Mystic London - Charles Maurice Davies (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📗

duet and its subsequent soli proved, but simply from a Sybaritic love for creature comforts. I ventured to suggest it might have been expedient to remove the seed, but was informed that, under those circumstances, the creature—its proprietor called it an uglier name—would not have sung at all. The remarkable part of the business to me was that they did sing at the proper time. They had not uttered anything beyond a twitter until silence was called, and from that moment one or the other was singing incessantly. I suppose it was the silence. I have noticed not only caged birds, but children—not to speak ungallantly of the fair sex—generally give tongue most freely when one is silent, and presumably wants to keep so.

The contest, however, was over, the stakes paid, and Corydon sought his pastoral pipe again—not without beer. It was a new experience, but not a very exciting one—to me, at least. It evidently had its attractions for the very large majority of attendants. In fact, Rodney Road is generally a "birdy" neighbourhood. Its staple products, to judge by the shops, seemed birds and beer. I was much pressed by mine host to stay for the evening entertainment, when six birds were to sing, and the attendance would be more numerous. As some five hours intervened I expressed regret at my inability to remain, reserving my opinion that five hours in Lock's Fields might prove the reverse of attractive, and Corydon in greater force might not have an agreeable effect on that already stuffy chamber. So I took myself off, wondering much, by the way, what strange association of ideas could have led any imaginative man to propose such an incongruous reward as a copper kettle by way of præmium for linnet-singing.

CHAPTER XI. A WOMAN'S RIGHTS DEBATE.

There never was a time when, on all sorts of subjects, from Mesmerism to Woman's Rights, the ladies had so much to say for themselves. There is an ancient heresy which tells us that, on most occasions, ladies are prone to have the last word; but certain it is that they are making themselves heard now. On the special subject of her so-called "Rights" the abstract Woman was, I knew, prodigiously emphatic—how emphatic, though, I was not quite aware, until having seen from the top of a City-bound omnibus that a lady whom I will describe by the Aristophanic name of Praxagora would lecture at the Castle Street Co-operative Institute. I went and co-operated so far as to form one of that lady's audience. Her subject—the "Political Status of Women"—was evidently attractive, not only to what we used in our innocence to call the weaker sex, but also to those who are soon to have proved to them the fallacy of calling themselves the stronger. A goodly assemblage had gathered in the fine hall of the Co-operators to join in demolishing that ancient myth as to the superiority of the male sex. My first intention was to have reported verbatim or nearly so the oration of Praxagora on the subject; and if I changed my scheme it was not because that lady did not deserve to be reported. She said all that was to be said on the matter, and said it exceedingly well too; but when the lecture, which lasted fifty minutes, was over, I found it was to be succeeded by a debate; and I thought more might be gained by chronicling the collision of opinion thence ensuing than by simply quoting the words of any one speaker, however eloquent or exhaustive.

I own with fear and trembling—for it is a delicate, dangerous avowal—that, as a rule, I do not sympathize with the ladies who declaim on the subject of Woman's Rights. I do not mean to say I lack sympathy with the subject—I should like everybody to have their rights, and especially women—but they are sometimes asserted in such a sledge-hammer fashion, and the ladies who give them utterance are so prone to run large and be shrill-voiced that their very physique proves their claim either unnecessary or undesirable. I feel certain that in whatever station of domestic life those ladies may be placed, they would have their full rights, if not something more; and as for Parliamentary rights, I tremble for the unprotected males should such viragos ever compass the franchise; or, worse still, realize the ambition of the Ecclesiazusæ of Aristophanes, and sit on the benches of St. Stephen's clad in the nether garments of the hirsute sex. There was nothing of that kind on Tuesday night. In manner and appearance our present Praxagora was thoroughly feminine, and, by her very quietude of manner, impressed me with a consciousness of power, and determination to use it. Her voice was soft and silvery almost as that of Miss Faithfull herself; and when, at the outset of her lecture, she claimed indulgence on the score of never having spoken in a public hall before, we had to press forward to the front benches to catch the modulated tones, and men who came clumping in with heavy boots in the course of the lecture were severely hushed down by stern-visaged females among the audience.

Disclaiming connexion with any society, Praxagora still adopted the first person plural in speaking of the doctrines and intentions of the down-trodden females. "We" felt so and so; "we" intended to do this or that; and certainly her cause gained by the element of mystery thus introduced, as well as by her own undoubted power of dealing with the subject. When the "we" is seen to refer to the brazen-voiced ladies aforesaid, and a few of the opposite sex who appear to have changed natures with the gentle ones they champion, that plural pronoun is the reverse of imposing, but the "we" of Praxagora introduced an element of awe, if only on the omne ignotum pro magnifico principle. In the most forcible way she went through the stock objections against giving women the franchise, and knocked them down one by one like so many ninepins. That coveted boon of a vote she proved to be at the basis of all the regeneration of women. She claimed that woman should have her share in making the laws by which she was governed, and denied the popular assertion that in so doing she would quit her proper sphere. In fact, we all went with her up to a certain point, and most of the audience beyond that point. For myself I confess I felt disheartened when, having dealt in the most consummate way with other aspects of the subject, she came to the religious phase, and begging the question that the Bible and religion discountenanced woman's rights, commenced what sounded to me like a furious attack on each.

Now I happen to know—what perhaps those who look from another standpoint do not know—that this aggressive attitude assumed so unnecessarily by the advocates of woman's rights is calculated to keep back the cause more than anything else; and matter and manner had been so much the reverse of hostile up to the moment she plunged incontinently into the religious question, that it quite took me by surprise. I have known scores of people who, when they came under vigorous protest to hear Miss Emily Faithfull on the same fertile subject, went away converted because they found no iconoclasm of this kind in her teaching. They came to scoff and stopped, not indeed to pray, but to listen very attentively to a theme which has so much to be said in its favour that it is a pity to complicate its advocacy by the introduction of an extraneous and most difficult question. So it was, however; with pale, earnest face, and accents more incisive than before, Praxagora said if Bible and religion stood in the way of Woman's Rights, then Bible and religion must go. That was the gist of her remarks. I need not follow her in detail, because the supplementary matter sounded more bitterly still; and, had she not been reading from MS. I should have thought the lecturer was carried away by her subject; but no, she was reading quite calmly what were clearly enough her natural and deliberate opinions. I said I was surprised at the line she took. Perhaps I ought scarcely to have been so, for she was flanked on one side by Mr. Bradlaugh, on the other by Mr. Holyoake! but I never remember being so struck with a contrast as when at one moment Praxagora pictured the beauty of a well-regulated home, and the tender offices of woman towards the little children, and then shot off at a tangent to fierce invectives against the Bible and religion, which seemed so utterly uncalled for that no adversary who wanted to damage the cause could possibly have invented a more complete method of doing so.

The lecture over, the chairman invited discussion, and a fierce little working man immediately mounted the platform and took Praxagora to task for her injudicious onslaught. But, as usual, this gentleman was wildly irrelevant and carried away by his commendable zeal. Over and over again he had to be recalled to the question, until finally he set his whole audience against him, and had to sit down abruptly in the middle of a sort of apotheosis of Moses—as far as I could hear, for his zeal outran his eloquence as well as his discretion, and rendered him barely audible. A second speaker followed, and, though cordially sympathizing with the address, and tracing woman's incapacity to her state of subjugation, regretted that such a disturbing element as religion had been mixed up with a social claim. He considered that such a subject must inevitably prove an apple of discord. For this he was at once severely handled by Mr. Bradlaugh, who, consistently enough, defended the line Praxagora adopted towards the religious question, and justified the introduction of the subject from the charge of irrelevance. He also deprecated the surprise which the last speaker had expressed at the excellent address of Praxagora by pointing out that in America about one-third of the press were females, a fact which he attributed to the plan of Mixed Education. Then a new line was opened up by a speaker—it was as impossible to catch their names as to hear the stations announced by porters on the Underground Railway. He predicted that if women did get the franchise, Mr. Bradlaugh's "Temple" would be shut up in six months, as well as those of Messrs. Voysey and Conway and Dr. Perfitt. The ladies, he said, were swayed by Conventionalism and Priestcraft, and until you educated them, you could not safely give them the franchise.

A youthful Good Templar mounted the rostrum, for the purpose of patting Praxagora metaphorically on the back, and also ventilating his own opinions on the apathy of the working man in claiming his vote. Then somebody got up and denied that ladies were by nature theological. Their virtues were superior to those of men just as their voices were an octave higher. He was for having a Moral Department of the State presided over by ladies. Only one lady spoke; a jaunty young woman in a sailor's hat, who said that in religious persecutions men, not women, had been the persecutors; and then Praxagora rose to reply. She first of all explained her position with regard to the Bible, which she denied having unnecessarily attacked. The Bible forbade a woman to speak; and, that being so, the Bible must stand on one side, for "we" were going to speak. That the highest intellects had been formed on Bible models she denied by instancing Shelley. If she thought that this movement was going to destroy the womanhood of her sex she would not move a finger for its furtherance. She only