V.—Domestic Strife.

‘They tell us that woman was made of a ribJust picked from a corner so snug in the side;But the Rabbins swear to you that this is a fib,And ’twas not so at all that the sex was supplied.‘The old Adam was fashioned, the first of his kind,With a tail like a monkey, full yard and a span;And when Nature cut off this appendage behind,Why, then woman was made of the tail of the man.‘If such is the tie between women and men,The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf;For he takes to his tail, like an idiot, again,And makes a most damnable ape of himself.‘Yet, if we may judge as the fashion prevails,Ev’ry husband remembers the original plan,And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail,Why, he leaves her behind him as much as he can.’

‘They tell us that woman was made of a ribJust picked from a corner so snug in the side;But the Rabbins swear to you that this is a fib,And ’twas not so at all that the sex was supplied.

‘The old Adam was fashioned, the first of his kind,With a tail like a monkey, full yard and a span;And when Nature cut off this appendage behind,Why, then woman was made of the tail of the man.

‘If such is the tie between women and men,The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf;For he takes to his tail, like an idiot, again,And makes a most damnable ape of himself.

‘Yet, if we may judge as the fashion prevails,Ev’ry husband remembers the original plan,And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail,Why, he leaves her behind him as much as he can.’

And certainly Moore lefthiswife as much as possible, while he hob-nobbed with princes and was the lion of London salons.

But search the ranks of married men who have achieved fame, and few shall you find who found, and wed, their affinity. Affinities, it should seem, are rare when once you come to brains of more than ordinary calibre: your dull dog more readily finds his match than wits or witlings, and the community of the commonplace is an easier consummation than the happy combination of the unconventional.

The Struggle for the Breeches.

Marriedlife is one long series of compromises—when, indeed, it is not a state of open warfare. The ‘mere man’ must be a little less than just, and more than a little selfish, who would assure himself of retaining his authority over the (more or less) ‘pleasing partner of his heart;’ for woman, be she never so sweet and gracious, is always greedy of power and domination, and though with ‘sweet Nellie,’ your ‘heart’s delight,’ the wish to rule may be possibly but a harmless and altogether amiable eccentricity, and your abandonment to her humours the wearing of golden and purely ornamental fetters, yet in process of time your benevolent despot may become more despotic and less benevolent, and your chains transmuted to more sordid guise. But with imperious Julia orhaughty Georgina ’tis another matter from the first; your initial complaisance spells infirmity of purpose, and having once abdicated your authority, you are undone for always, and may for ever tarry in attendance upon the good lady’s whims and ‘ways,’ while acquaintances sit in the seat of the scorner and opine that not you but the woman ‘wears the breeches.’

O! most miserable and ineffectual of men; you who have the will-power of a jelly-fish and the courage of a cockroach! The ‘better half’ is not yourself; your partner has achieved her own ‘betterment,’ and your compensation is all to seek for the ‘worsement’ that remains your portion.

Life is compact of compromise, but keep it outside the home and rule absolute beneath your roof-tree. Then shall one have satisfaction and the other be convinced of orthodoxy in observing apostolic precepts. Compromise, as Captain de Valabrèque found, is pleasing to neither side. A friend discovered him dressing for dinner at an unusual hour, and, in reply to the friend’s inquiry, he said: ‘It suits my wife to dine at four, and it is convenient for me to dine at six; and so we sit down to table at five, which suits neither of us.’

Dual control, in fact, works smoothly neither socially nor politically, and though there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, folly abides in divided authority everywhere, and nowhere more certainly than in domestic matters.

The New Women—female gendarmes, censors of morals, and would-be domestic tyrants—are quite alive to these objections against the division of authority, but their agreement goes no further. ‘Woman ought to be and shall be’ the head of the family, they say, and no statement is too rash for woman on the war-path to make or subscribe. Woman has ever been a religious animal, and even the modern woman differs little from her forbears in this respect; but do just remind her of St. Paul’s views on the silence and subjection of her sex, and you learn that the militant saint was an ass—no less! And yet Paul remains the patron saint of the foremost diocese in Christendom. See to it, O New Woman! Disestablish him, and erect some more complaisant saint in his stead. Certainly his opinions and teaching flout the feminine Ego.2

‘No sensible woman,’ wrote one of the most sensible of her sex,3‘objects to acknowledging what is the fact, that she is physically and mentally inferior to man.... The position of woman has always been, and will be, a subject one.... The man has always been, and will continue to be, the head of the family, and the position of the woman, to my mind, is perfectly summed up in the words, “Her desire shall be to her husband, and he shall rule over her.”’

