Why did this imperial, overbearing, all-powerful man love to stay in retirement when all Europe was waiting for his word? Why did he spend days in sauntering in country lanes, and chatting during quiet evenings with one loved friend alone? That question goes to the root of my subject. Chatham was happily married; when he was torn by bitter rage and disappointment, when his sovereign repulsed him, and when not even the pa.s.sionate love of an entire nation availed to further the ends on which the t.i.tan had set his heart, he carried his sorrow with him, and drew comfort from the goodness of the sweet soul who was his true mate. It is a very sweet picture; and we see in history how the softening home influence finally converted the, awful, imposing, tyrannical Chatham into a yielding, fascinating man.
From the world"s arbiter to the bricklayer"s labourer, the same general law holds; the man who makes a happy marriage lives out his life at its best--he may fail in some things, but in the essential direction he is successful. The woman who makes a happy marriage may have trials and suffering to bear, but she also gains the best of life; and some of the purest and most joyous creatures I have known were women who had suffered in their day. When I think of some marriages whereof I know the full history, I am tempted to believe in human perfectibility; and at chance times there come to me vague dreams of a day when the majority of human beings will find life joyous and tranquil. What one wise and well-matched couple achieve in life may be achieved by others as the days go on. Surely jarring and misery are not necessary in the great world of nations or in the little world of the family? Confidence, generosity, and complete unselfishness on both sides are needed to make the life of a married pair serene and happy. I know that the demand is a heavy one; but, ah, when it is adequately met, is not the gain worth all the sacrifices a thousand times over? There may be petty and amusing differences of opinion, quiet banter, and an occasional grave conflict of judgment; but, so long as three central requirements--confidence, generosity, and unselfishness--are met, there can be no serious break in the procession of placid, happy days. I abhor the gushing talk sometimes heard about "married lovers;" the people who dignify life and honour the community are those who are lovers and something more. Of course we can all feel sympathy with f.a.n.n.y Kemble when she says that the poetry of "Romeo and Juliet" went into her blood as she spoke on the stage; but there is something needed beyond wild Italian raptures before the ideal match is secured. Some of us are almost glad that Juliet pa.s.sed away in swift fashion when the cup of life foamed most exquisitely at her lips. How would she have fared had that changeable firebrand Romeo taken to wandering once more? It is a grievously flippant question to ask when the most glorious of all love-poems is in question; yet I ask it very seriously, and merely in a symbolic way. Romeo is a shadow, the adored Juliet is a shadow; but the two immortal shades represent for all time the mad lovers whose lives end in bitterness. I say again that only reasonable and calm love brings happy marriages. It is as true as any other law of nature that "he never loved who loved not at first sight;" but the frantic, dissolute man of genius who wrote that line did not care to go further and speak of matters which wise men of the world cannot disregard. The first blinding shock of the supreme pa.s.sion comes in the course of nature; but wise people live through the unspeakable tumult of the soul, and use their reason after they have resisted and subdued into calm strength the fierce impulse which has wrecked so many human creatures.
When writing on "Ill-a.s.sorted Marriages," I urged that men and women who are about to take the terribly momentous steps towards marriage must be guided by reason, and I repeat my adjuration here. When Lord Beaconsfield said, "I observe those of my friends who married for love--some of them beat their wives, and the remainder are divorced,"
he knew that he was uttering a piece of mockery which would have been blasphemous had it been set down in all seriousness. He meant to say that headlong marriages--marriages contracted in purblind pa.s.sion--always end in misery. No marriage can bring a spark of happiness unless cool reason guides the choice of the contracting parties. A hot-headed stripling marries a handsome termagant--her brilliant face, her grace, and rude health attract him, and he does not quietly notice the ebullitions of her temper. She is divine to him; and, though she snarls at her younger brother, insults her mother, and to outsiders plainly exhibits all sorts of petty selfishness, yet the stripling rushes on to his fate; and at the end of a few miserable years he is either a broken and hen-pecked creature or a mean and ferocious squabbler.
How different is the case of those who are not precipitate! Take the case of the splendid cynic whose words we have quoted. With his usual sagacity, Lord Beaconsfield waited, watched, and finally succeeded in making an ideally happy marriage in circ.u.mstances which would have affrighted an ordinary person. All the world knows the story now. The brilliant young statesman dared not risk the imputation of fortune-hunting; but the lady knew his worth; she knew that she could aid him, and she frankly threw over all the traditions of her s.e.x and of society and offered herself to him. No one in England who is interested in this matter can fail to know every detail of a bargain which makes one proud of one"s species, for Lord Ronald Gower has told us about the married life of the brilliant Hebrew who mastered England. The two kindred souls were bound up in each other. The lady was not learned or clever, and indeed her husband said, "She was the best of creatures; but she never could tell which came first--the Greeks or the Romans." But she had something more than cleverness--she had the confidence, generosity, and unselfishness which I have set forth as the main conditions of happiness. I must repeat an old story; for it cannot too often be repeated. Think of the woman who gathered all her resolution and uttered no sound, although the end of her finger was smashed by the closing of the carriage-door! Mr. D"Israeli was about to make a great speech; so his wife would not disturb him on his way to Westminster, though flesh and bone of her finger were crushed. She fainted when the orator had gone to his task; but her fort.i.tude did not forsake her until her beloved was out of danger of being perturbed. That one authentic story is worth a hundred dramatic tales of stagey heroism. And we must remember how the statesman repaid the simple devotion of his wife. All his spare time was pa.s.sed in her company, and the quaint pair wandered in the woods like happy boy and girl. Then, when the indomitable man had raised himself to be head of the State, and was offered a peerage, he declined; but he begged that his wife might be created countess in her own right. Could anything be more graceful and courtly? "You are the superior," the first man in England seemed to say; "and I am content to rejoice in your honours without rivalling them." All the fanciful rhymes of the troubadours cannot furnish anything prettier than that.
If we leave the Beaconsfields and the Chathams and come among less exalted folk, we find that the same laws regulate happy marriages.
Confidence, generosity, unselfishness--that is all. In this beautiful England of ours there are happy households which are almost numberless. The good folk do not care for fame or power; their happiness is rounded off and completed within their own walls, and they live as the lordly Chatham lived when he was free from the ties of place and Parliament. On summer days, when the quiet evening is closing, the wayfarer may obtain chance glimpses of such happy homes here and there. Some are inhabited by wealthy men, some by poor workmen; but the essential happiness of both cla.s.ses is arrived at in the same way.
