The introduction of the womankind belonging to a favourite male acquaintance of somewhat lower social condition affords a splendid opportunity for the display of feminine amenity. The presentation cannot be refused, yet it is resented as an intrusion. 'Another daughter, Mr. C.! You must have a dozen daughters surely,' a peeress said disdainfully to a commoner whom personally she liked, but whose family she did not want to know. The poor man had but two; and this was the introduction of the second.
Very painful to a high-spirited gentlewoman must be the way in which a superior creature of this kind receives her, if not of the same set as herself. The husband of the inferior creature may be adored, as men are adored by fashionable women who love only themselves, and care only for their own pleasures. Artist, man of letters, beau sabreur, he is the passing idol, the temporary toy, of a certain circle; and his wife has to be tolerated for his sake, and because she is a lady and fit to be presented, though an outsider. So they patronize her till the poor woman's blood is on fire; or they snub her till she has no moral consistency left in her, and is reduced to a mere mass of pulp. They keep her in another room while they talk to her husband with their other intimates; or they admit her into their circle, where she is made to feel like a Gentile among the faithful, for either they leave her unnoticed altogether or else speak to her on subjects quite apart from the general conversation, as if she were incapable of understanding them on their own ground. They ask her to dinner without her husband, and take care that there is no one to meet her whom she would like to see; but they ask him when they are at their grandest, and express their deep regret that his wife (uninvited) cannot accompany him. They know every turn and twist that can humiliate her if she has pretensions which they choose to demolish. They praise her toilet for its good taste in simplicity, when she thinks she is one of the finest on an occasion on which no one can be too fine. They tell her that pattern of hers is perfect, and made just like the dear duchess's famous dress last season, when she believes that she has Madame Josephine's last, freshly imported from Paris. They celebrate her dinner as the very perfection of a refined family dinner without parade or cost, though it has all been had from the crack confectioner's, and though the bill for the entertainment will cause many a day of family pinching. These are the things which women say to one another when they wish to pain and humiliate; things which pain and humiliate some more than would a positive disgrace. For some women are distressingly sensitive about these little matters. Their lives are made up of trifles, and a failure in a trifle is a failure in their object of life.
Women can do each other no end of despite in a small way in society, not to speak of mischief of a graver kind. A hostess who has a grudge against one of her more famous lady-guests can always ensure her a disappointing evening under cover of doing her supreme honour and paying her extra attention. If she sees the enemy engaged in a pleasant conversation with one of the male stars, down she swoops, and in the sweetest manner possible carries her off to another part of the room, to introduce her to some school-girl who can only say yes or no in the wrong places—'who is dying for the honour of talking to you, my dear;' or to some unfledged stripling who blushes and grows hot and cannot stammer out two consecutive sentences, but who is presented as a rising genius and to be treated with the consideration due to his future. As her persecution is done under the guise of extra friendliness, the poor victim cannot cry out, nor yet resist; but she knows that whenever she goes to Mrs. So and So's she will be seated next the stupidest man at table, and prevented from talking to any one she likes in the evening; and that every visit to that lady is made in some occult manner unpleasant to her. And yet what has she to complain of? She cannot complain in that her hostess trusts to her for help in the success of her entertainment, and moves her about the room as a perambulating attraction which she has to dispense fairly among her guests, lest some should be jealous of the others. She may know that the meaning is to annoy; but who can act on meaning as against manner? How crooked soever the first may be, if the last is straight the case falls to the ground, and there is no room for remonstrance.
Often women flirt as much to annoy other women as to attract men or amuse themselves. If a wife has crossed swords with a friend, and the husband is in any way endurable, let her look out for retaliation. The woman she has offended will take her revenge by flirting more or less openly with the husband, all the while loading the enemy with flattery if she be afraid of her, or snubbing her without much disguise if she feel herself the stronger. The wife cannot help herself, unless things go too far for public patience. A jealous woman without proof is the butt of her society, and brings the whole world of women like a nest of wasps about her ears. If wise, she will ignore what she cannot laugh at; if sensitive, she will fret; if vindictive, she will repay. Nine times out of ten she does the last, and, may be, with interest; and so goes on the duel, though all the time the fighters appear to be intimate friends and on the best possible terms together.
But the range of these feminine amenities is not confined to women; it includes men as well; and women continually take advantage of their position to insult the stronger sex by saying to them things which can be neither answered nor resented. A woman can with the quietest face and the gentlest voice imaginable insinuate that you have just cheated at cards; she can give you the lie direct as coolly as if she were correcting a misprint; and you cannot defend yourself. To brawl with her would be unpardonable; to contradict her is useless; and the sense of society does not allow you to show her any active displeasure. In this instance the weaker creature is the stronger, and the more defenceless is the safer. You have only the rather questionable consolation of knowing that you are not singular in your discomfiture, and that when she has made an end of you she will probably have a turn with your betters, and make them too, dance to her piping, whether they like the tune or not. At all events, if she humiliates you she humiliates her sisters still more; and with the knowledge that, hardly handled as you have been, others are yet more severely dealt with, you must learn to be content, and to practise as much of that grim kind of patience, which suffers keenly and bears silently, as your nature will permit.
GRIM FEMALES.
Almost all histories and mythologies embody the idea of a race of grim females. Whether as fabulous and complex monsters, like the Sphinx and the Harpies, or in the more human forms of the Fates and the Furies, unsexed women have been universally recognized as forming part of the system of nature and to be accepted among the stranger manifestations of human life. Yet it is hard to understand why they should exist at all. As moral 'sports,' they are so far interesting to the psychologists; but, as women with definite duties and fixed functions, nothing can be less admirable. They are even worse than effeminate men—which is saying everything.
The grim female must be carefully distinguished from the masculine woman; for they are by no means essentially the same, though the types may run into each other, and sometimes do. But the masculine woman, if not grim but only Amazonian, has often much that is fine and beautiful in her, as we see in her great prototype Pallas Athene; but the grim female pur sang is never noble, never beautiful; and the only meaning of her existence—the only mission she seems sent into the world to fulfil—is that of serving as a warning to the young what to avoid.