There are three periods in the career of a pushing woman. The first is that in which she emerges from obscurity, or, worse perhaps, from the notoriety of commercial antecedents, and carried, by a vigorous push, the outworks of fashionable society. The wife of a successful speculator in cotton or guano, who is also the mistress of a comfortable mansion in Bloomsbury, gradually becomes restless and dissatisfied with her surroundings. It would be curious to trace the growth of this discontent. Ambition is deeply rooted in the female bosom. Even housemaids are actuated by an impulse to better themselves, and village school-mistresses yearn for a larger sphere. Perhaps it is this instinct to rise, so creditable to the s.e.x, which compels a lady with a long purse, and a name well known in the city, to enter the lists as an aspirant to fashion. Perhaps her career is developed by a more gradual process. Climbing social Alps is like climbing material Alps--for a time the intervening heights shut out from view the grander peaks. It is not till one has topped Peckham or Hackney that a more extended horizon bursts on the eye, and one catches sight of the glittering summits of Belgravia. Account for it as we may, the phenomenon of a woman in the enjoyment of every comfort and luxury that wealth can give, but ready to barter it all for a few crumbs of contemptuous notice from persons of rank, is by no means uncommon. Probably the fashionable newspaper is a great stimulus to pushing.

The rich vulgarian pores over _Court Circulars_ and catalogues of aristocratic names till the fascination becomes irresistible, and the desire to see her own name, purged of cotton or guano, figuring in the same sheet grows to a monomania. But how is this to be done? Fortunately for the purpose which she has in view, there exist in these latter days amphibious beings, half trader, half fop, with one set of relations with the world of commerce and another set of relations with the world of fashion. The dandy, driven into the city by the stress of his fiscal exigencies, forms a link between the East-end and the West. Among his other functions is that of giving aid and counsel, not exactly gratis, to any fair outsider who wants to "get into" society. For every applicant he has but one bit of advice. She must spend money.

For a woman who is neither clever nor beautiful nor high-born, there is but one way to proceed. She must bribe right and left. No rotten borough absorbs more cash than the fashionable world. Its recognition is merely a question of money. All its distinctions have their price. It exacts from the pushing woman a thumping entrance-fee in the shape of a sumptuous concert or ball. Nor is it only the first push which costs.

Every subsequent advance is as much a matter of purchase as a step in the army.

There is a tariff of its honors, and any Belgravian actuary can calculate to a nicety the price of a stare from a great lady, or a card from a leader of fashion. This is the philosophy expounded by the amphibious dandy to his civic pupil. The upshot is, that she must give an entertainment, or a series of entertainments, on a scale of great splendor. Of course the house in Bloomsbury must be exchanged for another in a fashionable quarter. A more profuse style of living must be adopted. Her equipages must be gorgeous, her flunkeys numerous and well powdered. Above all, she must at once and for ever make a clean sweep of all her old friends. Upon these conditions, and in consideration of a _douceur_ for himself, he agrees to be her friend, and help her to push.

Then follows a delicate negotiation with one of those dowagers who rather pique themselves on their good nature in standing sponsors to pushing n.o.bodies. She, too, makes her conditions. For the sake of the elderly pet to whom she is indebted for her daily supply of scandal, she consents to countenance his _protegee_. But she declines to ask her to her own house. She will dine with her, provided the dinner is exquisite, and two or three of her own cronies are included in the invitation. Last and crowning condescension, she will ask the company for the proposed concert or ball, provided the thing is done regardless of expense. It would be hard to say which a cynic would think most charming--the readiness to accept, or the inclination to impose, such conditions.

At last the great occasion arrives. Planted at the top of her staircase, under the wing of her fashionable allies, the nominal giver of the entertainment is duly stared at and glared at by a supercilious crowd, who examine her with the same sort of languid interest which they devote to a new animal at the Zoological. The greater number are "going on" to another party. But the next morning brings balm for every mortification.

Her ball is blazoned in the fashionable journals, and the well-bred reporter, while elaborately complimentary to the exotics, is discreetly silent as to the supercilious stares. She does not exactly awake to find herself famous, but at least she is no longer outside the Pale. At a considerable outlay, she has got into what a connoisseur in shades of fashion would call tenth-rate society. This is not much; still, it is a beginning, and a beginning is everything to a pushing woman.

In the pushing woman of the transition period we behold a lady who has got a certain footing in society, but who is straining every nerve, in season and out of season, by hook and by crook, to improve her position.

Society within the Pale is divided into a great many "zones" or "sets."

It is like a target, with outer, middle, inner, and innermost circles.

The exterior circle, corresponding to "the black" in archery, consists of persona, for the most part, with limited means and moderate ambition.

People who try to combine fashion with economy stick here, and advance no further. Carpet-dances and champagneless suppers are typical of this circle. Here mothers and daughters prey upon the inexperienced youth of the Universities and green young officers, who are deluded for one season by their pretensions to fashion, but who cut them the next.

Here, too, may be found persons whose social progress has been r.e.t.a.r.ded by foolish scruples about cutting their old friends. Between this band of prowlers upon the outskirts of fashion and "the best set"--the golden ring in the centre of the shield--are many intermediate circles, each representing a different stage of distinction and exclusiveness. It is the multiplicity of these invisible lines of demarcation which makes pushing so laborious.

The world of fashion is not one h.o.m.ogeneous camp, but it is parcelled out into a number of cliques and coteries. Into one after another of these a pushing woman effects her entrance. She is always edging her way into a new and better set. At every step there are obstacles to be encountered, rivals to be jostled, fierce snubs to be endured. There is something almost sublime in the spectacle of this untiring activity of shoulder and elbow. The mere shoving--_vis consili expers_--would never bring her near to her goal. An adept in the art of pushing does not rely on sheer impudence alone. She has recourse to artificial aids and appliances. A great deal of ingenuity is exhibited in the selection of her self-propelling machinery. It is a good plan to acquire a name for some one social speciality.

Private theatricals, for instance, or similar entertainments, may be turned to excellent account. Exhibitions of this kind pique curiosity, and people who come to stare remain to supper, and possibly return to drop a card on the following afternoon. But, if you go in for this sort of thing, you must resign yourself to certain inconveniences. Your pretty drawing-room will be like Park Lane in a state of chronic obstruction. The carpenter's work will interfere somewhat with your comfort, and it is tiresome to be perpetually unhinging your doors and pulling your windows out of their frames. The jealousies and bickerings among the performers are another source of vexation. Miss A. declines to sit as Rowena to Miss B.'s Rebecca; and the drawing-room Roscius invariably objects to the part for which he is cast. Altogether, unless you have a positive taste for carpentry and green-room squabbles, it is better to steer clear of private theatricals.

Then there is the musical dodge. In skillful hands there is no better leverage for pushing operations than drawing-room music. Every one knows Lady Tweedledum and her amateur concerts. The fuss she makes about them is prodigious. They are a cheap sort of entertainment, but they cost the thrifty patroness of art a vast deal of trouble. She is always organizing practices, arranging rehearsals, drawing up programmes, or scouring London for musical recruits. She has been known to invade dingy Government offices for a tenor, and to run a soprano to earth in distant Bloomsbury. After all, her "music" is only so-so. You may hear better any night at Even's or the Oxford. One has heard "Dal tuo stellato soglio" before, and Niedermeyer insipidities are a little _fade_.

Sometimes, to complete the imposture, the names of Mendelssohn and Mozart are invoked, and, under cover of doing honor to an immortal composer, a chorus of young people a.s.semble for periodical flirtation.

On the whole, it is wise not to attempt too much. Miss Quaver, with her staccato notes and semi-professional _minauderies_, is not exactly a queen of song. Nor does it give one any exquisite delight to hear Sir Raucisonous Trombone give tongue in a French romance. The talented band of the Piccadilly Troubadours, floundering through the overture to _Zampa_, hardly satisfies a refined musical ear. But, however indifferent in a musical point of view, from the point of view of the fair projector the thing is a success. It serves as a trap to catch d.u.c.h.esses, a device for putting salt on the tails of the popinjays of fashion. One fine day Lady Tweedledum's pretended zeal for music receives its crowning reward. The noise of it reaches august ears. An act of gracious condescension follows. Her Ladyship has the supreme delight of leading a scion of Royalty to a chair of state in her drawing-room, to hear Sir Raucisonous bleat and Miss Quaver trill.

There are subtler means of pushing than amateur concerts and private theatricals. There is the push vertical, as in the case of the commercial lady; and there is also the push lateral. A good example of the latter style of operation is afforded by the dowager who is fortunate enough to have an eldest son to use as a pushing machine.

