Gertrud had gone back to the hotel laden with both our bathing-things. ...
Gertrud had gone back to the hotel laden with both our bathing-things. ‘She may as well take mine up at the same time,’ Charlotte had remarked, piling them on Gertrud’s passive arms. Undeniably she might; and accordingly she did. But her face was wry, and so had been the smile with which she returned Charlotte’s careless greetings. ‘You still keep that old fool, I see,’ said Charlotte. ‘It would send me mad to have a person of inferior intellect for ever fussing round me.’
‘It would send me much madder to have a person of superior intellect buttoning my boots and scorning me while she does it,’ I replied.
‘Why was I so gracious to you in the water?’ repeated Charlotte in answer to my inquiry, made not without anxiousness, for one likes to know one’s own cousin above the practices of ordinary bath-guests. ‘I’ll tell you why. I detest the stiff, icy way women have of turning their backs if they don’t know each other.’
Oh they’re not very stiff,’ I remarked, thinking of past bathing experiences, ‘and besides, in the water —’
‘It is not only unkind, it is simply wicked. For how shall we ever be anything but tools and drudges if we don’t co-operate, if we don’t stand shoulder to shoulder? Oh my heart goes out to all women! I never see one without feeling I must do all in my power to get to know her, to help her, to show her what she must do, so that when her youth is gone there will still be something left, a so much nobler happiness, a so much truer joy.’
‘Than what?’ I asked, puzzled.
Charlotte was looking into my eyes as though she were reading my soul. She wasn’t, whatever she might have thought she was doing. ‘Than what she had before, of course,’ she said with some asperity.
‘But perhaps what she had before was just what she liked best.’
‘But if it was only the sort of joy every woman who is young and pretty gets heaped on her, does it not take wings and fly away the moment she happens to look haggard, or is low-spirited, or ill?’
It was as I had feared. Charlotte was strenuous. There was not a doubt of it. And the strenuous woman is a form of the sex out of whose way I have hitherto kept. Of course I knew from the pamphlets and the lectures that she was not one to stay at home and see the point of purring over her husband’s socks; but I had supposed one might lecture and write things without bringing the pamphlet manner to bear on one’s own blood relations.
‘You were very jolly in the water,’ I said.
‘Why are you suddenly so serious?’
‘The water,’ replied Charlotte, ‘is the only place I am ever what you call Jolly in. It is the only place where I can ever forget how terribly earnest life is.’
‘My dear Charlotte, shall we sit down? The bathing has made me tired.’
We did sit down, and leaning my back against a rock, and pulling my hat over my eyes, I gazed out at the sunlit sea and at the flocks of little white clouds hanging over it to the point where they met the water, while Charlotte talked. Yes, she was right, nearly always right, in everything she said, and it was certainly meritorious to use one’s strength, and health, and talents as she was doing, trying to get rid of mouldy prejudices. I gathered that what she was fighting for were equal rights and equal privileges for women and men alike. It is a story I have heard before, and up to now it has not had a satisfactory ending. And Charlotte was so small, and the world she defied was so big and so indifferent and had such an inconsequent habit of associating all such efforts — in themselves nothing less than heroic — with the ridiculousness of cropped hair and extremities clothed in bloomers. I protest that the thought of this brick wall of indifference with Charlotte hurling herself against it during all the years that might have been pleasant was so tragic to me that I was nearly tempted to try to please her by offering to come and hurl myself too. But I have no heroism. The hardness and coldness of bricks terrifies me. What, I wondered, could her experiences with her great thinker have been, to make her turn her back so absolutely on the fair and sheltered land of matrimony? I could not but agree with much that she was saying. That women, if they chose, need not do or endure any of the things against which those of them who find their voice cry out has long been clear to me. That they are, on the whole, not well-disposed towards each other is also a fact frequently to be observed. And that this secret antagonism must be got over before there can be any real co-operation may, I suppose, be regarded as certain. But when Charlotte spoke of co-operation she was apparently thinking only of the co-operation of those whom years, in place of the might of youth, have provided with the sad sensibleness that comes of repeated disappointments — the co-operation, that is, of the elderly; and the German elderly in the immense majority of cases remains obscurely in her kitchen and does not dream of co-operating. Has she not got over the conjugal quarrels of the first married years? Has she not filled her nurseries and become indefinite in outline? And do not these things make for content? If thoughts of rebellion enter her head, she need only look honestly at her image in the glass to be aware that it is not her kind that will ever wring concessions from the other sex. She is a brave Frau, and a brave Frau who should try to do anything beyond keeping her home tidy and feeding its inmates would be almost pathetically ridiculous.
‘You shouldn’t bother about the old ones,’ I murmured, watching a little white steamer rounding the Göhren headland. ‘Get the young to co-operate, my dear Charlotte. The young inherit the earth — Teutonic earth certainly they do. If you got all the pretty women between twenty and thirty on your side the thing’s done. No wringing would be required. The concessions would simply shower down.’
‘I detest the word concession,’ said Charlotte.
‘Do you? But there it is. We live on the concessions made us by those beings you would probably call the enemy. And, after all, most of us live fairly comfortably.’
‘By the way,’ she said, turning her head suddenly and looking at me, ‘what have you been doing all these years?’
‘Doing?’ I repeated in some confusion. I don’t know why there should have been any confusion, unless it was a note in Charlotte’s voice that made her question sound like a stern inquiry after that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless. ‘Now, as though you didn’t very well know what I have been doing. I have had a row of babies and brought it up quite nicely.’
‘That isn’t anything to be proud of.’
‘I didn’t say it was.’
‘Your cat achieves precisely the same thing.’
‘My dear Charlotte, I haven’t got a cat.’
‘And now — what are you doing now?’
‘You see what I am doing. Apparently exactly what you are.’
‘I don’t mean that. Of course you know I don’t mean that. What are you doing now with your life?’
‘It would send me much madder to have a person of superior intellect buttoning my boots and scorning me while she does it,’ I replied.
‘Why was I so gracious to you in the water?’ repeated Charlotte in answer to my inquiry, made not without anxiousness, for one likes to know one’s own cousin above the practices of ordinary bath-guests. ‘I’ll tell you why. I detest the stiff, icy way women have of turning their backs if they don’t know each other.’
Oh they’re not very stiff,’ I remarked, thinking of past bathing experiences, ‘and besides, in the water —’
‘It is not only unkind, it is simply wicked. For how shall we ever be anything but tools and drudges if we don’t co-operate, if we don’t stand shoulder to shoulder? Oh my heart goes out to all women! I never see one without feeling I must do all in my power to get to know her, to help her, to show her what she must do, so that when her youth is gone there will still be something left, a so much nobler happiness, a so much truer joy.’
‘Than what?’ I asked, puzzled.
Charlotte was looking into my eyes as though she were reading my soul. She wasn’t, whatever she might have thought she was doing. ‘Than what she had before, of course,’ she said with some asperity.
‘But perhaps what she had before was just what she liked best.’
‘But if it was only the sort of joy every woman who is young and pretty gets heaped on her, does it not take wings and fly away the moment she happens to look haggard, or is low-spirited, or ill?’
It was as I had feared. Charlotte was strenuous. There was not a doubt of it. And the strenuous woman is a form of the sex out of whose way I have hitherto kept. Of course I knew from the pamphlets and the lectures that she was not one to stay at home and see the point of purring over her husband’s socks; but I had supposed one might lecture and write things without bringing the pamphlet manner to bear on one’s own blood relations.
‘You were very jolly in the water,’ I said.
‘Why are you suddenly so serious?’
‘The water,’ replied Charlotte, ‘is the only place I am ever what you call Jolly in. It is the only place where I can ever forget how terribly earnest life is.’
‘My dear Charlotte, shall we sit down? The bathing has made me tired.’
We did sit down, and leaning my back against a rock, and pulling my hat over my eyes, I gazed out at the sunlit sea and at the flocks of little white clouds hanging over it to the point where they met the water, while Charlotte talked. Yes, she was right, nearly always right, in everything she said, and it was certainly meritorious to use one’s strength, and health, and talents as she was doing, trying to get rid of mouldy prejudices. I gathered that what she was fighting for were equal rights and equal privileges for women and men alike. It is a story I have heard before, and up to now it has not had a satisfactory ending. And Charlotte was so small, and the world she defied was so big and so indifferent and had such an inconsequent habit of associating all such efforts — in themselves nothing less than heroic — with the ridiculousness of cropped hair and extremities clothed in bloomers. I protest that the thought of this brick wall of indifference with Charlotte hurling herself against it during all the years that might have been pleasant was so tragic to me that I was nearly tempted to try to please her by offering to come and hurl myself too. But I have no heroism. The hardness and coldness of bricks terrifies me. What, I wondered, could her experiences with her great thinker have been, to make her turn her back so absolutely on the fair and sheltered land of matrimony? I could not but agree with much that she was saying. That women, if they chose, need not do or endure any of the things against which those of them who find their voice cry out has long been clear to me. That they are, on the whole, not well-disposed towards each other is also a fact frequently to be observed. And that this secret antagonism must be got over before there can be any real co-operation may, I suppose, be regarded as certain. But when Charlotte spoke of co-operation she was apparently thinking only of the co-operation of those whom years, in place of the might of youth, have provided with the sad sensibleness that comes of repeated disappointments — the co-operation, that is, of the elderly; and the German elderly in the immense majority of cases remains obscurely in her kitchen and does not dream of co-operating. Has she not got over the conjugal quarrels of the first married years? Has she not filled her nurseries and become indefinite in outline? And do not these things make for content? If thoughts of rebellion enter her head, she need only look honestly at her image in the glass to be aware that it is not her kind that will ever wring concessions from the other sex. She is a brave Frau, and a brave Frau who should try to do anything beyond keeping her home tidy and feeding its inmates would be almost pathetically ridiculous.
‘You shouldn’t bother about the old ones,’ I murmured, watching a little white steamer rounding the Göhren headland. ‘Get the young to co-operate, my dear Charlotte. The young inherit the earth — Teutonic earth certainly they do. If you got all the pretty women between twenty and thirty on your side the thing’s done. No wringing would be required. The concessions would simply shower down.’
‘I detest the word concession,’ said Charlotte.
‘Do you? But there it is. We live on the concessions made us by those beings you would probably call the enemy. And, after all, most of us live fairly comfortably.’
‘By the way,’ she said, turning her head suddenly and looking at me, ‘what have you been doing all these years?’
‘Doing?’ I repeated in some confusion. I don’t know why there should have been any confusion, unless it was a note in Charlotte’s voice that made her question sound like a stern inquiry after that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless. ‘Now, as though you didn’t very well know what I have been doing. I have had a row of babies and brought it up quite nicely.’
‘That isn’t anything to be proud of.’
‘I didn’t say it was.’
‘Your cat achieves precisely the same thing.’
‘My dear Charlotte, I haven’t got a cat.’
‘And now — what are you doing now?’
‘You see what I am doing. Apparently exactly what you are.’
‘I don’t mean that. Of course you know I don’t mean that. What are you doing now with your life?’
Dieses Kapitel ist Teil des Buches The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen