C. Gasquoine Hartley

“ Let us spread the new romance of Love's responsibility to Life; let us honor ideals of self-dedication to our husbands, understanding their dependence upon us, to our homes, to our sons and our daughters, to our race, its great ones and their deeds; our moral obligations to all children even before they are born.
It is women, and they alone, who can save marriage; they hold all life in their hands. Never before in the world has the opportunity been so vast; it is a fearful thing to find oneself among realities. To you, who to-day are young, negligence no longer is possible. ”

“ A great town, set on its rough and elevated rock of granite in the midst of the blue Sierra, closely ringed by the deep brown water of the Tajo, it is like no other city in the world. The national character, strong and aloof, passionate and brilliant, and the nation’s history, are here epitomized before you. And coming to the city, as the stranger does, from Madrid, blatant, noisy, and modern, you will feel transplanted back into an older world. ”

“ The touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin is nowhere more manifest than in sex; that absorption of the male by the female to which life owes its continuation, its ecstasy, and its pain. It has seemed to me it is here in the primitive relations of the sexes that we may find the clue to many of those wrongs which women have suffered at the hands of men. Man, acting instinctively, has rebelled, not so much, I think, against woman as against this driving hunger within himself, which forces him helpless into her power. ”

“ The Jewish women have inherited the most perfect feminist ideal that as yet the world has known; an ideal of service within the home of which full life she is the high-priestess; an ideal turning to foolishness the false values of this industrial age. And this ideal of service, shared by all, gives to the most unlearned Jewish woman the priceless knowledge of an eternal truth: a truth that has to be learnt by each one among us before we can find happiness—that only by losing ourselves can we find the Self that is eternal. The Jewish woman learns this truth by living it. ”

“ The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate feverish expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in women’s outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force when they have refound their emancipation. To this end women must gain economic security, and the freedom for the full expression of their womanhood. The ultimate goal I conceive—at least I hope—is the right to be women, not the right to become like men. There can be no gain for women except this. ”

“ Not only in the churches that once were mosques does the passage of that great people remain, but in the houses, austere without but beautiful within, in ancient palaces, in fragments of gardens that still are places of rest, in embattled bridge and arch, in exquisite harmonies of ornament that meet you everywhere, and, more than all, we find this gracious influence in the spirit of the city itself. Toledo is a living picture, a city in which each building is a voice that speaks the history of Spain. ”

“ One great and hopeful sign is a new consciousness among all women of personal responsibility to their own sex. The most fruitful outgrowth from the present agitation for the rights of citizens—the Vote! the symbol of this awakening—is a solidarity unknown among women before, which now binds them in one common purpose. Yet there is a possible danger lurking in this enthusiasm. Women will gain nothing by snatching at reform. Many have no eyes to see the beyond; they are hurried forward by a cry of wrongs, while others are held back by fear of change. ”

“ The duty of expending great labour to gain the little good of money is not as yet understood by the Spaniards. They have always been, and still are, a people who stand definitely for art and the beauty of life—men and women whose spiritual instinct enables them to open windows to the stars, and through these windows, in passing, the stranger sometimes looks.
Literature and art in Spain rest on a long tradition which has not only produced pictures, carvings, splendid buildings, and books, but has left its mark on the language, the manners, the ideas, and the habits of the people. ”

“ Nor do I believe there need be cause for fear in this idea of divorce by mutual consent. It is not nearly so easy to break a marriage that has lasted for any time as is usually thought by those who have never tried to do it. The habit of living together forges bonds you do not feel until you try to break them. The intimacy of marriage creates a thousand and one little every-day interests and ties, habits, preoccupations and memories in common; when they are torn it is like tearing thousands of little nerves that are far more painful than the one big hurt that caused them to be broken. ”

“ This rebellion of men, and their efforts to free themselves from the thrall of women has been of little avail. We have reached now a new stage in the age-long conflict of the sexes—the rebellion of the woman. There has come a time when the old cry, "Woman, what have I to do with you?" is being changed. It is woman who is whispering to herself and to her sisters, and, as she gains in courage, crying it aloud, "Men, what have we to do with you? We belong to ourselves." It is to this impasse in the confusion and antagonism of the present moment of transition that sex-differences are bringing us. ”

“ During summer this outdoor parade in the Prado is in gay career until midnight; and as the night advances the promenades are full of gay noise. There are open-air concerts, and dancing takes place upon the open spaces of grass. Around the stalls of the refresco sellers, families are seated talking gaily together. The greatest animation prevails. The Madrileños never seem to be tired. The abandonment to happiness is contagious, and the stranger will gain a sense of the joy of life as he sees the ardent faces of men, women, and children, in whom mirth is never vulgar, but as natural as speech. ”

