| | | | It is the peculiar triumph of woman in this nineteenth | century that she has made the conquest of Art. Our | grandmothers lived in the kitchen, and debased their finer | faculties to the creation of puddings and pies. They span, | they knitted, they mended, they darned, they kept the | accounts of the household, and scolded the maids. From | this underground existence of barbaric ages woman has at | last come forth into the full sunshine of artistic day; she has | mounted from the kitchen to the studio, the sketching-desk | has superseded the pudding-board, sonatas have banished | the knitting-needle, poetry has exterminated weekly | accounts. Woman, in a word, has realized her mission; it is | her characteristic, she tells us through a chorus of musical | voices, to represent the artistic element of the world, to be | pre-eminently the aesthetic creature. Nature educates her, | as Wordsworth sang long ago, into a being, of her own, | sensitive above all to beauty of thought and colour, and | sound and form. Delicate perceptions of evanescent shades | and tones, lost to the coarser eye and ear of man, exquisite | refinements of spiritual appreciation, subtle powers of | detecting latent harmonies between the outer and the inner | worlds of nature and the soul, blend themselves like the | colours of the prism in the pure white light of woman's | organization. And so the host of Woman, as it marches to | the conquest of the world, flaunts over its legions the | banner of art. | In one of the occasional passages of real poetic power with | which Walt Whitman now and then condescends to break | the full tide of rhapsody over the eternities and the last | patent drill, he describes himself as seeing two armies in | succession go forth to the civil war. First passed the | legions of grant and McClellan, flushed with patriotic | enthusiasm and hope of victory, and cheered onward by the | shouts of adoring multitudes. Behind, silent and | innumerable, marched the army of the dead. Something, | we must own, of the same contrast strikes us as we stand | humbly aside progress of woman. It is impossible not to | feel a certain glow of enthusiastic sympathy as the | vanguard passes by ~~ women earnest in aim and effort, | artists, nursing-sisters, poetesses, doctors, wives, | musicians, novelists, mathematicians, political economists, | in somewhat motley uniform and ill-dressed ranks, but full | or resolve, independence, and self-sacrifice. If we were | fighting folk we confess we should be half inclined to shout | for the rights of woman, and to fall manfully into rank. As | it is, we wait patiently for the army behind, for the main | body ~~ woman herself. Woman fronts us as noisy, | demonstrative, exacting in her aesthetic claims. Nothing | can surpass the adroitness with which she uses her bluer | sisters on ahead to clear the way for her gayer legions; | nothing, at any rate, but the contempt with which he | dismisses them when their work is done. Their office is to | level the stubborn incredulity, to set straight the crooked | criticisms, of skeptical man, and then to disappear. Woman | herself takes their place. Art is everywhere throughout her | host ~~ for music, the highest of arts, is the art of all. The | singers go before, the minstrels follow after, in the midst | are the damsels playing on the timbrels. The sister Arts | have their own representatives within the mass. Sketching | boasts its thousands, and poetry its tens of thousands. A | demure band of maidens blend piety with art around the | standard of Church decoration. Perhaps | | it is his very regard for the first host ~~ for its earnestness, | for its real womanhood ~~ that makes the critic so cynical | over the second; perhaps it his very love for art that turns to | quiet bitterness as he sees art dragged at the heels of foolish | virgins. For art is dragged at their | heels. Woman will have man love her for her own sake; | but she loves art for the sake of man. Very truly, if with an | almost sublime effrontery, she re-christens for her own | special purposes the great studies that fired Raffaelle or | Beethoven. She pursues them, she pays for them, not as | arts, but as accomplishments. Their cultivation is the last | touch added at her finishing school ere she makes her bow | to the world. She orders her new duet as she orders her | new bonnet, and the two purchases have precisely the same | significance. She drops her piano and her paint-brush as | she drops her coquetries and flirtations, when the fish is | landed and she can throw the bait away. Or, what is worse, | she keeps them alive as little social enjoyments, as reliefs | to the tedium of domestic life, as something which fills up | the weary hours when she is fated to the boredom of rural | existence. A woman of business is counted a strange and | remarkable being, we hardly know why. Looking coolly at | the matter, it seems to us that all women are women of | business; that their life is spent over the counter; that there | is nothing in earth or heaven too sacred for their traffic and | their barter. Love, youth, beauty, a British mother reckons | them up on her fingers, and tells you to a fraction their | value in the market. And the pale sentimental being at her | side, after flooring one big fellow with a bit of Chopin, and | another with a highly unintelligible verse of Robert | Browning, poses herself shyly and asks through appealing | eyes, . | The answer to this question is best read perhaps in the | musical aspect of woman. Bold as the assumption sounds, | it is quietly assumed that every woman is naturally musical. | Music is the great accomplishment, and the logic of her | schools proves to demonstration that every girl has fingers | and an ear. In a wonderful number of cases the same logic | proves that girls have a voice. Anyhow, the assumption | moulds the very course of female existence. The morning | is spent in practicing, and the evening in airing the results | of the practice. There are country-houses where one only | rushes away from the elaborate Thalberg of midnight to be | roused up at dawn by the Battle of Prague on the piano in | the schoolroom over-head. Still we all reconcile ourselves | to this perpetual rattle, because we know that a musical | being has to be educated into existence, and that a woman | is necessarily a musical being. A glance, indeed, at what | we may call the life of the piano explains the necessity. | Music is preeminently the social art; no art draws people so | conveniently together, no art so lends itself to conversation, | no art is in a maidenly sense at once so agreeable, so easy | to acquire, and so eminently useful. A flirtation is never | conducted under greater advantages than amid the | deafening thunders of a grand finale; the victim doomed to | the bondage of turning over is chained to the fascination of | fine arms and delicate hands. Talk, too, may be conducted | without much trouble over music on the usual principles of | female criticism.

"Pretty"

and

"exquisite" |

go a great way with the Italian and the Romantic | schools;

"sublime"

does pretty universally for the German. | The Opera is, of course, the crown and sum of things, the | most charming of social lounges, the readiest of | conversational topics. It must be a very heavy Guardsman | indeed who cannot kindle over the Flower-song or the | Jewel-scene. And it is at the Opera that woman is supreme. | The strange mingling of eye and ear, the confused appeal to | every sensuous faculty, the littleness as well as the | greatness of it all, echo the confusion within woman | herself. Moreover, there is no boredom ~~ no absolute | appeal to thought or deeper feeling. It is in good taste to | drop in after the first act, and to leave before the last. It is | true that an opera is supposed to be the great creation of a | great artist, and an artist's work is presumed too have a | certain order and unity of its own; but woman is the Queen | of Art, and it is hard if she may not display her royalty by | docking the Fidelio of its head and its tail. But, if woman | is obliged to content herself with mutilating art in the opera | or the concert-room, she is able to create art itself over her | piano. A host of Claribels and Rosalies exist simply | because woman is a musical creature. We turn over the | heap of rubbish on the piano with a sense of wonder, and | ask, without hope of an answer, why nine-tenths of our | modern songs are written at all, or why, being written, they | can find a publisher. But the answer is a simple one, after | all; it is merely that aesthetic creatures, that queens of art | and of song, cannot play good music and can play bad. | There is not a publisher in London who would not tell us | that the patronage of musical woman is simply a patronage | of trash. The fact is that woman is a very practical being, | and she has learned by experience that trash pays better | than good music for her own special purposes; and when | these purposes are attained she throws good music and bad | music aside with a perfect impartiality. It is with a certain | feeling of equity, as well as of content, that the betrothed | one resigns her sway over the keys. She has played and | won, and now she holds it hardly fair that she should | interfere with other people's game. So she lounges into a | corner, and leaves her Broadwood to those who have | practical work to do. Her role in life has no need of | accomplishments, and as for the serious study of music as | an art, as to any real love of it or loyalty to it, that is the | business of

"professional people,"

and not of British | mothers. Only she would have her girls remember that | nothing is in better taste than for young people to show | themselves artistic. | Music only displays on the grand scale the laws which in | less obtrusive form govern the whole aesthetic life of | woman. Painting, for instance, dwindles in her hands into | the

"sketch";

the brown sands in the foreground, | the blue wash of the sea, and the dab of rock behind. Not a | very lofty or amusing thing, one would say at first sight; | but, if one thinks of it an eminently practical thing, rapid | and easy of execution, not mewing the artist up in solitary | studio, but lending itself gracefully to picnics and groups of | a picturesque sort on cliff and boulder, and whispered | criticism from faces peeping over one's shoulder. Serious | painting woman can leave comfortably to Academicians | and rough-beaded creatures of the Philip Firmin type, | though even here she feels, as she glances round the walls | of the Academy, that she is creating art as she is creating | music. She dwells complacently on the home tendencies of | modern painting, on the wonderful succession of squares of | domestic canvas, on the nursemaid carrying children | upstairs in one picture, on the nursemaid carrying children | downstairs in the next. She has her little crow of triumph | over the great artist who started with a lofty ideal, and has | come down to painting the red stockings of little girls in | green-baize pews, or the wonderful counterpanes and | marvelous bed-curtains of sleeping innocents. She knows | that the men who are forced to paint these things growl | contempt over their own creations, but the very growl is a | tribute to woman's supremacy. It is a great thing when | woman can wring from an artist a hundred

| "pot-boilers,"

while man can only give him an order for a | single

"Light of the World."

One field of art, | indeed, woman claims for her own. Man may build | churches as long as he leaves woman to decorate them. A | crowning demonstration of her aesthetic faculties meets us | on every festival in wreath and test and monogram, in | exquisitely moulded pillars turned into grotesque | corkscrews, in tracery broken by strips of greenery, in | paper flowers and every variety of gilt gingerbread. But it | may be questioned whether art is the sole aim of the | ecclesiastical picnic out of which decorations spring. The | chatty groups dotted over the aisle, the constant appeals to | the curate, the dainty little screams and giggles as the | ladder shakes beneath those artistic feet, the criticism of | cousins who have looked in quite accidentally for a peep, | the half-consecrated flirtations in the vestry, ally art even | here to those practical purposes which aesthetic woman | never forgets. Were she, indeed, once to forget them, she | might become a Dr. Mary Walker; she might even become | a George Sand. In other words, she might find herself an | artist, loving and studying art for its own sake, solitary, | despised, eccentric, and blue. From such a destiny | aesthetic woman turns scornfully away.