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Page 26
The aggressive shrew is usually the wife of some phlegmatic man; she
insults him at all hours and on all subjects, and she establishes
complete domination over him until she happens to touch his conscience
fairly, and then he probably crushes her by the sudden exertion of
latent moral force. Shall I talk of the drunken shrew? No--not that!
My task is unlovely enough already, and I cannot inflict that last
horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say--if ever you
know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the
morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and
is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of
all whom she may meet, pray for that man.
The blue-blooded shrew is by no means uncommon. Watch one of this kind
yelling on a racecourse in tearful and foul-mouthed rage and you will
have a few queer thoughts about human nature. Then there is the
ladylike shrew. Ah, that being! What has she to answer for? She is
neat, low-spoken, precise; she can purr like a cat, and she has the
feline scratch always ready too. Pity the governess, the servant, the
poor flunkey whom she has at her mercy, for their bread is earned in
bitterness. "My lady" does not raise her voice; she can give orders
for the perpetration of the meanest of deeds without varying the
silken flow of her acrid tongue; but she is bad--very bad; and I think
that, if Dante and Swedenborg were at all near being true prophets,
there would be a special quarter in regions dire for the lady-like
shrew.
* * * * *
I must distinctly own that the genuine shrew endeavours to make life
more or less unhappy for both sexes. Usually we are apt to think of
the shrew as resembling the village scolds who used to be promptly
ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an
individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her
husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the
whip-snake--she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often
able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect.
The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot
match the reticent stabber who is always ready, out of sheer
wickedness, to thrust a venomed point into man, woman, or child. I
shall give my readers an extreme instance towards which they may
probably find it hard to extend belief. I am right however, and have
fullest warrant for my statement. I learn on good authority, and with
plenitude of proof, that trained nurses are rather too frequently
subjected to the tender mercies of the shrew. Nothing is more grateful
to a cankered woman than the chance of humiliating some one who
possesses superior gifts of any description, and a well-bred lady who
has taken to the profession of nursing is excellent "game." Thus I
find that delicate young women of gentle nurture have been sent away
to sleep in damp cellars at the back of great town-houses; they have
had to stay their necessarily fastidious appetites with cold broken
food--and this too after a weary vigil in the sick-room. Greatest
triumph of all, the nurses have been compelled to go as strangers to
the servants' table and make friends as best they could. It is not
easy to form any clear notion of a mind capable of devising such
useless indignities, because the shrew ought to know that her conduct
is contrasted with that of good and considerate people. The nurse
bears with composure all that is imposed on her, but she despises the
shabby woman, and she compares the behaviour of the acrid tyrant with
that of the majority of warm-hearted and generous ladies who think
nothing too good for their hired guests. I quote this extreme example
just to show how far the shrew is ready to go, and I wish it were not
all true.
Next let me deal with the mean shrew, who has one servant or more
under her control. The records of the servants' aid societies will
show plainly that there are women against whose names a significant
mark must be put, and the reason is that they turn away one girl after
another with incredible rapidity, or that despairing girls leave them
after finding life unendurable. I know that there are insolent,
sluttish, lazy, and incompetent servants, and I certainly wish to be
fair toward the mistresses; but I also know that too many of the
persons who send wild and whirling words to the newspapers belong
without doubt to the class of mean shrews. Whenever I see one of those
periodical letters which tell of the writer's lifelong tribulation, I
like to refresh my mind by repeating certain golden utterances of the
man whom we regard as one of the wisest of living Englishmen--"There
is only one way to have good servants--that is, to be worthy of being
well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and
rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the
quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are
their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened
mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a
knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have
friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as
with your child, not indulgence, but care." Substitute "mistress" for
"master" in this passage of John Ruskin's, and we have a little lesson
which the mean shrew might possibly take to heart--if she had any
heart. What is the kind of "care" which the mean one bestows on her
dependants? "That's my little woman a-giving it to 'Tilda," pensively
observed Mr. Snagsby; and I suspect that a very great many little
women employ a trifle too much of their time in "giving it to 'Tilda."
