[Illustration: To face Page 26.
_T. Stothard delin._ _R. Slann sculpt._
CONDUCT AND BEHAVIOUR.
_Published March 1st. 1797, by Cadell and Davies Strand._]
One of the chief beauties in a female character, is that modest
reserve, that retiring delicacy, which avoids the public eye, and is
disconcerted even at the gaze of admiration.--I do not wish you to be
insensible to applause. If you were, you must become, if not worse, at
least less amiable women. But you may be dazzled by that admiration
which yet rejoices your hearts.
When a girl ceases to blush, she has lost the most powerful charm of
beauty. That extreme sensibility which it indicates may be a weakness
and incumbrance in our sex, as I have too often felt; but in yours it
is peculiarly engaging. Pedants, who think themselves philosophers,
ask why a woman should blush when she is conscious of no crime? It
is a sufficient answer, that nature has made you to blush when you
are guilty of no fault, and has forced us to love you because you do
so.--Blushing is so far from being necessarily an attendant on guilt,
that it is the usual companion of innocence.
This modesty, which I think so essential in your sex, will naturally
dispose you to be rather silent in company, especially in a large
one.--People of sense and discernment will never mistake such silence
for dulness. One may take a share in conversation without uttering a
syllable. The expression in the countenance shows it, and this never
escapes an observing eye.
I should be glad that you had an easy dignity in your behaviour at
public places, but not that confident ease, that unabashed countenance,
which seems to set the company at defiance. If, while a gentleman is
speaking to you, one of superior rank addresses you, do not let your
eager attention and visible preference betray the flutter of your
heart. Let your pride on this occasion preserve you from that meanness
into which your vanity would sink you. Consider that you expose
yourselves to the ridicule of the company, and affront one gentleman
only to swell the triumph of another, who perhaps thinks he does you
honour in speaking to you.
Converse with men even of the first rank with that dignified modesty
which may prevent the approach of the most distant familiarity, and
consequently prevent them from feeling themselves your superiors.
Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded
with great discretion and good-nature, otherwise it will create you
many enemies. Wit is perfectly consistent with softness and delicacy;
yet they are seldom found united. Wit is so flattering to vanity, that
they who possess it become intoxicated, and lose all self-command.
Humour is a different quality. It will make your company much
solicited; but be cautious how you indulge it.--It is often a great
enemy to delicacy, and a still greater one to dignity of character. It
may sometimes gain you applause, but will never procure you respect.
Be even cautious in displaying your good sense. It will be thought you
assume a superiority over the rest of the company.--But if you happen
to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from the
men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of
great parts, and a cultivated understanding.
A man of real genius and candour is far superior to this meanness. But
such a one will seldom fall in your way; and if by accident he should,
do not be anxious to show the full extent of your knowledge. If he has
any opportunities of seeing you, he will soon discover it himself;
and if you have any advantages of person or manner, and keep your own
secret, he will probably give you credit for a great deal more than you
possess.--The great art of pleasing in conversation consists in making
the company pleased with themselves. You will more readily hear than
talk yourselves into their good graces.
Beware of detraction, especially where your own sex are concerned.
You are generally accused of being particularly addicted to this
vice--I think, unjustly.--Men are fully as guilty of it when their
interests interfere.--As your interests more frequently clash, and as
your feelings are quicker than ours, your temptations to it are more
frequent. For this reason, be particularly tender of the reputation of
your own sex, especially when they happen to rival you in our regards.
We look on this as the strongest proof of dignity and true greatness of
mind.
Show a compassionate sympathy to unfortunate women, especially to those
who are rendered so by the villany of men. Indulge a secret pleasure,
I may say pride, in being the friends and refuge of the unhappy, but
without the vanity of showing it.
Consider every species of indelicacy in conversation, as shameful
in itself, and as highly disgusting to us. All double _entendre_ is
of this sort.--The dissoluteness of men’s education allows them to
be diverted with a kind of wit, which yet they have delicacy enough
to be shocked at, when it comes from your mouths, or even when you
hear it without pain and contempt.--Virgin purity is of that delicate
nature, that it cannot hear certain things without contamination. It
is always in your power to avoid these. No man, but a brute or a fool,
will insult a woman with conversation which he sees gives her pain;
nor will he dare to do it, if she resent the injury with a becoming
spirit.--There is a dignity in conscious virtue which is able to awe
the most shameless and abandoned of men.
