CHAPTER X.

WOMEN AND THE ARTS.

Development of the arts in the seventeenth century--Introduction

of women on the stage--Corruption of the period--Character of

the drama--Wearing masks by spectators--The French company

at Blackfriars Theatre--The first English company with women

players--Famous actresses--English female artists in the Stuart

period--Foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts--Angelica

Kaufmann and Mary Moser elected members--Their career--Fanny

Reynolds--Sir Joshua’s opinion of his sister’s work--Mrs.

Cosway--Mrs. Carpenter--Character of eighteenth-century

work--Women’s place in musical art--Musical education in early

times--Love of music in the sixteenth century--Instruments played

by women--Music abolished by the Puritans--Musical maidservants

in the seventeenth century--The first English opera--Purcell’s

early work--Performance at a ladies’ school.

It is in the seventeenth century, remarkable for political and

religious strife, and a general unsettling of society, that the history

of the fine arts, as far as women are concerned, really begins.

There is, in fact, very little to record of the progress of the arts

in England before this period. Unfavourable as the age seemed for

artistic progress when the public mind was so largely occupied with

momentous questions affecting the national life, it was signalized by

three notable events, viz. the introduction of women to the stage, the

commencement of English opera, and the uprising of female painters. The

dramatic revolution, as it may be called, being the most striking of

these events, will be touched upon first.

The middle of the seventeenth century, when women first began to appear

on the stage in England, was a period of unexampled laxity. It was not

simply that morality was at a low ebb, and that the passions reigned

uppermost. That was the case in feudal times when the intellectual side

of humanity was only half awakened, and the range of interests and

ideas, of taste and knowledge, was limited by physical obstacles. The

world was a sealed book to mediæval men and women. But the seventeenth

century had no such excuse. It had opened the clasps; it had the power

of choice, but it hugged the sins of past ages to its breast. Seeing

the good, it chose the evil.

It was an unfortunate moment for the introduction of actresses, and

their presence gave rise to many scandals, but abuses had long been

rife on the stage, and dramatic performances had been occasionally

suspended even in the reign of Elizabeth. The blame cannot be

attributed to the pernicious example of France as far as the plays

themselves are concerned, for it is agreed that French comedy in the

reign of Charles II. was not in the least coarse. This was the period

of Molière’s fame. Two or three years after the accession of Anne, who

did not countenance playhouses by her presence, the Puritan party of

that day earnestly hoped that the Queen might be induced to interdict

stage performances, or at least to prohibit certain pieces. There is

not the slightest doubt that the complaints made of obscene language

and manners were well founded. The plays remain as witnesses, and

the record of the scenes enacted in the green-room and the general

licence indulged in by the players furnish condemnatory evidence.

But the purists were not content with trying to uphold morality and

public decency. At that time natural phenomena were still regarded by

many people with superstitious terror. Sickness, storms, and other

calamities were looked upon as the visitations of wrathful Providence.

Now it happened that a disastrous tempest had been raging, a tempest

fiercer than any known for many years. A day of fasting and humiliation

had been appointed, and in the face of that public acknowledgment of

national sin the irreverent players chose to produce _Macbeth_ and _The

Tempest_, with as faithful a representation of real storms as they

could contrive.

“Surely,” writes one shocked contemporary, “the Players have

little reason to expect that they shall still go on in their

abominable Outrages; who, ’tis to be observed with Indignation,

did, as we are assured, within a few days after we felt

the late dreadful storm, entertain their audience with the

ridiculous Representation of what had filled us with so great

Horror in their Plays called _Macbeth_ and _The Tempest_, as

if they designed to Mock the Almighty Power of God, _who alone

commands the Winds and the Seas, and they obey him_.”[57]

Queen Anne did not suspend the plays, but she issued an edict for the

better regulation of the theatres. With a view to abolishing abuses and

indecencies, it was commanded--

“that no person of what quality soever presume to go behind

the scenes or come upon the stage either before or during the

acting of any play; that no woman be allowed or presume to wear

a vizard mask in either of the theatres,”[58]

together with several other regulations.

It was customary in the days of Charles II. for ladies to go to the

theatre masked, the presumption being that the language of the plays

was so coarse that no woman could sit and hear them in mixed company

with her face uncovered. But it was a practice that was liable to lead

to all sorts of disorders. Under the disguise of the mask women of all

degrees accosted strangers, and there were always men ready enough to

avail themselves of the general licence as to behaviour. Ladies then

sat in the pit, which, after the boxes, was the most aristocratic

portion of the house, for which the prices ranged from 2_s._ 6_d._ to

4_s._ in the money of that period.

The custom of having women to act was introduced from the Continent,

where it had long prevailed. At the time when Corneille’s plays were

constantly being acted, about 1633, there were a good many actresses

on the French stage. There was much dramatic activity in Paris at

that time. The French were very eager playgoers, and when a tragedy

having, for its subject the story of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn was

produced, there was such a rush to see the piece that four doorkeepers

were crushed to death on the first night, greatly to the pride and

delight of the author, Jean Puget de la Serre, who exclaimed with

triumph: “Voilà ce qu’on appelle de bonnes pièces.” In his exultation

he declared he would not yield the palm to Corneille, until his great

contemporary had caused _five_ doorkeepers to be killed in one day.

In the prevailing state of easy morals in the England of the

Restoration the appearance of actresses was an incentive to licence,

and every advantage was taken of the innovation by the court gallants.

The actresses were probably no worse than many of the ladies in the

audience, but their mere existence gave occasion for evil. Evelyn,

whose code of morals and taste were too high for that period, says, in

1666, that he hardly ever goes to the theatres--

“for many reasons now, as they were abused to an atheistical

liberty. Fowle and indecent women now, and never till now, were

permitted to appear and act.”

Thomas Brand, a Puritan, expressed great delight when he heard that

certain actresses had been hissed and pelted. The first result of

bringing women on to the stage was to give the rein to more unbridled

licence than before in the manners of the court and of society.

It was the presence of Queen Henrietta which brought over a French

company of players with women among them to England in 1659. They

established themselves at the celebrated theatre in Blackfriars. But

whether their distinguished countrywoman was unable or unwilling to

do anything on their behalf, they were very roughly received, less

because of the women in the company than because they were foreigners.

Their advent gave Prynne an opportunity for venting his indignation.

To the stern Puritan the sight of women on the boards was a great

additional aggravation. No English company seems to have introduced

women till 1660. Pepys, who, as every one knows, was an indefatigable

playgoer, records that the first time he saw women act was on January

3, 1660. This was at the Theatre Royal, Clare Market, the play being

_The Beggar’s Bush_. Three days later he saw actresses in Ben Jonson’s

play, _The Silent Woman_. It has been said that _Othello_ was the

play in which women first appeared in England, at a performance given

on December 8, 1660. Mrs. Anne Marshall, Mrs. Sanders (afterwards to

become famous as Mrs. Betterton, a most successful impersonator of

Shakespeare’s female parts), Mrs. Margaret Hughes, and Mrs. Coleman

were among the first actresses who appeared in public. Mrs. Betterton,

whose character was unexceptionable, was selected to give lessons in

elocution to the two princesses, Mary and Anne, daughters of James II.

A sort of precedent for women acting in stage plays was to be found

in the court performances. It was not till the reign of Charles II.

that professional actresses appeared in public, but Queen Anne, wife

of James I., was accustomed to take an active part in the masques

performed at court, where she was both actress and manager.[59] That

these were not mere impromptus may be gathered from the fact that the

cost of a performance often exceeded £1000. In the reign of Charles I.

the ladies of the court, headed by the Queen, Henrietta Maria, played

a French pastoral at Hampton Court to enliven the Christmas season.

The French Queen was very favourably disposed towards the stage, and

when the churchwardens and constables in 1631 petitioned Archbishop

Laud to get Blackfriars Theatre removed, on the ground that it was a

nuisance to trade and the public generally, and begged that the council

would see to the matter, the answer was returned that the queen was

“well affected towards plays, and that therefore good regulation is

more to be provided than suppression decreed.” Various members of the

aristocracy also took to the stage, or rather the actors under their

protection. One of the most constant supporters of the dramatic art was

the Countess of Holland, daughter of Sir Walter Cope, whose husband had

been executed in 1649. Holland House, Kensington, was frequently the

scene of dramatic entertainments.

Women are now so necessary to stage performances that it is odd to

find arguments gravely set forth in favour of their presence. The

reasons assigned for introducing women were that men failed to act

women’s parts satisfactorily; that boys were no more suitable than

girls, and some of the “boys” were middle-aged men, who could not

properly impersonate young maidens. When in the reign of Charles II.

patents were granted to Killigrew and Davenant for their theatres, the

following regulations appeared--

“And forasmuch as many plays formerly acted do contain several

profane, obscene, and scurrilous passages, and the women’s

parts therein have been acted by men in the habits of women

at which some have taken offence; for the preventing of these

abuses for the future we do strictly charge, command and enjoin

that from henceforth no new plays shall be acted by either of

the said companies containing any passages offensive to piety

and good manners, nor any old or revived play containing any

such offensive passages as aforesaid, until the same shall

be corrected and purged by the said masters or governors of

the said respective companies from all such offensive and

scandalous passages as aforesaid. And we do likewise permit and

give leave that all the women’s parts to be acted in either of

the said two companies from this time to come may be performed

by women, so long as these recreations which by reason of the

abuses aforesaid were scandalous and offensive may by such

reformation be esteemed not only harmless delights, but useful

and instructive representations of human life, by such of our

good subjects as shall resort to see the same.”

The character of the plays acted in the seventeenth century fitted the

temper of the times. Wycherley, Congreve, Mrs. Aphra Behn, and their

brothers and sisters in the craft were not too outspoken for the taste

of that day. Evelyn, it is true, was a severe censor, but he was a man

of the world who had travelled and seen many things. “In London,” he

says, “there were more wicked and obscene plays permitted than in all

the world besides.” And this, too, in Lent, which added much to the

offence.

