ney
for pleasure and for culture; if true beauty is to take the place of
tinsel, feathers, frills, ruffles, _poudre de riz_; if middle-class
women are to cease to live in bitterness because they cannot keep up
with the rich; if the daughters of the poor are no longer to be
stimulated and corrupted by example into poverty and prostitution, it
will be necessary for the few who lead the many to realize that
simplicity, modesty, moderation, and grace are the only things which
will enable women to gain for themselves, and for men, peace and
satisfaction out of a civilization every day more hectic.

IV

WOMAN AND THE PAINT POT

It is in a shrinking spirit that I venture to suggest that woman has so
far entirely failed to affirm her capacity in the pictorial arts, for I
address myself to an audience which contains many sculptors and
pictorial artists, an audience of serious and enthusiastic people to
whom art matters as much and perhaps more than life. But it is of no use
maintaining illusions; woman has exhibited, and is exhibiting, very
great artistic capacities in the histrionic art, in dancing, in
executive music, and in literature. There is, therefore, no case for
those who argue that woman has no artistic capacity. She has. I select
but a few out of the many when I quote the actresses, Siddons, Rachel,
La Duse, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry; the dancers, La Duncan, Pavlova,
Genee; the literary women, the Brontes, Madame de Stael, George Eliot,
Sappho, Christina Rossetti; among the more modern, May Sinclair and
Lucas Malet.

At first sight, however, it is curious that I should be able to quote no
composers and no dramatists; it is impossible to take Guy d'Hardelot and
Theresa del Riego seriously. And the women dramatists, taken as a whole,
hardly exist. This would go to show that there is some strength in the
contention that woman is purely executive and uncreative; but this
cannot be true, for the list of writers I have given, which is very far
from being exhaustive, and which is being augmented every day by
promising girl writers, shows that woman has creative capacity, creative
in the sense that she can evolve character and scene, and treat
relations in that way which can be described as art. If, therefore,
there have been no women painters of note, it cannot be because woman
has no creative capacity. It may be suggested that those women who have
creative capacity turn to literature, but that is a very rash