Pity for Women

by Henri de Montherlant

  Henri de Montherlant

  PITY FOR WOMEN

  The Girls Quartet #2

  'God created everything for man's happiness. There's no sin in any of it. An animal, for instance, will sleep in the Tartar reeds or in ours. It makes its home wherever it happens to be; it eats whatever God provides.'

  TOLSTOY, The Cossacks

  (Spoken by a Chechen peasant, the Chechens being at war with the Tartars.)

  In the town of N—, in 1918, there was a little girl of twelve whose family described her as a 'quiet little thing'. She had no friends, and played silently at home by herself for hours on end; she sat through whole meals, too, without saying a word. She was known as a tomboy because she liked going for long, solitary walks or bicycle-rides, and showed little enthusiasm for girlish things. Also because she was brave: in boats, in the dark, or left by herself in some lonely shed, she never showed the slightest fear. And yet she was shy. If the maid forgot to serve her at dinner, she made no complaint and went hungry.

  At school she was a fair pupil, though this must be qualified by the fact that she was a year behind. From twelve to fourteen, attempts were made to teach her the piano, without success. From fourteen to sixteen she was tried on the violin: a waste of time. After these four years and the expenditure of thousands of francs, it was at last conceded that this child of silence had not the slightest gift for making noise; later, a wireless set had to be got rid of, so greatly did this machine exasperate her. Then her father, who could wield a pencil rather nicely, thought he would teach her drawing: soon he had to lay down his arms. The fact was, she had neither inclination nor aptitude for anything. M. Dandillot became worried. In order to get her to 'acquire a personality' he would leave her for a whole hour, her cheeks on fire, sweating over a letter to an old uncle or to her godfather: her instructions were to write something 'original'. 'Original'.... M. Dandillot himself was considered something of an original. The son of a public prosecutor, after a year at the bar he had abandoned pettifoggery and with it any idea of ever making money, although his own fortune was no more than adequate. From the earliest days of French athleticism (he had been twenty- one in 1887) he had developed a passion for these things and had founded a sports club in N—. He was particularly keen on swimming, of which he had become the apostle. In his middle years, since he was by no means unintelligent or uncultivated, he had given up sport itself for the wider problems of physical culture, and resigned the presidency of his club - which from then on he condemned as heretical - to throw himself heart and soul into the natural health cults which were then taking root in France: a photograph taken at the Institute of Athletics in Rheims and published in l'Illustration around 1910, shows M. Dandillot heavily bewhiskered and clad as a Greek shepherd. He solemnly broke with his worldly life, went so far as to get rid of his dress-clothes - symbol of all the sins of Babylon - and thereafter concerned himself solely with the open air, the sun, diets, measurings and weighings, immersed in terrifying charts of all the things man must and must not do in order to remain 'natural', and in what might be called the hard labour of the 'natural' life - in short, forever harping on nature, although he could reach it only through the most preposterous artifices, which would have poisoned the life of any reasonable person, even supposing they could be reconciled with the obligations of a normal existence, which clearly they could not. At the age of fifty, still pursuing the path of 'purity', M. Dandillot began to 'tolstoyize': man, in order to be truly 'natural', must also remain chaste, and love his fellow men; thus the hatred M. Dandillot had always had for his father, from being a simple filial hatred, became as it were sanctified by the heads which the prosecutor had been responsible for lopping off. Shrewd, deceitful, stubborn, naïve, with a mind dappled like a panther's skin with patches of luminous intelligence and patches of dark stupidity; a bachelor by vocation though a father and a husband, with the qualities and eccentricities of the bachelor; and singularly uncreative, to the extent of not having managed by the age of sixty to deliver himself of the modest little treatise on the 'natural life' which he had conceived before the war and which would have been a mere compilation of his favourite masters.... But we shall not describe M. Dandillot further; he will do this for himself in what is to follow.

  In 1923, Solange's elder brother died in Madagascar, where he had gone farming, and the Dandillots moved to Paris. Solange was made to take a domestic science course.

  Nubile at fifteen years and three months, she had gone through puberty without any of the turmoil - the sensation of being physically sullied, the depression, the indignation, the secretiveness, the anxious, furtive glances at the parents, the hurry to get away from them when they are together, the vows to renounce love 'forever' - which one often comes across in pure and sensitive girls at that age. When she had asked her mother how babies were born, she had done so out of boredom, not because she was really interested. Her hair, once golden, had gradually turned black. Her eyes had narrowed a little, and they had a bluish tinge which appeared behind her dark lashes like the Mediterranean behind a curtain of pines. She was so pretty that hardly a day passed without her hearing exclamations from the men who passed her in the street. Like the two workmen in Toulon, for instance: 'Take a look at that! Isn't she a beauty?' It sometimes happened that Southern labourers would stop working one after the other as she went by. For it was in the South particularly that she was a success: she was too natural for the Parisians, who only like grotesquely 'dolled up' women. Yet she remained quite unspoiled. She was always in the back row at church, always a little in the background at family gatherings. And it was incredible to see this ravishing girl going out in the morning wearing an old, dowdy, worn-out dress. Never in her life had she bought a fashion magazine, though if she chanced to find one she would read it with apparent interest. It was not that she did not enjoy being attractive, but her enjoyment was not sufficient for her to go to great lengths in order to achieve it; when she had passed a damp finger along her eyebrows and her tongue over her lips, she felt she had done a great deal. She never went to the hairdresser, wore no jewellery, and did not use scent or lipstick - only powder, which she put on badly. And this was neither affectation - which would have implied pride - nor a matter of principle - for she did sometimes wear jewellery or paint her lips for a few days, or spend a whole afternoon doing her nails, carefully getting together everything she needed and then, when she had finished, scraping off all the varnish and going up to the attic to ruin her hands rummaging in old packing-cases. She always wore royal blue, and nothing would make her give it up: she was greatly praised for this. But one day she set her heart on a wine-coloured dress.

