Читать книгу Her Royal Highness Woman - O'Rell Max - Страница 3

CHAPTER I

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

What do we know about women?—Generalities on the subject—I am requested to speak on some subject I know something about.

'I am a man, and everything that concerns woman interests me,' might have said Terence. This is also what every Frenchman says, and why of all men on earth he is the one who knows women best. He is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, almost a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, the psychological, even the physiological, point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted. And this explains why, since Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country (not even in America) has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.

It is true that the leaders of thought in France, as in any other country, have long ago proclaimed that woman was the only problem it would never be given to man to solve. It is true that they have all tried and all failed, and that they acknowledge it, but they are trying still.

This characteristic of woman is probably, after all, what makes her ever so interesting to us. Nothing is more different from a woman than another woman. Nothing is more different from a woman than that very woman herself. The very moment we think we know her, she slips through our fingers and stands in front of us an absolute stranger. And so it should be. A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married twenty years without being able to understand his wife. 'You should not complain of that,' remarked the friend. 'I have been married to my wife three months only, and I understand her perfectly.'

When I come to think of it, I must confess that we men are sometimes perfectly lovely in our estimation of women. For example, you know, my dear fellow-men, that when we have a little cold in our heads—nothing more—the whole household is in a perfect state of commotion, and we wonder how it is that the earth still dares continue her course round the sun. Yet, when we see a woman patient, as she very generally is, of the most poignant physical and moral suffering, we exclaim, in admiration of her: 'She bears it like a man!' And what we seem to be unable to understand is, why women should smile when they hear us make that exclamation. Myself, I could roar, while holding my sides.

No man can say that he knows what a woman is unless he has met her in adversity. It is then that she can attain prodigious heights. Indeed, I believe that the head of a woman is much stronger in adversity than in prosperity. She can always surpass herself in misfortune, and often fails to stand success—I mean personal success, for she can associate herself to the success of a husband with all her heart and soul, but personal success is very often too much for her. How many women have I met during my twenty years of contact with the literary, artistic, dramatic, and social circles of life who completely lost their heads over a sudden personal success! I have seen women immediately lose all interest in home and family life; I have seen some abandon husband, and even children, on suddenly becoming a celebrity, a famous writer, actress, or singer, or a 'professional' beauty. A successful man will not alter in his feelings toward his family because he has become celebrated, unless he has a wife who should keep amusing herself with reminding him that, however the great 'John' of Oliver Wendell Holmes he may be to the public, he is only plain 'Jack' at home. On the contrary, the successful man will often most willingly give all the applause of the public for a few encouraging words of praise from a devoted wife, for a few expressions of admiration from a loving daughter. The easily unstrung, almost hysterical, temperament of a woman will sometimes make her give up all the quiet enjoyment of family happiness and love for the noisy applause of the crowd. It acts on her like an intoxicating beverage; and if men sometimes get cured of the craving for drink, women, it is well known, never do. The celebrated woman is seldom fit to be, or, if she is, to remain, a wife and a mother. She becomes an anomaly, a freak. It is in woman's nature. She cannot look down to drop her love on a man; to love she must admire and look up. I would rather be the husband of a simple little dairymaid than that of a George Sand or a Madame de Staël.

All these are stray thoughts on the great eternal feminine. Like my fellow-men, I know nothing about women.

I quite appreciated a little scene only a few weeks old. I was announced to give a lecture on 'Women' to the students of a large ladies' college in North Carolina. A couple of hours before the lecture, three young ladies from the college called on me at the hotel where I was staying. I met them in the parlour. Three charming, bright, most intelligent-looking girls they were. After looking at each other for some time, so as to suggest that the other should speak, one at last made up her mind to be the spokeswoman of the little deputation. 'We have called on you,' she said, 'to ask if you would be kind enough to change the subject of your lecture to-night. Our lecture course is instituted for the instruction and the general improvement of the students, and we thought we should like to hear you talk to us on a subject which you know something about.' I must say that I felt fearfully small; but I was delighted at the frankness of those young American girls, and at once acceded to their request.