Henbane

More today from the NYT on the problem of surplus men. And more from Rebecca West on what to do about it:

“I do not think, I know, I absolutely know, that most men do not die a natural death but are poisoned by their wives.” Now my husband knew, and I knew, and Constantine knew that such a statement was stark nonsense, but we also knew that it was the prelude to a good story. But my husband said, “Indeed?” And I said, “Do you really think so?” And Constantine began to tell us how after he had worked for some time in Russia as an official under the Bolsheviks, to save his life, he could bear it no longer and he decided to escape. First he had to lose his identity and this he did by picking up as gipsy girl and traveling with her for two months from fair to fair as a palmist, till he got down to the Roumanian border. Again and again while he was reading women’s hands they asked him if he could supply them with poison for the purpose of murdering their husbands. Nature, it is well known, always supplies its own antidote, and if it is natural for men to feel superior to women it is also natural for women to feed them with henbane when this superiority is carried past a joke. The story is borne out by the number of women who have been tried in Hungary during recent years for supplying poison to peasant women. Whatever Constantine wished to tell us in ths connexion we did not hear, for Gerda said crisply, “Dear me, I am glad that I am in the company of clever people who can believe such things as that most women poison their husbands.” “But it is true,” began poor Constantine. “Is it?” said Gerda. “I am only a simple woman, and I do not write books, but such things seem to me too foolish.” There was then a wrangle in Serbian which left Constantine red and silent.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon 692 (1940).