Rambles in Womanland

Let women have simplicity in their toilette, dignity in their manner, a severe gracefulness in their general attitude, and I guarantee you that no man – I mean no fairly well-bred man – will ever turn round to look at them.

Women should not call it success. They should feel humiliated to see that some gloriously beautiful women do not obtain it. They should take advice and seek a remedy with the earnestness of that cashier who, returning home, could not even take notice of his wife and children, much less kiss them, until he had discovered the cause of an error of a penny in his accounts amounting to several thousands of pounds.

When a woman tells me that she cannot go out without men looking and smiling at her, I have always a mind to say to her: 'Perhaps you wink at them.'

CHAPTER XIII

DANGEROUS MEN

(A WARNING TO WOMEN)

Among the men who are the most dangerous for women must be reckoned those whose advances of love generally prove unsuccessful. Women have no idea of the harm that may be done to them by those parasites of their homes.

A woman, young, amiable, and cheerful, welcomes such men in her house without entertaining any suspicion. She invites them to her receptions, her dinner-parties; she often finds them pleasant, witty, and then they venture a few flattering compliments. She at first accepts them as the current coin of society, and pays no attention to them.

As she is amiable to her guests, she is not on her guard, and she treats them to the same smiles, which these fops of the purest water often imagine are gracious smiles conferred on them only. Thus encouraged, they go further, and venture compliments bordering on declarations of love, or, at any rate, on expressions of deep admiration. The young woman, used to compliments, takes no notice of our heroes, or pretends to have understood nothing.

Her silence is then taken for a tacit acceptance, and the fops, emboldened, make an open declaration of love. Now, a regular flirt or coquette knows how to encourage or discourage a man with one glance, but a perfectly good woman is taken unaware; she feels embarrassed, and, thus apparently encouraged, these men get bolder and bolder, until the young woman has to show them the door.

Then her troubles begin. These parasites will go to their clubs, and, even in drawing-rooms, say that she is a heartless coquette who encourages men to make love to her just to amuse herself. They abuse her, watch her, and, if one day she should compromise herself in the least, woe to her if the secret should fall into such men's hands! There is no revenge of which they are not capable. A case of this sort was, not long ago, investigated thoroughly, and it turned out that an anonymous letter had been written to the husband of a most charming society woman by a cur whom she had to turn out of her house for offering her a worthless love.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN WHO SMILES

There is to be met in society a man who is particularly provoking and supremely objectionable and offensive. He is about forty, very gentlemanly, self-possessed, irreproachably dressed, well informed, interesting talker, with a somewhat patronizing air, and an eternal smile of self-satisfaction on his face.

This man has compromised more women than many a 'devil of a fellow.' If you say before him, 'Mrs. X. is very beautiful, isn't she?' he says nothing, but smiles complacently. So you look at him and add:

'Oh, you know her, then?' He smiles again. 'You don't say so!' you remark. 'I should have thought her a woman above the breath of suspicion.'

He smiles still. You become persuaded that he is, or has been, on the most intimate terms with the lady in question.

Mention before him the name of any woman you like to choose, and if the woman is in the least fashionable, or renowned for her beauty or position, he smiles.

If at a ball he asks a lady to give him the pleasure of her partnership for a waltz or a polka, he leans close toward her, smiling at her in such a strange way that people believe he is telling her words of love, or, worse, that he is granted permission to do so.

If he calls on a lady on her reception day, he has a way to salute her, to kiss her hand, to look at her in a patronizing way that seems to say to the other callers:

'See how ceremonious I am with her before other people, and what a good comedian I am!'

And he smiles, smiles, and smiles.

Women are ill at ease in his presence. They hate him, but as he is content with smiling, and goes no further, what are they to do? They avoid him when they can, his smiles are so compromising.

And they are right. His smiles are more compromising than bonâ fide slander and calumny.

The men hate him, too, but they feel as powerless as the women do. They would like to slap his face, but you cannot say to a man:

'I slap your face because I saw you smile on hearing my wife's name.'

No, that would be too absurd. He knows it, and that is why he goes on smiling. He is safe.

When he hears a bit of gossip on a woman, he immediately takes her defence, but in such a weak manner, and with such a smile on his face all the time, that people immediately come to the conclusion that 'it must be all true.'

What is most provoking is that the man has not a bad reputation. He has never been openly mixed in any intrigue, and even his intimate friends have never heard of any love affair connecting him with any woman. For some people he is an enigma, for others a clever comedian, a maniac, a bore, or a fop.

For men who justly hold that women should be treated with such respect that no act of man should cause anyone to even breathe a light remark on their character, the man who smiles is a cur.

CHAPTER XV

WOMEN AND DOLLS

The love of little girls for their dolls is a very serious love; it absolutely amounts to maternal tenderness. I have watched little girls nurse their dolls, and detected in their eyes that almost divine glance that you can see in devoted mothers tending their little children. For that matter a little girl is only a woman in miniature. A young boy has none, or very few, of the characteristics of a man; but a young girl has, at ten years of age, all the characteristics of a woman.

I have known little girls of ten and twelve who were perfect flirts, little coquettes, careful housekeepers, and, toward their dolls, most devoted mothers. I remember one who sternly refused to accompany us to a most tempting party, because her doll had a cold and she felt she must stay at home to nurse it. She was absolutely serious over it, and found even great delight in remaining at home all the time by the bedside of her doll. I remember another who had spent the whole morning cleaning her doll's house from top to bottom. When it was all over she drew a great sigh of relief. 'At last,' she said, 'the house is clean; that's comfort, anyway.' A good, dutiful, bourgeois housewife would not have expressed herself otherwise. Have you not, some of you, even seen little girls give medicines to their dolls, rock them to sleep, put them to bed, tuck them in most carefully, and see that the bedclothes did not choke them and cause them to have nightmares? I have, many times.

A man very often shows inclinations, tastes, and all sorts of characteristic traits which his parents never discovered in him when he was a young boy; but a woman of thirty is what she was when she was ten, only a little more so. A bad boy may become a very good man, and I have known very good boys become very bad men; but a caressing, loving little girl will surely make a loving wife and a tender mother; a cold and uncaressing little girl will become a heartless woman, an indifferent wife and mother. A boy is a boy! a little girl is a little woman.

This is so true that women, many women at all events, who treated their dolls as if they were children, treat their children as if they were dolls. It is the survival of the little girl in the woman. I have known women allow the hair of their boys to fall down their backs in long curls because they looked prettier and more like dolls, although they must have known that the sap of their young bodies was feeding hair at the expense of other far more important parts of their anatomy. When you see a woman most attentive to her baby, insisting on washing it, dressing it herself, you say: 'She is a most dutiful mother; she would trust no one but herself to attend her little child.' But it is not only the satisfaction of a duty performed that makes that woman look so happy, it is also the pleasure she derives from it. And the odds are ten to one that this very woman will play at doll with her child a great deal too long, and that the day on which she will be compelled to allow the child to have some liberty and become independent of her, she will resent it.

There is not, I believe, a single elderly woman that does not prefer the child of her daughter to her daughter herself, who has become now an unmanageable doll who dresses and undresses without the help of anybody. And if this daughter does not allow her mother to do with the grandchild just as she likes, there will be trouble, caused by jealousy. There will be two women now to play at dolls. Why does a grandmother indulge a young child, give it sweets and candies? Is it to give that child a good digestion? No; it is to play at dolls. Do they dress little girls like the 'principal boys' of pantomimes in the palace scene, in order to make them acquire modest tastes and sensible notions? No; it is to play at dolls.

Woman plays at dolls to the end of her life, with her toys, with her children, with her grandchildren, and with herself.

I have never heard women have a good word to say of daughters-in-law who had not given children to their sons. Poor, dear old ladies! They certainly were under the impression that their sons had only one object in view when they contemplated matrimony, that of presenting 'Grannie' with dolls to play with. I quite understand that grandmothers should be admired, that children should bless them, and even advise other children to 'get some,' when they have not got any, but I do not think that grandmothers should be held up to the world as models, because more than nine times out of ten they spoil children, and derive pleasure not from duties performed to the child, but from the satisfaction of playing at dolls. I have very often met sensible mothers, but grandmothers seldom; they generally are incorrigible sinners – and proud of it, too.

Alphonse Karr, in his 'Reminiscences,' relates how he used to meet in society a young and charming woman who always behaved towards him in a very cool manner. Unable to understand the reason, he one day took a chair by her side, made himself particularly pleasant, and point-blank asked her why she did not seem pleased to meet him, and inquired whether he might have unconsciously done anything to cause her displeasure. For a long time she defended herself, assuring him that her coldness towards him was only in his imagination; but, as he insisted, she at last said to him: 'Well, I will tell you. It was thirty-five years ago. One afternoon you called on us, and I was in the drawing-room. Being invited to take a seat by my mother, you chose an arm-chair on which my doll was asleep. You removed it, and quite unceremoniously laid it on a table, head downwards, at the risk of hurting it. In fact, you damaged its nose. I conceived for you a perfect hatred, and, upon my word, I do not think that I am now capable of forgiving you altogether.'

Moral. – If you want to get into the good graces of a woman, praise her baby; if you want a little girl to love you, admire her dolls and treat them with respect.

CHAPTER XVI

MEN AS A RULE ARE SELFISH – TWO KINDS OF SELFISH MEN

There are in the world men who are devotion and self-abnegation personified; there are women who are the embodiment of selfishness. From this we cannot lay down a rule any more than we could if, in landing in New York, we saw a red-haired woman, and said at once:

'The Americans are a red-haired people.'

But as, during my life, I have known more men who are selfish than unselfish, and more women who are unselfish than selfish, I am prepared to conclude that man is more selfish than woman.

I have known men of small income (and in their way good men they were) belong to two or three clubs, dine at expensive restaurants, and smoke excellent cigars all day long.

Their daughters had to give lessons in order to obtain the money that was necessary for dressing decently, and the house had to be kept on most economical lines.

I have known others, not worse than those I have just mentioned, allow nothing but water on their family table, and take champagne for dinner at the club or the restaurant.

I could divide selfish men into two classes: the man with good redeeming features, and the execrably selfish man.