ALCIBIADES ON WOMEN IN ENGLAND
In the third night the gods and heroes assembled at Venice. Where the Canal Grande almost disappears in the sea, there on mystic gondolas the divine Assembly met in the town of Love and Passion, at the whilom centre of Power wedded to Beauty. It was a starlit night of incomparable charm. The Canal Grande, with its majestic silence; the dark yet clearly outlined Palaces surrounding the Canal like beautiful women forming a procession in honour of a triumphant hero; the grave spires of hundreds of churches standing like huge sentinels of the town of millions of secrets never revealed, and vainly searched for in her vast archives; and last not least the invisible Past hovering sensibly over every stone of the unique city; all this contributed ever new charms to the meeting of the gods and heroes at Venice.
Zeus, not unforgetful of the Eternal Feminine, asked Alcibiades to entertain the Assembly with his adventures amongst the women of England. Alcibiades thereupon rose and spake as follows: "O Zeus and the other gods and heroes, I am still too much under the fascination of the women with whom I have spent the last twelve months, to be in a position to tell you with becoming calmness what kind of beings they are. In my time I knew the women of over a dozen Greek states, and many a woman of the Barbarians. Yet not one of them was remotely similar to the women of England. I will presently relate what I observed of the beauty of these northern women.
"But first of all, it seems to me, I had better dwell upon one particular type of womanhood which I have never met before except when once, eight hundred years ago, I travelled in company with Abelard through a few towns of Mediæval France. That type is what in England they call the middle-class woman. She is not always beautiful, and yet might be so frequently, were her features not spoilt by her soul. She is the most bigoted, the most prejudiced, and most intolerant piece of perverted humanity that can be imagined.
"The first time I met her I asked her how she felt that day. To this she replied, 'Sir-r-r!' with flashing eyes and sinking cheeks. When I then added: 'I hope, madame, you are well?'—she looked at me even more fiercely and uttered: 'Sir-r-r!' Being quite unaware of the reason of her indignation, I begged to assure her that it gave me great pleasure to meet her. Thereupon she got up from her seat and exclaimed in a most tragic manner: 'Si-r-r-r, you are no gentleman!!'
"Now, I have been shown out, in my time, from more than one lady's room; but there always was some acceptable reason for it. In this case I could not so much as surmise what crime I had committed. On asking one of my English friends, I learnt that I ought to have commenced the conversation with remarks on the weather. Unless conversation is commenced in that way it will never commend itself to that class of women in England. It is undoubtedly for that reason, Zeus, that you have given England four different seasons indeed, but all in the course of one and the same day. But for this meteorological fact, conversation with middle-class people would have become impossible.
"The women of that class have an incessant itch for indignation; unless they feel shocked at least ten times a day, they cannot live. Accordingly, everything shocks them; they are afflicted with permanent shockingitis.
"Tell her that it is two o'clock P.M., and she will be shocked. Tell her you made a mistake, and that it was only half-past one o'clock, and she will be even more shocked. Tell her Adam was the first man, and she will scream with indignation; tell her she had only one mother, and she will send for the police. The experience of over two thousand years amongst all the nations in and out of Europe has not enabled me to find a topic, nor the manner of conversation agreeable or acceptable to an English middle-class woman.