DOI article:
Le Gallienne, Richard: Four prose fancies
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0321
By Richard Le Gallienne 317
regard to all the specialised female “ departments ”—from the
supreme mystery of the female heart to the humble domestic
mysteries of a household. Similarly, men are supposed to have
no taste in women’s dress, yet for whom do women clothe them-
selves in the rainbow and the sea-foam, if not to please men r And
was not the high-priest of that delicious and fascinating mystery
a man—if it be proper to call the late M. Worth a man ?—as the
best cooks are men, and the best waiters ?
It would seem to be assumed from all this mystification that
men are beings clear as daylight, both to themselves and to
women. Poor simple manageable souls, their wants are easily
satisfied, their psychology—which, it is implied, differs little from
their physiology—long since mapped out.
It may be so, but it is the opinion of some that men’s simplicity
is no less a fiction than women’s mysterious complexity, and that
human character is made up of much the same qualities in men
and women, irrespective of a merely rudimentary sexual dis-
tinction, which has, of course, its proper importance, and which
the present writer would be the last to wish away. From that
quaint distinction of sex springs, of course, all that makes life
in the smallest degree worth living, from great religions to tiny
flowers. Love and beauty and poetry; “Romeo and Juliet,”
“ Helen of Troy,” Shakespeare’s plays, Burne-Jones’s pictures, and
Wagner’s operas—all such moving expressions of human life, as
a great scientist has shown us, spring from the all-important fact
that “ male and female created He them.”
This everybody knows, and few are fool enough to deny.
Many people, however, confuse this organic distinction of sex
with its time-worn conventional symbols ; just as religion is
commonly confused with its external rites and ceremonies. The
comparison naturally continues itself further ; for, as in religion so
The Yellow Book—Vol. VI. t
soon
regard to all the specialised female “ departments ”—from the
supreme mystery of the female heart to the humble domestic
mysteries of a household. Similarly, men are supposed to have
no taste in women’s dress, yet for whom do women clothe them-
selves in the rainbow and the sea-foam, if not to please men r And
was not the high-priest of that delicious and fascinating mystery
a man—if it be proper to call the late M. Worth a man ?—as the
best cooks are men, and the best waiters ?
It would seem to be assumed from all this mystification that
men are beings clear as daylight, both to themselves and to
women. Poor simple manageable souls, their wants are easily
satisfied, their psychology—which, it is implied, differs little from
their physiology—long since mapped out.
It may be so, but it is the opinion of some that men’s simplicity
is no less a fiction than women’s mysterious complexity, and that
human character is made up of much the same qualities in men
and women, irrespective of a merely rudimentary sexual dis-
tinction, which has, of course, its proper importance, and which
the present writer would be the last to wish away. From that
quaint distinction of sex springs, of course, all that makes life
in the smallest degree worth living, from great religions to tiny
flowers. Love and beauty and poetry; “Romeo and Juliet,”
“ Helen of Troy,” Shakespeare’s plays, Burne-Jones’s pictures, and
Wagner’s operas—all such moving expressions of human life, as
a great scientist has shown us, spring from the all-important fact
that “ male and female created He them.”
This everybody knows, and few are fool enough to deny.
Many people, however, confuse this organic distinction of sex
with its time-worn conventional symbols ; just as religion is
commonly confused with its external rites and ceremonies. The
comparison naturally continues itself further ; for, as in religion so
The Yellow Book—Vol. VI. t
soon