WOMAN'S THOUGHTS 
 
 ABOUT 
 
 WOMEN. 
 
 - / -7 
 
 , 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," 
 
 "Agatha's Husband," " The Ogilvies," 
 
 " Olive," &c., &c. 
 
 "Ho that good thinketli, good may do, 
 And God will help him thereunto : 
 For was never good work wrought 
 Without beginning of good t 
 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 RUDD & CARLETON, 130 GRAND STREET 
 
 (BROOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY.) 
 
 MDCCCLXI. 
 
AUTHOR'S EDITION 
 
 CRA.IGHEAD, PRINTEE, 
 
 Carton ISuiltJing, 
 
 81,83, and S5 Centre 
 
#8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THESE " Thoughts," a portion of which origi- 
 nally appeared in " Chambers' Journal," are, I 
 wish distinctly to state, only Thoughts. They 
 do not pretend to solve any problems, to lay 
 down any laws, to decide out of one life's 
 experience and within the limits of one volume, 
 any of those great questions which have puz- 
 zled generations, and will probably puzzle,, gene- 
 rations more. They lift the banner of no party; 
 and assert the opinions of no clique. They do 
 not even attempt an originality, which, in treat- 
 ing of a subject like the present, would be 
 either dangerous or impossible. 
 
 101824 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 In this book, therefore, many women will 
 find simply the expression of what they have 
 themselves, consciously or unconsciously, often- 
 times thought; and the more deeply, perhaps, 
 because it has never come to the surface in 
 words or writing. Those who do the most, 
 often talk sometimes think the least : yet 
 thinkers, talkers, and doers, being in earnest, 
 achieve their appointed end. The thinkers put 
 wisdom into the mouth of the speakers, and 
 both strive together to animate and counsel the 
 doers. Thus all work harmoniously together; 
 and verily 
 
 " Was never good work wrought, 
 Without beginning of good thought." 
 
 In the motto which I have chosen for its 
 title-page, lies at once the purpose and preface 
 of this my book. Had it not been planned 
 and completed, honestly, carefully, solemnly, 
 even fearfully, with a keen sense of all it might 
 do, or leave undone; and did not I believe it 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 to be in some degree a good book, likely to 
 effect some good, I would never have written 
 or published it. How much good it may do, 
 or how little, is not mine either to know, to 
 speculate, or to decide. 
 
 I have written it, I hope, as humbly as con- 
 scientiously ; and thus I leave if 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Something to Do, ...... 9 
 
 II. Self-Dependence, ...... 27 
 
 III. Female Professions, . . . . . 43 
 
 IV. Female Handicrafts, . . . . .64 
 V. Female Servants, 86 
 
 VI. The Mistress of a Family, . . . . 1 1 4 
 
 VII. Female Friendships, . . . . , 1 5 1 
 
 VIII. Gossip, 171 
 
 IX. Women of the World, 197 
 
 X. Happy and Unhappy Women, . . .228 
 
 XI. Lost Women, 255 
 
 XII. Growing Old, 280 
 
A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 SOMETHING TO DO. 
 
 I PKEMISE that these thoughts do not concern married 
 women, for whom there are always plenty to think, 
 and who have generally quite enough to think of for 
 themselves and those belonging to them. They have 
 cast their lot for good or ill, have realised in greater 
 or less degree the natural destiny of our sex. They 
 must find out its comforts, cares, and responsibilities, 
 and make the best of all. It is the single women, 
 belonging to those supernumerary ranks, which poli- 
 tical economists tell us, are yearly increasing, who 
 most need thinking about. 
 
 First, in their early estate, when they have so much 
 
10 Something to Do. 
 
 in their possession youth, bloom, and health giving 
 them that temporary influence over the other sex 
 which, may result, and is meant to result, in a per 
 manent one. Secondly, when this sovereignty is pass 
 ing away, the chance of marriage lessening, or wholly 
 ended, or voluntarily set aside, and the individual 
 making up her mind to that which respect for Grand 
 father Adam and Grandmother Eve must compel us 
 to admit, is an unnatural condition of being. 
 
 Why this undue proportion of single women should 
 almost always result from over-civilisation, and whe- 
 ther, since society's advance is usually indicated by 
 the advance, morally and intellectually, of its women 
 this progress, by raising women's ideal standard of 
 the " holy estate," will not necessarily cause a decline 
 in the very unholy estate which it is most frequently 
 made are questions too wide to be entered upon 
 here. We have only to deal with facts with a cer- 
 tain acknowledged state of things, perhaps incapable 
 of remedy, but by no means incapable of amelioration. 
 
 But, granted these facts, and leaving to wiser head? 
 the explanation of them if indeed there be any it 
 
Something to Do. 1 1 
 
 seems advisable*, or at least allowable, that any woimr, 
 who has thought a good deal about the matter, should 
 not fear to express in word or deed, which is bet- 
 ter, any conclusions, which out of her own observa- 
 tion and experience she may have arrived at. And 
 looking around upon the middle classes, which form 
 the staple r stock of the community, it appears to me 
 that the chief canker at the root of women's lives is 
 the want of something to do. 
 
 Herein I refer, as this chapter must be understood 
 especially to refer, not to those whom ill or good for- 
 tune query, is it not often the latter ? has forced to 
 earn their bread ; but " to young ladies," who have 
 never been brought up to do anything. Tom, Dick, 
 and Harry, their brothers, has each had it knocked 
 into him from schooldays that he is to do something, 
 to be somebody. Counting-house, shop, or college, 
 afford him a clear future on which to concentrate 
 all his energies and aims. He has got the grand pa- 
 bulum of the human soul occupation. If any inhe- 
 rent want in his character, any unlucky combination 
 of circumstances, nullifies this, what a poor creature 
 
12 Something to Do. 
 
 the man becomes ! what a dawdling,*moping, sitting 
 over-the-fire, thumb-twiddling, lazy, ill-tempered ani- 
 mal ! And why ? " Oh, poor fellow ! 'tis because 
 he has got nothing to do 1" 
 
 Yet this is precisely the condition of women for a 
 third, a. half, often the whole of their existence. 
 
 That Providence ordained it so made men to 
 work, and women to be idle is a doctrine that few 
 will be bold enough to assert openly. Tacitly they 
 do, when they preach up lovely uselessness, fascinat- 
 ing frivolity, delicious helplessness all those polite 
 impertinences and poetical degradations to which the 
 foolish, lazy, or selfish of our sex are prone to incline 
 an ear, but which any woman of common sense must 
 repudiate as insulting not only her womanhood but 
 her Creator. 
 
 Equally blasphemous, and perhaps even more 
 harmful, is the outcry about "the equality of the 
 sexes ;" the frantic attempt to force women, many 
 of whom are either ignorant of or unequal for 
 their own duties into the position and duties of 
 men. A pretty state of matters would ensue! 
 
Something to Do. 13 
 
 Who that ever listened for two hours to the ver- 
 bose confused inanities of a ladies' committee, would 
 immediately go and give his vote for a female House 
 of Commons? or who, on the receipt of a lady's 
 letter of business I speak of the average would 
 henceforth desire to have our courts of justice stocked 
 with matronly lawyers, and our colleges thronged by 
 
 " Sweet girl-graduates with their golden hair ?" 
 
 As for finance, in its various branches if you 
 pause to consider the extreme difficulty there always 
 is in balancing Mrs. Smith's housekeeping-book, or 
 Miss Smith's quarterly allowance, I think, my dear 
 Paternal Smith, you need not be much afraid lest 
 this loud acclaim for " women's rights" should ever 
 end in pushing you from your stools, in counting- 
 house, college, or elsewhere. 
 
 No ; equality of the sexes is not in the nature of 
 things. Man and woman were made for, and not 
 like one another. One only "right" we have to 
 assert in common with mankind and that is aa 
 
14 Something to Do. 
 
 much in our own hands as theirs the right of 
 having something to do. 
 
 That both sexes were meant to labour, one 'by 
 the sweat of his brow," the other "in sorrow to 
 bring forth" and bring up " children " cannot, 
 I fancy, be questioned. Nor, when the gradual 
 changes of the civilised world, or some special des- 
 tiny, chosen or compelled, have prevented that first, 
 highest, and ,in earlier times almost universal lot, 
 does this accidental fate in any way abrogate the 
 necessity, moral, physical, and mental, for a woman 
 to have occupation in other forms. 
 
 But how few parents ever consider this? Tom, 
 Dick, and Harry, aforesaid, leave school and plunge 
 into life ; " the girls" likewise finish their education, 
 come home, and stay at home. That is enough. 
 Nobody thinks it needful to waste a care upon 
 them. Bless them, pretty dears, how sweet they 
 are! papa's nosegay of beauty to adorn his draw- 
 ing-room. He delights to give them all they can 
 desire clothes, amusements, society ; he and mamma 
 together take every domestic care off their hands- 
 
Something to Do. 15 
 
 they have abundance of time and nothing to occupy 
 it ; plenty of money, and little use for it ; pleasure 
 without end, but not one definite object of interest 
 or employment; flattery and flummery enough, but 
 no solid food whatever to satisfy mind or heart 
 if they happen to possess either at the very emp- 
 tiest and most craving season of both. They have 
 literally nothing whatever to do, except to fall in 
 love ; which they accordingly do, the most of them, 
 as fast as ever they can. 
 
 " Many think they are in love, when in fact they 
 are only idle" is one of the truest sayings of that 
 great wise bore, Imlac, in JRasselas, and it has been 
 proved by many a shipwrecked life, of girls espe- 
 cially. This " falling in love" being usually a mere 
 delusion of the fancy, and not the real thing at all, 
 the object is generally unattainable or unworthy. 
 Papa is displeased, mamma somewhat shocked and 
 scandalised ; it is a " foolish affair," and no matrimo- 
 nial results ensue. There only ensues what ? 
 
 A long, dreary season, of pain, real or imaginary, 
 yet not the less real because it~is imaginary; of 
 
16 Something to Do. 
 
 anger and mortification, of impotent struggle against 
 unjust parents, the girl believes, or, if romantically 
 inclined, against cruel destiny. Gradually this mood 
 \\vurs out; she learns to regard "love" as folly, and 
 turns her whole hope and aim to matrimony ! Ma- 
 trimony in the abstract ; not the man, but any man 
 any person who will snatch her out of the dulness 
 of her life, and give her something really to live for, 
 something to nil up the hopeless blank of idleness 
 into which her days are gradually sinking. 
 
 Well, the man may come, or he may not. If the 
 latter melancholy result occurs, the poor girl passes 
 into her third stage of young-ladyhood, fritters or 
 mopes away her existence, sullenly bears it, or dashes 
 herself blindfold against its restrictions ; is unhappy, 
 and makes her family unhappy ; perhaps herself 
 cruelly conscious of all this, yet unable to find the 
 true root of bitterness in her heart: not knowing 
 exactly what she wants, yet aware of a morbid, per- 
 petual want of something ? "What is it ? 
 
 Alas ! the boys only have had the benefit of thai 
 well-known juvenile apophthegm, that 
 
Something to Do. 17 
 
 * Satan finds some mischief still 
 For idle hands to do :" 
 
 it has never crossed the parents' minds that the 
 rhyme could apply to the delicate digital extremities 
 of the daughters. 
 
 And so their whole energies are devoted to the 
 massacre of old Time. They prick him to death 
 with crochet and embroidery needles; strum him 
 deaf with piano and harp playing not music; cut 
 him up with morning-visitors, or leave his carcass 
 in ten-minute parcels at every " friend's" house they 
 can think of. Finally, they dance him defunct at all 
 sort of unnatural hours ; and then, rejoicing in the 
 excellent excuse, smother him in sleep for a third of 
 the following day. Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, 
 perfectly natural death; and they will never recog- 
 nise his murder till, on the confines of this world, or 
 from the unknown shores of the next, the question 
 meets them : " What have you done with Time ? " 
 Time, the only mortal gift bestowed equally on every 
 living soul, and excepting the soul, the only mortal 
 loss which is totally irretrievable. 
 
18 Something to Do. 
 
 Yet tliis great sin, this irredeemable Toss, in man_y 
 women arises from pure ignorance. Men are taught 
 as 3 matter of business to recognise the value of time, 
 to apportion and employ it : women rarely or never. 
 The most of them have no definite appreciation of the 
 article as a tangible divisible commodity at all. 
 They would laugh at a mantua-maker who cut up a 
 dress-length into trimmings, and then expected to 
 make out of two yards of silk a full skirt. Yet that the 
 same laws of proportion should apply to time and its 
 measurements that you cannot dawdle away a whole 
 forenoon, and then attempt to cram into the afternoon 
 the entire business of the day that every minute's 
 unpunctuality constitutes a debt or a theffc (lucky, 
 indeed, if you yourself are the only party robbed or 
 made creditor thereof!) : these slight facts rarely 
 seem to cross the feminine imagination. 
 
 It is not their fault ; they have never been " accus- 
 tomed to business." They hear that with men "time 
 is money;" but it never strikes them that the same 
 commodity, equally theirs, is to them not mgney, 
 perhaps, but life life in its highest form and noblest 
 
Something to Do. 19 
 
 uses life bestowed upon every human being, dis- 
 tinctly and individually, without reference to any 
 other being, and for which every one of us, married 
 or unmarried, woman as well as man, will assuredly 
 be held accountable before God. 
 
 My young-lady friends, of from seventeen upwards, 
 your time and the use c f it is as essential to you as to 
 any father or brother of you all. You are account- 
 able for it just as much as he is. If you waste it, you 
 waste not only your substance, but your very souls 
 not that which is your own, but your Maker's. 
 
 Ay, there the core of the matter lies. From the 
 hour that honest Adam and Eve were put into the 
 garden, not as I once heard some sensible preacher 
 observe "not to be idle in it, but to dress it and to 
 keep it," the Father of all has never put one man or 
 one woman into this world without giving each some- 
 thing to do there, in it and for it: some visible, tan- 
 gible work, to be left behind them when they die. 
 
 Young ladies, 'tis worth a grave thought what, if 
 called away at eighteen, twenty, or thirty, the most 
 of you would leave behind you when you die ? Much 
 
2o Something to Do. 
 
 embroidery, doubtless ; various pleasant, kindly, ille* 
 gible letters; a moderate store of good deeds; and a 
 cart-load of good intentions. Nothing else save your 
 uarne on a tombstone, or lingering for a few more 
 years in family or friendly memory. "Poor dear 
 
 ! what a nice lively girl she was!" For any 
 
 benefit accruing through you to your generation, you 
 might as well never have lived at all. 
 
 But " what am I to do with my life ?" as once asked 
 me one girl out of the numbers who begin to feel 
 aware that, whether marrying or not, each possesses 
 an individual life, to spend, to use, or to lose. And 
 herein lies the momentous question. 
 
 The difference between man's vocation and woman's 
 seems naturally to be this one is abroad, the other 
 at home : one external, the other internal : one active, 
 the other passive. He has to go and seek out his 
 path; hers usually lies close under her feet. Yet 
 each is as distinct, as honourable, as difficult; and 
 whatever custom may urge to the contrary if the life 
 is meant to be a worthy or a happy one each must 
 resolutely and unshrinkingly be trod. But howf 
 
Something to Do. 71 
 
 A definite answer to this question is simply impos- 
 sible. So diverse are characters, tastes, capabilities, 
 and circumstances, that to lay down a distinct line of 
 occupation for any six women of one's own acquaint- 
 ance, would be the merest absurdity. 
 
 " Herein the patient must minister to herself." 
 
 To few is the choice so easy, the field of duty so wide, 
 that she need puzzle very long over what she ought 
 to do. Generally and this is the best and safest 
 guide she will find her work lying very near at 
 hand : some desultory tastes to condense into regular 
 studies, some faulty household quietly to remodel, 
 some child to teach, or parent to watch over. All 
 these being needless or unattainable, she may extend 
 her service out of the home into the world, which 
 perhaps never at any time so much needed the help 
 of us women. And hardly one of its charities and 
 duties can be done so thoroughly as by a wise and 
 tender woman's hand. 
 
 Here occurs another of those plain rules which are 
 the only guidance possible in the matter a Bible 
 
22 Something to Do. 
 
 rule, too" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 tiiy miglit" Question it not, philosophise not over it ! 
 do it! only do it I Thoroughly and completely, 
 never satisfied with less than perfectness. Be it ever 
 so great or so small, from the founding of a village- 
 school to the making of a collar do it "with thy 
 might ;" and never Jay it aside till it is done. 
 
 Each day's account ought to leave this balance of 
 something done. Something beyond mere pleasure, 
 one's own or another's though both are good and 
 sweet in their way. Let the superstructure of life be 
 enjoyment, but let its foundation be in solid work 
 daily, regular, conscientious work : in its essence and 
 results as distinct as any " business" of men. What 
 they expend for wealth and ambition, shall not we 
 offer for duty and love the love of our fellow-crea- 
 tures, or, far higher, the love of God? "Labour is 
 worship," says the proverb : also ay, necessarily so 
 labour is happiness. Only let us turn from the 
 dreary, colorless lives of the women, old and young, 
 who have nothing to do, to those of their sisters who 
 are always busy doing something; who, believing 
 
Something to Do. 23 
 
 and accepting the universal law, that pleasure is the 
 mere accident of our being, and work its natural and 
 most holy necessity, have set themselves steadily to 
 seek out and fulfil theirs. 
 
 These are they who are little spoken of in the 
 world at large. I do not include among them those 
 whose labour should spring from an irresistible 
 impulse, and become an absolute vocation, or it is not 
 worth following at all namely, the professional 
 women, writers, painters, musicians, and the like. I 
 mean those women who lead active, intelligent, indus- 
 trious lives : lives complete in themselves, and there- 
 fore not giving half the trouble to their friends that 
 the idle and foolish virgins do no, not even in love- 
 affairs. If love comes to them accidentally, (or rather 
 providentially,) and happily, so much the better! 
 they will not make the worse wives for having been 
 busy maidens. But the " tender passion " is not to 
 them the one grand necessity that it is to aimless 
 lives ; they are in no haste to wed : their time is duly 
 filled up; and if never married, still the habitual 
 faculty of usefulness gives them in themselves and 
 
24 Something to Do. 
 
 with others that obvious value, that fixed standing in 
 society, which will for ever prevent their being drifted 
 away, like most old maids, down the current of the 
 new generation, even as dead May-flies down a 
 stream. 
 
 They have made for themselves a place in the 
 world : the harsh, practical, yet not ill-meaning world, 
 where all find their level soon or late, and where a 
 frivolous young maid sunk into a helpless old one, 
 can no more expect to keep her pristine position than 
 a last year's leaf to flutter upon a spring bough. But 
 an old maid who deserves well of this same world, by 
 her ceaseless work therein, having won her position, 
 keeps it to the end. 
 
 Not an ill position either, or unkindly ; often higher 
 and more honourable than that of many a mother of 
 ten sons. In households, where "Auntie" is the 
 universal referee, nurse, playmate, comforter, and 
 counsellor : in society, where " that nice Miss So-and- 
 so," though- neither clever, handsome, nor young, is 
 yet such a person as can neither be omitted nor over- 
 looked: in charitable works, where she is "such a 
 
Something to Do. 25" 
 
 practical body always knows exactly what to do, 
 and how to do it:" or perhaps, in her own house, 
 solitary indeed, as every single woman's home must 
 be, yet neither dull nor unhappy in itself, and the 
 nucleus of cheerfulness and happiness to many an- 
 other home besides. 
 
 She has not married. Under lleaven, her home, 
 her life, her lot, are all of her own making. Bitter 
 or sweet they may have been it is not ours to 
 meddle with them, but we can any day see their re- 
 sults. Wide or narrow as her circle of influence 
 appears, she has exercised her power to the uttermost, 
 and for good. Whether great or small her talents, 
 she has not let one of them rust for want of use. 
 Whatever the current of her existence may have been, 
 and in whatever circumstances it has placed her, she 
 has voluntarily wasted no portion of it not a year, 
 not a month, not a day. 
 
 Published or unpublished, this woman's life is a 
 goodly chronicle, the title-page of which you may 
 read in her quiet countenance ; her manner, settled, 
 cheerful, and at ease; her unfailing interest in all 
 
26 Something to Do. 
 
 tilings and all people. You will rarely find she thinks 
 much about herself; she has never had time for it. 
 And this her life-chronicle, which, out of its very 
 fulness, has taught her that the more one does, the 
 more one finds to do she will never flourish in your 
 face, or the face of Heaven, as something uncommonly 
 virtuous and extraordinary. She knows that, after 
 all, she has simply done what it was her duty to do. 
 
 But and when her place is vacant on earth, this 
 will be said of her assuredly, both here and Other- 
 where " She hath done what she could.' 11 
 
CHAPTEK II. 
 
 SELF-DEPENDENCE. 
 
 " IF you want a thing done, go yourself; if not, send." 
 This pithy axiom, of which most men know the 
 full value, is by no means so well appreciated by wo- 
 men. One of the very last things we learn, often 
 through a course of miserable helplessness, heart-burn- 
 ings, difficulties, contumelies, and pain, is the lesson, 
 taught to boys from their school-days, of self-depen- 
 dence. 
 
 Its opposite, either plainly or impliedly, has been 
 preached to us all our lives. " An independent young 
 lady" "a woman who can take care of herself" and 
 such-like phrases, have become tacitly suggestive of 
 hoydenishness, coarseness, strong-mindedness, down 
 to the lowest depth of bloomerism, cigarette-sn^oking, 
 and talking slang. 
 
 And there are many good reasons, ingrained in the 
 
28 Self-Dependence. 
 
 very tenderest core of woman's nature, why this should 
 be. We are " the weaker vessel " whether acknow- 
 ledging it or not, most of us feel this: it becomes 
 man's duty and delight to show us honour accord- 
 ingly. And this honour, dear as it may be to him 
 to give, is still dearer to us to receive. 
 
 Dependence is in itself an easy and pleasant thing : 
 dependence upon one we love being perhaps the very 
 sweetest thing in the world. To resign one's self 
 totally and contentedly into the hands of another ; to 
 have no longer any need of asserting one's rights or 
 one's personality, knowing that both are as precious 
 to that other as they ever were to ourselves ; to cease 
 taking thought about one's self at all, and rest safe, at 
 ease, assured that in great things and small we shall 
 be guided and cherished, guarded and helped in 
 fact, thoroughly "taken care of" how delicious is 
 all this ! So delicious, that it seems granted to very 
 few of us, and to fewer still as a permanent condition 
 of being. 
 
 Were it our ordinary lot, were every woman living 
 to have either father, brother, or husband, to watch 
 
Self-Dependence. 29 
 
 over and protect her, then, indeed, the harsh but salu 
 tarj doctrine of self-dependence need never be heard 
 of. But it is not so. In spite of the pretty ideals of 
 poets, the easy taken-for-granted truths of old-fashioned 
 educators of female youth, this fact remains patent to 
 any person of common sense and experience, that in 
 the present day, whether voluntarily or not, one-half 
 of our women are obliged to take care of themselves 
 obliged to look solely to themselves for maintenance, 
 position, occupation, amusement, reputation, life. 
 
 Of course I refer to the large class for which these 
 Thoughts are meant the single women ; who, while 
 most needing the exercise of self-dependence, are usu- 
 ally the very last in whom it is inculcated, or even per- 
 mitted. From babyhood they are given to understand 
 that helplessness is feminine and beautiful ; helpful- 
 ness except in certain received forms of manifesta- 
 tion unwomanly and ugly. The boys may do a 
 thousand things which are " not proper for little girls." 
 
 And herein, I think, lies the great mistake at the 
 root of most women's education, that the law of their 
 existence is held to be, not Eight, but Propriety ; a 
 
3C Self-Dependence. 
 
 ;i received notion of womanhood, which has 
 descended from certain excellent great-grandmothers, 
 admirably suited for some sorts of their descendants, 
 but totally ignoring the fact that each sex is composed 
 of individuals, differing in character almost as much 
 from one another as from the opposite sex. For do 
 we not continually find womanish men and masculine 
 women ? and some of the finest types of character we 
 have known among both sexes, are they not often 
 those who combine the qualities of both ? Therefore, 
 there must be somewhere a standard of abstract right, 
 including manhood and womanhood, and yet supe- 
 rior to either. One of the first of its common laws, 
 or common duties, is this of self-dependence. 
 
 We women are, no less than men, each of us a dis- 
 tinct existence. In two out of the three great facts of 
 our life we are certainly independent agents, and all 
 our life long we are accountable only, in the highest 
 sense, to our own souls, and the Maker of them. Is 
 it natural, is it right even, that we should be expected 
 and be ready enough, too, for it is much the easiest 
 way to hang our consciences, duties, actions, opinions. 
 
Self-Dependence. 31 
 
 upon some one else some individual, or some aggre- 
 gate of individuals yclept Society ? Is this Society 
 to draw up a code of regulations as to what is propel 
 for us to do, and what not ? Which latter is suppos- 
 ed to be done for us ; if not done, or there happens to 
 be no one to do it, is it to "fee left undone ? Alack, 
 most frequently, whether or not it ought to be, it is ! 
 
 Every one's experience may furnish dozens of 
 cases of poor women suddenly thrown adrift widows 
 with families, orphan girls, reduced gentlewomen 
 clinging helplessly to every male relative or friend 
 they have, year after year, sinking deeper in poverty 
 or debt, eating the bitter bread of charity, or com- 
 pelled to bow an honest pride to the cruellest humilia- 
 tions, every one of which might have been spared 
 them by the early practice of self-dependence. 
 
 I once heard a lady say a tenderly-reared and 
 tender-hearted woman that if her riches made them- 
 selves wings, as in these times riches will, she did not 
 know anything in the world that she could turn her 
 hand to, to keep herself from starving. A more piti- 
 able, and, in some sense, humbling confession, could 
 
32 Self-Dependence. 
 
 hardly have been made; yet it is that not of nun 
 (1 rods, but of thousands, in England. 
 
 Sometimes exceptions arise : here is one : 
 Two young women, well educated and refined, 
 were left orphans, their father dying just when his 
 business promised to realise a handsome provision for 
 his family. It was essentially a man's business in 
 many points of view, decidedly an unpleasant one. 
 Of course friends thought "the girls" must give it up, 
 go out as governesses, depend on relatives, or live in 
 what genteel poverty the sale of the good- will might 
 allow. But the "girls" were wiser. They argued: 
 " If we had been boys, it would have been all right ; 
 we should have carried on the business, and provided 
 for our mother and the whole family. Being women, 
 we'll try it still. It is nothing wrong ; it is simply 
 disagreeable. It needs common sense, activity, dili- 
 gence, and self-dependence. "We have all these ; and 
 what we have not, we will learn." So these sensible 
 and well-educated young women laid aside their pretty 
 uselessness and pleasant idleness, and set to work. 
 FTappily, the trade was one that required no personal 
 
Self-Dependence. 23 
 
 publicity; but they had to keep the books, manage 
 the stock, choose and superintend fit agents to dc 
 things difficult, not to say distasteful, to most women., 
 and resign enjoyments that, to women of their refine- 
 ment, must have cost daily self-denial. Yet they did 
 it ; they filled their father's place, sustained their deli- 
 cate mother in ease and luxury, never once compro- 
 mising their womanhood by their work, but rather 
 ennobling the work by their doing of it. 
 
 Another case different, and yet alike. A young 
 girl, an elder sister, had to receive for step-mother a 
 woman who ought never to have been any honest 
 man's wife. Not waiting to be turned out of her 
 father's house, she did a most daring and " improper " 
 thing she left it, taking with her the brothers and 
 sisters, whom by this means only she believed she 
 could save from harm. She settled them in a 
 London lodging, and worked for them as a daily 
 governess. "Heaven helps those who help them- 
 selves." From that day this girl never was dependent 
 upon any human being ; while during a long life she 
 
 has helped and protected more than I could count 
 
 2* 
 
34 Self-Dependence. 
 
 pupils and pupils' children, friends and their children, 
 besides brothers and sisters-in-law, nephews and 
 n'u res, down to the slenderest tie of blood, or even 
 mere strangers. And yet she has never been any- 
 thing but a poor governess, always independent, 
 always able to assist others because she never was 
 and never will be indebted to any one, except for 
 love while she lives, and for a grave when she dies. 
 May she long possess the one and want the other ! 
 
 And herein is answered the "cui lono?" of self- 
 dependence, that its advantages end not with the 
 original possessor. In this much-suffering world, a 
 woman who can take care of herself can always take 
 care of other people. She not only ceases to be an 
 unprotected female, a nuisance and a drag upon 
 society, but her working-value therein is doubled 
 and trebled, and society respects her accordingly. 
 Even her kindly male friends, no longer afraid that 
 when the charm to their vanity of " being of use to a 
 lady " has died out, they shall be saddled with a ptr- 
 petual claimant for all manner of advice and assist 
 ance ; the first not always followed, and the second 
 
Self-Dependence. 35 
 
 often accepted without gratitude even they yield an 
 involuntary consideration to a lady who gives them 
 no more trouble than she can avoid, and is always 
 capable of thinking and acting for herself, so far as 
 the natural restrictions and decorums of her sex 
 allow. True, these have their limits, which it would 
 be folly, if not worse, for her to attempt to pass ; but 
 a certain fine instinct, which, we flatter ourselves, is 
 native to us women, will generally indicate the divi- 
 sion between brave self-reliance and bold assumption. 
 Perhaps the line is most easily. drawn, as in most 
 difficulties, at that point where duty ends and plea- 
 sure begins. Thus, we should respect one who, on a 
 mission of mercy or necessity, went through the low- 
 est portions of St. Giles' or the Gallowgate ; we should 
 be rather disgusted if she did it for mere amusement 
 or bravado. All honour to the poor sempstress or 
 governess who traverses London streets alone, at all 
 hours of day or night, unguarded except by her own 
 modesty ; but the strong-minded female who would 
 venture on a solitary expedition to investigate the 
 humours of Cremorne Gardens or Greenwich Fair, 
 
36 Self-Dependence. 
 
 though perfectly " respectable," would be an exceed 
 ingly condemnable sort of personage. There are 
 many things at which, as mere pleasures, a woman 
 has a right to hesitate; there is no single duty, whe- 
 ther or not it lies in the ordinary line of her sex, from 
 which she ought to shrink, if it be plainly set before 
 her. 
 
 Those who are the strongest advocates for the pass- 
 ive character of our sex, its claims, proprieties, and 
 restrictions, are, I have often noticed, if the most sen- 
 sitive, not always the justest or most generous. I 
 have seen ladies, no longer either young or pretty, 
 shocked at the idea of traversing a street's length at 
 night, yet never hesitate at being " fetched" by some 
 female servant, who was both young and pretty, and 
 to whom the danger of the expedition, or of the late 
 return alone, was by far the greater of the two. I 
 have known anxious mothers, who would not for 
 worlds be guilty of the indecorum of sending their 
 daughters unchaperoned to the theatre or a ball and 
 very right, too ! yet send out some other woman's 
 young daughter, at eleven P. M., to the stand for a cab 
 
Self-Dependence. 37 
 
 or to the public-house for a supply of beer. It nevei 
 strikes them that the doctrine of female dependence 
 extends beyond themselves, whom it suits so easily, 
 and to whom it saves so much trouble ; that either 
 every woman, be she servant or mistress, sempstress 
 or fine lady, should receive the " protection" suitable 
 to her degree ; or that each ought to be educated into 
 equal self-dependence. Let us, at least, hold the 
 balance of justice even, nor allow an over-considera- 
 tion for the delicacy of one woman to trench on the 
 rights, conveniences, and honest feelings of another. 
 
 We must help ourselves. In this curious phase of 
 social history, when marriage is apparently ceasing to 
 become the common lot, and a happy marriage the 
 most uncommon lot of all, we must educate our maid- 
 ens into what is far better than any blind clamor for 
 ill-defined " rights " into what ought always to be the 
 foundation of rights duties. And there is one, the 
 silent practice of which will secure to them almost 
 every right they can fairly need the duty of self-de- 
 pendence. Not after any Amazonian fashion; no 
 mutilating of fair womanhood in order to assume the 
 
38 Self-Dependence. 
 
 unnatural armour of men; but simply by the full 
 exercise of every faculty, physical, moral, and intel- 
 lectual, with which Heaven has endowed us all, 
 severally and collectively, in different degrees ; allow- 
 ing no one to rust or to lie idle, merely because their 
 owner is a woman. And, above all, let us lay the 
 foundation of all real womanliness by teaching our 
 girls from their cradle that the priceless pearl of deco- 
 rous beauty, chastity of mind as well as body, exists 
 in themselves alone ; that a single-hearted and pure- 
 minded woman may go through the world, like 
 Spenser's Una, suffering, indeed, but never ,defence- 
 less; foot-sore and smirched, but never tainted; 
 exposed, doubtless, to many trials, yet never either 
 degraded or humiliated, unless by her own acts she 
 humiliates herself. 
 
 For heaven's sake for the sake of " womanhede," 
 the most heavenly thing next angelhood, (as men tell 
 us when they are courting us, and which it depends 
 upon ourselves to make them believe in all their 
 lives) young girls, trust yourselves; rely -on your- 
 selves! Be assured that no outward circumstances 
 
Self-Dependence. 39 
 
 will harm you while you keep the jewel of purity in 
 your bosom, and are ever ready with the steadfast, 
 clean right hand, of which, till you use it, you never 
 know the strength, though it be only a woman's hand. 
 
 Fear not the world : it is often juster to us than we 
 are to ourselves. If in its harsh jostlings the " weaker 
 goes to the wall " as so many allege is sure to hap- 
 pen to a woman you will almost always find that 
 this is not merely because of her sex, but from some 
 inherent qualities in herself, which, existing either in 
 woman or man, would produce just the same result, 
 pitiful and blameable, but usually more pitiful than 
 blameable. The world is hard enough, for two-thirds 
 of it are struggling for the dear life " each for him- 
 self, and de'il tak the hindmost;" but it has a rough 
 sense of moral justice after all. And whosoever 
 denies that, spite of all hindrances from individual 
 wickedness, the right shall not ultimately prevail, 
 impugns not alone human justice, but the justice of 
 God. 
 
 The age of chivalry, with all its benefits and harm- 
 fulness, is gone by, for us women. We cannot now 
 
40 Self-Dependence. 
 
 have men for our knights-errant, expending blood 
 and life for our sake, while we have nothing to dc 
 but sit idle on balconies, and drop flowers on half- 
 dead victors at tilt and tourney. Nor, on the other 
 hand, are we dressed-up dolls, pretty playthings, to 
 be fought and scrambled for petted, caressed, or 
 flung out of window, as our several lords and masters 
 may please. Life is much more equally divided be- 
 tween us and them. We are neither goddesses nor 
 slaves ; they are neither heroes nor semi-demons : we 
 just plod on together, men and women alike, on the 
 same road, where daily experience illustrates Hudi- 
 bras's keen truth, that 
 
 " The value of a thing 
 Is just as much as it will bring." 
 
 And our value is exactly what we choose to make 
 it. 
 
 Perhaps at no age since Eve's were women rated 
 so exclusively at their own personal worth, apart 
 from poetic flattery or tyrannical depreciation ; at no 
 
Self-Dependence. ^, 
 
 time in the world's history judged so entirely by theii 
 individual merits, and respected according to the re- 
 spect which they earned for themselves. And shall 
 we value ourselves so meanly as to consider this 
 unjust? Shall we not rather accept our position, 
 difficult indeed, and requiring from us more than the 
 world ever required before, but from its very difficulty 
 
 rendered the more honourable ? 
 
 
 
 Let us not be afraid of men ; for that, I suppose, 
 lies at the root of all these amiable hesitations. 
 "Gentlemen don't like such and such things." "Gen- 
 tlemen fancy so and so unfeminine." My dear little 
 foolish cowards, do you think a man a good man, in 
 any relation of life, ever loves a woman the more for 
 reverencing her the less ? or likes her better for trans- 
 ferring all her burdens to his shoulders, and pinning 
 her conscience to his sleeve? Or, even supposing 
 he did like it, is a woman's divinity to be man or 
 God? 
 
 And here, piercing to the Foundation of all truth 
 I think we may find the truth concerning self-de- 
 pendence, which is only real and only valuable when 
 
42 Self-Dependence. 
 
 its root is not in self at all; when its strength is 
 drawn not from man, but from that Higher and 
 Diviner Source whence every individual soul pro- 
 ceeds, and to which alone it is accountable. As soon 
 as any woman, old or young, once feels that, not as a 
 vague sentimental belief, but as a tangible, practical 
 law of life, all weakness ends, all doubt departs : she 
 recognises the glory, honour, and beauty of her exist- 
 ence ; she is no longer afraid of its pains ; she desires 
 not to shift one atom of its responsibilities to another. 
 She is content to take it just as it is, from the hands 
 of the All-Father ; her only care being so to fulfil it, 
 that while the world at large may recognise and pro- 
 fit by her self-dependence, she herself, knowing that 
 the utmost strength lies in the deepest humility, 
 recognises, solely and above all, her dependence upon 
 God. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 FEMALE PROFESSIONS. 
 
 GRANTED the necessity of something to do, and the 
 self-dependence required for its achievement, we may 
 go on to the very obvious question what is a woman 
 to do? 
 
 A question more easily asked than answered ; and 
 the numerous replies to which, now current in book, 
 pamphlet, newspaper, and review, suggesting every- 
 thing possible and impossible, from compulsory wife- 
 hood in Australia to voluntary watchmaking at home, 
 do at present rather confuse the matter than other- 
 wise. No doubt, out of these "many words," which 
 " darken speech," some plain word or two will one 
 day take shape in action, so as to evolve a practical 
 good. In the meantime, it does no harm to have the 
 muddy pond stirred up a little; any disturbance is 
 better than stagnation. 
 
44 Female Professions. 
 
 Those Thoughts however desultory and unsatis- 
 factory, seeing the great need there is for deeds rather 
 than words are those of a " working " woman, who 
 has been su:b all her life, having opportunities of 
 comparing the experience of other working women 
 with her own: she, therefore, at least escapes the 
 folly of talking of what she knows nothing about. 
 
