The Delicious Vice | Page 5

a
reasonable gentleman, either of whom might be met with anywhere in
their proper circles, I would be willing to stand trial for perjury on the
statement that I've known admirable women--far above the average,
really showing signs of moral discrimination--who have sniveled
pitifully over Nancy Sykes and sniffed scornfully at Mrs. Tess
Durbeyfield Clare. It is due to their constitution and social heredity.
Women do not strive and yearn and stalk abroad for the glorious pot of
intellectual gold at the end of the rainbow; they pick and choose and,
having chosen, sit down straightway and become content. And a state
of contentment is an abomination in the sight of man. Contentment is to

be sought for by great masculine minds only with the purpose of being
sure never quite to find it.
* * * * *
For all practical purposes, therefore--except perhaps as object lessons
of "the incorrect method" in reading novels--women, as novel-readers,
must be considered as not existing. And, of course, no offense is
intended. But if there be any weak-kneed readers who prefer the
gilt-wash of pretty politeness to the solid gold of truth, let them
understand that I am not to be frightened away from plain facts by any
charge of bad manners.
On the contrary, now that this disagreeable interruption has been forced
upon me--certainly not through any seeking of mine--it may be better
to speak out and settle the matter. Men who have the happiness of
being in the married state know that nothing is to be gained by failing
to settle instantly with women who contradict and oppose them. Who
was that mellow philosopher in one of Trollope's tiresomely clever
novels who said: "My word for it, John, a husband ought not to take a
cane to his wife too soon. He should fairly wait till they are half-way
home from the church--but not longer, not longer." Of course every
man with a spark of intelligence and gallantry wishes that women
COULD rise to real novel-reading Think what courtship would be!
Every true man wishes to heaven there was nothing more to be said
against women than that they are not novel-readers. But can mere
forgetting remove the canker? Do not all of us know that the abstract
good of the very existence of woman is itself open to grave doubt--with
no immediate hope of clearing up? Woman has certainly been thrust
upon us. Is there any scrap of record to show that Adam asked for her?
He was doing very well, was happy, prosperous and healthy. There was
no certainty that her creation was one of that unquestionably wonderful
series that occupied the six great days. We cannot conceal that her
creation caused a great pain in Adam's side--undoubtedly the left side,
in the region of the heart. She has been described by young and
dauntless poets as "God's best afterthought;" but, now, really--and I
advance the suggestion with no intention to be brutal but solely as a
conscientious duty to the ascertainment of truth--why is it, that--. But
let me try to present the matter in the most unobjectionable manner
possible.

In reading over that marvelous account of creation I find frequent
explicit declaration that God pronounced everything good after he had
created it--except heaven and woman. I have maintained sometimes to
stern, elderly ladies that this might have been an error of omission by
early copyists, perpetuated and so become fixed in our translations. To
other ladies, of other age and condition, to whom such propositions of
scholarship might appear to be dull pedantry, I have ventured the
gentlemanlike explanation that, as woman was the only living thing
created that was good beyond doubt, perhaps God had paid her the
special compliment of leaving the approval unspoken, as being in a
sense supererogatory. At best, either of these dispositions of the matter
is, of course, far-fetched, maybe even frivolous. The fact still remains
by the record. And it is beyond doubt awkward and embarrassing,
because ill-natured men can refer to it in moments of
hatefulness--moments unfortunately too frequent.
Is it possible that this last creation was a mistake of Infinite Charity and
Eternal Truth? That Charity forbore to acknowledge that it was a
mistake and that Truth, in the very nature of its eternal essence, could
not say it was good? It is so grave a matter that one wonders Helvetius
did not betray it, as he did that other secret about which the
philosophers had agreed to keep mum, so that Herr Schopenhauer could
write about it as he did about that other. Herr Schopenhauer certainly
had the courage to speak with philosophical asperity of the gentle sex.
It may be because he was never married. And then his mother wrote
novels! I have been surprised that he