THE MATRON'S HISS.
(An Apologue with an Application.)
[A lady-bicyclist the other day, riding in "rational dress," was roundly hissed by an elderly Mrs. Grundy, standing by. The wheel-woman is said to have retorted, "Are you women who thus hiss me? When you bathe, you wear a special costume, which you deem suitable. When I ride, I do the same. Where's the difference?">[
"But," said the Proud Briton to the Perfect Stranger, "in addition to our armies and fleets, our religions and our laws, our parsons and our policemen, we have one Protective Power, moral palladium and social ægis in one, whose value outweighs that of all others."
The Perfect Stranger looked surprised.
"And what," said he, "is that?"
"We call it the 'Matron's Hiss,'" replied the Proud Briton, with enigmatical complacency. "Anything contra bonos mores, bad form, improper, new-fangled, unconventional, unhealthy, unwholesome, immodest, vulgar, vicious, venal, on to summarise still further, anything that is either new or naughty, or both, is immediately 'put down' by the 'Matron's Hiss.'"
Quoth the Perfect Stranger, "I should like to observe it in operation."
"You shall!" said the Proud Briton.
The Perfect Stranger, under the guidance of the Proud Briton went everywhere and saw everything.
He saw a sweet, though apparently semi-suffocated, young girl dressed (or, as he would by unaided judgment have concluded, undressed) for her first ball.
He saw an elderly fine lady, a high-nosed dame de par le monde, prepared—he would have said, painted and glazed—for a high, social "function."
He saw a fair ingénue, under the eyes of her vigilant mamma and chaperon, in one evening waltzing with, and trying to win, as more permanent partners, an elderly but opulent Satyr, and a youthful, brainless, but titled Cloten.
He heard conversation which the talkers themselves laughingly called risqué (and which he would grimly have called rude) at fashionable dinner-tables between smirking matrons and leering elderly men.
He witnessed the vagaries of despot Fashion, the (as he considered) "immodesty" of "full dress," the "impropriety" of flagrant "cosmeticism," the "unhealthiness" of inadequate or superfluous clothing, the "cruelty" of corsets, the "vulgarity" and wanton murderousness of bird-destroying feather trimmings.
These, and many more follies, improprieties and wickedness the Perfect Stranger was wondering witness of.
"But," observed the Perfect Stranger, "where is the 'Matron's Hiss'?"
"Oh!" replied the Proud Briton, with some embarrassment, "but in all this there is nothing new, you know, nothing unprecedented, innovating, subversive of accepted Social Laws; nothing 'bad form,' that is to say unusual, unexpected, unconsecrated by respectable usage. If there is anything Naughty, it is not New, and what is—possibly—New is not Naughty. Therefore, there is no call for that omnipotent Hiss!"
"Humph! What then would elicit it?" inquired the Perfect Stranger.
"That is a bit difficult to define, off-hand," answered the Proud Briton, hesitatingly. "Say, for example, a natural waist, or absence of corsets, high-dress at a Court function, marriage for love—which in Society or in the tennis-court is equivalent to nothing—wearing an unfashionable hat, or four-buttoned gloves when six are de règle, sounding your g's (when fashion dictates their being dropped), or not sounding your h's (till fashion tells you to drop them), blushing inopportunely—say, at the stare of a duke or the 'suggestiveness' of a millionaire—showing sympathy out of your own 'set,' objecting to tailor-made attire or accepted bathing-costume, discussing questions of sex in a spirit of serious sympathy instead of through some décadent Art-medium; being earnest, original, or spontaneous in any way, and thus defying Society's golden rule, 'Do always as others do.'"
"Is that the Masterful Matron's sole rule?" queried the Perfect Stranger.
"Substantially yes," replied the Proud Briton; "though it is supplemented, perhaps, by the corollary, 'Never be either the first or the last to do a new thing.'"
"Then," commented the Perfect Stranger, "the Matron's Hiss would be silent at the sight of bared shoulders and bust in mid-winter, but would sound with anserine shrillness at the sight of a lady's lower limbs comfortably, and conveniently, and healthily, and decently, but unconventionally, clad in summer on a cycle?"
"Precisely!" said the Proud Briton, though perhaps with less of British pride than usual.
"Then," said the Perfect Stranger, "I think your Hissing Matron is a silly, despotic, cackling old goose, who will never save the social Capitol! But who and what is that?"
That was a portly, florid, and high-nosed elderly dame, of pompous demeanour, and flamboyant raiment, elaborately and obviously cosmetiqued, and arrayed in a startlingly low-cut garment.
"That," said the Proud Briton, with an uneasy smile, "is Mrs. Grundy, the great Goose-Autocrat, the Palladium of Propriety, the Ægis of Social Morality, the very Masterful Matron of whom we have been talking."
"Then," demanded the Perfect Stranger, with staggering pertinence, "Why does she not Hiss at Herself?"
The Proud Briton was silent.
The Lord Mayor Elect.—The incoming Lord Mayor has already shown himself a "Man of Letters" as he communicated a letter of thanks for kind wishes to pretty well every leading journal. These, when collected, may be published as a new "Renals Miscellany."