who is the "ideal" mistress?
the most determined advocates of free-love have never upheld the old, lazy indulgence towards man and his "wild oats." the ideal mistress, whom they so confidently exalt over the wife, is not the "kept woman" behind victorian respectability. modern writers have, boldly and justly, attacked that discreet indiscretion with the unanswerable logic of facts. if we allow men licence, justice demands equal liberty for women. sin is not less, but greater, for being in secret, however flimsy the veil.
it is difficult, nevertheless, to see how mutual infidelity can actually remove the admitted evils of a situation it makes more complex; or to believe that publicity can, of itself, turn black to white. by some curious twist of reasoning, it really would seem that they maintain: "by lifting the blinds, we have created a 'new' woman, the ideal of all the ages."
for where, after all, have they turned to [65]find her, save to their knowledge and experience of the past? we cannot, positively, reconstruct human nature.
there is a clear and concise exposition of the whole theory in miss romer wilson's last novel, the death of society. it is the story of mr. smith and his short visit to a distinguished norwegian writer. he, quite openly, worships the old man's young wife—"his girl, his woman, his desire"—and though for them "time was so short they could not afford to sleep," it is expressly stated that "she, the perfect woman in whom all women live, raised him to perfect manhood." "now," he said, "i have confidence to do what i think right. . . . i do not care for opinion any longer."
together, "they fell into the deep pool of love," when she "was too far gone in bliss to reply."
"many men," she said, "men who came to see my husband, thought that i was part of the visit, and that no man who thought well of himself should go away without seducing me." but "that is how you seduced me, because i saw love sprang straight from your heart and not from custom."
"there was an italian man who loved me, but not more than the books with gold covers [66]on his shelves. . . . he said i was the muse of comedy. . . . there was a frenchman who said i was the muse of poetry. . . . there was a russian who said nothing. . . . he loved me because we were both animals; but only you love me because i am part of your life and so i love you equally."
miss wilson, indeed, attempts to impart a unique atmosphere into this commonplace intrigue by a remarkable device. smith "cannot speak german, nor speak norwegian." she knows only a few words of english. "i like to pretend you hear," said rosa, "i have always pretended"; and he "could address her in whatever words he liked," since "lovers' language is universal."
by this method they do, in fact, hold conversations by the hour, answering each other with quite miraculous preciseness; understanding, we are expected to believe, the intimacies of thought and feeling behind each phrase: "though he had no idea what she had said, word for word." the intention, obviously, is to suggest some special mysterious, if not miraculous, bond of the spirit knitting two souls in one. the comment of a plain man, who deals with facts, must be that inarticulate love can be only physical. it does [67]not elevate, but further degrades, their intimacy. he "had gone back to the dust to learn about god."
they parted, however, because "they loved each other too much to ask for each other's lives." meanwhile, "in patience and humility" they must wait "until after the death of society"—when they can be together.
"how should i act," said rosa, "if there were no such a thing as society? i know how i should act. . . . i owe nothing to either man or woman. my name? my husband's name?—these belong to society. . . . i will not leave my husband, because he is an old man, nor my daughters, because they are young; but if i give you a day of love, and again a day perhaps, whom shall i hurt? . . . my soul belongs to nobody: i—rosa christiansen—am my own. my body is my soul's servant and friend, and by it i can know other souls as i know my own. . . . oh! oh! my soul is mine, and loves your soul!"
we see that the "perfect woman" still kept on husband and home.
and smith, thus "proudly numbering himself among the angels," also found time for a secondary, but quite passionate, intercourse with one of the daughters of the house, who [68]willingly gives him everything she has; because she loves him so much, he is all she wants.
he "kissed her violently on the face . . . squeezed her ribs as tight as ever he dared," and replied without hesitation, "i love you as i love flowers and the trees and the sky. i love you because you are lovable as a wet or fine day is lovable. why, yes, i must confess that i love you. . . . . i believe all men love a great many women. . . . i am a bluebeard with a cellar full of wives. . . . you see, god hasn't created the woman yet who represents the whole of female perfection. don't mistake me, nathalia; i am not a beast. i don't run after women solely as women. . . . he began to stroke her head as he thought of all those past and bygone romances."
and so on——! strangely enough, "his heart was filled with deep and tender respect for her."
more frequently, however, the novelists of this school seem to have gone back to the casual lusts of tom jones, with the r?le of hero and heroine reversed. there are many tales, almost romantic, of sir galahad waiting and tilting for cleopatra or mary queen of scots. too often, marriage is merely evidence that "the man has held out."
[69]still we maintain that the modernists are really looking to the old-world "kept" woman for their ideal of more or less open and, as it were, established free love. we find clear, specific complaints against the new system: "they had lapsed into a relation which slowly from irregular grew regular. it was not marriage, but it was in the nature of marriage." now, "after two and a half years . . . she had done wifely things for him. . . . love and domestic economy; it was very like marriage after all."
what then, frankly speaking, is the real charm of the new mistress-love? most obviously it comes, ultimately, from the holiday spirit; its freedom from sordid or petty cares, the prose of our daily life, business or home worries, the responsibilities that dull the eye and wear down body and soul: which means the incarnation of selfishness.
outspoken and simply coarse writers of the past centuries expose this fact by their frank hints on "the honeymoon"; of which we acknowledge the underlying truth.
it has been cynically maintained, nor dare one quite deny, that our romance-lady, the sheltered and innocent pure girl, would have been broken long ago but for the "outlet," to [70]mere males, of her under-sister. i would suggest that the new "ideal" mistress is certainly no less, probably more, dependent upon the housewife—the tame, tied woman who bears her lover's name.
we can none of us escape "the day's work." under the conventional "wild oats" scheme of life, we can place the whole burden upon the wife: and so find elsewhere "the woman"—passionately and emotionally our ideal.
but no theory of free love was ever based upon two establishments. the whole weight of the new thought cries out for open, frank leaving one woman and going to the other; where possible by mutual consent. the secrecy, the misunderstanding, the divided allegiance, of the old world, is the very evil they are clamouring to wipe out. yet can we leave our bills, our servants, and our children behind with the fixtures of the old "home to let"? can we spend our life, or for that matter, more than a few days or weeks, in one perpetual holiday among the "beach-flappers" of miss amber reeves' unstable helen in love and the boys they so gaily and easily annex?
the truth, of course, cannot be denied. these new, glorified sex-contracts (whether [71]entirely free, or on a "short lease" subject to "things going well") will, and must, involve all the trials of domesticity, without the compensations of a shared responsibility: a real bond to halve our sorrows and double our joys. there will, moreover, be a thousand times more occasion for incompatibility, the jar of nerves; where there is no steady, devoted endeavour towards mutual forbearance and understanding, no spur to forgive—in courageous hope. life in hotels may, superficially, expose less friction; but it quickly destroys any reality in comradeship. only daily service can build up love.
the mistress, in fact, remains an enervating luxury, a habit of living beyond our emotional means, a sparkling drug.
we have not found the ideal, because it does not exist.
