Did not you dream of these things as well as of love? Come now, be honest. It was always a prince, was it not, or, at the least, an exceedingly well-to-do party, that handsome young gentleman who bowed to you so gallantly from the red embers? He was never a virtuous young commercial traveller, or cultured clerk, earning a salary of three pounds a week, was he, Cinderella? Yet there are many charming commercial travellers, many delightful clerks with limited incomes, quite sufficient, however, to a sensible man and woman desiring but each other’s love. Why was it always a prince, Cinderella? Had the palace and the liveried servants, and the carriages and horses, and the jewels and the dresses, nothing to do with the dream?
No, Cinderella, you were human, that is all. The artist, shivering in his conventional attic, dreaming of Fame!—do you think he is not hoping she will come to his loving arms in the form Jove came to Danae? Do you think he is not reckoning also upon the good dinners and the big cigars, the fur coat and the diamond studs, that her visits will enable him to purchase?
There is a certain picture very popular just now. You may see it, Cinderella, in many of the shop-windows of the town. It is called “The Dream of Love,” and it represents a beautiful young girl, sleeping in a very beautiful but somewhat disarranged bed. Indeed, one hopes, for the sleeper’s sake, that the night is warm, and that the room is fairly free from draughts. A ladder of light streams down from the sky into the room, and upon this ladder crowd and jostle one another a small army of plump Cupids, each one laden with some pledge of love. Two of the Imps are emptying a sack of jewels upon the floor. Four others are bearing, well displayed, a magnificent dress (a “confection,” I believe, is the proper term) cut somewhat low, but making up in train what is lacking elsewhere. Others bear bonnet boxes from which peep stylish toques and bewitching hoods. Some, representing evidently wholesale houses, stagger under silks and satins in the piece. Cupids are there from the shoemakers with the daintiest of bottines. Stockings, garters, and even less mentionable articles, are not forgotten. Caskets, mirrors, twelve-buttoned gloves, scent-bottles and handkerchiefs, hair-pins, and the gayest of parasols, has the God of Love piled into the arms of his messengers. Really a most practical, up-to-date God of Love, moving with the times! One feels that the modern Temple of Love must be a sort of Swan and Edgar’s; the god himself a kind of celestial shop-walker; while his mother, Venus, no doubt superintends the costume department. Quite an Olympian Whiteley, this latter-day Eros; he has forgotten nothing, for, at the back of the picture, I notice one Cupid carrying a rather fat heart at the end of a string.
You, Cinderella, could give good counsel to that sleeping child. You would say to her—“Awake from such dreams. The contents of a pawnbroker’s store-room will not bring you happiness. Dream of love if you will; that is a wise dream, even if it remain ever a dream. But these coloured beads, these Manchester goods! are you then—you, heiress of all the ages—still at heart only as some poor savage maiden but little removed above the monkeys that share the primeval forest with her? Will you sell your gold to the first trader that brings you this barter? These things, child, will only dazzle your eyes for a few days. Do you think the Burlington Arcade is the gate of Heaven?”
Ah, yes, I too could talk like that—I, writer of books, to the young lad, sick of his office stool, dreaming of a literary career leading to fame and fortune. “And do you think, lad, that by that road you will reach Happiness sooner than by another? Do you think interviews with yourself in penny weeklies will bring you any satisfaction after the first halfdozen? Do you think the gushing female who has read all your books, and who wonders what it must feel like to be so clever, will be welcome to you the tenth time you meet her? Do you think press cuttings will always consist of wondering admiration of your genius, of paragraphs about your charming personal appearance under the heading, ‘Our Celebrities’? Have you thought of the Uncomplimentary criticisms, of the spiteful paragraphs, of the everlasting fear of slipping a few inches down the greasy pole called ‘popular taste,’ to which you are condemned to cling for life, as some lesser criminal to his weary tread-mill, struggling with no hope but not to fall! Make a home, lad, for the woman who loves you; gather one or two friends about you; work, think, and play, that will bring you happiness. Shun this roaring gingerbread fair that calls itself, forsooth, the ‘World of art and letters.’ Let its clowns and its contortionists fight among themselves for the plaudits and the halfpence of the mob. Let it be with its shouting and its surging, its blare and its cheap flare. Come away, the summer’s night is just the other side of the hedge, with its silence and its stars.”
You and I, Cinderella, are experienced people, and can therefore offer good advice, but do you think we should be listened to?
“Ah, no, my Prince is not as yours. Mine will love me always, and I am peculiarly fitted for the life of a palace. I have the instinct and the ability for it. I am sure I was made for a princess. Thank you, Cinderella, for your well-meant counsel, but there is much difference between you and me.”
That is the answer you would receive, Cinderella; and my young friend would say to me, “Yes, I can understand your finding disappointment in the literary career; but then, you see, our cases are not quite similar. I am not likely to find much trouble in keeping my position. I shall not fear reading what the critics say of me. No doubt there are disadvantages, when you are among the ruck, but there is always plenty of room at the top. So thank you, and goodbye.”
Besides, Cinderella dear, we should not quite mean it—this excellent advice. We have grown accustomed to these gew-gaws, and we should miss them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness: you, your palace and your little gold crown; I, my mountebank’s cap, and the answering laugh that goes up from the crowd when I shake my bells. We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy. You have known happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months, and the Prince’s arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince’s kisses on your lips; the gods themselves cannot take that from you.
The cake cannot last for ever if we will eat of it so greedily. There must come the day when we have picked hungrily the last crumb—when we sit staring at the empty board, nothing left of the feast, Cinderella, but the pain that comes of feasting.
It is a naïve confession, poor Human Nature has made to itself, in choosing, as it has, this story of Cinderella for its leading moral:—Be good, little girl. Be meek under your many trials. Be gentle and kind, in spite of your hard lot, and one day—you shall marry a prince and ride in your own carriage. Be brave and true, little boy. Work hard and wait with patience, and in the end, with God’s blessing, you shall earn riches enough to come back to London town and marry your master’s daughter.
You and I, gentle Reader, could teach these young folks a truer lesson, an we would. We know, alas! that the road of all the virtues does not lead to wealth, rather the contrary; else how explain our limited incomes? But would it be well, think you, to tell them bluntly the truth—that honesty is the most expensive luxury a man can indulge in; that virtue, if persisted in, leads, generally speaking, to a six-roomed house in an outlying suburb? Maybe the world is wise: the fiction has its uses.
I am acquainted with a fairly intelligent young lady. She can read and write, knows her tables up to six times, and can argue. I regard her as representative of average Humanity in its attitude towards Fate; and this is a dialogue I lately overheard between her and an older lady who is good enough to occasionally impart to her the wisdom of the world—
“I’ve been good this morning, haven’t I?”
“Yes—oh yes, fairly good, for you.”
“You think Papa will take me to the circus to-night?”
“Yes, if you keep good. If you don’t get naughty this afternoon.”
A pause.
“I was good on Monday, you may remember, nurse.”
“Tolerably good.”
“Very