gold and jewels, would care to be parsimonious? What is money worth,
except as a means of putting one’s favorite minister into a chasuble “in
gold cloth with glazed friz ground, double superior quality”? Since the
Christian must at any rate bear his cross, is it not a satisfaction to
have it “on a gold ground, richly worked in gold and silver”? If there
is no true religion without a cope, is it not well that its “hood and
orfraies” should be “surrounded with glazed gold-columned galloon”? And,
as death must come at any rate, is it not something that your pall may
bear “a handsome design of silver tears in emboss in the centre of the
cross,” price only six guineas?
Time would fail to tell of the banners and the dais, the altar-cloths
and frontals, the pastoral stoles and benediction-scarfs, the pyxes and
chalices, and, in short, all dear delights of consecrated souls. This
saintly upholsterer makes as many “fresh sacrifices,” it would appear,
as any other retailer; but, as this does not prevent him from pricing a
dais as high as four hundred pounds sterling, there is no danger of the
purchasers finding any thing cheap enough to be really discreditable.
And the goods are all warranted to be as indestructible as the lowly
virtues they symbolize.
M. Jeune positively announces that he “supplies every article connected
with the Roman Catholic Church.” Perhaps he reserves the faith, hope,
and charity for the next catalogue, as they do not appear largely in
this. In other respects, reading this catalogue is as good as a seat in
the most fashionable church, and leaves much the same impression. It is
especially useful for summer-time, when one may wander in the country,
to the peril of one’s soul, and may consider the lilies a great deal too
much, and may come to thinking religion a thing obtainable on cheap
terms, after all. This would not do for M. Jeune’s business: let us
return to the realities of time and eternity, and consider this
“embroidered glory of spangles and prul,”—whatever prul may be.
But can it, after all, be possible that these gorgeous garments are to
be worn by men only, and that those same men will sometimes treat it as
a reproach to women that they are fond of dress?
LI.
SUBLIME PRINCES IN DISTRESS.
In looking over some miscellaneous papers which came, the other day,
into my hands, I found among them a newspaper scrap, expressing certain
criticisms familiar to the inquiring mind. It stated the predominant
attribute of women to be frivolity; an inordinate love of show, display,
rank, title, dress; a habit of absorption in the petty details of these
follies, to the exclusion of all serious thought and purpose. In reading
this lucubration, one was led to suppose that the whole aim of all women
was to meet in little circles where they could wear costly attire, call
themselves by fine names, and, in the concise Italian phrase, “peacock
themselves” generally.
But there happened to be among the same papers another class of
documents which tended to unsettle the mind a little on these topics.
These documents were in print, and were not marked as private, or
addressed to any particular name, so that there can be no harm in
reprinting one of them, suppressing, however, all reference to
particular persons or places, lest I should be innocently betraying some
awful secret. The paper affording most information was as follows, the
dashes of omission (——) being mine, but all the rest being given
_verbatim_:—
“Lux e tenebris.”
—— CONSISTORY.
{Non nobis }
{Domine non}
S. P. R. S. {nobis, sed} 32°
{nomini tuo}
{da gloriam}
Sublime Prince:
A stated rendezvous of —— Consistory, A. A. S. Rite, will be held on
the 15th day of the month Adar, A. H. 5640, in —— Hall, under the c.
c. of the 3, near the B. B. at Five o’clock P.M.
Per order of
____ ____
Ill. Com. in Chief.
—— ——
Ill. Grand Secretary.
The object of this meeting is thus stated: “Work: the grade of Knight
Kadosh, the 30th, will be worked in full at this Rendezvous.” And it
appears that this work must have something of a military character; for
it seems from another circular, which I will not quote in full, that the
purpose of the rendezvous can be much better carried out if the members
will provide themselves with a costly uniform, including a sword and
other equipments. Yet it would also appear that the expenses of this
organization, apart from the uniform, are so great as to call forth the
following notice:—
“DELINQUENTS.—The Finance Committee recommend the discharge from
Membership of the following Sublime Princes, for non-payment of
dues, they having failed to make any satisfactory reply to repealed
notices of their indebtedness.” [Then follows a list of names and
amounts varying from $17 to $23.]
One of the most brilliant of recent French novels, Daudet’s “Les Rois en
Exil,” lays its whole plot among the forlorn class of dethroned
sovereigns in Paris; but really their sorrows do not touch an American
heart so deeply as this black-list. Here are nearly twenty Princes on
our own soil who are publicly exposed in a single circular as refusing,
after “repeated notices of their indebtedness,” even to reply
satisfactorily. What pleasure can there be in the most attractive
“rendezvous,” what joy in the most absorbing “work,” when one thinks of
all these fallen Sublime Princes wandering, like Milton’s angels, into
outer darkness? I almost blush to own that I recognize among the names
of these outcasts one or two acquaintances of my own, who certainly
passed for honest men before they became princes.
But the most interesting question for women to consider is this: Who
conducts this picturesque consistory, with its rites, its titles, and
its uniforms? Which sex is it that makes up this society, and twenty
other societies so absorbing in their “work” that some worthy persons
have a “society” for almost every evening in the week? Is it the sex
which is alleged to be frivolous, dressy, and eager for rank and title?
Or is it the grave sex, the serious and hard-working sex, the “noble
sex,” _le sexe noble_, as some of the French grammars call it? No doubt
there is under all this display and formality, in this “consistory,” as
in most similar organizations, a great deal of mutual help and
friendliness. But so there is under even the seeming frivolities of
women: the majority of fashionable women have good hearts, and do good.
If substantial and practical men like to cover even their benevolent
organizations with something of show and display, and to “peacock
themselves” a little, why should not women be permitted the same
privilege? Surely Sublime Princes should stand by their order, and not
look with disdain on those who would like to be Sublime Princesses if
they only could.
EDUCATION.
“Movet me ingens scientiarum admiratio, seu legis communis æquitas,
ut in nostro sexu, rarum non esse feram, id quod omnium votis
dignissimum est. Nam cum sapientia tantum generis humani ornamentum
sit, ut ad omnes et singulos (quoad quidem per sortem cujusque
liceat) extendi jure debeat, non vidi, cur virgini, in qua excolendi
sese ornandique sedulitatem admittimus, non conveniat mundus hic
omnium longè pulcherrimus.”—ANNÆ MARIÆ À SCHURMAN EPISTOLÆ. (1638.)
“A great reverence for knowledge and the natural sense of justice urge
me to encourage in my own sex that which is most worthy the aspirations
of all. For, since wisdom is so great an ornament of the human race that
it should of right be extended (so far as practicable) to each and every
one, I did not see why this fairest of ornaments should not be
appropriate for the maiden, to whom we permit all diligence in the
decoration and adornment of herself.”
LII.
“EXPERIMENTS.”
Why is it, that, whenever any thing is done for women in the way of
education, it is called “an experiment,”—something that is to be long
considered, stoutly opposed, grudgingly yielded, and dubiously
watched,—while, if the same thing is done for men, its desirableness is
assumed as a matter of course, and the thing is done? Thus, when Harvard
College was founded, it was not regarded as an experiment, but as an
institution. The “General Court,” in 1636, “agreed to give 400_l._
towards a schoale or colledge,” and the affair was settled. Every
subsequent step in the expanding of educational opportunities for young
men has gone in the same way. But when there seems a chance of
extending, however irregularly, some of the same collegiate advantages
to women, I observe that the Boston Daily Advertiser and the Atlantic
Monthly, in all good faith, speak of the measure as an “experiment.”
It seems to me no more of an “experiment” than when a boy who has
hitherto eaten up his whole apple becomes a little touched with a sense
of justice, and finally decides to offer his sister the smaller half. If
he has ever regarded that offer as an experiment, the first actual trial
will put the result into the list of certainties; and it will become an
axiom in his mind that girls like apples. Whatever may be said about the
position of women in law and society, it is clear that their educational
disadvantages have been a prolonged disgrace to the other sex, and one
for which women themselves are in no way accountable. When Françoise de
Saintonges, in the sixteenth century, wished to establish girls’ schools
in France, she was hooted in the streets, and her father called together
four doctors of law to decide whether she was possessed of a devil in
planning to teach women,—”_pour s’assurer qu’instruire des femmes
n’était pas un œuvre du démon_.” From that day to this, we have seen
women almost always more ready to be taught than was any one else to
teach them. Talk as you please about their wishing or not wishing to
vote: they have certainly wished for instruction, and have had it doled
out to them almost as grudgingly as if it were the ballot itself.
Consider the educational history of Massachusetts, for instance. The
wife of President John Adams was born in 1744; and she says of her youth
that “female education, in the best families, went no farther than
writing and arithmetic.” Barry tells us in his History of Massachusetts,
that the public education was first provided for boys only; “but light
soon broke in, and girls were allowed to attend the public schools two
hours a day.”[10] It appears from President Quincy’s “Municipal History
of Boston,”[11] that from 1790 girls were there admitted to such
schools, but during the summer months only, when there were not boys
enough to fill them,—from April 20 to Oct. 20 of each year. This lasted
until 1822, when Boston became a city. Four years after, an attempt was
made to establish a high school for girls, which was not, however, to
teach Latin and Greek. It had, in the words of the school committee of
1854, “an alarming success;” and the school was abolished after eighteen
months’ trial, because the girls crowded into it; and as Mr. Quincy,
with exquisite simplicity, records, “not one voluntarily quitted it, and
there was no reason to suppose that any one admitted to the school would
voluntarily quit for the whole three years, except in case of marriage!”
Footnote 10:
III., 323.
Footnote 11:
p. 21.
How amusing seems it now to read of such an “experiment” as this,
abandoned only because of its overwhelming success! How absurd now seem
the discussions of a few years ago!—the doubts whether young women
really desired higher education, whether they were capable of it,
whether their health would bear it, whether their parents would permit
it. The address I gave before the Social Science Association on this
subject, at Boston, May 14, 1873, now seems to me such a collection of
platitudes that I hardly see how I dared come before an intelligent
audience with such needless reasonings. It is as if I had soberly
labored to prove that two and two make four, or that ginger is “hot i’
the mouth.” Yet the subsequent discussion in that meeting showed that
around even these harmless and commonplace propositions the battle of
debate could rage hot; and it really seemed as if even to teach women
the alphabet ought still to be mentioned as “a promising experiment.”
Now, with the successes before us of Vassar and Wellesley and Smith
Colleges, of Michigan and Cornell and Boston Universities; with the
spectacle at Cambridge of young women actually reading Plato “at sight”
with Professor Goodwin,—it surely seems as if the higher education of
women might be considered quite beyond the stage of experiment, and
might henceforth be provided for in the same common-sense and
matter-of-course way which we provide for the education of young men.
And, if this point is already reached in education, how long before it
will also be reached in political life, and women’s voting be viewed as
a matter of course, and a thing no longer experimental?
LIII.
INTELLECTUAL CINDERELLAS.
When, some thirty years ago, the extraordinary young mathematician,
Truman Henry Safford, first attracted the attention of New England by
his rare powers, I well remember the pains that were taken to place him
under instruction by the ablest Harvard professors: the greater his
abilities, the more needful that he should have careful and symmetrical
training. The men of science did not say, “Stand off! let him alone! let
him strive patiently until he has achieved something positively
valuable, and he may be sure of prompt and generous recognition—when he
is fifty years old.” If such a course would have been mistaken and
ungenerous if applied to Professor Safford, why is it not something to
be regretted that it was applied to Mrs. Somerville? In her case, the
mischief was done: she was, happily, strong enough to bear it; but, as
the English critics say, we never shall know what science has lost by
it. We can do nothing for her now; but we could do something for future
women like her, by pointing this obvious moral for their benefit,
instead of being content with a mere tardy recognition of success, after
a woman has expended half a century in struggle.
