CHAPTER XVI.
After all this conversation we were in the mood to enjoy the dainty meal spread before us. The young woman in attendance was one of the employés of the Domestic Agency, and had served Mrs. Saville, to their mutual satisfaction, for five years. She moved about the room with a grace born of her perfect physical training, which I would fain see prevalent in my own country. In response to a question of John Saville’s, she informed us that there was to be a grand amateur theatrical entertainment in theRecreation Hall that evening, at which she intended to be one of the performers.
As she was one of the indoor servants of the Agency, and slept in the building, she was practically at home during most of her hours of recreation, and she spoke with all the verve and vigour of one who enjoyed life to the utmost. She was merry without familiarity; energetic without being fussy; and respectful without being servile—altogether the verybeau idéalof a nice-looking and intelligent waiting maid.
As I noted herself and her ways critically, I thought that there was really no reason why we should not establish these Domestic Aid Agencies in England. We are not usually very slow in adopting socially economic ideas which have once suggested themselves to us, and if enterprise and capital united were to take the notion up, the chief sources of English domestic worry would be soon put an end to, as would also the reluctance of respectable girls to adopt what is at present in only too many cases nothing better than a life of dull, miserable slavery.
The meal ended, and the things all cleared away, Alice O’Reilly’s work for the day was over, and she betook herself to her own quarters, in order to prepare for the evening’s innocent jollities, while we again reverted to our comparisons of the social conditions of our respective countries. I believe that the hardest nut which I gave the Saville family to crack was my statement that when I last remembered being at home, the English Government had consigned some zealous partisans of Irish liberty to the temporary seclusion of some gaols in Ireland, which I was now assured had long ceased to exist. It was in vain that I insisted; and when I spoke of Queen Victoria, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Parnell as living contemporaneouslywith myself, the amusement of my friends was, in its turn, amusing to witness.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, after that,” said John Saville, “to hear that you claim personal acquaintance with the immortal writer of Hamlet and Macbeth.”
“Do you allude to Shakespeare or Bacon?” I queried innocently.
“Bacon? I know nothing of Bacon,” retorted John Saville. “But I am very much in love with the works of a certain William Shakespeare.”
“You think you are. Shakespeare did not write the plays bearing his name. The real author was Bacon, as several individuals have set themselves to prove.”
“I am afraid they have proved their case but badly. For while all our scholars have Shakesperian quotations at their tongues’ ends, there is not one of us who has ever heard a whisper of any presumed Baconian origin of our best loved classics.”
Poor Mr. Donnelly!
From playwright to novelist was a natural transition; and, remembering sundry financial bruisings in connection with the publication of one of my earliest and lengthiest novels, a glow of exultation possessed me when I learnt the conditions under which books were published nowadays.
The long-suffering author had triumphed at last, and his erstwhile oppressor was shorn of his glory. I was told that the State had established an immense Literary Bureau, with which large printing and publishing works were associated. All works other than already licensed newspapers and magazines intended for publication were submitted in the first instance to the Bureau, and read by the official censor.
If found to be innocent of offences against morality, the book was taken in hand, and published under Stateauthority, the author paying the whole of the cost, and receiving the whole of the future emoluments, subject to the five per cent. tax accruing to the State. There was no arbitrary range of charges, but a scale of payment for work done which was sufficient to repay the State outlay,plusa slight percentage of profit. Writers could, by studying the printed tariff, know exactly what style and quality of material and workmanship to choose, and would also know to a fraction what their expenses would be. Nor did present lack of funds stand in the way of success, for the State helped capable, industrious authors by a judicious system of credit, just as it helped any other of its people who had done nothing to forfeit the supposition that they were deserving of such assistance. As already pointed out, State aid within certain limits was unattended with any risk to the Government, as it had means of repaying itself.
The law of copyright was simplicity itself. For one hundred years the copyright was the inalienable property of the author, or the author’s nominees. At the end of that time the State succeeded to all copyrights as were still of value. No grasping publisher was allowed to step in and reap the profits of an author’s brain toil, and there was no gall mixed with the thought that a work was being written which might possibly survive to become a valuable property of the nation, even as Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is still a gold mine to enterprising and speculative publishers in England.
There was no sort of hesitation on the part of anyone to claim of the “Mother” the help and protection to which, as her veritable children, they were justly entitled. Pauperism and workhouses did not exist, simply because the State saw the wisdom of preventing squalor and destitution by its system of claiming the care of its people fromtheir infancy, and being generous in its mode of launching them in life.
When we reflect upon the enormous sums which are collected for poor rates in England, it is easy to conceive the vast social improvement the same amount of money and labour could produce, if spent in the education and fair start in life of our thousands of miserable and squalid gutter-birds, who, instead of being all their life-long a continual source of expense to the nation, would grow up respectable and respected units of society, abhorring the life of shame and degradation which they and only too many others look upon at present as their natural birthright.
