A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858): a machine-readable transcription

Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock (1826-1887)


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Victorian Women Writers Project: an Electronic Collection

Perry Willett, General Editor.

A Woman's Thoughts About Women

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
348 p.
Hurst and Blackett
London
1858

        The copy transcribed is from the Lilly Library, Indiana University.



        All quotation marks, hyphens, dashes, apostrophes and colons have been transcribed as entity references.


        All apostrophes and single right quotation marks are encoded as ’.


        Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed; all hyphens are encoded as ‐ and em dashes as —.


        The publisher's advertisement following p.348 has been omitted.



(titlepage)

        


A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN.

By

THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," &c. &c.


"He that good thinketh, good may do,
And God will help him thereunto:
For was never good work wrought
Without beginning of good thought."
IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS.
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,


13 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1858. The right of Translation is reserved.

(printer)
LONDON:
Printed by G. BARCLAY, Castle St. Leicester Sq.


Page iii

(preface)
    

PREFACE.


        THESE "Thoughts," a portion of which originally 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 puzzled generations, and will probably puzzle generations more. They lift the banner of no party; and assert the opinions of no clique. They do not even attempt an originality,
Page iv

which, in treating of a subject like the present, would be either dangerous or impossible.


        In this book, therefore, many women will find simply the expression of what they have themselves, consciously or unconsciously, oftentimes 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."


Page v


        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 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 conscientiously; and thus I leave it.



Page 1

    

A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN.

    

CHAPTER I.

      

Something to do.


        I PREMISE 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
Page 2

single women, belonging to those supernumerary ranks, which political economists tell us, are yearly increasing, who most need thinking about.


        First, in their early estate, when they have so much 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 permanent one. Secondly, when this sovereignty is passing 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 Grandfather 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 whether, 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 es-


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tate," 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 certain acknowledged state of things, perhaps incapable of remedy, but by no means incapable of amelioration.


        But, granted these facts, and leaving to wiser heads the explanation of them--if indeed there be any--it seems advisable, or at least allowable, that any woman who has thought a good deal about the matter, should not fear to express in word--or deed, which is better,--any conclusions, which out of her own observation and experience she may have arrived at. And looking around upon the middle classes, which form the staple 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


Page 4

good fortune--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 school-days 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 pabulum of the human soul--occupation. If any inherent want in his character, any unlucky combination of circumstances, nullifies this, what a poor creature the man becomes!--what a dawdling, moping, sitting-over-the-fire, thumb-twiddling, lazy, ill-tempered animal! And why? "Oh, poor fellow! 'tis because he has got nothing to do!"


        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


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few will be bold enough to assert openly. Tacitly they do, when they preach up lovely uselessness, fascinating 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! Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose 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


Page 6

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 as 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 sor-


Page 7

row to bring forth"--and bring up--"children"--cannot I fancy, be questioned. Nor, when the gradual changes of the civilised world, or some special destiny, 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 drawing-room. He delights to give them all they can desire--clothes, amusements, society; he and mamma together take every domestic care off their hands; they have abundance of time and nothing to occupy it; plenty of


Page 8

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 emptiest 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 Rasselas, and it has been proved by many a shipwrecked life, of girls especially. This "falling in love" being usually a mere delusion of 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 matrimonial results ensue. There only ensues--what?


        A long, dreary season, of pain, real or ima-


Page 9

ginary, yet not the less real because it is imaginary; of anger and mortification, of impotent struggle--against unjust parents, the girl believes, or, if romantically inclined, against cruel destiny. Gradually this mood wears out; she learns to regard "love" as folly, and turns her whole hope and aim to--matrimony! Matrimony 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 fill 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 bitter-


Page 10

ness in her heart: not knowing exactly what she wants, yet aware of a morbid, perpetual want of something? What is it?


        Alas! the boys only have had the benefit of that well-known juvenile apophthegm, that
"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.


Page 11

Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, perfectly natural death; and they will never recognise 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.


        Yet this great sin, this irredeemable loss, in many women arises from pure ignorance. Men are taught as a 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


Page 12

to cram into the afternoon the entire business of the day--that every minute's unpunctuality constitutes a debt or a theft (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 "accustomed 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 money, perhaps, but life--life in its highest form and noblest uses--life bestowed upon every human being, distinctly 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 of it, is as essential to you as to any father or brother of you all. You are accountable for it just as much as he


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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 something to do there, in it and for it: some visible, tangible 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 embroidery, doubtless; various pleasant, kindly, illegible letters; a moderate store of good deeds; and a cart-load of good intentions. Nothing else--save your name on a tombstone, or lingering for a few more years in family or friendly memory. "Poor dear


Page 14

--! 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--how?


