WOMAN’S CARNIVAL

“To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”-Prov.
xxvi.

The sudden collapse of the war left us in a daze. After the years of inhuman strain it was hard to ease off tension to the almost forgotten conditions of peace. I recall that ever to be remembered day, November 11th, 1918-Victory Day. In the early hours before noon I was in London, and my young son was with me. Everywhere was an atmosphere of anxiety, an unusual stillness. Men in little groups of two and three stood here and there, soldiers in larger numbers loitered or walked slowly along the pavements; girls and women waited at the doors of business houses and shops, where inside nobody seemed attending to the few customers. Everyone was waiting; there was an expectancy so great and so stirring that ordinary life had stopped. The last hour seemed endless in its slow passing. I do not remember ever to have experienced the same anxious tension, which was felt so strongly by us all that, in a way I cannot explain, we seemed to gain liberation from ourselves, and, losing individuality, were brought to share a universal impulse. The colossal importance of that hour made itself felt.

Then at last the peace guns sounded. We knew the armistice had been signed: Germany had accepted the terms offered by the Allies. The fear of utter misery was lifted: the war was over. The streets filled as if by magic, sellers of newspapers appeared, nobody knew from where, and were besieged. As the news spread, a delirium of enthusiasm caught the people. There never was such a day, and there never can be such a day again. From noon onwards in ever increasing numbers the streets were thronged with people. Strangers who had never set eyes on one another before rejoiced together as sisters and brothers. Heedless of rain, and mud, and slush, Londoners turned the city into a carnival of joy. Then as the hours advanced the fun grew wilder. People linked hands and danced, and-maddest of all-indulged in wild “ring of roses” around lamp-posts and in the centers of the great thoroughfares. From the Strand and into the West End and beyond was one packed concourse of people, a never-ending stream spread from pavement to pavement across the way, in processions, in pairs, in groups, in taxi-cabs, on the top of taxi-cabs, in and on and all over motor-omnibuses, hanging to the backs of cabs, on great munition lorries-everywhere clustering and hanging like swarming flies. There were soldiers, crowds of Dominion boys, young officers and privates, old men and young men from civil life, and thousands upon thousands of women and girls of every age and representative of every class.

It was the women that I noticed most: they were wilder than the men, making more noise, cheering, shouting and singing themselves hoarse, dancing and romping themselves tired. Quite undisguisedly the soldiers were led by them. It was Woman’s Carnival as well as Victory Night.

It is very hard to find words to speak of what I felt. The universal gladness was intoxicating, and yet, none the less, as I watched and noted, the scene was a spectacle that for me at least, was shot strangely with apprehension, almost with pain, certainly with anger and regrets, with aspects unaccountably sad. I witnessed many incidents I am tempted to record, but events passed so quickly, and I do not wish to generalize rashly. One thing I noticed was the great number of women and girl smokers. The woman without a cigarette was almost the exception. There was no attempt at concealment. But what impressed me was the way of holding and smoking the cigarette with an awkwardness that proclaimed the novice. Quite plainly the majority of these girls were smoking not at all because they desired to smoke, but for a lark. A little thing, you will say, very harmless, and possibly you are right, and yet it is the straw which reveals the direction of the wind.

In all the riotous merriment there seemed to lurk the urgency of unsatisfied wants. These instabilities and shadows did not darken the whole prospect, it may be that they intensified the pageant; London was, indeed, very wonderful that evening. Yet all the foolish and ugly incidents, petty and grave alike, of which I could not fail to be aware, came to me with an effort of challenge as something not to be ignored, but steadily to be inquired into, as an imperative call for effort and courage, a spur once again to take up my pen and write to warn women.

My thoughts turned back over the last long four-and-a-half years-years of struggle, of violent disorders, anxiety and pain. That time was finished. Thanks to our dead! Honor to our great dead! The spectacle before me became wider and richer and deeper, more charged with hope and promise....

Bang! Laughter and harsh screaming as a rocket shot up starring the dark evening heavens with its clustering balls of colors. In many parts of the city, long obscured, lamps were lighted; row upon row of little electric globes of white and red and blue appeared, and the unaccustomed blaze infected the revelers. It gave a fresh impetus to shouting; it was like removing the curtain from some great, long-darkened mirror. The fun grew boisterous. At this corner there were cheers for the Prime Minister, at the next for Foch and Haig, and Beatty and the Grand Fleet, and for France and America. Numbers did not know what exactly they cheered; it did not matter, it gave an excuse for noise. Much noise was needed to keep up the revel and convince everyone that everybody was happy.

Unceasingly the violent merry-making went on. Hoot! and an immense motor-wagon, crowded with singing girls, blowing hooters, wildly waving flags, and followed by a trail of taxi-cabs like a gigantic wobbling tail, each one laden with ten, twenty, and even more soldiers, charged down a side street and urged its right of way brutally through the crowd.

It seemed to me that the whole spirit and quality of the reveling was summarized. A rabble of distractions sought to sway me hither and thither. Now, I watched a company of girls dancing with young officers to the accompaniment of a barrel organ, then a group singing, and another group playing some round game that I did not know; now it was some Tommies surrounded by a group of screaming girls. In one group a woman was carrying a baby, and a tiny child dragged at the hand of another girl, crying drearily, and no one noticed. Boys were kicking about boardings that had been torn from the statues in Trafalgar Square. The noise became more and more deafening.

