Exit the Cad

by GRETCHEN FINLETTER

1

To READ the novels and plays of a period is one method of discovering the moral atmosphere of the time. The view of course is limited to the world from which the author selects his characters. It may be confined to a small world, but this very selectiveness gives illustration as to what manner of person a writer finds significant in his generation. A simple yardstick for the reader is to look at the hero and then with greater care to measure the villain.

During the war the qualities of the hero were unmistakable. He followed an ancient tradition and exemplified the greatest of ideals — courage. The villain was the enemy — usually, the Nazi or Jap — who opposed him. The villain was a perfect symbol of what we despised. In the terrible terms of war there was no problem in differentiating black from white.

But with the end of the war men and women are again trying to find a code for the society of our times. In what respect does the modern code differ from the code of a couple of generations ago? What is the moral point of view that the earlier books and plays illustrate?

The society of this antecedent period was not made up of one small group but of hundreds of different groups, to which membership was allotted according to profession, or family, or income, or a dozen other divisions. These societies were for the most part stable; the sound of a changing world had not yet reached any threatening proportions, and the members, feeling secure, could make their rules for their different societies and see they were lived up to.

In the fiction of this older time the villain was the man who possessed those particular qualities which his society would not forgive. He broke the rules which had tacitly been agreed upon; and whether he moved in the most fashionable of worlds or in the simplest, the rules had a certain similarity. Basically they involved hospitality, money, friendship, women, and a thing called “one’s honor” which included money and women and something beyond.

The laws of hospitality demanded generosity from the host and protection to the guest under his roof. If the guest lost money while gambling, it was the host’s responsibility to see that he paid, or make good the debt himself. A guest could get drunk but the law of hospitality protected him. He must not, however, repeat what he had heard under his host’s roof. He had been accepted on trust as a friend and must break no confidences.

The problem of course arose as to where one could “demand satisfaction” and rebuke a man for what was deemed bad behavior if he had the protection of his host. One might strike him lightly across the face with a glove as the preliminary challenge to a duel or ask him to “step outside” for the fight itself. The brawl must not take place indoors, and particularly not in the presence of ladies.

In high society if a gentleman cheated at cards all doors were closed to him. In the society of the mining camp the same code carried but he was shot, and if the shot missed he left town in a hurry. Both gentleman and gold mine prospector could run up debts to the limit of their credit and could take an incredibly long time to repay them, but gambling debts must be paid within twenty-four hours. Gentleman or prospector could borrow money from a bank or a friend but never from a woman.

Friendship, like family relations, incurred certain obligations and responsibilities. Though it might involve grave personal danger, a friend helped a friend in his troubles. A man took on the enmities of his best friend as he would take on the enmities of his family in its feuds. If a man made love to his best friend’s wife he had behaved without honor. He had broken the code.

If a man had a mistress, under no circumstances must she ever meet his wife. A gentleman must never discuss a lady in his club.

The rules about women wore not so categoric, and varied slightly with the decades and the economic group, but basically there were certain prinples — blessed principles from the point of view of the writers — which guided behavior.

A woman’s honor, which meant her virtue, was the responsibility of her father or brother if she was unmarried. He who threatened her virtue must be prepared for the revenge of the father with the approval of all society. If the lady was married, her virtue was the responsibility of her husband. But here worldly society drew a distinction. It recognized emotions that could arise which would not be calmed, so it demanded discretion, the appearance of a solid marriage, and no scandal. Only if the affair became noticeable did society step in. One of the culprits must pay, and the husband could have the satisfaction of a duel or one of a number of choices in ruining his rival.

But the writers were faced with the dilemma of instinctively wanting to weight the scales in favor of the lover. French dramatists early discovered the comic possibilities of the deceived husband. Who was the hero and who the villain in this piece? The novelists studied the code and illustrated the following principle: “To love like a lover is no crime; but if you play fast and loose with your love, if you are not serious when you are asking her to risk her reputation, if you discard her, if it is for you only the satisfaction of the moment, then, my good fellow, you are — a Cad!”

And there was revealed and defined the character who cheated at cards and with women, who put love above honor, who broke the rules of his world, the villain of his day, the delight of novelists — The Cad.

There comes down to us the saying, “ He was the sort of fellow no decent man would speak to.” The picture is drawn of the fellow walking jauntily down the avenue and meeting his friends. Instantly their eyes are turned the other way. He is cut. The walk becomes less jaunty and he knows. All doors will be closed to him.

There is the tale of the lady in Boston. She refused the attentions of a distinguished gentleman, so he took his revenge. He ordered his carriage and pair to stand outside the door of her house all night. In the morning the sober citizens, as they went to their offices, saw coachman and horses still waiting there. The lady lost her reputation. But that evening when the gentleman entered his club, he was cut. He had been a cad.

2

WAS Soames a scoundrel in his treatment of his wife Irene in Galsworthy’s novel The Man of Property? Young Forsyte, who was many years later to comfort Irene, pondered over this: —

An unhappy marriage! . . . that indefinable malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, till death should end it.

. . . Whence should a man like his cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and beliefs of his class, draw the insight and inspiration necessary to break up this life? . . . Most people would consider such a marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly successful; he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise. There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they hated each other. . . . Half the marriages of the upper classes were conducted along these lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not offend the susceptibilities of the Church. To avoid offending these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings. The advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many pieces of property; there is no risk in the status quo. To break up the home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into the bargain.

Soames regards Irene as his possession. Twice Irene is reminded, “It’s not as if you had anything of your own.” The Forsyte family, though they do not label Soames a cad, for he has broken no tangible code, are yet uncomfortable and unoasy.

How inextricably in the worldly world were goods bound with morality, and morality with the conventions. Lily Bart, the heroine of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, cannot “live like a pig” and so cannot function without extravagant luxury. Lily holds only one possession, her beauty, “the raw material of conquest,” and this she intends to trade high for the other possessions that she must have.

The story is of Lily’s downfall brought about by the scandal of her transactions with Gus Trenor. Trenor behaves caddishly but it is on Sim Rosedale, the stock broker, that Edith Wharton unleashes her greatest irony. And why? Because ho wants to get into society and society laughs at him. At the end he is one of the few who behave decently to Lily and she ponders over his proposal: —

In fending off the offer he was so plainly ready to renew, had she not sacrificed to one of those abstract notions of honor that might be called the conventionalities of the moral life? What debt did she owe to a social order which had condemned and banished her without trial?

But in the end Lily bows to the social order and kills herself.

One wonders what it is that Edith Wharton questions in the order beyond its materialism. She is plainly the enemy of vulgarity and display, but that there must be an order, a society of the favored, she does not doubt. Her hero, Lawrence Selden, is modestly circumstanced but well-born and belongs to that profession which for some reason endears itself to novelists, as the best to illustrate the heroic qualities. Selden is “a rising young lawyer.” (Some day I hope to find the hero a fulling old stock broker.) Selden is also a prig and behaves with little spirit. But he is placed in the novel as the symbol of the good life which too late Lily realizes she has scorned.

3

How consistently did the playwrights illustrate the double standard. And how sharply was the line drawn between the good woman and the bad woman. Mrs. Tanqueray in Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Mrs. Erlynne in Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan are “bad” women, alike in their dependence on social recognition symbolized by that precious bit of white paper — the calling card. Until the “good” ladies have called and acknowledged them, they remain ostracized.

Paula Tanqueray is not admitted to the society of the countryside and furiously she protests to her husband, Aubrey Tanqueray, over this snub: —

“Mrs. Cortelyon! The woman who might have set the example of calling on me when we first threw out roots in the deadly-lively soil! Deuce take Mrs. Cortelyon! . . . Oh I know she’s an old acquaintance of yours — and of the first Mrs. Tanqueray. And she joins the rest of ‘em in slapping the second Mrs. Tanqueray in the face. However, I have my revenge — she’s six-and-forty, and I wish nothing worse to happen to any woman.”

Lord Windermere demands that his wife send Mrs. Erlynne a card to her ball.

LORD W. — ... If she comes here once she will have a chance for a happier, a surer life, than she has had. . . . Won’t you help a woman who is trying to get back?
LADY W. — No! If a woman really repents, she never wishes to return to the Society that has made or seen her ruin.
LORD W. — ... I won’t argue with you, but I insist upon your asking Mrs. Erlynne to-night.
LADY W. — I shall do nothing of the kind.
LORD W. — You refuse?
LADY W. —Absolutely!
LORD W. — Ah, Margaret, do this for my sake — it is her last chance.
LADY W. — What has that to do with me?
LORD W. — How hard good women are!
LADY W. — How weak bad men are!
LORD W. — ... Sit down and write the card.
LADY W. — Nothing in the world would induce me.
LORD W. — Then I will. . . .
LADY W. — Arthur; if that woman comes here, I shall insult her.
LORD W. — Child, if you did such a thing, there’s not a woman in London who wouldn’t pity you.
LADY W. — There’s not a good woman in London who would not applaud me. We have been too lax. We must set an example. I propose to begin tonight. Yes, you gave me this fan today; it was your birthday present. If that woman crosses my threshold, I shall strike her across the face with it.

The rules for the Mrs. Tanquerays and Mrs. Erlynnes were definitive and severe. They could have their houses in Curzon Street, be hostess on Peter Jarman’s yacht in the Mediterranean; but let them attempt to cross the threshold of the home of the good lady who was wife, and a solid door was closed against them.

The gentlemen sometimes sentimentalized or philosophized about the bad women, but on the whole they liked the system. What they would not back was the lady who bolted. She was heavily penalized and the man who urged her to take this conclusive step was generally considered a cad.

Mrs. Erlynne gives Lady Windermere a dreadful warning when she attempts to dissuade her from running off with Lord Darlington: —

“ . . . You don’t know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at — to be an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have to creep in by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should be stripped from one’s face, and all the while to hear the laughter, the horrible laughter of the world. . . . One pays for one’s sin, and then one pays again, and all one’s life one pays. . . . You haven’t got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. You have neither the wit nor the courage. You couldn’t stand dishonor. . . .”

In The Second Mrs. Tanqueray a group of men are gossiping after dinner in Aubrey Tanqueray’s chambers, in a “ tastefully decorated room, elegantly and luxuriously furnished.” The talk turns on the case of Lord Orreyed, who has dared to marry Mabel Hervey, a dressmaker. “ Paint her portrait, it would symbolize a creature perfectly patrician; lance a vein of her superbly-modelled arm, you would get the poorest vin ordinaire!”

DRUMMLE (referring to Lord Orreyed): The fool! The blackguard!
MISQUITH: Poor Orreyed! Well, he’s gone under for a time.
DRUMMLE: For a time! My dear Frank, I tell you he has absolutely ceased to be. For all practical purposes you may regard him as the late George Orreyed.<br/&gt; JAYNE: But, surely, in the course of years, he and his wife will outlive —
DRUMMLE: NO, no, Doctor. . . . You may dive into many waters, but there is one social Dead Sea!

How fortunate a time for novelists and dramatists. The limits carefully defined, and within the frame the great game of love, betrayal, fidelity, honor or villainy ordered and played by exact rules. And what about the performers who are so romantically and at times realistically described? Were they happier or more frustrated because they lived by a code?

4

IS THERE anything a man can do today for which he will be ostracized?

Yes, a man today may not cheat at cards. And he has to pay his gambling debts. What about that thing called “The Law of Hospitality”? We hear that the son of a President printed some revealing details about a guest of his father’s who happened to be a Prime Minister. Was he cut for it? The researcher can’t make out that he was.

Where does a woman’s reputation stand today? Perhaps it can be ruined, but not by a man parking his car outside her apartment house door all night. What he gets for his pains is a ticket. Only the police department has censured him.

And does a woman’s reputation mean something different from a man’s reputation? One can almost conclude that the double standard has vanished. Is it then a single standard for both sexes and do the writers illustrate this, or merely show no particular standard for anyone?

What does the modern man have to do to invite the equivalent of a duel or the cut direct? What actions of a modern woman will cause the door to be slammed in her face? Let us consider the oldest situation in the world — the husband, the wife, and the lover; the wife, the husband, and the mistress. Novelists and playwrights can’t get along without that triangle. One should be able to find out who is considered to have behaved badly in these circumstances.

Here one discovers something surprising. In the novels and in the plays the “ big ” scenes are between the two ladies. Not only is the convention wiped out that wife and mistress must never meet, but there is a compulsion that they must meet, and for long conversations. This scene seems to have a special appeal for writers. It is something they must feel they can get their teeth into. But here is the curious contradiction. In the theater the cards are stacked in favor of the wife, while the novel is apt to favor the claims of the mistress.

What can one conclude is the code that governs the woman’s actions? Has the lady in her rise to power in the world also made a place for herself as a scoundrel? And has the author any moral judgments of his own that he is illustrating?

In the novel, the wife is frequently described as “a faded blonde.” If her hair was streaked with gray I suppose she might appear a little pathetic, but a “faded” blonde evokes a picture which already begins to lose her the sympathy of the reader.

The rival is apt to be a young woman with a career who has worked with the husband as he is ambitiously driving onward and upward. When the faded blonde first sees her at a dinner party in her own home, where the husband has invited her — convention out of the window — she is struck by the imitation jeweled clip that this girl is wearing; so palpably false, so almost defiant in its pathetic glitter. How is it possible that her husband, who has such faultless taste in diamonds, has permitted — but then her eyes go beyond the clip to the face of this young woman, and she is startled at what she finds. It is the innate decency of that face.

From then on, God help the faded blonde. If she puts up any kind of fight she is told to be adult or civilized. When she has that intimate talk with her rival — she is after all curious to see what this girl has besides her decency — she gets what must be a disheartening picture of her husband. The girl shares with the husband his almost childish love of circuses, and she believes, well, it’s a funny thing to say to you, Mrs. Cartright, who know him so well, that his water colors show genius.

What chance now for the wife? She never even knew Mr, Cartright had a set of paints. She has two alternatives. To leave the novel quickly and never appear in it again, or to say, a little tremulously, My dear, I hope you will be very happy. You deserve to be.

In Daisy Kenyon, by Elizabeth Janeway, Dan, a businessman roaring ahead in his career, considers his wife, Lucile: —

He stopped putting papers into the briefcase, where he sat at his desk, and looked up at her with sudden pity. . . . He didn’t neglect her out of hatred or contempt or any particular positive emotion. He neglected her because he couldn’t help it. She was born to be a neglected wife, and she bore up under it very well, he thought. She had half a dozen women friends whose names and faces he could never put together; she had bridge and shopping and getting her hair done, and the church: which was about on the same level of emotional excitement as the shopping, and above all she had the children. She was a good and devoted mother.

Lucile never really has a prayer, for her rival is Daisy, an illustrator, “ tall with a lot of dark, red hair pulled up on the top of her head” and a “full red mouth.”

Margaret Ayer Barnes has more sympathy for Edna in her novel Edna His Wife, though her situation is not dissimilar to Lucile’s. Edna also has nothing to do but live in her luxurious apartment and wonder at the absences of her husband Paul, who begins as the rising young lawyer and then goes ruthlessly ahead to financial power.