“ From the Strand and into the West End and beyond was one packed concourse of people, a never-ending stream spread from pavement to pavement across the way, in processions, in pairs, in groups, in taxi-cabs, on the top of taxi-cabs, in and on and all over motor-omnibuses, hanging to the backs of cabs, on great munition lorries—everywhere clustering and hanging like swarming flies. There were soldiers, crowds of Dominion boys, young officers and privates, old men and young men from civil life, and thousands upon thousands of women and girls of every age and representative of every class. ”

“ And this I contest against all the Feminists: the real need of the normal woman is the full and free satisfaction of the race-instinct. Do I then accept the subjection of the woman. Assuredly not! To me it is manifest that it is just because of her sex-needs and her sex-power that woman must be free. To leave such a force to be used without understanding is like giving a weapon to a child, in whose hands a cartridge suddenly goes off, leaving the empty and smoking shell in his trembling hands.
It is well to remember, however, that for all women there is conceivably no one simple rule. ”

“ Fools and blind, we neither understand nor seek the cause of our failure. We are like little lost dogs searching for a master. We seek without ceasing some pilot passion to which we can surrender our heavy burden of freedom. The dry-rot destruction of this individualistic age has worm-eaten into marriage; we have sought to drown pain and the exhaustion of our souls, to fill emptiness with pleasure, to place the personal good in marriage above the racial duty, to forget responsibility, to arrogate for the unimportant Self, and, in so doing, inevitably we have turned away from essential things. ”

“ There is a completeness and simplicity in the worship, the great crowd, rich and poor, women and men, all moved by one strong emotion. And the spell of the strange scene penetrates the spirit; one forgets its pagan, mediæval childishness; one begins to understand how these outward symbols have had power to hold the faith of the people.
The cathedral is the chief centre of all the ceremonies; and the vast edifice—Santa Maria is the largest Gothic church in the world—which is not too vast for its part in the great functions, is seen best on these days of festival. ”

“ It is in this light, the welfare of the lives of the future and the building up of a finer race—that the individual and collective conduct of women must be judged. Women have talked and thought too much about their sex, and all the time they have totally under-estimated the real strength of the strongest thing in life. I think the force, the power, the driving intensity of love will come as a surprise and a wonder to awakened women. I think they will come to realise, as they have never realised before, the tremendous force sex is. ”

“ Most men, it is true, are not only tolerant of women's wiles; they like them. But most men succumb, I believe, against their will, and often against their inclination to this tyranny of lust. Men's chivalry as well as their pride has woven a cloak of silence around this question; this silence has protected women—even the worst.
There is such a thing as too much temptation for a man; temptation that a woman has no right to give unless she knows a man loves her and is ready to marry her. It is damnably hard on men. ”

“ The Spanish character speaks in every Spanish picture. There is one quality, which at a first knowledge will impress the careful observer, in all these pictures, which, though different, all have one aim—it is their dramatic seriousness. Rarely do you meet with a picture in which the idea of beauty, whether it be the beauty of colour or the beauty of form, has stood first in the painter’s mind. Almost in vain will you search for any love of landscape, for any passage of beauty introduced for its own sake. ”

“ After all it is the people of any race who make marriage, not marriage the people. The form of union is but a symbol of the people's character, their desires, and capacities. If we have evolved the wrong women and men, then any reform of marriage is vain. Have we in our weakened civilisation drifted so far from life that the inherent attributes of loyalty and discipline to the future are no longer with us in sufficient measure adequately to respond to the enduring realities of love? The answer is with women. ”

“ Yet this view is singularly untrue; for if we inquire into this question of men's lust, it is obvious that not they, but women, are the more responsible. How often it is woman who awakens this male lust, fans it to flame, feeds it to keep it at fever heat. Woman indeed must so act, since nature urges behind; but the prostitute uses this power without rest, she lives, not indeed sacrificed by men's lust, but kept alive by it. Always there is the invitation—"Come and find me." To be provocative is the one fixed simple rule of her life. Men's lust is a necessity to her very existence. ”

“ No one can have failed to note the immense egoism of the modern woman. Women are still in fear of life and love. They have been made ascetics through the long exercise of restraint upon their explosively emotional temperament. They have restrained their natures to remain pure. This false ideal of chastity was in the first place forced upon them, but by long habit it has been accentuated and has been backed up by woman's own blindness and fear. Thus to-day, in their new-found freedom, women are seeking to bind men up in the same bonds of denial which have restrained them. ”

“ But it is during the days of festival at Easter and the Feria that the fine hospitality of the Sevillians is seen at its best. The houses are filled to overflowing, and hospitality is taxed to a degree that only the most perfect courtesy and good-nature could endure. Every corner is received with a chorus of welcome, and embraced like a brother. Beds are surrendered, even sofas are given up, and as fresh strangers arrive, unable to gain accommodation in the crowded inns, mattresses, pillows, and rugs are brought out of cupboards, and beds are made upon the floor. ”