As We Are and As We May Be | Page 5

really good
commands instant attention, respect--and payment. But it must be
really good. Publishers are always looking about for genius.
Editors--even the much-abused editors--are always looking about for
good and popular writers. But the world is critical. To become popular
requires a combination of qualities, which include special training,
education, and natural aptitude. Art, again, in every possible branch,
offers recognition--and pay--for good work. But it must be really good.
The world is even more critical in Art than in Literature. In the theatre,
managers are always looking about for good plays, good actors, and
good actresses. In scholarship, women who have taken university
honours command good salaries and an honourable position if they can
teach. In music, a really good composer, player, or singer, is always
received with joy and the usual solid marks of approval. In this great
open Market there is no favouritism possible, because the public, which
is scornful of failure--making no allowance, and receiving no
excuses--is also generous and quick to recognise success. In this
Market clever women have exactly the same chances as clever men;
their work commands the same price. George Eliot is as well paid as
Thackeray; and the Market is full of the most splendid prizes both of
praise and pudding. It is a most wonderful Market. In all other Markets
the stalls are full of good things which the vendors are anxious to sell,
but cannot. In this Market nothing is offered but it is snapped up
greedily by the buyers; there are even, indeed, men who buy up the
things before they reach the open Market. In other Markets the cry of
those who stand at the stalls is 'Buy, buy, buy!' In this Market it is the

buyers who cry out continually, 'Bring out more wares to sell.' Only to
think of this Market, and of the thousands of gentlewomen outside, fills
the heart with sadness.
For outside, there is quite another kind of Market. Here there are long
lines of stalls behind which stand the gentlewomen eagerly offering
their wares. Alas! here is Art in every shape, but it is not the art which
we can buy. Here are painting and drawing; here are coloured
photographs, painted china, art embroideries, and fine work. Here are
offered original songs and original music. Here are standing long lines
of those who want to teach, and are most melancholy because they have
no degree or diploma, and know nothing. Here are standing those who
wait to be hired, and who will do anything in which 'general
intelligence' will show the way; lastly, there is a whole quarter at least a
quarter--of the Market filled with stalls covered with manuscripts, and
there are thousands of women offering these manuscripts. The
publishers and the editors walk slowly along before the stalls and
receive the manuscripts, which they look at and then lay down, though
their writers weep and wail and wring their hands. Presently there
comes along a man greatly resembling in the expression of his face the
wild and savage wolf trying to smile. His habit is to take up a
manuscript, and presently to express, with the aid of strange oaths and
ejaculations, wonder and imagination. ''Fore Gad, madam!' he says, ''tis
fine! 'Twill take the town by storm! 'Tis an immortal piece! Your own,
madam? Truly 'tis wonderful! Nay, madam, but I must have it. 'Twill
cost you for the printing of it a paltry sixty pounds or so, and for return,
believe me, 'twill prove a new Potosi.' This is the confidence trick
under another form. The unfortunate woman begs and borrows the
money, of which she will never again see one farthing; and if her book
be produced, no one will ever buy a copy.
The women at these stalls are always changing. They grow tired of
waiting when no one will buy: they go away. A few may be traced.
They become type-writers: they become cashiers in shops; they sit in
the outer office of photographers and receive the visitors: they 'devil'
for literary men: they make extracts: they conduct researches and look
up authorities: they address envelopes; some, I suppose, go home again

and contrive to live somehow with their relations. What becomes of the
rest no man can tell. Only when men get together and talk of these
things it is whispered that there is no family, however prosperous, but
has its unsuccessful members--no House, however great, which has not
its hangers-on and followers, like the ribauderie of an army, helpless
and penniless.
Considering, therefore, the miseries, drudgeries, insults, and
humiliations which await the necessitous gentlewoman in her quest for
work and a living, and the fact that these ladies are increasing in
number, and likely to increase, I venture to call attention to certain
preventive