A young man wisely waits until his judgment is matured, and then proceeds to choose his mate; he does not blunder into heroic fooleries in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth of money, and he knows how to despise the foolish beings who talk of "dross" and "filthy lucre"
and the rest. Mere craving for money he despises; but he knows that the amount of "dross" in a man"s possession roughly indicates his resources in the way of energy, ability, and self-control. When he marries, his wife is reasonably free from sordid cares. It may be that he has only seventy pounds in a building society, it may be that his cheque for fifty thousand pounds would be honoured; but the principle is the same. When the woman settles in her new home, she is free from sordid anxieties, and she can give the graces of her mind play. How beautiful some such households are! An old railway-guard once said to me--"Ah, there"s no talk like your own wife"s when she understands you, and you sit one side of the fire, and she the other! It don"t matter what kind of day you"ve had, she puts all right." The man was right--the most delightful conversation that can be held is between a rational man and woman who love each other, who understand each other, and who have sufficient worldly keenness to keep clear of lowering cares. A man rightly mated feels it an absolute delight to confide the innermost secrets of life to his wife; and the woman would feel almost criminal if she kept the pettiest of petty secrets from her partner.
They are friends, gloriously mated, and all the glories of birth and state ever imagined cannot equal their simple but perfect joy. When the tired mechanic comes home at night and meets one whom he has wisely chosen, he forgets his sharp day of labour as soon as his overalls are off. No snappish word greets him; and he is incapable of being ill-natured with the kind soul whom he worships in his rough way. I have always found that the merriest and most profitable evenings were pa.s.sed in houses where neither of the princ.i.p.al parties strove for mastery, and where the woman had the art of coaxing imperceptibly and discreetly. I reject the suggestion made by cynic men that no married pair can live without quarrelling. No married pair who were fools before marriage can avoid dissension; but, when man and wife make their choice wisely and cautiously, the notion of a quarrel is too horrible to dream of.
IX.
SHREWS.
The greatest masters who ever made studies of the shrew in fiction or in history have never, after all, given us a strictly scientific definition of the creature. They let her exhibit herself in all her drollery or her hatefulness, but they act in somewhat lordly fashion by leaving us to frame our definition from the picturesque data which they supply. Mrs. Mackenzie, in "The Newcomes," is repulsive to an awful degree, but the figure is as true as true can be, and most of us, no doubt, have seen the type in all its loathsomeness only too many times. Mrs. Mackenzie is a shrew of one sort, but we could not take her vile personality as the basis of a cla.s.sification. Mrs.
Raddle is one of that lower middle-cla.s.s which d.i.c.kens knew so well, still she is not hateful or vile, or anything but droll. I know how maddening that kind of woman can be in real life to those immediately about her, but onlookers find her purely funny; they never think of poor Bob Sawyer"s cruel humiliation; they only laugh themselves helpless over the screeching little woman on the stairs, who humbles her wretched consort and routs the party with such consummate strategy. Mrs. Raddle and Mrs. Mackenzie are as far apart as two creatures may be; nevertheless they are veritable specimens of the British shrew, and it should be within the resources of civilisation to find a definition capable of fitting both of them. As for Queen Elizabeth--that splendid, false, able, cruel, and inexorable shrew--she requires the s.p.a.ce of volumes to give even the shadow of her personality and powers. She has puzzled some of the wisest and most learned of men. She was truly royal, and wholly deceitful; self-controlled at times, and madly pa.s.sionate at others; a lover of pure literature, and yet terribly free in her own writings; kind to her dependants, yet capable of aiming a violent blow at some courtier whom she had caressed a moment before the blow came; an icy virgin, and a confirmed and audacious flirt; a generous mistress, and an odious miser; a free giver to those near her, and a skinflint who let the sailors who saved her country lie rotting to death in the open streets of Ramsgate because she could not find in her heart to give them either medical attendance or shelter. Was there ever such another being known beneath the glimpses of the moon? Some might call her superhuman; I am more inclined to regard her as inhuman, for her blending of characteristics is not like anything ever seen before or since among the children of men. She was a shrew--a magnificent, enigmatic shrew, who was perhaps the more fitted to rule a kingdom which was in a state of transition in that she was lacking in all sense of pity, shame, or remorse. She was the apotheosis of the shrew, and no one of the tribe can ever be like unto her again. Carlyle"s Termagant of Spain is a shadowy figure that flits through all the note-books on Frederick, but we never get so near to her as we do to Elizabeth, and she remains to us as a vast shape that gibbers and threatens and gesticulates in the realms of the dead. Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, must have been a terrible shrew, and I should think that Heber was not master in the house where Sisera died. The calm deliberation, the preliminary coaxing, the quick, cool determination, and the final shrill exultation which was reflected in Deborah"s song all speak of the shrew. Thackeray had a morbid delight in dwelling on the species, and we know that all of his portraits were taken from real life. If he really was intimate with all of the cruel figures that he draws, then I could pardon him for manifesting the most ferocious of cynicisms even if he had been a cynic--which he was not. The Campaigner, Mrs. Clapp, the landlady in "Vanity Fair," Mrs.
Baynes, and all the rest of the deplorable bevy rest like nightmares upon our memory. d.i.c.kens always made the shrew laughable, so that we can hardly spare pity for the poor Snagsbys and Raddles and Crupps, or any of her victims in that wonderful gallery; but Thackeray"s, Trollope"s, Charles Reade"s, Mrs. Oliphant"s, and even Miss Broughton"s shrews are always odious, and they all seem to start from the page alive.