Did anyone realize at all the colossal importance of that day? This hour of supreme thanksgiving, the most glorious of all days in the history of the world, was passing in a delirium of waste. For there was no joy, only a great pretense and noise.

In this medley the sense of the present tended to disappear. Victory Night, by some fantastic transformation, to me became terrible with menace. All the jostling, excited people, and especially the disheveled women and the crowds of rioting girls, appeared as tormented puppets, moving and capering, not at all from will and desire of their own, but agitated violently and incessantly by some hidden hand, forced into playing parts they did not want to play, saying words they had no wish to speak, cutting antics for which they had no aptitude or liking. Cruelties lurked everywhere, waiting in the confused mummery. Reality was being left and with it the practical grasp of those powerful simplicities that alone can guide life through confusion. I felt this with stinging certainty. Everyone seemed playing a part, goaded with the urgency of seeking an escape from themselves.

But must life always go on in the same way? Surely our great dead point us through all these pretenses into the future? Dead compelling hands, insisting with irritable gestures that this failure of life should cease, and cease forever.

A thousand serried problems seemed to be pressing on me at once. My young son was angry at my sadness, but it was the biting consciousness of his presence that ruled my mood. This world was his world; this England his England; this London was his London and that of all children. It was for them that the failure mattered. So I thought, tormented, tortured with pain and impatience.

Leaving the Strand, we turned down one of the narrow streets near to the Savoy Hotel, I forget which one it was, and walked to the Embankment. We came out not far from Charing Cross Bridge and looked down over the long sweep of the water. The evening sky was a dull gray, almost black, but the rain had ceased to fall, and just then above us there was a break as if the absent moon was working to cut the clouds adrift. A kind of luminous darkness closed around us. It was beautiful. The massed buildings rose a blurred outline between the river and the sky like great beasts crouching and ready to spring, while through the steel-black circlings of the bridge row after row of lights sparkled and glowed, and blurs of color, amber to warm orange, splashed upon the river. On the other side, behind us, the big hotels all were lighted, and the unaccustomed illumination appeared to give too full a flood of light to be quite real. Ever and anon rockets shot up into the gray and fell in burning rain, and every color was reflected in diminishing shades, above in that one luminous patch of sky, and below in the pallid, rippled water. Yes, the scene was beautiful, perfect as a dream-city one could desire; all the elements “composed” in the painter’s sense, and in arrogance of soul I felt that the beautiful effect had been arranged for me: that it was like a faultless piece of scene-painting, only there is no artist who could paint it.

I watched in silence as my son talked at my side. Here there was almost no noise; reports of motors and the harsh clang of shouting echoed, but in the distance. After the crowds we had left, the wide roadway appeared deserted, and the quiet made it easy for me to urge myself past my despair. One moment at least I had in which I was conscious again of a spirit and quality in life; the immense forces working on while the city rioted its victory. But it all goes so slowly-not fast enough!

The night became darker, the gray rift in the clouds narrowed and closed, a few great drops of rain fell heavily. Around us the air blew chill, the trees, whose points stood out jet black among the sweeping line of the still shrouded Embankment lamps, murmured with innumerable angry voices as the wind cut through them, the bitter wind that rises before rain. My mood shivered under the loneliness that marks the end of all perfect things.

Afterwards we walked up Villiers Street to the Strand Station, and witnessed a little longer the riot of pretended joy. Now, the fun had grown more boisterous, or so it appeared to me in contrast with the quiet we had left. A seething mass-women and girls and soldiers linked arms in arms charged down the street, blocking the station entrances, shouting, beating rattles and tins for drums, making the most deafening noise. Must we go on past or through them all? Yes, and it was for me a necessary lesson, perhaps, for trying to snatch too much for myself by getting away-and forgetting. I had wanted to shirk, now I was forced back to attention.

How clearly I recall that crowd! It took much time to get our train, and, as we waited, almost unconsciously I began to take mental notes of what I saw. Soon my interest was fastened. I observed individuals with quickened attention from the very sharpness of my disillusionment. Incidents burnt themselves into my memory, not in themselves of great importance, but surely significant. I was being dragged back face to face with many questions difficult to solve. What impressed me sharply was the unhappy faces of almost all those wildly excited girls. To my fancy each one was hiding from herself, and hiding also from everyone else. One girl, in particular, I remember, a lank figure, brightly dressed and her head adorned by a wreathed Union Jack, whirling lean arms in an ecstasy of irritability, her shrill voice mounting from scream note to scream note. A sickness of soul cried from her restless over-taxed body. She was but one unit of a whole rowdy company. Even this night was used by them to grab at something to fool men-to smother God in their hearts. Just a play, a pretense, yes, a pretense of power, especially that; they had no thought beyond excitement, and that to me seemed only the first step. I could not believe that the new freedom, the new England would be made by such women. Their make-believe merriment, all this riotous celebrating of the world’s stupendous Victory-what, after all, was it? And for me the desolate answer “Waste!” rang out from the unceasing noise.

“Surely this squandering of Woman’s gift, this failure of herself must cease now that peace has come!” The cry broke wordless from me. I understood the reality of my fear. I knew the peril to the future. It is the problem of unstable woman, clamorous and devouring, that cries aloud for solution.

First Essay