LADY JEUNE

 

 

 
 

 

 

THE
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LIBRARY
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AT
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LADIES AT WORK.

PAPERS ON PAID EMPLOYMENTS FOR LADIES.
LADIES AT WORK.

4

PAPERS ON

PAID EMPLOYMENTS FOR LADIES. /

BY

EXPERTS IN THE SEVERAL BRANCHES.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

LADY JEUNE,

LONDON:
A. D. INNES & CO,,

31 & 32, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.

1893. -
[Zhe Papers in this Volume are reprinted, after revision,
Jrom the ‘ Monthly Packet.’|
5382

67
GT
LIS
CONTENTS.
pane anane
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. By Lapy JEUNE . . : : ‘ . I
COLLEGES FOR WOMEN. By E. WoRDSWoRTH '. : - 4
JOURNALISM. By Fanny L. GREEN ‘ ‘ * ‘ - 29
MUSIC. By ETHEL M. BovctE, A.R.A.M. é : . ‘: - 40
ART. By FLORENCE REASON 2 5 : A ; . - 44
AUTHORSHIP, By CuaRLoTTE M. YoncE . . . . 52
THE STAGE. By GRACE LATHAM , . é - 62

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. By CaROLINE W. LATIMER, M.D. 75
WOMEN’S MEDICDE WORK IN INDIA. By Mrs. FRANK

PENNY . 2 ‘ : , ‘i Y é . ; - 86
HOSPITAL NURSING. By H. Mary WILSON and R. WILSON. 94
CARE OF INSANE PATIENTS. By Lapy CLiFFoRD . - 108
TEACHING. By M. T. WALLAS . 5 é , r , . 113
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHING, By F. Harrison e122
WOMEN’S WORK AMONGST THE POOR. By Sopuia

LONSDALE . 2 . ‘ 7 3 ‘ + 129
THE LADY OF ALL WORK. ByC. R. COLERIDGE . ‘i . 137

property D LYBRARY
LADIES AT WORK.

+

INTRODUCTION.

Or all the changes which mark the social revolutions
of the nineteenth century none are more remarkable
and more far-reaching in their effects than those affect-
ing the position of women. Perhaps we may call them
complete so far as they have gone, though in the future we
cannot doubt but that their results will be still wider and
more revolutionary. As regards the position and in-
fluence of women, there is not much left to desire, and
whether her power will be materially increased by giving
her the franchise, and so putting her on an equality with
men, is a question open to much speculation. To an
ordinary observer, it can hardly be said that a woman’s
position is a hard one because that privilege is withheld,
for in the most important matters affecting education,
training, and choice of professions a woman’s field of
choice is hardly less limited than that of a man.
Medicine, science, teaching, literature, and art are all
open to her, in all of which she has won laurels, while even
that most conservative and exclusive of careers, the law,
is now being invaded by her ; so that, given capacity and
physical strength, a woman’s chance of distinction is very
B
2 Ladies at Work.

 

little behind that of her masculine opponents. The
volume we have before us is the best proof of this: its
comprehensiveness, its thoroughness, and the grasp of
subjects it treats of, show how wide and far-reaching are
the results of modern life, and training, on educated and
intelligent women.

If we compare the life of a modern woman with that
of one at the beginning of the century, where can we find
a greater contrast ? Then, fettered and surrounded with
all the safeguards and prejudices of a narrow society,
with no future before her, if she remained unmarried,
save a life of dull monotony, often accompanied with
very straitened means, was it a wonder that existence to
her was a dreary wretchedness, obliged constantly as she
was to keep up an appearance of gentility under super-
human difficulties, because it was a reproach to be poor,
and a disgrace to make any attempt to earn her living?
And thus her life was passed, till the day when the dark
curtain fell on one who, perhaps, had she lived in these
later days, would have been a useful and happy member
of society. The lives of women and girls in the upper
classes were both as uneventful and uninteresting, for if
we take the novels of the early parts of the century
which treat of English social life, they present as dreary
a picture as one can conceive; in which women were
shut out and debarred from taking their part or sharing
in any way in the intellectual interests and occupations
of their husbands or brothers.

The causes which have brought about the change are

ier
Introduction. 3

 

not difficult to indicate. The improvement in the
education of women, the increased facilities of commu-
nication and the influence of America are undoubtedly
the main causes; and the pioneers of the women’s
movement have been happier than many other reformers,
for they have lived to see the results of their labours,
and witness the changes their courage and example
have worked,

The movement in its commencement had one
enormous advantage, namely, that the women who
embarked on it had high and difficult ideals, and were not
content to try and countermine the fortress, but resolved
to take it by assault. A less ambitious programme, a
less courageous attack, would have failed in its object;
but the ability and determination of the leaders of the
movement arrested public attention, and, though they
met with determined opposition, they commanded the
respect of the community, who watched with increasing
eagerness the chances and changes of the fight. I think
we may say that the battle has been fought fairly, and that
our antagonists have been generous, with one exception,
namely, in the struggle of women to enter the medical
profession, where all the prejudice and influence of a
powerful and narrow class were brought to bear in
opposition. How vain the contest proved is now a
matter of history, and millions of suffering women in the
Mother Country and in India owe a debt of gratitude to
the unbounded ability and undaunted courage of Elizabeth
Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex Blake.

B2
4 Ladies at Work..

 

Among the women who fought the battle of independ-
ence there are names which will always be household
words to English women ; but, like single soldiers who
often die performing heroic actions, there are many
women to whom the cause owes a debt which it can
never acknowledge, because they have fought unknown
and unheard of, and there are thousands at this moment
working silently in their several careers all adding to
the stability and dignity of women’s work. The volume
before us gives a very fair idea of how many are the
questions which interest women and how varied are the
opportunities which they now have of distinguishing
themselves. In medicine the field becomes wider every
year, and, apart from what women have achieved in
England, the article by Mrs. Penny on women’s work
in India shows how in that wonderful country, sur-
rounded with prejudice and powerful religious opposition,
English doctors and nurses have brought comfort and
relief to their suffering sisters, who up till that moment
had suffered and died unassisted and uncared for. In
this particular work the good has been of a two-fold
character, for the nurse or doctor has often been the means
of bringing to the poor Hindoo women the message of hope
which has made her passage to the dark unseen world less
terrible than formerly. If we consider for a moment the
conditions under which the lives of most Indian women
are passed, of the neglect and mismanagement of their
health at some of the most trying moments of their
existence, we realise how great has been the boon of Lady
° Introduction. 5

 

Dufferin’s association, and that English women are
doing a work in India, the like of which has never
before been seen or heard of, and which in its ultimate
effect may attain results undreamt of at its initiation.

Medicine and teaching have hitherto offered the
widest scope for women’s work, as well as the most
lucrative, though the training in both is the longest, and
the highest tests are exacted. The field, however, is
becoming less narrowed, and many other occupations,
less well paid and perhaps less absorbing, are opening
up in which women can earn a moderate income, and
which in their way are interesting enough. The stage
has become a profession which in these days is looked on
as quite as legitimate a way of earning a living as women
can desire. The higher tone of morality and the fact
that many ladies are adopting it is raising the stage from
the position it occupied for many years. To attain to
the highest position there, as in all other careers,
entails ability, genius, and a hard apprenticeship; but
there are minor positions which women can fill where
great intellectual qualities are not needed, and where
physical qualifications are as important. All women
cannot be Helen Fawcetts or Ristoris, but many can
and do earn their living in what is as honourable and
respectable a profession as any other.

The profession of journalism is one for which women
have shown extraordinary aptitude. Their imaginative
faculties, and the ease with which they write their

descriptive power, picturesque, varied, and done with
6 Ladies at Work.

 

a lighter vein than that of men, opens another
career to them, while the much-abused Society papers,
and the varied literature for women and children,
give them a large scope for their powers ; Miss
Green’s interesting paper gives an excellent account of
what women are doing in that direction. The field of
literature has been largely invaded by women, and
though, perhaps, the excellence of their work will not
compare favourably in all points with that of men,
they have with a noble determination always striven
to elevate the tone of their writings, and much of
the purity of English literature is due to the influence
which women have exercised in the last thirty years.
George Eliot, Annie Thackeray, Mrs. Humphrey
Ward, and Mrs. Oliphant are some of the most
prominent English women of letters whose names
naturally suggest themselves as those who have set this
example of purity and simplicity which has been so
eagerly followed by all other English authoresses ; and it
is no exaggeration to say that in every work, whether of
fiction, poetry, philosophy, or in discussing the complex
social and moral questions of our day, there is none by
English women which is not impregnated by a tone of
the highest morality, even while discussing and grappling
with difficult and delicate questions in the broadest and
widest degree. ‘Quite apart, however, from those whose
works place them in the front ranks of their profession,
and who undoubtedly do exercise a world-wide influence,
there is the great class of women who write, and write
Introduction. y

 

well, and whose influence has also been employed to
raise the literature of England to a pinnacle of purity
and morality of which they may well be proud, and
which contrasts favourably with that of any other
country.

In writing of women’s work, one can never forget
the great army of women who have devoted their lives
to the care of the sick and suffering; for the work of
nursing, carried to the perfection it now is, is the
genuine outcome of the feeling of love and mercy which
owed its existence to the unselfish devotion of a few
women, and to the example set to them by one whose
name will always live in English history—that of
Florence Nightingale. Despite the efforts which had
long been made to improve and develop the science of
nursing, the first real impetus was given to it when
Miss Nightingale and her band of nurses went to the
Crimea; and from then till this moment, when we have
reduced it to a science, nursing the sick and poor has
been essentially women’s work, and into the cause has been
poured lavishly the love, tenderness, and sympathy of
thousands and thousands of the best of English women.
When we think of what the life of a nurse means—of the
absolute self-abnegation, the courage, the devotion, the
patience, and the high sense of duty which it necessitates,
one realises the high ideal all these women have set
before them, and to which they have attained. In
no profession are these qualities so indispensable, and in
no other are the tests so severe or the strain so constant.
8 Ladies at Work.

 

Miss Lonsdale’s paper on work among the poor deals
with one of the most interesting schemes in which
women can occupy themselves. It is a part of women’s
work which needs further development, and one in
which women of education, refinement, and good sense
can exercise great influence, for it is one which
has hitherto been left to people of a very little better
class than those among whom they work. It is a
troublesome work, not always sympathetic, tiring, and
very disheartening, and the difficulty in providing the
best kind of worker lies in the fact that the pay is so
miserably small. Of unpaid assistance there is always an
abundance ; but it is spasmodic and uncertain, and there-
fore of much less value. The formation of a fund to
supplement the wages of paid workers among the poor
would be of unmixed advantage, for it would enable
clergymen, in paying a higher salary, to procure the
services of those qualified to undertake the duties,
instead of being obliged, as they now often are, to
accept any one who is willing to take small wages
to eke out a living, and is considered good enough
to work among the poor. If we consider who the
woman should be to work among the poor, and
think of the importance of physical strength, high
example, courage, and decision of character which she
should possess, and contrast her with those we are
often obliged to content ourselves with, we realise how
imperfectly the work must be done. It is not with any
desire to decry the wonderful work that has been done
Introduction. 9

 

and is done by unpaid workers among the poor ; but, as
I have before indicated, it is among those who are
necessarily required to supplement voluntary assistance
that a change is required. The pressure on some
fields of women’s work would be largely removed were it
possible for those who are obliged to take up less
congenial occupations to have this particular branch
better paid and organised. It would be impossible
in any review of the accompanying volume to overlook
Miss Coleridge's paper on, perhaps, the most useful
and most overworked of all women, namely, the
person she aptly names, ‘the woman of all work’; for
she is the best example of the change that has come
over the position of women during the last fifty
years, as showing the extraordinary and multifarious
occupations in which women can occupy themselves who
are not obliged to earn their living. Her household
must be well ordered, her children educated, and in no
way are these two most important duties to be neg-
lected ; yet on this is superadded a variety of occupa-
tions, all requiring energy, care, skill, tact, and physical
strength. Women of any position or of any known
capacity in England have all the hours of their day
mapped out for them with occupations very likely trivial
in comparison with those of men, but all requiring
capacity and power of organisation. In many ways
the life of a very busy woman is much more trying and
difficult than that of a woman who has a profession with its
distinct work, which allows of no excursions beyond its
10 Ladies at Work.

 

limits. She has to deal with many interests, to
consider many people’s feelings and inclinations, to
control where necessary, to find able coadjutors, and
above all to steer clear of the greatest of female
weaknesses—that of trying to do everything herself
instead of subdividing her work, and finding capable
people to carry it out.

One cannot help feeling, on closing this volume, full of
interest as it is for the present, and showing the increased
scope of women’s work in the future, a feeling of regret
that the earnings of women are small, and that all the
enthusiasm and honest effort made by them is so in-
adequately remunerated. The opposition which in their
earlier days, added to the difficulty of their training and
education, have disappeared in the face of the distinct
capacity they have shown ; but the fact must be faced and
will always remain, that women can never earn the same
wages as men, and, this being the case, it is the more to
their credit that they have never ceased to endeavour to
keep up the standard of excellence at which they aimed.
It isin the care and conscientiousness with which girls
work that we find the secret of women’s success:
emulation, opposition, even failure adds to the determina-
tion with which a girl conquers the difficulties in her
education, and, having developed the qualities which
ensure success, she carries them out into the graver work
of her life. The training and keen competition of her life
ministers to her enthusiasm and,détermination to achieve
the ideals she has set before her, and which she
Lntroduction. II

 

strives to attain. Less enthusiasm, less self-devotion,
would have ensured a certain amount of proficiency ; but
the real secret of the success of women in what work they
undertake lies in the fact that their aims are higher, their
recognition of defeat more tardy; and one cannot but
think that prophecies of failure have stirred them to
greater efforts. One important fact has assisted women
_ materially in their strife, namely, that their health has
stood the strain of pressure of work in an unexpected
manner. The false prophets who foretold the complete
destruction of the female constitution from overwork
have been confounded, and though there are cases where
women have broken down, the undoubted fact remains
that their physical strength has not really suffered to any
very great degree. This is one of the most important
and cheering elements in the question, and on it the
successful work done by them has in a great measure
depended. It is an aspect of the question no woman
should ever lose sight of if they are to maintain
the position they have won, and they should never
fail to listen to the first warning that their strength is
being overdrawn. Exercise and open air are as much
a necessity as food and clothing if women are to keep
their health and bring the vigour health alone gives to
bear on their work. Fortunately, what with gymnasiums,
etc., there are plenty of means at a woman’s command
by which they can have the exercise which the sedentary
nature of their occupations makes most imperative ; and
as the strain increases and the pressure of competition
12 Ladies at Work.

 

waxes more severe, itis well for women not to neglect so
obvious a precaution. To be healthy is to be happy,
wise, and fit for the struggle life is to us all; and
women will enormously add to their powers of work by
keeping themselves strong.

‘Remarkable as women's progress has been in the last
few years, there is still much more to be achieved and
overcome to fit her to take her place in the foremost ranks
with those of the other sex. We see what she has
accomplished, handicapped as she has been, and therefore
shall not rest satisfied without a distinct advance ; for
though women have solved many disputed questions, and
disproyed many fallacies, they have still to establish their
position on foundations which shall remain unshaken. On
two points they meet men at a disadvantage, in their
training and their physical strength. The modern system
of education is abolishing the former; but the latter is
unalterable, and it is on that account that, in choosing
their vocation, women should endeavour to avoid those
professions where physical strength is the sme gud non.
The sterner professions of the army and navy are fortu-
nately debarred ; but there are others where success must
always remain with those who have the broadest chests
and the greatest muscle. Endurance, capacity, courage, |
perseverance, women have proved they possess, and it
is in the professions where such qualities tell that they
should seek their laurels. They have a fair field |
and where they show capacity. the recognition is

generous and unequivocal. The field. of enterprise is
Introduction. 13

 

wide enough to satisfy most ambitions, and it is gettirig
broader every year, and though pecuniarily a woman’s
position is hard, even that shows signs of improve-
ment. It is not, however, from the latter point of view,
important as it is to many thousands of women, that we
must view the question, but from the higher one of what
has been done and what still remains to be accomplished.
To the majority of women the profession ordained by
Nature will be the one open to them, and in no other
is their influence more potent or wide-spreading ; but
every woman cannot be a wife and mother, and it is to
such women that all the questions with which this volume
deals are so important. Some women from necessity,
others from the mere dread of mental stagnation, must
work, and it is on these that the responsibility of main-
taining the position of women will rest. With the high
ideals and lofty aims of their predecessors they have an
example set them which they must follow, and it is only
by cherishing such ideals that they will be able, even in
uncongenial surroundings and occupations, to maintain the

position they have won.

Mary JEuNE.
14 Ladies at Work.

 

COLLEGES FOR WOMEN.

BY E, WORDSWORTH.

 

I HAVE been asked to write a few pages on the subject of
Ladies’ Colleges, and I do this with some reluctance, because
I am a believer in the proverb that ‘Lookers on see most of the
game. Even the great Duke found it difficult to give an
account of the battle of Waterloo. How much more must this
be the case with humble persons like ourselves who are only
subalterns in a movement, of which the magnitude can scarcely
as yet be accurately measured !

I must own at the outset that, like Mrs. Malaprop, ‘I began
with a little aversion!’ In my younger days, if I had been told
at a party that a young lady belonged to a Ladies’ College, I
should have preferred occupying the stiffest of upright chairs in
a thorough draught, to sitting by her on the most comfortable
of sofas. And even now, I heartily wish we weré in a state of
society where no such things were needed. My ideal woman is
always graceful and beautiful, better with her hands than her
head, but best of all with her heart. She has many admirers,
but is constant to one, whom she marries at five-and-twenty.
She has at least five children, all healthy and good like herself.
She can cook and sew, and dance and sing—she is very likely
accomplished and well informed. She is not a bore, because
she has never overworked her brain, and is really interested in
all she knows. She has an income, if a lady, of from £500 to
41000 a year; if a poor woman, of from 20s. to 30s. a week.
Colleges for Women. 15

 

She is a grandmother at sixty, and sings ‘John Anderson my Jo’
at seventy-five! I need hardly say that my pattern woman is
religious, but not at all controversial. She cannot argue, but she
lives.

Such is:my own, and I fancy many other person’s ideal.
Meanwhile what are the facts? Our modern young woman
finds herself in a very unpatriarchal state of society. First of
all, she may very likely live up to and beyond five-and-twenty
or even thirty without having any matrimonial chances at all.
Secondly, she is (happily) far harder to please than her great
grandmother. Pepys in his ‘ Diary’ speaks of getting a husband
for his sister because she is growing old and ugly, very much in
the way we should talk now of getting a new umbrella because
the winter was coming. The average person of either sex—I
am speaking now of the educated classes—is far more fastidious,
far more inclined to insist on some approach to ‘ elective affinity ’
in marriage than was formerly the case. And the comparative
lateness of marriage adds to the difficulty. People in former
days hardly knew they had got ‘characters’ any more than many
of the poor do at this day. Now, we take great interest in our
own characters ; have them told by our handwriting, or go to
some one to have our ‘bumps’ felt. A sense of incongruity or
incompatibility is a definite, recognised evil in marriage. Any
woman cannot put up with any man, and vice versd, save perhaps
when they have the misfortune to be Royal personages. People
still marry for Jove, at least as much, if not more than they did,
but it may be doubted if love is quite so blind as he used to
be. Perhaps on that account he may be all the more constant!

The money difficulty, again, is ever increasing, Not only
because of the much talked-of overcrowding, but, as has often
been said before, because of our luxurious habits. Never was
celibacy so caressed and choyéas at present! Not only single
men, but single women, have their lives made a great deal too
16 Ladies at Work.

 

comfortable. Everywhere one sees little suites of apartments
and clubs springing up, nice little sets of tea-things and cozy
contrivances, for making a single, or at least a dual life as easy
and self-indulgent as possible. Even the great increase of
hansom cabs in London is, I think, a sign of the times. There
is the large Continental hotel or pension, where, with a very
modest income, one can be very comfortable if one chooses to
live exclusively by and for oneself. Our high civilization does
not smile upon family life. Much as children are petted and
‘made of, yet Paterfamilias, with band boxes and perambulators
on the brain, and Materfamilias, with her basket of sandwiches
and two squalling infants at her side, is a never-failing butt for
the comic artist. That phrase so often heard now, ‘my people,’
seems to tell a story in itself. One can never quite help feeling
that there is a faint ring of false shame about it. Those to
whom it is used are supposed to care little for the individuals
whom it represents by a conveniently vague noun of multitude.
It means something very different from the same phrase on the
lips of Ruth.

Meanwhile, how many young women grow, or rather fade, into
middle life without ever having fully developed what was in
them! What half melancholy, half ludicrous tales ladies’ doctors
could tell us of hysteria, melancholia, all the long train of evils
which come from ‘fulness of bread and emptiness of employment !’
What provincial town is without some humiliating story of a
foolish woman setting her unoccupied affections on some member
of the cathedral, collegiate, or parochial staff, and possibly
pursuing him with an infatuation which, if told in fiction, would
hardly be believed? How many large families of daughters seem
ovetrunning one another in middle class households! How
petty are the interests by which many women’s lives are
bounded! That clever little story, the Autobiography of a
Slander, scarcely exaggerates the mischievous stupidity of the
Colleges for Women. 17

 

average tea-table talk of many circles, lay and clerical. Again
and again the question meets us, ‘What are we to do with our
young women ?’

Do not suppose that I am going to reply, as one who offers a
panacea for all evils, ‘Send them to Ladies’ Colleges.’ Far from
it. There are a great many girls for whom the life would be
absolutely unsuitable. But among the alleviations to the
present ‘congested’ state of things, I do honestly think Ladies’
Colleges may not unfairly be reckoned as holding an important
place, not only as finding occupation for unmarried women, but
as affording—may one dare to say it?—excellent training for
future wives and mothers. Why should stupidity or ignorance
be taken as a qualification for married life, as some people seem
to think? Even Thackeray evidently felt, when writing the
last pages of Vanity Fair, that William Dobbin would be con-
siderably bored by Amelia; and speaking for myself (though I
know it is comparing small things with great), from the
Pinkertonian point of view, I should “ke to have had Becky
Sharp for a student! Very likely something might have been
made of her if she had been taken in time, and her future
husband might have reaped the advantage.

But to return. There are, it seems, three classes whom
Ladies’ Colleges might benefit.

First, of course, the dorm scholars; women or girls who may
be found in schoolrooms, peering, like our old friend Ethel May,
into their brother’s books, trying their hands at Latin or Greek
—or it may be at mathematics or science, picking .up crumbs
from beneath the tables of their masculine belongings, and
blushing beautifully whenever detected. It is rather hard to
grudge these women what is often lavished on men without a
third of their abilities, or a tenth part. of their enthusiasm,
especially as they are very frequently women who would be
hard to provide for satisfactorily in married life,
18 Ladies at Work.

 

A second class is that of young girls of somewhat more than
average, or with good average ability, whose home does not
seem to offer adequate employment for them. In some ways a
Ladies’ College is more needed for them than for those mentioned
above. A very clever woman has pronounced tastes, and can
generally set herself to work, though she is a great gainer by
being properly taught ; but the rank and file will probably fall
into idleness when they are left to be their own, or very nearly
their own mistresses; and this is perhaps especially the case
with girls who live more or less ‘in society,’ and who would very
probably drift into a course of balls and tennis matches, for lack
of having ever been taught habits of application, and to love
work for its own sake. Any one who passes a few weeks at a
fashionable watering-place will need no further comment on this
text! While, on the other hand, experience has shown us that
some of the best and most business-like charitable work of the
day is being done by women* who have been trained at Oxford
or Cambridge.

I may add here, that so far as our experience goes, some
of the best friendships are formed between a brilliant and
original nature on one side, and a somewhat matter-of-fact,
plodding, but unselfish character on the other; each does the
other good; the clever one becomes less self-conscious and
eccentric, the more ordinary nature is raised and stimulated, and
has a higher ideal given her of life and work,

A third class consists of women of perhaps thirty years of
age, more or less, whose youth has denied them the oppor-
tunities of training and culture which they are now thankful to
embrace. Women of this type are usually in earnest, and may
gain very much from seeing something of organised and duly
subordinated work. They understand taking care of their own

* May’'l instance the ‘Women’s University Settlement’ at Southwark?
Other instances might be drawn from missfonary or colonial life.
Colleges for Women. 19

 

health, and utilising and economising their time, and are
brightened up by the high spirits of the younger students, to
whom they, in their turn, may sometimes be extremely useful
as advisers or sympathisers.

In many cases these women find themselves thrown on their
own resources at the breaking up of their homes, and discover
the need of some definite training before they can undertake
educational or literary work. It would be well, however, if parents,
whose daughters were likely to have to earn their bread, faced
the fact defore the home was broken up. A girl of nineteen or
twenty is a far more plastic creature than she will be ten years
later ; she has less to unlearn, even physically it is an advantage
to her to begin early. Little provincialisms of accent or
manner get insensibly corrected, shyness is less of a burden, the
eye anid ear lend themselves more readily to the influences of
culture, the power of self-adaptation and assimilation is far
greater, and blunders are sooner got over.

From the money point of view, there can be no doubt that
the training of a College or Hallis advantageous. Directly, it is
obviously so for intending High School mistresses ; but besides
that, it acts as a kind of introduction to the educational world.
A tutor is interested in a promising pupil (and I may here say
that I have rarely seen instances of kindlier interest than some
Oxford tutors, very busy men, have taken in their lady-students),
and does his best to‘push her on, perhaps educationally, pethaps
by getting her literary occupation. One High School teacher
recommends another to a head-mistress, or the Principal of the
Hall or College has perhaps an opportunity of doing so. Personal
knowledge is worth many certificates, and I may add that, when
all is said and done, the fact of being ‘a lady,’ or a good imita-
tion of one, goes at least as far as the most exhaustive
knowledge of the vagaries of tornus, or the most thorough
familiarity with ‘Grimm’s Law.’
20 Ladies at Work.

 

Another advantage offered by Ladies’ Colleges is peculiarly
important in these days when classes are so much less definitely
distinguished than formerly. Who has not known the nice
young gentlemanly curate with the hopelessly vulgar wife ?
They belong by birth to the same class, but one has had an
education and the other has not. In old days a ‘real lady’ was
educated by the very atmosphere she habitually breathed. She
was taught by the walls of her room, the books that lay about,
the people she met, etc. But how little of this unconscious
education can be got in many outwardly prosperous circles !

Many women go through the world without ever hearing as much
good conversation as might be picked up at any breakfast table
_ on a week’s visit at some privileged house, that ‘heart affluence
in discursive talk,’ of which Tennyson speaks in ‘In Memoriam’ ;
and in so doing they lose a good deal more than a mere intellec-
tual luxury, and should they marry future judges, bishops,
physicians, M.P.’s, or other public men, society suffers very much
by their loss.

A Hall or College offers, indeed, a very poor substitute for the
best home-made article ; but still there are generally two or three
cultivated and clever students, or possibly a lady ‘coach’ or
‘tutor,’ who possesses the gift of rousing and stimulating others.
I have heard from time to time really very respectable talk
among young women and girls, and can imagine it would have
been better still in my absence. Again, the mixture of classes
is very useful. The lady of old family and the daughter of a
business or professional man do one another good, ideas are
exchanged, points of view are shifted, theological, political, or
social questions are presented in a new light, sympathies are
widened, misunderstandings are corrected, and a larger charity
and a wiser judgment is the result. Liberals find there is some
good in Conservatives ; Church people discover that even Non-
conformists are not utterly devoid of faith or principle.
Colleges for Women. 21

 

And this leads me to mention another distinct gain—what is
popularly known as ‘finding one’s level.’ The figure is very
familiar to most of us of the ‘clever girl of the family,’ brought
by her admiring parents, who gently hint in lowered tones that
this time we have really secured a prodigy, and may consider
ourselves fortunate in the selection which was made of her future
place of education. As a tule she is conceited (or at least it is
much to her credit if she be not so) at first. By the end of her
first term she is thoroughly disliked; in her second she is
miserable ; in her third some of the nicer girls are sorry for her
and make friends ; in her fourth people begin to like her ; in her
fifth she really distinguishes herself, after which time a reaction
sets in, and the rest of her career, culminating in a First Class, is all
that could be wished ; but she never is gzi¢e so conceited again.

This word ‘ conceited’ at once lands us in the enemy’s country,
and suggests to us one or two of the probable objections to Halls
and Colleges for Women.

‘They’ll none of them ever be able to talk to a Guardsman,’
I was amused to hear was once remarked in an early stage of
the movement.

‘If they can’t, we may reply, ‘there are plenty of other girls
who will be delighted to do so. But I think some Guardsmen
might like for a change to have a young lady of this type next
them ata dinner-party. They might never discover how she
had been spending her time ; and yet they might find her very
good company.

Again, on the principle so well expressed by the proverb, ‘A
man is what a woman makes him,’ may we not say that it is just
as well for men that they should sometimes come across women
who have a high and independent moral and intellectual standard
of their own? The stronger sex, strong as it is, cannot afford to
dispense with the knowledge that women who are best worth
-pleasing will not tolerate any defalcation from that standard ;
22 . Ladies at Work.

 

and some of us at least have known instances of women, young,
attractive, and well-born, whose influence has been splendidly
and fearlessly used in the good cause.

But that word ‘ conceit!’ Are girls made more conceited by
going to Oxford or Cambridge? To be quite honest, I should
say the danger was not so much of conceit as of being
absorbed in new pursuits and new friendships to the temporary
exclusion of old ones. This is an evil that will always have to
be carefully guarded against ; it is almost inseparable from any
mode of life in which a person of either sex is usefully and happily
employed away from home. But one of two things happens.
Either a girl settles down happily again at home (with a superadded
desire to make herself useful, and more power of doing it than
formerly), or if she cannot afford to live at home, or is strongly
drawn to the vocation (say) of a teacher for its own sake, it is
happy for her that the severance has been so gently and
gradually made, and that she feels some enthusiasm for her
work, instead of saying, in an injured tone, ‘I suppose I must
teach,’

Conceit is very often cured by friction with others, and often
also by the survey of the wide extent of the field of knowledge.
Here again the danger is perhaps of an opposite kind ; a despair
seems to come over the original worker when confronted with the
masterpieces of literature or science. Everything seems done
already, and better done than he could do it! But a genuine
gift thrives in the atmosphere which kills off less sturdy ones,
The trophies of Marathon do not suffer Themistocles to sleep.
A great masterpiece is a stimulus to some, a narcotic to others.
In either case it does good to society. And I do not believe a
genuine Themistocles has ever been killed off by the previous
existence of any Miltiades.

Here we may notice another favourite objection. ‘You teach
girls Latin and Greek, and you introduce them to all the
Colleges for Women. 23

 

abominations of classical literature.’ Experience has taught us
that the real danger, so far as it goes, is on the modern and not
the ancient side. The language of Zola is the passport to at
least as many impurities as the language of Plato, and to make
a fuss about the classics, while for a few francs, or their equiva-
lents, one can purchase not only French novels, but some
English ones, which, despite their lack of refinement, certainly
do not show much acquaintance with Greek or Roman literature,
is to strain at a gnat and swallowa camel. Of all the difficulties
raised about the Higher Education of Women, this is the one at
which those who see the thing in actual working find it most
difficult to repress a smile.

How many women read (say) the Confessions of Rousseau (I
certainly never have) because they know French, or Caroline
dramatists, or even some Victorian ‘shilling shockers,’ because
they know English—if ‘the tongue which Shakspere spake’. can
be said to be that in which the writers of these nauseous works
express themselves? Then why must we be supposed to lose
delicacy and discrimination oz/y when we come in contact with
the dead languages? Because we read Homer, Virgil, or
Sophocles, is it necessary that we should read all Aristophanes,
all Lucretius, all Catullus, or even all Tacitus? If we go to stay
‘in Grosvenor Square or Kensington, does it follow that we can
find our way about in Whitechapel or Billingsgate ? For my own
part, I believe that a judicious classical training is the very best
a young person of either sex can have; not only intellectually,
but religiously. No one can apprehend what Christianity has
done for the world, till he sees what the world was like before’
Christianity, both in what human thought could, and what it
could not do.

This suggests another objection: ‘Don’t you find the “atmo-
sphere,” “training,” “ education,” or whatever else it may be
called, shakes their faith?’ Yes, perhaps it does—for a time ; but
24 Ladies at Work.

 

shaking does not mean upsetting. Some of us may have felt
our faith a good deal ‘shaken’ when we first read Butler's
Analogy, just as corn is shaken in a sieve. There is a good kind
of shaking and a bad kind of shaking ; and my contention is that
the sifting which advanced education cannot fail to bring about
is really very profitable in the long run ; it clears and strengthens
our faith. How much better it is to have our difficulties sifted
and cleared up than to go on not knowing the chaff from the
grain, and always having misgivings that the grain may turn out
to be but chaff after all!

I may be allowed to add here an earnest hope that as time
goes on religious and theological study will be more definitely
recognised as parts of education; for although our difficulties
are partly met by University sermons and occasional lectures and
addresses, yet it must be owned that there is still very much to
be done in this department.

The majority of women are, however, and let us hope they will
always continue to be, instinctively religious. They feel—perhaps
without owning it to themselves—that in religion, and religion
only, they can find that balance and self-control which highly-
stimulated and sensitive natures can least of all afford to dispense
with. It is evident, too, that the very absence of family ties and
home duties must be compensated for by some power which
exerts upon a larger scale the same influence and gives scope for
the same exercise of the affections as those ties and duties
formerly did ; and it is no less obvious that the Church is the
only body capable of so doing. Even when home ties exist, we
cannot afford to dispense with the higher life ; much more is this
the case when there is no natural bond of union, and an artificial
membership of a conventional society has to be substituted for
the life of home. But, again, what is to be done? What
mockery it is to talk of ‘home life’ for many young women
nowadays, when the choice practically lies between starvation, a
Colleges for Women. 25

 

mariage de convenance (or it may be a lot even more degrading),
and doing something for oneself? And how providentially has
it been ordered that, in an age of so much inevitable disintegra-
tion of the family life, the Church should step in and offer to
these and other homeless ones—young men in the Colonies, for
instance—the substance of which all earthly homes are but
shadows! Such might echo the words—

‘Fathers may leave us or forsake,

God’s foundlings then are we;
Mother on child no pity take,
But we shall still have Thee.

‘We may look home, and seek in vain
A fond fraternal heart ;

But Christ has given His promise plain
To do a Brother’s part.’

One other topic must be touched on, the question of Health.

Now I am going to be quite honest over this, and to say that
I am fully aware that some girls do knock up. Among ourselves
we have a current phrase which speaks of a particular age as
‘silly seventeen.’ And seventeen is generally, we find, very
silly. It sits in wet boots, has an insane passion for draughts,
thinks it interesting and refined to give up animal food, or
indulges in the strongest tea (if procurable) at the most un-
seasonable hours, glories in working till 2 A.M., and in fact in
doing everything that mothers, maiden aunts, and governesses
have hitherto been able to prevent. Were it not that some girls
are much older, and some much younger than their years, we
should make a hard-and-fast rule never to admit students till
at least eighteen years of age, and even as a general rule should
be disposed to prefer nineteen.

Again, there are a good many well-meaning people who seem
to think cleverness can be produced like sausages by some
infallible mechanical process, And there are very many plodding
26 Ladies at Work.

 

girls who think if they only work nine hours a day they will be
sure to distinguish themselves in the end. Now experience
shows that six hours (including lectures) are quite enough for
any one to work daily. As a rule a clever girl will easily get
on on this allowance. Every hour after that counts in most cases
for loss and not for gain. It is one of the great misfortunes of
the age that hardly any one seems to see no amount of rubbing
will make tin into silver. Nothing makes people of everyday
abilities more surely into bores than overmuch plodding, and we
know it may be added to our cost that even the best silver gets
thin and worn out in time if subjected to too much friction.

On the other hand, we could point to many cases where
regular, moderate, and congenial study has had the best possible
effects. For one woman who breaks down from over work, how
many are there who fret themselves into fancied illnesses? Here,
again, Nature should be our guide. Ifa girl loves study, let her
have it; if she does not, give her something practical to do.
There is a ‘vocation’ for a student’s or a teacher’s life as distinct
as that for an artist’s, a physician’s, a nurse’s, or a missionary’s.
Scores of girls who have no real aptitude are forced into the
teaching-market now, or driven through a course of lectures and
examinations ; they often crowd out those who have real gifts
and add portentously to the sum of human dulness. Their
grammar is faultless, their subjects all properly got up, they
know all about Oxford and Cambridge locals, sections, time-
tables, but they cannot kindle a spark of enthusiasm, and even
when reading the lines—

‘Erquickung hast Du nicht gewonnen
Wenn sie Dir nicht aus eigner Seele quillt,’

probably they only notice that substantives ending in wg are
as a tule feminine, and that eigner is to be taken with Dir, and
not with sie.

Should one word be added about Dress and Manners? I think
Colleges for Women. 27

2
we are improving here. We are not so defiant and self-conscious
as we used to be. There is not somuch of the fenum habet in
cornu about us ; in fact, the wisps of hay are getting so small as
to be almost invisible. Experience shows us that no woman who
has to live with her fellow-creatures can afford to ‘make a figure
of herself,’ and that whereas not one person in five hundred is
qualified to sit in judgment on our attainments, every one is a
critic of neat dressing, courteous, and modest manners, and that
teal high breeding which can only spring from the heart.
Mothers, it is found, do not like their little girls to be taught by
gawky, untidy, slovenly women. A lady can keep a class in
order where a merely well-crammed teacher can do nothing.
And it may be added that in a community of women living
together, without family ties, good manners are the very salt of
life. With regard to Oxford and Cambridge, I may add here
that we have on the whole found that it does rather good than
harm for students to have brothers ‘up’ at the same time with
themselves. As Goldsmith said long ago, ‘The two sexes seem
placed as spies upon each other, and are furnished with different
abilities adapted for mutual inspection, and a sense of possible
masculine criticism is by no means an unwholesome element in
a girl’s consciousness, Otherwise why do we not usually have
some families all boys, and others all girls?

I cannot refrain from adding in conclusion what I really
consider to be the whole truth of the matter in a nutshell. It
could easily be reduced to a series of syllogisms.

There are a good many women in England with spare time
and faculties.

God must have meant them for something.

How are we to find out what He meant them for ?

Clearly by (a) educating them, and thus giving them a chance
to develop their natural gifts, whether to be used in their own
homes or elsewhere.
28 Ladies at Work.

 

And (8) by training them to work in concert with others,
especially perhaps with a view to some of the great charitable
movements of the day.

IT may also add that no system of education is adequate which
does not constantly keep in view the end which Bacon put before
us long ago: ‘ The glory of the Creator, and the relief of man’s
estate.’

‘Self-improvement’ for selfs sake is foredoomed to disap-
pointment. On the other hand, the cultivation of talents,
involving in some cases the pursuit of study as a means toa
higher end, is surely not a matter of choice—a thing to be done
or left alone as we please, but obedience to an imperative call
from our Maker, which we cannot disregard, and which must
affect in the long run, not only our well-being, but that of others
known and unknown, from whom we cannot disconnect ourselves,
‘for we are members one of another.’
 

JOURNALISM.

BY FANNY L. GREEN,

 

THE newspaper press has been called ‘the grave of genius,’ but
there is no profession that demands more varied talent of its
votaries from the generals of the craft—the editors—to the
humble infantry who perform what is thought, by outsiders, to
be the mere mechanical work of reporting.

A woman whose idea in ‘taking up journalism’ is to provide
herself with an easy, lucrative and unexacting career, had better
leave it alone. It is as arduous and engrossing a pursuit as
any of the recognised ‘learned professions, law, medicine, and
divinity. But it is one of the most fascinating of callings, and at
present there are but few women who have gained a substantial
footing in it.

The title of ‘journalist,’ like the allied term ‘author,’ is often
used by budding aspirants who have no real claim to it, but the
word legitimately covers a variety of véles. The Institute of
Journalists in its rules allows a wide scope to the term. ‘A
journalist,’ it says, ‘must be professionally and habitually engaged
as editor of a journal; or upon the staff of a journal in the
capacity of leader-writer, writer of special articles, artist, special
correspondent, literary manager, assistant editor, sub-editor, or
reporter; or in supplying journals with articles, illustrations,
correspondence or reports.’

Into all these departments women have found their way, but
there is still room for them, especially for those of their number
30 Ladies at Work.

 

who take as their chosen particular field social and political
questions of special interest to their own sex.

It is only of late years that the desirability of a special
training for journalists has been recognised, and there are many
people still, who think that pen, ink and paper, combined with
natural talent, are a sufficient stock in trade for the embryo
newspaper writer. The barrister must have acquired the legal
knowledge sufficient for his ‘call,’ the solicitor have passed his
examinations, the doctor have walked his hospitals, the clergy-
man have read for ordination ; but the men who control the
world’s press stand in no need of special training. This is the
popular opinion, and though I think it is an erroneous one, I
should personally be very sorry if the examination principle were
to invade journalism.

As a matter of fact, successful journalists do as a rule get a
special training. They begin on the lower rungs of the ladder
and work up to the top. The refusal of editors to take
unsuitable ‘ stuff, and the knowledge of men and affairs which
comes from being—even in a humble capacity—‘in the swim,’
joined to their own talent and business habit of mind, are the
means by which they climb. In the more literary part of
journalism, such as leader-writing, eminence in the field of letters,
and scientific or legal distinction accompanied by facility of
expression, are often, indeed, a sufficient passport to the press for
their fortunate possessors. But leader-writers form but a very
small portion of the great army of pressmen.

The usual traditional course, then, for a woman who wants to
be a journalist is to content herself at first with ‘the day of
small things, and gradually fit herself by the experience that
comes from effort and failure for more important work.

Many men gain a footing on the press as shorthand reporters,
but comparatively few papers have women reporters on their
salaried staff. The Women’s Herald, which at its starting claimed
F ournalism. at

 

to be the only paper ‘conducted, written and published by women,’
in 1891 made an unsuccessful application for the admission of one
of its staff to the Reporters’ Gallery of the House of Commons.
This proceeding occasioned considerable public interest, but
while there is so little room in the Gallery for men who have
already won their place, women must be content to comment on
political affairs from ‘Outside the Gallery,’ unless they can get
admission—as women, not as reporters—to the Ladies’ Gallery.

Unattached reporters are usually known as ‘liners, though
‘lining’ strictly speaking is manifold ‘paragraphing, or reporting
supplied to several papers. It is from this source that the record
of inquests, fires and accidents, and the chronicling of the smaller
social functions of the day, often find their way into the papers.
The remuneration for this class of work is not excessive, varying
as it does fron a penny to twopence a line; and the woman who
makes it her mainstay is likely to degenerate into the purveyor of
the thoughtless—but none the less heartless—personal paragraphs
which are one of the worst features of ‘the New Journalism.’
No woman, however, need despise legitimate lining in view of
the many interesting events which pass every day unchronicled.
It is on record that the famous war correspondent of the Daily
News, Mr. Forbes, once in his early days received ninepence for
a paragraph of news he contributed to its columns.

Careful, accurate and intelligent verbatim reporting is not a
bad introduction to a department of journalism in which women
are making their mark—that of descriptive writing. At their
head is Mrs, Crawford, ‘the queen of journalists, whose brilliant:
contributions to Zruthk and the Daily News—of which she is the
special Paris correspondent—are better known than the chronicle
and exposition of French politics she at one time contributed
to the Weekly Dispatch. Wiarriet Martineau’s ‘Letters from
Ireland’ on the social and political condition of that country
were a contribution to this field, and Miss Power Cobbe, Miss
ag Ladies at Work.

 

Faithfull and Miss Billington, have all done good work in this
direction.

As time goes on, and the newspaper grows more and more to
aim at being a faithful reflection of the whole life of the nation,
it is probable that descriptive writing will to a large extent
absorb the department of reporting. The crisp and vigorous
paragraph which gives the picturesque side of an occurrence, the
main thread of a speech, already finds more readers than any
accurate, detailed, but bald report. The great British public
likes its meat spiced.

Here, then, is a field in which women may work with profit to
themselves and advantage to the community, and in it, if they are
wise and modest, they will seek to be not the rivals but the
collaborateurs of men. At their hands they will in the majority
of cases meet with perfect fairness, warm appreciation and
generous help.

Leader-writing is one of the most influential and highly paid
branches of newspaper work, but up to the present women have
had but very small share in it. Probably there are very few of
their number who possess the thorough training in history,
philosophy, economics and politics, the mature judgment, and
the power of clear, concise and forcible expression that made
Harriet Martineau’s work in this direction so valuable and
successful. Mr. Hunt said of the leaders she wrote for the Daily
News under his editorship: ‘They are read in the clubs; they
precede the debates and modify the Z7zmes. For him and his
successor, Mr. Weir—the ‘ master of the library of Europe ’—this
able Zitterateur wrote about sixteen hundred leaders. Their
subjects ‘cover the whole field of national and political action,
philanthropic effort and agricultural statistics’ Jewish, Irish
and American subjects, anti-slavery, economical and West
Indian interests, Indian and educational reform, foreign politics,
reviews of important books, were all dealt with by her in the
F ournalism. 33

 

leading columns of the Daily News from her home in the Lake
District, ‘several hundred miles out of the way of the latest
intelligence” Miss Power Cobbe has written leaders for the Echo,
and Miss Orme has performed the same service for the Weekly
Dispatch. Weader-writing however, from the nature of things,
cannot be entrusted to any one whose opinion does not carry
weight with it. The leader-writer is in no sense a tyro in letters.

Women with a strong critical faculty, suitable training and a
certain facility of expression, have several departments of
criticism open to them. If they are specialists, like Miss
Amelia B. Edwards, the Egyptologist, they will find the columns
of the papers specially devoted to criticism, such as the A ¢heneum,
open to them. If human foibles are their subject matter, they
may lash society from the pages of the Saturday Review, as
Mrs. Lynn Lynton did in her amusing sketches, ‘ The Girl of the
Period.’ If art is their mistress, they may be art critics like
Lady Colin Campbell, or they may combine criticism with de-
scription in the pages of the art magazines and reviews. Nor are
the ranks of musical and dramatic criticism closed against women.
Miscellaneous book-reviewing sometimes also falls to their lot,
but this is a path that leads to neither fame nor wealth.

Sub-editing has been rather condescendingly declared to be a
very suitable pursuit for women, because ‘to a certain extent this
is mere easy mechanism and quiet work,’ but it demands judg-
ment, a sense of proportion, and a business ability and training
which are rather rare among women at present.

Perhaps more women have sat in the editorial chair. Madame
Adam, of the Mouvelle Revue, is the most distinguished
woman-editor now living. George Eliot, when she was at the
head of the Westminster Review called herself ‘a miserable
editor,’ but no one who examines the volumes of the review that
appeared under her editorship will echo that opinion. The ideal
editor has all the literary qualities of a successful writer,

D
34. . Ladwes at Work.

 

together with a fineness of tact and knowledge of men and
things that would bring him to the front in any profession.

‘The New Journalism’ has introduced the practice of inter-
viewihg—an effective mode of advertisement which has its
enthusiastic upholders and its no less vigorous depreciators. It
undoubtedly makes pleasant reading, afd where confidence is
not violated, and a depraved taste for personal puerilities
pandered to, it would seem to be, on the whole, an unobjectionable
way of giving information. A writer in the Scots Observer, how-
ever, has made the system the theme for an indictment of women
journalists which is hardly borne out by facts. He admits that
women are the best interviewers, and goes on to say that this
success is‘due to the unscrupulousness of their methods. ‘The
woman interviewer,’ he says, ‘is determined to succeed. If her
victim is a lawyer, she will take the name of one of his clients ;
if a doctor, she will call herself a patient; if a politician, she
pretends to be the wife of his agent. In short, there is no lie ‘to
which she will not resort, and her conscience is so dead that she
boasts of her methods when they have succeeded. It is the lady
interviewers who ask their victim whether it be true that he is
applying for a divorce, and what his proof is, and which is the
stool his wife flung at him.’

‘ Miss Emily Faithfull, whose work in furthering the employment
of women in various fields has met with the recognition of a
pension from the Civil List, has taken up the cudgels on behalf
of her sex in this matter. She was frequently interviewed
during the three tours she made in America, and her report is
that the few interviewers ‘against whom: a reproachful word
must be uttered were men, not women.’ One gentleman, she
says, did:not scruple to knock at her door at a Chicago hotel,
rousing her from a peaceful slumber, and since she refused to see
him at that hour of the night, he printed an imaginary interview
with her in the: next’ day’s paper... At San Francisco another
Fournalisue. 35

 

interviewer who was shown into her sitting-room discovered that
it communicated with her bedroom; and though he was
informed that. Miss Faithfull could not possibly see him, as she
was suffering from severe neuralgic headache, he proceeded to
open the door, and say that he could put all his ‘leading
questions’ in that fashion without disturbing her. A third
journalist who was interviewing het, when she refused to give an
opinion on a particular subject, said he should have to invent one
for her. Miss Faithfull indignantly replied that she should
contradict it if he did, to which he rejoined, smilingly, ‘Ah, but
that will not matter—my statement will be a day ahead of your
denial.’

There is, then, a seamy side to interviewing ; but in America |
neatly every person of any prominence from a social, political,
or literary point of view, has submitted to be interviewed as the
readiest and most popular way of getting the public to read
what he wants it to know.

Special gifts are required for interviewing. A master of the
craft, Mr. Frank Burr, claims that ‘a man to be a successful
interviewer must have.a thorough knowledge of the world, touch
elbows with every class of society, be a careful student of human
nature, have a quick and trustworthy memory, good judgment,
good faith, and an intelligence broad enough to thoroughly grasp.
any subject he is discussing with his victim. Good corre-
spondents, he adds, ‘generally make good interviewers. Miss
Friedrichs, of the Pall Mall Gazette, is one of the best known
women interviewers. .

There is a large and increasing department of newspaper work
about which I have up to the present said little or nothing—the.
work that professes to be written by women for women, though
no inconsiderable part of it is at present done by men.. Miss Low,
of the Queen, and Lady Henry Somerset, of the Women’s Herald,
are, I believe, the only two-women who edit ‘women’s, papers.’

D2
36 Ladies at Work.

 

The Gentlewoman, the Ladies’ Pictorial, Mistress and Maid,
Woman, the Lady all have a man at their helm, though there
are women on the staff of these papers who do useful work in
paragraphing and contributing special letters and articles. The
bright and breezy letters of Mrs. Humphreys, the ‘Madge’ of
Truth, and the careful Women’s Column contributed by Miss
Faithfull to the Ladies’ Pictorial, and by Mrs. Fenwick Miller to
the Illustrated London News, are all devoted to the subjects in
which woman is supposed to have a special interest, while the
fashion article, both here and in America, is left almost wholly
in the hands of the ‘ clothes-women.’ ;

Journalism, as I have sought to show, is an art, and like all
arts it can be taught, though there is at present only one School
of Journalism in London where systematic instruction is given in
all branches of the craft. Mr. David Anderson, of the Daily
Telegraph; whose vivid picture of the Parliament of 1880—
‘Scenes in the Commons’—has met with wide appreciation,
undertakes in the course of twelve months’ practical tuition to
make any well-educated person a thoroughly trained journalist.
He has lately consented to read individually with women pupils,
and women who in sober earnest mean to be journalists will save
themselves much time and misdirected effort by availing them-
selves of his wide experience, his kindly interest, and his
unbiassed critical faculty. ‘The London School of Journalism,
founded -by him, is in the Outer Temple, and the course of study
covers paragraphs, reviewing, shorthand, interviewing, special and
war correspondence, preparing telegrams, leaders, art and
dramatic criticism, sub-leaders, sub-editing, and the writing
of stories and magazine articles.