But I am not minded to deal with the special instances of shrewism which have been p.r.o.nounced enough to claim attention from powerful masters of fiction and history; I am rather interested in the swarms of totally commonplace shrews who live around us, and who do their very best--or worst--to make the earth a miserable place. I can laugh as heartily as anybody at d.i.c.kens"s "scolds" and female bullies; none the less however am I ready in all seriousness to reckon the shrew as an evil influence, as bad as some of the most subtle and malevolent scourges inflicted by physical nature. All of us have but a little span on earth, and we should be able to economise every minute, so as to extract the maximum of joy from existence; yet how many frail lives are embittered by the shrew! How many men, women, and children has she not forced to wish almost for death as a relief from morbid pain and keen humiliation! Our social conditions tend to foster shrewish temperament, for we are gradually changing the subjection of woman to the enslavement of man; gentle chivalry is developing into maudlin self-advertising self-abnegation on the part of the males who favour the new movement. The sweet and equable lady remains the same in all ages; Imogen and Desdemona and Rosalind and the Roaring Girl have their modern counterparts. The lady never takes advantage of the just homage bestowed on her; she never a.s.serts herself; her good breeding is so absolute that she would not be uncontrolledly familiar with her nearest and dearest, and her thoughts are all for others. But the shrew must always be thrusting herself forward; her cankered nature turns kindness into poison; she resents a benefit conferred as though it were an insult; and yet, if she is not constantly noticed and made, at the least, the recipient of kindly offers, she contrives to cause every one within reach of her to feel the sting of her enraged vanity.
When I think of some women who are to be met with in various quarters, from the "slum" to the drawing-room, I am driven to wonder--shocking as it may seem--that crimes of violence are not more frequent than they are. It is most melancholy to notice how well the shrew fares compared with some poor creatures of gentler nature. In the lower cla.s.ses a meek, toil-worn, obliging woman is most foully ill-used by a vagabond of a husband in only too many cases; while a screaming selfish wretch who, in trying to madden her miserable husband, succeeds in maddening all within earshot, escapes unhurt, and continues to lead her odious life, setting a bad example to impressionable young girls, and perhaps corrupting a neighbourhood.
England is the happy hunting-ground for the shrew at present; for in America the average social relation between the s.e.xes has come to be so frank and even that a shrew would be as severely treated as a discourteous man. In England a sham sentiment reigns which gives license to the vilest of women without protecting the martyrs, who, in all conscience, need protection. The scoundrel who maltreats a woman receives far less punishment than is inflicted on a teacher who gives a young Clerkenwell ruffian a stripe with a switch; while the howling shrew who spends a man"s money in drink, empties his house, screeches at him by the hour together, is not censured at all--nay, the ordinary "gusher" would say that "the agonised woman vents the feelings of her overcharged heart."
Now let us glance at the various sorts of these awful scourges who dwell in our midst. It may be well to cla.s.sify them at once, because, unless I mistake many symptoms, the stubborn English may shortly snuff out the sentimentalists who have raised up a plague among us. I may say as a preliminary that in my opinion a shrew may be fairly defined as "a female who takes advantage of the n.o.blest impulses of men and the kindliest laws of nations in order that she may claim the social privileges of both s.e.xes and vent her most wicked temper with freedom." First, consider the doleful shrew. This is a person not usually found among the cla.s.ses which lack leisure; she is an exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingrat.i.tude of people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by her generosity, the result is merely distracting. If the victim says, "I allow that you have been very kind, and I am grateful," he commits an error in tactics, for the torturer is upon him at once. "Oh, you do own it then, and yet see how you behave!"--and then the torrent flows on with swift persistence. If, on the contrary, the sufferer cries, "Why on earth do you go on repeating what you have done? I owned your kindness once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!" he is still more clearly delivered into the enemy"s hands. He lays himself open to a charge of ingrat.i.tude, and the charge is pressed home with relentless fluency. Then, as to the doleful one"s influence on children--the general modern tendency is towards making children happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or bodies of the young. Some dense people perhaps imagine that children cannot suffer mental agony; yet the merest mite may carry a whole tragedy in its innocent soul. We all know the wheedling ways of children; we know how they will coax little luxuries and privileges out of "papa" and "mamma," and most of us rather like to submit with simulated reluctance to the harmless extortion. If I had heard a certain tiny youth say, "Papa, when I"m a big man, and you"re a little boy, I shall ask you to have some jam," I should have failed entirely to smother my laughter. Do you think the doleful one would have seen the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or soul of that devoted child? Nay. She would have whined about slyness, and cunning hints, and greediness, and the probabilities of utter ruin and disgrace overtaking underhand schemers, until that child would have been stunned, puzzled, deprived of self-respect, and rendered entirely wretched. Long ago I heard of a doleful one who turned suddenly on a merry boy who was playing on the floor. "You"re going straight to perdition!" observed the dolorous one; and the light went out of that boy"s life for a time. A gladsome party of young folk may be instantly wrecked by the doleful shrew"s entrance; and, if she cannot attract attention to herself amid a gathering even of sensible, cheerful adults, she will probably break up the evening by dint of a well-timed fit of spasms or something similar. d.i.c.kens made Mrs. Gummidge very funny; but the Gummidge of real life is not merely a limp, "lorn"
creature--she is a woman who began by being unhealthily vain, and ends by being venomously malignant. I do not think that many people have pa.s.sed through life very far without meeting with a specimen of the dolorous shrew, and I hope in all charity that the creature is not in the immediate circle of any one who reads this. In impa.s.sioned moments, when I have reckoned up all the misery caused by this species, I have been inclined to wish that every peculiarly malign specimen could be secured at the public expense in a safe asylum.
The aggressive shrew is usually the wife of some phlegmatic man; she insults him at all hours and on all subjects, and she establishes complete domination over him until she happens to touch his conscience fairly, and then he probably crushes her by the sudden exertion of latent moral force. Shall I talk of the drunken shrew? No--not that!
My task is unlovely enough already, and I cannot inflict that last horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say--if ever you know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of all whom she may meet, pray for that man.
The blue-blooded shrew is by no means uncommon. Watch one of this kind yelling on a racecourse in tearful and foul-mouthed rage and you will have a few queer thoughts about human nature. Then there is the ladylike shrew. Ah, that being! What has she to answer for? She is neat, low-spoken, precise; she can purr like a cat, and she has the feline scratch always ready too. Pity the governess, the servant, the poor flunkey whom she has at her mercy, for their bread is earned in bitterness. "My lady" does not raise her voice; she can give orders for the perpetration of the meanest of deeds without varying the silken flow of her acrid tongue; but she is bad--very bad; and I think that, if Dante and Swedenborg were at all near being true prophets, there would be a special quarter in regions dire for the lady-like shrew.
