characteristic. Far from it. It is the daughters of the moneyed
_bourgeoisie_ who are the idlest and most empty-minded. They think it
smart to be able to do nothing. How little they know about it! Were not
our Queen's daughters taught to cook and sew, and make themselves useful?
Did not the Princesses of Wales learn scientific dress-cutting? And was
not a Royal Princess, not very long ago, initiated into the mysteries of
hair-dressing? There is no better judge of needlework in the kingdom than
Princess Christian. Many of the designs used in the Royal School of Art
Needlework are from the clever pencil of Princess Louise, Marchioness of
Lorne. Princess Alice, mother of the present Empress of Russia, used to
cut out her children's clothes and trim their hats in the far-back days
when she was Grand Duchess of Hesse, and was surrounded by the little
ones. Princess Henry of Battenberg is a skilful embroidress, besides being
an artist and musician. Domesticity has not proved a bar to culture in the
case of any of these highly-placed women. The Empress Frederick of
Germany, our Princess Royal, is one of the most intellectual and
cultivated women in the world, but she is also an adept in the domestic
arts. She is a sculptress, and can cleverly wield the brush, as well as
her sister, the Marchioness of Lorne. So here is a shining example in high
places.
[Sidenote: Homely noblewomen.]
And if we take a step down to Duchesses, Marchionesses, &c., we shall find
that blue blood is usually associated with a taste for true British
domesticity. The Duchess of Abercorn can sew beautifully. The Duchess of
Sutherland can cook and make a gown. She often designs her own dresses.
The Marchioness of Londonderry, one of our most famous beauties, is a
utilitarian of the first water. She is one of the first authorities on
lace, is a philanthropist to her pretty finger-tips, and has often taught
the wives of her husband's miners how to cook the family dinner, besides
instructing them in the much neglected laws of hygiene. I might multiply
examples, but these might surely suffice to show that domesticity is far
from being _bourgeois_ and by no means incompatible with ineffable
smartness.
[Sidenote: Sensible millionaires.]
The aristocracy of wealth imitates that of birth in such matters; but, in
order to do so, it has to be at least a generation old in riches. The
_nouveaux riches_ have quite other notions, and think it far beneath the
dignity of their daughters to know anything about the domestic arts. But a
well-known family of millionaires, which has enjoyed the companionship of
our best society for fifty or sixty years, shares its idiosyncrasies on
the subject of useful education for its girls. Every one of them has been
brought up as if she were obliged to earn her own living. It is left to
the purse-proud and the vulgar to bring up their daughters as "fine
ladies." It is a grand mistake, in more ways than one, for idle people are
never happy people.
[Sidenote: The ideal girl.]
The ideal girl is she who combines with high culture a love of the
domestic and a desire to please. This last should not be so excessive as
to degenerate into vanity and conceit, but should be sufficiently powerful
to induce its possessor to dress attractively, keep her pretty hair at
its glossiest, and be as smart and neat and up-to-date in all matters
pertaining to the toilette as any of her less-useful sisters; besides
cultivating those social graces that do so much to brighten life and
sweeten it by making smooth the rough ways and rendering home intercourse
as agreeable and pleasant as it should be. There are girls who keep all
their prettinesses for the outside world, and are anything but attractive
within the home. They are by no means the ideal girls.
_THE GIRL-BACHELOR._
[Sidenote: A clever nest builder.]
The girl-bachelor is often a comfortable creature. She can make a home out
of the most unpromising materials. A dreary little flat, consisting of
three tiny rooms, with hardly any chance of sunshine getting into any of
them for more than three minutes in the afternoon, has been known to be
metamorphosed into a most inviting little nest by the exercise of taste
and skill, and at a minimum of cost. Two rooms on the second floor of a
dull house in a bleak street have often been transformed, by the same
means, into a cheery dwellingplace. Much merry contriving goes to this
result and serves to make, like quotations and patchwork, "our poverty our
pride," and, indeed, there is a keen pleasure in the cutting of our coat
according to our cloth; in making ends meet with just a little pulling,
and in devising ways and means of adjusting our expenditure to the very
limited contents of our exchequer.
[Sidenote: "Sweet are the uses of adversity."]
What a mistake it is to fall into an abyss of discontent just because we
are poor! Poverty may become the cause of a thousand unsuspected joys; as
it certainly is an education in ever so many ways. Some of us would hardly
know ourselves if we never had been poor. Did not poverty teach us to
cook, to sew, to make our dresses, to trim our hats, to cover our chairs,
to drape our windows, to use a dust-pan and brush and to find out at first
hand the charms of active cleanliness, that may be evoked with the aid of
a humble duster? And was it not poverty that taught us to appreciate the
day of little things, to enjoy the scores of small pleasures that, like
wild flowers, are too often passed carelessly over? It has its hardships,
truly, and some of them are bitter enough, but many who now are rich
enough look back to the days of "puirtith cauld," and recognise how good
it was and how much it brought out of undivined capacity; yes, and looking
back, can remember the actual pleasures of poverty!
[Sidenote: The retrospect.]
Is there not a pleasure in conquering circumstances--in fighting poverty
and making it yield to economy, contrivance, and industry? The fight is
often hard and long-continued; and there are sad cases in which it ends in
failure and disaster. But when courage and endurance have resulted in
victory, and firm footing has been won on the steep hill of success, it
is not unpleasant to look back and scan the long years of struggle,
endeavouring to compute what they have done for us; how they have
enriched, like the snows of winter, ground that might otherwise have
remained for ever arid and unprofitable.
[Sidenote: Bargain hunting.]
[Sidenote: "The little grocer's shop."]
There is a wonderful cheap world to be found in London, like an _entresol_
between a palatial shop and a magnificent first floor. Into this curious
world the girl-bachelor soon finds her way. She knows exactly the
twopenny-halfpenny little shop where she can get art-muslin at a
penny-three-farthings a yard. Most of it is hideous, but she is clever at
picking out the few pretty pieces. She sometimes purchases a quite
beautiful bit of colour for the brightening of her rooms in the shape of
pottery vases for a couple of pence. No one better than the girl-bachelor
knows that the best value for her money is to be found at the little
grocer's shop in a poor neighbourhood. The poor are, naturally, intent on
getting at least a shillingsworth for every shilling they lay out, and no
tradesman can make a living in such localities unless he purveys the best
provisions at fair prices. It is notorious that customers who buy in small
quantities, as the poor are obliged to do, living from hand to mouth with
their few shillings a week, are more profitable than those who can afford
to buy largely, and the tradesman who conscientiously provides good wares
at a moderate profit flourishes comfortably in such circumstances. Here
the girl-bachelor gets her stores. Not for her are the plate-glass windows
of the great West End "establishments," which have to pay high rentals and
the cost of horses and carts and extra men to send round daily for the
convenience of their customers. The little shop in the back street is good
enough for her.
[Sidenote: Her thrift.]
[Sidenote: A splendid training.]
And how expert does she become in her marketing! Such a thing as waste is
absolutely unknown in the tiny sphere of home of which she is the centre
and the sun. The bones from her miniature joints of beef and mutton are
not cast away until they are white and smooth from boiling and reboiling,
the stock they yield being skilfully made up into tempting soups and
savoury dishes of macaroni. There is splendid training for the future
housewife in all this; not only in the matter of food itself, but in the
diligent industry needed to combine its preparation with the day's work,
and the practical knowledge of what such work of preparation involves. The
kindest and most considerate mistresses are those who know exactly how
much time and trouble it takes to produce certain results.
[Sidenote: Unfortunate man.]
Contrast the girl-bachelor with her peer of the helpless sex. Look at the
dingy lodging-house breakfast-table of the poor clerk. Do you see the
crushed and soiled tablecloth, the cup and saucer rather wiped than
washed, the fork with suspicious lack of clear outline along its prongs,
hatefully reminiscent of previous meals, the knife powdered with brown
from recent contact with the knifeboard, and the food itself untempting to
the palate and not very nutritious to the system.
[Sidenote: "Cooking comes by nature."]
Cooking comes almost by nature to the bachelor-girl. With a good
stove-lamp, a frying-pan, a chafing-dish, and a boilerette, with a
saucepan or two and a kettle, she has an all-sufficing _batterie de
cuisine_. The wonders she can work with these are known to many of her
friends, and even those with comfortable establishments of their own are
often fain to confess that her cookery invites them as the achievements of
the queen of their kitchen often fail to do.
[Sidenote: "How it strikes a contemporary."]
And in many other essentials the girl-bachelor has the advantage of the
ordinary young man. Hear what a contemporary has to say:--"The average
youth, from the time he leaves school, wants unlimited tobacco for his
pipes and cigarettes, and often runs to several cigars a day; he seldom
passes many hours without a glass of something--wine, spirits, or beer,
according to his tastes or company, and he wants a good deal of amusement
of the sing-song or cheap music-hall kind, to say nothing of much more
expensive meals. Tobacco would not cost him much if he were content with a
little smoke when the day's work was over, instead of indulging in
perpetual cigarettes. The girl has none of these expenses; she often
economises, and gives herself healthy exercise by walking at least part of
the way to her occupation in fine weather; she does not smoke; she rarely
eats or drinks between meals, though she may nibble a bit of chocolate,
which, after all, is wholesome food; her mid-day meal seldom costs more
than sixpence, and she is glad after working hours to get home, where she
enjoys the welcome change of reading a book and making and mending her
clothes, concocting a new hat, and so forth."
It is a healthy, happy, often a merry, cheery life; and if the
girl-bachelor often sighs to be rich, the wish is not allowed to generate
discontent, but serves to arouse a wholesome ambition which may lead, in
time, to the realisation of the wish. And who so happy, then, as the
matured and cultured woman who reaps where she has sown, and finds, in the
fullest development of her faculties the real meaning of the highest
happiness, viz., living upward and outward to the whole height and breadth
and depth of her innate possibilities.
_THE MIDDLE-AGED CHAPERON._
[Sidenote: The miseries of the chaperon.]
[Sidenote: Draughts.]
[Sidenote: The charge who cannot dance.]
Many are the miseries of the middle-aged chaperon! Is it not enough, think
you, to see one's lost youth reflected in the blithesome scene, to
remember the waltzes of long ago, to recall the partners of the past, and
the pleasant homage no longer forthcoming, and to feel within a response
to the music and the rhythm of the dance, ridiculously incongruous with an
elderly exterior, without suffering any added woes? And yet they are
manifold. There are the draughts! Windows opened for the relief of heated
dancers, pour down cold airs on the uncovered shoulders of chilly
chaperons. What cared they for draughts in the long-ago, when all the
world was young? But now a draught is a fearsome thing. But worse, far
worse, is the girl who cannot dance, who treads on her partners' toes, and
knocks against their knees, and is returned with a scowl to her wretched
chaperon. "I know you are going to the Mumpshire ball," says some one.
"Would you mind taking my girl with you?" If she is a bad performer she is
returned with astonishing alacrity and punctuality at the end of each
dance; and quite perceptibly to her temporary guardian's practised eye is
the word passed round among the young men to avoid her as they would
the--something. After a few dances, a sense of vicarious guilt seizes upon
the chaperon. She knows the shortcomings of her charge are to be visited
partly upon herself, and she anticipates the angry glare with which each
man returns the young woman, and retreats in haste, malevolently eyeing
the chaperon.
[Sidenote: The reward.]
And the reward? The reward is to be treated with great stiffness by the
girl's mother, and to hear that she said: "I shall never ask Mrs.
What's-her-name to take my girl to a ball again. Her own daughters danced
every dance, while my poor child was left out in the cold. I think they
might have introduced their partners to her."
[Sidenote: Romance.]
[Sidenote: And Death.]
Such are the small gnat-like stings of the present moment, while the poor
chaperon is remembering the dances of long ago, the dark-eyed partner who
waltzed so exquisitely, and whose grave is in the dismal African swamp so
far away; the lively, laughing, joking boy who would put his name down for
half a dozen dances, only to have it promptly scratched out again with
many scoldings. He is now a very fat man with a disagreeable habit of
snorting in cold weather. How gladly the chaperon's thoughts fly away from
him, living, substantial, commonplace, to the poor fellow who died at sea
on his way home from that horrid war in Afghanistan. How strangely true it
is that were it not for grisly Death, and pain and grief, there would be
no true romance in all the world. If every life were an epic, or an idyll,
would not both be commonplace?
_LIGHTHEARTEDNESS._
[Sidenote: Lightheartedness and animal spirits.]
[Sidenote: Cheerfulness.]
Oh! what a delightful quality it is, both to the possessor and his
friends. Lightheartedness is sometimes confused with "animal spirits," but
it is not at all the same thing. The latter we share with the young lambs
in the meadows, the young goats on the rocky hillsides, the merry
schoolboy in the days of his irresponsible youth, and the madcap
schoolgirl who thinks those hours lost that are not spent in laughing.
Light-heartedness is ingrained in the very nature of those who enjoy it;
while animal spirits are merely one of the exterior circumstances,
incident to youth and health in a world that was created happy, and will
never lose traces of that original Divine intention. Cheerfulness, again,
is distinct from both. Men are always telling women that it is the duty of
the less-burdened sex to meet their lords and masters with cheerful faces;
and if any doubt were felt as to the value of the acquirement--for
cheerfulness often has to be acquired and cultivated like any other
marketable accomplishment--shall we not find a mass of evidence
in the advertisement columns of the daily papers? Do not all the
lady-housekeepers and companions describe themselves as "cheerful"? Lone,
lorn women could scarcely be successes in either capacity, and
cheerfulness is a distinct qualification for either post. A sort of
feminine Mark Tapleyism must occasionally be needed to produce it, and
keep it in full bloom.
[Sidenote: In trouble and work.]
Well, 'tis our duty to be cheerful, and those of us that are lighthearted
have no difficulty about it. The quality survives troubles of every sort,
and lifts its possessor over many a Slough of Despond, into which the
heavy-hearted would sink and be overwhelmed. And what a boon is
lightheartedness when there is work to do! The man who whistles over his
carpentering is happy, and his work is all the better for it. The mother
who is chirpy in the nursery finds it an easy matter to manage the
youngsters. They adore her bright face. And there are women who keep up
this delightful sunniness of disposition well on to seventy years.
"The world that knows itself too sad
Is proud to keep some faces glad,"
says Owen Meredith, and it is good to see the happy twinkle in some aged
eyes.
[Sidenote: With advancing years.]
[Sidenote: The humours of life.]
In married life there comes a time when the romance of love, like a
glorious "rose of dawn," softening down into the steady light of noonday,
becomes transmuted into a comfortable, serviceable, everyday friendship
and comradeship. In the same way the animal spirits of youth often fade
with maturity into a seriousness which is admirable in its way, a serenity
which keeps a dead level of commonplace. If there is no natural
lightheartedness to fall back upon, there then arises the everyday man or
woman, with countenance composed to the varied businesses of life, and
never a gleam of fun or humour to be found in eyes or lips. They go to the
play on purpose to laugh, and enjoy themselves hugely in the unwonted
exercise of facial muscles; but for weeks between whiles they seem
unconscious of the infinite possibilities of humorous enjoyment that lie
about them. It needs the joyous temperament to extract amusement from
these. If that is absent the fields of fun lie fallow. At a recent
entertainment for children a boy employed in selling chocolate creams
cried his wares in such a lugubrious tone of voice as to be highly
inconsistent with their inviting character. "Chocklits!" "Chocklits!" he
groaned on the lower G, as though he had been vending poison for immediate
use. Only two of the children present saw the fun of this. And so it is
with these endless unrehearsed effects of daily life. The lighthearted
seize them and make of them food for joy. And lightheartedness is of every
age, from seven to seventy-seven and perhaps beyond it. Was there not once
a blithe old lady who lived to the age of 110, and died of a fall from a
cherry tree then?
The joyous natures have their sorrows:--
"The heart that is earliest awake to the flowers
Is always the first to be touched by the thorns."
[Sidenote: "The merry heart."]
They have their hardships, their weary times, their trials of every sort,
but the inexhaustible vivacity inherent in them acts as wings to bear them
lightly over the bad places, where wayfarers of the ordinary sort must be
broadly shod to pass without being engulfed. It is practically
inextinguishable, and it makes existence comparatively easy.
"The merry heart goes all the day,
The sad tires in a mile-a."
[Sidenote: The enemy.]
The chief enemy of lightheartedness is the constant companionship of the
grim, the glum, the gloomy, and the grumpy, the solemn and the
pragmatical. Who shall compute what bright natures suffer in an
environment like this? Day after day, to sit at table opposite a
countenance made rigid with a practised frown, now deeply carved upon the
furrowed brow; to long for sunshine and blue skies, and be for ever in
the shadow of a heavy cloud; to feel that every little blossom of
joyfulness that grows by the wayside is nipped and shrivelled by the east
wind of a gloomy nature; this, if it last long enough, can subdue even
lightheartedness itself; can, like some malarial mist, blot out the very
sun in the heavens from the ken of those within its influence.
[Sidenote: The cultivation of humour.]
More pains should be taken to develop the sense of fun and the
possibilities of humorous perception of girls and boys. They should be
taught to look at the amusing side of things. But teachers are so afraid
of "letting themselves down," of losing dignity (especially those who have
none to lose!), that they cannot condescend to the study of the humorous.
Oh, the pity of it! For it tends to the life-long impoverishment of their
pupils.
_A BIT OF EVERYDAY PHILOSOPHY._
[Sidenote: A useful verb.]
[Sidenote: The love of simple pleasures.]
[Sidenote: On human and other songsters.]
The French have a verb for which we English have no equivalent. It is
"_savourer_," which in one dictionary is translated "To relish; enjoy." It
sounds rather a greedy word, and would indeed be so if it applied only to
the pleasures of the table. But fortunately there are for most of us other
delights in life than those connected with the gustatory organs, and it is
these that we would fain _savourer_, as Linnaeus did when he fell on his
knees on first seeing gorse in bloom, and thanked God. "How gross,"
remarks a character in a modern novel, "to give thanks for beef and
pudding, but none for Carpaccio, Bellini, Titian!" Just so. And apart from
the deep appreciation of genius, have we not a thousand daily joys for
which we might give thanks, if only we could attain to the realisation of
them? We let them pass us by, and but vaguely recognise them as bits of
happiness which, if duly woven into the woof of life, would brighten it
as no jewels ever could. It is good to encourage the love of simple
pleasures. It is the way to keep our souls from shrinking. For some of us
the song of the lark is as exquisite a pleasure as any to be found in the
crowded concert-room. Both are delights, but the compass of the spirit may
not always be great enough to embrace the two. To listen to the voice of a
Patti is not possible to us all, even only once in a lifetime, and alas!
there is but one Patti! Du Maurier says a lovely thing about her singing:
"Her voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh
girlish innocence turned into sound." With other singers the critical
spirit of the audience is apt to awake and spoil everything. Music must be
perfect, to be perfectly enjoyed. And how often do we find perfection in
the concert-room? With how many singers can we let ourselves float far
from reality into the region of the ideal, secure from jar of false note,
or twisted phrase to suit the singer? And have we not often to shut our
eyes because the frame in which the golden voice is bodied is in
dissonance with its beauty? With the lark we are safe, and the nightingale
sings no false note. The robin is plump, but never fat and shiny! The
plaintive cry of the plover is not spoiled for us by a vision of some
thirty teeth and pink parterres of gum. Our enjoyment of the blackbird's
mellow whistle is not marred by a little printed notice to the effect that
he craves the indulgence of the audience as he has been attacked by
hoarseness; and the flute-like melody of the thrush has not its romance
eliminated by a stumpy figure or want of taste in dress. Do I not remember
a great contralto singing to us some stirring strains and wearing the
while an agony in yellow and grass-green? And did not even S---- himself
alter the last mournful phrase of "The Harp that once" into a wild
top-yell in order to suit his voice? No! With nature's choristers we are
safe.
[Sidenote: Our ungrateful folly.]
But do we half appreciate them? Not half, I am very sure. Do we give
thanks for the blue of the skies, the green of the trees, the sweet air
that we breathe, the glowing sunset, and the starlit heavens? It is true
philosophy to _savourer bien_ these inexpensive joys; and, oddly enough,
the more we do so the less we shall feel inclined to grumble and feel
discontented when a pall of dingy fog hides away the blue and dims the
green and gives us sulphur to breathe instead of the lovely air that
invigorates and rejoices.
[Sidenote: Things to be thankful for.]
We owe an enormous debt to the writers of books, and especially to
biographers of interesting lives, to novelists, travellers who write of
what they have seen and thus share their experiences with us, poets who
sing down to us of the sunny heights of the ideal life, and those
photographic storytellers who delineate for us the workers of our world,
of whose lives we should otherwise know so little. It almost rises to the
height of epicurean philosophy to increase the joys of life by realising
them to the full as they deserve to be realised. An hour spent with some
delightful author may seem a little thing, but it is well worth saying
grace for.
[Sidenote: Gratefulness indeed!]