You will be reproached perhaps with prudery. By prudery is usually
meant an affectation of delicacy. Now I do not wish you to affect
delicacy; I wish you to possess it. At any rate, it is better to run
the risk of being thought ridiculous than disgusting.
The men will complain of your reserve. They will assure you that a
franker behaviour would make you more amiable. But, trust me, they
are not sincere when they tell you so.--I acknowledge, that on some
occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it
would make you less amiable as women;--an important distinction, which
many of your sex are not aware of.--After all, I wish you to have
great ease and openness in your conversation. I only point out some
considerations which ought to regulate your behaviour in that respect.
Have a sacred regard to truth. Lying is a mean and despicable vice.--I
have known some women of excellent parts, who were so much addicted
to it, that they could not be trusted in the relation of any story,
especially if it contained any thing of the marvellous, or if they
themselves were the heroines of the tale. This weakness did not proceed
from a bad heart, but was merely the effect of vanity, or an unbridled
imagination.--I do not mean to censure that lively embellishment of a
humourous story, which is only intended to promote innocent mirth.
There is a certain gentleness of spirit and manners extremely engaging
in your sex; not that indiscriminate attention, that unmeaning simper,
which smiles on all alike. This arises either from an affectation of
softness, or from perfect insipidity.
There is a species of refinement in luxury, just beginning to prevail
among the gentlemen of this country, to which our ladies are yet as
great strangers as any women upon earth; I hope, for the honour of the
sex, they may ever continue so: I mean, the luxury of eating. It is a
despicable selfish vice in men, but in your sex it is beyond expression
indelicate and disgusting.
Every one who remembers a few years back, is sensible of a very
striking change in the attention and respect formerly paid by the
gentlemen to the ladies. Their ’drawing-rooms are deserted; and after
dinner and supper, the gentlemen are impatient till they retire.
How they came to lose this respect, which nature and politeness so
well entitle them to, I shall not here particularly inquire. The
revolutions of manners in any country depend on causes very various and
complicated. I shall only observe, that the behaviour of the ladies in
the last age was very reserved and stately. It would now be reckoned
ridiculously stiff and formal. Whatever it was, it had certainly the
effect of making them more respected.
A fine woman, like other fine things in nature, has her proper point
of view, from which she may be seen to most advantage. To fix this
point requires great judgment, and an intimate knowledge of the human
heart. By the present mode of female manners, the ladies seem to expect
that they shall regain their ascendency over us, by the fullest display
of their personal charms, by being always in our eye at public places,
by conversing with us with the same unreserved freedom as we do with
one another; in short, by resembling us as nearly as they possibly
can.--But a little time and experience will show the folly of this
expectation and conduct.
The power of a fine woman over the hearts of men, of men of the finest
parts, is even beyond what she conceives. They are sensible of the
pleasing illusion, but they cannot, nor do they wish to dissolve it.
But if she is determined to dispel the charm, it certainly is in her
power: she may soon reduce the angel to a very ordinary girl.
There is a native dignity in ingenuous modesty to be expected in your
sex, which is your natural protection from the familiarities of the
men, and which you should feel previous to the reflexion that it is
your interest to keep yourselves sacred from all personal freedoms. The
many nameless charms and endearments of beauty should be reserved to
bless the arms of the happy man to whom you give your heart, but who,
if he has the least delicacy, will despise them if he knows that they
have been prostituted to fifty men before him.--The sentiment, that a
woman may allow all innocent freedoms, provided her virtue is secure,
is both grossly indelicate and dangerous, and has proved fatal to many
of your sex.
Let me now recommend to your attention, that elegance, which is not
so much a quality itself, as the high polish of every other. It is
what diffuses an ineffable grace over every look, every motion, every
sentence you utter. It gives that charm to beauty, without which it
generally fails to please. It is partly a personal quality, in which
respect it is the gift of nature; but I speak of it principally as a
quality of the mind. In a word, it is the perfection of taste in life
and manners;--every virtue and every excellency in their most graceful
and amiable forms.
You may perhaps think that I want to throw every spark of nature out
of your composition, and to make you entirely artificial. Far from it.
I wish you to possess the most perfect simplicity of heart and manners.
I think you may possess dignity without pride, affability without
meanness, and simple elegance without affectation. Milton had my idea,
when he says of Eve,
Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.