[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 3.—VOL. I. SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884. PRICE 1½_d._]
GIRLS, WIVES, AND MOTHERS.
A WORD TO THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
There may be theoretically much to sympathise with in the cry for the
yet higher culture of the women of our middle classes, but at the
same time not a little to find fault with in practice. While it is
difficult to believe that there can be such a thing as over-education
of the human subject, male or female, there may yet be false lines
of training, which lead to a dainty misplaced refinement, quite
incompatible with the social position the woman may be called to fill
in after-life, and which too often presupposes, what even education has
a difficulty in supplying—a subsistence in life. Where we equip, we too
frequently impede. In the hurry to be intelligent and accomplished, the
glitter of drawing-room graces is an object of greater desire than the
more homely but not less estimable virtues identified with the kitchen.
Our young housewives are imbued with far too much of the æsthete at the
expense of the cook; too much of the stage, and too little of the home.
In abandoning the equally mistaken views of our grandfathers on women’s
up-bringing, we have gone to the opposite extreme, to the exclusion of
anything like a means to an end; and in the blindest disregard of the
recipients’ circumstances in life, present and prospective.
In considering what the aim of female education ought to be, it is
surely not too much to expect that of all things it should mentally
and physically fit our women for the battle of life. Its application
and utility should not have to end where they practically do at
present—at the altar. While it is necessary to provide a common armour
for purposes of general defence, there certainly ought to be a special
strengthening of the harness where most blows are to be anticipated;
and if not to all, certainly to middle-class women, the years of battle
come _after_, not before marriage. Every one of them, then, ought to
be trained in conformity with the supreme law of her being, to prove
a real helpmate to the man that takes her to wife. Make sure that she
is first of all thoroughly qualified for a mother’s part, in what may
be called a working sphere of life; then add whatever graces may be
desirable as a sweetening, according to taste, means, and opportunity.
It is in this happy blending of abstract knowledge with the economy of
a home, that true success in the education of middle-class women must
be sought.
In the training of our boys, utility in after-life is seldom lost
sight of. Why should it be too often the reverse in the education of
our girls, whose great vocation in life, as wives and mothers, is a
birthright they cannot renounce, which no lord of creation can deprive
them of, and which no sticklers for what they are pleased to call the
rights of women can logically disown? No doubt, among the last-named
there are extreme people, who cannot, from the very nature of their
own individual circumstances, see anything in wifely cares save the
shackles of an old-world civilisation. In their eyes, motherhood is a
tax upon pleasure, and an abasement of the sex. With them, there need
be no parley. There is no pursuit under the sun that a woman will not
freely forsake—often at a sacrifice—for the wifely cares that supervene
on marriage; and therein, few will deny, lies her great and natural
sphere in life. Than it, there is no nobler. In it, she can encounter
no rival; and any attempt to divest herself of nature’s charge can
have but one ending. The blandishments of a cold æstheticism can never
soothe, animate, and brighten the human soul, like the warm, suffusive
joys which cluster round the married state.
Here we may briefly digress to remark, that in our opinion, no valid
objections can be urged against women entering professional life,
_provided they stick to it_. They already teach, and that is neither
the lightest nor least important of masculine pursuits. Why should they
not prescribe for body and soul? why not turn their proverbial gifts
of speech to a golden account at the bar? It would be in quitting any
of these professions, and taking up the _rôle_ of wife and mother,
which they would have to learn at the expense of their own and others’
happiness, that the real mischief of the liberty would lie. In nine
cases out of ten, their failure in the second choice would be assured,
thereby poisoning all social well-being at its very source.
The woman not over- but mis-educated is becoming an alarmingly fruitful
cause of the downward tendencies of much of our middle-class society.
She herself is less to blame for this, than the short-sighted, though
possibly well-meant policy of her parents and guardians, who, in the
worst spirit of the age, veneer their own flesh and blood, as they do
their furniture, for appearance’ sake. Let us glance at the educational
equipment they provide their girls with, always premising that our
remarks are to be held as strictly applicable only to the middle ranks
of our complex society.
Our typical young woman receives a large amount of miscellaneous
education, extending far through her teens, and amounting to a very
fair mastery of the _R_s. If she limp in any of these, it will be
in the admittedly vexatious processes of arithmetic. She will have
a pretty ready command of the grammatical and idiomatic uses of her
mother-tongue; a fairly firm hold of the geography of this planet, and
an intelligent conception of the extra-terrestrial system. She will
have plodded through piles of French and German courses, learning many
things from them but the language. She will have a fair if not profound
knowledge of history. She can, in all likelihood, draw a little, and
even paint; but of all her accomplishments, what she must imperatively
excel in is music. From tender years, she will have diligently laboured
at all the musical profundities; and her chances in the matrimonial
market of the future are probably regarded as being in proportion to
her proficient manipulation of the keyboard. If she can sing, well and
good; play on the piano she must. If, as a girl, she has no taste for
instrumental music, and no ear to guide her flights in harmony, the
more reason why she should, with the perseverance of despair, thump
away on the irresponsive ivories, in defiance of every instinct in her
being. The result at twenty _may_ be something tangible in some cases,
but extremely unsatisfactory at the price.
