It is a notable thing that in almost every instance it was her father's
influence which forced Evadne to draw conclusions in regard to life quite
unlike any of his own, and very distasteful to him. He was the most
conservative of men, and yet he was continually setting her mind off at a
tangent in search of premises upon which to found ultra-liberal
conclusions.
His primitive theories about women and "all that they are good for," for
one thing, which differed so materially from the facts as she observed
them every day, formed a constant mental stimulus to which her busy brain
was greatly indebted. "Women should confine their attention to
housekeeping," he remarked once when the talk about the higher education
of women first began to irritate elderly gentlemen. "It is all they are
fit for."
"Is it?" said Evadne.
"Yes. And they don't know arithmetic enough to do that properly."
"Don't they? why?" she asked.
"Because they have no brains," he answered.
"But some women have been clever," she ventured seriously.
"Yes, of course; exceptional women. But you can't argue from exceptional
women."
"Then ordinary women have no brains, and cannot learn arithmetic?" she
concluded.
"Precisely," he answered irritably. Such signs of intelligence always did
irritate him, somehow.
Evadne found food for reflection in these remarks. She had done a certain
amount of arithmetic herself in the schoolroom, and had never found it
difficult, but then she had not gone far enough, perhaps. And she went at
once to get a Colenso or a Barnard Smith to see. She found them more
fascinating when she attacked them of her own free will and with all her
intelligence than she had done when necessity, in the shape of her
governess, forced her to pay them some attention, and she went through
them both in a few weeks at odd times, and then asked her father's advice
about a book on advanced mathematics.
"Advanced mathematics!" he exclaimed. "Can you keep accounts?"
"I don't know," she answered doubtfully.
"Then what is this nonsense about advanced mathematics?"
"Oh, I have finished Barnard Smith, and I thought I should like to go on,"
she explained.
"Now, isn't that like your sex?" he observed, smiling at his own
superiority. "You pick things up with a parrot-like sharpness, but haven't
intelligence enough to make any practical application of them. A woman
closely resembles a parrot in her mental processes, and in the use she
makes of fine phrases which she does not understand to produce an effect
of cleverness--such as 'advanced mathematics!'"
Evadne bent her brow, and let him ruminate a little in infinite
self-content, then asked abruptly: "Can men keep accounts who have never
seen accounts kept?"
"No, of course not," he answered, seeing in this a new instance of
feminine imbecility, and laughing.
"Ah," she observed, then added thoughtfully as she moved away: "I should
like to see how accounts are kept."
She never had any more conversation with her father upon this subject, but
from that time forward mathematics, which had before been only an incident
in the way of lessons, became an interest in life, and a solid part of her
education. But, although she found she could do arithmetic without any
great difficulty, it never occurred to her either that her father could be
wrong or that there might be in herself the making of an exceptional
woman. The habit of love and respect kept her attention from any point
which would have led to a judgment upon her father, and she was too
unconscious of herself as a separate unit to make personal application of
anything as yet. Her mind at this time, like the hold of a ship with a
general cargo, was merely being stored with the raw materials which were
to be distributed over her whole life, and turned by degrees to many
purposes, useful, beautiful--not impossibly detestable.
But that remark of her father's about "all that women are fit for," which
he kept well watered from time to time with other conventional expressions
of a contemptuous kind, was undoubtedly the seed of much more than a
knowledge of the higher mathematics. It was that which set her mind off on
a long and patient inquiry into the condition and capacity of women, and
made her, in the end of the nineteenth century, essentially herself. But
she did not begin her inquiry of set purpose; she was not even conscious
of the particular attention she paid to the subject. She had no foregone
conclusion to arrive at, no wish to find evidence in favour of the woman
which would prove the man wrong. Only, coming across so many sneers at the
incapacity of women, she fell insensibly into the habit of asking why. The
question to begin with was always: "Why are women such inferior beings?"
But, by degrees, as her reading extended, it changed its form, and then
she asked herself doubtfully: "Are women such inferior beings?" a position
which carried her in front of her father at once by a hundred years, and
led her rapidly on to the final conclusion that women had originally no
congenital defect of inferiority, and that, although they have still much
way to make up, it now rests with themselves to be inferior or not, as
they choose.
She had an industrious habit of writing what she thought about the works
she studied, and there is an interesting record still in existence of her
course of reading between the ages of twelve and nineteen. It consists of
one thick volume, on the title page of which she had written roundly, but
without a flourish, "Commonplace Book," and the date. The first entries
are made in a careful, unformed, childish hand, and with diffidence
evidently; but they became rapidly decided both in caligraphy and tone as
she advanced. The handwriting is small and cramped, but the latter
probably with a view to economy of space, and it is always clear and neat.
There are few erasures or mistakes of grammar or spelling, even from the
first, and little tautology; but she makes no attempt at literary style or
elegance of expression. Still, all that she says is impressive, and
probably on that account. She chooses the words best calculated to express
her meaning clearly and concisely, and undoubtedly her meaning is always
either a settled conviction or an honest endeavour to arrive at one. It is
the honesty, in fact, that is so impressive. She never thinks of trying to
shine in the composition of words; there was no idea of budding authorship
in her mind; she had no more consciousness of purpose in her writing than
she had in her pinging, when she sang about the place. The one was as
involuntary as the other, and the outcome of similar sensations. It
pleased her to write, and it pleased her to sing, and she did both when
the impulse came upon her. She must, however, have had considerable
natural facility of expression. Writing seems always to have been her best
mode of communication. She was shy from the first in conversation, but
bold to a fault with her pen. Some of the criticisms she wrote in her
"Commonplace Book" are quite exhaustive; most of them are temperate,
although she does give way occasionally to bursts of fiery indignation at
things which outrage her sense of justice; but the general characteristic
is a marked originality, not only in her point of view, but also in the
use she makes of quite unpromising materials. In fact, the most notable
part of the record is the proof it contains that all the arguments upon
which she formed her opinions were found in the enemy's works alone. She
had drawn her own conclusions; but after having done so, as it happened,
she had the satisfaction of finding confirmation strong in John Stuart
Mill on "The Subjection of Women," which she came across by accident--an
accident, by the way, for which Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells was
responsible. She brought the book to Fraylingay, and forgot it when she
went home, and Evadne, happening to find it throwing about, took charge of
it, read it with avidity, and found for herself a world of thought in
which she could breathe freely.
"The Vicar of Wakefield" was one of her early favourites. She read it
several times, and makes mention of it twice in her "Commonplace Book."
Her first notice of it is a childish little synopsis, very quaint in its
unconscious irony; but interesting, principally from the fact that she was
struck even then by the point upon which she afterward became so strong.
"The vicar," she says, "was a good man, and very fond of his wife and
family, and they were very fond of him, but his wife was queer, and could
only read a little. _And he never taught her to improve herself,
although_ he had books and was learned. [Footnote: This is the point
alluded to.] He had two daughters, who were spiteful and did not like
other girls to be pretty. They had bad taste, too, and wanted to go to
church overdressed, and thought it finer to ride a plough-horse than walk.
It does not say that they ever read anything, either. If they had they
would have known better. There is a very nasty man in the book called
Squire Thornhill, and a nice one called Sir William Thornhill, who was his
uncle. Sir William marries Sophia, and Squire Thornhill marries Olivia,
although he does not intend to. Olivia was a horrid deceitful girl, and it
served her right to get such a husband. They have a brother called Moses,
who used to talk philosophy with his father at dinner, and once sold a cow
for a gross of green spectacles. A gross is twelve dozen. Of course they
were all annoyed, but the vicar himself was cheated by the same man when
he went to sell the horse. He seemed to think a great deal of knowing
Latin and Greek, but it was not much use to him then. It was funny that he
should be conceited about what he knew himself, and not want his wife to
know anything. He said to her once: 'I never dispute your abilities to
make a goose pie, and I beg you'll leave argument to me'; which she might
have thought rude, but perhaps she was not a lady, as ladies do not make
goose pies. I forgot, though, they had lost all their money. They had
great troubles, and the vicar was put in prison. He was very ill, but
preached to the prisoners, and everybody loved him. I like 'The Vicar of
Wakefield' very much, and if I cannot find another book as nice I shall
read it again. 'Turn, Gentle Hermit' is silly. I suppose _Punch_ took
Edwin and Angelina out of it to laugh at them."
Quite three years must have elapsed before she again mentions "The Vicar
of Wakefield," and in the meantime she had been reading a fair variety of
books, but for the most part under schoolroom supervision, carefully
selected for her. Some, however, she had chosen for herself--during the
holidays when discipline was relaxed; but it was a fault which she had to
confess, and she does so always, honestly. Lewes' "Life of Goethe" was one
of these. She wrote a glowing description of it, at the end of which she
says:
"I found the book on a sofa in the drawing room, and began it without
thinking, and read and read until I had nearly finished it, quite
forgetting to ask leave. But of course I went at once to tell father as
soon as I thought of it. Mother was there too, and inclined to scold, but
father frowned, and said: 'Let her alone. It will do her no harm; she
won't understand it.' I asked if I might finish it, and he said, 'Oh,
yes,' impatiently. I think he wanted to get rid of me, and I am sorry I
interrupted him at an inconvenient time. Mother often does not agree with
father, but she always gives in. Very often she is right, however, and he
is wrong. Last week she did not want us to go out one day because she was
sure it would rain, but he did not think so, and said we had better go It
did rain--poured--and we got wet through and have had colds ever since,
but when we came in mother scolded me for saying, 'You see, you were
right,' She said I should be saying 'I told yon so!' next, in a nasty
jeering way as the boys do, which really means rejoicing because somebody
else is wrong, and is not generous. I hope I shall never come to that; but
I know if I am ever sure of a thing being right which somebody else thinks
is wrong, it won't matter what it is or who it is, I shall not give in. I
don't see how I could."
Her pen seldom ran away with her into personal matters like these, in the
early part of the book; but from the first she was apt to be beguiled
occasionally by the pleasure of perceiving a powerful stimulant under the
influence of which everything is lost sight of but the point perceived.
She had never to fight a daily and exhausting battle for her private
opinions as talkative people have, simply because she rarely if ever
expressed an opinion; but her father stood ready always, a post of
resistance to innovation, upon which she could sharpen the claws of her
conclusion silently whenever they required it.
When next she mentions "The Vicar of Wakefield," she says expressly:
"I do not remember what I wrote about it the first time I read it, and I
will not look to see until I have written what I think now, because I
should like to know if I still agree with myself as I was then."
And it is interesting to note how very much she does agree with herself as
she "was then"; the feeling, in fact, is the same, but it has passed from
her heart to her head, and been resolved by the process into positive
opinion, held with conscious knowledge, and delivered with greatly
improved power of expression.
"'The Vicar of Wakefield' makes me think a good deal," she continues, "but
there is no order in my thoughts. There is, however, one thing in the book
that strikes me first and foremost and above all others, which is that the
men were educated and the women were ignorant. It is not to be supposed
that the women preferred to be ignorant, and therefore I presume they were
not allowed the educational advantages upon which the men prided
themselves. The men must accordingly have withheld these advantages by
main force, yet they do not scorn to sneer at the consequences of their
injustice. There is a sneer implied in the vicar's remark about his own
wife: 'She could read any English book without much spelling.' That her
ignorance was not the consequence of incapacity is proved by the evidence
which follows of her intelligence in other matters. Had Mrs. Primrose been
educated she might have continued less lovable than the vicar, but she
would probably have been wiser. The vicar must always have been conscious
of her defects, but had never apparently thought of a remedy, nor does he
dream of preventing a repetition of the same defects in his daughters by
providing them with a better education. He takes their unteachableness for
granted, remarking complacently that an hour of recreation 'was taken up
in innocent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philosophical
arguments between my son and me,' as if 'innocent mirth' were as much as
he could reasonably expect from such inferior beings as a wife and
daughters must necessarily be. The average school girl of to-day is a
child of light on the subject of her own sex compared with the gentle
vicar, and incapable, even before her education is half over, of the envy
and meanness which the latter thinks it kindest to take a humourous view
of, and of the disingenuousness at which he also smiles as the inevitable
outcome of feminine inferiority--at least _I_ never met a girl in my
position who would not have admired Miss Wilmot's beauty, nor do I know
one who would not answer her father frankly, however embarrassing the
question might be, if he asked her opinion of a possible lover."
The next entry in the book is on the subject of "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain
Lectures," and, like most of the others, it merits attention from the
unexpected view she takes of the position. It does not strike her as being
humourous, but pathetic. She feels the misery of it, and she had already
begun to hold that human misery is either a thing to be remedied or a
sacred subject to be dwelt on in silence; and she considers Mrs. Caudle
entirely with a view to finding a cure for her case.
"The Caudles were petty tradespeople," she says, "respectable in their own
position, but hardly lovable according to our ideas. Mr. Caudle, with meek
persistency, goes out to amuse himself alone when his day's work is done.
Mrs. Caudle's day's work never is done. She has the wearing charge of a
large family, and the anxiety of making both ends meet on a paltry income,
which entails much self denial and sordid parsimony, but is
conscientiously done, if not cheerfully, nevertheless. It is Mr. Caudle,
however, who grumbles, making no allowance for extra pressure of work on
washing days, when she is too busy to hash the cold mutton. The rule of
her life is weariness and worry from morning till night, and for
relaxation in the evening she must sit down and mend the children's
clothes; and even when that is done she goes to bed with the certainty of
being roused from her hard-earned rest by a husband who brings a sickening
odour of bad tobacco and spirits home with him, and naturally her temper
suffers. She knows nothing of love and sympathy; she has no pleasurable
interest in life. Fatigue and worry are succeeded by profound
disheartenment. One can imagine that while she was young, the worn
garments she was wont to mend during those long lonely evenings were often
wet with tears. The dulness must have been deadly, and dulness added to
fatigue time after time ended at last not in tears, but in peevish
irritation, ebullitions of spleen, and ineffectual resistance. The woman
was thoroughly embittered, and the man had to pay the penalty. Whatever
pleasure there might have been in their joint lives he had secured for
himself, leaving her to stagnate for want of a little variety to keep her
feelings flowing wholesomely; and she did stagnate dutifully, but she was
to blame for it. Had she gone out and amused herself with other wives
similarly situated, and had tobacco and beer, if she liked them, every
evening, it would have been better for herself and her husband."