 Female professions, as distinct from what may be 
 termed female handicrafts, which merit separate classi- 
 fication and discussion, may, I think, be thus divided ; 
 the instruction of youth ; painting or art ; literature ; 
 and the vocation of public entertainment including 
 actresses, singers, musicians, and the like. 
 
 The first of these, being a calling universally 
 wanted, and the easiest in which to win, at all events, 
 daily bread, is the great chasm into which the help- 
 less and penniless of our sex generally plunge ; and 
 this indiscriminate Quintus Curtiusism, so far from 
 rilling up the gulf, widens it every hour. It must be 
 so, while young women of all classes and all degrees 
 of capability rush into governessing, as many young 
 men enter the church, because they think it a 
 
Female Professions. 45 
 
 ' respectable " profession jo get on in, and are fit for 
 lothing else. Thus the most important of ours, and 
 he highest of all men's vocations, are both degraded 
 in so far as they can be degraded by the unworthi- 
 icss and incompetency of their professors. 
 
 If, in the most solemn sense, not one woman in five 
 .housand is fit to be a mother, we may safely say that 
 lot two out of that number are fit to be governesses. 
 Consider all that the office implies : very many of a 
 nother's duties, with the addition of considerable 
 nental attainments, firmness of character, good sense, 
 
 rood temper, good breeding ; patience, gentleness, 
 
 . 
 .oving-kindness. In short, every quality that goes to 
 
 nake a perfect woman, is required of her who pre- 
 sumes to undertake the education of one single little 
 ihild 
 
 Does any one pause to reflect what a "little child" 
 .s? Not sentimentally, as a creature to be philoso- 
 phised upon, painted and poetised ; nor selfishly, as a 
 iissable, scoldable, sugar-plum-feedable plaything ; 
 but as a human soul and body, to be moulded, in- 
 structed, and influenced, in order that it in its turn 
 
46 Female Professions. 
 
 may mould, Instruct, and influence unborn genera 
 tions. And yet, in face of this awful responsibility, 
 wherein each deed and word of hers may bear fruit, 
 good or ill, to indefinite ages, does nearly every edu- 
 cated gentlewoman thrown upon her own resources, 
 nearly every half-educated " young person" who 
 wishes by that means to step out of her own sphere 
 into the one above it, enter upon the vocation of a 
 governess. 
 
 Whether it really is her vocation, she never stops 
 to think ; and yet, perhaps, in no calling is a personal 
 
 bias more indispensable. For knowledge, and the 
 
 
 
 power of imparting it intelligibly, are two distinct 
 and often opposite qualities ; the best student by no 
 means necessarily makes the best teacher : nay, when 
 both faculties are combined, they are sometimes 
 neutralised by some fault of disposition, such as want 
 of temper or of will. And allowing al] these, 
 granting every possible intellectual and practical 
 competency, there remains still doubtful the moral 
 influence, which, according to the source from which 
 it springs, may ennoble or corrupt a child for life. 
 
Female Professions. 47 
 
 All these are facts so trite and so patent, that one 
 would almost feel it superfluous to state them, did we 
 not see how utterly they are ignored day by day by 
 even sensible people; how parents go on lavishing 
 expense on their house, dress, and entertainments 
 everything but the education of their children ; send- 
 ing their boys to cheap boarding-schools, and engaging 
 for their daughters governesses at 201. a year, or daily 
 tuition at sixpence an hour ; and how, as a natural 
 result, thousands 6f incapable girls, and ill-informed, 
 unscrupulous women, go on professing to teach every- 
 thing under the sun, adding lie upon lie, and mean- 
 ness upon meanness often through no voluntary 
 wickedness, but sheer helplessness, because they must 
 either do that or starve ! 
 
 Yet, all the while we expect our rising generation 
 to turn out perfection ; instead of which we find it 
 what? 
 
 I do solemnly aver, having seen more than one 
 generation of young girls grow up into womanhood 
 that the fairest and best specimens of our sex that 
 T have ever known have been among those who have 
 
48 Female Professions. 
 
 never gone to school, or scarcely ever had a regular 
 governess. 
 
 Surely such a fact as this I put it to general expe- 
 rience, whether it is not a fact ? indicates some great 
 flaw in the carrying out of this large branch of 
 women's work. How is it to be remedied? I 
 believe, like all reformations, it must begin at the 
 root with the governesses themselves. 
 
 Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility 
 in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she 
 professes to impart, a liking for children, and above 
 all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards 
 them, for her to attempt to enrol herself in the 
 scholastic order is absolute profanation. Better turn 
 shopwoman, needlewoman, lady's-maid even become 
 a decent housemaid, and learn how to sweep a floor, 
 than belie her own soul, and peril many other souls, 
 by entering upon what is, or ought to be, a female 
 " ministry," unconsecrated for, and incapable of the 
 work. 
 
 "But," say they, "work we must have. Comjie 
 tition is so great, that if we did not profess to do 
 
Female Professions. 49 
 
 everything, it would be supposed we could do no- 
 thing : and so we should starve." 
 
 / 
 Yet, what is competition ? A number of people 
 
 attempting to do what most of them can only half do, 
 and some cannot do at all thereby "cutting one 
 another's throats," as the saying is, so long as their 
 incapacity is concealed ; when it is found out, starv- 
 ing. There may be exceptions, from exceeding mis- 
 fortune and the like but in the long run, I believe 
 it will be found that few women, really competent to 
 what they undertake, be it small or great, starve for 
 want of work to do. So, in this case, no influence is 
 so deeply felt in a house, or so anxiously retained, if 
 only from self-interest, as the influence of a good 
 governess over the children ; among the innumerable 
 throng of teachers, there is nothing more difficult to 
 find or more valuable when found, to judge by the 
 high terms asked and obtained by many professors 
 than a lady who can teach only a single thing, solidly, 
 conscientiously, and well. 
 
 In this, as in most social questions, where to theo- 
 rise is easy and to practise very difficult, it will ofter 
 
 3 
 
 
jo Female Professions. 
 
 be found that the silent undermining of an evil is 
 safer than the loud outcry against it. If every go- 
 verness, so far as her power extends, would strive to 
 elevate the character of her profession by elevating 
 its members, many of the unquestionable wrongs and 
 miseries of governess-ship would gradually right 
 themselves. A higher standard of capability would 
 weed out much cumbersome mediocrity ; and, compe- 
 tition lessened, the value of labour would rise. I say 
 " the value of labour," because, when we women do 
 work, we must learn to rate ourselves at no ideal and 
 picturesque value, but simply as labourers fair and 
 honest competitors in the field of the world ; and our 
 wares as mere merchandise, where money's worth 
 alone brings money, or has any right to expect it. 
 
 This applies equally to the two next professions, 
 art and literature. I put art first, as being the most 
 difficult perhaps, in its highest form, almost impos- 
 sible to women. There are many reasons for this ; in 
 the course of education necessary for a painter, in the 
 not unnatural repugnance that is felt to women's 
 drawing from "the life," attending anatomical dis- 
 
Female Professions. 51 
 
 sections, and so on all which studies are indis- 
 pensable to one who would plumb the depths and 
 scale the heights of the most arduous of the liberal 
 arts. Whether any woman will ever do this, remains 
 yet to be proved. Meantime, many lower and yet 
 honourable positions are open to female handlers of 
 the brush. 
 
 But in literature we own no such boundaries ; there 
 we meet men on level ground and, shall I say it ? 
 
 we do often beat them in their own field. We are 
 
 f 
 
 acute and accurate historians, clear explanators of sci- 
 ence, especially successful in imaginative works, and 
 within the last year Aurora Leigh has proved that we 
 can write as great a poem as any man among them 
 all. Any publisher's list, any handful of weekly or 
 monthly periodicals, can testify to our power of enter- 
 ing boldly on the literary profession, and pursuing it 
 wholly, self-devotedly, and self-reliantly, thwarted by 
 no hardships, and content with no height short of the 
 highest. 
 
 So much for the best of us women whose work 
 will float down the ages safe and sure ; there is no need 
 
52 Female Professions. 
 
 to speak of it or them. But there is another second 
 ary class among us, neither "geniuses" nor ordinary 
 tt omen aspiring to both destinies, and usually achiev- 
 ing neither: of these it is necessary to say a word. 
 
 In any profession, there is nothing, short of being 
 absolutely evil, which is so injurious, so fatal, as 
 mediocrity. To the amateur who writes "sweetly" 
 or paints "prettily," her work is mere recreation; 
 and though it may be less improving for the mind 
 to do small things on your own account, than to be 
 satisfied with appreciating the greater doings of other 
 people, still, it is harmless enough, if it stops there. 
 But all who leave domestic criticism to plunge into 
 the open arena of art I use the word in its widest 
 sense must abide by art's severest canons. One of 
 these is, that every person who paints a common- 
 place picture, or writes a mediocre book, contributes 
 temporarily happily, only temporarily to lower 
 the standard of public taste, fills unworthily some 
 better competitor's place, and without achieving any 
 private good, does a positive wrong to the commu' 
 nity at large. 
 
Female Professions. 53 
 
 One is often tempted to believe, in the great in- 
 flux of small talents which, now deluges us, that if 
 half the books written, and pictures painted, were 
 made into one great bonfire, it would be their 
 shortest, easiest, and safest way of illuminating the 
 world. 
 
 Therefore, let men do as they will and truly they 
 are often ten times vainer and more ambitious than 
 we 1 but I would advise every woman to examine 
 herself and judge herself, morally and intellectually, 
 by the sharpest tests of criticism, before she attempts 
 art or literature, either for abstract fame or as a means 
 of livelihood. Let her take to heart, humbly, the 
 telling truth, that 
 
 " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," 
 
 and be satisfied that the smallest perfect achievement 
 is nobler than the grandest failure. But having, after 
 mature deliberation, chosen her calling, and conscien- 
 tiously believing it is her calling that in which she 
 
 shaL do most good, and best carry out the aim of her 
 
 3* 
 
54 Female Professions. 
 
 existence let her fulfil to the last iota its solemn 
 requirements. 
 
 These entail more, much more, than flighty young 
 genius or easily-satisfied mediocrity ever dreams of; 
 labour incessant, courage inexhaustible, sustained 
 under difficulties, misfortunes, and rebuffs of every 
 conceivable kind added thereto, not unfrequently, 
 the temperament to which these things come hardest. 
 Le genie c'est la patience; and though there is a truth 
 beyond it since all the patience in the world will 
 not serve as a substitute for genius, still, never was 
 a truer saying than this of old Buffon's. Especially 
 as applied to women, when engaged in a profession 
 which demands from them, no less than from men, 
 the fervent application, and sometimes the total devo- 
 tion of a lifetime. 
 
 For, high as the calling is, it is not always, in the 
 human sense, a happy one ; it often results in, if it 
 does not spring from, great sacrifices ; and is full of a 
 thousand misconstructions, annoyances, and tempta- 
 tions. Nay, since ambition is a quality far oftener 
 deficient in us than in the other sex, its very sue- 
 
Female Professions. 55 
 
 cesses are less sweet to women than to men. Many a 
 " celebrated authoress" or " exquisite paintress" must 
 have felt the heart-truth in Aurora Leigh : 
 
 " I might have been a common woman, now, 
 And happier, less known and less left alone, 
 Perhaps a better woman after all 
 With chubby children hanging round my neck, 
 To keep me low and wise. Ah me ! the vines 
 That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it 
 The palm stands upright in a realm of sand." 
 
 And, setting aside both these opposite poles of the ' 
 female character and lot, it remains yet doubtful whe- 
 ther the maiden-aunt who goes from house to house, 
 perpetually busy and useful the maiden house- 
 mother, who keeps together an orphan family, having 
 all the cares, and only half the joys of maternity or 
 mistress-ship even the active, bustling " old maid," 
 determined on setting everybody to rights, and having 
 a finger in every pie that needs her, and a few that 
 don't I question whether each of these women has 
 not a more natural, and therefore, probably, a happier 
 
56 Female Professions. 
 
 existence, than any " woman of genius" that evei 
 enlightened the world. 
 
 But happiness is not the first nor the only thing on 
 earth. Whosoever has entered upon this vocation in 
 the right spirit, let her keep to it, neither afraid nor 
 ashamed. The days of blue-stockings are over : it is 
 a notable fact, that the best housekeepers, the neatest 
 needlewomen, the most discreet managers of their 
 own and others' affairs, are ladies whose names the 
 world cons over in library lists and exhibition cata 
 logues. I could give them now except that the 
 world has no possible business with them, except to 
 read their books and look at their pictures. It must 
 imply something deficient in the women themselves, 
 if the rude curiosity of this said well-meaning but 
 often impertinent public is ever allowed to break in 
 upon that dearest right of every woman the invio- 
 lable sanctity of her home. 
 
 Without in these books and by these pictures 
 let it always be a fair fight, and no quarter. To exact 
 consideration merely on account of her sex, is in any 
 woman the poorest cowardice. She has entered the 
 
Female Professions. 57 
 
 neutral realm of pure intellect has donned brain- 
 armour and must carry on with lawful, consecrated 
 weapons a combat, of which the least reward in her 
 e_y as, in which .she never can freeze up or burn out 
 either the woman-tears or woman-smiles, will be that 
 public acknowledgment called Fame. 
 
 This fame, as gained in art or literature, is certainly 
 of a purer and safer kind than that which falls to 
 the lot of the female artiste. 
 
 Most people will grant that no great gift is given to 
 be hid under a bushel ; that a Sarah Siddons, a Ea- 
 chel, or a Jenny Lind, being created, was certainly not 
 created for nothing. There seems no reason why a 
 great actress or vocalist should not exercise her talents 
 to the utmost for the world's benefit, and her own ; 
 nor that any genius, boiling and bursting up to find 
 expression, should be pent down, cruelly and danger- 
 ously, because it refuses to run in the ordinary chan- 
 nel of feminine development. But the last profession 
 of the four which I have enumerated as the only paths 
 at present open to women, is the one which is the 
 
j8 Female Professions. 
 
 most full of perils and difficulties, on account of the 
 personality involved in its exercise. 
 
 "We may paint scores of pictures, write shelvesful 
 of books the errant children of our brain may be fami- 
 liar half over the known world, and yet we ourselves 
 sit as quiet by our chimney-corner, live a life as simple 
 and peaceful as any happy " common woman" of them 
 all. But with the artiste it is very different ; she needs 
 to be constantly before the public, not only mentally, 
 but physically : the general eye becomes familiar, not 
 merely with her genius, but her corporeality; and 
 every comment of admiration or blame awarded to 
 her, is necessarily an immediate personal criticism. 
 This of itself is a position contrary to the instinctive 
 something call it reticence, modesty, shyness, what 
 you will which is inherent in every one of Eve's 
 daughters. Any young girl, standing before a large 
 party in her first tableau vivant any singing-pupil at 
 a public examination any boy-lover or some ador- 
 able actress, at the moment when he first thinks of that 
 goddess as his wife, will understand what I mean. 
 
Female Professions. 59 
 
 But that is by no means the chief objection ; for the 
 feeling of personal shyness dies out, and in the true 
 artiste becomes altogether merged in the love and 
 inspiration of her art the inexplicable fascination of 
 which turns the many-eyed gazing mass into a mere 
 "public," of whose individuality the performer is no 
 more conscious than was the Pythoness of her curled 
 and scented Greek audience, when she felt on her 
 tripod the afflatus of the unconquerable, inevitable 
 god. The saddest phase of artiste-life which is, 
 doubtless, the natural result of this constant appear- 
 ance before the public eye, this incessant struggle for 
 the public's personal verdict is its intense involun- 
 tary egotism. 
 
 No one can have seen anything of theatrical or 
 musical circles without noticing this the incessant 
 recurrence to "my part," "my song," "what the pub- 
 lic think of me" In the hand-to-hand struggle for 
 the capricious public's favour, this sad selfishness is 
 apparently inevitable. "Each for himself" seems 
 implanted in masculine nature, for its own preserva- 
 tion ; but when it comes to " each for herself" whec 
 
60 Female Professions. 
 
 you see the fairest Shakespeare heroines tu. MI red 01 
 pale at the mention of a rival impersonator when 
 Miss This cannot be asked to a party for fear of meet- 
 ing Madame That, or if they do meet, through all 
 their smiling civility you perceive their backs are up, 
 like two strange cats meeting at a parlour-door I say, 
 this is the most lamentable of all results, not abso- 
 lutely vicious, which the world, and the necessity of 
 working in it, effect on women. 
 
 And for this reason the profession of public enter- 
 tainment, in all its gradation, from the inspired 
 tragedienne to the poor 'chorus-singer, is, above any 
 profession I know, to be marked with a spiritual 
 Humane Society's pole, " Dangerous." Not after the 
 vulgar notion : we have among us too many chaste, 
 matronly actresses, and charming maiden- vocalists, to 
 enter now into the old question about the " respecta- 
 bility" of the stage; but on account of the great 
 danger to temperament, character, and mode of 
 thought, to which such a life peculiarly exposes its 
 followers. 
 
 But if a woman has chosen it I repeat in this as 
 
Female Professions. 61 
 
 in any other let her not forego it ; for in every oo 
 cupation the worthiness, like the "readiness," "is 
 all." Never let her be moulded by her calling, but 
 mould her calling to herself; being, as every woman 
 ought to be, the woman first, the artiste afterwards. 
 And, doubtless, so are many; doubtless one could 
 find, not only among the higher ranks of this profes- 
 sion, where genius itself acts as a purifying and refin- 
 ing fire, but in its lower degrees, many who, under 
 the glare of the footlights and the din of popular 
 applause, have kept their freshness and singleness of 
 character unfaded to the end. Aye, even among poor 
 ballet-dancers, capering with set rouged smiles and 
 leaden hearts coarse screaming concert-singers, doing 
 sham pathos at a guinea a-night flaunting actresses- 
 of-all-work, firmly believing themselves the best Juliet 
 or Lady Macbeth extant, and yet condescending to 
 take ever so small a part even the big-headed "prin- 
 cess" of an Easter extravaganza, for the sake of the 
 old parents, or the fiddler-husband and the sickly 
 babies at home. No doubt, many of them live let 
 us rather say, endure a life as pure, as patient, aa 
 
62 Female Professions. 
 
 self-denying, as that of hundreds of timid, daintily 
 protected girls, and would-be correct matrons, who 
 shrink in safe privacy from the very thought of these 
 Bat Heaven counts and cares for all. 
 
 Therefore, in this perilous road, double honour be 
 unto those who walk upright, double pity unto those 
 who fall 1 
 
 Conning over again this desultory chapter, it seems 
 to me it all comes to neither more nor less than this : 
 that since a woman, by choosing a definite profession, 
 must necessarily quit the kindly shelter and safe nega- 
 tiveness of a private life, and assume a substantive 
 position, it is her duty not hastily to decide, and be- 
 fore deciding, in every way to count the cost. But 
 having chosen, let her fulfil her lot. Let there be no 
 hesitations, no regrets, no compromises they are at 
 once cowardly and vain. She may have missed or 
 foregone much ; I repeat, our natural and happiest 
 life is when we lose ourselves in the exquisite absorp- 
 tion of home, the delicious retirement of dependent 
 love; but what she has, she has, and nothing can 
 ever take it from her. Nor is it, after all, a small 
 
Female Professions. 63 
 
 tiling for any woman be she governess, paintei ;/ 
 author, or artiste to feel that, higher or lower, accord- 
 ing to her degree, she ranks among that crowned 
 band who, whether or not they are the happy ones, 
 are elected to the heaven-given honour of being the 
 Workers of the world. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FEMALE HANDICRAFTS. 
 
 WHILE planning this chapter I chanced to read, in a 
 late number of the North British Quarterly, a paper 
 headed " Employment of Women," which expressed 
 many of my ideas in forms so much clearer and bet- 
 ter than any into which I can cast them, that I long 
 hesitated whether it were worth while attempting to 
 set them down here at all ; but afterwards, seeing that 
 these Thoughts aim less at originality than usefulness 
 nay, that since they are but the repetition in one 
 woman's written words of what must already have 
 occurred to the minds of hundreds of other women, 
 if they were startlingly original, they would probably 
 cease to be useful, I determined to say my say. It 
 matters little when, or how, or by how many, truth is 
 spoken, if only it be truth. 
 
 Taking up the question of female handicrafts, in 
 
Female Handicrafts. 65 
 
 contradistinction to female professions, the first thing 
 that strikes one is the largeness of the subject, and 
 how very little one practically knows about it. Of 
 necessity, it has not much to say for itself; it lives by 
 its fingers rather than its brains ; it cannot put its life 
 into print. Sometimes a poet does this for it, and 
 thrills millions with a Song of ike Shirt ; or a novelist 
 presents us with some imaginary portrait some Let- 
 tice Arnold, Susan Hopley, or Ruth, idealised more or 
 less, it may be, yet sufficiently true to nature to give 
 us a passing interest in our shop-girls, sempstresses, 
 and maid-servants, abstractedly as a class. But of the 
 individuals, of their modes of existence, feeling, and 
 thought of their sorrows and pleasures, accomplish- 
 ments and defects we " ladies" of the middle and 
 upper ranks, especially those who reside in great 
 towns, know essentially nothing. 
 
 The whole working class is a silent class ; and this 
 division of it being a degree above the cottage visita- 
 tions of Ladies Bountiful, or the legislation of Ten- 
 Hours'-Bill Committees in an enlightened British 
 Parliament, is the most silent of all. Yet it includes 
 
66 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 so many grades from the West-end millinc.r, who 
 dresses in silk every day, and is almost (often quite) 
 a "lady," down to the wretched lodging-house 
 1 slavey," who seems to be less a woman than a mere 
 working animal that, viewing it, one shrinks back 
 in awe of its vastness. What an enormous influence 
 it must unconsciously exercise on society, this dumb 
 multitude, which, behind counters, in work-rooms, 
 garrets, and bazaars, or in service at fashionable, 
 respectable, or barely decent houses, goes toiling, 
 toiling on, from morning till night often from night 
 till morning at anything and everything, just for 
 daily bread and honesty ! 
 
 Now, Society recognises this fact gets up early- 
 closing movements, makes eloquent speeches in lawn 
 sleeves or peers' broadcloth at Hanover Square 
 Rooms, or writes a letter to the Times, enlarging on 
 the virtue of ordering court-dresses in time, so that 
 one portion of Queen Yictoria's female subjects may 
 not be hurried into disease or death, or worse, in 
 order that another portion may shine out brilliant 
 and beautiful at Her Majesty's balls and drawing- 
 
Female Handicrafts. 67 
 
 rooms. All this is good ; but it is only a drop in the 
 bucket a little oil cast on the top of the stream. 
 The great tide of struggle and suffering flows on just 
 the same ; the surface may be slightly troubled, but 
 the undercurrent seems to be in a state which it ia 
 impossible to change. 
 
 Did I say "impossible?" No; I do not believe 
 there is anything under heaven to which we have a 
 right to apply that word. 
 
 Apparently, one of the chief elements of wrong in 
 the class which I have distinguished as handicrafts- 
 women, is the great and invidious distinction drawn 
 between it and that of professional women. Many 
 may repudiate this in theory ; yet, practically, I ask 
 lady-mothers whether they would not rather take for 
 daughter-in-law the poorest governess, the most pen- 
 niless dependant, than a " person in business" milli- 
 ner, dress-maker, shop- woman, &c. ? As for a domes- 
 tic servant a cook, or even a lady's-maid I am 
 afraid a young man's choice of such an one for his 
 wife, would ruin him for ever in the eyes of Society. 
 
 Society begging her pardon! is often a great 
 
68 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 fooL Why should it be less creditable to make good 
 dresses than bad books ? In what is it better to be at 
 night a singing servant to an applauding or capri- 
 ciously contemptuous public, than to wait on the said 
 public in the day-time from behind the counter of 
 shop or bazaar ? I confess, I cannot see the mighty 
 difference ; when the question, as must be distinctly 
 understood, concerns not personal merit or endow- 
 ments, but external calling. 
 
 And here comes in the old warfare, which began 
 worthily enough, in the respect due to mind over 
 matter, head-work over hand-work, but has deterio 
 rated by custom into a ridiculous and contemptible 
 tyranny the battle between professions and trades. 
 I shall not enter into it here. Happily, men are novr 
 slowly waking up women more slowly still to a 
 perception of the truth, that honour is an intrinsic and 
 not extrinsic possession ; that one means of livelihood 
 is not of itself one whit more "respectable" than 
 another ; that credit or discredit can attach in no de- 
 gree to the work done, but to the manner of doing it^ 
 and to the individual who does it. 
 
Female Handicrafts. 69 
 
 But, on the other hand, any class that, as a class, 
 lacks honour, has usually, some time or other, fallen 
 short in desert of it. Thus, among handicraftswomen, 
 who bear to professional women the same relation as 
 tradesmen to gentlemen, one often finds great sell- 
 assertion and equivalent want of self-respect, painful 
 servility or pitiable impertinence in short, many of 
 those faults which arise in a transition state of partial 
 education, and accidental semi-refinement. Also, 
 since a certain amount of both refinement and educa- 
 tion is necessary to create a standard of moral consci- 
 entiousness, this order of women is much more defi- 
 cient than the one above it in that stern, steady up- 
 rightness which constitutes what we call elevation of 
 character. Through the want of pride in their calling, 
 and laxity or slovenliness of principle in pursuing it, 
 they are at war with the class above them; which 
 justly complains of those unconquerable faults and 
 deficiencies that make patience the only virtue it can 
 practise towards its inferiors. 
 
 How amend this lamentable state of things? How 
 lessen the infinite wrongs, errors, and sufferings of 
 
70 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 tliis mass of womanhood, out of which arc glutted 
 our churchyards, hospitals, prisons, penitentiaries; 
 from which, more than from any other section of 
 society, is taken that pest and anguish of our streets, 
 the 
 
 "Eighty thousand women in one smile, 
 Who only smile at night beneath the gas." 
 
 Many writers of both sexes are now striving to 
 answer this question; and many others, working 
 more by their lives than their pens, are practically 
 trying to solve the problem. All honour and suc- 
 cess attend both workers and writers! Each in 
 their vocation will spur on society to bestir itself, 
 and, by the combination of popular feeling, to 
 achieve in some large form a solid social good. 
 
 But in these Thoughts I would fain address indi- 
 viduals. I want to speak, not to society at large, 
 for as we well know, " everybody's business" is often 
 " nobody's business," but to each woman separately, 
 appealing to her in her personal character as em- 
 ployer or employed. 
 
Female Handicrafts. 71 
 
 And, first, as employer. 
 
 I am afraid it is from some natural deficiency in 
 tlie constitution of our sex that it is so difficult to 
 tench us justice. It certainly was a mistake to make 
 that admirable virtue a female; and even then the 
 allegorist seems to have found it necessary to ban- 
 dage her eyes. No; kindliness, unselfishness, cha- 
 rity, come to us by nature ; but I wish I could see 
 more of my sisters learning and practising what is 
 far more difficult and far less attractive common 
 justice, especially towards one another. 
 
 In dealing with men, there is little fear but that 
 they will take care of themselves. That "first law 
 of nature," self-preservation, is doubtless, for wise 
 purposes imprinted pretty strongly on the mind of 
 the male sex. It is in transactions between women 
 and women that the difficulty lies. Therein I put 
 the question to the aggregate conscience of us all 
 is it not, openly or secretly, our chief aim to get 
 the largest possible amount of labour for the smallest 
 possible price? 
 
 We do not mean any harm ; we are only acting 
 
72 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 for the best for our own benefit, and that of the se 
 nearest to us ; and yet we are committing an act of 
 injustice, the result of which fills slopsellers' doors 
 with starving sempstresses, and causes unlimited 
 competition among incompetent milliners and dress- 
 makers, while skilled labour in all these branches 
 is lamentably scarce and extravagantly dear. Of 
 course ! so long as one continually hears ladies say : 
 "Oh, I got such and such a thing almost for half- 
 price such a bargain I" or : " Do you know I have 
 found out such a cheap dressmaker !" May I suggest 
 to these the common-sense law of political economy, 
 that neither labour nor material can possibly be got 
 "cheaply" that is, below its average acknowledged 
 cost, without somebody's being cheated? Conse- 
 quently, these devotees to cheapness, when not vic- 
 tims which they frequently are in the long run 
 are very little better than genteel swindlers. 
 
 There is another lesser consideration, and yet not 
 small either. Labour, unfairly remunerated, of ne- 
 cessity deteriorates in quality, and thereby lowers the 
 standard of appreciation. Every time I pay a low 
 
Female Handicrafts. 73 
 
 price for an ill-fitting gown or an ugly tawdry bonnet 
 cheapness is usually tawdry I am wronging not 
 merely myself, but my employee, by encouraging 
 careless work and bad taste, |ind by thus going in di- 
 rect opposition to a rule from whence springs so much 
 that is eclectic and beautiful in the female character, 
 *,hat " whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing 
 well." If, on the contrary, I knowingly pay below 
 its value for really good work, I am, as aforesaid, 
 neither more nor less than a dishonest appropriator 
 of other people's property a swindler a ihwf. 
 
 Humiliating as the confession may be, it must be 
 owned that, on the whole, men are less prone to this 
 petty vice than we are. You rarely find a gentleman 
 beating down his tailor, cheapening his hosier, or 
 haggling with his groom over a few shillings of wages. 
 Either his wider experience has enlarged his mind, 
 or he has less time for bargaining, or he will not take 
 the trouble. It is among us, alas ! that you see most 
 instances of "stinginess" not the noble economy 
 which can and does lessen its personal wants to the 
 narrowest rational limit, but the mean parsimony 
 
74 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 which tries to satisfy them below cost-price, and con- 
 sequently always at somebody else's expense rather 
 than its own. Against this crying sin none the less 
 a sin because often masked as a virtue, and even cor- 
 rupted from an original virtue it becomes our 
 bounden duty, as women, to protest with, all oar 
 power. More especially, because it is a temptation 
 peculiar to ourselves ; engendered by many a cruel 
 domestic narrowness, many a grinding struggle to 
 " make ends meet," of which the sharpness always 
 falls to the woman's lot, to a degree that men, in their 
 grand picturesque pride and reckless indifference to 
 expense, can rarely either feel or appreciate. 
 
 I do not here advance the argument, usually en 
 forced by experience, that cheapness always come? 
 dearest in the end, and that only a wealthy person 
 can afford to make "bargains;" because I wish to 
 open the question and leave it on the far higher 
 ground of moral justice. The celebrated sentiment 
 of Benjamin Franklin, " Honesty is the best policy," 
 appears rather a mean and unchristian mode of incul- 
 cating the said virtue. 
 
Female Handicrafts. 75 
 
 Another injustice, less patent, but equally harmful, 
 is constantly committed by ladies na*mely, the con- 
 ducting of business relations in an unbusinesslike 
 manner. Carelessness, irregularity, or delay in giv- 
 ing orders ; needless absorption of time, which is 
 money ; and, above all, want of explicitness and deci- 
 sion, are faults which no one dare complain of in a 
 customer, but yet which result in the most cruel 
 wrong. Perhaps the first quality in an employer is 
 to know her own mind ; the second, to be able to state 
 it clearly, so as to avoid the possibility of mistake ; 
 and no error caused by a blunder or irresolution on 
 her part should ever be visited upon the person 
 employed. 
 
 There is one injustice which I hardly need refer to, 
 so nearly does it approach to actual dishonesty. Any 
 lady who wilfully postpones payment beyond a rea- 
 sonable time, or in any careless way prefers her 
 convenience to her duty, her pleasure to her sense of 
 right who for one single day keeps one single person 
 waiting for a debt which at all lies within her power 
 to discharge is a creature so far below the level of 
 
76 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 true womanhood that I would rather not speak of 
 her. 
 
 And now, as to the class of the employed. It 
 resolves itself into so many branches that I shall 
 attempt only to generalise, nor refer to distinctive 
 occupations, which are dividing, subdividing, and 
 extending from year to year. The world is slowly 
 discovering that women are capable of far more crafts 
 than was supposed, if only they are properly educated 
 for them: that, here and abroad, they are good 
 accountants, shopkeepers, drapers' assistants, telegraph 
 clerks, watch-makers : and doubtless would be better, 
 if the ordinary training which almost every young 
 man has a chance of getting, and which in any case 
 he is supposed to have, were thought equally indis- 
 pensable to young women. And well, indeed, if it 
 were so: for there is no possible condition of life 
 where business habits are not of the greatest value to 
 any woman. 
 
 I have heard the outcry raised, that this educating 
 of one sex to do the work and press into the place of 
 the other lessens the value of labour, and so depreci 
 
Female Handicrafts. 77 
 
 ates the chances of matrimony, to the manifest injury 
 of both. Charming theory ! which pays us the double- 
 edged compliment of being so evidently afraid of our 
 competitive powers, and so complacently satisfied, that 
 the sole purpose and use of our existence is to be 
 married ! 
 
 But Nature, wiser than such theorists, contradicts 
 them without any argument of ours. She has suffi- 
 ciently limited our physique to prevent our being very- 
 fatal rivals in manual labour; she has given us in- 
 stincts that will rarely make us prefer masculine oc- 
 cupations to sweeping the hearth and rocking the 
 cradle when such duties are possible. And if it 
 were not so, would the case be any better? There is 
 a certain amount of work to be done, and somebody 
 must do it: a certain community to be fed, and it 
 must be fed somehow. "Would it benefit the male 
 portion thereof to have all the burden on their own 
 shoulders? "Would it raise the value of their labour 
 to depreciate ours? or advantage them to keep us, 
 forcibly, in idleness, ignorance, and incapacity? I 
 trow not. Rather let each sex have a fair chance : let 
 
7 8 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 women, and single women above all, be taught to dc 
 all they can, and do it as well as they can. Little feai 
 that there will not remain a sufficiently wide field 
 open to competent men, and only men, in every 
 handicraft : little fear that the natural metier of most 
 women will not always be the cherished labours of 
 the fireside. 
 
 One trade in all its branches, domestic or otherwise, 
 is likely to remain principally our own the use of 
 the needle. 
 
 Who amongst us has not a great reverence for that 
 little dainty tool; such a wonderful brightener and 
 consoler ; our weapon of defence against slothfulness, 
 weariness, and sad thoughts; our thrifty helper in 
 poverty, our pleasant friend at all times ? From the 
 first "cobbled-up" doll's frock the first neat stitch- 
 ing for mother, or hemming of father's pocket-hand- 
 kerchief the first bit of sewing shyly done for some 
 one who is to own the hand and all its duties most 
 of all, the first strange, delicious fairy work, sewed at 
 diligently, in solemn faith and tender love, for the 
 tiny creature as yet unknown and unseen truly, no 
 
Female Handicrafts. 79 
 
 one but ourselves can tell what the needle is to us 
 women. 
 
 With all due respect for brains, I think women 
 cannot be too early taught to respect likewise their 
 wn ten fingers. 
 
 It is a grand thing to be a good needlewoman, even 
 in what is called in England "plain sewing," and in 
 Scotland, a "white seam;" and any one who ever 
 tried to make a dress knows well enough that skill, 
 patience, and ingenuity, nay, a certain kind of genius, 
 is necessary to achieve any good result. Of all artifi- 
 cers, the poor dressmaker is the last who ought to be 
 grudged good payment. Instead of depreciating, we 
 should rather try to inspire her with a sincere follow- 
 ing of her art as an art even a pleasant pride in it. 
 
 " The labour we delight in physics pain ;" 
 
 and it may be doubted whether any branch of labour 
 can be worthily pursued unless the labourer take an 
 interest in it beyond the mere hire. I know a dress- 
 maker who evidently feels personally aggrieved when 
 you decline to yield to her taste in costume; who 
 
8o Female Handicrafts. 
 
 never spares pains or patience to adorn her customers 
 to the very best of her skill ; and who, by her serious 
 and simple belief in her own business, would half per- 
 suade you that the destinies of the whole civilised 
 world hung on the noble but neglected art of mantua- 
 making. One cannot but respect that woman ! 
 
 Much has been said concerning justice from the em- 
 ployer to the employed, and as much might be said in 
 behalf of the opposite side. For a person to under- 
 take more work than she can finish, to break her pro- 
 mises, tell white lies, be wasteful, unpunctual, is to-be 
 scarcely less dishonest to her employer than if she 
 directly robbed her. The want of conscientiousness, 
 which is only too general among the lower order of 
 shopkeepers and people in business, does more to 
 brand upon trade the old stigma which the present 
 generation is wisely endeavouring to efface, and to 
 blacken and broaden the line, now fast vanishing, be- 
 tween tradesfolk and gentlefolk more, tenfold, than 
 all the narrow-minded pride of the most prejudiced 
 aristocracy. 
 
 I should like to see working women handicrafts- 
 
Female Handicrafts. 81 
 
 women take up their pride, and wield it with sense 
 and courage ; I should like to see them educating 
 themselves, for education is the grand motive power 
 in the advancement of all classes. I do not allude to 
 mere book-learning, but that combination of mental, 
 moral, and manual attainments, the mere desire for 
 and appreciation of which give a higher tone to the 
 whole being. And there are few conditions of life, 
 whether it be passed at the counter or over the needle, 
 in the work-room or at home, where an intelligent 
 young woman has not some opportunity of gaining 
 information ; little enough it may be from a book 
 snatched up at rare intervals, a print-shop window 
 glanced at, as she passes along the street a silent ob- 
 servation and imitation of whatever seems most plea- 
 sant and refined in those of her superiors with whom 
 she may be thrown into contact. However small her 
 progress may be, yet if she have a genuine wish for 
 mental improvement, the true thirst after what is good 
 and beautiful the good being always the beautiful 
 for its own sake, there is little fear but that she will 
 gradually attain her end. 
 
82 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 There is one class which, from its daily and hourly 
 familiarity with that above it, has perhaps more op- 
 portunities than any for this gradual self-cultivation 
 I mean the class of domestic servants ; but these, 
 though belonging to the ranks of women who live by 
 hand-labour, form a body in so many points distinct, 
 that they must form the subject of a separate chapter. 
 
 Cannot some one suggest a slight amendment on 
 the usual cry of elevating the working classes 
 whether it be not possible to arouse in them the 
 desire to elevate themselves ? Every growth of nature 
 begins less in the external force applied than the vital 
 principle asserting itself within. It is the undercur- 
 rent that helps to break up the ice ; the sap, as well 
 as the sunshine, that brings out the green leaves 
 of spring. I doubt if any class can be success- 
 fully elevated unless it has indicated the power to 
 raise itself ; and the first thing to make it worthy of 
 respect is, to teach it to respect itself. 
 
 ' : In all labour there is profit " ay, and honour too, 
 if the toilers could but recognise it ; if the large talk 
 now current about the " dignity of labour" could only 
 
Female Handicrafts 83 
 
 be reduced to practice ; if, to begin at the beginning, 
 we could but each persuade the handful of young 
 persons immediately around us and under our influ- 
 ence, that to make an elegant dress or pretty bonnet 
 nay, even to cook a good dinner, or take pride in a 
 neatly kept house, is a right creditable, womanly 
 thing in itself, quite distinct from the profit accruing 
 from it. Also, since hope is the mainspring of excel- 
 lence, as well as of happiness, in any calling, let it be 
 imprefised on every one that her future advancement 
 lies, sj iritually as well as literally, in her own hands. 
 Seldom, with the commonest chance to start with, 
 will a real good worker fail to find employment ; sel- 
 dome;: still, with diligence, industry, civility, and 
 punctuality, will a person of even moderate skill lack 
 customers. "Worth of any kind is rare enough in the 
 world for most people to be thankful to get it and 
 keep it, too. In these days, the chief difficulty seems 
 to consist, not in the acknowledgment of merit, but 
 the finding of any merit that is worth acknowledging 
 above all, any merit that has the sense and consis- 
 tency to acknowledge and have faith in itself, and to 
 
84 Female Handicrafts. 
 
 trust in its own power of upholding itself afloat in 
 'the very stormiest billows of the tempestuous world ; 
 assured with worthy old Milton, that 
 
 " If virtue feeble were 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her." 
 
 But I am pulled down from this Utopia of female 
 handicrafts by the distant half-smothered laughter of 
 my two maid-servants, going cheerily to their bed 
 through the silent house ; and by the recollection that 
 I myself must be up early, as my new sempstress is 
 coming to-morrow. Well, she shall be kindly treated, 
 have plenty of food and drink, light and fire ; and 
 though I shall be stern and remorseless as fate respect- 
 ing the quality of her work, I shall give her plenty 
 of time to do it in. ]STo more will be expected from 
 her than her capabilities seem to allow and her word 
 promised; still, there will be no bating an inch of 
 that: it would be unfair both to herself and me. In 
 fact, the very reason I took her was from her honest 
 look and downright sayings : " Ma'am, if you can't 
 wait, or know anybody better, don't employ me ; but, 
 
Female Handicrafts. 85 
 
 ma'am, when I say I'll come, I always do." (P./S 
 She didn't!!) 
 
 Honest woman ! If she turns out fairly, so much 
 the better for us both, in the future, as to gowns and 
 crown-pieces. If she does not, I shall at least enjoy 
 the satisfaction of having done unto her as, in her 
 place, I would like others to do unto me which sim- 
 ple axiom expresses and includes all I have been 
 writing on this subject. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 FEMALE SERVANTS. 
 
 THOUGH female servants come under the category 
 of handicrafts women, yet they form a distinct class, 
 very important in itself, and essential to the welfare 
 of the community. 
 
 A faithful servant next best blessing, and next 
 rarest, after a faithful friend ! who among us has not 
 had, or wanted, such a one ? Some inestimable fol- 
 lower of the family, who has known all the family 
 changes, sorrows, and joys; is always at hand to look 
 after the petty necessities and indescribably small 
 nothings which, in the aggregate, make up the sum of 
 one's daily comfort; whom one can trust in sight and 
 out of sight call upon for help in season and out 
 of season ; rely on in absence, or sickness, or trouble, 
 to " keep the house going," and upon whom one can 
 at all times, and under all circumstances, depend for 
 
Female Servants. 87 
 
 that conscientious fidelity of service which money can 
 never purchase, nor repay. 
 
 And this, -what domestic servants ought to be, 
 might be, they are alas, how seldom 1 
 
 Looking round on the various households we 
 know, I fear we shall find that this relation of master 
 (or mistress) and servant a relation so necessary, as 
 to have been instituted from the foundation of the 
 world, and since so hallowed by both biblical and 
 secular chronicles, as to be, next to ties of blood and 
 friendship, the most sacred bond that can exist 
 between man and man is, on the whole, as badly 
 fulfilled as any under the sun. 
 
 "Whose fault is this? the superior's, who, in the 
 march of intellect and education around him, losing 
 somewhat the distinction of mere rank, yet tries to 
 enforce it by instituting external distinctions impossi- 
 ble to be maintained between himself and his depen- 
 dants? or the inferior's, who, sufficiently advanced 
 to detect the weaknesses of the class above him, 
 though not to cure his own, abjures the blind reve- 
 rence and obedience of ancient times, without attain- 
 
88 Female Servants. 
 
 ing to the higher spirit of this our day when the 
 law of servitude has been remodelled, elevated, and 
 consecrated by Christianity itself, in the person of its 
 Divine Founder? "He that is greatest among you, let 
 him be your servant." 
 
 This recognition of the sanctity of service, through 
 the total and sublime equality on which, in one sense, 
 are thus placed the server and the served, seems the 
 point whereon all minor points ought to turn, and 
 which, in the solemn responsibility it imposes on both 
 parties, ought never to be absent from the mind of 
 either ; yet it is usually one of the very last things 
 likely to enter there. 
 
 To tell Mrs. Jones who yesterday engaged her 
 cook Betty for fourteen pounds a-year, having beaten 
 her down from fourteen guineas by a compromise 
 about the beer; and who, after various squabbles, 
 finally turned out pretty Susan, the housemaid, into 
 the ghastly Yanity-fair of London, for gossiping on 
 area steps with divers "followers" or the honour- 
 able Mrs. Browne Browne, who keeps Yictorine sit- 
 ting up till daylight just to undo her mistress's gown, 
 
Female Servants. 89 
 
 and last week threatened, though she did not dare, to 
 dismiss the fine upper-nurse, because, during the brief 
 minute or two after dessert, when Master Baby ap- 
 peared, mamma, who rarely sees him at any other 
 time, and never meddles with his education, physical 
 or moral, was shocked to hear from his rosy lips a 
 "naughty word" to say to these "ladies" that the 
 "women" they employ are of the same feminine flesh 
 and blood, would of course meet nominal assent. But 
 to attempt to get them to carry that truth out practi- 
 cally to own that they and their servants are of like 
 passions and feelings, capable of similar elevation or 
 deterioration of character, and amenable to the same 
 moral laws in fact, all "sisters" together, account- 
 able both to themselves and to the other sex for the 
 influence they mutually exercise over one another, 
 would, I fear, be held simply ridiculous. " Sisters " 
 indeed! Certainly not, under any circumstances 
 except when Death, the great Leveller, having perma- 
 nently interposed, we may safely, over a few spade- 
 fuls of earth, venture to acknowledge " our dear sister 
 here departed." 
 
go Female Servants. 
 
 I have gone up and down the world a good deal, 
 yet I have scarcely found one household, rich or 
 po >r, hard or benevolent, Christian or worldly, aristo- 
 cratic or democratic, which, however correct in out- 
 ward practice, could be brought to own as a guiding 
 principle this, which is apparently the New-Testa- 
 ment principle with regard to service and servants. 
 
 This by no means implies or commands equality ; 
 of all shams, there is none so vain as the assertion of 
 that which does not, and cannot exist in this world, 
 and which the highest religious and social legislation 
 never supposes possible. 
 
 For instance, my cook prepares and sends up din- 
 ner. From long practice, she does it a hundred times 
 better than I could do; nay, even takes a pleasure 
 and pride in it, for which I am truly thankful, and 
 sincerely indebted to her, too : for a good cook is a 
 household blessing, and no small contributor to 
 health, temper, and enjoyment. Accordingly, I treat 
 her with consideration, and even enter her domains 
 with a certain respectful awe. But I do not invite 
 her to eat her own dinner, or mingle in the society 
 
Female Servants. 91 
 
 v?hich to me is its most piquant sauce. She was not 
 born to it, nor brought up for it. Good old soul ! 
 she would gape at the finest bon-mot, and doze over 
 the most intellectual conversation. She is better left 
 in peace by her kitchen-fire. 
 
 Also, though it is a real pleasure to me to watch 
 my neat parlour-maid in and out of the drawing-room, 
 to see by her bright intelligent face that she under- 
 stands much of whatever talk is going on, and may 
 learn something by it too sometimes ; still, I should 
 nev?r think of asking her to take a seat among the 
 guests. Poor little lass ! she would be as unhappy 
 and out of place here as I should be in the noisy 
 Christmas party below-stairs, of which she is the very 
 centre of attraction, getting more compliments and 
 mistletoe-kisses than I ever got, or wished for, in my 
 whole life-time. And, by the same rule, though I 
 like to see her prettily dressed, and never scruple to 
 tell her when she sets my teeth on edge by a blue 
 bow on a green-cotton gown, I do not deem it neces- 
 sary, when she helps me on with my silk one, to 
 condole with her over the said cotton, or to offer her 
 
Q2 Female Servants. 
 
 the use of my toilet and my chaperonage at the con 
 versazione to which I am going, where, in the scores 
 I meet, there may be scarcely any face more pleasant, 
 more kindly, or more necessary to me than her own. 
 Nevertheless, each is in her station. Providence 
 fixed both where they are ; and while they there re- 
 main, unless either individual is qualified to change, 
 neither has the smallest right to overstep the barrier 
 between them; recognised, perhaps, better tacitly 
 than openly by either, but never by any ridiculous 
 assumption of equality denied or set aside. Yet one 
 meeting-point there is far below, or above, all exter- 
 nal barriers the common womanhood in which all 
 share. If anything were to happen to my little maid 
 if I caught her crying over "father's" letter, or 
 running in, laughing and rosy, after shutting the back 
 gate on somebody, I am afraid my heart would 
 warm to her just as much as, though I never left my 
 card at Buckingham Palace, it is prone to do to a cer- 
 tain Lady there, who takes early walks, and goes 
 tides with her little children apparently a better wo- 
 man, wife, and mother than nine-tenths of her sub- 
 
Female Servants. 93 
 
 jects. Is it not here, then, that true equality lies in 
 this recognition of a common nature ; to the divinely- 
 appointed law of which all external practice is to be 
 referred ? Would that both mistresses and servants 
 could be brought to recognise this equality not as a 
 mere sentimental theory, but as a practical fact, the 
 foundation and starting-point of all relations between 
 them! 
 
 It concerns maids just as much as mistresses ; and 
 to them I wish to speak, in the earnest hope that 
 every household which reads this book will do what 
 is a practice, useful and excellent in itself, with all 
 family books, send it down of quiet evenings, Sun- 
 days and holidays, to be read in the kitchen, when 
 work is done. For, work being done, no mental 
 improvement that is compatible with the duties of his 
 or her calling ought to be forbidden any human 
 being. 
 
 I should like, first, to impress upon all women- 
 servants how very much society depends upon them 
 jbr its well-being, physical and moral. And this, with 
 no fear of thereby increasing their self-conceit: it is 
 
94 
 
 Female Servants. 
 
 not responsibility, but the want or loss of it, which 
 di -grades character. To feel that you can or might 
 be something, is often the first step towards becoming 
 it; and it is safest, on the whole, to treat people as 
 better than they are, if, perchance, conscience may 
 shame them into being what they are believed, than 
 to check all hope, paralyse all aspiration, and irritate 
 them, by the slow pressure of contemptuous incredu- 
 lity, into becoming actually as bad as they are sup- 
 posed to be. Thus, if the young women to whom 
 has fallen the lot of domestic service, of making 
 homes comfortable, and especially of taking care of 
 children, could once be made to feel their own impor 
 tance as a class their infinite means of usefulness 1 
 think it would stimulate them into a far higher feeling 
 of self-respect and true respectability, and make them 
 of double value to the community at large. 
 
 What do you "go to service" for? "Wages, of 
 course : the object being how much money you can 
 earn, and how easy a place you can get for it. Cha- 
 racter is likewise indispensable to you ; so you seek 
 out good families, and keep in them for a certain 
 
Female Servants. 95 
 
 length, of time. Meanwhile, the most energetic and 
 sensible among you try to learn as much as lies in 
 your way but only as a means of bettering your- 
 selves. " To better yourself," is usually held a satis- 
 factory reason for quitting the most satisfactory place 
 and the kindest of mistresses. 
 
 On the whole, the bond between you and " missis," 
 is a mere bargain a matter of pounds, shillings, and 
 pence ; you do just as much as she exacts, or as you 
 consider your wages justify her in expecting from 
 you not a particle more. As to rights, privileges, 
 and perquisites, it is not unfrequently either a daily 
 battle or a sort of armed treaty between kitchen and 
 parlour. The latter takes no interest in the former, 
 except to see that you do your work and keep your 
 place ; while you on your part, except for gossip or 
 curiosity, are comfortably indiiferent to "the family." 
 You leave or stay just as it suits them, or yourself, 
 get through a prescribed round of work, are tolerably 
 well-behaved, civil, honest at least in great mat- 
 ters and tell no lies, or only as many white ones as 
 will answer your purposes. And so you go on, 
 
96 Female Servants. 
 
 passing from "place" to "place," resting nowhere, 
 responsible nowhere ; sometimes marrying, and drop- 
 pi ng into a totally different sphere, but oftener sti]l 
 continuing in the same course from year to year, lay- 
 ing by little enough, either in wages or attachment ; 
 yet doing very well, in your own sense of the term, 
 till sickness or old age overtakes you, and then 
 where are you ? 
 
 I have read somewhere that in our hospitals and 
 lunatic asylums there is, next to governesses, no class 
 so numerous as that of female domestic servants. 
 
 Kemember, I am referring not to the lower de- 
 grees, but to the respectable among you those who 
 can always command decent wages and good situa- 
 tions, so long as they are capable of taking them. Of 
 the meaner class, ignorant, stupid, drifted from house- 
 hold to household, from pure incapacity to do or to 
 learn anything, or expelled disgracefully thence for 
 want of (poor wretches I were they ever taught it ?) 
 a sense of the common moral necessities of society, 
 which objects to the open breach of at least the 
 sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments of 
 
Female Servants. 97 
 
 these unhappy dregs of your sisterhood, I cannot 
 now venture to speak. I speak of those, born ol 
 respectable parents, starting in service with good 
 prospects, able, generally, to read and write, and 
 gifted with sufficient education and intelligence to 
 make them a blessing to themselves and all about 
 them, if their intelligence were not so often degraded 
 into mere " sharpness," for want of that quality rare 
 in all classes, but rarest in yours moral conscien- 
 tiousness. 
 
 Why is it that, especially in large towns, a 
 " clever" servant is almost sure to turn out badly ? 
 Why do mistresses complain that, while one can get 
 a decent servant, a good-natured servant, a servant 
 who "does her work pretty well, with plenty of 
 looking after," a conscientious servant is with diffi- 
 culty, if at all, to be found ? 
 
 By conscientious, I mean one who does her duty 
 that is, the general business of her calling not 
 merely for wages or a character, or even for the 
 higher motive of " pleasing missis," but for the high- 
 est of all motives because it is her duty. Because, 
 
98 Female Servants. 
 
 to cook a dinner, with care and without waste to 
 k<vp a house clean and orderly in every corner, seen 
 or not seen ; to be scrupulously honest and truthful, 
 in the smallest as in the greatest things ; to abstain 
 from pert answers in the parlour, squabbles in the 
 kitchen, and ill-natured tittle-tattle about her fellow- 
 servants or the family concern not merely her po- 
 sition as a servant, but her conduct and character as a 
 human being, accountable to Grod as much as the 
 greatest woman that ever was born. 
 
 "Oh. that's fine talking 1" you may say; "but 
 what can / do ? what can be expected of me only a 
 poor servant ?" 
 
 Only a poor servant! Only a person whom a 
 whole household is obliged to trust, more or less, 
 with its comfort, order, property, respectability, peace / 
 health I was going to add, life ; who, in times of 
 sickness or trouble, knows more of its secrets than 
 nearest acquaintance ; who is aware of all its domestic 
 weaknesses, faults, and vexations; to whom the 
 " skeleton" said to be in every house must necessarily 
 be a thing guessed at, if not only too familiar ; on 
 
Female Servants. 99 
 
 whom master, mistress, children, or friend, must be 
 daily dependent for numerous small comforts and at- 
 tentions, scarcely known, perhaps, until they are 
 missed. Only a poor servant! Why, no living 
 creature has more opportunity of doing good or evil, 
 and becoming to others either a blessing or a curse, 
 than a " poor servant !" 
 
 x Not if she is a mere bird of passage, flitting from 
 roof to roof, indifferent to everything save what she 
 may pick up to feather her nest with by the way. 
 Not if she starts with the notion that "missis" and 
 she are to be always at war, or on the alert against 
 mutual encroachments, anxious only which can get 
 the most out of the other. Not if she takes to 
 fawning and flattering, humouring her mistress's 
 weak points, and laughing at her behind her back ; 
 betraying the follies or misfortunes of one household 
 into another ; carrying on a regular system of double- 
 faced hypocrisy, and fancying she is getting her re- 
 venge, and degrading her injurers, when, in fact, she 
 more, much more, degrades herself. 
 
 These are the things which make servants de 
 
loo Female Servants. 
 
 ; not because they are servants, but because 
 the most of them, if they assume any moral standard 
 at all, hold one so far below that of the class above 
 them, that this class learns to regard and treat them 
 as an inferior order of beings. 
 
 "What can you expect from a servant?" said tc 
 me a lady with whom I often used to argue the mat- 
 ter a, good and noble-minded woman, too, among 
 whose few prejudices was this, fixed and immutable, 
 against the whole race of domestics. 
 
 What do I expect from a servant? Why, pre- 
 cisely what I exact from myself the same honesty 
 of word and act, the same chastity and decency of 
 behaviour, self-government in temper and speech, 
 and propriety of dress and manner according to our 
 respective stations. 
 
 Therefore, in any disputed point, I, as being pro- 
 bably the more educated, older, if not wiser of the 
 two, feel bound as much as possible to put myself in 
 her place, to try and understand her feelings and 
 character, before I judge her, or legislate for her. I 
 try in all things to set her an example to follow, 
 
Female Servants. ioi 
 
 rather tlian abuse her for faults and failings which she 
 has sense enough to see I am just as liable to as she. 
 I would rather help her in the right way, than drive 
 her into it, whip in hand, and take another road my- 
 self. Eeprove, I ought, and will, as often as she 
 requires it ; but reproof is one thing, scolding another : 
 she should never see that I find fault merely from bad 
 temper, or for the pleasure (?) of scolding. Authority 
 I must have : it is for her good as well as mine that 
 there should be only one mistress in the house, to 
 whom obedience must be implicitly rendered, and 
 whose domestic regulations will admit of no idleness, 
 carelessness, or irregularity; but I would scorn to 
 use my authority unjustly, or wantonly, or unkindly, 
 simply for the sake of asserting it. If it is worth 
 anything in itself, she will soon learn that it is not to 
 be disputed. 
 
 And generally, rule, order, and even fair reproof, 
 are among the last things that servants complain o 
 Selfishness, stinginess, want of consideration for 
 others, are much oftener the fruitful source of all 
 kinds of domestic rebellion, or the distrust which is 
 
102 Female Servants. 
 
 worse than any open fight the sense of gnawing 
 injustice, which destroys all respect and attachment 
 between "up-stairs" and "down-stairs." 
 
 And yet the servant is often very unjust, to*. 
 Cook, who has only to dress the dinner, and neither 
 to work for it nor pay for it, turns up her nose at 
 missis's "meanness," i. e. displeasure at waste or 
 extravagance cook, who, if any crash came, has 
 only to look out for another place ; while missis has 
 her five children, whose little mouths must be filled, 
 and little bodies must be clothed, and "master," 
 whom it breaks her heart to see coming in from the 
 City, haggard, tired, and cross a crossness he cannot 
 help, poor man! or sitting down with a pitiful 
 patience, sick and sad, almost wishing, save for her 
 and the children, that he could lay his head on her 
 shoulder and die I What does cook in the kitchen, 
 fat and comfortable, know of all these things of the 
 agonised struggle for position and character nay, 
 mere bread which makes the days and nights of 
 thousands of the professional classes one 'long battle 
 for life? 
 
Female Servants. 103 
 
 Also, the pretty housemaid, who has her regular 
 work and periodical holiday, with her " young man " 
 coming faithfully on Sundays, about whom, should he 
 turn out false, she rarely makes a fuss, but quickly 
 takes up with another ; she being essentially practical, 
 and mental suffering being happily out of her line. 
 Little she guesses of all the conflicts, torments, and 
 endurances which fall to the lot of natures whom a 
 different cultivation, if not a finer organization, has 
 rendered more alive to another sort of trouble that 
 anguish of spirit which is worse than any bodily pain. 
 Little she knows, when she comes in singing to dust 
 the parlour, of many a cruel scene transacted there ; 
 or of many an hour of mortal agony, bitter as death, 
 yet sharpened by the full consciousness of youth and 
 life, which has been spent in the pretty room, outside 
 which she grumbles so, because "miss will keep her 
 door locked, and it'll be dinner time afore ever a 
 body can get the beds made." 
 
 Servants should make allowance for these things, 
 and many more which they neither know nor under- 
 stand. They should respect, not out of blind sub- 
 
104 Female Servants. 
 
 servicnce, but mere common sense, the great differ 
 ence which their narrower education and mcde of 
 thought often places between them and " the family," 
 in its pleasures, tastes, and necessities, and, above all, 
 in its sufferings. This difference must exist : in the 
 happiest homes, cares and anxieties must be for ever 
 arising, like sea- waves, to be breasted or avoided, or 
 dashed against and broken, as may be ; and against 
 these the servant must bear her part as well as the 
 mistress. But it is, and ought to be, something to 
 know how often a word or look of respectful sympa- 
 thy, a quiet little attention, an unofficious observance 
 of one's comfort in trifles, will, in times of trouble, 
 go direct to the mistress's heart, with a soothing influ- 
 ence of which the servant has not the slightest idea, 
 and which is never afterwards forgotten. 
 
 " Better is a friend that is near than a brother afar 
 off;" and better, many a time, is the silent kindness 
 of some domestic, who, from long familiarity, under- 
 stands one's peculiarities, than the sympathy of many 
 an outside friend, who only rubs against one's angles, 
 sharpened by sickness or pain and often, uninten- 
 
Female Servants. 1 05 
 
 fcionally, hurts more by futile comforting than, by total 
 neglect. 
 
 A word on one branch of female service, unde- 
 niably the most important of all the care and ma- 
 nagement of children. 
 
 I have always, from fond experience, held that 
 child to be the happiest who never had a nursery- 
 maid only a mother. But this lot is too felicitous 
 to fall to many, and perhaps, after all, would not be 
 in reality so Utopian as in idea particularly to the 
 mothers. So let us grant hired nurses to be a natu- 
 ral necessity of civilisation. 
 
 Poor things ! they certainly need consideration-, for 
 they have much to bear. Children are charming in 
 the abstract ; but one sometimes sees the petted 
 cherubs of the drawing-room the little fiends of the 
 nursery, exhibiting, almost before they can speak, 
 passions which would tempt one to believe in original 
 sin, did not education commence with existence. Yet 
 whatever the mysterious law of sin may be that 
 Adam made us liable for, it is possible to bring 
 
 even infants under the dominion of that law of 
 
 5* 
 
106 Female Servants. 
 
 love given by the Second Adam to Whom little 
 children came. And how? By practising it our* 
 6eh es. 
 
 Ay; making allowance for the necessary short- 
 comings of all young things, just entered on the 
 experience of life, from kittens to boys, the former 
 being much the least troublesome of the two, I 
 never once knew or heard of a case of irredeemably 
 "naughty" children, in regard to whom parents or 
 nurses, or both, were not originally and principally 
 to blame. I never saw a fretful sullen girl, who had 
 not been made so by selfishness and ill humour on 
 the *part of others, or by tantalising restrictions and 
 compelled submission, hard enough at any age, but 
 especially in childhood. I never knew a revengeful 
 boy, who had not first had the Cain-like spirit put 
 into him by some taunting voice or uplifted hand 
 not a baby hand; teaching him that what others 
 did he might do, and that the blow he smarted from 
 was exactly the same sort of pain, and dealt in the 
 same spirit, as that he delighted to inflict on mirse 
 or brother, feeling out of his fierce little heart that 
 
Female Servants. 107 
 
 this was the sole consolation left him for his half- 
 understood but intolerable wrongs. 
 
 Does ever any man or woman remember the feel- 
 ing of being "whipped" as a child the fierce 
 anger, the insupportable ignominy, the longing for 
 revenge, which blotted out all thought of contrition 
 for the fault in rebellion against the punishment? 
 With this recollection on their own parts, I can 
 
 hardly suppose any parents venturing to inflict it 
 
 ' 
 
 certainly not allowing its infliction by another, under 
 any circumstances whatever. A nurse-maid or do- 
 mestic of any sort, once discovered to have lifted up 
 her hand against a child, ought to meet instant 
 severe rebuke, and, on a repetition of the offence, 
 instant dismissal. 
 
 A firm will the nurse must have which the child 
 will obey, knowing it must be obeyed ; but it should 
 be with her no less than with the parents, a loving 
 will always. I will not suppose any young woman 
 so mean and cowardly as to wreak her whims and 
 tempers, or those of her mistress, on the helpless 
 
io8 Female Servants. 
 
 little sinner, who, however annoying, is after all such 
 a very small sinner. I cannot believe she will find it 
 so very hard to love the said sinner, who clings about 
 h<T helplessly night and day, in the total dependence 
 that of itself produces love. And surely, remember- 
 ing her own childhood and its events such nothings 
 now, of such vast moment then, its unjust punish- 
 ments, unremedied wrongs, and harshly-exacted 
 sacrifices things which in their resutei may have 
 affected her temper for years, and even yet are unfor- 
 gotten she will strive as much as possible to put 
 herself in her nursling's place, to look at the world 
 from his point of view, and never, as people often do, 
 to expect from him a degree of perfection which one 
 rarely finds even in a grown person ; above all, never 
 to expect from him anything that she does not 
 practise herself. 
 
 It will be seen that I hold this law of kindness as 
 the Alpha and Omega of education. I once asked 
 one in his own house a father in everything but the 
 name, his authority unquestioned, his least word held 
 
Female Servants. 109 
 
 in reverence, his smallest wish obeyed ' How did 
 you ever manage to bring up these children ?" He 
 said: "By love." 
 
 That is the question. It is because people have 
 so little love in them, so little purity and truth, self- 
 control and self-denial, that they make such frightful 
 errors in the bringing up of children. When I go 
 from home to home of the middle classes, and see the 
 sort of rule or misrule there, the countless evil 
 influences, physical and spiritual, against which chil- 
 dren have to struggle, I declare I often wonder that in 
 the rising generation there should be any good men 
 and women. And when I glance down the Times 
 column of "Want Places," and speculate how few of 
 these "nurses," upper and under "girls," and 
 "nursery-maids," have the smallest knowledge of 
 their responsibility, or care about fulfilling it, my 
 wonder is, that the new generation should grow up to 
 manhood and womanhood at all. 
 
 This responsibility if the nurse ever reflects on it 
 how awful it is ! To think that whatever the man 
 may become, learned and great, worldly or wickedj 
 
1 1 o Female Servants. 
 
 he is at present only the child, courting her smile and 
 coming to her for kisses, or hiding from her frown 
 and sobbing on her neck, " I will be good, I will be 
 good I" That, be she old or young, clever or igno-- 
 rant, ugly or pretty, she has, next to the mother- 
 sometimes before the mother, though that is a sad 
 thing to see this all-powerful influence over him 
 stronger than any he will afterwards allow or own. 
 That it rests with herself how she uses it, whether 
 wisely and tenderly, for the guidance and softening 
 of his nature, or harshly and capriciously, after a 
 fashion which may harden and brutalize him, and 
 make him virtually disbelieve in love and goodness 
 for the remainder of his existence. 
 
 Truly, in this hard world, which they must only 
 too soon be thrust into, it is more essential even for 
 boys than girls that, in the dawn of life, while women 
 solely have the management of them, they should be 
 accustomed to this law of love love paramount and 
 never ceasing, clearly discernible in the midst of re- 
 straint, reproof, and even punishment love that tries 
 to be always as just as it is tender, and never exer 
 
Female Servants. 1 1 1 
 
 cines one of its rights for its own pleasure and good 
 but for the child's. To the nurse, unto whom it does 
 not come by instinct, as it does to parents, the practice 
 of it may be difficult very difficult but God forbid 
 it should be impossible. 
 
 And what a reward there is in this, beyond any 
 foim of service to a woman I Eespect and gratitude 
 of parents ; consideration from all in the house ; affec- 
 tion, fresh, full, and free, and sweet as only a child's 
 love can be. Trying as the nurse-maid's life is, count 
 less as are her vexations and pains, how many a child- 
 less wife or solitary old maid has envied her, playing 
 at romps for kisses, deafened with ever-sounding rills 
 of delicious laughter all day, and lying down at night 
 with a soft sleepy thing breathing at her side, or wak- 
 ened of a morning with two little arms tight round 
 her neck, smotheringly expressing a wealth of love 
 that kingdoms could not buy. 
 
 And when she grows an old woman, if, as often 
 happens to domestic servants, she does not marry, but 
 remains in service all her life, it must be her own 
 fault if nurse's position is not an exceedingly happy 
 
112 Female Servants. 
 
 and honoured one. Not perhaps, in our modern 
 times, after the fashion of her order in novels and 
 plays from Juliet's nurse downwards but still 
 abounding in comfort and respect. Most likely, she 
 still lives in the family anyhow, it will be strange if 
 her grown-up " children " do not now and then come 
 and see her, to gossip over those old times, which 
 grow the more precious the further we leave them 
 behind. In time these children's children with their 
 other parent, who knew not nurse, and whom nurse 
 still views with rather suspicious curiosity come and 
 chatter to her, eager to hear all about " pa " or " ma ;" 
 how "ma" looked when she was a little baby; 
 whether "pa" was a good boy or a naughty boy, 
 some thirty odd years ago. And a remarkable 
 moral fact! the chances are that "pa" will gravely 
 confess to the latter ; while old nurse, seeing all things 
 through the softening glass of time, will protest that 
 neither he nor any of the children ever gave her the 
 least trouble since they were born ! 
 
 I have said a good deal, and yet it seems as if I 
 had almost left the subject where I found it, it is so 
 
Female Servants. 113 
 
 wide. Let me end it in words which, coming into 
 my mind now, transcend all minej and yet, I trust, 
 have been made the foundation of them; in which 
 case I need not fear. Words open alike to master 
 and servant studied by how few, yet in which lies 
 the only law of life for all : 
 
 " Servants, obey in all things your masters according 
 to the flesh ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers ; but in 
 singleness of heart, fearing God: and whatsoever ye do, 
 do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men ; ~know* 
 ing that of the Lord ye shall receive the KEWABD." 
 
CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 THE MISTRESS OF A FAMIIA. 
 
 THE house-mother! what a beautiful, comprehensive 
 word it is! how suggestive of all that is wise and 
 kindly, comfortable and good! Surely, whether the 
 lot comes to her naturally, in the happy gradations of 
 wifehood and motherhood or as the maiden-mistress 
 of an adopted family, or, as one could find many 
 instances in this our modern England, when the pos- 
 session of a . large fortune, received or earned, gives 
 her, with all the cares and duties, many of the advan- 
 tages of matronhood every such woman must ac- 
 knowledge that it is a solemn as well as a happy 
 thing to be the mistress of a family. 
 
 Easy, pleasant, and beautiful as it is to obey, de- 
 velopment of character is not complete when the 
 person is fitted only to obey. There comes a time in 
 most women's lives when they have to learn how to 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 1 1 5 
 
 govern first, themselves, then those about them. I 
 say, to learn ; because it has to be learnt. Love of 
 arbitrary power may come by instinct ; as in the very 
 youngest children you may see one fierce little spirit 
 to which all the rest, whether older or younger, suc- 
 cumb : but to domineer and to rule are two distinct 
 arts, proceeding often from totally opposite charac- 
 ters. 
 
 The most of women are, in their youth, at least, by 
 both habit and temperament, as I once heard it ex- 
 pressed by a very acute thinker decidedly " adjec- 
 tive." Few of them have ever had the chance of 
 becoming a "noun substantive" (whether or not 
 that be a natural or enviable position). They have 
 been accustomed all their lives hitherto to be govern- 
 ed, if not guarded ; protected or unprotected, as may 
 be; but rarely placed in circumstances where they 
 had actively to assume the guardianship or rule of 
 others. This, then, if it falls to their lot, they have 
 to acquire, difficultly, painfully : often with no prepa- 
 ration, or with what is worse than none, a complete 
 ignorance that there is anything to be acquired! 
 
ii 6 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 They expect all is to come quite naturally the due 
 arrangement and superintendence of a house the 
 regulation of an income the guidance and control 
 of servants. 
 
 And yet, every family is a little kingdom in itself: 
 the members and followers of which are often as hard 
 to manage as any of the turbulent governments whose 
 discords convulse our world. " "Woe to thee, land, 
 v when thy king is a child 1" And woe to thee, 
 household, when thy mistress is worse than a child 
 a foolish, ignorant, and incapable woman. 
 
 "With families, as with kingdoms, one of the prin- 
 cipal evidences of misgovernment is at the working 
 root of the little community the servants. Why is 
 it that in one half of the families one knows, the 
 grand burden of complaint is servants? Ts the 
 fault altogether on one side ? which side, either 
 party being left to decide : or is it a natural conse- 
 quence of their relative positions, as ruler and ruled ? 
 a state of things equally hateful and inevitable, for 
 which nobody is to blame? 
 Let us see taking at random the most prominent 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 1 1 
 
 
 specimens of mistresses of families, which present 
 themselves to every one's notice who is at all familiar 
 with middle-class society. These, I must distinctly 
 state, are in every case generalisations of a class, and 
 of no personal application ; which, indeed, would mar 
 the whole moral of these imaginary portraits, by 
 giving results and unfairly omitting causes. 
 
 For instance, there is Mrs. Smith. You will never 
 once enter that lady's house without hearing of a 
 change in its domestic arrangements ; you will hardly 
 knock at the door four successive weeks, without its 
 being opened by a strange damsel. To count the 
 number of servants Mrs. Smith has had since her 
 marriage, would puzzle her eldest boy, even though 
 he is just going into his multiplication-table. Out of 
 some scores, surely all could not have been so bad ; 
 yet, to hear her, no imps of Satan in female form 
 could be worse than those with which her house has 
 been haunted cooks who sold the dripping, and 
 gave the roast-meat to the policeman; housemaids 
 who could only scrub and scour, and wait at table 
 and clean plate, and keep tidy to answer the door 
 
1 1 8 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 and who actually had never learned to sew neatly, 01 
 to get up fine linen! Nurses wickedly pretty, or 
 thinking themselves so, who .had the atrocious impu- 
 dence to buy a bonnet "just like my last new one," 
 with flowers inside ! Poor Mrs. Smith ! Her whole 
 soul is engrossed in the servant-question. Her whole 
 life is a domestic battle of the mean, scratch-and- 
 snap, spit-and-snarl kind. She has a handsome 
 house; she gives good wages that is, her liberal 
 husband does but not a servant will stay with her. 
 
 And why ? Because she is not fitted to be a mis- 
 tress. She cannot rule she can only order about; 
 she cannot reprove she can only scold. Possessing 
 no real dignity, she is always trying to assert its 
 semblance; having little or no education, she is the 
 hardest of all judges upon ignorance. Though so 
 tenacious of her prerogative, that she dismissed Sally 
 Baines for imitating missis's bonnet (Heaven forgive 
 you, Mrs. Smith ! but do you know where you might 
 find that poor pretty sixteen-year old child now ?) 
 still, the more intelligent of her servants soon find out 
 that she is " not a lady ;" that, in fact, if one were to 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 119 
 
 strip off her satin gowns, and sell her carriage, and 
 make her inhabit the basement-story instead of the 
 drawing-room of her handsome house, Mrs. Smith 
 would be not one whit superior to her own cook. 
 Her quick-witted parlour-maid is really her superior, 
 and fully aware of it too, as you may see from the 
 way in which she contrives to wind missis round her 
 little finger, get her own way entirely, and rule the 
 house-arrangements from attic to cellar. This being 
 not unprofitable, she will probably outstay many of 
 the other servants not because she is any better than 
 the rest, but merely cleverer. 
 
 Miss Brown's household is on quite a different plan. 
 You will never hear the small domestic "rows" the 
 petty squabbles between mistress and maid, injustice 
 on one side and impertinence on the other. Miss 
 Brown would never dream of quarrelling with "a 
 servant," any more than with her dog or cat, or some 
 other inferior animal. She strictly fulfils her duty as 
 mistress ; gives regular wages, very moderate, cer- 
 tainly, for her income is much below both her birth 
 and her breeding; exacts no extra service; and ia 
 
120 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 rigidly particular in allowing her servants the duo 
 holidays namely, to church every other Sunday, and 
 a day out once a-month. Her housekeeping is econo- 
 mical without being stingy; everything is expected to 
 go on like clock-work ; if otherwise, immediate dis- 
 missal follows, for Miss Brown dislikes to have to 
 find fault, even in her own lofty and distant way. 
 She is a conscientious, honourable lady, who exacts 
 no more than she performs ; and her servants respect 
 her. But they stand in awe of her ; they do not love 
 her. There is a wide gulf between their humanity 
 and hers you never would believe that they and she 
 shared the same flesh and blood of womanhood, and 
 would end in the same dust and ashes. She is well 
 served, well obeyed, and justly; but and that is 
 justice, too she is neither sympathised with nor con- 
 fided in. Perhaps this truth may have struck home 
 to her sometimes ; as when her maid, who had been 
 ill unnoticed for months, in waiting on her one morn- 
 ing dropped down, and died that night ; or when, 
 the day there came news of the battle of Inkermann, 
 she sat hour after hour with the Times in her lap, in 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 121 
 
 her gloomy, lonely dining-room, and not a soul came 
 nigh her to ask or learn from her speechless looks 
 " what of young Captain Brown ?" 
 
