Much of a Muchness ?
Women of the Underworld. By Mrs. Cecil Chesterton. (Stanley Paul. 5s.) Tins book will excite strong emotions, but those who read it hoping for an orgy of condemnation or sentimental excuse will be disappointed. Mrs. Chesterton deals in neither. She shows us wonderful sketches of individuals and living pictures of groups who inhabit the foul basement of the social edifice, and she assures the " quality " upon the first floor that the likeness between them and their despised neighbours is very striking, in fact that the difference is chiefly one of circum- stance. At first the (technically) innocent reader will experi- ence a passionate impulse of self defence, at last—perhaps- something akin to a conviction of sin. " As with the hungry and homeless, so with those of the underworld—thieves, prosti- tutes and tricksters—I have never met a woman whose place I could not fill by one of the well to do." The words " much of a muchness " would shortly express her conclusion as to comparative social values where women are concerned. Can it be true ?
When she compares the sexes, however, the phrase has no application. She is hard upon her sisters. " It is so often and so loudly said that the female has more moral sense than the male that some of us are in danger of believing it." In her opinion it is simply not so. " As a sex we are," she thinks " fundamentally less honest and more devious than men." Contrary, however, to general experience women in her eyes have great powers of moral resuscitation. " My acquaintance with the rejects of society has shown me that under the stimulus of vanity, an excellent preservative of virtue, direct emotional appeal, and impartial judgment, the criminal and outcast, secret or declared, may and does retrieve normality with startling thoroughness." All these assertions may pro- voke to contradiction, but none of us can deny Mrs. Chesterton's pre-eminent right to speak. She knows what goes on " In darkest London," and her literary power as its exponent has been long established.
It is difficult, however, for her feminine readers not to feel a certain satisfaction, pharisaic though their emotion may be, when she fails to prove the equality theory—equality we mean in guilt—which she so persistently presses home.
Take, for instance, the case of the elderly females who " work at the black " ; i.e., make their livings- by blackmail. We see them at what might be called a mildly convivial moment. To all outward appearance they are merely a set of shabby old ladies gossiping, studying newspapers and drinking tea together in what might be a teashop. It is noticeable that they have good shoes, well-cared-for hair and some of them refined faces—one of them has a saintly face. (Cast of countenance, according to Mrs. Chesterton, is little or no indica- tion of character.) The shoes and hair, however, lead an expert to suspect the show of poverty. Many such women make a good thing of " the black." They live in pleasant suburban homes and amuse themselves at charity bazaars in
their leisure moments. The tea-party to whom we are intro- duced, however, are hard at work. They are met together to compare notes and develop plans for screwing money out of complete strangers by methods of mental torture. Mrs. Chesterton would cool our righteous indignation by the reflection that reputations are blasted round the tea-tables of fine houses. Do the two things really compare ?
Hardly less repellent than these neat-haired harpies is a well- dressed, pleasant spoken elderly woman " connected with the management " of a shady night club in the West End. When we are introduced to her she is making every effort to frighten and corrupt a poor little dancing mistress from the country, who accepts work from her as a " dancing partner." The girl is so poor and so pretty and so enamoured of her inferior art that, in spite of her resistance, we feel as if the story can only end one way. It seems impossible that she shoull resist the powers of evil embodied in Madame. She is, how- ever, rescued before it is too late by the sympathy and gene- rosity of a prostitute. The snare is broken and she is de- livered. By what is usually described as coincidence the dancing mistress comes across Mrs. Chesterton just as she is beginning to realize that she can hardly continue under the protection of the good-hearted " Lily." " I can't live on her, letting her do for me what I won't do myself," she said to her- new friend, but " you must not think badly of Lily." Mrs. Chesterton did not think badly. " But for Lily's protection and generosity, as I realized, the girl might have had to yield or to starve." All the same, it was better to remove her to a place of more safety, and " later on she got a job as an in- structress in a school of dancing, commercially sound and quite respectable." Meanwhile the earth has not opened and swallowed up " Madame." What does she feel like on sleepless nights, one wonders. It is only human nature to hope for the worst.
" Prisons are not what they were," said an old convict cheerfully to Mrs. Chesterton. " Nor crime either," thought her interlocutor. That there has been a vast change for the better in the English world as a whole is a conviction which permeates this book. " The measure of our civilization," said a Police Court Magistrate on one occasion, " is the treat- ment of the youthful delinquent." A propos of this dictum, Mrs. Chesterton tells a charming story of an engaging de-, sperado of "seven and a bit" charged with "playing truant and leading a gang of ruffians to the detriment of the King's Highway." He is gravely lectured by the magistrate and " finally condemned to join the Boy Scouts."
We have no space to reproduce the picture of a children's court here presented to us, with its benevolent figures of Magistrate, Probation Officer and Police Court Missionary. These good men she depicts as showing the way to the Promised Land. In her mind's eye we are sure she sees- Adam nearing the far off gate and Eve following—a long way behind—yet
with her face also " thitherward." CECILIA TOWNSEND.
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