Handled with tact, a young heir, not yet cut adrift from the maternal ap.r.o.n-string, may be turned to excellent account. There is, or was, a sentimental ballad ent.i.tled, "I'll kiss him for his mother." One might reverse the sentiment in the case of _Madame Mere_. Of her the dowagers with daughters to marry sing in chorus, "I'll visit her for her son."

Civility to the mother is access to the son. A sharp tactician sees her advantage, and works the precious relationship for her own private ends.

It is a mine of invitations of an eligible kind. By aid of it she springs over barriers which it would otherwise take her years to surmount, and is lifted into circles which by their una.s.sisted efforts she and her daughters would never reach. Scheming dowagers are glad to have her at their b.a.l.l.s when there is a chance of young Hopeful following in her train, and her five o'clock tea is delightful when there is a young millionaire to sip it with. Deprived of her decoy duck she would soon lose ground, and be left to push her way in society with uncomfortably reduced momentum.

Another capital instrument for pushing is a country-house. The mistress of a fine old hall and a cypher of a husband is apt to take a peculiar view of the duties of property. One might expect her to be content with so dignified and enviable a lot, and to pa.s.s tranquil days in coddling the cottagers, patronizing the rector's wife, and impressing her crotchet on the national school. But no--she is bitten with the tarantula of social success. She wants to "get on" in society. She must push as vigorously as any trumpery adventuress in May Fair. A good old name is dragged into the dirt inseparable from pushing. The family portraits look disdainfully from their frames, and the ancestral oaks hang their heads in shame. The company reflects the peculiar ambition of the hostess. The neighboring squires are conspicuous by their absence.

The local small fry are of course ignored, though to the great lady of the county, who cuts her in town, she is cringingly obsequious. The visitors consist mainly of relays of youths, fast, foolish, and fashionable, with now and then a stray politician or journalist thrown in to give the party a _soupcon_ of intellect. The principle of invitation is very simple. No one is asked who will not be of use in town. Any brainless little fop, any effete dandy, is sure of a welcome, provided he is known to certain circles and can help her to scramble into a little more vogue.

One more instance of lateral pushing. A connection with literature may be very effectively worked. The wives of poets, novelists, and historians have great facilities for pushing if they care to use them.

Even the sleek parasite who fattens on a literature which he has done nothing to adorn, and conceals his emptiness under the airs of Sir Oracle, has been known to hoist his female belongings into the high levels of society.

The last period in the career of a pushing woman is the triumphant. This is when she has achieved fashion, and has virtually done pushing. There is nothing left to push for. The Belgravian citadel has fairly capitulated. Like Alexander weeping that there are no more worlds to conquer, she may indulge a transient regret that there are no more _salons_ left to penetrate. But rest is welcome after so hara.s.sing a struggle. And with rest comes a sensible improvement in her character and manners. The last stage of a pushing woman is emphatically better than the first. It is curious to notice what a change for the better is produced in her by the partial recovery of her self-respect. One might almost call her a pleasant person. She can at last afford to be civil, occasionally even good-natured. And this is only natural. In the thick of a struggle which taxes her energies to the uttermost, there is no time for courtesies and amenities. The better instincts of her nature necessarily remain in abeyance. But they rea.s.sert themselves, unless she be irretrievably spoilt, when the struggle is over.

At last she can afford to speak her true thoughts, consult her own tastes, and receive her own friends, not another's, like a lady to the manner born. And if this emanc.i.p.ation from a self-imposed thraldom is not too long deferred, if it finds her at sixty with a relish for gaiety still unslaked, she may yet be able to enjoy society herself and to render it enjoyable to others. How many women there are of whom one says, How pleasant they will be when they have done pushing! or have pushed enough to allow themselves and others a little rest! One longs for the time to arrive when they shall have kicked down the ladders by which they have mounted, and effaced the trace of the rebuffs which they have encountered. One longs to see them cleansed from the stains with which their toilsome struggle has bespattered them, enjoying the ease and tranquillity of the after-push. If "getting on in society" must continue to be an object of female ambition, would it not be wise to abate the nuisance by rendering the process somewhat more easy? Might not some central authority be established to grant diplomas to pushing women, which would admit them _per saltum_ to those select circles which they go through so much dirt to reach?

FEMININE AFFECTATIONS.

