第46章

Unlike the heroine of fiction, you have a certain number of human appetites and instincts; a few human follies, perhaps, a human fault, or shall we say two? In short, dear Ladies, you also, even as we men, are the children of Adam and Eve.Tell me, if you know, where I may meet with this supernatural sister of yours, this woman that one reads about.She never keeps any one waiting while she does her back hair, she is never indignant with everybody else in the house because she cannot find her own boots, she never scolds the servants, she is never cross with the children, she never slams the door, she is never jealous of her younger sister, she never lingers at the gate with any cousin but the right one.

Dear me, where DO they keep them, these women that one reads about?

I suppose where they keep the pretty girl of Art.You have seen her, have you not, Reader, the pretty girl in the picture? She leaps the six-barred gate with a yard and a half to spare, turning round in her saddle the while to make some smiling remark to the comic man behind, who, of course, is standing on his head in the ditch.She floats gracefully off Dieppe on stormy mornings.Her baigneuse--generally of chiffon and old point lace--has not lost a curve.The older ladies, bathing round her, look wet.Their dress clings damply to their limbs.But the pretty girl of Art dives, and never a curl of her hair is disarranged.The pretty girl of Art stands lightly on tip-toe and volleys a tennis-ball six feet above her head.The pretty girl of Art keeps the head of the punt straight against a stiff current and a strong wind.SHE never gets the water up her sleeve, and down her back, and all over the cushions.HER pole never sticks in the mud, with the steam launch ten yards off and the man looking the other way.The pretty girl of Art skates in high-heeled French shoes at an angle of forty-five to the surface of the ice, both hands in her muff.SHE never sits down plump, with her feet a yard apart, and says "Ough." The pretty girl of Art drives tandem down Piccadilly, during the height of the season, at eighteen miles an hour.It never occurs to HER leader that the time has now arrived for him to turn round and get into the cart.The pretty girl of Art rides her bicycle through the town on market day, carrying a basket of eggs, and smiling right and left.

SHE never throws away both her handles and runs into a cow.The pretty girl of Art goes trout fishing in open-work stockings, under a blazing sun, with a bunch of dew-bespangled primroses in her hair;and every time she gracefully flicks her rod she hauls out a salmon.

SHE never ties herself up to a tree, or hooks the dog.SHE never comes home, soaked and disagreeable, to tell you that she caught six, but put them all back again, because they were merely two or three-pounders, and not worth the trouble of carrying.The pretty girl of Art plays croquet with one hand, and looks as if she enjoyed the game.SHE never tries to accidentally kick her ball into position when nobody is noticing, or stands it out that she is through a hoop that she knows she isn't.

She is a good, all-round sportswoman, is the pretty girl in the picture.The only thing I have to say against her is that she makes one dissatisfied with the girl out of the picture--the girl who mistakes a punt for a teetotum, so that you land feeling as if you had had a day in the Bay of Biscay; and who, every now and again, stuns you with the thick end of the pole: the girl who does not skate with her hands in her muff; but who, throwing them up to heaven, says, "I'm going," and who goes, taking care that you go with her: the girl who, as you brush her down, and try to comfort her, explains to you indignantly that the horse took the corner too sharply and never noticed the mile-stone; the girl whose hair sea water does NOT improve.

There can be no doubt about it: that is where they keep the good woman of Fiction, where they keep the pretty girl of Art.

Does it not occur to you, Messieurs les Auteurs, that you are sadly disturbing us? These women that are a combination of Venus, St.

Cecilia, and Elizabeth Fry! you paint them for us in your glowing pages: it is not kind of you, knowing, as you must, the women we have to put up with.