Edna is described as “a round little woman in the middle fifties, very carefully dressed in very obviously expensive clothes. . . . Her face softened by creams, tightened by astringents, faintly tinged with rouge . . . would have presented an appearance as devoid of expression as the faces on the motion picture ‘stills’ except for the small, pursed mouth that hinted of years of inarticulate suppression, and the round blue eyes that held, at fifty-five, a look of almost girlish bewilderment, very incongruous and slightly ridiculous in that middle-aged face, but which somehow touched the heart.”

Edna loses Paul to Katharine Boyne, a sculptress “ with brown strong hands and slender wrists . . . and with a wavy shock of short black hair which grew low on her forehead and rippled back from the ears with the lift of a bird’s wing.’

Both Lucile and Edna react deeply to their positions of deceived women — Lucile with bitter rage and Edna with compassion, but a breaking heart. They are the wives of their husbands’ youth, and, unable to keep up, become the victims of their husbands’ ambitions. Dan pays a certain lip service to the appearances, but no social order has really disciplined either man in his conduct, for the exterior life, or even in preserving the amenities. The husbands sign the checks and ask only to be let alone.

5

IN B.F.’s Daughter, by John Marquand, Polly, the wife, meets Winifred James, her husband’s mistress. Polly is not faded; she is young, alive, and curious with a human curiosity to know what manner of woman it is with whom Tom has fallen in love. The victory can be Polly’s, for the mediocrity of Winifred confirms the mediocrity of Tom, and Polly knows that if she wants her husband back, because of this sample of his second-rate taste, she, possessing the more forceful qualities, can win him again.

Neither Tom nor Polly lives by conscious beliefs in principles. Polly is confused and unhappy and at the conclusion of the book encounters again Bob Tasmin, the rising young lawyer who was her first love. Tasmin possesses a natural nobility and behaves with chivalry toward Polly and to his own wife. But this sense of personal honor appears individual to himself and seems to derive more from an inherited instinct than from the belief of a living code.

In the theater the wife rides to victorious triumph. Gone are the faded hair, the double chin. Dressed in the most becoming of costumes, she meets her rival in Act II, and what a scene of tinkling laughter that is.

“Mind, my dear?” says the wife. “I am grateful to you. I only wish you joy and ha-ha-ha much patience.”

“Patience!” cries the home-breaker.

“Patience with, shall we call it — his moods? I’m used to the midnight hilarity, the morning grouch. But his jokes — well, who was it said, ‘Antiquity hath a certain beauty all its own’ — ha-ha-ha.”

Here the audience is ha-ha-ing too. It relaxes and waits confidently for the third act, a year later, when a battered husband crawls back to that tolerant and understanding smile.

No Time for Cornedy,¹ by S. N. Behrman, is a series of scenes between Linda the wife and Amanda, who is attempting to steal Linda’s husband, Gay, the playwright. They have a catty meeting in Act II in Amanda’s apartment, where Gay is writing his play under the new inspiration of Amanda, and they take it up again the next day in Act III in Linda’s home. Amanda is trying to find Gay, who has disappeared,

LINDA: It seems to me a great gap of time since last night. Does it to you?
AMANDA: Not really. I’m afraid I was awfully rude. . . .
LINDA: If I remember correctly, I was insufferable. . . .
AMANDA: Linda — I have something to tell you.
LINDA: Have you?
AMANDA: Yes — it’s an awful thing — I — I don’t know how to put it — I really don’t — I — you make it impossible for me!
LINDA: Nothing is impossible for you, Mandy! . . .
AMANDA: I wish, Linda, I didn’t like you so very, very much. . . .
LINDA: You will end, I am sure, by not letting your affection for me stand in your way. What is it?
AMANDA: Well — Gay and I —
LINDA: Yes?
AMANDA : Gay and I —
LINDA: I suspected it.
AMANDA: Oh, no. It’s not that! It’s worse . . . from your point of view. Oh, believe me, Linda! I struggled against this! Only last night — I told him I thought we might never see each other again . . . his play was well on the way — my usefulness over. I entreated him to return to you — and then suddenly, out of a clear sky, he asked me to marry him.
LINDA: Infallible technique!
AMANDA (loftily): That’s unworthy of you, Linda.
LINDA: Sorry.
AMANDA: . . . I’m really frightfully worried about Gay.
LINDA: You must get used to these little disappearances. If you find him elusive as a lover, as a husband he’s practically nonexistent.

There is never any real doubt as to the outcome. Linda will get Gay back and vanquish Amanda. The audience only waits for the coup de grâce.

Liz Essendine is the wife of Garry Essendine, an actor, in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. Though separated from her husband at the beginning of the play, she is in every scene smiling at the other ladies who appear from the bedroom or swoon in Garry’s arms. She is ready with a quip or a subterfuge to cover up her husband’s infidelities, and in the end, surprise, Garry returns to her. Garry’s behavior, and the behavior of Liz, and the behavior of all the other lovers and mistresses is so utterly, utterly civilized that it becomes well-nigh decadent to the simpler eye.

In State of the Union,² by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, the wife, Mary Matthews, is faced with a problem which is not given to many women. If her husband, Grant, is elected President of the United States, her rival, Kay Thorndyke, owner of a chain of newspapers, will be eliminated, as Presidents are not supposed to have mistresses. Mary has differed with her husband on the virtues of the Republican machine.

Conover, the politician, is troubled over Mary’s political theories and their influence over Grant, his candidate, and he talks to Mary after a dinner which Grant is giving and to which Grant has also invited his mistress, Kay.

CONOVER (speaking about Kay, who is in the dining room with Grant): . . . She’s in there now doing her damndest to get Grant into the White House. And the White House is the one place where she can’t be with him. She can’t follow him there, Mary. Have you ever thought of that?
MARY : No, I hadn’t.
CONOVER: Well, isn’t it a little unintelligent of you to do anything to stop Grant from getting there. If he doesn’t become President, I’m not so sure what’s going to happen between you and him. But if he is elected — then you’ll be the First Lady — in more ways than one.

In the end the situation of Grant and Mary is solved through a belief in the American people; the marriage triumphs and the White House is lost.

It is difficult to find meetings between the husband and the lover. How to write this scene apparently baffles the author. In what manner to make the lover a strong character, yet adult, the husband masculine, but tolerant, eludes the writer. He presumably believes in the manly virtues, but if he illustrates them one of his men may be in danger of raising his voice, of going primitive, of even accusing another character of being a scoundrel. And that would be uncivilized.

What then is the principle that the modern writers believe guides behavior? It is not the compulsion of society, for society appears to take no stand. It is not the virtue of a tradition, for too many of the conventions have been relinquished.

It is, I have concluded, the principle of Love. Love is the justification, it is the vindication. Only those who would thwart love are the villains. The heroes are those who attain love—whether by honest declaration or by theft, it does not matter.

And what is love? Here is the paradox. Love is a casual thing, not very enduring, easily achieved and as easily discarded. Love cannot stand up to the knocks, it cannot even age. So all the shouting and the murmurs is a great fuss about nothing. Love just hasn’t got what it takes.

One notes references to the hypocrisy of older times — the appearance of love when there was not love. Why then it was a living lie. “True, true,” murmurs the researcher; “undoubtedly much of it was a cynical performance.” And yet one becomes a little wistful. There was a certain virility in the earlier characters with their anger and even their talk of honor.

One wonders idly if the writers of today do give the true picture. In these situations made by love, are there no bitter feelings engendered which must find outlet? Surely someone somewhere along the line raises a protest for the victim — yes, defies the novelists and playwrights — and passes a moral judgment.

And deeply, deeply is one regretful for the disappearance of the Cad. But he is lost, gone — sunk without a trace.