humanity of her nature. For birds and animals she had always a great
love. We hear of her as a little girl watching with eager eyes the
swallows as they built their nests in summer or prepared for their flight
in the autumn; and when snow was on the ground she used to open the
windows to let the robins hop in and pick crumbs on the breakfast-table.
On one occasion she went with her father on a tour in the Highlands, and
found on her return that a pet goldfinch, which had been left in the
charge of the servants, had been neglected by them and had died of
starvation. She was almost heart-broken at the event, and in writing her
Recollections, seventy years after, she mentioned it and said that, as
she wrote, she felt deep pain. Her chief pet in her old age was a
mountain sparrow, which used to perch on her arm and go to sleep there
while she was writing. One day the sparrow fell into the water-jug and
was drowned, to the great grief of its mistress who could hardly be
consoled for its loss, though later on we hear of a beautiful paroquet
taking the place of le moineau d'Uranie, and becoming Mrs. Somerville's
constant companion. She was also very energetic, Phyllis Browne tells
us, in trying to get a law passed in the Italian Parliament for the
protection of animals, and said once, with reference to this subject, 'We
English cannot boast of humanity so long as our sportsmen find pleasure
in shooting down tame pigeons as they fly terrified out of a cage'--a
remark with which I entirely agree. Mr. Herbert's Bill for the
protection of land birds gave her immense pleasure, though, to quote her
own words, she was 'grieved to find that "the lark, which at heaven's
gate sings," is thought unworthy of man's protection'; and she took a
great fancy to a gentleman who, on being told of the number of singing
birds that is eaten in Italy--nightingales, goldfinches, and
robins--exclaimed in horror, 'What! robins! our household birds! I would
as soon eat a child!' Indeed, she believed to some extent in the
immortality of animals on the ground that, if animals have no future, it
would seem as if some were created for uncompensated misery--an idea
which does not seem to me to be either extravagant or fantastic, though
it must be admitted that the optimism on which it is based receives
absolutely no support from science.
On the whole, Phyllis Browne's book is very pleasant reading. Its only
fault is that it is far too short, and this is a fault so rare in modern
literature that it almost amounts to a distinction. However, Phyllis
Browne has managed to crowd into the narrow limits at her disposal a
great many interesting anecdotes. The picture she gives of Mrs.
Somerville working away at her translation of Laplace in the same room
with her children is very charming, and reminds one of what is told of
George Sand; there is an amusing account of Mrs. Somerville's visit to
the widow of the young Pretender, the Countess of Albany, who, after
talking with her for some time, exclaimed, 'So you don't speak Italian.
You must have had a very bad education'! And this story about the
Waverley Novels may possibly be new to some of my readers:
A very amusing circumstance in connection with Mrs. Somerville's
acquaintance with Sir Walter arose out of the childish inquisitiveness
of Woronzow Greig, Mrs. Somerville's little boy.
During the time Mrs. Somerville was visiting Abbotsford the Waverley
Novels were appearing, and were creating a great sensation; yet even
Scott's intimate friends did not know that he was the author; he
enjoyed keeping the affair a mystery. But little Woronzow discovered
what he was about. One day when Mrs. Somerville was talking about a
novel that had just been published, Woronzow said, 'I knew all these
stories long ago, for Mr. Scott writes on the dinner-table; when he
has finished he puts the green cloth with the papers in a corner of
the dining-room, and when he goes out Charlie Scott and I read the
stories.'
Phyllis Browne remarks that this incident shows 'that persons who want to
keep a secret ought to be very careful when children are about'; but the
story seems to me to be far too charming to require any moral of the
kind.
Bound up in the same volume is a Life of Miss Mary Carpenter, also
written by Phyllis Browne. Miss Carpenter does not seem to me to have
the charm and fascination of Mrs. Somerville. There is always something
about her that is formal, limited, and precise. When she was about two
years old she insisted on being called 'Doctor Carpenter' in the nursery;
at the age of twelve she is described by a friend as a sedate little
girl, who always spoke like a book; and before she entered on her
educational schemes she wrote down a solemn dedication of herself to the
service of humanity. However, she was one of the practical, hardworking
saints of the nineteenth century, and it is no doubt quite right that the
saints should take themselves very seriously. It is only fair also to
remember that her work of rescue and reformation was carried on under
great difficulties. Here, for instance, is the picture Miss Cobbe gives
us of one of the Bristol night-schools:
It was a wonderful spectacle to see Mary Carpenter sitting patiently
before the large school gallery in St. James's Back, teaching,
singing, and praying with the wild street-boys, in spite of endless
interruptions caused by such proceedings as shooting marbles at any
object behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out 'Amen'
in the middle of a prayer, and sometimes rising en masse and tearing
like a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes down from the gallery,
round the great schoolroom, and down the stairs, and into the street.
These irrepressible outbreaks she bore with infinite good humour.
Her own account is somewhat pleasanter, and shows that 'the troop of
bisons in hob-nailed shoes' was not always so barbarous.
I had taken to my class on the preceding week some specimens of ferns
neatly gummed on white paper. . . . This time I took a piece of coal-
shale, with impressions of ferns, to show them. . . . I told each to
examine the specimen, and tell me what he thought it was. W. gave so
bright a smile that I saw he knew; none of the others could tell; he
said they were ferns, like what I showed them last week, but he
thought they were chiselled on the stone. Their surprise and pleasure
were great when I explained the matter to them.
The history of Joseph: they all found a difficulty in realising that
this had actually occurred. One asked if Egypt existed now, and if
people lived in it. When I told them that buildings now stood which
had been erected about the time of Joseph, one said that it was
impossible, as they must have fallen down ere this. I showed them the
form of a pyramid, and they were satisfied. One asked if _all_ books
were true.
The story of Macbeth impressed them very much. They knew the name of
Shakespeare, having seen his name over a public-house.
A boy defined conscience as 'a thing a gentleman hasn't got, who, when a
boy finds his purse and gives it back to him, doesn't give the boy
sixpence.'
Another boy was asked, after a Sunday evening lecture on 'Thankfulness,'
what pleasure he enjoyed most in the course of a year. He replied
candidly, 'Cock-fightin', ma'am; there's a pit up by the "Black Boy" as
is worth anythink in Brissel.'
There is something a little pathetic in the attempt to civilise the rough
street-boy by means of the refining influence of ferns and fossils, and
it is difficult to help feeling that Miss Carpenter rather overestimated
the value of elementary education. The poor are not to be fed upon
facts. Even Shakespeare and the Pyramids are not sufficient; nor is
there much use in giving them the results of culture, unless we also give
them those conditions under which culture can be realised. In these
cold, crowded cities of the North, the proper basis for morals, using the
word in its wide Hellenic signification, is to be found in architecture,
not in books.
Still, it would be ungenerous not to recognise that Mary Carpenter gave
to the children of the poor not merely her learning, but her love. In
early life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness of
being a wife and a mother; but later she became content that her
affection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse in
the prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne,'
seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, she
rather inclined to Bacon's opinion, that unmarried people do the best
public work. 'It is quite striking,' she says in one of her letters, 'to
observe how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed of
late years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, have
quite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb all
their powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them by
God, and want no more.' The whole passage is extremely interesting, and
the phrase 'unattached ladies' is quite delightful, and reminds one of
Charles Lamb.
* * * * *
Ismay's Children is by the clever authoress of that wonderful little
story Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, a story which delighted the
realists by its truth, fascinated Mr. Ruskin by its beauty, and remains
to the present day the most perfect picture of street-arab life in all
English prose fiction. The scene of the novel is laid in the south of
Ireland, and the plot is extremely dramatic and ingenious. Godfrey
Mauleverer, a reckless young Irishman, runs away with Ismay D'Arcy, a
pretty, penniless governess, and is privately married to her in Scotland.
Some time after the birth of her third child, Ismay died, and her
husband, who had never made his marriage public, nor taken any pains to
establish the legitimacy of his children, is drowned while yachting off
the coast of France. The care of Ismay's children then devolves on an
old aunt, Miss Juliet D'Arcy, who brings them back to Ireland to claim
their inheritance for them. But a sudden stroke of paralysis deprives
her of her memory, and she forgets the name of the little Scotch village
in which Ismay's informal marriage took place. So Tighe O'Malley holds
Barrettstown, and Ismay's children live in an old mill close to the great
park of which they are the rightful heirs. The boy, who is called
Godfrey after his father, is a fascinating study, with his swarthy
foreign beauty, his fierce moods of love and hate, his passionate pride,
and his passionate tenderness. The account of his midnight ride to warn
his enemy of an impending attack of Moonlighters is most powerful and
spirited; and it is pleasant to meet in modern fiction a character that
has all the fine inconsistencies of life, and is neither too fantastic an
exception to be true, nor too ordinary a type to be common. Excellent
also, in its direct simplicity of rendering, is the picture of Miss
Juliet D'Arcy; and the scene in which, at the moment of her death, the
old woman's memory returns to her is quite admirable, both in conception
and in treatment. To me, however, the chief interest of the book lies in
the little lifelike sketches of Irish character with which it abounds.
Modern realistic art has not yet produced a Hamlet, but at least it may
claim to have studied Guildenstern and Rosencrantz very closely; and, for
pure fidelity and truth to nature, nothing could be better than the minor
characters in Ismay's Children. Here we have the kindly old priest who
arranges all the marriages in his parish, and has a strong objection to
people who insist on making long confessions; the important young curate
fresh from Maynooth, who gives himself more airs than a bishop, and has
to be kept in order; the professional beggars, with their devout faith,
their grotesque humour, and their incorrigible laziness; the shrewd
shopkeeper, who imports arms in flour-barrels for the use of the
Moonlighters and, as soon as he has got rid of them, gives information of
their whereabouts to the police; the young men who go out at night to be
drilled by an Irish-American; the farmers with their wild land-hunger,
bidding secretly against each other for every vacant field; the
dispensary doctor, who is always regretting that he has not got a Trinity
College degree; the plain girls, who want to go into convents; the pretty
girls, who want to get married; and the shopkeepers' daughters, who want
to be thought young ladies. There is a whole pell-mell of men and women,
a complete panorama of provincial life, an absolutely faithful picture of
the peasant in his own home. This note of realism in dealing with
national types of character has always been a distinguishing
characteristic of Irish fiction, from the days of Miss Edgeworth down to
our own days, and it is not difficult to see in Ismay's Children some
traces of the influence of Castle Rack-rent. I fear, however, that few
people read Miss Edgeworth nowadays, though both Scott and Tourgenieff
acknowledged their indebtedness to her novels, and her style is always
admirable in its clearness and precision.
* * * * *
Miss Leffler-Arnim's statement, in a lecture delivered recently at St.
Saviour's Hospital, that 'she had heard of instances where ladies were so
determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that they had
actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids fastened the fifteen-
inch corset,' has excited a good deal of incredulity, but there is
nothing really improbable in it. From the sixteenth century to our own
day there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted on
girls, and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an
unreasonable and monstrous Fashion. 'In order to obtain a real Spanish
figure,' says Montaigne, 'what a Gehenna of suffering will not women
endure, drawn in and compressed by great coches entering the flesh; nay,
sometimes they even die thereof.' 'A few days after my arrival at
school,' Mrs. Somerville tells us in her memoirs, 'although perfectly
straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays, with a steel busk
in front; while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the
shoulder-blades met. Then a steel rod with a semicircle, which went
under my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In this
constrained state I and most of the younger girls had to prepare our
lessons'; and in the life of Miss Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a
certain fashionable establishment, 'she underwent all the usual tortures
of back-boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a very
tiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out the
muscles and increase the growth,' a signal failure in her case. Indeed,
instances of absolute mutilation and misery are so common in the past
that it is unnecessary to multiply them; but it is really sad to think
that in our own day a civilised woman can hang on to a cross-bar while
her maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle. To begin with, the
waist is not a circle at all, but an oval; nor can there be any greater
error than to imagine that an unnaturally small waist gives an air of
grace, or even of slightness; to the whole figure. Its effect, as a
rule, is simply to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips;
and those whose figures possess that stateliness which is called
stoutness by the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect by
yielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of tight-lacing.
The fashionable English waist, also, is not merely far too small, and
consequently quite out of proportion to the rest of the figure, but it is
worn far too low down. I use the expression 'worn' advisedly, for a
waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put on
when and where one likes. A long waist always implies shortness of the
lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of view, has the effect of
diminishing the height; and I am glad to see that many of the most
charming women in Paris are returning to the idea of the Directoire style
of dress. This style is not by any means perfect, but at least it has
the merit of indicating the proper position of the waist. I feel quite
sure that all English women of culture and position will set their faces
against such stupid and dangerous practices as are related by Miss
Leffler-Arnim. Fashion's motto is: Il faut souffrir pour etre belle; but
the motto of art and of common-sense is: Il faut etre bete pour souffrir.
* * * * *
Talking of Fashion, a critic in the Pall Mall Gazette expresses his
surprise that I should have allowed an illustration of a hat, covered
with 'the bodies of dead birds,' to appear in the first number of the
Woman's World; and as I have received many letters on the subject, it is
only right that I should state my exact position in the matter. Fashion
is such an essential part of the mundus muliebris of our day, that it
seems to me absolutely necessary that its growth, development, and phases
should be duly chronicled; and the historical and practical value of such
a record depends entirely upon its perfect fidelity to fact. Besides, it
is quite easy for the children of light to adapt almost any fashionable
form of dress to the requirements of utility and the demands of good
taste. The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for instance, figured in the
present issue, has many good points about it, and the gigantic
dress-improver does not appear to me to be really essential to the mode;
and though the Postillion costume of the fancy dress ball is absolutely
detestable in its silliness and vulgarity, the so-called Late Georgian
costume in the same plate is rather pleasing. I must, however, protest
against the idea that to chronicle the development of Fashion implies any
approval of the particular forms that Fashion may adopt.
* * * * *
Mrs. Craik's article on the condition of the English stage will, I feel
sure, be read with great interest by all who are watching the development
of dramatic art in this country. It was the last thing written by the
author of John Halifax, Gentleman, and reached me only a few days before
her lamented death. That the state of things is such as Mrs. Craik
describes, few will be inclined to deny; though, for my own part, I must
acknowledge that I see more vulgarity than vice in the tendencies of the
modern stage; nor do I think it possible to elevate dramatic art by
limiting its subject-matter. On tue une litterature quand on lui
interdit la verite humaine. As far as the serious presentation of life
is concerned, what we require is more imaginative treatment, greater
freedom from theatric language and theatric convention. It may be
questioned, also, whether the consistent reward of virtue and punishment
of wickedness be really the healthiest ideal for an art that claims to
mirror nature. However, it is impossible not to recognise the fine
feeling that actuates every line of Mrs. Craik's article; and though one
may venture to disagree with the proposed method, one cannot but
sympathise with the purity and delicacy of the thought, and the high
nobility of the aim.
* * * * *
The French Minister of Education, M. Spuller, has paid Racine a very
graceful and appropriate compliment, in naming after him the second
college that has been opened in Paris for the higher education of girls.
Racine was one of the privileged few who was allowed to read the
celebrated Traite de l'Education des Filles before it appeared in print;
he was charged, along with Boileau, with the task of revising the text of
the constitution and rules of Madame de Maintenon's great college; it was
for the Demoiselles de St. Cyr that he composed Athalie; and he devoted a
great deal of his time to the education of his own children. The Lycee
Racine will, no doubt, become as important an institution as the Lycee
Fenelon, and the speech delivered by M. Spuller on the occasion of its
opening was full of the happiest augury for the future. M. Spuller dwelt
at great length on the value of Goethe's aphorism, that the test of a
good wife is her capacity to take her husband's place and to become a
father to his children, and mentioned that the thing that struck him most
in America was the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge, a superb titanic structure,
which was completed under the direction of the engineer's wife, the
engineer himself having died while the building of the bridge was in
progress. 'Il me semble,' said M. Spuller, 'que la femme de l'ingenieur
du pont de Brooklyn a realise la pensee de Goethe, et que non seulement
elle est devenue un pere pour ses enfants, mais un autre pere pour
l'oeuvre admirable, vraiment unique, qui a immortalise le nom qu'elle
portait avec son mari.' M. Spuller also laid great stress on the
necessity of a thoroughly practical education, and was extremely severe
on the 'Blue-stockings' of literature. 'Il ne s'agit pas de former ici
des "femmes savantes." Les "femmes savantes" ont ete marquees pour
jamais par un des plus grands genies de notre race d'une legere teinte de
ridicule. Non, ce n'est pas des femmes savantes que nous voulons: ce
sont tout simplement des femmes: des femmes dignes de ce pays de France,
qui est la patrie du bons sens, de la mesure, et de la grace; des femmes
ayant la notion juste et le sens exquis du role qui doit leur appartenir
dans la societe moderne.' There is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in
M. Spuller's observations, but we must not mistake a caricature for the
reality. After all, Les Precieuses Ridicules contrasted very favourably
with the ordinary type of womanhood of their day, not merely in France,
but also in England; and an uncritical love of sonnets is preferable, on
the whole, to coarseness, vulgarity and ignorance.
* * * * *
I am glad to see that Miss Ramsay's brilliant success at Cambridge is not
destined to remain an isolated instance of what women can do in
intellectual competitions with men. At the Royal University in Ireland,
the Literature Scholarship of 100 pounds a year for five years has been
won by Miss Story, the daughter of a North of Ireland clergyman. It is
pleasant to be able to chronicle an item of Irish news that has nothing
to do with the violence of party politics or party feeling, and that
shows how worthy women are of that higher culture and education which has
been so tardily and, in some instances, so grudgingly granted to them.
* * * * *
The Empress of Japan has been ordering a whole wardrobe of fashionable
dresses in Paris for her own use and the use of her ladies-in-waiting.
The chrysanthemum (the imperial flower of Japan) has suggested the tints
of most of the Empress's own gowns, and in accordance with the colour-
schemes of other flowers the rest of the costumes have been designed. The
same steamer, however, that carries out the masterpieces of M. Worth and
M. Felix to the Land of the Rising Sun, also brings to the Empress a
letter of formal and respectful remonstrance from the English Rational
Dress Society. I trust that, even if the Empress rejects the sensible
arguments of this important Society, her own artistic feeling may induce
her to reconsider her resolution to abandon Eastern for Western costume.
* * * * *
I hope that some of my readers will interest themselves in the
Ministering Children's League for which Mr. Walter Crane has done the
beautiful and suggestive design of The Young Knight. The best way to
make children good is to make them happy, and happiness seems to me an
essential part of Lady Meath's admirable scheme.
(1) Gossips with Girls and Maidens Betrothed and Free. By Lady Bellairs.
(Blackwood and Sons.)
(2) A Modern Apostle and Other Poems. By Constance Naden. (Kegan Paul.)
(3) Mrs. Somerville and Mary Carpenter. By Phyllis Browne, Author of
What Girls Can Do, etc. (Cassell and Co.)
(4) Ismay's Children. By the Author of Hogan, M.P.; Flitters, Tatters,
and the Counsellor, etc. (Macmillan and Co.)
ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA
(Pall Mall Gazette, December 16, 1887.)