Colonial memories

“Comparisons are odious” we know, but yet when one gets past middle age one is constantly invited to make them.

My life is brightened and cheered by many girl friends, and there is nothing about which they show a more insatiable curiosity than my own girlhood.

I think it is the going back so constantly to that distant time, and being forced by my imperious pets to drag every detail out of the pigeon-holes of memory, which has impressed so forcibly on me the superiority of the modern girl.

I began to answer their questions with the full intention of proving to the contrary, but alas, in the course of the talks, I often felt how heavily handicapped we had been. I am afraid the first point upon which I had to dilate was our clothes, the description of which always provoked peals of laughter. It is to be presumed that pretty women set the fashions and that they suited them, but the rigour of the fashion laws prescribed that every one should wear exactly and precisely the same gown or bonnet, with, of course, disastrous results as to appearance. Then we all had to dress our hair in precisely the same way. The ears especially were treated as though they were monstrous deformities, and had to be carefully concealed. What the modern girls find most difficult to believe is that these same fashions lasted for three or four years without the slightest change, so there was no escape from an unbecoming garment. Of course I impressed upon my laughing audience, with all the dignity at my command, that we looked extremely nice, and at all events were quite contented with our appearance.

If I could not defend the colours and cut of the material provided for our bodies, still less could I champion the diet prescribed for our minds. Looking back on it all I see there was the same cardinal error; the want of recognition of any individuality. As in our frocks so in our studies, no allowance whatever used to be made for our different natures. In fact, the great aim of every mother and teacher was to make her girl exactly and precisely like every other girl. No matter in what direction your tastes and talents lay, you had to plod through the same list of what was called “accomplishments.” The very word was a misnomer, for nothing was really accomplished. A girl’s education was supposed to be quite “finished” (Heaven save the mark!) at about sixteen or seventeen, but if she were studiously inclined, or even dimly suspected that she had not exhausted all the treasures of knowledge, she would have found it difficult to pursue any course of study. And the idleness of that stage of girlhood was one of its greatest dangers. A reaction from the practical days of our own grandmothers had set in, and there was no still-room, or work-room, or any branch of domestic education to which we could turn to find an outlet for our energies.

A girl with any musical talent could of course go on practising, and had a chance of achieving something, but art education must have been at its lowest ebb half a century ago. It is difficult to believe that a “drawing class” of that day generally consisted of a dozen girls or so meeting at the house of some rising or even well-known artist. The great point seemed to be his name. Drawing materials and every other facility, except instruction, used to be provided by our “master.” Perhaps the poor man recognised the hopelessness of his task, but he certainly let us severely alone even in our choice of subjects. We were only asked to copy other drawings, and I well remember selecting, as my first attempt at painting, a most ambitious sketch of a pretty Irish colleen with a pitcher on her head emerging from a ruined archway. I dashed in her red petticoat and blue cloak with great vigour, but took little pains with her uplifted arm or bare legs. They must indeed have been curious anatomical studies, for I recollect the master heaving a deep sigh, if not a groan, as I presented my drawing for his criticism. But he made no attempt whatever to teach me how to do better, only took possession of my picture, kept it a few days and returned it—what was called “corrected,” though we never knew where our faults lay.

Our “fancy work” was truly hideous also, and as useless as it was ugly. It makes one’s heart ache to think of the terrible waste of time and eyesight which our awful performances in wool work and crotchet entailed. Hardly any girl was taught to do plain sewing, and I really think one of my keenest pangs of regret for my misspent youth in the way of needlework was caused the other day, by my youngest girl friend telling me that at her school she was taught to cut out and make a whole set of baby clothes, as well as garments for older children.

Our amusements were few and far between, but we took to them a freshness and keenness of enjoyment which I suspect is often lacking in the much amused damsel of the present day. But then, on the other hand, “vapours” had gone out of fashion, and “nerves” had not yet been invented, so one never heard of rest cures being prescribed for young matrons!

I am thankful to say that the day of tight lacing and small appetites was over before I became aware of the dangers I had escaped, but I remember the pity with which I listened to my poor young mother’s stories of how she was required to hold on to the bedpost while her maid laced her stays, and how she often fainted after she was dressed.

I am often asked what exercise we were allowed to take. We rode a great deal, though girls were hardly ever seen in the hunting field, and I wonder we survived a ride on a country road, considering that our habits almost swept the ground. We had no out-door game except croquet, which was just coming into fashion, and was pursued with a frenzy quite equal to that evoked by ping-pong or any other modern craze. Of course, there was always walking and dancing, though over the latter there still hung a faint trace of the stately movements of the generation before us. We all did elaborate steps in the quadrille, and although the waltz was firmly established in the ball-rooms of my youth, it was a slow measure compared to the modern rush across the room. The polka woke us all up, and we hailed its pretty and picturesque figures with enthusiasm.

I often hear of the iniquities of girls of the present day, but I don’t come across those specimens, and I confess that I honestly believe the modern girl, as I know her, to be a very great improvement on the early Victorian maiden. To begin with, she is much nicer and prettier to look at, because she can suit her dress and her coiffure to her individuality. Then she is not so dreadfully shy—not to say gauche, as we were, because she is not kept in the school-room until the hour before she is launched into society, as ignorant of its ways as if she had dropped from the moon.

I distinctly remember being reproached for my want of “knowledge of the world,” when I had not even the faintest idea what the phrase meant. When I came to understand it, it seemed a rather unreasonable criticism, for I certainly should have been regarded with horror had I made any attempt to acquire such knowledge on my own account.

Now—so far as my experience goes—the up-to-date girl has pretty and pleasant manners, and is not secretly terrified if a new acquaintance speaks to her. She is more sure of herself, and has the confidence of custom, for she has probably been her mother’s companion out of school hours. I fear girls are not quite as respectful and obedient to their elders as we used to be, although the days of “Honoured Madam” and “Sir” had passed away with the generation before mine. Still the modern mother seems quite content with her pretty girl, and it is often difficult to distinguish between them, but I always observe the daughter is the most proud and delighted if “Mummie” is taken for her elder sister.

Then the New Girl is so companionable. Her education has been conducted on very different lines to ours, and she does not dream of giving up her studies because she is no longer obliged to pursue them. Her individual tastes have been given a chance of asserting themselves, and I am often told of “work” gone on with at home. In fact her education has really taught her how to go on educating herself. Of course I am speaking of intelligent girls, and I am happy to think they are far more numerous than they were even one generation ago. There will always be frivolous, empty-headed girls, but with even them I confess I find it very difficult to be properly angry, as they are generally so pretty and coaxing.

The delightful classes and lectures on all subjects and in all languages now so common were unknown in my day, to say nothing of the numerous aids to difficult branches of knowledge. Even history was offered to us in so unattractive a form that although we swallowed, so to speak, a good deal of it, we digested little or none. Poetry was generally regarded as dangerous mental food, and, perhaps to our starved natures, it may have been. Our reading was most circumscribed, and everything was Bowdlerised as much as possible. I am not sure, however, that miscellaneous reading does not begin too soon now, and certainly I am often astonished at the books very, very young girls are allowed to read. In this respect I confess I think the old way safer, to say the least of it.

In considering the subject of the new ways of girls, however, one must bear in mind how many more girls there now are, and that marriage is not the invariable destiny of every pretty or charming girl one meets. The consequence is girls certainly do not talk and think of future or possible husbands as much as they used to a couple of generations ago. Such talk was quite natural and harmless under the old conditions, but I must say it seems healthier and nicer that now it should be the merits of the favourite “bike,” or the last “ripping” run, or the varying fortunes of golf or hockey, or even croquet, which claims their attention when they get together. I often wonder how a man could have encumbered himself with any of us as his life’s companion! It is true that he had not any option, but still we must have been rather trying. I know of one girl who amazed her husband by appearing before him the first Sunday morning after their marriage, with her Prayer Book, which she handed to him with the utmost gravity, and standing up with her hands clasped behind her back, in true school-girl fashion, proceeded to rattle off the collect, epistle, and gospel for the day, having no idea she was doing anything the least unusual!

The only comfort I have in looking back on our crudeness and ignorance is that we were really good girls. That is to say we were trained to be unselfish, and certainly we were obedient and docile, though in many ways what would now be called silly. Still, we were as pure minded and innocent as babes, and quite as unworldly. No doubt this white-souled state sprang from crass ignorance, but who shall say that it was not good to keep us from tasting the fruit of that terrible Tree of Knowledge as long as possible?

“You must have been dears,” is the verdict with which a talk of these distant days is often ended by my laughing critics. And I feel inclined to say, “Well, and you are dears, too,” so I suppose that is the real solution of the question.

THE END

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