_Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Sharp._
"Rue Millevoye.
"My dearest Emmy,--No answer from you? How unkind! But still I continue
to give you my ideas of the moment from this. What do we want? A writer
in one of the frivolous sheets which are called newspapers on this side
of the Channel, has been giving himself great airs; looking out of his
window, with two or three touches of his pen he dismisses the poor women
who pass under his balcony, and closes the casement with the conviction
that woman's rights and wrongs are put away for another generation.
Foolish women! They are plentiful enough, and they muster in fair
numbers at the Wauxhall meetings which have been going on here, to the
infinite amusement of the superior creatures who drink absinthe, smoke
cigars, and gamble, hours after we silly things have gone to bed. I am
not writing to deny woman's weakness, nor her vanity, nor the ridiculous
exhibition she makes of herself when she takes to "orating"--as the
Yankees say--and lecturing, and dressing herself up in her brother's
clothes. Do you think, my dear Emmy, there are many women foolish enough
to applaud Dr. Mary Walker because she dresses like an overgrown
school-girl, and shows her trousers? What is she like in society?
Neither man nor woman. But how many have imitated her? How many women in
England, France, and America have taken to the platform? One would think
that all womankind was in a state of revolution, and about to make a
general descent upon the tailors and tobacconists, turning over the
lords of the creation to the milliners and the baby-linen warehouses.
This is just the way men argue, and push themselves out of a
difficulty. This French philosophical pretender, who has been observing
us from his window (I can't imagine where he lives), describes one or
two social monstrosities--with false complexions, hair, figure,--and
morals; brazen in manner, defiant in walk--female intellectual
all-in-alls. His model drives, hunts, orates, passes resolutions,
dissects--in short does everything except attend to baby. This she
leaves to the husband. He takes the pap-bowl, and she shoulders the gun.
He looks out the linen while she sharpens her razors. The foolish public
laugh all along the boulevards, and say what a charming creature a woman
will be when she drives a locomotive, commands a frigate, and storms a
citadel!
"Every time a meeting is convened at the Wauxhall to consider how the
amount of female starvation or misery may be reduced, the philosopher
throws his window open again, and grins while he caricatures, or rather
distorts and exaggerates to positive untruth. M. Gill gets fresh food.
The _chroniqueurs_ invent a series of absurdities, which didn't happen
yesterday, as they allege. I am out of patience when I see all this
mischievous misrepresentation, because I see that it is doing harm to a
very just and proper cause. We are arguing for more work for our poor
sisters who have neither father, husband, brother, nor fortune to depend
upon; and these French comic scribblers describe us as unsexed brawlers,
who want top-boots. I want no manly rights for women. I am content with
the old position, that her head should just reach the height of a man's
heart; but I do see where she is not well used--where she is left to
genteel dependence, and a life in the darkest corner of the
drawing-room, upon the chair with the unsafe leg, over the plate that is
cracked, in the bedroom where the visitor died of scarlet fever.
[Illustration: FRENCH RECOLLECTION OF MEESS TAKING HER BATH.
_The faithful Bouledogue gazes with admiration at the performance of his
Mistress._]
[Illustration: THE BRAVE MEESS AMONG THE BILLOWS HOLDING ON BY THE TAIL
OF HER NEWFOUNDLAND.]
"She is not unsexed wearing her poor heart out against these bars; but
she would be a free, bright, instructed creature, helping her rich
sister, or a trusty counsellor when the children are ill. She would be
unsexed issuing railway tickets or managing a light business; but she is
truly womanly while she is helpless and a burden to others.
"Foolish women! Yes, very stupid very often, but hardly in hoping that
the defenceless among us may be permitted to become, by fair womanly
exertion, independent. I am directed to observe how amusing the _Figaro_
has been recently at our expense, hoping to obtain the suffrages of the
really thoughtless of our sex thereby. We are our own worst enemies and
well do you men know it. The frivolous are an immense host, and these
have reason to laugh at serious women who want to get a little justice
and teaching for their dependent sisters--not manly avocations, nor
masculine amusements. I go to the Wauxhall, my dear Emmy, not to help my
sex to unsex itself, but, I must repeat, to aid my poor sisters who want
to work, that, if left without the support of male kindred, they may
lead honourable, independent lives; to this end they must have certain
rights, and these, and no more, I advocate.
[Illustration: VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH STOCK.
_The Parent Flower and two lovely Buds._]
[Illustration: COMPATRIOTS MEETING IN THE FRENCH EXHIBITION.
_Bar-maids in the English Department recognising a fellow-countryman._]
"You see, the old story is told over again. We beg a little
independence; and we are answered with ancient jests. You are quite as
unjust, and not so amusing or clever in your injustice in England. They
have not imitated the medical students in St. James's Hall at this
Wauxhall. We have seen no such monstrous spectacle as a host of young
men hooting and yelling at one poor, weak, foolish little woman in black
pantalettes. Truly, you must be as tired of the comic view of the
question as you are ashamed of your medical students. I know what the
highly-educated English ladies think on the subject. They detest the
orating, blustering, strangely-costumed advocates of woman's rights; but
don't fall into the common error of believing that they are not earnest
about many of the points we have been discussing here, in the midst of
this mocking race. Depend upon it, we are not foolish enough--fond as
you men are of crying 'foolish women!'--to unsex ourselves.
"The woman who wants to get into Parliament is, to my thinking, a
monster; and I would sentence her to stocking-mending for life. The
creature who appears before men in black pantalettes, and other
imitations of his dress, should be rigorously held clear of decent
houses, until she had learned how to dress herself modestly and
becomingly. The Missy who talked about eating her way to the bar, I
would doom to the perpetual duty of cooking chops for hungry lawyers'
clerks.
"But you will have had enough of this.
"Not a word? and you promised so many. Somebody has whispered a name to
me. It is Charles. Is that true? I will never forgive you.
"Ever yours,
"CARRIE."
Emmy never answered, poor girl!