For women to claim supremacy comes somewhat too late in the day to be effectual. There is a very pretty paradox concealed in the fact that their numbers constitute their weakness, for numerical preponderance is usually found to be an increase of strength; but the converse is the case where women are concerned. A wife may be had for the mere asking by any man, so great is the excess of women, and still so widespread the old-fashioned and right-minded notion that marriage rounds off and completes a woman’s life. Scarce a man so ill-formed in mind or body, or so ill-found in worldly estate but could become a Benedick on the morrow, an he chose. Man’s supremacy must infallibly last while he remains in a minority. He is already perfectly conscious that there are not enough of him to go round, and that this fact puts a premium upon his sex; and he can afford to smile at the women who have theories and air them so persistently. Forhimself there is no occasion to protest so loudly, while nature continues to endow him with a larger quantity and a superior quality of brains: gives him greater bodily strength, and—best boon of all—keeps him in a minority.

And yet, although women are inferior to men in such important matters as intellect and strength, the ‘hen-pecked husband’ has ever been common, and the ‘wearing of the breeches’ by the wife has been a phrase, time out of mind, to denote

‘She who with furious blows and loud-tongued noiseDoth tempests in her quiet household raise.’

‘There is a proverbial phrase to signify that the wife is master in the household, by which it is intimated that “she wears the breeches.”’ The phrase is, it must be confessed, an odd one, and is only half-understood by modern explanations; but in mediæval story we learn how ‘she’ first put in her claim to wear this particular article of dress, how it was first disputed and contested, how she was at times defeated; but how, as a general rule, the claim was enforced. There was a French poet of the thirteenth century, Hugues Piancelles, two of whosefaiblaux, or metrical tales, entitled theFaiblau d’Estaumiand theFaiblau de Sire Hains et de Dame Anieuse, are preserved in manuscript, and have been printed in the collection of Barbazan. The second of these relates some of the adventures of a mediæval couple, whose household was not thebest regulated in the world. The name of the heroine of this story, Anieuse, is simply an old form of the French wordennuyeuse, and certainly Dame Anieuse was sufficientlyennuyeuseto her lord and husband. ‘Sire Hains,’ her husband, was, it appears, a maker of ‘cottes’ and mantles, and we should judge, also, by the point on which the quarrel turned, that he was partial to a good dinner. Dame Anieuse was of that disagreeable temper that, whenever Sire Hains told her of some particularly nice thing which he wished her to buy for his meal, she bought instead something which she knew was disagreeable to him. If he ordered boiled meat, she invariably roasted it, and further contrived that it should be so covered with cinders and ashes that he could not eat it. ‘This,’ observes Mr. Wright, ‘would show that people in the Middle Ages, except, perhaps, professional cooks, were very unapt at roasting meat.’ This state of things had gone on for some time, when one day Sire Hains gave orders to his wife to buy him fish for his dinner. The disobedient wife, instead of buying fish, provided nothing for his meal but a dish of spinach, telling him falsely that all the fish stank. This led to a violent quarrel, in which, after some fierce wrangling, especially on the part of the lady, Sire Hains proposes to decide their difference in a novel manner. ‘Early in the morning,’ he said, ‘I will take off my breeches and lay them down in the middle of the court, and the one who can win them shall beacknowledged to be master or mistress of the house.’

‘Le matinet sans contredireVoudrai mes braies deschaucier,Et enmui nostre cort couchier;Et qui conquerre les porra,Par bone reson monsterraQu’il est sire ou dame du nostre.’

Dame Anieuse accepted the challenge with eagerness, and each prepared for the struggle. After due preparation, two neighbours, friend Symon and Dame Aupais, having been called in as witnesses, and the breeches, the object of dispute, having been placed on the pavement of the court, the battle began, with some slight parody on the formalities of the judicial combat.

The first blow was given by the Dame, who was so eager for the fray that she struck her husband before he had put himself on his guard; and the war of tongues, in which at least Dame Anieuse had the best of it, went on at the same time as the other battle. Sire Hains ventured a slight expostulation on her eagerness for the fray, in answer to which she only threw in his teeth a fierce defiance to do his worst. Provoked at this, Sire Hains struck at her, and hit her over the eyebrows so effectively that the skin was discoloured; and, overconfident in the effect of this first blow, he began rather too soon to exult over his wife’s defeat. But Dame Anieuse was less disconcerted than he expected,and recovering quickly from the effect of the blow, she turned upon him and struck him on the same part of his face with such force, that she nearly knocked him over the sheepfold. Dame Anieuse, in her turn, now sneered over him, and while he was recovering from his confusion, her eyes fell upon the object of contention, and she rushed to it, and laid her hands upon it to carry it away. This movement roused Sire Hains, who instantly seized another part of the article of his dress of which he was thus in danger of being deprived, and began a struggle for possession, in which the said article underwent considerable dilapidation, and fragments of it were scattered about the court. In the midst of this struggle the actual fight recommenced, by the husband giving his wife so heavy a blow on the teeth, that her mouth was filled with blood. The effect was such that Sire Hains already reckoned on the victory, and proclaimed himself lord of the breeches.

‘Hains fiert sa fame enmi les denzTel cop, que la bouche dedenzLi a toute emplie de sancz“Tien ore,” dist Sire Hains, “ancJe cuit que je t’ai bien atainte,Or t’ai-je de deux colors tainte—J’aurai les braies toutes voies.”’

But the immediate effect on Dame Anieuse was only to render her more desperate. She quitted her hold on the disputed garment, and fell upon her husband with such a shower of blows that hehardly knew which way to turn. She was thus, however, unconsciously exhausting herself, and Sire Hains soon recovered. The battle now became fiercer than ever, and the lady seemed to be gaining the upper hand, when Sire Hains gave her a skilful blow in the ribs, which nearly broke one of them, and considerably checked her ardour. Friend Symon here interposed, with the praiseworthy aim of restoring peace before further harm might be done, but in vain, for the lady was only rendered more obstinate by her mishap; and he agreed that it was useless to interfere before one had got a more decided advantage over the other. The fight therefore went on, the two combatants having now seized each other by the hair of the head, a mode of combat in which the advantages were rather on the side of the male. At this moment one of the judges, Dame Aupais, sympathising too much with Dame Anieuse, ventured some words of encouragement, which drew upon her a severe rebuke from her colleague, Symon, who intimated that if she interfered again there might be two pairs of combatants instead of one. Meanwhile, Dame Anieuse was becoming exhausted, and was evidently getting the worst of the contest, until at length, staggering from a vigorous push, she fell back into a large basket which lay behind her. Sire Hains stood over her exultingly, and Symon, as umpire, pronounced him victorious. He thereupon took possession of the disputed article of raiment, and againinvested himself with it, while the lady accepted faithfully the conditions imposed upon her, and we are assured by the poet that she was a good and obedient wife during the rest of her life.

Man Mastered.[From a rare print after Van Mecken.]

Man Mastered.

[From a rare print after Van Mecken.]

In this story, which affords a curious picture of mediæval life, we learn the origin of the proverb relating to the possession and the wearing of the breeches. Hugues Piancelles concludes hisfaiblauby recommending every man who has a disobedient wife to treat her in the same manner; and mediæval husbands appear, to have followed his device without fear of laws against the ill-treatment of women.

Van Mecken, a Flemish artist who flourished in the fifteenth century, has left a record of domesticstrife in an engraving which shows the wife as victor in the struggle for the breeches; and an ungenerous victor she would seem to have been, judging from the picture, where she is seen engaged at once in putting on the hard-won garments and striking her husband on the head with a distaff. He, poor fellow, is following, under compulsion, some merely feminine occupation, and seems to find it uncongenial.

A Judicial Duel.[From an old German MS.]

A Judicial Duel.

[From an old German MS.]

In Germany, during mediæval times, domestic differences were settled by judicial duels between man and wife, and a regular code for their properconduct was observed. ‘The woman must be so prepared,’ so the instructions run, ‘that a sleeve of her chemise extend a small ell beyond her hand like a little sack: there indeed is put a stone weighing iii pounds; and she has nothing else but her chemise, and that is bound together between the legs with a lace. Then the man makes himself ready in the pit over against his wife. He is buried therein up to the girdle, and one hand is bound at the elbow to the side.’

The seventeenth century seems to have been prolific of domestic broils, for an unusual number of pamphlets exist which have as their subject the attempts of women to obtain the upper hand over their husbands. One there is, calledWomen’s Fegaries, which is especially bitter. A spirited woodcut on the cover shows a man and woman struggling for a pair of breeches, which certainly would be no gain to either of them, except as a trophy of victory, so immensely large are they. The woman wields a ladle; the man brandishes something that may be either a sword or a cudgel, and both seem in deadly earnest. The contents of this counterblast to women’s efforts are extravagant and amusing; but you shall judge for yourself:—

‘The proverb says, “There is no wit like the woman’s wit,” especially in matters of mischief, their natures being more prone to evil than good; for, being made of a knobby crooked rib, they contain something in their manners and dispositions of thematter and form of which they were created, as may be instanced in several examples, of which we shall in this sheet of paper give you some of them.

‘At a town calledStocking Pelham, in the county [sic] of England, not long ago there happened a terrible fray betwixt the man of the house on one side, and his wife and his maid on the other side, and though two to one be great odds at football, yet, by the strength of his arm, and a good crab-tree cudgel, they felt by their bruised sides that he had gotten the victory. Now, though the man’s name wasWilliam, yet the wife for a great while did want herWill—I mean, how to be revenged upon him—until at last she effected, by policy, what she could not compass by strength; for he, putting his head out of a window that had neither Glass nor Lettice belonging to it, but only a riding shutter, he having no eyes behind him, she nimbly stept to the shutter, and ran it up close to his neck, so that he was locked fast, as in a Pillory; where, whilst the one kept him in, the other with a great washing-beetle, belaboured his body, as your Seamen do stock-fish. The maid-servant, a strong-docht wench, with both her hands laying on, and at every blow saying:—

‘“Remember how you beat my dame:Now look for to be served the same.”

‘The poor man, to be rid of his tormentors, was glad to pray, crave, and entreat, and promise whatsoever they would have him, vowing never after touse Crab-tree Cudgel again, nor so much as to eat of Mustard, if it were made of Verjuice, out of detestation to Crabs and Crab-trees.

‘Thus, women, you may learn a ready wayTo make resisting husbands to obey:Although to baste your sides their fingers itches,You may, by policy, obtain the breeches.

‘It is in the memory of man, since inBlack-Fryersa Taylor and his Wife fell out about superiority. The Taylor fretted, and his Wife scolded, whereupon this ninth part of a man challenged her out into the street to try the conquest, having provided broom-staves there for that purpose. Being both entered the lists, the woman thought it best policy to begin first, and, catching up a Ram’s Horn, which lay at her foot, she threw it at her husband, which by chance lighted on his forehead at the great end, and stuck there as fast as ever it grew upon the Ram’s head; which, having done, she ran in at the door again. The Taylor, being mad to be served so, went to run after her, but, making more haste than good speed, he ran his horn into the staple of the door, where he was so entangled by his brow antlers, that he could stir no further, which the woman perceiving, she got up one of the broom-staves, and so belaboured poorPilgarlick, that, in great humility, he asked her forgiveness, and resigned the right of the breeches up to her.

‘’Twas in the sound ofClerkenwellbells, andtherefore of long standing, that a Plaisterer had gotten a most damnable Scold to his wife, who used to fetch him from the Ale-house. One night, coming home three-quarters drunk, she acted the part ofZantippe, and made the house to Ring with her scolding. This music was so untunable in her Husband’s Ears, that, getting a cudgel in his hands, he fell to belabouring her until he made her to ask him for forgiveness, and promise never to scold so again. Having thus, as he thought, got an absolute conquest over her tongue, he went quietly to bed, where he slept soundly, whilst she lay awake studying of mischief. In the morning, before he awaked, she examined his pockets for money (the common tricks of a good many women), but found nothing in them, save only some lath nails; these did she take and set upright all about the room, which done, she gets a Pail of Water in her hands, and, calling aloud, commanded him to rise, which he refused to do; whereupon she throws the pail of water upon the bed. This so vexed him that, starting suddenly up, he went to run after her; when his naked feet lighting upon the lath nails, he was forced to slacken his pursuit, being so mortified with them that he could neither stand nor walk. Whereupon his wife, taking the same cudgel he had beaten her withall the night before, told him thatwhat was sauce for a Goose was sauce for a Gander, and so be-rib-roasted him, that with great penitency he now asked her forgiveness, resigning the wholeright and title of the Breeches unto her, and that though he was superior to her in strength, yet he was inferior to her in policy.’

‘When as that women do themselves applyTo mischief, they perform it readily.Nothing will serve them when their fingers itchesUntil such time they have attained the breeches.Be it to scold, to brangle, scratch, or fight,Their hands are heavy though their tails are light.

‘In that part ofAlbionwhich is calledVeal Country, there formerly lived a merry saddler who had gotten a scolding carrion to wife that would frequent the ale-house almost every day, from which he was forced to fetch her home at night, where he would bestow some rib-roast upon her to give her a breathing that she might not grow foggy with drinking so much ale. However, the woman did not take it so kindly but that she vowed to be revenged upon him for it; and to put her determination into practice, one day she asked two of her boon companions to get her husband to the ale-house and make him drunk, which they performed according to her desire, leading him home about ten o’clock at night, and placing him in a chair with a good fire before him, where he presently fell fast asleep: now had the woman a fit opportunity to put her design into practice, when pulling out his feet towards the fire, and the fire so near towards them as it almost touched them, she went to bed,when quickly his shoes began to fry, and his feet were mortified with the burning, so that he made a most sad, dolorous noise. She, knowing the fish was caught that she had laid wait for, went down with a good ashen wand in her hand. “You ill-conditioned slave,” quoth she, “must you come home drunk and make such a noise that one cannot rest in quiet for you? I will make you to roar for something,” and thereupon fell on him with as much Fury as a Pyrat doth on a Merchant’s bark. The poor Sadler was forced to endure all, for he could not help himself; but, desiring her to be merciful, he resigned up the breeches to her, she tryumphing in her double conquest, first paying him who used to pay her, and, secondly, bringing him into that condition that for three-quarters of a year afterwards he did not stir out of doors to fetch her from the ale-house:—

‘Women, like pismires, have their sting,And several ways to pass their ends do bring.Their tongues are nimble, nor their hands crazy,Although to work, each limb they have is lazy.

‘Many other examples might we instance of the imperiousness of women, and what stratagems they have invented for gaining the Breeches from their Husbands, but these I think may suffice for one single sheet of paper, and, indeed, as many as can well be afforded for four Farthings; but least any one should complain of a hard pennyworth, tomake him amends, I will afford him a song into the bargain:—

‘When women that they do meet together,Their tongues do run all sorts of weather,Their noses are short, and their tongues they are long,And tittle, tittle, tattle is all their song.

‘Now that women (like the world) do grow worse and worse, I have read in a very learned authour, viz.,Poor Robin’s Almanack, how that about two hundred and fifty years ago (as near as he could remember) there was a great sickness almost throughout the whole world, wherein there dyed Forty-five millions, eight hundred, seventy-three thousand, six hundred and ninety-two good women, and of bad women only three hundred, forty and four; by reason whereof there hath been such a scarcity of good women ever since: the whole breed of them being almost utterly extinct.’

And so an end. But the author of this pamphlet is not alone in his satires of domestic infelicity. Here you shall see, inThe Woman to the Plow, how these things struck our forbears. He has good ideas, this seventeenth-century versifier, but his gifts in the matter of rhyme and rhythm are all too slight:—

OR, A FINE WAY TO CURE A COT QUEAN.

Both men and women, listen well,A merry jest I will you tell,Betwixt a good man and his wifeWho fell the other day at strife.He chid her for her huswivery,And she found fault as well as he.

He says:—

‘Sith you and I cannot agree,Let’s change our work’—‘Content,’ quoth she.‘My wheel and distaff, here, take thou,And I will drive the cart and plow.’This was concluded ’twixt them both:To cart and plow the good wife goeth.The good man he at home doth tarry,To see that nothing doth miscarry.An apron he before him put:Judge:—Was not this a handsome slut?He fleets the milk, he makes the cheese;He gropes the hens, the ducks, and geese;He brews and bakes as well’s he can;But not as it should be done, poor man.As he did make his cheese one dayTwo pigs their bellies broke with whey:Nothing that he in hand did takeDid come to good. Once he did bake,And burnt the bread as black as a stock.Another time he went to rockThe cradle, and threw the child o’ the floor,And broke his nose, and hurt it sore.He went to milk, one evening-tide,A skittish cow, on the wrong side—His pail was full of milk, God wot,She kick’d and spilt it ev’ry jot:Besides, she hit him a blow on th’ faceWhich was scant well in six weeks’ space.Thus was he served, and yet to dwellOn more misfortunes that befellBefore his apron he’d leave off,Though all his neighbours did him scoff.Now list and mark one pretty jest,’Twill make you laugh above the rest.As he to churn his butter wentOne morning, with a good intent,The cot-quean fool did surely dream,For he had quite forgot the cream.He churned all day with all his might,And yet he could get no butter at night.’Twere strange indeed, for me to utterThat without cream he could make butter.Now having shew’d his huswivery,Who did all things thus untowardly,Unto the good wife I’ll turn my rhyme,And tell you how she spent her time.She used to drive the cart and plow,But do’t well she knew not how.She made so many banks i’ th’ ground,He’d been better have given five poundThat she had never ta’en in hand,So sorely she did spoil the land.As she did go to sow likewise,She made a feast for crows and pies,She threw away a handful at a place,And left all bare another space.At the harrow she could not rule the mare,But bid one land, and left two bare:And shortly after, well-a-day,As she came home with a load of hay,She overthrew it, nay, and worse,She broke the cart and kill’d a horse.The goodman that time had ill-luck;He let in the sow and killed a duck,And, being grieved at his heart,For loss on’s duck, his horse and cart,The many hurts on both sides done,His eyes did with salt water run.‘Then now,’ quoth he, ‘full well I see,The wheel’s for her, the plow’s for me.I thee entreat,’ quoth he, ‘good wife,To take my charge, and all my lifeI’ll never meddle with huswivery more.’The goodwife she was well content,And about her huswivery she went;He to hedging and to ditching,Reaping, mowing, lading, pitching.

The goodwife she was well content,And about her huswivery she went;He to hedging and to ditching,Reaping, mowing, lading, pitching.

And let us hope that, like the Prince and Princess in the fairy tale, they lived happily ever afterwards. But I have my doubts.

ThatWoman’s true profession is marriage is a fact commonly blinked in these times when, owing to their greater numbers, it is become inevitable that many women must go through life as spinsters. Not every woman may become the mistress of a home in these days when the proportion of females to males is growing larger and more evident year by year: not all the women and girls can attain to that ideal of marriage which they so ardently desire, now that women outnumber the men in Great Britain and Ireland alone by nearly a million; and so, to cover their failure in life, the unmarried have started the heresy that woman’s mission is domination rather than submission; that woman’s sphere of action and influence is not properly confined to the home, but is rightly universal, and that marriage is an evil which destroys their individuality. These failures, rightly to call those who cannot achieve legalised coverture, are, of course, of all classes, but chiefly and equally of course, they belong to the wage-earning class, and must seek employment wherewith to supporttheir existence in an undesired spinsterhood. The growing competition of women with one another in feminine employments, the higher education of modern girls, the increasing tendency of men to defer marriage, or to remain bachelors altogether—all these causes have led to woman’s turning from the long-since overstocked markets for woman’s work to the more highly-paid functions fulfilled by men. Then, also, the new employments and professions evolved from the increasingly complex civilisation of this dying nineteenth century, have been almost exclusively feminised by thefemmes soleswho are occupied nowadays as clerks, shorthand writers, journalists, type-writers—vulgo‘typists’—doctors, dentists, telephonists, telegraphists, decorators, photographers, florists, and librarians. A lower social stratum takes to such employments as match-box making, printers’ folding and bookbinding, and a hundred other crafts. Where deftness of manipulation comes into request these wage-earning women have proved their right to their new places; but in the occupations of clerks, cashiers, telephonists, telegraphists, and shorthand writers they have sufficiently demonstrated their unfitness, and only retain their situations by reason of the lower wages they are prepared to accept, in competition with men, and through the sexual sentimentality which would rather have a pretty woman to flirt with in the intervals of typewriting than a merely useful and unornamental man. It may be inevitable, andin accordance with the inexorable law of self-preservation, that women will continue to elbow men from their stools; but woman cannot reasonably expect, if she competes with man in the open market, to receive the old-time deference and chivalric treatment—real or assumed—that was hers when woman remained at home, and when the title of spinster was not an empty form. She must be content to forego much of the kindly usage that was hers before she became man’s competitor; and if she fails in market overt, where chivalry has no place, why, she has no just cause of complaint. If the time is past when women were regarded as a cross between an angel and an idiot it is quite by her own doing, and if she no longer receives the deference that is the due of an angel, nor the compassionate consideration usually accorded an idiot, no one is to blame but herself.

If she would be content to earn her wages in those manly employments she has poached, and to refrain from the cry of triumph she cannot forbear, she would be a much more gracious figure, and, indeed, entitled to some sympathy; but foolish women are clamorously greedy of self-glorification, and still instant, in and out of season, in reviling the strength and mental agility of men which surpass their own and forbid for ever the possibility of female domination. And yet women, one might reasonably suppose, have no just cause of complaint in the matter of their mental and physical inferiority. Thefeminine quality of cunning has ever stood them in good stead, and by its aid they have grasped advantages that could not have been theirs by right of their muscles or their reason. Cunning has taught them to use their shortcomings as claims for consideration, and to urge courtesy as their due in order to handicap men in the race. In the same manner Mr. Gladstone was wont, when all reasonable arguments had failed him, to urge his age as a claim to attention and a compliance with his policy; and, whenever a cricket match is played between an eleven of gentlemen and a corresponding number of ladies, the men must fain tie one hand behind their backs and fend as best they may with the other, and use a stump in place of a bat. Again, when gloves are wagered on a race, who ever heard of pretty Fanny paying when her wager was lost? You shall see an instance of feminine unreasonableness in competition with man in this tale of a race:—Mrs. Thornton, the wife of a Colonel Thornton, rode on horseback, in 1804, a match with a Mr. Frost, on the York racecourse. The course was four miles, and the stakes were 500 guineas, even. The race was run before an immense concourse, and eventually the lady lost! She could not, of course, considering her sex, contain herself for indignation, and her letter to theYork Heraldwhich followed made complaint against Mr. Frost for having been lacking in courtesy in ‘distancing her as much as he could.’ She challenged that discourteous sportsman toanother match, but he very rightly considered that sport is masculine, and did not accept.

Many thousands of girls and unmarried women live nowadays upon their earnings in a solitary existence. They are of all grades and classes; they have entered the professions, and even invention is numbered among their occupations, although the inability of women to originate is notorious. According to a statement in theTimesof December, 1888, ‘out of 2500 patents issued to women by the Government of the United States, none reveal a new principle.’

We have not many women inventors in these islands. Women have not had sufficient courage or rashness for dabbling in applied science, or meddling with mechanics. They owe even the sewing-machine, and all the improvements upon its crude beginnings, to man, and would have been content to wield the needle in slow and painful stitches for all time but for his intervention.

It was left for the Government to bring the employment of women forward, and successive Postmasters-General have sanctioned their introduction to post-offices; but as post-office clerks they have failed to give satisfaction. They readily assume official insolence, and carry it to an extent unknown even to Foreign Office male clerks, who were, before the introduction of women into the Civil Service, supposed to have attained the utmost heights of ‘side’ and official offensiveness. Manyhave been the bitter letters addressed to theTimes—that first resort of the aggrieved—upon the neglect and contumely heaped upon the public by the Postmaster-General’s young ladies. But this neglect and studied insolence has, it must be owned, been chiefly shown by these Jacquettas in office to their own sex; and ladies have been observed to wait, with rage and vexation, for the tardy pleasure of female post-office clerks in condescending to notice their presence.

At one time the business of post-offices became served almost entirely by women. This was due not to any Governmental delusions upon the score of their merits, but was owing entirely to a cheeseparing economy which employed inferior wits at a lower wage than would have been acceptable to men. Even such extremely busy offices as those of Ludgate Circus and Lombard Street were filled with women, who elbowed men from their stools, and became so ‘flurried’ in the press of business that they frequently gave either too much change or too little over the counter, or committed such vagaries as giving ten shillings’ worth of stamps for half-a-crown; or were incapable of weighing letters and parcels properly, so that the Post-office revenues were increased by packages being more than sufficiently stamped, or else were augmented by the fines levied upon addressees in cases where their inherent inability to juggle with figures had caused inadequate prepayment. Indeed, the woman whocan reason from cause to effect, or can employ the multiplication-table accurately (except under circumstances in which time is no object) is as much a ‘sport’—as Professor Huxley might say—as a white raven or a cat born with six legs.

The storm of indignation was so great over these unbusinesslike doings, that even that elephantine creature—the Postmaster-General—was moved,4and the chiefest of the City post-offices are served now by men.

But the pert miss of the suburban post-office, and the establishments just beyond the City, is still very much in evidence. It is she who, with a crass stupidity almost beyond belief, misreads the telegrams handed in, and despatches the most extraordinary and extravagant messages that bear no sort of resemblance to their original draughts, and it is her sister at the other end of the wire who cannot interpret the dot and dash of the Morse system aright, and so further complicates affairs. The marvels and conveniency of telegraphy have been praised, and not beyond their due, but the other side of the medal has to be shown in the extraordinary and disquieting ‘blunders,’ perpetrated chiefly by female telegraphists, which spread dismay and consternation through such vital substitutionsas ‘father is dead,’ for the original message of ‘father is bad’; ‘all going well: a little fire at 7 o’clock this morning,’ in which ‘fire’ is transmitted instead of ‘girl’; and the appalling error ‘Come at once: mother muchdiseased,’ in which the word ‘diseased’ usurps the place of ‘distressed.’

