Women of England Part 13

The prosperous and well-domiciled woman of the middle cla.s.ses could rest in the comfortable feeling that the demarcations of society no longer absolutely precluded the possibility of her daughters' entering the ranks of those famous for their signal worth of one sort or another; but as yet the great movements of modern society had not come into close touch with the lives of ordinary women. Newspapers were published, but women seldom read them. Philanthropy was making headway, but women had little part in its movement, nor had they fully entered as yet into their birthright in the realm of literature.

In the rural districts, their life was so contracted that a weekly newsletter, pa.s.sed from hand to hand, was the chief medium of information as to the outside world; but even this was not usually read by the womenfolk, who were content to receive their news by hearsay. Unlike the women of the aristocracy, the women of the middle cla.s.ses did not become beneficiaries to any large degree in the wider connections of their husbands, because such connections were for the most part of a business nature and not social. They were women of mediocrity, and their role was domestic. It was still thought unimportant to widen woman's horizon beyond the elements of an education. To these, in the case of the more prosperous, were added those accomplishments which are still looked upon by ignorant persons with disdain, but which serve to bridge the chasms of society by establis.h.i.+ng tests of good breeding irrespective of social birth; so that to reading, writing, geography, and history there were added music, French, and Italian. Such a curriculum, faithfully followed, prepared young women to move in polite circles.

The old cry of women's incapacity for intellectual attainments of the same order as those of men is audible throughout the eighteenth century. One writer, after speaking of the regard in which the s.e.x were held in England, discusses the matter of their education and concludes that it is not easy to comprehend the possibility of raising them to a higher plane than that to which they had been lifted, because of their natural incapacity for other than the domestic and social functions which they so gracefully fulfilled. To English people generally, it was a matter of pride that their women received greater respect and were held in greater affection than those of continental countries. This was often remarked upon by foreign visitors, one of whom observes that "among the common people the husbands seldom make their wives work. As to the women of quality, they don't trouble themselves about it." The position of the wife in middle-cla.s.s society has been set before us by Fielding in a satire that has in it much of truth: "The Squire, to whom that poor woman had been a faithful upper-servant all the time of their marriage, had returned that behavior by making what the world calls a good husband. He very seldom swore at her, perhaps not above once a week, and never beat her. She had not the least occasion for jealousy, and was perfect mistress of her time, for she was never interrupted by her husband, who was engaged all the morning in his field exercises, and all the evening with his bottle companions." Certainly home had come to have attached to it a notion of greater sanct.i.ty than ever before, and women were accorded their natural rights and position, with the respect and deference in the tenderer relations of life, which signified much more than the profuse chivalry of the Middle Ages or the mock courtesy of the time of Charles II.

The English people were above all domestic; and the period, in its emphasis upon this phase of social life,--the English home,--marks in a way the beginning of that conception which is now regarded as being at the very foundation of a secure society. While France was going on in its iconoclastic way, destroying all things sacred in a mad desire to seize for the Third Estate the rights which they realized belonged to them, and the grasping of which was to cause French history to be written in the blood and fire of the great Revolution, the English, having pa.s.sed out of the social depravity of the reign of Charles II., became eminently steady and conservative of those elements of social progress which, in their case, unlike that of their French neighbors, had already been secured for them by progressive and largely peaceful measures.

It is interesting to note that the term "old maid" had now entered into the popular vernacular, although "spinster," with its transferred meaning, was the more respectful way of speaking of unmarried women.

"An old maid is now thought such a curse," says the author of the _Ladies' Calling_, "as no Poetick Fury can exceed; looked on as the most calamitous creature in nature. And I so far yield to the opinion as to confess it to those who are kept in that state against their wills; but sure the original of that misery is from the desire, not the restraint, of marriage; let them but suppress that once, and the other will never be their infelicity. But I must not be so unkind to the s.e.x as to think 'tis always such desire that gives them an aversion to celibacy; I doubt not many are frightened only with the vulgar contempt under which that state lyes: for which if there be no cure, yet there is the same armous against this which is against all other causeless reproaches, viz., to contemn it."

The esteem in which matrimony was held as the manifest destiny of the fair s.e.x is ill.u.s.trated by all the social manners of the day. Women had, however, the good taste to conduct themselves without reproach, and not to invite attention even while they most appreciated it. In a word, the young women of the eighteenth century were not coquettes, and with them modesty was not a lost art. They were not masculine, and indeed might have been regarded from the standards of to-day as prudes. But the prudery of the British women excited the admiration of foreigners, thoroughly satiated with the arts, the flaunting manners, and the gilded charms of the young women of the European capitals.