During all these years, she has been systematically kept ignorant of
almost every domestic care. Of the commonplaces of cookery she has
not the remotest idea. A great educationist, whose statement we have
good reason to indorse, asserts that there are thousands of our young
housewives that do not know how to cook a potato. This may seem satire.
It is, we fear, in too many cases, true, and we quote it with a view to
correct rather than chastise.
The misapplications of young miss’s upbringing do not end here. She
cannot sew to any purpose. If she deign to use a needle at all, it
is to embroider a smoking-cap for a lover or a pair of slippers for
papa. To sew on a button, or cut out and unite the plainest piece of
male or female clothing, is not always within her powers, or at least
her inclinations. Prosaic vulgar work, fit only for dressmakers and
milliners! She will spend weeks and months over eighteen inches of
what she is pleased to call lace, while the neighbouring seamstress is
making up all her underclothing, to pay for which, papa has not too
much money; but then it is genteel.
She cannot knit. A pair of worsted cuffs or a lanky cravat is something
great to attain to; while a stocking, even were the charwomen less
easily paid, is sure to come off the needles right-lined as any of
Euclid’s parallelograms—all leg and no ankle—a suspicion of foot, but
never a vestige of heel. To darn the hole that so soon appears in the
loosely knitted fabric, would be a servile, reproachful task, quite
staggering to the sentimental aspirations of our engaged Angelina.
Yet darning and the divine art of mending will one day be to her a
veritable philosopher’s stone, whose magic influences will shed beams
of happiness over her household, and fortunate will she be if she have
not to seek it with tears.
By the sick-bed, where she ought to be supreme, she is often worse
than useless. The pillows that harden on the couch of convalescence,
too rarely know her softening touch. She may be all kindness and
attention—for the natural currents of her being are full to repletion
of sweetness and sympathy—yet as incapable of really skilled service
as an artist’s lay-figure. And, as a last touch to the sorry picture,
instead of being in any way a source of comfort to the bread-winners of
her family, or a lessening of the strain on their purse-strings, she is
a continual cause of extra work to servants, of anxiety to her parents,
of _ennui_ to herself.
Apparently, the chief mission of the young lady to whom we
address ourselves, is to entice some eligible young man into the
responsibilities of wedlock. He, poor fellow, succumbs not so much
to intrinsic merits, as to fine lady-like airs. He sees the polish
on the surface, and takes for granted that there is good solid wear
underneath. Our young miss has conquered, and quits the family
roof-tree, sweetly conscious of her orange wreath of victory; but
alas!—we are sorry to say it—do not her conquests too often end at
the altar, unless she resolutely set herself to learn the exacting
mysteries of her new sphere, and, what is far more difficult, to
unlearn much that she has acquired? That she often does at this stage
make a bold and firm departure from the toyish fancies of her training,
and makes, from the sheer plasticity and devotion of her character,
wonderful strides in the housewife’s craft, we cheerfully confess. Were
it otherwise, the domestic framework of society would be in a far more
disorganised condition than it happily is. But why handicap her for the
most important, most arduous portion of her race in life? Why train her
to be the vapid fine lady, with almost the certainty that, by so doing,
you are taking the surest means of rendering her an insufficient wife
and mother? And, unfortunately, not always, in fact but seldom, is she
able, when she crosses her husband’s threshold, to tear herself away
from her omnivorous novel-reading, piano-playing, and all the other
alleviations of confirmed idleness.
The sweets of the honeymoon and an undefined vacation beyond make no
great calls on her as a helpmate and wife. If her husband’s means
permit of a servant or two, the smoother the water and the plainer
the sailing for the nonce; although these keen-scented critics in
the kitchen will, in a very short time, detect and take the grossest
advantage of their mistress’s inexperience. Besides, if we reflect
that among our middle classes more marry on an income of two hundred
pounds than on a higher, it becomes painfully apparent that two or
three servants are the one thing our young housewife needs, but cannot
possibly afford.
