THE RETURN OF THE GIRL
ταδε νυν ἑταἱραιςταἱς εμαισι τερπνα καλως ἁεἱσω—Sappho,Frag. II.
ταδε νυν ἑταἱραιςταἱς εμαισι τερπνα καλως ἁεἱσω—Sappho,Frag. II.
ταδε νυν ἑταἱραις
ταἱς εμαισι τερπνα καλως ἁεἱσω
—Sappho,Frag. II.
TO begin with, a girl is, generally speaking, an interesting organism, and a perfect specimen finds prompt welcome in any cabinet. The type is not paleozoic; at all events no fossil remains have yet been discovered in any of the rocks; but Jane Austen may serve in that stead, duly pinned and labelled archeparthenos.
Not of grizzled spinsters dully staring, in the mummy stage of existence, out of vitreous eyes furnished by the taxidermist, but of plump, sound, hearty young girls do we now wish some scientific notes. Let the withered type-specimens remain in their glass cases for the benefit of Professor Shelfdust and the English novelists: our heroine is yet under twenty years of age; she has never heard of sociology and is marvellously ignorant of the ethics of elopement; but she is as clever as she is fascinating.
Sappho knew the value of her sex in the bud, when perfect girl nature was just beginning to let go its charming essentials upon the air.
“τἱς δ’ αγροιωτἱς τοι θἑλγει νοονουκ επισταμενα τα βρακε’ εγκην επι των σφνρων?”
“τἱς δ’ αγροιωτἱς τοι θἑλγει νοονουκ επισταμενα τα βρακε’ εγκην επι των σφνρων?”
“τἱς δ’ αγροιωτἱς τοι θἑλγει νοον
ουκ επισταμενα τα βρακε’ εγκην επι των σφνρων?”
“What rustic lass can win your heartWithout a touch of girlish art?”
“What rustic lass can win your heartWithout a touch of girlish art?”
“What rustic lass can win your heart
Without a touch of girlish art?”
Or literally: “What rustic maiden, even, can captivate your mind, if she is not clever at drawing her skirts around her ankles?” There shows the brush of genius, a fine stroke, like the circle of Giotto, projecting a complete figure; and it is warm with life. The girl is pretty, brown as a berry, smiling, and lissomely graceful. Her sophistication is altogether hereditary. Sidney had her in mind when he wrote:—
“Gay hair, more gay than straw when harvest lies,Lips red and plump as cherries’ ruddy side,Eyes fair and great, like fair great ox’s eyes, . . .. . . Flesh as soft as wool new dressed,And yet as hard as brawn made hard by art.”
“Gay hair, more gay than straw when harvest lies,Lips red and plump as cherries’ ruddy side,Eyes fair and great, like fair great ox’s eyes, . . .. . . Flesh as soft as wool new dressed,And yet as hard as brawn made hard by art.”
“Gay hair, more gay than straw when harvest lies,
Lips red and plump as cherries’ ruddy side,
Eyes fair and great, like fair great ox’s eyes, . . .
. . . Flesh as soft as wool new dressed,
And yet as hard as brawn made hard by art.”
Like a bird in a bush, the strong, healthy girl shows her decorations with enthusiastic willingness,yet shyly, flitting betimes and keeping quite out of reach, while apparently not thinking of danger. Even the wild lass, saucing Daphnis from the doorway of her cave, knew perfectly well that he would hang his head and pass by. She wasσὑνοφρυς κὁρα; that is, her eyebrows ran together across her nose, which was not as unfortunate as Herrick’s sort of girl, who was—
“One of thoseThat an acre hath of nose.”
“One of thoseThat an acre hath of nose.”
“One of those
That an acre hath of nose.”
Why will the thought of berries come up? Dear old Suckling gave vent to it thus:—
“No grape that’s kindly ripe could beSo round, so plump, so soft as she,Nor half so full of juice.”
“No grape that’s kindly ripe could beSo round, so plump, so soft as she,Nor half so full of juice.”
“No grape that’s kindly ripe could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.”
No wonder that it has been a persistent dream of masculine poets to—
“Journey alongWith an armful of girl and a heart full of song!”
“Journey alongWith an armful of girl and a heart full of song!”
“Journey along
With an armful of girl and a heart full of song!”
