Part 10

Be virtuous and you will be happy.

She jots down all the possible variations: Be virtuous and you will be unhappy.

“Too simple that one,” she tells herself. Be virtuous and your friends will be happy if you are not.

“Better, but not wicked enough. Let us think again. Be happy and people will jump to the conclusion that you are virtuous.

“That’s good, I’ll try that one at to-morrow’s party.”

She is a painstaking lady. One feels that, better advised, she might have been of use in the world.

There is likewise a disgraceful old Peer who tells naughty stories, but who is good at heart; and one person so very rude that the wonder is who invited him.

Occasionally a slangy girl is included, and a clergyman, who takes the heroine aside and talks sense to her, flavoured with epigram. All these people chatter a mixture of Lord Chesterfield and Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Heine, Voltaire, Madame de Stael, and the late lamented H. J. Byron. “How they do it beats me,” as I once overheard at a music hall a stout lady confess to her friend while witnessing the performance of a clever troup, styling themselves “The Boneless Wonders of the Universe.”

The synopsis added that: “Ursula Bart, a charming and unsophisticated young American girl possessed of an elusive expression makes her first acquaintance with London society.”

Here you have a week’s unnecessary work on the part of the author boiled down to its essentials. She was young. One hardly expects an elderly heroine. The “young” might have been dispensed with, especially seeing it is told us that she was a girl. But maybe this is carping. There are young girls and old girls. Perhaps it is as well to have it in black and white; she was young. She was an American young girl. There is but one American young girl in English fiction. We know by heart the unconventional things that she will do, the startlingly original things that she will say, the fresh illuminating thoughts that will come to her as, clad in a loose robe of some soft clinging stuff, she sits before the fire, in the solitude of her own room.

To complete her she had an “elusive expression.” The days when we used to catalogue the heroine’s “points” are past. Formerly it was possible. A man wrote perhaps some half-a-dozen novels during the whole course of his career. He could have a dark girl for the first, a light girl for the second, sketch a merry little wench for the third, and draw you something stately for the fourth. For the remaining two he could go abroad. Nowadays, when a man turns out a novel and six short stories once a year, description has to be dispensed with. It is not the writer’s fault. There is not sufficient variety in the sex. We used to introduce her thus:

“Imagine to yourself, dear reader, an exquisite and gracious creature of five feet three. Her golden hair of that peculiar shade”—here would follow directions enabling the reader to work it out for himself. He was to pour some particular wine into some particular sort of glass, and wave it about before some particular sort of a light. Or he was to get up at five o’clock on a March morning and go into a wood. In this way he could satisfy himself as to the particular shade of gold the heroine’s hair might happen to be. If he were a careless or lazy reader he could save himself time and trouble by taking the author’s word for it. Many of them did.

“Her eyes!” They were invariably deep and liquid. They had to be pretty deep to hold all the odds and ends that were hidden in them; sunlight and shadow, mischief, unsuspected possibilities, assorted emotions, strange wild yearnings. Anything we didn’t know where else to put we said was hidden in her eyes.

“Her nose!” You could have made it for yourself out of a pen’orth of putty after reading our description of it.

“Her forehead!” It was always “low and broad.” I don’t know why it was always low. Maybe because the intellectual heroine was not then popular. For the matter of that I doubt if she be really popular now. The brainless doll, one fears, will continue for many years to come to be man’s ideal woman—and woman’s ideal of herself for precisely the same period, one may be sure.

“Her chin!” A less degree of variety was permissible in her chin. It had to be at an angle suggestive of piquancy, and it had to contain at least the suspicion of a dimple.

To properly understand her complexion you were expected to provide yourself with a collection of assorted fruits and flowers. There are seasons in the year when it must have been difficult for the conscientious reader to have made sure of her complexion. Possibly it was for this purpose that wax flowers and fruit, carefully kept from the dust under glass cases, were common objects in former times upon the tables of the cultured.

Nowadays we content ourselves—and our readers also, I am inclined to think—with dashing her off in a few bold strokes. We say that whenever she entered a room there came to one dreams of an old world garden, the sound of far-off bells. Or that her presence brought with it the scent of hollyhocks and thyme. As a matter of fact I don’t think hollyhocks do smell. It is a small point; about such we do not trouble ourselves. In the case of the homely type of girl I don’t see why we should not borrow Mr. Pickwick’s expression, and define her by saying that in some subtle way she always contrived to suggest an odour of chops and tomato sauce.

If we desire to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an “elusive expression,” or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance.

But it is not policy to bind oneself too closely to detail. A wise friend of mine, who knows his business, describes his hero invariably in the vaguest terms. He will not even tell you whether the man is tall or short, clean shaven or bearded.

“Make the fellow nice,” is his advice. “Let every woman reader picture him to herself as her particular man. Then everything he says and does becomes of importance to her. She is careful not to miss a word.”

For the same reason he sees to it that his heroine has a bit of every girl in her. Generally speaking, she is a cross between Romola and Dora Copperfield. His novels command enormous sales. The women say he draws a man to the life, but does not seem to know much about women. The men like his women, but think his men stupid.

Of another famous author no woman of my acquaintance is able to speak too highly. They tell me his knowledge of their sex is simply marvellous, his insight, his understanding of them almost uncanny. Thinking it might prove useful, I made an exhaustive study of his books. I noticed that his women were without exception brilliant charming creatures possessed of the wit of a Lady Wortlay Montagu, combined with the wisdom of a George Eliot. They were not all of them good women, but all of them were clever and all of them were fascinating. I came to the conclusion that his lady critics were correct: he did understand women. But to return to our synopsis.

The second chapter, it appeared, transported us to Yorkshire where: “Basil Longleat, a typical young Englishman, lately home from college, resides with his widowed mother and two sisters. They are a delightful family.”

What a world of trouble to both writer and to reader is here saved. “A typical young Englishman!” The author probably wrote five pages, elaborating. The five words of the sub-editor present him to me more vividly. I see him positively glistening from the effects of soap and water. I see his clear blue eye; his fair crisp locks, the natural curliness of which annoys him personally, though alluring to everybody else; his frank winning smile. He is “lately home from college.” That tells me that he is a first-class cricketer; a first-class oar; that as a half-back he is incomparable; that he swims like Captain Webb; is in the first rank of tennis players; that his half-volley at ping-pong has never been stopped. It doesn’t tell me much about his brain power. The description of him as a “typical young Englishman” suggests more information on this particular point. One assumes that the American girl with the elusive expression is going to have sufficient for both.

“They are a delightful family.” The sub-editor does not say so, but I imagine the two sisters are likewise typical young Englishwomen. They ride and shoot and cook and make their own dresses, have common sense and love a joke.

The third chapter is “taken up with the humours of a local cricket match.”

Thank you, Mr. Sub-editor. I feel I owe you gratitude.