THE STUPID WOMAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5409, 9 November 1895, Page 3

THE STUPID WOMAN.

Gilbert, in one of his brightly written letters to " Sister Frances." in the New Budget, professes his conversion to the cause of the advanced woman. Oddly, enough it waa wrought in a single weefc: by one of the vacant-minded ones. But let him explain,: —

I have sustained a rude shock. I have just met, and been for a week on fairly intimate terms with, a thoroughly stupid girl. I have fled exhausted from the encounter to the seaside, where I am endeavouring to recruit my shattered strength.

I had thought that the type had ceaped to exist. I had grown so mcd to meeting learned young ladies who had been Second Wranglers, and literary young ladies who earned their own living, and emancipated young ladies with the'fioe frenzy of the Pioneer Club in their hearts, that it; was a dismal surprise to find that the old stupidity still held up its head, if not in our beloved London, at least in country towns.

I was staying, aa you know, with the Barringtons when the prodigy arrived. She was twenty-t hree; pretty —in an unintelligent style ; charmingly dressed —in an unintelligent s'yle ; vivacious— in an unintelligent style. I soon discovered that it would not be necessary for me to make conversation. She talked all day and every day without! the slightest intermission on three subjects, viz. :— (1) Heraelf. (2) Clothes. (3) Entertainments. The first of these occupied the major parb of her time; indeed, the subject was so pervasive that one might almost regard the other two as subdivisions of the first. That in itself was unobjectionable, if only interesting to relate about herself. But she had had anything in the remotest degree as she had lived an uneventful life in a commonplace suburb of' London, this was hardly likely to be the case, In the six days during which I knew her, I learned that she had not enough money, that she " liked pink for evanings," that she liked dancing—" Had I been to the subscription dances at — Vestry Hall " (the suburb in question) ?— that she wore sixes in gloves, and six-and-a-half 'a in shoes, and that she liked Brighton, and Miss Braddon, and Swan and Edgar's. What was Ito do with such a person ? . For the first day it was rather amusing. One imagines one is so tired of perpetual oleverneßß. Everybody is so abominably | olever in London nowadays. Bat towards the end of the second, I began seriously to wish she would change the Bubject or let me do 60. By the evening of the third, I was hoping she would drop dead, or I — ifc didn't matter which. For the remainder of her viaifc I was in a state of coma. But she never swerved from her self-appointed ! themes. She was never for aninstant silent; , I don't think Bhe ever read. She had not | i even the brama to be a tuft-hunter and ' I study the Morning Post,' and she was i I incapable of anything beyond the least ■ intelligent kind of fancy- work. 1 think she was adorning ft red kettle-holder with black flowers at intervals during the week. That, I take it,is fancy-work at its lowest ebb. At last, finding that she showed no signs of going away, I made up an exou&e to Mrs Barrington and fled myself, and here I am, nursing my wits and my serves slowly back to their normal condition. ' But my views of the great Womsm Question are profonndly mocUtiedi I find - myself, for the first time, understanding • why some people were able to raad the "Heavenly Twins," and why others still pretend they can read the novels of •• George Egerton." la fact, I have baen brought face to fscs with the tragedy of a Vacant Mind, and I didn't like it. j You see, if the poor girl had been useful one wouldn't have minded. If she had knitted eocko for her brothers, or been her mother's support in household matters, or supported her parents by addressing oircnlars, much might have been forgiven her. One doesn't; mind merely stupid people. The girls of a hundred years ago were all stupid, if we are to believe what ■vie hear, and yet they may bavo baett vcy charming, and th^y wore apparently iavnriably useful. Indeed, it there is anything in heredity, I am sure our grandmothers . rc'u?'; hva been delightful' ladies. But a girl who thinka and talks, of nothing but vherealf from morning to right, whose solitary accompUshrotat Ji flaacing, and whoso wle

interest 13 dress seems to me to be in an absolutely deplorable condition. I would rather she waved a red flag and thumped a tub in Hyde Park. I would rather she toured in the United Statea in the cause of temperance, or paraded Picoadilly in knickerbockers, or wrote articles in the newspapers advocating free love, or novels of dubious propriety about her sex. All these, which were once, as you 'know, my pet abhorrences, have sunk into insignificance beside the spectre of mere vacuity. Count me, therefore^ as a convert to The Cause from this time onward— at least, until, some fresh monßter turns me aside.