We older folk, who were brought up and educated in the sweet provincial ways, can see that it has been the atrabilious old maids and the matronly flirts who have banished the dear, delicious girl from artisticconsideration. The woman of thirty, and upwards, by persistent manœuvring, has got between us and sweet sixteen. What we have to show for the change is the feminine novel of nasty morals. Of course many of these flabby romances about over-mature heroines are written by men; but they are mostly men of a beardless style with much complaint to make against their ancestors. A sound man naturally loves a healthy young girl and wants to be her father, her brother, or her lover, according to propriety. He is, moreover, lenient towards the elderly unmarried females, when they do not insist upon the superiority of an Isabella-colored complexion; but at best they are not girls; in which they differ from happily married women, who keep to themselves a girlish charm late into life.
We all have our misfortunes for which we are not in the least to blame. The single woman whose bloom is gone is interesting as an embodied pathos, but not thrilling as a sweetheart; she looks dry as a heroine of romance; she spoils a love-song. No wonder that the realists cannot fit their art to girlhood while their theory of life excludes sweetness and health. It is a pursuit of love within discouraginglimitations when some middle-aged man, with gray in his whiskers, limps rheumatically on the track of a stout lady in her thirties, and with a picture of such a race is pessimism best represented.
But the healthy and natural girl, apple-cheeked and merry-eyed, sweet-voiced—παρθενον αδυφονον—a girl of girls, is what charms mankind in life and literature. Her ways are like thistledown in a summer breeze; they suggest idyllic dreams and make us believe in all manner of delightful human happiness. We are all poets when she engages our imagination; we are all young when she loves us; we are all good in her presence,—holy-minded at thought of her.
Perhaps the surest sign of decadence in art is the appearance of the dame in the space naturally occupied by the lass; for it proves that taste is no longer an elemental impulse, but rather a matter of fashion, or of illicit influence. We do not find Madame Bovary appealing to the ever-fresh wells of our manhood. We could not be glad of having her for mother, wife, daughter, sister, or sweetheart. She poisons our imagination and repels our interest. It is a delight to turn away from her to the blushingyoung heroine who loves purely and with all her heart,—a girl as fresh and sound as a May strawberry.
Of all unnatural things none can seem quite so unjust as ill health falling upon a girl. Balzac, in one of his hideously interesting romances, pictures to the minutest line a poor child stricken with disease and robbed of her season of bud and bloom. I have always felt that the story was an unpardonable piece of writing. We sometimes see such pitiful and appealing objects in the street, or at some country place; but why should they be put into books written for our delectation?
Once upon a time a friend and I, upon archery intent, tramped together for a fortnight among the hills of North Carolina, in a region given over to the race of mountaineers. It was saddening to observe the lean, vacant, bloodless faces of the girls in the cabins. As a rule, however, activity of body and a certain limberness go with these desiccated-looking countenances, and now and again you find a flower of rustic loveliness wasting its sweetness and ignorance on the mountain air. An instance comes to mind. We were having luncheon at a spring under the hill,upon which an ancient cabin nestled amid its peach-trees.
Down a zig-zag path worn into the brick-yellow clay and rotten slate of the declivity came a maiden bearing on her head a cedar noggin. She stepped briskly and nimbly, not deigning to touch the noggin with her hand, but with scarcely perceptible head-movements kept it at perfect equilibrium on her crown. Barefooted, her coarse blue petticoat very scant and short, a wonderful brush of pale gold hair crinkling over her perfect shoulders, her arms half bare, a throat like a bird’s, and a face-flower full of happy lights, she made just that sudden impression of æsthetic surprise which comes with the poet’s rarest phrase and most unexpected rhyme.
It turned out that this strong young thing was as ignorant and empty as she was beautiful and healthy; but when she spoke to us her voice had thetimbreof a hermit thrush’s and she gave us a glimpse of teeth incomparably white and even. She was not timid, not bold, but natural. Took hold of my yew bow, which rested against a tree, and inquired about it, fingered my arrows and quiver, asked my companion whither we were going. All this time thecedar noggin on her sunny head wagged gently, but kept its place, until presently she took it off, and, with a melodious souse in the spring, filled it, replaced it aloft and walked back up the hill, hands down and absolutely sure of foot.
“Well,” said my companion, in a breathless tone, “if I didn’t think for a moment that you meant to shoot her! A regular wood nymph.”
As for myself I did not like the term wood nymph applied to a girl like that. She was as pretty, as pure, and as ignorant as a wild blue violet, and evidently as happy as a lark in a meadow. I felt the better for having seen her, and, as we trudged on, there was a new fragrance in my imagination.
