Part 1

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A WORD TO WOMEN

by

MRS. HUMPHRY ("MADGE" OF "TRUTH")

Author of "Manners for Women," "Manners for Men," etc.

London James Bowden 10, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C. 1898

* * * * *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

_And Uniform with this Volume._

1. Manners for Men. (_Thirty-sixth Thousand._)

2. Manners for Women. (_Twentieth Thousand._)

One Shilling each.

LONDON: JAMES BOWDEN.

* * * * *

PREFACE

My book "Manners for Women" has met with such a kindly reception that I am encouraged to follow it up with the present little volume. Of a less practical character than the former, it yet follows out the same line of thought, and is the fruit of many years' observation of my countrywomen in that home life for which England is distinguished among nations.

C. E. HUMPHRY.

_London, 1898._

CONTENTS.

PAGE

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 9

OUR SCHOOL-GIRLS 18

WHAT ABOUT SEWING? 25

MOTHERS AND SONS 32

OUR CLEVER CHILDREN 38

ULTRA-TIDINESS 46

GOOD MANNERS AT HOME 51

ARE WOMEN COWARDS? 57

A GLASS OF WINE 64

SOME OLD PROVERBS 70

CANDOUR AS A HOME COMMODITY 76

GOLDEN SILENCE 81

A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 88

OUR DEBTS 94

THE DOMESTIC GIRL 102

THE GIRL-BACHELOR 108

THE MIDDLE-AGED CHAPERON 114

LIGHTHEARTEDNESS 117

A BIT OF EVERYDAY PHILOSOPHY 122

DEADLY DULNESS 129

THE PLEASURES OF MIDDLE AGE 136

GROWING OLD 145

A WORD TO WOMEN.

_MOTHER AND DAUGHTER._

[Sidenote: The golden mean.]

There is a happy medium between narrowness and latitude; between the exiguity which confines the mind between canal-like borders and the broad, expansive amplitude which allows it to flow with the freedom of a great river, though within certain definite limits. The tendency of the moment is towards breadth and the enlarging of borders, the setting back of frontier lines, and even to ignoring them. "One must move with the times" is a phrase constantly heard and read. It is true enough. One would not willingly be left stranded on the shores of the past; but then, in the effort to avoid this, one need not shape a wild and devious course. There is always the golden mean attainable, though occasionally it needs some seeking to find it.

[Sidenote: Some modern daughters.]

In nothing so much as the relations between mother and daughter is this modern tendency prolific of difficulty. For some generations the rule of severity that began with the Puritans has been gradually relaxing more and more, and now the spectacle of a harsh-voiced, domineering young woman, ordering her mother about, is by no means an infrequent one, detestable as it is. Nor does she always content herself by merely ordering. Sometimes she scolds as well! If the mother, in these revolutionary times, has any chance of maintaining her own position as the elder and the wiser of the two, she must keep her eyes open to the successive grooves of change down which the world is spinning. The daughter must not be permitted to suspect her of old-fashioned notions. That would be fatal!

[Sidenote: The bicycling craze.]

When the bicycle craze began many mothers disapproved of the exercise for their girls. But with doctors recommending it, and the girls themselves looking radiantly bright and healthy after a few preliminary trials, what remained for the mother but to overcome her first dislike and do all she could to persuade the father to buy bicycles for all the girls? The next step was, often, to learn to ride herself, and to benefit enormously thereby. The mother who failed to follow her daughters' lead in this particular, as in others, proved that she was too narrow to accept new ideas; just the sort of thing to give the daughters a lead in these century-end days. And of that one must beware! The poor mothers must not give a single inch, or they will find themselves mulcted in many an ell.

[Sidenote: About Chaperons and Chaperonage.]

The old, strait-laced ideas about chaperons are now decidedly behind the times, and the parents and guardians who try to maintain them in all their rigid integrity will only find that the too-tightly-drawn bow will soon snap. Far better to accept changes as they come, taking the wide, enlarged view, and allowing the young creatures as much freedom of action as may be consistent with the social laws. The old parallel of the hen-mother and the young ducks would come in most usefully here, were it not so hackneyed. But think what sad deprivations of the _joie de vivre_ the ducks would have suffered had it been in the power of the hen to enforce her objections. Think of this, oh ye nineteenth century mothers! What trepidations, what anxieties, what feverish fears, assail us when the young ones escape from the restrictions that bound ourselves when we were girls! The father laughs at our tremors, and proves, by doing so, what needs no proof, that the sense of responsibility is always deeper and keener in the mother, and that, therefore, she is more bound than he to exercise due caution. To combine the two with wide views is not always easy.

[Sidenote: "The evils that never arrive."]