She is now, however, only about to begin her life-work, and if there is
such a thing clearly marked out for a being on this globe, it is for
woman. By birthright, she is the mother of the human race. Could she
have a greater, grander field for enterprise? How admirably has nature
fitted her for performing the functions of the mother and adorning the
province of the wife! Hence, there devolves upon her a responsibility
which no extraneous labour in more inviting fields can excuse. No
philosophy, no tinkering of the constitution, no success in the
misnamed higher walks of life and knowledge, will atone for the failure
of the mother. Let her shine a social star of the first magnitude, let
her be supreme in every intellectual circle, and then marry, as she
is ever prone to do, in spite of all theories; and if she fail as a
mother, she fails as a woman and as a human being. She becomes a mere
rag, a tatter of nature’s cast-off clothing, spiritless, aimless, a
failure in this great world of work.
As her family increases, the household shadows deepen, where all
should be purity, sweetness, and light. The domestic ship may even
founder through the downright, culpable incapacity of her that takes
the helm. Her children never have the air of comfort and cleanliness.
In their clothes, the stitch is never in time. The wilful neglect, and
consequent waste, in this one matter of half-worn clothing is almost
incredible. A slatternly atmosphere pervades her entire home. With the
lapse of time our young wife becomes gradually untidy, dishevelled,
and even dirty, in her own person; and at last sits down for good,
disconsolate and overwhelmed by her unseen foe. Her husband can find no
pleasure in the ‘hugger-mugger,’ as Carlyle phrases it, of his home;
there is no brightness in it to cheer his hours of rest. He returns
from his daily labours to a chaos, which he shuns by going elsewhere;
and so the sequel of misery and neglect takes form.
As a first precaution against such a calamity, let us strip our
home-life of every taint of quackery. Let us regard women’s education,
like that of men, as a means to a lifelong end, never forgetting that
if we unfit it for everyday practice, we render it a mere useless gem,
valuable in a sense, but unset. Middle-class women will be the better
educated, in every sense, the more skilled they are in the functions
of the mother and the duties of the wife. Give them every chance of
proving thrifty wives and good mothers, in addition to, or, where
that is impossible, to the exclusion of accomplished brides. Let some
part of their training as presently constituted, such as the rigours
of music, and the fritterings of embroidery, give way, in part, to
the essential acquirements which every woman, every mother should
possess, and which no gold can buy. Give us a woman, then, natural in
her studies, her training, her vocations, and her dress, and in the
words of the wisest of men, who certainly had a varied experience of
womankind, we shall have something ‘far more precious than rubies. She
will not be afraid of the snow for her household; strength and honour
will be her clothing; her husband shall have no need of spoil; he shall
be known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders; he shall
praise her; and her children shall call her blessed.’
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
CHAPTER IV.—IN THE OAK PARLOUR.
And so, it had been only a bit of Uncle Dick’s kindly forethought and
common-sense which had prompted the alarming words he had spoken to
Madge. How she and Philip laughed at the chimerical idea that there
could be any possible combination of circumstances in time or space
which could alter their thoughts regarding each other! The birds in
the orchard, in the intervals of pecking the fruit, seemed to sing a
joyous laughing chorus at the absurdity of it—notwithstanding that the
admission of it might be prudent.
But when they came down to the point of vague admission that in the
abstract and in relation to other couples—of course it could not apply
to their own case—Uncle Dick’s counsel was such as prudent young people
about to separate should keep in mind, an expression of perplexity
flitted across Madge’s face. She looked at him with those tenderly
wistful serious eyes, half doubting whether or not to utter the thought
which had come to her.
‘But what I cannot understand,’ she said slowly, ‘is why Uncle Dick
should have been in such a temper. You know that although he may fly
into a passion at anything that seems to him wrong, he never keeps it
up. Now he had all the time riding home from Kingshope to cool, and yet
when he spoke to me he seemed to be as angry as if he had just come out
of the room where the quarrel took place.’
‘What can it matter to us?’ was the blithe response. ‘He is not angry
with me or with you, and so long as that is the case we need not mind
if he should quarrel with all creation.’
‘I’ll tell you what we will do,’ she said, and the disappearance of
all perplexity from her face showed that she was quite of his opinion,
although she wanted to have it supported by another authority.
‘What is that?’
‘We will go in and ask Aunt Hessy what she thinks about it.... Are you
aware, sir’ (this with a pretty assumption of severity), ‘that you have
not seen aunty to-day, and that you have not even inquired about her?’
‘That _is_ bad,’ he muttered; but it was evident that the badness which
he felt was the interruption of the happy wandering through the orchard
by this summary recall to duty.
In his remorse, however, he was ready to sacrifice his present
pleasure; for Aunt Hessy was a stanch friend of theirs, and it
might be that her cheery way of looking at things would dispel
the last lingering cloud of doubt from Madge’s mind regarding the
misunderstanding between his father and Uncle Dick.
‘Then we had better go in at once; we shall find her in the dairy.’
Mrs Crawshay was superintending the operations of three buxom maidens
who were scalding the large cans in which the milk was conveyed every
morning to the metropolis. Her ruddy face with the quiet, kindly gray
eyes was that of a woman in her prime, and even her perfectly white
hair did not detract from the sense of youth which was expressed in her
appearance: it was an additional charm. She was nearly sixty. Her age
was a standing joke of Uncle Dick’s. He had made the discovery that she
was a month older than himself, and he magnified it into a year.
‘Can’t you see?’ he would say, ‘if you are born in December and I am
born in January, that makes exactly a year’s difference?’
Then there would be a loud guffaw, and Uncle Dick would feel that he
had completely overcome the Missus. The words and the guffaw were as
a rule simultaneous, and if nobody happened to be present, it usually
ended in Uncle Dick putting his arm round her neck and saying with a
lump in his throat: ‘My old lass—young always to me.’
He had not the slightest notion of the poetry that was in his soul
whilst he spoke.
Mrs Crawshay believed in young love. She had been very happy in hers.
She had been brought up on a farm. Lads had come about her of course,
and she had put them aside with a—‘Nay, lad, I’m not for thee,’ and had
thought no more about them. Then Dick Crawshay had come, and—she did
not know why—she had said: ‘Yes, thou art my lad.’
They had been very happy notwithstanding their losses—indeed the losses
seemed to have drawn them closer together.
‘It’s only you and me, my old lass,’ he would say in their privacy.
‘Only you and me, Dick,’ she would say as her gray head rested on his
breast with all the emotion of youth in her heart.
* * * * *
‘Go into the oak parlour,’ said Mrs Crawshay cheerily to the young
folks, when she understood their mission; ‘and I’ll be with you in a
minute.’
The oak parlour was the stateroom of the house. It was long and high;
the oak of the panels and beams which supported the pointed roof were
of that dark hue which only time can impart. The three narrow windows
had been lengthened by Dick’s father, and when the moon shone through
them they were like three white ghosts looking in upon the dark
chamber. But the moon did not often get a chance of doing this, for
there was only a brief period of the year during which there was not
a huge fire blazing in the great old-fashioned ingle. There were four
portraits of former Crawshays and three of famous horses; with these
exceptions the walls were bare, for none of the family had ever been
endowed with much love of art.
There were some legends still current about the mysteries hidden
behind the sombre panels. One of the panels was specially honoured
because it was reputed to have a recess behind it in which the king had
found shelter for a time during his flight from the Roundheads. But
owing to the indifference or carelessness of successive generations,
nobody was now quite sure to which of the panels this honour properly
belonged. There had been occasional attempts made to discover the royal
hiding-place, but they had hitherto failed.
The furniture was plain and substantial, displaying the styles of
several periods of manufacture. In spite of the stiff straight lines of
most of the things in the room, the red curtains, the red table-cover,
the odd variety of the chairs gave the place a homely and, when the
fire was ablaze, a cosy expression. This stateroom was correctly called
‘parlour,’ and it had been the scene of many a revel.
As Philip and Madge were on their way to the oak parlour, a servant
presented a card to the latter.
‘He asked for you, miss,’ said the girl, and passed on to the kitchen.
Madge looked at the card, and instantly held it out to Philip.
‘Hullo!—my father,’ ejaculated he, adding with a laugh: ‘Now you can
see that this mountain of yours is not even a molehill.’
‘How can you tell that?’
‘Because my father is the reverse of Uncle Dick. He never forgets—I
doubt if he ever forgives—an unpleasant word. And yet here he is. Come
along at once—but we had better say nothing to him about the affair
unless he speaks of it himself.’
They entered the room together, smiling hopefully.
Mr Lloyd Hadleigh was standing at a window, hat in one hand, slim
umbrella in the other, and staring hard at the shrubs. He had a way of
staring hard at everything, and yet the way was so calm and thoughtful
that he did not appear to see anything or anybody, and thus the stare
was not offensive.
‘The guv’nor always seems to be dreaming about you when he looks at
you, and you never know when he’s going to speak—that’s awk’ard,’ was
the description of his expression given by Caleb Kersey, one of the
occasional labourers on Ringsford.
He was a man of average height, firmly built; square face; thick
black moustache; close cropped black hair, with only an indication of
thinning on the top and showing few streaks of white. His age was not
more than fifty, and he had attained the full vigour of life.