  The Lycée at N— was strictly run. In the top form, only one in every six girls had a lover. Solitary practices were unknown and Solange did not even discover what they were until she was twenty-one. Only a few of the girls had 'crushes' on others, and all of them, without exception, were from convent-schools. When Solange, one day, had been caught letting another girl smother her with kisses, her 'But, Madame, there's nothing wrong with it between girls' had been the cry of innocence itself. Once she knew, she repelled the girl's advances. But she remained the ideal confidante to all her friends, who were soothed by her placidity and her good advice. She listened to everything they told her and never said a word about herself. If the truth be told, there was not a great deal to be said.

  As for men, nothing. Purveyors of flattery were sent packing, often with a flea in their ears. She liked dancing, but regarded the men who held her in their arms merely as a means of achieving that pleasure: she would as soon have danced alone. In a little book with a rose-pink cover she kept a list of the houses where she had been invited to dances, but she did not keep a list of her partn
ers, even in the cotillions; she merely noted down indiscriminately the names of the young men and girls of her acquaintance whom she met at such parties. When first one, then another confessor in Paris (the provincial ones had been most correct) asked her questions which displeased her, she stopped going to confession altogether. Her religion became that of most Catholics: going to Mass on Sunday. She had no faith, and her life was in no way guided by religion; yet if she had missed Sunday Mass it would have worried her, and she would have gone into a church for a few moments. The habit of not going to confession increased yet further the power she had of keeping her intimate thoughts to herself and also of pondering over everything she did; instead of casting it all into a dark corner, she held on to it and turned it over in her mind. From that day (when she stopped going to confession), she became more intelligent and more conscientious. What may seem strange is the fact that she realized this.

  Her mother and father loved her dearly, and with some intelligence. She loved them too in her way, which at first they had found some difficulty in getting used to. No sudden bursts of affection towards them, never a charming word, never a thoughtful 'attention'. She even disliked the 'attentions' they had for her: 'I hate being fussed over.' If her mother stroked her hair, she would frown and narrow her eyes even more. Her 'No's' were as famous as her silences: she would wake from her dreams at night shouting 'No! No! No!' As a baby, if someone merely glanced at her without saying a word she would scream 'No!', and she used to throw a tantrum immediately on entering the street where her grandmother lived, because the old lady was liable to paw her with maniacal affection. At the Lycée, she had not remained a boarder very long because she pined for her parents so. Yet when her mother came to visit her, the child would sit by her side in the parlour for half an hour without saying a word: it was her way of loving her mother. Her father nicknamed her 'Miss Silence', or sometimes just 'Silence'. 'But why didn't you ever say anything nice to me in the school parlour?' 'It didn't occur to me.' Once, when her brother had tortured a kitten in front of her, squeezing its neck until it no longer gave any sign of life, she had watched it all with her eyes starting out of her head and made no attempt to save the little creature. 'But you loved Misti, didn't you? Why didn't you call somebody?' 'It never occurred to me.' It was true: nothing ever 'occurred to her'. However, once one had resigned oneself to her cold ways, there was nothing to complain of in her behaviour. 'She's cold, but she's gentle,' her mother used to say, 'and she has never given me the slightest trouble.' Indeed, it was not that she did not love her parents, but rather that, while she felt at ease with strangers, she was shy with those she loved. And if, when punished by her father, she kept out of the way and sulked, she was burning inside with the desire to go and kiss him. Only it wouldn't 'come out'.

  She really was a 'quiet little thing' until the day when, her brother having slapped her, she had a genuine fit of hysterics (she was fourteen). But even at the height of it, still no tears.

  'If you had cried, you would have felt better,' the doctor said.

  'But I can't cry!'

  'You mean you can't cry in front of other people? Or you can't cry at all?'

  'I can't cry at all.'

  During the thorough medical check-up that followed this episode (the unexpected violence of her nervous reactions had caused some alarm) it was discovered that her heartbeats were abnormal in number and intensity. Three years later, when she was about to be X-rayed and the electric light was switched off in the laboratory, she had another attack. The family diagnosis was altered. She was no longer a 'quiet little thing'; she was now a 'suppressed hysteric'. The description was not such a bad one: everything that came out of her seemed somehow damped down, like a noise stifled by a wad of cork or cotton-wool.

  Whatever their experience to the contrary, men persist in believing that a character must be all of a piece. Yet it is only in artificially-created characters that unity is to be found; whatever remains natural is inconsistent. Mlle Dandillot's principal characteristic was her naturalness. There was great surprise when, an elderly young man having proposed to her, she showed both pride and delight: with the character attributed to her, it was assumed that she would send him packing. And so she did, but only after having granted him two interviews. Later, she refused two other proposals. She only wanted to marry a man who attracted her (she had at least discovered that!). The trouble was that none of them attracted her. Her parents did not want to force her. In this they were right; but they should have taken her out more. As it was, since they did not care for society, she met very few people. So the three of them settled down to wait for the husband the heavens would send. The fact that Mlle Dandillot had firmly and vehemently refused three good matches did not however alter the family's verdict that she 'lacked willpower', any more than the handsome fortune her brother was piling up in Madagascar altered the family's verdict on him - that he was not 'practical'. He had never been able to mend a fuse: therefore he was 'not practical'. In certain circumstances. Mlle Dandillot showed will-power, and in certain circumstances she was fatalistic. It is this 'in certain circumstances' that people always forget. And yet, having so often heard it said that she had no will-power, she had come to believe it herself. But if she exerted her will so seldom, it was perhaps because there was little she desired.

  And thus she reached the age of twenty-one, which she had only just arrived at when she slipped into this tale. A good housewife, adept at dealing with the upholsterer or the electrician, an expert on food and liking only the best, thrifty in the house and a spendthrift on herself, squandering her small allowance on silly things that gave her no pleasure, she was nonetheless still very much a child, fighting with her brother, climbing trees, rushing down the stairs four at a time. Disliking dogs - too frisky - and birds - too noisy - she liked cats, being very cat-like herself, and above all aquarium fish, perhaps because they were silent like herself, and cold, with neurotic reflexes (watch them as they twist and turn). She had a continuous succession of them, for after a week they would be found floating belly upwards: she had forgotten to feed them. She read little - a few snippets - and in the forty-odd books that made up her little library there were only three novels, which were there by pure chance; as for poetry, the less said the better: she hated it as she hated music. Even then she was far from having read all her books, though all the pages had been cut and the volumes carefully wrapped in transparent paper. She went to a dance about once a month, and had to force herself to do so, such was her hatred of 'dressing up'. At the last moment she would hesitate whether to make an excuse and not go, but once she was there she was happy as could be, never missing a single dance and always the last to leave: it was enough to wear her poor mother out. Whereas on the days when she did not go out she was in bed by half past nine. In society, she was sometimes thought to be stuck-up, because she carried her chin a little in the air (on account of her very heavy bun, which pulled her head back).

  Whereas her brother, at fifteen, had impatiently shaken off everything that reminded him of his childhood, and lived only for the future, she did not think of her future, but awaited it passively, huddling over her past instead, hoarding her school-books, her prizes, her volumes of the Bibliothèque Rose, filing away, as it were, the whole of her childhood, every relic of which she would have preserved in her bedroom had not her father from time to time impounded some beloved toy-rabbit ['But you never talked to your rabbit!' 'I talked to him inside.'] or porcelain Infant Jesus and taken it up to the attic. All of which will no doubt gratify the reader, for a woman without childishness is a horrible monster. And yet, though she remained so close to childhood, she was incapable of talking to children as girls of her age usually can, and felt bored and ill at ease in their company. In her state of romantic solitude, she felt peaceful and happy. Of course she realized that the day would come when all this would change (for, let me repeat, she was not guided by any principle and there was no 'theory' behind her coldness) but she did not yea
rn for that day, and could not in the least imagine what sort of change it might bring. 'One shouldn't organize one's life, it's unlucky', she used to say. If she had had any precise feeling about her future; it would have been fear, fear of being less happy than she was now, fear of being, as she put it in her typical little-girl idiom, 'disappointed'.

  Thus Mlle Dandillot lived, in a placid key which the author has endeavoured to emulate in writing about her.

  (We have omitted to mention that from the age of sixteen, that is some twenty years before the age at which a man, and a man of mature understanding, begins to have a few notions as to how he should govern himself, Mlle Dandillot knew how the State should be governed. Not being clever enough to embrace all political convictions at one and the same time, she restricted herself to one: she was madly right-wing. She even belonged to an extreme right-wing group, and had intended to work on one of its charity committees; but she had only gone twice, being too right-wing to be able to settle down to it. We shall not mention the group to which Mlle Dandillot belonged, since she has given herself to a gentleman.)

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard

  7 June 1927

  Dear Costals,

  Status quo. The weather's too hot, I haven't the energy to suffer, at least to suffer acutely. I'm certainly unhappy, and prefer to be unhappy because of you than apply myself to being angry with you; but unhappy not with an unhappiness that tears me apart, but with a torpid unhappiness, always the same. The state of mind of one still anaesthetized after an operation, of a detached convalescent, of Lazarus rising from the tomb - a kind of indifference and meekness towards the world. 'Let them do as they like. All that's over for me.' Do not however mistake this meekness for benevolence. I no longer wish to be frank, nor to give pleasure. Thanks to you, I have become like you.