"These affectionate women," said Sir Andrew Clarke, the eminent physician, "they make themselves miserable about things that may happen, and wear themselves out in anxieties for which there is little or no foundation." And Jefferson says: "How much have cost us the evils that never happened!" True, indeed. But, also, how much have they cost to the objects of our care? Can any one reckon up that difficult sum? The timid, fearful mother has often ruined her boys out of pure anxiety to do her very (mistaken) best for them. And as to girls, they are not allowed to do the very things that would teach them self-reliance, make them vigorous in mind and body, and teach them that lore, not in any girls' school curriculum, which is best expressed in the French idiom, "_savoir faire_."

[Sidenote: Want of width.]

And all for want of width! What sort of life would a little chicken lead if it were for ever under the good old hen's wing? Yet that is what some of us would prefer for the bright young things, whose very life is in change, variety, excitement, fun, laughter, and exercise of all kinds. Small wonder that some of them rebel, feeling tethered, with the inevitable longing for escape. Led with a silken string in wide ways of the great world, they would be contented and happy enough.

[Sidenote: Mothers and daughters.]

Every girl is a queen to some one at some time in her life. Was there ever a girl whom nobody loved? What would English homes be without their girls? Mothers of sons are proud indeed, but they often long for a daughter. The tie between girl and mother is a wonderfully close one. They almost share each others' thoughts, and the home life together becomes, as the girl grows up, a delicious duet. Sons, however affectionate and gentle, have always some part of their nature veiled away. They cannot tell all to a mother as a daughter can, with perfect open-mindedness, so that the page lies clear to the eye of affection, like a book in good, large print. And more particularly is this the case with an only daughter. Have you ever, dear reader, noticed how the tendrils of the growing vines twine round each other, at last becoming so inextricably close that they cannot be separated without breaking them? That is the way that many a mother and daughter whose lives are closely woven in with each other, forming a bond of strength that, with the flowing of the years, increases in power and influence.

[Sidenote: The inevitable man.]

And then comes some charming young man, with pretty eyes and a gentle manner, and oh! the loneliness of the poor mother when he carries off her girl to be the sunshine of his home, leaving hers in deepest shadow!

But mothers are unselfish and love to know their daughters happy, fulfilling their destiny in the good old womanly way as wife and mother. And the best way to make a girl a good wife is to train her to be a first-rate daughter.

[Sidenote: A girl's idea of usefulness.]

[Sidenote: The ideal daughter.]

A girl's thoughts of usefulness sometimes begin a very long way off. They appear to her at a distance, as if she were looking through the small end of a telescope. "The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," and the girl's idea of usefulness is to nurse the sick and wounded in war-time, to go out as a missionary among the heathen, to write books with great thoughts in them, to do noble deeds of tremendous self-sacrifice, to take up some great life-work. She looks so far afield that she cannot see the little duties lying to her hand, in the performance of which lies her best training for great and worthy deeds. Many a girl dreams of such an ideal as Florence Nightingale, and nevertheless shrieks and runs out of the room when her little brother cuts his hand with the carving-knife. What a scared, helpless creature she would be in a hospital! Another girl pictures herself a heroine of self-denial, giving up "all" for some one, while she is too lazy to run upstairs to fetch her mother's gloves, or too self-indulgent to read the money article in _The Times_ to her father. She is not "faithful in small things," though she fully intends to excel in great. The ideal daughter is the unselfish, active, intelligent, and good-tempered girl, who thinks out what she can do to help her mother, to make life pleasanter for her father, and home happier for her brothers.

[Sidenote: True self-culture.]

Many girls think self-culture the first and greatest duty of all, but in thinking so, and in acting on the thought, they turn their backs upon real self-culture. Doing something for others, when we would rather be doing something for ourselves, goes further towards self-culture, in its highest and best sense, than reading the cleverest book ever written, or practising the most difficult music. There have been girls who, thinking it their duty, have refused to leave their parents, even to marry the man they love. This is usually a mistaken notion of "_fais ce que dois_," for it throws on the father and mother a terrible weight of obligation, never to be paid off, and even if they know nothing of the sacrifice at the time it is made, it is certain to come home to them sooner or later. Is it not Ruskin who declares that self-denial, when it is carried beyond the boundary of common sense, becomes an actual injury against those for whom it is practised? There is a deep truth in this.

[Sidenote: About unselfishness.]

