UNCONVENTIONAL SKETCHES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 46, 18 November 1893, Page 419

UNCONVENTIONAL SKETCHES.

BY MARY ANGELA DICKENS. WHIPS AND SCORPIONS There is perhaps no weapon so simple and even limited in its application, which exhibits such infinite variety of form as the whip ! But from the boy’s toy whip to the Russian knout, what a magnificent range of instruments, alike only in one essential characteristic-r-a capacity for making man to wince. Whips material are out of fashion to day. They have gone out with slavery, with unenlightened methods of dealing with youth, with the degradation of the British soldier, and various other barbarities, which are of course things of the past ! Perhaps tins is the reason—-or one of the reasons—why whips of another kind are rampant and all powerful, flourishing about in every direction with such übiquitous impartiality that eve' v man and woman is engaged in a continual shirking evasion of that particular instrument with an affinity for bis or her particular person. The whips of to-day are to he found in every newspaper, in every magazine, and in every society novel. Every draw-ing-room full of people, and every club room contains at least one. No family is without one. WE DO NOT CALL THEM WHIPS BUT CRITICS. And both in its übiquity and in the position which it occupies, the whip of to-day is the crea’ion of sundry characteristic features of the age. First and foremost, it may be taken for granted that the demand creates the supply. The great craze of the moment is for notice, for notoriety. To be ignored, to he left in ob scurity—however well deserved—is the one unendurable thing ; and if a gentle titillation of the vanity is not to be obtained, castigation is, in nine cases out of ten. ACCEPTED WITH SATISFIED HOWLS. It is also pre-eminently an age of haste and high pressure.

in which the majority of men have no time to mete one with their own hands the praise and blame for which all their fellow men are competing. The whip consequently meets a twofold want, and its position is assured aco.ordingly ; it has a distinct place among the appliances of the day. To the demeanour of its victims may be traced the atinos pbere of awe which has grown up about it, nmking of it something resembling a sacred weapon. Tnis demeanour, though its varieties are as innumerable as are the minus of men, may be roughly divided into three classes. The exultant shrieks of those who have obtained the notice for which their souls yearned ; the indignant protestations of those who admire nothing so much as their own doings ; and the writhings of the true worker, whose sensitiveness is greater than his common sense. Fundamental principles of human nature lie behind each one of these lines of conduct, and argument is powerless against them. So long as whip and whipped continue to exist, the victims will continue to attach to the weapon that lash without which it would be comparatively harmless. There are TWO GREAT ORDERS OF WHIP --whips professional and whips non-professional Professional whips shall take the precedence which is their due. To exhaust the innumerable varieties into which the order is divided and subdivided, is obviously not the mission of a sketch. Students of the subject would discover some very remarkable hybrids, and some particularly noticeable specimens in which the whip is in process of evolving the scorpion. Three strongly marked types, however, may be taken as representing the most salient features of the order in its entirety. , First and foremost—reverence being due to age—stands the knout. This ponde-ous instrument of torture is becoming somewhat obsolete, but there is a class of society which contemplates its operations with a delighted awe which a more delicate implement would be powerless to create. Its methods of procedure are RATHER BARBARIC THAN ARTISTIC. No modifications of its strokes is possible It enters as deep when it falls upon a youth for the first offence as when it is dealing with a hardened criminal. It cannot tickle nor can

it caress. Its strokes sre rather calculated to kill than to admonish, and if they maim, they leave a scar never to be worn out.

But the knout is being superseded by its very antithesis ; an elegant, lithe, clean-cutting instrument, which we will call a riding whip, and which is pre-eminently the whip of the day. The notion that the victim gains by the exchange is a fallacy based soly on the relative appearance of the two implements. Indeed it is an open secret that a large proportion of the knouted ones take their punishment nowadays wrapped in a muffler which effectually baffles the more clumsy weapon, but which is of no avail against the insidious cuts of the riding whip. The new weapon, in the variety and refinement of the effects it produces, is a production of which its age may be proud. Where it chastises steadily and persistently, it will destroy as certainly as its predecessor, but with so artistic an action that its mercilessness will pass unnoticed in the admiration it excites. For repeated stinging cuts, lighting now here, now there, according as the victim seeks to protect himself, it has never bad an equal. It can stroke deliciously, and the movement by which it turns a caress into a cut is so subtle as to be imperceptible to all but the victim. It is particularly noticeable in its selection of objects for its operations. Like many another smart young new-comer, it is immensely scornful of its predecessor, and will caress the old whipping boys, whilst it lays on with peculiar energy to whatever the knout held sacred. IT IS THE WEAPON OF THE TIMES ; it is instinct with the spirit of the times, and that spirit is a restless and curious spirit, sure of nothing but that whatever is new is good. The third vaiiety of the whip is also essentially a product of the times ; but of times under another aspect. It may be called the toy whip. It does not crush like the knout, nor does it carve curiously like the riding whip ; it has no capacity for influencing more than the most momentary sting upon the sensitive skin. As a rule, it simply flicks and flourishes to and fro, and to anyone who bas stood within the range of the material implement volumes could not convey more. It is absolutely übiquitous, and nothing is sacred from its flippant little lash. It can hurt nobody 1 consequently the wincing and nervous starting which its unrestrained license entails, invariably produces a laugh, and for the production of laughter it exists. The humiliation and the misery of its victims —misery which is not the less real in that it is ridiculous—is of no account whatever.

THE WHIP PROFESSIONAL,

as it whistles through public life, is universally recognised and a good deal discussed. Its non professional brother is more or less ignored ; its existence is hardly realised. But as a matter of fact it is not one whit less powerful and all pervading in the sphere to which it belongs than is the more obvious influence

Social life and domestic life have each their whips. In both the knout, the riding whip, and the top whip may be observed in great activity. But as in these spheres the impulses which lead to the übiquity and power of the whip are morbid growths which have neither the justification nor the outlet which public life affords, the whip soon ceases to satisfy, and the scorpion takes its place. In any and every body of men and women held together by the bonds of social inteicourse, THE SOCIAL SCORPION is to be found, and wherever that scourge is found it is a power. It is usually personified in a woman. In humble life she is a woman who stands out from her fellows by force of greater notability as a housewife, of having ‘ seen better days,’ or, in nine cases out of len, of having a greaterwealth of vituperation in her vocabulary. In school life she is the girl who is prettier, richer, or more ‘ knowing ’ than the rest. In society, to use the word in its accepted sense, she is the woman who takes the lead in her ‘ set,’ by right of superior wealth, smartness, or ambition. The qualifications, it is seen, vary slightly according to circumstances, but in the main they are allied. The one essential common to all is a strongly-developed instinct for pre eminence UNDER THE STING OF THE SCORPION nothing can flourish, and from the sting of the scorpion nothing is safe. No beauty of person, character, or action can stand before it. No achievement but it shiivels it into futility, no hopes but it poisons and maims them. All schemes, from that for the turning of a winter gown to that for the giving of the ball of the season, are liable to sudden and untimely collapse if the scorpion should turn upon them ; and from its venom there is no appeal. There is another variety of the scorpion tribe, which curls up upon the domestic hearth. The social scorpion, indeed, rarely disdains to exercise its functions within the sphere of home, but the genuine domestic variety seldom wanders far afield. The domestic scorpion, strangely enough, is quite as often male as female. The primary characteristic requisite in the man or woman qualifying for the transmogrification, is I ha same for the domestic as for the social variety —a strongly developed instinct for pre-eminence. Various qualifications such as superior beauty, wealth or wit, alluded to with reference to the social variety, will also now and again produce the domestic type. But the vast majority of domestic scorpions graduate on a characteristic which is comparatively ineffective for the production of their social sister—ill temper In nine cases out of ten it is the bittertongued member who is THE FAMILY CRITIC. The whole house trembles before the sting of its scorpion, propitiates it with deference, waits in breathless anxiety for the movement of its venomous little tail. It needs only a little courage to put the foot down upon a scorpion and still that stinging tail for ever. It needs only a little daring to break a whip But an army of scorpions and an army of whips are opponents not to he despised, and on the whole it seems that whips and scorpions must be borne with for the present. After all, unpleasant as they are, it may be that they are not without their uses. It is a truth too often over-looked in these days, that though all castigation is of necessity painful, all castigation is by no manner of means cruel, mean, or degrading There are many whips at once strong and merciful, from which no genuine man or woman will withhold their thanks, even though those thanks may be uttered with watering eyes.

(7). St. Laura. (2). Yattenfeldt. (5). Annabelle.