I must distinctly own that the genuine shrew endeavours to make life more or less unhappy for both s.e.xes. Usually we are apt to think of the shrew as resembling the village scolds who used to be promptly ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the whip-snake--she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect.
The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot match the reticent stabber who is always ready, out of sheer wickedness, to thrust a venomed point into man, woman, or child. I shall give my readers an extreme instance towards which they may probably find it hard to extend belief. I am right however, and have fullest warrant for my statement. I learn on good authority, and with plenitude of proof, that trained nurses are rather too frequently subjected to the tender mercies of the shrew. Nothing is more grateful to a cankered woman than the chance of humiliating some one who possesses superior gifts of any description, and a well-bred lady who has taken to the profession of nursing is excellent "game." Thus I find that delicate young women of gentle nurture have been sent away to sleep in damp cellars at the back of great town-houses; they have had to stay their necessarily fastidious appet.i.tes with cold broken food--and this too after a weary vigil in the sick-room. Greatest triumph of all, the nurses have been compelled to go as strangers to the servants" table and make friends as best they could. It is not easy to form any clear notion of a mind capable of devising such useless indignities, because the shrew ought to know that her conduct is contrasted with that of good and considerate people. The nurse bears with composure all that is imposed on her, but she despises the shabby woman, and she compares the behaviour of the acrid tyrant with that of the majority of warm-hearted and generous ladies who think nothing too good for their hired guests. I quote this extreme example just to show how far the shrew is ready to go, and I wish it were not all true.
Next let me deal with the mean shrew, who has one servant or more under her control. The records of the servants" aid societies will show plainly that there are women against whose names a significant mark must be put, and the reason is that they turn away one girl after another with incredible rapidity, or that despairing girls leave them after finding life unendurable. I know that there are insolent, s.l.u.ttish, lazy, and incompetent servants, and I certainly wish to be fair toward the mistresses; but I also know that too many of the persons who send wild and whirling words to the newspapers belong without doubt to the cla.s.s of mean shrews. Whenever I see one of those periodical letters which tell of the writer"s lifelong tribulation, I like to refresh my mind by repeating certain golden utterances of the man whom we regard as one of the wisest of living Englishmen--"There is only one way to have good servants--that is, to be worthy of being well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and rebel against an ign.o.ble one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters" shadows and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants"-hall, a knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have friends there. Only let it be remembered that "kindness" means, as with your child, not indulgence, but care." Subst.i.tute "mistress" for "master" in this pa.s.sage of John Ruskin"s, and we have a little lesson which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart--if she had any heart. What is the kind of "care" which the mean one bestows on her dependants? "That"s my little woman a-giving it to "Tilda," pensively observed Mr. Snagsby; and I suspect that a very great many little women employ a trifle too much of their time in "giving it to "Tilda."
That is the "care" which poor "Tilda gets. Consider the kind of life which a girl leads when she comes for a time under the domination of the mean shrew. Say that her father is a decent cottager; then she has probably been used to plain and sufficient food, dressed in rough country fashion, and she has at all events had a fairly warm place to sleep in. When she enters her situation, she finds herself placed in a bare chill garret; she has not a sc.r.a.p of carpet on the floor, and very likely she is bitterly cold at nights. She is expected to be astir and alert from six in the morning until ten or later at night; she is required to show almost preternatural activity and intelligence, and she is not supposed to have any of the ordinary human being"s desire for recreation or leisure. When her Sunday out comes--ah, that Sunday out, what a tragic farce it is!--she does not know exactly where to go. If she is near a park or heath, she may fall in with other girls and pa.s.s a little time in giggling and chattering; but of rational pleasure she knows nothing. Then her home is the bare dismal kitchen, with the inevitable deal table, frowsy cloth, and rickety chairs. The walls of this interesting apartment are possibly decked with a few tradesmen"s almanacs, whereon Grace Darling is depicted with magnificent bluish hair, pink cheeks, and fashionable dress; or his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales a.s.sumes a heroic att.i.tude, and poses as a field-marshal of the most stern and lofty description. Thus are "Tilda"s aesthetic tastes developed. The mean shrew cannot give servants such expensive company as a cat; but the beetles are there, and a girl of powerful imagination may possibly come to regard them as eligible pets. Then the food--the breakfast of weak tea and scanty bread; the mid-day meal of horrid sc.r.a.ps measured out with eager care to the due starvation limit; the tasteless, dreadful "tea" once more at six o"clock, and the bread and water for supper! And the incessant scold, scold, scold, the cunning inquiries after missing morsels of meat or potatoes, the exasperating orders! It is too depressing; and, when I see some of the virtuous letters from ill-used mistresses, I smile a little sardonically, and wish that the servants could air their eloquence in the columns of great newspapers.
Some time ago there was a case in which a perfectly rich shrew went away from home from Sat.u.r.day morning till Monday night, leaving one shilling to provide all food for two young women. This person of course needed fresh servants every month, and was no doubt surprised at the ingrat.i.tude of the starvelings who perpetually left her. I call up memories of homes, refuges, emigration-agencies, and so forth, and do most sternly and bitterly blame the mean shrew for mischief which well-nigh pa.s.ses credence. There is nothing more delightful than to watch the dexterous, healthy, cheerful maids in well-ordered households where the mistress is the mother; but there is very little of the mother about the mean shrew--she is rather more like the slave-driver. "Stinted means," observes some tender apologist. What ineffable rubbish! If a woman is married to a man of limited means, does that give her any right to starve and bully a fellow-creature?
How many brave women have done all necessary housework and despised ign.o.ble "gentility"! No, I cannot quite accept the "stinted means"
excuse; the fact is that the mean shrew is hard on her dependants solely because her nature is not good; and we need not beat about the bush any longer for reasons. A domestic servant under a wise, dignified, and kind mistress or housekeeper may live a healthy and happy life; the servant of the mean shrew does not live at all in any true sense of the word. No rational man can blame girls for preferring the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses, then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred years ago? There is a problem. That girl"s letters to her mistress are simply throbbing with pa.s.sionate love and grat.i.tude; and the phrases "My beloved mistress," "My dear, dear mistress," recur like sobs.