The old form of feminine affectation used to be that of a die-away fine lady afflicted with a mysterious malady known by the name of the vapors, or one, no less obscure, called the spleen. Sometimes it was an etherealized being who had no capacity for homely things, but who pa.s.sed her life in an atmosphere of poetry and music, for the most part expressing her vague ideas in halting rhymes that gave more satisfaction to herself than to her friends. She was probably an Italian scholar, and could quote Petrarch and Ta.s.so, and did quote them pretty often; she might even be a Della Cruscan by honorable election, with her own peculiar wreath of laurel and her own silver lyre; any way she was "a sister of the Muses," and had something to do with Apollo and Minerva, whom she was sure to call Pallas, as being more poetical. Probably she had dealings with Diana too, for this kind of woman does not in any age affect the "sea-born," save in a hazy sentimental way that bears no fruits; a neatly-turned sonnet or a clever bit of counterpoint being to her worth all the manly love or fireside home delights that the world can give.

What is the touch of babies' dimpled fingers or the rosy kisses of babies' lips compared to the pleasures of being a sister of the Muses, and one of the beloved of Apollo? The Della Cruscan of former days, or her modern avatar, will tell you that music and poetry are G.o.dlike and bear the soul away to heaven, but that the nursery is a prison, and babies no dearer gaolers than any other, and that household duties disgrace the aspiring soul mounting to the empyrean. This was the Ethereal Being of the last generation--the Blue-stocking, as a poetess in white satin, with her eyes turned up to heaven, and her hair in dishevelled cascades about her neck. She dropped her mantle as she finally departed; and we still have the Della Cruscan essence, if not in the precise form of earlier times. We still have ethereal beings who, as the practical outcome of their etherealization, rave about music and poetry, and Halle and Ruskin, and horribly neglect their babies and the weekly bills.

A favorite form of feminine affectation among certain opposers of the prevalent fast type is in an intense womanliness, an aggravating intensity of womanliness, that makes one long for a little roughness, just to take off the cloying excess of sweetness. This kind is generally found with large eyes, dark in the lids and hollow in the orbit, by which a certain spiritual expression is given to the face, a certain look of being consumed by the hidden fire of lofty thought, that is very effective. It does not destroy the effectiveness that the real cause of the darkened lids and cavernous...o...b..ts, when not antimony, is most probably internal disease; eyes of this sort stand for spirituality and loftiness of thought and intense womanliness of nature, and, as all men are neither chemists nor doctors, the simulation does quite as well as truth.

The main characteristic of these women is self-consciousness. They live before a moral mirror, and pa.s.s their time in att.i.tudinizing to what they think the best advantage. They can do nothing simply, nothing spontaneously and without the fullest consciousness as to how they do it, and how they look while they are doing it. In every action of their lives they see themselves as pictures, as characters in a novel, as impersonations of poetic images or thoughts. If they give you a gla.s.s of water, or take your cup from you, they are Youth and Beauty ministering to Strength or Age, as the case may be; if they bring you a photographic alb.u.m, they are t.i.tian's Daughter carrying her casket, a trifle modernized; if they hold a child in their arms, they are Madonnas, and look unutterable maternal love, though they never saw the little creature before, and care for it no more than for the puppy in the mews; if they do any small personal office, or attempt to do it, making believe to tie a shoestring, comb out a curl, fasten a b.u.t.ton, they are Charities in graceful att.i.tudes, and expect you to think them both charitable and graceful. Nine times out of ten they can neither tie a string nor fasten a b.u.t.ton with ordinary deftness, for they have a trick of using only the ends of their fingers when they do anything with their hands, as being more graceful, and altogether fitting in better than would a firmer grasp with the delicate womanliness of the character; and the less sweet and more commonplace woman who does not att.i.tudinize morally, and never parades her womanliness, beats them out of the field for real helpfulness, and is the Charity which the other only plays at being.

This kind, too, affects, in theory, wonderful submissiveness to man. It upholds Griselda as the type of feminine perfection, and--still in theory--between independence and being tyrannized over, goes in for the tyranny. "I would rather my husband beat me than let me do too much as I liked," said one before she married, who, after she was married, managed to get entire possession of the domestic reins, and took good care that her nominal lord should be her practical slave. For, notwithstanding the sweet submissiveness of her theory, the intensely womanly woman has the most astonishing knack of getting her own way and imposing her own will on others. The real tyrant among women is not the one who flounces and splutters, and declares that nothing shall make her obey, but the self-mannered, large-eyed, and intensely womanly person, who says that Griselda is her ideal, and that the whole duty of woman lies in unquestioning obedience to man.