 In the Jones's highly respectable family are most 
 respectable servants, clever, quick, attentive, and 
 fully conscious of their own value and capabilities. 
 They dress quite as finely as "the family," go out 
 with parasols on Sundays, and have their letters 
 directed " Miss." They guard with jealousy all their 
 perquisites and privileges from the tradesmen's 
 Christmas-boxes, and the talk outside the nearly- 
 closed front-door with unlimited "followers," to the 
 dearly-prized right of a pert answer to missis when 
 she ventures to complain. And missis a kind, easy 
 soul is rather afraid of so doing ; and endures many 
 an annoyance, together with a few real wrongs, 
 rather than sweep her house with the besom of righ- 
 teous destruction, and annihilate in their sprouting 
 evils that will soon grow up like rampant weeds. 
 This is no slight regret to Mrs. Jones's friends, who 
 see that a little judicious authority, steadily and un- 
 varyingly asserted a little quiet exercise of will, 
 
 6 
 
1 22 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 instead of fidgety or nervous fault-finding and keed 
 loss suspiciousness, would make matters all straight, 
 and reduce this excellent and liberal establishment, 
 from the butler down to the little kitchen-maid, to 
 the safe level of a limited monarchy. Instead of 
 which there is a loose sway, which often borders 
 upon that most dangerous of all governments do- 
 mestic republicanism. 
 
 This last is the government at Mrs. Kobinson's. 
 She has long let the reins go leaned back, and 
 slumbered. Where her household will drive to, 
 Heaven only knows! The house altogether takes 
 care of itself. The mistress is too gentle to blame 
 anybody for anything too lazy to do anything her- 
 self, or show anybody else how to do it. I suppose 
 she has eyes, yet you might write your name in dust- 
 tracks on every bit of furniture in her house. She 
 doubtless likes to wear a clean face and a decent 
 gown, for she has tastes not unrefined ; yet in Betty, 
 her maid-of-all-work, both these advantages are appa- 
 rently impossible luxuries. Mrs. Eobinson can't, OT 
 believes she can't, afford what is called a " good" ser- 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 1 23 
 
 vant that is, an efficient, responsible woman, who 
 requires equivalent wages for valuable services; 
 therefore she does with poor Betty, a very well- 
 meaiiing girl, though quite incompetent for the duties 
 she undertakes, and never likely to be instructed 
 therein. For it never seems to strike Betty, or her 
 mistress either, that though poverty may bs inevita- 
 ble, dire and tatters are not that a girl, if ever so 
 ignorant, can generally be taught a house, if ever 
 so small and ill-furnished, can at least be clean a 
 dinner, if ever so plain, nay, scanty, may be well 
 cooked and well arranged ; and however the servants 
 fall short, every mistress has always her own intelli- 
 gent brain, and has, at the worst, her own pair of 
 active hands. Did you ever consider that last pos- 
 sibility, my good Mrs. Eobinson? "Would Betty 
 honour you less if, every morning, she saw you dust 
 a chair or two, or hunt out lurking ambushes of 
 spiders shaming her into knowledge and industry 
 by the conviction, that what she left undone her 
 mistress would certainly do? Would you be less 
 amiable in your husband's eyes by the discovery that 
 
1 24 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 it was you yourself who cooked, and then taught 
 , to cook, his comfortable dinner? Would he 
 have less pleasure in petting your dainty fingers for 
 seeing on them a few needle-marks, caused by the 
 sewing of tidy chair-covers, or the mending of clean 
 threadbare carpets, so as to make the best of his 
 plain, quiet home, where Heaven has at once denied 
 the blessing and spared the responsibility of chil- 
 dren ? But you may be as ignorant as Betty herself. 
 I am afraid you are. Let me give you a golden rule 
 "Never expect a servant to do that which you 
 cannot do, or, if necessary, will learn to do, your- 
 self." 
 
 Mrs. Johnson, now, will be a very good illustration 
 of this. I doubt if she is any richer than Mrs. 
 Eobinson ; for a few years after her marriage, I 
 know it was very uphill- work indeed with the young 
 couple ; especially fbr the wife, who, married at nine- 
 teen, was as ignorant as any school-girl. She and 
 her cook are reported to have studied Mrs. Glass 
 together. To this day, I fancy the praise of any 
 special dinner would be modestly received as con- 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 1 25 
 
 jointly due to "missis and me." So, doubtless, would 
 any grand effect in household arrangements, though, 
 where all goes on so smoothly and orderly, that the 
 most sudden visitor would only necessitate an extra 
 knife and fork, and a clean pair of sheets in the spare 
 room, there is not much opportunity for any coup 
 d'etat in the housemaid-line. As for the nursery -staff 
 but since her boys could walk alone, Mrs. John- 
 son has abolished the nursery altogether. If she has 
 no more children, these two lads will have the 
 infinite blessing of never being "managed" by any 
 womenkind save their mother. Of course it is a 
 busy, and often hard life for her; and her hand- 
 maidens know it. They see her employed from 
 morning to night, happy and merry enough, but 
 always employed. They themselves would be asham- 
 ed to be lazy ; they would do anything in the world 
 to lighten things to missis. If little delicate Fred is 
 ailing, Jane will sit up half the night with him, and 
 still get up at five next morning. Mary, the cook, 
 does not grumble at any accidental waiting, if missis, 
 in her sewing, has the slightest need of Jane. Both 
 
1 26 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 would work their fingers to the bone any day to save 
 her the least trouble or pain. Not a cloud comes 
 across her path not a day of illness her own or her 
 little ones' shadows her bright looks, but is felt as 
 an absolute grief in the kitchen. Jane's face, as she 
 opens the front door, is a sufficient indication to all 
 friends as to how things are with "the family ;" and 
 if you, being very intimate, make any chance inquiry 
 of Mary in the street, ten to one she will tell you 
 everything Mrs. Johnson has done, and exactly how 
 she has looked, for a week past, ending with a grave, 
 respectful remark, ventured in right of her own ten 
 years of eldership, that she "is afraid missis is wear- 
 ing herself out, and would you please to come and 
 see her?" 
 
 And missis, on her side, returns the kindly interest. 
 She likes to hear anything and everything that her 
 damsels may have to tell, from the buying of a new 
 gown to the birth of a new nephew. Any relatives of 
 theirs who may appear in the kitchen, she generally 
 goes to speak to, and welcomes always kindly. She 
 is glad to encourage family affection, believing it to 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 127 
 
 be quite as necessary and as beautiful in a poor 
 housemaid as in a sentimental lady. Love, also. She 
 has not the smallest objection to let that young baker 
 come in to tea on Sundays, entering honestly at the 
 front-door, without need of~sneaking behind area- 
 railings. And if, on such Sundays, Jane is rather 
 absent and awkward, with a tendency to forget the 
 spoons, and put hot plates where cold should be, her 
 mistress pardons all, and tempers master's indig- 
 nation by reminding him of a certain summer, not 
 
 ten years back, when , &c. Upon which he kisses 
 
 his little wife, and grows mild. 
 
 Thus the family have no dread of u followers," no 
 visions of burglarious sweethearts introduced by the 
 kitchen- window, or tribes of locust "cousins" creating 
 a famine in the larder. Having always won confi- 
 dence, Mrs. Johnson has little fear of being deceived. 
 When pretty Jane can make up her mind, doubtless 
 there will occur that most creditable event to both 
 parties the maid being married frem her mistress's 
 house. Of course, Jane would be a great loss, or 
 Maiy either ; but Mary is growing middle-aged, and 
 
1 28 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 is often seen secretly petting Master Fred, as only old 
 maid-servants do pet the children of "the family." 
 Freddy says, she has promised never to leave him ; 
 and her mistress, who probably knows as much of 
 Mary's affairs as anybody, does not think it likely she 
 ever will. 
 
 The Johnson household is the best example I know 
 of the proper relation between kitchen and parlour. 
 True, Jane and Mary are estimable women might 
 have been such in any " place ;" but I will do human 
 nature the justice to believe, that the class of domestic 
 servants contains many possible Janes and Marys, if 
 only their good qualities could be elicited by a few 
 more Mrs. Johnsons. 
 
 It is an obvious law, that any movement for social 
 advancement must necessarily commence in the higher 
 class, and gradually influence the lower. By higher 
 and lower, I mean simply as regards moral and intel- 
 lectual cultivation, which, continued through genera- 
 tions and become a habit of life, makes, and is the 
 only thing tljat does or ought to make, the difference 
 between master and servant, patrician and plebeian 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 129 
 
 Mrs. Thomson, descended from the clan Kobertson, a 
 very superior family, has a great deal more chance of 
 being a lady than Peg Thompson her nursery-maid, 
 whose father, grandfather, &c., have been farm- 
 labourers. But if, by any of her not rare freaks, 
 Dame Nature should have placed in Peg's uncouth 
 body the soul of a gentlewoman, together with that 
 rare quality of rising, which, in spite of circumstances, 
 enables many refined minds to reach their natural 
 level if so, Mrs. Thomson should not have the 
 slightest objection to assist that desirable end in 
 every possible way. Nay, finally, it might be rather 
 a pleasure to her some day to sit at table with Miss 
 Margaret Thompson ; and she should altogether scorn 
 the behaviour of that fine gentleman who once "cut" 
 honest Dodsley the publisher-footman of whom the 
 meek old fellow only observed: "Yes, he knows me; 
 I used to wait behind his chair." 
 
 But since the laws of nature and of circumstance 
 have made some to be mistresses and others servants 
 giving to the one incalculably more chances of 
 
 superiority than the other, would it not be as well if 
 
 6* 
 
130 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 more ladies would try to prove this superiority instead 
 of resting content in the mere assertion thereof? The 
 proverb asserts, " A good mistress will make a good 
 servant." "Whether this is possible or not, all will 
 agree that the best servant in the world cannot make 
 a good mistress. 
 
 The reformatory process must necessarily com- 
 mence with the superior. 
 
 Also the root of all improvement must be the mis- 
 tress's own conviction, religious and sincere, of the 
 truth, more than once already urged here, but which 
 cannot be too often referred to, that she and her ser- 
 vants share one common womanhood : alike in its 
 mental and physical weaknesses ; in its capabilities of 
 advancement and deterioration ; in its tempers, pas- 
 sions, and prejudices : with aims, hopes, or interests 
 distinctly defined, and pursued with equal eagerness ; 
 with a life here, meant as a school for the next life ; 
 with an immortal soul. 
 
 A lady who can once be made to feel that, so far as 
 any human soul can be made responsible for another, 
 she is responsible for that of every domestic who 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 131 
 
 enters her house, has gained one step from which she 
 is not likely ever to backslide. And if accountable 
 for the soul the better part, so also for the body. 
 Since, with advanced knowledge, we are all now 
 beginning to recognise some with the stolid assent 
 of materialism, and some with the Christian's holy 
 wonder at this human machine, made too wonderfully 
 to be made for nothing, and by no one, how myste- 
 riously soul and body act and react upon one another; 
 how one half of the shortcomings of the spirit springs 
 from mere bodily causes ; and how a healthy soul can 
 stimulate even the poorest and most unsound dwell- 
 ing-house of flesh and blood into something of its 
 own beauty and divineness. 
 
 And yet there is a saying that one sometimes hears, 
 and sees silently in action perpetually " Anything 
 will do for the servants." Kitchen and parlour are 
 placed on quite a different footing ; not only with re- 
 gard to coarser food reasonable enough sometimes, 
 when the parlour has nice or sickly tastes, and the 
 kitchen is blessed with the wholesome omnivorous 
 appetite of hard work and an easy mind but in the 
 
132 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 regular routine of daily life. " Late to bed and eai Ly 
 to rise," yet still expected to be " both healthy and 
 :'' compelled to sleep in damp, heat, uncleanli- 
 ness, or ill-ventilation anything is good enough for 
 a " servant's bedroom ;" allowed no time for personal 
 attention, sewing, or mending, yet required to be 
 always " tidy ;" kept at work constantly, without re- 
 gard to how much and what sort of work each per- 
 son's strength can bear ; yet supposed to be capable 
 of working on for ever, without that occasional inter- 
 mixture of "play," not idleness, but wholesome 
 amusement without which every human being grows 
 dull, dispirited, falls into ill-humour, and finally into 
 ill-health. Truly it often makes one's heart ache to 
 think of the sort of life even well-meaning mistresses 
 make their servants lead ; and it would be curious, 
 were it not so melancholy, to pause and consider, if 
 in all one's acquaintance there are half-a-dozen ladies 
 under whom, did fate compel, one would choose to 
 " go into service." 
 
 My dear madam who may be opening your eyes 
 widely at this heterodox view of the question you 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 133 
 
 have no right-to keep a servant at all unless you can 
 keep her comfortable. You did not buy "her, body 
 and soul, like a negro slave ; you only took her on 
 hired service, to fulfil certain duties, which you must 
 exact from her kindly and firmly, for her good aa 
 well as yours : but you have no right to any more. 
 Except so far as nature and education have instituted 
 a difference between you, you are not justified in 
 placing either her enjoyments or necessities on a 
 lower level than your own. The same sanitary laws, 
 of physical and mental well-being, apply to you both, 
 and neither can break them, or be allowed to break 
 them, with impunity. 
 
 Moral laws, also. Mrs. Smith thinks it is against 
 her that poor Sally Baines sinned in the matter of the 
 bonnet. Foolish Mrs. Smith ! Suppose you were to 
 purchase at Swan and Edgar's that hundred-guinea 
 Cachemire labelled "the Queen's choice" whom 
 would you harm, her Majesty or yourself? So, 
 when your Emma or Betsy buys a silk gown and a 
 twelve-shilling parasol, she errs, and grievously, too : 
 but it is against herself. She lowers her own self- 
 
134 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 respect by striving to maintain a false position, 
 wastes in shabby showiness the money that she ought 
 to lay up for sickness, old age, or marriage, and the 
 happy duty of helping others ; loses the simple neat- 
 ness befitting the respectable maid-servant, and be* 
 comes ridiculous as the sham fine-lady. 
 
 But in this complaint, only too general, of servants 
 "dressing above their place," the mistress's own 
 example is the best warning and reproof: a thing, my 
 poor Mrs. Smith, which it would be vain to look for 
 from you. Equally vain in another matter, which 
 applies as stringently to that wretched Sally Baines 
 whom, if she now came drunk and flaunting to your 
 area-gate, you would hustle away in charge of X 25 
 as to your own little daughter, whom you hope one 
 day to see Mrs. Somebody, and will take all available 
 maternal means to that desirable end. 
 
 You do not. think it, but the kitchen is made of 
 flesh and blood as well as the parlour. However you 
 may insist upon "No followers allowed," Emma will 
 meet her sweetheart round the corner, and cook will 
 startle your nerves after five years' service with 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 135 
 
 " Please suit yourself, marm, as I'm a-going to be mar- 
 ried." Happy for you if no worse occurs than this. 
 For you are exacting an injustice an impossibility : 
 you are instituting a state of things which, from its 
 very unnaturalness, gives a premium to deceit and 
 immorality. Love nay, I beg your pardon; you 
 don't understand what that word means but court- 
 ing, which looks so pretty in the drawing-room, you 
 treat as a crime in the kitchen; and therefore it is 
 very likely to become such. An honest lover as 
 much Emma's right as your own when you took up 
 with Mr. Smith you degrade into a "follower," who 
 has to sneak about areas, hide in coal-cellars, and be 
 gossiped with behind doors. Consequently, there can 
 be no inquiry into his character, no open acknowledg- 
 ment of an honourable attachment, which neither 
 mistress nor maid need ever be ashamed of; every- 
 thing goes on underhand, and if discovered at all, is 
 generally in such a miserable form as to make pru- 
 dent Mrs. Smiths firmer than ever in their impossible 
 edict, never obeyed. "Whilst other women, accus- 
 tomed to regard love ani marriage according to the 
 
136 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 standard of the better classes, are shocked at the low 
 tone of thought on such subjects, which inevitably 
 results in that low tone of morals almost universally 
 prevalent among the ranks from which female ser- 
 vants are recruited. 
 
 It is worth while trying whether since dark deeds 
 and ill feelings can only be conquered by being 
 brought to the light mistresses should not make the 
 experiment of saying, as every mother ought to say to 
 her daughters (alas, how few do I and what a train 
 of horrible evils often results from that want of confi- 
 dence between mother and child !) "Be honest with 
 me. I don't expect from you more than human 
 nature is capable of. I expect you to fall in love and 
 be married : all I desire is that you should love wor- 
 thily, and marry wisely. Only be honest.^ No false- 
 hoods, no concealments of any kind. Let everything 
 be plain, open, and above-board; tell the truth, and 
 don't be afraid." 
 
 Perhaps, then we should have less of these frightful 
 cases of shame and sorrow, or those hasty marriages, 
 of which one so often hears when a decent, respecta- 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 137 
 
 ble girl, after a few months' wedlock, comes back tc 
 lier old mistress, ragged and destitute, with a husband 
 in jail for bigamy, or against whom she has to swear 
 the peace, for that brutal ill-usage which makes us 
 English disgraced abroad as "the nation that beats its 
 wives." 
 
 In households as in states there must be one ruling 
 head and there ought to be but one. Every person 
 knows what sort of system that is, which I have called 
 domestic republicanism. Whether or not it is best 
 for kingdoms, in families the only safe form of govern- 
 ment is autocracy. 
 
 And the autocrat should decidedly be the lady, the 
 mistress. The master, be he father, husband, or bro- 
 ther, has quite enough to do without doors. He is the 
 bread-winner; the woman, the bread-keeper, server, 
 and expender. Nature as well as custom has save 
 m very exceptional cases instituted this habit of life, 
 and any alteration of it, making mamma attend the 
 law-courts and Exchange, or drive about on a series 
 of medical visits, while papa stays at home to cook the 
 dinner and nurse the babies, would assuredly be very 
 
138 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 bad, if not for himself, for the dinner and the 
 babies. 
 
 No. We of the " softer " sex, though not by any 
 means really so soft as we are complimented and 
 coaxed into appearing, have no call, and, mostly, no 
 desire to force ourselves into the province of men. 
 We feel that we are not fitted for it. Female doctors 
 though all honour be to those heroic, self-sacrificing 
 women, who are capable of undertaking such a pro- 
 fession female missionaries, travellers, and life-long 
 devotees to science, art, or philanthropy, are and 
 always will be rare and peculiar cases, not to be judged 
 by ordinary rules. The average number of us are con- 
 tent to leave to men their own proper place : but 
 none the less resolutely ought we to keep our own 
 one of the first " rights " of which is, the supreme rule 
 in all domestic concerns. 
 
 A man has no business to meddle in the manage- 
 ment of the house. No business, except through hard 
 necessity, or the saddest incompetency on the part of 
 others, to poke over the weekly bills, and insist on 
 knowing what candles are per pound, whether the 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 139 
 
 washing is done at home or abroad, and what he is 
 going to have every day for dinner. He who volun- 
 tarily and habitually interferes in these things must be 
 a rather small-minded gentleman, uncommonly incon- 
 venient to his family and servants. Perhaps to more 
 than they : since a man who is always " muddling 
 about " at home is rarely a great acquisition to the 
 world outside. 
 
 I once heard a married lady say, with great glee 
 
 and satisfaction : " Oh, Mr. saves me all trouble 
 
 in housekeeping ; he orders dinner, and goes to the 
 butcher's to choose it, too; pays all the bills, and 
 keeps the weekly accounts : he never wants me to do 
 anything." Thought I privately, "My dear, if I 
 were you I should be very much ashamed both of 
 myself and Mr. ." 
 
 When a house boasts both master and mistress, 
 each should leave to the other the appointed work, 
 and both qualify themselves rightly to fulfil the 
 same, abstaining as much as possible from mutual 
 interference. A man who can trust his wife or his 
 housekeeper should no more meddle with her home 
 
140 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 concerns than she should pester him with questions 
 about his business. Nc doubt, countless occasions 
 will arise when he will be* thankful and glad to take 
 counsel with her in worldly cares; while she may 
 have to remember all her life long, and never think 
 of without a gush of gratitude and love, some season 
 of sickness or affliction, when he filled his own place 
 and hers too, ashamed of no womanish task, and 
 neither irritated nor humiliated by ever such mean 
 household cares. 
 
 A lady of my acquaintance gives it as her sine qud 
 non of domestic felicity, that the " men of the family" 
 should always be absent at least six hours in the day. 
 And truly a mistress of a family, however strong her 
 affection for the male members of it, cannot but ac- 
 knowledge that this is a great boon. A house where 
 " papa" or the " boys" are always " pottering about," 
 popping in and out at all hours, everlastingly wanting 
 something, or finding fault with something else, is a 
 considerable trial to even feminine patience. And I 
 beg to ask my sex generally in confidence, of course 
 if it is not the greatest comfort possible when, the 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 141 
 
 masculine half of the family being cleared out for the 
 day, the house settles down into regular work and 
 orderly quietness until evening ? 
 
 Also, it is good for them, as well as for us, to have 
 all the inevitable petty domestic " bothers" got over 
 in their absence ; to effect which ought to be one of 
 the principal aims of the mistress of a family. Let 
 them, if possible, return to a quiet smiling home, 
 with all its small annoyances brushed away like the 
 dust and cinders from the grate which, en passant, is 
 one of the first requisites to make a fireside look com- 
 fortable. It might be as well, too, if the master him- 
 self could contrive to leave the worldly mud of the 
 day at the scraper outside his door ; however, as these 
 chapters do not presume to lecture the lords of cre- 
 ation, I have nothing more to say on that score. 
 
 But she who, the minute an unfortunate man comes 
 home, fastens upon him with a long tale of domestic 
 grievances, real or imagined how the butcher will 
 never bring the meat in time, and the baker keeps a 
 false account of loaves how she is sure cook is given 
 to drink, and that Mary's " cousin" had his dinner 
 
142 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 off " our" mutton yesterday ; why, such a lady de- 
 serves all she gets : cold looks, sharp speeches, hasty 
 plunges into the convenient newspaper; perhaps an 
 angry cigar a walk with no invitation for her com- 
 pany or the club. Poor little woman ! sitting cry- 
 ing over her lonely fire, not owning that she is wrong, 
 but only that she is very unhappy, and very much 
 ill-used, might one recommend to her notice one 
 golden rule ? " Never pester a man with things that 
 he cannot remedy and does not understand." Also, 
 for her own benefit as well as his, a harmless rhyme, 
 true enough of minor vexations, whatever it may 
 be of the greater griefs it so philosophically disposes 
 of: 
 
 " For every evil under the sun 
 There is a remedy or there's none : 
 If there is one, try and find it; 
 If there isn't, never mind it." 
 
 And when he comes in again, honest man ! perhaps 
 a little repentant, too, there is but one course of 
 conduct which I recommend to all sensible women, 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 143 
 
 viz. to put her arms round his neck, and hold her 
 tongue. 
 
 But the house-mother has her troubles ; ay, be she 
 ever so gifted with that blessed quality of taking 
 them lightly and cheerfully ; weighing them at their 
 just value and no more; never tormenting herself 
 and everybody else by that peculiarity of selfish and 
 narrow minds, which makes the breaking of a plate 
 as terrible a calamity as the crash of an empire. No 
 one can hold the reins of family government for ever 
 so brief a time, without feeling what a difficult posi- 
 tion it is : how great its daily need of self-control, as 
 the very first means of controlling others ; of inces- 
 sant individual activity, and a personal carrying out 
 of all regulations instituted for the ordering of the 
 establishment, which, unless faithfully observed by 
 the mistress the eye and heart of the house are no 
 more than a dead letter to the rest of the establish 
 ment. 
 
 No doubt this entails considerable self-sacrifice. It 
 is not pleasant for lazy ladies to get breakfast over at 
 that regular early hour, which alone sets a household 
 
144 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 fairly a-going for the day: nor for unarithmetical 
 ladies, who have always reckoned their accounts by 
 sixpences, to put down each item, and persevere in 
 balancing periodically receipts and expenditures : nor 
 for weakly, nervous, self-engrossed ladies, to rouse 
 themselves sufficiently to put their house in order, 
 and keep it so ; not by occasional spasmodic " setting 
 to rights," but by a general methodical overlooking 
 of all that is going on therein. Yet, unless all this is 
 done, it is in vain to insist on early rising, or grumble 
 about waste, or lecture upon neatness, cleanliness, and 
 order. The servants get to learn that "missis is 
 never in time ;" and laugh at her complaints of their 
 unpunctuality. They see no use in good manage- 
 ment, or avoidance of waste ; " Missis never knows 
 about anything. She may lecture till she is weary 
 about neatness and cleanliness; "Just put your 
 head into her room and see I" For all moral quali- 
 ties, good temper, truth, kindliness, and above all, 
 conscientiousness, if these are deficient in the mistress, 
 it is idle to expect them from servants, or children, or 
 any members of the family circle. 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 145 
 
 Yet this fact, so trite, that readers may smile at its 
 being urged at all, is the last to be generally acted 
 upon. Mistresses blame all persons about them, and 
 Providence above them ; for does it not often virtu- 
 ally mean that ? every thing and every body except 
 themselves. They will not see, that until a woman 
 has done all that is in her power to do, striving with 
 antagonistic circumstances, great and small, and 
 chiefly with her own self, her errors of character, and 
 weaknesses of temperament until then she has no 
 right to begin blaming anybody. It is vain to 
 attempt showing them, what is plain enough to any 
 unbiassed student of life in the abstract and this 
 ought to strike solemnly upon the mind of every 
 woman who feels that where much is given much is 
 required that, however fatally the conduct of the 
 master may affect the external fortunes of a family, 
 there are very few families whose internal misma- 
 nagement and domestic unhappiness are not mainly 
 the fault of the mistress. 
 
 The house-mother! where could she find a nobler 
 
 title, a more sacred charge? All these souls, given 
 
 7 
 
l /J.6 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 into her hand to be cared for, both in great things 
 and small if anything can be called small on which 
 rests the comfort of a family ; and that to a degree 
 which can never be too much appreciated. For 
 instance, good temper is with many people dependent 
 upon good health ; good health upon good digestion ; 
 good digestion upon wholesome, well-prepared food, 
 eaten in peace and pleasantness. Ill-cooked, untidy 
 meals, are as great a cause of bad temper as many a 
 moral wrong; and a person of sensitive physique 
 may be nursed into settled hypochondria by living in 
 close rooms, where the sweet fresh air and sunshine 
 are determinedly shut out, and the foul air as deter- 
 minedly shut in. While those nervous, irritable tem- 
 peraments, which, either from the slow deterioration 
 of our race, or our modern error of cultivating the 
 mind at the expense of the body, are getting so 
 common now-a-days, are often diiven almost into 
 madness by the non-observance of those ordinary 
 sanitary rules, ignorance or neglect of which, bad 
 enough in anybody, is in the mistress of a family 
 scarcely less than a crime. 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 147 
 
 Yet most of these short-comings in women, on 
 whom this responsibility has fallen, are by no means 
 intentional. A girl marries early, thinking only how 
 pleasant it is to have a house of one's own, and nevei 
 once how difficult it is to mauage it: perhaps she 
 makes a pride, and her young husband a joke, of her 
 charming ignorance in common things a la David 
 and Dora Copperfield pretty enough while it lasts. 
 But only picture these poor little silly Doras living, 
 instead of, happily, dying! Drifting on to middle 
 age helpless, burdensome wives lazy, feeble, many- 
 childed mothers ; meaning well enough, but incapable 
 of acting upon their good intentions ; either sinking 
 into a hopeless indifference, which is not content, or 
 wearing themselves out with weak complainings, 
 which never result in any amendment. Poor dear 
 women ! we may pity and pardon, acknowledging 
 their many gentle and estimable qualities ; but all the 
 passive sweetness in the world will not make up for 
 active goodness; and there is many a "most amiable 
 woman," who, whatever she mighi have been in an 
 inferior position, when unhappily she is mistress of a 
 
1 48 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 family, by her over-kindness, lazy laxity, and general 
 laissez-faire, does as much harm as the greatest shrew 
 who ever embittered the peace of a household. 
 
 Power, of whatsoever kind and degree, so that it is 
 j ust and lawful, is a glorious thing to have, a noble 
 thing to use. But what shall be said for the woman 
 who has had it and thrown it away, or retained it 
 only to misuse it ? "Woe betide both her and all con- 
 nected with her ! for she has ceased to injure herself 
 alone. Every life that was given her in charge for 
 health of body and mind, peace, comfort, and enjoy- 
 ment, will assuredly one day rise up in judgment 
 against her. We can imagine such an one, suddenly 
 waking up to the consciousness of all she has done 
 and left undone what those belonging to her are, 
 and what she might, under God, have made them 
 crying out in her agony, " Would that I had never 
 been born !" 
 
 At present, the happiest thing for her if there can 
 be any happiness in a self-deceptionis, that she 
 really is unaware of her own" position that most hu- 
 miliating position of a woman who is not mistress in 
 
The Mistress of a Family. 149 
 
 her own family; whose servants disobey or despise 
 her, whose children rule her, whose husband snubs 
 her or neglects her, whose friends and neighbours 
 criticise, compassionate, or laugh at her. "Who, 
 though anything but a bad woman, will slip through 
 existence without dignity, effecting little or no real 
 good : at best only patiently borne with and kindly 
 treated while she lives, and her place filled up, some 
 few regretting awhile, but none really missing her, as 
 soon as ever she dies. 
 
 "What a contrast to that portrait standing out as 
 true a photograph of nature in this our modern day, 
 as it did in those ancient days, under the glowing sun 
 of the East, " the words of King Lemuel," that " his 
 mother taught him." 
 
 " Who can find a virtuous woman ? for her price is far above 
 rubies. 
 
 The heart of her husband doth safely trust hi her, so that she 
 ehall have no need of spoil. 
 
 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. 
 ***** 
 
 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her 
 arms. 
 
1 50 The Mistress of a Family. 
 
 She Jayeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands 1 old the 
 distaff 
 
 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor ; yea, she reacheth 
 forth her hands to the needy. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among 
 the elders of the land. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in 
 time to come. 
 
 She openeth her mouth with wisdom ; and in her tongue is 
 the law of kindness. 
 
 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth 
 not the bread of idleness. 
 
 Her children arise up, and call her blessed ; her husband also, 
 and he praiseth her. 
 
 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest 
 them all. 
 
 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that 
 feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. 
 
 Give her of the fruit of her hands ; and let her own works 
 praise her in the gates.' 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 'And what is Friendship but a name, 
 
 A charm that lulls to sleep, 
 A shade that follows wealth and fame, 
 And leaves the wretch to weep ?" 
 
 THIS remark, expressed too tersely and intelligibly to 
 be considered " poetry" now-a-days, must apply to the 
 nobler sex. Few observant persons will allege 
 against ours, that even in its lowest form our friend- 
 ship is deceitful. Fickle it may be, weak, exagge- 
 rated, sentimental the mere lath-and-plaster imitation 
 of a palace great enough for a demigod to dwell in 
 but it is rarely false, parasitical, or diplomatic. The 
 countless secondary motives which many men are 
 mean enough to have nay, to own are all but 
 impossible to us ; impossible from the very faults of 
 our nature our frivolity, irrationality, and incapacity 
 
152 Female Friendships. 
 
 to seize on more than one idea at the same time. In 
 truth, a sad proportion of us are too empty-headed to 
 be double-minded, too shallow to be insincere. Nay, 
 even the worst of us being more direct and simple of 
 character than men are, our lightest friendship the 
 merest passing liking that we decorate with that name 
 is, while it lasts, more true than the generality of 
 the so-called " friendships" of mankind. 
 
 But and this "but" will, I am aware, raise a 
 whole nest of hornets from our very peculiarities of 
 temperament, women's friendships are rarely or never 
 so firm, so just, or so enduring, as those of men 
 when you can find them. Damon and Pythias, 
 Orestes and Pylades, Brutus and Cassius last and 
 loveliest, David and Jonathan, are pictures unmatched 
 by any from our sex, down even to the far-famed 
 ladies of Llangollen. When such a bond really does 
 exist, from its exception to general masculine idiosyn- 
 crasies especially the enormous absorption in and 
 devotion to Number One from its total absence of 
 sentimentality, its undemonstrativeness, depth, and 
 power, a friendship between two men is a higher 
 
Female Friendships. 153 
 
 thing than between any two women nay, one of the 
 highest and noblest sights in the whole world. Pre- 
 cisely as, were comparisons not as foolish as they are 
 odious, a truly good man, from the larger capacities 
 of male nature both for virtue and vice, is, in one 
 sense, more good than any good woman. Bat this ques- 
 tion I leave to controversialists, who enjoy breaking 
 their own heads, or one another's, over a bone of con- 
 tention which is usually not worth picking after all. 
 
 Yet, though dissenting from much of the romance 
 talked about female friendships, believing that two- 
 thirds of them spring from mere idleness, or from 
 that besoin d'aimer which, for want of natural domes- 
 tic ties, makes this one a temporary substitute, Heaven 
 forbid I should so malign my sex as to say they are 
 incapable of an emotion which, in its right form and 
 place, constitutes the strength, help, and sweetness of 
 many, many lives ; and the more so because it is one 
 of the first sweetnesses we know. 
 
 Probably there are few women who have not had 
 some first friendship, as delicio'is and almost as pas- 
 sionate as first love. It may not last it seldom does ; 
 
 7* 
 
1^4 Female Friendships. 
 
 but at tlie time it is one of the purest, most self- 
 forgetful and self-denying attachments that the human 
 heart can experience: with many, the nearest ap- 
 proximation to that feeling called love I mean love 
 in its highest form, apart from all selfishnesses and 
 sensuousnesses which in all their after-life they will 
 ever know. This girlish friendship, however fleeting 
 in its character, and romantic, even silly, in its mani- 
 festations, let us take heed how we make light of, 
 lest we be mocking at things more sacred than we are 
 aware. 
 
 And yet, it is not the real thing not friendship, 
 but rather a kind of foreshadowing of love ; as jealous, 
 as exacting, as unreasoning as wildly happy and 
 supremely miserable ; ridiculously so to a looker-on, 
 but to the parties concerned, as vivid and sincere as 
 any after-passion into which the girl may fall ; for the 
 time being, perhaps long after, colouring all her 
 world. Yet it is but a dream, to melt away like a 
 dream when love appears ; or if it then wishes to 
 keep up its vitality at all, it must change its charac- 
 ter, temper its exactions, resign its rights : in short, 
 
Female Friendships. 155 
 
 be buried and come to life again in a totally different 
 form. Afterwards, should Laura and Matilda, with a 
 house to mind and a husband to fuss over, find them- 
 selves actually kissing the babies instead of one 
 another and managing to exist for a year without 
 meeting, or a month without letter-writing, yet feel 
 life no blank, and affection a reality still then their 
 attachment has taken its true shape as friendship, 
 shown itself capable of friendship's distinguishing fea- 
 ture namely, tenderness without appropriation ; and 
 the women, young or old, will love one another faith- 
 fully to the end of their lives. 
 
 Perhaps this, which is the test of the sentiment, 
 explains why we thus seldom attain to it, in its high- 
 est phase, because nature has made us in all our feel- 
 ings so intensely personal. "We have instincts, pas- 
 sions, domestic affections, but friendship is, strictly 
 speaking, none of the three. It is to borrow the 
 phrase so misused by that arch tra-moralist, that high- 
 priest of intellectual self- worship, Goethe an elective 
 affinity, based upon the spiritual consanguinity, which, 
 though frequently co-existent with, is different from 
 
Female Friendships. 
 
 any tie of instinct or blood-relationship. Therefore, 
 neither the sanctities nor weaknesses of these rightly 
 appertain to it; its duties, immunities, benefits and 
 pains, belong to a distinct sphere, of which the vital 
 atmosphere is perfect liberty. A bond, not of nature 
 but of choice, it should exist and be maintained calm, 
 free, and clear, having neither rights nor jealousies ; 
 at once the firmest and most independent of all 
 human ties. 
 
 " Enough," said Easselas to Imlac; "you convince 
 me that* no man can ever be a poet." And truly, 
 reviewing friendship in its purest essence, one is prone 
 to think that, in this imperfect world of ours, no man 
 certainly no woman ever can be a friend. And 
 yet we all own some dozens; from Mrs. Granville 
 Jones, who invites "a few friends" say two hundred 
 to pass with her a "social evening" to the poor 
 costermonger, who shouts after the little pugilistic 
 sweep the familiar tragico-comic saying: "Hit him 
 hard ; he's got no friends !" And who that is not an 
 utter misanthrope would refuse to those of his or her 
 acquaintance that persist in claiming it, the kindly 
 
Female Friendships. 157 
 
 ; and the pleasant social charities which belong 
 
 thereto ? 
 
 % 
 " Love is sweet, 
 
 Given or returned ;" 
 
 and so is friendship ; when, be it ever so infinitesimal 
 in quantity, its quality is unadulterated, springing, 
 as, I repeat, women's friendship almost always does 
 spring, out of that one-idea'd impulsiveness, often 
 wrong-headed, but rarely evil-hearted, which makes 
 us at once so charming and so troublesome, and 
 which, I fear, never will be got out of us till we cease 
 to be women, and become what men sometimes call 
 us and they well know they give us but too much 
 need to be angels. 
 