The Institute of Journalists, to which a charter of incor-
poration was granted at the beginning of 1890, admits women to
membership on the same footing as men. Its general aims are
stated by. the President to be to make itself the organ and
Fournalism. 37

 

mouthpiece of the whole body of working journalists, to furnish
advice and assistance. to those who need it, to ascertain and
define professional customs and usages, to establish a code of
professional honour which all its members will recognise and
adopt, and to define and establish a recognised educational
standard to which journalists will conform. ; The Institute
demands of its members that they shall have attained the age
of twenty-one years, and shall before joining have been engaged
in actual practice as professional journalists for at least two
years. It is a development of the National, Association of
Journalists, which was founded in 1884, and has already done |
useful work.

With regard to the vexed question of remuneration, journalism
on the whole compares favourably with other employments open
to women. It has this great merit. The woman teacher has
longer hours and much lower pay than men who teach ; but the
woman journalist is as well paid for the work she does as if she
were aman. Unless, however, she gets to be known and does
really good work, her income will be a small one. Mrs.
Humphreys is stated to have £500 a year for the weekly letters
she contributes to Zyruth, and there are a few other women
who are highly paid; but the woman who is content to do
mediocre work in journalism, work that is distinctive neither in
style nor treatment, will not earn much,

Some journalistic work, however, is highly remunerative. At
the head of the English press is The Times. Some interesting
particulars of the salaries earned by the staff of this great paper
have been lately given by Mr. Cuthbert Hadden. None of its
leader-writers have a retainer of less than £ 1000 a year, but they
are not allowed to contribute even to magazines or quarterlies,
though they may write books. The musical critic of The Times
has a salary of £450 a year and seven shillings and sixpence for
each concert he attends. The salaries given to correspondents
38 Ladies at Work.

vary., M. de Blowitz, the! Paris correspondent, is paid £3200 a
year ; the Berlin and Vienna correspondents have £2500 each ;
the correspondents at Rome and St. Petersburg respectively have
the rent of a residence added to their fixed salary of £2000.
The lesser correspondents, who do not, on an average, wire more
than a dozen columns in the course of a year, have varying
salaries. Senor Diaz at Madrid has £1000, Herr Lax at
Brussels has 4500, and though Mr. Heinrich at Christiania has
only £250, his salary is at the rate of nearly £17 per message.

The salary of the editor of a London daily ranges from £ 1000
to £5000 a year, and a leader-writer’s retainers from £500 to
41000. The leader-writers on the Daily Telegraph have a
retainer of £800 a year, and its war correspondents a salary of
#100 a month, with all expenses, when on actual service. Mr.
Sala’s ‘Echoes,’ which are published in a syndicate of papers, are
said to bring him in £40 a week. For articles contributed to
their columns The: Times pays five guineas, the S* Fames's
Gazette three guineas, the Sfectator and the Saturday Review
three to five guineas, and the Glode a guinea.

Physical health is an important factor in successful journalism.
The journalist has often to rush from place to place, to snatch a
hurried meal when time and opportunity offer, and to postpone
sleep itself. It does not often fall to the lot of women journalists
to be sent—like Miss Bisland, of the Cosmopolitan Magazine—
round the world at fifteen minutes’ notice; but sudden and
unforeseen demands are always liable to be made on their
resources, Mrs. Crawford is said once to have left a great state
ball in the midst of a terrific storm, and since the streets were
deserted by the cabmen, to have rushed on foot, ‘in satin shoes
and delicate ball dress, to the telegraph office in order to
despatch a description of the function to London. Nor is the
way in which her account of the debate of the 2 5th of May, 1871,
and the defeat of the French Government reached England less
Fournalism. 39

 

instructive to the journalistic aspirant. By special favour she
was admitted to the front row of the large grille at Versailles,
where she sat from seven in the morning to midnight, unable to
move or take a single note. Then she returned to Paris, sat up
all night writing, and by the early mail despatched the first full
account of the defeat of the Government that was received in
England.

NotTeE.—For certain of the particulars of salaries and workers given in this
article, the Author is indebted to papers which have appeared in the Spectator
and cho, and to Mr. Dawson’s ‘ Practical Journalism.’

1
40 Ladies at Work.

 

MUSIC.

BY ETHEL M. BOYCE, A.R.A.M.

 

ON first entering a musical college one is struck by the fact
that the students seem to know and care for nothing but music.
It is their work, their pleasure, and their eternal subject of
conversation. More than this, the singers seem interested in
singing, the pianists in the pianoforte, and so on, to the exclusion
of the other branches of the art. Perhaps this is inevitable, but
it tends to make the musician rather a distressing person to live
with. Fortunately, there are exceptions, and these exceptions
often make the most satisfactory musicians in the end,

No one should enter the musical profession who is not prepared
for hard work in her student days, and, in fact, through the whole
of her professional career ; but this work is much lightened by
having a good education to start with. The enthusiastic
beginner is apt to grudge every moment which is not spent in
acquiring zechnique ; but what suppleness of voice or hand can
compensate for the larger views, the keener insight into the
subtleties of music, possessed by the really cultivated person ?

As a question of making money, doubtless those parents are
wise who wish their children to perform in public before they can
speak plain; but we go and hear them as we buy strawberries
in February, wondering the while whether the hothouse fruit is
worth the cost of its production.

I have taught for some years as a sub-professor in a large
musical institution, and have constantly heard girls say, ‘ Ah, if
. Music. 41

 

I had only begun when I was younger!’ Of course nothing can
make up for years spent in complete ignorance of music; but I
am convinced that all is not lost if music has held merely a
secondary place in the scheme of education, and that it is not
too late to enter the profession on leaving school, if a good ear
and a clear head make up for the slightness of technical
knowledge.

In thinking of music as a profession for girls, we must bear in
mind the different branches that are open to them; they may
become singers or instrumentalists, teachers or composers (the
lady conducter is at present rare), according to their different
qualifications. All girls, save the very timid, must feel the
attraction of a public life. We have all been enraptured by the
beauty of a well-trained voice, or carried away by the fire of a
great performer. But we must consider the hours of practice,
and, what is worse, the nervousness, and the struggle to get
engagements, which all but the very great must pass through
before they secure even a moderate success. A special train of
mind, almost a special bringing up, seems necessary to make a
good public performer ; but, in many instances, the quiet music
teacher, whose name is unknown, may be doing more to increase
artistic feeling, and to further the love of really good music, than
the brilliant concert artist, who, unfortunately, often plays or sings
the merest claptrap. How can the people who frequent London
“At Homes’ put up with the music they hear ?—that is, if they
ever listen to it, which seems improbable.

We know that good drawing-room songs can exist ; have not
Mr. Cowen and Miss Maud Valerie White given us ample proof
of it? Then, why should the ‘Whereas, whereas, oh, word of
pain!’ school flourish while better music hides its head, or is at
best known only to the few?

Some weeks ago I was sitting in a little country inn in
Germany, where the landlord and his brother had been delight-
42 Ladies at Work.

 

ing their guests by playing the violin, and singing songs of
Schumann and Brahms. An English lady volunteered to sing,
and sang a drawing-room ballad by a well-known lady
composer; both song and performance filled with. that ex-
aggerated sentiment which prevails at present. The Germans
listened with pained faces, and the landlord said to me, ‘Is that
English music ?’

How could I.make him understand that the song was a
drawing-room ballad, written to catch the public taste, probably
with no thought of what a musician would think of it, and that
in England it sometimes seems as if we had two kinds of music—
music for musicians, and music for the public. Surely the more
that people with educated and refined tastes join the ranks of
musicians, and protest against the rubbish which is thrust upon
them, the more will the standard of public taste be raised, and
the reproach of ‘an unmusical nation’ be finally removed
from us.

Behind the ranks of the unusually gifted, who sing and play
because they must, come those who become musicians because
they have no other special gift, or because they see in teaching
music a means of gaining a livelihood. In teaching young pupils
and careless pupils, personal popularity and influence are
invaluable qualities, often possessed by people who are them-
selves but indifferent performers. Though the work be hard, and
but too often badly paid, there is much pleasant companionship
in the life of a music teacher, if she really takes an interest
in her pupils’ characters and progress. And though a brilliant
pupil, to whom all seems easy, may win much honour for her
class, I believe the teacher feels more real gratification in the
steady progress of one who, but for her encouragement and
sympathy, would have given up in despair. Unfortunately, there
is not enough employment for the multitude of teachers, and
some are obliged to work for an absurdly small remuneration.
Must. 43

Altogether I fear music teaching is rather a precarious way of
getting a living for any girl who has not some private means to
fall back upon, unless she is fortunate enough to get into a good
school, or has influential introductions. In private teaching the
number of pupils’ varies so much from term to term that there
is an unpleasant uncertainty about the amount of the yearly
income.

As to composition, that still more uncertain livelihood, few
girls would be bold enough to say, ‘I will support myself by
composition,’ and fewer still could do it. But as an opening
for artistic enterprise it is certainly tempting, and, as yet, almost
untried ground for women, as very few have attempted serious
musical works,

I think few musicians would change their lives ; in fact, there
is a certain tone among them in speaking of ‘ people who are not
musicians,’ which conveys some pity for the rest of the world.
Indeed, it is a pleasant thought that each in her small way is
spreading the love of music, and helping others to enjoy and
understand one of the greatest pleasures we have. Let us take
a wider view of music‘than is often done, looking upon it as an
art to be delighted in, in all its branches, and of which we should
understand enough to make all interesting to us, even though we
ourselves may be only proficient in a very humble matter. As
"was said by one whose professional status was lowly, but who
had a soul above his position—I allude to the sublime Léon
Berthelini—‘ Art is art; it is not water-colour sketches nor

practising on a piano—it is a life to be lived!’
44 Ladies at Work.

 

ART.

BY FLORENCE REASON.

 

MANY are the tales in which the heroine, in difficulties of one
sort or another, turns to painting, and so finds a way out of them
in a very short time. Have we not all read stories in which the
heroine’s sweet girlish figure—she’s only seventeen—and the
rapid touches of her brush—which she wields with the skill of a
master who has been at work for forty years—fill the hero with
amazement and admiration, as he suddenly comes upon this
charming figure in the foreground of the landscape? Of course
he has the opportunity very soon of rescuing the lady and her
picture from a mad bull or a big wave, or some other natural
phenomenon ; and when the danger is over he gazes at the
picture and exclaims, ‘This is a masterpiece! From whom did
you learn this manner of painting, combining the sweetness of
Raphael with the majesty of Michael Angelo?’

To which she replies, ‘Oh! I am so glad you like my little
effort ; [ taught myself I?

Then the plot thickens ; he goes away, she loses her friends,
her money, everything, except her paints and brushes. With
these she rapidly covers a large canvas, painting some easy little
subject such as the Meeting of the Gods in Walhalla, or Joan of
Arc leading her Troops to Victory ; paints them without models,
or ‘properties,’ or books of reference, or anything save her own
imagination ; sends the picture to the Academy, where the
Hanging Committee exclaim as one man, ‘This is a work of
genius ; let us hang it in the place of honour, with a wreath on
Art. 45

 

one corner of the frame’; and when the heroine wakes, on the
first Monday in May, she finds herself famous, The dealers rush
to buy the picture of the year, but it has already been seen at the
private view by the hero, just returned from visiting the Grand
Llama of Thibet, who has given him pockets full of gold ; he
purchases the picture which he recognises as the handiwork of
the very young genius whose life he had saved. He gets her
address from the catalogue, flies to her, and finds her as sweetly
modest as ever, although all England is ringing with her praises.
They are married in due course, and henceforth she devotes
herself to painting only for the delight of her husband and
friends, although the dealers go on their knees to her for
examples of her work.
This sort of tale belongs, of course, to the past; no one would
‘now think of writing or of reading such a story, so I need not
warn girls with artistic inclinations that such things are impossible.
The hero and the mad bull and the girl of seventeen may exist,
but not the pictures. Most people are beginning now to under-
stand that the power of painting even fairly well comes only after
years of downright hard work to the majority of art students ;
and the exceptions are so.few that it is wiser to consider oneself
as one of the majority, and not as a genius. Now that Schools
of Design are scattered all over the country, and a large number
of people are consequently more able to learn what is bad work-
manship and what is good, the untaught ‘artist’ has a bad
chance. Even before this, those writers who aimed at giving true
pictures of life did not attempt to give their heroines talent that
was marketable. One of the most pathetic parts of that pathetic
book ‘Vanity Fair,’ is that in which the unhappy Amelia tries to
sell her drawings.
STUDENT LIFE.

When a girl thinks of becoming an art student, the first
consideration is—has she an intense desire to learn to paint or
46 Ladies at Work.

 

to model? Without that strong desire she will fail, even if her
talent be great, for the power of doing good work can only be
obtained at the price of more patient drudgery than is needed for
most other occupations. There is more hope fora girl with a.
very little talent and ‘ an infinite capacity for taking pains,’ than
for one who has good natural gifts but who lacks industry and
perseverance. And it is almost impossible to say whether there is
talent or not until the power of working hard has been exercised
for some time.

When it has been decided that a girl shall go to some School of
Art, the question arises—Where is the best place to send her?

There are schools in connection with the Art Department,
South Kensington, scattered all over the United Kingdom, the
better-managed being, as a rule, in the larger towns. In London
there are not only several Government Schools of Design, but °
many others, such as the Slade School, at University College ; the
school known as ‘Heatherley’s, in Newman Street, etc., to say
nothing of several ‘studios,’ which are really private art schools.
My own impression, after seeing something of most of these
schools and their students, is, that a large school is preferable to
a small one, because it is likely to have a better staff of teachers,
a larger number of students in all stages of development, and
more advantages in the way of scholarships, etc. Last, but not
least, among the points to be considered in selecting a school for
a girl, is that of the liberty of choosing associates. It is much
easier to limit one’s acquaintance or to extend it.in a large
school than in a small one.

Each of the large metropolitan schools has some special
advantage over the others, and is generally selected by its
students on account of that one thing. But a girl who has
perseverance and originality will find that she can get what she
‘wants in the way of training at any one of these schools, very
often. learning: as. much from seeing the different methods of
Art. 47

 

work, the failures or successes of her companions, as from the
instructions of the teachers.

The first lesson a beginner has to learn is the management
of her tools and materials. The simplest of these—lead-pencil
and india-rubber—are difficult to control. It is wonderful into
how many places on the paper the point will wander before it
will go near the right one, and what firm lines, difficult to rub out,
it will trace anywhere but in the right track. Black chalk
presents yet more difficulties to the student, although when once
it is brought under control it is one of the most manageable of
materials. Brushes and colours are the last and most trouble-
some tools to conquer; good workmanship in laying on the
colour, either in oil or water, being attained by most people only
after years of practice. :

At the same time as these powers of work are being slowly
acquired by the student, she has another and a greater difficulty to
struggle with—she must learn to see. Most people who do not
paint or draw take it for granted that it is only the ability to put
colours on canvas or paper which distinguishes the artist from
themselves, and most art students start with the idea that they
can see as much and as well as the greatest of painters.: But it
is not so. The natural sense of colour is often so keen as not to
require much training, but the power of seeing any. but the most
clearly-marked light and shade—such, for instance, as the
shadow of a cart thrown on a sunny roadway—is one which very
few people possess naturally ; it has to be cultivated with extreme
care by the teacher and by very appreciable efforts on the part
of the student. It is difficult for an untrained eye to'see, say,
the’ light and shade which, on a cloudy day, make the trunk of a
tree look round instead of flat, like this sheet of paper. Without
that delicate light and shade, every curve in the outline might be
correctly marked, every. crease in the bark put, in, and yet the
drawing would look like a diagram, a map, not like a solid rounded
48 Ladies at Work.

 

mass. To this appreciation of subtle degrees of light and shade
the student slowly advances, beginning by learning to see the
well-marked shadows on a white cast hung near a strong light—
working day after day at one problem after another ; finding out
how to make an apple look round and a wall look flat, and how to
represent all the many different degrees of curved surface which
lie between a sphere anda plane. The drawings are generally
made in black chalk while the student is learning the elementary
principles of light and shade, but they can be done in lead-pencil
or paint of one colour. From light and shade the student goes
on to learn the use of colours, and, after much practice, to mix
her pigments rapidly and almost without conscious effort, to
match the colours of her subject. Slowly she learns to see the
greys of which, when she began, she was perhaps almost un-
conscious ; learns to see the difference between the colour of a
glossy light and a dull one, on objects of the same colour ; learns
how, when one colour is put next another it looks quite different
from when it was on her palette ; learns how limited is the scale
of colour in her box, and how, by artful management, those
colours which look dull beside the sunset sky, yet shall give an im-
pression of the brilliancy of that sunset when they are contrasted
with others on the canvas. All her life the-artist will be learning
more about light and shade, more about colour, more about the
beauty of form ; the world to her will be an ever more and more
beautiful place, for she will.see more and more of the beauty that
is in it, the beauty that can only be seen after the patient breaking
away of many thorns of difficulty, after many an hour of watchful
effort to see what seems so elusive. And the training for this
begins in the art school, in the room full of easels, and boards, and
canvases, where the casts from the old Greek marbles stand, in
their wonderful colourless beauty, among the English girls full of
life and brightness, who make themselves aprons of many colours
and (some of them) in the fulness of time, an income and a name.
Art. 49

 

The working-day in the school in which I was trained was
nominally from 10 to 3 o'clock, but all who held scholarships
or who had shown themselves specially hard-working began at
9.30 A.M. and drew until 4 or 5 P.M. There was an interval of
half an hour for lunch, when, at the sound of a gong, we all
trooped down to the luncheon-room. How our tongues wagged,
and what. experiments we tried in cookery! We chattered
about all sorts of subjects, grave and gay ; we helped each other
over difficulties in perspective or anatomy, and, happiest theme
of all, planned sketching expeditions for the summer holidays.

Those were happy times, but had to come to an end. Some
of us went from the School of Art into the Royal Academy
Schools. This is the best, almost the only thing to do in
England, in-order to get helped over the difficult passage from
the stage of student to that of artist. It is difficult to obtain
admission to these schools, as the competition is very keen and
the number of vacancies few. The works which have to. be sent
in before the student is admitted as probationer are such as can
only be done after long and careful study, and. recently the
Academicians have limited the competitors to those under
twenty-three years of age. The majority of the students of the
Royal Academy are, of course, well on their way to be entitled
artists, and it is a great privilege to be one of this picked set of
workers. The men-students have more advantages, both in the
way of study and of substantial prizes, than the women-students,
but the ladies have frequently carried off some of the more
important medals and other awards in spite of their disadvantages.
The latter part of the term of studentship is spent in a gradual
metamorphosis from a light-hearted student into a sober, hard-
working artist, with a studio of severely attic type, up many
steep stairs, with very large windows in it, but with little else.
One thing it always has if it belong to a lady, that is, a tea-pot
and one or two cups and saucers.
50 Ladies at Work.

 

And now that our student has become committed to the
career of an artist we will consider her chances of success in—

ART AS A PROFESSION,

There are two things which seem to be the ends for which an
artist works—money and fame. At least, these are the two
which would be considered by ‘parents and guardians.’ Really,
the artist works because he cannot help it; he can no more leave
off painting than a bird can leave off flying when it has once
learned how to do it.

As regards the earning of money; it is of no use to look
forward to making a good income, or even a regular small one,
by the sale of pictures, at all events until the painter has been at
work for many years, and has slowly built up a sort of fame for
herself. In some cases this comes rather more quickly. If a
painter has the faculty of finding out and painting subjects which
please the popular taste, there is sure to be a market found for
them at once ; even although from an artist’s point of view they
may be very indifferent works of art. But this happens to very
few ; the majority have to wait and to fail for many years before
success comes to them. So that it is wiser not to reckon on
making an income in this way. Most young artists earn their
living by doing other things, of which the most usual are (1)
illustrating. stories for books and magazines, and (2) teaching
drawing and painting. Each of these requires a special aptitude,
and both want much patience. Either of them can be carried on
while part of one’s times is reserved for painting pictures. Beside
these two methods of earning money, there are many bye-ways,
such as chromo-lithographic work; designing Christmas cards
and booklets; painting panels, screens and fans; drawing
costumes, etc., for the papers devoted to that kind of thing. It
is not very difficult to make an income of one or perhaps two
hundred pounds in the year, if one is willing to do anything, small
Art. 51

 

or great, that is offered ; and some women earn several hundreds
in the course of a year. Portrait painting is perhaps the most
lucrative of all branches of the artist’s work, when one has become
sufficiently well-known to get a succession of commissions for
portraits. In any case, an income large enough to live upon can
only be gained after some years of hard work.

As for fame, it is well known that she is a capricious dame,
and shuts her eyes when she has a gift to throw away. The best
work sometimes has to wait for recognition, while inferior pictures
are becoming famous among the frequenters of picture exhibi-
tions ; but in the long run—a very long one sometimes—fame
does crown the best works, although the hand that touched them
into beauty may have vanished. Sometimes fame does not
make a mistake to begin with, and the lucky artist enjoys all the
pleasures and the drawbacks belonging to the career of a well-
known painter. Read Thackeray’s description of an artist—
Thackeray, who himself wished to be a painter in colours rather
than in words:—‘ Out of that bright light looked his pale,
thoughtful face, and long locks, and eager brown eyes. The
palette on his arm was a great shield painted of many colours ;
he carried his maul-stick and a sheaf of brushes along with it,
the weapons of his glorious but harmless war. With these he
achieves conquests, wherein none are wounded, save the envious,
with that he shelters him against how much idleness, ambition,
temptation! Occupied over that consoling work, idle thoughts
cannot gain the mastery over him ; selfish wishes or desires are
kept at bay. Art is truth, and truth is religion, and its study
and practice a daily work of pious duty. What are the world’s
struggles, brawls, successes, to that calm recluse pursuing his
calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round his chamber,
numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories which he
has won—sweet flowers of fancy reared by him—kind shapes of

beauty which he has devised and moulded.’
E 2
52 Ladies at Work.

 

AUTHORSHIP.

BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE,

 

WE sometimes hear of amateur authors. What this means at
the present day there is no knowing. In former times it was
clear enough. It was the persons who had something to say and
were desirous of saying it to the public at their own cost; nay,
who thought it almost derogatory to accept any remuneration.
Horace Walpole was the type of these.

But now there is no one who is not willing to obtain, if not
appropriate, the profits of the sale that is hoped for as a testi-
mony of success ; and there are great numbers of writers, not
always dependent on their earnings, but finding them an im-
portant addition to their income, and thus becoming more and
‘more professional.

There is really no rule as to whence the impetus comes that
leads to success. It is not always the sheer love of the expres-
sion of thoughts, or of setting the puppets of one’s imagination
to work, though this was so entirely my own case that I long
believed it essential to the commencement of original composi-
tion that (as Mr. Keble used to say) one could not help it. But
to dwell on women alone, how different was the motive in each
case! Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, and the Bronté sisters, were
all instances of the same kind of instinct, of need of expression ;
but Maria Edgeworth was the exponent of her father’s thoughts,
and her earlier works were exercises under his superintendence.
Mrs. Trollope, now almost forgotten, but a considerable power
in her day, wrote under the most unfavourable circumstances,
Authorship. 53

 

late in life, for actual maintenance, and at the bedsides of a dying
husband and son. Yet her factory tale was in its way almost as
effective a protest against white slavery as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’
was against black slavery ; and Mrs. Beecher Stowe really only
began to write by the advice of her mother-in-law, who thought
her strength and ability wasted in trying to make puddings and
mind three baby children at the same time. It was from no
burning partizanship of the negroes that she began the story,
but the facts grew on her after the serial was started. Her other
books show her to have had real power and imagination. Mrs.
Gaskell began as a distraction to her mind after a heavy do-
mestic grief, when her youth was over, and thus learnt the charm
and developed the faculty. Breadwinning actuated George
Eliot’s earlier work, so likewise Dinah Muloch (Mrs. Craik)
and Louisa Alcott, both of whom worked up through mere ‘ pot-
boilers’ to success. Miss Alcott was found a year or two ago to
be the most popular author in America, judging by the amount of
sales, but it remains to be proved how far this was an ephemeral
matter.

One very unpalatable piece of counsel I would give. Do not
try to publish very early in life. Many people have a gift of
narration, and when they have plenty of leisure, they are much
inclined to use it ; and there is no reason against their practising
it in home MSS. and competitions, but at the very best, they are
really incapable of using it to the fullest effect without some
experience. Their knowledge of life cannot help being limited,
and if taken from books, their work is imitative. They may have
indeed the noble freshness that depicts a character after an ideal
standard, but if they make him and his doings impossible, the
effect is destroyed. Or else they ramble into the commonplace
for want of knowing that the notions, to them pathetic and
lovely, are the most hackneyed. The real idea, if there be any
good and original germ in it, is wasted by being put forward
54 Ladies at Work.

 

with inadequate powers, and cannot be used for fear of repeti-
tion when after-years have given the faculties needful for carrying
it opt.

Meantime, it is quite well to write. Translation is excellent
practice. I once translated the whole of Manzoni’s ‘ Promessi
Sposi’ for a very fastidious man to read and enjoy it. When I
returned to writing original stories, I found my facility of correct
composition greatly improved. Translation, as regards the purse,
is not apt to be profitable, and those who expect to depend on it
are often sorely disappointed ; but if carefully executed, not too
literally, yet not too freely, it is excellent training. It has the
advantage, too, of drawing the translator out of habits of slip-
slop.

Almost all the writers we have enumerated had the training
of letter-writing in a time when it was disgraceful not to write a
grammatical letter, with something positive in it. They did not
scratch down a little careless slang, but felt it due to the re-
cipient, who bore the expense of postage, to say something worth
having. Thus they learnt the habit of thinking and writing good
English, and it occurred to them without effort. Questions are
sometimes asked about style. Good grammar and attention to
punctuation, with a little common sense and avoiding of repe-
titions, ambiguities, or abrupt turns, are the secret of style. To
read aloud and mark what jars on the ear, or is liable to be mis-
understood, is a great help. A real kind, critical listener is the
chief benefit, really the chief of all, but even Moliére’s old
woman is better than nothing. One’s own ear may be awake to
blunders, even if the critic be perilously admiring.

And of all things to be avoided is any kind of ready-made
facetiousness. Allusions to Scripture, such as ‘fearfully and
wonderfully made,’ or ‘the last state of that man is worse than
‘the first,’ are absolutely profane, and can only be excused by
supposing the writers ignorant or thoughtless; but there are
Authorship. 55

 

many others adopted as a sort of cheap liveliness; for instance,
‘slept the sleep of the just,’ was, we believe, once a clever turn
in a French book, but it has come to be used merely for slept
soundly, and amuses no one, ahy more than does, ‘the light
fantastic toe’ in a county paper’s account of wedding festivities.

Mr. Besant recommends writing poetry (not always for publi-
cation) as a training in rhythmical expression. He is right; it
is a help to good prose, and the masters of the art wrote prose
that may be actually read as poetry ; witness ‘The Rose and the
Ring, and Dickens’s higher descriptive pages. But let no one
try to publish poetry, even in a parish magazine, without trying
it by the rules of measure and metre. ‘Native wood notes wild,’
may, by the help of a tolerable ear, and likewise imitation, sound
well for some time, especially when they are an unconscious
parody of a familiar hymn; but by-and-by comes an unman-
ageable word or thought, which is crammed by the head and
shoulders into the unfortunate stanza which has to swallow it.
Half our aspirant poets do not know that verses ought to be
capable of being scanned, and as to their blank verse, it is prose
measured off in lengths. To put down verses as they rise in the
mind or fancy, by the ear, is a very pleasant occupation, and
even more, it often relieves the mind of strong feeling, whether
high, meditative, or sorrowful. If so, it has the soul of poetry,
but it cannot have the body without conforming to rule, any
more than a sweet voice and good ear will make a real singer
without knowledge of music. Whoever wants to make any real
use of poetic talent, should try the compositions by rules, such
as are to be found under the head of ‘ Prosody’ in an Encyclo-
pedia, and in one of the National Society’s manuals, ‘On the
Art of Teaching English Literature, No. 1; by Canon War-
burton.’ The cost is eightpence. It would be no small benefit
to editors if all would-be poets would try their verses by the
rules here given.
56 Ladies at. Work.

 

There are books, generally the first works of some really
powerful person, written in gaceté de ceur or with real meaning:
Such are many books now classics ; and later, ‘Peter Simple,’
‘Harry Lorrequer,’ Southey’s ‘ Doctor,’ ‘ Pickwick,’ which carry
one‘along by their swing, without much plot. ‘John Inglesant’
may be numbered among these, perhaps, but as a rule a plot is
needful, a central aim, to which the characters must work, and
which has to produce its fruits. Even a child’s book, in spite of
the beloved examples of Frank and Rosamond, needs to drive at
something definite, and indeed, in Rosamond, each chapter is a
little, well-pointed tale in itself, only all strung on the same
heroine. |

Another thing required of an author is summed up in a verse
of Ecclesiasticus : ‘Be not ignorant of anything in a great matter
or a small.’ Verify whatever you may have set down. Then
we should not have full moons twice in a month ; Orion shining
on summer evenings ; birdsnesting in September ; primroses and
poppies in the same nosegay ; rattlesnakes in India ; potatoes in
Italy before the discovery of America; cygnets shaming the
whiteness of their parents; ladies smelling lovely bouquets of
sea anemones, or a philanthropic glow-worm, anxious to be of
use, lighting the epitaph on a headstone in a consolatory
manner ; and lucifer matches in the days of John Wesley.

Methods and ways of working vary, and no rule can be laid
down. Some can write best by dashing on, and correcting after-
wards ; others go step by step; some plan out the contents of
every chapter, as did Harriet Martineau ; some go on as the
characters lead them; some can only write when in the vein,
others can perform their daily task, like Trollope, without de-
pendence on mood. The point is really the pains, the polish, and
the conscience of the work ; and by conscience there is much
implied. There is the resolution to let no need of gain lead to
pandering to the popular taste when it is for evil ; the determin-
Authorship. 57

 

ation to deal with nothing but what is purifying, truthful, and
elevating ; the further withstanding of temptations to irreverence,
and the honesty of giving thoroughly good, sound, unscamped
work, such as may not swell the flood of worldliness and evil.

Woman can often speak with great effect to her own generation,
even if her achievements do not obtain lasting fame, and this
should be her aim. I have written hitherto only of her work in
fiction ; where she can deal with more solid subjects, her pen can
be most valuable. Essays like Anne Mozley’s, histories, memoirs,
science teachings made comprehensible to the popular or the
childish mind, all these are subjects in which women can worthily
excel. A good school book is a very profitable article till it is
superseded, as it is sure soon to be in these days of progress.

For now we come to the business side of the matter. Mr.
Besant has written excellent advice to authors, and experience
for self and friends fully confirms what he says: the first start
is a difficulty, but real merit will in time find its level.

Magazines seem, at first sight, the safe region for trying the
-wings, but they are so overcrowded that rejection often only
means that there is no suitable opening. A paper of any
superiority is, however, sure to find entrance somewhere, but
there is a profusion of writing ‘ower bad for blessing, and ower
good for banning,’ and a good many refusals generally (though
not always) show the MS. to be of this quality at least. The
same may be said of offers to publishers. Some decline because
their hands are full of other matter of the same kind, or because
the subject is not in their own line, so that it is better to try,
try again and again.

But on no account let eagerness to gain a hearing induce
a novice to undertake to advance a sum for the printing or
publishing. Such a plan does not, as a rule, come from the
superior and trustworthy houses. They take a book on their
own risk or not at all, and there are, unhappily, many cases on
58 Ladies at Work.

 

record where the aspirant has not only never had any return for
the money laid down, but has never seen any more of the
production itself.

A person who has no veteran /ittérateur to advise and direct
the first venture, will do best to consult the Authors’ Society.
The address is 4, Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the sub-
scription a guinea a year, and there a candid opinion may be
obtained as to whether a MS. is worthless or marketable, and,
likewise, where it may be best and most safely disposed of.
There is a fee for having a MS. read, but this is well worth
paying to spare hope deferred in the case of a mediocre one, or
to assist a worthy one.

When a paper is accepted by a magazine, it is desirable always
to be clear whether the payment is for first appearance or copy-
right. This differs in many cases, and it is wiser, except in
special instances, to retain the copyright, though at some sacrifice
of present gain. If the author arrives at the honour of ‘collected
works’ it is very troublesome to have to deal with varied claims
of passing publications, and worse still to see their reappearance
with no control over them.

Literature, like other avocations open to women, is all the
worse for those really dependent on it, because they are under-
sold by those to whom remuneration is unimportant, and this out
of ignorance and desire to gain a hearing. Therefore, it is right
to insist on a fair price, and not to close in haste with any offer
for less. Magazines have stated tariffs for the writing in their
pages, and this will enable one to estimate the value of his works ;
but name, fame, and success go for so much that first undis-
tinguished efforts can only bring moderate profits, unless they
make a hit.

It is wiser to have agreements looked over before signature
by an experienced eye. Such, the Authors’ Society offers, and
it is invaluable in preventing errors, and—where the house is
Authorship. 59

 

not one of the great ones, free from all suspicion—in keeping a
check on the publishers. Coleridge and Southey spoke of the
‘thriving bookseller ’ as like him

‘who sate like a Cormorant
Perched on the tree of knowledge.’

And the unguarded now and then receive circulars sent forth
from varieties of cormorants’ crags, which they would do wisely
to consign immediately to the waste-paper basket.

The accredited means of publishing are either selling the copy-
right at a fair price, which of course is all that the author can
ever expect, or—which is the method most in favour for a young
untried writer—for the publisher to take the whole risk and half
the profits, giving the other half to the author. This involves no
loss to the author, and often is very satisfactory in the hands of
any one of the higher and more honourable men of the trade. But
there is a possibility with others of heavy percentages on sales,
and charges for advertisements which mulct the author heavily.
Sometimes the publisher offers a royalty—a round sum on a
specified number of copies—and after they are sold, a fixed
amount for each copy in proportion to the price; but this is not
often done unless the author’s name is a guarantee, or the subject
is one certain to command popularity.

Again, the author can publish at his own expense, allowing
a percentage to the publisher, and inspecting the accounts, but
this is unsafe except where the authotr’s position is established,
or—as sometimes happens in the case of books intended for
distribution—where the work is to be sold at a price below the
ordinary rate.

If none of these methods are open, there is nothing for it but
either to decide that literature is not the vocation of the aspirant,
or else to persevere till something is accepted, and the horsehair
thus let down by which the beetle is to ascend !

Then come the proofs. How delightful are the first, how well
60 Ladies at Work.

 

they are revised—probably with a pepperbox of commas ready
to drop on them, and sheer delight and diversion in -printer’s
errors! By the bye, printers evidently do not love either colons
or semicolons, and many a sentence which ought euphoniously
to be divided by the latter, is either made to drag on with an
ineffective comma, or cut short off with a full-stop before the
sense is concluded. Also, whether by their fault or the writer's
is uncertain, the nominative absolute prevails. ‘A fair evening,
the trees all lovely green,’ is no sentence, nor is, ‘A fine lad with
a roguish mouth and pug nose. Every sentence must have a
verb, or it is no sentence at all—a mere absurd interjection.

The book is out! Notices probably come in. They are not
apt to be such as once they were—the fuller ones often valuable
and instructive in the way of criticism, favourable or adverse.
There is little time or space for such work now. One thing I
would say: that it seems to me an unworthy thing to solicit a
favourable notice. Surely one’s book goes out to stand on its
own merits, not to be pushed and puffed. The point is, to
learn whether it is good for anything, and what mannerisms are
to be avoided. Praise in a review is very delightful, but it must
be unsolicited to be worth having. Sometimes people actually
sent round in type their favourite sentences for the reviewers
to insert! This is a really absurd puff, pretty certain to
prejudice the critics.

On one side, it is better not to be too eager for reviews, or to
pin one’s feeling on them as Charlotte Bronté did when she cried
all night over what was said of ‘Jane Eyre. On the other, it is
not wholesome entirely to avoid the sight. George Eliot was not
allowed to see unfavourable criticisms, and thus the chances of

improvement were missed. Keats’ death, through the ‘ Quarterly -

—savage and tartarly ’—was a myth ; and when Mrs. Wood made
a malevolent critic slay a book and its author by writing in all the
reviews and papers, she forgot how unlike they all are, and how
Authorship. 61

 

impossible the feat would be. Depend upon it, a good book
will raise its head above censure, or, still worse, neglect, at the
first. And when the name is made, come the trials of over-
much work, leading to carelessness and to requests for per-
formances, more with a view to the space in the periodical than
to the scope of the tale, often leading to conclusions spoilt by
crowding of incidents and want of giving scenes their due
development.

One thing more it may be well to say. There is at present
a taste for sensation, and a certain conventional distaste for a
moral, pure, and religious tone. It is a fatal thing to be led away
by it. If for every idle word we speak we are to give account,
how much more for every word we write? And setting aside
this awful aspect: what is written without the salt of life does
not live, or acquire fame. Even remuneration is only ephemeral.
Evil is a dead weight, sinking the performance.

It is true that women’s good heroes are apt to be called prigs.
But be content to have them so, If you sacrifice your womanly
nature in the attempt at the world’s notion of manly dash, you
only sacrifice yourself, and mar the performance, unless it is only
a very slight sketch from the outside. A woman cannot do a
man truthfully from within, any more than one nationality can
represent another from within. And if the ideal given is often
called a prig, it is because she is incapable of the ‘ Carle-hemp’ in
part, and also in part, because a certain depth of self-respect and
of self-assertion, often bordering on self-conceit, is really a needful
weapon of defence in the midst of scenes of temptation. Boys
and good poor people find it so. There is much to be said for
the so-called prig ; but if you find your hero growing into one,
frankly own it, or else give him some lovable weakness.
62 Ladies at Work.

 

THE STAGE.

BY GRACE LATHAM, AUTHOR OF ‘READING AS AN ART,’

 

‘In art you have to give your skin. —FRANCOIS MILLET.

THERE is, perhaps, no art which is at once so popular, and so
little understood, as acting. It is recognised that-steady, arduous
training is required by a musician or a painter; the notion is
still prevalent that any one with a memory need only walk on to
the stage to be an actress. The grind of training, the labour it
costs a theatrical company to produce a piece, is not known by
the mass of an audience. Therefore, as this paper is written for
those who, in the words of actors and actresses, do not belong to

. the profession, it will be necessary to point out in some degree.
in what the art really consists, as well as the preparation
necessary for it.

The Vocation—The girl who has got what her friends un-
kindly call ‘a craze for acting,’ has usually been dazzled by
seeing a noted actress in a great part; the girl goes home, tries
her wings in a farce or slight comedy in her back drawing-room
or parish schoolroom; the audience are too courteous to be
critical, they applaud, and soon her family is thrown into con-
sternation by the announcement that she has determined to go
on the stage. a

With some girls this is merely the outcome of vanity, of an
unhealthy craving for publicity and applause. To such it is
kindest to say at once that they are without the true artistic
spirit to support them under annoyances and mortifications such
The Stage. 63

 

as they have never dreamt of, and that to temperaments like
. theirs the danger of theatrical life is real and serious.

But with others this startling resolution means that they have
found out they possess the dramatic gift, and it is for and to
these that we are writing. Now there is no power more
commonly found in a slight, or more rarely in a great degree ;
and it is only right to consider carefully, if it be simply enough
to give you, and perhaps your friends, a good deal of pleasure ;
or the great gift, joined to a strong dramatic instinct, which is as
much your natural method of expression as song to the bird or
the brush to the painter. The desire of the present moment
may quite pass away, though it seems strong now, and this,
therefore, cannot be used as a test. Think whether the wish to
give your life to the stage is a new one, or whether it dates
from early childhood, long before you thought you had power
that way. When you go to the theatre, are you carried away
by the actor, or do you instinctively notice how he makes his
effects, what poses he takes, what they express, and how he
uses his voice? Do you unconsciously watch yourself and
others, noting the intonations, looks, and gestures which convey
ideas and feelings? Have you always acted more or less in
your childish games? If this is so, you probably have the
dramatic instinct ; whether the power to use it is yours to any
great degree, you can only prove by getting trained, and going
on the stage.

This is a very serious step to take. A writer or painter -may
remain, to a certain extent, in her own natural surroundings ;
you will have to throw yourself out of your home-nest, and your
defined position, into a world in which you will be less than
nobody, and where you must make and keep your own place;
and it is well to consider if you have endurance to go through
a long training, and longer waiting to climb to any height. It
is only in story-books that a débutante rises at one bound to the
64 Ladies at Work.

 

top of her profession ; if Fanny Kemble did so, she owed it to
the well-earned fame of her family, and her father’s position as a
manager. The brightest genius, especially if she has no theatrical
connections, may have to wait for years, like the elder Kean, to
obtain parts in which she can prove her power to those in
authority, and to obtain such a hold on the public, that it may be
a paying speculation to give her an important character to play.
Put aside the dream that there will be a rush to secure your
services, or that you are going into a world where people live
and work for art alone. They may, they often do, love their
profession ; but they work for their own and their children’s
bread and butter, just as a stockbroker or solicitor does ; while
the daily expenses of a theatre, the cost of staging a piece are
so enormous, that managers must engage the people who will
best fill their houses ; so that, if you have genius, you must show
that it is marketable before it will be any good to you. You
will have to take a succession of insignificant, unsuitable parts,
and—be thankful.

Again, you must face the probability, we will not say of
failure, but of partial success; you have most likely dreamt of
drawing London to see your Juliet or your Lady Teazle.
Such triumphs fall to the very few, scarcely half-a-dozen in
each generation, who are fortunate enough, as well as so gifted,
physically and mentally, as to be able to gain them, and of these
hardly one is really great. All this should be honestly thought
out before taking the irrevocable step.

The Training —You must now labour unremittingly. You
are probably between seventeen and twenty-four years of age,
and are still ignorant of your art when your career should have
begun. From her earliest childhood the actor’s daughter finds
school, library, interest, ambition in the theatre ; always in and
out of one, she sees acting, hears the practical criticisms of the
professionals, adds to the family budget by playing child-parts,
The Stage. 65

 

and picks up unconsciously what you will have to learn by slow
degrees. So you must work hard.

The Art of Acting has these peculiarities: 1. That the physical
personality of the actor forms the material in which he works.
2, What he produces does not endure to bring him fame at a
later date, its full and only effect must be made at once, and is
then over for ever. 3. He can do nothing without the co-
operation of his fellow-actors and of the audience—a seething,
restless mass, whose attention is liable to be called away at any
moment. .

The grand aim and object of your training is therefore to
cultivate and subdue your body, your quivering nerves and
muscles, so as to be able to express exactly what you wish at a
given moment with perfect accuracy. Night by night you must
practically make your work of art afresh under the eyes of the
public, and though you may study a part slowly and thought-
fully, its execution must be rapid and unhesitating; every
intonation, every movement must convey a definite meaning ;
the least vagueness or uncertainty in your work will be at once
perceived by the audience, and you will lose your hold on them.
There is no use in depending on the feeling of the moment to
pull you through ; it may help you, but in sickness or trouble it
may fail you altogether, and it must always be guided and held
in check.

‘In England we have no recognised standard or school of
acting as in France, so that you will have to get the various
branches of your art education in different places, and you
must do a great deal for yourself, by systematising what you
are taught, and filling up the gaps in what you have learnt in
one quarter from another.

What you have now to find out is what the tools are with
which you must work, and how to use them.

Every bodily feature you possess—for instance, your general

=
66 Ladies at Work.

 

appearance, the flexibility of your features, the shape of your
mouth—are either valuable gifts to be used to the utmost,
defects to be counteracted, or wants to be supplied ; and while a
characteristic may be almost indispensable to you in one part, it
will forbid your succeeding in another, unless you can subdue it
or triumph over it.

Begin by studying elocution ; in other words, by training the
ear and voice. The ear to recognise and remember, so that you
can reproduce at will the tones, half-tones, and quarter-tones
which are on the scale of the speaking voice, the many qualities
of sound it can produce, which answer to the zémodres in singing,
the intonations which come to it when influenced by surprise,
joy, ete.

The voice to be obedient to the directions thus given it; by
patient, steady exercise to increase its power, its compass, to
bring out its many tones and special good qualities. You must
learn to pitch it, that even a whisper will carry over a wide space,
how to inspire deeply, and to economise your breath. Your
articulation must be taken in hand ; it is probably slovenly and
indistinct, or you have family peculiarities ; you can allow your-
self none, except what you deliberately assume for a part; in
fact, you must learn to speak all over again. Take lessons from
some old actor, who will teach you to read parts, and will give
you the traditions, good or bad, of the actresses who have
preceded you in them. Listen to them all, and observe narrowly
how he uses his voice, and in what manner he makes his
effects.

The Body—At the same time you must learn to walk, to
stand, to sit, to hold yourself perfectly ; you must become lithe,
active, graceful, that either in repose or in rapid movement
your body may have the beauty of harmony. A Juliet who
shuffled when she walked, a Lady Teazle who poked, a Rosalind
who waggled her shoulders and elbows when she ran, would lose
The Stage. 67

 

their distinctive characters and become ridiculous at once; here
again peculiarities must be kept for special uses. You must
study to express character and feeling in pose and movement.
For these purposes get yourself drilled, take first-class dancing
lessons, telling your master the purpose for which you are
studying. The Polish Mazurka, the Tarentella, the Minuet de la
Cour are splendid training for the body for lithesomeness, agility,
and expression, even if you never have occasion to use them on
the stage. Fencing is almost indispensable, gesture quite so.
The great difficulty which will meet you is that in private life
you have been rightly taught to control your feelings and their
outward expression ; you will seldom or never have seen strong
emotion. In sudden calamity your first thought is to be calm and
practically useful, and you probably seem cold and very quiet ;
but if you were J/iterally to reproduce this upon the stage, you
would express nothing whatever to the audience. The stage,
for the most part, deals with the exceptional occurrences of life,
and you will have constant necessity for strong expression,
while its very unfamiliarity will make the signs by which you
are taught to portray it seem unnatural, and what you will call
theatrical. You can only overcome this by studying the people
and classes, children, for example, who show feeling as it arises,
and act under its impulses. :
Stage Deportment is another and an important branch of your
education—the innumerable technicalities which govern your
behaviour on the stage itself. The right method of coming on
and going off, how to make a cross, which hand or knee to use,
how to turn, to group yourself with others, to dress the stage, etc.
Most people learn this while they are at work, but it will save a
great deal of time if you know something of it beforehand, as, now
that we have lost our provincial stock companies, which served as
schools of acting, and play the same character in the same piece
night after night, this sort of knowledge can only be picked up
; F2
68 Ladies at Work.

 

very slowly. Very few people will take the trouble to teach it,
but you will find Mr. Charles Daly, of 8, Overstone Road,
Hammersmith, a most helpful master in practical stage-training.

The Waiting Time—The next step is perhaps the most
difficult of all—to learn to apply your education. As soon as
possible get an engagement in a travelling company which is
taking out a London drama to tour in the provinces, or better
still, into that of an actor or actress who is going to star in the
country in half-a-dozen pieces, for there you will get more parts
and a better chance of new ones; what you want is practice and
experience. If an engagement offers, break off your lessons and
take it ; you can go on with them when you come back. You
will get a pound or thirty shillings a week at first, will have to
find your own board, lodgings, and costumes, but third-class
railway fares will be paid you, and your luggage will be conveyed
with that of the rest of the company.

You will feel utterly lost when you first step before the
footlights. All the pretty little ways which have charmed your
friends will fall quite flat. Don’t be discouraged ; it only means
that you do not understand the kind or amount of effect needed
in so large a space, and the conditions of acting in private and
playing in public are totally dissimilar. Not only must effects
for the stage be exaggerated, or rather magnified, according to
the style of piece and the size of the building in which you
are playing ; but we do so many things in real life which are
either inexpressive, or unnecessary to a clear representation of the
matter in hand, that no literal reproduction of an event will ever
tell its story clearly and dramatically on the stage. Something of
this you already know, but practice only can fully teach it you.
Take all the parts you can get hold of, no matter how unsuitable,
and see what you can make of them—they will be all too few.
Your business here is not to stand on your dignity, but to learn
to apply the zechnigue you have been studying, to find out what
The Stage. 69

 

you can do and are fit for, to make your experiments, your
failures, which, it is to be hoped, will lead you to success; at
present, you will discover, you are only a very raw novice.

You will find your present existence very curious, and quite
unlike anything you have ever known before. Three days in one
town, a week in another, a night in another. Starting the
moment the piece is finished, catching the last train, and arriving
in the. early morning in some strange town, the following day
being spent at rehearsal, and possibly in getting a dress ready in
a hurry for a new and unexpected part; or else you may be
travelling all Sunday by slow trains, with many changes, and
getting in late at night. Rushing off to rehearsal, hoping you
may get back before the dinner you have ordered is quite spoilt.
New scenes, new occurrences, new classes, new characters, will
daily pour in upon you ; 2zmprévu will be the order of your life,
and everything you see should be so much material to you for
future use.

To many minds the freedom of the life is an intense attraction.
Here to-day and gone to-morrow ; falling in with new -com-
panions, and for a few days or weeks being thrown with them in
the utmost intimacy, then parting, probably for ever, but leaving
you with the impression that you have learnt to know them
more thoroughly than you could do after years of ordinary
acquaintanceship.

It is hardly possible to be an actress and not also a student of
human nature, and the stage affords a delightfully wide field for
observation ; not only fellow-professionals, but all the people in,
about, and connected with the theatre, all the outside folk,
landladies and others, with whom it brings you in contact ; you
see them too from such a different point of view.

Ordinary ladies’ lives are so hedged about with conventionality,
that, in the words of dear old John Parry’s song, ‘They never
express themselves quite as they feel,’ and in consequence,
70 Ladies at Work.

 

except in their own immediate circle, they live in a kind of mist

‘which it takes a wise woman to penetrate. Once out in the
world this disappears, and though with it a good deal of the
soft, comfortable padding of life goes too, yet you are in an
infinitely superior position for the observation of character.

You have become a working woman, valued for what she can
do andbe. The people you meet will show you their real selves ;
will openly love you, hate you, fight for or with you, and in a few
months you will get experience you would never otherwise gain.
The class barrier is removed ; your landlady will treat you as her
equal, and will tell you all her concerns, without the reservations
and exaggerations with which she might recount them to the
district lady. Each town brings you perhaps a new friend,
always a fresh study.

This is what you need. How can you represent many
varieties of human nature, under all kinds of circumstances,
when you only know one class? Even if you are able to divine
much, you must have some kind of positive knowledge to start
from.

It is only in superior companies that the agent in advance finds
you rooms before you arrive, and, unless you have been able to
secure some by writing, when you get into a new town you will
have to wander up and down the streets, perhaps in pelting rain,
and knock at every likely door.

‘Can I have lodgings here ?’

‘Be you play-actors ?’

‘Yes.’

Bang! The door is slammed in your face.
A little farther—

‘Do you let lodgings?’ ,

‘Not to folk who travel on Sunday ; you ought to be ashamed
of yourselves!’ Quite a likely answer in some places,
You try again. This time the door is opened by a pale,
The Stage. 71.

 

depressed woman. You see the rooms; they are very dirty,
especially the bedding. But you are too tired to go any farther,
and ask—

‘How much for the two rooms ?’

‘Fourteen shillings a week, with fire, lights, and cooking,’ and
you discover how wonderfully little it really costs to live. You
agree ; the baggage man of the company sends up your luggage ;
you wonder if you can get into that bed, but you do, and you
survive, and go away feeling sure your money came in handy for
the rent. The next experience is pleasanter. A bright little
woman takes you in without hesitation. She is just married to a
tradesman, and the way to the lodgings is through the shop and
back-parlour. Her one anxiety is lest her new furniture should
be spoilt, and when she sees you are careful she does her utmost
for the lodger’s comfort ; tells you all about her life in service, her
courtship, marriage, and future hopes. Then perhaps you fall
into the hands of a character—a gaunt, hard woman, with a meek
husband creeping silently about the house. She won't let you
use her good knives until perfectly satisfied as to what you are
like, orders you to be' in early, and charges into your room
whenever she hears you put coal on to the fire you have paid
for. She has a small niece, whose hair she combs viciously, who
will grow up exactly like her, and whom she brings in to sing to
you in a twangy, pipy voice—for she is proud of her. There is
a small servant whom she drives about all day, but is very
jealous of your asking anything of. Still she likes you, and you
part excellent friends.

It will be said ‘This is a life of hard work and/self-denial. Is it
worth the trouble?’ Most certainly it is. All work worth doing
involves labour and self-sacrifice, and all beginnings are hard;
but to the artist the very training is delightful. The sense that
day by day you are learning to produce your effects with greater
certainty ; the gradual discovery of your gifts of voice, featuré
72 Ladies at Work.

 

and movement will make you feel as though, for the first time,
you could speak, and say out all that had been struggling for
utterance in you. On the boards the feeling that your whole
being is working harmoniously, fulfilling the object for which it
was created, the expression of thought and feeling through the
medium of the body, is exquisite, unalloyed delight, which an
artist would go through any hardship to obtain. This is the real
artistic attraction of the stage, which is so irresistibly strong, and
yet which few outsiders can understand.

When your tour is over, and you go back to town, try fora
fresh engagement. Meanwhile play in matinées, entertainments,
benefits—anywhere or anyhow for more practice.

Go on with your ¢echnigue training, have lessons, go to the
theatre and study different schools of acting of all nations—not to
imitate them, that is fatal, but—to learn their technique, their
method of expression, that you may build up your own on it.

This, the mechanism of acting, you can be taught—nothing
more ; but it is all important, standing in the same relation to
the art as the builder’s tools do to the completed edifice. Until
their proper use is learnt, the material cannot possibly be
employed to advantage ; and only when you can use yours, with
the perfect freedom and accuracy which comes with habitual
dexterity, will the great gift that is in you have full power to
work and perfect itself.

All the rest—the soul, the life, the fire, the art—must come
from yourself—from daily observation of life and character, till
you discover the secrets of the human heart and: the outward
signs by which they are expressed, and from your power of
simulating them. The art of acting is the dramatic representa-
tion of the human being, his passions, sentiments, or peculiarities
under given circumstances. Patiently teach yourself to reproduce
your observations in dramatic fashion, choosing and arranging
what you need, to exhibit them‘to an audience, and rejecting the
The Stage. 73

 

rest. Toa great extent real art is the power of selection; but
every true artist retains different things, according to the nature
of his mind and talent. Then, by experiments on your public,
find out if what has seemed clear and definite to yourself is so to
them. Try to extend your range; don’t devote yourself exclu-
sively to a single line of business, even if your talent lies only in
one direction—enrich it by studying beyond it. This is no easy
life. In the words of Francois Millet, the great painter of
peasant life in France—‘In art you have to give your skin,
But how intensely fascinating it is, the artist only knows.

For the rest it is only possible to say that you must never lose
an opportunity of gaining an acquaintance or a useful friend ;
never, unless driven to it, make an enemy. While holding your
own, be pleasant and obliging; don’t get the name of being
touchy, quarrelsome, difficult to work with. Remember the
proverb, ‘ Silence is golden’—hear everything and say nothing.
Make an impression wherever you can, and push yourself in
every possible manner ; you have got to get known and to make
your reputation with the profession, and then to build up your
outside public. Don’t be too proud to play in insignificant
places and in small parts, and don’t think too much about their
being out of your line—unless you know you must make an
evident failure in them. They will give you practice, the
great need nowadays, and may lead to something more.

A dramatic wave is passing over the land, as it did in the time
of Elizabeth. Young men and women are rushing by thousands
into the profession ; but there are not playgoing people enough
in each town to support more than a certain number of theatres,
which, in their turn, can only give employment to a certain
number of professionals, so that the struggle for artistic existence
among them is a hard one, in which, not only the incapables, but
many a decided talent has to go to the wall. Naturally those in
possession try to keep others out, and give the openings they
74 Ladies at Work.

 

cannot use to friends already in the business, to those connected
with it by relationship or association.

If you have no theatrical influence or connections, and one of
your reasons for becoming an actress be the necessity of literally
earning your daily bread, the chances against your making a
living, as things are now, are too many for it to be worth your
while to make trial of the profession. The child of a scene-
shifter or a super stands a better chance than the most charming,
talented, and highly-educated outsider. Besides, a woman has
not the power of pushing herself that a man has.

If you can put bread in your mouth during. the waiting time,
make the attempt, and see if fortune will be kind to you, and if
you can pick up help and influence enough to give you oppor-
tunity to prove your ability to the public. You will have a hard
fight, but others have succeeded, and so may you.
( 75 )

 

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

BY CAROLINE W. LATIMER, M.D.

 

THE admission of women to the study and practice of the pro-
fession of medicine has been for about fifty years a debatable
ground for partisans on either side ; and it is only within the last
few years that the subject may be considered to have been at
last decided. The question, as it now stands, is no longer
whether a woman who has chosen the medical profession in any
of its branches as her work in life, is entitled to receive a suitable
education, and to find in it a fair field in which to labour; the
education, if she desires it, is within her reach ; the opportunities
to exercise it are no longer denied to her. She will stand or fall
in the future by her own merits, and it is now time to decide
whether she is able to fill worthily the place which has been
accorded to her, and whether the result of the freedom of choice
and action, which is now hers, will prove to justify the claims
which have been urgently brought forward in its favour by the
advocates of a medical career for women. It is under this aspect
that I wish to consider the subject, as well as to bring forward a
few of the points which, from my own experience, I feel sure
should receive the most careful consideration before the choice
of medicine as a profession is made.

In the first place, it cannot be too strongly urged that it ought
never to be undertaken from motives of a pecuniary nature. It
is greatly to be regretted that a certain number, at all events, of
both men and women in the profession are actuated, to a greater
76 : Ladies at Work.

 

or less extent, by these sentiments, and that, from first to last,
their chief object seems to be to obtain the exact amount of
education which will authorise them to receive fees, at the least
possible expenditure of time and money; and, having once
attained the degree which legally entitles them to do so, they
no longer consider it worth their while to make any further effort
towards pursuing their education, unless they can see some
immediate pecunidry return as a result. Doubtless the labourer
is worthy of his hire, and those who work faithfully and con-
scientiously in this, as in any other profession, are entitled to
receive from it an honourable support ; but it may be long before
even this result is reached, although a woman standing on the
threshold is perhaps more fortunate in this respect than a man
under similar circumstances, for, as their numbers are compara-
tively small, the competition among them is not so great,'‘and
success, if it be hers, is sooner attained.

Of the various elements which enter into combination to form
that success, the most essential is the possession of a really good
education, not in medicine alone, but comprehending a thorough
preliminary training in science as well as a knowledge of other
subjects indirectly bearing on scientific work. Such an education
should always, if possible, be obtained at college, not only because
the habits of study acquired there are of great importance, but
because the necessary laboratory work cannot easily be supplied
elsewhere ; the possession of a diploma from a college of good
Standing is also of value, and will sometimes save its possessor
from the strain of further examinations. A collegiate education,
however, valuable as it is, is not absolutely essential, as the requisite
amount of knowledge can, of course, be obtained in other ways ;
but from whatever source it is derived, it ought to include, in
addition to the ordinary English branches, a fair amount of Latin,
a reading knowledge of French and German, and a thorough
elementary training in physics, chemistry, and biology. A know-
The Medical Profession. 77

 

ledge of botany is also useful, and there are occasions when a
little Greek is of service ; but their absence will not cause any
serious inconvenience. In the increasing educational demands
which characterise the present generation, it is often necessary
(for we are but human) to select among several branches of
knowledge those which will render us the greatest service, and
when such a choice is to be made, nothing should be allowed to
take precedence of the scientific studies. The ability to read
French and German at sight is required in order to keep up with
current medical literature.

It is true that very few medical colleges require so much pre-
liminary education, as a necessary qualification for admission ; but
the work after entrance will be far easier to a woman who comes
thus prepared; while any one who wishes to advance steadily in
her profession, and to do scientific work in it, will find that, if she
has not gone over the ground before beginning her medical
education proper, it will be necessary for her to do so later, when
it will be accomplished under great disadvantages. The work
which is required during the years spent in studying for a degree
in medicine is very difficult and laborious, and the better pre-
pared a woman comes to it, the less she will be liable to suffer
injuriously from its effects. Indeed, I believe that a large pro-
portion of the cases in which the students have broken down in
health from overwork, either before or after graduation, are due
to the fact that they have entered upon their medical education
with so little previous preparation, that they cannot follow the
necessary course of instruction without over-fatigue.

In regard to the choice of a university in which to pursue an
education in medicine, although there are excellent facilities both
in Great Britain and the United States, the highest educational
advantages are to be found, at present, at the foreign universities of
Zurich, Basle, and elsewhere. At all of these institutions, women
are admitted on equal terms with men, but such a system is con-
78 Ladies at Work.

 

sidered, by many persons, to be open to very grave objections.
I speak with great hesitation on this subject, as I have never
seen the system of co-education in action among undergraduates,
and I cannot but believe it to be most undesirable in colleges
where the standard for entrance is low, and where the students,
as a class, are, consequently, under-educated and unrefined ; but
the objections to it are certainly much lessened, if not entirely
removed, by the existence of requirements for admission so
severe, as to give. assurance that those who possess them are
earnest in purpose, mature in judgment, and have received the
elevating influence of a superior general education. A medical
education received at one of these universities, which are every-
where acknowledged to be the highest source, is of such value to
its possessor, that any woman who contemplates making medi-
cine her work in life, will do wisely to weigh carefully the advan-
tages to be derived from it, before arriving at a ‘decision in the
matter. In regard to a choice among the various schools in
Great Britain, I think nothing could be added to the statements
given in Mrs. Penny’s article on Women’s Medical Work in
India; and it is evident that, in order to enter any of those
she mentions, as well as those on the Continent, a thorough pre-
vious education is essential. It is, of course, apparent that such
an education as I have endeavoured to describe must necessitate
a liberal expenditure of time and money. The amount of time
consumed is not so great a disadvantage as might, at first,
appear, for neither the study nor the practice of medicine is suit-
able for a very young woman ; and if seven, eight, or even ten
years are expended before she enters on the exercise of her pro-
fession, she will not be much under thirty years of age when she
attempts it, and this is quite as soon as it is at all desirable, for
her own sake, that she should do so. The matter is entirely
different from its pecuniary side, and I fully appreciate how hard
this barrier must appear to women whose heart is in their work,
The Medical Profession. 79

 

who have chosen it from genuine love and enthusiasm, yet who
find themselves constantly hampered, and in some instances
completely arrested, in their progress from lack of the necessary
means. When no other course is open, it is wiser to wait until
it is possible to lay by a sum sufficient to obtain first-class edu-
cation, rather than to enter at once upon an inferior one; but in
some cases it is an excellent investment of a small amount of
capital to expend it in procuring the best advantages which will
in time bring their own return.

It may be objected that many physicians are both successful
and respected whose education has been much below the
standard I have given; and this is perfectly true, as it is also
true that many children, whose moral training has been greatly
neglected by their parents, do nevertheless become good and
useful men and women. But their ultimate integrity and useful-
ness are the result of efforts made in adult life to conquer faults
which should have been corrected for them in childhood, and to
overcome bad habits which they should never have been allowed
to acquire. Instead of starting on the race in life fairly equipped,
and with an even chance for its honours, they are under a hard
necessity which obliges them to exercise, in a constant restraint
upon themselves, the faculties which should, legitimately, be fully
employed in the service of their own necessities and ambitions.
So is it in medicine ; if a woman has entered its ranks without
the necessary intellectual preparation, she will, if she is in earnest
and respects herself, endeavour to supply the deficiency as soon
as she perceives it by all the means in her power; but the effort
to do so will be a great addition to her daily labour, and
occasions will constantly arise when she will be forced to feel
keenly that her work suffers in comparison with that of others
‘more fortunate than herself, or.that she is not fully able to
enter into subjects under discussion, in which, nevertheless, she
is deeply interested.
80 Ladies at Work.

 

One of the questions most ardently discussed by the partisans
for and against the admission of women to the profession of
medicine has been whether her mental capacities were sufficient
to justify such a course. Without entering into the subject of
the differences existing between the intellects of the sexes in
the abstract, there is now probably no unprejudiced person who
does not freely admit a woman’s ability to receive and profit by
a medical education, as far as intellectual qualifications are con-
cerned. It is the practice of medicine in which a woman can
never stand on exactly the same plane as a man, and her dis-
abilities in this respect are less mental, than physical ; the average
woman cannot enter upon a life so arduous as that of the general
practitioner, without being heavily handicapped physically, when
compared with the average man. I am fully aware that this view
of the question differs from that held by the majority of women
who are interested in it; but I cannot but suspect that the very
eagerness with which they repudiate even the most qualified
statement of the kind, shows that they will not allow themselves
to consider the subject fairly. No doubt a number of women do
practise médicine who are able to meet the demands on their
strength successfully for a number of years ; but they must do so
at a constant expenditure of nervous energy which they are more
eager to spend, and less able to spare, than a man would be
under like conditions, and their liability to bankruptcy in this
respect is therefore much greater. I am speaking at present only
of what is known as general practice, in which the wear and tear
of body and mind, from incessant competition, heavy responsi-
bility, and frequent loss of rest, are very great; and when to
these is added, in many cases, constant pecuniary anxiety
from a precarious means of livelihood, I think it is evident
that the life is one calculated to tax severely the strength of
the strongest.

Assuredly, for those whose endurance is equal. to the demands
The Medical Profession. 81

 

which will be made upon it, the field of usefulness is very wide ;
but I would urge a most careful consideration of this side of the
shield on those who are yet irresolute, and I would entreat them
to believe that it is not within their power to estimate justly the
strain which their nervous force will be called upon to endure,
and therefore they must trust to the experience of others, who
tell them that the number of their sex fitted by nature for such
endurance are in the minority. But general practice is not the
only path of usefulness and honour in medicine ; there are many
others which can be followed, in laboratories, in hospital wards,
in practice among the insane, and many others which offer great
opportunities for practical usefulness and the keenest intellectual
enjoyment, and which are well fitted to a woman’s nature and
physique. The entrance into these fields of labour, it is true, is
carefully guarded ; but the ‘open sesame’ needed in most cases
is supplied by a superior education, which is only one of the
many reasons why it is of such paramount importance to a
woman that she should start fully equipped in this respect ; and I
feel sure that an acknowledgment on her part that she is physi-
cally more fitted for work of this kind, together with the
endeavour to qualify herself especially for it, would tend to
elevate her place in the profession rather than to lower it,

When the gates of the domain of Medicine have been passed
and the journey over its high road is commenced under the
guidance of necessity or of choice, it remains to be seen whether
the traveller will consider her education as completed, or as
begun. Until this time it has been required of her to work up
to a certain fixed standard, and her ability to keep her place in
the ranks has been tested by frequent examinations which have
obliged her to exert herself, or to fall behind on the march.
Now she is free, and it becomes a question of individual force of
character, ability, industry, and, above all, of genuine love of .her
profession as an intellectual career, whether she will at once seek

G
82 Ladies at Work.

=

opportunities to acquire more knowledge and to gain experience

 

in the practical exercise of her profession, or whether she will
consider that enough has been accomplished when she is no
longer required to pass further examinations. Mr. Edward A.
Freeman told us, that when he had received his degree and
fellowship he said, ‘Now I will begin really to read’ ; and it is
this feeling of future enjoyment in study which ought to inspire
those who experience the delicious sensation of freedom spring-
ing from the knowledge of deliverance from the clutches of the
examiners, not the eager acceptance of relief from a required
task which, once completed, has no further claims. It is during
the years immediately following graduation that time can be
devoted to regular attendance on post-graduate courses of in-
struction ; for as the years go by, and the claims of engrossing
business press on those who bear the burden and heat of the
day, they cannot command their time sufficiently for this purpose.
The special kind of work undertaken must vary, of course, with
personal taste, opportunities, and the different vista which opens
before each individual; but some pursuit with an educational
aim in view ought to be entered upon as soon as possible after
professional life is begun, and if a woman has the right spirit
within her it will cease only with its close.

I am afraid that I am already encroaching on the space which
my subject is to fill; but, before I close, I must say a: word in
regard to the woman doctor viewed as an individual, and not as
a class, because so much of both her usefulness and happiness
depend on her own personality. During undergraduate life it is _
a great advantage to a student in medicine to live at a distance
from her immediate family, for the innumerable petty claims on
time, which will arise incessantly in her own home, will be a
serious obstacle to the hard study to which she must devote many
hours each day, and to the complete rest which she ought to
enjoy in her spare moments. The reverse obtains, however, when
The Medical Profession. 83

 

a professional life is entered upon, if she contemplates establishing
herself in practice. No doubt, in some cases, it is necessary for
young women to leave home because there is there no opening
for success ; but I think the necessity is sometimes more fancied
than real ; and I am old-fashioned enough to believe that a woman
should, if possible, have the protection and support which family
ties will give her, and to think that even some sacrifices will be
.compensated for by the comparative freedom from unpleasant
criticism and comment which thee will afford her. In the
natural course of events, as time goes on, her family ties become
loosened one by one; but the respect due to increased age, and
to an established position, are then her protectors, while during
youth, as Mr. Henry James tells us, ‘a young gentlewoman
without visible relations is like a flower without foliage.’ |
It is a common objection to medical women that they are
hard, aggressive, and unwomanly, and I fear it must be admitted
that too much reason is given for the accusation, in the manners,
appearance, and conduct of some of their number. But these
women are such by nature, and, although a life which forces them
to rely entirely on themselves, and brings them constantly before
the public, may have a tendency to foster these unlovely qualities,
they would exist under any conditions and environment, even
though they did not receive the same opportunities for display.
It is unjust to assume that a profession having such aims as the
advancement of science, and the relief of human suffering, can,
in itself, exert a deteriorating influence over character. For
many years the educational privileges granted to women were
so small, the struggle to obtain even these so great, and the
position of a woman exercising the profession.of medicine in
every respect such a trying one, that women who possessed
refinement, cultivation, and social advantages, shrank from
embracing such a life, or were discouraged by the arguments
and opposition of friends. Many of its objectionable features
G2
84 Ladies at Work.

 

have now disappeared, while those that remain are rapidly
becoming modified; and one of the greatest benefits to be
derived from the recent movements in favour of a medical career
for women, is that those among them who are entitled to our
esteem and admiration, not only for their intellectual, but for
their womanly qualities, will have every encouragement in
future to make it their chosen work in life. Yet the life before
them, of which they ought fully to count the cost, is one of hard- -
ship, fatigue, discouragement, and of incessant self-denial, although
its intellectual gratifications are of the highest order, and the
opportunities it affords of human intercourse, and of usefulness
to the world at large, are of the widest kind. No woman should
enter on the profession of medicine from any other motive than
genuine love and enthusiasm for it as a science. Even the desire
to do good in her generation, and to alleviate, so far as lies in
her power, the suffering of humanity, is not a sufficient reason
for the undertaking, if it be not based on an instinctive affection
for the work in itself. This only can enable her to toil onward
for years under the burden of opposition, or at best, cold indiffer-
ence, from friends, to bear the sting of professional jealousy in
her own success, to refrain from reflecting it in that of others,
and, above all, to endure cheerfully the almost complete isolation
which must be her lot.

In return, she will have the happiness of great opportunities of
usefulness ; she will, if she is all she ought to be, receive, as years
go on, the respect and affection of many to whom she is able to
render valuable service, and she will enjoy the absorbing interest
conferred by the ability to follow the advancement of science in
her profession ;-but the nature of her occupations and interests
must tend to separate her from other women, and to render her
path a solitary one. For all the sacrifices, misconstructions, and
disappointments of her life, her compensation must be found in
devotion to her work, and in the interest and enjoyment which a
The Medical Profession. 85

 

devotion so strong to a profession so noble must bring her in
return.

To the woman whose earnest love has prompted her choice,
and who is governed in all her actions by the true spirit of the
science to which her love belongs, the profession of medicine can
bring only ennobling and refining influences. She will be happier
for the knowledge she acquires in its pursuit, and better for the
broader views of life, and of its aims and opportunities which it
will open to her sight. The last half-century has determined
that the profession of medicine shall be opened to women ; the
next must decide whether the work that she accomplishes there
will be such as to convince the world at large that there is need
in it for her services ; and it is now within her own hands that
the answer to the question lies,

df
86 Ladies at Work.

 

WOMEN’S MEDICAL WORK IN INDIA.

BY MRS, FRANK PENNY, AUTHOR OF ‘CASTE AND CREED.’

 

No profession was opened to women more reluctantly than that
of medicine. Only twenty years ago the obstacles placed in the
way of the intrepid woman who wished to become that doubtful
individual, a lady-doctor, seemed almost insuperable. The
majority of men and women looked askance at the strong-minded
young person who dared to attack the mysteries of anatomy, or
presumed to master the science of medicine and surgery. Public
opinion, backed by the personal prejudices of those who stood in
a prominent position in the profession, endeavoured to show,
firstly :—that women were not fitted by nature to become
surgeons, and that it would unsex them; secondly :—that they
were not needed, the field being already filled adequately by the
men. ‘The first objection has long since been proved fallacious ;
and we have only to look at India and Burmah to see that the
second is equally false.

In our eastern’colonies there is an illimitable opening for the
lady-doctor. She need have no fear that she is encroaching on
the rights of the sterner sex. It is a recognised fact that medical
aid to the women of India can only be given through women. The
whole channel with all its ramifications through which medical
aid alone can flow must be feminine. If the aid cannot reach
the female portion of the population through women it is refused ;
or administered in such a second-hand way as to render it
practically useless. In the presidency towns there are a few,,a

a
Women’s Medical Work in India. 87

 

very few, exceptions to this rule amongst the pariahs. But with
the wealthy middle classes and the higher castes, in both town
and country, the rule holds rigidly.

Of late years, under the auspices of a philanthropical govern-
ment, several agencies have been at work to introduce the
qualified lady practitioner. The missionary societies were
amongst the first to recognise the importance of such a move-
ment. They sent the lady-doctor to be the pioneer of the
minister and catechist. They established dispensaries, at differ-
ent centres, and made the cure of the body preface the salvation
of the soul. But the skilled medical aid thus offered so freely was
not always accepted. Close upon the heels of the doctor came
the missionary ; and the presence of the latter was not accept-
able ; the door of zenana and harem was too often rigorously
closed.

This difficulty was recognised by India’s rulers ; and. attempts
were made in three or four centres to give women medical
assistance, perfectly free of any religious teaching. The
attempts were isolated and dependent on local charity ; but so
far as they went, they were successful.

At this juncture Lady Dufferin stepped in with a gigantic
scheme—for founding female hospitals and wards all over the
empire, where caste women could be treated without violating
any of their national prejudices—for providing lecturers to teach
native women in India to be doctors, hospital assistants, and
nurses; and for introducing and establishing lady-doctors tc
attend hospitals, as well as to practise privately. Lady
Dufferin’s scheme was so practical, so well planned, that its
success has been assured from the very beginning. It absorbed
or affiliated all other attempts, and spread like a network over
the whole country. Native princes, fearing no interference with
their jealously guarded religious superstitions, have followed the
example thus set; hospitals have been built by them in their
88 Ladies at Work.

 

capitals ; lady-practitioners have been invited to become resident
physicians, and to form classes for hospital assistants and
midwives, and to practise privately amongst the richer portion
of the population. Lady Dufferin’s Association willingly under-
takes to find candidates for any bona fide post that the native
ruler may wish to fill.

Lady-doctors in India are thus divided into two classes ; (2)
those who work from a purely missionary spirit, and who use
their profession as a means to a higher end; (4) those who
undertake the work for secular reasons, regarding it solely from
a business point of view. Appointments may be heard of (a) by
applying to the secretaries of the missionary societies ; and (0)
through the Secretary of the National Association for supplying
female medical aid to the women of India—in other words
Lady Dufferin’s Fund.

Of the twenty examining Boards of the United Kingdom, five:
confer degrees upon women. These are :—

(1.) The University of London.

(2.) The Royal University of Ireland.

(3.) The King and Queen’s College of Physicians and the
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (Conjoint).

(4.) The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh
and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow ,
(Conjoint).

(5.) The Society of Apothecaries of London.

A student must have completed her eighteenth year before
she begins to study medicine. She must also have passed the
matriculation examination of the University she selects—(1) and
(2) Or one of the examinations in Arts recognised by the
General Medical Council,.(3) (4) (5). , {

Before commencing the study of medicine she must devote
one year to science, a knowledge of its broad principles being of
the greatest importance.
Women’s Medical Work in India. 89

 

Having qualified so far, the student must attend the classes
in one of the medical schools, and begin to walk the hospital.

At the London School of Medicine for Women (30, Handel
Street, Brunswick Square, W.C.), the classes are unmixed, and
most of the lecturers are ladies. At Edinburgh the classes are
also unmixed, and the lecturers are menand women. At Dublin
the sexes are mixed, and the lecturers men.

The time required for completing the medical course is five
years at Edinburgh, and seven at the University of London. If
the student prefers it, she can study in London, and go to
Edinburgh for her examination, thus completing her course in
the shortest possible time. But the woman who intends going
out to India will do well not to hurry over her studies. It is of
the greatest importance that she should be thoroughly proficient
in obstetric practice, especially in operative midwifery. In-
numerable cases will come before her of patients suffering from
the most dangerous conditions incident to maternity; due to
maltreatment by ignorant native practitioners, and the deplorable
custom of child-marriage. Extra time devoted to this subject
will be well spent.

The hospitals which are open to students, are :—

(1.) The Royal Free Hospital, Gray’s Inn Road, which is
associated with the London School of Medicine for Women.

(2.) The New Hospital for Women, 144, Euston Road.

(3.) The Alexandra Hospital for Hip Disease, Queen’s
Square.

(4.) The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street.

(5.) The Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields.

(6.) The National Dental. Hospital, Great Portland Street.

(7.) The London Fever Hospital, Liverpool Road.

(8.) Queen Charlotte’s Lying-in Hospital, Maryiebone Road.

' (9.) British Lying-in Hospital, Endell Street, W.C.
(10.) Rotunda Lying-in Hospital, Dublin.
90 Ladies at Work.

 

(11.) Clapham Maternity Hospital, 74, Jeffry’s Road, S.W.

The students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women
are admitted to the Leith Hospital, which is associated with the
school.

A certain course of Lectures must be taken at the hospitals,
and attendance at operations, in conjunction with the studies at
the schools, is necessary.

The cost of the medical education varies with the degree taken
and the school chosen.

The personal expenses of students for board and lodging must.
of course depend on the requirements of the individual. They
usually vary from £1 to £2 aweek. The winter and summer
sessions together give about thirty-eight weeks.

The minimum fees for the whole course of lectures and of
hospital instruction are :—

(1.) London School of Medicine for Women, £105 if paid in
one sum; £115 if paid in instalments.

(2.) Edinburgh School of Medicine for women, £80 if paid in
one sum; £85 if paid in instalments.

(3.) Irish College of Surgeons, £99 I5s.

Besides these there are examination fees varying from 10
guineas to £ 30, according to the Examining Board chosen.

Several scholarships are offered at the Edinburgh and London

_Schools to students who intend practising in India. Lady
Dufferin’s Fund recently gave two. The Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge is prepared to give assistance. Other
missionary societies offer help on certain conditions, which are
generally to the effect that the candidates will undertake to
practise in India on the completion of their term of study.

A student should decide beforehand on the diploma or degree
that she wishes to take. The rules and requirements differ in
each case ; and much valuable time may be lost by indecision.
It is also as well to bear in mind that though all registered
Women’s Medical Work in India. gl

 

practitioners are legally on an equality, the graduates of the
University hold a higher professional status than those who
take simple qualifications to practise. The examinations are
more difficult and the time of study more prolonged, especially
in the case of the University of London, the degrees of which
may be considered as honours degrees. Requiring skilled doctors
as India does, these facts should recommend the University
diplomas to ladies intending to go there.

But something else is needed besides the medical qualifications
for taking up work in India. A woman must be physically
strong, or her health will not bear the strain. The hospitals are
necessarily built in the very midst of the people they are
intended to benefit. The resident surgeon will find herself
obliged to live in the most thickly populated part of the town,
where the air is foulest and hottest. The Europeans, if there
ate any, will be some distance away in cantonments. Her time
will be fully employed in seeing patients, diagnosing diseases,
performing operations, attending confinements, and in teaching
classes of native students. When her hospital duties are over,
she will be obliged to pay her visits to patients at private
houses. She will drive out in a close carriage through
insanitary streets, where the open drains defy the doctor. She
will enter the small ill-ventilated rooms to which rich and poor
alike cling with fatal perversity ; and she will once more have to
combat the disheartening ignorance and obstinacy of those who
tend the patient. Still more frequently will she find that she is
expected to set right the irreparable damage done by the native
midwife. During the hot months of March, April, and May she
must stay at her post, whilst her countrywomen, the wives and
daughters of the English officers, fly to the hills. It needs a
strong constitution to endure such a life with its hard work and
comparative loneliness.

A woman also requires tact—the instinctive tact which is the
92 Ladies at Work.

 

outcome of true nobility of mind. She is brought into close
contact with a sensitive, quick-witted people, keenly alive to all
the little courtesies of good-breéding, though they may. not
practise them themselves. She has to deal with prejudice,
strong and deeply rooted, prejudice against herself as a foreigner,
and against her system ; which is in every detail exactly opposite
to the practices of the native doctor. She will see the commonest
laws of hygiene systematically disregarded in spite of all she
may urge to the contrary. She must keep her temper and be
gentle and tender in the face of obstinate perverseness ; she
must be courageous and persevering in the face of exasperating
ignorance.

The Englishwoman who goes out to India, whether to work as
missionary or as a paid doctor, should always bear in mind that
she is in aheathencountry. She occupies a responsible position,
for she stands as an example of Western civilisation and thought
before the eyes of thousands of her Eastern sisters. The Oriental
is essentially religious in his character ; and this is especially the
case with the women. A contempt is felt for those who have no
faith. In the old days, when there were fewer clergymen and
ladies in the country, and when Englishmen too often stooped to
the level of the Mahomedan and Hindoo in their mode of life,
the people were wont to speak contemptuously of the conquering
race as ‘kaffirs without religion.’ Now the tone of society is
better ; and, though he may not understand it, the native knows
that the Englishman has a religion ; and he respects him for it.
Lady Dufferin’s Association requests its doctors not to interfere
with the religions of their patients ; it asks that the subject may
not be mentioned. But it does not require an absence of all
religion in the doctor herself; it does not expect her to set at
naught the teaching of her childhood, and extinguish within
herself the Christian instincts of generations.

Medical work in India should undoubtedly be taken up from
Women's Medical Work in India. 93

the highest motives, whether the doctor works on purely business
lines, or whether she labours conjointly with the missionary.
She must possess the enthusiasm of a lover of the science, and
also the desire to do good to her fellow-creatures and benefit
suffering humanity. For whether she preaches Christianity openly
or not, the lady-doctor must of necessity be the pioneer of a
higher civilisation, and of a far holier creed than those which
now hold India and her millions in their embrace.
‘94 Ladies at Work:

 

HOSPITAL NURSING.

BY H. MARY WILSON AND R. WILSON.

 

THOUGH a great deal has been written on hospital nursing—
though it has been led before the public in many guises, has
been treated to laudatory, cavilling, and depreciatory remarks—
it still seems necessary to say a few more words on the subject,
at the risk, perhaps, of a little wearisome reiteration; but we
must remember that ‘it is repetition, not novelty, that produces
the strongest effect; and phrases, like tunes, are a long time
making themselves at home in the brain.’

This paper, if it needs any apology, finds it in the fact that it
is the outcome of anxious thoughts born of experience and
nourished at the side of the stern mother reality. For there are
some who, while living in this particular sphere of usefulness,
try to weigh truly for themselves and their fellow-workers the
many serious difficulties and temptations which balance its joys
and pleasures. And these long to speak words of warning or
advice, which will open the eyes of those young ardent souls who
wish, or fancy that they wish, to join the band of hard-working
hospital nurses. They long, too, to help those who, having
begun the life well, fail to live it truly, lacking the force of the
best motive ; or those who take each step with the unwholesome
consciousness that they would like to appear as martyrs in the
eyes of others.

We talk of motives, and I think of some that bring proba-
tioners to our hospitals. I know one girl who acknowledged

\
fLospital Nursing. 95

 

that she ‘took up nursing’ because she found her dress allowance
quite inadequate for the demands of a London season. Another
came with the boasted purpose of getting married.

Many keep their reasons to themselves, but often cannot find
in their hearts much worthier motives than these.

How infinitely better it would be for all concerned, if they
could know the weight and labour of the plough to which they
are so lightly putting their hands! Then let me try to give them
and others a wider conception of the life than that expressed by
a certain lady acquaintance.

‘Oh, how beautiful your work must be!’ she said to a hospital
nurse. ‘How happy you must feel, going up and down those
interesting wards, putting a poultice here and a poultice there!’ *

We hear and read a great deal about the hardships of a nurse’s
life, or of the inconsiderate treatment she receives at the hand
of the hospital authorities. Almost every magazine or daily
paper wishes to say something upon the subject. As a natural
consequence, nurses stand before thé eyes of the world in the
double characters of martyrs and ‘ministering angels.’ The
former they most emphatically are ot; the latter—well, they do
minister to the sick and suffering, whether rich-or poor, and it is
the glorious badge of their office that they may do so. But it is
not good that this kindly babel of applauding tongues should
chatter so unthinkingly in admiration of or pity for them. Of
course, those who work in large city hospitals know full well how
many improvements must be made before a nurse’s surroundings
are idealistic ; but they should not forget how much has already
been done, and how infinitely superior their lot is to that of their
sisters who went before them. ‘They should rather be content
to wait, knowing that those in authority are trying their utmost
—slowly, it may be, but surely—to improve the position of all
who call themselves by the beloved name ‘nurse.’

* A fact.
96 Ladies at Work.

 

Twenty years ago—perhaps ten, or even five—we find, on
looking back, how real were the hardships endured by those who
first entered the nursing ranks. We read of herculean efforts to
reform important public institutions ; of lasting results accom-
plished by undaunted women possessing no greater physical.
calibre than our own—women, in many cases, who said nothing of
themselves, who toiled on patiently in obscurity, doing their work
and laying down their lives, unknown of men, untouched by fame,
who not only said nothing of themselves, but had no one to say
it for them.

It is reserved for those who tread more easily the beaten track,
which tore the feet of these pioneers, to receive the meed of praise,
which is hardly in part their due. And they forget this. Thirty-
nine years ago, Florence Nightingale, in the face of the world—
and a very perplexed world too—stepped quietly from the ranks
of educated women and entered a breach which she alone could fill.’
The hearts of men and women will always quicken and throb
with enthusiasm whenever her name is mentioned, and well may
those who try to follow in her footsteps thank God for her bright
example. For she it was who showed them first the way—who
drew back the curtain of conventionality which hung before the
crowds of English women, sitting waiting in the twilight of in-
activity for an emancipating hand. She led them into the day-
light and sunshine of consecrated work, and herself showed that
we may go into the thick of life’s battle and yet remain modest
and true, pure and holy, the truest women still.

But, as each year passes since 1854, and more and more step.
forward to join one or other of the active lines of thought and
work, we wonder sometimes where it will end. Will the homes.
where parents grow old and brothers are reared be left alto-
gether destitute of a daughter’s tender carefulness or a sistet’s
immeasurable influence? Will the lovely pictures of English
home-life be marred or lose their fresh vivacity. because the
Flospital Nursing. 97

 

‘women-kind—one and all—must have a vocation, a calling, an
outside element to make their life liveable ?

We are told to believe in the adjustability of human nature—
of English nature especially.

Then let us hope that the pendulum of time, which seems to
have swung from inactivity and seclusion to the opposite extreme
‘of noisy work, will eventually return to a happy medium, in which
those who hear the call to live the highest of all lives—the family
life—will strive to make it perfect ; while those others—the de-
solate, the heart-sick, the obliged-to-work, or those who may, or
must, stand alone—will find open to them fertile fields of work and
interest, which will save them from the ‘tragedy of aimlessness.’

And now what about this class of women who wish to ‘take
up nursing?’ It is a very large one, for I know, as a fact, that
one of our great London hospitals received no less than two
‘thousand applications in one year from would-be probationers.

I think I detect, lurking in the nurse’s mind, a tinge of shame
for her profession as she speaks of ‘taking it up.’ It gives the
impression that it is not her life, but only a passing interest,
to be lightly laid down again.

Let us, rather, speak of those who are to de nurses.

What is a nurse? What is required of her? What powers of
mind and body must she be prepared to offer up in the cause for
which she lives? What must she be ?

It is easy enough to look round and then to tell you what she
must zot be. To define in a few words an ideal nurse is almost
‘impossible. But I can give you three qualities which every
nurse, or would-be nurse, must possess: she must be a good
woman; she must be a tender woman; she must be a brave
‘woman.

I will presently let a hospital nurse dwell—in her own words
—upon the value of these three items. But now I want to urge
an important matter. Why will not those women who feel within

FH
98 Ladies at Work.

 

themselves: the stirrings of life—the soarings after any high or
noble work—cultivate first, zz their own sheltered homes, these
golden qualities, goodness, tenderness, bravery? In their train
might follow the acquisition of lesser, but very valuable habits,
such as early-rising, orderliness, self-restraint in word and action,
and a good memory.

Many probationers enter the large hospitals of London in
absolute ignorance of what is required of them. They come,
perhaps, from homes of luxury, from the artificial ways of
society, from idle lives, fired by a passing idea that nursing
will interest them. They come from the world of ‘being-waited-
upon’ to another, where everything must be done by and for
themselves and those dependent upon their care. The routine—
especially. during the usual three months’ probation—is one of
hard manual labour, including cleaning, scrubbing iron bedsteads,
rubbing brasses, and scouring baths. The day’s work. extends
‘through long hours of duty, and entails a constant strain, not only
on the mind and body, but—an important detail—on the memory
as well, The hospital nurse finds herself face to face with
disease of every kind, loathsome sights, foul smells, and death
in all its saddest and most pathetic varieties. She may have to
conquer an inborn sickening repugnance to the sight of blood.
What will she do? A strong will prayerfully wielded must come
to her aid. She must echo the brave words of the Duchess
Maria Josepha, the Royal surgical nurse, who had just such a
nervous shrinking to conquer, and say with her, ‘What others
can endure, I can bear to see.’ But the battle w7// only be to
the strong. Instead of the accustomed daily drives or healthy
walks, the nurse will have to content herself with a ‘ pass’ to the
outer world for two or three hours once or twice a week, and a
‘long day’ once a month. If she complains of fatigue, it is only
to, be told cheerfully, ‘Oh, we all feel the same! You will get
accustomed to it by-and-by.’
fLospital Nursing. 99

 

Does not this all prove what a serious consideration even
the physical qualifications become? And do you wonder that
women fail and drop out of the ranks day after day? The real
wonder is that many more do not do the same.

But now let me emphasise a few details in the all-important
qualifications of character.

I believe, for instance, that no one outside the hospital walls
can realise how terribly hard it sometimes becomes to exercise
stern self-restraint.

It occasionally happens on night duty, when all the patients
are asleep, and when there is, for an hour or so, nothing to do,
that in the nurse’s rounds of the ward she passes an empty bed,
a couch, or arm-chair. Perhaps she has not been able to sleep
while she was off duty during the day. And now sleep suddenly
attacks her with all its force. Nothing seems to rouse her. She
is alone in the ward. The quiet breathings of the patients are
so many tempting voices. Her eyes ache with weariness. Her
eye-lids droop, leaden-weighted. She staggers and nearly sleeps
as she walks. I am justified in using the word awful in de-
scribing these sensations, for with them comes too the degrading
feeling that she would almost sell her soul to sleep.

Is it difficult to guess what will be the issue if the nurse is
weak in moral courage, or if the highest motives do not underlie
her purposes?

We will suppose that the ordeal is safely passed, and
thoroughly wearied in soul and.body, but with a heart at
rest, the tired nurse draws down the blind in her little room
to shut out the daylight, and seeks the sleep that is now hers
legitimately.

But here a new temptation will sometimes assail her.

Sleep, ‘coy’ as ever, cannot be found. She lies there wide-
eyed and unnaturally wakeful. She begins to think of theflong
hours of the ‘night duty’ that come nearer every moment, and

H 2
100 Ladies at Work.

 

she involuntarily shrinks from such another battle with self,
feeling physically too weak for it.

Is she not justified in taking a dose of morphia to force the
sleep that will not come? No! It is a most fatal step. The
need is sure to recur. The habit is so easily formed. The evil
done is often soirrevocable. These are two of the giant tempta-
tions that attack the nurse. Here is one of the lesser trials.

At the close of a hard day of fourteen hours, at five minutes
to nine, just when she expects the welcome advent of the night
nurse to relieve her, there comes a cry of ‘ Nurse’ from the other
end of the long ward. She may have been on her feet all those
long hours, with the exception of half-an-hour for dinner and a
hastily-swallowed cup of tea in the ward-kitchen ; her feet and
back may be aching painfully ; and, beyond all, she had imagined
that the day’s work was done.

I maintain that, to rise cheerfully—as is so often, often done—
and, if the need is only a drink of water, to put a tone of pleasure
into her voice as she answers, ‘ All right, granny, you shall have
some!’ requires as much courage as to carry a comrade under
the enemy’s fire to a place of safety.

I have pointed out some of the shadows in the dark side of
this picture of hospital life. My thoughts gladly turn now to
those joys—very special and very heart-filling, that lie like
gleaming bars of sunlight across the canvas.

When a long hand-to-hand fight with insidious disease has
strained a nurse’s energies and filled her heart with alternating
hopes and fears, the unexpected signs of returning consciousness
and renewed strength, each feeble step safely accomplished to-
wards convalescence, are delights indeed.

To some there comes the supreme moment when the prompt
action of a firm unerring hand saves a life at a time of unforeseen
peril. ‘Then the look of warm approval in the face of a great
doctor, the congratulatory hand-clasps of her fellow-workers, the
flospital Nursing. IOI

 

strange uplifted feeling that carries her through the hours that
follow, are wonderful experiences, very sweet while they last. But
they are usually followed by a reaction when she sees herself as she
really is—when the ‘remorseful fear’ of herself zz// come with
‘every smile of partial friend, and she can only say humbly,
“Not unto me, O Lord, not unto me.’

After all, the most satisfying joys belong to the quieter
pleasures of the daily routine. The caressing touch of a baby’s
weak fingers ; the clinging dependence of the wee Jimmies and
Louies ; their sunny, saucy ways when childhood asserts itself
once more in their tiny frames ; the quaint facetious remarks of
the daddies and grannies—very wags they are sometimes, dear
old things—these are all very good things to possess. One day
may bring the unlooked-for visit of an old patient, whose grati-
tude urges him to show ‘sister’ and ‘nurse’ a limb whole and
in good working order. Or, as she enters the ward in the..
morning, she may meet a wistful welcoming look in a sick boy’s
patient face, and hear him say, ‘I am glad you've come, nurse.
Oh, I’ve been wearyin’ for you!’

Again, it falls to the lot of some nurses to be able to carry off a
convalescent child to her own dear, peaceful home in the country,
and to place it in the kind old motherly arms that used to hold
her in the same way twenty-five years ago. Yes, moments such
as these are the best helps in her arduous life.

And is it not a chastened happiness to go with tired trustful
souls to the very edge of the dark river, so close that she can
almost touch the angel hands stretched out to take them from
her, and does quite see the wonderful reflection of the heavenly

light in their weary upturned faces ?

These are some of the God-sent compensations of hospital
life. Two others occur to me now: one, the inspiriting sense
of comradeship which pervades the whole band of workers ; the
102 Ladies at Work.

 

other, those deep, true, enduring friendships between woman and
woman which are so often formed here, and which can add so
much to the beauty and usefulness of our lives. Yes, we want
the life of a hospital nurse to be an ideal one. We mean to
make it so, if we can. :

It is so already to many. There are those whose influence
over the other nurses is incalculable—to whom the weak and the
easily persuaded come with all their difficulties, their doubts,
their weariness of life, and go away refreshed. There are those
who inspire such confidence in the patients under their care that
they follow them thankfully with their eyes, while they almost
worship them in their hearts, because, perhaps, they are their
first vision of true, pure womanhood.

And what is the secret of it all? I believe it lies in this—that
each act of the daily life has become ‘a voice of aspiration after
tight,’ winning the answering touch of approval from One ‘who
did bless the merciful of old.’

A hospital nurse was asked to write a few words of advice to
some probationers. The gist of what she said I have already
given. ‘Be good. Be tender. Be brave, she wrote at the
head of the paper ; and then, because her heart was very full, she
went on with eager pen, ‘Be good first. You will find in your
busy life no time for meditation, and very few moments for
prayer. But you may cultivate that necessary habit of a faithful
nurse, the practice of praying as you work. Each action may be
dedicated with a silent “For Thy dear sake,” for that is the
thought which should live with you and be your very breath.
It is possible while actually scrubbing and cleaning to raise the
heart on high, and to ask for the graces which you most need.
At least you may pause and repeat, with your hand upon the
door before entering the Ward and beginning your day’s work,
that noble soldier’s prayer, “ Lord, I shall be very busy to-day.
If I forget Thee, yet do Thou remember me.” A hospital life
fLospital Nursing. 103

 

is one of constantly recurring emergencies, calling for a continual
spirit of recollectedness.

‘Be tender. Do not let the sights you mus¢ see, and the work
you must do, make you careless of the sufferings of the least of
God’s children. Remember that a heedless word or an uncon-
trolled look may wound the feelings of a suffering sister, if it
does not sow the seeds of coarseness in your own heart. Why
should we suspect the lower classes of less sensitiveness than we
ourselves possess ?

‘Lastly, be brave. Do not be ashamed to stand to your
colours. Be brave enough to refute gossip—the bane of hospital
life. Be brave enough to say a good word for, or to, some one
who may have got a bad name by misunderstanding perhaps, or
by mistake. Be brave, again, in overcoming any tendency to
carelessness in your life. It must be either advance or retreat.
It requires, believe me, a constant courage, a courage of the
highest type, to resist the tendencies which crowd upon us from
every side to blunt our susceptibilities, and make our natures
lower instead of higher than they are. For when we leave our
quiet homes to live between hospital walls, our view of life is
suddenly widened to such an extent that we must fix our eyes
upon the boundaries, lest in the confusing details—the seemingly
contradictory facts—which move before our eyes, we lose sight
of the great truth that its horizon merges in the infinite, and
that God is our Father.

‘If we fail in this, we see only the seamy side of human life,
and by constantly dwelling upon that we, perforce, become lower,
coarser, more impure. Once again, be brave to take up the
manual labour that must be part of your life—not as a duty
beneath you, as something to be hurried over, or handed on to
an inferior, but in the spirit of appreciative cheerfulness. It is
quite right that some amount of scrubbing, cleaning, and dusting
should fall to your lot. How can you teach others if you cannot
104 Ladies at Work.

 

do yourself? What should we become if there were no possi-
bility of counteracting the depressing influences of our sur-
roundings by a little wholesome labour? ‘You will find that
sweeping and scrubbing can have quite an exhilarating effect
upon you, and no satisfaction exceeds that of looking round upon
your ward done from beginning to end by yourself and your
probationer. I am quite sure that, in the working of a nurse’s
life, there are many improvements still to be made—that more
nurses might be provided to do the work now accomplished by
the few. But many others share my opinion, that it is a great
mistake to try and make the life of a nurse into that of a fine
lady instead of a working woman.

‘By all means let the educated women of England—the
highest ladies in the land, if you will—become the nurses of
the poor. But let them come among us with a thorough know-
ledge of what it is they undertake, and willing, with that
knowledge and a pure motive, to live the lives of earnest working
women.

“How could I serve in the wards if the hope of the world were a lie?

How could. I bear with the sights and the loathsome smells of disease—
But that He said, “Ye do it to Me, when ye do it to these”?’

It remains for us to treat, with a few practical suggestions, of
the distinctly business aspect of the subject.

We will say that the would-be hospital nurse, having attained
the age of twenty-three, which has been wisely decided to be the
earliest at which it is well to enter on the life of a probationer,
has decided in her own mind which institution she wishes to enter,
choosing probably one in a large city, where the system is good and
the experience likely to be wide and profitable. Her next step will
then be to write to the matron, asking for the rules and regula-
tions for the nursing staff. These are returned to her, and in
many cases are accompanied by a note to the effect that there

f
Flospital Nursing. 105

 

will be no vacancy for some months, unless she should wish to
enter as a paying probationer.

She has now two ways open to her: either to wait, we will
say, for twelve or for eighteen months—an interval which might
be wisely spent, as I have already said, in useful matters of self-
training in her own home; or to begin as a ‘special’ probationer
paying, usually, one guinea a week. If she decides upon the
latter course, she can step into an ordinary probationer’s position
afterwards, should the opportunity offer before she is a qualified
staff nurse.

In the general run of hospitals, the special probationer and the
ordinary probationer live in separate houses and have to keep
rather different hours. The former has the lighter work, and
so, probably, a less useful training. She is on duty from 8.30 in
the morning to 7 or 8 at night; but has two hours off duty
every afternoon, when she can always obtain a pass to the
outer world. In some hospitals she is exempt from the scrub-
bing, rubbing, and cleaning that falls to the lot of an ordinary
probationer.

For her—the ordinary probationer—the day begins at six
o'clock. Breakfast is at 6.40, and she is on duty in the wards
from 7 A.M. until 8 P.M., with the exception of three hours off
duty every alternate day, and a whole day once a month. Half
an hour is allowed for dinner, and the same length of time for
tea.

A probationer’s duties vary in detail in different hospitals ;
but there is no doubt that these first months of training are by
far the most arduous, when we remember that spare moments

~ should be spent in reading up certain books that will be recom-
mended to her, and in other practical ways coaching herself for
the examination she must pass, at the end of her first year, before
she can become a staff nurse. There is usually another examina-
tion at the end of three years which decides her position among
106 Ladies at Work.

 

the other nurses, and which, in this age of competition, materially
affects her future nursing career.

One word about dress.

A nurse should, while on duty, keep strictly to her uniform,
and wear no jewellery. A gold bangle, or more than one plain
ring, are out of place in a ward, and do not look like a hard-
working practical nurse.’ I should also advise the adopting of
the out-of-door uniform, which, at most institutions, is not com-
pulsory. It is a great protection to the nurse in her often
solitary walks along the crowded streets. It is respected by the
‘roughest customer,’ and calls forth many an act of chivalrous
gratitude from unexpected quarters, as the following anecdote
will testify.

A nurse, in her long cloak and neat close-fitting bonnet, with
its white strings, was waiting on the path of a crowded thorough-
fare. The road was narrow, and the vehicles thronged thickly
at this point. No policeman was in sight. She looked timidly
up and down, remembering that delay just now would involve
the reporting of herself to ‘matron’ as having exceeded her
‘pass-time.’ Suddenly a ringing, cheery voice above her called
aloud, ‘Come on, nuss!’

Looking up, she saw a waggoner reining in his great horses
and bringing the carriages behind him to an abrupt stand-still.
Thankfully she hurried across the space so unexpectedly opened
for her.

And, then, what about an occasional amusement, a change of
scene and sights? These certainly are welcome and helpful, duz
while a probationer is serving hér time—indeed, during the first
year or two of hospital work—if she can’persuade herself to refuse,
as a rule, all evening engagements that will keep her out late at
night, she will soon reap the full benefit of her self-denial in the
Hospital Nursing. 107

 

good that she will receive from her regular, full measure of sleep
and rest, every hour of which she will find she needs.

And, lastly, one small matter occurs to me. When you are
preparing to leave your home, and are looking round your pretty
_ bedroom, while you ask yourself which, and how many, of these
treasured possessions and dainty ‘knick-knacks’ you shall take
with you, give a thought to the hard-worked maids of the nurses’
home, who will have to dust and tidy for you. Take only what

will rest your eyes and tune your mind to homeward or upward
thoughts.
108 Ladtes at Work.

CARE OF INSANE PATIENTS.

BY LADY CLIFFORD.

 

EVERY one knows what a great improvement has taken place of
late years in the management of the insane; but I think every
one does not know that in many of the large mental hospitals
there has lately been a great movement to supply patients of the
upper classes with companion attendants of more or less the same
social standing. In most, if not all, of these hospitals for the
insane there are also nurses of a lower grade, and a strong staff
of servants; but it is the lady attendants who live entirely
with the lady patients, sharing their meals and exercise,
starting and encouraging their amusements and occupations,
and giving as bright and healthy a tone as possible to their
daily life.

It is not, of course, a work that would suit everyone. No girl
should think of it unless she has sound health, steady nerves, and
a patient cheerful temper; and even of those apparently so
qualified a large proportion fail on trial.

But those who are fitted for the work come to take in it a most
absorbing interest, and certainly it is hard to imagine any life
more filled with acts of loving kindness, more rich in opportunities
of doing good. It has also this in its favour, that small personal
advantages and a stock of slight accomplishments are of much
greater value in it than in most careers for women.

A pleasant appearance, voice, and manner go for much ; so do
other trifling gifts, such as skill in fancy work, in any or all its
Care of Insane Patients. 109

 

‘branches, an every-day amount of musical capability, skill in out-
door and in-door games—any art, in fact, which, by inciting to
effort and emulation, may help a sufferer through the weary day.

‘We are so glad,’ said an experienced lady attendant once to
me, ‘of anything that will kill an hour,’

Any lady feeling drawn to the work should of course begin by
applying for admission at one of the many great hospitals for
the insane where attendants of a superior class are employed. I
May mention St. Ann’s Heath, Virginia Water; Barnwood
‘House, Gloucester ; St. Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton ; and
there are many others. ’

I am told that the medical men who manage these establish-
ments are already overwhelmed with applications: as in every-
thing else of the sort, the market is getting over-stocked. At
the same time it is inevitable that not every so-called ‘lady’
attendant should quite deserve the title, and I cannot but think
that there is a demand for real born and bred gentlewomen, who
must be the most suitable and acceptable companions to those of
the same class. It is, of course, extremely difficult for a doctor
to judge of this by correspondence only, and a personal intro-
duction is most desirable. In any case, it is probable that the
applicant will have to wait some time for a vacancy.

That difficulty overcome, she goes to whichever Mental Hospi-
tal she has obtained admission to, and starts on her six months’
training. It is probable that the rules vary according to the
place ; I will mention what they are in the only one of which I
hhave any personal knowledge, and this will give a good general
‘idea, as the difference is not likely to be very material.

In the Mental Hospital of which I speak, the salary to start
with is £25, all found; collars and cuffs, I believe, are also pro-
vided, and the lady attendants wear a grey uniform. The
patients are divided into ‘galleries, being, of course, most care-
fully classed according to the degree and kind of their affliction.
110 Ladies at Work.

 

Through each gallery in turn the attendant under training has to
pass, being minutely instructed in the management of every kind
of mental disease, and, of course, giving her assistance in every
possible way to those set over her.

Public examinations are being now instituted for every class
of attendant, and probably before long no one will be engaged
who has not first passed and obtained a certificate.

As yet, however, I believe the practical knowledge obtained by
this six months’ training is sufficient to entitle any one who goes
through it satisfactorily to be a qualified attendant. The hours
on duty are from 7 A.M. to 9.30 P.M., and practically more, since
the attendant sleeps in the room with at least one patient,
probably several, and must take her chance of disturbed nights.

The night nurses, making their hourly rounds, have the power
to remove and specially care for any very -violent or noisy
patients; but the attendant must expect constant minor dis-
turbances from nervous and exacting sufferers, and the day
begins inexorably at..7 A.M. no matter what kind of night it
follows. .On the other hand, it must be remembered that the
long hours ‘on duty’ include many that may very likely be
passed pleasantly. There are constant walks and drives, much
lawn tennis and ladies’ cricket in summer, with tea taken out of
doors in the shade ; in winter there are dances, musical evenings,
private theatricals, and other entertainments, at which patients
and attendants of both sexes meet under the supérintendence of
the matron and of the doctors.

The attendants are most of them bright merry young: people,
ready to give and take much pleasant sympathy, and many of
the patients are convalescent, and may be very agreeable com-
panions, although not yet quite sound enough to be launched
into life again.

The attendants have an afternoon free once a week, from about
2 P.M. to 9 P.M., the same about every 4th Sunday, and a whole
Care of Insane Patients. Cit

 

day out once a month. Three weeks’ holiday every year after
the first, and six weeks for the head attendant.

The six months’ training over, the lady attendant receives her
certificate, and then she may either remain on the staff of the
hospital in which she has started, or she may try to get a
‘private case, that is, the care of a mental sufferer whose
relations prefer keeping her at home or in private lodgings,

This must be in some ways a far more trying life than that of
one among many in a hospital. The responsibility is so much
heavier, and there is so little of sympathy or companionship to
lighten it. On the other hand, it is much better paid ; the salary
of a lady attendant with a ‘private case’ varying from thirty
shillings to three guineas a week, according to her capabilities
and the means of her employers. :

If the lady attendant remains in the Hospital for the Insane,
she may either continue to move from gallery to gallery pretty
often, that being found best for the health and nerves, or she may
be told off to the care of a single patient whose friends may
prefer her having an attendant entirely to herself, or who may
require, from the turn her illness has taken, constant watching.
Her duties may include the trying one of fetching new patients
from their homes or from other asylums, and she will probably
sometimes have the more cheerful one of accompanying to her
home one ‘out on leave,’ that is, one who, though sufficiently
recovered to, return to her family, is still, as a measure of
precaution, kept for the first few weeks under supervision.

It is not necessary to point out what close companionship with
the patient is implied in these arrangements, and how thoroughly
desirable it is, in the case of sufferers of naturally refined habits
and traditions, that they should not be exposed to the constant
irritation of living, eating, and sleeping with a person who does
not possess those traditions, and to whom those habits are an
effort and an achievement. This is indeed eminently a work for
112° Ladies at Work.

 

ladies, and I trust that this fact will be constantly more and more
realised,

So far I have not dwelt on the more painful part in the life of
a lady attendant on the insane. But it must, of course, be
remembered that while some patients are more nervous and
whimsical than positively insane, many others seem to have sunk
below the level of humanity ; some seem—and who can say that
they are not ?—to be the victims of diabolical possession.

Those who undertake the care of these poor sufferers must
brace themselves to endure the sight of terrible misery and
despair, to listen unmoved to fearful blasphemies, to encounter |
calmly, and control wisely, strange abnormal propensities to mis-
chief and to crime; and to practise a ceaseless watchfulness,
which in itself is a strain on nerves and spirits. There will be
much that is loathsome and repulsive, much that shocks a
woman’s delicacy, much that tries her temper; and through all
she must be able to ‘ possess her soul in patience,’ or she is unfit
for her work.

Above all, if she would not be overwhelmed, mind, body and
soul, by the sight of these most strange, inexplicable afflictions,
she must hold fast to those three only clues in the labyrinth of
life—Faith, Hope, and Charity, ‘believing all things, hoping all
things, enduring all things.’ She must carry about in her own
heart that great sunshine of the love of God which alone can
light up the dark places ; and, remembering Who it was to
Whom they brought many lunatics, and many possessed with
devils, she must feel it a blessed privilege to follow humbly in
His footsteps, and, by patient, obedient, self-denying work, to
help in bringing comfort and perhaps healing to a class of
sufferers on whom our Blessed Saviour always had compassion.
( 113°)

 

TEACHING.

BY M. T. WALLAS.

 

THIS is an age in which the laws of the social code are under-
going many alterations and modifications.

With regard to that part of the code which refers more
particularly to women, the prohibitive commands are decreasing
in humber, whilst those which set forth the duty of doing instead
of abstaining are as surely increasing: ‘Thou shalt not’ is giving
way to ‘ Thou shalt.’

It has long been the custom to expect in a woman particular
virtues such as self-abnegation, gentleness, humility, whilst the
discovery of such qualities in one of the opposite sex brought
with it the pleasure of the unexpected. The generally received
opinion that women’s sphere is the domestic one, has of late
years been greatly modified by the recognition of the stubborn
fact that many households consist of a number of unmarried
daughters.

The fact which is usually the correlative of the preceding—
namely, that servants form a part of the household, and that the
domestic work for each member of the family is therefore reduced
to an infinitesimal quantity—is becoming also a matter for com-
ment rather than of indifference. After the hour of household
work—if so much is required—a single woman must, for the
remainder of the day, find occupation for herself. The maxims,
‘No one need ever be idle, —‘there is plenty of occupation for
willing hands,—have certainly lost none of their truth, but

I
114 Ladies at Work.

 

might well receive this important addition : ‘Before undertaking
any work, see that it is worth doing. Make sure that the ex-
penditure of your energy will be repaid by some solid good
done to the community.’

The amount of unproductive work done by women, and by
women capable, if their energies were properly directed, of doing
real service to their fellow-creatures, is a painful subject for con-
templation, not only to him whose economical soul grieves over
the waste of time and talent thereby incurred, but also to him
who believes in the dignity given to the labourer by his power
of contributing to the real wants of his generation. I say ‘real’
wants, for women, as a rule, do not discriminate between mere
occupation and serious work. Provided that they are not idle,
are not ‘wasting their time’ (although by ‘waste of time’ they
often mean nothing more than bodily inactivity), many women
feel no serious dissatisfaction with the aimlessness of their
exertions.

We all feel the pathos of Mr. Casaubon’s wholly profitless
literary efforts, but the sight of mountains of needlework, done
with infinite labour, with much mechanical skill, but without the
artistic training or talent which alone make such productions
valuable, is surely as pathetic. To devote hours to the reading
of history, art, science, literature, for the sake only of the occupa-
tion thereby provided, is to sentence the mind to the punishment
of the mental treadmill.

I once, when a child, watched with the fascination of the
horrible, a lunatic picking up pebbles on the sea-shore. She
slipped each laboriously sought-for stone through the hole in her
gown, from which it fell on to the shore again, instead of
dropping it into her pocket. Thus, very early in life, I received
a never-forgotten lesson on unproductive labour.

The best way of ascertaining that one’s work is both intrinsi-
cally good and adapted to the wants of the age is to carry it into
Teaching. 115

 

the labour market. The absolute necessity of earning a liveli-
hood drives many women there, but where the goad of actual
poverty is absent, that of principle can with advantage take its
place.

A naturally sincere mind desires that its work shall be judged
by unbiassed critics,

Home companions or friends, for the sake of the doer, fre-
quently overlook, perhaps scarcely see, the many imperfections
of the work.

To such sympathisers with every effort, life owes most of its
smiles and much of its grace, but the judge of results should be
sought elsewhere. The professional cook on the failure of her
apple-pie cannot look for the consolation administered once in
my hearing to an amateur in the art: ‘It is a very good pie if
one ignores the taste of it.’

If your pie is to find a purchaser, it must taste well.

The ideal of work, which everyone worthy of the name of
labourer possesses, becomes, in times of depression, very dim ;
nothing, according to my experience, gives the daily stimulus
needed to undergo drudgery, to force the unwilling flesh to
perform its allotted work, like the thought of the impending
judgment. Companionship is another sweetener and lightener
of work. The professional ranks offer such opportunities for
friendship, founded on similarity of aim and effort, as are
seldom to be found amongst the scattered bands of amateur
workers. :

For all these reasons I should advise even those who do not
absolutely need the pecuniary remuneration to compete with
paid workers, in order that their work may supply a real want;
may be intrinsically good ; may be done with more sustained
effort, and consequently with less expenditure of effort.

These reasons seem to apply more especially to the profession
of teaching. In no other profession is there so much of what

I 2
116 Ladies at Work.

 

may be called ‘subterranean industry.’ Anyone may proclaim
him or herself a teacher, and may possibly obtain from credu-
lous parents more or less occupation. Teaching might well
seem to be the most important of all industries, since the
commodities with which it deals are minds and characters.
But by an odd contradiction it is precisely in the profession of
teaching that work can be obtained without any tangible show
of merit.

Any one calling himself a medical man, and practising with-
out a medical certificate, is liable to punishment—to practise
ignorantly on the mind of a child is no offence.

This state of things must continue until certain proofs of
efficiency are universally required from those who enter the
educational profession. Many teachers (I use the term exclusive
of the quacks of the profession) and other persons interested in
educational matters are endeavouring to exclude unskilled
labourers from their ranks by establishing a system of regis-
tration, with the hope that eventually certain certificates may be
required as the condition of registration.

Naturally as long as our daily papers contain such advertise-
ments as, ‘Required, a thoroughly good nursery governess
capable of teaching French, music, English, needlework and
drill ; disciplinarian and bright with children ; salary £12,’ there
will be unskilled workers to supply the demand for the terms
offered; but it is to be hoped that increased educational
advantages will teach parents the difference between thoroughly
good work and that which is indifferent or bad, and will also
teach them to apply the rules of the commercial to the edu-
cational market. I fully recognise the frequent excellence of

private teachers and of private schools. To many a thoroughly.

enlightened and conscientious teacher, the absence of University
inspection, of public examinations, of the necessary routine of
public school life, is of positive advantage ; but to keep the work
Teaching. 117

 

‘of teaching up to a general standard of efficiency, these tests are
most useful, if not indispensable.

The thoroughfares for teachers of girls are the High Schools,
Middle and Grammar Schools, and the Board Schools. I should
advise any one who intends to become a teacher, to aim at
obtaining a post, at any rate for the first part of her career, in a
school which stands well in the educational world, or is, at least,
a recognised member of it.

There are very good openings in the Board Schools for candi-
dates who not only are properly qualified, but who have also
enjoyed the advantages of a cultivated home.

The work in such schools is certainly severe, but any woman
strong enough bodily and mentally to stand the strain, will find
here the best of all possible opportunities for using the gifts of
refinement and culture in making the lives of her fellow-teachers
and of her pupils brighter, fuller, and more interesting.

I find in the report of the School Board for London for. the
year 1889, that the average salary of a head-mistress is
£231 19s. 2d, and that of a fully-qualified assistant-teacher,
£108 145. 8d.

Having the aim of teaching in some public school, the methods
of preparation for the work must next be considered. As a High
School teacher myself, I feel qualified to give advice concerning
the entrances to that department alone of the educational world.
Applicants fora post in the schools of the Girls’ Public Day
School Company are usually required to possess either the
Cambridge University degree, whether it be taken in classics,
mathematics, history or science, or the B.A. degree of the
London University, or the certificate obtained by proficiency in
three groups of the Cambridge Higher Local Examination for
Women.

Preparation for the last examination is frequently given in the
sixth form of many leading girls’ schools. A general feeling is,
118 Ladtes .at Work.

 

however, arising that preparation for this examination interferes
too greatly with the general course of the school work, and that
students more fitly prepare for it when they have done with the
ordinary routine of school life.

If the family purse can bear the strain, a year spent in either
France or Germany by an intelligent girl at the end of her
school course, will not,only-ensure valuable success in the papers
set on foreign languages, but will be of the greatest assistance in
the acquiring of general culture.

Not only can colloquial knowledge of a language be thus
obtained, but association with a continental people, even though
it be but for one. year,-increases the appreciation of a foreign
literature by giving some insight into the national habit of mind
and national customs.

I never thoroughly appreciated Goethe’s ‘Hermann und
Dorothea,’ until by living amongst Germans I learnt to
sympathise with the ideal of a ‘tuchtiges, deutsches. Madchen.’

Much of the work for this examination can be done at home.
I joined the University Correspondence Classes as I was unable
to obtain good oral teaching. The fees for the different courses
vary from two to four guineas. The work is carried on by means
of directions as to the books to be read, explanations. of any
difficulty occurring to. the student, and periodical examination
papers, the answers to which are returned after correction. The
guidance I thus received in the study of English literature formed
my first real introduction to the charmed world of books. By
means of many a delicate hint directing. my attention to the
pathos or the humour of various passages, I made some progress
in the art of reading—the art which is within the reach of all
of us, and which alone can transport each of us from uncongenial-
surroundings into society and scenery of our own choosing.
‘This world is a brazen one,’ says Sir Philip Sidney, ‘the poets
only do deliver a golden.’
Teaching. 119

 

I should advise any one intending to take this examination, to
allow herself two years for obtaining a full certificate, taking the
subject most congenial to her as one year’s work, and completing
her certificate in the examination of the following year.

The course of study for the Cambridgre degree, if something
more than the mere pass is aimed at, is more suitable for those
who have some distinct bent of mind, whether classical, mathe-
matical, or scientific. Scholarships, such as the St. Dunstan
Exhibitions, exist, which are large enough to cover the expenses
of three years of college-life at Girton.or at Newnham. Many of
the cleverest girls in the High Schools and Colleges compete for
these, but such prizes are of course only within the reach of the
‘chosen few.’ A certain number of scholarships are also awarded
on the results of the. Senior Cambridge Examination, the Higher
Local, and the Newnham and Girton College Entrance Examina-
tions. These all help to defray. the expenses of college-life,
amounting to about £100 per annum.

Students living in London can study at small expense for the
degree of the London University, by attending the classes held
for matriculation, intermediate examination, and the final B.A.
degree, at University College, Bedford College, the Birkbeck
Institute, and other centres. There are also correspondence
classes in connection with these examinations.

Many girls now matriculate before leaving school, which
reduces the time required for working for a degree from three
years to two.

Supposing then that due qualifications for a teacher’s post have
been obtained, the fact must be faced that the educational market
is yearly becoming more crowded, and that, therefore, those who
have done good work, but are not specially distinguished amongst
other competitors, may find it difficult, without some mark of
extra merit, to obtain such work as they desire.

.A modern feature in the educational world is the training of.
120 Ladies at Work.

 

teachers. Besides the numerous training colleges open to those
intending to teach in Government schools, there are two Colleges,
one in Fitzroy Street, Bloomsbury, and one in Cambridge, which
offer a course of training to women who wish to teach in schools
of a higher grade. Many of us believe that either the teacher,
like the poet, is born not made, or that any one who thoroughly
knows a subject can teach it. With regard to the ‘born teacher,”
no doubt talent for teaching exists as well as for any other art.
Very few people will, however, deny that training develops
natural talent, and I do.not see any reason why talent for
teaching should alone be excepted from this general rule.
When I hear remarks to the effect that systematic help and
advice from the more experienced in the profession will very pro-
bably destroy the originality and brightness of a clever young
teacher, I am forcibly reminded of the story of the grim-looking
lady applying for the post of head nurse in a hospital ward.

‘Where have you been trained, Madam?’ asked a member of
the committee. °

‘Trained!’ replied the applicant, with a scornful smile.
“Nowhere, sir—I have a gift.’

As the musician and the painter at least make use of the
experience of their predecessors, by studying their works and
noting their methods, surely the teacher may profit by studying
the excellencies or noting the defects of various educational
systems. Why should the educational views of such men as
Locke, Pestalozzi, Fréebel, or of Dr. Arnold, Herbert Spencer,
Dr. Thring in later times, be of less value to the embryo teacher
than the works of the masters in other arts are to modern
devotees ?

The course of study at these training colleges includes the
reading of some of the best books on educational theories, actual
practice in.the art of teaching a class, and lectures on the
elements of psychology. Since the science of teaching must
Teaching. 121

 

necessarily be founded on the knowledge of the human mind—
that is, of the various mental processes, such as imagination,
memory, reasoning—the instruction given in psychology is of
the greatest practical use. A scientific basis is thus supplied for
the educational maxims regarding the importance of teaching
little children largely through pictures, of passing from the known
to the unknown, of always allowing observation and reasoning to
precede definitions, or, in other words, of using a rule as the
culminating point of a lesson, instead of as an introduction.

Such a course of study not only increases the pecuniary value
of a teacher's work, but is a scientific short cut to a much higher
standard of efficiency than can be gained in the same time by
unaided effort. A quotation from my own experience, when a
student at the Maria Grey Training College, will perhaps
illustrate what I mean by the helpfulness of supervision and
suggestion at the entrance of.a teacher's career.

I was making strenuous but ineffectual efforts to explain the
meaning of the word ‘opposite’ to a child of eight. The
Principal of the College came to my rescue, and enlightened both
teacher and pupil by means of the question, ‘ Which walls in the
room look at one another ?’

Supposing, then, the teacher to be duly equipped, and, as a
further step in life, to have obtained congenial work, it only
remains to assure her that the profession of teaching has its
rewards in the sympathy of colleagues, the affection of pupils, the
absorbing interest of work that can never be done too well, of
work, the effect of which is more wide-spreading than any
amongst us can calculate.

I will merely repeat this advice, once given to me by a
celebrated member of the profession: ‘Do not become absorbed
in school work. Be a teacher, but do not cease to be a citizen.
Your success in your work will indirectly depend on the amount
of interest you take in the progress of your generation,’
122 Ladies at Work.

 

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHING.

BY F. HARRISON.

 

SINCE education has been made compulsory by the Government,
many girls who would otherwise have become teachers in High
Schools, or private governesses, have availed themselves of the
increased facilities opened to them, and have gained the certifi-
cate necessary to qualify them for the charge of an Elementary
School.

Some have succeeded admirably, but others have so signally
failed, that many people have an impression that no one can be
a good teacher in a National School who was not educated in
one. Nearly all head-teachers, however, prefer taking for pupil-
teachers, girls who have been educated in a High School when
they can get them, and some of the most successful mistresses
the writer has known were the well-educated daughters of
professional men who had been to a Training College for two
years.

Failure is generally caused either by personal unfitness, or
lack of enthusiasm. The Compulsory Education Act of 1870
created such a great demand for elementary school teachers,
that certificates were granted to untrained ones on very
easy terms, and unfortunately a number of incompetent persons
entered the profession, to the great injury of education.

These terms have been altered, and no one should now
attempt to. become a schoolmistress, who feels that her natural
Elementary School Teaching. 123

 

talents would not enable her to pass the Higher Cambridge
Examination, if she had no other hindrance.

. Before showing how the profession. may be entered, it may
be well to consider whether it is worth the consideration of
well-educated, able women, who could obtain good salaries as
governesses in private families, or ladies’ colleges. As the
salary of a schoolmistress ranges from £60 to £230 or 4250 per
annum, it may be less or more than what would be received by
a private governess, but the lower salaries often have many
compensating advantages. Respectable inexpensive lodgings
are generally provided, and a schoolmistress is not obliged to
dress expensively, while there seems good reason to believe
that a national system of superannuation will soon be in
force.

The position of a schoolmistress is generally a more perma-
nent one than that of a private governess. The pupils of the
latter grow out of the school-room, and she is obliged to seek
another post, but a schoolmistress may, if she desires, remain in
the same school until she gives up teaching entirely ; and if she
seeks to improve in efficiency, the longer she remains, the more
she will be valued. If she is thoroughly in earnest, her influence
will extend not only to almost every detail of her scholars’ lives,
but to every person in the district. The importance of the
religious instruction she is privileged to give is recognised by every-
body, but this is but a small part of her work. The songs taught,
the books introduced, the sports encouraged, are as seeds bearing
fruit on all sides. She is bound to insist upon cleanliness and
neatness among her scholars, and now that the teaching of
elementary science, laundry work, and cooking, is encouraged in
schools, she can speak plainly and with authority upon subjects,
that the clergyman or district visitor can hardly mention without
giving offence. If she feels that she has the requisite time and
physical strength, it is not difficult for her to find many, ways of
124 Ladies at Work.

 

helping in parish work by means of guilds, sewing-meetings, etc.,
for she can generally have the use of the school-room, and has
unequalled opportunities of reaching every home ; but care must
be taken not to undertake extraneous work that interferes with
her school duties. She must secure sufficient time for recreation,
study, and reading educational periodicals. Unless she does
this, she will find herself unable to keep pace with the require-
ments of the time, and her school will suffer, as well as her own
mental and bodily powers.

If a schoolmistress takes an interest in the individual welfare
of her children, she may almost invariably depend upon the sup-
port and co-operation of others, and a recommendation from her
will generally secure a girl a fair start in life either as a servant
or an apprentice.

A woman possessing great force of character and originality,
who is anxious to do her utmost for her pupils, and experiences
a difficulty in adapting herself to all the arrangements of the
family as a private governess, would probably make an excellent
schoolmistress, and be a very happy one.

Any one who thinks of entering the profession should first
obtain a copy of the ‘Code of Regulations,’ and also the
‘Instructions to Inspectors.’ These may be obtained through
any bookseller for a few pence, and their contents should be
carefully studied before any decisive step is taken. If any’
difficulty is experienced in understanding the various articles,
an annotated edition of the Code had better be obtained.
The one by Heller, price one shilling, is perhaps the most
widely circulated, but care must be taken to get the latest
edition.

It will be found on studying the Code, that pupil-teachers may
serve for two, three, or four years, and that certificates are
granted after certain specified examinations, either to assistant-
teachers or students in a training college. If suitable arrange-
Elementary School Teaching. 125

 

ments can be made, it is undoubtedly the best plan to become a
pupil-teacher, if only for the shortened period of two years, and
then to go to a training college. Many of my readers would
prefer being qualified without either becoming a pupil-teacher or
entering a training college, and their first step must be to get
recognised as assistant-teachers. This can be done by passing
the Queen’s Scholarship examination, or any examination
mentioned in the Code as recognised by the Education Depart-
ment. Persons entirely unaccustomed to elementary schools
will probably find the Scholarship examination the most difficult,
as almost every paper contains questions bearing on school
management. They had perhaps better, therefore, seek to
pass one of the alternative ones, if they have not already
done so; but an estimate of the relative difficulty can be
formed by obtaining copies of the questions set during recent
years.

