I MUST unburden myself to you, because I may do so without offence, without shocking you beyond forgiveness; for I feel that if my letter were to another, I should either have to use such self-control that I should gain no relief for my injured feelings, or else the other would think I had gone mad, and blot my name out of the book of her correspondents—two r’s, please. You see I am in an evil mood, the bad tense of the evil mood; so I may as well begin in the green leaf what is sure to come in the brown. Besides, you are partly to blame! Is not that like a man? You supplied me with the fruit of this knowledge which has set my teeth on edge, but it is also true that you gave it in furtherance of my request and to oblige me. I fancy that was the case with Eve. Adam probably sent her up a tree (the expression has lasted to our own time), looked the other way, and pretended he had forgotten all about it when the obliging lady came down and tendered the result of her painful efforts. It is bad enough to climb with your clothes on, as I saw the other day, when I induced a friend to swarm up a fern-tree by telling him I did not believe he could do it. But this is all beside the mark;—what has roused my ire is a parcel of new books, kindly selected by you to cheer my solitude. As they came direct from the bookseller, I do not know whether you have read them, but they are very new indeed, and, from what you say, I think you must at least have wrestled with some of them. Very recent publications, like many of these, are rather a rarity here, and, as I was particularly busy, I lent some of them to friends who are always hungering for new literature. Now I am rather sorry, though I washed my hands of the transaction by saying that I would not take the responsibility of recommending anything, but they were at liberty to take what they liked. In due time the volumes were returned, without comment, but with the pages cut. I did not think anything of that at the time, the realities of the moment interested me a great deal more than any book could; but now I have read some of the batch, and I am suffering from an earnest desire to meet the authors and “have it out with them.” As however, that is not in my power, I am going to victimise you. There is one story, of a kind that is now common enough, that is specially aggravating. If you have read it you will know which I refer to; if not, I won’t tell you. It is written by a woman, and discourses in a very peculiar fashion on the ways of men. That is of no particular moment, for the writer has either a very indifferent knowledge of men, or she is not to be congratulated on her male friends, or she has had some very unfortunate personal experiences, and judges the species by some repulsive individuals. It was a man who said that women do not possess the sentiment of justice, and he might, if he had wished to be fair, have added that it is comparatively rare in men. Men have written many unkind and untrue things about women as a sex, but they cannot have harmed them much, since their influence over the beings, derisively styled “Lords of Creation” is certainly on the increase, especially in new countries like America.

What, however, is rather strange is that, in the book I speak of, there are two women—joint-heroines, as it were—held up for the reader’s admiration, but described as perfectly odious creatures. The story, however, is practically confined to the life and character of one of these ladies, and the exact position of the other, in relation to her friend, is not altogether clear, nor of any concern as regards my point. Let me then speak of the one woman as the heroine; it is to her I wish to apply the epithet odious. The writer, I take it, is very pleased and satisfied with the lady of her creation, and, whilst she never loses an opportunity of enlarging on the very objectionable characteristics of all men of birth and education, she evidently means the reader to understand that she has drawn and coloured the picture of a very perfect and altogether captivating woman. A young, beautiful, intelligent, highly educated, perfectly dressed woman, surrounded by every luxury that great wealth and good taste can secure, may easily be captivating, and it might be counted something less than a crime that a number of admirers should be anxious to marry her. When it comes to character it is different; and even though the spectacle of a woman with fewer attractions than I have named, and a disposition that left something to be desired, enslaving men of renown, is not unknown to history, it seems a little unusual to design a heroine as the very embodiment of selfishness, and then exhibit her as the perfect woman. The life that is shown to us is chiefly that of a girl,—old enough, and independent and intelligent enough, to know perfectly what she was doing,—constantly allowing, or alluring, men to make love to her; and then, when they wished to marry her, telling them in language which, if not considerate, was certainly plain, how deeply insulted she felt. If they wasted years and years, or lost their useless, sinful lives altogether, over her, that was a matter of such absolute indifference that it never gave her a second thought or a moment of regret. She did not avoid men altogether; on the contrary, she seemed rather fond of their society, as she had only one woman friend, and is described as giving them all ample opportunities of declaring their passionate admiration for her beauty and intelligence. The lovers were many and varied; coming from the peerage, the squirearchy, the army, the Church, and other sources; but they all met with the same fate, and each in turn received a special lecture on the vice and amazing effrontery of his proposal.

I suppose it is a book with a purpose, and, unlike a Scotch sermon, it is divided into only two heads. As to one, I could imagine the reply might be in the form of another book styled “Her Lord the Eunuch.” Biblical history deals with the species. It is less common now, but if a demand again arises, no doubt there will be a supply to meet it. That is the head I cannot discuss, even in these days of fin de siÈcle literature, wherein it is a favourite subject, and would have fewer difficulties than the case of a nineteenth-century Virgin Mary, which formed the text of one volume in the parcel. The other consideration seems to rest on safe ground, with no treacherous bogs or dangerous quicksands, and therefore I venture to ask you what you think of this paragon of all the virtues. Is she the type of a woman’s woman? One sometimes, but very, very rarely, meets a woman like this, in England at any rate; and though the lady’s girdle is certain to be decorated with a collection of male scalps of all ages and many colours, very few of her own sex will be found in the number of her friends or admirers. Her charity is generally a form of perversity; for if she occasionally lavishes it on some animal or human being, it is a caprice that costs her little, and to the horse or dog which fails in instant obedience, to the beggar or relative who importunes, she is passionately or coldly cruel. Yet her fascination is real enough, but it seldom endures. There is no need to sympathise with the would-be lovers, who are rejected yet still importunate. When, as sometimes happens in a world of change, there has been mutual love between man and woman, and one has ceased to love, it is natural enough that the other should desire to retain what may still be, to him or her, the only thing worth living for. But to importune a woman to give herself, her body and soul, her whole destiny till death, when she does not wish it, is to ask for something that it were better not to precisely define. Presumably if the man thinks he is in love, it is the woman’s love he wants. She says she does not love him, and he is a fool, or worse, to take anything less, even when she is willing to sacrifice or sell herself for any conceivable reason. Surely, if the man had any real regard for her, he would think first of her happiness, and refuse to take advantage of her weakness or necessities. Besides, her misery could not be his advantage, and the worn-out sophism of parents or other interested persons, that “she did not know her own mind, and would get to like him,” is too hazardous a chance on which to stake the welfare of two lives. Of course men plague women to marry them after they have been refused. The world is full of people who want what is not for them, and are not too particular as to the means, if they can secure the end. But I wonder what a man would say if some woman he did not care about worried his life out to marry her. Man is easily flattered, the sensation is with him comparatively rare, and he is very susceptible to the agreeable fumes of that incense; but only the very weakest would be lured to the altar, and the after-life of the lady who took him there would not be an altogether happy one. Man and his descendants have had a grudge against the first woman for thousands of years, for an alleged proposal of hers that is said to have interfered with his prospects. It is not chivalrous for a man to press a woman to “let him love her, if she can’t love him;” it is not a very nice proposition, if he will take it home and work it out quietly; it is something very like an insult to her, and it is certainly not likely to be anything but a curse to him. That is when she is endowed with those charming qualities common to most women. When, however, as in the case I have referred to, she has a special aversion to men generally, and him in particular, and prides herself on the possession of characteristics that he could not admire in his own mother, to still insist upon forcing the lady into a union with him is to be vindictively silly. It is hardly necessary to go as far as this to prove his determination and his title to a sort of spurious constancy.