        A definite answer to this question is simply


Page 15

impossible. 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 acquaintance, 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.


Page 16


        Here occurs another of those plain rules which are the only guidance possible in the matter--a Bible rule, too--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Question it not, philosophise not over it!--do it!--only do it! 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 lay 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 lets 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-creatures, or, far higher, the love of God?


Page 17


        "Labour is worship," says the proverb: also--nay, 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 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, industrious lives: lives complete in themselves, and therefore not giving half the trouble to their friends that the idle and foolish virgins do--no, not even


Page 18

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 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


Page 19

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 overlooked: in charitable works, where she is "such a 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 another home besides.


        She has not married. Under Heaven, her home, her life, her lot, are all of her own making. Bitter or sweet they may have been--it is not


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ours to meddle with them, but we can any day see their results. 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 things 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,


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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 Otherwhere--"She hath done what she could."


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CHAPTER 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 women. One of the very last things we learn, often through a course of miserable helplessness, heart-burnings, difficulties, contumelies, and pain, is the lesson, taught to boys from their school-days, of self-dependence.


        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 hoydenish-


Page 23

ness, coarseness, strong-mindedness, down to the lowest depth of bloomerism, cigarette-smoking, and talking slang.


        And there are many good reasons, ingrained in the very tenderest core of woman's nature, why this should be. We are "the weaker vessel"--whether acknowledging it or not, most of us feel this: it becomes man's duty and delight to show us honour accordingly. 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


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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 over and protect her, then, indeed, the harsh but salutary 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;


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who, while most needing the exercise of self-dependence, are usually the very last in whom it is inculcated, or even permitted. From babyhood they are given to understand that helplessness is feminine and beautiful; helpfulness--except in certain received forms of manifestation--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 Right, but Propriety; a certain 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,


Page 26

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 superior 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 distinct 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, upon some one else--some individual, or some aggregate of individuals yclept Society? Is this Society to draw up a code of regulations as to what is proper for us to do, and what not? Which latter is supposed to be done for us; if not done, or there happens to be no one to do


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it, is it to be 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 compelled to bow an honest pride to the cruellest humiliations, 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 themselves 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 pitiable, and, in some sense, humbling confession, could hardly have been made; yet it is that not of hundreds, but of thousands, in England.


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        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, diligence, 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.


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Happily, the trade was one that required no personal publicity; but they had to keep the books, manage the stock, choose and superintend fit agents--to do things difficult, not to say distasteful, to most women, and resign enjoyments that, to women of their refinement, must have cost daily self-denial. Yet they did it; they filled their father's place, sustained their delicate mother in ease and luxury, never once compromising 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


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helps those who help themselves." 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--pupils and pupils' children, friends and their children, besides brothers and sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces, down to the slenderest tie of blood, or even mere strangers. And yet she has never been anything 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 bono?" 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-


Page 31

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 perpetual claimant for all manner of advice and assistance; the first not always followed, and the second 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 division between brave self-reliance and bold assumption.


        Perhaps the line is most easily drawn, as in most difficulties, at that point where duty ends


Page 32

and pleasure begins. Thus, we should respect one who, on a mission of mercy or necessity, went through the lowest 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, though perfectly "respectable," would be an exceedingly 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, whether 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 passive character of our sex, its claims, proprieties, and restrictions, are, I have often


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noticed, if the most sensitive, 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, or to the public-house for a supply of beer. It never 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


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each ought to be educated into equal self-dependence. Let us, at least, hold the balance of justice even, nor allow an over-consideration 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 maidens 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-dependence. Not after any Amazonian fashion; no mutilating of fair womanhood in order to assume the unnatural armour of men; but simply by the full exercise of every faculty, physical, moral, and intellectual, with which Heaven has endowed us all, severally and col


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lectively, in different degrees; allowing 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 gifts from their cradle that the priceless pearl of decorous 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 defenceless; 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 yourselves! Be assured that no outward circumstances will harm you while you keep the jewel of purity in your bosom,


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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 happen 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 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.


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        The age of chivalry, with all its benefits and harmfulness, is gone by, for us women. We cannot now have men for our knights-errant, expending blood and life for our sake, while we have nothing to do 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 between 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 Hudibras'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.


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        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 time in the world's history judged so entirely by their individual merits, and respected according to the respect 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." "Gentlemen 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


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transferring 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-dependence, which is only real and only valuable when 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 proceeds, 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 existence; 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


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at large may recognise and profit 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.


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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 everything possible and impossible, from compulsory wifehood in Australia to voluntary watchmaking at home, do at present rather confuse the matter than otherwise. No doubt, out of these "many words," which "darken speech," some plain word or two will one day take shape


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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.


        These Thoughts--however desultory and unsatisfactory, seeing the great need there is for deeds rather than words--are those of a "working" woman, who has been such 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 classification 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


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events, daily bread, is the great chasm into which the helpless and penniless of our sex generally plunge; and this indiscriminate Quintus Curtiusism, so far from filling 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 "respectable" profession to get on in, and are fit for nothing else. Thus the most important of ours, and the highest of all men's vocations, are both degraded--in so far as they can be degraded--by the unworthiness and incompetency of their professors.


        If, in the most solemn sense, not one woman in five thousand is fit to be a mother, we may safely say that not two out of that number are fit to be governesses. Consider all that the office implies: very many of a mother's duties, with the addition of considerable mental attainments, firmness of character, good sense, good temper,


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good breeding; patience, gentleness, loving-kindness. In short, every quality that goes to make a perfect woman, is required of her who presumes to undertake the education of one single little child.


        Does any one pause to reflect what a "little child" is? Not sentimentally, as a creature to be philosophised upon, painted and poetised; nor selfishly, as a kissable, scoldable, sugar-plum-feedable plaything; but as a human soul and body, to be moulded, instructed, and influenced, in order that it in its turn may mould, instruct, and influence unborn generations. 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 educated 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.


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        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 all 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.


        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 edu-


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cation of their children; sending their boys to cheap boarding-schools, and engaging for their daughters governesses at 20l. a year, or daily tuition at sixpence an hour; and how, as a natural result, thousands of incapable girls, and ill-informed, unscrupulous women, go on professing to teach everything under the sun, adding lie upon lie, and meanness 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 I have ever known have been among those who have never gone to school, or scarcely ever had a regular governess.


        Surely such a fact as this--I put it to general


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experience, 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 the 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. Competition is so great, that if we did not


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profess to do everything, it would be supposed we could do nothing: 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, starving. There may be exceptions from exceeding misfortune 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


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who can teach only a single thing, solidly, conscientiously, and well.


        In this, as in most social questions, where to theorise is easy and to practise very difficult, it will often be found that the silent undermining of an evil is safer than the loud outcry against it. If every governess, 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, competition 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.


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        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 impossible 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 dissections, and so on--all which studies are indispensable 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 acute and accurate historians, clear explanators of science, especially successful in imaginative works, and within the last year


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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 entering 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 work will float down the ages, safe and sure; there is no need to speak of it or them. But there is another secondary class among us, neither "geniuses" nor ordinary women--aspiring to both destinies, and usually achieving 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


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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 community at large.


        One is often tempted to believe, in the great influx 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.


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        Therefore, let men do as they will--and truly they are often ten times vainer and more ambitious than we!--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 conscientiously believing it is her calling--that in which she shall do most good, and best carry out the aim of her existence--let her fulfill to the last iota its solemn requirements.


        These entail more, much more, than flighty young genius or easily-satisfied mediocrity ever


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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 génie 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 of them, no less than from men, the fervent application, and sometimes the total devotion of a lifetime.


        For, high as the calling is, it is not always, in the human sense, a happy on; it often results in, if it does not spring from, great sacrifices; and is full of a thousand misconstructions, annoyances, and temptations. Nay, since ambition is a quality far oftener deficient in us than in the other sex, its very successes are less sweet to women than to men. Many a "celebrated


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authoress" or "exquisite paintress" must have felt the heart-truth in Aurora Leigh:
"I might have been a common women, now,
And happier, less known and less left alone,
Perhaps a better woman after all--
With chubby children hanging around 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 whether 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 existence, than any


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"woman of genius" that ever enlightened the world.


