Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts,its good resolves, its "Studied French an hour,""Read Modern History," "Trimmed up my grey hat,""Darned stockings," "Tatted," "Practised my new song,""Went to the daily service," "Took Bess soup,""Went out to tea." Poor simple diary!and did I write it?
Was I this good girl,this budding colourless young rose of home?did I so live content in such a life,seeing no larger scope, nor asking it,than this small constant round — old clothes to mend,new clothes to make, then go and say my prayers,or carry soup, or take a little walkand pick the ragged-robins in the hedge?
Then for ambition, (was there ever lifethat could forego that?) to improve my mindand know French better and sing harder songs;for gaiety, to go, in my best whitewell washed and starched and freshened with new bows,and take tea out to meet the clergyman.
No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes,only the young girl's hazed and golden dreamsthat veil the Future from her. So long since:and now it seems a jest to talk of meas if I could be one with her, of mewho am…… me. And what is that?
My looking-glassanswers it passably; a woman sure,no fiend, no slimy thing out of the pools,a woman with a ripe and smiling lipthat has no venom in its touch I think,with a white brow on which there is no brand;a woman none dare call not beautiful,not womanly in every woman's grace.
Aye let me feed upon my beauty thus,be glad in it like painters when they seeat last the face they dreamed but could not findlook from their canvass on them, triumph in it,the dearest thing I have.
Why, 'tis my all,let me make much of it: is it not this, this beauty, my own curse at once and toolto snare men's souls — (I know what the good sayof beauty in such creatures) — is it not thisthat makes me feel myself a woman still,some little pride, some little — Here's a jest!what word will fit the sense but modesty?
A wanton I but modest! Modest, true;
I'm not drunk in the streets, ply not for hireat infamous corners with my likenessesof the humbler kind; yes, modesty's my word — 'twould shape my mouth well too,
I think I'll try:"Sir,
Mr What-you-will,
Lord Who-knows-what,my present lover or my next to come,value me at my worth, fill your purse full,for I am modest; yes, and honour meas though your schoolgirl sister or your wifecould let her skirts brush mine or talk of me;for I am modest." Well,
I flout myself:but yet, but yet — Fie, poor fantastic fool,why do I play the hypocrite alone,who am no hypocrite with others by?where should be my "But yet"?
I am that thingcalled half a dozen dainty names, and nonedainty enough to serve the turn and hidethe one coarse English worst that lurks beneath:just that, no worse, no better. And, for me,
I say let no one be above her trade;
I own my kindredship with any drabwho sells herself as I, although she crouchin fetid garrets and I have a homeall velvet and marqueterie and pastilles,although she hide her skeleton in ragsand I set fashions and wear cobweb lace:the difference lies but in my choicer ware,that I sell beauty and she ugliness;our traffic's one — I'm no sweet slaver-tongueto glaze upon it and explain myselfa sort of fractious angel misconceived — our traffic's one:
I own it.
And what then?
I know of worse that are called honourable.
Our lawyers, who, with noble eloquenceand virtuous outbursts, lie to hang a man,or lie to save him, which way goes the fee:our preachers, gloating on your future hellfor not believing what they doubt themselves:our doctors, who sort poisons out by chance,and wonder how they'll answer, and grow rich:our journalists, whose business is to fiband juggle truths and falsehoods to and fro:our tradesmen, who must keep unspotted namesand cheat the least like stealing that they can:our — all of them, the virtuous worthy menwho feed on the world's follies, vices, wants,and do their businesses of lies and shamshonestly, reputably, while the worldclaps hands and cries "good luck," which of their trades,their honourable trades, barefaced like mine,all secrets brazened out, would shew more white?
And whom do I hurt more than they? as much?
The wives?
Poor fools, what do I take from themworth crying for or keeping?
If they knewwhat their fine husbands look like seen by eyesthat may perceive there are more men than one!
But, if they can, let them just take the painsto keep them: 'tis not such a mighty taskto pin an idiot to your apron-string;and wives have an advantage over us,(the good and blind ones have), the smile or poutleaves them no secret nausea at odd times.
Oh they could keep their husbands if they cared,but 'tis an easier life to let them go,and whimper at it for morality.
Oh! those shrill carping virtues, safely housedfrom reach of even a smile that should put redon a decorous cheek, who rail at uswith such a spiteful scorn and rancorousness,(which maybe is half envy at the heart),and boast themselves so measurelessly goodand us so measurelessly unlike them,what is their wondrous merit that they stayin comfortable homes whence not a soulhas ever thought of tempting them, and wearno kisses but a husband's upon lipsthere is no other man desires to kiss — refrain in fact from sin impossible?
How dare they hate us so? what have they done,what borne, to prove them other than we are?
What right have they to scorn us — glass-case saints,
Diana's under lock and key — what rightmore than the well-fed helpless barn-door fowlto scorn the larcenous wild-birds? Pshaw, let be!
Scorn or no scorn, what matter for their scorn?
I have outfaced my own — that's harder work.
Aye let their virtuous malice dribble on — mock snowstorms on the stage — I'm proof long since:
I have looked coolly on my what and why,and I accept myself. Oh I'll endorsethe shamefullest revelings mouthed at me,cry "True!
Oh perfect picture!
Yes, that's I!"and add a telling blackness here and there,and then dare swear you, every nine of ten,my judges and accusers,
I'd not changemy conscience against yours, you who tread outyour devil's pilgrimage along the roadsthat take in church and chapel, and arrangea roundabout and decent way to hell.
Well, mine's a short way and a merry one:so says my pious hash of ohs and ahs,choice texts and choicer threats, appropriate names,(Rahabs and Jezebels), some fierce Tartuffehurled at me through the post.
We had rare funover that tract digested with champagne.
Where is it? where's my rich repertoryof insults biblical? 'I prey on souls' — only my men have oftenest none I think:'I snare the simple ones' — but in these daysthere seem to be none simple and none snared,and most men have their favourite sinnings plannedto do them civilly and sensibly:'I braid my hair' — but braids are out of date:'I paint my cheeks' — I always wear them pale:'I — ' Pshaw! the trash is savourless to-day:one cannot laugh alone.
There, let it burn.
What, does the windy dullard think one needshis wisdom dove-tailed on to Solomon's,his threats out-threatening God's, to teach the newsthat those who need not sin have safer souls?
We know it, but we've bodies to save too;and so we earn our living. Well lit, tract!at least you've made me a good leaping blaze.
Up, up, how the flame shoots! and now 'tis dead.
Oh proper finish, preaching to the last — no such bad omen either; sudden end,and no sad withering horrible old age.
How one would clutch at youth to hold it tight!and then to know it gone, to see it gone,be taught its absence by harsh, careless looks,to live forgotten, solitary, old — the cruellest word that ever woman learns.
Old — that's to be nothing, or to be at besta blurred memorial that in better daysthere was a woman once with such a name.
No, no,
I could not bear it: death itselfshews kinder promise…… even death itself,since it must come one day — Oh this grey gloom!
This rain, rain, rain, what wretched thoughts it brings!
Death:
I'll not think of it. Will no one come?'Tis dreary work alone. Why did I readthat silly diary?
Now, sing song, ding dong,come the old vexing echoes back again,church bells and nursery good-books, back againupon my shrinking ears that had forgotten — I hate the useless memories: 'tis fools' worksinging the hackneyed dirge of 'better days:'best take Now kindly, give the past good-bye,whether it were a better or a worse.
Yes, yes,
I listened to the echoes once,the echoes and the thoughts from the old days.
The worse for me:
I lost my richest friend,and that was all the difference.
For the worldwould not have that flight known.
How they'd roar:"What!
Eulalie, when she refused us all,'ill' and 'away,' was doing Magdalene,tears, ashes, and her Bible, and then offhide her in a Refuge… for a week!"A wild whim that, to fancy I could changemy new self for my old, because I wished!since then, when in my languid days there comesthat craving, like homesickness, to go backto the good days, the dear old stupid days,to the quiet and the innocence,
I know'tis a sick fancy and try palliatives.
What is it?
You go back to the old home,and 'tis not your home, has no place for you,and, if it had, you could not fit you in it.
And could I fit me to my former self?
If I had had the wit, like some of us,to sow my wild-oats into three per cents,could I not find me shelter in the peaceof some far nook where none of them would come,nor whisper travel from this scurrilous world,that gloats and moralizes through its leers,to blast me with my fashionable shame?
There I might — oh my castle in the clouds!and where's its rent? — but there, were there a there,
I might again live the grave blameless lifeamong such simple pleasures, simple cares:but could they be my pleasures, be my cares?
The blameless life, but never the content — never.
How could I henceforth be contentin any life but one that sets the brainin a hot merry fever with its stir?what would there be in quiet rustic days,each like the other, full of time to think,to keep one bold enough to live at all?
Quiet is hell,
I say — as if a womancould bear to sit alone, quiet all day,and loathe herself, and sicken on her thoughts.
They tried it at the Refuge, and I failed:
I could not bear it.
Dreary hideous room,coarse pittance, prison rules, one might bear theseand keep one's purpose; but so much alone,and then made faint and weak and fancifulby change from pampering to half-famishing — good God, what thoughts come!
Only one week moreand 'twould have ended: but in one day moreI must have killed myself.
And I loathe death,the dreadful foul corruption, with who knowswhat future after it. Well,
I came back,
Back to my slough.
Who says I had my choice?
Could I stay there to die of some mad death?and if I rambled out into the world,sinless but penniless, what else were thatbut slower death, slow pining shivering deathby misery and hunger?
Choice! what choiceof living well or ill? could I have that?and who would give it me?
I think indeedsome kind hand, a woman's — I hate men — had stretched itself to help me to firm ground,taken a chance and risked my falling back,could have gone my way not falling back:but, let her be all brave, all charitable,how could she do it?
Such a trifling boon,little work to live by, 'tis not much,and I might have found will enough to last:but where's the work?
More sempstresses than shirts;and defter hands at white work than are minedrop starved at last: dressmakers, milliners,too many too they say; and then their tradesneed skill, apprenticeship.
And who so boldas hire me for their humblest drudgery?not even for scullery slut; not even,
I think,for governess, although they'd get me cheap.
And after all it would be something hard,with the marts for decent women overfull,if I could elbow in and snatch a chanceand oust some good girl so, who then perforcemust come and snatch her chance among our crowd.
Why, if the worthy men who think all's doneif we'll but come where we can hear them preach,could bring us all, or any half of us,into their fold, teach all us wandering sheep,or only half of us, to stand in rowsand baa them hymns and moral songs, good lack,what would they do with us? what could they do?
Just think! with were't but half of us on handto find work for… or husbands.
Would they tryto ship us to the colonies for wives?
Well, well;
I know the wise ones talk and talk:"Here's cause, here's cure:" "No, here it is and here:"and find society to blame, or law,the Church, the men, the women, too few schools,too many schools, too much, too little taught:somewhere or somehow someone is to blame:but I say all the fault's with God himselfwho puts too many women in the world.
We ought to die off reasonably and leaveas many as the men want, none to waste.
Here's cause; the woman's superfluity:and for the cure, why, if it were the law,say, every year, in due percentages,balancing them with men as the times need,to kill off female infants, 'twould make room;and some of us would not have lost too much,losing life ere we know what it can mean.
The other day I saw a woman weepbeside her dead child's bed: the little thinglay smiling, and the mother wailed half mad,shrieking to God to give it back again.
I could have laughed aloud: the little girlliving had but her mother's life to live;there she lay smiling, and her mother weptto know her gone! My mother would have wept.
