JE GARDE LA fidélité à tout le monde, j’essaye d’être toujours véritable, sincère, et fidèle à tous les hommes, et j’ai une tendresse de cœur pour ceux à qui Dieu m’a unis plus étroitement, et soit que je sois seul ou à la vue de tous les hommes, j’ai en toutes mes actions la vue de Dieu, qui les doit juger et à qui je les ai toutes consacrées. — PASCAL.
IF one is to believe some people, there are a certain number of unmarried ladies whose wail has of late been constantly dinning in the ears of the public, and who, with every comfort and necessary of life provided, are supposed to be pining away in lonely gloom and helplessness. There are a score of books written for their benefit with which they doubtless wile away their monotonous hours. Old Maids, spinsters, the solitary, heart-broken women of England, have quite a little literature of their own, which is not certainly cheering to our forlorn spirits. It demands a degree of public sympathy for this particular class which would be insulting almost in individual cases, except, indeed, that there are no individual cases, and very few, who, while desiring such commiseration for others, would not quite decline to present themselves as its deserving objects. To come forward, for instance, and say, ‘Oh, alas, alas! what a sad, dull, solitary, useless, unhappy, unoccupied life is mine! I can only see a tombstone at the end of my path, and willows and cypresses on either side, and flowers, all dead and faded, crumbling beneath my feet; and my only companions are memories, and hair ornaments, and ghosts, prosy, stupid old ghosts, who go on saying the same things over and over and over again, and twaddling about all the years that are gone away for ever.’ This is no exaggeration. This is what the ‘thoughtful’ spinster is supposed to say in her reflective moments. There are Sunsets of spinster life, Moans of old maids, Words to the wasted, Lives for the lonely, without number, all sympathising with these griefs, such as they are, urging the despondent to hide their sufferings away in their own hearts, to show no sign, to gulp their bitter draught, to cheer, tend, console others in their need, although unspeakably gloomy themselves. One book, I remember, after describing a life passed in abstract study, in nursing sick people, in visiting unhappy ones, in relieving the needy, exclaims (or something very like it):—’ But, ah! what at best is such a life as this, whose chief pleasures and consolations are to be found in the cares and the sorrows of others? Married life, indeed, has its troubles;’ these single but impartial critics generally go on to state; ‘but then there is companionship, sympathy, protection’ — one knows the sentence by heart. ‘Not so is it with those whose lonely course we should be glad to think that we had cheered by the few foregoing remarks, whose sad destiny has been pointed out by a not unfeeling hand. Who knows but that there may be compensation in a lot of which the blank monotony is at least untroubled by the anxieties, and fears, and hopes of the married?’ These are not the exact words, but it is very much the substance, of many of the volumes, as anybody who chooses may see. Where there really seems to be so much kindness and gentle-heartedness, one is the more impatient of a certain melancholy, desponding spirit, which seems to prevail so often. But what have the ladies, thus acknowledging their need, been about all these years? Who has forced them to live alone? Is there nobody to come forward and give them a lift? What possible reason can there be to prevent unmarried, any more than married, people from being happy (or unhappy), according to their circumstances — from enjoying other pleasures more lively than the griefs and sufferings of their neighbours? Are unmarried people shut out from all theatres, concerts, picture-galleries, parks, and gardens? May not they walk out on every day of the week? Are they locked up all the summer time, and only let out when an east wind is blowing? Are they forced to live in one particular quarter of the town? Does Mudie refuse their subscriptions? Are they prevented from taking in The Times, from going out to dinner, from match-making, visiting, gossiping, drinking tea, talking, and playing the piano? If a lady has had three husbands, could she do more? May not spinsters, as well as bachelors, give their opinions on every subject, no matter how ignorant they may be; travel about anywhere, in any costume, however convenient; climb up craters, publish their experiences, tame horses, wear pork-pie hats, write articles in the Saturday Review? They have gone out to battle in top-boots, danced on the tight-rope, taken up the Italian cause, and harangued the multitudes. They have gone to prison for distributing tracts; they have ascended Mont Blanc, and come down again. They have been doctors, lawyers, clergywomen, squires — as men have been milliners, dressmakers, ballet-dancers, ladies’ hair-dressers. They have worn waistcoats, shirt-collars, white neckcloths, wideawakes. They have tried a hundred wild schemes, pranks, fancies; they have made themselves ridiculous, respected, particular, foolish, agreeable; and small blame to them if they have played their part honestly, cheerfully, and sincerely. I know of no especial ordinance of nature to prevent men, or women either, from being ridiculous at times; and we should hate people a great deal more than we do, if we might not laugh at them now and then. To go back to our spinsters, they have crossed the seas in shoals, been brave as men when their courage came to be tried; they have farmed land, kept accounts, opened shops, inherited fortunes, played a part in the world, been presented at Court. What is it that is to render life to them only one long regret? Cannot a single woman know tenderest love, faithful affection, sincerest friendship? And if Miss A. considers herself less fortunate than Mrs. B., who has an adoring husband always at home, and 10,000l. a year, she certainly does not envy poor Mrs. C., who has to fly to Sir Cresswell Cresswell to get rid of a ‘life companion’ who beats her with his umbrella, spends her money, and knocks her down instead of ‘lifting her up.’ With all this it is dismally true that single women many, and many of them, have a real trouble to complain of; and one which is common also to married people, that is, want of adequate means; and when the barest necessaries are provided, life can only be to many a long privation; from books, from amusement, from friendly intercourse, from the pleasure of giving, and from that social equality which is almost impossible without a certain amount of money; but then surely it is the want of money, and not of husbands, which brings such things to this pass. Husbands, the statistics tell us, it is impossible to provide; money, however, is more easily obtained. For mere sentimental griefs for persons whose comforts are assured, and whose chief trouble is that they do not like the life they lead, that they have aspirations and want sympathy, I think fewer books of consolation might suffice. The great Times newspaper alone, as it turns its flapping page, contains many an answer to our questions; and it might supply more than one need for each separate want, and change how many vague things, dull dreams, hopeless prayers, into facts, human feelings, boys and girls, into work, into pains and sympathy, into old shoes, and patches, and rags, and darns, into ignorance and dawning knowledge and gratitude. The whole clamour is so much mixed up together that it is very difficult to separate even facts and feelings from one another. It is not the sorrow of others which makes the happiness of those who are able to find out some means for lessening that sorrow, but the relief of their relief which can only be truly earned and felt by those who have worked for it. And the best work and the most grateful surely. No one can witness the first-fruits of such good labour without coming away, for a little time at least, more Christian and gentle-hearted. But it can only be by long patience and trouble that such things can be achieved. For to sympathise, I suppose people must know sorrow in some measure; to help they must take pains; to give they must deny themselves; to know how to help others best they must learn themselves. And the knowledge of good and of evil, as it is taught to us by our lives, is a hard lesson indeed; learnt through failure, through trouble, through shame and humiliation, forgotten, perhaps neglected, broken off, taken up again and again. ‘With pauses oft a many and silence strange, And silent oft it seems when silent it is not; Revivals, too, of unexpected change...’ This lesson taught with such great pains has been sent to all mankind — not excepting old maids, as some people would almost have it: such persons as would make life one long sentimental penance, during which single women should be constantly occupied, dissecting, inspecting, regretting, examining themselves, living among useless little pricks and self-inflicted smarts, and wasting wilfully, and turning away from the busy business of life, and still more from that gracious gift of existence, and that bounty of happiness and content, and gratitude, which all the clouds of heaven rain down upon us. When one sees what some good women can do with great hearts and small means, how bravely they can work for others and for themselves, how many good chances there are for those who have patience to seek and courage to hold, how much there is to be done — and I do not mean in works of charity only, but in industry, and application, and determination — how every woman in raising herself may carry along a score of others with her — when one sees all this, one is ashamed and angry to think of the melancholy, moping spirit within us which, out of sheer dulness and indolence, would tempt many of us to waste hours of daylight in gloomy sentiment and inertness. I do not mean that this is the habitual spirit of the self-denying and self-concentrated persons of whom I have just been, speaking, for honest and persistent efforts must make themselves respected in any form. I suppose I am addressing that vague, but useful offending scapegoat that all advice-givers, advertisers, and article-writers attack. It misbehaves in every convenient manner in order to give the wrath-pots of eloquence an opportunity of pouring out. Statistics are very much the fashion now-a-days, and we cannot take up a newspaper or a pamphlet without seeing in round numbers that so many people will do so and so in the course of the year; so many commit murder, so many be taken up for drunkenness, so many subscribe to the ‘London Journal,’ so many die, so many marry, so many quarrel after, so many remain single to the end of their lives, of whom so many will be old maids in the course of time. This last number is such an alarming one, that I am afraid to write it down; but it is natural to suppose that out of these latter thousands a certain number must be in want of some place where they can have lunch and tea more quietly, and cheaply, and comfortably served than at a pastrycook’s shop. Fifteen years ago good tea and bread and butter for sixpence, and dinner off a joint, with potatoes, for ninepence, were to be had at a little reading-room in Langham Place, which things must, I should think, have been a boon to a good many who were perhaps out and about all day, earning their sixpences and ninepences. The ladies might not only partake of all these, and other delicacies, and join in intellectual conversation, but go upstairs and read the Times, and the ‘Englishwoman’s Journal,’ and the ‘Cornhill Magazine,’ &c. &c., and write their letters on neatly stamped paper when the meal was over. The governesses and hard-working ladies, however, did not seem to frequent this liberal-minded little refreshment-room as much as might have been expected; changes were made, the Englishwoman’s reading-room was closed after a useful and original life of some ten years’ duration; and the Berners Street Club was then started with the same object. It is a well-furnished home-like place, with armchairs, food, literature. I went there one evening in the dusk and found some ladies comfortably established at one of the tables in the dining-room with something smoking before them and a waitress in attendance, while upstairs a reader was sitting in the drawing-room absorbed in a novel and an armchair. The housekeeper let me see the tariff of the charges. There is a dinner at one o’clock to which some students from the Royal Academy often come; later in the day people order what they want from the carte. Notwithstanding the rise of coals and meat, the prices are not less moderate than they were at the former club fifteen years ago: — were among a few of the items. It is a nice old house with a Georgian face, an old-fashioned staircase; the dining-room is downstairs, and the reading-room is above, with a request for silence and missing volumes to be returned, on the door. In the drawing-room any amount of conversation is tolerated, and visitors, ladies and gentlemen too, are admitted. The drawing-room table seemed to me, as far as I could judge, to be as liberal and well supplied as the dining-room. Half-a-dozen morning papers, for breakfast, hot from the printing press; no lack of solid reading, besides lighter stores upon the shelves neatly served in calf, and monthly entrées of magazines and quarterlies. These refreshments may be partaken of all the days of the week from eight in the morning till half-past ten at night. The annual subscription is a pound and the entrance-fee five shillings. Perhaps some people may think some great moral experiment is involved in the existence of this little place, but it is a pity to mix up social science with cups of tea; and this establishment has no more sinister intention than that of providing a little rest, food, and intelligent relaxation for any who may wish to avail themselves of it. It cannot of course attempt to compete with any of the clubs in Pall Mall, economy is studied perforce; perhaps at some future time, when women’s work is better paid, and education is a liberal profession for women as well as for men, economy may give way and more spacious comfort be secured. [On the ground floor of the Ladies’ Club in Berners Street, there is the office for the franchise of women. An uninterested person, not long ago, coming in and receiving a courteous reply to a few passing questions, could not help feeling ashamed of a certain conscious and accepted ignorance, as there contrasted with the courage and liberality which has prompted certain ladies to attempt to urge the rights of the lazy and uninterested people who have not even cared to take trouble to think out a serious subject. These ladies feel that justice (if justice it is) has nothing to do with that acknowledged apathy of ‘half the women of England’ who do not care for votes, and whose supineness in the Attorney-General’s eyes is a good reason for not giving the Franchise to those persons who do happen to care for it. The ideal woman as one imagines her is no social failure. She is calm, beautiful, dignified and gentle, not necessarily accomplished, but she must be intelligent, a good administrator, wise and tender by instinct; for my own taste, she should have perhaps a gift for music, and a natural feeling for art and suitability in her home — and beyond this home she should have an interest large enough to care for other people and other things, nor should that which affects the world and her own country-people’s welfare be indifferent to her. If she is able to rule her household, to bring up her sons and daughters in love and in truth, and to advise her husband with sense and composure, she may perhaps be trusted in time with the very doubtful privilege of a 5,000th voice in the election of a member for the borough.] Somebody says somewhere, that it is better a thousand times to earn a penny than to save one. I have just been learning how, in a few cases, this penny may be earned by women. There are — to give the first instance which comes to me — Schools of Art all over the kingdom, where young men and young women are taught the same things by the same masters. It is a fact that the women generally take higher places than the men in the examinations; and when they leave, a person in authority has assured me that he did not know of one single instance where they had failed to make their way. They can earn generally from one hundred to two hundred a year. This is by teaching privately or in government schools, and by designing for manufacturers. One girl that I have heard of was engaged at two hundred a year to invent patterns for table-cloths all day long for some great Manchester firm. I think the melancholy books themselves nearly all most sensibly urge upon parents their duty either to make some provision for their daughters or to help them early in life to help themselves. For troubles come — sad times come — and it is hard to look out for a livelihood with eyes blinded by tears. It is now about sixteen years since a society was started, called the ‘SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN’ of which the object is so good that I should think there must be few who will not sympathise with it. ‘Miss Boucherett and a few ladies,’ says the report, ‘feeling deeply the helpless and necessitous condition of the great number of women obliged to resort to nondomestic industry as a means of subsistence, consulted together as to the best way in which they might bring position and influence to their aid.... They resolved on the formation of a new society, which should have for its object the opening of new employments to women, and their more extensive admission into those branches of employment already open to them.’ The report goes on to describe briefly enough some of the difficulties which at once occurred to them. Among others, where they should begin their experiment. ‘For highly-educated women, we could for a time do nothing; women of no education could do nothing for us. That is to say, we could open no new channels for the labour of the former, and our experiments would have failed, owing to the inefficiency of the latter. But we felt convinced that in whatever direction we made an opening, the pressure upon all ranks of working women would be lessened.’ It has not been idle during the past fifteen years. This society has continued in apprenticing girls to hair-dressing, printing, law-copying, dial-painting, sunglass engraving. It is making inquiries in other directions, but it finds many obstacles in its way. Apprenticeship is expensive, very few of the girls who come to them can give the time to learn a new trade. They almost all want immediate work and payment, and something to do which needs no learning nor apprenticeship. Can one wonder how it is that women earn so little and starve so much? I once saw a dismal list belonging to the secretary of the society, which tells of certain troubles in a very brief and business-like way. Here is — ‘Miss A., aged 30, daughter of a West Indian merchant, reduced to poverty by his failure: highly educated, but not trained to anything. Just out of hospital. Wants situation as nursemaid, without salary. ‘Miss B., aged 30. Father speculated, and ruined the family, which is now dependent on her. He is now old, and she has a sister dying. ‘Miss C., aged 50. Willing to do anything. ‘Miss D., aged 30. Obliged by adverse circumstances to seek employment: unsuited for teaching. ‘Mrs. E., widow, with four daughters, aged from 14 to 23. Not trained to anything, imperfectly educated, lost large property by a lawsuit. ‘Mrs. R, husband in America, appears to have deserted her. Wants immediate employment. ‘Mrs. G., aged 55; husband, a clergyman’s son, ill and helpless. Would do anything. Go out as charwoman. Orderly and methodical in her habits. Applied at St. Mary’s Hospital, refused as being too old. ‘Miss H., aged 30, clergyman’s daughter, governess seven years. Dislikes teaching, is suffering in consequence of overwork.’ One has no training, no resources; another poor thing says she is neither well educated nor clever at anything; she had a little money of her own, but lent it to her brother, and lost it. ‘Miss I., energetic, willing to do anything. ( J., middle-aged woman, not trained to anything in particular; tried to live by needlework, and failed.’ Here we are only at J, and there are yet alphabets and alphabets of poor souls all ready to tell the same story, more or less, whom this friendly society is endeavouring to help. At that time the society had already opened two little establishments that were making their way in the world with every chance of prosperity and success. One was the law-copying office in Portugal Street, and the other the printing press in Great Coram Street, which, as I was told, was better known, and where twice as many hands were employed. To this printing-house in Great Coram Street we went, my friend A. and I; A. telling me, as we drove along, of all the thought, and pains, and money the house had cost. The money it is already giving back; the kind thought and trouble will be paid in a different coin. One of the best hands in the office, A. said, is a poor printer’s daughter from Ireland, who learnt the business there at her father’s press. After his death, she fell into great poverty and trouble, and could find no work nor way of living, when one day she happened to pick up an old torn newspaper, in which she read some little account of the Victoria Press. She set off immediately, begged her way all the way to London, and arrived one day covered with grime and rags, to ask Miss Faithfull to take her in. There was another printress whom I saw diligently at work, a little deaf and dumb girl, who had been trained in the office. I scarcely know if I may-say so here, but I know that the printers in this office are trained to better things still than printing. The workwomen are paid by the piece at the same rate as men are paid. The money is well-earned money, for the work is hard; but not so hard — and, I think, some of these very women could tell us so — as working button-holes fourteen hours a day at five farthings an hour, selling life, and spirit, and flesh, and blood, in order not to die. Here are eighteen and twenty shillings to be made a week between nine and six o’clock, except, of course, when some sudden press of business obliges them to work on late into the night. On the ground-floor there is an office, a press-room, a store-room; down below, a dining-room, where the women cook their dinners if they like, and rest for an hour in the middle of the day. On the first floor are work-rooms. The front one is filled up with wooden desks, like pews, running from the windows, and each holding three or four young women. At right-angles with the pews run long tables, loaded with iron frames and black sheets of type, which are being manipulated by two or three men in dirty-white paper caps. There are also men to print off, and do all the heavy work, which no woman’s strength would be equal to. It is a very busy, silent colony; a table of rules is hanging up on the wall, and I see NO TALKING ALLOWED printed up in fiery letters. All the tongues are silent, but the hands go waving, crossing, recrossing. What enchantresses, I wonder, weaving mystic signs in the air, ever worked to such good purpose! Backwards, forwards, up and down, there goes a word for a thousand people to read; hi, presto! and the GUINEA BASSINET is announced in letters of iron. Besides all the enchantresses, there is a little printer’s devil, who haunts the place, and seems to have à very pleasant time there, and to be made a great deal of by all the womankind. He has a pair of very rosy cheeks, he wears a very smart little cap, with ‘Victoria Press’ embroidered upon it, and he goes and waits in the halls, and sends up for the ladies’ manuscript, just like any other printer’s devil one has ever heard of. ‘The Society for the Employment of Women apprenticed five girls to me,’ says Miss Faithfull, describing their start, ‘at premiums of 10l. each. Others were apprenticed by relations and friends, and we soon found ourselves in the thick of the struggle — When you remember that there was not one skilled compositor in the office, you will readily understand the nature of the difficulties we had to encounter. Work came in immediately from the earliest day. In April we commenced our first book.’ Everybody, I think, must wish this gallant little venture good speed, and all the success it deserves. Here is one more extract about the way in which the printers themselves look at it: — ‘The introduction of women into the trade has been contemplated by many printers. Intelligent workmen do not view this movement with distrust. They feel very strongly that woman’s cause is man’s, and they anxiously look for some opening for the employment of those otherwise solely dependent upon them.’ And I feel bound to add that I have seen exactly a contrary statement in another little pamphlet, written by another member of the society. The other place to which we went was a law stationer’s in Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn, where are a series of offices and shops in which lawyer’s clerks, I believe, go and buy all those red tapes, blue bags, foolscap papers, plain or over-written, in stiff, upright, legible handwriting — all of which seem to play such an important part in the legislature of the country. Blue paper, white paper, of a dozen tints, ruled, unruled, abbreviations, erasures, ordered, permitted, forbidden — all these things are decreed by certain laws, which are as much the laws of the land as 3 Vict, or 18 Geo. III., which one reads about in the newspapers. All this was good-naturedly explained to us by the manager of this copying office, into which we were invited to enter by an elaborate hand hanging up on the wall, and pointing with a pen, which was ornamented by many beautiful flourishes. I was rather disappointed to find the place perfectly light and clean, without any of the conventional dust and spiders’ webs about. The manager sitting in a comfortable little room, the clerks busy at their desks in another — very busy, scarcely looking up as we go in, and working away sedulously with steel pens. I am told that the very first thing they learn, when they come in, is to stick their pens behind their ears. There were about ten of them, I think. The manager told us that they were paid, like the printers, by the piece, and could earn from fifteen to twenty-four shillings a week; receiving three-halfpence a folio, or twopence a folio, according to the difficulty of the work. They go on from ten till about six. This business, however, cannot be counted on with any certainty; sometimes there is a press of work which must be done, and then the poor clerks sit up nearly all night, scratching with wearied pens, and arrive in the morning with blear eyes, and pale faces, and fit for very little. Then, again, there is comparatively nothing going on; and they sit waiting in the office, working and embroidering, to pass the time. The idea of clerks embroidering in their office, and of young women with pens behind their ears, bending over title-deeds and parchments, seemed rather an incongruous one; but young women must live somehow, and earn their daily bread; and a great many of these had tried and failed very often before they drifted into Miss Rye’s little office. It was opened some ten months ago, she told us, by the Society, and was transferred to her in November, and already begins to pay its own expenses. It was very uphill work at first. The copyists were new to their work; the solicitors chary of reading it. Many of their clerks, too, seemed averse to the poor ladies. Others, however, were very kind; and one, in particular, came to see Miss Rye of his own accord, to tell her of some mistakes which had been made, and gave her many useful hints at the same time. Without such help, she said, they never could have got on at all. Now the drudgery is overcome, the little office is flourishing; the steel pens find plenty of work to do. One of the copyists is a widow, and supports two children; another is a Quaker lady, who writes the most beautiful hand imaginable. Applicants come every day to be taken in, and Miss Rye says that if they seem at all promising she is only too glad to engage them; but many and many of them lose courage, cry off at the last moment, find the occupation too severe, the distance too great, would like to come sometimes of an afternoon, and so go off to begin their search anew after that slender livelihood that seems so hard to win — so hard in some cases, that it is death as well as life that poor creatures are earning, as they toil on day by day, almost contented, almost cheerful. Ladies — those unlucky individuals whose feelings have been trained up to that sensitive pitch which seems the result of education and cultivation, and which makes the performance of the common offices of life a pain and a penalty to them — might perhaps at a pinch