Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General

“‘I think differently, Count,’ said I. ‘I maintain that it is good play, and I abide by it.’

“‘Let us decide it by a wager,’ said he.

“‘In what way?’

“‘Thus: We shall leave the question to the galerie. You shall allege what you deem to be the reasons for your play, and they shall decide if they accept them as valid.’

“‘I agree. What will you bet?’

“‘Ten napoleons – twenty, fifty, five hundred if you like!’ cried he, warmly.

“‘I shall say ten. You don’t like losing, and I don’t want to punish you too heavily.’

“‘There is the jury, sir,’ said he, haughtily; ‘make your case.’

“‘The wager is this,’ said I, ‘that, to win, I shall satisfy these gentlemen that for the card I played I had a sufficient and good reason.’

“‘Yes.’

“‘My reason was this, then – I looked into your hand!’

“I pocketed his ten napoleons, but they were the last I won of him. Indeed, it took a month before he got over the shock.”

It would be interesting if we had, which unhappily we have not, any statistical returns to show what classes and professions have produced the best whist-players. In my own experience I have found civilians the superiors of the military.

Diplomatists I should rank first; their game was not alone finer and more subtle, but they showed a recuperative power in their play which others rarely possessed: they extricated themselves well out of difficulties, and always made their losses as small as possible. Where they broke down was when they were linked with a bad partner: they invariably played on a level which he could never attain to, and in this way cross purposes and misunderstandings were certain to ensue.

Lawyers, as a class, play well; but their great fault is, they play too much for the galerie. The habit of appealing to the jury jags and blurs the finer edge of their faculties, and they are more prone to canvass the suffrages of the surrounders than to address themselves to the actual issue. For this reason, Equity practitioners are superior to the men in the courts below.

Physicians are seldom first-rate players – they are always behind their age in Whist, and rarely, if ever, know any of the fine points which Frenchmen have introduced into the game. Their play, too, is timid – they regard trumps as powerful stimulants, and only administer them in drop-doses. They seldom look at the game as a great whole, but play on, card after card, deeming each trick they turn as a patient disposed of, and not in any way connected with what has preceded or is to follow it.

Divines are in Whist pretty much where geology was in the time of the first Georges; still I have met with a bishop and a stray archdeacon or two who could hold their own. I am speaking here of the Establishment, because in Catholic countries the higher clergy are very often good players. Antonelli, for instance, might sit down at the Portland or the Turf; and even my old friend G. P. would find that his Eminence was his match.

Soldiers are sorry performers, for mess-play is invariably bad; but sailors are infinitely worse. They have but one notion, which is to play out all the best cards as fast as they can, and then appeal to their partner to score as many tricks as they have – an inhuman performance, which I have no doubt has cost many apoplexies.

On the whole, Frenchmen are better players than we are. Their game is less easily divined, and all their intimations (invites) more subtle and more refined. The Emperor plays well. In England he played a great deal at the late Lord Eglinton’s, though he was never the equal of that accomplished Earl, whose mastery of all games, especially those of address, was perfection.

The Irish have a few brilliant players – one of them is on the bench; but the Scotch are the most winning of all British whisters. The Americans are rarely first-rate, but they have a large number of good second-class players. Even with them, however, Whist is on the decline; and Euchre and Poker, and a score more of other similar abominations, have usurped the place of the king of games. What is to be done to arrest the progress of this indifferentism? – how are we to awaken men out of the stupor of this apathy? Have they never heard of the terrible warning of Talleyrand to his friend who could not play, as he said, “Have you reflected on the miserable old age that awaits you?” How much of human nature that would otherwise be unprofitable can be made available by Whist! What scores of tiresome old twaddlers are there who can still serve their country as whisters! what feeble intelligences that can flicker out into a passing brightness at the sight of the “turned trump”!

Think of this, and think what is to become of us when the old, the feeble, the tiresome, and the interminable will all be thrown broadcast over society without an object or an occupation. Imagine what Bores will be let loose upon the world, and fancy how feeble will be all efforts of wit or pleasantry to season a mass of such incapables! Think, I say, think of this. It is a peril that has been long threatening – even from that time when old Lord Hertford, baffled and discouraged by the invariable reply, “I regret, my Lord, that I cannot play Whist,” exclaimed, “I really believe that the day is not distant when no gentleman can have a vice that requires more than two people!”

ONE OF OUR “TWO PUZZLES”

The two puzzles of our era are, how to employ our women, and what to do with our convicts; and how little soever gallant it may seem to place them in collocation, there is a bond that unites the attempt to keep the good in virtue with the desire to reform the bad from vice, which will save me from any imputation of deficient delicacy.

