The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays (Vol. 1&2). E. Lynn Linton
and we all know how heartily we despise her, and how we ridicule her in our hearts, if not by our words. If the reigning queens of fashion, at present young and beautiful, would but remember that they are only that worldly old woman in embryo, and that in a very few years they will be her exact likeness, unhappily repeated for the scorn of the world once more to follow! The traditional skeleton at the feast had a wonderfully wise meaning, crude and gross as it was in form. For though its memento mori, too constantly before us, would either sadden or brutalize, as we were thoughtful or licentious, yet it is good to see the end of ourselves, and to study the meaning and lesson of our lives in those of our prototypes and elder likenesses.
The pleasures of the world are, as we all know, very potent and very alluring, but nothing can be more unsatisfying if taken as the main purpose of life. While we are young, the mere stirring of the blood stands instead of anything more real; but as we go on, and the pulse flags and pleasurable occasions get rare and more rare, we find that we have been like the Prodigal Son, and that our food and his have been out of much the same trough, and come in the main to much the same thing.
This is an age of extraordinary wealth and of corresponding extraordinary luxury; of unparalleled restlessness, which is not the same thing as activity or energy, but which is the kind of restlessness that disdains all quiet and repose, as unendurable stagnation. Hence the fashionable woman of the day is one of extremes in her own line also; and the idleness, the heartlessness, the self-indulgence, the want of high morality, and the insolent luxury at all times characteristic of her were never displayed with more cynical effrontery than at present, and never called for more severe condemnation.
The fashionable women of Greece and Rome, of Italy and France, have left behind them names which the world has made typical of the vices naturally engendered by idleness and luxury. But do we wish that our women should become subjects for an English Juvenal? that fashion should create a race of Laïses and Messalinas, of Lucrezia Borgias and Madame du Barrys, out of the stock which once gave us Lucy Hutchinson and Elizabeth Fry? Once the name of Englishwoman carried with it a grave and noble echo as the name of women known for their gentle bearing and their blameless honour—of women who loved their husbands, and brought up about their own knees the children they were not reluctant to bear and not ashamed to love. Now, it too often means a girl of the period, a frisky matron, a fashionable woman—a thing of paints and pads, consorting with dealers of no doubtful calling for the purchase of what she grimly calls 'beauty,' making pleasure her only good and the world her highest god. It too often means a woman who is not ashamed to supplement her husband with a lover, but who is unwilling to become the honest mother of that husband's children. It too often means a hybrid creature, perverted out of the natural way altogether, affecting the license but ignorant of the strength of a man; as girl or woman alike valueless so far as her highest natural duties are concerned; and talking largely of liberty while showing at every turn how much she fails in that co-essential of liberty—knowledge how to use it.
SLEEPING DOGS.
There is a capital old proverb, often quoted but not so often acted on, called 'Let sleeping dogs lie;' a proverb which, if we were to abide by its injunction, would keep us out of many a mess that we get into now, because we cannot let well alone. Certainly we fall into trouble sometimes, or rather we drift into it—we allow it to gather round us—for want of a frank explanation to clear off small misunderstandings. At least novelists say so, and then make a great point of the anguish endured by Henry and Angelina for three mortal volumes, because they were too stupid to ask the reason why the one looked cold the other evening at the duchess's ball, and the other looked shy the next morning in the park. But then novelists, poor souls, are driven to such extravagant expedients for motives and matter, that we can scarcely take them as rational exponents of real life in any way; though the very meaning and final cause of their profession is to depict human nature as it is, and to show the reflex action of character and circumstances somewhat according to the pattern set out in the actual world. But, leaving novelists alone, on the whole we find in real life that if speech is silvern, silence is essentially golden, and that more harm is done by saying too much than by saying too little; above all, that infinite mischief arises by not letting sleeping dogs lie.
People are so wonderfully anxious to stir up the dregs of everything, they can never let things rest. Take a man or woman who has done something queer that gets noised abroad, and who is coldly looked on in consequence by those who believe the worst reports which arise as interpretations. Now the wisest thing undoubtedly is to bear this coldness as the righteous punishment of that folly, and to trust for rehabilitation to the mysterious process called 'living it down.' If there has been absolutely no sinfulness to speak of, nothing but a little imprudence and a big glossary of scandalous explanation, a little precipitancy and a great deal of ill-nature, by all means wake up the sleeping dog and set him howling through the streets. He may do good, seeing that truth would be your friend. But if there be a core of ugly fact, even if it be not quite so ugly as the envelope which rumour has wrapped round it, then fall back on the dignity of 'living it down,' and let the dog lie sleeping and muzzled.
There is another, but an unsavoury saying, which advises against the stirring up of evil odours; but this is just what imprudent, high-spirited people will not understand. They will take their own way in spite of society and all its laws; they will kick over the traces when it suits them; they will do this and that of which the world says authoritatively, 'No, you shall not do it;' and then, when the day of wrath arrives, and down comes the whip on the offending back, they shriek piteously and wake up all the dogs in the town in the 'investigation of their case.' And a queer kennel enough they turn out sometimes! They would have done better to put up with their social thrashing than to have set the bloodhounds of 'investigation' on their heels.
Actions for libel often do this kind of thing, as every one may read for himself. Many a man who gets his farthing damages had better have borne the surly growl of the only half-roused dog, than have retaliated, and so waked him up. The farthing damages, representing say a cuff on the head or a kick in the ribs, or a milder 'Lie down, sir!' may be very pleasant to the feelings of the yelped-at, as so much revenge exacted—Shylock's pound of flesh, without the blood. But what about the consequences? what about the disclosure of your secret follies and the uncovering of the foundations on which the libel rested? The foundations remain immoveable to the end of time if the superstructure be disroofed, and the sleeping dog is awakened, never to be set at rest again while he has a tooth in his head that can bite.
One of the arts of peaceful living at home is contained in the power of letting sleeping dogs lie. Papa is surly—it is a way papas have—or mamma is snappish, as even the best of mammas are at times when the girls are tiresome and will flirt with ineligible younger brothers, or when the boys, who must marry money, are paying attention to dowerless beauty instead. Well, the family horizon is overcast, and the black dog keeps the gate of the family mansion. Better let it lie there asleep, if it will but remain so. It is not pleasant to have it there certainly, but it would be worse to rouse it into activity and to have a general yelping through the house.
Sometimes, indeed, in a family given to tears and caresses and easily excited feelings, a frank challenge as to reasons why is answered by a temporary storm, followed by a scene of effusion and attendrissement, and the black dog is not awakened, but banished, by the rousing he has got. This is a method that can be tried when you have perfect knowledge and command of your material; else it is a dangerous, and nine times out of ten would be an unsuccessful, experiment. It is nearly always unsuccessful with husbands and wives, who often sulk, but rarely for causes needing explanation. Angelina knows quite well that she danced too often the other night with that fascinating young Lovelace for whom her Henry has a special, and not quite groundless, aversion. She may put on as many airs of injured innocence as she likes, and affect to consider herself an ill-used wife suffering grievous things because of her husband's displeasure and the black dog of sulks accompanying; but she knows as well as her Henry himself where her sin lies, and to kick at the black dog would only be to set him loose upon her, and be well barked at if not worried for her pains. The wiser course would be to muzzle him by ignoring