Oh mother, mother, did you ever dream,you good grave simple mother, you pure soulno evil could come nigh, did you once dreamin all your dying cares for your lone girlleft to fight out her fortune all alonethat there would be this danger? — for your girl,taught by you, lapped in a sweet ignorance,scarcely more wise of what things sin could bethan some young child a summer six months oldwhere in the north the summer makes a day,of what is darkness… darkness that will cometo-morrow suddenly.
Thank God at leastfor this much of my life, that when you died,that when you kissed me dying, not a thoughtof this made sorrow for you, that I toowas pure of even fear. Oh yes,
I thought,still new in my insipid treadmill life,(my father so late dead), and hopeful stillhere might be something pleasant somewhere in it,some sudden fairy come, no doubt, to turnany pumpkin to a chariot,
I thought thenthat I might plod, and plod, and drum the soundsof useless facts into unwilling ears,tease children with dull questions half the day,then con dull answers in my room at nightready for next day's questions, mend quill pensand cut my fingers, add up sums done wrongand never get them right; teach, teach, and teach — what I half knew, or not at all — teach, teachfor years, a lifetime — I! And yet, who knows?it might have been, for I was patient once,and willing, and meant well; it might have beenhad I but still clung on in my first place — a safe dull place, where mostly there were smilesbut never merry-makings; where all daysjogged on sedately busy, with no haste;where all seemed measured out, but margins broad:a dull home but a peaceful, where I feltmy pupils would be dear young sisters soon,and felt their mother take me to her heart,motherly to all lonely harmless things.
But I must have a conscience, must blurt outmy great discovery of my ignorance!
And who required it of me?
And who gained?
What did it matter for a more or lessthe girls learnt in their schoolbooks, to forgetin their first season?
We did well together:they loved me and I them: but I went offto housemaid's pay, six crossgrained brats to teach,wrangles and jangles, doubts, disgrace… then this;and they had a perfection found for them,who has all ladies' learning in her headabridged and scheduled, speaks five languages,knows botany and conchology and globes,draws, paints, plays, sings, embroiders, teaches allon a patent method never known to fail:and now they're finished and,
I hear, poor things,are the worst dancers and worst dressers out.
And where's their profit of those prison yearsall gone to make them wise in lesson books?who wants his wife to know weeds' Latin names?who ever chose a girl for saying dates?or asked if she had learned to trace a map?
Well, well, the silly rules this silly worldmakes about women!
This is one of them.
Why must there be pretence of teaching themwhat no one ever cares that they should know,what, grown out of the schoolroom, they cast offlike the schoolroom pinafore, no better fitfor any use of real grown-up life,for any use to her who seeks or waitsthe husband and the home, for any use,for any shallowest pretence of use,to her who has them?
Do I not know this,
I like my betters, that a woman's life,her natural life, her good life, her one life,is in her husband,
God on earth to her,and what she knows and what she can and isis only good as it brings good to him?
Oh God, do I not know it?
I the thingof shame and rottenness, the animalthat feed men's lusts and prey on them,
I,
I,who should not dare to take the name of wifeon my polluted lips, who in the wordhear but my own reviling,
I know that.
I could have lived by that rule, how content:my pleasure to make him some pleasure, prideto be as he would have me, duty, care,to fit all to his taste, rule my small sphereto his intention; then to lean on him,be guided, tutored, loved — no not that word,that loved which between men and women meansall selfishness, all putrid talk, all lust,all vanity, all idiocy — not lovedbut cared for.
I've been loved myself,
I think,some once or twice since my poor mother died,but cared for, never: — that a word for homes,kind homes, good homes, where simple children comeand ask their mother is this right or wrong,because they know she's perfect, cannot err;their father told them so, and he knows all,being so wise and good and wonderful,even enough to scold even her at timesand tell her everything she does not know.
Ah the sweet nursery logic! Fool! thrice fool!do I hanker after that too?
Fancy meinfallible nursery saint, live code of law!me preaching! teaching innocence to be good!a mother! Yet the baby thing that wokeand wailed an hour or two, and then was dead,was mine, and had he lived…… why then my namewould have been mother.
But 'twas well he died:
I could have been no mother,
I, lost thenbeyond his saving.
Had he come beforeand lived, come to me in the doubtful dayswhen shame and boldness had not grown one sense,for his sake, with the courage come of him,
I might have struggled back. But how?
But how?
His father would not then have let me go:his time had not yet come to make an endof my 'for ever' with a hireling's feeand civil light dismissal.
None but himto claim a bit of bread of if I went,child or no child: would he have given it me?
He! no; he had not done with me.
No help,no help, no help.
Some ways can be trodden back,but never our way, we who one wild dayhave given goodbye to what in our deep heartsthe lowest woman still holds best in life,good name — good name though given by the worldthat mouths and garbles with its decent prate,and wraps it in respectable grave shams,and patches conscience partly by the ruleof what one's neighbour thinks but something moreby what his eyes are sharp enough to see.
How I could scorn it with its Pharisees,if it could not scorn me: but yet, but yet — oh God, if I could look it in the face!
Oh I am wild, am ill,
I think, to night:will no one come and laugh with me?
No feast,no merriment to-night.
So long alone!
Will no one come? At least there's a new dressto try, and grumble at — they never fitto one's ideal.
Yes, a new rich dress,with lace like this too, that's a soothing balmfor any fretting woman, cannot fail,
I've heard men say it… and they know so wellwhat's in all women's hearts, especiallywomen like me. No help! no help! no help!
How could it be?
It was too late long since — even at the first too late.
Whose blame is that?there are some kindly people in the world,but what can they do?
If one hurls oneselfinto a quicksand, what can be the end,but that one sinks and sinks?
Cry out for help?
Ah yes, and, if it came, who is so strongto strain from the firm ground and lift one out?
And how, so firmly clutching the stretched hand,as death's pursuing terror bids, even so,how can one reach firm land, having to footthe treacherous crumbling soil that slides and givesand sucks one in again?
Impossible path!
No, why waste struggles,
I or any one?what is must be.
What then?
I, where I am,sinking and sinking; let the wise pass byand keep their wisdom for an apter use,let me sink merrily as I best may.
Only,
I think, my brother — I forgothe stopped his brotherhood some years ago — but if he had been just so much less goodas to remember mercy.
Did he thinkhow once I was his sister, prizing himas sisters do, content to learn for himthe lesson girls with brothers all must learn,to do without? I have heard girls lamentthat doing so without all things one would,but I saw never aught to murmur at,for men must be made ready for their work,and women all have more or less their chanceof husbands to work for them, keep them safelike summer roses in soft greenhouse airthat never guess 'tis winter out of doors:no,
I saw never aught to murmur at,content with stinted fare and shabby clothesand cloistered silent life to save expense,teaching myself out of my borrowed books,while he for some one pastime, (needful trueto keep him of his rank, 'twas not his fault),spent in a month what could have given memy teachers for a year. 'Twas no one's fault:for could he be launched forth on the rude seaof this contentious world and left to findoars and the boatman's skill by some good chance?'Twas no one's fault: yet still he might have thoughtof our so different youths, and owned at least'tis pitiful when a mere nerveless girl,untutored, must put forth upon that sea,not in the woman's true place, the wife's place,to trust a husband and be borne along,but impotent blind pilot to herself.
Merciless, merciless — like the prudent worldthat will not have the flawed soul prank itselfwith a hoped second virtue, will not havethe woman fallen once lift up herself……lest she should fall again.
Oh how his taunts,his loathing fierce reproaches, scarred and seared,like branding iron hissing in a wound!
And it was true — that killed me: and I felta hideous hopeless shame kill out my heart,and knew myself for ever that he said,that which I was — Oh it was true, true, true.
No, not true then.
I was not all that then.
Oh,
I have drifted on before mad windsand made ignoble shipwreck, not to-daycould any breeze of heaven prosper meinto the track again, nor any handsnatch me out of the whirlpool I have reached;but then? Nay he judged very well: he knewrepentance was too dear a luxuryfor a beggar's buying, knew it earns no bread — and knew me a too base and nerveless thingto bear my first fault's sequel and just die.
And how could he have helped me?
Held my hand,owned me for his, fronted the angry worldclothed with my ignominy?
Or maybetaken me to his home to damn him worse?
What did I look for? for what less would servethat he could do, a man without a purse?
He meant me well, he sent me that five pounds,much to him then; and, if he bade me workand never vex him more with news of me,we both knew him too poor for pensioners.
I see he did his best;
I could wish nowsending it back I had professed some thanks.
But there!
I was too wretched to be meek:it seemed to me as if he, every one,the whole great world, were guilty of my guilt,abettors and avengers: in my heartI gibed them back their gibings;
I was wild.
I see clear now and know one has one's lifein hand at first to spend or spare or givelike any other coin; spend it or giveor drop it in the mire, can the world seeyou get your value for it, or bar backthe hurrying of its marts to grope it upand give it back to you for better use?
And if you spend or give that is your choice;and if you let it slip that's your choice too,you should have held it firmer.
Yours the blame,and not another's, not the indifferent world'swhich goes on steadily, statistically,and count by censuses not separate souls — and if it somehow needs to its worst useso many lives of women, useless else,it buys us of ourselves, we could hold back,free all of us to starve, and some of us,(those who have done no ill and are in luck),to slave their lives out and have food and clothesuntil they grow unserviceably old.
Oh I blame no one — scarcely even myself.
It was to be: the very good in mehas always turned to hurt; all I thought rightat the hot moment, judged of afterwards,shows reckless. Why, look at it, had I takenthe pay my dead child's father offered mefor having been its mother,
I could thenhave kept life in me, (many have to do it,that swarm in the back alleys, on no more,cold sometimes, mostly hungry, but they live);
I could have gained a respite trying it,and maybe found at last some humble workto eke the pittance out.
Not I, forsooth,
I must have spirit, must have womanly pride,must dash back his contemptuous wages,
I,who had not scorned to earn them, dash them backthe fiercer that he dared to count our boyin my appraising: and yet now I thinkI might have taken it for my dead boy's sake;it would have been his gift. But I went forthwith my fine scorn, and whither did it lead?
Money's the root of evil do they say?money is virtue, strength: money to mewould then have been repentance: could I liveupon my idiot's pride? Well, it fell soon.
I had prayed Edward might believe me dead,and yet I begged of him — That's like me too,beg of him and then send him back his alms!
What if he gave as to a whining wretchthat holds her hand and lies?
I am less to himthan such a one; her rags do him no wrong,but I,
I, wrong him merely that I live,being his sister.
Could I not at leasthave still let him forget me?
But 'tis past:and naturally he may hope I am long dead.
Good God! to think that we were what we wereone to the other… and now! He has done well;married a sort of heiress,
I have heard,a dapper little madam, dimple cheekedand dimple brained, who makes him a good wife — No doubt she'd never own but just to him,and in a whisper, she can even suspectthat we exist, we other women things:what would she say if she could learn one dayshe has a sister-in-law!
So he and Imust stand apart till doomsday. But the jest,to think how she would look! — Her fright, poor thing!
The notion! — I could laugh outright…… or else,for I feel near it, roll on the ground and sob.
Well, after all, there's not much differencebetween the two sometimes. Was that the bell?
Some one at last, thank goodness.
There's a voice,and that's a pleasure.
Whose though?
Ah I know.
Why did she come alone, the cackling goose?why not have brought her sister? — she tells moreand titters less.
No matter; half a loafis better than no bread. Oh, is it you?
Most welcome, dear: one gets so moped alone.
