure him away from her with even more ease. Each successive luring makes defection simpler for a man. Practice tends towards perfection in most things; perhaps it is the single exception, love, which proves the rule.

Three delusions among women are widespread and painful. Marriage is currently supposed to reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken for life, and, if "the other woman" were only out of the way, he would come back. Love sometimes reforms a man, but marriage does not. The rejected lover suffers for a brief period,--feminine philosophers variously estimate it, but a week is a generous average,--and he who will not come in spite of "the other woman" is not worth having at all.

[Sidenote: "Not Things, but Men"]

Emerson says: "The things which are really for thee gravitate to thee." One is tempted to add the World's Congress motto--"Not things, but men."

There is no virtue in women which men cultivate so assiduously as forgiveness. They make one think that it is very pretty and charming to forgive. It is not hygienic, however, for the woman who forgives easily has a great deal of it to do. When pardon is to be had for the asking, there are frequent causes for its giving. This, of course, applies to the interesting period before marriage.

[Sidenote: Post-Nuptial Sins]

Post-nuptial sins are atoned for with gifts; not more than once in a whole marriage with the simple, manly words, "Forgive me, dear, I was wrong." It injures a man's conceit vitally to admit he has made a mistake. This is gracious and knightly in the lover, but a married man, the head of a family, must be careful to maintain his position.

Cases of reformation by marriage are few and far between, and men more often die of wounded conceit than broken hearts. "Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love," save on the stage and in the stories women cry over.

[Sidenote: "The Other Woman"]

"The other woman" is the chief bugbear of life. On desert islands and in a very few delightful books, her baneful presence is not. The girl a man loves with all his heart can see a long line of ghostly ancestors, and requires no opera-glass to discern through the mists of the future a procession of possible posterity. It is for this reason that men's ears are tried with the eternal, unchanging: "Am I the only woman you ever loved?" and "Will you always love me?"

The woman who finally acquires legal possession of a man is haunted by the shadowy predecessors. If he is unwary enough to let her know another girl has refused him, she develops a violent hatred for this inoffensive maiden. Is it because the cruel creature has given pain to her lord? His gods are not her gods--if he has adored another woman.

These two are mutually "other women," and the second one has the best of it, for there is no thorn in feminine flesh like the rejected lover who finds consolation elsewhere. It may be exceedingly pleasant to be a man's first love, but she is wise beyond books who chooses to be his last, and it is foolish to spend mental effort upon old flames, rather than in watching for new ones, for Cæsar himself is not more utterly dead than a man's dead love.

Women are commonly supposed to worry about their age, but Father Time is a trouble to men also. The girl of twenty thinks it absurd for women to be concerned about the matter, but the hour eventually comes when she regards the subject with reverence akin to awe. There is only one terror in it--the dreadful nines.

[Sidenote: Scylla and Charybdis]

"Twenty-nine!" Might she not as well be thirty? There is little choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for every woman, married, engaged, or unattached.

The married woman felicitates herself greatly, unless a tall daughter of nine or ten walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl is safe--she rejoices in the last hours of her lingering girlhood and hems table linen with more resignation. The unattached girl has a strange interest in creams and hair tonics, and usually betakes herself to the cloister of the university for special courses, since azure hosiery does not detract from woman's charm in the eyes of the faculty.

Men do not often know their ages accurately till after thirty. The gladsome heyday of youth takes no note of the annual milestones. But after thirty, ah me! "Yes," a man will say sometimes, "I am thirty-one, but the fellows tell me I don't look a day over twenty-nine." Scylla and Charybdis again!

[Sidenote: Perennial Youth]

Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women are mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron of fifty seems to have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose, as regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed, self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and found it sweet. A woman is never old until the little finger of her glove is allowed to project beyond the finger itself and she orders her new photographs from an old plate in preference to sitting again.

In all the seven ages of man, there is someone whom she may attract. If she is twenty-five, the boy who has just attained long trousers will not buy her striped sticks of peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her books. She is not apt to wear fraternity pins and decorate her rooms in college colours, unless her lover still holds his alma mater in fond remembrance. But there are others, always the others--and is it less sweet to inspire the love which lasts than the tender verses of a Sophomore? Her field of action is not sensibly limited, for at twenty men love woman, at thirty a woman, and at forty, women.

[Sidenote: Three Weapons]

Woman has three weapons--flattery, food, and flirtation, and only the last of these is ever denied her by Time. With the first she appeals to man's conceit, with the second to his heart, which is suspected to lie at the end of the oesophagus, rather than over among lungs and ribs, and with the third to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But the pleasures of the chase grow beautifully less when age brings rheumatism and kindred ills.

Besides, may she not always be a chaperone? When a political orator refers effectively to "the cancer which is eating at the heart of the body politic," someway, it always makes a girl think of a chaperone. She goes, ostensibly, to lend a decorous air to whatever proceedings may be in view. She is to keep the man from making love to the girl. Whispers and tender hand clasps are occasionally possible, however, for, tell it not in Gath! the chaperone was once young herself and at times looks the other way.

That is, unless she is the girl's mother. Trust a parent for keeping two eyes and a pair of glasses on a girl! Trust the non-matchmaking mother for four new eyes under her back hair and a double row of ears arranged laterally along her anxious spine! And yet, if the estimable lady had not been married herself, it is altogether likely that the girl would never have thought of it.

[Sidenote: The Chaperone]

The reason usually given for chaperonage is that it gives the girl a chance to become acquainted with the man. Of course, in the presence of a chaperone, a man says and does exactly the same things he would if he were alone with the maiden of his choice. He does not mind making love to a girl in her mother's presence. He does not even care to be alone with her when he proposes to her. He would like to have some chaperone read his letters--he always writes with this intention. At any time during the latter part of the month it fills him with delight to see the chaperone order a lobster after they have all had oysters.

Nonsense! Why do not the leaders of society say, frankly: "This chaperone business is just a little game. Our husbands are either at the club or soundly asleep at home. It is not nice to go around alone, and it is pathetic to go in pairs, with no man. We will go with our daughters and their young friends, for they have cavaliers enough and to spare. Let us get out and see the world, lest we die of ennui and neglect!" It is the chaperone who really goes with the young man. She takes the girl along to escape gossip.

[Sidenote: Behold his House!]

It is strange, when it is woman's avowed object to make man happy, that she insists upon doing it in her own way, rather than in his. He likes the rich, warm colours; the deep reds and dark greens. Behold his house!

Renaissance curtains obscure the landscape with delicate tracery, and he realises what it might mean to wear a veil. Soft tones of rose and Nile green appear in his drawing-room. Chippendale chairs, upon which he fears to sit, invite the jaded soul to whatever repose it can get. See the sofa cushions, which he has learned by bitter experience never to touch! Does he rouse a quiescent Nemesis by laying his weary head upon that elaborate embroidery? Not unless his memory is poor.

[Sidenote: Home Comforts]

Take careful note of the bric-à-brac upon his library table. See the few square inches of blotting paper on a cylinder which he can roll over his letter--the three stamps stuck together more closely than brothers, generously set aside for his use. Does he find comfort here? Not very much of it.

See the dainty dinner which is set before the hungry man. A cup of rarest china holds four ounces of clear broth. A stick of bread or two crackers are allotted to him. Then he may have two croquettes, or one small chop, when his soul is athirst for rare roast beef and steak an inch thick. Then a nice salad, made of three lettuce leaves and a suspicion of oil, another cracker and a cubic inch of cheese, an ounce of coffee in a miniature cup, and behold, the man is fed!

Why should he go to his club, call loudly for flesh-pots, sink into a chair he is not afraid of breaking, and forget his trouble in the evening paper, while his wife is at home, alone, or having a Roman holiday as a chaperone?

It is a simple thing to acquire a lover, but it is a fine art to keep him. Clubs were originally intended for the homeless, as distinguished from the unmarried. The rare woman who rests and soothes a man when he is tired has no rival in the club. Misunderstanding, sorrowful, yearning for what she has lost, woman contemplates the wreck of her girlish dream.

[Sidenote: The Heart of a Woman]

There are three things man is destined never to solve--perpetual motion, the square of the circle, and the heart of a woman. Yet he may go a little way into the labyrinth with the thread of love, which his Ariadne will gladly give him at the door.

The dim chambers are fragrant with precious things, for through the winding passages Memory has strewn rue and lavender, love and longing; sweet spikenard and instinctive belief. Some day, when the heart aches, she will brew content from these.

There are barriers which he may not pass, secret treasures that he may not see, dreams that he may not guess. There are dark corners where there has been torture, of which he will never know. There are shadows and ghostly shapes which Penelope has hidden with the fairest fabrics of her loom. There are doors, tightly locked, which he has no key to open; rooms which have contained costly vessels, empty and deep with dust.

There is no other step than his, for he walks there alone; sometimes to the music of dead days and sometimes to the laughter of a little child. The petals of crushed roses rustle at his feet--his roses--in the inmost places of her heart. And beyond, of spotless marble, with the infinite calm of mountains and perpetual snow, is something which he seldom comprehends--her love of her own whiteness.

It is a wondrous thing. For it is so small he could hold it in the hollow of his hand, yet it is great enough to shelter him forever. All the world may not break it if his love is steadfast and unchanging, and loving him, it becomes deep enough to love and pity all the world.

It is a tender thing. So often is it wounded that it cannot see another suffer, and its own pain is easier far to bear. It makes a shield of its very tenderness, gladly receiving the stabs that were meant for him, forgiving always, and forgetting when it may.

[Sidenote: The Solace]

Yet, after all, it is a simple thing. For in times of deepest doubt and trouble, it requires for its solace only the tender look, the whispered word which brings new courage, and the old-time grace of the lover's way.

[The end]
Myrtle Reed's essay: Concerning Women

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