“Prevention is better than cure,” is just as trite and useful a maxim for the State as it is for the subject, as is also the warning against being “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” It would cost much less for our country to feed, clothe, educate, and train to useful avocations half-a-million youngsters taken from the slums, than it would cost to meet one-half of the expenses that same half-million of juveniles will provide for their compatriots before they have run the course of drunkenness, pauperism, misery, and crime which the laws of cause and effect have only too surely marked out for them in the unhappy future.
When comparing New Amazonia with England, another idea suggests itself. How much of the national prosperity I saw around me was owing to the fact that New Amazonia was free from the incubus of having to provide vast sums for the support of a monarchy which with us is exceedingly limited in its beneficent effects, but which possesses an unlimited capacity for appropriating huge emoluments which would be more sensibly spent in liquidating the National Debt, or in alleviating some of the nationalmisery! If saddled with the incalculable burdens which England has to bear, even New Amazonian rulers would find it a difficult task to present a satisfactory budget at the end of their term of office.
There is also another way in which our poor are deprived of a great deal of help they would otherwise receive. Many of our churches and chapels are simply begging houses, in which their frequenters are persuaded to part with every penny they can be induced to spare. And this, if the donors are satisfied, is perfectly right in its way. But is it right that while countless poor souls, old and young, are rotting, body and soul, in our own land, it should be the boast of our Missionary Societies that they givehundreds of thousands of pounds every year to strangers who do not need the gospel preached practically to them half so much as the miserable denizens of the back slums of our own parishes?
The zeal of the advocates of Foreign missions is commendable, but I respectfully submit that it is misdirected, and if some of them had half an idea of what only too often ultimately becomes of their money, they would be very chary about subscribing in future.
But when even those whose office and mission it is to seek and succour their poor and needy neighbours, find their time and attention taken up with more distant and less pressing duties, how is it likely that our legislators, occupied so intensely as they are in trying to prove each other unfit for office, will ever find time to take the cause of the social improvement of the people into consideration? It is hopeless to think of it at present, for a true and tender interest will never be felt in the units of the nation until our Constitution becomes less that of rulers and ruled, and more like that of mother and children.
To this devoutly-to-be-hoped-for consummation there isanother obstacle. The truly maternal instinct has no equivalent in the breast of man, and so long as none but men are the people’s representatives, even so long will that people be deprived of a thousand rights which a just, earnest, womanly co-government would give them. It is monstrous to speak of women as being even incapable of voting wisely, when they have already proved themselves capable of governing much more judiciously than men, many of whom seem to recognise no other legitimate result of taking office than squabbling and banqueting.
Certainly in many cases these are about the only matters to which some of our corporate bodies devote their attention, and surely, surely feminine nincompoopery could go no further than this!
There is a town in Kansas, called Oskaloosa, of which the Mayor and other members of the Corporation are all women. Their first term of office has been so triumphantly progressive that they have been enthusiastically re-elected, and within twelve months the place has made such wonderful strides in the trifling matters of social morality, sanitation, and prosperity, that it is the wonder of surrounding towns.
After so signal a proof of feminine capacity, it argues great paucity of brains for anyone to insinuate that a clever, capable woman is less able to form a sensible opinion as to the relative merits of candidates for office than a man who perhaps spends half his days in loafing about public houses or race courses, and half his nights in dens of infamy. A truly moral judgment we need expect from such truly moral voters!
I meet an individual in the street. His legitimate avocation is that of bird-catching. He has been doing good business, and has spent part of his precarious earnings in sundry “two-pennorths” of gin, and in a paper of viletobacco. He positively reeks of low life, and pollutes the atmosphere as he staggers through the streets. An unfortunate dog crosses his path. He gives it a vicious kick, and sends it howling and limping to a neighbouring cabmen’s shelter for sympathy. The dog’s howls remind him of the miserable wife and children at home who are destined to feel the weight of his kicks and blows, and a demoniac, exulting grin of conscious masculine superiority spreads over his face, while he unconsciously increases his speed, in order the sooner to be at the game he loves above all others.
Am I to believe that this thing is better able to judge of the merits of a candidate for electoral honours than I am simply because it is a MAN?
Am I to assume that this reptile is legally and morally better fitted to take a place among our legislators than I, solely because it is a MAN?
Perish the thought! Man’s arrogance and woman’s cowardice have reigned long enough, and it behoves my countrywomen to assert their rights and privileges without further delay.
Never mind what the men say. They cannot say more than they have said. Never mind what theweak-mindedwomen say. Their opinions are not worth heeding.
We are beginning to understand all we have been deprived of. We have clear ideas as to what we want. We are perfectly aware that we have an uphill fight, and plenty of senseless opposition to encounter. But we also know that “Patience overcometh all things.”