Youth is not naturally self-denying. Human nature is strongly selfish, and when girls are young they have had little chance to oppose the strength of this inherent quality. Some girls, however, are much less selfish than others, while some are utterly spoilt! A doting mother is nothing more nor less than a selfish mother, who, _to please herself_, allows her daughter's faults to grow up unchecked. She fears to be firm, lest she should lose some of the affection she prizes. Could she only know that the child, at a very early age, is distinctly aware of this weakness and despises it, she would plainly see the awful mistake she is making. Children love best the mothers who are both firm and gentle. By a sort of instinct the young ones seem to be aware of the true selflessness that actuates the parent who battles with their early faults. It is not the foolishly indulgent mothers who win the warmest love from their girls. It is those who can temper justice with love. Girls soon know whether the mother is swayed by selfishness or actuated by principle, and, with very few exceptions, they follow in her steps.

[Sidenote: The home training.]

Could some of the happy lovers and happy husbands look back through the years at the long and patient training, the loving care, that has resulted in the complete realisation of their brightest dreams--"My queen! my queen!"--they would find in them a guarantee for the future. Girls who have not been spoiled by over-indulgence, and who have been taught to take a sane, calm, rational view of all life's circumstances, are the best helpmeets that man can have. Such an one is a delightful companion, with her cultivated mind and her ready sympathies. She can enter into his outside troubles in the battle of life, and there is a fibre of strength in her on which he may safely lean in the day of disaster, should it come.

_OUR SCHOOL-GIRLS._

[Sidenote: Growing Girls.]

Mothers of growing girls have many an anxious hour. The young things feel so bright, so strong, so full of energy, that it is difficult for them to listen to the voice of prudent counsel which bids them take care of themselves, and mothers often give in when a word of warning is received with laughing heedlessness. And how frequently they have to regret the giving in! When girls are growing very fast, even if they keep up their strength and look strong and well, there is much risk in any over-fatigue. The heart is sometimes outpaced by the rest of the frame, and if care be not taken there is a possibility of inducing strain, which may result in permanent mischief. Girls want to run, play sett after sett of tennis, or go on pulling a boat on the river when they are already hot and tired, and it is only natural that they should fancy that their capacity for enjoyment is as inexhaustible as their taste for it.

[Sidenote: Over-exertion.]

But the doctors will tell mothers to restrain the young creatures from damaging their health by over-exertion, and if we fail to do so we may some day feel agonies of remorse. It is easy enough to manage this so long as they are quite young and under our own eyes all day, but when school-time begins matters are very different. The spirit of emulation awakes, and the keenest anxiety to equal other girls in progress spurs on the young spirit. Teachers are anxious, too, and the mother often has to do battle on behalf of her daughter, not only with the school authorities, but with the girl herself. Firmness with both is the only method, and this in face of protests on one side and tears and expostulations on the other. The teachers think the mother "ridiculously fussy," and condole with the girl, stirring her up to rebellion in a most injudicious way; but after all the mother is in the right and must be firm. What is the use of class successes if they are won at the expense of health? And though scholarships are very pleasant things in more ways than one, they may cost too dear. If the money they save has to go in doctors' fees, of what earthly use are they?

[Sidenote: Too much study.]

At the same time mothers must not sacrifice the young ones to nervous or morbid fears, as some are inclined to do. The only way to be sure that precautions are really necessary is to have advice from a doctor, and if a girl is growing very quickly he is almost sure to say that she must not do too much. As a rule girls spend far too many hours a day in study. School-days come just when they are very busy growing, and it is also the time when habits are formed. With all these contradictory considerations influencing the mother, she is often afraid to trust her own judgment as to whether this or that course shall be pursued. If the girl is worked too hard she may become nervous or anaemic, and if she is allowed to rest too much she may grow up lazy and self-indulgent. So what is one to do? With our limited powers all we can do is to watch the growing daughters from day to day, and if they show any signs of failing energies, or of weakening health, at once take steps to lessen the number of hours devoted to study. At each succeeding term the school programme should be carefully gone through, with a view to seeing if the lessons that follow consecutively may not be too trying, and, if so, arrangements should be made with the head of the school to spare the girl a long run of monotonous subjects.

[Sidenote: Meal hours.]

The school authorities, naturally enough, arrange the hours to suit themselves and their teachers, and sometimes with the result that a girl has to rush back to school after a hasty meal, her food actually doing her harm instead of good in consequence. It is in cases like this that the mother comes in--not always, you may be very sure, to the unmitigated delight of the teachers, or even of the girl herself! In fact, the poor mother often gets blamed all round. The members of her own family are profuse in criticism, as a rule, of everything that she does in connection with her children. The best thing she can do is to ignore their opinion completely, for, whatever she does, she is sure to be blamed. If two diametrically opposite courses are open before her, whichever she chooses is sure to be condemned by somebody. It is the old story of the old man and his donkey. When it carried him the people found fault, and when he carried it they were as censorious as ever. We must just go the way our conscience points out, and present a stoical front to criticism. The philosophy embodied in the good old French motto comes to our aid: "_Fais ce que dois advienne que pourra_."

[Sidenote: The best way to rest.]

[Sidenote: Expressing thanks.]

It does wonders for a girl to lie down for even half an hour a day. But to lie sideways or crumpled up in the extraordinary fashion beloved of girls is of no use whatever. The shoulders must be flat, and the head not much raised. If a book is read the while it must be held so that the eyes are wide open in reading; the feet should be stretched out to their full length, so as to give as much rest to the muscles as possible. Girls run so tall nowadays that they need extra care, and it is the mothers who must see to it that they get it. On free mornings an extra half hour in bed will do no harm, but rather good; and it should be always understood that this is an indulgence to be accepted as a boon for which gratitude is to be felt and expressed. To encourage young people to express gratitude is good for them. It is strange, but true, that human nature is averse to express thanks with cordiality, and it is one of the marks of the well-bred girl that her thanks follow as naturally upon the act that elicits them as if the two were cause and effect.

[Sidenote: Dangers of High Schools.]

Some of the high schools offer so many facilities in the various departments of education that the danger is of tremendously overworking the girls. One of whom I knew was at work from nine a.m. till half-past eight at night five days in the week, and from nine till two on Saturdays. The only exercise that she had was in her daily walk to and from school--once in the morning and again after lunch--and her only recreation was an occasional romp with her small brothers and sisters in the nursery. The girl broke down, as any one might safely have predicted that she would, and her costly education was entirely thrown away, for by the time that she was well enough to resume study she had forgotten all that she had learned.

[Sidenote: Bad training.]

There is another danger connected with overdoing study in the time of girlhood that must not be overlooked. It is that of wearying young people with books, and so tiring them that they never want to open one on a serious subject after they have left school-days behind them. To do this is to lose for them one of the greatest pleasures of life. Education, rightly understood, is a drawing out, not a crowding in. The best education consists in developing the powers and eliciting the bent of the mind, and laying a foundation for future culture. To speak of any girl's education as being "finished" is tantamount to speaking of a scaffolding as being finished, preparatory to the real work being begun. In after life comes the true work, and circumstances have much to do in guiding it. There is, therefore, no reason that growing girls should be overburdened with ologies and isms. French and German they must learn; drawing, if they have a special taste for it, and the piano, on the same terms. It is utter waste to teach some girls to play on the piano, and the idea that it is a necessary part of polite education is now rapidly disappearing from the cultured classes of society. Simplification in every branch is one of the safest rules of life, and this applies as much to the programme of a girl's existence as to that of her mother.

[Sidenote: Hygiene and sanitation.]

There is no doubt that, in a great degree, the improvement in the physique of English girls is largely due to the enlightened ideas of their parents on subjects connected with hygiene and sanitation. The nation is wonderfully improved on these matters, during the last fifteen years, and it is at last beginning to be understood that a perfectly sound body is necessary to a perfectly healthy and capable mind. If girls are encouraged to place the culture of the mind not only before, but in opposition to, that of the body, they must be consequent sufferers--if not in girlhood, at some later period; and may bequeath suffering to others. So, mothers, be advised in time, and let girlhood be the healthy, happy, sunny time that Nature intended it to be. Our girls are young but once, and it is not for long. The cares of life will soon enough cloud over their brightness. Do not allow overwork or long hours to shadow the irrecoverable springtime.

_WHAT ABOUT SEWING?_

[Sidenote: The prejudice against sewing.]

[Sidenote: A word in its favour.]

Some of the very advanced and extremely superior women of the present day are strenuously opposed to the teaching of needlework in girls' schools and colleges. A mere handicraft should be beneath the notice of highly intellectual human beings, and should be left to those whose intelligence is of a lower order. That is their creed. I am glad to see that one of the cleverest and most learned women of the time, Mrs. Bryant, D.Sc., advocates, though in a half-hearted and semi-apologetic fashion, the teaching of needlework to girls receiving the higher education. She thinks that, just as a man is a somewhat incomplete person if he cannot make himself useful with a hammer, a plane, and a saw, a woman who cannot sew is equally an anomaly. The man who wants a rent in his glove stitched would be likely to regard her as much more so. But I must not, from this, be understood as advocating the accomplishment of sewing merely with a view to the repair of men's sartorial damages. This would be to invoke indeed the wrath of the superior woman, who thinks it degradation to stoop to all the sweet, old-fashioned, housewifely uses and despises her gentler sisters who delight in making home comfortable and life smooth for those who dwell with her.

[Sidenote: The training it involves.]

[Sidenote: Its moral value.]