It is said that the audiences give the tone to the stage, and that a

moral and cultured public would purify the drama. The audiences of

the Restoration period did not certainly perform their part towards

effecting such a consummation. Their behaviour in the playhouse has

often been noted. They showed plainly that low jests and coarse

allusions were to their taste and what they expected, and they would

have scoffed at or yawned over more decorous language. If the piece

were not to their liking they treated the performers with scant

ceremony, and hissed and pelted them. Such demonstrations were the

more frequent owing to the custom of caricaturing living persons. The

actresses, when not playing, moved about in the front rows of the

auditorium among their admirers. Then, again, the occupants of the

pit would make audible comments on the ladies sitting in the boxes,

who did not disdain to retort, greatly to the amusement of the rest

of the house. The theatre was the rallying point for adventurers

and libertines of both sexes, and served many purposes besides its

legitimate one of entertainment.

In the eighteenth century, when the custom of toasting ladies

prevailed, plays were given “for the entertainment of the new Toasts

and several Ladies of Quality.” This always brought a crowded audience.

The auditorium was frequently the scene of quarrels, and the custom of

allowing spectators to stand about on the stage was the cause of much

disorder. On one occasion, in 1721, a regular fray occurred, owing to

the presence of some tipsy noblemen; and the king, George I., gave

orders that thenceforth a guard of soldiers should protect the actors

during the performance. One could not expect in that age to find any

regard paid to the sentiments of women, and omissions made from the

plays lest their susceptibilities should be wounded. Yet this was

done in one instance certainly,[60] and the passage left out was not

one of peculiar coarseness, but one which vaunted man’s superiority

over woman. Those were not the days of equal rights between men and

women, and there could hardly have been many women who would have been

offended at the claims of the male sex to supremacy. Dr. Trusler,

writing of the eighteenth century, says--

“Many of our comedies are improper for a young lady to be seen

at; as, indeed, there are few English comedies that a modest

girl can see without hurting her delicacy.”

The attentions of the audience to a popular actress were a little

overwhelming at times. A knot of admirers would gather round the door

of a lady’s dressing-room, and insist upon escorting her home. As late

as the middle of the century the manners of the gallery were so rough

that it was no uncommon thing for an orange to be flung at a lady in

court dress.

Whatever condemnation the stage incurred in the seventeenth century,

it was, whether deservedly or not, quite as much held up to opprobrium

in the eighteenth. A tract, published in 1726 by William Law, after

describing the playhouse as a “sink of corruption and debauchery,” goes

on to say--

“This is not the state of the Play House through any accidental

abuse, as any innocent or good thing may be abused; but that

corruption and debauchery are the truly natural and genuine

effects of the stage entertainment.”

But in spite of the abuses that existed in connection with the stage,

the fact remains that all through the eighteenth century there was a

succession of actresses whose celebrity was not confined to their own

age. The mere mention of the names of Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Porter, Peg

Woffington, Mrs. Cibber, Kitty Clive, and, later, the incomparable

Sarah Siddons, Miss Farren, and Mrs. Jordan, recalls the glories of the

playhouse and the privileges enjoyed by audiences of those days.

In the last century it would have seemed scarcely less absurd to

question the propriety of having women to act than it would now. The

difference in the course of little over fifty years was marvellous.

There is no department of the fine arts in which women have progressed

with so much rapidity as in acting. It is hardly necessary to record

the triumphs won by popular actresses, or to chronicle the successes

which have marked the career of numbers who are not in the first rank.

Women have entered upon the stage as upon their natural inheritance.

Their presence has stimulated the talents of their male compeers. The

attempt to represent human nature with only one half of humanity

seems absurdly futile to later generations, who find it impossible to

conceive of stage performances in which the players were all men.

It has been seen how the first advent of women on the stage was

productive of increased licence and freedom of manners--an almost

inevitable result considering what the age was, and the novelty

of the experiment. The influence of the drama in England, and the

important part which it has played in the development of our social

life, have been very widely discussed. Those who view the stage as

a great educator, and those--a dwindling number--who regard it as a

debaser of public morals, can both find apt illustrations to prove

their contentions. But whichever standpoint be taken, the stage, in

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was far more than at the

present day the national recreation. There were fewer counterbalancing

attractions.

The Puritan party as a whole, of course, held the stage in horror, but

more than one actress whose name has come down to us was descended from

a stern Republican--like Anne and Rebecca Marshall, who were said to

be daughters of a divine of the Long Parliament. The dissoluteness of

the stage was in part attributable to the Puritan spirit which kept

the soberer members of the community from countenancing the theatre

by their presence, and deterred some from entering the dramatic

profession. Stage-acting was decried as a calling to which only the

debased would resort, and there were plentiful exhortations to those

who valued their soul’s welfare to abstain from looking upon corrupting

sights. It was difficult, especially in the seventeenth century, for

women of unblemished reputation to go on the stage without being

besmirched with the vices of the worst of their companions. Many of the

mistresses of Charles II. and his courtiers belonged to the theatrical

profession. But the century which delighted in the fascinations of Nell

Gwynn, in the beauty of Moll Davies, which watched the performances

of Prince Rupert’s mistress, Mrs. Hughes, saw also the famous Mrs.

Betterton, of unquestioned virtue, and such actresses as Mrs.

Bracegirdle and Elizabeth Barry. There never has been a time when the

stage has been without women of high repute as well as brilliant talent

to uphold its honour.

It is not until the reign of Charles I. that there is any record of

women artists. The first efforts of English artists were directed to

the illumination of manuscripts. It was for several centuries the

only kind of art worth mentioning in England. There were, it is true,

clever goldsmiths and workers in precious stones. It was the custom to

have books, especially religious books, richly bound and ornamented.

Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, gave a missal with gold clasps, which

had belonged to the Duchess of Portland, to her nephew, Henry VI. But

there was little painting of pictures, except of the rudest kind, up to

the seventeenth century. And, as far as women are concerned, the record

is absolutely bare. They do not even appear among the illuminators.

But with the days of Vandyck’s residence in England begins our roll

of female artists. Anne Carlisle shared the royal patronage with the

great Flemish painter, whom she outlived. She was a great favourite at

court, and the king’s fine taste would not have tolerated an inferior

artist. Then followed a period when the fine arts were forgotten in the

turmoil of war, and crushed by the gloomy, repressive Puritan spirit.

But after the Restoration, matters changed, and from that time onwards

there is a steadily increasing stream of artists, though the women are

few in number, up to the present century. The only female painters

of any note in the seventeenth century were those who obtained royal

patronage, like Mary Beale, a painter in both oil and water-colours,

and a most industrious artist, highly commended by the famous portrait

painter, Sir Peter Lely. Anne Killigrew, maid of honour to Mary of

Modena, Duchess of York, had only twenty-five years in which to make a

name, but she has secured a niche not only through her pictures, which

included portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York, but also by her

verses.

It is anticipating events to proceed to the days of Angelica Kaufmann

and Mary Moser, but, for the sake of preserving the continuity of the

subject, a rapid review may be taken of the work done by women in the

last century.

In 1768 the Royal Academy was founded, the first keeper being George

Moser, for many years manager of a private academy for artists in St.

Martin’s Lane, London. He was the father of Mary Moser, who, like

Angelica Kaufmann, was elected a member of the Royal Academy, these two

being the only women on whom that honour was conferred. Both had signed

a memorial to George III. in favour of the foundation of an Academy

of Arts. When it was opened in 1769, Angelica Kaufmann sent two large

paintings, and she continued for years to be an exhibitor. Mary Moser

sent a flower piece in oils, and two years later a figure subject.

After her marriage with Captain Lloyd she ceased to appear among the

ranks of professional painters, though she continued to exhibit at the

Academy uninterruptedly until 1779, and at intervals to a later period,

her last contribution being in the year 1800.

Angelica Kaufmann and Mary Moser were both of Swiss parentage.

Angelica’s father was a native of Schwartzenberg, near Lake Constance,

and George Moser was born at Schaffhausen. Angelica Kaufmann was born

about 1741--the exact date is uncertain--and Mary Moser in 1744. But

while the more celebrated artist spent the years of her childhood among

the beautiful surroundings of Morbegno, in Lombardy, and on the shores

of Lake Como, and acquired her early training in the galleries of

Milan, Mary Moser was born and educated in England. Angelica Kaufmann

did not come to this country until 1765, after she had made a name for

herself in Italy, and had helped her father to decorate the Church of

Schwartzenberg with frescoes, had painted the portraits of several

noble personages, had been warmly praised and munificently treated by

the Bishop of Constance, and had become the pet of the ladies about the

court of the Governor of Milan, Francis III., Duke of Modena. It was

through Lady Wentworth, the wife of the English Minister at Venice,

Mr. Murray, that Angelica Kaufmann came to England, where she was

welcomed by artists both English and foreign, and made much of in the

fashionable world. The painter Fuseli, whom she had already met in

Rome, was desperately in love with her, but she, unfortunately, fell

into the meshes of that arch adventurer who passed himself off as Count

de Horn, while her fellow-artist, Mary Moser, was languishing for love

of Fuseli, who was indifferent or blind to her attachment. In 1781

Angelica Kaufmann married Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian artist, and left

England for Italy never to return. Fuseli consoled himself with a Miss

Sophia Rawlins in 1788, the year in which he was elected Associate of

the Royal Academy, and Miss Moser married Captain Hugh Lloyd.

Mary Moser, at the time when she and Angelica Kaufmann joined the

ranks of the “Forty,” was the only flower painter in the Academy,

with the exception of John Baker. If Angelica Kaufmann, with her

brilliant beauty and talents, has eclipsed her humbler friend, yet

Miss Moser contrived to secure a very fair share of artistic success.

She gained very practical recognition from the royal family, the Queen

commissioning her to paint a room at Frogmore, for which she was paid

£900. The whole decoration of this room was in flowers, flower-painting

being Miss Moser’s speciality. The last time she exhibited at the

Academy she sent a figure subject.

Fanny Reynolds, the retiring and unappreciated sister of Sir Joshua

Reynolds, was one of Angelica Kaufmann’s many friends. Perhaps she did

not object to the romantic devotion paid by her famous brother to the

fascinating young Italian artist who captivated all hearts. Frances

Reynolds had many difficulties in the way of her artistic studies.

She got no help or even encouragement from her brother, who, far from

tendering her any advice, disliked to see her paint, and ridiculed

her miniatures, which, he said, “make other people laugh and me cry.”

Perhaps James Northcote, Sir Joshua’s pupil, was right when he said

that Miss Reynolds’s portraits were an exact imitation of Sir Joshua’s

defects. This would account for the unfavourable judgment and harsh

treatment poor Fanny always received from her brother.

Mrs. Cosway, another of Angelica Kaufmann’s friends, and one of a

very smart circle, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. She

was the daughter of an Englishman, or Irishman, named Hadfield, who

kept an hotel at Florence, and sent his little girl to a convent to

be educated. She wished to become a nun, but was dissuaded from that

course by her mother desiring her company when her father died, and

the family moved to England. It was Angelica Kaufmann who eventually

completed the work of converting Maria Hadfield from a religious to a

secular life. Her husband was an R.A., wealthy, and much admired as an

artist. Mrs. Cosway, like her husband, painted miniatures, and was very

successful. She also possessed a good deal of musical talent, and was

personally attractive, so that between them Mr. and Mrs. Cosway made

numerous friends and quantities of money, for Cosway had a keen eye to

business, and could turn everything to account. Their receptions were

noted, and were attended by artists, men of letters, the most exclusive

of the fashionable world, and also by royalty. But all this splendour

faded away when Cosway took up the cause of the Revolutionists in

France. His friends turned their backs on him, his wife’s health

failed, their only child died, and the last years of their married life

were spent in a dull house in the Edgeware Road, London. After her

husband’s death, Mrs. Cosway went back to her native country.

In the closing years of the eighteenth century there were many

landscape painters among women, but in the early part of the nineteenth

century they declined, very few exhibiting at the Royal Academy. It

was, however, a flourishing period for portrait painters. “Never

before or since have so many lady artists obtained such honours in a

most difficult branch.”[61] Mrs. Carpenter, who lived between 1793 and

1877, was pre-eminent among these, and was a regular exhibitor at the

Academy from 1814 to 1866. Mrs. James Robertson was a clever miniature

painter, and was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of St.

Petersburg. She was also an exhibitor at the Royal Academy during the

same period as Mrs. Carpenter.

It was not an easy matter at the close of the last century and the

beginning of the present to obtain instruction in miniature painting,

and the women who excelled did so entirely by their own laborious

efforts. Later on this branch of the art fell into desuetude. Flower

and fruit painting came much into vogue early in the century. It is a

curious thing that the amateurs of art should have fallen so much into

the background in the first half of this century. In the last decade of

the eighteenth century the amateurs were rather distinguished. There

were numbers of “honorary exhibitors” between 1793 and 1800 at the

Royal Academy, who seem to have been so described because they were

amateurs like Miss Spilsbury, Miss Serres, and other ladies.

It seems strange that in music women have shown so little creative

power. They have proved first-class executants, but as composers they

have not attempted any great flights. With a few exceptions their

productions have been confined to the lighter kinds of music, to songs

and the simpler class of pianoforte works. They have rarely attempted

orchestral pieces or the more elaborate forms of vocal composition.

Symphonies, oratorios, operas, or even cantatas have very seldom

issued from the pen of a woman. It is not, however, impossible that

creative capacity may have existed in many women without finding direct

expression or acknowledgment. Mendelssohn narrates how he was summoned

to play before the Queen, who wished that he should accompany her in

one of his compositions. He asked Her Majesty to select her favourite

song, and when the Queen had chosen what she called quite the best,

Mendelssohn was obliged to confess that the song was his sister’s

work, not his own. The elder Mendelssohn would probably have seen

more impropriety in his daughter’s name appearing in print than in

his son taking credit for what he had not composed. Just as Caroline

Herschell’s large share in her brother’s astronomic labours and Fanny

Mendelssohn’s authorship were not acknowledged, so is it impossible to

say that musical genius may not have been the heritage of some among

the women of famous composers’ families.

But women have always delighted in playing and singing, even in those

early periods of our history when music in this country was chiefly a

thing of ear and memory, there being hardly any musical literature and

very few professional instructors. In the middle ages, throughout the

Renaissance period, and down to the last century, music was part of

polite education for both sexes. At the present day a gentleman may go

comfortably through life with no more, if as much, knowledge of music

as a Board School child, and not be accused of lack of breeding. For a

woman in the middle and upper ranks, music has remained an essential

feature of education. Indeed, it has been made far too much of, and

many years are often wasted in attaining a very moderate degree of

executive skill, with little pleasure or profit, by those who have not

sufficient natural ability to make prolonged study useful.

In the present century the musical education of women has made great

strides. Every opportunity has been taken for latent talent to develop

by means of the best instruction. The academies and schools of music

have raised the standard of private teaching, besides directly

educating vast numbers of students. The result is an ever-increasing

number of really able performers and teachers, but very few composers.

To the executive power of women there is no limit beyond that of the

instrument. With regard to vocalism, there is the barrier of climate.

We are not a nation of vocalists, and though there is a very large

amount of respectable talent it is seldom that England produces a great

singer.

One proof of the advanced musical education of women is to be found in

their frequent presence as performers in high-class orchestras. It used

to be a rare thing to see a woman appear on a concert platform in any

capacity but that of vocalist or pianoforte player. Now she takes her

place quite naturally among the “strings.” To play in concerted music

means a wider training, and one that has only become possible to women

in recent times.

The English have always been a music-loving nation. The records of

early times show in what esteem music was held. The harp was the

favourite instrument of our forefathers. The possession of a harp was

one of the three things necessary to a gentleman or a freeman in Wales,

and slaves were not permitted to play on it. A gentleman’s harp was

never seized for debt, because he would then have been degraded to

the rank of a slave. The minstrel was as essential to English social

life in the middle ages as the cook or the henchman. A writer in the

thirteenth century speaks of the good singers in England at the court

of Henry II. Erasmus in the sixteenth century remarks of the English:--

“They challenge the prerogative of having the most handsome

women, of keeping the best table, and being most accomplished

in the skill of music of any people.”

At that time everybody, high or low, delighted in music. It was as

much a part of education as reading and writing, and there was never a

festival or entertainment of any kind without music. Curiously enough,

ladies then played the bass viol, thought by some to be an “unmannerly

instrument for a woman.” The virginal, or as it is generally called the

virginals, a sort of pianoforte; the cittern and the gittern, which

were varieties of the lute and the guitar, were the instruments most in

use by gentlewomen.[62] The virginal is said to have received its name

from being played by young girls, or, according to some authorities,

because it was an instrument used by the nuns in their hymns to the

Virgin. It was expected of every lady that she must be able--

“to play upon the virginals, lute, and cittern; and to read

prick song (_i.e._ music written or pricked down) _at first

sight_.”

So common was the lute that lute-strings were much in vogue as new

year’s gifts to ladies. Queen Elizabeth, as is well known, was a

skilful performer on the lute and virginals, and her “Virginal Book” is

frequently referred to in musical works. “Lady Nevill’s Virginal Book”

is another famous collection of sixteenth-century airs.

Queen Elizabeth gave great encouragement to sacred music, and issued

express orders for the retention of the musical portion of the Church

Service, and in her own chapel various instruments were used. She gave

much offence to the stricter Protestants by her patronage of music.

All through the Tudor period England was merry with music, but with

the triumph of the Puritans, in the seventeenth century, all this was

changed. Music was denounced as corrupting and mischievous, like the

other arts, and every effort made to prevent the people’s enjoyment

of it, either in their own homes or in the religious services. Under

James I. there had been little encouragement given to music, and when

the Civil War came, and the Commonwealth, with its austere doctrines,

was established, there was no chance for musicians. The fury of the

Puritans against church music was shown in acts of violence. The organ

of Westminster Abbey was broken down, and the pipes pawned for ale by

roistering republicans. Ordinances were passed in 1644 for--

“the speedy demolishing of all organs and all matters of

superstitions, monuments in all Cathedral or Collegiate or

Parish Churches and Chapels throughout the Kingdom.”

And even before then havoc had been made of the church organs. Of the

court players no one knows--they disappeared. But after the Restoration

the Royal Chapel Choir was re-formed with some difficulty, for both

teachers and performers had been scattered to the four winds. Then

followed the age of Purcell, Humphrey, Wise, and Blow.

Throughout the seventeenth century, and down to the time of the second

George, ladies continued to play on the virginals and lute, and to

practise reading music at sight.

“Part of a gentlewoman’s bringing up is to sing, dance, play

on the lute, or some such instrument, before she can say her

_Pater Noster_ or ten commandments: ’tis the next way their

parents think to get them husbands, they are compelled to learn.”

And just as Englishwomen of the present day are apt to lay aside their

accomplishments after marriage, so, in the seventeenth century,

“they that being maids took so much pains to sing, play, and

dance, with such cost and charge to their parents to get these

graceful qualities, now being married, will scarce touch an

instrument, they care not for it.”

The very maidservants at that period understood music. Pepys speaks

of a servant whom he and his wife took into their household, a poor,

wretched girl, without proper clothing, but with a decided talent for

singing, apparent even through a voice described by the diarist as

furred for want of use. This was the fourth maid in the course of less

than ten years whom Pepys praises for musical ability; and there was

also the boy who was in the habit of playing his lute in bed at four in

the morning, a habit that most employers would object to, but Pepys saw

in it only occasion for praise.

The seventeenth century marks an era in our musical history, because

it witnessed the first attempts at opera by English composers. Matthew

Lock’s opera, _Psyche_, produced in 1673, was the first English

composition of this class. Henry Purcell, when he was only about

seventeen, wrote _Dido and Æneas_. It was performed in 1677. Now, as

Madame Raymond Ritter has said--

“Woman’s practical career as a musician only began with the

invention of the opera about 1600. It was not until her

superiority as an actress and a singer had been undeniably and

triumphantly established on the stage that she was allowed to

resume her musical participation in Church services.”[63]

Purcell’s opera had a very modest introduction to the world. It was

performed at a girl’s boarding-school, kept in Leicester Fields by Mr.

James Priest, a famous dancing-master, who persuaded young Purcell to

write the music to the libretto of the drama which had been composed by

one Tate at his suggestion. Mr. Priest desired to have something for

his pupils to perform, and the exhibition came off with great _éclat_

in the presence of the pupils’ parents and friends.

It is a little surprising that any one should have been found daring

enough to carry out so startling an idea at a girls’ school, and it

seems odd that Mr. Priest should have been the proprietor of such an

establishment.

The musical history of England affords little that is encouraging to

dwell upon from the middle of the seventeenth century. A great many

foreign artists visited this country, but native talent was at a very

low ebb. There were no English composers of any note after Purcell,

who died at thirty-seven years of age, just when Italian opera was

beginning to take root in England.

PERIOD III.

_LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY._

CHAPTER I.

MATRONS AND MAIDS.

Artificiality of eighteenth-century life--The _rôle_ of

the middle-class woman--Scotch domestic life--The old

maid--Admiration of foreigners for English women--English

dress--Public morals--Contrast between town and country life--A

country lady in London--Racquets, routs, and drums--Education

of girls--The boarding-school--Habits and manners of the middle

class--Le Blanc’s opinion of the English.

“La dix-huitième siècle aime la nature.” The love of the eighteenth

century for nature was, however, a capricious attachment, a spurious

sentiment. No century so delighted in artificiality. Its dress, its

habits, its amusements, its very speech,--all bear witness to its

dislike of nature unadorned. It loved the town and the works of

man. The eighteenth century stands out with a curiously distinct

individuality. The influences that moulded society in the time of the

Stuarts had passed away. The contest between the moralist and the

sensualist had spent itself. Although the Puritan spirit lived on,

it slumbered awhile, and the open profligacy against which it had

striven, though not extinguished, was manifested in less pronounced

shapes. The Church was both lethargic and corrupt. For the first time

in English history we come upon a period when there was no dominant

spiritual influence. Religion, like everything else, was a matter of

formalism.

Slowly the great characteristics of social life in England had changed.

Romanism and feudalism had governed it in earlier times. Then came

the Renaissance, with its vivifying power, followed by the reign of

sensuality and the opposing force of Puritanism. It seemed as if the

nation were exhausted; passion had spent itself, moral feeling was

deadened, enthusiasm was quenched. The new force was conventionality.

Women in every-day life felt the spell of this goddess less than did

the great ladies. Over the fashionable world she reigned supreme; but

the _bourgeoisie_, while they admired, and as far as possible imitated,

the ways of their social superiors, showed themselves more children of

nature.

Increase of material ease and comfort was re-shaping the course of

domestic life. As household arrangements were improved, new appliances

invented, and the general conditions made smoother, woman’s position

changed. She was less completely occupied with the means of living,

and more open to outside influences. That she invariably made a good

use of her liberty is not so clear. The prosperous, well-housed

citizenesses of the eighteenth century probably spent much of their

spare time in idle chatter--it was a great period for gossip--and in

tricking themselves out to imitate the fine ladies of whom they got

glimpses at church and in the public gardens. They rose late because

it was fashionable, leaving their servants to do the work that their

grandmothers would have shared. There is as much lost as gained in

the uprooting of social habits while the people are still unripe for

changes. And the women of the eighteenth century _were_ unripe. There

was more material than intellectual improvement. The literary movement

hardly touched women in every-day life; the philanthropic movement

had not made any headway, and as for politics, it was only the great

ladies, with relatives and friends among statesmen, who concerned

themselves with public affairs. Middle-class women seldom read the

newspapers. It was in the coffee-houses that men learned and discussed

the news of the day; they did not buy the papers and bring them home in

London. In the country a weekly news-letter was handed from neighbour

to neighbour, or discussed at village inns, but the women-folk usually

gathered their news by hearsay, not finding much to interest them

in the curiously composed, ill-printed medley that called itself a

newspaper.

The women of the middle classes did not keep pace with the men in

enlarging their sphere of interests. Among the aristocracy women were

naturally drawn more into the current of life by their connection

with leading men of the time, by their intercourse with distinguished

foreign visitors, by their opportunities of travel and of contact with

the best thought of the day. But the women of the trading classes were

removed from all these influences. Their _rôle_ was a domestic one. The

education which they received was not calculated to inspire them with

any idea that their minds needed enlarging. It was seldom thought that

women required anything beyond a few accomplishments.

In Scotland--

“domestick affairs and amuseing her husband was the bussiness

of a good wife. Those that could afoard governesses for their

children had them, but all they could learn them was to read

English ill and plain work. The chief thing required was to

hear them repeat Psalms and long catechisms, in which they

were employed an hour or more every day, and almost the whole

day on Sunday. If there was no governess to perform this work

it was done by the chaplan, of which there was one in every

family. No attention was given to what we call accomplishments.

Reading and writing well, or even spelling, was never thought

of. Musicke, drawing, or French were seldom taught the girls.

They were allowed to rune about and amuse themselves in the way

they choiced, even to the age of women, at which time they were

generally sent to Edinburgh for a winter or two to lairn to

dress themselves, and to dance and see a little of the world.

The world was only to be seen at Church, at marriages, burials,

and baptisms. These were the only public places where the

ladys went in full dress, and as they walked the street they

were seen by everybody; but it was the fashion when in undress

all-wise to be masked. When in the country their employment was

in color’d work, beds, tapestry and other pieces of furniture;

imitations of fruits and flowers with very little taste. If

they read any it was either books of devotion or long romances,

and sometimes both.”

These are the words of an Ayrshire lady, whose reminiscences date back

to the early years of the eighteenth century. She lived up till 1795,

during which time she witnessed a great change in girls’ education.

Reading, writing, music, drawing, geography, history, even French and

Italian were added gradually to the curriculum.

In former periods women were producers as well as distributors, each

household being like a little township, dependent on itself. But in

the eighteenth century, although domestic industries had not been

revolutionized as they have since been, there were factories and shops,

and all sorts of hawkers, who vended goods of various kinds in the

streets. In London and in the large towns there was no need for each

family to produce its own necessaries, though in country districts

the domestic arrangements were more stationary. Baking, brewing,

and salting were still carried on in the larger houses occupied by

the gentry, but in small households most of the things required for

daily use were bought. The domestic _rôle_ of the eighteenth-century

woman among the middle classes was not so absorbing as to leave her

no time for mental recreation. But books, like politics, were, for

the most part, left to the men. There was so little circulation of

literature that in London much of the reading was done standing at a

bookseller’s stall, a method obviously impossible to women. With such

scanty education as was considered appropriate to the weaker sex, with

no books but of the most dreary kind, written for young people, it was

little wonder that the generality of girls grew up without any habit of

reading, or of regarding literature as an essential element of their

daily lives. We cannot think of the average woman in the last century

as finding much of her pleasure in any intellectual occupation. She had

been neglected, her mind allowed to rust. The awakening that had taken

place two hundred years before had been succeeded by a reaction, and

there was a general apathy with regard to women’s education.

A writer in the second quarter of the century, who is vaunting the

superiority of men over women, says England is

“the place in the world where the fair sex is the most

regarded, and, perhaps, deserves most to be so.... Nor is it

easy to comprehend how it is possible to raise them higher with

any show of reason, considering their natural incapacity for

everything above the sphere they actually move in.”

Foreigners were always struck by the freedom enjoyed by married women.

One observes that

“among the common people the husbands seldom make their wives

work. As to the women of quality, they don’t trouble themselves

about it.”

The middle-class wife has been pictured for us by Fielding in the

description of Squire Western’s wife:--

“The Squire, to whom that poor woman had been a faithful

upper-servant all the time of their marriage, had returned that

behaviour by making what the world calls a good husband. He

very seldom swore at her, perhaps not above once a week, and

never beat her. She had not the least occasion for jealousy,

and was perfect mistress of her time, for she was never

interrupted by her husband, who was engaged all the morning in

his field exercises and all the evening with bottle companions.”

Whatever the position of the wife, it was preferred to that of the

single woman.

“An old maid is now thought such a curse as no Poetick Fury can

exceed,” writes the author of “The Ladies’ Calling,” “looked

on as the most calamitous creature in nature. And I so far

yield to the opinion as to confess it to those who are kept

in that state against their wills; but sure, the original of

that misery is from the desire, not the restraint, of marriage:

let them but suppress that once, and the other will never be

their infelicity. But I must not be so unkind to the sex as to

think ’tis always such desire that gives them an aversion to

celibacy; I doubt not many are frighted only with the vulgar

contempt under which that state lyes: for which if there be

no cure, yet there is the same armour against this which is

against all other causeless reproaches, viz. to contemn it.”

This supports the remark that women were more easily won than formerly.

An elderly beau writes--

“The men of these days are strangely happy. In my time a fine

woman was not to be gain’d without a long application and a

thousand testimonies of an unfeign’d and constant regard;

but now a game of romps or a lucky run at cards reduces the

vanquished fair to accept of what condition the conqueror is

pleased to give.”

The modest demeanour of English women when seen abroad excited the

admiration of foreigners, who were a little astonished at the general

taste for walking, which is

“a great diversion among the ladies and their manner of doing

it is one way of knowing their character; desiring only to

be seen, they would walk together for the most part without

speaking, they are always dressed and always stiff; they go

forward constantly, and nothing can amuse them or put them out

of their way.... Yet, notwithstanding all their care to be

seen, they are seldom coquets, nor have they any ridiculous

affectations or bold ways.”

It was not usual for girls to walk about alone, and was considered

indecorous by the older generation.

“I know this age has so great a contempt of the former that

’tis but matter of scorn to alledge any of their customs; else

I should say that the liberties that are taken now would then

have been startled at. They that should then have seen a young

maid rambling abroad without her mother or some other prudent

person, would have looked on her as a stray, and thought it but

a neighbourly office to have brought her home: whereas now ’tis

a rarity to see them in any company graver than themselves,

and she that goes with her parent (unless it be such a parent

as is as wild as herself) thinks she does but walk abroad with

jaylour.”

Our national fault--want of taste in dress, and fondness for new

fashions, however unsuitable--called forth the censure of an Italian

visitor:--

“The ladies of England do not understand the art of decorating

their persons so well as those of Italy; they generally

increase the volume of the head by a cap which makes it much

bigger than nature, a fault which should be always avoided in

adorning that part.... They wear their petticoats too short

behind, and not imitating the most graceful birds, as the

ladies of Italy and France, in a trail of their robes upon the

ground, lose the greatest grace which dress can impart to a

female....

“In truth, not beauty, but novelty governs in London, not

taste, but copy. A celebrated woman of five foot six inches

gives law to the dress of those who are but four feet two....

There is nothing so common as to hear the ladies of this nation

assure you that such a shape is quite out of fashion, and the

present reigning mode is the slender or the large; as if the

creative power, like the hands of mantua makers, had cut the

human person by a new pattern and thrown away the old.... This

is not the case in Italy and France; the ladies know that the

grace which attends plumpness is unbecoming the slender; and

the tall lady never affects to look like a fairy; nor the dwarf

like the giantess, but each studying the air and mein which

become her figure, appears in the most engaging dress that can

be made, to set off her person to the greatest advantage.”

About the middle of the century quite an outcry arose about the

introduction of so many French fashions, and the prints of the day

are full of caricatures of French ways and costumes. It was the upper

classes who were first seized with this mania for imitation, and the

example being infectious, spread rapidly through all ranks of society.

The fashionable world followed France, and the middle classes followed

the fashionable world. The mode of life, the popularity of public

gardens, to which high and low resorted, brought the ways of the gay

world under the eyes of the staid folk who dwelt in the city.

“What was looked upon as the beau-monde, then lived much more

in public than now, and men and women of fashion displayed

their weaknesses to the world in public places of amusement and

resort with little shame or delicacy. The women often rivalled

the men in libertinism and even emulated them sometimes in

their riotous manners.”[64]

In 1770 an Act was passed declaring--

“That all women of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree,

whether virgins, maids or widows, that shall from and after

such Act, impose upon, seduce, or betray into matrimony, any

of his Majesty’s male subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetic

washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays,

hoops, high-heeled shoes, etc., shall incur the penalty of the

law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanours, and

that the marriage upon conviction shall stand null and void.”

Public morals were at a low ebb if we may trust the observation of

that experienced traveller, M. Grosley, who says that the women of the

town were bolder and more numerous in London than in Paris or Rome.

They thronged the footpaths at night, and even in broad daylight

accosted passers by, more particularly those whom they perceived to be

foreigners.

Archenholz, who visited London some years after Grosley, says:--

“On compte cinquante mille prostituées à Londres, sans les

maîtresses en titre. Leurs usages et leur conduite déterminent

les différentes classes où il faut les ranger. La plus vile de

toutes habite dans les lieux publics sous la direction d’une

matrone qui les loge et les habille. Ces habits même pour les

filles communs, sont de soie, suivant l’usage que le luxe a

généralement introduit en Angleterre.... Dans la seule paroisse

de Marybonne, qui est la plus grande et la plus peuplée de

l’Angleterre, on en comptoit, il y a quelques années, treize

mille, dont dix-sept cents occupoient des maisons entières à

elles seules.”

One of the causes of the number of these _filles de joie_ was,

probably, the constant immigration from the provinces of young

friendless girls eager to taste the delights of London. When their

means were exhausted it was impossible for them to return or obtain

employment without credentials, and they entered upon the only career

that seemed open to them.

Another Frenchman comments on the openly lax morality which disgraced

English family life--

“There’s yet a much greater fault which the English women

have reason to complain of, and that is that most of the

husbands keep mistresses. Some have carried them home and

made them eat at the same table with their wives, and yet no

mischief happened.... They have been seen even in company

with the wives, and if there is any distinction, ’tis that

they are handsomer for the most part, better dressed and less

starch’d.”[65]

“If this be thought an exaggerated portrait, drawn with the inaccuracy

of hasty observation and coloured by prejudice, the same cannot be

said with regard to the pen of Fielding, who, in “Tom Jones,” reflects

popular opinion and represents the standard of the day. A young fellow,

named Nightingale, who has betrayed his landlady’s daughter, is thus

addressed by his uncle:--

“Honour is a creature of the world’s making, and the world has

the power of a creator over it, and may govern and direct it as

they please. Now, you well know how trivial these breaches of

contract are thought: even the grossest make but the wonder and

conversation of the day. Is there a man who afterwards will be

more backward in giving you his sister or daughter, or is there

any sister or daughter who would be more backward to receive

you? Honour is not concerned in these engagements.”

It will be remembered how “Squire Western,” when he heard that “Tom

Jones” had betrayed a village girl, laughed at the episode as a good

joke, and called upon his daughter to bear him out that women would

think no worse of a young fellow for that. As for “Sophia” herself, it

proved no serious check on her passion.

And yet England was said to be the country where offences against women

were punished with the greatest severity, and where, if a man wished to

find an unlawful partner, he must search among those whose poverty made

them ready victims to temptation.

It cannot be doubted that women of the middle classes were accustomed

to expect a lower standard of morality among men than at the present

day. The novels of the last century show that what are now deemed as

grave offences were then considered mere peccadilloes. Drinking and

swearing were foibles too common to excite notice, and breaches of the

moral code were easily condoned. The women were not so prone themselves

as might have been thought to the sins which they tolerated, but they

were brought up in the belief that a larger licence should be allowed

to men. The same tendency is apparent now in circles where the women

take little or no share in the occupations of their husbands and

brothers, and where the interests are totally different. The women,

who are the most ready to be lenient where they should be severe,

set up different standards of morality for the sexes, and draw a

dividing-line between masculine and feminine virtues and vices.

What greatly impressed Frenchmen was the seriousness of English wives,

and their sober, chaste lives.

“Au milieu des débordemens, souvent poussés à l’excès, dans

cette grande ville, il est bien rare de voir la corruption

attaquer une femme mariée, et chercher à lui faire partager ses

infames plaisirs. Elle trouve un rempart insurmontable dans son

amour pour sa famille, les soins de son ménage, et sa gravité

naturelle. Je soutiens même qu’il n’y a pas de ville dans le

monde où l’honneur des maris soit moins en danger qu’à Londres.”

Another writes:--

“Le part qu’ont les femmes au sérieux et à la mélancolie

nationale en les rendant sédentaire, les attache à leurs maris,

à leurs enfans, et à leur ménage.”

Le Blanc remarks, with a touch of wounded vanity--

“Most of those who among us pass for men of good fortune in

amours, would with difficulty succeed in addressing an English

fair. She would not sooner be subdued by the insinuating

softness of their jargon than by the amber with which they are

perfumed.”

Naturally a Frenchman thought his own countrywomen more attractive--

“The women in France are not so reserved as in England; but we

find charms in their company which those of this country have

not. The one, by their awkwardness, have the defect of making

virtue itself disagreeable; the others, more engaging, have

often the pernicious art of making vice seem amiable.”

There were those who complained that in France--

“women have too much boldness, and are scarcely women. The

continual commerce between the sexes causes, as it were, an

exchange of characters which makes each sex derogate something

from its proper character. They (the women) drink hard at

table, and do it agreeably. They understand gaming as well as

men. They go a-hunting with men, and come so near to men in

everything that they are scarcely women.”

What would have been thought of the modern Englishwoman who rides to

hounds, wears masculine, tailor-made clothes, and shares the serious

occupations as well as the amusements of the male sex, it is needless

to discuss. In the last century pursuits that are now quite common,

and pass without notice, were thought extravagantly fast, while our

ancestors tolerated a licence of manners and speech that we, in our

turn, should repudiate.

There was considerable difference between the manners and habits of

town dwellers and those living in the country. An article in _The

Female Spectator_, in 1745, recounts a country lady’s experiences on

her first visit to London, and her amazement at the habits of London

folk. She went to call on an old acquaintance with whom she had at one

time been extremely intimate:--

“It was between eleven and twelve when I came to her door,

where, after knocking a considerable time, a footman with his

nightcap on, and pale as just risen from the dead, came yawning

forth, and on my asking for his lady, ‘O Gad, madam,’ drawled

he out, ‘we had a racquet here last night, and my lady cannot

possibly be stirring these three hours.’ I wondered what had

happened, but would not ask any questions of the fellow, and

only left my name and said I would wait on her at a more proper

time.”

The lady returns about three o’clock, after shopping and dining, and

thus describes her visit:--

“I had now the good fortune to be admitted, and found her at

her chocolate; she had a dish of it in one hand, and with

the other she seemed very busy in sorting a large parcel

of guineas, which she divided in two heaps on a table that

stood before her. She rose and received me with a great

deal of civility and kindness, told me she was sorry for my

disappointment on my first calling, but added with a smile that

when I had been a little while in town I should learn to lie

longer in bed in a morning.”

After this the London lady explains to her country visitor the meaning

of the term racquet, viz. when the number of company assembled for

cards exceeded ten tables; if it were fewer, the entertainment was

called a “rout,” and if there were only two tables it was a “drum.”

To the bewildered visitor the amusements of London folk seemed

very odd, and she adds that she found cheating at cards almost as

fashionable as cards themselves.

As the stage-coach system developed country people came more to London,

and Londoners began to pay periodical visits to watering-places,

whither they carried the dissipations of town life. The love of scenery

is a taste that has been largely developed within the present century.

When people travelled formerly, if it were not for business, it was

to comply with fashion and for the excitement of a change, but not to

revel in the beauties of Nature. The eighteenth century was full of

artificial sentiment. It disliked in women the evidences of health and

of a robust constitution of mind. The effect on ordinary women was to

make them shallow and affected. They were not taught to think; they

were encouraged to believe that appearances counted for everything,

reality for nothing. As long as the exterior was pleasing, it mattered

not what was beneath.

“When a poor young lady is taught to value herself on nothing

but her cloaths and to think she’s very fine when well

accoutred; when she hears say, that ’tis wisdom enough for

her to know how to dress herself, that she may become amiable

in his eyes, to whom it appertains to be knowing and learned;

who can blame her if she lay out her industry and money on such

accomplishments, and sometimes extends it farther than her

misinformer desires she should....

“If from our infancy we are nurs’d upon ignorance and vanity;

are taught to be proud and petulent, delicate and fantastick,

humorous and inconstant, ’tis not strange that the ill-effects

of this conduct appears in all the future actions of our

lives.... That, therefore, women are unprofitable to most, and

a plague and dishonour to some men is not much to be regretted

on account of the men, because ’tis the product of their own

folly, in denying them the benefits of an ingenuous and liberal

education, the most effectual means to direct them into, and

secure their progress in the ways of vertue.”[66]

The flirtation with literature, the coquetting with accomplishments

which passed for female education, were shams, like the powdered

_pouffs_ of hair and the face-washes. It was an age of shams,

and women were told, in effect if not in words, that successful

shamming was their _rôle_ in life. They were to sham sensitiveness,

modesty, ignorance (which could not have been difficult), anything

and everything which it was deemed likely would commend them to the

perverted taste of the day. The vapourish, hysterical, fainting

heroines of romance are only slightly coloured pictures of reality.

The physical effects of the system of education were as harmful as the

results on the mind.

“Miss is set down to her frame before she can put on her

clothes; and is taught to believe that to excel at the needle

is the only thing that can entitle her to general esteem....

One hardly meets with a girl who can at the same time boast of

early performances by the needle and a good constitution.”[67]

_The Female Spectator_ issued a protest against that devotion to the

needle, which was regarded as one of the cardinal virtues in women:--

“Nor can I by any means approve of compelling young ladies

of fortune to make so much use of the needle, as they did in

former days, and some few continue to do. In my opinion a

lady of condition should learn just as much of cookery and of

work as to know when she is imposed upon by those she employs

in both those necessary occasions, but no more. To pass too

much of her time in them may acquire her the reputation of a

notable housewife, but not of a woman of fine taste, or any way

qualify her for polite conversation, or of entertaining herself

agreeably when alone. It always makes me smile when I hear the

mother of fine daughters say, ‘I always keep my girls at their

needle.’ One, perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt

for a bed, and a third engaged to make a whole dozen of shirts

for her father. And then when she has carried you into the

nursery and shewn you them all, add, ‘It is good to keep them

out of idleness; when young people have nothing to do, they

naturally wish to do something they ought not.’”

In the second half of the century, when the influence of the

fashionable world was more strongly felt among the _bourgeoisie_,

the boarding-school, with its flimsy accomplishments and its lack of

solid education, began to attract the daughters of a different class.

Hitherto it had been the monopoly of the so-called gentlefolk, but now

mingling with these were the daughters of tradesmen and farmers, who

had money to spend and a fancy for making “ladies” of their girls. It

may have been a step up in the social ladder for these newcomers, but

from an educational point of view it was no gain. The training of the

fashionable boarding-school was only a veneer.

To the French it seemed odd and unnatural to see English parents

sending their children off to boarding-schools, or to be educated

abroad at the convent schools of Paris. In France young girls were kept

at home with their mothers much more than in England.

“Les parens se débarassent de leurs enfans,” writes La Combe in

his “Tableau de Londres,” “en les jettant au hazard dans des

pensions ou des académies. Ils semblent rougir de voir leurs

enfans se former sous leurs yeux; ils prefèrent des étrangers,

qui n’ont ni attachement ni la connaissance des passions des

enfans qu’on leur confie, et les elévent tous avec indifférence

sur le même plan. Il serait plus raisonnable d’avoir les enfans

chez soi, d’étudier leur goût, leur penchant, de les façonner

peu à peu par la douceur et les caresses, à la docilité au

travail, à l’honnêteté et de les familiariser insensiblement

avec tout ce qu’ils doivent savoir un jour et pratiquer dans la

société. On est étonné, à Paris surtout, lorsqu’on voit arriver

de jeunes Anglaises dans les couvents. Quoi? dit on, les mœurs

sont donc bien corrompues à Londres pour nous charger d’élever

les demoiselles.”

As the century grew older the habits and amusements of the leisured

classes spread to the trading community.

“I will not presume to say that all the misfortunes the city of

London at present labours under are owing to their preposterous

fondness of following the fashions of the court; but that they

are in a great measure so I believe most people will readily

enough agree to.”[68]

Speaking of a City dame who had taken up with the fashions of the

West-end, the same writer observed--

“A great courtier now become, she looks with contempt on her

former fellow-citizens, joins in the laugh coquets and beaus

set up whenever any of them appear, and sees not that herself

is equally an object of ridicule to those she is so vain of

imitating. Thus despising and despised without one real friend,

she lives a gawdy, glittering, worthless member of society,

and endured by those whose example has rendered her such, on no

other account than that immense wealth which they find means

to share with her, while she imagines they are doing her an

honour.”

The busy merchants and traders whose wives were so eager to be in the

fashion were themselves no less anxious to be up to the times.

“I do not but see that the men are as eager to quit their

compting houses and strut in the drawing-room disguised in a

long sword and taper wig as the women can be in a new brocade,

exactly the same pattern with that of one of the Princesses.

The infection has spread itself pretty equally through both

sexes. And the husband has little to reproach the wife with, or

the wife the husband, but what each are guilty of in the same

degree.”

Merchants and bankers, in spite of the cares of business, took

life very easily, spending the first part of the morning in the

coffee-houses, and, after a couple of hours at the Exchange, going home

to dinner at four o’clock.

The manners and customs of the eighteenth century accentuated the

differences of sex, and set up artificial barriers between men and

women. Foreigners, because they heard politics constantly discussed,

and forming the chief interest of the citizen’s life, and because they

saw the wife acquiesce in her husband’s views, concluded that politics

proved a strong bond of union in family life.

“Cet intérêt repand dans le domestique un nouvel agrément: le

mari y trouvant toujours quelqu’un avec qui il peut traiter à

cœur ouvert, aussi longuement et aussi profondement que bon lui

semble, les objets qui l’interessent le plus.”

As has been noted elsewhere, interest in politics--especially politics

which dealt in personalities--was keen enough among the women of

the aristocracy, for the game was being largely played by their own

friends, but the women of the middle classes were generally indifferent

to public affairs. Except on occasions of great public excitement,

the City madam, the country squire’s lady, and the farmer’s wife knew

little of what was stirring in the world of statecraft. They lumped

together politics and pipes as part of the men’s amusements with which

they had no direct concern. They shared their husbands’ views because

they had none of their own, and it was not worth while troubling their

heads about such matters as changes of Ministry, Bills in Parliament,

and so forth.

Occupations and habits caused men and women to lead separate lives.

Hard riding and hard drinking were the recreations of the country

squire; the farmer had his out-door duties; the tradesman had his

apprentices to superintend; the shopkeeper had no suburban residence,

and was a shopkeeper all day long while the shutters were open. The

wife occupied herself with her store-cupboard, her linen-press, and her

kitchen, and gossiped in her parlour with neighbours over a dish of tea.

“The English,” wrote Le Blanc, “lose a great deal in conversing

so little with the sex whom Nature has endowed with the graces,

and whose company has constant charms and a certain sweetness

not to be found in that of men. The conversation of women

polishes and softens our behaviour; by the habit we acquire

of endeavouring to please them, we contract a tone of voice

equally agreeable to both sexes....

“The custom of living with what is most valuable in both sexes,

makes the pleasure and happiness of life.... And ’tis by too

much neglecting this custom that the English have a certain

disagreeable bluntness in their character.”

In this century many things have occurred to modify the differences

in the habits of the sexes, to bring men and women more into the same

current of ideas, occupations, amusements. To a much greater extent

than formerly the evolution of women is proceeding along the same lines

as the evolution of men. In the last century men regarded women as--

“made only to take possession of their hearts, and seldom or

never to afford any amusement to their minds. They prefer the

pleasure of toasting their healths in a tavern to that of

chatting with them in a circle. They treat them as if they had

been as much of another species as of another sex. For the most

part they look on them as good for nothing but to dissipate

their vapours or ease the fatigue of business.”

They now regard them as comrades instead of playthings.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT LADY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

London society in the last century--Lord Chesterfield on

taste--Coarse language of great ladies--The speculation mania

among ladies--Narrowness of fashionable life--Manners and

amusements--Difficulties of social intercourse--The founders

of Almack’s Club--The passion for politics--Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu on women’s training--Some traits of eighteenth-century

life.

After the turmoil of the Stuart period was over, and the country had

settled down under the rule of the dull Hanoverians, social life in

England assumed a new form. The circles of the great ladies who now

come into prominence, partly through their wealth and dignities,

but more on account of their qualifications as leaders of society,

eclipse the circles gathered in royal palaces. Until the eighteenth

century society consisted of factions. There was a court party and a

party strongly opposed to the court; there were court beauties and

favourites, duly hated by the opposite set. In London there were

mansions where revels were held by great families, but there was no

cohesion among the scattered elements of London life. It was only in

the seventeenth century that it became fashionable to keep a town as

well as a country house, or rather to spend the winter in London in a

house hired for the season, which then included the darkest and coldest

months in the year. London was only just beginning to be made the

centre of all that was most brilliant in social life, and society’s

leaders were still, for the most part, performing their functions at

their country estates.

But in the eighteenth century London has its well-established social

circles, which take the lead in all matters of fashion and taste,

having first acquired the tone from Paris. It was in the second quarter

of the century that the question of taste was always uppermost in

polite circles, according to Lord Chesterfield.

“Taste,” he writes, “is now the fashionable word of the

fashionable world. Everything must be done with taste; that is

settled, but where that taste is is not quite so certain, for

after all the pains I have taken to find out what was meant

by the word, and whether those who use it oftenest had any

clear idea annexed to it, I have only been able negatively to

discover that they do not mean their own natural taste, but

on the contrary, that they have sacrificed it to an imaginary

one, of which they can give no account. They build houses in

taste, which they cannot live in with conveniency; they suffer

with impatience the music they pretend to hear with rapture,

and they even eat nothing they like, for the sake of eating in

taste. Eating, itself, seems to me to be rather a subject of

humiliation than pride, since the imperfection of our nature

appears in the daily necessity we lie under of recruiting it

in that manner, so that one would think the only care of a

rational being should be to repair his decaying fabric as cheap

as possible. But the present fashion is directly contrary; and

eating now is the greatest pride, business, and expense of

life, and that, too, not to support, but to destroy nature.”

There was certainly a want of taste in the language used by great

ladies, whose speech was often so coarse as not to bear repetition. One

day the Duchess of Marlborough called upon Lord Mansfield, the Lord

Chancellor, _incognita_. When the clerk went in to the Chancellor to

announce the visitor, he said: “I could not make out, Sir, who she was,

but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a lady of quality.” The

substance of ladies’ talk was also open to censure. Writes Swift:

“Or how should I, alas, relate

The sum of all their senseless prate,

Their Inuendo’s, Hints, and Slanders,

Their meanings, lewds, and double entanders!

Now comes the general scandal charge.

What some invent the rest enlarge.”

Expressions then in common use among ladies would not be tolerated

now in decent society. In their intercourse with men they were

more restrained, at least in writing, but the attitude of the sexes

towards each other was one peculiar to the age. There was so much

affectation of gallantry on the part of the men, and such a want of

straightforwardness on the part of the women, that the whole tone

of society was thoroughly artificial. Between the wits, statesmen,

men of letters, and the great ladies of their acquaintance there

was a romantic kind of relation worthy of the days of chivalry. The

elaborately framed protestations of devotion to which women were

generally quite ready to listen belonged rather to feudal romance than

to real life. But the romance of the eighteenth century was tinctured

with the spirit of banter, and both sides were well aware that the

whole thing was merely put on, like the powder and the patches. So

general was this playing at sentiment that when real feeling for once

in a way tried to get the ascendant it was unable to obtain credence.

The fashionable dames of the eighteenth century loved to dabble in

politics, which afforded a fresh excitement when the social round

began to grow a little flavourless. The eighteenth century was a great

period for letter-writing, and political news was a constant topic of

correspondence. The interest centred on men rather than on principles.

These great ladies, when they wrote to each other or to their friends

of the male sex, did not discuss causes. They were concerned with

individuals, with the career of the gentlemen of their acquaintance.

Looked at in this way, politics were, in the phraseology of the age,

“vastly” entertaining.

When the rage for speculation came in, the ladies became ardent

speculators. They exchanged confidences and congratulations over

the great South Sea Bubble, before it burst, and hoped that “stocks

were going on prosperously.” Mrs. Molesworth, writing to Mrs. Howard

(Countess of Suffolk), in June, 1720, says--

“To tell you the truth, I am South Sea mad, and I find that

philosophic temper of mind which made me content under my

circumstances, when there was no seeming probability of

bettering them, forsakes me on this occasion; and I cannot,

without great regret, reflect that for want of a little money,

I am forced to let slip an opportunity which is never like to

happen again. Perhaps you will think me unreasonable when I

tell you that good Lady Sunderland was so mindful of her absent

friends as to secure us a £500 subscription, which money my

father had laid down for us, and it is now doubled; but this

has but given me a taste of fortune, which makes me more eager

to pursue it. As greedy as I seem, I should have been satisfied

if I could by any means have raised the sum of £500 or £1000

more, but the vast price that money bears, and our being not

able to make any security according to law, has made me reject

a scheme I had laid of borrowing such a sum of some monied

friend.”

The ladies got their men friends, with whom they corresponded

copiously, to gamble for them. Thus the Duke of Argyll, in 1719-20,

acted for the Countess of Suffolk, and invested for her a large sum

of money in the Missouri scheme, informing her from time to time how

things were going.

The taste for speculation was worse than the taste for French fashions,

which was decried by Lord Chesterfield.

“I do not mean to undervalue the French,” he writes. “I know

their merit. They are a cheerful, industrious, ingenious,

polite people, and have many things in which I wish we did

imitate them. But, like true mimics, we only ape their

imperfections, and awkwardly copy those parts which all

reasonable Frenchmen themselves contemn in the originals. If

this folly went no farther than disguising both our meats and

ourselves in the French modes, I should bear it with more

patience, and content myself with representing only to my

country folks that the one would make them sick and the other

ridiculous; but when even the materials for the folly are to be

brought over from France too, it becomes a much more serious

consideration. Our trade and manufactures are at stake, and

what seems at first only very silly is, in truth, a great

national evil and a piece of civil immorality.”

The great lady of the eighteenth century is always, so to speak, in

full dress. She seems to live in and for society, to be the leading

figure in a great show. It is difficult to think of her except with a

train and an elaborate _coiffure_, with her fan and smelling-bottle

and her grand manner _en princesse_. The elaboration of life in the

fashionable world, the affectations of speech and manner, and the

imposing costumes surround her with an air of artificiality. Though

she might be an ardent politician or a brilliant wit, though she might

achieve fame in the world of letters, she lived in a narrow circle.

The great social movements of the country were as nothing to her. The

history of the classes below her own had no meaning for her mind. Court

intrigues, political changes, were events of moment; they were part

of her world; she knew no other. Her outlook was limited to personal

interests and ambitions. The accident of birth gave her a part to play

in the affairs of the world. And she played it like a great lady, whose

proper business is pleasure. She flirted, intrigued, and cajoled;

suffered herself to be alternately flattered and neglected when she

wanted a place at court or to worm out some political secret for a

friend. But of the healthy, broad interest which regards the politics

of to-day, both home and foreign, as the history of the morrow, she

was generally devoid.

The great lady of the eighteenth century, unless she happened to

be gifted with exceptional breadth of view, was indifferent--often

contemptuously indifferent--to matters outside her own fashionable

circle. Her education and the temperament of the age fostered this

feeling. She had not the domestic responsibilities of women of a lower

grade, or of great ladies of former times. In their place she was

offered the distractions of society. One by one her duties had fallen

away from her. Domestic occupations did not form part of the _rôle_

of a great lady then any more than at the present time. The altered

conditions of life gave her leisure; the increase of luxury begat a

distaste for exertion. There was a great deal of licence of manners

allowed to women, but little real freedom. They could not venture out

of the beaten track without incurring ridicule, and possibly insult. In

all the relations of life they were made to feel they were dependent

beings. As daughters they had the inferior portion, and no profession

but marriage. As wives they had nothing at all of their own, not even

their children--a condition only remedied late in the present century.

But the lack of all interest in their children, which was said to be a

characteristic of the French nobility, was not so marked in England. In

France it was considered very _bourgeois_ to be surrounded by a family.

Husbands and wives commonly lived independent lives. “Une mariage uni

devient une anomalie dans le grand monde, un manque de goût.”[69]

It was the attitude in which women were regarded that affected their

position more than the actual existence of repressive or deteriorating

customs. And to public opinion the great lady was both more susceptible

and more subject than other women, for she lived with all eyes upon

her. Without a great deal of moral courage she could not step out of

her bounds or revolt against the conditions of her life. A narrow

mental horizon, a cramping education, united with wealth and high

place, were not favourable to the evolution of women, morally or

intellectually. In the eighteenth century women moved in a circle, from

the meshes of which they were not freed until the present century had

run half its course.

With all the elaborate airs and dress which prevailed in the eighteenth

century there was a coarseness of taste and behaviour which is in

odd contrast to the exaggerated politeness affected by _beaux_ and

_élégantes_. There seems a good foundation for Walpole’s description

of the gaiety of the women as “an awkward jollity.” The diversions

of the great ladies read strangely to our modern ears. What would

be thought now of dukes and duchesses going about London with their

friends in hired vehicles to see the sights? But in the spring of 1740,

the Duke and Duchess of Portland organized a jaunt (as one of the party

described it) to the City to see the City show-places. There were four

ladies and four gentlemen, and they set out at ten o’clock in the

morning in a couple of hackney coaches, made a comprehensive tour, and

wound up by dining at a City tavern. “I never spent a more agreeable

day,” writes one of the ladies of the party.

The fashionable diversions, balls and routs, were repeated over and

over again at every watering-place.

“Pleasure with an English lady is a capital and rational

affair. A party at Bath is perhaps the fruit of six months’

meditation and intrigue: she must feign sickness, gain over the

servants, corrupt the physician, importune an aunt, deceive a

husband, and in short have recourse to every artifice in order

to succeed, and the business at last is to get fully paid for

all the pains that have been taken. Pleasure is so much the

more attractive to the English women as it is less familiar and

costs them more to obtain. Melancholy persons feel joy more

sensibly than those who are habituated to it.”[70]

Amusements had no background of broad general interests. It was

inevitable that their effect should be enervating. Some fresh zest

was wanting, and it was found in a licentiousness of manner, just as

flavour was added to conversation by doubtful anecdotes. A phrase in

general use was “demi-reps.” It was the fashion to abbreviate words,

and “rep” was commonly used for “reputation,” a thing in constant

danger of being lost or destroyed at tea-tables. Walpole, writing in

the last quarter of the century, notes with pleasure and surprise the

unusual occupations of some of his fair friends, who busied themselves

with carving and decorative work to adorn the interior of their houses.

“How much more amiable,” he says, “the old women of the next

age will be than most of those we remember who used to tumble

at once from gallantry to devout scandal and cards, and revenge

on the young of their own sex the desertion of ours. Now they

are ingenious. They will not want amusement.”

The great ladies of the eighteenth century sadly wanted amusement, for

they had nothing else to fill up their time. It was not fashionable

to be philanthropic, to start societies for the propagation of

new social creeds. And there were not nearly so many diversions.

There was no fishing in the Norwegian fjords in the summer, no

autumn shooting-parties among the Scotch moors, no winter trips to

the Riviera. At Bath, Tunbridge Wells, and other spas whither the

fashionable world resorted, the social round was only varied by the

bathing and drinking. The bad state of the roads often afforded

diversion to the young, and many a merry mishap befell parties

returning from festivities in the country. It certainly added to the

excitement of a ball to know that there was every probability of being

overturned on the road, or having to ford a stream swollen by the rain.

The vivacious Elizabeth Robinson (afterwards Mrs. Montagu) describes

how greatly she relished a break-down of the carriage on the return

journey after a ball in the country.

