St. Elmo Part 35

"For shame, you tormentor! when you know that I love tea as well as did your model of politeness, Dr. Johnson! Not one line of all that nauseating scientific stuff shall you read to me. Here is a volume of poems of the 'Female Poets'; do be agreeable for once in your life, and select me some sweet little rhythmic gem of Mrs. Browning, or Mrs. Norton, or L. E. L."

"Estelle, did you ever hear of the Peishwah of the Mahrattas?"

"I most a.s.suredly never had even a hint of a syllable on the subject. What of him, or her, or it?"

"Enough, that though you are evidently ambitious of playing his despotic role at Le Bocage, you will never succeed in reducing me to that condition of abject subjugation necessary to make me endure the perusal of 'female poetry.' I have always desired an opportunity of voting my cordial thanks to the wit who expressed so felicitously my own thorough conviction, that Pegasus had an unconquerable repugnance, hatred, to side-saddles. You vow you will not listen to science; and I swear I won't read poetry! Suppose we compromise on this new number of the--Magazine? It is the ablest periodical published in this country. Let me see the contents of this number."

It was a dark, rainy morning in July. Mrs. Murray was winding a quant.i.ty of zephyr wool, of various bright colors, which she had requested Edna to hold on her wrists; and at the mention of the magazine the latter looked up suddenly at the master of the house.

Holding his cigar between his thumb and third finger, his eye ran over the table of contents.

"'Who smote the Marble G.o.ds of Greece?' Humph! rather a difficult question to answer after the lapse of twenty-two centuries. But doubtless our archaeologists are so much wiser than the Athenian Senate of Five Hundred, who investigated the affair the day after it happened, that a perusal will be exceedingly edifying. Now, then, for a solution of this cla.s.sic mystery of the nocturnal iconoclasm; which, in my humble opinion, only the brazen lips of Minerva Promachus could satisfactorily explain."

Turning to the article he read it aloud, without pausing to comment, while Edna's heart bounded so rapidly that she could scarcely conceal her agitation. It was, indeed, a treat to listen to him; and as his musical voice filled the room, she thought of Jean Paul Richter's description of Goethe's reading: "There is nothing comparable to it. It is like deep-toned thunder blended with whispering rain-drops."

But the orphan's pleasure was of short duration, and as Mr. Murray concluded the perusal, he tossed the magazine contemptuously across the room, and exclaimed:

"Pretentious and shallow! A tissue of pedantry and error from beginning to end--written, I will wager my head, by some scribbler who never saw Athens! Moreover, the whole article is based upon a glaring blunder; for, according to Plutarch and Diodorus, on the memorable night in question there was a new moon. Pshaw! it is a tasteless, insipid plagiarism from Grote; and if I am to be bored with such insufferable twaddle, I will stop my subscription. For some time I have noticed symptoms of deterioration, but this is altogether intolerable; and I shall write to Manning that, if he cannot do better, it would be advisable for him to suspend at once before his magazine loses its reputation. If I were not aware that his low estimate of female intellect coincides fully with my own, I should be tempted to suppose that some silly but ambitious woman wrote that stuff, which sounds learned and is simply stupid."

He did not even glance toward Edna, but the peculiar emphasis of his words left no doubt in her mind that he suspected, nay, felt a.s.sured, that she was the luckless author. Raising her head which had been drooped over the woolen skeins, she said, firmly, yet very quietly:

"If you will permit me to differ with you, Mr. Murray, I will say that it seems to me all the testimony is in favor of the full-moon theory. Beside, Grote is the latest and best authority; he has carefully collected and sifted the evidence, and certainly sanctions the position taken by the author of the article which you condemn."

"Ah! how long since you investigated the matter? The affair is so essentially Paganish that I should imagine that it possessed no charm for so orthodox a Christian as yourself. Estelle, what say you concerning this historic sphinx?"

