CHAPTER V.

EVERY-DAY LIFE IN THE STUART PERIOD.

Puritan influence--Neglect of women’s education--The boarding-out system for girls--Sir Matthew Hale on the education of girls--Manners and customs--Diversions of great ladies--Rules for behaviour--John Evelyn on manners--Effects of the Civil War--Simplicity of home life--Lady Anne Halkett--Position of wives--A contemporary writer on husbands.

The Civil War had raised up two parties in England, divided as much upon ethics as upon politics. With the extremists on either side, women fared badly. They were between two camps, both equally noxious in their way--the libertines and the ascetics.

“Under the Commonwealth society assumed a new and stern aspect. Women were in disgrace; it was everywhere declared from the pulpit that woman caused man’s expulsion from Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of the greatest temptations of Satan. ‘Man,’ said they, ‘is conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity; it was his complacency to women that caused his first debasement; let man not therefore glory in his shame; let him not worship the fountain of his corruption.’ Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged, and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible theological discussions of the day.”

If Cromwell’s “Saints,” with their deadly hatred of Roman Catholicism, had been told that their views coincided with certain portions of the early teaching of the abhorred Church, they would have vehemently repelled the accusation. But the Puritans, in their revolt against beauty and pleasure, in their cramped conception and distorted views of the position of women, were only following the lead of the Fathers and the monks of the fourth century, who made of Christianity a revolting and immoral form of asceticism.

A kind of moral dislocation was going on, forming a canker in social life. With the excesses of the court on the one hand and the austerities of the Puritans on the other, there was a constant interaction going on, each party goading the other into greater extremes. The deterioration of moral tone on the one side, and the perversion of thought on the other, affected the national life injuriously, and retarded the intellectual progress of women.

There was, to begin with, an unstable throne. The Stuarts were weak rulers, and the people felt the relaxing of the strong hand of the Tudors. James I., untrained for his position, was a very undesirable sovereign, and earned for himself ridicule and dislike. One of his peculiarities was to affect a great contempt for women, and to scoff at men who treated them with respect. No wonder that he was held in abhorrence by the court ladies, and that there were loud complaints of his Majesty’s want of gallantry.

Then there was a tendency to listlessness, and especially to mental inertia, after the revival of learning in the sixteenth century. The tension could not be sustained. And there were special difficulties arising from the circumstances of the time. The destruction of so many seats of learning by the dissolution of the Religious Houses was a blow to education. Nothing had arisen to take the place of the monastic schools. How little provision there was may be judged by the following remarks, made on the establishment of a school for the sons of gentlemen in the second half of the seventeenth century:--

“It is sufficiently known that the subjects of his Majestie’s dominions have, naturally, as noble minds and as able bodies as any nation of the earth, and therefore deserve all accommodations for the advancing of them either in speculation or action. Neverthelesse such hath been the neglect or undervalueing of ourselves and our own abilities, and over-valueing of forreigne teachers, that hitherto no such places for the education and trayning up of our own young nobilitie and gentrie in the practise of arms and arts have been instituted here in England as are in Italy, France, and Germany, but that by a chargeable and sometimes an unfortunate experience we, to our own losse and disgrace, doe finde the noble and generous youth of this kingdome is sent beyond the seas, to learn such things at excessive rates, from strangers abroad, wherein they might be as well, and with lesse expense and danger, instructed here at home.”

If little attention were given to providing for the training of youths, still less was paid to that of girls, for whom there was not the compensation of being “sent beyond the seas.” Even for a gentleman’s daughters it was not thought necessary that they should learn anything thoroughly except housewifery.

“Let them learne plaine workes of all kind so they take heed of too open seeming. Instead of song and musick let them learn cookery and laundry, and instead of reading Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Arcadia,’ let them read the grounds of good huswifery. I like not a female poetesse at any hand: let greater personages glory their skill in musicke, the posture of their bodies, their knowledge in languages, the greatnesse and freedome of their spirits, and their arts in arraigning of men’s affections at their flattering faces: this is not the way to breede a private gentleman’s daughter.”[41]

The author of the above remarks suggests that where there were several daughters, one should be left with the mother, and the others drafted off into some other household, such as that of a merchant, or lawyer, or country gentleman, to gain experience and multiply their matrimonial chances.

It is obvious that the custom of sending children away to board in families was still common in the seventeenth century, and that the domestic ideal had not much enlarged. Women are still to study housewifery before all else, and to shun learning as an unprofitable thing. The profession of marriage is the only one proper to women. “Loke to thi doughten,” advises an early English poet--

“And geve hem to spowsynge as soone as thei ben ablee.”

In France the education of girls was much neglected.

“Il est honteux, mais ordinaire de voir des femmes qui ont de l’esprit et de la politesse, ne savoir bien prononcer ce qu’elles lisent; ou elles hesitent, ou elles chantent en lisant: au lieu qu’il faut prononcer d’un ton simple et naturel, mais forme et uni. Elles manquent encore plus grossièrement pour l’ortogrape, ou pour la manière de former ou de lier les lettres en écrivant.”

Fénélon goes on to suggest that girls should learn something of the laws and regulations of their country--

“ce que c’est qu’un contrat, une substitution, un partage des cohéritiers ... ce que c’est biens meubles et immeubles. Si elles se marient toutes leurs principales affaires rouleront la-dessus.”

In every age there is always some one to act the part of _laudator temporis acti_. Sir Matthew Hale, the celebrated Lord Chief Justice, bemoans the degeneracy of his own period. He says--

“In former times the education and employment of young gentlewomen was religious, sober, and serious, their carriage modest, and creditable was their habit and dress. When they were young they learned to read and to sew; as they grew up they learned to spin, to knit, to make up their own garments; they learned what belonged to housewifery.... And now the world is altered; young gentlewomen learn to be bold, talk loud and more than comes to their share, think it disparagement for them to know what belongs to good housewifery or to practise it.... They know the ready way to consume an estate and to ruin a family quickly, but neither know nor can endure to learn or practise the ways and methods to save it or increase it; and it is no wonder that great portions are expected with them, for their portions are commonly all their value.... If a fit of reading come upon them, it is some romance, or play book, or love story; and if they have at any time a fit of using their needle, it is some such unprofitable or costly work that spends their friends or husbands more than it is worth when it is finished.”

Domestic life was changing, and the habits and customs of former times were being modified. The simple ways of old did not suffice. There were too many distractions, at least in London, for women to sit down contentedly with the resources of their grandmothers. Among the well-to-do country gentlemen it was becoming customary to bring their families to London for the season, which was then the winter, and this greatly altered the tone of domestic life. To women confined to a country village with little change of scene or occupation, it meant as much as the “grand tour” in the next century. A rebound naturally followed the gloomy days of the Commonwealth, when--

“there were no comedies or other diversions (which were forbidden not only as ungodly but for fear of drawing company or number together), and there was no business for any man that loved monarchy or the family of Stuart; so that the nobility and gentry lived most in the country.”

The Puritan movement retarded the intellectual advance of women. The clearer thought which the Renaissance brought was obscured, the ideals that were beginning to enlarge the purpose of life were narrowed, and a check was put upon mental growth. As by the Roman Catholic Church women were taught to submit their minds and consciences to the priest, so under the sway of Puritanism they were taught that all nature’s gifts to mind or body were so many snares, that true life consisted in a crushing out of all aims and desires not connected with the saving of the soul, a process that was apparently facilitated by a constant contemplation of never-ending tortures supposed to be in reserve for the greater portion of mankind.

With all its tyranny and its perverted teaching on the subject of women’s position, the Roman Church was a great civilizing, educating power, the only one for centuries. Puritanism was the reverse. It aimed at undoing what had been accomplished, at checking progress. At a time when the nation needed every stimulus that could be applied to mental exertion, when political strife was choking the path of culture, Puritanism stepped in with a denunciation of learning and art as perils to humanity.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that Puritanism, with its uncompromising treatment of vice, helped to raise the standard of social purity and the ideal of womanhood. Like the fire which followed the plague, Puritanism came as a great cleansing force. But, like the fire, it destroyed while it purified. Under its teaching many attained to a high ideal of life. Every religion has its saints, and the stress and suffering of the age were calculated to bring out the qualities that go to the making of heroes and martyrs. The Puritan maiden and the Puritan wife stand for some of the noblest types of womanhood.

After the Restoration, the standard of living went up, and luxury increased as the nation righted itself after the turmoil and loss occasioned by war.

“In 1688 there were on the ‘Change more men worth £10,000 than there were in 1650 worth £1000; that £500 with a daughter was, in the latter period, deemed a larger portion than £2000 in the former; that gentlewomen in those earlier times thought themselves well clothed in a serge gown which a chambermaid would, in 1688, be ashamed to be seen in; and that besides the great increase of rich clothes, plate, jewels, and household furniture, coaches were in that time augmented a hundredfold.”

In dealing with the position of women during this period, it has to be taken into account that what would be called society was stamped with the manners of the court of Charles II. The court party forgot its former troubles and revelled in gaieties. The example was infectious, and the general laxity and extravagance were so marked that even the king himself referred to it in his speech at the close of the Parliamentary Session of 1661-2.

“I cannot but observe,” he said, “that the whole nation seems to be a little corrupted in their excess of living; sure all men spend much more in their clothes, in their diet, and all other expences than they have been used to do; I hope it has been only the excess of joy after so long suffering that has transported us to these other excesses, but let us take heed that the continuance of them does not indeed corrupt our natures. I do believe I have been faulty myself; I promise you I will reform, and if you will join with me in your several capacities, we shall by our example do more good both in city and country than any new laws would do.”

It was the reign of the senses. Beauty was the road to greatness for women, and to beauty and wit all other qualities yielded. The great ladies who stand out most prominently on the canvas are the royal favourites, the exquisite frail beauties who dazzle the vision and eclipse the women of sterner mould. Women forgot that they had any other _rôle_ to play but one--that of syren. Those who had no power to captivate dropped into the background, were pushed aside, and forgotten. The greatest lady was she who could sell herself at the highest price, whose charms drew the largest number of bidders. What she gloried in was the rank and number of her lovers, and her ambition was to flaunt her conquests in the eyes of other women. Lady Castlemaine, Francis Stuart, Louise de Querouaille, and Nell Gwynn of immortal memory, together with many others whose task was the subjugation of man, represent the society of the Restoration period.

The disintegration of the times no doubt militated against high ideals, although the Civil War itself gave rise to the display of heroic virtues on the part of both men and women. The stern and awful discipline of the sword, far from degrading, produced a nobler type of womanhood. Through the trials entailed by ruined fortunes and blasted careers, through the agonies of bereavement, women passed triumphant, but they were not proof against the war of social forces. The conflict of feeling between the opposing parties on other than State questions sent both to extremes. The Royalists, in their hearty hatred of austerity, rushed into a wild worship of the senses. The Puritans, to express their horror of the worldliness of their foes, assumed virtues they did not possess. It has been averred that if we study the characters and lives of the great ladies of the Puritan party, we shall find much laxity under the guise of strictness. It would not be matter of surprise if, in some cases, this were so, though the bulk of the party seem free from such a reproach. The general tone of society was lowered from various causes. It is seen in everything, in the literature, on the stage, in the habits of the day. The coarse tastes of the upper classes show that the standard of public propriety was not at all commensurate with the degree of enlightenment which that age enjoyed. Wanting higher intellectual interests, women in fashionable life filled up their time with cards and dice, and if they read anything they read romances of very poor quality. This condition of things continued through the century.

“Were the men,” wrote Mary Astell in 1694, “as much neglected and as little care taken to cultivate and improve them, perhaps they would be so far from surpassing those whom they now despise, that they themselves would sink into the greatest stupidity and brutality. The preposterous returns that the most of them make to all the care that is bestow’d on them renders this no uncharitable nor improbable conjecture.”

John Evelyn speaks of great ladies suffering themselves to be treated in taverns--

“where a courtesan in other cities would scarcely vouchsafe to be entertain’d; but you will be more astonish’d when I shall assure you that they drink their crowned cups roundly, strain healths through their smocks, daunce after the fiddle, kiss freely and team it an honourable treat.”

And this, he goes on to say, was not confined to the lower or the more “meretricious” circles, but was a common spectacle in good houses where such sports were the afternoon diversion.

The following letter from that lively young lady of fashion, Bridget Noel, to her sister, the Countess of Rutland, in April, 1687, shows what sort of diversions occupied the aristocracy.

“I am extreme sory it is not poseble for us to wat of my deare sister suner than the 28 of May, for hear is a coking and hors matches which we have promesed to be at. My Lord Toumand will be at the great coking, and Barney and Lord Grandson and a great many more lords that I doe not know ther name, it is sade hear that it will be as great a match as ever has been. Barney intends to back our coks with thousands, for he is of our side.... The great coking dos not begin tell the 29 and twenty of June, but we have a letel wan begins of Whesen Monday.”

In 1663, among the rules laid down for the behaviour of men who wish to be considered well-bred, occurs the following recommendation--

“It is not becoming a person of quality when in the company of ladies to handle them roughly ... to kiss them by surprize; to pull off their hoods; to snatch away their handkerchiefs; to rob them of their ribbands and put them in his hat; to force their letters or books from them; to look into their papers, etc. You must be very familiar to use them at that rate; and unless you be so nothing can be more indecent or render you more odious.”

Such admonitions now would be considered an impertinence if addressed to a club of factory hands.

We must give the seventeenth century credit for introducing some refinements which undoubtedly had an influence on the position of women. Social customs are useful indices to national character, and daily habits often give the key to the moral standard. As long as coarse feeding and heavy drinking prevailed, there was a barrier to social intercourse between the sexes. When the ale and wine, which had been habitually drunk at every meal, were replaced by coffee and tea, it was an undoubted gain to both health and manners. The taste became more refined, repasts ceased to be orgies unfit for the presence of women. John Evelyn considered the custom of gentlemen leaving ladies to themselves after dinner, or rather of the ladies quitting the gentlemen, as barbarous, and it certainly had its origin in barbarous manners. He would doubtless have been astonished if he could have foreseen that the custom continued in force for more than two hundred years after his time, when regular drinking-bouts had ceased.

Evelyn’s complaint of the indelicacy of ladies speaking of gentlemen by their Christian names is a little hypercritical. It was the manners that needed alteration more than the speech. He is shocked to hear such talk as--

“Tom P. was here to-day. I went yesterday to the Cours with Will R., and Harry M. treated me at such a tavern.”

Surely what Evelyn calls, with a fine scorn, this “particular idiom” and these “gracefull confidences” were not inconsistent with the character of ladies who consented to be treated at taverns. De Cominges, ambassador from France in the reign of Charles II., observes that--

“excesses in taverns and brothels pass among people of note merely for gallantries, and even women of good condition do not refuse a gallant to accompany him to drink Spanish wine.”

It hardly becomes a Frenchman to comment on the coarseness of the English, considering the licentiousness among his own people. In France marriage was a constant subject of satire,[42] and much of the profligacy of our court and society was due to French influence. The French nobility hated the bourgeoisie, and could not forgive them for their higher moral tone.[43]

The Puritans, in their war against vice, endeavoured to lay waste the fields of culture and learning. Everything which ministered to the pleasure of the senses they treated as a snare to be avoided. The remedy which they applied to the ills of society was in itself a disease. George Fox, declaiming against the schoolmistresses who teach young women “to play of instruments and music of all kinds,” shows the attitude of the Puritan party in the matter of ordinary education. A catch, a song, or a dance, Fox looked upon as destructive of modesty, things leading to wantonness, and only fitted “for them that live in the lusts of the world.” It was little wonder that, with learning at a discount and accomplishments denounced as sinful, women became frivolous and narrow. The light-hearted, in rebellion against the austerities of their Puritan neighbours, plunged into excesses, and the more serious subsided into a round of domestic drudgery.

To men of the old order the times seemed sadly out of joint.

“All relations were confounded by the _several sects in religion_ which discountenanced all forms of reverence and respect as reliques and marks of superstition. Children asked not blessing of their parents; nor did they concern themselves in the education of their children, but were well content that they should take any course to maintain themselves that they might be free from that expense. The young women conversed without any circumspection or modesty, and frequently met at taverns and common eating houses; and they who were stricter and more severe in their comportment became the wives of the seditious preachers or of officers of the army. The daughters of noble and illustrious families bestowed themselves upon the _divines of the time_ or other low and unequal matches. Parents had no manner of authority over their children, nor children any obedience or submission to their parents; but every one did that which was good in his own eyes.”[44]

The loss of property occasioned by the Civil War caused great domestic upheavals. Many a family was brought to the brink of ruin. It was then that the women bestirred themselves. The daughters of men whose estates had been confiscated, the wives who had brought their husbands dowers, finding themselves denuded, made strenuous efforts to recover their possessions, in the absence through death or enforced exile of their male protectors. The Duchess of Newcastle, who was herself a sufferer,[45] looked with grave disapprobation upon the more energetic of her sex at this juncture. She complains that--

“women become pleaders, attornies, petitioners and the like, running about with their several causes, complaining of their several grievances, exclaiming against their several enemies, bragging of their several favours they receive from the powerful; thus trafficing with idle words, bringing in false reports and vain discourse.”

There were, of course, pretenders among the numerous claimants, people who, as the duchess avers, “made it their trade to solicit.”

As a rule, however, women in everyday life were secluded from the bustle of public affairs. According to Walpole, after the Restoration, the really respectable, well-conducted members of the female sex were neither seen nor heard outside their own home circle. That they led very dull lives seems pretty obvious, for they had neither the resources of learning and culture nor the distractions of society. But they enjoyed more personal freedom than women on the Continent. The Prince of Tuscany, who visited England, observes of the women--

“They live with all the liberty that the custom of the country authorizes. This custom dispenses with that rigorous constraint and reservedness which are practised by the women of other countries, and they go whithersoever they please, either alone or in company.”

Gentlewomen of good position were accustomed, in the seventeenth century, to live in a simple way, within the four walls of their home, occupied with domestic affairs. The wife of Sir John Coke, who was Secretary of State in the reign of Charles I., when she writes to her husband from the country, discourses to him of the children and of the needlework she is doing for the baby in homely fashion, and thanks him for sending her a new gown and hat, as if she were unused to fine clothes. Lady Anne Halkett, who played a notable part in the political troubles of her day, lived a quiet life enough when public affairs did not demand her attention, and spent her time like any good housewife. She was fond of gathering herbs and compounding powders and conserves for the sick poor.

“She was ever imployed either in doing or reaping good: in the summer season she vyed with the bee or ant, in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or limbeck, for the mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily then in a dress fitted for her still-house; making preparations of extracted waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders, etc., which she ministred every Wednesday to a multitude of poor infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all ranks who consulted her in their maladies.”

Mary Astell, however, who was so anxious about the intellectual advancement of her sex, blames Englishwomen for not excelling in the domestic talents, and upholds the example of the Dutch women, who, she says, not only manage all the household affairs, but--

“keep the books, balance the accounts, and do all the business with as much dexterity and exactness as their own or our men can do.”

Englishwomen could certainly not have coped with accounts if their arithmetic were on a par with their spelling. But they appear to have had complete control over domestic matters, or at least to have impressed foreigners with that belief.

“So great,” wrote one visitor, “is the respect which the English entertain for their women, that in their houses the latter govern everything despotically, making themselves feared by the men, courageous as they are on other occasions.”

In the opinion of a contemporary English writer,[46] husbands were by no means free agents--

“There is also the want of halfe a man’s liberty in marriage; for he is not absolutely himselfe, though many believe when they are going to Church upon their wedding day they are going into the land of liberty.... For my part I am not married; if I were I should finde my wings clipt and the collar too streight for my neck.”