In contrast with this special affectation is the mannish woman--the woman who wears a double-breasted coat with big b.u.t.tons, of which she flings back the lappels with an air, understanding the suggestiveness of a wide chest and the need of unchecked breathing; who wears unmistakeable shirtfronts, linen collars, vests, and plain ties, like a man; who folds her arms or sets them akimbo, like a man; who even nurses her feet and cradles her knees, in spite of her petticoats, and makes believe that the att.i.tude is comfortable because it is manlike. If the excessively womanly woman is affected in her sickly sweetness, the mannish woman is affected in her breadth and roughness. She adores dogs and horses, which she places far above children of all ages. She boasts of how good a marksman she is--she does not call herself markswoman--and how she can hit right and left, and bring down both birds flying. When she drinks wine she holds the stem of the gla.s.s between her first two fingers, hollows her underlip, and tosses it off, throwing her head well back--she would disdain the ladylike sip or the closer gesture of ordinary women. She is great in cheese and bitter beer, in claret cup and still champagne, but she despises the puerilities of sweets or of effervescing wines. She rounds her elbows and turns her wrist outward, as men round their elbows and turn their wrists outward. She is fond of carpentry, she says, and boasts of her powers with the plane and saw; for charms to her watch-chain she wears a corkscrew, a gimlet, a big knife, and a small foot-rule; and in entire contrast with the intensely womanly woman, who uses the tips of her fingers only, the mannish woman when she does anything uses the whole hand, and if she had to thread a needle would thread it as much by her palm as by her fingers. All of which is affectation--from first to last affectation; a mere a.s.sumption of virile fashions utterly inharmonious to the whole being, physical and mental, of a woman.

Then there is the affectation of the woman who has taken propriety and orthodoxy under her special protection, and who regards it as a personal insult when her friends and acquaintances go beyond the exact limits of her mental sphere. This is the woman who a.s.sumes to be the antiseptic element in society, who makes believe that without her the world and human nature would go to the dogs, and plunge headlong into the abyss of sin and destruction forthwith; and that not all the grand heroism of man, not all his thought and energy and high endeavor and patient seeking after truth, would serve his turn or the world's if she did not spread her own petty preserving nets, and mark out the boundary lines within which she would confine the range of thought and speculation. She knows that this a.s.sumption of spiritual beadledom is mere affectation, and that other minds have as much right to their own boundary lines as she claims for herself; but it seems to her pretty to a.s.sume that woman generally is the consecrated beadle of thought and morality, and that she, of all women, is most specially consecrated.

As an offshoot of this kind stands the affectation of simplicity--the woman whose mental att.i.tude is self-depreciation, and who poses herself as a mere n.o.body when the world is ringing with her praises. "Is it possible that your Grace has ever heard of _me_?" said one of this cla.s.s with prettily affected _navete_ at a time when all England was astir about her, and when colors and fashions went by her name to make them take with the public at large. No one knew better than the fair _ingenue_ in question how far and wide her fame had spread, but she thought it looked modest and simple to a.s.sume ignorance of her own value, and to declare that she was but a creeping worm when all the world knew that she was a soaring b.u.t.terfly.

There is a certain little kind of affectation very common among pretty women; and this is the affectation of not knowing that they are pretty, and not recognising the effect of their beauty on men. Take a woman with bewildering eyes, say, of a maddening size and shape, and fringed with long lashes that distract you to look at; the creature knows that her eyes are bewildering, as well as she knows that fire burns and that ice melts; she knows the effect of that trick she has with them--the sudden uplifting of the heavy lid, and the swift, full gaze that she gives right into a man's eyes. She has practiced it often in the gla.s.s, and knows to a mathematical nicety the exact height to which the lid must be raised, and the exact fixity of the gaze. She knows the whole meaning of the look, and the stirring of men's blood that it creates; but if you speak to her of the effect of her trick, she puts on an air of extremest innocence, and protests her entire ignorance as to anything her eyes may say or mean: and if you press her hard she will look at you in the same way for your own benefit, and deny at the very moment of offence.

Various other tricks has she with those bewildering eyes of hers--each more perilous than the other to men's peace; and all unsparingly employed, no matter what the result. For this is the woman who flirts to the extreme limits, then suddenly draws up and says she meant nothing.