"That I am blissfully ignorant of the whole question, and have a vague impression that it is not worth the paper it is written on, much less a quarrel with you, Monsieur 'Le Hutin'; that it is the merest matter of moons.h.i.+ne--new moon versus full moon, and must have been written by a lunatic. But, my Chevalier Bayard, one thing I do intend to say most decidedly, and that is, that your lunge at female intellect was as unnecessary and ill-timed and ill-bred as it was ill-natured. The mental equality of the s.e.xes is now as unquestioned, as universally admitted, as any other well-established fact in science or history; and the sooner you men gracefully concede us our rights, the sooner we shall cease wrangling, and settle back into our traditional amiability."

"The universality of the admission I should certainly deny, were the subject of sufficient importance to justify a discussion. However, I have been absent so long from America, that I confess my ignorance of the last social advance in the striding enlightenment of this most progressive people. According to Moleschott's celebrated dictum--'Without phosphorus no thought,' and if there be any truth in physiology and phrenology, you women have been stinted by nature in the supply of phosphorus. Peac.o.c.k's measurements prove that in the average weight of male and female brains, you fall below our standard by not less than six ounces. I should conjecture that in the scales of equality six ounces of ideas would turn the balance in favor of our superiority."

"If you reduce it to a mere question of avoirdupois, please be so good as to remember that even greater differences exist among men.

For instance, your brain (which is certainly not considered over average) weighs from three to three and a half pounds, while Cuvier's brain weighed over four pounds, giving him the advantage of more than eight ounces over our household oracle! Accidental difference in brain weight proves nothing; for you will not admit your mental inferiority to any man, simply because his head requires a larger hat than yours."

"Pardon me, I always bow before facts, no matter how unflattering, and I consider one of Cuvier's ideas worthy of just exactly eight degrees more of reverence than any phosph.o.r.escent sparkle which I might choose to hold up for public acceptance and guidance. Without doubt, the most thoroughly ludicrous scene I ever witnessed was furnished by a 'woman's rights' meeting,' which I looked in upon one night in New York, as I returned from Europe. The speaker was a raw- boned, wiry, angular, short-haired, lemon-visaged female of very certain age; with a hand like a bronze gauntlet, and a voice as distracting as the shrill squeak of a cracked cornet-a-piston. Over the wrongs and grievances of her down-trodden, writhing sisterhood she ranted and raved and howled, gesticulating the while with a marvelous grace, which I can compare only to the antics of those inspired goats who strayed too near the Pythian cave, and were thrown into convulsions. Though I pulled my hat over my eyes and clapped both hands to my ears, as I rushed out of the hall after a stay of five minutes, the vision of horror followed me, and for the first and only time in my life, I had such a hideous nightmare that night, that the man who slept in the next room broke open my door to ascertain who was strangling me. Of all my pet aversions my most supreme abhorrence is of what are denominated 'gifted women'; strong-minded (that is, weak-brained but loud-tongued), would-be literary females, who, puffed up with insufferable conceit, imagine they rise to the dignity and height of man's intellect, proclaim that their 'mission' is to write or lecture, and set themselves up as s.h.i.+ning female lights, each aspiring to the rank of protomartyr of reform. Heaven grant us a Bellerophon to relieve the age of these noisy Amazons! I should really enjoy seeing them tied down to their spinning-wheels, and gagged with their own books, magazines, and lectures! When I was abroad and contrasted the land of my birth with those I visited, the only thing for which, as an American, I felt myself called on to blush, was my country-women. An insolent young count who had traveled through the Eastern and Northern States of America, asked me one day in Berlin, if it were really true that the male editors, lawyers, doctors and lecturers in the United States were contemplating a hegira, in consequence of the rough elbowing by the women, and if I could inform him at what age the New England girls generally commenced writing learned articles, and affixing LL.D., F.E.S., F.S.A., and M.M.S.S. to their signature?"

"'Lay on, Macduff!' I wish you distinctly to understand that my toes are not bruised in the slightest degree; for I am entirely innocent of any attempt at erudition or authors.h.i.+p, and the sole literary dream of my life is to improve the present popular recipe for biscuit glace. But mark you, 'Sir Oracle,' I must 'ope my lips' and bark a little under my breath at your inconsistencies. Now, if there are two living men whom, above all others, you swear by, they are John Stuart Mill and John Ruskin. Well do I recollect your eulogy of both, on that ever-memorable day in Paris, when we dined with that French encyclopaedia, Count W--, and the leading lettered men of the day were discussed. I was frightened out of my wits, and dared not raise my eyes higher than the top of my winegla.s.s, lest I should be asked my opinion of some book or subject of which I had never even heard, and in trying to appear well-educated, make as horrible a blunder as poor Madame Talleyrand committed, when she talked to Denon about his man Friday, believing that he wrote 'Robinson Crusoe.' At that time I had never read either Mill or Ruskin; but my profound reverence for the wisdom of your opinions taught me how shamefully ignorant I was, and thus, to fit myself for your companions.h.i.+p, I immediately bought their books. Lo, to my indescribable amazement, I found that Mill claimed for women what I never once dreamed we were worthy of--not only equality, but the right of suffrage. He, the foremost dialectician of England and the most learned of political economists, demands that, for the sake of equity and 'social improvement,' we women (minus the required six ounces of brains) should be allowed to vote. Behold the Corypheus of the 'woman's rights' school! Were I to follow his teachings, I should certainly begin to clamor for my right of suffrage--for the lady-like privilege of elbowing you away from the ballot-box at the next election.

"I am quite as far from admitting the infallibility of man as the equality of the s.e.xes. The clearest thinkers of the world have had soft spots in their brains; for instance, the daemon belief of Socrates and the ludicrous superst.i.tions of Pythagoras; and you have laid your finger on the softened spot in Mill's skull, 'suffrage.'

That is a jaded, spavined hobby of his, and he is too shrewd a logician to involve himself in the inconsistency of 'extended suffrage' which excludes women. When I read his 'Representative Government' I saw that his reason had dragged anchor, the prestige of his great name vanished, and I threw the book into the fire and eschewed him henceforth. Sic transit."

Here Mrs. Murray looked up and said:

"John Stuart Mill--let me see--Edna, is he not the man who wrote that touching dedication of one of his books to his wife's memory?

You quoted it for me a few days ago, and said that you had committed it to memory because it was such a glowing tribute to the intellectual capacity of woman. My dear, I wish you would repeat it now! I should like to hear it again."

With her fingers full of purple woolen skeins, and her eyes bent down, Edna recited, in a low, sweet voice the most eloquent panegyric which man's heart ever p.r.o.nounced on woman's intellect:

"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part, the author, of all that is best in my writings, the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward, I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and n.o.ble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write unprompted and una.s.sisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."

"Where did you find that dedication?" asked Mr. Murray.

"In Mill's book on liberty."

"It is not in my library."

"I borrowed it from Mr. Hammond."

"Strange that a plant so noxious should be permitted in such a sanctified atmosphere! Do you happen to recollect the following sentences? 'I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions!' 'There is a Greek ideal of self-development which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government blends with but does not supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than either.'"

"Yes, sir. They occur in the same book; but, Mr. Murray, I have been advised by my teacher to bear always in mind that n.o.ble maxim, 'I can tolerate every thing else but every other man's intolerance'; and it is with his consent and by his instructions that I go like Ruth, gleaning in the great fields of literature." "Take care you don't find Boaz instead of barley. After all, the universal mania for match-making schemes and manoeuvers which continually stir society from its dregs to the painted foam-bubble dancing on its crested wave, is peculiar to no age or condition, but is an immemorial and hereditary female proclivity; for I defy Paris or London to furnish a more perfectly developed specimen of a 'manoeuvring mamma' than was crafty Naomi, when she sent that pretty little Moabitish widow out husband-hunting."

"I heartily wish she was only here to outwit you!" laughed his cousin, nestling her head against his arm as they sat together on the sofa.

"Who? The widow or the match-maker?"

"Oh! the match-maker, of course. There is more than one Ruth already in the field."

The last clause was whispered so low that only St. Elmo heard it, and any other woman but Estelle Harding would have shrunk away in utter humiliation from the eye and the voice that answered:

"Yourself and Mrs. Powell! Eat Boaz's barley as long as you like-- nay, divide Boaz's broad fields between you; and you love your lives, keep out of Boaz's way."

"You ought both to be ashamed of yourselves. I am surprised at you, Estelle, to encourage St. Elmo's irreverence," said Mrs. Murray, severely.

"I am sure, Aunt Ellen, I am just as much shocked as you are; but when he does not respect even your opinions, how dare I presume to hope he will show any deference to mine? St. Elmo, what think you of the last Sibylline leaves of your favorite Ruskin? In looking over his new book, I was surprised to find this strong a.s.sertion ... Here is the volume now--listen to this, will you?"

"'Shakespeare has no heroes; he has only heroines. In his labored and perfect plays you find no hero, but almost always a perfect woman; steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose. The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and failing that, there is none!'"

"For instance, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Regan, Goneril, and last, but not least, Petruchio's sweet and gentle Kate! De gustibus!" answered Mr. Murray.

"Those are the exceptions, and of course you pounce upon them.

Ruskin continues: 'In all cases with Scott, as with Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches and guides the youth; it is never by any chance the man who watches over or educates her; and thus--'"

"Meg Merrilies, Madge Wildfire, Mause Headrigg, Effie Deans, and Rob Roy's freckle-faced, red-haired, angelic Helen!" interrupted her cousin.

"Don't be rude, St. Elmo. You fly in my face like an exasperated wasp. I resume: 'Dante's great poem is a song of praise for Beatrice's watch over his soul; she saves him from h.e.l.l, and leads him star by star up into heaven--'"

"Permit me to suggest that conjugal devotion should have led him to apostrophize the superlative charms of his own wife, Gemma, from whom he was forced to separate; and that his vision of h.e.l.l was a faint reflex of his domestic felicity."

"Mask your battery, sir, till I finish this page, which I am resolved you shall hear: 'Greek literature proves the same thing, as witness the devoted tenderness of Andromache, the wisdom of Ca.s.sandra, the domestic excellence of Penelope, the love of Antigone, the resignation of Iphigenia, the faithfulness of--'"

"Allow me to a.s.sist him in completing the list: the world-renowned constancy of Helen to Menelaus, the devotion of Clytemnestra to her Agamemnon, the sublime filial affection of Medea, and the bewitching--"

"Hush, sir! Aunt Ellen, do call him to order! I will have a hearing, and I close the argument by the unanswerable a.s.sertion of Ruskin: 'That the Egyptians and Greeks (the most civilized of the ancients) both gave to their spirit of wisdom the form of a woman, and for symbols, the weaver's shuttle and the olive!"

"An inevitable consequence of the fact, that they considered wisdom as synonymous with sleepless and unscrupulous cunning! Schiller declares that 'man depicts himself in his G.o.ds'; and even a cursory inspection of the cla.s.sics proves that all the abhorred and hideous ideas of the ancients were personified by woman. Pluto was affable, and beneficent, and gentlemanly, in comparison with Brimo; ditto might be said of Loke and Hela, and the most appalling idea that ever attacked the brain of mankind, found incarnation in the Fates and Furies, who are always women. Unfortunately the mythologies of the world crystallized before the age of chivalry, and a little research will establish the unflattering fact that human sins and woes are traced primarily to female agency; while it is patent that all the rows and squabbles that disgraced Olympus were stirred up by scheming G.o.ddesses!"

"Thank heaven! here comes Mr. Allston; I can smooth the ruffled plumes of my self-love in his sunny smiles, and forget your growls.

Good morning, Mr. Allston; what happy accident brought you again so soon to Le Bocage and its disconsolate inmates?"