Without Prejudice | Page 3

setting one against the
other. We are both the outcome of the same great forces, and both of us
have our special selfishnesses, advantages, and drawbacks. If there is

any cruelty, it is Nature's handiwork, not man's. So far from trampling
on womanhood, we have let a woman reign over us for more than half a
century. We worship womanhood, we have celebrated woman in song,
picture, and poem, and half civilisation has adored the Madonna. Let us
have woman's point of view and the truth about her psychology, by all
means. But beware lest she provoke us too far. The Ewigweibliche has
become too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting
woman question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for
equal purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of
the Orient--"
As I spoke the figure before me appeared to be undergoing a
transformation, and, ere I had finished, I perceived I was talking to an
angry, seedy man in a red muffler.
"Thee keeps down the proletariat," he interrupted venomously. "Thee
lives on the sweat of his brow, while thee fattens at ease. Thee plants
thy foot on his neck."
"Do I?" I exclaimed, lifting up my foot involuntarily.
Mistaking the motion, he disappeared, and in his stead I saw a withered
old pauper with the Victoria Cross on his breast. "I went to the mouth
of hell for thee," he said, with large reproachful eyes; "and thou leavest
me to rot in the workhouse."
"I am awfully sorry!" I said. "I never heard of thee. It is the nation--"
"The nation!" he cried scornfully. "Thou art the nation; the nation is
only a collection of individuals. Thou art responsible. Thou art the
man."
"Thou art the man," echoed a thousand voices: "Society is only an
abstraction." And, looking round, I saw, to my horror, that the women
had quite disappeared, and their places were filled by men of all
complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes.
"I died in the streets," shouted an old cripple in the background--"round

the corner from thy house, in thy wealthy parish--I died of starvation in
this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and a generation after
Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'"
"If I had only known!" I murmured, while my eyes grew moist. "Why
didst thou not come to me?"
"I was too proud to beg," he answered. "The really poor never beg."
"Then how am I responsible?" I retorted.
"How art thou responsible?" cried the voices indignantly; and one
dominating the rest added: "I want work and can't get it. Dost thou call
thyself civilised?"
"Civilised?" echoed a weedy young man scornfully. "I am a genius, yet
I have had nothing to eat all day. Thy congeners killed Keats and
Chatterton, and when I am dead thou wilt be sorry for what thou hast
not done."
"But hast thou published anything?" I asked.
"How could I publish?" he replied, indignantly.
"Then how could I be aware of thee?" I inquired.
"But my great-grandfather did publish," said another. "Thou goest into
ecstacies over him, and his books have sold by tens of thousands; but
me thou leavest pensionless, to earn my living as a cooper. Bah!"
"And thou didst put my father in prison," said another, "for publishing
the works of a Continental novelist; but when the novelist himself
comes here, thou puttest him in the place of honour."
I was fast growing overwhelmed with shame.
"Where is thy patriotism! Thou art letting some of the most unique
British birds become extinct!" "Yes, and thou lettest Christmas cards be
made in Germany, and thou deridest Whistler, and refusest to read Dod

Grile, and thou lettest books be published with the sheets pinned
instead of sewn. And the way thou neglectest Coleridge's grave----"
"Coleridge's grave?" interrupted a sad-eyed enthusiast. "Why, thou hast
put no stone at all to mark where James Thomson lies!"
"Thou Hun, thou Vandal!" shrieked a fresh contingent of voices in
defiance of the late Professor Freeman. "Thou hast allowed the
Emanuel Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the
oaken ceiling of King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to
destroy the view from Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral
windows, or scratched thy name on them, hast pulled down Roman
walls, and allowed commons to be inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake
District with advertisements of pills, and the blue heaven itself with
sky-signs; and in thy passion for cheap and nasty pictorial journalism
thou art allowing the art of wood-engraving to die out, even as thou
acceptest photogravures instead of etchings."
I cowered before their wrath, while renewed cries of "Thou art
responsible! Thou! Thou!" resounded from all sides.
"A pretty Christian thou art!" exclaimed another voice in unthinking
vituperation. "Thou decimatest savage