One foreigner is found recording his astonishment at the diversity in the manner of walking of the ladies, and sees in it an index of their characters; for, says he, when they are desirous only of being seen, they walk together, for the most part without speaking. He suggests that the stiffness and formality of their demeanor when not thus on dress parade are laid aside for greater naturalness. But he says that, with all their care to be seen, they have no ridiculous affectations.

In former times, it was not customary for young women to go about without the attendance of some older person, and a girl so doing was brought under suspicion as to her character; but in the eighteenth century, young girls went about freely with their fellows and without any other company, and a writer of the period a.s.sures us that if a young girl went out with a parent, unless such parent were as wild as herself, she felt as though she was going abroad with a jailer. It was not usual, however, for girls to go about unchaperoned.

It would be an unwarranted a.s.sumption to suppose that demureness was any deeper than demeanor in the maidens of the eighteenth century, for the feminine character--and not times and customs--determines the effectiveness of the s.e.x. Matters of custom and of dress signify little, and yet the Solons who pa.s.sed the act of 1770 to lessen the potency of woman's charms appear to have been utterly oblivious of the important consideration that these do not rest in outward circ.u.mstance, but in inward grace. This curious act prescribed: "That all women, of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, whether virgins, maids, or widows, that shall, from and after such Act, impose upon, seduce, or betray into matrimony, any of his Majesty's male subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, etc., shall incur the penalty of the law now enforced against witchcraft and like misdemeanours, and that the marriage upon conviction shall stand null and void." And this, too, just six years before the American Declaration of Independence!

Allusion to this act proscribing aids to beauty leads to the consideration of the matter of costume and adornment. This can be summarized in the censure which was called forth from an Italian visitor: "The ladies of England do not understand the art of decorating their persons so well as those of Italy; they generally increase the volume of the head by a cap that makes it much bigger than nature, a fault which should be always avoided in adorning that part." After this observation, the writer pa.s.ses on to criticise the length of the ladies' skirts, affirming that they wore their petticoats too short behind, unlike the ladies of Italy and France, for--and we are indebted to him for his explication of trains--these ladies "pattern after the most graceful birds." By their failure to emulate the peac.o.c.k or the bird-of-paradise in the matter of their splendid appendages, the English women are said to lose "the greatest grace which dress can impart to a female." He continues, saying: "In truth, not beauty, but novelty governs in London, not taste, but copy.

A celebrated woman of five foot six inches gives law to the dress of those who are but four feet two.... This is not the case in Italy and France; the ladies know that the grace which attends plumpness is unbecoming the slender; and the tall lady never affects to look like a fairy; nor the dwarf like the giantess, but each, studying the air and mien which become her figure, appears in the most engaging dress that can be made, to set off her person to the greatest advantage."

Pa.s.sing from the generalities of female dress and coming to particular descriptions thereof, here is an account of the costuming of the ladies who a.s.sembled at court to congratulate his majesty George II.

and his queen, Caroline, on their nuptials: "The ladies were variously dressed, though with all the richness and grandeur imaginable; many of them had their heads dressed English, of fine Brussels lace of exceeding rich patterns, made up on narrow wire and small round rolls, and the hair pinned to large puff-caps, and but a few without powder; some few had their hair curled down on the sides; pink and silver, white and gold, were the general knots worn. There was a vast number of Dutch heads, their hair curled down in short curls on the sides and behind, all very much powdered, with ribbands frilled on their heads, variously disposed; and some had diamonds set on ribbands on their heads; laced tippets were pretty general, and some had ribbands between the frills; treble-lace ruffles were universally worn, though abundance had them not tacked up. Their gowns were either gold stuffs or rich silks, with either gold or silver flowers, or pink or white silks, with either gold or silver nets or tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs; the sleeves to the gowns were middling (not so short as formerly), and wide, and their facings and robings broad; several had flounced sleeves and petticoats and gold or silver fringe set on the flounces; some had stomachers of the same sort as the gown, others had large bunches of made flowers at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the gowns were variously pinned, but in general flat, the hoops French, and the petticoats of a moderate length, and a little slope behind. The ladies were exceedingly brilliant likewise in jewels; some had them in their necklaces and ear-rings, others with diamond solitaires to pearl necklaces of three or four rows; some had necklaces of diamonds and pearls intermixed, but made up very broad; several had their gown-sleeves b.u.t.toned with diamonds, others had diamond sprigs in their hair, etc. The ladies'

shoes were exceeding rich, being either pink, white, or green silk, with gold or silver lace braid all over, with low heels and low hind-quarters and low flaps, and abundance had large diamond shoe-buckles."

