Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

Frost had arrived in Botany Bay before I left it, I mistook the name, never having heard of the Chartist leader, and thought he said Rossthe arrival of Sir James Ross with his South Pole exploration expedition having been expected just as I left: So I answered very innocently that he had not arrived, which I was sorry for, as I knew him a little and wanted much to see him. My two friends glanced at each other and looked surprised, but, when they murmured something about believing he had been in a respectable station of life, it led to an explanation of the mistake, and they continued to enlighten me on recent history till we reached London.

HENRY ELLIOT.

WOMEN OF TO-DAY.

'WHAT an easy matter it is to stem the current of our imagination, to discharge a troublesome or improper thought, and at once return to a state of calm!' So wrote and thought the great Roman emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius.

Alas! for these degenerate days, how few men and women can coincide with this opinion! Great have been the inventions of this present century-railways, electricity, and telephones-but in direct ratio to the importance of these inventions has the spirit of meditation, the enjoined repose of the philosopher, disappeared from our world. These conditions of mind are as much out of date and as rare to meet with as the spinning-wheels of our grandmothers or the stage-coaches that our forefathers travelled in.

If this state of unrest, the constant journeyings to and fro, and the continual mental excitement, have told heavily upon this generation of men, still greater is the burden that now rests upon the shoulders of women.

The old order changeth.' Silent revolutions are being daily performed under our eyes; and it is only because these changes are gradual in their development that men in general pay them so little heed. No one will deny that the education of women has increased and grown enormously during the last few years. A different standard of perfection has been raised, and, above all, strange and new requirements have been added to the old code.

Woman is still to retain her charm; all that art can do in dress, grace, and refinement, and seduction of manner are as keenly appreciated as ever.

But, besides these light and airy graces of the old school, it is now felt that the more grave and serious parts of education must not be found wanting in a woman. She must do more, from a literary point of view, than superficially glance down the columns of a newspaper; while the susceptibilities of her friends require greater artistic excellence than was evinced by her mother (when she took the Captain's heart by storm some thirty years ago by singing a few popular airs of the day); and as to her water-colours, they must be better than her aunt's roses entwined with auriculas, which were considered such works of art at that time.

If she is to exercise artistic faculties, it is only powers of the first order that, her acquaintance will greet with favour.

The old-world indulgence with which elderly people of a former generation hailed the very mediocre attempts of their young friends to amuse them after dinner by a solo or duet, partly in but often mostly out of tune, that kindly feeling of acceptance is as much an emotion of the past as the Pyramids or armour of the middle ages are relics of past civilisations. In old days people laid to heart the old saying of You must not look a gift horse in the mouth,' and there was a general feeling prevalent that what you did not pay for you had no right to criticise.

Beyond all this, it is now found indispensable that every woman should take a part in charitable and even in political organisa

tions.

To obtain proficiency in these objects, it is requisite that she should acquire business-like habits, and be able to write, and even to speak in public, if not brilliantly, at least with fluency and to the point. Added to these new tests of education, a woman is still expected to be a good linguist. It is thought absolutely necessary that she should be able to read and to express herself with ease in several languages. It does not excite astonishment that a man should have spent most of his early life at a public school, and then at one of the Universities, nominally learning Latin and Greek, and at the end of what he is pleased to call his education be guiltless of being able to translate a stanza of Horace or a line of Homer intelligibly.

The old fiction that the equivalent to a Latin or Greek quotation is not to be found in the English language is a fable that has been repeated so often that it is hardly to be supposed that women will lose faith in their interpreters at once.

On the other hand, it would be considered extraordinary that a woman in society, who had travelled in France, or who had had the advantages of a French governess as a child, should not be able to express herself in French with ease, talk if necessary to a French attaché at a London dinner-party, or write correctly to her modiste in Paris. Added to all this, the athletic developments of a woman's education must not be forgotten to be mentioned here. The same critical faculty is brought to bear upon her ability as a lawn-tennis and a cricket player; and if she does not shoot, at least she is expected to show the same endurance as a man, when she walks over miles of heather, or through fields of turnips. To all these graces, accomplishments, and physical exercises are added her old duties of wife, mother, housekeeper, and hostess.

In all these departments much more is required of a woman than formerly. Not only in every branch is everything to be done personally, but done better, and more fully. A woman now aspires not

only to be the nurse of her children, and the protectress of their infancy, but desires when they grow up to form and guide their minds, and to influence them long after the time when her authority shall have ceased.

A larger capacity and a broader understanding are demanded on all sides from women. Even the type of a woman's woman is changing. A figure-head of inane incapacity, very mediocre mental attainments, veneered by refinement of manner, and clothed in French millinery, is no longer an ideal to women; whilst men are no more contented to find in a woman merely a recipient of their thoughts and ideas, a worshipper who places them upon a pedestal, and who, by means of her own limitations and ignorances, clothes them in the giant's robe. Women are daily opening more and more their souls and minds; they are beginning to learn the secret of how to make the divine fire-not only to boil the domestic pot, but also as a delight and pleasure to themselves.

As the managers of households much more now is demanded of them. People no longer live all the year round in one place. In one country house one thing is often found to be good, in another bad. Little customs vary and change, and every woman who looks at housekeeping from an artistic point of view, and not merely as a daily drudgery, will always be anxious to effect constant reforms; to take valuable hints wherever she can find them, and to add fresh graces to her table and to her rooms. Take alone the arrangement of flowers on a dinner-table-a completely modern art, almost unknown, except in its simplest rudiments, to the last generation. Many a social aspirant believes it to be de rigueur that her table should be arranged in one kind of flower, and in one colour. To obtain a sufficient quantity of blossoms Covent Garden has to be ransacked, and such skill is demanded that little short of a floral education is necessary for a woman to be the decorator herself. Then all the accessories of hospitality are much more complicated now than formerly. Breakfasts, dinners, shooting luncheons, picnics, and five-o'clock teas are all pushed to such a pitch of perfection and luxury, that they would have seemed to our grandmothers feasts only to be found in the Arabian Nights.

But perhaps the hardest burden of all is the vast number and constant change of subjects and occupations that a woman has to get through in a day. There are so many little things that must be done: little things that seem so trivial in themselves that they are not worth mentioning or particularising, but which, if left undone, would place a household in chaos, and make every member of it uncomfortable. Everyone knows by comparison the difference between a house where a woman of education and refinement gives some of her thought and personal care to the comfort of her guests, and one where all is left to the servants. We can all recall

[blocks in formation]

n has

gs that

es that

if left

ember

Ference

ement

of her

recall

in certain houses the sheets scented with lavender, the enticing quill pens and the dainty bunch of flowers, the cosy fire on a cold day, that all whispered welcome to us as we entered our bedroom, and compare them favourably with the scrubby and torn blotting-book, the black and incapable pens, and sullen grate, that have been our fate in other places. In one house we have felt instinctively that the hostess has looked upon no details as too small or beneath her dignity; that no guest can come too late or go away too early.

[ocr errors]

Men generally laugh at what they term 'fussing' on the part of a woman, or, in other words, any mention before them or discussion of household duties. And yet all is to be perfection, particularly the cuisine;' the Julienne soup' is to be worthy of a French café, the 'côtelettes à la soubise' irreproachable. It is true that they retain their privilege-as Englishmen-of grumbling; but that is, as a rule, all the help they are willing to give a woman in domestic matters. Till people have done a thing themselves, they always underrate the labour that it requires to do it efficiently. It looks so easy, it cannot take long,' is said as often by men and women as by children. The next time that Lady Clara Vere de Vere goes to Ascot, it might add to her experiences of life if she were on one occasion to pack her own boxes. She would, perhaps, by means of that experience, better understand the look given her by her maid (of indignant mortification) when she decides at the last moment to change her travelling dress for one that is reposing at the bottom of her trunk. The law of the Medes and Persians will not suit an English household-a system that works well for a few months is not necessarily good for all time. A change of household often involves to the woman as much trouble and annoyance as a change of ministry to a country. Nor must it be believed that because a household is numerous, and a woman has many servants under her command, she can, to quote the vulgar phrase, 'be quite a lady,' loll on a sofa all day, and read a novel.

'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' and often, with their discussions, recriminations and quarrels, much more time is lost and wasted by :he cooks than was required for the actual making of the soup. John Stuart Mill, in his Subjection of Women, speaks of the many and various duties of a woman, and compares her life 'to an interrupted sentence.' Many women sink beneath the fretting burden of daily commonplaces and trivial duties. Lord Lytton, in one of his novels, writes, 'How many Hampdens and Miltons are killed by the atmosphere of a drawing-room!' How many more Brontës and George Eliots' are destroyed by the load of conventional life! Nobody looks on a woman's time as sacred. Who ever heard of a woman's study in any country house? A man may be the most bucolic of mortals, or only happy in the company of his dogs and gamekeeper, yet courtesy

« ForrigeFortsett »