Madeleine and Others
Madeleine's Journal. By Mrs. Robert Henrey. (Dent. 16s.) With Malice Toward Women. A Handbook for Women-Haters drawn from the Best Minds of All Time. Selected and edited by Justin Kaplan. (W. H. Allen. 12s. 6d.) " I HAVE a friend called Sonia," writes Madeleine, " with whom I relax on the telephone after a hard morning's work. We generally talk for an hour, which is annoying for those who want to ring us up . . . " but fascinating for those who want to listen in, which they can do here for 300 pages. It took me some time to decide on my favourite passage but in the end I chose the author's visit to Wiltshire to have her portrait painted by an R.A. for the Royal Academy. Considering that she ,thought she had " the irregular sort of face that I believe only Renoir could have painted," this was very brave of her. But she insisted on being painted in her "' adorable hat . . . my first Paris hat since the liberation". . . . "My Paris hat makes my breasts swell with love and pride." In between sittings there are discussions about Sargent, English nudes and many other things. " Henry James," writes Madeleine, " would have gathered us all up into a short story . . . "
If Madeleine, giving a final thrust to her hat-pin in front of a gilt- framed mirror, were to hear Mr. Justin Kaplan's icy voice saying, " God sends women, no doubt, but the Devil beautifies them," would she be upset ? As she runs up a new blouse does she ever think of those fateful events on Penguin Island—"Why clothe them ? When they wear clothes and are under the moral law they will assume an immense pride, a vile hypocrisy, and an excessive cruelty"? Madeleine is the most striking proof that men may fulminate against Women as much as they like, but the walls of the boudoir are thicker than the walls of Jericho and no blast of the trumpet by John Knox or anybody else can affect them, for they are also soundproof.
Madeleine, who was born in France, will not be surprised to learn—if her enemies give her Mr. Kaplan's book—that there is only one representative of France included. For Frenchwomen on the whole are not unsporting enough to compete with men on their own ground ; therefore it is less necessary to attack them. Moliere did so when appropriate, while Montherlant did so for many volumes, and could possibly have been included in this one.
On the other hand there are signs that Madeleine could hit back with Malice Toward Men, and I should be sorry for men. They have taken the glamour out of women's lives, she insists, and " what will a girl of seventeen do with a favourable trade balance in ten years' time ? In her place I would prefer a new hat ! " She disapproves too of débutantes doing the washing up, and indicates that never, at the most picturesque moments of her picturesque (i.e. poverty-stricken) childhood, would she have taken such a Job. Schopenhauer would have been shocked but Mencken (both naturally quoted by Mr. Kaplan) would have understood. Women always know exactly what they want, and if Mrs. Henrey were a little less smug about having got it and a little more ruthless with her dialogue she would be much more pleasant to read. The choice between her and Mr. Kaplan is that between sweet and cheese ; as ' the rustle of taffeta dies away I can only ignore the peculiar taste in IllY mouth—could it be sour grapes ?—and ask for cheese, garnished as, here with Thurber and followed by Ouida (the only woman in this fierce anthology) as a liqueur.
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