Women of England

by Bartlett Burleigh James

Women no longer fear to write under their own names, and do not resort to pseudonyms as did Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Ann Evans—George Eliot. It was at one time thought that the demands of research and study outside of the range of ordinary feminine acquaintance precluded the sex from doing many forms of intellectual work which were open to men. Fiction did not present special difficulties; and as the line of least resistance, as well as that of especial adaptation, women took to this form of writing.

At the present day, however, there is no question as to woman's faithfulness, accuracy, and ability to attend to detail; and so there are no lines of research or of authorship in which women are not engaged. This is in part due to the similar lines upon which women and men are now educated. Their broad acquaintance with the whole range of intellectual subjects eminently fits the sex for special work in any department. To distinguish by their method of treatment the writings of women is no longer possible. Their pens have the same grace and vigor of style as those of men, while there is no fineness or daintiness of touch in their writings which does not find counterpart in those of men.

The fiction of the century reveals woman intrepidly discussing political, economic, and labor questions with a large degree of assurance, and others with a great deal of acuteness and insight. Although there is intense competition in the realm of literature, yet the complexity of modern society, the universality of education, the opportunities of leisure for reading, the social demands for acquaintance with standard and recent works, and the incitement to reading given through the newspapers, magazines, book reviews, and lectures of the times, furnish unlimited opportunities for gifted women to exercise their talents in writing.

It was not until 1861 that women were admitted to all the privileges and opportunities of art education which centred in the Royal Academy schools. In that year these were opened to women students. It is interesting to notice how in almost an accidental manner the limitations placed upon women were removed. At the annual dinner of the Academy in 1859, Lord Lyndhurst felicitated those present on the benefits which were conferred upon all her majesty's subjects by the Academy schools. Miss Laura Herford, an artist, wrote to Lord Lyndhurst and pointed out the fact that half of her majesty's subjects were excluded. This made the discussion of the propriety of admitting women a kindly one, and a memorial was prepared and signed by thirty-eight women artists, copies of which were sent to every member of the Academy, praying the admission of women and pointing out the benefit it would be to them to study, under qualified teachers, from the antique and from life. It was regarded as impracticable that women and men should study life subjects together, and the request was refused. There was nothing in the constitution of the Academy either for or against the admission of women. A drawing with the signature "L. Herford" was then sent in by Miss Herford, and it was admitted by a letter addressed to "L. Herford, Esq." The question then arose whether a woman who had been accepted as a man should be allowed to enter. Miss Herford had her way.

No women had been admitted into the Academy since the days of Angelica Kaufmann and Mary Moser. The reason for their non-reception, as assigned by Sanby in his History of the Royal Academy of Arts, and quoted by Georgiana Hill in her Women in English Life, is as follows: "One or two ladies, if elected members, could scarcely be expected to take part in the government or in the work of the society; and as the practice even of giving votes by proxy has long since been abolished, the effect of their election as Royal Academicians would be, virtually, to reduce the number of those who manage the affairs of the institution and the schools in proportion as ladies were admitted to that rank: and as long as the number of Associates is limited, a difficulty would arise in the fact that the higher rank has to be recruited from that body." Miss Hill regards this as a grievance, because it virtually makes the matter of sex a disqualification, and quotes with endorsement Miss Ellen Clayton, as follows: "The Academy has studiously ignored the existence of women artists, leaving them to work in the cold shade of utter neglect. Not even once has a helping hand been extended, not once has the most trifling reward been given for highest merit and industry. Accidents made two women Academicians—the accident of circumstances and the accident of birth. Accident opened the door to girl students—accident, aided by courage and talent. In other countries, they have the prize fairly earned quietly placed in their hands, and can receive it with dignity. In free, unprejudiced, chivalric England, where the race is given to the swift, the battle to the strong, without fear or favour, it is only by slow, laborious degrees that women are winning the right to enter the list at all, and are then received with half-contemptuous indulgence."

Whether or not women artists have a real grievance against the Royal Academy, certain it is that the last half of the nineteenth century has been notable for the progress of women in art. It was in the galleries of the Society of Lady Artists, which came into existence in 1859, that Lady Butler first exhibited and pictures by Rosa Bonheur were displayed. With the multiplicity of art schools and every facility for obtaining instructions under the most favorable conditions, women have been brought into prominence as artists. Landscape, portrait painting, oil, water-colors, pastel—the whole range of subjects and styles of painting includes pictures of merit by women.

In many of the lesser branches of art, hundreds of women have found congenial vocations. They have shown excellent taste and aptitude in china painting and other forms of decorative work—in book illustration, as designers of carpet and wall-paper patterns, as preparers of advertisements, designers of calendars, and a host of other minor art industries.

Women as musical composers had appeared in the last half of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Beardman, who made her début as a singer at the Gloucester festival in 1790, was equally gifted as composer, singer, and pianist. Ann Mounsey displayed early talent, and her precocity brought her into notice when she was but nine years of age. In her maturity, her compositions gave her high rank among female composers, and in 1855 her oratorio The Nativity was produced in London. She was a member of the Philharmonic Society and also of the Royal Society of Musicians. Another gifted woman, whose talents brought her early into notice and who was a member of the Royal Academy of Music, was Kate Fanny Loder. She had been instructed in piano-forte by Mrs. Lucy Anderson, teacher to Queen Victoria when she was princess and afterward to the children of her majesty. Miss Loder was a king's scholar at the Royal Academy, and when but eighteen years of age was appointed professor of harmony at her alma mater. Eliza Flower—whose sister, Mrs. Adams, wrote the words of the hymn Nearer, my God, to Thee—was another of the gifted composers of the century, and her name appears as the author of many hymn tunes.

To give the names of all the women composers of hymn tunes would be to give a history of hymnology in modern times, for there is no sacred song collection but embraces the compositions of many women gifted in music. To give the names of those who have figured in opera would involve a history which includes a great many more foreign artists than English; but without seeking to do more than mention a few of those whose names have figured in popular favor as operatic prima donnas, and omitting particular mention of their individual capabilities, there are some names which suggest themselves to the patrons of the opera as worthy of first mention in the list of England's great singers. Catherine Tofts, Anastasia Robinson, Lavinia Fenton,—afterward Duchess of Bolton,—achieved celebrity in the opera during the first thirty years of the century. Lavinia Fenton was the heroine of The Beggars' Opera, which took London by storm. The names of Catherine Hayes and Louisa Pyne are still treasured by those whose recollections go back to the forties.

The general ill repute under which the stage rested in the seventeenth century continued to hang about it throughout the eighteenth. There was still a great deal of license allowed spectators, and it was not unusual for them to pass on the stage and behind the scenes. The rude and boisterous conduct of the patrons of the theatre made it extremely unpleasant for persons of refinement to attend it. The city streets had not yet become well protected, and the degree of security which is now afforded to pedestrians was lacking in the eighteenth century. It was out of the question for any gentlewoman to attend the theatre unaccompanied by male escort. There were always loiterers about the streets, and any man of rank whose character was bad enough to permit him to do so felt at liberty to salute a woman with insults—which, when they came from such a source, were then styled as gallantries; and women who adopted the stage as a profession, being looked upon as having forfeited their claims to gentility, were regarded as fair game by the rakes of the day. Notwithstanding the attempts of Queen Anne to reform the manners of theatre-goers by the passage of edicts looking to that end, the evils which made it so unpleasant to a respectable person to attend the theatre and which brought the playhouse under odium continued to be flagrant.