It was not till I was actively engaged in the work of Mary Carpenter at Bristol, and had begun to desire earnestly various changes of law relating to young criminals and paupers, that I became an advocate of “Women’s Rights.” It was good old Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New York, who, when paying us a visit, pressed on my attention the question: “Why should you not have a vote? Why should not women be enabled to influence the making of the laws in which they have as great an interest as men?”
My experience probably explains largely the indifference of thousands of women, not deficient in intelligence, in England and America to the possession of political rights. They have much anxiety to fulfil their home duties, and the notion of undertaking others, requiring (as they fully understand) conscientious enquiry and reflection, rather alarms than attracts them. But the time comes to every woman worth her salt to take ardent interest in some question which touches legislation. Then she begins to ask herself, as Mr. May asked me; “Why should the fact of being a woman, close to me the use of the plain, direct means, of helping to achieve some large public good or stopping some evil?” The timid, the indolent, the conventional will here retreat, and try to believe that it concerns men only to right the wrongs of the world in some more effectual way than by single-handed personal efforts in special cases. Others again,—and of their number was I—become deeply impressed with the need of woman’s voice in public affairs, and thenceforth attach themselves to the “Woman’s Cause” more or less earnestly. For my own part I confess I have been chiefly moved by reflection on the sufferings and wrongs borne by women, in great measure owing to the deconsideration they endure consequent on their political and civil disabilities. Whilst I and other happily circumstanced women, have had no immediate wrongs of our own to gall us, we should still have been very poor creatures had we not felt bitterly those of our less fortunate sisters, the robbed and trampled wives, the mothers whose children were torn from them at the bidding of a dead or living father, the daughters kept in ignorance and poverty while their brothers were educated in costly schools and fitted for honourable professions. Such wrongs as these have inspired me with the persistent resolution to do everything in my power to protect the property, the persons and the parental rights of women.
I do not think that this resolve has any necessary connection with theories concerning the equality of the sexes; and I am sure that a great deal of our force has been wasted on fruitless discussions such as: “Why has there never been a female Shakespeare?” A Celt claiming equal representation with a Saxon, or any representation at all, might just as fairly be challenged to explain why there has never been a Celtic Shakespeare, or a Celtic Tennyson? My own opinion is, that women en masse are by no means the intellectual equals of men en masse;—and whether this inequality arise from irremediable causes or from alterable circumstances of education and heredity, is not worth debating. If the nation had established an intellectual test for political equality, and admission to the franchise were confined to persons passing a given Standard; well and good. Then, no doubt, there would be (as things now stand) fifty per cent. of men who would win votes, and perhaps only thirty per cent. of women. So much may be freely admitted. But then that thirty per cent. of females would obtain political rights; and those who failed, would be debarred by a natural and real, not an arbitrary inferiority. Such a state of things would not present such ludicrous injustice as that which obtains,—for example,—in a parish not a hundred miles from my present abode. There is in the village in question a man universally known therein as “The Idiot;” a poor slouching, squinting fellow, who yet rents a house and can do rough field work, though he can scarcely speak intelligibly. He has a vote, of course. The owner of his house and of half the parish, who holds also the advowson of the living, is a lady who has travelled widely, understands three or four languages, and studies the political news of Europe daily in the columns of the Times. That lady, equally of course, has no vote, no power whatever to keep the representation of her county out of the hands of the demagogues naturally admired by the Idiot and his compeers. Under the regulations which create inequalities of this kind is it not rather absurd to insist perpetually, (as is the practise of our opponents,) on the intellectual inferiority of women,—as if it were really in question?
I hold, however, that whatever be our real mental rank,—to be tested thoroughly only in future generations, under changed conditions of training and heredity,—we women are the equivalents, though not the equals, of men. And to refuse a share in the law-making of a nation to the most law-abiding half of it; to exclude on all largest questions the votes of the most conscientious, temperate, religious and (above all) most merciful and tender-hearted moiety, is a mistake which cannot fail, and has not failed, to entail great evil and loss.
I wrote, as I have mentioned in Chapter XV., a great many articles, (chiefly in Fraser and Macmillan,) on women’s concerns about the years 1861–2–3: “What shall we do with our Old Maids?”; “Female Charity, Lay and Monastic;” “Women in Italy in 1862;” “The Education of Women;” “Social Science Congress and Women’s Part in them;” and, later, “The Fitness of Women for the Ministry of Religion.” These made me known to many women who were fighting in the woman’s cause; Miss Bessie Parkes (now Madame Belloc), Madame Bodichon, Mrs. Grey, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Peter Taylor, Miss Becker, and others; and when Committees were formed for promoting Woman Suffrage, I was invited to join them. I did so; and frequently attended the meetings, though not regularly. We had several Members of Parliament and other gentlemen (notably Mr. Frederick Hill, brother of my old friend Recorder Hill and of Sir Rowland), who generally helped our deliberations; and many able women, among others Mrs. Augusta Webster, the poetess; and Lady Anna Gore Langton, an exceedingly sensible woman, who also held Drawing-Room Suffrage Meetings (at which I spoke) in her house. We had for secretary Miss Lydia Becker; a woman of singular political ability, for whom I had a sincere respect. Her premature death has been an incalculable loss to the women of England. She gave me the impression of one of those ill-fated people whose outward persons do not represent their inward selves. I am sure she had a large element of softness and sensitiveness in her nature, unsuspected by most of those with whom she laboured. She was a most courageous and straightforward woman, with a single eye to the great political work which she had undertaken, and which I think no one has understood so well as she.
After Miss Becker’s lamented death the great schism between Unionists and Home Rulers extended far enough to split even our Committee, (which was avowedly of no party,) into two bodies. I naturally followed my fellow-Unionist, Mrs. Fawcett when she re-organized the moiety of the Society and established an office for it in College Street, Westminster. Believing her to be quite the ablest woman-economist and politician in England, I entertain the hope that she may at last carry a Woman Suffrage Bill and live to see qualified single women recording their votes at Parliamentary elections. When that time arrives every one will scoff at the objections which have so long closed the “right of way,” to us of the “weaker sex.”
Beside the Committee of the Society for Woman Suffrage, I also joined for a time the Committee which,—long afterwards,—effected the splendid achievement of procuring the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act; the greatest step gained up to the present time for women in England. I can claim no part of that real honour, which is due in greatest measure to Mrs. Jacob Bright.
The question of granting University Degrees to women, was opened as far back as 1862. In that year I read, in the Guildhall in London at the Social Science Congress, a paper, pleading for the privilege. Dean Milman, who occupied the Chair, was very kind in praising my crude address, and enjoyed the little jokes wherewith it was sprinkled; but next morning every daily paper in London laughed at my demand, and for a week or two I was the butt of universal ridicule. Nevertheless, just 17 years afterwards, I was invited to join a Deputation headed by Lady Stanley of Alderley, to thank Lord Granville for having (as President of London University) conceded those degrees to women, precisely as I had demanded! I took occasion at the close of the pleasant interview, to present him with one of the very few remaining copies of my original and much ridiculed appeal.
From this time I wrote and spoke not unfrequently on behalf of women’s political and civil claims. One article of mine in Fraser, 1868, was reprinted more than once. It was headed “Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors;” and enquired “Whether the classification should be counted sound?” I hope that the discussion it involved on the laws relating to the property of married women was of some service in helping on the great measure of justice afterwards granted.
Another paper of mine, circulated by the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage, for whom I wrote it, was entitled “Our Policy.” It was, in effect, an address to women concerning the best way to secure the suffrage. I began this pamphlet by the following remarks:—
“There is an instructive story, told by Herodotus, of an African nation which went to war with the South Wind. The wind had greatly annoyed these Psyllians by drying up their cisterns, so they organised a campaign and set off to attack the enemy at head-quarters—somewhere, I presume, about the Sahara. The army was admirably equipped with all the military engines of those days; swords and spears, darts and javelins, battering rams and catapults. It happened that the South Wind did not, however, suffer much from these weapons, but got up one fine morning and blew!—The sands of the desert have lain for a great many ages over those unfortunate Psyllians; and, as Herodotus placidly concludes the story, ‘The Nasamones possess the territory of those who thus perished.’
“It seems to me that we, women, who have been fighting for the Suffrage with logical arguments—syllogisms, analogies, demonstrations, and reductions-to-the-absurd of our antagonists’ position, in short, all the weapons of ratiocinative warfare—have been behaving very much like those poor Psyllians, who imagined that darts, and swords, and catapults would avail against the Simoom. The obvious fact is, that it is Sentiment we have to contend against, not Reason; Feeling and Prepossession, not intellectual Conviction. Had Logic been the only obstacle in our way, we should long ago have been polling our votes for Parliamentary as well as for Municipal and School Board elections. To those who hold that Property is the thing intended to be represented by the Constitution of England, we have shown that we possess such property. To those who say that Tax-paying and Representation should go together, we have pointed to the tax-gatherers’ papers, which, alas! lie on our hall-tables wholly irrespective of the touching fact that we belong to the ‘protected sex.’ Where Intelligence, Education, and freedom from crime are considered enough to confer rights of citizenship, we have remarked that we are quite ready to challenge rivalry in such particulars with those Illiterates for whose exercise of political functions our Senate has taken such exemplary care. Finally, to the ever-recurring charge that we cannot fight, and therefore ought not to vote, we have replied that the logic of the exclusion will be manifest when all the men too weak, too short, or too old for the military standard be likewise disfranchised, and when the actual soldiers of our army are accorded the suffrage.
“But it is Sentiment, not Logic, against which we have to struggle; and we shall best do so, I think, by endeavouring to understand and make full allowance for it; and then by steady working, shoulder to shoulder so as to conquer, or rather win it over to our side.”
In 1876, May 13th, I made a rather long and elaborate speech on the subject of women’s suffrage in a meeting in St. George’s Hall, at which Mr. Russell Gurney, the Recorder of London, took the chair. John Bright had spoken against our Bill in the House, and though I had not intended to speak at our meeting, I was spurred by indignation to reply to him. In this address I spoke chiefly of the wrongs of mothers whose children are taken from them at the will of a living or dead father. I ended by saying:—
“I advocate Woman Suffrage as the natural and needful constitutional means of protection for the rights of the weaker half of the nation. I do this as a woman pleading for women. But I do it also, and none the less confidently, as a citizen, and for the sake of the whole community, because it is my conviction that such a measure is no less expedient for men than just for women; and that it will redound in coming years ever more and more to the happiness, the virtue and the honour of our country.”
Several years after this, I wrote a letter which was printed in the (American) Woman’s Tribune, May 1st, 1884. It expresses so exactly what I feel still on the subject that I shall redeem it if possible from oblivion. The following are the passages for which I should like to ask the reader’s attention:
“If I may presume to offer an old woman’s counsel to the younger workers in our cause, it would be that they should adopt the point of view—that it is before all things our Duty to obtain the franchise. If we undertake the work in this spirit, and with the object of using the power it confers, whenever we gain it, for the promotion of justice and mercy and the kingdom of God upon earth, we shall carry on all our agitation in a corresponding manner, firmly and bravely, and also calmly and with generous good temper. And when our opponents come to understand that this is the motive underlying our efforts, they, on their part, will cease to feel bitterly and scornfully toward us, even when they think we are altogether mistaken.
“That people MAY conscientiously consider that we are mistaken in asking for woman suffrage, is another point which it surely behoves us to carry in mind.
“We naturally think almost exclusively of many advantages which would follow to our sex and to both sexes from the entrance of woman into political life. But that there are some ‘lions in the way,’ and rather formidable lions, too, ought not to be forgotten.
“For myself, I would far rather that women should remain without political rights to the end of time than that they should lose those qualities which we comprise in the word ‘womanliness;’ and I think nearly every one of the leaders of our party in America and in England agrees with me in this feeling.
“The idea that the possession of political rights will destroy ‘womanliness,’ absurd as it may seem to us, is very deeply rooted in the minds of men; and when they oppose our demands, it is only just to give them credit for doing so on grounds which we should recognize as valid, if their premises were true. It is not so much that our opponents (at least the better part of them) despise women, as that they really prize what women now are in the home and in society so highly that they cannot bear to risk losing it by any serious change in their condition. These fears are futile and faithless, but there is nothing in them to affront us. To remove them, we must not use violent words, for every such violent word confirms their fears; but, on the contrary, show the world that while the revolutions wrought by men have been full of bitterness and rancour, and stormy passions, if not of bloodshed, we women will at least strive to accomplish our great emancipation calmly and by persuasion and reason.”
I was honoured about this time by several friendly advances from American ladies and gentlemen interested like myself in woman’s advancement. The astronomer, Prof. Maria Mitchell, wrote me a charming letter, which I exceedingly regret should have been lost, as I felt particular interest in her great achievements. I had the pleasure of receiving Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in Hereford Square, and also Mrs. Livermore, whose speech at one of our Suffrage Meetings realised my highest ideal of a woman’s public address. Her noble face and figure like that of a Roman Matron, her sweet manners and playful humour without a scintilla of bitterness in it,—as if she were a mother remonstrating with a foolish, school-boy son,—were all delightful to me.
Col. J. W. Higginson, who has been so good a friend and adviser to women, also came to see me, and gave me some bright hours of conversation on his wonderful experiences in the war, during which he commanded a coloured regiment, which fought valiantly under his leadership. Finally I had the privilege of being elected a member of the famous Sorosis Club of New York, and of receiving the following very pleasant letter conveying the gift of a pretty gold and enamel brooch, the badge of the Sisterhood.
“The ladies of Sorosis—The Woman’s Club of New York—beg your acceptance of the accompanying Pin, the insignia of their organization, which they send by the hand of their foreign correspondent, Mrs. Laura Curtis Ballard.
“Trifling as is this testimonial in itself, they feel that if you knew the genuine appreciation of you and your work that goes with it—the gratitude with which each one regards you as a faithful worker for women—you would not consider it unworthy your acceptance. With best wishes for your continued health, which in your case means continued usefulness,
The part of my work for women, however, to which I look back with most satisfaction was that in which I laboured to obtain protection for unhappy wives, beaten, mangled, mutilated or trampled on by brutal husbands. One day in 1878 I was by chance reading a newspaper in which a whole series of frightful cases of this kind were recorded, here and there, among the ordinary news of the time. I got up out of my armchair, half dazed, and said to myself: “I will never rest till I have tried what I can do to stop this.”
I thought anxiously what was the sort of remedy I ought to endeavour to put forward. A Parliamentary Blue Book had been printed in 1875 entitled: “Reports on the State of the law relating to Brutal Assaults,” and the following is a summary of the results. There was a large consensus of opinion that the law as it now stands is insufficient for its purpose. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justice Lush, Mr. Justice Mellor, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott and Pollock, all expressed the same judgment (pp. 7–19). The following gave their opinion in favour of flogging offenders in cases of brutal assaults. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justices Blackburn, Mellor, Lush, Quain, Archibald, Brett, Grove, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott, Pollock, Charles, and Amphlett. Only Lord Coleridge and Lord Denman hesitated, and Mr. Justice Keating opposed flogging. Of Chairmen of Quarter Sessions 64 (out of 68, whose answers were sent to the Home Office,) and the Recorders of 41 towns, were in favour of flogging. After all this testimony of the opinions of experts (collected of course at the public expense), three years elapsed during which absolutely nothing was done to make any practical use of it! During the interval, scores of Bills, interesting to the represented sex, passed through Parliament; but this question on which the lives of women literally hung, was never mooted! Something like 5,000 women, judging by the published judicial statistics, were in those years “brutally assaulted;” i.e., not merely struck, but maimed, blinded, burned, trampled on by strong men in heavy shoes, and, in many cases, murdered outright; and thousands of children were brought up to witness scenes which (as Colonel Leigh said) “infernalise a whole generation.” Where lay the fault? Scarcely with the Government, or even with Parliament, but with the simple fact that, under our present constitution, Women, having no votes, can only exceptionally and through favour, bring pressure to bear to force attention even to the most crying of injustices under which they suffer. The Home Office must attend first to the claims of those who can bring pressure to bear on it; and Members of Parliament must bring in the measures pressed by their constituents; and thus the unrepresented must go to the wall.
The cases of cruelty of which I obtained statistics, furnished to me mainly by the kindness of Miss A. Shore, almost surpassed belief. It appeared that about 1,500 cases of aggravated (over and above ordinary) assaults on wives took place every year in England; on an average about four a day. Many of them were of truly incredible savagery; and the victims were, in the vast majority of cases, not drunken viragos (who usually escape violence or give as good as they receive), but poor, pale, shrinking creatures, who strove to earn bread for their children and to keep together their miserable homes; and whose very tears and pallor were reproaches which provoked the heteropathy and cruelty of their tyrants.
After much reflection I came to the conclusion that in spite of all the authority in favour of flogging the delinquents, it was not expedient on the women’s behalf that they should be so punished, since after they had undergone such chastisement, however well merited, the ruffians would inevitably return more brutalised and infuriated than ever; and again have their wives at their mercy. The only thing really effective, I considered, was to give the wife the power of separating herself and her children from her tyrant. Of course in the upper ranks, where people could afford to pay for a suit in the Divorce Court, the law had for some years opened to the assaulted wife this door of escape. But among the working classes, where the assaults were ten-fold as numerous and twenty times more cruel, no legal means whatever existed of escaping from the husband returning after punishment to beat and torture his wife again. I thought the thing to be desired was the extension of the privilege of rich women to their poorer sisters, to be effected by an Act of Parliament which should give a wife whose husband had been convicted of an aggravated assault on her, the power to obtain a Separation Order under Summary Jurisdiction.
Mr. Alfred Hill, J.P., of Birmingham, son of my old friend Recorder Hill, most kindly interested himself in my project, and drafted a Bill to be presented to Parliament embodying my wishes. Meanwhile; I set about writing an article setting forth the extent of the evil, the failure of the measures hitherto taken in various Acts of Parliament, and, finally, the remedy I proposed. This article my friend Mr. Percy Bunting was good enough to publish in the Contemporary Review in the spring of 1878. I also wrote an article in Truth on Wife Torture, afterwards reprinted. Meanwhile, I had obtained the most cordial assistance from Mr. Frederick Pennington and Mr. Hopwood, both of whom were then in Parliament, and it was agreed that I should beg Mr. Russell Gurney to take charge of the Bill which these gentlemen would support. I went accordingly, armed with the draft Bill, to the Recorder’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and, as I anxiously desired to find him at home, I ventured to call as early as 10.30. Mr. Gurney read the draft Bill carefully, and entirely approved it. “Then,” I said, “you will take charge of it, I earnestly hope?” “No,” said Mr. Gurney, “I cannot do that; I am too old and over-worked to undertake all the watching and labour which may be necessary; but I will put my name on the back of it, with pleasure.”
I knew, of course, that his name would give the measure great importance and also help me to find some other M.P. to take charge of it, so I could not but thank him gratefully. At that moment of our interview, his charming wife entered the room leading a little boy; I believe his nephew. Naturally I apologized to Mrs. Gurney for my presence at that unholy hour of the morning; and said, “I came to Mr. Gurney in my anxiety, as the Friend of Women.” Mr. Gurney, hearing me, put his hands on the little lad’s shoulder and said to him, “Do you hear that, my boy? I hope that when you are an old man, as I am, some lady like Miss Cobbe may call you the Friend of Women!”
At last, the Bill embodying precisely the purport of that drawn up for me by Mr. Hill, and subsequently published in the Contemporary Review, was read a first time, the names of Mr. Herschell (now Lord Herschell) and Sir Henry Holland (afterwards Lord Knutsford) being on the back of it. Every arrangement was made for the second Reading; and for avoiding the opposition which we expected to meet from a party which seems always to think that by calling certain unions “Holy” a Church can sanctify that which has become a bond of savage cruelty on one side, and soul-degrading slavery on the other. Just at this crisis, Lord Penzance, who was bringing a Bill into the House of Lords to remedy some defects concerning the costs of the intervention of the Queen’s Proctor in Matrimonial causes, introduced into it a clause dealing with the case of the assaulted wives, and giving them precisely the benefit contemplated in our Bill and in my article; namely, that of Separation Orders to be granted by the same magistrates who have convicted the husband of aggravated assaults upon them. That Lord Penzance had seen our Bill, then before the Lower House, (it was ordered to be printed February 14th) and had had his attention called to the subject, either by it, or by my article in the Contemporary Review, I have taken as probable, but have no exact knowledge. I went at once to call on him and thank him from my heart for undertaking to do this great service of mercy to women; and also to pray him to consider certain points about the custody of the children of such assaulted wives. Lord Penzance received me with the utmost kindness and likewise gave favourable consideration to a letter or two which I ventured to address to him. It is needless to say that his advocacy of the measure carried it through the House of Lords without opposition. I believe that in speaking for it he said that if any noble Lord needed proof of the grievous want of such protection for wives they would find it in my article, which he held in his hand.
There was still, we feared, an ordeal to go through in the House of Commons; but the fates and hours were propitious, and the Bill, coming in late one night as already passed by the House of Lords and with Lord Penzance’s great name on it,—escaped opposition and was accepted without debate. By the 27th May, 1878, it had become the law of the land, and has since taken its place as Chapter 19 of the 41st Vict. An Act to amend the Matrimonial Causes Acts. The following are the clauses which concern the assaulted Wives:—
4. If a husband shall be convicted summarily or otherwise of an aggravated assault within the meaning of the statute twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth Victoria, chapter one hundred, section forty-three, upon his wife, the Court or magistrate before whom he shall be so convicted may, if satisfied that the future safety of the wife is in peril, order that the wife shall be no longer bound to cohabit with her husband; and such order shall have the force and effect in all respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty; and such order may further provide,
1. That the husband shall pay to his wife such weekly sum as the Court or magistrate may consider to be in accordance with his means, and with any means which the wife may have for her support, and the payment of any sum of money so ordered shall be enforceable and enforced against the husband in the same manner as the payment of money is enforced under an order of affiliation; and the Court or magistrate by whom any such order for payment of money shall be made shall have power from time to time to vary the same on the application of either the husband or the wife, upon proof that the means of the husband or wife have been altered in amount since the original order or any subsequent order varying it shall have been made.
2. That the legal custody of any children of the marriage under the age of ten years shall, in the discretion of the Court or magistrate, be given to the wife.
At first the magistrates were very chary of granting the Separation Orders. One London Police Magistrate had said that the House of Commons would never put such power in the hands of one of the body, and he was, I suppose, proportionately startled when just six weeks later, it actually lay in his own. By degrees, however, the practice of granting the Orders on proper occasions became common, and appears now to be almost a matter of course. I hope that at least a hundred poor souls each year thus obtain release from their tormentors, and probably the deterrent effect of witnessing such manumission of ill-treated slaves may have still more largely served to protect women from the violence of brutal husbands.
Six years after the Act had passed in 1884, I received a letter from a very energetic and prominent woman-worker with whom I had a slight acquaintance, in which the following passages occur. I quote them here (though with some hesitation on the score of vanity) for they have comforted me much and deeply, and will do so to my life’s end.
“On Wednesday last I was two hours with a widow,—of O——, near W——; one of those persons who make a country so good, brave, loving and hardworking! For 33 long years she lived with a fiend of a husband, and suffered furious blows, kicks, and attacks with ropes, hot water, and crockery; was hurled down cellar-steps, &c., starved and insulted. All the time, up early and at work managing a large shop and superintending 35 girls....
“I wish you could have been there to hear her tell me that ‘the law was altered now,’ and how her niece had got a separation for brutal treatment; and (best of all) ‘her two bairns’ (children). As for the 8s. a week ordered,—the wife never ‘bothers after that.’ ‘The Lord has stopped that villain’s ways, and she wants no more.’ I could not help crying, as I looked at the exquisitely clean person and home,—the determined face, and thought of the diabolical horrors this good, clever woman had gone through. I told her how you had got the law altered—and she kept saying ‘She’s a lady—she’s a lady. Bring her to O——, Missis! and we’ll percession her down t’ street!’...
“You have love and gratitude from our hearts, I assure you; we live wider lives and better for your presence. I have ventured to write freely on a subject some would find wearisome, but your heart is big and will sympathise; and I am always longing for you to know the active result of your achieved work. This! that poor battered, bruised women are relieved—are safer—and bless you, and so do I, from a full heart.
If I could hear before I die that I had been able to do as much for tortured brutes, I should say “Nunc Dimittis,” and wish no more.
Some time after this (I have kept no copy or record of date) I delivered a Lecture, which was a good deal noticed at the time, on the Little Health of Ladies. It was an exposure of the evils resulting to families from the state of semi-invalidism in which so many women live, usually gently lapped therein by interested advisers. I exhorted women to do, as a duty to God and man, everything possible to avoid falling into this wretched condition, with the self-indulgence and neglect of home and social duties leading to it or consequent on it. I did not then know as much as I subsequently learned of the inner history of a great deal of this misery, or I might have added to my warning some remarkable denunciations by honourable doctors of the practices of their colleagues.[32]
A singular incident followed the publication of this address in one of the Magazines.
There was a lady, whose husband was a wealthy manufacturer in the North of England, who came to London once or twice a year, and for several years called on me; having much sympathy with my various interests. She appeared to be a confirmed invalid, crawling with great difficulty out of her carriage into our dining-room, and lying on a sofa during her visits. One day I was told she had come, and I was hastening to receive her downstairs, when a tall, elegant woman, whom I scarcely recognized, walked firmly and lightly, into my drawing-room, and greeted me cordially with laughter in her eyes at my astonishment.
“So glad to see you so well!” I exclaimed, “but what has happened to you?”
“It is you who have effected the cure!” she answered.
“Good gracious! How?”
“Why, I read your Little Health of Ladies, and I resolved to set my doctor at naught and go about like other people. And you see how well I am! There was really nothing the matter with me but want of exercise!”
I saw her several times afterwards in good health; and once she brought me a beautiful gold bracelet with clasp of diamonds set in black enamel, which she had had made for me, and which she forced me to accept as a token of her gratitude. I am fond of wearing it still.
Another incident strongly confirmed my belief in the source of much of the evil and misery arising from the Little Health of Ladies. Travelling one day from Brighton I fell into conversation with a nice-looking, well-bred woman the only other occupant of the railway carriage. Speaking of the salubrity of Brighton, she said, “I am sure I have reason enough to bless it. I was for fourteen years a miserable invalid on my sofa in London; my doctor telling me I must never go out or move. At last I said to my husband, ‘It is better to die than to go on thus;’ and, in defiance of our Doctor, he brought me away to Brighton, and there I soon grew, as you see, quite strong; and—and,—I must tell you, I have a little baby, and my husband is so happy!”
That clever Gynæcologist lost, I daresay, a hundred, or perhaps two hundred, a year by the escape of his patient from his assiduous visitations; but the lady gained health and happiness; her husband his wife’s companionship; and both of them a child! How much of the miseries and ill-health, and, in many cases, death of women (of the poorer classes especially) lies at the door of medical practitioners and operators, too fond by half of the knife, is known to those who have read the recent articles and correspondence respecting the Women’s Hospitals and “Human Vivisection” therein in the Daily Chronicle (May, 1894) and in the Homœopathic World for June.
Quite apart from the doctors, however, a great deal of the sickliness of women is undoubtedly due to wretched fashions of tight-lacing, and wearing long and heavy skirts, and tight, thin boots, which render free exercise of their limbs impossible. Nothing makes me really despair of my sex, except looking at fashion-plates; or seeing (what is much worse still, being wicked, as well as foolish) the adornments so many women use of dead birds, stuck on their empty heads and heartless breasts. These things are a disgrace to women for which I have often felt they deserve to be despised and swept aside by men as soulless creatures unworthy of freedom. But alas! it is precisely the women who adopt these idiotic fashions in dress, and wear (abominable cruelty!) Egrets as ornaments, who are not despised but admired by men, who reserve their indifference and contempt for their homely and sensible sisters. Men in these respects are as silly as the fish in the river caught by a gaudy artificial fly on a hook, or enticed into a net by a scrap of scarlet cloth, and a glittering morsel of brass. I often wonder whether women are generally, as little capable of forming a discriminating judgment of men?
Lastly, there is a cause of female ill-health which always impresses me with profoundest pity, and which has never, I think, been fairly brought to the front as the origin of a large part of feminine feebleness. I mean the common want, among women who earn their livelihood, of sufficiently brain-nourishing and stimulating food. Let any man, the strongest in the land in body and mind, subsist for one week on tea without milk, and bread and butter, and at the end of that time, he will, I venture to predict, have lost half his superiority. His nervous excitability and cheerfulness may remain, or even be enhanced, but the faculty of largely grasping and strongly dealing with the subjects presented to him, and of doing thorough and complete work, nay even the desire of such perfection and finish, will have abated; and the fatal slovenliness of women’s work will probably have begun to show itself. The physical conditions under which the human spirit can alone (in this life) carry out its purpose and attain its maximum of vigour, are more or less lacking to half the women even in our country; and almost completely wanting to the poor prisoners of the Zenanas of India and the cripples of China. Exercise in the open air, wholesome and sufficient food, plenty of sleep at night,—every one of these sine qua non elements of real Health of Mind, as well as of Body, are out of reach of one woman out of every two; yet we remark, curiously, on the inferiority of their work! It is a vicious circle in which they are caught. They take lower wages because they can live more cheaply than men; and they necessarily live on those low wages too poorly to do anything but poor work;—and again their wages are paltry because their work is so poor!
I confess, however, that—on the other hand—the spectacle of feminine feebleness and futility when (as continually happens) it is exhibited without the smallest excuse from inadequate food supply, is indescribably irritating, nay, to me, humiliating and exasperating. Watch (for example of what I mean by “feminine futility”) a woman asked to open a just-arrived box, or a bottle of champagne or of soda-water. She has been given a cold-chisel for opening the box, and a hammer; but they are invariably “astray” when required, or she does not think it worth while to fetch them from up or downstairs, so she kneels down before the box and begins by fumbling with her fingers at the knots in the cord. After five minutes’ efforts and broken nails, she gives this up in despair, and “thinks she must cut it.” But how? She never by any chance has a knife in her pocket; so she first tries her scissors, which she does keep there, but which, being always quite blunt, fail to sever the rope; and then she fetches a dinner-knife, and gives one cut,—when the feminine passion for economy suggests to her that she can save the rest of the cord by pushing it (with immense effort) an inch or two along the box, first at one side and then at the other. Then she hopes by breaking open the top of the box at one end only, to get out the contents without dealing further with the recalcitrant rope; and she endeavours to pull it open where the nails seem least firm. Alas! those nails will never yield to her weak hands; so her scissors are in requisition again, and being inserted and used as a wedge, immediately break off at the points, and are hastily withdrawn with an exclamation of agonising regret for the blunt, but precious, instrument. Something must be thrust in, however, to prize open the box. The cold-chisel and hammer having been at last sought, but sought in vain, the kitchen cleaver, covered with the fat of the last joint it has cut, is brought into play; or, happy thought! she knows where her master keeps a fine sharp chisel, and this is pushed in,—of course against a nail which breaks the edge and makes it useless for ever. The poker serves sufficiently well as a hammer to knock in the chisel, or the cleaver, and to bang up the protruding lid of the box; and at last one plank of the top is loosened, and she tears it off triumphantly, with a cry of rejoicing: “There! Now, we shall get at everything in the box!” The goods, however, stubbornly refuse to be extricated through the hole on any terms; and eventually all the planks have to be successively broken up, and the long-cared-for cord (for the preservation of which so much trouble has been undergone) is cut into little pieces of a foot or two in length, each attached to a hopelessly entangled knot, while the box itself is entirely wrecked.
The case of the soda-water, or champagne bottle is worse again; so much so that experience warns the wise to forbear from calling for effervescent drinks where parlour-maids prevail. The preliminary ineffectual attempt to loosen the wires with the fingers (the proper pliers being, of course, missing); the resort to a steel carving-fork to open them, and, in default of the steel fork, to a silver one, which is, of course, bent immediately; the endeavour to cut the hempen cord with the bread knife with the result of blunting that tool against the wire; the struggle to cause the cork to fly by wobbling it with the right hand, while clasping the neck of the bottle till it and the contents are hot in the left; then (on the failure of this bold attempt) the cutting off the head of the cork with a carving knife, and at the same time a small slice of the operator’s hand, which, of course, bleeds profusely; the consequent hasty transference of the bottle and the job to a second attendant; the hurried search of the same in the side-table drawer for the corkscrew; her rush to the kitchen to fetch that instrument where it has been nefariously borrowed and where the point of the screw has been broken off; the difficult (and crooked) insertion of the broken screw into the cork; the repeated frantic tugs at the bottle, held tight between the knees, finally the climax, when the cork bursts out and the champagne along with it, up in the reddening face and over the white muslin apron of the poor anxious woman, who hurries nervously to wipe it off, and then pours the small quantity of liquor which remains bubbling over the glasses, till the table-cloth is swamped;—such in brief is Feminine Futility, as exhibited in the drawing of corks! Luckily it is possible to find parlour-maids who know how to use, and will keep at hand, both cold-chisels and corkscrews. But they are exceptions. The normal woman, in the presence of a nailed-down box or a champagne bottle, behaves as I have depicted from careful study; and the irritation she produces in me is past words, especially if a man be waiting for his beverage and observing the spectacle of the helplessness of my sex. If “Man” be “a tool-making animal,” I am afraid that “Woman” is a “tool-breaking” one. I think every girl, as well as every boy, ought to be given a month’s training in a carpenter’s shop to teach her how to strike a nail straight; what is the difference between the proper insertion and extraction of nails and of screws; why chisels should not be employed as screw-drivers; how far preferable for making holes are gimlets to hairpins or the points of scissors; and, finally, the general superiority of glue over paste or gum for sticking wooden furniture when broken by her besom of destruction!
My dear friend Emily Shaen wrote an excellent tract which I should like to see republished, urging that it is absurd to go on talking of the House being the proper sphere of a woman, while we neglect to teach her the very rudiments of a Hausfrau’s duties, and leave her to find them all out, at her husband’s expense, when she marries. The nature of gas and of gasometers, and how not to cause explosions nor be cheated in the bill; the arrangements of water-works in houses, pipes, drains, cisterns, ball-cocks and all the rest, for hot and cold water; the choice of properly morticed, not merely glued, furniture; what constitutes a good kitchen range, and how coal should be economised in it; how to choose fresh meat, &c., such should be her lessons. To this might be usefully added an inkling of the laws relating to masters and servants, debts, bills, &c., &c., and of the elementary arrangements of banking and investing money. It was once discovered at my school that a very clever young lady, who could speak four languages and play two instruments well, could not read the clock! I think there are many grown up women, well-educated according to the ordinary standard of their class, whose ignorance concerning the simplest matters of household duty is not a whit less absurd.
In 1881—I prepared and delivered to an audience of about 150 ladies, in the Westminster Palace Hotel, a course of six Lectures on the Duties of Women. My dear friend, Miss Anna Swanwick took the chair for me on these occasions, and performed her part with such tact and geniality as to give me every advantage. My auditors were very attentive and sympathetic, and altogether the task was made very pleasant to me. I repeated the course again at Clifton the same year, Mrs. Beddoe, the wife of Dr. John Beddoe the anthropologist who was then living at that place, most obligingly lending me her large drawing-rooms.
These Lectures when printed, went through three editions in England and, I think, eight in America, the last being brought out by Miss Willard, who adopted the little book as the first of a series on women’s concerns, published by her vast and wonderful organisation, the W.C.T.U.
My object in giving these Lectures was to impress women as strongly as might be in my power, with the unspeakable importance of adding to our claims for just Rights of all kinds, the adoption of the highest standard of Duty; and the strict preservation amongst us of all womanly virtues, while adding to them those others to the growth of which our conditions have hitherto been unfavourable,—namely, Truth and Courage. I desired also to discuss the new views current amongst us respecting filial and conjugal “obedience;” the proper attitude to be held towards (unrepentant) vice, and many other topics. Finally I wished to place the efforts to obtain political freedom on what I deem to be their proper ground. I ask:
“What ought we to do at present, as concerns all public work wherein it is possible for us to obtain a share?
“The question seems to answer itself in its mere statement. We are bound to do all we can to promote the virtue and happiness of our fellow-men and women, and therefore we must accept and seize every instrument of power, every vote, every influence which we can obtain, to enable us to promote virtue and happiness.
“... Why are we not to wish and strive to be allowed to place our hands on that vast machinery whereby, in a constitutional realm, the great work of the world is carried on, and which achieves by its enormous power, ten-fold either the good or the harm which any individual can reach; which may be turned to good or turned to harm according to the hands which touch it? In almost every case it is only by legislation that the roots of great evils can be reached at all, and that the social diseases of pauperism, vice and crime can be brought within hope of cure.
“You will judge from these remarks the ground on which, as a matter of duty, I place the demand for woman’s political emancipation. I think we are bound to seek it, in the first place, as a means,—a very great means,—of fulfilling our Social Duty, of contributing to the virtue and happiness of mankind, and advancing the Kingdom of God. There are many other reasons, viewed from the point of Expediency; but this is the view from that of Duty. We know too well that men who possess political rights do not always, or often, regard them in this fashion; but this is no reason why we should not do so. We also know that the individual power of one vote at any election seems rarely to effect any appreciable difference; but this also need not trouble us, for, little or great, if we can obtain any influence at all, we ought to seek for it, and the multiplication of the votes of women bent on securing conscientious candidates, would soon make it not only appreciable, but weighty. Nay, further, the direct influence of a vote is but a small part of the power which the possession of the political franchise confers. Its indirect influence is far more important. In a government like ours, where the basis of representation is so immensely extensive the whole business of legislation is carried on by pressure—the pressure of each represented class and party to get its grievances redressed, to make its interests prevail.... It is one of the sore grievances of women that, not possessing representation, the measures which concern them are for ever postponed to the bills promoted by the represented classes (e.g., the Married Woman’s Property Bill, was, if I mistake not, six times set down for reading in one Session in vain, the House being counted out on every occasion).
“Thus, in asking for the Parliamentary Franchise, we are asking, as I understand it, for the power to influence legislation generally; and in every other kind of franchise, municipal, parochial, or otherwise, for similar power to bring our sense of justice and righteousness to bear on public affairs....
“What is this, after all, my friends, but Public Spirit; in one shape called Patriotism, in another Philanthropy; the extension of our sympathies beyond the narrow bounds of our homes, and disinterested enthusiasm for every good and sacred cause? As I said at first, all the world has recognised from the earliest times how good and noble and wholesome a thing it is for men to have their breasts filled with such public spirit; and we look upon them when they exhibit it as glorified thereby. Do you think it is not equally an ennobling thing for a woman’s soul to be likewise filled with these large and generous and unselfish emotions?”
I draw the Lectures to a conclusion thus:—
“None of us, I am sure, realise how blessed a thing we might make of our lives if we would but give ourselves, heart and soul, to fulfil all the obligations, personal, social and religious which rest upon us; to gain the strength—