Step by step she has led you on, with looks and smiles, and pretty doubtful phrases always susceptible of two meanings, the one for the ear by mere word, the other for the heart by the accompaniments of look and manner, which are intangible; step by step she has drawn you deeper and deeper into the maze where she has gone before as your decoy; then, when she has you safe, she raises her eyes for the last time, complains that you have mistaken her cruelly, and that she has meant nothing more than any one else might mean; and what can she do to repair her mistake? Love you? marry you? No; she is engaged to your rival, who counts his thousands to your hundreds; and what a pity that you had not seen this all along, and that you should have so misunderstood her! Besides, what is there about her that you or any one should love?

Of all the many affectations of women, this affectation of their own harmlessness when beautiful, and of their innocence of design when they practice their arts for the discomfiture of men, is the most dangerous and the most disastrous. But what can one say to them? The very fact that they are dangerous disarms a man's anger and blinds his perception until too late. That men love though they suffer is the woman's triumph, guilt, and condonation; and so long as the trick succeeds it will be practiced.

Another affectation of the same family is the extreme friendliness and familiarity which some women adopt in their manners towards men. Young girls affect an almost maternal tone to boys of their own age, or a year or so older; and they, too, when their wiser elders remonstrate, declare they mean nothing, and how hard it is that they may not be natural. This form of affectation, once begun, continues through life, being too convenient to be lightly discarded; and youthful matrons not long out of their teens a.s.sume a tone and ways that would about befit middle age counselling giddy youth, and that might by chance be dangerous even then if the "Indian summer" was specially bright and warm.

Then there is the affectation pure and simple, which is the mere affectation of manner, such as is shown in the drawling voice, the mincing gait, the extreme gracefulness of att.i.tude that by consciousness ceases to be grace, and the thousand little _minauderies_ and coquetries of the s.e.x known to us all. And there is the affectation which people of a higher social sphere show when they condescend to those of low estate, and talk and look as if they were not quite certain of their company, and scarcely knew if they were Christian or heathen, savage or civilized. And there is the affectation of the maternal pa.s.sion with women who are never by any chance seen with their children, but who speak of them as if they were never out of their sight; the affectation of wifely adoration with women who are to be met about the world with every man of their acquaintance rather than with their lawful husbands; the affectation of asceticism in women who lead a thoroughly self-enjoying life from end to end; and the affectation of political fervor in those who would not give up a ball or a new dress to save Europe from universal revolution.

Go where we will, affectation of being something she is not meets us in woman, like a ghost we cannot lay or a mist we cannot sweep away. In the holiest and the most trivial things alike we find it penetrating everywhere--even in church, and at her prayers, when the pretty penitent, rising from her lengthy orison, lifts her eyes and looks about her furtively to see who has noticed her self-abas.e.m.e.nt and to whom her picturesque piety has commended itself.

All sorts and patterns of good girls and pleasant women are very dear and delightful; but the pearl of great price is the thoroughly natural and unaffected woman--that is, the woman who is truthful to her core, and who would as little condescend to act a pretence as she would dare to tell a lie.

IDEAL WOMEN.

It is often objected against fault-finders, writers or others, that they destroy but do not build up, that while industriously blaming errors they take good care not to praise the counteracting virtues, that in their zeal against the vermin of which they are seeking to sweep the house clean they forget the n.o.bler creatures which do the good work of keeping things sweet and wholesome. But it is impossible to be continually introducing the saving clause, "all are not so bad as these." The seven thousand righteous who have not bowed the knee to Baal are understood to exist in all communities; and, vicious as any special section may be, there must always be the hidden salt and savor of the virtuous to keep the whole from falling into utter corruption. This is specially true of modern women. Certainly, some of them are as unsatisfactory as any of their kind that have ever appeared on earth before, but it would be very queer logic to infer, therefore, that all are bad alike, and that our modern womanhood is as ill off as the Cities of the Plain which could not be saved for want of the ten just men to save them.

Happily, we have n.o.ble women among us yet; women who believe in something beside pleasure, and who do their work faithfully, wherever it may lie; women who can and do sacrifice themselves for love and duty, and who do not think they were sent into the world simply to run one mad life-long race for wealth, for dissipation, or for distinction. But the life of such women is essentially in retirement; and though the lesson they teach is beautiful, yet its influence is necessarily confined, because of the narrow sphere of the teacher. When such public occasions for devotedness as the Crimean war occur, we can in some sort measure the extent to which the self-sacrifice of women can be carried; but in general their n.o.blest virtues come out only in the quiet and secresy of home, and the most heroic lives of patience and well-doing go on in seclusion, uncheered by sympathy and unrewarded by applause.