There must have been some system in Evadne's reading, for "The Naggletons"
came immediately after "Mrs. Caudle," and are dismissed curtly enough:
"Vulgar, ill-bred, lower class people," she calls them. "Objectionable to
contemplate from every point of view. But a book which should enlighten
the class whom it describes on the subject of their own bad manners.
_We_ don't nag."
She owed her acquaintance with the next two books she mentions to the
indirect instigation of her father, and she must have read them when she
was about eighteen, and emancipated from schoolroom supervision, but not
yet fairly entered upon the next chapter of her existence; for they are
among the last she notices before she came out.
The date is fixed by an entry which appears on a subsequent page with the
note: "I was presented at court to-day by my mother." After this entry
life becomes more interesting than literature, evidently, for the book
ceases to be a record of reading and thought with an occasional note on
people and circumstances, and becomes just the opposite, viz., a diary of
events interspersed with sketches of character and only a rare allusion to
literature. But, judging by the number and variety and the careful record
kept of the works she read, the six months or so immediately preceding her
presentation must have been a time of the greatest intellectual activity,
her father's influence being, as usual, often apparent as primary
instigator. Once, when they were having coffee out on the lawn after
dinner, he began a discussion in her hearing about books with another
gentleman who was staying in the house, and in the course of it he
happened to praise "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" eloquently. He said
they were superior in their own line to anything which the present day has
produced. "They are true to life in every particular," he maintained, "and
not only to the life of those times, but of all time. In fact, you feel as
you read that it is not fiction, but human nature itself that you are
studying; and there is an education in moral philosophy on every page."
Evadne was much impressed, and being anxious to know what an education in
moral philosophy might be, she got "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" out
of the library, when she went in that evening, and took them to her own
room to study. They were the two books already referred to as being among
the last she read just before she came out. They did not please her, but
she waded through them from beginning to end conscientiously,
nevertheless, and then she made her remarks.
Of "Roderick Random" she wrote:
"The hero is a kind of king-can-do-no-wrong young man; if a thing were not
right in itself he acted as if the pleasure of doing it sanctified it to
his use sufficiently. After a career of vice, in which he revels without
any sense of personal degradation, he marries an amiable girl named
Narcissa, and everyone seems to expect that such a union of vice and
virtue would be productive of the happiest consequences. In point of fact
he should have married Miss Williams, for whom he was in every respect a
suitable mate. If anything, Miss Williams was the better of the two, for
Roderick sinned in weak wantonness, while she only did so of necessity.
They repent together, but she is married to an unsavoury manservant named
Strap as a reward; while Roderick considers himself entitled to the
peerless Narcissa. Miss Williams, moreover, becomes Narcissa's
confidential friend, and the whole disgraceful arrangement is made
possible by Narcissa herself, who calmly accepts these two precious
associates at their own valuation, and admits them to the closest intimacy
without any knowledge of their true characters and early lives. The fine
flavour of real life in the book seems to me to be of the putrid kind
which some palates relish, perhaps; but it cannot be wholesome, and it may
be poisonous. The moral is: Be as vicious as you please, but prate of
virtue."
"Tom Jones" she dismissed with greater contempt, if possible:
"Another young man," she wrote, "steeped in vice, although acquainted with
virtue. He also marries a spotless heroine. Such men marrying are a danger
to the community at large. The two books taken together show well the
self-interest and injustice of men, the fatal ignorance and slavish apathy
of women; and it may be good to know these things, but it is not
agreeable."
The ventilation of free discussion would doubtless have been an advantage
to Evadne at this impressionable period, when she was still, as it were,
more an intellectual than a human being, travelling upon her head rather
than upon her heart--so to speak--and one cannot help speculating about
the probable modification it would have wrought in some of her opinions.
Unfortunately, however, her family was one of those in which the
_clôture_ is rigorously applied when any attempt is made to introduce
ideas which are not already old and accustomed. It was as if her people
were satisfied that by enforcing silence they could prevent thought.