The preposterous hooped petticoats which ladies wore out of doors subjected them to the good-natured banter of the wits of the time. One of these sallies, which appeared about 1720, runs as follows:

"An elderly lady, whose bulky squat figure By hoop and white damask was rendered much bigger, Without hood and bare-neck'd to the Park did repair To show her new clothes and to take the fresh air; Her shape, her attire, raised a shout in loud laughter: Away waddles Madam, the mob hurries after.

Quoth a wag, then observing the noisy crowd follow, 'As she came with a hoop, she is gone with a hollow.'"

The hoopskirt was the characteristic feature of eighteenth-century styles, and it grew to such enormous proportions as seriously to inconvenience the wearer and to interfere with the cubic feet of s.p.a.ce which a pedestrian might reasonably claim as his right on a crowded thoroughfare. But there were eighteenth-century styles which were more reprehensible than the oft-caricatured hoop.

There was a cla.s.s of votaries of fas.h.i.+on, in contrast to the ma.s.s of society, whose only notion of dress was display, and toward the middle of the eighteenth century these imported the most extravagant and immodest of French styles. As they paraded the public gardens, to which all cla.s.ses resorted, the staid people were scandalized by their appearance. T. Wright, in his _Caricature History of the Georges_, says that "what was looked upon as the _beau-monde_ then lived much more in public than now, and men and women of fas.h.i.+on displayed their weaknesses to the world in public places of amus.e.m.e.nt and resort, with little shame or delicacy. The women often rivalled the men in libertinism, and even emulated them sometimes in their riotous manners." Women of the town were greatly in evidence, and a trustworthy traveller of the times affirms that they were bolder and more numerous in London than in either Paris or Rome. Not only at night, but in broad daylight, they traversed the footpaths, selecting out of the pa.s.sers-by the susceptible for their enticement, particularly directing themselves to foreigners. Archenholz says: _On compte cinquante mille prost.i.tuees a Londres, dans les maitresses en t.i.tre. Leurs usages et leur conduite determinent les differentes cla.s.ses ou il faut les ranger. La plus vile de toutes habite dans les lieux publics sous la direction d'une matrone qui les loge et les habille. Ces habits mee pour les filles communes, sont de soie, suivant l'usage que le luxe a generalement introduit en Angleterre....

Dans_ _la seule paroisse de Marybonne, qui est la plus grande et la plus peuplee de l'Angleterre, on en comptoit, il y a quelques annees, treize mille, dont dix-sept cents occupoient des maisons entieres a elles seules_.

Such a picture of social vice in the metropolis is a sad commentary upon the tendency of the young women of the country districts to drift to the city. The "lights o' London" had already begun to possess that fascination for the weak in morals, the light-headed and frivolous, which has made them a wrecker's beacon on a rockbound sh.o.r.e, luring to destruction untold hosts of inexperienced country youth. Nor was the drift Londonward due altogether to the fascination which the gay and pleasure-pandering city possessed, for there were not wanting methods of enticement such as are still employed, in spite of legal penalties.

The example of city dwellers of outward respectability did not tend to elevate the moral tone of those who came fresh from the country, with its purer home life; for while the sanct.i.ty of the home was an appreciable fact of the seventeenth century, it was much less so in the metropolis and in the cities generally than it was in the country.

A notorious fact that attracted the notice of continental visitors to England was that lax morality prevailed in many English families.

Muralt, a Frenchman, even a.s.serts that he found it customary for husbands generally to maintain mistresses and also to bring them to their homes and place them on a footing with their wives. This is doubtless an exaggerated statement of the case; but when the king was not faultless, the people were apt to pursue folly. Although no king after Charles II., except George II., disgraced the nation by the profligacy which he exhibited, yet Charles's successor, James II., kept a mistress, as did most of the kings following him.

Referring again to Fielding, we get what is probably a truer picture of the times in this respect than could be penned from the hasty observations of a traveller. A young fellow who has led astray his landlady's daughter is addressed by his uncle in the following manner: "Honour is a creature of the world's making, and the world has the power of a creator over it, and may govern and direct it as they please. Now, you well know how trivial these breaches of contract are thought; even the grossest make but the wonder and conversation of the day. Is there a man who afterwards will be more backward in giving you his sister or daughter, or is there any sister or daughter who would be more backward to receive you? Honour is not concerned in these engagements." It need not be supposed that such sentiments were general; but that they were all too prevalent is manifested by the literature that mirrors the times.