The highwaymen who haunted the outskirts of London lent a melodramatic

colour to all assemblies after dark. Even in broad daylight people

who had anything to lose traversed unfrequented roads with fear and

trembling. Certainly these conditions of social life averted the danger

of monotony.

Looked at from another side, the great lady of the eighteenth century

bears favourable comparison with the great lady of modern times.

She was a more distinct individual influence in society than her

successors. And yet neither then nor later had we _salons_ comparable

to those in Paris.

“Il n’y a pas à Londres comme à Paris des bureaux de femmes de

bel esprit. Les auteurs anglais ne consultent pas les femmes;

ils ne mendient pas leurs suffrages. Les affaires publiques

intéressent le beau sexe anglais, mais il ne s’ingère pas de

décider entre les intérêts de l’opposition et de la cour. Les

femmes dans le monde, ne parlent ni de guerre, ni de politique,

pratiquent leur religion et ne discutent point des dogmes.

En général les femmes anglaises sont douces, modestes, et

vertueuses.”[71]

But there were notable society leaders, such as the ladies who founded

Almack’s Club, some of whom, like Lady Molyneux, were beauties who set

the fashions. Almack’s, which was opened in 1765, was a club for both

sexes, on the model of the men’s club at White’s. Ladies nominated and

elected the men, and the men chose the ladies. The founders were Mrs.

Fitzroy, Lady Pembroke, Mrs. Meynel, Miss Pelham, Miss Lloyd, and Lady

Molyneux.

Better known to after generations are the names of the beautiful

Duchess of Devonshire, the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Mary Chudleigh, the

sisters Gunning. Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, whose most intimate friend was

the Duchess of Portland, collected the wits and brilliant talkers, and

made Montagu House a rallying-point for all that was most attractive

in society. The Countess of Suffolk was at one time the centre round

which court gossip revolved. Lady Caroline Petersham kept up the pace

with her frolics and jaunts. There was the more strictly political

set, who were perpetually discussing the action of Ministers, and the

probable effects on themselves and their friends. The ladies in this

set, impelled largely by personal motives, were as keen about political

moves as any party wire-puller.

“Our ladies are grown such vehement politicians that no other topic

is admissible,” writes Walpole in 1783, the year of the memorable

Westminster election. He complains that

“politics have engrossed all conversation and stifled other

events, if any have happened. Indeed, our ladies who used to

contribute to enliven correspondence are become politicians,

and, as Lady Townley says, ‘squeeze a little too much lemon

into conversation.’”

There was a good deal of acrimony imported into the atmosphere of

political circles, partly because of the strong personal element

pervading all politics. The weakness of eighteenth-century society was

its narrowness. It cared nothing, comparatively speaking, for large

general questions. The literary set discussed books and authors, but

society in general did not care very much about literature. A new

poem or a new romance were matters of interest because new; it was the

correct thing to show acquaintance with the latest productions in verse

or prose. Politics absorbed a great many in the fashionable world, but

chiefly on the ground of personal interest. Society lived in a kind of

mental stays.

The great ladies of the eighteenth century do not seem to have thought

of work as a distraction when pleasures began to pall. They would

have been bored to extinction at the idea. The worship of work is a

characteristic of the nineteenth century. Those who do not work for

profit work for the sake of the occupation, at some self-imposed task.

The great philanthropic current, using the adjective to describe all

forms of social amelioration, has drawn into its stream numbers of

recruits from the so-called leisured classes. Indeed it is the members

of this class who largely carry on works of general usefulness. England

has become the country of volunteers in the public service.

The eighteenth century worshipped idleness. It looked upon labour

as ignoble. This view of life had its effect on the bringing-up of

girls in the higher ranks. They were bred to idleness as their proper

vocation. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to her daughter, Lady

Bute, in 1753, about the education of the Countess’s daughter, says--

“I could give many examples of ladies whose ill-conduct has

been very notorious, which has been owing to that ignorance

which has exposed them to idleness, which is justly called the

mother of mischief. There is nothing so like the education of a

woman of quality as that of a prince: they are taught to dance,

and the exterior part of what is called good breeding, which if

they attain, they are extraordinary creatures in their kind,

and have all the accomplishments required by their directors.

The same characters are formed by the same lessons, which

inclines me to think (if I dare say it), that nature has not

placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females

of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity;

though I am persuaded that if there was a commonwealth of

rational horses (as Dr. Swift has supposed), it would be an

established maxim among them that a mare could not be taught to

pace.”

The life of a great lady in the eighteenth century is well reflected

in the contemporary literature. The satires of poets, the strictures

of moralists, the raillery of wits, bring before us the social side

of the period in numberless ways. A lady who was not a politician or

a blue-stocking killed time by rising late, spending several hours

over an elaborate toilette, and preparing herself for the gaieties of

the evening. The eighteenth century was in some respects a period of

inanition. The formalism which pervaded its literature was seen in

another aspect in the social life of the age. There was a general want

of the sympathetic spirit. Each circle in society lived shut up within

itself, not knowing, nor caring to know, how the rest of the world

went on. The narrowness of this attitude told more strongly on the

wealthy classes, who had not the stimulus of being obliged to make an

effort for the satisfaction of any desire. Social progress, as a recent

writer has observed, is not the product of the intellect, but is due

to the altruistic spirit.[72] This spirit was asleep in the eighteenth

century. In previous centuries there had been more progress with fewer

opportunities. During periods of unrest women’s energies were called

forth to cope with difficulties which a later civilization smoothed

away. Family life, even for great ladies, offered scope, in times past,

for the constant exercise of activity in the discharge of functions

which lapsed in more refined ages. The leisure which had been painfully

won in the progress of civilization the women of the eighteenth

century knew not how to use. They dallied with trifles, yawned out of

sheer vacuity, invented wants to pass the time, were by turns elated

and vapourish, and affected sentiment for the sake of excitement.

There were servile imitations of French manners as well as fashions,

and neither were successful. Instead of progressing to a wider life,

society turned off into a sidewalk of artificiality and moral inertia.

END OF VOL. I.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

_J. D. & Co._

FOOTNOTES

[1] The translation runs thus:--

“Much ought woman to be held dear;

By her is everybody clothed.

Well know I that woman spins and manufactures

The cloths with which we dress and cover ourselves,

“And gold tissues, and cloth of silk;

And therefore say I, wherever I may be,

To all those who shall hear this story

That they say no ill of womankind.”

[2] Warton, “History of English Poetry.”

[3] See p. 15.

[4] Denton, “England in the Fifteenth Century.”

[5] Mrs. A. S. Green, “Town Life in the Fifteenth Century.”

[6] Helen Blackburn, “The Legal Status of Women” (_Englishwoman’s

Review_, 1883).

[7] Gild of St. George, Norwich, founded 1385.

[8] Herbert’s “Livery Companies.”

[9] “English Gilds”: Worcester Ordinances, 1467.

[10] Ashley, “Essay on Woollen Industry.”

[11] S. H. Burke, “Monastic Houses of England.”

[12] Montalembert.

[13] Henry Bradshaw, “Life of St. Werburga of Chester.” E. E. Text

Society.

[14] Stubbs, “Constitutional History.”

[15] Gregory Smith, “Christian Monachism.”

[16] Hugo, “Mediæval Nunneries.”

[17] Aungier, “History of Syon Monastery.”

[18] Cf. Chapter II., p. 22, “Learning before the Days of the Printing

Press.” Period I.

[19] “London and the Kingdom.”

[20] Lea, “Sacerdotal Celibacy.”

[21] Hugo, “Mediæval Nunneries.”

[22] “Ancren Riwle.”

[23] Aungier, “History of Syon Monastery.”

[24] S. H. Burke, “Men and Women of the Reformation.”

[25] Wright, “Essay on Literature and Learning.”

[26] Cf. G. Hill, “History of English Dress,” vol. i.

[27] Gasquet, “Suppression of the Monasteries.”

[28] Gasquet.

[29] “European Morals,” vol. ii.

[30] Dr. Philip, “Vindiciæ Veritatis.”

[31] Arnold von der Passer, “Eva.”

[32] “De Ritu Mulierum in Ecclesia.”

[33] _Nineteenth Century_, September, 1894.

[34] Draper, “Intellectual Development of Europe.”

[35] Higginson, “Common Sense about Women.”

[36] “Social Evolution.”

[37] Elizabeth Lamond, “Discourse of the Commonweal.”

[38] Alexander, “History of Women.”

[39] “State Worthies.”

[40] Mrs. Makins, “Essay to revive Antient Education of Gentlewomen.”

[41] “The Art of Thriving.”

[42] Bouchot, “La Famille d’Autrefois.”

[43] Michelet.

[44] “Life of Clarendon.”

[45] See p. 166.

[46] Henry Peacham.

[47] W. H. Wilkins, “Political Ballads.”

[48] “Western Martyrology.”

[49] Robert Bell, “Memorials of the Civil War.”

[50] “Autobiography of Flora McDonald.”

[51] Chapter VI.

[52] Rev. R. Warner, “Ecclesiastical History of Bath.”

[53] Wm. Sewel, “History of the Society of Friends.”

[54] “Angliæ Notitiæ.”

[55] Stoughton, “Religion in England: The Church of the Revolution.”

[56] “Diary of John Rous.”

[57] “Tracts on the Stage.”

[58] Fitzgerald.

[59] Doran’s “Annals of the Stage.”

[60] Doran.

[61] Ellen Clayton.

[62] Chappell, “Popular Music of the Olden Time.”

[63] _Victoria Magazine_, 1876.

[64] T. Wright, “Caricature History of the Georges.”

[65] Muralt.

[66] Mary Astell.

[67] Buchan, “Domestic Medicine.”

[68] _The Female Spectator._

[69] S. Bouchot, “La Famille d’Autrefois.”

[70] Le Blanc.

[71] Londres, la Cour et les Provinces.

[72] B. Kidd, “Social Evolution.”

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not

changed.

Spelling inconsistencies in archaic quotations have not been changed.

“English women,” “Englishwomen,” and “English-women” all appear in this

text and have not been changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page vi: “idiosyncracies” was printed that way.

Page 123: “ne not may” was printed that way (“ne”).