That is the "care" which poor 'Tilda gets. Consider the kind of life
which a girl leads when she comes for a time under the domination of
the mean shrew. Say that her father is a decent cottager; then she has
probably been used to plain and sufficient food, dressed in rough
country fashion, and she has at all events had a fairly warm place to
sleep in. When she enters her situation, she finds herself placed in a
bare chill garret; she has not a scrap of carpet on the floor, and
very likely she is bitterly cold at nights. She is expected to be
astir and alert from six in the morning until ten or later at night;
she is required to show almost preternatural activity and
intelligence, and she is not supposed to have any of the ordinary
human being's desire for recreation or leisure. When her Sunday out
comes--ah, that Sunday out, what a tragic farce it is!--she does not
know exactly where to go. If she is near a park or heath, she may fall
in with other girls and pass a little time in giggling and chattering;
but of rational pleasure she knows nothing. Then her home is the bare
dismal kitchen, with the inevitable deal table, frowsy cloth, and
rickety chairs. The walls of this interesting apartment are possibly
decked with a few tradesmen's almanacs, whereon Grace Darling is
depicted with magnificent bluish hair, pink cheeks, and fashionable
dress; or his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales assumes a heroic
attitude, and poses as a field-marshal of the most stern and lofty
description. Thus are 'Tilda's �sthetic tastes developed. The mean
shrew cannot give servants such expensive company as a cat; but the
beetles are there, and a girl of powerful imagination may possibly
come to regard them as eligible pets. Then the food--the breakfast of
weak tea and scanty bread; the mid-day meal of horrid scraps measured
out with eager care to the due starvation limit; the tasteless,
dreadful "tea" once more at six o'clock, and the bread and water for
supper! And the incessant scold, scold, scold, the cunning inquiries
after missing morsels of meat or potatoes, the exasperating orders! It
is too depressing; and, when I see some of the virtuous letters from
ill-used mistresses, I smile a little sardonically, and wish that the
servants could air their eloquence in the columns of great newspapers.
Some time ago there was a case in which a perfectly rich shrew went
away from home from Saturday morning till Monday night, leaving one
shilling to provide all food for two young women. This person of
course needed fresh servants every month, and was no doubt surprised
at the ingratitude of the starvelings who perpetually left her. I call
up memories of homes, refuges, emigration-agencies, and so forth, and
do most sternly and bitterly blame the mean shrew for mischief which
well-nigh passes credence. There is nothing more delightful than to
watch the dexterous, healthy, cheerful maids in well-ordered
households where the mistress is the mother; but there is very little
of the mother about the mean shrew--she is rather more like the
slave-driver. "Stinted means," observes some tender apologist. What
ineffable rubbish! If a woman is married to a man of limited means,
does that give her any right to starve and bully a fellow-creature?
How many brave women have done all necessary housework and despised
ignoble "gentility"! No, I cannot quite accept the "stinted means"
excuse; the fact is that the mean shrew is hard on her dependants
solely because her nature is not good; and we need not beat about the
bush any longer for reasons. A domestic servant under a wise,
dignified, and kind mistress or housekeeper may live a healthy and
happy life; the servant of the mean shrew does not live at all in any
true sense of the word. No rational man can blame girls for preferring
the freedom of shop or factory to the thraldom of certain kinds of
domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses,
then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the
other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet
eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret
Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred
years ago? There is a problem. That girl's letters to her mistress are
simply throbbing with passionate love and gratitude; and the phrases
"My beloved mistress," "My dear, dear mistress," recur like sobs.
Margaret would have become a fiend under the mean shrew; but the holy
influence of a good lady made a noble woman of her, and she became a
pattern of goodness long after one rash but blameless freak was
forgotten. All Margaret's race now rise up and call her blessed, and
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