The Old Wives’ Tale

The Old Wives’ Tale

Arnold Bennett

The Old Wives' Tale

Arnold Bennett

To W. W. K.

In the autumn of 1903 I used to dine frequently in a restaurant in the

Rue de Clichy, Paris. Here were, among others, two waitresses that

attracted my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl, to whom I

never spoke, for she was employed far away from the table which I

affected. The other, a stout, middle-aged managing Breton woman, had

sole command over my table and me, and gradually she began to assume

such a maternal tone towards me that I saw I should be compelled to

leave that restaurant. If I was absent for a couple of nights running

she would reproach me sharply: "What! you are unfaithful to me?" Once,

when I complained about some French beans, she informed me roundly that

French beans were a subject which I did not understand. I then decided

to be eternally unfaithful to her, and I abandoned the restaurant. A

few nights before the final parting an old woman came into the

restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She

had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see

that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had

developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the

thoughtless. She was burdened with a lot of small parcels, which she

kept dropping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it, chose

another; and then another. In a few moments she had the whole

restaurant laughing at her. That my middle-aged Breton should laugh was

indifferent to me, but I was pained to see a coarse grimace of giggling

on the pale face of the beautiful young waitress to whom I had never

spoken.

I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once

young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous

mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her

case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel

out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman

is not grotesque--far from it!--but there is an extreme pathos in the

mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the

unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And

the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman

is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each

unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.

It was at this instant that I was visited by the idea of writing the

that the woman who caused the ignoble mirth in the restaurant would not

serve me as a type of heroine. For she was much too old and obviously

unsympathetic. It is an absolute rule that the principal character of a

novel must not be unsympathetic, and the whole modern tendency of

realistic fiction is against oddness in a prominent figure. I knew that

I must choose the sort of woman who would pass unnoticed in a crowd.

I put the idea aside for a long time, but it was never very distant

from me. For several reasons it made a special appeal to me. I had

always been a convinced admirer of Mrs. W. K. Clifford's most precious

novel, "Aunt Anne," but I wanted to see in the story of an old woman

many things that Mrs. W. K. Clifford had omitted from "Aunt Anne."

Moreover, I had always revolted against the absurd youthfulness, the

unfading youthfulness of the average heroine. And as a protest against

this fashion, I was already, in 1903, planning a novel ("Leonora") of

which the heroine was aged forty, and had daughters old enough to be in

love. The reviewers, by the way, were staggered by my hardihood in

offering a woman of forty as a subject of serious interest to the

public. But I meant to go much farther than forty! Finally as a supreme

reason, I had the example and the challenge of Guy de Maupassant's "Une

Vie." In the nineties we used to regard "Une Vie" with mute awe, as

being the summit of achievement in fiction. And I remember being very

cross with Mr. Bernard Shaw because, having read "Une Vie" at the

suggestion (I think) of Mr. William Archer, he failed to see in it

anything very remarkable. Here I must confess that, in 1908, I read

"Une Vie" again, and in spite of a natural anxiety to differ from Mr.

Bernard Shaw, I was gravely disappointed with it. It is a fine novel,

but decidedly inferior to "Pierre et Jean" or even "Fort Comme la

Mort." To return to the year 1903. "Une Vie" relates the entire life

history of a woman. I settled in the privacy of my own head that my