FIFTEEN HUNDRED WORDS ABOUT WOMEN

A Recipe for Assembling the 1917 Ideal Model

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

INTO the processes of mind of the female of the species, Mr. W. L. George—the English writer—has lately penetrated, if with neither the arresting brilliance nor depth of plumb of such of his predecessors in the lady burrowing process as Balzac, Bourget, et al., then at least with a practised and a highly cunning eye. And the talented gentleman's excavations, in the Atlantic Monthly, have lately arrested the rapt attention and careful consideration not only of the man who reviews books for the New Republic but of persons appreciative of good literature and sound thinking as well. Yet it would seem that, well as the British writer has done his task, he selected unfortunately for that task the less important phase of the subject—at least so far as eleven out of ten of his male readers are concerned. For it is a fact perfectly patent that what a woman thinks is of infinitely less interest to a man than what she doesn't think: that a woman's mind concerns you and me not nearly so much as the dimple in the lobe of her left ear. And it is therefore not without a considerable impudence and presumption that I seek here, and now, to supply, in miniature, the vital supplement to Mr. George's writings.

REPEATING again that where one man may be interested in knowing the Juliet-of-the-species' processes of ratiocination as they come into contact with the problems of Nora Helmer and Carrie Chapman Catt, nine of his brothers get more highly excited over the soft white linen baby-collar which she wears on her Bendel blue, let us warn the reader against expecting common sense and logic in the handling of this particular phase of the subject (that were too much!) and get under weigh. What, then, constitutes the ideal woman—or, if not the ideal woman, at least the girl that, to the highest average, englamours and attracts the male?

Some time ago, after much study and after submitting the thing to thirteen men of my acquaintance, including one ancient savant of sixty-two, I arrived finally at the twenty-one following bits of vital statistics:

1. If she likes and eats sausages, she does so in private and lets no one know about it.

2. She smiles, but she never laughs.

3. She never, even when the mode current so dictates, wears transparent sleeves.

4. She never refers to her physiology: never, for example, says she is losing or gaining "flesh," never mentions a visit to the doctor, never alludes to the tonsils which her physician has recommended in need of immediate cutting. . . .

5. She never dances the waltz, holding that music written in the lovely waltz tempo should be listened to in immobile silence and not accompanied by bizarre antics of the human frame.

6. On the street, she never wears other than black stockings.

7. In speech with a man, she frequently professes to disagree with him, but gradually permits him, with adroitly timed pouts, to persuade her to his point of view. This is always —and perhaps rightly—a man's idea of a thoroughly intellectual woman.

8. She understands football, but knows not the first thing about baseball.

9. When in the presence of a man, she never speaks in complimentary terms of any other man.

10. She prefers roasted chestnuts to artichokes. Or, if she doesn't, pretends to.

11. She never, at tea, refuses a man's invitation to a cocktail. But she never drinks the cocktail.

12. She never smokes more than one cigarette in a man's presence—and that, she smokes but one-third of.

13. She believes that wet asphalt smells better than any perfume.

14. Perfume she never uses. But her powder has a faint Japanesey smell.

15. The only books she has ever read are Max Beerbohm's "Happy Hypocrite," Grimm's Fairy Tales, Helen Woljeska's "Woman's Confessional," Nietzsche's "Will to Power" Volume II, Richard Harding Davis' "Captain Macklin"—and Edwin Lefevre's short story, "Without End." All of these she admires, with the exception of the fourth.

16. Her hair looks always as if it had just been washed.

17. The only operas she ever has sat entirely through are "Rosenkavalier" and "Louise."

18. When walking, she wears high, laced, dark tan boots.

19. She is always just a bit sleepy.

20. When you ask her something, she looks into your eyes for just the fraction of a second—and then quickly away again—before replying.

21. She always says, Yes.

THIS, then, after a sedulous (and largely impersonal) examination into the subject, was disclosed in the estimation of the thirteen gentlemen—citizens of the world, all of them—to approach closest, so far as it went, to la fille ideale.

The ideal girl never permits a man to see her when she has a cold in the head. Nothing is so violative of romance as a sneeze.

The ideal girl never wears diamonds. There is a something about a diamond that suggests its wearer to be just a trifle too self-confident, too interested in money as money, too of-the-world. A sapphire, or a pearl, or a mild coral, is a more subtle jewel. It suggests a warm sea, a warm sky—youth.

The ideal girl occasionally mispronounces a word. Nothing is more irritating than consistently accurate pronunciation. It implies wisdom. A casual mispronunciation suggests innocence—it gives the necessary child touch to the girl —and it makes the man feel a trifle superior: a desideratum.A man may admire a girl who exclaims, very precisely, "Imagine!" but, other things being equal, he will love a girl who exclaims, with the accent on the second syllable, "Uh-magine!" The former brings to the reflective eye no picture, unless it be that of one's rigid governess of youngsterhood or one's first school-teacher. The latter brings back the little girl in pigtails that lingers ever in some man's fancy. For all men, however young, are really old men in the love for reminiscence.

She wears, this ideal girl, olive and a suggestion of burnt orange if she be dark as Pschorbrau; pale yellow with a relief of soft, lustreless black if she be the less dark shade of Würzburger; blue and white if her hair be of the golden shade of Pilsener. And . . . she may be seventeen, she may be twenty or twenty-two or twenty-four or forty . . . but she never, never, never signs her letters, "Faithfully."'