        But happiness is not the first not the only thing on earth. Whosoever has entered upon this vocation in the right spirit, let her keep to it, neither afraid not 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 catalogues. 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 inviolable sanctity of her home.


        Without--in those books and by these pictures


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--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 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 eyes, 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 Rachel, 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 ex-


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pression, should be pent down, cruelly and dangerously, because it refuses to run in the ordinary channel 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 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 familiar 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


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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 of some adorable actress, at the moment when he first thinks of that goddess as his wife, will understand what I mean.


        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 that 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


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appearance before the public eye, this incessant struggle for the public's personal verdict--is its intense involuntary 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 public 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 preservation; but when it comes to "each for herself"--when you see the fairest Shakespeare turn red or pale at the mention of a rival impersonator--when Miss This cannot be asked to a party for fear of meeting 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 absolutely vicious, which the world, and the necessity of working in it, effect on women.


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        And for this reason the profession of public entertainment, in all its graduation, from the inspired tragédienne 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 in the old question about the "respectability" 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 in any other--let her not forego it; for in every occupation 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


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among the higher ranks of this profession, where genius itself acts as a purifying and refining 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. Ay, even among poor ballet-dancers, capering with set rouged smiles and laden 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 "princess" of an Easter extravaganza, for the sake of 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, as self-denying, as that of hundreds of timid, daintily protected girls, and would-be correct matrons, who shrink in safe privacy from the very


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thought of these. But 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!


        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 negativeness of a private life, and assume a substantive position, it is her duty not hastily to decide, and before 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 absorption of home, the delicious retirement of dependent love; but what she has, she has, and nothing can ever take it from her. Nor


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is it, after all, a small thing for any woman--be she governess, painter, author, or artiste--to feel that, higher or lower, according 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.


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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 better 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
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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 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 the Shirt; or a novelist presents us with some imaginary portrait--some Lettice 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, accomplishments and defects--we "ladies" of the middle and upper ranks, especially those


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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 visitations of the ladies Bountiful, or the legislation of Ten-Hours'-Bill Committees in an enlightened British Parliament, is the most silent of all. Yet it includes so many grades--from the West-end milliner, who dresses in silk every day, and is almost (often quite) a "lady," down to the wretched lodging-house "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!


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        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 Victoria'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-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 is 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


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as handicraftswomen, 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 penniless dependent, than a "person in business"--milliner, dress-maker, shop-woman, &c.? As for a domestic 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 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 capriciously 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 under-


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stood, concerns not personal merit or endowments, 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 deteriorated by custom into a ridiculous and contemptible tyranny--the battle between professions and trades. I shall not enter into it here. Happily, men are now 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 degree to the work done, but to the manner of doing it, and to the individual who does it.


        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,


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one often finds great self-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 education is necessary to create a standard of moral conscientiousness, this order of women is much more deficient 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 this mass of womanhood, out of which are glutted our churchyards, hospitals, prisons,


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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 success 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 from a solid social good.


        But in these Thoughts I would fain address individuals. 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 employer or employed.


        And, first, as employer.


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        I am afraid it is from some natural deficiency in the constitution of our sex that it is so difficult to teach 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 bandage her eyes. No; kindliness, unselfishness, charity, 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?


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        We do not mean any harm; we are only acting for the best--for our own benefit, and that of those nearest to us; and yet we are committing an act of injustice, the result of which fills slopsellers's doors with starving sempstresses, and causes unlimited competition among incompetent milliners and dressmakers, 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!" 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 possible be got "cheaply"--that is, below its average acknowledged cost, without somebody's being cheated? Consequently, these devotees to cheapness, when not victims--which they frequently are in the long run--are very little better than genteel swindlers.


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        There is another lesser consideration, and yet not small either. Labour, unfairly remunerated, of necessity deteriorates in quality, and thereby lowers the standard of appreciation. Every time I pay a low price for an ill-fitting gown or an ugly tawdry bonnet--cheapness is usually tawdry--I am wronging not merely myself, but my employée, by encouraging careless work and bad taste, and by thus going in direct opposition to a rule from whence springs so much that is eclectic and beautiful in the female character, that "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 thief.


        Humiliating as the confession may be, it must be owned that, on the whole, men are less prone to this petty vice that we are. You rarely find a gentleman beating down his tailor, cheapening his


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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 which tries to satisfy them below cost-price, and consequently 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 corrupted from an original virtue--it becomes our bounden duty, as women, to protest with all our 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


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to expense, can rarely either feel or appreciate.


        I do not here advance the argument, usually enforced by experience, that cheapness always comes 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 inculcating the said virtue.


        Another injustice, less patent, but equally harmful, is constantly committed by ladies--namely, the conducting of business relations in an unbusiness-like manner. Carelessness, irregularity, or delay in giving orders; needless absorption of time, which is money; and, above all, want of explicitness and decision, are faults which no one dare complain of in a customer, but yet which result in the more cruel wrong.


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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 reasonable 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 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


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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 indispensable 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 depreciates 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


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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 sufficiently limited our physique to prevent our being very fatal rivals in manual labour; she has given us instincts that will rarely make us prefer masculine occupations 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 women, and single women above all, be taught to do all they can, and do


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it as well as they can. Little fear that there will not remain a sufficiently wide field open to competent men, and only men, in every handicraft: little fear that the natural métier 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 stitching for mother, or hemming of father's pocket-handkerchief--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


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the tiny creature as yet unknown and unseen--truly, no 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 own 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 artificers, 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 following 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


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take an interest in it beyond the mere hire. I know a dressmaker who evidently feels personally aggrieved when you decline to yield to her taste in costume; who 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 persuade 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 employed, and as much might be said in behalf of the opposite side. For a person to undertake more work than she can finish, to break her promises, 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


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present generation is wisely endeavoring to efface, and to blacken and broaden the line, now fast vanishing, between tradesfolk and gentlefolk--more, tenfold, than all the narrow-minded pride of the most prejudiced aristocracy.


        I should like to see working women--handicraftswomen--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 the 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


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--a silent observation and imitation of whatever seems most pleasant and refined in those of their 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.


        There is one class which, from its daily and hourly familiarity with that above it, has perhaps more opportunities 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


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nature begins less in the external force applied than the vital principle asserting itself within. It is the undercurrent 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 successfully 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 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 influence, 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


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mainspring of excellence, as well as of happiness, in any calling, let it be impressed on every one that her future advancement lies, spiritually 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; seldomer 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 consistency to acknowledge and have faith in itself, and to 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."


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        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 respecting the quality of her work, I shall give her plenty of time to do it in. No 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, ma'am, when I say I'll come, I always do."--(P.S. She didn't!!)


        Honest woman! If she turns out fairly, so


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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 simple axiom expresses and includes all I have been writing on this subject.


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CHAPTER V.

      

Female Servants.


        THOUGH female servants come under the category of handicraftswomen, 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 follower 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


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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 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!


        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


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him, losing somewhat the distinction of mere rank, yet tries to enforce it by instituting external distinctions impossible toe maintained between himself and his dependants?--or the inferior's, who, sufficiently advanced to detect the weaknesses of the class above him, though not to sure his own, abjures the blind reverence and obedience of ancient times, without attaining 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;


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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 Vanity-fair of London, for gossiping on area steps with divers "followers"--or the honourable Mrs. Browne Browne, who keeps Victorine sitting up till daylight just to undo her mistress's gown, and last week threatened, through she did not dare, to dismiss the fine upper-nurse, because, during the brief minute or two after dessert, when Master Baby appeared, 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


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flesh and blood, would of course meet nominal assent. But to attempt to get them to carry that truth out practically--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, accountable 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 greatest Leveller, having permanently interposed, we may safely, over a few spadefuls of earth, venture to acknowledge "our dear sister here departed."


        I have gone up and down the world a good deal, yet I have scarcely found one household, rich or poor, hard or benevolent, Christian or worldly, aristocratic or democratic, which, however correct in outward practice, could be brought to own as a guiding principle as this, which is


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apparently the New-Testament 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 dinner. 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 a certain respectful awe. But I do not invite her to eat her own dinner, or mingle in the society which to me is its most piquant sauce. She was not born to it, not brought up for it. Good old soul! she would gape at the finest bon-mot,


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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 parlor-maid in and out of the drawing-room, to see by her bright intelligent face that she understands much of whatever talk is going on, and may learn something by it too sometimes; still, I should never 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 lifetime. 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 necessary, when she helps me on with my silk one, to condole


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her over the said cotton, or to offer her the use of the toilet and my chaperonage at the conversazione 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 remain, 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 external 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


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I never left my card at Buckingham Palace, it is prone to do to a certain Lady there, who takes early walks, and goes rides with her little children--apparently a better woman, wife, and mother than nine-tenths of her subjects. 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, Sundays and holidays, to be read in the kitchen, when the work


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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 on them for its well-being, physical and moral. And this, with no fear of thereby increasing their self-conceit: it is not responsibility, but the want or loss of it, which degrades 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 incredulity, into becoming actually as bad as they are supposed to be. Thus, if the young women to whom has fallen the lot of domestic service, of making homes comfort-


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able, and especially of taking care of children, could once be make to feel their own importance as a class--their infinite means of usefulness--I 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. Character is likewise indispensable to you; so you seek out good families, and keep in them for a certain 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 yourselves. "To better yourself," is usually held a satisfactory 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,


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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 indifferent 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 matters--and tell no lies, or only as many white ones as will answer your purposes. And so you go on, passing from "place" to "place," resting nowhere, responsible nowhere; sometimes marrying, and dropping into a totally different sphere, but oftener still continuing in the same course from year to year, laying by little enough, either in wages


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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.


        Remember, I am referring not to the lower degrees, but to the respectable among you--those who can always command decent wages and good situations, so long as they are capable of taking them. Of the meaner class, ignorant, stupid, drifted from household to household, from pure incapacity to do or to learn anything, or expelled disgracefully thence for want of (poor wretches! 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 these unhappy dregs of your sisterhood, I cannot now venture to speak. I speak of those, born


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of 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 conscientiousness.


        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 difficulty, 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 highest of all motives--because it


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is her duty. Because, to cook a dinner, with care and without waste; to keep 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 position as a servant, but her conduct and character as a human being, accountable to God as much as the greatest woman that ever was born.


        "Oh, that's fine talking!" you may say; "but what can I 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


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is aware of all its domestic weakness, 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 whom master, mistress, children, or friend, must be daily dependent for numerous small comforts and attentions, 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!"


        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 always be 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


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follies or misfortunes of one household into another; carrying on a regular system of double-faced hypocrisy, and fancying she is getting her revenge, and degrading her injurers, when, in fact, she more, much more, degrades herself.


        These are the things which make servants despised; 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 to me a lady with whom I often used to argue the matter--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, precisely what I exact from myself--the same honesty of word and act, the same chastity and


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decency of behavior, 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 probably 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, rather than 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 myself. Reprove, 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


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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 of. Selfishness, stinginess, want of consideration for others, are much oftener the fruitful source of all kinds of domestic rebellion, or the distrust which is 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, too. 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


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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! What does cook in the kitchen, fat and comfortable, know of all these things--of the agonised struggle for position and character--may, mere bread--which makes the days and nights of thousands of the professional classes one long battle for life?


        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 suf-


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fering 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 understand. They should respect not out of blind subservience, but mere common sense, the great difference which their narrower education and mode of thought often places between


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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 sympathy, 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 influence 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, understands one's peculiarities, than the sympathy of many an outside friend, who only rubs against one's angles, sharpened by


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sickness or pain and often, unintentionally, hurts more by futile comforting than by total neglect.


        A word on one branch of female service, undeniably the most important of all--the care and management 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 natural 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


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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 love--given by the Second Adam--to Whom little children came. And how? By practicing it ourselves.


        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


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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 nurse or brother, feeling out of his fierce little heart that this was the sole consideration left him for his half-understood but intolerable wrongs.


        Does ever any man or woman remember the feeling 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 domestic of any sort, once discovered to have lifted up her hand against a child, ought to meet instant severe


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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 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 her helplessly night and day, in the total dependence that of itself produces love. And surely, remembering her own childhood and its events--such nothings now, of such vast moment then, its unjust punishments, unremedied wrongs, and harshly-exacted sacrifices--things which in their results may have affected her temper for years, and even yet are unforgotten--she will strive as much as possible to put herself


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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 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 children have to struggle,


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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 wicked, 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!" That, be she old or young, clever or ignorant, 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,


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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 brutalise 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 restraint, reproof, and even punishment--love that tries to be always as just as it is tender, and never exercises 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.


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        And what a reward there is in this, beyond any form of service--to a woman! Respect and gratitude of parents; consideration from all in the house; affection, fresh, full, and free, and sweet as only a child's love can be. Trying as the nurse-maids's life is, countless as are her vexations and pains, how many a childless 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 wakened 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 and honoure