This absence of sex-attraction in Zenith gatherings was only one expression of a lack that in course of time seemed to me almost insupportable—the lack of thrill. Everything was too quiet, too even, too reasonable. Nobody seemed ever to feel or think anything passionately. The key was low, pulled down, like the decoration of the houses, which was usually in good taste but so very sober and restrained. These people, I said to myself, must have some emotional outlet; what is it?
Well, the young men, no doubt, found an outlet in business. For it must be remembered that among all these men there was not one professional idler. It was one of the accepted conventions that a man must work. Some of them were idlers by nature and worked, I dare say, as little as possible; most of them worked almost fiercely, though not during such long hours as had the men of their fathers’ generation. And they drank hard at their stag-parties. I heard of one or two disreputable road-houses in the country near-by, so somewhere in Zenith sex-attraction did exist, but it existed as something outside the magic circle. So far as I was able to learn, very few of the young men I knew frequented those places. Their outlet was not women; they seemed strangely uninterested in women; they did not even talk about them at the stag-parties.
But what of the women, the younger women, themselves? They appeared so cool, so reasonable, so sure of themselves, and so gracious, that it seemed an impertinence to be sorry for them. Nevertheless, I was sorry for them—secretly. What outlet did they have? It is true that they had their homes to manage and their children to bring up. But, even with at best inadequate servants—hardly ever more than one, never more than two—and at frequent intervals no servants at all, this took only a small part of their time. Their homes were so well organized, and possessed, too, every known mechanical labour-saving device, from vacuum cleaners to electric stoves. What did these attractive young women do with their spare time? Well, they read, of course, and they gave or attended a great many teas, at which no man was ever present. That could hardly be an emotional outlet. Music, perhaps, was a partial one. As I have said, there was excellent music to be heard in Zenith. There were two concert courses every winter, to which came really great artists—Paderewski, Mischa Elman, famous string quartets, the Vatican Choir. And to these concerts, I feel sure, these young women listened with intelligence and emotion. (Their husbands sat through the concerts patiently). But even so? Zenith is, after all, only a small city. There may have been fifteen concerts in a season. What about the rest of the time? A few young women played exceedingly well, themselves. That might really be an outlet. But most did not play well enough to find satisfaction in playing at all, knowing what they knew of great music. They went in for golf and boating, and they danced a good deal, too—well, but without the grace of abandon. To me, for all their perfection and intelligence, they seemed only half alive.
They were intelligent, more so than their husbands—or perhaps more grown-up. And in a way they were well educated. They knew something about, were interested in, a great many subjects to which their husbands were indifferent—music, Russian dancing, Scandinavian literature, social welfare work, civic improvement, and so forth and so forth. But it is true that they did not know any one thing thoroughly, as their husbands knew their business. Again, I think, that was because they did not know any one thing passionately. ‘What can have been their outlet?’ I asked a woman—not in Zenith. ‘Virtue, perhaps,’ she replied. They seemed sadly wasted, somehow, those delightful young women, and only half alive.
I think, perhaps, that subconsciously they were afraid of coming alive. They filled their days deliberately with pretty, well-ordered, superficial activities. They made existence so pleasant and so full that it disguised the absence of life. A proof of this seemed to appear in their gregariousness. They clung together in everything. If they wanted to study a period of history they did not do it in solitude; they organized a club among themselves to study it. They organized a club or a class or a group for everything. It was as though they huddled together, for comfort—and in fear. Fear of what? Of their individual selves, I fancy. Groups have only a factitious life; real life is in the individual alone. And I think these young women were afraid of real life. So they were, I suppose, failures. But there was something finer in their failure than in their husbands’ narrow success. The young men were aware of but one possible activity in life—business; and threw themselves into it desperately. The young women were aware of a score, and, held back by all the pleasant conventions among which they existed, and, unlike their husbands, by a vague perception of dark troubled depths in the individual soul, threw themselves into none.
But how charming they were, how candid and clear and—oh, decent! I wonder if they would mind if they knew that, even while admiring, some one had found them, and Zenith, a little pathetic.
DISILLUSIONMENT
We can hardly fail to perceive that we are living to-day in a period of profound disillusionment. There is nothing strange about that. Every great war has brought disillusionment in its wake. What is of interest is to examine the nature of the disillusionment and estimate its probable results.
In the first year or two after the Armistice it was a bitter and passionate thing, almost as sharply felt among civilians as among the returned soldiers. Life appeared barren and profitless, religion a mockery, civilization a myth. The young cursed the old for creating such a mess; the old, though not conscious of having deliberately created anything of the sort, were broken-hearted at the spectacle of what some one must have done—and who, then, if not they? Governments were a mirthless laughing-stock. Moral laws were thrown overboard; for if all that moral laws had resulted in was this, of what possible value were they? Marriage all but went to smash in favour of a cheap promiscuity. No one believed in anything, no one trusted any one else; life resolved itself into three elemental desires—for food and drink, excitement and the gratification of sex. With all of which unrestraint, there was far less happiness in the world than before. People were ‘fed up’—‘fed up’ even in the midst of their most reckless adventures in gaiety.
This summary of the state of mind in the year of grace 1919 is, of course, exaggerated, but such was undoubtedly the impression one received in any country that had seen the worst of the war.