After being recognised, the next step is to get an appointment
as an assistant in a school, in order to obtain permission to
attend the certificate examinations. As assistants are in great
request, there is no difficulty in doing this, but the candidate
should seek a post where she may have opportunities of
thoroughly mastering the technicalities of the profession, even
though the salary be small. The largest schools, though they
may have a high reputation, are not always the best training
places for teachers, as, too often, an assistant is put to work in
a class-room, where she sees very little of the general routine
and organisation of the school. One where the head-teacher can
exercise a vigilant supervision over every detail, and where the
classes must be arranged so that the work of one does not inter-
fere with that of another, affords the best training. The teacher
should carefully study how to arrange a time-table, so that the
most work may be done with the least exhaustion both to
teachers and scholars ; how to keep school registers and other
126 Ladies at Work.

 

school accounts ; how to maintain good discipline, and how to
secure the intelligent interest of children. These points are of
almost equal importance. She must study school management,
not merely as a science by“itself; but whatever she learns, be it
history, arithmetic, or any other subject, she must notice what
methods make it interesting and intelligible to herself, and seek
to reproduce them in her own teaching.

Registration is really very simple, but it is the matter above
all others, in which mistakes are ‘made by those who enter the
profession when grown up. If they implicitly follow the printed
instructions, they will find that a few minutes daily, an extra
hour at the end of each week, and two or three hours at the
end of each quarter, will generally be amply sufficient to prevent
any strain or confusion in this respect at the Government
examination; but if they are careless: or procrastinating, they
are sure to find the registration a difficulty.

The Code of each year should be studied very carefully
directly it is published, as’ well as the Instructions to Inspectors,

After being qualified as an assistant, two examinations must
be passed in order to obtain a certificate, the first after being
employed as an assistant for at least twelve months, during which
time a favourable report from an inspector must be obtained for
skill in teaching, reading, and recitation; the second after an
interval of at least twelve months, and a second favotrable
report from an inspector.

When these examinations have been successfully passed, the
candidate will be a teacher on probation, and may have charge
of a school, but she will not receive a parchment certificate until
she has obtained two favourable reports from an inspector at
two consecutive annual visits.

While engaged as an assistant, it is advisable, if possible, to
join one of the classes formed for the purpose of preparing
candidates for the examination. If none are within reach,
Elementary School Teaching. 129

 

instruction by correspondence will be helpful, and full particulars
may be obtained by studying the advertisement columns of the
Schoolmistress, a weekly newspaper which affords many useful
hints respecting all the secular work of teachers in elementary
schools.

There is in some minds an impression that the work in
elementary schools is exceptionally hard, and that many teachers
fail in health. When this is the case it is generally found that
the teachers are naturally delicate, that the ordinary laws of health
are violated, or that much extraneous work is undertaken. No
one who has fairly good health, and is prepared to apply her
knowledge of hygiene to the practical preservation of it, need
fear the work of an Elementary School.

Some regard the position as a peculiarly isolated one, but it
is probably less lonely than that of a private governess, for a
schoolmistress is more free to make her own arrangements, and
among the school managers there are generally found some who
are anxious to show her kindness. In fact, practically her social
position depends very much upon herself, and she may, if she
wishes it, have friends among all classes.

The profession has been chiefly spoken of as a means of doing
useful work and earning a livelihood, but to readers who are
Church women it will scarcely be out of place to remark that
the Church seems to need the services of her educated daughters.
During the last ten years the large School Boards have paid
great attention to the training of their pupil-teachers, while the
managers of the Voluntary Schools have somewhat overlooked
it. As aconsequence the great majority of the present students
in the Training Colleges are from Board Schools. However
excellent they may be as women and teachers, they cannot be
expected to sympathise with the traditions of Church schools,
even if they should care to go into them. The common bond
of interest which often unites the clergy, parents, and teachers
128 | Ladies at Work.

of a parish almost as if they were one family, would not be
understood by them. It is already a difficulty to get a well-
trained mistress in a Church school, and this difficulty is
increasing. Out !of the first fifty candidates on the Scholarship
List (females) this last year,* only one comes from a Church
school, Unless something is done to counteract the effects of
this, the loss to the Church must be great.

* 1892.
( 129 )

 

WOMEN’S WORK AMONGST THE POOR.

BY SOPHIA LONSDALE,

 

IN these days everything and everybody is organised, at the
obvious risk of losing much grace, spontaneity, and life. Workers
may become stereotyped and machine-like, and their work then
becomes, comparatively speaking, worthless. At the same time
my object in writing this paper is to urge the necessity of training
upon young women who feel they have a vocation for working
among the poor, and further to suggest openings for workers both
paid and unpaid.

It may, perhaps, seem a truism to say that in order to be of
any real use to the poor, or indeed to go amongst them without
doing positive harm, experience and training are of the greatest
importance. A short time since I heard a clergyman’s wife say
that the clergy knew how to deal with poor people by virtue of
the grace of Ordination. I should be the last person to deny the
grace of Holy Orders, but I should have liked to ask that lady
why, if her hypothesis were true, a knowledge of Butler’s Analogy
or of Paley’s Evidences is not imparted at the same time? One
is quite as likely to happen asthe other. But though we may smile
at such a doctrine when we see it reduced to an absurdity, it is
nevertheless practically believed and acted upon by a good many
people. How many of our young deacons, when they go to their
first curacy, know anything of the way in which the poor really
live? How many of them know anything of the Poor Law, or of
legislation specially affecting the poor? It is perfectly true that

K
130 Ladies at Work.

 

in after years many of the clergy learn a great deal about such
things, but it would surely prevent much blundering and waste
of power if they could learn the A B C of practical work before-
hand.

What is true of the young clergy is equally true of other
workers. A girl has a good deal of time on her hands, she hears
that district visitors are wanted in her parish, she wishes to do
something for Christ’s poor and His Church, her offer of help is
accepted, and a district ‘with no bad people in it, only some of
them very poor,’ is handed over to her.

Now in nine cases out of ten what will happen? If she.is
quick-witted and observant she will soon find out that some of
her new acquaintances are clean, tidy, and apparently prosperous ;
their children are regular at school, and it is a pleasure to visit
them. Others are dirty, very poor, and seem to be always ‘at the
last gasp,’ the children are hardly ever at school, having no boots
to goin, and the cruelty of both landlord and school attendance
officer is a fruitful topic of conversation. Here at the outset is a
difficulty ; why, are these two classes of people living side by side
so different ? Howcan the difference between them be accounted
for? As for trying to amend the ways of the poor and dirty, and
to help them to become prosperous and clean, that is a task
altogether beyond her powers. What then does she hope to do
for them? Most of her ideas about the poor are taken from
descriptions of them in magazines, where squalor and misery are
depicted in the darkest colours ; her ignorance as to trades, rates
of wages, the Poor Law, and the agencies available for relief is
complete. To put it shortly she has no true idea of the real
position of the people among whom she is towork. It is only too
probable that, in despair, she will degenerate into one of the many
amateur relieving officers (alas for the independence of our people !)
who abound in almost every parish in England. Of course she
gets profuse thanks ; the poor thriftless souls are grateful for her
Womens Work amongst the Poor. 131

 

grocery tickets and her shillings, but she will never find the
condition of a family so permanently improved that it will cease to
need her gifts. The disease of poverty is not to be cured by such
means ; or as a worker of great experience once said to me: ‘A
surgeon might just as well try to mend a broken leg by giving
the patient a peppermint drop every half-hour. There is, too, a
serious danger connected with this form of relief. It disheartens
the thrifty careful man to see that improvidence, dirt, and
drunkenness ‘pay’ ; is it very unlikely that in time he also may
be corrupted? A London City Missionary gave the following
instance, which came under his notice in his district. There was
a house inhabited by several families, all of whom paid their way,
and were steady, careful, clean people. In an evil hour there
came as tenants to this house a dirty, drunken, thriftless family,
bringing in their wake two benevolent ladies who visited and also
‘relieved’ them. The Missionary stated that in avery short time
every tenant in that house had become hopelessly dirty,
drunken, and thriftless. Why? Because they saw it paid to be
poor !

How then can workers be of use to the poor? How can they
do good instead of harm? How can they raise people instead of
merely relieving them? Personal influence isthe chief agent. It
is this subtle, indescribable power, which alone can grapple
successfully with the enormous difficulties which have to be faced.
It was this element in General Booth’s scheme which commended
it to many thoughtful minds, although they were forced to reject
it on account of grave defects which I need not discuss here. But
personal influence must be coupled with knowledge and experi-
ence. Would any man or woman dare to set up as an amateur
doctor without having received a medical education? Yet we
see all around us men and women working away with a will,
tampering with the moral nature of the poor, administering
fearlessly the powerful drug of relief, without waiting or wishing

K 2
132 Ladies at Work.

 

to learn what the almost certain result of that drug may be. The
best worker I have ever known, one who has perhaps more real
friends among the poor than any other woman in England, said
to me once, ‘The poor are so ill-treated.’ I asked her what she
meant, and she replied: ‘Everything is done to destroy their
independence, and to teach them to trust anybody’s efforts but
their own.’

How can young women get training? There is abundance of
zeal, cultivation, and real desire to benefit the poor. What is
wanting to convert the raw material into a band of workers which
shall leave its mark for good on the poorer classes of this
country? How can the necessary knowledge of the difficult
problems to be solved be acquired?

Many of the elder clergy, especially those who have worked
in large towns, can give much valuable information about the way
in which the poor live, but as a rule they have no time to train
their workers. Deaconesses and Sisters of Charity have no doubt
experience, so far as it goes; although I cannot help suspecting
that their knowledge must be of a one-sided kind. They are
known to be benevolent, and therefore are pretty sure to be
received with open arms. As a rule they have nothing of their
own to bestow, but they are not ‘unnaturally used as almoners
both by the clergy and by the wealthy laity. It is not probable
that they would be willing to impart their knowledge to outsiders,
even if they had time to do so. Moreover some of their favourite
methods of dealing with the poor are open to criticism, and are
certainly calculated to increase pauperism. Trucks of food for
the so-called ‘unemployed,’ unfair trading which undersells the
poor striving needlewoman, free breakfasts, etc. etc., use up an
enormous amount of sympathy and money which might be far
better employed. I remember one good little Deaconess
who used to beg for money to pay up the back rents in her
district |
Women’s Work amongst the Poor. 133

 

There is a society which ought to be the great training college
for workers among the poor. The Charity Organisation Society
has committees in every part of London and in most of our large
towns. I would advise any young woman who really wishes to
learn how the poor live, what their real (not their supposed or
apparent) difficulties are, and the wisest and most effectual means
of helping them, to ask leave to attend the meetings of one of
these committees as a visitor. If she is really in earnest she
will be warmly welcomed. She will find some ten or twelve men
and women of all professions and creeds met together to consult
over the various cases of poverty and distress brought before
them. Many atime have I heard one single case discussed for
half an hour—patiently, carefully, sympathetically, before a
decision could be arrived at which really satisfied the committee.
Many of these committees want more workers, and would thank-
fully accept offers of help from young and active women, willing
to be taught the best and wisest principles of dealing with,
the poor.

There are many openings for workers in the Metropolitan
Association for Befriending Young Servants ; the Society for the
Relief of Distress is constantly wanting almoners ; there are ladies
wanted to act as Board School visitors, and there is the Society
for visiting Invalid Children, which needs helpers, but my space
will not allow me to dwell on these. I will devote the rest of
this paper to one grand opening for women workers, both paid
and unpaid.

In the opinion of those well able to judge, there will be in
a short time a large and ever-increasing demand for women
qualified to take charge of tenement houses and to collect rents.
The London County Council has large schemes for pulling down
and building up, and it is almost certain its example will sooner
or later be followed in other large towns. There will be a sudden
demand, but where will be the supply? I quote the words of a
134 Ladies at Work.

 

member of the London County Council, who is managing director
of several large‘properties in London :—

“We hear a great deal of talk nowadays about better houses
for working people, but unfortunately, because large schemes of
improvement are beset with difficulties, we hear of but little being
actually accomplished ; and where better houses are built, we too
often find that they are less of a success than might be wished and
expected, because the important fact is ignored that dwellings
need to be managed as well as built, and the tenants need to be
educated to use them properly before they can get the full benefit
of them. Large blocks of dwellings, left without experienced
heads to govern them, are likely to prove doubtful blessings.’

Most of my readers probably know that Mr. Ruskin and
Miss Octavia Hill devised together the scheme of buying up
miserable house-property, gradually converting it into decent
dwellings, and, better still, educating the tenants in decent and
orderly habits. The houses are handed over to ladies, who collect
the rents, see after repairs, keep the accounts, and in fact manage
the property. A really good rent-collector should possess many
qualities. Courage she must have, to enable her to do an
unpopular thing when it has to be done, good temper, and
judgment, tact, and, perhaps above all, patience. Good health is
essential, for rents must be collected whether it is wet or fine, and
there is a good deal of climbing up. and down stairs ; but it is not
such hard work as hospital nursing, it is a much more independent
life than that of a governess, and the paid workers earn five per
cent. on the rents collected. The influence which a refined,
educated, religious woman may have over her tenants is almost
unbounded. She becomes a real friend to many of them ; her
intercourse with them is healthy and natural. She is neither
the ‘ tract-lady,’ nor the ‘lady with the tickets,’ therefore she may
at times see the rough side of her people. One of my friends who.
has been a landlady for many years tells the following story. A
Women’s Work amongst the Poor. 135

 

woman for some misconduct had received notice to quit, upon
which she exclaimed, in a fit of anger: ‘It’s a dreadful wicked
place, and I’m glad to go. When I lived in B., a City Missionary
used to come and read and pray with me, and leave me a ticket
Sor groceries, but no one has been nigh this place with such a
thing !’

It is quite impossible to describe all the different kinds of work
which grow out of the care of house-property. There is plenty of .
scope for the Temperance worker. If the rent is not forthcoming,
and the landlady hears of a drinking bout, she will not be slow to
associate cause and effect, and a sharp, firm, yet kindly warning
may be the beginning of better things for the poor, weak, tempted
man or woman. There are summer excursions, when all who
can, go out together for a day in the country, and the landlady
becomes hostess. There are evening classes for the lads, and,
where there is a playground, supervision of the play, which is apt
to degenerate into bullying and even worse. But above all is
the real, steady friendship between the landladies and their people.
When the tenants once understand that they are not treated
capriciously, but are in the hands of a woman who is trying to do
her duty by them, and expects them to try and do theirs by her,
a great step has been gained. They will confide in her, they will
tell her their troubles, difficulties—nay, more, their temptations,
their sins. They know that she will very often defend them from
themselves or help them through their troubles.

If any young woman who reads this paper thinks she would
like to know more about this work, I advise her to read Miss
Octavia Hill’s ‘Homes of the London Poor,’ and if any one
would like to try their hand at it they may write to me (Miss
Sophia Lonsdale, The Close, Lichfield), and I shall be able to
put them in communication with ladies who have been employed
on large properties for many years, and who are willing to train
workers,
136 Ladies at Work.

 

It is a field in which any woman may be proud to work.
It is real work, not mere ‘slumming,’ which of: late years,
especially in the East of London, has become fashionable, and
upon this point I would commend to my readers the wise words
of the present Bishop. of Bedford. It is work which makes a
large and ever-increasing demand upon the workers’ sympathies
and interest, but it is well worth doing, and though it has its
disappointments, it has also its pleasures and its rewards.

NOTE.—In this article no attempt has been made to deal with the relations
between rich and poor as we see them under their most natural and pleasant
conditions ; I mean that friendly intercourse, extending over a number of
years, perhaps from generation to generation, whereby the circumstances and
characters of the poor become intimately known to their richer neighbours.
If some misfortune happens it is told by the one, and the tale is believed by
the other, quite naturally and simply, and assistance is given and received
as between friends. But this kind of intercourse, though often seen in country
villages, is not usually attainable in large towns, and even the squires’ and
clergymen’s daughters in their friendly visits to the village people, will be
none the worse as friends, for more of that sound, accurate knowledge which,
rightly directed, is power.
( 137 )

 

THE LADY OF ALL WORK.

BY C. R, COLERIDGE.

 

SHE is a modern production, though she includes among her
varied functions many of those of the Ladies Bountiful of an
earlier generation. She belongs, in her perfection, as much to
the busy latter half of our century, as the Lady Doctors and
trained nurses, the High School teachers and the journalists, who
have let us into the secrets of their arduous lives in these pages.
And the professional women owe a great deal to her. Mrs.
Whitney says, in one of her charming books, that though it is
quite true that women can knock round in the world, the men
have made a world fit for them to knock round in. In the same
way it is the lady of all work who picks up the odds and ends,
and clears a way for the definite workers who have to confine
their energies to one object.

These papers have all dealt with work outside the home, and
therefore this one will not dwell specially on the domestic side of
the lady of all work’s vocation, varied and important as it is.
She may have a house and family on her hands, or she may
not. She may be married or single, young or old, rich or poor.
She may be county or country town, smart or dowdy, in Lon-
don society or buried in a tiny village ; the point is, that she is
responsible for a great variety of unpaid work, chiefly of a more
or less philanthropic description, on the accurate performance of
which other people's interests depend. The peculiar crux and
difficulty of her position is, that while her amateur work is almost
138 Ladies at Work.

 

as important to other people as if it were professional, it does
not and cannot stand in exactly the same relation to the rest of
her life. Consequently, she has often to decide how far she is
justified in undertaking work which cannot have the first claim
on her time and on her energies. The distinction is not exactly
between paid and unpaid work, for there are nowadays various
unpaid official positions held by ladies, such as guardian of the
poor, the headships of great societies, or collecting of rents, which
must be treated professionally or not at all; that is to say, they
must hold the same place towards the other duties of life that a
profession would, or be given up if this is impossible. Of course
there are times of pressure in a woman’s, or, indeed, in a man’s
life, when the profession must go to the wall, but everyone who
has worked both professionally and as an amateur—and be it
observed many women do try to do at once the work of bricks
and mortar in this manner—knows the difference of the claim
made on time that belongs partly to other people.

It is very usual to sneer at amateur work of all kinds, but
this paper means to point out that such work can be done, should
be done, and, indeed, must be done, or the world would be ina
very bad way, and that the readiness and the power to lend a
hand to it is as much a vocation as anything else.

The lady of all work, according to her age and her powers, may
teach Sunday schools and Bible classes, or she may instil French,
Scripture, or high art, into pupil teachers, or induce big boys to
carve wood and beat out brass, or she may get up classes for
cookery, nursing, or scientific dressmaking. She will have a
‘district.’ Orphans, idiots, incurables, and decayed gentlewomen
will need vigorous canvassing for various institutions. She may,
she probably will, sit on any number of councils and committees ;
may be responsible for various training homes and orphanages ;
may work for the G. F. S. or some other kindred society ; may
have Bands of Hope and Bands of Mercy on her hands. - She
The Lady of all Work. 139

 

will, if she is so minded, write books which she thinks are
wanted, or put forward the claims of her special objects in maga-
zine articles and appeals ; she may sing, act, or recite for charities,
or work for bazaars, or undertake to manage and arrange the
performances and the work of others.: She may be a Primrose
Dame, or devoted to some other political organisation. She may
be secretary or treasurer of many missions, Home or Foreign.
In connection with politics or with philanthropy, she will very
likely have to become accustomed to more or less public speak-
ing. She may also be responsible for Church decorations and
arrangements, and perhaps in a small place for Church music.
In fact, she will be expected to do whatever is wanted.

* It is perhaps incredible that any one woman should do al
these things ; but it is quite possible that she may be asked to
do them, and that she will do a great many of them ; and’ the
skill with which so many conflicting claims are balanced by
many ladies is something extraordinary. Some people can turn
quickly from one thing to another and so make a mosaic of life.
Others feel that they must have blank spaces. The molecules
must not touch. The great problem of the modern lady’s. life is
to know how far it is better to do useful things more or less
imperfectly than to leave them undone. And this is a some-
what subtle question, for it is not only a matter of hours or
minutes, but of the amount of vital energy which it is possible to
spare for each piece of work. Every worker knows how much
more perfection costs than mediocrity. To do the thing a little
bit better is so much harder than to do it just well enough. It
is also so very much more interesting.

Now there is so much work to do in the world, and on the
whole half a loaf is so much better than no bread, that it cannot,
we think, be said, in this imperfect state of being, that no one
should undertake anything which she cannot do with all her
might. It is very unsatisfactory, but perhaps, if there is no one
140 Ladies at Work.

 

else who can do the particular thing at all, a little piece of one’s
energy and oneself is better than nothing, immensely inferior as
it is to the whole. But it is exceedingly important to vow
when one is only doing a thing in an external and makeshift
manner. Work so done may be useful as far as it goes, but it
can never be delightful to the worker. It may sometimes be
impossible, it may not always be right, to give up a social
engagement for a committee ; but it is most necessary to know,
when the meeting so depends upon us that our absence will
throw everything into confusion. And as the theatrical critic
said, ‘We don’t expect grammar at the Surrey, but you might
jine your flats. If we can only give an external attention to
the outward organisation of the work in hand, that attentioh
may be regular and careful. It is easier to be punctual than to
be influential—at least for most people. If you cannot touch
the soul of your scholar, you can perhaps come to your class in
time and prepare your lesson properly. It is possible to be
accurate when you cannot be thorough. Not that even perfect
punctuality is compatible with a great pressure, and there are
lives in which a dozen extra notes is an impossible demand
on preoccupied energies.

If we realise what the work is that has to be done, we shall
soon see how far we do it.

A rule would be delightfully simple: ‘Never undertake any-
‘thing which you have not time to do thoroughly well.’ But life
is apt to be very unruly, and when the water is running away
one must hurry up and turn off the tap, if one is standing
nearest. The life of the lady of all work is a series of questions :
‘Can I undertake this?’ ‘Is there anybody else who can do it
better?’ ‘Had it better be dropped than done superficially ?’
“If I do it, shall I take too much out of myself to go on with
that other thing?’

There is no general answer. To find the right one in each
The Lady of all Work. I4I

 

case is one of the high responsibilities for which a right judg-
ment is needful. The highest motives do not settle the point,
for however willing we are to spend and be spent for others, the
question of possibility will still arise.

The woman who knows that she does not do all will probably
do something, and will certainly welcome the fellow-labourer who
can do more.

There may be a risk in recognising that work can be rightly
done and not wholly. But what is there among life’s problems
that is not risky? And the answer to the important ‘Shall I?’
depends so much on how far other people’s lives will depend
upon our care, and also how far it is possible, if prevented, to
find an efficient deputy. There is work, and there are times and
crises in all work when it must take the first place, let what else
will go. The other side of the question is so obvious that it
seems barely worth while to insist upon it. Not needlessly to
undertake what it is not likely we shall be able to do, considering
health and other hindrances, not to rush after novelties, not to
be futile and careless, and happy-go-lucky, and half ashamed of
being really interested in what we are doing. We may rightly
settle that we can only do a very small amount of a particular
work ourselves, but if we think that it does not matter much
whether anybody does it, we had far better give it up, and
disconnect ourselves from an organisation or a set of people on
whose energies our indifference can only have a chilling effect.
There are a great many degrees of usefulness and perfection,
for instance, in being a Sunday-school teacher ; but the young
lady who thinks Sunday schools old-fashioned bores, and that
the poor dear little children had better be out at play, is quite
out of place in one, even if she means to be good-natured in
going there. She will not be much good, if she pretends to
think so, because she believes it the correct thing.

Two remarks, however, do not seem quite obvious. One is,
142 Ladies at Work.

 

that if we find we can do, however weakly, the more inward, the
more difficult, the more spiritual work, we must not shirk it, and
quiet our consciences by thinking what a quantity we do of
external organisation. That is quite as real a temptation,
and more difficult to resist for many people, than the opposite
one of shirking drudgery because we like more exciting oppor-
tunities.

‘Nine-tenths of the world’s work is drudgery,’ said Bishop
Temple. Yes, but we must never forget that it is the tenth
that makes the drudgery divine. The other point applies
more, perhaps, to young workers. These are often far from
realising that what is a bore when it is done carelessly, becomes
an interest when it is done well. The higher the aim, the less
wearisome the work, in spite of all its disappointments. We
shall be much more vigorous amateurs if we aim at professional
perfection. But we shall never find it easy to adjust all our
interests to each other. It will always be difficult to decide if
the visit should be given up for the class, or the dance for the
meeting. Or again, whether the home school feast or the
Diocesan committee has the first claim. No one can expect
that the answer to the question shall be always comfortably the
same. Those are the points the ladies of all work have to
settle.

Now, in youth and early middle life, some of us may be called
upon to decide whether we shall be ladies of all work, or
professional workers. The point is decided for many by the
need of money, the possession of some special faculty, or the
calls of life. But where means are sufficient, and faculties are
less marked, is it not a pity to think that the worth and interest
of life depends upon having a special calling ?

We say nothing against the desire to earn five pounds. Five
pound notes are too desirable and too scarce not to be welcomed ;
buti it is often said that ‘If So and So could only get an article
The Lady of all Work. 143

into a magazine, or sell her pictures now and then, it would be
such an o#t/let for her, such an zuéerest in life.’

Now, to be an author or an artist is quite worth trying for ;
but an occasional success does not, it really does not, make life
worth living. An occasional appearance in print, or on the walls
of an exhibition, does not make a very great difference between
the interest of one life and another. Isn’t it worth while to fill
up the holes of the world, and often to penetrate into new spheres
of interest, to be able to try experiments for which specialists
have no time—to run along the little bye-roads of life and see
what is to be found there? If all the work enumerated above,
and much that is omitted, is lying about waiting to be done, it is
surely a very sufficient vocation to have leisure to do it. It has
been said that general knowledge means particular ignorance.
It is for the ladies of all work to see that general work does
not mean particular inefficiency.

It is a good, hard, vigorous vocation to make it effectual.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limiten,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
DATE DUE

 

GAYLORD PRINTEOINY.S.A.

Cornell University Library |

HF 5382.67.G7L15

Ladies at work :p:

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