The absurd way in which people have been summoned by telegraph to meet friends at places that not only did those friends not contemplate, but which either do not exist at all, or, at least, not in the situations some of these erring telegrams assign them, is within the experience of almost every one who is in the way of frequently receiving these pink missives at the post-office. ‘Meet me 5 o’clock Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington,’ has been rendered, ‘Meet me 5 o’clock Saint Mark Abchurch, Kennington.’ The substitution of ‘Piccadilly’ for ‘Pevensey’; the omission of the second word in the address of ‘Manchester Square,’ and similar vagaries are common.

Of course this is not to say that they are only the women telegraph clerks who fall into these errors, but the greater percentage originates with them. The woman-clerk who receives a message through the wire cannot follow the telegraphic instrument with the attention that makes all the difference between accuracy and some dreadful blunder. Thus it is that in the domain of the electric telegraph the ineradicable tendency of her sex to argue from false premises, and her capacityfor jumping to erroneous conclusions are admirably well shown; and the system by which telegrams are sent lends itself in the most complete and remarkable way to her errors of anticipation. The telegraphic alphabet now universally in use—known as the Morse system—consists of a series of dots and dashes; and a message is spelled out by a laborious ticking of the magnetic needle at the office in receipt of the telegram. The message is read, tick by tick, from the needle’s rapid oscillations:—‘Your sister di——’ ‘Oh,’ says the female telegraphist to herself, disregarding the next few movements of the needle, ‘died, of course,’ and so finishes the word. The needle continues ticking and the next words are spelled out, ‘with us last night, undertake——’ The telegraphist adds an ‘r’ to that word to make it fit her first guess, and reads off the remainder of the message, ‘to bring her up to-morrow,’ and so despatches an alarming telegram, which should have read harmlessly enough, ‘Your sister dined with us last night. Undertake to bring her up to-morrow.’

These things are sufficiently dreadful, and leave little room for exaggeration; but one must scan more than doubtfully that tale of a telegram which when handed in read, ‘I tea with Mr. Smith in Dover Street. Stay for me,’ but which was changed into ‘I flee with Mrs. Smith to Dover straight. Pray for me.’

As for journalism, women have invaded thenewspaper offices to some purpose, and it is owing to them that the modern newspaper is usually an undistinguished farrago of wild and whirling words, ungrammatical at best, and at its worst a jumble of more or less malicious gossip, without sequence or thread of reason. The ‘lady journalist’ is no respecter of persons or institutions, and an easy impudence is natural to her contributions, whether her subject be peer or peasant. Proportion is in no sense her gift or acquirement: the death of a member of the ‘submerged tenth’ in a court off Fleet Street is more thrilling to her senses than the fall of a statesman from office; the cut of a dress or the shade of a ribbon wears an importance in her eyes that the rise and progress of trades can never win; and the babble of Social Science Congresses, or the lecturing of University Extensionists transcends the Parliamentary debater in her mind. ‘Actuality’ is her shibboleth and gush her output; and the heart actuates her pen rather than the head.

The journalist of years bygone was a very different being. His—for the old-time journalist was always masculine—his knowledge of frocks and flounces wasnil; his habitat was generally a pothouse, and his speech was as often as not thick and husky with potations; but however confused his talk, and however objectionable his personality, his utterances in the press were apt and luminous and he took no bribes. In this last respect thename and trade of a ‘lady journalist’ are somewhat stale and blown upon of late, and she has been revealed as the debaucher of newspaper morality, who, in league with the advertisement department, praises the shoddy goods of the advertising tradesman, while he who relies not uponréclamebut on excellence of workmanship is dismissed with faint praise, or mentioned not at all. Worse than this unscrupulous fending for her employer—editor or advertising manager—she stoops to gifts in coin and kind from eager shopkeepers, panting to gain the ear and open the purse of the public, and when she has a fancy for any ‘particular’ article, she begs it with an assurance born of the knowledge that her wishes will not be refused by the tradesman who has that article in his gift. He dare not do so, for his puff would be missing from the ‘organ’ that would otherwise have proclaimed the excellence of his wares to a gulled and gullible world.

Certainly, in all the man’s employments she has invaded, in no other is woman so powerful for ill as in journalism.

LONDON:

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