ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1248, 30 January 1896, Page 23

ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To rui*- amuck and tilt at all 1 meet. Pope. _ SCRUTATOR. Mr Grant Allen, the author of the justly notorious "Woman Who Did," has, I see, been expressing his opinion upon " English Wives" in the columns of the North American Review. Why Mr Grant Allen's opinion upon the English wife should have been deemed specially worthy of publication in the American magazine is somewhat of a puzzle, for, according to the " Woman Who Did," the institution of matrimony ought to be considered an exploded fallacy, but there is his article, and in default of any timely and important topics this week we will have a look at it. Mr Allen considers English wives in three classes —the working man's wife, the middle-class wife, and the wife of the aristocrat. His picture of the first-mentioned class is not altogether flattering. He says z—^ The ideal wife of the labouring classes is a housewife and mother of the antique Teutonic pattern. She rules the kitchen. She spends her life in hard toil, endless household drudgery; she washes and cooks and sews and makes beds for her husband, herself, and her ten clean little ones ; their faces are almost as white as their pinafores; yet she believes in God in a blind sort of way, and attaches great importance to religious ceremonies. But she has no soul; how could she find time to attend to one ? She is the material ideal of a materialised, brutalised, soulless peasantry.

What an absurdly overdrawn portrait this is, to be sure. I have known a good many English working men and their wives in my younger days, and to me Mr Allen's summing up of the characteristics of the average worker's helpmate is horribly onesided and ridiculously inaccurate. To believe the author of the " Woman Who Did," the wife of the English working man has no happiness, no amusements, no share of the lighter and brighter side of life, and yet I can remember on public holidays in some of the great manufacturing centres in the North of England seeing thousands of happy, con-tented-looking women, an application to whom of the crude and brutal generalisation with which Mr Allen ends his portrait is an absolute insult. In the purely agricultural counties of the east and south Mr Allen's picture of a patient, suffering animal of a woman might perhaps apply in some degree, out even there it would be a cruelly untrue description of a class. " She believes in God in a blind sort of way," sneers Mr Allen, the cultured, godless Darwinian, the writer of " new-rotic" novels, the libeller of his fellow countrywomen. Well, well, I may be old fashioned, but to " believe in God," even in a " blind sort of way," appears to me to be preferable to a non-belief, and to a pessimism which denies all idea of brightness or life to those outside the circumscribed circle of the " cultured, mentally-rich scientist," as Mr Grant Allen is called by the editor of the North American Review.

Just before sitting down to write these lines I had taken a. stroll along the shores of the beautiful Porirua Harbour. lam in the country, taking a brief—alas! all too brief spell from tho hard work of journalism, and before lighting my lamp and commencing my weekly task I go outside- for some fresh air and for a little quiet thought. Overhead is the lovely orb of night, millions of miles away, weirdly incomprehensible in the nature of its composition to the average non-scientific mind; all round are the hills ; in front tho waters of the lovely inlet; behind me, in the distance, the lights in the cottages and homesteads of a peaceful village. I have read my Eeview, and these words of Grant Allen's " She believes in God in a blind sort of way," still reverberate, in all their cruel simplicity of type-perpetuated sneer, in my memory. " Believes in God in a blind sort of way !" That is what we all do who believe in God at all; we can prove nothing, yet we believe. In face with Nature in its most mysterious but most lovely aspect at night, in such a solitude as this, who can do aught else but believe in God? The mysteries of the infinite we cannot penetrate, yet who is the man that can go abroad on such an evening as this and silently accept the sneer at a belief in the Almighty Creator ? Is there such a man? Does Mr Allen himself really believe there is no God ? He is a "cultured, mentally-rich scientist"; his writings are found in almost every magazine one picks up ; his books are sold by tens of thousands, and yet he teaches us to sneer at the poor wife of the English toiler a toiler herself because she believes m God in a blind sort of way. Heaven help this world of ours if such teachings are to be popular. _____

I come indoors, I light my lamp and finish Mr Allen's article. Mr Allen, I find, has more sneers, this time for the middle-

looking children at measured intervals, and spends most of her time thenceforth in frittering uselessly over their -nursery arrangements." " She stakes no part whatsoever in her husband's business and asks no questions about it ; she contents herself with spending her housekeeping money wisely to the best advantage." " She is the simple and unattractively virtuous ideal of a solid, stolid, unimaginative bourgeoisie."

A totally false portrait, indirectly and by implication false it may be, yet false to the core for all that. As a matter of fact, as the men of the English middle class will Sometimes tell you, in nine cases out of ten, they owe a large amount of their business success to their wives, upon whose sound common sense and regard for economy they mainly rely in the hour of trouble and doubt. Then again, why the sneer at the " six wholesome-looking children " ? Would Mr Allen have them unwholesome-looking, would he, too —perhaps he would, according to the ethics of " The Woman Who Did " have them legally nameless, the offspring of those "free" unions whose disastrous family and social results he had, in spite of himself and his theories, to deplore in the last chapter of his novel ? To be a " New Woman," to parade herself on public platforms in hideous, so-called " reformed " garb, to cast decorum and ordinary decency to the winds, to flaunt her illegitimate offspring before the t world, to be bereft even of a " blind " belief in an Almighty, to personify all the worst features of Continental latter-day life —this perhaps may be Mr Allen's ideal. It is, thank Heaven, far removed from that " simple and unattractively virtuous ideal" of the great English middle class, the " solid, stolid, unimaginative bourgeoisie," as Mr Allen calls them.

Thank goodness the English middleclass, the backbone of the Old Country are " solid " —solid in their opposition to newfangled notions of Atheisin-cum-licensed immorality; that they are "stolid" too —stolid in their contempt for the writers who, like Mr Allen, are so continually seeking notoriety by the advocacy of the New Gospel of "Do as you like," obey no laws, divine or human, but pose as lovers of a liberty that is only in reality an unbridled and hateful license; and that they are " unimaginative" also incapable of imagining such disgustingly dirty theories as those Mr Allen chooses to degrade himself and his talents by exploiting. We read and hear a good deal of Mr Grant Allen .nowadays. I may be prejudiced> but it seems to me that he is a careless, inaccurate, stupid writer, a man whose chief object is to get notoriety at any price, and it is beyond my comprehension that his fustian philosophy should be welcomed in any decent periodical.

I throw up my window and put out my lamp. There still shines the moon on the waters of the inlet, as shine it will for ages after such miserable insects as Mr Grant iUlen and similar pseudo-scientists have ceased to cumber the earth and to sneer at its Creator and those who believe in His existence. " She believes in God in a blind sort of way," says Mr Allen of the English worker's wife. Better far even a " blind " belief than none at all. lam sorry for Mr Allen, and sorrier still for those who can read his books and articles with approval. " The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." Can there be many such fools nowadays ? I hope not.

The German Emperor is such a " touchy " and suspicious "mortal that he employs, so the story goes, quite a small army of private detectives to roam about the public resorts in Berlin. The duty of these mouchards, as the French used to call a similar class when Nap the Third was reigning, is to keep their ears open for any expressions of disrespect to which the faithful subjects of the Kaiser may be tempted to give utterance over their beer, and to immediately report the same so that the offenders may be punished. Apropos of the Kaiser's police, a good story is told as follows:

Scene —Beer Saloon, Unter den Linden, Berlin. •

Voice of Workman : D the King ! He is the cause of all my trouble.

Secret Police Officer (listening) : Ah, I have at last a chance of distinguishing myself. Socialistic workmen are the Emperor's pet aversion. I will call the guard. Guard is called, and upon statement of officer the workman and the proprietor of the saloon are arrested and lodged in gaol, charged with lesc majeste. The officer gives his evidence. Judge: Prisoner, what have you to say? Prisoner: We were playing " nap." I went nap with ace, queen, knave, ten and nine, and I was beaten by the king and another. I said " D the King \" —meaning the king of clubs. Judge: You are discharged, but never say such a thing again.

Prisoner : Never ! I will not even say " D—— the knave !" in future, for fear of offending' this officer.

The smartest thing I have come across of late in an English paper is contained in a three-line paragraph which I clip from Reynolds' Newspaper, a journal which, when it can leave the Royal Family alone, and cease its bowlings against the lady whom it considers the height of wit to style " Miss Guelpb," has frequently some very clever things in its columns. The paragraph in question runs as follows: " Chestnuts are selling in the Strand this week at thirteen a penny, and yet Punch cost threepence." Poor old Punch has had to bear many hard knocks in it? time, but the above is far and away the neatest jibe ever levelled against the time-honoured but too often deadly dull old professional merryman.

The London society papers, which are nothing if not snobbish and given to toadying to wealth, have recently been gushing over the fact that Mr Winans, an American gentleman of many dollars, has distributed amongst the members of the corps dc ballet at that ancient home of the ballet, the Alhambra Music Hall. Mr Winans is the same gentleman who, in order to make what is now the largest deer forest in Scotland, evicted some hundreds of families. For many scores of miles there now reigns solitude where once men lived and worked and brought up their families. The men, the wives and the children are now scattered about in the States, in Canada, or Australia, driven away from the home of their forefathers through the land hunger of an American millionaire. And yet it is the same millionaire who distributes <£looo amongst a mob of ballet girls and is applauded therefor by the London press ! Is it any wonder that Socialism is making headway in the Old Country, or that many thoughtful observers are of opinion that the English press is rotten to the core!

The most encouraging proof that Lord Salisbury and Mr Chambeilain are pursuing the right policy with regard to foreign affairs is the unreserved confidence in that policy which is being expressed by the leaders of the English Liberals. Lord Rosebery has practically expressed his approval of the Prime Minister's action, and I notice by the English papers to hand by the last mail that even Mr John Morley, who is nothing if not cautious in such matters, told a Liberal meeting at Newcastle that " as to foreign affairs, Lord Salisbury appeared to be pursuing a most prudent and circumspect policy, and he did not believe that in the present crisis the Prime Minister was likely to do anything unwise." It is a matter, I think, for sincere congratulation that English politicians can agree to bury individual jealousies and differences at a time of national trouble.