Drinking and swearing, the coa.r.s.e a.s.sociations of the alehouse, the obscene jokes and sallies which were indulged in freely in such places and made up a great part of the conversation, were conducive to a very low moral standard for men, and there was nothing in the times to lead women to uphold higher ideals of conduct than those which were imposed upon them by the male s.e.x. Consequently, they were accustomed to a lower standard than would be tolerated to-day; but as libertinism was largely concerned with the outcast element of society, the women of the homes were not called upon to sacrifice integrity of character for its satisfaction. So that the lower moral standard was set up for men, and a woman who would attempt at once to maintain her respectability and follow such courses would very soon have found that difference in standards for the s.e.xes visited a stricter condemnation upon her than upon the male delinquent.

The testimony of foreigners to the chast.i.ty of the English matron quite coincides with that which comes from English sources. Le Blanc remarks: "Most of those who among us pa.s.s for men of good fortune in amours would with difficulty succeed in addressing an English fair.

She would not sooner be subdued by the insinuating softness of their jargon than by the amber with which they are perfumed." Another observer, of the same nationality, speaking of the una.s.sailability of the English woman, attributes it to the insurmountable rampart which she had in the love for her family, the care of her household, and her natural gravity, and says that he does not know any city in the world where the honor of husbands is in less danger of deflection than in London.

The social hypocrisy of the eighteenth century, as it relates to woman, was due to the failure as yet to place the s.e.x in correct adjustment with the times. Instead of considering her as having serious qualities and value other than the realization of matrimony, everything that entered into woman's life pointed in that one direction. The art of pleasing was not cultivated as an opportunity of the s.e.x due to their special graces of spirit and of person, which might legitimately be employed for their own sake to make the world happier and brighter. There was not afforded to men the restfulness and pleasure in the company of women which would serve as a delightful foil to the practical and anxious cares of their daily lives; nor were women taught to believe in themselves as capable persons in the spheres of life in which feminine personality, taste, and touch best affect and mould civilization. Except in a few notable cases, literature and art, to say nothing of science, were outside of woman's sphere, because she neither believed in herself nor was seriously regarded by men as a factor in any of the wide relations of life other than those which were involved in her s.e.x. The arts of the toilette, conversation, and deportment were all in which she was considered to need to be adept. Where naturalness was suppressed, it is not strange that the young women should have been influenced by false standards; false modesty, false sensitiveness, false ignorance, were depended upon to give them the artlessness and innocence of deportment which should recommend them to the blase men of the times.

The estimate in which the s.e.x was held was not quietly accepted by all women; although the new woman had not appeared upon the horizon, there were not wanting women who realized that their position was a humiliating one, and who sought to create a sentiment for its betterment. Mary Astell was one such, and the case as presented by her shows the superficiality of the conventional routine of a woman's life. She says: "When a young lady is taught to value herself on nothing but her cloaths, and to think she's very fine when well accoutred; when she hears say, that 'tis wisdom enough for her to know how to dress herself, that she may become amiable in his eyes to whom it appertains to be knowing and learned; who can blame her if she lays out her industry and money for such accomplishments, and sometimes extends it farther than her misinformer desires she should?... If from our infancy we are nurs'd upon ignorance and vanity; are taught to be proud and petulant, delicate and fantastick, humourous and inconstant, 'tis not strange that the ill effects of this conduct appear in all the future actions of our lives.... That, therefore, women are unprofitable to most, and a plague and dishonor to some men, is not much to be regretted on account of the men, because 'tis the product of their folly in denying them the benefits of an ingenuous and liberal education, the most effectual means to direct them into, and secure their progress in, the ways of virtue."

A French writer criticised the Englishmen of the day for their failure to avail themselves of the refining influence of women, in whose graces, he affirmed, there could be found constant charm and a certain sweetness peculiar to the s.e.x. He said that the conversation of the women would polish and soften the manners of the men and enable them to contract a manner and tone which would be agreeable to both s.e.xes; and he ascribed the bluntness of the English character to this lack of the refining influence of female society.

As women were left so largely to their own devices, falling the comrades.h.i.+p of men, they gave themselves over to the needle as the chief resource for idle hours. The _Female Spectator_ protested against this excessive needlework on the part of women: "Nor can I by any means approve of your compelling young ladies of fortune to make so much use of the needle, as they did in former days, and some few continue to do.... It always makes me smile when I hear the mother of fine daughters say: 'I always keep my girls at their needle;' one, perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt for a bed, and a third engaged to make a whole dozen s.h.i.+rts for her father. And then, when she had carried you into the nursery and shown you them all, add: 'It is good to keep them out of idleness; when young people have nothing to do, they naturally wish to do something they ought not,'" With such a narrow circle of interest, it was not strange that women who had leisure should have wasted it in frivolity.

Gambling among women of fas.h.i.+on was more a result of too much leisure and too little intellectual stimulus than an indication of vicious propensities. _The Female Spectator_, from which we have quoted, in an article in 1745, relating an account of the visit of a country lady to a London friend, furnishes an ill.u.s.tration of the extent and effects of the vice. The article recites that after knocking a considerable time at the door of her friend's house,--the hour was between eleven and twelve o'clock in the day,--a footman, with his nightcap on and a general appearance of having risen from the dead, responded to her inquiry for her friend, in the interim of his yawns: "We had a racquet here last night, and my lady cannot possibly be stirring these three hours." The surprised visitor refrained from asking any questions concerning this unintelligible answer, and, after leaving her name, returned again at three o'clock. She had the good fortune to be admitted, and found her friend at her chocolate. She had a dish of this in one hand, and with the other she seemed to have been busy in sorting a large pile of guineas, which she had divided in two heaps on the table before her. Rising, she greeted her visitor with great civility, and expressed regret at the latter's disappointment on first calling, saying, with a smile, that when her friend had been a little longer in town, she would lie longer in bed in the morning. She then enlightened her as to the term "racquet," telling her that when the number a.s.sembled for cards exceeded ten tables the game was so styled; if fewer, it was called a "rout"; and if there were but two tables, it was a "drum."

It must always appear a curious and an unfortunate circ.u.mstance that at the time of the great industrial awakening in England in the last half of the eighteenth century, when men, women, and children were losing their individuality and becoming mere industrial units, representing so many pounds of human energy to be added to a machine, the women and children of the factories and of the hovels of the factory towns cried piteously to the Church for bread and received but a stone. And this was at a time when the social needs were so great and the sympathies of all other cla.s.ses seemed to be alienated by diversity of interest from those who were called upon to toil for the making of England's wealth. Professor Thorold Rogers, the painstaking and acute investigator of England's industry, says with regard to the lethargy which const.i.tuted a veritable Dark Age for the English Church: "It is hard indeed to see what there is to relieve the darkness of the picture which the Anglican Church presents from the death of Queen Anne to the time of the Evangelical Revival. Over against the Anglican Church, formal, jealous of laymen, fearful of schism or irregularity, should be set the nonconformist churches."

Although there was a great deal of religious enthusiasm in the religious communities of the Commonwealth, the princ.i.p.al branches of the Protestant nonconformists soon became wedded to their own systems, and, in a way, as narrow in their application of the principles of the New Testament as the church from which they had separated. It was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that a movement began which opened the way to lines of development which have been going on ever since. The vast number of present-day religious societies, whether in direct connection with the Church or outside of its pale, may be traced in some ways to the period just before and during the reign of William III.

Then arose societies for the reformation of manners in all parts of the kingdom. These societies represented the early stirring of the spirit of reform which found its expression in so many forms of activity in later times. They resembled somewhat the modern societies for the correction of social evils, such as societies for the prevention of vice, or societies for preventing the corrupting of the youth. It was all done under the impulse of religion, but was not initiated by the Church; it was a lay movement. The first distinctively women's movements in religious matters were outside of the Church. The great preacher Whitfield attracted the attention of the Countess of Huntingdon, whose drawing rooms were thrown open for his preaching and were filled by fas.h.i.+onable auditors. Other t.i.tled women joined the countess, and among them was the famous d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. The interest of n.o.blewomen in a movement essentially plebeian has its parallel in the nineteenth century, when the Salvation Army enlisted the interest and support of women of rank and t.i.tle.

The att.i.tude of the countess in her loyal support of the new evangelical movement brought her under the criticism that is always encountered by a zeal which is not understood by people generally.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham wrote to her: "I thank your Ladys.h.i.+p for the information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your Ladys.h.i.+p should relish any sentiments so at variance with high rank and good breeding." The Countess of Suffolk on one occasion was so incensed at a sermon of Whitfield in the Countess of Huntingdon's drawing room, that she rushed out of the house in a pa.s.sion, under the impression that the discourse was a personal attack. The att.i.tude of the clergy generally to the Methodist movement within the Church was one of indifference.

The suffering among the wives of the inferior clergy, who were impoverished and suffered under the defeat of the endeavor to make their scanty resources meet the demands of household expenses, the lack of opportunity for educating their children, and their own loss of self-respect, must have made their lives more miserable in some ways than those of the wives of the potters, whose sphere of existence and needs were much more limited. One of the clergymen of this order plaintively sets forth his pecuniary distress as follows: "Oh, my Lord, how prettily and temperately may a wife and half a dozen children be maintained with almost 30 per annum! What an handsome s.h.i.+ft will an ingenious and frugal divine make, to take by turns and wear a ca.s.sock and a pair of breeches another! What a primitive sight it will be to see a man of G.o.d with his shoes out at the toes, and his stockings out at heels, wandering about in an old russet coat and tatter'd gown for apprentices to point at and wags to break jest on!

And what a notable figure will he make in the pulpit on Sundays who has sent his _Hooker_ and _Stillingfleet_, his _Pearson_ and _Saunderson_, his _Barrow_ and _Tillotson_, with many more fathers of the English Church, into limbo long since to keep his wife's pensive petticoat company, and her much lamented wedding ring!" Such a picture belongs rather to the latter part of the eighteenth century than to its beginning, for in its earlier days the Church was prolific of quiet scholars and antiquaries, in both parsonage and manse, living peaceful, comfortable, and cultured existences.

The att.i.tude of the Church of the eighteenth century toward women is hardly one of record, as there was not enough animation or interest displayed in social conditions--or, indeed, during a part of the century, enough of intellectual comprehension--to serve the Church for any discrimination as to women's status. When the change of att.i.tude of the Church in respect to its indifference toward that element of its body which before the Reformation, and continuously since then, has been so serviceably employed by the Roman Catholic Church did occur, it was the High Church party which brought it about, and so preserved for English Protestantism the work of women.

Although the Church was indifferent to the great mission that lay before it in the eighteenth century,--a mission that had to be met by the raising up from the laity of men and women who should stand for the spiritual rights of the lower orders of society especially,--there was a notable band of Christian philanthropic women who brightened the close of the century.

By harnessing human compa.s.sion to social needs, the distressed cla.s.ses of society came to be lifted to that position of betterment which is theirs to-day, largely through agencies that owe their beginnings to the More sisters, Elizabeth Fry, and Harriet Martineau. It is always a pleasing task to turn to such women as these, exemplifying as they do the attainments of the s.e.x in those peculiar and special ways which so well represent the adaptations of women. The greatest woman who graced the annals of helpfulness of the last half of the eighteenth century in England was Hannah More. The beautiful devotion of her long and honorable life to the cause of teaching, and the widespread interest which, by her writings, she attracted to the subject both in Europe and America, place her at the source of one of the mighty streams of pervasive influence that have ever permeated human society. So great was her appreciation of the character and the position of woman, that she was able to forecast well-nigh everything that has been enunciated in modern times with regard to the place of the s.e.x in education and in society.

Hannah More was born in 1745, in a little village near Bristol. Her father, who was the village schoolmaster, gave his five daughters educations adapted as near as might be to the peculiar talents of each. Three of the girls opened a boarding school in Bristol, when the oldest was only twenty years of age. This school soon became fas.h.i.+onable and ultimately famous. It was to this inst.i.tution that the early labors of Hannah More were given, and it was here that she attracted the attention of such men as Ferguson the astronomer, the elder Sheridan, Garrick the tragedian, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Burke, and indeed nearly all men of eminence in intellectual and state life. But her a.s.sociations were not solely with the fas.h.i.+onable world, by which she was petted and flattered, for she turned her attention to labors for the poor and the ignorant. She sought to do for the children who lived amid the savage profligacy of the peasant cla.s.s what Madame de Maintenon sought to do for girls of the aristocratic cla.s.s in her country. Both alike aimed to offset the perversion of character which threatened the girls of their respective schools, from different sources, but to the same end,--their destruction. Madame de Maintenon worked to counteract the insidious infidelity that permeated the upper walks of life--Hannah More, to counteract the practical atheism of the lowest plane of life. The fundamental principle of her educational system was the necessity of Christian instruction. She recognized the close relations.h.i.+p of education and religion, and gauged well the significance of the historical fact of woman's debt to Christianity for her elevation. The question which she asked was not that of social utility, but that of personal character. She saw too much of the utilitarian principle in its actual workings, the reducing of human life to the plane of mechanism, to permit her to base her educational efforts upon a utilitarian foundation. She sought to cultivate that "sensibility which has its seat in the heart rather than in the nerves." Anything which detracted from modesty or delicacy, or tended to make a girl bold or forward, she severely rebuked. She taught the wastefulness of expending time upon the cultivation of a talent which one does not possess, and held that excessive cultivation of the aesthetic range of subjects contributes to a decline in those more stable factors upon which is based the security of states. Neither indelicate exposure of the person in style of dress nor extravagance in dancing found favor at her hands. Such were some of the views which were entertained and promulgated by the woman who created an epoch in the att.i.tude of society toward her s.e.x. She taught the dignity of womanhood, from which the duties of domesticity cannot detract, the performance of them as a function of womankind being of all things honorable. The pure common sense of Hannah More did for the women of her time the service which had failed of performance by the Church.

Pa.s.sing from the theoretical to the practical part of Hannah More's work, it is interesting to see her putting into effect her philanthropic labors. The people among whom she labored were dest.i.tute of almost everything that makes life comfortable. Among the Mendip Hills, out from Bristol, lived a wild, barbarous, lawless population, compared with which the millers and the colliers of the mines were mild and tractable. Among these people Hannah More established her schools. Some of the children had already had the schooling of the prison, and all of them had been tutored in vice beyond comprehension for persons so young. Hannah More's schemes were regarded by many as visionary and impracticable, and received opposition from sources where sympathy and helpfulness were to be expected. Gradually, however, her school work was extended until it covered an area of twenty-eight miles.

In the Sunday schools the children received religious instruction, and in the day schools they were taught to spin flax and wool. No missionary bishop travelled more constantly, no Methodist itinerant cultivated his circuit district more a.s.siduously, than did Hannah and her sister Patty More their lay diocese. The many difficulties which had to be overcome by them cannot be appreciated by workers among the dest.i.tute to-day, with all the appliances and books and methods which represent a century's experience in such lines. Nothing of the sort was to hand for these sisters; but Hannah More was an author as well as a philanthropist, and the tales for the interest and instruction of the children she wrote herself.

While Hannah More lived and worked in the eighteenth century, her life's service extended over into the nineteenth century also. She was a contemporary of Miss Mitford, Mary Carpenter, Mrs. Summerville, and Maria Edgeworth. The eighteenth century brought forth the women who were to carry into the nineteenth century the elements of service for society, which were to be like the seed sown in good ground and to bring forth the maximum fold of fruitage.

The national system of education had not been developed in the eighteenth century, making the acquirement of an education somewhat dependent upon individual circ.u.mstances as affected by personal ambitions. There was nothing in the way of general education for women. But the dawn of better things intellectually was shown by the development of a group of women of literary comprehension and productivity, who formed a set apart and yet were in a real sense prophets in a wilderness, proclaiming the democracy of letters. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes very bitterly of the low esteem in which was held the intellectuality of the s.e.x, and in speaking of the study of cla.s.sics, says: "My s.e.x is usually forbid studies of this nature, and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere we are sooner pardoned any excesses of that, than the least pretensions to reading or good sense.... Our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes are daily entertained with. This custom so long established and industriously upheld makes it even ridiculous to go out of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses as if it was a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with other women of quality, whose birth and leisure only serve to render them the most useless and most worthless part of the creation. There is hardly a creature in the world more despicable or more liable to universal ridicule than a learned woman! These words imply, according to the received sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain, and conceited creature.... The Abbe Bellegarde gives a reason for women's talking over much: they know nothing, and every outward object strikes their imagination and produces a mult.i.tude of thoughts, which, if they knew more, they would know not worth thinking of. I am not now arguing for an equality of the two s.e.xes. I do not doubt G.o.d and nature have thrown us into an inferior rank; we are a lower part of the creation, we owe obedience and submission to the superior s.e.x, and any woman who suffers her folly and vanity to deny this rebels against the laws of the Creator, and indisputable order of nature; but there is a worse effect than this, which follows the careless education given to women of quality--it's being so easy for any man of sense, that finds it either his interest or his pleasure to corrupt them. The common method is to begin by attacking their religion: they bring a thousand fallacious arguments their excessive ignorance hinders them from refuting; and, I speak now from my own knowledge and conversation among them, there are more atheists among the fine ladies than among the lowest sort of rakes." This bitter plaint of a lady of quality, with its humiliating acknowledgment of the inferiority of her s.e.x and the hopelessness of that inferiority, sounds very pathetic in the light of the present-day estimate of woman and her acknowledged equality with man in all matters, saving only in the exercise of the public functions for which the advocates of the full programme of woman's rights contend.

It is not surprising that women of intellectual gifts grew morbid under a sense of social inferiority; it is not strange that they hid their light under a bushel, and were afraid of acknowledging their talents or their aspirations, when men regarded learning for their daughters "as great a profanation as the clergy would do if the laity should undertake to exercise the functions of the priesthood." In matters intellectual, woman was negative. She must not embarra.s.s her superiors by displaying in their presence indications of talent or evidences of learning; her theories and opinions were not worthy of statement or consideration in the presence of the male s.e.x. Her gentility was one of breeding, but it did not involve the brain.

Of necessity the intellectual development of woman in such a mental atmosphere was slow. Her elevation was dependent upon an awakening of thought in all departments of life. There was lacking an incentive to intellectual industry when the fruits of such toil might not be enjoyed.

Under such adverse conditions, the names of the women of exceptional intellectual gifts in the eighteenth century const.i.tute a roll of honor worthy to be inscribed in every hall of learning devoted to the education of women. This literary coterie included, besides Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Parker, Mrs. Vesey, Hannah More, Mrs. Chapone, Elizabeth Carter, and Miss Talbot.

Lady Montagu was of an aggressive nature, and well fitted to conquer difficulties rather than to despair in their presence. She was a good cla.s.sical scholar, a student under Bishop Burnet, and was abreast of all the thought of her time. She is credited, among other things, with the courage to introduce the system of inoculation for smallpox, having had her son so treated.

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu was an insatiable devotee of society, and abounded with a fund of mirth for the enlivenment of the dullest company. In her correspondence, amid a lively flow of chatter, she introduces discussions of Dr. Middleton's _Life of Cicero_ and other critical and historical allusions relating to the cla.s.sic authors, and evinces familiarity with such literature. Again, she is found descanting in a critical vein on the qualities of Warburton's _Notes on Shakespeare_. Her observations upon English history are appreciative of its distinguis.h.i.+ng features. In these remarks she says: "In some reigns, the kingdom is in the most terrible confusion, in others it appears mean and corrupt; in Charles II.'s time, what a figure we make with French measures and French mistresses! But when our times are written, England will recover its glory; such conquests abroad, such prosperity at home, such prudence in council, such vigor in execution, so many men clothed in scarlet, so many fine tents, so many cannon that do not so much as roar, such easy taxes, such flouris.h.i.+ng trade! Can posterity believe it? I wish our history, from its incredibility, may not get bound up with fairy tales and serve to amuse children, and make nursery maids moralize." The same light touch and whimsical insight displayed in this quotation are evidenced in all her writings. It matters not the subject--b.a.l.l.s or books, flirtations or syllogisms, the same delicate vein of humor runs throughout them.

Miss Carter, the particular friend of Mrs. Montagu, frail in health and devoted, a beauty, a wit, a brilliant conversationalist, was yet of a much more retiring disposition than was her friend. She created no Hillstreet and Portman Square a.s.semblies, although she was by no means a recluse; and even if she did not have so strong a social following as Mrs. Montagu, her presence possessed charm for those who a.s.sembled about her. She had a wide acquaintance with literature, and patronized the libraries extensively; her linguistic accomplishments included French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and, most rare acquirement in those days, German. She was discriminating in her literary tastes, and is found commenting upon German books of fiction.

She says that they are dangerous for young people, for the reason that they possess the singular art of sanctifying the pa.s.sions. Mere sentimentality was repugnant to her feelings, and she dismissed from her attention a German book, with the expression: "A detestable book, but I know of no other in German that is exceptionable in the same horrid way."

Mrs. Vesey was another literary character whose salon, made thoroughly delightful, was frequented only by persons of the greatest culture.

Just how the name _bas-bleu_ came to be identified with the a.s.sembly which Mrs. Vesey gathered about her is not known. One explanation which was current at the time attributes the term to a foreign gentleman who was invited to go to either Mrs. Montagu's or Mrs.

Vesey's, and was a.s.sured as to the informality of the occasion by an acquaintance, who told him that full dress was quite optional, and, in fact, he might go in blue stockings if he was so minded. Other accounts do not agree with this; one lays the phrase at the door of Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, the naturalist, who always wore blue stockings; but it is a.s.serted by Miss Carter's biographer that Stillingfleet died before the name came into vogue. Hannah More, in some whimsical lines, describes a _bas-bleu_ a.s.sembly: