The two puzzles of our era are, how to employ our women, and what to do
with our convicts; and how little soever gallant it may seem to place
them in collocation, there is a bond that unites the attempt to keep the
good in virtue with the desire to reform the bad from vice, which will
save me from any imputation of deficient delicacy.
Let us begin with the Women. An enormous amount of ingenuity has
been expended in devising occupations where female labour might be
advantageously employed, and where the more patient industry and more
delicate handiwork of women might replace the coarser mechanism of men.
Printing, bookbinding, cigar-making, and the working of the telegraph,
have been freely opened--and, I believe, very successfully--to female
skill; and scores of other callings have been also placed at their
disposal: but, strange enough, the more that we do, the more there
remains to be done; and never have the professed advocates of woman’s
rights been so loud in their demands as since we have shared with them
many of what we used to regard as the especial fields of man’s industry.
Women have taken to the practice of Medicine, and have threatened to
invade the Bar--steps doubtless anticipatory of the time when they shall
“rise in the House” or sit on the Treasury benches. Now, I have very
little doubt that we used not to be as liberal as we might in sharing
our callings with women. We had got into the habit of underrating their
capacities, and disparaging their fitness for labour, which was very
illiberal; but let us take care that the reaction does not cany us too
far on the other side, and that in our zeal to make a reparation we only
make a blunder, and that we encourage them to adopt careers and crafts
totally unsuited to their tastes and their powers.
It is quite clear--in fact, a mere glance at the detail of the
preliminary studies will suffice to show it--that medicine and surgery
should not be shared with them. For a variety of reasons, they ought
not to be encouraged to take holy orders; and, on the whole, it is very
doubtful if it would be a wise step to introduce them into the army,
much less into the navy. Seeing this, therefore, the question
naturally arises, Are women to be the mere drudges--the Helots of our
civilisation? Are we only to employ them in such humble callings as
exclude all ideas of future distinction? A very serious question this,
and one over which I pondered for more than half an hour last night, as
I lay under the influence of some very strong tea and a slight menace of
gout.
Women are very haughty creatures--very resentful of any supposed
slight--very aggressive, besides, if they imagine the time for attack
favourable. Will they sit down patiently as makers of pill-boxes and
artificial flowers? Will they be satisfied with their small gains and
smaller consideration? Will there not be ambitious spirits amongst
them who will ask, What do you mean to offer us? We are of a class who
neither care to bind books nor draw patterns. We are your equals--if
we were not distinctively modest, we might say something more than
your equals--in acquirement and information. We have our smattering
of physical-science humbug, as you have; we are read up in theological
disputation, and are as ready as you to stand by Colenso against Moses;
in modern languages we are more than your match. What have you to offer
us if we are too proud, or too poor, or too anything else, to stand
waiting for a buyer in the marriage-market of Belgravia? You will not
suffer us to enter the learned professions nor the Service; you will not
encourage us to be architects, attorneys, land-agents, or engineers. We
know and we feel that there is not one of these callings either above
our capacity or unsuited to our habits, but you deny us admittance; and
now we ask, What is your scheme for our employment? what project have
you that may point out to us a future of independence and a station of
respect? Have you such a plan? or, failing it, have you the courage to
proclaim to the world that all your boasted civilisation can offer us
is to become the governesses to the children of our luckier sisters? But
there are many of us totally unsuited to this, brought up with ways
and habits that would make such an existence something very like penal
servitude--what will you do with us?
With this cry--for it became a cry--in my ears, I tried to go asleep.
I counted seventeen hundred and forty-four; I thought of the sea; I
imagined I was listening to Dr Cumming; and I endeavoured to repeat
a distich of Martin Tupper: but the force of conscience and the congo
carried the day, and I addressed myself vigorously to the question.
I thought of making them missionaries, lighthouse-keepers, lunacy
commissioners, Garter Kings-at-Arms, and suchlike, when a brilliant
thought flashed across my brain, and, with the instinct of a great
success, I saw I had triumphed. “Yes,” cried I aloud, “there is one
grand career for women--a career which shall engage not alone all the
higher and more delicate traits of their organisation, which will call
forth their marvellous clear-sightedness and quick perception, their
tact, their persuasiveness, and their ingenuity, but will actually
employ the less commendable features of female nature, and find work for
their powers of concealment, their craft in deception, and their passion
for intrigue. How is it that we have never hit upon it before? for
of all the careers meant by nature for women, was there any one could
compare with Diplomacy!”
Here we have at once the long-sought-for career--the _desideratum tanti
studii_--the occupation for which men are too coarse, too clumsy, too
inept, and which requires the lighter touch and more delicate treatment
of female fingers. It is the everyday reproach heard of us abroad, that
our representatives are deficient in those smaller and nicer traits by
which irritations are avoided and unpleasant situations relieved. John,
they say, always imagines that to be national he must be “Bull,” and
toss on his horns “all and every” that opposes him. Now, late events
might have disabused foreign cabinets on this score: a quieter beast
than he has shown himself need not be wished for. Still, he has
bellowed, and lashed his tail, and cut a few absurd capers, to show
what he would be at if provoked; but the world has grown too wise to be
terrified by such exhibitions, and quietly settled down to the opinion
that there is nothing to fear from him. Now, how very differently might
all this have been if the Duchess of S. were Ambassador at Paris, and
the Countess of C. at St Petersburg, and Lady N. at Vienna! There would
have been no bluster, no rudeness, no bullying--none of that blundering
about declining a Congress to-day because a Congress “ought to follow
a war,” and proposing one to-morrow, “to prevent a war.” Women despise
logic, and consequently would not stultify it. A temperance apostle is
not likely to adulterate the liquor that he does not drink; and for
this reason, female intelligence would have escaped this “muddle.” Her
Ladyship would have thrown her blandishments over Rechberg--he is now
of the age when men are easy victims--all the little cajoleries and
flatteries of women’s art would have been exerted first to find out, and
then to thwart, his policy. It is notorious that English diplomacy knows
next to nothing through secret agency. Would such be the case if we had
women as envoys? What mystery would stand the assault of a fine lady,
trained and practised by the habits of her daily life?
They tell us that our fox-hunters would form the finest scout-cavalry
in Europe; and I am convinced that a London leader of fashion--I have a
dozen in my eye at this moment--would track an intrigue through all its
stages, and learn its intimate details of place and time and agency,
weeks before a merely male intelligence began to suspect the thing was
possible.
Imagine what a blue-book would be in these times--would there be
any reading could compare with it? We used to admire a certain
diplomatist--a pleasant narrator of court gossip--giving, as he did,
little traits of Kings and Kaisers, and telling us the way in which
majesty was graciously pleased to blow his royal nose. Imagine a female
pen engaged on such themes! What clever and sharp little touches would
reveal the whole tone of a “reception”! We should not be told “His
Majesty received me coldly,” but we would have a beautiful analysis
of the royal mind in all its varied moods of displeasure, concealment,
urbanity, reserve, and deception. Compared with the male version of the
same incident, it would be like Faraday’s report on a case of supposed
poisoning beside the blundering narrative of a country apothecary!
It is a long time--a very long time--before an old country has energy
enough to throw off any of its accustomed ways. It requires the vigorous
assault of young and sturdy intelligences, and, above all, immense
persistence, to effect it.
Light comes very slowly indeed through the fog of centuries’ growth, and
there is hope always when even the faintest flicker of a ray pierces the
Boeotian cloud. Now, for some years back, it may have been remarked that
a sort of suspicion has been breaking on the minds of our rulers, that
the finer, the higher, and subtler organisations of women might find
their suitable sphere of occupation in the diplomatic service.
“I don’t speak German, but I play the German flute,” said the apologetic
gentleman; and so might we say. We don’t engage ladies in diplomacy,
but we employ all the old women of our own sex! Wherever we find a
well-mannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine
clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul
devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we
make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an Envoy Extraordinary.
I remember an old medical lecturer in Dublin formerly, who used to hold
forth on the Materia Medica in the hall of the University, and who,
seeing a “student” whose studies had been for some time before pursued
in Germany, appear in the lecture-room, with a note-book and pen to take
down the lecture--
“Tell that young gentleman,” said the Professor, “to put up his writing
materials, for there’s not one word he’ll hear from me that he’ll not
find in the oldest editions of the ‘Dublin Pharmacopoeia.’” In the same
spirit our diplomatists may sneer at the call for blue-books. We have
all of us had the whole thing already in the ‘Times;’ and why? Because
we choose to employ unsuitable tools. We want to shave with a hatchet
instead of a razor; for be it remarked, as no things are so essentially
unlike as those that have a certain resemblance, there is nothing in
nature so remote from the truly feminine finesse as the mind of a male
“old woman.”
It is simply to the flaws and failures of female intelligence that the
parallel applies. A very pleasant old parson, whom I knew when I was a
boy, and who used to discourse to me much about Edmund Burke and Gavin
Hamilton, told me once that he met old Primate Stewart one day returning
from a visitation, and turned his horse round to accompany the carriage
for some distance. “Doctor G.,” said the Archbishop, “you remind me most
strikingly of my friend Paley.”
“Oh, my Lord, it is too much honour: I have not the shadow of a
pretension to such distinction.”
“Well, sir, it is true; I have Paley before me as I look at you.”
“I am overwhelmed by your Lordship’s flattery.”
“Yes, sir; Paley rode just such another broken-down old grey nag as
that.”
Do not therefore disparage my plan for the employment of women in
diplomacy by any ungenerous comparisons with the elderly ladies at
present engaged in it. This would be as unfair as it is ungallant.
There are a variety of minor considerations which I might press into the
cause, but some of them would appeal less to the general mind than to
the official, and I omit them--merely observing what facilities it would
give for the despatch of business, if the Minister, besieged, as he
often now is, by lady-applicants for a husband’s promotion, instead of
the tedious inquiry, “Who is Mr D.?--where has he been?--what has he
done?--what is he capable of?” could simply say, “Make Mrs T. Third
Secretary at Stuttgart, and send Mrs O’Dowd as Vice-Consul to Simoom!”