Still, it is impossible to write of one absolute womanly ideal--one single type that shall satisfy every man's fancy; for, naturally, what would be perfection to one is imperfection to another, according to the special bent of the individual mind. Thus one man's ideal of womanly perfection is in beauty, mere physical outside beauty; and not all the virtues under heaven could warm him into love with red hair or a snub nose. He is entirely happy if his wife is undeniably the handsomest woman of his acquaintance, and holds himself blessed when all men admire and all women envy. But for his own sake rather than for hers. Pleasant as her loveliness is to look on, it is pleasanter to know that he is the possessor of it. The "handsomest woman in the room" comes into the same category as the finest picture or the most thoroughbred horse within his sphere, and if the degree of pride in his possession is different, the kind is the same. And so in minor proportions, from the most beautiful woman of all, to simply beauty as a _sine qua non_, whatever else may be wanting. One other thing only is as absolute as this beauty, and that is its undivided possession.

Another man's ideal is a good housekeeper and a careful mother, and he does not care a rush whether his wife, if she is these, is pretty or ugly. Provided she is active and industrious, minds the house well, and brings up the children as they ought to be brought up, has good principles, is trustworthy, and even-tempered, he is not particular as to color or form, and can even be brought to tolerate a limp or a squint. Given the great foundations of an honorable home, and he will forego the lath and plaster of personal appearance which will not bear the wear and tear of years and their troubles. The solid virtues stand.

His balance at the banker's is a fact; his good name and credit with the tradespeople is a fact; so is the comfort of his home; so are the health, the morals, the education of his children. All these are the true realities of life to him; but the beauty which changes to deformity by the small-pox, which fades under dyspepsia, grows stale by habit, and is worn threadbare by the end of twenty years, is only a skin-deep grace which he does not value. Perhaps he is right. Certainly, some of the happiest marriages among one's acquaintances are those where the wife has not one perceptible physical charm, and where the whole force of her magnetic value lies in what she is, not in how she looks.

Another man wants a tender, adoring, fair-haired seraph, who will worship him as a demiG.o.d, and accept him as her best revelation of strength and wisdom. The more dependent she is, the better he will love her; the less of conscious thought, of active will, of originative power she has, the greater his regard and tenderness. To be the one sole teacher and protector of such a gentle little creature seems to him the most delicious and the best condition of married life; and he holds Milton's famous lines to be expressive of the only fitting relation between men and women. The adoring seraph is his ideal; Griselda, Desdemona, Lucy Ashton, are his highest culminations of womanly grace; and the qualities which appeal the most powerfully to his generosity are the patience which will not complain, the gentleness that cannot resent, and the love which nothing can chill.

Another man wants a cultivated intelligence in his ideal. As an author, an artist, a student, a statesman, he would like his wife to be able to help him by the contact of bright wit and ready intellect. He believes in the s.e.x of minds, and holds only that work complete which has been created by the one and perfected by the other. He sees how women have helped on the leaders in troubled times; he knows that almost all great men have owed something of their greatness to the influence of a mother or a wife; he remembers how thoughts which had lain dumb in men's brains for more than half their lifetime suddenly woke up into speech and activity by the influence of a woman great enough to call them forth. The adoring seraph would be an enc.u.mbrance, and nothing better than a child upon his hands; and the soul which had to be awakened and directed by him would run great chance of remaining torpid and inactive all its days. He has his own life to lead and round off, and so far from wishing to influence another's, wants to be helped for himself.

Another man cares only for the birth and social position of the woman to whom he gives his name and affection; to another yellow gold stands higher than blue blood, and "my wife's father" may have been a rag-picker, so long as rag-picking had been a sufficiently rich alembic with a residuum admitting of no kind of doubt. Venus herself without a dowry would be only a pretty sea-side girl with a Newtown pippin in her hand; but Miss Kilmansegg would be something worth thinking of, if but little worth looking at. One man delights in a smart, vivacious little woman of the irrepressible kind. It makes no difference to him how petulant she is, how full of fire and fury; the most pa.s.sionate bursts of temper simply amuse him, like the anger of a canary-bird, and he holds it fine fun to watch the small virago in her tantrums, and to set her going again when he thinks she has been a long enough time in subsidence. His ideal of woman is an amusing little plaything, with a great facility for being put up, and a dash of viciousness to give it piquancy.