The Gay Rebellion
Page 24
XXIII
THE Eugenic Revolution might fairly be said to have begun with theignominious weddings of Messrs. Reginald Willett, James Carrick, De LancySmith, and Alphonso W. Green.
Its crisis culminated in the Long Acre riots. But the great suffragetterevolution was now coming to its abrupt and predestined end; thereaction, already long overdue, gathered force with incredible rapidityand exploded from Yonkers to Coney Island, in a furiouscounter-revolution. The revolt of the Unfit was on at last.
Mobs of maddened spinsters paraded the streets of the five boroughsdemanding spouses. Maidens of uncertain age and attractions who, in thehysterical enthusiasm of the eugenic revolution, had offered themselvesthe pleasures of martyrdom by vowing celibacy and by standing asidewhile physically perfect sister suffragettes pounced upon and married allflawless specimens of the opposite sex, now began to demand forthemselves the leavings among the mature, thin-shanked, and bald-headed.
In vain their beautiful comrades attempted to explain the eugenisticprinciples--to point out that the very essence of the entire cult lay innon-reproduction by the physically unfit, and in the ultimate extinctionof the thin, bald, and meagre among the human race.
But thousands and thousands of the love-maddened rose up and denouncedthe Beauty Trust, demanded a return to the former conditions of faircompetition in the open shop of matrimony.
They were timidly encouraged by thousands of middle-aged gentlemen whodenied that either excessive meagreness or baldness was hereditary; theyeven dared to assert that the suffragette revolution had been a mistake,and pointed out that only an average of one in every hundred women hadtaken the trouble to exercise her privilege at the polls in the recentelection, and that ninety per cent. of those who voted marked theirballots wrong or forgot to mark them at all, or else invalidated them bywriting suggestions to the candidates on the backs of the ballots.
A week of terrible confusion ensued, and, in the very midst of it, newscame from London that Miss Pondora Bottomly, who, after throwing bricksall day through the back windows of Windsor Castle, had been arrested bya very thin Scotch policeman, had suddenly seized the policeman andmarried him in spite of his terrified cries.
A shout of protest arose from every human man in the civilised world; agroan of dismay burst from every human woman. It was the beginning of theend; the old order of things was already in sight; men, long hidden,reappeared in public places; wives shyly began to respond to the cautious"good-mornings" of their long ignored husbands, the wealthy and sociallydesirable but otherwise unattractive plucked up spirits; florists,caterers, modistes, ministers came out of seclusion and began to prowlaround the debris of their ruined professions with a view to startingout again in business; and here and there the forgotten art of flirtingwas furtively resurrected and resumed in the awaking metropolis.
"Perfection," said America's greatest orator on the floor of the Senate,"is endurable only because unattainable. The only things on earth thatmake this world interesting are its sporting chances, its misfortunes,and its mutts!"
And within a month after the delivery of this classic the American nationhad resumed its normal, haphazard aspect. The revolution, the riots onFifth Avenue and Long Acre, the bachelors' St. Bartholomew were allforgotten; Tammany Hall and the Republican State Organization yawned,stretched, rubbed their eyes, awoke, and sat up licking their hungrychops; the gentlemen in charge of the Bureau of Special Privileges openedthe long-locked drawers of that piece of furniture, and looked over theledgers; trusts, monopolies, systems came out of their cyclone cellars;turf associations dredged the dump-docks for charters, whither a femininemunicipal administration had consigned them; all-night cafes,dance-halls, gambling houses reopened, and the electric lights sparkledonce more on painted cheeks and tinted lips.
The good old days of yore were returning fast on the heels of the retreatof woman; capital shook hands with privilege; the prices of staplessoared; joints, dives, and hospitals were fast filling up; jails andprisons and asylums looked forward to full houses. It was the same oldworld again--the same dear old interesting, exciting, grafting,murdering, diseased planet, spinning along through space--just as far asusual from other worlds and probably so arranged in order that otherworlds might not suffer from its aroma.
And over it its special, man-designed god was expected to keep watch anddeal out hell or paradise as the man-made regulations which governed thedeity and his abode required.
So once again the golden days of yore began; congregations worshipped inFifth Avenue churches and children starved on Avenue A; splendidhospitals were erected, palatial villas were built in the country; anddepartment stores paid Mamie and Maud seven dollars a week--but competedin vain, sometimes, with smiling and considerate individuals who offeredthem more, including enough to eat.
The world's god was back in his heaven; the world would, therefore, govery well; and woman, at last, was returning to her own sphere to mindher own business--and a gifted husband, especially created as herphysical and mental lord and master by a deity universally regarded asmasculine in sex.