Woomanship

by STEPHEN POTTER

VOLUMES will be written about the historical aspects of that huge subdepartment of Lifemanship, Woomanship. It was known, certainly, in early China. The Cretans were said to woo and “enjoy patterns of woo behavior” before becoming engaged to each other.

My task now is to collect reports on some of the leading Woomen and Woo-women of today. I have a sheaf of them for tabulation. But wooing is, of course, a very human subject and many aspects of it are readily understandable to the general public.

Woo BASIC

“. . . for each approach, the method. . . .”

Through the Gears with Gattling-Fenn

Each woman presents a different problem, or, alternatively, each woman presenls the same problem. How often that has been said. To that sound old wooman Gattling-Fenn, the problem, and the approach, was always the same, a fact or situation which may owe its being to Gattling-Fenn’s undoubted limitations. He was getting bald in a curious way. Yet he was always falling in love with horrifyingly pretty girls of vacant minds.

To see Gattling-Fenn at work on one such is to see woo basic at its best. There is nothing new about the theory of Gattling’s “gradually-awakenedinterest” approach. But his practice of it has never been improved upon.

“The rule,” he was always telling us, “is not so much to seem to be attracted against your will, as to give the impression that you can scarcely bring yourself to speak to her. And this in spite of the fact, you are at the same time able to indicate, that the face you are addressing happens by some racial fluke, some luck of the ethnological draw, of some genetical jackpot, to be as near the perfection of sexual beauty as mortal may be.”

Gattling-Fenn used often to talk in fairly long words. It was part of his method. But he also talked in short words, too; and in the opening stages he was monosyllabic.

The principle of Instantaneous Speech is important. No good, if you get into a railway carriage soteh occupied by some wooworthy girl, waiting for half an hour and offering her a cigarette after premonitory mumbles and throat-clearing. Gattling always used to maintain that he would start speaking to the girl while still half in the corridor, saving, for instance (if she is reading The Times), “Good heavens, I thought The Times had ceased publication,” naturally and easily, as he entered.

Or at a cocktail party Gattling, having succeeded by much pushing and side-stepping in planting himself next some mentally feeble girl, begins as follows; —

G.-F. (struggling against boredom): I have, in fact, seen you before. Being important in some film shot. Denham, Stage II. (For Americans “Denham, Stage II” should read “Hollywood, MGM Studio.”)

The girl will be unlikely to deny absolutely that she has ever been in a film studio, but will probably say: —

GIRL: Oh — I don’t think so.

G.-F.: Sorry, a bad professional blob of mine.

GIRL: Professional?

G.-F.: Yes, I’m sorry. There was one period of my life when it was my job to stare at Film Faces.

At tin’s moment he suddenly wrenches his glasses out of his pocket, rams them on his nose, stares, and snatches them off again.

GIRL: Oh?

G.-F.: Selecting the perfect film profile — one of J. Arthur’s more surprisingly imaginative ideas. Two hundred and fifty dead-straight noses. Two hundred and fifty pairs of brilliant eyes, oh so large and liquid. I’m afraid you’re rather the type.

GIRL: Were you really?

G.-F.: How do you mean?

GIRL: I mean, what did you have to do?

G.-F.: Me? Just be the final judge, and take the unfortunate creature to various functions. You don’t act at all, do you? I have an office job at the moment, and I’m wondering whether even the theatre isn’t better than that. I’m no good at being a ten till five man.

GIRL: Oh, I have to beat the office at nine.

First Gear

This, of course, is the moment to slip into Gear One. Galt ling leans forward fractionally, and although he has in fact been staring at the girl all the evening he manages to give the impression that he is seeing her, now, for the first time.

G.-F.: What — you have a job?

GIRL: Oh yes.

G.-F.: I mean a real human job, doing things, working, like myself — with all the routine, and sometimes the thrill? How wise of you — to be part of the pattern. You mix with people. Know people.

GIRL: Oh, you see a lot of people. I don’t think it’d interest you much.

Gears Two and Three should follow automatically according to Gattling.

WOOMANSHIP SECONDARY

Being One Thing or the Other, or, alternatively, Being One Thing and Then the Other

Most of the experts agree here. The sound wooman is either fascinatingly rich or amusingly poor. It is bad gam bit ting to have a normal income.

Similarly, he must either be charmingly weak about women, reckless and extravagant; or he must be slow to move, stolid, and dependably waiting for the “One Woman.”

Similarly, one must either be the experienced ladies’ man, with correct Flower Flay; or alternatively, one must be so gauche as to be the kind of man who has never given a bunch of flowers in his life, doesn’t know where to buy them, and waits till the taxi has been chugging back to Hammersmith for twenty minutes before he breaks the silence by saying “Can I kiss you.?”

In the same ways the wooman must ask himself: Is he going to be vague so as to get the ‘He’s so vague, let me look after him without his knowing it” reaction. Or is he going to be quietly definite, precise and well-ordered, so as to make use of the “I can depend on him” diathesis.

It is sometimes necessary to combine both of any two opposed approaches, or rapidly substitute one for another, if the first isn’t working. Have you decided that the dependable line is not succeeding? Do you wish to seem uncared for and in need of a woman’s touch? BILLINGTON’S WOO AIDS LTD. supply special Esioff imitation inkstains, a file for fraying cuffs, a pair of “Break-Phast” shoelaces and their useful “Odsox” for the man who wants, in a hurry, to look carelessly dressed. All profits are sent direct to Station Road, Yeovil. HELP LIFEMANSHIP.

The Wilkes Method

On the physical side it is most important, finally, to decide whether you are (a) handsome, or (b) ugly. The ugly man, or the half-and-half who decides to be ugly, must learn to suggest, like Wilkes, that though the ugliest man in the country, yet, given half an hour’s start of the handsomest man in Britain, he could out-woo him with any girl he liked. Of recent years, P. Wilkes has done well with this. He will get himself introduced to the girl, stare crossly at the floor, and then say suddenly: —

WILKES: I’m sorry. I don’t seem to have anything to say, as usual.

GIRL: Oh, well, it’s stupid to talk all the time, isn’t it ?

WILKES: I was trying to put myself in your place, while I was trying — forgive me — not to stare at your face. You see . . . you have this marvelous lookability — this ability, by your face alone, to thaw.

GIRL: Thaw?

WILKES: To melt — melt the resistance to making contact which is in all of us. Whereas, in my case, there is this barrier of my pretty fearsome countenance. I think —

GIRL (looking at him): But. 1 don’t know —

WILKES: I know what you’re going to say. You have got an essential delicious kindness —

GIRL: I think you’ve got rather a nice face.

Wilkes had, in fact, a rather well-shaped and expressive left cheek, with interesting lines and dents in it, deepened by repeated exercises, including the turning on and of! of bath taps with his teeth, which he did for five minutes every morning. He would at this point in the above conversation affect an expression of humorous skepticism, lay a special smile (exercise 2) on the left side of his face only, at the same time moving his head underneath a top light, to give a deep-set effect to his eyes.

The Staines Method

The necessity of having to be very much one thing or the other oppresses some novice or diffident woomen. They have to decide when making basic plans whether, say, to be a Leonardo (intellectual all-rounder), a Fry (games all-rounder), or just a plain attentive man-in-the-background who “refuses to do any thing unless he can do it perfectly.

But remember that William Staines elaborated a method by which, concentrating on one part, he was able to suggest the whole.

Staines’s particular approach was to establish himself as the “perfect ladies’ man with exquisite manners and real consideration.” Yet anybody who knew anything about Staines when he was off gambit knew that he was slothful, dirty, bad-mannered, and had never, off gambit or on, opened a door for a lady in his life. Yet by concentrating on one tiny department of chivalry he somehow captured the whole.

He had a rack of a dozen lighters, which he cleaned and put in order once a week. Before making for his girl, he would select one, fuel it, put in a new flint, taking care to choose a large and manly one for the tiny, frightened girl, or one, for instance, with cigarette case and pencil attached for the slightly oopsy girl. At precisely the right moment in the cigarette maneuver, fire would dart from his hand. He had trained himself to see a pretty girl feel for a cigarette across three platforms of Waterloo Station, as it were, and to be behind her, flame ready, before the cigarette was at her lips.

The beauty of the Staines method is that once his gentlemanliness with lighters was established, the girl would be so stunned with the perfection of this particular piece of good manners that she would never question his good manners in general, even if she found herself left with the two heaviest bags to carry, and was asked to stand over them while Staines himself went into the refreshment room for a cup of tea.

Triangulation, or Third Person Play

To prove, if proof were necessary, that approaches must be varied, it is only necessary to consider for a moment the essential Woo Situation.

The very word “woo” suggests an unwillingness on the part of the object: and that, carried one step further, means a previous attachment. The wooman if he knows his business will, as soon as he knows the identity of this Second Man, leave the girl almost unattended, if necessary for days on end, and make a thorough examination of this person, observe, make discreet inquiries at his place of employment. And then, once he is thoroughly acquainted with the Second Man’s character, he can woo with a clear mind and high heart. Tor he will know what to do. He must be sure that his character, habits, hobbies, tastes, and mannerisms are the precise opposite of his rival s.

Supposing Second Man’s main interest is geology. Now the wooman may himself be the greatest British authority on this very subject. He may have written the definitive work on the Flora of the Tpper Cretaceous. But he mustn’t reveal it for a second. Keep geology dark, and particularly fossils.

In other words, the wooman must in all respects be the opposite of this Second Man, whose preserve, so far from being a hindrance, may in this way be actually turned to advantage.

“I’m not quite sure that I shall ever understand how the North Downs and the South Downs are part of a denuded anticlyne,” says this thoughtful girl, the first time she dines out with wooman. “I don’t even know exactly where the North Downs and South Downs are,” says wooman. She makes no reply, but her eyes grow a shade softer.

Wildworthy’s Counter to the Cunningham Indifference

A pretty example of Third Person Play arose originally as a counter to the sound Indifference Play of Cunningham.

E. D. C. Wildworthy, of the Board of Trade, fell in love, from a distance, with Ivy Spring. Cunningham was Second Man, and had been doing well with Ivy through his amazing indifference to everything she did. Whether Ivy appeared in a new hat, an old hat, or an old dress brilliantly renovated and cut in half, Cunningham would never notice the difference, but would always greet her in precisely the same way, “Well, here we are again.”

Ivy, who had been brought up to “keep her man on the alert” so as not to let him be too sure of what she was like, doubled and redoubled her efforts to attract his curiosity— I remember on one occasion, for instance, she turned up for a date with Cunningham with a Yale undergraduate in American sporting clothes on each arm, she herself wearing the uniform of a lance bombardier. “Well,” said Cunningham, when he turned up, a little late, “here we are again.”

This fascinated Ivy at first, of course, as it was bound to do. But actually from the woo point of view, I realized that Cunningham was dangerously liable to be third-personed; and when E. D. C. Wildworthy began to lay plans for Ivy, I watched with interest. I le already knew Cunningham. His right procedure was obvious. The danger was, of course, that he might make it obvious to Ivy — as a procedure. He might notice and appreciate every time that Ivy remembered to wind up her wristwatch.

In the end he hit the mark by means of a simple trick. Arriving early one evening at Ivy’s fiat, while she was shouting at him through the door to make himself a drink, what in fact he did was to take the radio set, which usually rested on the piano, and reverse the positions, so that the piano rested on the radio set. When Ivy came in he said: —

“What a good idea to change those round. It breaks the line of the room much better. You really are rather a clever girl.” Ivy, of course, couldn’t remember having touched them, thought she must have done it in her sleep, but wasn’t going to let on that it was luck, not cunning. At the same time, she said to herself at once, This is the man for me.