And there was another very dreadful thing that I can hardly speak of. Taking one hundred as the maximum that anyone can understand of what is possible in human thought, the most loving hearts whose comprehension equalled, say, four, were given a love potion and immediately introduced to some lady or gentleman, equally tender and sincere, whose comprehension ran up sometimes as far as nine. This is not the same thing as being misunderstood. That is a grievance which no one really minds unless they are very hard at work altering their natural character; as, for instance, when the born miser who has forked out three-and-sixpence instead of two shillings, after heart-breaking struggles with himself, says bitterly, “It is so horrid of you to suggest that I don’t like giving money away. It hurts me far more than if you had accused me of something that I really do.” But to return to the ninepence and fourpence. It is not misunderstanding; it is what an earnest lady was heard saying at a party when the music stopped, “Of course I was never able to go quite all the way with John Stuart Mill.”
If that lady had been John Stuart Mill’s bosom friend he would have felt the remark as an awful blow. Can anything be more painful than for some one to refer to, let us say, the resemblance of the human skeleton to that of a pig and for his companion to reply with tears springing up from an injured, loving heart, “Oh, please don’t talk like that! I hate it when you say such things. As if there could be any resemblance!” Of course it doesn’t matter now and then, but if it is to go on all the time you can’t do much better with a thumb-screw. One need not go far to see tortured men and women with their dear ones simply dancing on their vitals. The sharp intake of Reginald’s breath is audible when Polly says at dinner, “My husband never can keep a toothbrush more than a fortnight, can you, Reggie? It gets in a perfectly impossible state. I have to——” etc. If Reggie tells a funny little story all about a spade—a story with a good point to it and quite impersonal—she will most probably blame him for vulgarity, yet his little story about the spade was as detached as a robin’s song in December. It is the personal touch in speech which only the unimaginative can hear unmoved. Men have complained that they were obliged to say indecent things themselves as a protection against hearing some one else say something less indecent in an indecent way. By their method they shut the others up.
“What does he mean?” a woman asked on one of these occasions.
“Well, Polly gets so gross when she begins to talk about ordinary things,” said Reginald, “that I have to shout out all I know about more difficult subjects for fear she should begin to attempt them.”
“What did I say that was gross?” asked Polly, opening her large eyes.
“I don’t want ever to remember what you said about the baby,” Reginald answered with haste. “Let us talk about something else quickly; rape, sacrilege, anything you like, but don’t mention the child’s toes again.”
“But Reginald——” protested his wife.
“Silence, woman!” commanded Reginald, and when he had gone out of the room Polly said that she was quite coming round to the idea that women ought to vote. Men cared nothing whatever about children and lots of other things. They were so utterly material, and political life ought to have an element of delicacy and refinement to keep it on the highest level. As a child Reginald had, of course, suffered the usual forms of infant torture. He used, as we all did, to come into the drawing-room to see visitors. His sisters became inured to this, although it bored them. They got a certain interest out of the visitor’s appearance and tricks of manner, which were all reproduced with merciless accuracy in the schoolroom afterwards; not ill-naturedly, but because they had been stored as sounds are stored on the phonograph. Reginald was more than bored; he suffered from the personal attentions of his mother and her guests. Personal remarks always hit his comfort like unpleasant sounds hit the sense of music. “Where have you been?” his mother would ask, which she would not have done if they had been alone, because she knew that there was practically nowhere to go except the park. Then began the old, old rigmarole: how he had grown, whom he was like, what form of exercise he took—there is no need to go into details, because we are all familiar with the stupid, tactless business. We have all sat and simmered while the little creatures stand kicking one foot against the other until we release them from our impertinence. Then his mother either repeated something he had told her in confidence the day before, or she made affected use of his schoolboy slang as if it were her own, or she blew his nose with her handkerchief, and showed off generally, and made him show off, and it was all beastly. He suffered incessantly from this showing off on everybody’s part. In his public-school days his sisters showed off when he came home. They borrowed his forms of speech. These were not his own to begin with, but they were the language of his tribe, and what was his by capture was theirs by theft, which is quite different and creates a false situation. He never got at these facts by himself, but he felt uneasy and strained. Later on he much preferred strangers to his own family, because they kept out of his bathroom and he was free to present his own idea of himself without the risk of some one remarking across the table, “Why, Reggie! You loathe poetry! How can you! You always said it was such humbug!” We can never alter or enlarge our tastes in the family circle. A strict record is kept of all our utterances, and they are brought up against us as if we had crossed the floor of the House of Commons. Strangers take all for gospel and do not know what we said last year.
But apart from Reggie’s little troubles, we all have our own. For instance, there is the torture by question. This is suitable for both men and women, and it is most effective, perhaps, when administered by women, because they have the pertinacity of insects and cannot be got rid of; slapping doesn’t destroy them. You may even burn sulphur, it doesn’t keep them off a bit. Remember, it was a poor, lorn widow who defeated the unjust judge. If her husband had been there he would have blushed and said, “Come away, Maria—it’s no good—he won’t listen.” But Maria lit once more upon the bald head of the judge and set up her interminable buzz, and lo! the thing was done.
The following scene illustrates how the torture by question is administered: