By the way, is not this just another instance of that mania for pigeonholing human tastes and playing them off against one another? If you appreciate Sienkiewicz, you must share the opinion of “The Virginian” (and Mr. Wister) regarding Jane Austen; and if you find entertainment in the human comedy as played in English country towns at the end of the eighteenth century, it stands to reason that you are not the person for the Poland of the seventeenth. It avails you little to protest that you find an equal pleasure in routing Lady Catherine with Elizabeth and Tartars with Volodyovski. One of these days I intend to found a society for the suppression of useless comparisons. I can understand how a Trinitarian and a Unitarian, a Democrat and a Republican, a suffragist and an anti-suffragist might drift naturally into discussion. But why, when I speak a good word for the canine race, must my acquaintance, B, launch aggressively into praise of cats, as if my love of dogs were a challenge? Why may I not enjoy Tennyson without calling down on myself the scorn of the Browningite? It annoys me to have my pets or my poets made the excuse for a wrangle. I refuse to commit myself to any type of novel.
But, you may remind me, I went so far as to keep a parrot “once, long ago.” I plead guilty, yet, Mark Twain to the contrary, a parrot is no index to character. John Silver kept one, but nobody ever compared him to a maiden lady.
So, dear George, when you meet some gentle spinster with a flavor of “Cranford” about her, give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she likes nothing better than to swagger in imagination through the streets of old Paris in company with the immortal three, brandishing a sheaf of rapiers taken from the cardinal’s guard.
—And between you and me, George, I never saw a “typical woman.”
Your affectionate aunt,
Anne Coddington.
ON THE USE OF HYPERBOLE IN ADVERTISING
From a Lady who Suffers from Skepticism to a Friend who is Healthily Credulous
BY AGNES REPPLIER
