XII
THE FEMININE APPRECIATION OF MATHEMATICS

If I could approach mathematics with the same spirit as do ninety-eight women out of a hundred, I might be rather good at them. As it is, my power of will in face of algebraical figures, in face even of numbers that exceed the functions of the simplest forms of arithmetic, my power of will stands aghast. I can do nothing.

Now, ninety-eight women out of a hundred are far more ignorant of the mere rudiments of mathematics than am I; yet with an instinct which I would give my soul to possess they can solve problems and carry on the ordinary business of life with an ability that is little short of marvellous.

Truly, a little learning is a dangerous thing, and most especially when that learning is of mathematics. If once you have tried to weigh hydrogen on an agate-balanced scale, you are for ever unfitted for the common-or-garden mathematical exigencies of life. Now this is where a woman has all the pull. The most that she has ever had to calculate the weight of is a pound of flour or seven and a half pounds of sirloin already weighed and attested by the butcher. When, then, it comes to weighing the baby on the scale-pans in the kitchen, she will fling on the weights with such a degree of confidence that the result is bound to be correct. You and I, on the other hand, would approach the matter with such delicacy of touch—believing, and quite rightly, that a baby was of far more importance than all the immeasurable quantities of hydrogen in the world—with such delicacy and care should we approach it that the poor infant would have caught its death of cold and be in a comatose condition of exhaustion before we had decided that the scale-pan was clean or the weights were in proper condition to be used.

This smattering of general education is a fatal business. It unfits men for all the real and useful demands of life.

Only the other day, my friend Cruikshank broke a brass candlestick and looked up helplessly from the wreck.

“Where on earth can I get any solder from?” said he.

“What’s solder?” asked Bellwattle, his wife.

The question was so direct that, for the moment, it confused him.

“Solder?” he repeated. “Solder? Oh, it’s stuff to mend metal with.”

“I’ll do it with sealing-wax,” said Bellwattle.

Cruikshank laughed and, as he said to me afterwards—

“I gave it to her to do. It’s best to let women learn by experience. Sealing-wax!” And he laughed knowingly at me. I knew he meant it kindly, so I laughed with him; but the next day I made inquiries about the candlestick.

“How did she get on?” I asked.

“By Jove, she’s done it,” said he. “It won’t bear much knocking about, of course, but it stands as firm as a rock. It’s only a woman,” he added, “who’d think of mending a brass candlestick with sealing-wax.”

“It’s only a woman who’d succeed,” said I.

But this has nothing to do with mathematics, and it is of mathematics that I want to speak.

If you have any interest in photography, you know how tricksy a matter is the exposure of a plate. It is tricksy to you and I will tell you why. It is because your academic study of the process has taught you that the two-thousandth part of a second is sufficient exposure in order to get cloud effects. Conceive, then, how your brain whirls with figures when you come to take a photograph of an interior or a portrait of some one sitting in a room. I will not remind you of the tortures which your mind must suffer, nor the result of such torture when at last you develop the plate in the dark-room—both are too painful to speak about. Now, a woman knows nothing about this two-thousandth part of a second. She would not believe there were such a measurable fraction of time if you told her. She just exposes the plate; that is all.

One day I had to get a photograph taken in a hurry. I marched into a photographer’s in the Strand. There was first a narrow passage, hung with frames filled with photos of young men and young women looking their worst in their best. Then I was confronted by a flight of stairs which I mounted, to find myself in a great big room hung also with photographs—photographs of family groups, of babies in their characteristic attitudes as their mothers had given them to the world. Every conceivable sort of photograph was there, but the room, except for an American roll-topped desk near the window, was empty.

I coughed, and the head of a young girl—not more than twenty years of age—popped up above the desk.

“Can Mr. Robinson take my photograph this morning?” I asked.

“Mr. Robinson is not in at present,” she replied.

“I rather wanted my photograph taken in a hurry,” said I.

“Oh, you can have it taken,” said she. “Would you like it done at once?”

“At once, if you please,” I answered.

She rose from her seat behind the roll-topped desk and she walked to the door.

“Then will you step into the waiting-room?” she asked.

I obeyed. The waiting-room had a mirror and a pair of brushes. When I thought of the families whose portraits I had seen within—I refrained.

“I shall do,” said I, “as I am.”

After a few moments’ delay there was a knock on the door. I opened it. There again was the little lady waiting for me.

“Will you step up to the studio, please?” she said, and I received the impression from her voice of anxious assistants waiting in rows to receive me, ready to take my features and record them upon a photographic plate for the benefit of posterity.

Up into the studio, then, I went; a gaunt, great place with white-blinded windows that stared up to the dull, grey sky. But it was empty. I looked in vain for the assistants—there were none. And when she began to wheel the camera into place I stood amazed.

“Are you the whole business of Robinson and Co.?” I asked.

She smiled encouragingly.

“Mr. Robinson is out,” said she.

“I don’t believe there is a Mr. Robinson,” I replied.

She laughed gleefully at that and repeated that there was such a person, but he was out.

“And does he leave you to the responsibility of the entire premises?” I asked.

“Yes,” said she.

“What do you do if any one comes into the portrait gallery downstairs while you’re up here?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” she replied confidently; “they don’t often come.”

I let her fix that abominable instrument of torture at the back of my neck. Her fingers tickled me as she did it, but I said nothing. I was trying in my mind to assess the value of this business of Mr. Robinson. It was no easy job. I had not got beyond single figures when she walked back to the camera.

I glanced up at the leaden sky.

“It’s rather dull,” said I; “what exposure are you going to give?”

“Oh, I think once will be enough.”

“Once what?” I asked.

“Just once,” said she.

“But, good heavens!” I exclaimed, and I thought of the two-thousandth part of a second—“it must be one of something. Is it seconds or minutes or half-hours or what?”

She burst out laughing.

“I don’t know what it is,” she replied, as if it were the simplest matter in the world, “only Mr. Robinson says my once is as good as his twice.”

“Is it?” said I. “As good as his twice? What a splendid once it must be!”

Now that is what I mean. That is the feminine appreciation of mathematics. I wish I had it. It may not be of much service on the office stool, but in a world of men and women it is invaluable.