New times, new ways. Won't you remember that, in dealing with Peg Woffington? She was a product--and a fine product--of her generation and surroundings. Think of her only as an unfortunate, warm-hearted, beautiful girl, whom men adored almost as much for her lovable qualities as for her siren fascinations.
She merits a pedestal in the temple of superwomen. If I have failed to establish her right to it, the fault is mine, not hers.
MODEL FOR ALL THE SIRENS OF THE CENTURIES
Some wise folk say she never existed. But, for that matter, some wise folk also say that her press agent, Homer, never existed, and that his "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were compilations of lesser men's writings. As well say that Napoleon was a "compilation" of his marshals.
Some aver that she indeed walked the earth, a Wonder Woman, and that her charm perhaps stirred up strife among nations, but that her fame kept on growing after she was dead, until--even as hundreds of jokes were attributed to Joe Miller that Joe never perpetrated or even heard--people got to making her the heroine of a myriad impossible deeds and adventures that no one woman or no ten women could have achieved.
Still others declare that she and her story were allegorical, standing for feminine charm and for its fatal power; that she embodied the Greek idea of superwoman perfection. The same sort of people gravely tell us that Hercules and Croesus and William Tell were "solar myths"--whatever that may mean--and their descendants will put the myth brand, ten thousand years hence, on Napoleon, Roosevelt, John L. Sullivan, and Lydia Pinkham.
While common sense may balk at the tale of Helen of Troy, common sense would as readily balk at a narrative of the high cost of living or of the All-Europe War. And what is common sense among friends? I am going to tell Helen's story as if it were gospel truth. For all I know, it may be. I am not going to draw on a dull imagination for any of it, but to take it entirely from a dozen of the olden authorities, from Homer down. After all, since we believe in Santa Claus, why not in Helen of Troy?
(I cannot help feeling a little thrill of pride in this preamble. In spots, it is almost scholarly. And so to the story.)