Margaret would have become a fiend under the mean shrew; but the holy influence of a good lady made a n.o.ble woman of her, and she became a pattern of goodness long after one rash but blameless freak was forgotten. All Margaret"s race now rise up and call her blessed, and her spirit must have rejoiced when she saw her brilliant descendant appearing in England two years ago as representative of a mighty colony.
What shall I say about the literary shrew? Let no one be mistaken--we have a good many of them, and we shall have more and more of them.
There are kind and charming lady-novelists in plenty, and we all owe them fervent thanks for happy hours; there are deeply-cultured ladies who make the joy of placid English homes; there are hundreds on hundreds of honest literary workers who never set down an impure or ungentle line. I am grateful in reason to all these; but there is another sort of literary woman towards whom I pretend to feel no grat.i.tude whatever, and that is the downright literary shrew, who usually writes, so to speak, in a scream, and whose sentences resemble bursting packets of pins and needles. She is what the Americans would call "death on man," and she likes to emphasize her invectives by always printing "Men" with a capital "M." She is however rigidly impartial in her distribution of abuse, and she finds out at frequent intervals that English women and girls are going year by year from bad to worse. That the earth does not hold a daintier, purer, more exquisitely lovable being than the well-educated, well-bred English girl, is an opinion held even by some very cynical males; but the literary shrew rattles out her libels, and, in order to show how very virtuous she is, she usually makes her articles unfit to be brought within the doors of any respectable house. Not that she is ribald--she is merely so slangy, so audacious, and so bitter that no "prudent" man would let his daughters glance at a single article turned out by our emphatic shrew. As to men--well, those ign.o.ble beings fare very badly at her hands. I do not know exactly what she wants to do with the poor things, but on paper and on the platform she insists that they shall practically give up their political power entirely, for women, being in an immense majority, would naturally outvote the inferior s.e.x.
Sometimes, when the shrew is more than usually capricious and enraged with her own s.e.x, she may magnanimously propose to disfranchise huge numbers of women; but, as a rule, she is bent on mastering the enemy--Man. If you happen to remark that it would be rather awkward if a majority of women should happen to bring about a war in which myriads of men would destroy each other, we rather pity you; that argument always beats the shrew, and she resorts to the literary equivalent for hysterics. If the controversialist ventures to ask some questions about the share which women have had in bringing about the great wars known to history, he draws on himself more and more hysterical abuse. What a strange being is this! Her life is one long squabble, she is the most reckless and violent of fighters, and yet she is always crying out that Men are brutal and bloodthirsty, and that she and her sisters would introduce the elements of peace and goodwill to political relations. We may have a harmless laugh at the literary shrew so long as she confines herself to haphazard scribbling, because no one is forced to read; but it is no laughing matter when she transfers her literary powers to some public body, and inflicts essays on the members. Her life on a School Board may be summarised as consisting of a battle and a screech; she has the bliss of abusing individual Men rudely--nay, even savagely--and she knows that chivalry prevents them from replying. But she is worst when she rises to read an essay; then the affrighted males flee away and rest in corners while the shrew denounces things in general. It is terrible. Among the higher products of civilisation the literary shrew is about the most disconcerting, and, if any man wants to know what the most gloomy possible view of life is like, I advise him to attend some large board-meeting during a whole afternoon while the literary shrew gets through her series of fights and reads her inevitable essay. He will not come away much wiser perhaps, but he will be appreciably sadder.
And so this long procession of shrews pa.s.ses before us, scolding and gibbering and dispensing miseries. Is there no way of appealing to reason so that they may be led to see that inflicting pain can never bring them anything but a low degree of pleasure? No human creature was ever made better or more useful by a shrew, for the very means by which the acrid woman tries to secure notice or power only serves to belittle her. Take the case of a vulgar schoolmistress who is continually scolding. What happens in her school? She is mocked, hated, tricked, and despised; real discipline is non-existent; the bullied a.s.sistants go about their work without heart; and the whole organisation--or rather disorganisation--gradually crumbles, until a place which should be the home of order and happiness becomes an ugly nest of anarchy. But look at one of the lovely high schools which are now so common; read Miss Kingsley"s most fervent and accurate description of the scholars, and observe how poorly the scolding teacher fares in the comparison. Who ever heard of a girl being scolded or punished in a good modern high school? Such a catastrophe is hardly conceivable, for one quiet look of reproach from a good teacher is quite sufficient to render the average girl inconsolable until forgiveness is granted. This ill.u.s.trates my point--the shrew never succeeds in doing anything but intensifying the fault or evil which she pretends to remove. The shrew who shrieks at a drunkard only makes him dive further into the gulf in search of oblivion; the shrew who snaps constantly at a servant makes the girl dull, fierce, and probably wicked; the shrew who tortures a patient man ends by making him desperate and morose; the shrew who weeps continually out of spite, and hopes to earn pity or attention in that fashion, ends by being despised by men and women, abhorred by children, and left in the region of entire neglect. Perhaps if public teachers could only show again and again that the shrew makes herself more unhappy, if possible, than she makes other people, then the selfish instinct which is dominant might answer to the appeal; but, though I make the suggestion I have no great hope of its being very fruitful.
After all, I fear the odious individual whose existence and attributes we have discussed must be accepted as a scourge sent to punish us for past sins of the race. Certainly women had a very bad time in days gone by--they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their revenge in true servile fashion. This line of thought would carry me back over more ages than I care to traverse; I am content with knowing that the shrews are in a minority, and that the majority of my countrywomen are sweet and benign.
X.
ARE WE WEALTHY?
Among the working-cla.s.ses shrewd men are now going about putting some very awkward questions which seem paradoxical at first sight, but which are quite understood by many intelligent men to whom they are addressed. The query "Are we wealthy?" seems easy enough to answer; and of course a rapid and superficial observer gives an affirmative in reply. It seems so obvious! Our income is a thousand millions per year; our railways and merchant fleets can hardly be valued without putting a strain on the imagination; and it seems as if the atmosphere were reeking with the very essence of riches. A millionaire gives nearly one thousand pounds for a puppy; he buys seventeen baby horses for about three thousand pounds apiece; he gives four thousand guineas for a foal, and bids twenty thousand pounds for one two-year-old filly; his house costs a million or thereabouts. Minor plutocrats swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be answered--"Are we wealthy?" We may give the proletarians good advice and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures; but there is the new disposition, and we cannot get away from it. I take no side; the poor have my sympathy, but I endeavour to understand the rich, and also to face facts in a quiet way. Supposing that a ball is being given that costs one thousand pounds, and that within sound of the carriages there are twenty seamstresses working who never in all their lives know what it is to have sufficient food--is not that a rather curious position? The seamstresses are the children of mighty Britain, and it seems that their mother cannot give them sustenance.
The excessive luxury of the ball shows that some one has wealth, but does it not also seem to show that some one has too much? The clever lecturers who talk to the populace now will not be content with the old-fashioned answer, and an awkward deadlock is growing more nearly imminent daily. Suppose we take the case of the sporting-man again, and find that he pays three guineas per week for the training of each of his fifty racers, we certainly have a picture of lavish display; but, when we see, on the other hand, that nearly half the children in some London districts never know what it is to have breakfast before they go to school, we cannot help thinking of the palaces in which the horses are stabled and the exquisite quality of the animal"s food.
There is not a good horse that mother England does not care for, and there are half a million children who rarely can satisfy their hunger, and who are quartered in dens which would kill the horses in a week.
These crude considerations are not-presented by us as being satisfactory statements in economics; but, when the smart mob orator says, "What kind of parent would keep horses in luxury and leave children to hunger?" "Is this wealthy England?" his audience reply in a fashion of their own. Reasoning does not avail against hunger and privation. I am forced to own that, for my part, the awful problem of poverty seems insoluble by any logical agent; but the man of the mob does not now care for logic than ever he did before, and he has advisers who state to him the problems of life and society with pa.s.sionate rhetoric which eludes reason.
The whole world hangs together, and Chicago may be called a mere suburb of London. English people did not understand the true history of the genesis of poverty until the developments of society in America showed us with terrific rapidity the historical development of our own poverty. The fearful state of things in American cities was brought about in a very few years, whereas the gradual extension of our poverty-stricken cla.s.ses has been going on for centuries. To us poverty, besides being a horror, was more or less of a mystery; but America exhibited the development of the gruesome monster with lurid distinctness. In the old countries the men who first were able to seize the land gradually sublet portions either for money or warlike service; the growth of manufactures occupied a thousand years before it reached its present extent; and with the rising of manufacturing centres came enormous new populations which were finally obliged to barter their labour for next to nothing--and thus we have the appalling and desolating spectacle of our slums. All that took place in America with the swiftness of a series of stage-scenes; so that men now living have watched the inception and growth of all the most harrowing forms of poverty and the vices arising from poverty. And now the cry is, "Go back to the Land--the Land for the Nation!" Matters have reached a strange pa.s.s when such a political watchword should be chosen by thousands in grave and stolid England, and we shall be obliged to compromise in the end with those by whom the cry is raised.
I believe that a compromise may be arranged in time, but the leaders of the poor will have to teach their followers wisdom, self-restraint, and even a little unselfishness, impossible as the teaching of that last may seem to be. We have begun a great labour war, in which battles are being lost and won by opposing sides around us every day.
The fighting was very terrible at the beginning; but we shall be forced at last to adopt a system of truces, and then the question "Are we wealthy?" may find its answer. At this moment, however much an optimist may point to our wealth, the logical opponent of established things can always point to the ghastly sights that seem to make the very name of wealth a cynical mockery.
We have to take up a totally new method of meeting and dealing with the poor; and rich and poor alike must learn to think--which is an accomplishment not possessed by many of either cla.s.s. In the early part of the century, when the ideas of the Revolution were still very vital, there was hope that a time might come when wealth and power would be shared so as to secure genuine human existence to the whole population. Then came the mad hopes that followed the Reform Bill, when grave Parliamentary men wept and huzzaed like schoolboys on seeing that remarkable measure pa.s.sed. People thought that the good days had at last come, and even the workers who were still left out in the cold fancied that in some vague way they were to receive benefits worth having. The history of human delusions is a very sad one, as sad almost as the history of human wickedness; and all those poor enthusiasts had a sad awakening, for they found that the barren fights of placemen would still go on, that the people would continue to be shorn, and that the condition of the poor was uncommonly likely to be worse than ever. The hour of hopefulness pa.s.sed away, and there succeeded bitter years of savage despair. The unhappy Chartists struggled hard; and there is something pathetic in thinking how good men were treated for preaching political commonplaces which are now deemed almost Conservative. The wild time in which every crown in Europe tottered was followed by another period of optimism; for the great religious revival had begun, and the Church resumed her ancient power over the people, despite the shock given by Newman"s secession.
Then once again the query "Are we wealthy?" was answered with enthusiasm; and even the poor were told that they were wealthy, for had they not the reversion of complete felicity to crown their entry into a future world? We must believe that there is some compensation for this life"s ills, or else existence would become no longer bearable; but it was hard for people in general to think that everything was for the best on this earth. Soon came the day of doubt and bitterness, which a.s.sailed eager philanthropists and mere ordinary people as well. The poor folk did not feel the effects of Darwin"s work, but those effects were terrible in certain quarters, for many precipitate thinkers became convinced that we must perish like the dumb beasts. Wherefore came the question, "Why should the poor go without their share of the good things of this world, since there is nothing for them in the next?" A very ugly query it is too, because, when the question of number arises, rash spirits may say, as it was said long ago, "Are we not many, and are you not few?"
I have not any fine theories, and I do not want to stir up enmities; and I therefore say to the instructors of the poor, "Instead of egging your men on to warfare, why not teach them how to use the laws which they already have? No new laws are wanted; every rational and necessary reform may be achieved by dint of measures now on the statute-book--measures which seem to slumber as soon as the agitation raised in pa.s.sing them has glorified a certain number of placemen."
Every year we have the outcry, to which we have so often alluded, about disgraceful dwellings; yet there is not a bad case in London or elsewhere which could not be cured if the law were quietly set in motion by men of business. As a matter of fact, a very great portion of the wealth of the country is now at the service of the poor; but they do not choose to take it--or, at any rate, they know nothing about it. Look at the School Board elections, and see how many exercise the right to vote. Yet, if the majority elected their own School Board, they could divert enough charities to educate our whole population, and they could do as they chose in their own schools.
Again, the Local Government Act renders it possible for the populace to secure any public inst.i.tutions that they may want, and in the main they can order their own social life to their liking. What is the use of incessant declamation? Organisation would be a thousand times better. Let quiet men who do not want mere self-advertis.e.m.e.nt tell the people what is their property and how to get it, and there will be no need of the outcry of one cla.s.s against another. It is a bitter grief for all thinking men to observe the inequalities that continue to make life positively accursed in many quarters, and the sights of shame that abound ought to be seen no more; but rage can do nothing, while wise teaching can do everything. The population question must be dealt with by the people themselves; they must resolve to crush their ma.s.ses no more into slums; they must choose for themselves a n.o.bler and a purer life--and that can be accomplished by the laws which they may set in action at once. Then they will be able to say, "England is wealthy, and we have our share."
Some excellent articles have been turned out by the brilliant professor of biology who inspects our fisheries for us. He has done rare service for the people in his own way--no one better, for he was one of the first who eagerly advocated the education of the ma.s.ses; but I fear he is now becoming "disillusionised." He talked once about erecting a Jacob"s Ladder from the gutter to the university; and he has found that the ladder--such as it is--has merely been used to connect the tradesman"s shop and the artisan"s dwelling with the exalted place of education. The poor gutter-child cannot climb the ladder; he is too hungry, too thin, too weak for the feat, and hence the professor"s famous epigram has become one of the things at which scientific students of the human race smile sadly and kindly. And now the professor grows savage and so wildly Conservative that we fear he may denounce Magna Charta next as a gross error. I know very well that all men are not equal, and the professor"s keenest logic cannot make me see that point any more clearly than at present. But suppose that one fine day some awkward leader of the people says, "You tell us, professor, that we are wealthy, and that it is right that some men should be gorged while we are bitten with famine. If Britain is so wealthy, how is it that eleven million acres of good agricultural land are now out of cultivation, while the people whom the land used to feed are crushed in the slums of the towns in the case of labourers, or gone beyond the sea in the case of the farmers?" I want to be impartial, but freely own that I should not like to answer that question, and I do not believe the professor could. The men who used to supply our fighting force are now becoming extinct. If they go into the town and pick up some kind of work, then the second generation are weaklings and a burden to us; while, if they go abroad, they are still removed from the Mother of Nations, who needs her sons of the soil, even though she may feel proud of the gallant new States which they are rearing. And, while rats and mice and obscure vermin are gradually taking possession of the land on which Britons were bred, the signs of bursting wealth are thick among us. Is a nation rich that cannot afford even to keep the kind of men who once defended her? To me the gradual return of the land to its primitive wildness is more than depressing. There are districts on the borders of Hertford and Ess.e.x which might make a sentimental traveller sit down and cry. It all seems strange; it looks so poverty-stricken, so filthy, so sordid, so like the site of a slum after all the houses have been levelled for a dozen years; and this in the midst of our England! I say nothing about land-laws and so forth, but I will say that those who fancy the towns can survive when the farms are deserted are much mistaken. "Are we wealthy?" "Yes," and "No." We are wealthy in the wrong places, and we are poor in the wrong places; and the combination will end in mischief unless we are very soon prepared to make an alteration in most of our ways of living. In many respects it is a good world; but it might be made better, n.o.bler, finer in every quarter, if the poor would only recognise wise and silent leaders, and use the laws which men have made in order to repair the havoc which other men have also made.
XI.
THE VALUES OF LABOUR.
Only about a quarter-century ago unlearned men of ability would often sigh and say, "Ah, if I was only a scholar!" Admirers of a clever and illiterate workman often said, "Why, if he was a scholar, he would make a fortune in business for himself!" Women mourned the lack of learning in the same way, and I have heard good dames deplore the fact that they could not read. I pity most profoundly those on whom the light of knowledge has never shone kindly; and yet I have a comic sort of misgiving lest in a short time a common cry may be, "Ah, if I was only not a scholar!" The matchless topsy-turvydom which has marked the pa.s.sage of the last ten years, the tremendously accelerated velocity with which labour is moving towards emanc.i.p.ation from all control, have so confused things in general that an observer must stand back and get a new focus before he can allow his mind to dwell on the things that he sees. One day"s issue of any good newspaper is enough to show what a revolution is upon us, for we merely need to run the eye down columns at random to pick out suggestive little sc.r.a.ps. At present we cannot get that "larger view" about which Dr. W.B.
Carpenter used to talk; he was wont to study hundreds and thousands of soundings and measurements piecemeal, and the chaos of figures gradually took form until at length the doctor had in his mind a complete picture of enormous ocean depths. In somewhat the same way we can by slow degrees form a picture of a changed state of society, and we find that the faculties of body or mind which used to bring their possessor gain are now nearly worthless. In one column of a journal I find that a trained schoolmistress is required to take charge of a village school. The salary is sixteen pounds per annum; but, if the lady is fortunate enough to have a husband, work can be procured for him daily on the farm. This is just a little disconcerting. The teacher must see to the mental and moral training of fifty children; she must have spent at least seven years in learning before she was allowed to take charge of a school; then she remained two more years on probation, and all the time her expenses were not light. As the final reward of her exertions, she is offered six shillings per week, out of which she must dress neatly--for a slatternly schoolmistress would be a dreadful object--buy sufficient food, and hold her own in rural society! The reverend man who advertises this delectable situation must have a peculiar idea regarding the cla.s.s into which an educated lady like the teacher whom he requires would likely to marry.
An agricultural labourer may be an honest fellow enough, but, as the husband of an educated woman, he might be out of place; and I fancy that a schoolmistress whose husband pulled turnips and wore corduroys might not secure the maximum of deference from her scholars. In contrast to this grotesque advertis.e.m.e.nt I run down a list of cooks required, and I find that the average wage of the cook is not far from three times that of the teacher, while the domestic has her food provided for liberality. The village schoolmistress in the old days was never well paid; but then she was a private speculator; we never expected to see the specialised product of training and time reckoned at the same value as the old dame"s, who was able to read and knit, but who could do little more. While we are comparing the wages of teachers and cooks, I may point out that the _chef_, whose training lasts seven years, earns, as we calculate, one hundred and thirty pounds per year more than the average English schoolmaster. This is perhaps as it should be, for the value of a good _chef_ is hardly to be reckoned in money; and yet the figures look funny when we first study them. And now we may turn to the wages of dustmen, who are, it must be admitted, a most estimable cla.s.s of men and most useful. I find that the London dustman earns more than an a.s.sistant master under the Salford School Board, and, besides his wages, he picks up many trifles. The dustman may dwell with his family in two rooms at three-and-sixpence per week; his equipment consists of a slop, corduroys, and a sou"-wester hat, which are sufficient to last many a day with little washing. But the a.s.sistant, whose education alone cost the nation one hundred pounds cash down, not to speak of his own private expenditure, must live in a respectable locality, dress neatly, and keep clear of that ugly soul-killing worry which is inflicted by trouble about money. Decidedly the dustman has the best of the bargain all round, for, to say the least, he does not need to labour very much harder than the professional man. This instance tends to throw a very sinister and significant flash on the way things are tending. Again, some of the gangs of Shipping Federation men have full board and lodging, two changes of clothes free, beer and rum in moderate quant.i.ties, and thirty shillings per week. Does anybody in England know a curate who has a salary like that? I do not think it would be possible to find one on the Clergy List. No one grudges the labourers their extra food and high wages; I am only taking note of a significant social circ.u.mstance. The curate earns nothing until he is about three-and-twenty; if he goes through one of the older universities, his education costs, up to the time of his going out into the world, something very like two thousand pounds; yet, with all his mental equipment, such as it is, he cannot earn so much as a labourer of his own age. Certainly the humbler cla.s.ses had their day of bondage when the middleman bore heavily on them; they got clear by a mighty effort which dislocated commerce, but we hardly expected to find them claiming, and obtaining, payments higher than many made to the most refined products of the universities! It is the way of the world; we are bound for change, change, and yet more change; and no man may say how the cycles will widen. Luxury has grown on us since the thousands of wealthy idlers who draw their money from trade began to make the stream of lavish expenditure turn into a series of rushing rapids. The flow of wasted wealth is no longer like the equable gliding of the full Thames; it is like the long deadly flurry of the waters that bears toward Niagara. These newly-enriched people cause the rise of the usual crop of parasites, and it is the study of the parasites which forces on the mind hundreds of reflections concerning the values of different kinds of labour. A little while ago, for example, an exquisitely comic paragraph was printed with all innocence in many journals. It appeared that two of the revived species of parasites known as professional pugilists were unable to dress properly before they began knocking each other about, "because their valets were not on the spot." I hope that the foul old days of the villainous "ring" may never be recalled by anything seen in our day, for there never were any "palmy days," though there were some ruffians who could not be bought. Yet the worst things that happened in the bygone times were not so much fitted to make a man think solemnly as that one delicious phrase--"their valets were not on the spot." In the n.o.ble days, when England was so very merry, it often happened that a man who has been battered out of all resemblance to humanity was left to dress himself as best he could on a bleak marsh, and his chivalrous friends made the best of their way home, while the defeated gladiator was reckoned at a dog"s value. Now-a-days those sorely-entreated creatures would have their valets. In one department of industry a.s.suredly the value of labour has altered. The very best of the brutal old school once fought desperately for four hours, though it was thought that he must be killed, and his reason was that, if he lost, he would have to beg his bread. Now-a-days he would have a valet, a secretary, a manager, and a crowd of plutocratic admirers who would load him with money and luxuries. I was tickled to the verge of laughter by finding that one of these gentry was paid thirty pounds per night for exhibiting his skill, and my amus.e.m.e.nt was increased when it turned out that one of those who paid him thirty pounds strongly objected on learning that the hero appeared at two other places, from each of which he received the same sum. Thus for thirty-six minutes of exertion per day the man was drawing five hundred and forty pounds per week. All these things appeared in the public prints; but no public writer took any serious notice of a symptom which is as significant as any ever observed in the history of mankind. It is almost awe-striking to contemplate these parasites, and think what their rank luxurious existence portends. Here we see a man of vast wealth, whereof every pound was squeezed from the blood and toil of working-men; he pa.s.ses his time now in the company of these fellows who have earned a reputation by pounding each other. The wealthy bully and his hangers-on are dangerous to the public peace; their language is too foul for even men of the world to endure it, and the whole crew lord it in utter contempt of law and decency. That is the kind of spectacle to be seen in our central city almost every night. Consider a story which accidently came out a few weeks ago owing to legal proceedings and kept pleasure-seeking and scandalmongering London laughing for a while, and say whether any revelation ever gave us a picture of a more unspeakable society. A rich man, A., keeps a prizefighter, B., to "mind" him, as the quaint phrase goes. Mr. A. is offended by another prizefighter, C., and he offers B. the sum of five hundred pounds if he will give C. a beating in public. B. goes to C., and says, "I will give you ten pounds if you will let me thrash you, and I won"t hurt you much." C. gladly consents, so B. pockets four hundred and ninety pounds for himself, and the n.o.ble patron"s revenge is satisfied. There is a true tale of rogues and a fool--a tale to make one brood and brood until the sense of fun pa.s.ses into black melancholy. Five hundred men worked for sixty hours per week before that money was earned--and think of the value received for the whole sum when it was spent! Truly the parasite"s exertions are lucrative to himself!
As for the market-price of book-learning or clerkly skill, it is not worth so much as naming. The clerk was held to be a wondrous person in times when the "neck-verse" would save a man from the gallows; but "clerk" has far altered its meaning, and the modern being of that name is in sorrowful case. So contemptibly cheap are his poor services that he in person is not looked upon as a man, but rather as a lump of raw material which is at present on sale in a glutted market. All the walks of life wherein men proceed as though they belonged to the leisured cla.s.s are becoming no fit places for self-respecting people.
Gradually the ornamental sort of workers are being displaced; the idle rich are too plentiful, but I question whether even the idle rich have done, so much harm as the genteel poor who are ashamed of labour. I do not like to see wages going downward, but there are exceptions, and I am almost disposed to feel glad that the searchers after "genteel"
employment are now very much like the birds during a long frost. The enormous lounging cla.s.s who earn nothing do not offer an agreeable subject for contemplation, and their parasites are horrible--there is no other word. Yet we may gather a little consolation when we think that the tendency is to raise the earnings of those who do something or produce somet