Her Royal Highness Woman.

by Max O'Rell.

PREFACE

'MONSIEUR, MADAME, ET BeBe,' that most delightful, untranslatable book of the late Gustave Droz, by its genial and humorous philosophy and its pretty pictures of matrimonial life, by its healthy teachings and its piquant, poetic ill.u.s.trations, has taught to thousands of French people how to make their married lives happier and more cheerful.

This unpretentious little volume of mine, which appears simultaneously in Paris, London, and New York, will not have been written in vain if it causes one married couple in each of the three great countries where it is published to study and understand each other better.

I dedicate it to married men and women, and to young men and women contemplating matrimony--a large public indeed.

MAX O'RELL.

P.S.--Did I hear you ask whether I have been married?

Oh yes, that's all right.

M. O'R

_April, 1901._

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS WOMAN

CHAPTER I

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

What do we know about women?--Generalities on the subject--I am requested to speak on some subject I know something about.

'I am a man, and everything that concerns woman interests me,' might have said Terence. This is also what every Frenchman says, and why of all men on earth he is the one who knows women best. He is keenly alive to woman's influence, and woman is an ever-present, almost a fixed, idea with him. Whether he study her from the artistic, the psychological, even the physiological, point of view, his interest in her is never exhausted. And this explains why, since Aspasia inspired Socrates and advised Pericles, in no other country (not even in America) has woman's sovereignty been so supreme as it has always been, and still is, in France.

It is true that the leaders of thought in France, as in any other country, have long ago proclaimed that woman was the only problem it would never be given to man to solve. It is true that they have all tried and all failed, and that they acknowledge it, but they are trying still.

This characteristic of woman is probably, after all, what makes her ever so interesting to us. Nothing is more different from a woman than another woman. Nothing is more different from a woman than that very woman herself. The very moment we think we know her, she slips through our fingers and stands in front of us an absolute stranger. And so it should be. A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married twenty years without being able to understand his wife. 'You should not complain of that,' remarked the friend. 'I have been married to my wife three months only, and I understand her perfectly.'

When I come to think of it, I must confess that we men are sometimes perfectly lovely in our estimation of women. For example, you know, my dear fellow-men, that when we have a little cold in our heads--nothing more--the whole household is in a perfect state of commotion, and we wonder how it is that the earth still dares continue her course round the sun. Yet, when we see a woman patient, as she very generally is, of the most poignant physical and moral suffering, we exclaim, in admiration of her: 'She bears it like a man!' And what we seem to be unable to understand is, why women should smile when they hear us make that exclamation. Myself, I could roar, while holding my sides.

No man can say that he knows what a woman is unless he has met her in adversity. It is then that she can attain prodigious heights. Indeed, I believe that the head of a woman is much stronger in adversity than in prosperity. She can always surpa.s.s herself in misfortune, and often fails to stand success--I mean personal success, for she can a.s.sociate herself to the success of a husband with all her heart and soul, but personal success is very often too much for her. How many women have I met during my twenty years of contact with the literary, artistic, dramatic, and social circles of life who completely lost their heads over a sudden personal success! I have seen women immediately lose all interest in home and family life; I have seen some abandon husband, and even children, on suddenly becoming a celebrity, a famous writer, actress, or singer, or a 'professional' beauty. A successful man will not alter in his feelings toward his family because he has become celebrated, unless he has a wife who should keep amusing herself with reminding him that, however the great 'John' of Oliver Wendell Holmes he may be to the public, he is only plain 'Jack' at home. On the contrary, the successful man will often most willingly give all the applause of the public for a few encouraging words of praise from a devoted wife, for a few expressions of admiration from a loving daughter. The easily unstrung, almost hysterical, temperament of a woman will sometimes make her give up all the quiet enjoyment of family happiness and love for the noisy applause of the crowd. It acts on her like an intoxicating beverage; and if men sometimes get cured of the craving for drink, women, it is well known, never do. The celebrated woman is seldom fit to be, or, if she is, to remain, a wife and a mother. She becomes an anomaly, a freak. It is in woman's nature. She cannot look down to drop her love on a man; to love she must admire and look up. I would rather be the husband of a simple little dairymaid than that of a George Sand or a Madame de Stael.

All these are stray thoughts on the great eternal feminine. Like my fellow-men, I know nothing about women.

I quite appreciated a little scene only a few weeks old. I was announced to give a lecture on 'Women' to the students of a large ladies' college in North Carolina. A couple of hours before the lecture, three young ladies from the college called on me at the hotel where I was staying. I met them in the parlour. Three charming, bright, most intelligent-looking girls they were. After looking at each other for some time, so as to suggest that the other should speak, one at last made up her mind to be the spokeswoman of the little deputation.

'We have called on you,' she said, 'to ask if you would be kind enough to change the subject of your lecture to-night. Our lecture course is inst.i.tuted for the instruction and the general improvement of the students, and we thought we should like to hear you talk to us on a subject which you know something about.' I must say that I felt fearfully small; but I was delighted at the frankness of those young American girls, and at once acceded to their request.

CHAPTER II

WOMAN'S INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL

A woman at the beginning--The first love-story--Different versions--'Cherchez la femme'--The influence of woman on national characteristics.

If we look back into the dawn of the world, we see that, from her first appearance, woman has always been a great power. Indeed, she had the leading part in the first great drama of which the literature of the world gives any account. A snake and a poor weak man had the minor parts, the snake playing the villain and the poor man the fool. I have never read that story without feeling ashamed of the first representative of my s.e.x. If I had been Adam, I would have stuck to Eve through thick and thin. To save, even only to shield, a woman (especially one I loved, or one who would have been as kind to me as Eve had been to Adam), I would tell lies by the yard and by the hour, and I admire that English judge who, being told so by a male co-respondent in a divorce case, replied, 'And so would I.'

How I prefer that story of our first parents as related in the sacred books of the Buddhists! There, as in the version that we know, man is tempted by woman, and, as in our version, and as he has done ever since, and will do for ever and ever, he succ.u.mbs. But when he is found out and sentence is to be pa.s.sed on him, what a difference! He does not turn around and say, 'Please, it was not I who tempted her; it was she who tempted me.' No, he acknowledges his guilt, affirms that he alone disobeyed, and that he alone should be punished. Then Eve intervenes, and she, too, confesses her guilt. There is a regular attempt each at shielding the other. Then both fall on their knees and beg to be punished together, and their request is granted, and they go forth hand in hand into exile. This is the first record of love and devotion, not, as in our version, a first record of man's cowardice and selfishness.

From that memorable day to this, Her Royal Highness Woman has been the greatest power for good and evil that the world has known, for ever since Adam and Eve there have been men and women--especially women.

A beautiful woman was the cause of the Trojan War; the cause of David's single sin, a woman; the cause of Solomon's decadence, a woman, or rather, many women. A woman was the instigator of the greatest crime ever recorded in history, the terrible ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew. A woman, who has dearly paid for it since, was the cause of the Franco-German war. On the other hand, France was saved in the fifteenth century by a sweet peasant girl at a time when King and people had given up all hope of ever again seeing France a free and independent nation--but that was a long time ago.

There is no country where the influence of women over men is so great as France, and the famous phrase 'Cherchez la femme'--'Seek the woman'--emanated from the lips of the greatest jurisconsult France ever produced, President Dupin, in the reign of King Louis Philippe. And it is a fact that among French prisoners who belong to the better cla.s.ses, there are ninety-nine out of every hundred who have committed murder, forgery, embezzlement, theft, for the sake of a woman. The English people (and the Americans, too, I believe) say that drunkenness is responsible for the great majority of crimes committed in Great Britain and America. The expensive ways of French women are responsible for the majority of crimes and offences committed by men in modern France, as these expensive ways of women are responsible for their own downfall nine times out of ten.

On the other hand, a man owes all his best qualities to the influence of the first woman he has known, his mother. A man will be what his mother has made him. A man does not learn how to be a gentleman at school, at college, or at the university. There he may improve his manner, but his mind is formed at home much earlier than that.

It is woman, and woman alone, that makes society polite. Men together can talk or chat, but it is only when women join them that they can _causer_, an equivalent for which the English language does not possess. And why? Simply because Englishmen do not as a rule care for the restraint that results from the presence of women.

Thanks to the tact, the brilliancy, and the high intellectual attainments of American women, one can _causer_ in America, and the vocabulary of the language used in the United States ought to be richer by one word, a good equivalent for this French verb which both 'to talk' and 'to chat' most imperfectly translate; for _causer_ means 'to chat with wit, humour, brilliancy, and great refinement.'

Chapter III

MAXIMS FOR THE MAN IN LOVE

How to deal with your girl--Avoid catching colds in your head--How women with humour can be saved.

Never go down on your knees to declare your love; you will spoil your trousers and feel very uncomfortable. Rather give the lady an opportunity of denying that you were on your knees before her, for the simple reason that she was sitting on them.

Never put your hand near your lady's waistband or round her neck. Place it about the middle of her back; there are no pins there.

If she asks you to fasten her bracelet, never forget to apply a kiss on her arm. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that is what she wants and why she does not secure her bracelet with a little chain.

Never call on your lady-love while you have a cold in your head. If you begin your declaration, you will never be able to resume it after a fit of sneezing. A cold in the head inspires pity neither in the heart of man nor in that of woman, and sneezing is fatal if the lady possesses the slightest particle of humour. Remember that, with a cold in your head, you will have to say to her: 'I lob you, be darling. Oh! I hab such a cold id be dose.' No romantic love, my dear fellow, could survive that.

I knew a man who once eloped with a married woman. They were deeply in love with each other. When they arrived at their destination, they went to the hotel where they had engaged rooms. It was a bitterly cold day, and they had forgotten to give orders for fires. The rooms were dull and chilly. They fell in each other's arms. 'At last, my darling!' he exclaimed. 'At last, my own beloved one!' He could say no more. He was seized with a violent fit of sneezing. The misled lady came at once to her senses. In no time the trunks were sent back to the station, and that same evening she had returned safe and sound to the conjugal roof.

The 'saving grace' of humour has done still more for women than for men who owe so much to it.