"One by the hearth sat, with the maids around,
And on the skeins of yarn, sea-purpled, spent
Her morning toil. Him to the council bound,
Called by the honoured kings, just going forth she found."
And calling him, as she might now, "Pappa phile," Dear Papa, asks for the
mule waggon: but it is her father's and her five brothers' clothes she
fain would wash,--
"Ashamed to name her marriage to her father dear."
But he understood all--and she goes forth in the mule waggon, with the
clothes, after her mother has put in "a chest of all kinds of delicate
food, and meat, and wine in a goatskin;" and last but not least, the
indispensable cruse of oil for anointing after the bath, to which both
Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so much health and beauty. And then we
read in the simple verse of a poet too refined, like the rest of his
race, to see anything mean or ridiculous in that which was not ugly and
unnatural, how she and her maids got into the "polished waggon," "with
good wheels," and she "took the whip and the studded reins," and "beat
them till they started;" and how the mules "rattled" away, and "pulled
against each other," till
"When they came to the fair flowing river
Which feeds good lavatories all the year,
Fitted to cleanse all sullied robes soever,
They from the wain the mules unharnessed there,
And chased them free, to crop their juicy fare
By the swift river, on the margin green;
Then to the waters dashed the clothes they bare
And in the stream-filled trenches stamped them clean.
"Which, having washed and cleansed, they spread before
The sunbeams, on the beach, where most did lie
Thick pebbles, by the sea-wave washed ashore.
So, having left them in the heat to dry,
They to the bath went down, and by-and-by,
Rubbed with rich oil, their midday meal essay,
Couched in green turf, the river rolling nigh.
Then, throwing off their veils, at ball they play,
While the white-armed Nausicaa leads the choral lay."
The mere beauty of this scene all will feel, who have the sense of beauty
in them. Yet it is not on that aspect which I wish to dwell, but on its
healthfulness. Exercise is taken, in measured time, to the sound of
song, as a duty almost, as well as an amusement. For this game of ball,
which is here mentioned for the first time in human literature, nearly
three thousand years ago, was held by the Greeks and by the Romans after
them, to be an almost necessary part of a liberal education; principally,
doubtless, from the development which it produced in the upper half of
the body, not merely to the arms, but to the chest, by raising and
expanding the ribs, and to all the muscles of the torso, whether
perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and grace which it was believed
to give were so much prized, that a room for ball-play, and a teacher of
the art, were integral parts of every gymnasium; and the Athenians went
so far as to bestow on one famous ballplayer, Aristonicus of Carystia, a
statue and the rights of citizenship. The rough and hardy young
Spartans, when passing from boyhood into manhood, received the title of
ball-players, seemingly from the game which it was then their special
duty to learn. In the case of Nausicaa and her maidens, the game would
just bring into their right places all that is liable to be contracted
and weakened in women, so many of whose occupations must needs be
sedentary and stooping; while the song which accompanied the game at once
filled the lungs regularly and rhythmically, and prevented violent
motion, or unseemly attitude. We, the civilised, need physiologists to
remind us of these simple facts, and even then do not act on them. Those
old half-barbarous Greeks had found them out for themselves, and,
moreover, acted on them.
But fair Nausicaa must have been--some will say--surely a mere child of
nature, and an uncultivated person?
So far from it, that her whole demeanour and speech show culture of the
very highest sort, full of "sweetness and light."--Intelligent and
fearless, quick to perceive the bearings of her strange and sudden
adventure, quick to perceive the character of Ulysses, quick to answer
his lofty and refined pleading by words as lofty and refined, and pious
withal;--for it is she who speaks to her handmaids the once so famous
words:
"Strangers and poor men all are sent from Zeus;
And alms, though small, are sweet"
Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of demeanour, shrinking from
the slightest breath of scandal; while she is not ashamed, when Ulysses,
bathed and dressed, looks himself again, to whisper to her maidens her
wish that the Gods might send her such a spouse.--This is Nausicaa as
Homer draws her; and as many a scholar and poet since Homer has accepted
her for the ideal of noble maidenhood. I ask my readers to study for
themselves her interview with Ulysses, in Mr. Worsley's translation, or
rather in the grand simplicity of the original Greek, {76} and judge
whether Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet who imagined
her--or, it may be, drew her from life--must have been a perfect
gentleman; both complete in those "manners" which, says the old proverb,
"make the man:" but which are the woman herself; because with her--who
acts more by emotion than by calculation--manners are the outward and
visible tokens of her inward and spiritual grace, or disgrace; and flow
instinctively, whether good or bad, from the instincts of her inner
nature.
True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. No more, most probably,
could the author of the Odyssey. No more, for that matter, could
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they were plainly, both in mind and
manners, most highly-cultivated men. Reading and writing, of course,
have now become necessaries of humanity; and are to be given to every
human being, that he may start fair in the race of life. But I am not
aware that Greek women improved much, either in manners, morals, or
happiness, by acquiring them in after centuries. A wise man would sooner
see his daughter a Nausicaa than a Sappho, an Aspasia, a Cleopatra, or
even an Hypatia.
Full of such thoughts, I went through London streets, among the Nausicaas
of the present day; the girls of the period; the daughters and hereafter
mothers of our future rulers, the great Demos or commercial middle class
of the greatest mercantile city in the world: and noted what I had noted
with fear and sorrow, many a day, for many a year; a type, and an
increasing type, of young women who certainly had not had the
"advantages," "educational" and other, of that Greek Nausicaa of old.
Of course, in such a city as London, to which the best of everything,
physical and other, gravitates, I could not but pass, now and then,
beautiful persons, who made me proud of those "grandes Anglaises aux
joues rouges," whom the Parisiennes ridicule--and envy. But I could not
help suspecting that their looks showed them to be either country-bred,
or born of country parents; and this suspicion was strengthened by the
fact, that when compared with their mothers, the mother's physique was,
in the majority of cases, superior to the daughters'. Painful it was, to
one accustomed to the ruddy well-grown peasant girl, stalwart, even when,
as often, squat and plain, to remark the exceedingly small size of the
average young woman; by which I do not mean mere want of height--that is
a little matter--but want of breadth likewise; a general want of those
large frames, which indicate usually a power of keeping strong and
healthy not merely the muscles, but the brain itself.
Poor little things. I passed hundreds--I pass hundreds every day--trying
to hide their littleness by the nasty mass of false hair--or what does
duty for it; and by the ugly and useless hat which is stuck upon it,
making the head thereby look ridiculously large and heavy; and by the
high heels on which they totter onward, having forgotten, or never
learnt, the simple art of walking; their bodies tilted forward in that
ungraceful attitude which is called--why that name of all others?--a
"Grecian bend;" seemingly kept on their feet, and kept together at all,
in that strange attitude, by tight stays which prevented all graceful and
healthy motion of the hips or sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being
purposely misshapen in this direction and in that, to hide--it must be
presumed--deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been
taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been that too
often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no doubt that these
women were not only full grown, but some of them, alas! wives and
mothers.
Poor little things.--And this they have gained by so-called civilisation:
the power of aping the "fashions" by which the worn-out Parisienne hides
her own personal defects; and of making themselves, by innate want of
that taste which the Parisienne possesses, only the cause of something
like a sneer from many a cultivated man; and of something like a sneer,
too, from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and
swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed,
according to all true canons of taste, than most town-girls; and thanking
her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-dwellers and
gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air upon the open moor.
But the face which is beneath that chignon and that hat? Well--it is
sometimes pretty: but how seldom handsome, which is a higher quality by
far. It is not, strange to say, a well-fed face. Plenty of money, and
perhaps too much, is spent on those fine clothes. It had been better, to
judge from the complexion, if some of that money had been spent in solid
wholesome food. She looks as if she lived--as she too often does, I
hear--on tea and bread-and-butter, or rather on bread with the minimum of
butter. For as the want of bone indicates a deficiency of phosphatic
food, so does the want of flesh about the cheeks indicate a deficiency of
hydrocarbon. Poor little Nausicaa:--that is not her fault. Our boasted
civilisation has not even taught her what to eat, as it certainly has not
increased her appetite; and she knows not--what every country fellow
knows--that without plenty of butter and other fatty matters, she is not
likely to keep even warm. Better to eat nasty fat bacon now, than to
supply the want of it some few years hence by nastier cod-liver oil. But
there is no one yet to tell her that, and a dozen other equally simple
facts, for her own sake, and for the sake of that coming Demos which she
is to bring into the world; a Demos which, if we can only keep it healthy
in body and brain, has before it so splendid a future: but which, if body
and brain degrade beneath the influence of modern barbarism, is but too
likely to follow the Demos of ancient Byzantium, or of modern Paris.
Ay, but her intellect. She is so clever, and she reads so much, and she
is going to be taught to read so much more.
Ah, well--there was once a science called physiognomy. The Greeks, from
what I can learn, knew more of it than any people since: though the
Italian painters and sculptors must have known much; far more than we. In
a more scientific civilisation there will be such a science once more:
but its laws, though still in the empiric stage, are not altogether
forgotten by some. Little children have often a fine and clear instinct
of them. Many cultivated and experienced women have a fine and clear
instinct of them likewise. And some such would tell us that there is
intellect in plenty in the modern Nausicaa: but not of the quality which
they desire for their country's future good. Self-consciousness,
eagerness, volubility, petulance, in countenance, in gesture, and in
voice--which last is too often most harsh and artificial, the breath
being sent forth through the closed teeth, and almost entirely at the
corners of the mouth--and, with all this, a weariness often about the
wrinkling forehead and the drooping lids;--all these, which are growing
too common, not among the Demos only, nor only in the towns, are signs,
they think, of the unrest of unhealth, physical, intellectual, spiritual.
At least they are as different as two types of physiognomy in the same
race can be, from the expression both of face and gesture, in those old
Greek sculptures, and in the old Italian painters; and, it must be said,
in the portraits of Reynolds, and Gainsborough, Copley, and Romney. Not
such, one thinks, must have been the mothers of Britain during the latter
half of the last century and the beginning of the present; when their
sons, at times, were holding half the world at bay.
And if Nausicaa has become such in town: what is she when she goes to the
seaside, not to wash the clothes in fresh-water, but herself in salt--the
very salt-water, laden with decaying organisms, from which, though not
polluted further by a dozen sewers, Ulysses had to cleanse himself,
anointing, too, with oil, ere he was fit to appear in the company of
Nausicaa of Greece? She dirties herself with the dirty salt-water; and
probably chills and tires herself by walking thither and back, and
staying in too long; and then flaunts on the pier, bedizened in garments
which, for monstrosity of form and disharmony of colours, would have set
that Greek Nausicaa's teeth on edge, or those of any average Hindoo woman
now. Or, even sadder still, she sits on chairs and benches all the weary
afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the
"Library;" and then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of which the
fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid
fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa of England! That is a sad sight to some who
think about the present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad
sight to see your old father--tradesman, or clerk, or what not--who has
done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by your old
mother, who has done good work in her day--among the rest, that heaviest
work of all, the bringing you into the world and keeping you in it till
now--honest, kindly, cheerful folk enough, and not inefficient in their
own calling; though an average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish
Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force,
could drive five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not
a sad sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside benches,
looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and the sunlight, and
enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act of doing nothing.
It is not the old for whom wise men are sad: but for you. Where is your
vitality? Where is your "Lebensgluckseligkeit," your enjoyment of
superfluous life and power? Why can you not even dance and sing, till
now and then, at night, perhaps, when you ought to be safe in bed, but
when the weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment, has roused
itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure? What
there is left of it is all going into that foolish book, which the
womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, delights in; because it
places you in fancy in situations in which you will never stand, and
inspires you with emotions, some of which, it may be, you had better
never feel. Poor Nausicaa--old, some men think, before you have been
ever young.
And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your share in
"the higher education of women," by making you read more books, and do
more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop over desks at night after
stooping over some other employment all day; and to teach you Latin, and
even Greek.
Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you learn thereby to read the
history of Nausicaa of old, and what manner of maiden she was, and what
was her education. You will admire her, doubtless. But do not let your
admiration limit itself to drawing a meagre half-mediaevalized design of
her--as she never looked. Copy in your own person; and even if you do
not descend as low--or rise as high--as washing the household clothes, at
least learn to play at ball; and sing, in the open air and sunshine, not
in theatres and concert-rooms by gaslight; and take decent care of your
own health; and dress not like a "Parisienne"--nor, of course, like
Nausicaa of old, for that is to ask too much:--but somewhat more like an
average Highland lassie; and try to look like her, and be like her, of
whom Wordsworth sang--
"A mien and face
In which full plainly I can trace
Benignity and home-bred sense,
Ripening in perfect innocence.
Here scattered, like a random seed,
Remote from men, thou dost not need
The embarrassed look of shy distress
And maidenly shamefacedness.
Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear
The freedom of a mountaineer.
A face with gladness overspread,
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred,
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays.
With no restraint, save such as springs
From quick and eager visitings
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech.
A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life."
Ah, yet unspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant of the dark tender-
hearted Celtic girl, and the fair deep-hearted Scandinavian Viking, thank
God for thy heather and fresh air, and the kine thou tendest, and the
wool thou spinnest; and come not to seek thy fortune, child, in wicked
London town; nor import, as they tell me thou art doing fast, the ugly
fashions of that London town, clumsy copies of Parisian cockneydom, into
thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and
modest dress of thy mother and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the
little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots,
and other women's hair.
It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls more and
more to that of boys. If that means that girls are merely to learn more
lessons, and to study what their brothers are taught, in addition to what
their mothers were taught; then it is to be hoped, at least by
physiologists and patriots, that the scheme will sink into that limbo
whither, in a free and tolerably rational country, all imperfect and ill-
considered schemes are sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be a bona
fide one: then it must be borne in mind that in the public schools of
England, and in all private schools, I presume, which take their tone
from them, cricket and football are more or less compulsory, being
considered integral parts of an Englishman's education; and that they are
likely to remain so, in spite of all reclamations: because masters and
boys alike know that games do not, in the long run, interfere with a
boy's work; that the same boy will very often excel in both; that the
games keep him in health for his work; that the spirit with which he
takes to his games when in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit
with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school;
and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-
shop-haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually
extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games
conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing-
field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely
daring and endurance, but, better still, temper, self-restraint,
fairness, honour, unenvious approbation of another's success, and all
that "give and take" of life which stand a man in such good stead when he
goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is
always maimed and partial.
Now: if the promoters of higher education for women will compel girls to
any training analogous to our public school games; if, for instance, they
will insist on that most natural and wholesome of all exercises, dancing,
in order to develop the lower half of the body; on singing, to expand the
lungs and regulate the breath; and on some games--ball or what not--which
will ensure that raised chest, and upright carriage, and general strength
of the upper torso, without which full oxygenation of the blood, and
therefore general health, is impossible; if they will sternly forbid
tight stays, high heels, and all which interferes with free growth and
free motion; if they will consider carefully all which has been written
on the "half-time system" by Mr. Chadwick and others; and accept the
certain physical law that, in order to renovate the brain day by day, the
growing creature must have plenty of fresh air and play, and that the
child who learns for four hours and plays for four hours, will learn
more, and learn it more easily, than the child who learns for the whole
eight hours; if, in short, they will teach girls not merely to understand
the Greek tongue, but to copy somewhat of the Greek physical training, of
that "music and gymnastic" which helped to make the cleverest race of the
old world the ablest race likewise: then they will earn the gratitude of
the patriot and the physiologist, by doing their best to stay the
downward tendencies of the physique, and therefore ultimately of the
morale, in the coming generation of English women.
I am sorry to say that, as yet, I hear of but one movement in this
direction among the promoters of the "higher education of women." {88} I
trust that the subject will be taken up methodically by those gifted
ladies; who have acquainted themselves, and are labouring to acquaint
other women, with the first principles of health; and that they may avail
to prevent the coming generations, under the unwholesome stimulant of
competitive examinations, and so forth, from "developing" into so many
Chinese-dwarfs--or idiots.