It is commonly considered to be a step forward in civilization, that
whereas ancient and barbarous nations exposed children to special
hardships, in order to kill off the weak and toughen the strong, modern
nations aim to rear all alike carefully, without either sacrificing or
enfeebling. If we apply this to muscle, why not to mind? and, if to
men’s minds, why not to women’s? Why use for men’s intellects, which are
claimed to be stronger, the forcing process,—offering, for instance,
many thousand dollars a year in gratuities at Harvard College, that
young men may be induced to come and learn,—and only withhold assistance
from the weaker minds of women? A little schoolgirl once told me that
she did not object to her teacher’s showing partiality, but thought she
“ought to show partiality to all alike.” If all our university systems
are wrong, and the proper diet for mathematical genius consists of fifty
years’ snubbing, let us employ it, by all means; but let it be applied
to both sexes.
That it is the duty of women, even under disadvantageous circumstances,
to prove their purpose by labor, to “verify their credentials,” is true
enough; but this moral is only part of the moral of Mrs. Somerville’s
book, and is cruelly incomplete without the other half. What a garden of
roses was Mrs. Somerville’s life, according to some comfortable critics!
“All that for which too many women nowadays are content to sit and
whine, or fitfully and carelessly struggle, came naturally and quietly
to Mrs. Somerville. And the reason was, that she never asked for any
thing until she had earned it; or, rather, she never asked at all, but
was content to earn.” Naturally and quietly! You might as well say that
Garrison fought slavery “quietly,” or that Frederick Douglass’s escape
came to him “naturally.” Turn to the book itself, and see with what
strong, though never bitter, feeling, the author looks back upon her
hard struggle.
“I was intensely ambitious to excel in something; for I felt in my
own breast that women were capable of taking a higher place in
creation than that assigned them in my early days, which was very
low” (p. 60). “Nor ... should I have had courage to ask any of them
a question, for I should have been laughed at. I was often very sad
and forlorn; not a hand held out to help me” (p. 47). “My father
came home for a short time, and, somehow or other finding out what I
was about, said to my mother, ‘Peg, we must put a stop to this, or
we shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days’” (p. 54).
“I continued my mathematical and other pursuits, but under great
disadvantages; for, although my husband did not prevent me from
studying, I met with no sympathy whatever from him, as he had a very
low opinion of the capacity of my sex, and had neither knowledge of
nor interest in science of any kind” (p. 57). “I was considered
eccentric and foolish; and my conduct was highly disapproved of by
many, especially by some members of my own family” (p. 80). “A man
can always command his time under the plea of business: a woman is
not allowed any such excuse” (p. 164). And so on.
At last in 1831—Mrs. Somerville being then fifty-one—her work on “The
Mechanism of the Heavens” appeared. Then came universal recognition,
generous if not prompt, a tardy acknowledgment. “Our relations,” she
says, “and others who had so severely criticised and ridiculed me,
astonished at my success, were now loud in my praise.”[12] No doubt. So
were, probably, Cinderella’s sisters loud in her praise, when the prince
at last took her from the chimney-corner, and married her. They had kept
for themselves, to be sure, as long as they could, the delights and
opportunities of life; while she had taken the place assigned her in her
early days,—“which was very low,” as Mrs. Somerville says. But, for all
that, they were very kind to her in the days of her prosperity; and no
doubt packed their little trunks, and came to visit their dear sister at
the palace, as often as she could wish. And, doubtless, the Fairyland
Monthly of that day, when it came to review Cinderella’s “Personal
Recollections,” pointed out, that, as soon as that distinguished lady
had “achieved something positively valuable,” she received “prompt and
generous recognition.”
Footnote 12:
p. 176.
LIV.
FOREIGN EDUCATION.
There is a fashionable phrase which always awakens my inward
protest,—“the advantages of foreign education.” Every summer brings
within my view a large class of people who have perhaps spent their
youth in Europe, and then have taken Europe for their wedding-tour; and
then, after a year or two at home, have found it an excellent reason for
going abroad again “to give the children the advantage of foreign
education, you know.” And, as it is in regard to girls that this
advantage is especially claimed, it is in respect to them that I wish to
speak.
In some ways, undoubtedly, the early foreign training offers an
advantage. It is a thing of very great convenience to have the easy
colloquial command of one or two languages beside one’s own; and this
can no doubt be obtained far more readily by a few years of early life
abroad than by any method employed in later years at home. There are
also some unquestionable advantages in respect to music, art, and
European geography and history. The trouble is, that, when we have
enumerated these advantages, we have mentioned all.
And, as a further trouble, it comes about that these things, being all
that are better learned in Europe, are easily assumed, by what may be
called our Europeanized classes, to be all that are worth learning,
especially for girls. When, in such circles, you hear of a young lady as
“splendidly educated,” it commonly turns out that she speaks several
languages admirably, and plays well on the piano, or sketches well. It
is not needful for such an indorsement that she should have the
slightest knowledge of mathematics, of logic, of rhetoric, of
metaphysics, of political economy, of physiology, of any branch of
natural science, or of any language, or literature, or history, except
those of modern Europe. All these missing branches she would have been
far more likely to study, if she had never been abroad: all these, or a
sufficient number of them, she would have been pretty sure to study at a
first-class American “academy” or high school. But all these she is
almost sure to have missed in Europe,—missed them so thoroughly, indeed,
that she is likely to regard with suspicion any one who knows any thing
about them, as being “awfully learned.”
Yet it needs no argument to show that the studies thus omitted by girls
taught in Europe are the studies which train the intellect. That a girl
should know her own powers of body and mind, should know how to observe,
how to combine, how to think; that she should know the history and
literature of the world at large, and in particular of the country in
which she is to live,—this is certainly more important than that she
should be able to speak two or three languages as well as a European
courier, and should have nothing to say in any of them.
A very few persons I have known who contrived, while living abroad, to
keep a home atmosphere round their children, and who, by great personal
effort, succeeded in giving to their girls that solid early training
which is to be had in every high school in this country, but is only to
be obtained by personal effort, and under great disadvantages, in
Europe. Wiser still, in my judgment, were those who trusted America for
the main training, but contrived early to secure for their children the
needful year or two of foreign life, for the learning of languages
alone. Perhaps we exaggerate, too, the absolute necessity of foreign
study, even for modern languages. The Russians, who are the best
linguists in Europe, are not in the habit of expatriating themselves for
that purpose; and perhaps we have something to learn from them in this
direction, as well as in the line of Professor Runkle’s machine-shops.
LV.
TEACHING THE TEACHERS.
Cotton Mather says of his father, Increase Mather, that, when he became
president of Harvard College, it was from the desire to teach those who
were to teach others, or, as he expresses it, not to shape the building
but the builders,—_non lapides dolare sed architectos_. It is curious to
see that women are admitted more readily to this higher work than to the
lower. Thus I know a lady who teaches elocution professionally, and has
clerical pupils among others. One of these assures me that he finds his
power and influence in the pulpit much increased through her
instruction. Yet there is scarcely a denomination which would admit her
into the pulpit: she can direct the builders, but can take no share in
the building.
It sometimes occurred to me, when a member of the legislature of
Massachusetts, that the little I knew of political economy was mainly
due to the assiduous reading, in childhood, of Miss Martineau’s stories
founded on that science. Yet it would have been thought something very
astounding, were some such woman to have a seat in that legislature. So
I have seen classes of young men and maidens, in a high school, reciting
political economy out of Mrs. Fawcett’s excellent textbook,—and
sometimes reciting it to a woman; and yet, should any one of these boys
ever become a member of “the Great and General Court,” as the
legislature is called in Massachusetts, he could not even invite this
teacher, or Mrs. Fawcett herself, to sit beside him and aid him with her
advice. Can any one help seeing that this distinction is a merely
traditional thing, and one that cannot last?
At the last teachers’ convention which I attended, I heard a lady, Mrs.
Knox, give an address on the best way of teaching English composition.
There was assembled a great body of teachers, some five or six hundred;
the church was crowded; and yet this lady faced the audience for some
three-quarters of an hour,—she being armed only with a piece of chalk
and a blackboard,—and held it in close attention. Without perceptible
effort, and without a word or an attitude that was otherwise than
womanly and graceful, she taught the teachers, men and women alike. I do
not see how it is possible that the alleged supremacy of man can long
withstand such influences.