To me the whole
business seemed painful and revolting. We were being asked to find
delight in the spectacle of a father--scouring down an infant of
tender years with a scrubbing-brush. How women--many of them
mothers--could remain through such an exhibition without rising in
protest appeared to me an argument against female suffrage. A lady
entered, the wife, so the programme informed me, of a Baron! All I
can say is that a more vulgar, less prepossessing female I never wish
to meet. I even doubted her sobriety. She sat down plump upon the
baby. She must have been a woman rising sixteen stone, and for one
minute fifteen seconds by my watch the whole house rocked with
laughter. That the thing was only a stage property I felt was no
excuse. The humour--heaven save the mark--lay in the supposition
that what we were witnessing was the agony and death--for no child
could have survived that woman's weight--of a real baby. Had I been
able to tap myself beforehand I should have learned that on that
particular Saturday I was going to be "set-serious." Instead of
booking a seat for the pantomime I should have gone to a lecture on
Egyptian pottery which was being given by a friend of mine at the
London Library, and have had a good time.
Children could tap their parents, warn each other that father was
"going down;" that mother next week was likely to be "gusty."
Children themselves might hang out their little barometers.
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