The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1891.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 49, 5 December 1891, Page 656

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1891.

The effort made by the House of Representatives to confer the franchise upon the women of New Zealand, has attracted more attention in the London and the American newspapers than is usually given to any action of these colonies, and if it does nothing more this will at least have the effect of advertising her existence. American ideas on the subject of New Zealand are very vague, some busy people there imagining that it forms one of their remote Western territories. The lady president of the Sororis College was probably, however, better informed when she congratulated New Zealand before her assembled sisters on the step in advance which this country seemed upon the point of making. The conservative of the London papers, as might be expected, sneered at the contemplated measure, while the most Radical on the rejection of the Bill by our Legislative ■Council, vented its spleen by roundly condemning the obstructiveness of that break in the constitutional machine.

But although New Zealand bids fair to give the voting power in politics to women, the American State of Kansas is already in advance of her in the matter of enduing the sex with the responsibilities of public office. Nothing would satisfy the chivalrous men of what is considered by such old States as Massachusetts and Virginia as a crude and rough young member of the Union, but that the sex which embodies all the possible virtues should be allowed to govern. There may, however, have been a deeper and more insidious motive underlying all this. There are, it is more than probable, husbands in the State of Kansas who would be very well content that their brother citizens should enjoy a portion of the superabounding eloquence with which nature has endowed their wives. Having been fairly dazzled by the brilliancy and wakefulness of their spouses toward the small hours of the morning, they have doubtless pointed out to them their admirable qualifications for late and determined sittings in the cause of public business. At all events, be it due either to the baser or the more chivalrous motive, or to some of each, the Kansan town of Kiowa was a short while since bragging that it led the world in the possession of a female mayor.

Latest dispatches represent Kiowa as now singing small upon this subject. Its ambition is satisfied, and it desires to lead the world no longer. In less than one short year the men of Kiowa have had their chivalrous illusions dispelled, and are calling upon their mayor, Mrs Paxton, to resign. Walter Besant has described the Revolt of Man against petticoat rule as beginning some centuries hence, but we have it with us already. The female Mayor of Kiowa has shown the typical qualities of her sex, which however suited they may be for privately ‘ bossing ’ a husband controlled by the courts and officers of justice, are apparently not tolerable to the male community collectively’. When the males of Kiowa are unanimously agreed in petitioning Mrs Paxton ‘to let up’ (as the Western phrase runs) on her liquorcrusade, what is that lady going to do? How is she going to enforce her orders ? When the male ‘ bobbies ’ and bailiffs strike, is she going to enroll female * specials,’ ami will these ladies actually proceed with real batons and revolvers against the revolters ?

As with the Lady Blanche in ‘ Princess Ida ’ and the question of the perpetuation of the race, here is another dilemma opening up a field of speculation entirely unforeseen by the female mind. Apparently it was not unforeseen by the men of Kiowa, for when they elected their female mayor they must have felt assured that they could

get rid of her if she didn’t suit, only one of their number being hopelessly committed for life to government from that quarter. The men of New Zealand may usefully consult this precedent before proceeding any further in the direction of female emancipation, and it is one which the ladies of New Zealand may also study with advantage. When a man says ‘ I won't,’ or a body of men say ‘ we won’t ’ to a body of women, what are they going to do about it unless they can get some other men to help them ? Why, they will, as the Americans say, have simply ‘ to climb down ’ and embrace the men all round in the good old-fashioned manner, and the men will put them into office again and render obedience until they feel that the sense of oppression must be wiped out again in the same bloodless fashion. Think, oh think, how frequent coups d'etat will become under that new regime. The chronic state of revolution in South America will completely pale before it.

What are the canons of musical criticism ? The critic who goes forth to criticise in New Zealand has one great difficulty to encounter at the outset. It matters not whether the performance is one in a small district or one of a body representing the best musical ability in our larger towns, the language in one case is expected to be just as inflated as it is in the other. There is no measure or moderation in the efforts demanded of the reviewer, and the blast of eulogy must go forth to the world not in proportion to the excellence of the performance but according to the degree in wluch the critic is capable of spreading himself in favour of local talent. Hence the organ of a remote hamlet in the Buller diggings will, if it happens to possess an accomplished reporter stranded by fate in those wilds, speak of the Saturday evening variety entertainment in Micawberish terms, which with slight retouching would more than suffice for the highest class of concert any of our chief towns is capable of giving.

With the chief towns it is much the same ; no discrimination is made between the greater and the less. Presumably there must be a process of selection in every place, so that the best talent comes to the top in some recognizedly superior organization ; but it is not always easy to tell from the language used which is the superior organization and who is the possessor of the superior ability. The painting throughout is laid on in great patches of white, with here and there a lurid dab of red in a terrible effort to describe the indescribable. Not that the critic thinks that performer perfection, but because having piped in a promiscuously laudatory strain of what is beneath mediocrity, he is compelled to struggle unto bursting in a conscientious attempt to produce somewhat like a comparative effect. As for painting in neutral colours or putting on a damning patch of shade—particularly if it is upon a lady—the thought is not to be entertained. Occasionally, if a male performer is unpopular in a community, the critic will rub him down for the public gratification, or even for the critic’s own, and sometimes when the critic’s ear has been tortured beyond bearing by a succession of fair musical deceivers, he will console himself by hitting out at some unlucky male vocalist who is not a fourth part as bad, and so make the general tone of the report more measured. Such perversions of justice and servility to the homage aux dames sentiment are common.

The consequence of all this is to encourage a silly local conceit which only becomes sensible of itself on passing to a larger centre. If local singers in New Zealand wish to get an unprejudiced opinion regarding their abilities they will have to go to a community much larger than those in which they have been beslavered ad nauseam. Such a change usually operates soas to give the performers a less exaggerated notion of their abilities. Sometimes, however, the reverse is the case, and a singer whom petty jealousy, social prejudice, or musical purblindness kept down in little Pedlington soars aloft with exceeding rapidity in a great city. As a rule, performers of all sorts find their true level in a crowd, for there there is no necessity imposed upon the critic of making it sweet and smooth for the feelings of incompetents, nor is there the same tendency to bolster up local effort merely because it is local effort. In crowded centres, moreover, there is not the same anxiety shown to represent the last performance of any importance as having excelled anything which preceded it, though in reality it may have fallen below the average of the past. In con-

elusion, it may be said that the competent critic finds the impartial discharge of his duty easiest in places where his identity is unknown, where the performers are personally strangers to him, and where the obligation of consulting the feelings of anybody does not weigh in the true estimating of relative merit.

The ladies, God bless them, are novelistically endowed with a certain faculty denominated • intuitiveness.’ This heaven-bestowed quality enables them to see the secrets of life though buried beneath innumerable mill stones, to solve all the problems which have perplexed philosophers since the days of Confucius at a glance, and to read the character of a newcomer—at least if he is a man-before they have well known him two days. The wondet is that with such a gift it should be found necessary to educate women at all. It is a curious fact, however, that with all this women are much slower at reading one another’s characters than they are in deciphering that of a person of the opposite sex. This is probably due to the bitter experience which has taught them that as between one women and another all is not gold that glitters, and because a new female acquaintance is good-looking, welldiessed, and effusive in her demonstrations, she is not therefore to be accepted without a certain amount of discretion. M Oman knows that woman is deep, but believes that man is a poor superficial creature who can be turned inside out in a little less than no time. Then too, no matter how poorly or indifferently a woman is dressed the more gorgeous is the array in which a man presents himself to her the more complimented and delighted she feels, whereas every other woman’s attire may be a tacit reflection upon her own.

Hence there are apparently fewer obstacles in enabling a male to clamber into the exalted sphere where ‘ ladies’ men ’ coruscate upon the face of society than for a woman to reach a corresponding eminence. Women make ‘ society ’ (so-called), and the woman who would steer her way through the shoals and pitfalls of feminine sensitiveness and jealousy to a position of acknowledged leadership must have not only wealth, but much bonhomie and tact at her command. Men, at least those who are met regularly in society, she does not find it nearly so difficult to read or to manage as her own sex, and even those who remain without the charmed circle are, she finds, more frightened of her arts than proof against them. Men of much experience and of much learning never pretend to the God-given faculty of intuition, i.e., the hit-or miss style of judging, as do women, and are especially cautious in applying this test to the enchantress whom they see ‘ shaping ’ (as the athletes say) in their vicinity with a view to attack. For they know that if the ladies have a heaven-descended instinct, it is not the ability to read character, but the passion to get as many of the other sex as possible ‘ upon the string,’ and tell it not in Gath, or publish it upon the house tops, the women who have husbands, and are often preposterously jealous of them, are not the least offenders in this respect.