 Yes, with all our folly, we are not false : not even 
 when Lavinia Smith adores with all her innocent soul 
 the condescending Celestina Jones, though meeting 
 twenty years after as fat Mrs. Brown and vulgar Mrs. 
 Green, they may with difficulty remember one an- 
 other's Christian names : not when Bessy Thompson, 
 blessed with three particularly nice brothers, owns 
 
158 Female Friendships. 
 
 likewise tliree times three "dearest" friends, who 
 honestly persuade themselves and her that they come 
 only to see dear Bes?y ; nevertheless, the fondness is 
 real enough to outlast many bothers caused by said 
 brothers, or even a cantankerous sister-in-law to end 
 with. Nay, when Miss Hopkins, that middle-aged 
 and strong-minded "young lady" of blighted affec- 
 tions, and Mrs. Jenkins, that woman of sublime 
 aspirations, who has unluckily " mated with a clown." 
 coalesce against the opposite sex, fall into one an- 
 other's arms and vow eternal friendship for a year ; 
 after which, for five more, they make all their 
 acquaintances uncomfortable by their eternal enmity 
 even in this lamentable phase of the sentiment, it is 
 more respectable than the time-serving, place-hunt- 
 ing, dinner-seeking devotion which Messrs. Tape and 
 Tadpole choose to denominate " friendship." 
 
 Men may laugh at us, and we deserve it : we are 
 often egregious fools, but we are honest fools; and 
 our folly, at least in this matter, usually ends where 
 theirs begins with middle life, or marriage. 
 
 It is the unmarried, the solitary, who are most 
 
Female Friendships. 
 
 prone to that sort of "sentimental" friendship with 
 their own or the opposite sex, which, though often 
 most noble, unselfish, and true, is in some forms 
 ludicrous, in others dangerous. For two women, 
 past earliest girlhood, to be completely absorbed in 
 one another, and make public demonstration of the 
 fact, by caresses or quarrels, is so repugnant to com- 
 mon sense, that where it ceases to be silly it becomes 
 actually wrong. But to see two women, whom 
 Providence has denied nearer ties, by a wise sub- 
 stitution making the best of fate, loving, sustaining, 
 and comforting one another, with a tenderness often 
 closer than that of sisters, because it has all the 
 novelty of election which belongs to the conjugal tie 
 itself this, I say, is an honourable and lovely sight. 
 
 ISTot less so the friendship rare, I grant, yet quite 
 possible which subsists between a man and woman 
 whom circumstances, or their own idiosyncrasies, 
 preclude from the slightest chance of ever "falling in 
 love." That such friendships can exist, especially 
 between persons of a certain temperament and order 
 pf naind. *ind remain for a lifetime, utterly pure, inter 
 
160 Female Friendships. 
 
 (l-riiig with no rights, and transgressing no law of 
 morals or society, most people's observation of life 
 will testify ; and he must take a very low view of 
 human nature who dares to say that these attach- 
 ments, satirically termed " Platonic," are impossible. 
 But, at the same time, common sense must allow that 
 they are rare to find, and not the happiest always, 
 when found; because in some degree they are con- 
 trary to nature. Nature's law. undoubtedly is, that 
 our nearest ties should be those of blood father or 
 brother, sister or mother until comes the closer one 
 of marriage ; and it is always, if not wrong, rather 
 pitiful, when any extraneous bond comes in between 
 to forestall the entire affection that a young man 
 ought to bring to his future wife, a young woman to 
 her husband. I say ought God knows if they ever 
 do ! But, however fate, or folly, or wickedness may 
 interfere to prevent it, not the less true is the un- 
 doubted fact, that happy above all must be that 
 marriage where neither husband nor wife ever had a 
 friend so dear as one another. 
 
 After marriage, for either party to have or to desiro 
 
Female Friendships. < 161 
 
 
 
 a dearer or closer friend than the other, is a state of 
 things so inconceivably deplorable the more erring, 
 the more deplorable that it will not bear discussion. 
 Such cases there are ; but He who in the mystery of 
 marriage prefigured a greater mystery still, alone can 
 judge them, for He only knows their miseries, their 
 temptations, and their wrongs. 
 
 While allowing that a treaty of friendship, " pure 
 and simple," can exist between a man and woman 
 under peculiar circumstances, even between a young 
 man and a young woman it must also be allowed 
 that the experiment is difficult, often dangerous; so 
 dangerous that the matter-of-fact half of the world 
 will not believe in it at all. Parents and guardians 
 very naturally oBject to a gentleman's "hanging up 
 his hat" in their houses, or taking sentimental twi- 
 light rambles with their fair young daughters. They 
 insist, and justly, that he ought to 
 
 " Come with a good will, or come not at all j" 
 namely, as a mere acquaintance, a pleasant friend of 
 
1 62 Female Friendships. 
 
 the family the whole family, or as a declared suitor. 
 And though this may fall rather hard upon the 
 voung man, who has just a hundred a-year, and, with 
 every disposition towards flirting, a strong horror of 
 matrimony still it is wisest and best. It may save 
 both parties from frittering away, in a score of false 
 sentimental likings, the love that ought to belong but 
 to one ; or, still worse, from committing or suffering 
 what, beginning blamelessly on, either side, frequently 
 ends in incurable pain, irremediable wrong. 
 
 Therefore it is, generally speaking, those further 
 on in life, with whom the love-phase is past, or for 
 whom it never existed, who may best use the right, 
 which every pure and independent heart undoubt- 
 edly has, of saying: "I take this man or woman for 
 my friend : only a friend never either more or less 
 whom as such I mean to keep to the end of my 
 days." And if more of these, who really know what 
 friendship is, would have the moral courage to assert 
 its dignity against the sneers of society, which is 
 loath to believe in anything higher and purer than 
 itself, I think it would be all the better for the world 
 
Female Friendships. 163 
 
 Women's friendships with one anothei are of 
 course free from all these perils, and yet they have 
 their own. The wonderful law of sex which exists 
 spiritually as well as materially, and often indepen- 
 dent of matter altogether ; since we see many a man 
 who is much more of a woman, and many a woman 
 who would certainly be the "better half" of any 
 man who cared for her this law can rarely be with- 
 stood with impunity. In most friends whose attach- 
 ment is specially deep and lasting, we can usually 
 trace a difference of strong or weak, gay or grave, 
 brilliant or solid answering in some measure to the 
 difference of sex. Otherwise, a close, all-engrossing 
 friendship between two women would seldom last 
 long; or if it did, by their mutual feminine weak- 
 nesses acting and reacting upon one another, would 
 most likely narrow the sympathies and deteriorate 
 the character of both. 
 
 Herein lies the distinction marked and inalien- 
 able between friendship and love. The latter being 
 a natural necessity, requires but the one, whom it 
 absorbs and assimilates till the two diverse, and often 
 
164 Female Friendships. 
 
 opposite characters, become a safe unity according 
 to divine ordinance, " one flesh." But friendship, tc 
 be friendship at all, must have an independent self 
 existence, capable of gradations and varieties; for 
 though we can have but one dearest friend, it would 
 argue small power of either appreciating or loving to 
 have only one friend. 
 
 On the other hand, " the hare with many friends 7 ' 
 has passed into a proverb. Such, a condition is mani- 
 festly impossible. The gentleman who, in answer to 
 his servant's request to be allowed to go and " see a 
 friend," cries : 
 
 " Fetch me my coat, John ! Though the night be raw, 
 I'll see him too the first I ever saw :" 
 
 this cynic, poor wretch ! speaks wiser than he is aware 
 of. One simple fact explains and limits the whole 
 question that those only can find true friends who 
 have in themselves the will and capacity to be such. 
 
 A. friend. Not perhaps until later life, until the 
 follies, passions, and selfishnesses of youth have died 
 
Female Friendships. 165 
 
 out, do we I mean especially we women recognise 
 the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as 
 sweet, of possessing or of being a friend. And though, 
 not willing to run counter to the world's kindly cus- 
 tom, we may give that solemn title to many who do 
 not exactly own it ; though year by year the fierce 
 experience of life, through death, circumstance, or 
 change, narrows the circle of those who do own it ; 
 still that man or woman must have been very unfor- 
 tunate perhaps, as there can be no result without a 
 cause, worse than unfortunate who, looking back on 
 thirty, forty, or fifty years of existence, cannot say from 
 the heart, " I thank God for my friends." 
 
 People rarely long keep what they do not deserve. 
 If you find any who, in the decline of life, have few 
 " auld acquaintance," and those few " never brought 
 to mind," but in their stead a lengthy list of friends 
 who are such no more, who have " ill-treated" them, 
 or with whom they have had a " slight coolness ;" if 
 they are always finding fault with the friends they 
 now have, and accusing them of ingratitude or neg- 
 lect ; if they tell you these friends 1 secrets, and expect 
 
j66 Female Friendships. 
 
 you in return to tell them all your friends' secrets, and 
 your own beware of these people ! They may have 
 many good qualities ; you may like them very much, 
 and keep them as most pleasant society ; but as for 
 resting your heart upon them, you might as well rest 
 it upon a burning rock or a broken reed. 
 
 But if you find people who through all life's vicis- 
 situdes and pangs have preserved a handful of real 
 "friends" exclusive of you, for it takes years to 
 judge the value of friendship towards ourselves if 
 on the whole they complain little either of these 
 friends or of the world, which rarely misuses a good 
 man or woman for ever ; if they bestow no extrava 
 gant devotion on you, nor expect from you one whit 
 more than you freely give ; if they never, under any 
 excuse, however personally flattering, talk to you 
 about a third party, as you would shrink from their 
 talking to any third party about you then, be satis- 
 fied ; 
 
 " Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried; 
 Grapple, them to thy soul with hooks of steel I" 
 
 Never let them go ; suffer no changing tide of for- 
 
Female Friendships. 167 
 
 tune to sweep them from you no later friendships tc 
 usurp their place. Be very patient with them ; bear 
 their little faults as they must bear yours ; make 
 allowance for the countless unintentional slights, neg- 
 lects, or offences, that we all in the whirl of life must 
 both endure and commit towards those who form not 
 a part, but an adjunct of our existence remember- 
 ing, as I said before, that the very element in which 
 true friendship lives, and out of which it cannot li ve 
 at all, is perfect liberty. 
 
 Friendship once conceived should, like love, in one 
 sense last for ever. That it does not ; that in the 
 world's harsh wear and tear many a very sincere at- 
 tachment is slowly obliterated, or both parties grow 
 out of it and cast it, like a snake his last year's skin 
 though that implies something of the snake-nature, I 
 fear are facts too mournfully common to be denied. 
 But there is a third fact, as mournfully uncommon, 
 which needs to be remembered likewise : we may lose 
 the friend the friendship we never can or ought to 
 lose. Actively, it .may exist no more ; but passively, 
 it is just as binding as the first moment when we 
 
168 Female Friendships. 
 
 pledged it, as we believed, for ever. Its duties, like 
 its delights, may have become a dead-letter ; but none 
 of its claims or confidences have we ever afterwards 
 tiie smallest right to abjure or to break. 
 
 And here is one accusation which I must sorrow- 
 folly bring against women, as being much more 
 guilty than men. "We can keep a secret ay, against 
 all satire, I protest we can while the confider remains 
 our friend ; but if that tie ceases, pop ! out it comes ! 
 and in the bitterness of invective, the pang of 
 wounded feeling, or afterwards in mere thoughtless- 
 ness, and easy forgetting of what is so easily healed, 
 a thousand things are said and done for which 
 nothing can ever atone. The lost friendship, which, 
 once certain that it is past all revival, ought to be 
 buried as solemnly and silently as a lost love, is cast 
 out into the open street for all the snarling curs of 
 society to gnaw at and mangle, and all the contemptu- 
 ous misogynists who pass by to point the finger at 
 " See what your grand ideals all come to !" 
 
 Good women dear my sisters ! be our friendships 
 false or true, wise or foolish, living or dead let us at 
 
Female Friendships. 
 
 least learn to keep them sacred ! Men are far better 
 than we in this. Barely will a man voluntarily or 
 thoughtlessly betray a friend's confidence, either at 
 the time or afterwards. He will say, even to his own 
 wife: "I can't tell you this I have no right to tell 
 you :" and if she has the least spark of good feeling, 
 she will honour and love him all the dearer for so 
 saying. More rarely still will a ma^i be heard, as 
 women constantly are, speaking ill of some friend 
 who a little while before, while the friendship lasted, 
 was all perfection. What is necessary to be said he 
 will say, but not a syllable more, leaving all the rest 
 in that safe, still atmosphere, where all good fructifies 
 and evil perishes the atmosphere of silence. 
 
 Ay, above all things, what women need to learn in 
 their friendships is the sanctity of silence silence in 
 outward demonstration, silence under wrong, silence 
 with regard to the outside world, and often a delicate 
 silence between one another. About the greatest 
 virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her 
 tongue; and though this, like all virtues carried to 
 
 extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, 
 
 8 
 
170 Female Friendships. 
 
 still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible 
 laxity and profligacy of speech which is at the root 
 of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the 
 world. 
 
 And let every woman, old or young, in com 
 mencing a friendship, be careful that it is to the right 
 thing she has given the right name. If so, let her 
 enter upon it thoughtfully, earnestly, advisedly, as 
 upon an engagement made for life, which in truth it 
 is ; since, whether its duration be brief or long, it is a 
 tangible reality, and, as such, must have its influence 
 on the total chronicle of existence, wherein no lino 
 can ever be quite blotted out. Let her, with the 
 strength and comfort of it, prepare to take the 
 burden ; determined, whatever the other may do, to 
 fulfil her own part, and act up to her own duty, abso- 
 lutely and conscientiously, to the end. For truly, 
 the greatest of all external blessings is it to be able to 
 lean your heart against another heart, faithful, tender, 
 true, and tried, and record with a thankfulness that 
 years deepen instead of diminishing, " I have got a 
 <Hend!" 
 
CHAPTER Yin. 
 
 GOSSIP. 
 
 ONE of the wisest and best among our English ethi 
 cal writers, the author of Companions of my Solitude, 
 says, Apropos of gossip, that one half of the evil- 
 speaking of the world arises, not from malice prepense, 
 but from mere want of amusement. And I think we 
 may even grant that in the other half, constituted 
 small of mind or selfish in disposition, it is seldom 
 worse than the natural falling back from large ab- 
 stract interests, which they cannot understand, upon 
 those which they can alas! only the narrow, com- 
 monplace, and personal. 
 
 Yet they mean no harm ; are often under the de- 
 lusion that they both mean and do a great deal of 
 good, take a benevolent watch over their fellow- 
 creatures, and so forth. They would not say an un- 
 true word, or do an unkind action not they ! The 
 
1 72 Gossip. 
 
 most barefaced slanderer always tells her story with 
 a good motive, or thinks she does; begins with a 
 harmless "bit of gossip," just to pass the time away 
 the time which hangs so heavy 1 and ends by be- 
 coming the most arrant and mischievous tale-bearer 
 under the sun. 
 
 Ex. gratia Let me put on record the decline and 
 fall, voluntarily confessed, of two friends of mine, 
 certainly the last persons likely to take to tittle-tattle ; 
 being neither young nor elderly; on the whole, per- 
 haps rather "bright" than stupid; having plenty to 
 do and to think of too much, indeed, since they 
 came on an enforced holiday out of that vortex in 
 which London whirls her professional classes round 
 and round, year by year, till at last often nothing but 
 a handful of dry bones is cast on shore. They came 
 
 to lodge at the village of X , let me call it, as 
 
 being an " unknown quantity," which the reader 
 will vainly attempt to find out, since it is just like 
 BDme hundred other villages has its church and rec- 
 tor, great house and squire, doctor and lawyer (alas ! 
 poor village, I fear its two doctors and two lawyers) ; 
 
Gossip. 1 73 
 
 also its small select society, where everybody knows 
 everybody that is, their affairs : for themselves, one 
 half the parish resolutely declines "knowing" the 
 other half sometimes pretermittently, sometimes per- 
 manently. Of course, not a single soul would have 
 ventured to know Bob 1 and Maria as I shall call the 
 strangers had they not brought an introduction to 
 one family, under the shelter of whose respectability 
 they meekly placed their own. A very worthy 
 family it was, which showed them all hospitality, 
 asked them to tea continually, and there, in the 
 shadow of the pleasant drawing-room, which over- 
 looked the street, indoctrinated them into all the mys- 
 teries of X , something in this wise : 
 
 "Dear me! there's Mrs. Smith; she has on that 
 identical yellow bonnet which has been so long in 
 Miss Miffin's shop- window. Got it cheap, no doubt : 
 Mr. Smith does keep the poor thing so close ! Anna- 
 bella, child, make haste; just tell me whether that 
 isn't the same young man who called on the Joneses 
 three times last week ! Eed whiskers and mous- 
 taches. One cf those horrid officers, no doubt. My 
 
1 74 Gossip. 
 
 dear Miss Maria, I never do like to say a word 
 against my neighbours ; but before I would let my 
 
 Annabella go about like the Jones's girls 
 
 Bless my life! there's that cab at the corner house 
 again and her husband out ! "Well, if I ever could 
 have believed it, even of silly, flirty Mrs. Green ! 
 whom people do say old Mr. Green married out of a 
 London hosier's, where he went in to buy a pair of 
 gloves. What a shocking place London must 
 be . . . . ! But I beg your pardon, my dear . . . ." 
 And so on, and so on. 
 
 This, slightly varied, was the stock conversation, 
 which seemed amply sufficient to fill the minds and 
 hours of the whole family, and, indeed, of every family 
 atX . 
 
 Maria and Bob used to go home laughing, and 
 thanking their stars that they did live in that shocking 
 place London. Bob made harmless jokes at the 
 expense of the unconscious household who, 
 
 " Pinnacled dim in the intense inane," 
 could drop down, hawk-like, upon reputations, bon- 
 
Gossip. 
 
 nets, and beans. Maria gave vent to a majestic but 
 indignant pity ; and both hugged themselves in the 
 belief that never, nnder any circumstances, could they 
 sink to such a dead-level of folly, vacuity, spite. 
 
 Weeks passed rather slowly, especially when 
 of autumn evenings, they found themselves minus 
 books, piano, theatre, concerts, society in fact, in pre- 
 cisely the position of the inhabitants of X - all 
 year round. So, as daylight was less dull than candle- 
 light, they used to rise at unearthly hours ; dine 
 shall I betray the Goths ? at 11.30 A.M., take tea at 
 4 P.M., and go to bed as soon after dark as they could 
 for shame. At last, from very dulness, Maria got 
 into the habit of sitting at the window and telling Bob 
 what was passing in the street, interspersed with lit- 
 tle illustrative anecdotes she had caught up, "just as 
 bits of human nature." One, the stock scandal of the 
 place, interested them both so much, that they watched 
 for the heroine's carriage every day for a week ; and 
 when at last Maria cried, " There it is !" Bob jumped 
 up with all the eagerness of Annabella herself, and 
 missing the sight, retired grumbling: ""What non 
 
l y6 Gossip. 
 
 sense ! I declare you're getting just as bad a gossip 
 as anybody here !" '(N.B. The masculine mind, in 
 an accusative form, always prefers the second person 
 of the verb.) 
 
 " Well," observed Maria, " shall I give up telling 
 you any news I happen to hear ?" 
 
 " Oh, no ! You may tell what you like. As the 
 man said when his wife beat him it amuses you, and 
 it doesn't harm me." 
 
 Finally I have it from Maria's own confession 
 coming in one afternoon absorbed in cogitations as to 
 what possible motive Mrs. Green could have in telling 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Jones she wished to call on her, Maria ; 
 and what on earth would be done if Annabella, whose 
 mamma wouldn't allow her even to bow to Mrs. 
 Green, should happen to call at the same time she 
 was quite startled by Bob's springing up from the 
 sofa to meet her, with an air of great relief. 
 
 11 So you're back at last ! Well, who did you see, 
 and what did they say to you? Do sit down, and 
 let's hear all the gossip going." 
 
 " Gossip !" And meeting one another's eyes, they 
 
Gossip. \-]~i 
 
 both burst into a hearty fit of laughter, declaring 
 they never again would pride themselves on being a 
 bit better than their neighbours. 
 
 Ay, fatal and vile as her progeny may be, "the 
 mother of mischief," says the proverb, "is no bigger 
 than a midge's wing." Nay, as many a vice can be 
 traced back to an exaggerated virtue, this hateful pro- 
 pensity to tittle-tattle springs from the same peculiarity 
 which, rightly guided, constitutes womanhood's chief- 
 est strength and charm ; blesses many a worthless 
 man with a poor, fond, faithful wife, who loves him 
 for nothing that he is or does, but merely because he 
 is himself; forgives to many a scapegrace son or bro- 
 ther a hundred sins, and follows him to the grave or 
 the scaffold, blind to everything except the fact that 
 he is her own. Personal interests, personal attach- 
 ments, personal prejudices, are, whether we own it or 
 not, the ruling bias of us women : it is better to own 
 it at once, govern, correct, and modify it, than to deny 
 it in name, and betray it in every circumstance of our 
 lives. 
 
 Men, whose habits of thought and action are at 
 8* 
 
i y8 Gossip. 
 
 once more selfish and less personal than ours, are 
 very seldom given to gossiping. They will take a 
 vast interest in the misgovernment of India, or the 
 ill -cooking of their own dinners; but any topic be- 
 twixt these two such as the mismanagement of their 
 neighbour's house, or the extravagance of their part- 
 ner's wife is a matter of very minor importance. 
 They " canna be fashed" with trifles that don't imme- 
 diately concern themselves. It is the women always 
 the women who poke about with undefended far 
 thing candles in the choke-damp passages of this 
 dangerous world ; who put their feeble ignorant hands 
 to the Archimedean lever that, slight as it seems, can 
 shake society to its lowest foundations. For, though 
 it irks me to wound with strong language the deli- 
 cate sensibilities of my silver-tongued sisters, I would 
 just remind them of what they may hear, certainly 
 one Sunday in the year, concerning that same dainty 
 little member, which is said to be "a fire, a world of 
 iniquity . . . and it is set on fire of hell" 
 
 Verily, the "Silent Woman" a lady without a 
 head, who officiates as sign to many a country inn 
 
Gossip. 1 79 
 
 had need to be so depicted. But it is not "the gift of 
 the gab," the habit of using a dozen words where one 
 would answer the purpose, which may arise from 
 want of education, nervousness, or surplus but honest 
 energy and earnest feeling it is not that which docs 
 the harm ; it is the lamentable fact, that whether from 
 a superabundance of the imaginative faculty, careless- 
 ness of phrase, or a readiness to jump at conclusions, 
 and represent facts not as they are but as they appear 
 to the representers, very few women are absolutely 
 and invariably veracious. Men lie wilfully, delibe- 
 rately, on principle, as it were; but women quite 
 involuntarily. Nay, they would start with horror 
 from the bare thought of such a thing. They love 
 truth in their hearts, and yet and yet they are 
 constantly giving to things a slight colouring cast 
 by their own individuality ; twisting facts a little. 
 a very little, according as their tastes, affections, or 
 convenience indicate: never perhaps telling a direct 
 lie, but merely a deformed or prevaricated truth. 
 
 And this makes the fatal danger of gossip. If all 
 people spoke the absolute truth about their neigh 
 
 1 
 
1 8c Gossip. 
 
 hours, or held their tongues, which is always a pos- 
 sible alternative, it would not so much matter. At 
 the worst, there would be a few periodical social 
 thunder-storms, and then the air would be clear. But 
 the generality of people do not speak the truth : they 
 speak what they see, or think, or believe, or wish 
 Few observant characters can have lived long in the 
 woild without learning to receive every fact commu- 
 nicated second-hand with reservations reservations 
 that do not necessarily stamp the communicator as a 
 liar, but merely make allowance for certain inevitable 
 variations, like the variations of the compass, which 
 every circumnavigator must calculate upon as a natu- 
 ral necessity. 
 
 Thus, Miss A., in the weary small-talk of a morn- 
 ing call, not quite knowing what she says, or glad to 
 say anything for the sake of talking, lets drop to Mrs. 
 B. that she heard Mrs. C. say : "She would take care 
 to keep her boys out of the way of the little B.V a 
 very harmless remark, since, when it was uttered, the 
 little B.'s were just recovering from the measles. But 
 Miss A., an absent sort of woman, repeats it three 
 
Gossip. 181 
 
 months afterwards, forgetting all about the measles ; 
 indeed, slie has persuaded herself that it referred to 
 the rudeness of the B. lads, who are her own private 
 terror, and she thinks it may probably do some good 
 to give their over-indulgent mamma a hint on the 
 subject. Mrs. B., too well-bred to reply more than 
 "Indeed!" is yet mortally offended; declines the 
 next dinner-party at the C.'s, and confides her private 
 reason for doing so to Miss D., a good-natured chat- 
 terbox, who, with the laudable intention of getting to 
 the bottom of the matter, and reconciling the bellige- 
 rents, immediately communicates the same. " What 
 have I done?" exclaims the hapless Mrs. C. "I 
 never said any such thing !" " Oh, but Miss A. pro- 
 tests she heard you say it." Again Mrs. C. warmly 
 denies ; which denial goes back directly to Miss A. 
 and Mrs. B., imparting to both them and Miss D. a 
 very unpleasant feeling as to the lady's veracity. A 
 few days after, thinking it over, she suddenly recol- 
 lects that she really did say the identical words, with 
 reference solely to the measles ; bursts into a hearty 
 fit of laughter, and congratulates herself that it is all 
 
182 Gossip. 
 
 right. But not so : the mountain cannot so quickly 
 shrink int_> its original mole-hill. Mrs. B., whose 
 weak point is her children, receives the explanation 
 with considerable dignity and reserve ; is " sorry that 
 Mrs. C. should have troubled herself about such a 
 trifle;" shakes hands, and professes herself quite 
 satisfied. Nevertheless, in her own inmost mind she 
 thinks and her countenance shows it "I believe 
 you said it, for all that." A slight coolness ensues, 
 which everybody notices, discusses, and gives a sepa- 
 rate version of; all which versions somehow or other 
 come to the ears of the parties concerned, who, with- 
 out clearly knowing why, feel vexed and aggrieved 
 each at the other. The end of it all is a total es- 
 trangement. 
 
 Is not a little episode like this at the root of nearly 
 all the family feuds, lost friendships, "cut" acquaint- 
 anceships, so pitifully rife in the world ? Earely any 
 great matter, a point of principle or a violated pledge, 
 an act of justice or dishonesty ; it is almost alwaya 
 some petty action misinterpreted, some idle word 
 repeated or a succession of both these, gathering and 
 
Gossip. 1 83 
 
 gathering like the shingle on a sea-beach, something 
 fresh being left behind by every day's tide. Not the 
 men's doing the fathers, husbands, or brothers, who 
 have no time to bother themselves about such trifles, 
 and who, if they see fit to quarrel over their two 
 grand causes belli, religion and politics, generally do it 
 outright, and either abuse one another like pickpock- 
 ets in newspaper columns; or, in revenge for any 
 moral poaching on one another's property, take a 
 horsewhip or a pair of pistols, and so end the matter. 
 No. It is the women who are at the bottom of it 
 all, who, in the narrowness or blankness of their 
 daily lives, are glad to catch at any straw of interest 
 especially the unmarried, the idle, the rich, and the 
 childless. As says the author I have before referred 
 to : " People not otherwise ill-natured are pleased 
 with the misfortunes of their neighbours, solely be- 
 cause it gives them something to think abput, some- 
 thing to talk about. They imagine how the principal 
 actors and sufferers will bear it ; what they will do ; 
 how they will look ; and so the dull bystander forma 
 a sort of drama for himself." 
 
i&j Gossip. 
 
 And what a drama! Such a petty plot such 
 small heroes and heroines such a harmless villain ! 
 "When we think of the contemptible nothings that 
 form the daily scandal-dish of most villages, towns, 
 cities, or communities, and then look up at the starry 
 heaven which overshines them all, dropping its rain 
 upon the just and the unjust or look abroad on the 
 world, of whose wide interests, miseries, joys, duties, 
 they form such an infinitesimal part, one is tempted 
 to blush for one's species. Strange, that while hun- 
 dreds and thousands in this Britain have not a crust 
 to eat, Mrs. E. should become the town's talk for 
 three days, because owing a dinner-party to the F.'s, 
 G.'s, H.'s, and J.'s, she clears accounts at a cheaper 
 rate by giving a general tea-party instead. " So mean ! 
 and with Mr. E.'s large income, too !" That while 
 millions are living and dying without God in the 
 world, despising Him, forgetting Him, or never having 
 even heard His name, Miss K., a really exemplary 
 woman, should not only refuse, even for charitable 
 purposes, to associate with the L.'s, an equally irre- 
 proachable family as to morals and benevolence, but 
 
Gossip. 18 J 
 
 should actually forbid her district poor to receive 
 their teaching or their Bibles, because they refuse to 
 add thereto the Church of England Catechism. As 
 to visiting them " Quite impossible ; they are Dis- 
 senters, you know." 
 
 The gossip of opposing religionism I will not 
 even call it religion, though religion itself is often 
 very far from pure " godliness" is at once the most 
 virulent and the saddest phase of the disease ; and our 
 sex, it must be confessed, are the more liable to it, 
 especially in the provinces. There, the parish curate 
 may at times be seen walking with the Unitarian or 
 Independent minister, if they happen to be well- 
 educated young men of a social turn ; even the rec- 
 tor, worthy man ! will occasionally have the sense, to 
 join with other worthy men of every denomination 
 in matters of local improvement. But oh ! the talk 
 that this gives rise to among the female population I 
 till the reverend objects of it, who in their daily 
 duties have usually more to do with women than 
 with men another involuntary tribute to those vir- 
 tues which form the bright under-side of every fault 
 
186 Gossip. 
 
 that can be alleged against us are often driven to 
 give in to the force of public opinion, to that inces- 
 sant babble of silvery waters which wears through the 
 rockiest soil. 
 
 The next grand source of gossip and this, too, 
 curiously indicates how true must be the instinct of 
 womanhood, even in its lowest forms so evidently a 
 corruption from the highest is love, and with or 
 without that preliminary, matrimony. What on 
 earth should we do if we had no matches to make, 
 or mar ; no " unfortunate attachments" to shake our 
 heads over; no flirtations to speculate about and com- 
 ment upon with knowing smiles ; no engagements "on" 
 or " off" to speak our minds about, nosing out every 
 little circumstance, and ferreting out our game to their 
 very hole, as if all their affairs, their hopes, trials, 
 faults, or wrongs, were being transacted for our own 
 private and peculiar entertainment ! Of all forms of 
 gossip I speak of mere gossip, as distinguished from 
 the carrion-crow and dunghill-fly system of scandal- 
 mongcring this tittle-tattle about love-affairs is the 
 moat general, the most odious, and the most dangerous. 
 
Gossip. 1 87 
 
 Every one of us must have known within our own 
 experience many an instance of dawning loves 
 checked, unhappy loves made cruelly public, happy 
 loves embittered, warm, honest loves turned cold, by 
 this horrible system of gossiping about young or un- 
 married people " evening" to one another folk who 
 have not the slightest, mutual inclination, or if they 
 had, such an idea put into their heads would effec- 
 tually smother it ; setting down every harmless free 
 liking as " a case," or " a flirtation ;" and if anything 
 "serious" does turn up, pouncing on it, hunting it 
 down, and never letting it go till dismembered and 
 ground to the bone. Should it ever come to a mar- 
 riage and the wonder is, considering all these things, 
 that any love-affair ever does come to that climax at 
 all, or that any honest-hearted, delicate-minded young 
 people, ever have the courage to indulge the world by 
 an open attachment or engagement heavens and 
 earth ! how it is talked about ! How one learns every 
 single item of what "he" said and "she" said, and 
 what all the relations said, and how it came about, and 
 how it neve] would have come about at all but foi 
 
1 88 Gossip. 
 
 So-and-so, and what they have to live upon, and 
 capable or incapable they are of living upon it tmd 
 how very much better both parties would have done 
 if they had only each left the choosing of the other to 
 about four-and-twenty anxious friends, all of which 
 were quite certain the affianced pair never would 
 suit one another, but would have exactly suited 
 somebody else, &c. &c., ad libitum and ad infi- 
 nitum. 
 
 Many women, otherwise kindly and generous, have 
 in this matter no more consideration towards their 
 own sex or the other, no more sense of the sanctity 
 and silence due to the relation between them, than if 
 the divinely instituted bond of marriage were no 
 higher or purer than the natural instincts of the beasts 
 that perish. It is most sad, nay, it is sickening, to see 
 the way in which, from the age of fourteen upwards, 
 a young woman, on this one subject of her possible or 
 probable matrimonial arrangements, is quizzed, talked 
 over, commented upon, advised, condoled with, 
 lectured, interrogated until, if she has happily never 
 had cause to blush for herself, not a week passes that 
 
Gossip. 1 89 
 
 slie does not blush, for her sex, out of utter contempt, 
 disgust, and indignation. 
 
 Surely all right-minded women ought to set theii 
 fa^es resolutely against this desecration of feelings, to 
 maintain the sanctity of which is the only preser- 
 vative of our influence that is, our rightful and holy 
 influence, over men. Not that, after the school of 
 Mesdames Barbauld, Hannah More, and other excel- 
 lent but exceedingly prosy personages, love should be 
 exorcised out of young women's lives and conversa- 
 tions query, if possible ? but let it be treated of 
 delicately, earnestly, rationally, as a matter which, if 
 they have any business with it at all, is undoubtedly 
 the most serious business of their lives. There can be 
 there ought to be no medium course ; a love-affair 
 is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not 
 wickedness : to gossip about it is, in the first instance, 
 intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, 
 simply siTy. Practical people may choose between 
 the two alternatives. 
 
 Gossip, public, private, social to fight against it 
 either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting 
 
190 Gossip. 
 
 with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests 
 against it, blames and despises it ; yet everybody does 
 it, or at least encourages others in it: quite inno- 
 cently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless 
 fashion yet, we do it. We must talk about some- 
 thing, and it is not all of us who can find a rational 
 topic of conversation, or discuss it when found. 
 Many, too, who in their hearts hate the very thought 
 of tattle and tale-bearing, are shy of lifting up their 
 voices against it, lest they should be ridiculed for 
 Quixotism, or thought to set themselves up as more 
 virtuous than their neighbours. Others, like our 
 lamented friends, Maria and Bob, from mere idleness 
 and indifference, long kept hovering over the unclean 
 stream, at last drop into it and are drifted away by it. 
 Where does it land them ? Ay, where ? 
 
 If I, or any one, were to unfold on this subject only 
 our own experience and observation not a tittle 
 more what a volume it would make I 
 
 Families set by the ears, parents against children, 
 brothers against brothers not to mention brothers 
 and sisters-in-law, who seem generally to assume* 
 
Gossip. 
 
 with the legal title, the legal right of interminably 
 squabbling. Friendships sundered, betrothals broken 
 marriages annulled in the spirit, at least, while in 
 the letter kept outwardly, to be a daily torment, 
 temptation, and despair. Acquaintances that would 
 otherwise have maintained a safe and not unkindly 
 indifference, forced into absolute dislike originating 
 how they know not; but there it is. Old com- 
 panions, that would have borne each other's little 
 foibles, have forgiven and forgotten little annoyances, 
 and kept up an honest affection till death, driven at 
 last into open rupture, or frozen into a coldness more 
 hopeless still, which no after- warmth will ever have 
 power to thaw. 
 
 Truly, from the smallest Little Peddlington that 
 carries on, year by year, its bloodless wars, its harm- 
 less scandals, its daily chronicle of interminable 
 nothings, to the great metropolitan world, fashiona- 
 ble, intellectual, noble, or royal, the blight and curse 
 of civilised life is gossip. 
 
 How is it to be removed ? How are scores of well- 
 meaning women, who in their hearts really like and 
 
1 92 Gossip. 
 
 respect one another who, did trouble come to air? 
 one of them, would be ready with countless mutual 
 kindnesses, small and great, and among whom the 
 sudden advent of death would subdue every idle 
 tongue to honest praise, and silence, at once and for 
 ever, every bitter word against the neighbour 
 departed how 'are they to be taught to be every 
 day as generous, considerate, liberal-minded in 
 short, womanly, as they would assuredly be in any- 
 exceptionable day of adversity? How are they to 
 be made to feel the littleness, the ineffably pitiful 
 littleness, of raking up and criticising every slight 
 peculiarity of manner, habits, temper, character, word, 
 action, motive household, children, servants, living, 
 furniture, and dress, thus constituting themselves the 
 amateur rag-pickers, chiffonntires I was going to say, 
 scavengers, but they do not leave the streets clean- 
 of all the blind alleys and foul by-ways of society ; 
 while the whole world lies free and open before them, 
 to do their work and choose their innocent pleasure 
 therein this busy, bright, beautiful world ? 
 
 Such a revolution is, I doubt, quite hopeless on 
 
Gossip. 193 
 
 this side Paradise. But every woman has it in 1 er 
 power personally to withstand the spread of this 
 great plague of tongues, since it lies within her own 
 volition what she will do with her own. 
 
 " All the king's horses and all the king s men" 
 
 cannot make us either use or bridle that little mem- 
 ber. It is our never-failing weapon, double-edged, 
 delicate, bright, keen ; a weapon not necessarily 
 either lethal or vile, but taking its character solely 
 from the manner in which we use it. 
 
 First, let every one of us cultivate, in every word 
 that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say 
 cultivate, because to very few people as may be 
 noticed of most young children does truth, this rigid, 
 literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even 
 who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes 
 only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitcer 
 experience of years. Let no one conscious of need- 
 ing this care be afraid to begin it from the very 
 
 beginning ; or in her daily life and conversation fear 
 
 9 
 
1 94 Gossip. 
 
 to confess : " Stay, I said a little more than 1 meant 
 --"I think I was not quite correct about such a 
 thing' 7 " Thus it was ; at least thus it seemed to me 
 personally," &c. &c. Even in the simplest, most 
 everyday statements, we cannot be too guarded or 
 too exact. The "hundred cats" that the little lad 
 saw "fighting on our back-wall," and which after- 
 wards dwindled down to " our cat and another," is A 
 case in point, not near so foolish as it seems. 
 
 "Believe only half of what you see, and nothing that 
 you hear," is a cynical saying, and yet less bitter than 
 at first appears. It does not argue that human nature 
 is false, but simply that it is human nature. How 
 can any fallible human being with two eyes, two ears, 
 one judgment, and one brain all more or less limited 
 in their apprehensions of things external, and biassed 
 by a thousand internal impressions, purely individual 
 how can we possibly decide on even the plainest 
 actions of another, to say nothing of the words, 
 which may have gone through half-a-dozen different 
 translations and modifications, or the motives, which 
 can only be known to the Omniscient himself ? 
 
Gossip. 195 
 
 In His name, therefore, let us "judge not, that we 
 be not judged." Let us be " quick to hear, slow to 
 speak;" slowest of all to speak any evil, or to listen 
 to it, about anybody. The good we need be less 
 careful over; we are not likely ever to hear too 
 much of that. 
 
 "But," say some very excellent people, too 
 " are we never to open our mouths? never to men- 
 tion the ill things we see or hear ; never to stand up 
 for the right, by proclaiming, or by warning and tes- 
 tifying against the wrong ?" 
 
 Against wrong in the abstract, yes: but against 
 individuals doubtful. All the gossip in the world, 
 or the dread of it, will never turn one domestic 
 tyrant into a decent husband or father; one light 
 woman into a matron leal and wise. Do your neigh- 
 bour good by all means in your power, moral as well 
 as physical by kindness, by patience, by unflinch- 
 ing resistance against every outward evil by the 
 silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if 
 the only good you can do him is by talking at him, 
 or about him nay, even to him, if it be in a self 
 
1 96 Gossip. 
 
 satisfied, super-virtuous style such as I earnestly 
 hope the present writer is not doing you had much 
 better leave him alone. If he be foolish, soon or 
 late he will reap the fruit of his folly ; if wicked, be 
 sure his sin will find him out. If he has wronged 
 you, you will neither lessen the wrong nor increase 
 his repentance by parading it. And if since there 
 are two sides to every subject, and it takes two to 
 make a quarrel you have wronged him, surely you 
 will not right him or yourself by abusing him. In 
 Heaven's name, let him alone. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WOMEN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 THE world! It is a word capable of as diverse 
 interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing 
 itself a thing by various people supposed to belong 
 to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternately to all 
 three. But this is not the place to argue the pros 
 and cons of that doctrinal theology which views as 
 totally evil the same world which its Creator pro- 
 nounced to be " very good," the same world in and 
 for which its Redeemer lived as well as died ; nor, 
 taking it at its present worst, a sinful, miserable, 
 mysterious, yet neither wholly comfortless, hopeless, 
 nor godless world, shall I refer further to that strange 
 Manichgeanism which believes that anything earth 
 possesses of good can have sprung from any other 
 source than the All-good, that any happiness in it 
 could exist for a moment, unless derived from Infinite 
 Perfection. 
 
198 Women of the World. 
 
 " A woman of the world" " Quite a woman of the 
 world" "A mere woman of the world" with how 
 many modifications of tone and emphasis do we hear 
 the phrase; which seems inherently to imply a 
 contradiction. Nature herself has apparently decided 
 for women, physically as well as mentally, that their 
 natural destiny should be not of the world. In the 
 earlier ages of Judaism and Islamism, nobody ever 
 seems to have ventured a doubt of this. Christianity 
 alone raised the woman to her rightful and original 
 place, as man's one help-meet, bone of his "bone and 
 flesh of his flesh, his equal in all points of vital 
 moment, yet made suited to him by an harmonious 
 something which is less inferiority than difference. 
 And this difference will for ever exist. Yolumes 
 written on female progress ; speeches interminable, 
 delivered from the public rostrum in female treble, 
 which from that very publicity and bravado would 
 convert the most obvious "rights" into something 
 very like a wrong ; biographies numberless of great 
 women aye, and good who, stepping out of their 
 natural sphere, have done service in courts, camps, 01 
 
Women of the World. 199 
 
 diplomatic bureaus : all these exceptional cases will 
 never set aside the universal law, that woman's 
 proper place is home. Not merely 
 
 "To suckle fools and chronicle small-beer," 
 
 Shakspeare, who knew us well, would never have 
 made any but an logo say so but to go hand-in-hand 
 with man on their distinct yet parallel roads, to be 
 within-doors what he has to be in the world without 
 sole influence and authority in the limited mon- 
 archy of home. 
 
 Thus, to be a " woman of the world," though 
 not essentially a criminal accusation, implies a state 
 of being not natural, and therefore not happy. 
 Without any sentimental heroics against the hollow- 
 ness of such an existence, and putting aside the 
 religious view of it altogether, I believe most people 
 will admit that no woman living entirely in and for 
 the world ever was, ever could be, a happy woman ; 
 that is, according to the definition of happiness, 
 which supposes it to consist in having our highest 
 
200 Women of the World. 
 
 faculties most highly developed, and in use to then 
 fullest extent. Any other sort of happiness, either 
 dependent on externally favourable circumstances, 
 or resting on safe negations of ill, we must be 
 considered to possess in common with the oyster: 
 indeed, that easy -tempered and steadfast mollusk, if 
 not "in love," probably has it in much greater 
 perfection than we. 
 
 Starting with the proposition that a woman of the 
 world is not a happy woman ; that if she had been, 
 most likely she never would have become what she 
 is I do not think it necessary to nail her up, poor 
 painted jay, as a " shocking example" over Society's 
 bam-door, around which strut and crow a great many 
 fowls quite as mean and not half so attractive. For 
 she is very charming in her way that is, the 
 principal and best type of her class ; she wears d 
 merveitte that beautiful mask said to be " the homage 
 paid by vice to virtue." And since the successful 
 imitation of an article argues a certain acquaintance 
 with the original, she may once upon a time have 
 actually believed in many of those things which she 
 
Women of the World. 2oi 
 
 now so cleverly impersonates virtue, heroism, truthj 
 love, friendship, honour, and fidelity. She is like 
 certain stamped-out bronze ornaments, an admirable 
 imitation of real womanhood till you walk round 
 her to the other side. 
 
 The woman of the world is rarely a very young 
 woman. It stands to reason, she could not be. To 
 young people, the world is always a paradise a fool's 
 paradise, devoutly believed in : it is not till they have 
 found out its shams that they are able to assume them. 
 By that time, however, they have ceased to be fools : 
 it takes a certain amount of undoubted cleverness 
 to make any success, or take any rule in the world. 
 
 By the world, I do not mean the aristocratic Vanity 
 Fair let those preach of it who move up and down or 
 keep stalls therein but the world of the middle 
 classes ; the " society" into which drift the homeless, 
 thoughtless, ambitious, pleasure-loving among them ; 
 those who have no purpose in life except to get 
 through it somehow, and those who never had any 
 interest in it except their own beloved selves. 
 
 A woman of the sort I write of may in one sense be 
 9* 
 
202 Women of the World. 
 
 placed at the lowest deep of womanhood, because hei 
 centre of existence is undoubtedl y herself. You may 
 trace this before you have been introduced to her five 
 minutes : in the sweet manner which so well simu- 
 lates a universal benevolence, being exactly the same 
 to everybody namely, everybody worth knowing ; 
 in the air of interest with which she asks a dozen 
 polite or kindly questions, of which she never waits 
 for the answer ; in the instinctive consciousness you 
 have that all the while she is talking agreeably to 
 you, or flatteringly listening to your talented conver- 
 sation, her attention is on the qui vive after everybody 
 and every thing throughout the room -that is every 
 thing that concerns herself. As for yourself, from the 
 moment you have passed out of her sight, or ceased to 
 minister to her amusement or convenience, you may 
 be quite certain you will have as completely slipped 
 out of her memory as if you had vanished into ano- 
 ther sphere. Her own sphere cannot contain yon ; 
 for though it seems so large, it has no real existence ' 
 it is merely a reflection of so much of the outer world 
 as can be received into the one small drop of not 
 
Women of the World. 203 
 
 over clear water, which constitutes this woman's 
 soul. 
 
 x 
 
 Yet waste not your wrath upon her she is as 
 much to be pitied as blamed. Do not grow savage at 
 hearing her, in that softly-pitched voice of hers, talk 
 sentiment by the yard, while you know she snubs hor- 
 ribly in r .ivate every unlucky relative she has ; whose 
 only hours of quiet are when they joyfully deck her 
 and send her out to adorn society. Do not laugh 
 when she criticises pictures, and goes into raptures 
 over books, which you are morally certain she has 
 never either seen or read ; or if she had, from the very 
 character of her mind, could no more understand them 
 than your cat can appreciate Shakspeare. Contemn 
 her not, for her state might not have been always thus ; 
 you know not the causes which produced it ; and 
 stay till you see her end. 
 
 There is a class of worldly women which, to my 
 mind, is much worse than this ; because their shams 
 are less cleverly sustained, and their ideal of good (for 
 every human being must have one the conqueror his 
 crown, and the sot his gin-bottle) is far lower and 
 
204 Women of the World. 
 
 more contemptible. The brilliant woman of society 
 has usually her pet philanthropies, her literary, learn- 
 ed, or political penchants, in which the good she thirsts 
 after, though unreal, is the imitation of a vital reality; 
 and as such is often, in some degree, useful to others. 
 But this pseudo-woman of the world has no ideal be- 
 yond fine dresses, houses, carriages, acquaintances ; 
 and even these she does not value for their own sakes, 
 only because they are superior to her neighbour's. 
 
 You will find her chiefly among the half-educated 
 nouveaux riches of the professional classes, vainly 
 striving to attain to their level the highest point 
 visible on her horizon. And this is no happy alti- 
 tude of learning, or intelligence, or refinement ; but 
 merely a certain "position" a place at a dinner- 
 party, or a house in a square. 
 
 "While the first kind of woman always has a degree 
 of sway in society, this one is society's most prostrate 
 slave. She dares not furnish her house, choose her 
 servants, eat her food, pay her visits, or even put the 
 gown on her back and the bonnet on her head, save 
 by rule and precedent. She will worry herself and 
 
Women of the World. 205 
 
 you about the veriest trifles of convenance such as 
 whether it is most genteel to leave one card with the 
 corner turned down, or to expend a separate card 
 upon each member of the family. To find herself at 
 a full-dress soiree in demi-toilette would make this 
 poor lady miserable for a month ; and if by any 
 chance you omitted paying her the proper visit of 
 inquiry after an entertainment, she would consider 
 you meant a ^personal insult, and, if she dared only 
 she seldom ventures on any decisive proceedings 
 would cut your acquaintance immediately. 
 
 The celebrated Mrs. Grundy keeps her in a state of 
 mortal servitude. Even in 'London, which to a lady 
 of medium age, established character, and decent be- 
 haviour, is the most independent place in the world ; 
 where, as I once heard said : " My dear, be, assured 
 you are not of the least importance to anybody may 
 go anywhere, dress anyhow, and, in short, do any- 
 thing you like except stand on your head" even 
 here she is for ever pursued by a host of vague ad- 
 jectives, "proper," " correct," " genteel," which hunt 
 her to death like a pack of rabid hounds. 
 
206 Women of the World. 
 
 True, the world, like its master, is "by no means sc 
 black as it is sometimes painted: it often has a 
 foundation of good sense and right feeling under its 
 most ridiculous and wearisome forms ; but this woman 
 sees only the forms, among which she blunders like 
 one of those quack-artists who pretend to draw the 
 human figure without the smallest knowledge of 
 anatomy. Utterly ignorant of the framework on 
 which society moves, she is perpetually straining at 
 gnats and swallowing camels, both in manners and 
 morals. To her, laborious politeness stands in the 
 stead of kindliness ; show, of hospitality ; etiquette, 
 of decorum. Les bienseances, which are only valuable 
 as being the index and offering of a gentle, generous, 
 and benevolent heart, are to this unfortunate woman 
 the brazen altar upon which she immolates her own 
 comfort and that of everybody connected with her. 
 
 How often do we hear the phrases, " "What will 
 the world say?" "Perhaps; but, then, we live in 
 the world." " A good soul enough, but totally igno- 
 rant of the world." It is worth while pausing a mo- 
 ment to consider of what this "world" really con- 
 
Women of the World. 207 
 
 sists, that women seem at once so eagerly to run after, 
 and to be so terribly afraid of. 
 
 Not the moral world, which judges their sins 
 with, alas, how short-sighted and unevenly balanced 
 a judgment, often ! but the perpetually changing 
 world of custom, which regulates their clothes, furni- 
 ture, houses, manner of living, sayings, doings, and 
 sufferings. Take it to pieces, and what is it? No- 
 thing but a floating atmosphere of common-place peo- 
 ple surrounding certain congeries of people a little 
 less ordinary, the nucleus of which is generally one 
 person decidedly extra-ordinary, who, by force of 
 will, position, intellect, or character, or by some un- 
 questionable magnitude of virtue or vice, stands out 
 distinctly from the average multitude, and rules it ac- 
 cording to his or her individual choice. All the rest 
 are, as I said, a mere atmosphere of nobodies ; which 
 atmosphere can be cloven any day one sees it done 
 continually by a single flesh-and-blood arm : yet in 
 it the woman of the world allows herself to sit and 
 suffocate ; dare not dress comfortably, act and speak 
 straightforwardly, live naturally, or sometimes even 
 
2o8 Women of the World. 
 
 honestly. For will she not rather run in debt for a 
 bonnet, than wear her old one a year behind the 
 mode f give a ball and stint the family dinner for a 
 month after ? take a large house, and furnish hand- 
 some reception-rooms, while her household huddle to- 
 gether anyhow in untidy attic bed-chambers, and her 
 servants swelter on shake-downs beside the kitchen 
 fire? She prefers this a hundred times to stating 
 plainly, by word or manner : " My income is so much 
 a-year I don't care who knows it it will not allow 
 me to live beyond a certain rate, it will not keep com- 
 fortably both my family and acquaintance ; therefore, 
 excuse my preferring the comfort of my family to the 
 entertainment of my acquaintance. And, Society, if 
 you choose to look in upon us, you must just take us 
 as we are, without any pretences of any kind ; or you 
 may shut the door, and good by !" 
 
 And Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is 
 astonishing what an amount of " eccentricity" it will 
 stand from anybody who takes the bull by the 
 horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of con- 
 sequences. How respectfully it will follow a clevei 
 
Women of the World. 209 
 
 woman who is superior to the weakness of washing 
 her hands or combing her hair properly, whose mil- 
 liner and dress-maker must evidently have lived in 
 the last century, and who, in her manners and con- 
 versation, often breaks through every rule of even 
 the commonest civility I How the same thoroughly 
 respectable set, which would be shocked to let its 
 young daughters take a morning shopping in Eegent 
 Street unprotected by a tall footman, will carry them 
 at night to a soiree given by a Lady Somebody, of 
 rather more doubtful reputation, till some rich mar- 
 riage, which in its utter lovelessness and hypocrisy 
 may have been, in the sight of Heaven, the foulest of 
 all her sins, in the sight of man obliterated every one 
 of them at once I 
 
 Yet this " world" which, when we come to look at 
 it, seems nothing less than nothing a chimera that 
 no honest heart need quail at for a moment--is at 
 once the idol and the bete noire of a large portion of 
 women-kind during their whole existence. Ay, from 
 the day when baby's first wardrobe must be of the 
 most extravagant description, costing in lace, braid- 
 
21 o Women of the World. 
 
 ing, and embroidery a'most as much as mammas 
 marriage outfit which was a deal too fine for her 
 station when all the while unfortunate baby would 
 be quite as pretty and twice as comfortable in plain 
 muslin and lawn; down to the last day of our subjuga- 
 tion to fashion, when we must needs be carried to our 
 permanent repose under a proper amount of feathers, 
 and followed by a customary number of mourning 
 coaches after being coaxed to it useless luxury ! 
 by a satin-lined coffin, stuffed pillow, and ornamented 
 shroud. 
 
 In the intermediate stage, marriage, we are worse 
 off still, because the world's iron hand is upon us at a 
 time and under circumstances when we can most 
 keenly feel its grinding weight. 
 
 " Do you think," said a young lady once to me, 
 " that Henry and, I ought to marry upon less than 
 four hundred a-year ?" 
 
 " No certainly, my dear ; because you marry for so 
 many people's benefit besides your own. How, for 
 instance, could your acquaintance bear to see moreen 
 curtains, instead of the blue-and-silver damask you 
 
Women of the World. 211 
 
 were talking of! And how could you give those 
 charming little dinner-parties which, you say, are in- 
 dispensable to one in your position, without three ser- 
 vants or a boy in buttons as well ? Nay, if you went 
 into society at all, of the kind you now keep, a fifth of 
 Henry's annual income would melt away in dresses, 
 bouquets, and white kid-gloves. No, my dear girl, I 
 can by no means advise you to marry upon less than 
 four hundred a-year." 
 
 My young friend looked up, a little doubtful if I 
 were in jest or earnest ; and Mr. Henry gave vent to 
 an impatient sigh. I thought " Poor things !" for 
 they were honestly in love, and there was no earthly 
 reason why they should not marry. How many 
 hundreds more are thus wasting the besfr years of 
 their life, the best hopes of their youth, love, home, 
 usefulness, energy and God only knows how much 
 oesides and for what? Evening-parties, dresses, 
 and gloves, a fine house, and blue-and-silver curtains ! 
 
 Yet a woman of the world would have said that 
 this couple were quite right; that if they had married 
 and lived afterwards with the careful prudence that 
 
212 Women of the World. 
 
 alone would have been possible to a young man of 
 Mr. Henry's independent character,. they must infalli- 
 bly have gone down in society, have dropped out of 
 their natural circle, to begin life as their parents did, 
 as most middle-class parents have done, narrowly 
 and humbly. Though without much fear of positive 
 starvation, they must have given up many luxuries, 
 have had to learn and practise many domestic econo- 
 mies which probably never had come into the head 
 of either the lady or the gentleman; and yet love 
 might have taught them, as it teaches the most 
 ignorant. They would undoubtedly have had to live, 
 for the next few years at least, not for society at large, 
 but for their own two selves and their immediate 
 connexions. 
 
 And very likely Henry would have done it, for a 
 young fellow in love will do mightily heroic things ; 
 some, especially hard- worked professional men, being 
 weak enough to believe that a snug fire-side, where a 
 cheerful-faced little wife has warmed his slippers and 
 sits pouring out his tea even if obliged to make 
 sundry intermediate rushes up-stairs to quiet some- 
 
Women of the World. 213 
 
 thing which obstinately refuses to go to sleep is 
 preferable to a handsome solitary club-dinner, a wine 
 and-cigar party, or a ball, at which he revels till 3 
 A.M. in the smiles of a tarlatane angel, whom he may 
 ask to waltz ad libitum, but dare not for his life 01 
 his honour, which is dearer ask any other .question, 
 until he has got grey hairs and a thousand a-year. 
 Dares not, for the worldly fathers, the still more 
 worldly mothers, nay, the young daughters them- 
 selves, whose hearts, under their innocent muslins, 
 are slowly hardening into those of premature women 
 of the world, would stand aghast at the idea; " Love 
 in a cottage" such an out-of-date, absurdly romantic, 
 preposterous thing! Which it decidedly is for 
 people who bring to the said cottage the expectations 
 and necessities of Hyde Park Gardens or Belgrave 
 Square. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, it is hardly possible to 
 over-calculate the evils accruing to individuals and to 
 society in general from this custom, gradually increas- 
 ing, of late and ultra-prudent marriages. Parents 
 bring up their daughters in luxurious homes, expect- 
 
214 Women of the World. 
 
 ing and exacting that the home to which they transfer 
 them should be of almost equal ease ; forgetting how 
 next to impossible it is for such a home to be offered 
 by any young man of the present generation, who 
 has to work his way like his father before him. 
 V Daughters, accustomed to a life of ease and laziness, 
 are early taught to check every tendency towards " a 
 romantic attachment " the insane folly of loving a 
 man for what he is, rather than for what he has got ; 
 of being content to fight the worldly battle hand-in- 
 hand with a hand that is worth clasping, rather 
 than settle down in comfortable sloth, protected and 
 provided for in all external things. Young men . . . 
 But words fail to trace the lot of enforced bachelor- 
 hood, hardest when its hardship ceases to be con- 
 sciously felt. An unmarried woman, if a good 
 woman, can always make herself happy ; find innu- 
 merable duties, interests, amusements; live a pure, 
 cheerful, and useful life. So can some men but 
 very, very few. 
 
 Scarcely any sight is more pitiable than a young 
 man who has drifted on to past thirty, without home 
 
Women of the World. 2 1 <; 
 
 or near kindred; with just income enough to keep 
 him respectably in the position which he supposes 
 himself bound to maintain, and to supply him with 
 the various small luxuries such as thirty guineas 
 per annum in cigars, &c. which have become habi- 
 tual to him. Like his fellow-mortals, he is liable 
 enough to the unlucky weakness of falling in love, 
 now and then; but he somehow manages to extin- 
 guish the passion before it gets fairly alight; know- 
 ing he can no more venture to ask a girl in his own 
 sphere to marry him, or be engaged to him, than he 
 can coax the planet Venus out of her golden west 
 into the dirty, gloomy, two-pair-back where his laun- 
 dress cheats him, and his landlady abuses him : 
 whence, perhaps, he occasionally emerges gloriously, 
 all studs and white necktie to assist at some young 
 beauty's wedding, where he feels in his heart he might 
 once have been the happy bridegroom if from his 
 silence she had not been driven to go desperately and 
 sell herself to the old fool opposite, and is fast becom- 
 ing, nay, is already become, a fool's clever mate a 
 mere woman of the world. And he what a noble 
 
216 Women of the World. 
 
 ideal he has gained of our sex, from this and other 
 similar experiences ! with what truth of emotion will 
 he repeat, as he gives the toast of " The bridemaids," 
 the hackneyed quotation about pain and sorrow 
 wringing the brow, and smile half-adoringly, half- 
 pathetically, at the "ministering angels" who titter 
 around him. They, charming innocents ! will doubt- 
 less go home avouching "What a delightful person is 
 Mr. So-and-so. I wonder he never gets married." 
 While Mr. So-and-So also goes home, sardonically 
 minded, to his dull lodgings, his book and his cigar, 
 or he best knows where. And in the slow process 
 of inevitable deterioration, by forty he learns to think 
 matrimony a decided humbug ; and hugs himself in 
 the conclusion that a virtuous, high-minded, and dis- 
 interested woman, if existing at all, exists as a mere 
 lusus naturcenot to be met with by mortal man 
 now-a-days. Believing his feeling with a grunt 
 half-sigh, half-sneer he dresses and goes to the opera 
 or the ballet, at all events or settles himself on the 
 'sofa to a French novel, and ends by firmly believing 
 us women to be what we are painted there ! 
 
Women of the World. 217 
 
 Good God! the exclamation is too solemn to 
 be profane if this state of things be true, and it is 
 true, and I have barely touched the outer surface of 
 its unfathomably horrible truth what will the next 
 generation come to? What will they be those 
 unborn millions who are to grow up into our men 
 and our women? The possible result, even in a 
 practical, to say nothing of a moral light, is awful 
 to think upon. 
 
 Can it not be averted ? Can we not since, while 
 the power of the world is with men, the influence lies 
 with women can we not bring up our girls more 
 usefully and less showily less dependent on luxury 
 and wealth? Can we not teach them from babyhood 
 that to labour is a higher thing than merely to enjoy ; 
 that even enjoyment itself is never so sweet as when 
 it has been earned? Can we not put into their 
 minds, whatever be their station, principles of truth, 
 simplicity of taste, helpfulness, hatred of waste , and, 
 these being firmly rooted, trust to their blossoming 
 up in whatever destiny the young maiden may be 
 
 called to? We should not then have to witness the 
 
 10 
 
218 Women of the World. 
 
 terrors that beset dying beds when a family of girla 
 will be left unprovided for ; nor the angry shame 
 when some thoughtless young pair commit matri- 
 mony, and rush ignorantly into debt, poverty, and 
 disgrace, from which -facilis descensus Averni all the 
 efforts of too-late compassionate relatives can never 
 altogether raise them. 
 
 Nevertheless and I risk this declaration without 
 fear of its causing a general rush to the register-offices, 
 or the publication, at every out-of-the-way church in 
 the three kingdoms, of surreptitious bans between all 
 the under-aged simpletons who choose to fly in the 
 face of Providence by marrying upon 
 
 " Nothing a week, and that uncertain very I" 
 
 nevertheless, taking life as a whole, believing that 
 it consists not in what we have, but in our power of 
 enjoying the same ; that there are in it things nobler 
 and dearer than ease, plenty, or freedom frcm care - 
 nay, even than existence itself; surely it is not 
 Quixotism, but common-sense and Christianity, to 
 
Women of the World. 219 
 
 protest that love is better than outside show, labour 
 than indolence, virtue than mere respectability. 
 Truly, in this present day putting aside those cases 
 Avhere duty and justice have claims higher than 
 cither love or happiness there is many an instance 
 ef cowardly selfishness, weakness, and falsehood, com- 
 mitted by young people of both sexes, under the 
 names of prudence, honourable feeling, or obedience 
 to parents ; there is many an act, petted under the 
 name of a virtue, which is a much blacker crime be- 
 fore God, and of far more fatal result to society at 
 large, than the worst of these so-called improvident 
 marriages. 
 
 Strange how much people will sacrifice ay, even 
 women will to this Moloch of the world ! It re- 
 minds me of an infantile worship, which a certain 
 friend of mine confessed to have instituted, and offici- 
 ated as high-priestess of, at the age of three-and-a-half. 
 She used to collect from her own store, and levy from 
 unwilling co-idolaters, all sorts of childish dainties, 
 together with turnips, apple-parings, &c., and lay 
 them in a remote corner of the farmyard, as ?n offer- 
 
22O Women of the World. 
 
 ing to a mysterious invisible being called Dor, whc 
 came in the night and feasted thereon at least, the 
 sacrifice was always gone the next morning. A 
 pious relative, finding her out, stopped with great 
 horror the proceedings of this earnest little heathen ; 
 but for years after, nothing would have persuaded my 
 deluded young friend that the awful Dor was, in fact, 
 only a chance-wind, a hen and her chickens, or a 
 hungry old sow. So, often, it is not till half a life- 
 time has been expended on this thankless service, that 
 we come to find out if we ever do find out that 
 the invisible Daimon who swallows up the best of 
 our good things time, ease, wealth, money, comfort, 
 peace, and well if no more than these is, after all, a 
 combination of the merest accidents, or perhaps one 
 individual brute beast. 
 
 Yet, there is a fascination, hard to account for, but 
 idle to gainsay, in this miserable Eleusinia, this blind 
 worship of a self-invented god. Who does not know 
 the story of the wise old nanny-goat, which painted to 
 her dear daughter that horrible wild beast, the leopard, 
 giving him every conceivable ugliness, a ghastly wide 
 
Women of the World. 221 
 
 mouth and fiery eyes ; so that when the fair Miss Kid 
 saw a beautiful animal with shiny spotted skin and 
 graceful motions, sporting innocently after his own 
 tail in the forest shadow, how could she ever identify 
 him with the portrait her mother drew ? What could 
 she do,, but approach, and wonder, and admire, then 
 fall right into his clutches, and have her poor little 
 bones crunched between his dazzling jaws? Would 
 not many a mother do well in laying to heart this old 
 fable? 
 
 Yes, the world is doubtless very pleasant in its 
 way. Delicious, almost to deliriousness, is a young 
 girl's first step into the enchanted circle called " good 
 society;" to feel herself in her best attire and best 
 looks, charming and charmed, for the behoof of the 
 entire company ; or, as it usually soon comes to, poor 
 little fool I for the sake of one particular person 
 therein. And for a long time after, though the first 
 magic of the cup is gone, though it intoxicates rather 
 than exhilarates, it is by no means the poison-cup that 
 frigid moralists would make us believe. It has a lit- 
 tle of the narcotic ; and the young woman begins to 
 
222 Women of the World. 
 
 take it as such, feeling rather ashamed of Lerself for 
 BO doing ; and, like all opiates, it leaves a slight bit- 
 terness in the mouth. But what of that ? 
 
 Now and then our young lady wonders, during 
 " slow " evening-parties and prosy morning-calls, 
 whether her whistle is worth quite as much as she 
 has daily to pay for it whether the agreeable circles 
 in which she moves are not, if they would but avow it, 
 for the chief part of the time that they spend together, 
 a very great bore to themselves and to one another 
 whether, after all, one handful of the salt of common- 
 sense would not purify society as' well as a bushel of 
 idle ceremonies, and one ounce of kind feeling, tact, 
 and thoughtfulness for others, be worth a cart-load of 
 ponderous etiquette.' And perhaps she sets to work 
 on this grand, new, and original system of hers, which 
 every young heart thinks it is the very first to discover 
 and practise 
 
 " Like one who tries in little boat 
 To tug to him the ship afloat." 
 
 Most likely she fails fails totally, angrily, miserably ; 
 
Women of the World. 223 
 
 only gets herself misjudged and laughed at, and 
 resolves no more to remodel the world which may 
 be a wise determination ; or settles into stolid indiffer- 
 ence, and believes that, after all, right and wrong do 
 not much matter ; it will all be the same a hundred 
 years hence : so drops slowly into the current, and is 
 drifted with the rest, along, along whither ? 
 
 Or else, having just penetration enough left to dis- 
 tinguish a truth from its eidolon, its doppelg anger, 
 which almost always walks alongside of it, and mim- 
 ics it, in this strange world of ours, she gradually per- 
 ceives the sense, beauty, and fitness which may be 
 traced under the most exaggerated of forms and cus- 
 toms. She sees also that these 
 
 " Nice customs courtesy to great kings," 
 
 as saith Henry of England when he kisses his French 
 Katherine ; and that any woman is unworthy of the 
 just empery of her sex when she gives up to either fash- 
 ion or ceremony her common-sense, comfort, or good 
 taste : when, for instance, she condescends to make of 
 
224 Women of the World. 
 
 herself a silk-draped walking butter-tub, or a 
 female 
 
 " Whose head 
 Does grow beneath her shoulders ;" 
 
 when she suffers herself to waste hour after hour, day 
 after day, year after year, in the company of frivolous 
 folk, who she can do no good to, and receive no 
 good from, and whom, she is fully aware, if she drop- 
 ped out of their smiling circle to-morrow, to die in a 
 ditch, in the hospital close by, or were even to create 
 a temporary sensation by jumping from "Waterloo 
 Bridge, would merely remark : "Dear me, how shock- 
 ing ! Who would have thought it ? "Well, as I was 
 saying . . . ." 
 
 No doubt, this conviction, when it fairly breaks 
 upon her, strikes her poor weakened eyes with a pain- 
 ful glare, which throws into harder outline than is 
 natural the cruel angles of this would-be palace that 
 for a time seems to her little better than a grim dun* 
 geon, from which she only seeks to escape 
 
 " Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world." 
 
* Women of the World. 225 
 
 This is the crisis of her life. She either ends by % 
 tacit, hopeless acquiescence in what she both despises 
 and disbelieves, or herself sinking to their level, 
 accepts them as realities after all. Or else, by a des- 
 perate struggle, she creeps from chaos into order, from 
 darkness into clear day, learns slowly and temperately 
 to distinguish things, and people, in their true colours 
 and natural forms ; taking them just as they are, no 
 better and no worse, and trying to make the best of 
 them : to use the world, in short, as its Maker doth 
 after the example of Him who himself said that the 
 tares and wheat must " grow together until the har- 
 vest." 
 
 Such an one and I ask those of my sex who read 
 this page, if I have not painted her according to 
 nature? if many weary, dissatisfied hearts, beating 
 heavily with pulses they do not understand, will not 
 confess, that in some poor way I have spoken out 
 their already half-recognised feelings? such an one 
 will escape that end to which all must come who fix 
 their pleasures alone in this life: the woman of 
 
 fashion, after the pattern of Mrs. Skewton and Lady 
 
 10* 
 
?.26 Women of the World. * 
 
 Kew: the woman of "mind," fluttering her faded 
 plumage in the face of a new generation, which 
 recognises her not, or recognises only to make game 
 of her: or the ordinary woman of the world. 
 
 This latter in her day of decline, who has not en- 
 countered her some time or another ? Dependent on 
 the pity of those who remember what she was, or 
 might have been; invited out, because there is a 
 certain agreeableness about her still, and because, 
 "poor thing, she likes a little society;" yet made 
 irritable by a perpetual need of excitement, which 
 drives her to prefer anybody's company to her own. 
 Painfully jealous over every fragment of the affection 
 which she herself has never disinterestedly shown to 
 anybody, but has spread it, like school bread and 
 butter, over so wide a surface, that tastelessness is the 
 natural consequence of its extreme tenuity. 
 
 Friendships she has none : she never either desired 
 or deserved them. In all her long career, she has 
 never been able to take root in any human heart. As 
 for the Heart Divine, the chances are that she has 
 never once sought it, or believed in it. She has 
 
Women of the World. 227 
 
 believed in a cushioned pew, in a velvet prayer-book 
 with, a gilt cross on tlie back; in certain religious 
 thoughts, words, and deeds, proper for Sundays and 
 holidays, and possibly suitable for that "convenient 
 season" when she means to "make her peace with 
 Heaven," as the judge tells the criminal who is 
 " turned off" to seek in another existence that hope 
 which man denies. But for all else her soul contra- 
 distinguished from her intellect, which may be vivid 
 and brilliant still is a blank, a darkness, a death in 
 life. 
 
 And yet the woman of the world will one day lave 
 to die ! 
 
 We can but leave her to Infinite Mercy then. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HAPPY AND UNHAPPY WOMEN. 
 
 1 GIVE fair warning that this is likely to be a " senti- 
 mental" chapter. Those who object to the same, and 
 complain that these " Thoughts" are " not practical," 
 had better pass it over at once, since it treats of 
 things essentially unpractical, impossible to be 
 weighed and measured, handled and analysed, yet as 
 real in themselves as the air we breathe and the sun- 
 shine we delight in things wholly intangible, yet the 
 very essence and necessity of our lives. 
 
 Happiness! Can any human being undertake to 
 define it for another ? Yarious last-century poets have 
 indulged in " Odes" to it, and good Mrs. Barbauld 
 wrote a " Search" after it a most correct, elegantly 
 phrased, and genteel little drama, which, the dramatis 
 personce being all females, and not a bit of love in the 
 whole, is, I believe, still acted in old-fashioned 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 229 
 
 boarding-schools, with, great eclat. The plot, if I 
 remember right, consists of an elderly lady's leading 
 four or five younger ones on the immemorial search, 
 through a good many very long speeches ; but whether 
 they ever found happiness, or what it was like when 
 found, I really have not the least recollection. 
 
 Let us hope that excellent Mrs. Barbauld is one of 
 the very few who dare to venture upon even the pri- 
 mary question What is Happiness ? Perhaps, poor 
 dear woman ! she is better able to answer it now. 
 
 I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come 
 to is, that in this world happiness is quite indefinable. 
 "We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun 
 in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it 
 interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and 
 strength ; we can see it in a pale reflection shining 
 elsewhere ; or in its total absence, we, walking in 
 darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is 
 not. But I doubt whether any woman ever craved 
 for it, philosophised over it, or pardon, shade of Bar- 
 bauld! commenced the systematic search after it, 
 and ever attained her end. For happiness is not an 
 
230 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 end it is only a means, an adjunct, a consequence, 
 The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed b^y 
 any, save those who out of their own human selfish- 
 ness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be ab- 
 sorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of 
 His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His 
 ineffable goodness and love. 
 
 Therefore, whosoever starts with " to be happy" as 
 the summum lonum of existence, will assuredly find 
 out she has made as great a mistake as when in her 
 babyhood she cried, as most of us do, for the moon, 
 which we cannot get for all our crying. And yet it 
 is a very good moon, notwithstanding ; a real moon, 
 too, who will help us to many a poetical dream, light 
 us in many a lovers' walk, till she shine over the 
 grass of our graves upon a new generation ready to 
 follow upon the immemorial quest. Which, like the 
 quest of the Sangreal, is only possible to pure hearts, 
 although the very purest can never fully attain it, ex- 
 cept, like Sir Galahad, through the gates of the Hoty 
 City the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Happy and unhappy women the adjectives being 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 231 
 
 applied less with reference to circumstances than cha 
 racter, which is the only mode of judgment possible 
 to judge them and discourse of them is a very 
 difficult matter at best. Yet I am afraid it cannot be 
 doubted that there is a large average of unhappiness 
 existent among women : not merely unhappiness of 
 circumstances, but unhappiness of soul a state of 
 being often as unaccountable as it is irrational, finding 
 vent in those innumerable faults of temper and dis- 
 position which arise from no inherent vice, but merely 
 because the individual is not happy. 
 
 Possibly, women more than men are liable to this 
 dreary mental eclipse neither daylight nor darkness. 
 A man will go poetically wretched or morbidly mis- 
 anthropic, or any great misfortune will overthrow 
 him entirely, drive him to insanity, lure him to slip 
 out of life through the terrible by-road of suicide ; 
 but he rarely drags on existence from year to year, 
 with " nerves," " low spirits," and the various mala- 
 dies of mind and temper that make many women a 
 torment to themselves, and a burden to al] connected 
 with them. 
 
232 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 "Why is this ? and is it inevitable ? Any one who 
 could in the smallest degree answer this question, 
 would be doing something to the lessening of a great 
 evil greater than many other evils which, being 
 social and practical, show 'more largely on the aggre- 
 gate census of female woe. 
 
 Most assuredly, however unpoetical may be such a 
 view of the matter, the origin of a great deal of 
 unhappiness is physical disease ; or rather, the loss of 
 that healthy condition of body, which in the present 
 state of civilisation, so far removed from a state of 
 nature, can only be kept up in any individual by the 
 knowledge and practice of the ordinary laws of 
 hygiene generally the very last knowledge that 
 women seem to have. The daily necessities of water, 
 fresh air, proper clothing, food, and sleep, with the 
 due regulation of each of these, without which no 
 human being can expect to live healthily or happily, 
 are matters in which the only excuse for lamentable 
 neglect is still more lamentable ignorance. 
 