find a livelihood in either of these offices, or add enough to their store to enable them at least to live up to their cultivated feelings. At any rate, it must be less annoying and degrading to be occupied with work, however humble, than to contemplate narrower and narrower stintings and economies every day — economies which are incompatible with the very existence of cultivation and refinement. Scarcely any work that is honest and productive can be degrading. If a lady could earn 60l. a year as a cook, it seems to me more dignified to cook than to starve on a pittance of 30l. or 20l., as so many must do. Work may be wearily sought indeed, but it is to be found. By roadsides, in arid places, springing up among the thorns and stones. Patient eyes can see it, honest hands may gather; good measure, now and then pressed down and overflowing. Only poor women’s hands are bruised by the stones sometimes, and torn by the thorns. I seem to have been wandering all about London, and to have drifted away ever so far from the spinsters in whose company I began my paper. But is it so? I think it is they who have been chiefly at work, and taking us along with them all this time; I think it is mostly to their warm sympathy and honest endeavours that these places owe their existence — these, only a few among a hundred which are springing up in every direction: — springing up, helpful, forbearing, kindly of deed, of word, gentle of ministration, in the midst of a roaring, troublous city. Somehow grief, and shame, and pain, seem to bring down at times consolation, pity, love, as a sort of consequence. 1873. The writer has left these last few pages as they were written at the time, fifteen years ago or more, not because of the description they contain of things which have passed away, but for the sake of things that cannot pass away — a remembrance of the hands that marked this portion of the writer’s life. One hand — that which ruled and blessed at home — wrote a title to the rambling little paper; and then comes the remembrance of a woman’s hand, worn and delicate, yet ready with help for others in its slight and steady grasp, whose impress is on this page. The guiding companion whom I have called A is no longer among us, but her faithful light still burns as from a shrine, and falls upon many a dark and tortuous way, and its radiance still cheers and encourages many a lagging pilgrim. Adelaide Anne Procter is a household name to many and many of us, and her voice is not silent. The writer can recall the scene in the little copying office in Lincoln’s Inn, and still see the noble, worn face, the slender form leading the way, and the bright-haired lady who came smiling into the room with a welcome to her visitor. This lady also in these long fifteen years has won for herself a place in the ranks of those who have not grudged to give their life’s toil and generous hearts to others. Homes, husbands, sons, and daughters, such sacred ties are sweet, but they are not the only ones nor the only sacred things in life, and some examples seem indeed to show us that love may be strong enough and wide enough to take the world itself for a home, and the deserted for children, and the sick and the sorrowful for a family. Married or unmarried, such lives are not alone. Before concluding this little article, written from its double point of view and from the two ends of fifteen years, I cannot help adding a few words about some of the changes which have taken place in women’s work since it was first published. As regards this special Society for the Employment of Women, Miss King, the present secretary, tells me that among the experiments (some abandoned perforce, others continued) hair-dressing has perhaps been most thoroughly successful and well established. The following extract about Dispensers is also very interesting and hopeful: — ‘The demand for female dispensers is still small, but the efficiency displayed by those already engaged in this occupation will almost, as a matter of course, ensure an increase, and during the year two applications have been made for female dispensers, which the committee was unable to meet, having no one qualified to undertake the duties. The opinion of a doctor who has large experience in dispensers, both male and female, is interesting. He writes of a lady who was employed in a dispensary which he superintended: “She was one of the most efficient dispensers I have had under my direction, and I have had several, both male and female. My experience has led me to prefer an intelligent female to a male dispenser. I find they are more careful, neater, more courteous to the patients, and that although still a novelty, they are in no way taken exception to.”’ Miss King also tells me that there is a class at the Society’s office for book-keeping and arithmetic, which seems to answer admirably, and I again extract from the report showing the practical use of such instruction:— ‘Women who have obtained certificates seldom have to wait long for employment, and the reports received by the Society of the manner in which they discharge their duties are in almost all cases satisfactory. Captain Costyn, secretary of the Westminster Palace Hotel, wrote in April last as follows to the secretary: “For some time two young women educated in the institution have been employed in the office of this company, and, I am glad to say, before long a third will be established here. The conduct of the two has been so creditable, and the aptitude they have displayed for business so great, that I am induced to communicate with you and to ask whether it would be agreeable to you to receive particulars of any vacancy which may occur in the head office, though I trust the day may be distant when I lose the services of either. I may mention that in a fortnight all the clerks will be females.”’ The report goes on to say that ‘persons who have once had book-keepers from the Society constantly return for others when those they have obtained through the Society form engagements, or they require additional hands; and book-keepers who have once made a good start seldom find it necessary to put their names again on the register, which is, perhaps, the best guarantee that could be given of their success.’ Book-keepers in the house earn from 15l. to 50l. a year; out of the house from 10s. to 25s. weekly; for law writing the average for the year is only from 8s. to 15 s. a week. Miss King has collected an interesting table of the proportional wages of women; of these the highest are for trained artists and painters on china, who can earn from 3l. to 5l. weekly, and who seem to be the only well-paid workers on the list There are curious trades and details in the list. 18s. a week for sticking pins into paper is a liberal and unexpected item. Among the best paid workers are the colour stampers, who can earn from 20s. to 25s. The wages seem to rise immediately when the occupation ceases to be mechanical, and intelligence comes into play. These women, well or ill paid, have learnt their art, can use their tools, and are fortunate in having wherewithal to gain their honest daily bread, and to be able to look the future in the face. ‘But what is one to do,’ says the secretary, ‘for persons of 40 or 50 who come to one wanting employment for the first time, who have never learnt anything nor done anything in their life before? Though I write their names down on the registry, it is of little use; and yet it is a case of daily occurrence: nor does it much matter if it is that of a man or a woman.’ Let us hope, according to the present rate of progress, that in another forty years every woman will have learnt a trade. As regards teachers, Miss King told me that people now constantly ask for certificated teachers for their schools and their children, and it necessarily follows that such teachers stand in a far better position than they did before these certificates were given. There is certainly a different feeling about education now from that which formerly existed. The London Association of Schoolmistresses, established for the purpose of meeting and talking over matters concerned with education, indicates a new spirit and interest in the work. The Cambridge scheme for local examination has been of real and practical benefit, and there is also the system for education by correspondence. One friend, whom I will not name, has given leisure, energy, and resource to the work, and has sown his seed broadcast in the endeavour to raise the aim and widen the span of the ordinary schoolgirl mind. It is not so much at the onset of life, in the early spring-time, that the result of such teaching will tell; but a little later, when the time for the harvest comes round, and the fields are ripening, then the sheaves may be reaped and sorted, and the work of the labourer and the effort of the soil repaid. In education, that mighty field, as you sow the seed, that strange incongruous seed of human intelligence cast forth hour by hour in books and words, in the secret meditations, the works of the dead as well as the deeds of the living, so it grows again, new, revivified, gathering life from every breath of air and ray of light. But, nevertheless, it happens not unfrequently that while some good soil is utilised and worked and turned to good and useful ends, other soil not less good and fruitful is neglected or ill-treated and scantily supplied, diluted with platitude, planted with parsley and cucumbers and with asparagus, when under more favourable circumstances it might have grown wheat or wholesome crops in bountiful measure. What Arnold did for schoolboys and schoolmasters, inventing freedom for them and a rescue from the tyranny of common-place and opposition, and bringing in the life of truth and common sense to overwhelm schoolroom fetishes and opposition, some people have been trying to do for home-girls, schoolgirls, and their teachers, for whom surely some such revolution has long been needed. Of late years a very distinct impression has grown up (by the efforts of the people I am alluding to) that even schoolgirls and governesses are human beings, with certain powers of mind which are worthy of consideration, and for whom the best cultivation, as well as the worst, might be provided with advantage. The College for Ladies has proposed to itself some such aim of good teaching and intelligent apprehension. There is also a home at Cambridge for the use of ladies who wish to attend the professors’ lectures. When the home began, with Miss Clough as its principal, it only consisted of eight or nine pupils; there are now more than twenty, and the numbers are steadily increasing. The little home has moved from Regent Street, where it was first opened, to an old house in a green garden not far from the river, where the very elms and gables seem to combine in a tranquil concentration. The girls meet together, they are taught by people who do it from interest in the teaching itself; they come into contact with cultivated minds, perhaps for the first time in their lives. ( We teach the girls first for the examination which the university has instituted specially for women,’ writes a friend; ‘then if they like to stay on, we teach them further, just what we teach the young men. About half of them are preparing to be teachers; the rest come for pure love of learning. We do not want to have only the professional ones, though we are specially anxious to aid these.... ‘I am glad that you hear people speak favourably of the results of our examination. What we want to do is just what you describe — to aid in the great stimulus that is everywhere being given to girls’ education. This is good for all, while for the few to whom the acquisition of knowledge can be the pleasure or even the business of life, we want to provide guidance and encouragement, and a little material evidence if possible....’ ‘I have taught some of the girls. It was an instructive change from teaching men. Most of them insist on understanding what they learn, and won’t take words for thoughts. Even the stupider ones that I have met with in my teaching do not write the absolute rubbish which stupid men write. I mention this because most people would expect the opposite.’ What is it, then, that we would wish for, for ourselves and for the younger selves who are growing up around us? Eyes to see, ears to hear, sincerity and the power of being taught and of receiving the truth: and then, as I hear A. F. saying, by being taken out of ourselves, and farthest removed from this narrow domain into the world all about us, do we most learn to be ourselves and to fulfil the intention of our being. All nature comes to our help, all arts, all sciences. The track of stars, the vibration of strings, the chords of colour, the laws of motion, the unending secrets of truth — what is there that does not contribute to the divine reiteration? The problem of education is no sooner over than that of life itself begins. Very soon people begin to sort themselves out, to fall into their places; and then for the women who do not many comes a further question to solve, and some write books, and some write articles, and some put on long black cloaks, and some wear smart chignons, and the business of living goes on. For the motherly woman, those who have homely hearts, there are the real joys and fulfilments undreamt of perhaps in earlier life, when no compromise with perfect happiness seemed to be possible. The rest of the human race is not so totally devoid of all affection and natural feeling that it does not respond to the love and fidelity of an unmarried friend or relation. There are children to spare and to tuck up in their little beds, young people to bring their sunshine and interest into autumn; there are friendships lifelong and unchanging, which are surely among a single woman’s special privileges; as years go by she finds more and more how truly she may count upon them. Nor are her men friends less constant and reliable than the women with whom she has passed her life. Some amount of sentiment clings to these old men and women friendships: and some sentiment, perhaps, belongs to every true feeling; it is the tint that gives life to the landscape. As for work, whichever way we turn are the things that we have left undone. ‘Come, pluck us; come, pluck us!’ cry the fruits as they hang from the branches. There is education, there are associations for helping the poor, there are a thousand plans, schemes, enterprises, fitted to their different minds. Some go into sisterhoods and put their lives into the hands of others, who may or may not be wiser than themselves; others are nurses, administrators. We need not despair of seeing women officially appointed as guardians of the poor. As regarding the much debated question of religious and secular organisation, I cannot refrain from quoting a passage from a book, that speaks straightly and wisely in solution of a problem that has occurred to many hundreds of women before this: ‘Secular associations do not undertake to discipline the souls of their members, nor to afford them any special opportunity of expressing their devotion to God as the common Father, but they can no more hinder the expression of such feelings than they can hinder the growth of the soul. On the contrary, they give all the scope that naturally belongs to charitable action, for the expression of such feelings in deed as well as in word. They neither seek for nor value pain and humiliation as a means of proving devotion; on the contrary, they avoid all that might injure health, or distract attention, or encourage spiritual vanity as interruptions to the one main object — the good of the poor. Those who wish to see charitable organisations organised upon a purely secular basis wish it not only because they believe singleness of aim to be the first condition of perfect success; not only because ‘the poor will probably be most effectually served by those who do it from pure love of them, without thought of their own spiritual interests; not only because secular association breaks none of the domestic interests and social ties which they believe to be divinely appointed, and full both of blessing and power for all good ends; but also because they think that to provide an organisation for the systematic cultivation and exhibition of love and devotion, is to depart from Christian simplicity, and must tend in the long run to injure true humility, sincerity, and even the love and devotion themselves which are thus artificially stimulated.’ ‘They think that the only service of love which God, who sees the heart, can demand, is that of right action-disregarding pain, when necessary, in the discharge of duty, gladly accepting all innocent pleasure, and freely expressing itself in the spontaneous and unheard utterances of the heart as it looks up to Him for strength and guidance in the daily work undertaken, not to prove devotion, but out of the spirit of devotion, and in the path which appears to be pointed out by obedience to natural laws.’ ‘L’homme n’est ni ange ni bête,’ says Pascal; ‘et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête.’ But the angels and the beasts, far apart though they may be, come together both toiling in the field of life, each doing their part in the work: the beasts cultivate the ground, the angels reap and store the good grain. The bread of life itself cannot come to fruition without labour, and the sacrament of brotherly love, union, and faithful promise must be kneaded with toil.