Let us begin with the Women. An enormous amount of ingenuity has been expended in devising occupations where female labour might be advantageously employed, and where the more patient industry and more delicate handiwork of women might replace the coarser mechanism of men. Printing, bookbinding, cigar-making, and the working of the telegraph, have been freely opened – and, I believe, very successfully – to female skill; and scores of other callings have been also placed at their disposal: but, strange enough, the more that we do, the more there remains to be done; and never have the professed advocates of woman’s rights been so loud in their demands as since we have shared with them many of what we used to regard as the especial fields of man’s industry. Women have taken to the practice of Medicine, and have threatened to invade the Bar – steps doubtless anticipatory of the time when they shall “rise in the House” or sit on the Treasury benches. Now, I have very little doubt that we used not to be as liberal as we might in sharing our callings with women. We had got into the habit of underrating their capacities, and disparaging their fitness for labour, which was very illiberal; but let us take care that the reaction does not cany us too far on the other side, and that in our zeal to make a reparation we only make a blunder, and that we encourage them to adopt careers and crafts totally unsuited to their tastes and their powers.

It is quite clear – in fact, a mere glance at the detail of the preliminary studies will suffice to show it – that medicine and surgery should not be shared with them. For a variety of reasons, they ought not to be encouraged to take holy orders; and, on the whole, it is very doubtful if it would be a wise step to introduce them into the army, much less into the navy. Seeing this, therefore, the question naturally arises, Are women to be the mere drudges – the Helots of our civilisation? Are we only to employ them in such humble callings as exclude all ideas of future distinction? A very serious question this, and one over which I pondered for more than half an hour last night, as I lay under the influence of some very strong tea and a slight menace of gout.

Women are very haughty creatures – very resentful of any supposed slight – very aggressive, besides, if they imagine the time for attack favourable. Will they sit down patiently as makers of pill-boxes and artificial flowers? Will they be satisfied with their small gains and smaller consideration? Will there not be ambitious spirits amongst them who will ask, What do you mean to offer us? We are of a class who neither care to bind books nor draw patterns. We are your equals – if we were not distinctively modest, we might say something more than your equals – in acquirement and information. We have our smattering of physical-science humbug, as you have; we are read up in theological disputation, and are as ready as you to stand by Colenso against Moses; in modern languages we are more than your match. What have you to offer us if we are too proud, or too poor, or too anything else, to stand waiting for a buyer in the marriage-market of Belgravia? You will not suffer us to enter the learned professions nor the Service; you will not encourage us to be architects, attorneys, land-agents, or engineers. We know and we feel that there is not one of these callings either above our capacity or unsuited to our habits, but you deny us admittance; and now we ask, What is your scheme for our employment? what project have you that may point out to us a future of independence and a station of respect? Have you such a plan? or, failing it, have you the courage to proclaim to the world that all your boasted civilisation can offer us is to become the governesses to the children of our luckier sisters? But there are many of us totally unsuited to this, brought up with ways and habits that would make such an existence something very like penal servitude – what will you do with us?

With this cry – for it became a cry – in my ears, I tried to go asleep. I counted seventeen hundred and forty-four; I thought of the sea; I imagined I was listening to Dr Cumming; and I endeavoured to repeat a distich of Martin Tupper: but the force of conscience and the congo carried the day, and I addressed myself vigorously to the question. I thought of making them missionaries, lighthouse-keepers, lunacy commissioners, Garter Kings-at-Arms, and suchlike, when a brilliant thought flashed across my brain, and, with the instinct of a great success, I saw I had triumphed. “Yes,” cried I aloud, “there is one grand career for women – a career which shall engage not alone all the higher and more delicate traits of their organisation, which will call forth their marvellous clear-sightedness and quick perception, their tact, their persuasiveness, and their ingenuity, but will actually employ the less commendable features of female nature, and find work for their powers of concealment, their craft in deception, and their passion for intrigue. How is it that we have never hit upon it before? for of all the careers meant by nature for women, was there any one could compare with Diplomacy!”

Here we have at once the long-sought-for career – the desideratum tanti studii– the occupation for which men are too coarse, too clumsy, too inept, and which requires the lighter touch and more delicate treatment of female fingers. It is the everyday reproach heard of us abroad, that our representatives are deficient in those smaller and nicer traits by which irritations are avoided and unpleasant situations relieved. John, they say, always imagines that to be national he must be “Bull,” and toss on his horns “all and every” that opposes him. Now, late events might have disabused foreign cabinets on this score: a quieter beast than he has shown himself need not be wished for. Still, he has bellowed, and lashed his tail, and cut a few absurd capers, to show what he would be at if provoked; but the world has grown too wise to be terrified by such exhibitions, and quietly settled down to the opinion that there is nothing to fear from him. Now, how very differently might all this have been if the Duchess of S. were Ambassador at Paris, and the Countess of C. at St Petersburg, and Lady N. at Vienna! There would have been no bluster, no rudeness, no bullying – none of that blundering about declining a Congress to-day because a Congress “ought to follow a war,” and proposing one to-morrow, “to prevent a war.” Women despise logic, and consequently would not stultify it. A temperance apostle is not likely to adulterate the liquor that he does not drink; and for this reason, female intelligence would have escaped this “muddle.” Her Ladyship would have thrown her blandishments over Rechberg – he is now of the age when men are easy victims – all the little cajoleries and flatteries of women’s art would have been exerted first to find out, and then to thwart, his policy. It is notorious that English diplomacy knows next to nothing through secret agency. Would such be the case if we had women as envoys? What mystery would stand the assault of a fine lady, trained and practised by the habits of her daily life?

They tell us that our fox-hunters would form the finest scout-cavalry in Europe; and I am convinced that a London leader of fashion – I have a dozen in my eye at this moment – would track an intrigue through all its stages, and learn its intimate details of place and time and agency, weeks before a merely male intelligence began to suspect the thing was possible.

Imagine what a blue-book would be in these times – would there be any reading could compare with it? We used to admire a certain diplomatist – a pleasant narrator of court gossip – giving, as he did, little traits of Kings and Kaisers, and telling us the way in which majesty was graciously pleased to blow his royal nose. Imagine a female pen engaged on such themes! What clever and sharp little touches would reveal the whole tone of a “reception”! We should not be told “His Majesty received me coldly,” but we would have a beautiful analysis of the royal mind in all its varied moods of displeasure, concealment, urbanity, reserve, and deception. Compared with the male version of the same incident, it would be like Faraday’s report on a case of supposed poisoning beside the blundering narrative of a country apothecary!

It is a long time – a very long time – before an old country has energy enough to throw off any of its accustomed ways. It requires the vigorous assault of young and sturdy intelligences, and, above all, immense persistence, to effect it.

Light comes very slowly indeed through the fog of centuries’ growth, and there is hope always when even the faintest flicker of a ray pierces the Boeotian cloud. Now, for some years back, it may have been remarked that a sort of suspicion has been breaking on the minds of our rulers, that the finer, the higher, and subtler organisations of women might find their suitable sphere of occupation in the diplomatic service.

“I don’t speak German, but I play the German flute,” said the apologetic gentleman; and so might we say. We don’t engage ladies in diplomacy, but we employ all the old women of our own sex! Wherever we find a well-mannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an Envoy Extraordinary.

I remember an old medical lecturer in Dublin formerly, who used to hold forth on the Materia Medica in the hall of the University, and who, seeing a “student” whose studies had been for some time before pursued in Germany, appear in the lecture-room, with a note-book and pen to take down the lecture —

“Tell that young gentleman,” said the Professor, “to put up his writing materials, for there’s not one word he’ll hear from me that he’ll not find in the oldest editions of the ‘Dublin Pharmacopoeia.’” In the same spirit our diplomatists may sneer at the call for blue-books. We have all of us had the whole thing already in the ‘Times;’ and why? Because we choose to employ unsuitable tools. We want to shave with a hatchet instead of a razor; for be it remarked, as no things are so essentially unlike as those that have a certain resemblance, there is nothing in nature so remote from the truly feminine finesse as the mind of a male “old woman.”

It is simply to the flaws and failures of female intelligence that the parallel applies. A very pleasant old parson, whom I knew when I was a boy, and who used to discourse to me much about Edmund Burke and Gavin Hamilton, told me once that he met old Primate Stewart one day returning from a visitation, and turned his horse round to accompany the carriage for some distance. “Doctor G.,” said the Archbishop, “you remind me most strikingly of my friend Paley.”

“Oh, my Lord, it is too much honour: I have not the shadow of a pretension to such distinction.”

“Well, sir, it is true; I have Paley before me as I look at you.”

“I am overwhelmed by your Lordship’s flattery.”

“Yes, sir; Paley rode just such another broken-down old grey nag as that.”

Do not therefore disparage my plan for the employment of women in diplomacy by any ungenerous comparisons with the elderly ladies at present engaged in it. This would be as unfair as it is ungallant.

There are a variety of minor considerations which I might press into the cause, but some of them would appeal less to the general mind than to the official, and I omit them – merely observing what facilities it would give for the despatch of business, if the Minister, besieged, as he often now is, by lady-applicants for a husband’s promotion, instead of the tedious inquiry, “Who is Mr D.? – where has he been? – what has he done? – what is he capable of?” could simply say, “Make Mrs T. Third Secretary at Stuttgart, and send Mrs O’Dowd as Vice-Consul to Simoom!”

A MASTERLY INACTIVITY

It is no small privilege to you “gentlemen of England who live at home at ease,” or otherwise, that you cannot hear how the whole Continent is talking of you at this moment. We have, as a nation, no small share of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. If we do not thank God for it, we are right well pleased to know that we are not like that Publican there, “who eats garlic, or carries a stiletto, or knouts his servants, or indulges in any other taste or pastime of ‘the confounded foreigner.’” The ‘Times’ proclaims how infinitely superior we are every morning; and each traveller – John Murray in hand – expounds in his bad French, that an Englishman is the only European native brought up in the knowledge of truth and the wash-tub.

By dint of time, iteration, and a considerable amount of that same French I speak of, an article expressly manufactured for exportation, we really did at last persuade patient and suffering Europe to take us at our own valuation. We got them to believe that – with certain little peculiarities, certain lesser vices, rather amiable than otherwise – no nation, ancient or modern, could approach us. That we were at one and the same time the richest, the strongest, the most honourable, the most courageous people recorded in history; and not alone this, but the politest and the most conciliatory, with the largest coal-fields and the best cookery in Europe. Now, there is nothing more damaging than the witness who proves too much. Miss Edgeworth tells us somewhere, I think, of an Irish peer who, travelling in France with a negro servant, directed him, if questioned on the subject, always to say his master was a Frenchman. He was punctiliously faithful to his orders; but whenever he said, “My massa a Frenchman,” he always added, “So am I.”

In the same spirit has Bull gone and damaged himself abroad. He might have enjoyed an unlimited credit for his stories of English wealth and greatness – how big was our fleet, and how bitter our beer; he might have rung the changes over our just pride in our insular position and our income-tax, and none dared to dispute him; but when, in the warm expansiveness of his enthusiasm, he proceeded to say, not merely that we dressed better and dined better than the foreigner, but that our manners were more polished, our address more insinuating, and the amiability of our whole social tone more conspicuous, “Mossoo,” taking him to represent all from Stockholm to Sicily, began to examine for himself, and after some hesitation to ask, “What if the wealth be only like the politeness? What if the national character be about as rude as the cookery? What if English morality turn out to be a jumble and confusion, very like English-French? Who is to tell us that the coal-fields may not be as easily exhausted as the civility?” These were very ugly doubts, and for some years back foreigners, after that slow fashion in which public opinion moves amongst them, have been turning them over and over, but in a manner that showed a great revulsion had taken place on the Continent with regard to the estimate of England.

A nation usually judges another nation by the individuals and by the Government. Now it is no calumny to say that, taking them en masse, the English who travel abroad, whether it be from indifference, from indolence, from a rooted confidence in their own superiority, or from some defect in character, neither win favour for themselves, nor affection for their country from foreigners. So long as we were looked upon, however, as colossal in wealth and power, a certain rude and abrupt demeanour was taken as the type of a people too practical to be polished. It grew to be thought that intense activity and untiring energy had no time to bestow on mere forms. When, however, a suspicion began to get abroad – it was a cloud no bigger at first than a man’s hand – that if we had the money it was to hoard it, and if we had the power it was to withhold its exercise; that we wanted, in fact, to impose on the world by the menace of a force we never meant to employ, and to rule Europe as great financiers “bear” the Stock Exchange – then, and then for the first time, there arose that cry against England as a sham and an imposition, of which, as I said before, it is very pleasant for you at home if the sounds have not reached you.

All our late policy has led to this. Ever ready to join with France, we always leave her in the lurch. We went with her to Mexico, and left her when she landed. We did our utmost to launch her into a war for Poland, in which we had never the slightest intention of joining. Always prompt for the initiative, we stop short immediately after. I have a friend who says, “I am very fond of going to church, but I don’t like going in.” This is exactly the case of England. She won’t go in.

Now, I am fully persuaded it would have been a mistake to have joined in the Mexican campaign. I cannot imagine such a congeries of blunders as a war for the Poles. But why entertain these questions? Why discuss them in cabinets, and debate them in councils? Why convey the false impression that you are indignant when you are indifferent, or feel sympathy for sufferings of which you will do nothing but talk?

“Masterly inactivity” was as unlucky a phrase as ever was coined. It has led small statesmanship into innumerable blunders, and made second-rate politicians fancy that whenever they folded their arms they were dignified. To obtain the credit for a masterly inactivity, it is first of all essential you should show that you could do something very great if you would. There would be no credit in a man born deaf and dumb having observed a discreet silence. To give England, therefore, the prestige for this high quality, it was necessary that she should seem to bestir herself. The British lion must have got up, rolled his eyes fearfully, and even lashed his tail, before he resolved on the masterly inactivity of lying down again.