The streets and suburban lanes of our little Western towns and cities offer great facilities for the study of happy girlhood, large thanks to the bicycle. During my summer walks and drives I meet whisps and flocks and bevies of lasses, or they pass me at scorching speed. They put the “bicycle-face” to shame with their rippling countenances and merry chatter. I shall never, I hope, forget one little maid of fifteen who drove her wheel as straight and steady as a flying quail, with her arms folded on her breast,and her lithe body poised inimitably. She looked at me with big round eyes, as if to say: “Do you see how I can do this?”
Indeed, my enjoyment of the frank sweetness in the air where girls are at play would be perfect were it not for the “Little Lord Fauntleroy” so often in evidence; but for him, all becurled and beruffled, I have a supreme and stony aversion. If some ruddy, ragged urchin, of the true Adamic race, would but down him and bedaub him with mud! If some girl would spank him and send him home; but the girl seems actually to like the self-conscious and unnatural little scamp. She smoothes his collar and pulls down his velvet jacket, hugs him and calls him pet names. He is the fellow who will grow up to be gun-shy, and inclined to marry a double-divorced actress, much to the girl’s disgust.
It was Madame de Staël, I believe, who said: “Let my children be not girls; for a woman’s life is so sad.” Even she, however, did not find girlhood unhappy, and the preventive to be used against the misery of womanhood would be to hold on to girlish simplicity, faith, and sanity as long as possible. We grow like what we contemplate, and the question is,do we now-a-days give adequate contemplation to the true, the beautiful, and the good, whose symbol and measure is the heart of a healthy girl? Our civilization must luxuriate in what maidenhood can safely assimilate, or it must grovel at the feet of the yellow woman, tough andpassée.
There is encouraging evidence, visible just now, of a desire on the public’s part to get rid of Old Mrs. Woman, and take up once more with her granddaughter, the not wholly unsophisticated, but yet quite innocent and undesigning maiden. Men of the right sort have always felt that the happy married woman should be sheltered from publicity, and that the unhappy wife’s sorrows are sacred; but the love of a youth and a maid, that is something for the delight of the whole world. We are tired of this rank immorality tricked out in the toggery of love,—and the lovers married to other folk,—this rank immorality of the old blasé hero and the adroit, conscienceless and time-battered heroine.
A return to the insipid pastoral of the early centuries would be tolerable, if no better shift can be had, as breach full and wide with the feminine party of faded spinsterhood and preposterous sociology, oftirades against marriage and of the sainthood of grass widows. Let in the young girl of sound body and merry heart; give her another chance; the whole world is ready to welcome her. Her smile will banish the yellow dust of the faded asters; her presence will hush even the whisper of brutalities.
The other day I wrote to a distant friend and put to him Horace’s light question:—
“Quæ circumvolitas agilis thyma?”
Back came the answer: “I am running races with my three little girls. What is there better to do?” A man of gravity and distinction playing with his little daughters has what a politician would call a “pull” upon the gods for the highest joy of existence. From that play-ground he bears away the nectar of incomparable flowers, and the pollen on his thighs will freshen the whole hive of the world.
We may be sure that there is something wrong when we hear it growled around that young maidenhood is insipid in art, and that virility—a murrain seize the word—demands a Harriet Martineau, or the like, for a good, substantial feast of the imagination. Not assuming to know a great deal aboutvirile women, I can venture the statement that truly virile men adore the young girl. She is the heroine of the iron-willed, vastly capable, boy-hearted fellows who make the world move. There is always a love of simple, elemental pleasures in great masculine natures. Precious little they care for artificial cheeks and pencilled eyebrows. Better a healthy, dewy-lipped milkmaid, singing behind the hedge, than a bediamonded old heiress whose teeth have ground luxuries some three dozen long years.
At all events my own preference for the blushing young heroine is unalterable, and I am eager to see her come back, garlanded and happy, to take her rightful place in both life and romance. I long to read yet one more book wherein the sound-hearted story-teller gives full run to that quintessential joy of loving which only the young girl can inspire. I am tired of bacon and potatoes; give me some of old Gervase Markham’s simples—
“The king-cup, the pansy with the violet,The rose that loves the shower,The wholesome gilliflower.”
“The king-cup, the pansy with the violet,The rose that loves the shower,The wholesome gilliflower.”
“The king-cup, the pansy with the violet,
The rose that loves the shower,
The wholesome gilliflower.”