‘People talk about the fire and “go” of thirty,’ he would say in his
dry way. ‘It is nonsense. At that age a man is either going downhill or
going up it, and in either case he is too much occupied and worried to
have time to be happy. That was the most miserable period of my life.’
Coldness was the first impression of his outward character. No one had
ever seen him in a passion. Successful in business, he had provided
well for the five children of a very early marriage. He never referred
to that event, and had been long a widower without showing the
slightest inclination to establish a new mistress at Ringsford.
He turned on the entrance of Madge and Philip, saluting the former with
grave politeness; then to the latter: ‘There are some letters for you
at home, Philip.’
‘Thank you, sir; but I have no doubt they can wait. I am to stay for
dinner here.’
‘From the postmarks I judge they are of importance.’
‘Ah—then I know who they are from, and in that case there is no hurry
at all, for the mail does not leave until Monday.’
Mr Hadleigh addressed himself to Madge—no sign of annoyance in voice or
manner.
‘May I be permitted to have a few minutes’ conversation with you in
private, Miss Heathcote?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ broke in Philip hastily; ‘I did not
understand you to mean that you found me in the way.—If your aunt
should ask for me, Miss Heathcote, I shall be in the garden.’
With a good-natured inclination of the head, he went out. And as he
walked down the garden path filling his pipe, he muttered to himself
thoughtfully: ‘Seems to me he grows queerer and queerer every day. What
_can_ be the matter with him? If anybody else had asked for a private
interview so solemnly, I should have taken it for granted that he was
going to propose.... Daresay he wants to give some explanation of that
confounded row, and make his apologies through Madge. I should like him
to do that.’
But Mr Hadleigh was neither going to propose nor to make apologies.
He smiled, a curious sort of half-sad, half-amused smile, and there
was really something interesting in the expression of his eyes at the
moment.
‘The truth is, Miss Heathcote, that I cannot acknowledge weakness
before Philip. He is such a reckless fellow about money, that he would
tell me I ought to give in at once to the labourers.’
‘I am sure he would not, Mr Hadleigh, if he thought you were in the
right.’
‘I am not one likely to hold out if convinced that I am in the wrong.’
‘Few men do under these conditions, Mr Hadleigh,’ said Madge, smiling.
‘Well, at anyrate, I want your assistance very much; will you give it?’
‘With great pleasure, if it is worth anything to you.’
‘It is worth everything; for what harvest I might have on the
home-farm—and I understand it promises to be a good one—is likely to be
lost unless you help me.’
‘How can that be, Mr Hadleigh?’
‘Through beer. This is how the matter stands. You know the dispute
about the wages, and I am willing to give in to that. But on this
question of beer in the field I am firm. The men and women shall have
the price of it; but I will neither give beer on the field nor permit
them to bring it there. A great reform is to be worked in this matter,
and I mean to do what little I can to advance it. I am sure, Miss
Heathcote, you must acknowledge that I am right in adhering to this
resolution.’
‘I have been brought up in some very old-fashioned notions, Mr
Hadleigh,’ she answered with pretty evasiveness.
‘There is a high principle at stake in it, my dear Miss Heathcote, and
it is worth fighting for.’
‘But I do not yet see how my services are to be of use to you,’ she
said, anxious to avoid this debatable subject. It was one on which
her uncle had quite different views from those of Mr Hadleigh. And,
therefore, she could not altogether sympathise with the latter’s
enthusiasm, eager as she was to see the people steady and sober, for
she remembered at the moment that he had made a considerable portion of
his fortune out of a brewery.
‘That was exactly what I was about to explain,’ he replied. ‘I came to
beg you to speak to Caleb Kersey.’
‘Caleb!—why, he never touches anything stronger than tea.’
‘That may be; but he believes that other people have a right to do so
if they like. He has persuaded every man and woman who comes to me
or my bailiff to put the question: “Is there to be beer?” When they
are answered: “No; but the money,” they turn on their heels and march
off, so that at this moment we have only two men. Now, my dear Miss
Heathcote, will you persuade Kersey to stop his interference?’
‘I do not see that he is interfering; but I will speak to him.’
‘Thanks, thanks. If you were with me I should have no difficulty.’
‘You would find me a very bad second,’ she answered, laughing, ‘for I
should say—submit to old customs until persuasion alters them, since
force never can.’
Two things struck Madge during this interview and the commonplaces
about nothing which followed it: The first, how much more frank and at
ease he seemed to be with her than with any one else; and the second
was, how loath he seemed to go.
The owner of Ringsford said to himself as he was driven away: ‘I shall
be glad when she is Philip’s wife.’