 An ignorance the worse, because it is generally 
 quite unacknowledged. If you tell a young girl that 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 233 
 
 water, the colder the better, is essential to every pore 
 of her delicate skin every morning; that moderate 
 out-door exercise, and regularity in eating, sleeping, 
 employment, and amusement, are to her a daily neces- 
 sity ; that she should make it a part of her education 
 to acquire a certain amount of current information on 
 sanitary science, and especially on the laws of her 
 own being, physical and mental: tell her this, and 
 the chances are she will stare at you uncomprehend- 
 ingly, or be shocked, as if you were saying to her 
 something "improper," or answer flippantly: "Oh, 
 yes ; I know all that." 
 
 But of what use is the knowledge ? when she lies 
 in bed till ten o'clock, and sits up till any hour the next 
 morning ; eats all manner of food at all manner of 
 irregular intervals; is horrified at leaving her bed- 
 room window two inches open, or at being caught in 
 a slight shower ; yet will cower all day over the fire 
 in a high woollen dress, and put on a low muslin one 
 in the evening. "When she wears all winter thin 
 boots, gossamer stockings, a gown open at the chest 
 and arms, and a loose mantle that every wind blows 
 
234 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 under, yet wonders that she always has a cold ! and 
 weighs herself down in summer-time with four petti- 
 coats heaped one over the other, yet is quite astonished 
 that she gets hot and tired so soon ! Truly any sen- 
 sible, old-fashioned body, who knows how much .the 
 health, happiness, and general well-being of this 
 generation and, alas! not this generation alone 
 depend upon these charming, loveable, fascinating 
 young fools, cannot fail to be " aggravated" by them 
 every day. 
 
 However humiliating the fact may be to those po- 
 etical theorists who, in spite of all the laws of nature, 
 wish to make the soul entirely independent of the 
 body forgetting, that if so, its temporary probation 
 in the body at all, would have been quite unnecessa- 
 ry I repeat, there can be no really sanitary state of 
 mind without a similar condition of body ; and that 
 one of the first requisites of happiness is good health. 
 But as this is not meant to be an essay on domestic 
 hygiene, I had better here leave the subject. 
 
 Its corresponding phase opens a gate of misery so 
 wide that one almost shrinks from entering it. Inn- 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 235 
 
 nite, past human counting or judging, are the causes 
 of mental unhappiness. Many of them spring from a 
 real foundation, of sorrows varied beyond all mea- 
 suring or reasoning upon : of these, I do not attempt 
 to speak, for words would be idle and presumptuous ; 
 I only speak of that frame of mind sometimes left 
 behind by a great trouble, sometimes arising from 
 troubles purely imaginary which is called " an un- 
 happy disposition." 
 
 Its root of pain is manifold; but with women, 
 undoubtedly can be oftenest traced to something con- 
 nected with the affections : not merely the passion 
 called par excellence love, but the entire range of per- 
 sonal sympathies and attachments, out of which we 
 draw the sweetness and bitterness of the best part of 
 our lives. If otherwise if, as the phrase goes, an 
 individual happens to have " more head than heart," 
 she may be a very clever, agreeable personage, but 
 she is not properly a woman not the creature who, 
 with all her imperfections, is nearer to heaven than 
 man, in one particular she " loves much." And 
 loving is so frequently, nay, inevitably, identical with 
 
236 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 suffering, either with, or for, or from, the object 
 beloved, that we need not go further to find the cause 
 of the many anxious, soured faces, and irritable tem- 
 pers, that we meet with among women. 
 
 Charity cannot too deeply or too frequently call, to 
 mind how very difficult it is to be good, or amiable, 
 or even commonly agreeable, when one is inwardly 
 miserable. This fact is not enough recognised by 
 those very worthy people who take such a world of 
 pains to make other people virtuous, and so very 
 little to make them happy. They sow good seed, are 
 everlastingly weeding and watering, give it every 
 care and advantage under the sun except sunshine 
 and then they wonder that it does not flower 1 
 
 One may see many a young woman who has, 
 outwardly speaking, " everything she can possibly 
 want," absolutely withering in the atmosphere of a 
 loveless home, exposed to those small ill-humours by 
 which people mean no harm only do it ; chilled by 
 reserve, wounded by neglect, or worried by anxiety 
 over some thoughtless one, who might so easily havo 
 spared her it all ; safe from either misfortune or ill- 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 237 
 
 treatment, yet harassed daily by petty pains and 
 unconscious cruelties, which a stranger might laugh 
 at ; and she laughs herself when she counts them up, 
 they are so very small yet they are there. 
 
 " I can bear anything," said to me a woman, no 
 longer very young or very fascinating, or particularly 
 clever, who had gone through seas of sorrow, yet 
 whose blue* eyes still kept the dewiness and cheerful- 
 ness of their youth ; "I can bear anything, except 
 unkindness." 
 
 She was right. There are numberless cases where 
 gentle creatures, who would have endured bravely 
 any amount of real trouble, have their lives frozen 
 up by those small unkindnesses which copy-books 
 avouch to be " a great offence ;" where an avalanche 
 of worldly benefits, an act of undoubted generosity, 
 or the most conscientious administering of a friendly 
 rebuke, has had its good effects wholly neutralised 
 by the manner in which it was done. It is vain to 
 preach to people unless you also love them Chris- 
 tianly love them ; it is not the smallest use to try to 
 make people good, unless you try at the same time 
 
238 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 and they feel that you are trying to make them 
 happy. And you rarely can make another happy, 
 unless you are happy yourself. 
 
 Naming the affections as the chief source of unhap- 
 piness among our sex, it would be wrong to pass 
 over one phase of them, which must nevertheless be 
 touched tenderly and delicately, as one that women 
 instinctively hide out of sight and comment. I mean 
 what is usually termed " a disappointment." Alas I 
 as if there were no disappointments but those of 
 love ! and yet, until men and women are made differ- 
 ently from what God made them, it must always be, 
 from its very secretness and inwardness, the sharpest 
 of all pangs, save that of conscience. 
 
 A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it 
 as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and 
 will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its 
 infinite varieties: loss by death, by faithlessness or 
 unworthiness, and by mistaken or unrequited affec- 
 tion. Of these, the second is beyond all question the 
 worst. There is in death a consecration which lulls 
 the sharpest personal anguish into comparative calm ; 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 239 
 
 and in time there comes, to all pure and religious 
 natures, that sense of total possession of the object? 
 beloved, which death alone gives that faith, which 
 is content to see them safe landed out of the troubles 
 of this changeful life, into the life everlasting. And 
 an attachment which has always been on one side 
 only, has a certain incompleteness which prevents its 
 ever knowing the full agony of having and losing, 
 while at the same time it preserves to the last a 
 dreamy sanctity which sweetens half its pain. But 
 to have loved and lost, either by that total disen- 
 chantment which leaves compassion as the sole sub- 
 stitute for love which can exist no more, or by the 
 slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day 
 all that constitutes the diviner part of love namely, 
 reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to 
 the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic ten- 
 derness this lot is probably the hardest any woman 
 can have to bear. 
 
 " What is good for a bootless bene ? 
 And she made answer, Endless sorrow." 
 
240 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 No. There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or 
 ought to be, endless. To believe or to make it so, is 
 nn insult to Heaven itself. Each of us must have 
 known more than one instance where a saintly or he- 
 roic life has been developed from what at first seemed 
 a stroke like death itself; a life full of the calmest 
 and truest happiness because it has bent itself to the 
 Divine will, and learned the best of all lessons, to 
 endure. But how that lesson is learned, through 
 what bitter teaching, hard to be understood or 
 obeyed, till the hand of the Great Teacher is recog- 
 nised clearly through it all, is a subject too sacred to 
 be entered upon here. 
 
 It is a curious truth and yet a truth forced upon 
 us by daily observation that it is not the women 
 who have suffered most who are the unhappy wo- 
 men. A state of permanent unhappiness not the 
 morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which 
 generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, 
 incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all 
 tilings and all people, which we see in some women, 
 is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 241 
 
 the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. Nor 
 can it be too early impressed upon every girl that 
 this condition of mental mal-aise, whatever be its 
 origin, is neither a poetical nor a beautiful thing, but 
 a mere disease, and as such ought to be combated 
 and medicined with all remedies in her power, prac- 
 tical, corporeal, and spiritual. For though it is folly 
 to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and 
 that we can make ourselves content and cheerful 
 whenever we choose a theory that many poor 
 hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh 
 driven mad yet, on the other hand, no sane mind 
 is ever left without the power of self-discipline and 
 self-control in a measure, which measure increases in 
 proportion as it is exercised. 
 
 Let any sufferer be once convinced that she has this 
 power that it is possible by careful watch, or, better, 
 by substitution of subjects and occupations, to ab- 
 stract her mind from dwelling on some predominant 
 idea, which otherwise runs in and out of the chambers 
 of the brain like a haunting devil, at last growing into 
 
 the monomania which, philosophy says, every human 
 
 11 
 
242 Happy 'and Unhappy Women. 
 
 being is affected with, on some one particular point 
 only, happily, he does not know it ; only let her try 
 if she has not, with regard to her mental constitution, 
 the same faculty which would prevent her from 
 dancing with a sprained ankle, or imagining that 
 there is an earthquake because her own head is spin- 
 ning with fever, and she will have at least taken the 
 first steps towards cure. As many a man sits weary 
 ing his soul out by trying to remedy some grand flaw 
 in the plan of society, or the problem of the universe, 
 when perhaps the chief thing wrong is his own liver, 
 or overtasked brain; so many a woman will pine 
 away to the brink of the grave with an imaginary 
 broken heart, or sour to the very essence of vinegar 
 on account of everybody's supposed ill-usage of her, 
 when it is her own restless, dissatisfied, selfish heart, 
 which makes her at war with everybody. 
 
 Would that women and men, too, but that their 
 busier and more active lives save most of them from 
 it could be taught from their childhood to recognise 
 as an evil spirit this spirit of causeless melancholy 
 this demon which dwells among the tombs, and yet, 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 243 
 
 which first shows itself in such a charming and pic- 
 turesque form, that we hug it to our innocent breasts, 
 and never suspect that it may enter in and dwell 
 there till we are actually "possessed ;" cease almost to 
 be accountable beings, and are fitter for a lunatic asy- 
 lum than for the home-circle, which, be it ever so 
 bright and happy, has always, from the inevitable 
 misfortunes of life, only too much need of sunshine 
 rather than shadow, or permanent gloom. 
 
 Oh, if such women did but know what comfort 
 there is in a cheerful spirit ! how the heart leaps up 
 to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even tem- 
 per, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is 
 better, from conscientious principle, has learned to 
 take all things on their bright side, believing that the 
 Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering 
 we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He 
 sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil ! 
 like a child who, when once it thoroughly believes in 
 its father, believes in all his dealings with it, whethei 
 it understands them or not. 
 
 And here, if the subject were not too solemn to be 
 
244 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 more than touched upon, yet no one dare avoid it 
 who believes that there are no such distinctions as 
 * secular" and " religious," but that the whole earth 
 with all therein is, not only on Sundays, but all days, 
 continually "the LOKD'S" I will put it to most peo 
 pie's experience, which is better than a hundred ho- 
 milies, whether, though they may have known sincere 
 Christians who, from various causes, were not alto- 
 gether happy, they ever knew one happy person, man 
 or woman, who, whatever his or her form of creed 
 might be, was not in heart, and speech, and daily life, 
 emphatically a follower of Christ a Christian ? 
 
 Among the many secondary influences which can 
 be employed either by or upon a naturally anxious 
 or morbid temperament, there is none so ready to 
 hand, or so wholesome, as that one incessantly referred 
 to in the course of these pages, constant employ- 
 ment. A very large number of women, particularly 
 young women, are by nature constituted so exceed- 
 ingly restless of mind, or with such a strong physical 
 tendency to nervous depression, that they can by no 
 possibility keep themselves in a state of even to! era- 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. ^245 
 
 ble cheerfulness, except by being continually occu- 
 pied. At what, matters little; even apparently useless 
 work is far better for them than no work at all. To 
 such I cannot too strongly recommend the case of 
 
 " Honest John Tomkins, the hedger and ditcher, 
 Who, though he was poor, didn't want to be richer," 
 
 but always managed to keep in a state of sublime con- 
 tent and superabundant gaiety ; and how ? 
 
 " He always had something or other to do, 
 If not for himself for his neighbour." 
 
 And that work for our neighbour is perhaps the 
 most useful and satisfactory of the two, because it 
 takes us out of ourselves; which, to a person who 
 has not a happy self to rest in, is one good thing 
 achieved : 1Jhis, quite apart from the abstract question 
 of benevolence, or the notion of keeping a balance- 
 sheet with Heaven for work done to our fellow-crea- 
 tures certainly a very fruitless recipe for happiness. 
 
 The sufferer, on waking in the morning that cruel 
 moment when any incurable pain wakes up too, 
 
246 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 sharply, so sharply ! and the burden of a monotonous 
 life falls down upon us, or rises like a dead blank wall 
 before us, making us turn round on the pillow long- 
 ing for another night, instead of an insupportable day 
 should rouse herself with the thought : " Now, 
 what have I got to do to-day?" (Mark, not to enjoy 
 or to suffer, only to do.) She should never lie down 
 at night without counting up, with a resolute, uncom- 
 promising, unexcusing veracity, " How much have I 
 done to-day?" "I can't be happy," she may ponder 
 wearily ; " 'tis useless trying so we'll not think about 
 it : but how much have I done this day ? how much 
 can I do to-morrow?" And if she has strength 
 steadily to fulfil this manner of life, it will be strange 
 if, some day, the faint, involuntary thrill that we call 
 "feeling happy" something like that with which we 
 stop to see a daisy at our feet in January does not 
 come and startle into vague, mysterious hope, the poor 
 wondering heart. 
 
 Another element of happiness, incalculable in its 
 influence over those of sensitive and delicate physical 
 organisation, is Order. Any one who has just quitted 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 247 
 
 a disorderly household, where the rooms are untidy 
 and "littery," where meals take place at any houi 
 and in any fashion, where there is a general atmo- 
 sphere of noise, confusion, and irregularity ; of doing 
 things at all times and seasons, or not doing anything 
 in particular all day over ; who, emerging from this, 
 drops into a quiet, busy, regular family, where each 
 has an appointed task, and does it ; where the day 
 moves on smoothly, subdivided by proper seasons of 
 labour, leisure, food, and sleep oh, what a Paradise it 
 seems ! How the restless or anxious spirit nestles down 
 in it, and, almost without volition, falls into its cheer- 
 ful round, recovering tone, and calm, and strength. 
 
 " Order is Heaven's first law," 
 
 and a mind without order can by no possibility be 
 either a healthy or a happy mind. Therefore, beyond 
 all sentimental sympathy, or contemptuous blame, 
 .should be impressed upon all women inclined to me- 
 lancholy, or weighed down with any irremediable 
 grief, this simple advice to make their daily round 
 of life as harmoniously methodical as they possibly 
 
248 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 can ; leaving no odd hours, scarcely an odd ten 
 minutes, to be idle and dreary in ; and by means of 
 orderly-arranged, light, airy rooms, neat* dress, and 
 every pleasant external influence that is attainable, to 
 leave untried none of these secondary means which 
 are in the power of every one of us, for our own bene- 
 fit or that of others, and the importance of which we 
 never know until we have proved them. 
 
 There is another maxim easy to give, and hard to 
 practise Accustom yourself always to look at the 
 bright side of things, and never make a fuss abont 
 trifles. It is pitiful to see what mere nothings some 
 women will worry and fret over lamenting as much 
 over an ill-made gown as others do over a lost fortune ; 
 how some people we can always depend upon for 
 making the best, instead of the worst, of whatever 
 happens, thus greatly lessening our anxieties for 
 themselves in their troubles ; and, oh ! how infinitely 
 comforting when we bring to them any of our own. 
 For we all of us have wretched, indeed, if we have 
 not ! some friends, or friend, to whom we instinct- 
 ively carry every one of our griefs or vexations, as 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 249 
 
 sured that, if any one can help us, they can and will ; 
 while with others we as instinctively " keep ourselves 
 to ourselves," whether sorrowing or rejoicing; and 
 many more there are whom we should never dream 
 of burdening with our cares at all, any more than we 
 would think of putting a butterfly in harness. 
 
 The disposition which can bear trouble ; which, 
 while passing over the lesser annoyances of life, as 
 unworthy to be measured in life's whole sum, can yet 
 meet real affliction steadily, struggle with it while re- 
 sistance is possible ; conquered, sit down patiently, to 
 let the storms sweep over ; and on their passing, if 
 they pass, rise up, and go on its way, looking up to 
 that region of blue calm which is never long invisible 
 to the pure of heart this is the blessedest possession 
 that any woman can have. Better than a house full 
 of silver and gold, better than beauty, or high for- 
 tunes, or prosperous and satisfied love. 
 
 "While, on the other hand, of all characters not 
 radically bad, there is none more useless to herself 
 and everybody else, who inflicts more pain, anxiety, 
 
 and gloom on those around her, than the one who is 
 11* 
 
250 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 often deprecatingly or apologetically described as 
 being " of an unhappy temperament." You may 
 know her at once by her dull or vinegar aspect, her 
 fidgety ways, her proneness to take the hard or ill- 
 natured view of things and people. Possibly she. is 
 unmarried, and her mocking acquaintance insult wo- 
 manhood by setting down that as the cause of her dis- 
 agreeableness. Most wicked libel ! There never was 
 an unhappy old maid yet who would not have been 
 equally unhappy as a wife and more guilty, for she 
 would have made two people miserable instead of 
 one. It needs only to count up all the unhappy wo- 
 men one knows women whom one would not change 
 lots with for the riches of the Queen of Sheba to see 
 that most of them are those whom fate has apparently 
 loaded with benefits, love, home, ease, luxury, leisure ; 
 and denied only the vague fine something, as inde- 
 scribable as it is unattainable, the capacity to enjoy 
 them all. 
 
 Unfortunate ones ! You see by their countenances 
 that they never know what it is to enjoy. That thrill 
 of thankful gladness, oftenest caused by little things 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 251 
 
 a lovely bit of nature, a holiday after long toil, a 
 sudden piece of good news, an unexpected face, or a 
 letter that warms one's inmost heart to them is alto- 
 gether incomprehensible. To hear one of them in 
 her rampant phase, you would suppose the whole ma- 
 chinery of the universe, down even to the weather, 
 was in league against her small individuality ; that 
 everything everybody did, or said, or thought, was 
 with one sole purpose her personal injury. And 
 when she sinks to the melancholy mood, though your 
 heart may bleed for her, aware how horribly real are 
 her self-created sufferings, still your tenderness sits 
 uneasily, more as a duty than a pleasure ; and you 
 often feel, and are shocked at feeling, that her pre- 
 sence acts upon you like the proverbial wet-blanket, 
 and her absence gives you an involuntary sense of 
 relief. 
 
 For, though we may pity the unhappy ever so 
 lovingly and sincerely, and strive with all our power 
 to lift them out of their grief, when they hug it, and 
 refuse to be lifted out of it, patience sometimes fails. 
 Human life is so full of pain, that once past the 
 
252 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 yoTitliful delusion that a sad countenance is interest 
 ing, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing 
 possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get 
 rest, and cheer, and sunshine. And the friend who 
 can bring to it the largest portion of these is, of a 
 natural necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, 
 and the most dear. 
 
 The " happy woman" in this our world, which is 
 apparently meant to be the road to perfection, never 
 its goal you will find too few specimens to be ever 
 likely to mistake her. But you will recognise her 
 presence the moment she crosses your path. Not by 
 her extreme liveliness lively people are rarely either 
 happy or able to diffuse happiness ; but by a sense of 
 brightness and cheerfulness that enters with her as 
 an evening sunbeam across your parlour wall. Like 
 the fairy Order in the nursery tale, h.Q takes up the 
 tangled threads of your mind, and reduces them to re- 
 gularity, till you distinguish a clear pattern through the 
 ugly maze. She may be neither handsome, nor clever, 
 nor entertaining, yet somehow she makes you feel 
 " comfortable," because she is so comfortable herself 
 
Happy and Unhappy Women. 253 
 
 She shames you out of your complainings, for she 
 makes none. Yet, mayhap, since it is the divine law 
 that we should all, like our Master, be " made perfect 
 through suffering," you are fully aware that she has 
 had far more sorrow than ever you had ; that her 
 daily path, had you to tread it, would be to you as 
 gloomy and full of pitfalls as to her it is safe and 
 bright. She may have even less than the medium 
 lot of earthly blessings, yet all she has she enjoys to 
 the full ; and it is so pleasant to see any one enjoy ! 
 For her sorrows, she neither hypocritically denies, 
 nor proudly smothers them she simply bears them ; 
 therefore they come to her, as sorrows were meant to 
 come, naturally and wholesomely, and passing over, 
 leave her full of compassion for all who may have to 
 endure the same. 
 
 Thus, whatever her fate may be, married or single, 
 rich or poor, in health or sickness though a cheerful 
 spirit has twice as much chance of health as a melan- 
 choly one she will be all her days a living justifica- 
 tion of the ways of Providence, Who makes the 
 light as well as the darkness, nay, makes the light out 
 
254 Happy and Unhappy Women. 
 
 of the darkness. For not only in the creation of a 
 world, but in that which is equally marvellous, the 
 birth and development of every human soul, there is 
 a divine verity symbolised by the one line, 
 
 ' And GOD said, Let there be light 1 and there was light /" 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 LOST WOMEN. 
 
 I ENTER on this subject with a hesitation strong 
 enough to have prevented my entering on it at all, 
 did I not believe that to write for or concerning 
 women, and avoid entirely that deplorable phase of 
 womanhood which, in country cottages as in city 
 streets, in books, newspapers, and daily talk, meets 
 us so continually that no young girl can long be kept 
 ignorant of it, is to give a one-sided and garbled view 
 of life, which, however pretty and pleasant, would be 
 false, and being false, useless. We have not to 
 construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we 
 find it, and make the best of it : we have no right, 
 not even the most sensitive of us women, mercifully 
 constituted with less temptation to evil than men, to 
 treat as impure what God has not made impure, or to 
 shrink with sanctimonious ultra-delicacy from the 
 
256 Lost Women. 
 
 barest mention of things which, though happy cii 
 cumstances of temperament or education have shielded 
 us from ever being touched or harmed thereby, we 
 must know to exist. If we do not know it, our 
 ignorance quite a different thing from innocence -is 
 at once both helpless and dangerous : narrows our 
 judgment, exposes us to a thousand painful mistakes, 
 and greatly limits our power of usefulness in the 
 world. 
 
 On the other hand, a woman who is for ever 
 paddling needlessly in the filthy puddles of human 
 nature, just as a child delights in walking up a dirty 
 gutter when there is a clean pavement alongside, 
 deserves, like the child, whatever mud she gets. 
 And there is even a worse kind of woman still, only 
 too common among respectable matrons, talkative old 
 maids, and even worldly, fascinating young ones, who 
 is ready to rake up every scandalous tale, and titter 
 over every vile double entendre, who degrades the most 
 solemn mysteries of holy Nature into vehicles for 
 disgraceful jokes, whose mind, instead of being a 
 decent dwelling-house, is a perfect Augean stable of 
 
Lost Women. 257 
 
 uncleanness Sucli a one cannot be too fiercely 
 reprobated, too utterly despised. However intact hei 
 reputation, she is as great a slur upon womanhood, as 
 great a bane to all true modesty, as the most unchaste 
 Messalina who ever disgraced her sex. 
 
 I beg to warn these foul grubbers in the dark 
 places of the earth not for purposes of cleansing, but 
 merely because it amuses them that they will not 
 find anything entertaining in this article. They will 
 only find one woman's indignant protest against a 
 tone of thought and conversation which, as their 
 consciences will tell them, many other women think it 
 no shame to pursue when among their own sex ; and 
 which, did the other sex know it, would be as harm- 
 ful, as fatal, as any open vice, by making men dis- 
 believe in virtue disbelieve in its. For its vileness 
 in the sight of Heaven truly, if we think of that, 
 many a well-reputed British lady is as much a "lost' : 
 woman as any poor, seduced creature whose child is 
 born in a workhouse, or strangled at a ditch-side. 
 
 It is to the latter class, who have fallen out of the 
 ranks of honest women, without sinking to a lower 
 
258 Lost Women. 
 
 depth still, that I chiefly refer : because with them, 
 those for whom this book is meant namely, the 
 ordinary middle ranks of unmarried females are 
 more likely to have to do. That other class, awful 
 in its extent and universality, of women who make a 
 trade of sin, whom philanthropists and political eco- 
 nomists are for ever discussing, and can come to no 
 conclusion about I leave to the wise and generous 
 of both sexes who devote their lives to the subject ; 
 to the examination and amelioration of a fact so 
 terrible that, were it not a fact, one would hardly be 
 justified in alluding to it here. Wretched onesl 
 whom even to think of turns any woman's heart 
 cold, with shame for her own sex, and horror at the 
 other: outcasts to whom happiness and love are 
 things unknown, God and heaven mere words to 
 swear with, and to whom this earth must be a daily 
 hell: 
 
 " Noil ragionam di lor, ma guarda, e passa." 
 
 But the others cross our path continually. No one 
 can have taken any interest in the working-classes 
 
Lost Women. 259 
 
 without being aware how frightfully common among 
 them is what they term '"a misfortune" how few 
 young women come to the marriage-altar at all. or 
 come there just a week or two before maternity ; or 
 having already had several children, often only half 
 brothers and sisters, whom no ceremony has ever 
 legalized. Whatever be the causes of this and I 
 merely skim over the surface of a state of things 
 which the Times and Sanitary Commissioners have 
 plumbed to sickening depths it undoubtedly ex- 
 ists ; and no single woman who takes any thought of 
 * what is going on around her, no mistress or mother 
 who requires constantly servants for her house, and 
 nurse-maids for her children, can or dare blind her- 
 self to the fact. It is easy for tenderly reared young 
 ladies, who study human passions through Miss 
 Austen or Miss Edgeworth, or the Loves of the Angels, 
 to say: "How shocking! Oh, it can't be true!" But 
 it is true; and they will not live many more years 
 without finding it to be true. Better face truth at 
 once, in all its bareness, than be swaddled up for ever 
 in the folds of a silken falsehood. 
 
260 Lost Women. 
 
 Another fact, stranger still to account for, is, that 
 the women who thus fall are by no means the worst 
 of their station. I have heard it affirmed by more 
 than one lady by one in particular, whose experi- 
 ence is as large as her benevolence that many of 
 them are of the very best ; refined, intelligent, truth- 
 ful, and affectionate. 
 
 "I don't know how it is," she would say 
 " whether their very superiority makes them dissatis- 
 fied with their own rank such brutes or clowns as 
 labouring men often are! so that they fall easier 
 victims to the rank above them ; or whether, though 
 this theory will shock many people, other virtues can 
 exist and flourish, entirely distinct from, and after the 
 loss of, that which we are accustomed to believe the 
 indispensable prime virtue of our sex chastity. I 
 cannot explain it ; I can only say that it is so : that 
 some of my most promising village-girls have been 
 the first to come to harm ; and some of the best and 
 most faithful servants I ever had, have been girls who 
 have fallen into shame, and who, had I not gone to 
 
Lost Women. 261 
 
 the rescue, and put them on the way to do wel}, 
 would infallibly have become 'lost' women." 
 
 There, perhaps, is, one clue caught. Had she not 
 "come to the rescue." Kescue, then, is possible; and 
 they were capable of being rescued. 
 
 I read lately an essay, and from a pure and good 
 woman's pen, too, arguing, what licentious material- 
 ists are now-a-days unblushingly asserting, that 
 chastity is not indispensable in our sex ; that the old 
 chivalrous boast of families "all their men were 
 brave, and all their women virtuous" was, to say 
 the least, a mistake, which led people into worse ills 
 than it remedied, by causing an extravagant terror at 
 the loss of these good qualities, and a corresponding 
 indifference to evil ones much more important. 
 
 While widely differing from this writer for God 
 forbid that our Englishwomen should ever come to 
 regard with less horror than now the loss of personal 
 chastity! I think it cannot be doubted that even 
 this loss does not indicate total corruption or entail 
 permanent degradation ; that after it, and in spite of 
 
 * 
 
 it, many estimable and womanly qualities may be 
 
262 Lost Women. 
 
 found existing, not only in our picturesque Neft 
 Gwynnes and Peg Woffingtons, but our poor every- 
 day sinners: the servant obliged to be dismissed 
 without a character and with a baby ; the sempstress 
 quitting starvation for elegant infamy ; the illiterate 
 village lass, who thinks it so grand to be made a lady 
 of so much better to be a rich man's mistress than a 
 working-man's ill-used wife, or rather slave. 
 
 Till we allow that no one sin, not even this sin, 
 necessarily corrupts the entire character, we shall 
 scarcely be able to judge it with that fairness which 
 gives hope of our remedying it, or trying to lessen in 
 ever so minute a degreje, by our individual dealing 
 with any individual case that comes in cur way, the 
 enormous aggregate of misery that it entails. This it 
 behoves us to do, even on selfish grounds, for it 
 touches us closer than many of us aro aware ay, in 
 our hearths and homes in the sons and brothers that 
 we have to send out to struggle in a world of which 
 we at the fireside know absolutely nothing; if we 
 marry, in the fathers we give to our innocent children, 
 the servants we trust their infancy to, and the 
 
Lost Women. 263 
 
 influences to which we are obliged to expose them 
 daily and hourly, unless we were to bring them up in 
 a sort of domestic Happy Yalley, which their first 
 effort would be to get out of as fast as ever they could. 
 And supposing we are saved from all this ; that our 
 position is one peculiarly exempt from evil ; that if 
 pollution in any form comes nigh us, we just sweep it 
 hastily and noiselessly away from our doors, and think 
 we are all right and safe. Alas! we forget that a 
 refuse-heap outside her gate may breed a plague even 
 in a queen's palace. 
 
 One word, before continuing this subject. Many 
 of us will not investigate it because they are afraid : 
 afraid, not so much of being, as of being thought to 
 be, especially by the other sex, incorrect, indelicate, 
 unfeminine ; of being supposed to know more than 
 they ought to know, or than the present refinement 
 of society a good and beautiful thing when real 
 concludes that they do know. 
 
 women ! women ! why have you not more faith 
 in yourselves in that strong inner purity which alone 
 can make a woman brave! which, if she knows 
 
264 Lost Women. 
 
 herself to be clean in heart and desire, in body ana 
 soul, loving cleanness for its own sake, and not for the 
 credit that it brings, will give her a freedom of action 
 and a fearlessness of consequences which are to her a 
 greater safeguard than any external decorum. To be, 
 and not to seem, is the amulet of her innocence. 
 
 Young women, who look forward to marriage and 
 motherhood, in all its peace and dignity, as your 
 natural lot, have you ever thought for a moment what 
 it must be to feel that you have lost innocence, that 
 no power on earth can ever make you innocent any 
 more, or give you back that jewel of glory and 
 strength, having which, as the old superstition says, 
 
 " Even the lion will turn and flee 
 From a maid in the pride of her purity ?" 
 
 That, whether the world knows it or not, you know 
 yourself to be not this ? The free, happy ignorance 
 of maidenhood is gone for ever ; the sacred dignity 
 and honour of matronhood is not, and never can be 
 attained. Surely this consciousness alone must be the 
 most awful punishment to any woman; and from it 
 
Lost Women. 265 
 
 no kindness, no sympathy, no concealment of shame, 
 or even restoration to good repute, can entirely free 
 her. She must bear her burden, lighter or heavier as 
 it may seem at different times, and she must bear it 
 to the day of her death. I think this fact alone is 
 enough to make a chaste woman's first feeling 
 towards an unchaste that of unqualified, unmitigated 
 pity. 
 
 This, not in the form of exaggerated sentimental- 
 ism, with which it has of late been the fashion to 
 treat such subjects, laying all the blame upon the 
 seducer, and exalting the seduced into a paragon of 
 injured simplicity, whom society ought to pet, and 
 soothe, and treat with far more interest and considera- 
 tion than those who have not erred. Never, as it 
 seems to me, was there a greater mistake than that 
 into which some writers have fallen, in fact and 
 fiction, but especially in fiction, through their gene- 
 rous over-eagerness to redeem the lost. These are 
 painted one heroine I call to mind now as such 
 patterns of excellence, that we wonder, first, how they 
 
 ever could have been led astray, and secondly, 
 
 12 
 
266 Lost Women. 
 
 whether this exceeding helplessness and simplicity of 
 theirs did not make the sin so venial, that it seems as 
 wrong to blame them for it as to scold a child for 
 tumbling into an open well. Consequently, their 
 penitence becomes unnecessary and unnatural ; their 
 suffering disproportfonably unjust. You close the 
 book, inclined to arraign society, morality, and, what 
 is worse, Providence; but for all else, feeling that 
 the question is left much as you found it; that 
 angelic sinners such as these, if they exist at all, are 
 such exceptions to the generality of their class, that 
 their example is of very little practical service to the 
 rest. 
 
 To refine away error till it is hardly error at all, to 
 place vice under such extenuating circumstances that 
 we cannot condemn it for sheer pity, is a fault so 
 dangerous that Charity herself ought to steel her 
 heart against it. Far better and safer to call Crime 
 by its right name, and paint it in its true colours- 
 treating it even as the Bagged Schools did tae young 
 vagabonds of our streets not by persuading them 
 and society that they were clean, respectable, ill-used, 
 
Lost Women. 267 
 
 and maligned individuals ; or by waiting for them to 
 grow decent before they dealt with them at all, but 
 by simply saying : " Come, just as you are ragged, 
 dirty, dishonest. Only come, and we will do our best 
 to make you what you ought to be." 
 
 Allowing the pity, which, as I said, ought to be a 
 woman's primary sentiment towards her lost sister- 
 hood, what is the next thing to be done? Surely 
 there must be some light beyond that of mere com- 
 passion to guide her in her after-conduct towards 
 them? 
 
 Where shall we find this light ? In the world and 
 its ordinary code of social morality, suited to social 
 convenience ? I fear not. The general opinion, even 
 among good men, seems to be that this great question 
 is a very sad thing, but a sort of unconquerable 
 necessity; there is no use in talking about it, and 
 indeed the less it is talked of the better. Good 
 women are much of the same mind. The laxer-prin- 
 cipled of both sexes treat the matter with philosophi- 
 cal indifference, or with the kind of laugh that makes 
 the blood boil in any truly virtuous heart. 
 
268 Lost Women. 
 
 Then, where are we to look? 
 
 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent- 
 ance." 
 
 1 Neither do I condemn thee : go and sin no more" 
 " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; because she loved 
 much." 
 
 These words, thus quoted here, may raise a sneer on 
 the lips of some, and shock others who are accus- 
 tomed to put on religion with their Sunday clothes, 
 and take it off on Monday, as quite too fine, maybe too 
 useless for every-day wear. But I must write them, 
 because I believe them. I believe there is no other 
 light on this difficult question than that given by the 
 New Testament. There, clear and plain, and every- 
 where repeated, shines the doctrine of which, until 
 then, there was no trace, either in external or revealed 
 religion that for every crime, being repented of and 
 forsaken, there is forgiveness with Heaven; and if 
 with Heaven, there ought to be with men. This, 
 without entering at all into the doctrinal question of 
 atonement, but simply taking the basis of Christian 
 
Lost Women. 269 
 
 morality, as contrasted with the natural morality 
 of the savage, or even of the ancient Jew, which 
 without equivalent retribution pre-supposes no such 
 thing as pardon. 
 
 All who have had any experience among criminals 
 from the poor little "black sheep " of the family, 
 who is always getting into trouble, and is told conti- 
 nually by everybody that, strive as he will, he never 
 can be a good boy, like brother Tommy, down to the 
 lowest, most reprobate convict, who is shipped off to 
 the colonies because the mother-country cannot exactly 
 hang him, and does not know what else to do with 
 him unite in stating that, when you shut the door 
 of hope on any human soul, you may at once give up 
 all chance of its reformation. As well bid a man eat 
 without food, see without light, or breathe without air, 
 as bid him mend his ways, while at the same time you 
 tell him that, however he amends, he will be in just 
 the same position the same hopelessly degraded, 
 unpardoned, miserable sinner. 
 
 Yet this is practically the language used to fallen 
 
 women, and chiefly by their own sex : " God may for- 
 
 12 
 
270 " Lost Women. 
 
 give you, but we never can !" a declaration which: 
 however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, 
 when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arro- 
 gance of blasphemy. 
 
 That for a single offence, however grave, a whole 
 life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to 
 Nature's own dealings in the visible world. There, 
 her voice clearly says "Let all these wonderful pow- 
 ers of vital renewal have free play : let the foul flesh 
 slough itself away ; lop off the gangrened limb ; enter 
 into life maimed, if it must be :" but never, till the 
 last moment of total dissolution, does she say ; " Thou 
 shalt not enter into life at all." 
 
 Therefore, once let a woman feel that, in moral as 
 in physical disease, " while there is life there is hope " 
 dependent on the one only condition that she shall 
 sin no more, and what a future you open for her! 
 what a weight you lift off from her poor miserable 
 spirit, which might otherwise be crushed down to the 
 lowest deep, to that which is far worse than any bodily 
 pollution, ineradicable corruption of soul ! 
 
 The next thing to be set before her is courage. 
 
Lost Women. 271 
 
 That intolerable dread of shame, which is the last 
 token of departing modesty, to what will it not drive 
 some women! To what self-control and ingenuity, 
 what resistance of weakness and endurance of bodily 
 pain, which, in another cause, would be called heroic 
 blunting every natural instinct, and goading them 
 on to the last refuge of mortal fear infanticide. 
 
 Surely, even by this means, many a woman might 
 be saved, if there were any one to save her, any one 
 to say plainly: "What are you afraid of God or 
 man? your sin or its results?" Alas! it will be 
 found almost invariably the latter : loss of position, of 
 character, and consequently of the means of livelihood. 
 Kespectability shuts the door upon her ; mothers will 
 not let their young folks come into contact with her : 
 mistresses will not take her as a servant. Nor can one 
 wonder at this, even while believing that in many 
 cases the fear is much more selfish than virtuous, and 
 continued long after its cause has entirely ceased to 
 exist. It is one of the few cases in which at least at 
 first the sufferers cannot help themselves ; they must 
 suffer for a season : they must bear patiently the work- 
 
272 Lost Women. 
 
 ing out of that immutable law which makes sin 
 sooner or later, its own Nemesis. 
 
 But not for ever and it is worth while, in con 
 sidering this insane terror of worldly opinion, to ask : 
 " Which half of the world are you afraid of, the good 
 or the bad?" For it may often be noticed, the less 
 virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from 
 the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The 
 good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the 
 most brave. I believe there are hundreds and thou- 
 sands of Englishwomen who would willingly throw 
 the shelter of their stainless repute around any poor 
 creature who came to them and said honestly : "I 
 have sinned help me that I may sin no more." But 
 the unfortunates will not believe this. They are like 
 the poor Indians, who think it necessary to pacify the 
 evil principle by a greater worship than that which 
 they offer to the Good Spirit ; because, they say, the 
 
 Bad Spirit is the stronger. Have we not, even in 
 
 
 
 this Britain, far too many such tacit devil- worshippers? 
 
 Given a chance, the smallest chance, and a woman's 
 redemption lies in her own hands. She cannot b 
 
Lost Women. 273 
 
 too strongly impressed with this fact, or too soon, 
 No human power could have degraded her against 
 her will ; no human power can keep her in degrada- 
 tion unless by her will. Granted the sin, howsoever 
 incurred, wilfully or blindly, or under circumstances 
 of desperate temptation ; capable of some palliations, 
 or with no palliation at all take it just as it stands, 
 in its whole enormity, and there leave it. Set it 
 aside, at once and altogether, and begin anew. Better 
 beg, or hunger, or die in a ditch except that the 
 people who die in ditches are not usually the best of 
 even this world's children than live a day in volun- 
 tary unchastity. 
 
 This may sound fine and romantic far too 
 romantic, forsooth, to be applied to any of the cases 
 that we are likely to meet with. And yet it is the 
 plain truth : as true of a king's mistress as of a ruined 
 servant-maid. No help from without can rescue 
 either, unless she wishes to save herself. 
 
 She has more power to do this than at first appears ; 
 but it must be by the prime agent, Truth. 
 
 After the first false step, the principal cause of 
 12* 
 
274 Lost Women. 
 
 women's further downfall is their being afraid of 
 truth truth, which must of necessity be tho begin- 
 ning and end of all attempts at restoration to honour 1 . 
 For the wretched girl, who, in terror of losing a 
 place, or of being turned from an angry father's door, 
 fabricates tale after tale, denies and denies till she can 
 deny no longer, till all ends in a jail and a charge of 
 child-murder ; for the fashionable lady whose life is a 
 long deceit, exposed to constant fear lest a breath 
 should tear her flimsy reputation to rags ; and for all 
 the innumerable cases between these two poles of 
 society, there is but one warning No virtue ever 
 was founded on a lie. 
 
 The truth, then, at all risks and costs the truth 
 from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whom- 
 soever you need to make it, and then face the 
 world. 
 
 This must be terrible enough no denying that; 
 but it must be done : there is no help for it. Perhaps, 
 in many a case, if it were done at once, it would 
 save much after-misery, especially the perpetual 
 dreat 1 and danger of exposure, which makes the sin 
 
Lost Women. 275 
 
 itself quite a secondary consideration compared with 
 the fear of its discovery. This once over, with all its 
 paralysing effects, the worst has come to the worst, 
 and there is a chance of hope. 
 
 Begin again. Put the whole past life aside as if it 
 had never been, and try what you can do with the 
 future. This, I think, should be the counsel given 
 to all erring women not irretrievably " lost." 
 
 It would be a blessed thing if our honourable wo- 
 men, mothers and matrons, would consider a little 
 more what could be done with such persons : any 
 openings for useful employment ; any positions suffi- 
 ciently guarded to be safe, and yet free enough to 
 afford trial, without drawing too harshly the line 
 always harsh enough between these, and those who 
 are of unblemished reputation. Reformatories, Mag- 
 dalen Institutions, and the like, are admirable in their 
 way ; but there are numberless cases in which indi- 
 vidual judgment and help alone are possible. It is 
 this the train of thought that shall result in act, and 
 which I desire to suggest to individual minds, in the 
 hope of arousing that imperceptibly small influence 
 
276 Lost Women. 
 
 of the many, which forms the strongest lever of uni 
 versal opinion. 
 
 I said in a former paper, that the only way tc 
 make people good, is to make them happy. Strange 
 that this truth should apply to circumstances like 
 these now written of ! and yet it does ; and it would 
 be vain to deny it. Bid a woman lift up her head 
 and live ; tell her that she can and ought to live, and 
 you must give her something to live for. You must 
 put into her poor sore heart, if you can, a little 
 more than peace comfort. And where is she to 
 find it? 
 
 Heterodox as the doctrine may appear to some, 
 it seems to me that Heaven always leaves its sign 
 of hope and redemption on any woman when she is 
 left with a child. Some taste of the ineffable joy, 
 the solemn consecration of maternity, must come 
 even to the most wretched and guilty creature think- 
 ing of the double life she bears, or the helpless life to 
 which she has given birth that life for which she is 
 as responsible to God, to itself, and to the woild, as 
 any married mother of them alL 
 
Lost Women. 277 
 
 And the sense of responsibility alone conveys a 
 certain amount of comfort and hope. One can ima- 
 gine many a sinful mother, who, for the very child's 
 sake, would learn to hate the sin, and to make to 
 the poor innocent the only atonement possible, by 
 giving it what is better even than stainless birth a 
 virtuous bringing-up. One can conceive such a wo- 
 man taking her baby in her arms, and starting afresh 
 to face the world made bold by a love which has no 
 taint in it, and cheered by the knowledge that no 
 human being can take from her either this love, or 
 its duties, or its rewards. 
 
 For it rests with herself alone, the comfort she may 
 derive from, and the honour in which she may be 
 held by, her child. A mother's subsequent conduct 
 and character might give a son as much pride in her, 
 and in the nameless parentage which he owes her, as 
 in any long lawful line 
 
 " Whose ignoble blood 
 Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood." 
 
 Even a daughter might live to say : " Mother, do not 
 
278 Lost Women. 
 
 grieve ; I had rather liave had you, just as you are, 
 than any mother I know. It has been better, for me 
 at least, than if you had married my father." 
 
 1 have written thus* much, and yet, after all, it 
 seems but "words, words, words." Everywhere 
 around us we see women falling, fallen, and we 
 cannot help them ; we cannot make them feel the 
 hideousness of sin, the peace and strength of that 
 cleanness of soul which is not afraid of anything in 
 earth or heaven ; we cannot force upon their minds 
 the possibility of return, after ever so long wander- 
 ings, to those pleasant paths out of which there is no 
 peace and no strength for either man or woman ; and 
 in order to this return is needed for both alike not 
 so much outside help, as inward repentance. 
 
 All I can do all, I fear, that any one can do by 
 mere speech is to impress upon every woman, and 
 chiefly upon those who, reared innocently in safe 
 homes, view the wicked world without, somewhat 
 like gazers at a show or spectators at a battle 
 shocked, wondering, perhaps pitying a little, but not 
 understanding at all that this repentance is possible 
 
Lost Women, 275 
 
 Also, that once having returned to a chaste life, a 
 woman's former life should never once be " cast up" 
 against her , that she should be allowed to resume, if 
 not her pristine position, at least one that is full of 
 usefulness, pleasantness, and respect a respect, the 
 amount of which must be determined by her own 
 daily conduct. She should be judged as, indeed, 
 human wisdom alone has a right to judge, in all cases 
 solely by what she is now, and not by what she has 
 been. That judgment may be, ought to be, stern 
 and fixed as justice itself with regard to her present, 
 and even her past, so far as concerns the crime com- 
 .mitted; but it ought never to take the law into its 
 own hands towards the criminal, who, for all it 
 knows, may have long since become less a criminal 
 than a sufferer. Virtue degrades herself, and loses 
 every vestige of her power, when her dealings with 
 Yice sink into a mere matter of individual opinion, 
 personal dislike, or selfish fear of harm. For all 
 offences, punishment, retributive and inevitable, must 
 come ; but punishment is one thing, revenge is ano- 
 ther. ONE only, who is Omniscient as well as Omni- 
 potent, can declare, " Vengeance is I/me." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 GROWING OLD. 
 
 1 Do ye think of the days that are gone, Jeanie, 
 
 As ye sit by your fire at night ? 
 Do ye wish that the morn would bring back the 
 
 When your heart and your step were so light ?' 
 ' I think of the days that are gone, Robin, 
 
 And of ah 1 that I joyed in then ; 
 But the brightest that ever arose on me, 
 
 I have never wished back again.' " 
 
 GROWING old! A time we talk of, and jest 01 
 moralise over, but find almost impossible to realise 
 at least to ourselves. In others, we can see its 
 approach clearer: yet even then we are slow to 
 recognise it. "What, Miss So-and-so looking old, 
 did you say ? Impossible ! she is quite a young 
 person: only a year older than I and that would 
 make her just .... Bless me ! I am forgetting ho\? 
 
Growing Old. 281 
 
 time goes on. Yes," with a faint deprecation which 
 truth forbids you to contradict, and politeness to 
 notice, " I suppose we are neither of us so young as 
 we used to be." 
 
 Without doubt, it is a trying crisis in a woman's 
 life a single woman particularly when she begins 
 to suspect she is " not so young as she used to be ;" 
 that, after crying ""Wolf" ever since the respectable 
 maturity of seventeen as some young ladies are fond 
 of doing, to the extreme amusement of their friends 
 the grim wolf, old age, is actually showing his teeth 
 in the distance ; and no courteous blindness on the 
 part of these said friends, no alarmed indifference on 
 her own, can neutralise the fact that he is, if still far 
 off, in sight. And, however charmingly poetical he 
 may appear to sweet fourteen-and-a-half, who writes 
 melancholy verses about "I wish I were again a 
 child," or merry three-and-twenty, wlio preserves in 
 silver paper "my first grey hair," old age, viewed as 
 a near approaching reality, is quite another thing. 
 
 To feel that you have had your fair half at least of 
 the ordinary terms of years allotted to mortals ; that 
 
282 Growing Old. 
 
 you have no right to expect to be any handsomer, or 
 stronger, or happier than you are now ^ that you have 
 climbed to the summit of life, whence the next step 
 must necessarily be decadence ; ay, though you do 
 mt feel it, though the air may be as fresh, and the 
 view as grand still, you know that it is so. Slower 
 or faster, yoti are going down-hill. To those who go 
 "hand-in-hand," 
 
 " And sleep thegither at the foot," 
 
 it may be a safer and sweeter descent; but I am 
 writing for those who have to make the descent 
 alone. 
 
 It is not a pleasant descent at the beginning. 
 When you find at parties that you are not asked to 
 dance as much as formerly, and your partners are 
 chiefly stout, middle-aged gentlemen, and slim lads, 
 who blush terribly and require a great deal of draw- 
 ing out; when you are "dear"-ed and patronised by 
 stylish young chits, who were in their cradles when 
 you were a grown woman ; or when some boy, who 
 was your plaything in petticoats, has the impertinence 
 
Growing Old. 283 
 
 to look over your head, bearded and grand, or even 
 to consult } on on his love-affairs ; when you find 
 your acquaintance delicately abstaining from the 
 term "old maid," in your presence, or immediately 
 qualifying it by an eager panegyric on the solitary 
 sisterhood ; when servants address you as " Ma'am," 
 instead of "Miss;" and if you are at all stout and 
 comfortable-looking, strange shopkeepers persist in 
 making out your bills to "Mrs. Blank," and pressing 
 upon your notice toys and perambulators. 
 
 Eather trying, too, when, in speaking of yourself 
 as a "girl" which, from long habit, you unwittingly 
 do you detect a covert smile on the face of your 
 interlocutor; or, led by chance excitement to deport 
 yourself in an ujtra-youthful manner, some instinct 
 warns you that you are making yourself ridiculous. 
 Or catching in some strange looking-glass the face 
 that you are too familiar with to notice much, ordina- 
 rily, you suddenly become aware that it is not a young 
 face ; that it will never be a young face again ; that it 
 will gradually alter and alter, until the known face of 
 your girlhood, whether plain or pretty, loved or dis 
 
284 Growing Old. 
 
 liked, admired or despised, will have altogethel 
 vanished nay, is vanished: look as you will, you 
 cannot see it any more. 
 
 There is no denying the fact, and it ought to silence 
 many an ill-natured remark upon those unlucky onea 
 who insist on remaining " young ladies of a certain 
 age," that with most people the passing from matu- 
 rity to middle age is so gradual, as to be almost im- 
 perceptible to the individual concerned. It is very 
 difficult for a woman to recognise that she is growing 
 old ; and to many nay, to all, more or less this re- 
 cognition cannot but be fraught with considerable 
 pain. Even the most frivolous are somewhat to be 
 pitied, when, not conducting themselves as passees, 
 because they really do not think it, they expose them- 
 selves to all manner of misconstructions by still deter- 
 minedly grasping that fair sceptre 'of youth, which 
 they never suspect is now the merest " rag of sove- 
 reignty" sovereignty deposed. 
 
 Nor can the most sensible woman fairly put aside 
 her youth, with all it has enjoyed, or lost, or missed ; 
 its hopes and interests, omissions and commissions, 
 
Growing Old. 285 
 
 doings and sufferings; satisfied that it is henceforth tc 
 be considered as a thing gone by without a momen- 
 tary spasm of the heart. Young people forget this 
 as completely as they forget that they themselves may 
 one day experience the same, or they would not be so 
 ready to laugh at even the foolishest of those foolish 
 old virgins who deems herself juvenile long after 
 everybody else has ceased to share in the pleasing 
 delusion, and thereby makes both useless and ridicu- 
 lous that season of early autumn which ought to be 
 the most peaceful, abundant, safe, and sacred time in 
 a woman's whole existence. They would not, with 
 the proverbial harsh judgment of youth, scorn so 
 cruelly those poor little absurdities, of which the un- 
 lucky person who indulges therein is probably quite 
 unaware merely dresses as she has always done, and 
 carries on the harmless coquetries and minauderies of 
 her teens, unconscious how exceedingly ludicrous they 
 appear in a lady of say forty ! Yet in this sort of 
 exhibition, which society too often sees and enjoys, 
 any honest heart cannot but often feel, that of all the 
 actors engaged in it the one who plays the least ob- 
 
286 Growing Old. 
 
 jecti enable and disgraceful part is she who only 
 makes a fool of herself. 
 
 Alas ! why should she do it ? Why cling so des 
 perately to the youth that will not stay ? and which; 
 after all, is not such a very precious or even a happy 
 thing. Why give herself such a world of trouble to 
 deny or conceal her exact age, when half her ac- 
 quaintance must either know it or guess it, or be 
 supremely indifferent about it ? "Why appear dressed 
 imdressed, cynics would say after the pattern of 
 her niece, the belle of the ball ; annoying the eye 
 with beauty either half withered or long overblown, 
 and which in its prime would have been all the love- 
 lier for more concealment ? 
 
 In this matter of dress, a word or two. There are 
 two styles of costume which ladies past their premiere 
 jeunesse are most prone to fall into : one hardly 
 knows which is the worst. Perhaps, though, it is the 
 ultra-juvenilesuch as the insane juxtaposition of a 
 yellow skin and white tarlatane, or the anomalous 
 adorning of grey hair with artificial flowers. It may 
 be questioned whether at any age beyond twenty a 
 
Growing Old. 287 
 
 ball-costume is rdfcly becoming ; but after thirty, it is 
 the very last sort of attire that a lady can assume 
 with impunity. It is said that you can only make 
 yourself look younger by dressing a little older than 
 you really are ; and truly I have seen many a woman 
 look withered and old in the customary evening-dress 
 which, being unmarried, she thinks necessary to 
 shiver in, who would have appeared fair as a sun- 
 shiny October day if she would only have done 
 Nature the justice to assume, in her autumn time, an 
 autumnal livery. If she would only have the sense 
 to believe that grey hair was meant to soften wrinkles 
 and brighten faded cheeks, giving the same effect for 
 which our youthful grandmothers wore powder ; that 
 flimsy, light-coloured dresses, fripperied over with 
 trimmings, only suit airy figures and active motions ; 
 that a sober-tinted substantial gown and a pretty cap 
 will any day take away ten years from a lady's ap- 
 pearance ; above all, if she would observe this one 
 grand rule of the toilet, always advisable, but after 
 youth indispensable that though good personal 
 41 points" are by no means a warrant for undue ex- 
 
288 Growing Old. 
 
 hibition thereof, no point that is po^lfevely unbeautiful 
 ought ever, by any pretence of fashion or custom, to 
 be shown. 
 
 The other sort of dress, which, it must be owned, 
 is less frequent, is the dowdy style. People say 
 though not very soon " Oh, I am not a young wo- 
 man now ; it does not signify what I wear." "Whe- 
 ther they quite believe it is another question; but 
 they say it and act upon it when laziness or indiffer- 
 ence prompts. Foolish women ! they forget, that if 
 we have reason at any time more than another to 
 mind our " looks," it is when our looks are departing 
 from us. Youth can do almost anything in the toilet 
 middle-age cannot ; yet is none the less bound to 
 present to her friends and society the most pleasing 
 exterior she can. Easy is it to do this when we have 
 those about us who love us, and take notice of what 
 we wear, and in whose eyes we would like to appear 
 gracious and lovely to the last, so far as nature allows : 
 not easy when things are otherwise. This, perhaps, 
 is the reason why we see so many unmarried womeu 
 
Growing Old. 289 
 
 grow careless and " old-fashioned" in their dress 
 " What does it signify ? nobody cares." 
 
 I think a woman ought to care a little a very 
 little for herself. Without preaching up vanity, or 
 undue waste of time over that most thankless duty of 
 adorning one's self for nobody's pleasure in particular 
 is it not still a right and becoming feeling to have 
 some respect for that personality which, as well as 
 our soul, Heaven gave us to make the best of? And 
 is it not our duty considering the great number of 
 uncomely people there are in the world to lessen it 
 by each of us making herself as little uncomely as she 
 can? 
 
 Because a lady ceases to dress youthfully, she has 
 no excuse for dressing untidily ; and though having 
 found out that one general style suits both her person, 
 her taste, and her convenience, she keeps to it, and 
 generally prefers moulding the fashion to herself, 
 rather than herself to the fashion, still, that is no 
 reason why she should try the risible nerves of one 
 generation by showing up to them the out-of-date cos- 
 tume of another. Neatness invariable ; hues carefully 
 
 13 
 
290 Growing Old. 
 
 harmonised, and as time advances, subsiding into a 
 general unity of tone, softening and darkening in 
 c olour, until black, white, and grey alone remain, as 
 the suitable garb for old age : these things are every 
 woman's bounden duty to observe as long as she lives. 
 No poverty, grief, sickness, or loneliness those men- 
 tal causes which act so strongly upon the external 
 life can justify any one (to use a phrase probably 
 soon to be obsolete, when charity and common-sense 
 have left the rising generation no Fifth of November) 
 in thus voluntarily " making a Guy of herself." 
 
 That slow, fine, and yet perceptible change of 
 mien and behaviour, natural and proper to advancing 
 years, is scarcely reducible to rule at all. It is but 
 the outer reflection of an inward process of the mind. 
 We only discover its full importance by the absence 
 of it, as noticeable in a person " who has such very 
 young' manners," who falls into raptures of enthusi- 
 asm, and expresses loudly every emotion of her 
 nature. Such a character, when real, is unobjection- 
 able, nay, charming in extreme youth ; but the great 
 improbability of its being real makes it rather ludi- 
 
Growing Old. 291 
 
 crous, if not disagreeable, in mature age, when the 
 passions die out or are quieted down, the sense of 
 happiness itself is calm, and the fullest, tenderest tide 
 of which the loving heart is capable, may be described 
 by those "still waters" which "run deep." 
 
 To "grow old gracefully," as one, who truly has 
 exemplified her theory, has written and expressed it, 
 is a good and beautiful thing ; to grow old worthily, 
 a better. And the first effort to that end is not only 
 to recognise, but to become personally reconciled to 
 the fact of youth's departure ; to see, or, if not seeing, 
 to have faith in, the wisdom of that which we call 
 change, yet which is in truth progression ; to follow 
 openly and fearlessly, in ourselves and our daily life, 
 the same law which makes spring pass into summer, 
 summer into autumn, autumn into winter, preserving 
 an especial beauty and fitness in each of the four. 
 
 Yes, if women could only believe it, there is a 
 wonderful beauty even in growing old. The charm 
 of expression arising from softened temper or ripened 
 intellect, often amply atones for the loss of form and 
 colouring; and, consequently, to those who neve* 
 
292 Growing Old. 
 
 could boast either of these latter, years give much 
 more than they take away. A sensitive person often 
 requires half a lifetime to get thoroughly used to this 
 corporeal machine, to attain a wholesome indifference 
 both to its defects and perfections, and to learn at 
 last, what nobody would acquire from any teacher 
 but experience, that it is the mind alone which is of 
 any consequence ; that with a good temper, sincerity, 
 and a moderate stock of brains or even the two 
 former only any sort of body can in time be made 
 useful, respectable, and agreeable, as a travelling- 
 dress for the soul. Many a one, who was absolutely 
 plain in youth, thus grows pleasant and well-looking 
 in declining years. You will hardly ever find any- 
 body, not ugly in mind, who is repulsively ugly in 
 person after middle life. 
 
 So with the character. If a woman is ever to be 
 wise or sensible, the chances are that she will have 
 become so somewhere between thirty and forty. Her 
 natural good qualities will have developed; her evil 
 ones will have either been partly subdued, or have 
 overgrown her like rampant weeds ; for, however we 
 
Growing Old. 293 
 
 may talk about people being "not a whit altered" 
 "just the same as ever" not one of us is, or can be, 
 for long together, exactly the same; no more than 
 that the body we carry with us is the identical body 
 we were born with, or the one we supposed ours 
 seven years ago. Therein, as in our spiritual self 
 which inhabits it, goes on a perpetual change and 
 renewal : if this ceased, the result would be, not per- 
 manence, but corruption. In moral and mental, as 
 well as physical growth, it is impossible to remain 
 stationary; if we do not advance, we retrograde. 
 Talk of "too late to improve " " too old to learn," 
 &c. ! Idle words ! A human being should be im- 
 proving with every day of a lifetime ; and will proba- 
 bly have to go on learning throughout all the ages of 
 immortality. 
 
 And this brings me to one among the number of 
 what I may term " the pleasures of growing old." 
 
 At our outset, "to love" is the verb we are most 
 prone to conjugate; afterwards we discover, that 
 though the first, it is by no means the sole verb in the 
 grammar of life, or even the only one that implies 
 
2 94 Growing Old. 
 
 (vide Lennie or Murray) " to be, to do, or to suffer/ 
 To know that is, to acquire, to find out, to be able 
 to trace and appreciate the causes of things, gradually 
 becomes a necessity, an exquisite delight. We begin 
 to taste the full meaning of that promise which, de- 
 scribes the other world as a place where "we shall 
 know even as we are known." Nay, even this world, 
 with all its burdens and pains, presents itself in a 
 phase of abstract interest entirely apart from ourselves 
 and our small lot therein, whether joyful or sorrowful. 
 We take pleasure in tracing the large workings of all 
 things more clearly apprehended as we cease to 
 expect, or conduct ourselves as if we expected, that 
 Providence will appear as Deus ex machind for our 
 own private benefit. We are able to pass out of our 
 own small daily sphere, and take interest in the mar- 
 vellous government of the universe ; to see the grand 
 workings of cause and effect, the educing of good out 
 of apparent evil, the clearing away of the knots in 
 tangled destinies, general or individual, the wonder- 
 ful agency of time, change and progress in ourselves, 
 in those surrounding us, and in the world at large. 
 
Growing Old. 295 
 
 "We have lived just long enough to catch a faint 
 tone or two of the large harmonies of nature and fate 
 to trace the apparent plot and purpose of our own 
 life and that of others, sufficiently to make us content 
 to sit still and see the play played out. As I once 
 heard said, " We feel we should like to go on living, 
 were it only out of curiosity." 
 
 In small minds, this feeling expends itself in med- 
 dling, gossiping, scandal-mongering ; but such are 
 only the abortive developments of a right noble 
 quality, which, properly guided, results in benefits 
 incalculable to the individual and to society. For, 
 undoubtedly, the after-half of life is the best working- 
 time. Beautiful is youth's enthusiasm, and grand are 
 its achievements ; but the most solid and permanent 
 good is done by the persistent strength and wide expe- 
 rience of middle age. 
 
 A principal agent in this is a blessing which rarely 
 comes till then contentment: not mere resignation, 
 a passive acquiescence in what cannot be removed, but 
 active contentment ; bought, and cheaply, too, by a 
 personal share in that daily account of joy and pain, 
 
2gb Growing Old. 
 
 which the longer one lives the more one sees is-prettj 
 equally balanced in all lives. Young people are hap- 
 py enjoy ecstatically, either in prospect or fruition, 
 " the top of life ;" but they are very seldom contented. 
 It is not possible. Not till the cloudy maze is half 
 travelled through, and we begin to see the object and 
 purpose of it, can we be really content. 
 
 One great element in this nor let us think shame 
 to grant that which God and nature also allow con- 
 sists in the doubtful question, "To 'marry or not to 
 marry?" being by this time generally settled; the 
 world's idle curiosity or impertinent meddling there- 
 with having come to an end ; which alone is a great 
 boon to any woman. Her relations with the other 
 sex imperceptibly change their character, or slowly 
 decline. Though there are exceptions, of old lovers 
 who have become friends, and friends whom no new 
 love could make swerve from the fealty of years, still it 
 usually happens so. If a woman wishes to retain her 
 sway over mankind not an unnatural wish, even in 
 the good and amiable, who have been long used tc 
 attention and admiration in society she must do it by 
 
Growing Old. 297 
 
 means quite different from any she has hitherto 
 employed. Even then, be her wit ever so sparkling, 
 her influence ever so pure and true, she will often find 
 her listener preferring bright eyes to intellectual con- 
 versation, and the satisfaction of his heart to the 
 improvement of his mind. And who can blame 
 him? 
 
 Pleasant as men's society undoubtedly is ; honour 
 able, well-informed gentlemen, who meet a lady on 
 the easy neutral ground of mutual esteem, and take 
 more pains to be agreeable to her than, unfortu- 
 nately, her own sex frequently do ; they are, after 
 all, but men. Not one of them is really necessary to 
 a woman's happiness, except the one whom, by this 
 time, she has probably either met, or lost, or found. 
 Therefore, however uncomplimentary this may sound 
 to those charming and devoted creatures, which of 
 course they always are in ladies' young ladies' 
 society, a lady past her youth may be well content to 
 let them go before they depart of their own accord. 
 I fear the waning coquette, the ancient beauty, as 
 
 well as the ordinary woman, who has had her fail 
 1-3* 
 
298 Growing Old. 
 
 share of both, love and liking, must learn and sho\i 
 by her demeanour she has learned that the only way 
 to preserve the unfeigned respect of the opposite sex, 
 is by letting them see that she can do without eithei 
 their attention or their admiration. 
 
 Another source of contentment, which in youth's 
 fierce self-dependence it would be vain to look for is 
 the recognition of one's own comparative unimport- 
 ance and helplessness in the scale of fate. We begin 
 by thinking we can do everything, and that every- 
 thing rests, with us to do; the merest trifle frets and 
 disturbs us; the restless heart wearies itself with 
 anxieties over its own future, the tender one over the 
 futures of those dear to it. Many a young face do I 
 see wearing the indescribable Martha-look " troubled 
 about many things" whom I would fain remind of 
 the anecdote of the ambassador in China. To him, 
 tossing sleepless on his bed, his old servant said : 
 
 " Sir, may I put to you, and "will you answer, three 
 questions? First, did not the Almighty govern this 
 world very well before you came into it ?" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
Growing Old. 299 
 
 " And will He not also do the same when you are 
 gone out of it?" 
 
 " I know that." 
 
 " Then, do you not think, sir, that He is able tc 
 govern it while you are in it?" 
 
 The ambassador smiled assent, turned round, and 
 slept calmly. 
 
 Alas I it is the slowest and most painful lesson that 
 Faith has to learn Faith, not Indifference to do 
 steadfastly and patiently all that lies to her hand; 
 and there leave it, believing that the Almighty is 
 able to govern His' own world. 
 
 It is said that we suffer less as we grow older, that 
 pain, like joy, becomes dulled by repetition, or by 
 the callousness that comes with years. In one sense 
 this is true. If there is no joy like the joy of youth, 
 the rapture of a first love, the thrill of a first ambi- 
 tion, God's great mercy has also granted that there is 
 no anguish like youth's pain ; so total, so hopeless, 
 blotting out earth and heaven, falling down upon the 
 whole being like a stone. This never comes in after 
 life, because the sufferer, if he or she have lived tc 
 
300 Growing Old. 
 
 any purpose at all, lias learned that God never meant 
 any human being to be crushed under any calamity 
 like a blind worm under a stone. 
 
 For lesser evils, the fact that our interests gradu- 
 ally take a wider range, allows more scope for the 
 healing power of compensation. Also our strongest 
 idiosyncrasies, our loves, hates, sympathies and pre- 
 judices, having assumed a more rational and softened 
 shape, we do not present so many angles for the 
 rough attrition of the world. Likewise, with the eye 
 of that Faith already referred to, we have come to 
 view life in its entirety, instead of agonisingly puz- 
 zling over its disjointed parts, which are not, and 
 were never meant to be, made wholly clear to mortal 
 eye. And that calm twilight, which by nature's 
 kindly^ law so soon begins to creep over the past, 
 throws over all things a softened colouring which 
 altogether transcends and forbids regret. I suppose 
 there is hardly any woman with a good heart and a 
 clear conscience, who does not feel, on the whole, the 
 infinite truth of the verses at the head of this papcr ; 
 and of the other two verses which I here add partly 
 
Growing Old. 301 
 
 because a pleasant rhyme is a wholesome thing to 
 cling about the memory, and partly in the hope that 
 some one may own or claim this anonymous song : 
 
 " ' Do ye think of the hopes that are gone, Jeanie, 
 
 As ye sit by your fire at night ? 
 Do ye gather them up as they faded fast 
 
 Like buds with an early blight ?' 
 ' I think of the hopes that are gone, Robm, 
 
 And I mourn not their stay was fleet ; 
 For they fell as the leaves of the red rose fall, 
 And were even in falling, sweet.' 
 
 ' Do ye think of the friends that are gone, Jeanie, 
 
 As ye sit by your fire at night ? 
 Do ye wish they were round you again once more 
 
 By the hearth that they made so bright ?' 
 ' I think of the friends that are gone, Robin, 
 
 They are dear to my heart as then : 
 But the best and the dearest among them all 
 I have never wished back again 1 ' " 
 
 Added to all these reasons, contentment, faith, 
 cheerfulness, and the natural calming down of both 
 passions and emotions, which give a woman greatei 
 
302 Growing Old. 
 
 capacity for usefulness in middle life than in any pre- 
 vious portion of her existence, is another her 
 greater independence. By the time she has arrived 
 at the half of those three-score-years-and-ten which 
 form the largest available limit of active life, she 
 will generally have become, in the best sense of the 
 term, her own mistress. I do not mean as regards 
 exemption from family ties and restrictions, for this 
 sort of liberty is sadder than bondage, but she will 
 be mistress over herself she will have learned to un- 
 derstand herself, mentally and bodily. Nor is this 
 last a small advantage, for it often takes years to 
 comprehend, and act upon when comprehended, the 
 physical peculiarities of one's own constitution. 
 Much valetudinarianism among women arises from 
 ignorance or neglect of the commonest sanitary laws ; 
 and indifference to that grand preservative of a healthy 
 body, a well-controlled, healthy mind. Both of these 
 are more attainable in middle age than youth ; and, 
 therefore, the sort of happiness they bring a solid, 
 useful, available happiness is more in her power 
 then, than at any earlier period. 
 
Growing Old. 303 
 
 And why ? Because she has ceased to think prin- 
 cipally of herself and her own pleasures ; because, as 
 I tried to show in a former chapter, happiness itself 
 has become to her an accidental thing, which the 
 good God may give or withhold as He sees most fit 
 for her most adapted to the work for which He 
 means to use her in her generation. This conviction 
 of being at once an active and a passive agent self* 
 working, worked through, and worked upon is 
 surely consecration enough to form the peace, nay, 
 the happiness, of any good woman's life : enough, be 
 it ever so solitary, to sustain it until the end. 
 
 In what manner such a conviction should be 
 carried out, no one individual can venture to advise. 
 "Women's work is, in this age, if undefined, almost 
 unlimited, when the woman herself so chooses. She 
 alone can be a law unto herself; deciding, acting 
 according to the circumstances in which her lot is 
 placed. 
 
 And have we not many who do so act ? "Women 
 of property, whose name is a proverb for generous 
 and wise charities whose riches, carefully guided, 
 
304 Growing Old 
 
 flow into innumerable channels, freshening the whole 
 land, Women of rank and influence, who use both, 
 or lay aside both, in the simplest humility, for labours 
 of love which level, or rather raise, all classes to one 
 common sphere of womanhood. And many others, 
 of whom the world knows nothing, who have taken 
 the wisest course that any unmarried woman can 
 take, and made for themselves a home and a position: 
 some, as the Ladies Bountiful of a country neighbour- 
 hood ; some, as elder sisters, on whom has fallen the 
 bringing up of whole families, and to whom has 
 tacitly been accorded the headship of the same, by 
 the love and respect of more than one generation 
 thereof; and some as writers, painters, and profes- 
 sional women generally, who make the most of the 
 special gift apparently allotted to them, believing 
 that, be it great or small, it is not theirs either to lose 
 or to waste, but that they must one day render up to 
 the Master His own, with usury. 
 
 "Would that, instead of educating our young girls 
 with the notion that they are to be wi ves, or nothing 
 matrons, with an acknowledged position and 
 
Growing Old. 305 
 
 duties, or with no position and duties at all we 
 could instil into them the principle that, above and 
 before all, they are to be women women, whose 
 character is of their own making, and whose lot lies 
 in their own hands. Not through any foolish inde- 
 pendence of mankind, or adventurous misogamy : let 
 people prate as they will, the woman was never born 
 yet who would not cheerfully and proudly give her- 
 self and her whole destiny into a worthy hand, at the 
 right time, and under fitting circumstances that is, 
 when her whole heart and conscience accompanied 
 and sanctified the gift. But marriage ought always 
 to be a question not of necessity, but choice. Every 
 girl ought to be taught that a hasty, loveless union, 
 stamps upon her as foul dishonour as one of those 
 connexions which omit the legal ceremony altogether; 
 and that, however pale, dreary, and toilsome a single 
 life may be, unhappy married life must be tenfold 
 worse an ever-haunting temptation, an incurable 
 regret, a torment from which there is no escape but 
 death. There is many a bridal-chamber over which 
 
306 Growing Old. 
 
 ought to be placed no other inscription than that 
 well-known one over the gate of Dante's hell : 
 
 " Lasciate ogni speranza voi chi entrate." 
 
 God forbid that any woman, in whose heart is any 
 sense of real marriage, with all its sanctity, beauty, 
 and glory, should ever be driven to enter such an 
 accursed door ! 
 
 But after the season of growing old, there comes, 
 to a few, the time of old age ; the withered face, the 
 failing strength, the bodily powers gradually sinking 
 into incapacity for both usefulness and enjoyment 
 I will not say but that this season has its sad aspect 
 to a woman who has never married ; and who, as her 
 own generation dies out, probably has long since died 
 out, retains no longer, nor can expect to retain, any 
 flesh-and-blood claim upon a single human being. 
 When all the downward ties which give to the decline 
 of life a rightful comfort, and the interest in the new 
 generation which brightens it with a perpetual hope, 
 are to her either unknown, or indulged in chiefly on 
 
Growing Old. 307 
 
 one side. Of course there are exceptions where an 
 aunt has been almost like a mother, and a loving and 
 loveable great-aunt is as important a personage as 
 any grandmother. But I speak of things in general. 
 It is a condition to which a single woman must make 
 up her mind, that the close of her days will be more 
 or less solitary. 
 
 Yet there is a solitude which old age feels to be as 
 natural and satisfying as that rest which seems such 
 an irksorneness to youth, but which gradually grows 
 into the best blessing of our lives; and there is 
 another solitude, so full of peace and hope, that it is 
 like Jacob's sleep in the wilderness, at the foot of the 
 ladder of angels. 
 
 " All things are less dreadful than they seem." 
 
 And it may be that the extreme loneliness which, 
 viewed afar off, appears to an unmarried woman as 
 one of the saddest of the inevitable results of her lot, 
 shall by that time have lost all its pain, and be 
 regarded but as the quiet, dreamy hour " between the 
 
308 Growing Old. 
 
 lights ;" when the day's work is done, and we leac 
 back, closing our eyes, to think it all over before we 
 finally go to rest, or to look forward, in faith and 
 hope, unto the Coming Morning. 
 
 A finished life a life which has made the best of 
 all the materials granted to it, and through which, be 
 its web dark or bright, its pattern clear or clouded, 
 can now be traced plainly the hand of the Great 
 Designer; surely this is worth living for? And 
 though at its end it may be somewhat lonely; though 
 a servant's and not a daughter's arm may guide the 
 failing step ; though most likely it will be strangers 
 only who come about the dying bed, close the eyes 
 that no husband ever kissed, and draw the shroud 
 kindly over the poor withered breast where no child's 
 head has ever lain; still, such a life is not to be 
 pitied, for it is a completed life. It has fulfilled its 
 appointed course, and returns to the Giver of all 
 breath, pure as He gave it. Nor will He forget it 
 when He counteth up His jewels. 
 
 On earth, too, for as much and as long as the 
 
Growing Old. 
 
 39 
 
 happy dead, to whom all things have long been made 
 equal, need remembering, such a life will not have 
 been lived in vain : 
 
 w Only the memory of the just 
 Smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust," 
 
 THE EHD. 
 
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