Woman has up to now proved that she is superabundantly gifted with a spurious, undesirable sort of patience. It has hitherto been of the passive and take-things-as-a-matter-of-course kind. All that wants altering. Patience still, if you like. But it must be active, andcoupled with such steady determination as shall ensure the realisation of all our hopes, and make political and social equality of the sexes a realisation of the near future.
And, now, I am struck with another idea. It has suddenly occurred to me that I have wandered a long way from the Savilles, and that my readers will wonder where I intend to pick them up again. I have really, however, not very far to go, for they are originally responsible for all the digression which their conversation has suggested, and if the opinions feebly expressed in the preceding pages succeed in winning a few recruits to the cause of progress, the Saville family would not be disposed to cavil at my momentary neglect of them.
I recall a remark John Saville made during that memorable visit.
“Suppose,” he said, “I were to find this fabulous country of yours, and were to set up as a lecturer, how do you think I should succeed?”
“That depends upon the subjects chosen. I do not doubt your power to express your views forcibly.”
“Well, I will give you a short syllabus. I would extol our methods of dealing with children, in preference to yours. I would impress upon all young women the folly of permitting my sex to arrogate to itself the right to be the first to speak of matters amorous or matrimonial. I would scout the idea of women being paid less wages than men, when the work done by both is identically the same in quality and quantity. I would insist not merely upon woman’s electoral rights, but upon woman’s equal right with man to govern her country. You see, I am not quite going the length of leaving us poor men out in the cold altogether. How do you think my programme will take?”
“Indifferently well.”
“Why?”
“Because you would be lecturing in opposition to the ‘no progress’ views of the majority of your hearers.”
“But I have understood you to say that your country boasts far more women than men. How then could I, the ‘Woman’s Apostle,’ be in the minority?”
“Because you would not merely have the opposition of men to overcome, but would have arrayed against you the prejudices of all those women who are too bigoted in their own ignorance to know what is good for themselves or others, and their name is legion. You see, the process of education in the doctrines of the necessity for self-assertion and personal effort is still young, and until we can awaken the self-respect, which it has been for ages the mission of men to extinguish in women, we cannot hope to effect the results which demand united action. Still, the ‘Onward’ portion of my sex grows in numbers every year, as does also the number of our masculine supporters, and I hope to win an immense number of recruits when I get home again, and describe all I have seen here.”
“And that reminds me. How do you propose to get home?”
“Well, really, I ——. Upon my word, I don’t know. I suppose, however, that I shall be able to discover some way of reaching England, when I have solved the preliminary problem of earning the necessary funds. I have already written some descriptive articles, which I hope will be accepted.”
“They are sure to be accepted, and well paid for into the bargain, for everything connected with you has roused the greatest interest in the country. So the question of your independence is settled already. But even were this not so, the Mother is always kind, and would provide you with the means of travelling. The difficulty lies in discovering your actual destination.”
“If this is really Ireland in a perfected state, I have not far to go. A country may be revolutionised and improved by social reforms, but nothing of much less power than an earthquake can remove it altogether. If England stands where it did, I have but to take a boat to Holyhead, and a few hours more will take me home to Northumberland.”
“And what will you do when you get there?”
“Report myself to my friends without further delay.”
“You forget that you must have been sleeping some centuries, and that you are not likely to find any friends left alive, or any place you have known, in the same condition as that in which you left it. Look at this map. Here is the island of which you speak. Holyhead and Northumberland still find their place upon it. But is all else as you left it?”
I eagerly looked at the map before me, and without difficulty pounced upon Newcastle. But where were all the outlying villages which used to assert themselves so independently and with such “plum”-like utterance?
Gone! Everyone of them. Swallowed up in the huge advance of their powerful centre, Newcastle-on-Tyne. I looked for Benwell, Gosforth, Scotswood, Lemington, Newburn, Benton, Killingworth, and a dozen other places, all in vain, for Newcastle overspread them all, and, as the veritable Metropolis of the North, presented a picture of progress and prosperity which were amazing to me.
I was told that centuries of effort had made the Tyne one of the noblest rivers in the land. Fleets could ride upon its waters in safety, and it was now an important naval station. Its commercial relations with the rest of the world were enormous. In arts and manufactures it was alike distinguished, and it was the most famous place in all Europe for the production of every kind of electrical apparati, besides being the northern centre of learning.
Countless other improvements and aggrandisements were related to me, but for the most part they fell on deaf ears at the time.
I had at last realised that I was bereft of everybody and everything I had ever held dear, and must henceforth consider myself alone in the world, an alien in a strange land, without the possibility of ever again exchanging a word or look of affection with those whom I had loved well and truly.
No wonder my fortitude gave way. No wonder I returned to the college in a mood bordering on despair.