Perhaps, in importance even before regularity of living we should rank the athletic habits of the people, their large amount of vigorous out-of-door exercise. The upper classes are, by the customs of society, quite generally excluded from productive industry. They follow the custom of feudal times and live mostly in the country, where walking, driving, riding, and country sports furnish the chief employment and amusement. Children are trained into habits of out-of-door exercise till they get an appetite for it, as they have for their food, and it is not unusual to hear an Englishwoman say, “I would as soon go without my lunch as without a walk of an hour or an hour and a half in the day;” and the habits of the upper classes, as I have already intimated, percolate down through all ranks of life. As contributing in no small degree to invite this open air exercise, we must include the moderate and equable temperature, and the excellent and attractive roads and walks.
IV. Almost as the tap-root of this long-lived, hardy race is the strong and universal desire for family permanence, which makes the peculiar constitution that gives the best promise of maintaining the family, the ideal standard for the whole nation. Mothers know that their daughters stand little chance of marrying an eldest son, unless they have a well-developed physique, and daughters are not slow in learning the same truth. This necessitates a high physical ideal for the women, towards which they consciously strive, outside of and above the general national habits.
These considerations, the repose, the care for health, the regularity of habits, the open air exercise, the demand for a strong physique as security for the permanence of the family, combine to produce a high average of health in men and women alike. In looking into the habits that more especially affect the health of the women, we may separate society into two classes, drawing just below the large retail traders, a line of division which, as a rule, marks the distinction between skilled and unskilled servants. In this upper division, we find a nurse who has served an apprenticeship as under nurse in the same grade of life, a cook who has served as under cook, etc. Each servant understands exactly the duties that belong to her sphere, that is, the regimen in her branch of work, proper for a family in that position.
Fashion says the women of the family should not only do no money-earning work, but also no money-saving work. In short, the best criterion of rank would be the degree and naturalness with which they indulge an absolute leisure.
Ostensibly they very rigidly obey this fashion, though doubtless, in many cases, some dressmaking or plain sewing is done somewhere out of sight. The plan is for the mistress to spend half-an-hour in the morning in giving her orders and looking over accounts; beyond this, for the women of the family to be exempt from any real household service, while all branches of sewing are to be given to professional seamstresses. If the family lives in town, the evenings are supposed to be very regularly spent in social enjoyment; if they live in the country, they fill in the time as best they can, after the late dinner. But whether at home or away, the food and habits are about the same, or, if there are late hours, the sleep is made up in the morning. The children are in the hands of a competent nurse, and from her they pass to a governess, who looks after their physical habits as well as their lessons. Few mistakes are likely to be made. The regimen of habits for the children at the advancing ages is well understood, and the success of the nurse or governess in keeping her place depends upon her fidelity in carrying them out. The children are trained into these regular habits till they become appetites, and seem to be laws of their nature.
In the lower division, the servants are less numerous and less efficient. Mothers and daughters do a part, or all, of the domestic work. But the baking, in most parts of the country, and much of the sewing, is done out of the house. More servants are employed than in corresponding families with us, and altogether much less work is included in the domestic occupations. In the higher grades of this lower division, the education of the girls continues till from fourteen to sixteen, and is carried on either under a governess, or in small schools, which are either boarding-schools or day schools. The governesses are cheap, and the schools are cheap, and there seems to be little choice between the two plans.
The girls have a little history, French, music, and ornamental needlework. Below these upper grades, girls are educated at the National schools, where, if they remain long enough, they are taught the common branches and plain needlework, moderately well. Through the upper division of society, the education of the girls continues till from seventeen to eighteen. About half of their education, also, is given by governesses, and the other half about equally in boarding and day schools. Nearly all private schools are small, rarely exceeding forty pupils, and giving an average of from twenty to twenty-five. If there is but one session of the school, it never exceeds four hours. Great pains are taken not to have the schools change the dietary and hygienic habits to which the girls are accustomed at home. They either go home for their simple midday dinner, or they dine at the school, and their daily walks are provided for at home, or taken with a governess at school. That is, there is an approved system of habits for English girls, and these are rigidly carried out, whether they are in a boarding-school or a day school, or under a governess; and on the average, either in the efficiency of the teaching, or the physical results, there seems to be little choice between the three plans. As to the amount of intellectual work accomplished, no English person speaks well, nor indeed with a moderate degree of censure.
About ten years ago, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of the education of the country; and though the plan first contemplated, included only boys' schools, the commissioners were later instructed to extend their inquiry to girls' schools. The report of this commission bore the most concurrent testimony, that the girls' schools were much inferior to the boys' schools. They complained that too many subjects were attempted, too little thoroughness was attained; that there was a disposition to limit the education too largely to moral training; that much time was wasted on music; arithmetic is spoken of as “a weak point,” and mathematics, beyond this, as seldom attempted. I have not space for the full consideration of the points brought out by the commissioners. I give only enough to show that the average and almost universal education of English women is wholly of the old-time feminine type—useful sewing, reading, writing, and religious instruction for the girls of the lower classes; ornamental needlework, music, modern languages, history, and English composition for the girls of the higher classes. The result is, as far as I have been able to judge, women who are in a rare degree truthful, pure, and faithful to recognized obligations, but, as a rule, their range of recognized obligations is not very wide, and the subjects in which they take an interest are very limited. Among the lower classes men are said to seek society in the beer-shops, and in the higher classes, at the clubs and with their gentlemen friends, because they have little companionship at home. The education is so different that there is far less of companionship between men and women than with us. Among the lower classes, great wastefulness in the family economies is attributed to the ignorance of the women. In the report of one of the meetings of the Social Science Congress, I find the statement of a working man which, I am sure, expresses the general feeling of the people of the country. In referring to the want of education, and the consequent want of the home-creating power among the women, he said: “The homes of our artisans are not nearly equal to the work they execute, nor to the wages they earn.” Among the higher classes, I am disposed to believe, that nowhere else can women be found so exactly fitted for the place that the popular sentiment expects them to fill; in short, that the handiwork of man shows no higher triumph of skill in adapting its instrument to the purpose it is meant to serve, than is seen in these moral, healthy, dignified, orderly, executive English matrons; and though the place they fill in the work of the world is not very large, it is not strange that the conservative sentiment of the country dreads to disturb the perfect balance.
The narrow intellectual attainments of these women do not interfere very much with the general prosperity of the family. Social position depends so largely upon birth that no amount of intelligence or grace would enable them to add very much to acquaintance or popularity; and the servants are so skilful in their departments, that the cleverest amateur could help them but little.
All these women of the upper class uniformly write and speak better English than we do. This is, perhaps, quite as much due to the fact that they neither hear nor read anything but good English, as to the careful drill in English composition given in English schools. I am speaking now of the intellectual attainments of the very large proportion of the women in this upper class; but among them are women, forming a considerable class, with whom we have very few to compare, and none to equal the best. But these highly educated women do not owe their attainments to the schools and governesses. For the most part, they are the daughters of learned men, by whom they have been taught, or they have kept along with their brothers, who were getting “honors” at the public schools and universities. If women have once studied enough to create an intellectual appetite, the privacy of English homes, especially rural homes, furnishes great facilities for fostering it. In regard to the school habits of girls under eighteen, I quote the following statements, from the letter of a teacher whose opinion and practice respecting these matters would be received with as much authority as that of any person in England: