UTILIZING THE YOUNG LADIES.
Time was when it was accepted as an axiom that young ladies had no
object in life but to be ornamental--no mission but matrimony. The
"accomplishments" were the sum total of a genteel education, though
charged as "extras" on the half-yearly accounts; and all the finished
creature had to do, after once "coming out," was to sit down and
languidly wait for an eligible suitor.
Times changed. And, in England, when we make a change, we always rush
violently into an opposite extreme. Woman had a mission, and no mistake.
Now it was the franchise and Bloomer costume, just as aforetime it was
the pianoforte and general fascination. Blue spectacles rose in the
market. We had lady doctors and female lawyers. The only marvel is that
there was no agitation for feminine curates.
Then came reaction again. It was discovered that woman could be educated
without becoming a bluestocking, and practical without wearing bloomers
or going in for the suffrage. Still holding to the wholesome principle
that "woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse," the real friends of
the gentler sex discovered a hundred and one ways in which it could
employ itself usefully and remuneratively. It was no longer feared lest,
as Sydney Smith puts it, if a woman learnt algebra she would "desert her
infant for a quadratic equation;" and the University of Cambridge soon
fell in with the scheme for the Higher Education of Women; while Miss
Faithfull, and several others, organized methods for employing
practically the talents which education could only develope in a general
way. It was to one of these methods--not Miss Faithfull's--my attention
was drawn a short time since by a letter in the daily papers. The
Victoria Press and International Bureau are faits accomplis, and it is
well that efforts should be made for utilizing in other ways that
interesting surplus in our female population. Mrs. Fernando, of Warwick
Gardens, Kensington, has set herself to the solution of the problem, and
the shape her method takes is a Technical Industrial School for Women.
The object and aim of the institution is to examine, plan, and organize
such branches of industrial avocation as are applicable to females, and
open up new avocations of useful industry compatible with the
intellectual and mechanical capabilities of the sex, not forgetting
their delicacy, and the untutored position of females for practical
application in all industrial labour: to give the same facilities to
females as are enjoyed by males, in collective classes for special
training or special preparation for passing examinations open to women,
thereby to enable them to earn their livelihood with better success than
is attainable by mere school education only: to give special training to
females to qualify them to enter special industrial avocations with such
competency as will enable them to be successful in obtaining employment:
to apprentice females, or to employ them directly into trades where such
employers will receive them beyond the limits of the industrial school
and where females can be constantly employed, such as in composing,
embossing, illuminating, black-bordering, ticket-writing,
circular-addressing, flower-making, flower-cultivating, &c.
Being a determined sceptic in the matter of prospectuses, I determined
to go and see for myself the working of this scheme, which looked so
well on paper. The Institution occupies a large house exactly opposite
Dr. Punshon's chapel: and there is no chance of one's missing it, for it
is placarded with announcements like a hoarding at election time. I
found Mrs. Fernando an exceedingly practical lady, doing all the work of
the institution herself, with the exception of a few special subjects
such as botany, &c., which are conducted by her husband. There are no
"assistants," therefore, or deputed interests, the bane of so many
high-priced schools.
These classes are held in the evening from seven to nine o'clock, and
are intended for ladies above the age of fifteen years, who may be
engaged through the day in various occupations, and for such as suffer
from neglected education, and who wish conveniently and economically to
improve themselves, without being necessitated to mix with their juniors
in day-schools. These classes prepare ladies to meet the qualifications
necessary to enter clerkships and other official departments; to bring
them also to a standard to meet the qualifications for post offices and
telegraph departments; and also to pass certain examinations open to
them. The charge is only _2s._ per week--_8s._ per month--_1l. 4s._ per
quarter. The first course embraces spelling, reading, writing,
arithmetic, history, geography, and grammar. The second course consists
of advanced arithmetic, book-keeping and commercial instruction, so as
to qualify women to take posts of responsibility with marked success.
The third course consists of French, for practical usefulness. The
fourth course embraces simple or technical training in such departments
as are available within the limits of the class-room--to qualify women
to enter industrial avocations with competency, and to make them
successful in obtaining employment. This department will be extended to
greater usefulness as conveniences arise, by apprenticing the girls or
employing them directly in trades beyond the limits of the class-room,
where employers will receive them, or where women could be consistently
engaged--as, for instance, in the work of compositors, ticket-writers,
embossers, &c. &c.
The two classes with which I was brought into contact were the
book-keeping and embossing. In the former, more than a dozen young
ladies were being initiated in the mysteries of single and double entry,
and they posted up their books in a way that made me feel very much
ashamed of myself, when I thought how incapable I should be of doing
anything half so useful. Many girls go from this department to be
book-keepers at large hotels, places of business, &c.
I then went to the embossing room, where six presses were being worked
by as many young ladies, one in an adjoining room being reserved for
Mrs. Fernando, who not only tells her pupils what to do, but shows them
how to do it. The gilding and colouring of the stamps was most
elaborate; two monograms of the Queen's name and that of the Empress
Eugénie being perfect marvels of artistic and intricate workmanship.
Every process, from mixing the colours up to burnishing the gold, was
gone through in detail by this practical lady and her intelligent pupils
for my special edification, and I passed out a much wiser and certainly
not a sadder man than I entered this veritable hive of human bees.
No expense was spared in the education of these girls, low as are the
terms they pay. I saw quite a ruinous heap of spoilt envelopes and
fashionable sheets of thick cream-laid; for they have to make their
experiments on the best material, and the slightest alteration in the
position of a pin where the stamping process has to be several times
repeated spoils the whole result. Mrs. Fernando has also introduced
envelope and circular addressing by women, as a department of female
industrial work in the Technical Industrial School for Women, where a
number of females are employed between the hours of ten and four
o'clock, receiving satisfactory remuneration. She provides the females
employed in this department evening classes free of charge, to improve
themselves in general education.
I am an intense admirer of the female sex in general, and young ladies
in particular, but really when I came away, leaving my pretty
book-keepers and embossers to resume their normal work, and saw the
numbers of young ladies sitting listlessly over misnamed "work" at the
window, or walking languidly nowhither in the streets, I thought that,
without losing any of their attractions, nay, adding a new claim to the
many existing ones on our regard, they might with great advantage take a
turn at Mrs. Fernando's sixpenny lessons in technical education.