Soon after their arrival, Miss Rogers died; but her friend was not discouraged. In the following March, an officer of state, Hekekyan Effendi, came to inquire whether she would take charge of the royal women, one hundred in number, and the nearest relatives of the sovereign. Much depended, it was thought, upon the co-operation of the oldest daughter, Nas-lee Hanoom; and it was His Highness's desire that the heads of the family should be formed into a committee to extend female schools. See how this Mohammedan officer writes to Miss Holliday.
"You have no doubt read much about hareems," he says, "yet little, I fear, that resembles the truth. We pay great respect to women and aged persons, whatever may be our own rank. Our children, however, are uneducated, in the European sense of the term. Besides being illiterate, they know nothing of domestic economy; and, in the middling and lower classes of the community, this ignorance is so profound as to endanger, by its dire consequences, domestic health, peace, and prosperity. This want is the first cause of slavery and its concomitant vices. In seconding the illustrious efforts of Mehemet Ali, I have been able to trace our debasement as a nation to no other cause than the want of a useful and efficient moral education for our women. In giving to them enlightened education, we shall be striking at the root of the evils that afflict us; we shall diminish the dangers and misfortunes which proceed from ignorance and idleness. Habits of industry, cleanliness, order, and economy, by increasing happiness, make us morally better, and will secure that moral training to our children which no subsequent effort is sufficient to replace."
So true is it that the value of words is comparative, that all this might have been written by some Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts. The arguments of the Turk and Effendi are very familiar to us. Modern civilized society shuts women out of schools to protect their modesty. Modern professors tell us how much they respect women, and value material training, at the very moment when they bar the gates of life against her. On the 27th of March, 1838, Miss Holliday went in state to the hareem. She was preceded by the two janissaries attached to the English Consulate, bearing their silver wands of office, and accompanied by the wife of Hekekyan. In the ante-room they were regaled with coffee out of golden cups set with diamonds. Young Georgian girls of great beauty brought sherbet and massive pipes with amber mouth-pieces. They were then introduced to the Princess Nas-lee, a little woman about forty, simply dressed; and, before the interview ended, Alice had promised to spend four hours of every day in the hareem. She began with instruction that tended to civilize daily life; and boxes of embroidery and baby-clothes, made for patterns in England, excited the first lively interest. She declined all invitations to take up her abode in the hareem, although promised entire liberty. She was humble, and, as a consequence, wise. She did not expect great results, or look for much enthusiasm, in the hareem.
In August, she writes: "My visits have been attended with the most cheering success. I am received and honored with every possible distinction; but, added to my school, it is a great fatigue." Her character in every way sustained the effect of her teaching. She was offered thirty pounds a month for her attendance at the hareem, but thought ten pounds sufficient, and would accept no more. In October, a box of presents was received from England. When Hekekyan was invited to look into this box, he seized upon some scientific plates sent to the young princess. "Ah!" said he, "these are the things we need." The Pacha was captivated, in his turn, by an orrery, and a model of the Thames Tunnel. The hareem sent back a similar box, and Nas-lee herself worked a scarf for the queen. Miss Holliday was soon ordered to translate some of her books into Turkish; and her princesses wrote touching letters to their English friends. Soon after, we find this indefatigable woman teaching English, French, drawing, and writing, in the hareem of a late Governor of Cairo. Education must begin with languages; for Egypt has no literature to offer to her children. In 1840 Victoria sent to the hareem a portrait of herself, which was carried in procession and hung with proper honors by the side of that of the pacha. Very soon came an Egyptian Society for the Promotion of Female Education. Scientific instruments and books were ordered. An infant school began with one hundred and fifty children. The hareem demanded another teacher, and Mrs. Lieder was sent out. In 1844 a male school was formed, and European teachers imported. The young girls, who had begun with needle-work eight years before, were now studying Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, geography, arithmetic, and drawing. "What a change," writes Alice in 1846,—"what a change within the last ten years! When I came to Egypt, there was not a woman who could read; and now some hundreds have not only the power, but the best books. Year after year, I have been permitted to see the growth of a new civilization. What a change has come over the royal family since I first entered it! The desire for trifles is preparing the way for our noblest gifts; and a fatal blow has been struck at the whole system of hareems." It would be pleasant to trace this devoted woman farther, to know whether she still lives, and if she has reached the Abyssinian plains. In this humble way began the great educational movement in Egypt, which gave strength and vitality to Mehemet Ali's best-considered plans, which has sent scores of young princes to Paris, and will eventually change the face of the whole land.
Alice Holliday succeeded, because the "sinews of war"—namely, the "purse-strings"—were in her own hands. Very similar in spirit was the enterprise of Madame Luce in Algiers, of which Madame Bodichon has given an interesting account. Madame Luce went to Algiers, soon after the conquest, about 1834, and was probably a teacher in the family of one of the resident functionaries. In 1845, nearly nine years after Alice had begun her Egyptian labors, Madame Luce was a widow, with very little money to devote to the work on which she had set her heart; namely, a school to civilize the women of Algiers. Government was already beginning to instruct the men; but the Mohammedan dread of proselytism stood in their way. The women were in the worst state,—closely veiled, taught no manual arts, having no skill in housekeeping even,—for the simple life of a warm climate, the scanty furniture, give no scope for such skill. To wash their linen, to clamber over the roofs to make calls, to offer coffee and receive it, to dress very splendidly at times, very untidily always, was the synopsis of their lives. They did not know their own ages, yet were liable to be sold in marriage at the age of ten. Upon such material, and at such a time,—when the value of a Moorish woman was estimated, like that of a cow, by her weight,—Madame Luce undertook to work. She had a Christian courage in her heart, which might put many a man to shame.
While laying her plans, she had perfected herself in the native tongue, and now commenced a campaign among the families of her acquaintance, coaxing them to trust their little girls to her for three or four hours a day, that they might be taught to read and write French, and also to sew neatly. Her presents, her philanthropic tact, her solemn promise not to interfere in matters of religion, won for her, at length, four little girls, whom she took to her own hired house without a moment's delay. As the rumor of her success spread, one child after another dropped in, till she had more than thirty. Finding the experiment answer beyond her hopes, she was compelled to demand assistance of the local government. Men have no faith in quixotic undertakings. As might have been expected, they complimented Madame Luce upon her energy, saw no use in educating Moorish women, and declined to assist her. She waited, in breathless suspense, till the day on which the Council were to meet, bribing the parents, clothing the children, and pursuing her noble work. "Surely," she thought, "they will devise some plan;" but the twilight of the 30th of December closed in, and they had not even alluded to her school. On the 1st of January, 1846, it was closed. Nine hundred miles from Paris, without the modern conveniences of transport, what do you suppose this woman did? Could she give up? She scorned an offer of personal remuneration made by a few gentlemen, and told them that what she wanted was adequate support for a national work. She pawned her plate, her jewels, even a gold thimble, and set off for Paris, where she arrived early in February, and sent in her report to the Minister of War. She went in person from deputy to deputy, detailing her plans. Poor Madame Luce! her success was not quite so speedy as Alice Holliday's, whose schools had doubtless stimulated her efforts. Everywhere she had to combat the scepticism, the indifference, the inertia, of worldly men. There was no Miss Rogers, with a kind heart and a long purse, to help her on her way. Nor did Madame Luce desire that there should be. She knew that individual efforts of such a kind can never last long; and she was determined to make the government adopt and become responsible for her work. Then it would outlive her. Then it might redeem the nation. At last, daylight began to dawn. The government gave her three thousand francs for her journey, and eleven hundred more on account of some claim of her deceased husband. They urged her return to Algiers, and promised still farther support. So perseveringly had she wrought, that, early in June, she was able to re-open her school, amid the rejoicings of parents and children. It was seven months before the government contrived to put the school on a better foundation. During this time, her pupils constantly increased, and she was put to the greatest straits to keep it together. The Curé of Algiers gave her a little money and a great deal of sympathy. The Count Guyot, high in office, helped her from his own purse. When she was entirely destitute, she would send one of her negresses to him, and he would send her enough for the day. On one occasion, he sent a small bag of money, left by the Duc de Nemours for the benefit of a journal which had ceased to exist. She found in this two hundred francs, which she received as a direct gift from Heaven. Thus she got along from hand to mouth. She engaged an Arab mistress, who was remarkably cultivated, to assist her, and to train the children in her own faith. Pledged as she was not to instruct them in Christianity, she had the sense to see, what few would have admitted, that such instruction was not only necessary, but desirable. It gave them the knowledge of one God, and made clear distinctions between right and wrong. At last, in January, 1847, the school was formally adopted, and received its first visit of inspection. The gentlemen were received by thirty-two pupils, and the Arab mistress unveiled; a great triumph of common sense, if we consider how short a time the school had been opened. Since that time, the work has steadily prospered. In 1858 it numbered one hundred and twenty pupils, between the ages of four and eighteen. The practical wisdom of Madame Luce led her to establish a workshop, where the older pupils learned the value of their labor, and earned a good deal of money. They had always a week's work in advance, when the wise, slow government put an end to it, whether to save the thirty-five pounds a year, which the salary of its superintendent cost, or to prevent competition with the nunneries, Madame Luce has never known. She thought it the best part of her plan,—far better than teaching the girls to turn a French phrase neatly for the satisfaction of inspectors. The government are now beginning to understand her value. They have established a second school in Algiers, and several in the provinces. The results are not miraculous, but they plant new germs of moral power and thought in every family circle which they touch. Such names as those of Alice Holliday and Madame Luce have a great value. These women and their labors are permeated by the Christian idea of self-surrender. The preponderance of this idea in these examples distinguishes them above women of the past, whether German exaltadas, brilliant adventurers amid the perils of the Froude, or witty loiterers in the salon of Madame de Sablé.
La Rochefoucauld, who was proud of Mademoiselle and her princesses, would only have sneered at Madame Luce; nor would Lady Russell, nor Mrs. John Adams, have followed Alice to Egypt cheerfully. Nor do these two women belong to the army of saints and martyrs. A religious devotee has in her a mistaken enthusiasm, and goes away from the world. These women are doing the work of saints and martyrs with a far higher appreciation of God's providence, of the uses of this world, and with all the hindrances that fall to the lot of simple human beings. It is not our intention to multiply such instances here: they belong, rather, to the illustrations of individual power. We must not forget, however, the existence, in England, of that circle of women, of whom Mrs. Bodichon, Mrs. Hugo Reid, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Jameson, and Bessie Raynor Parkes, are honorable examples. We have such lives as those of Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Evans; the scientific reputation not alone of Mrs. Somerville, but of Mrs. Griffith, to whose masculine power of research English marine botany may be said to owe its existence, and who still survives, at an advanced age, to see that knowledge becomes popular, in her cheerful and honored decline, which she pursued, for many a year, unassisted and alone. We have Mrs. Janet Taylor, one of the best and most popular teachers of navigation and nautical mathematics in all England. Her classes have been celebrated and numerously attended by men who have been long at sea, as well as by youths preparing for the merchant service; and, still farther, we have in cultivated circles, to balance the old prejudice, an encouraging liberality. A review, published in the Westminster, after the issue of Miss Martineau's pamphlet on the future government of India, shows conclusively that any woman who will do good work may feel sure of honest appreciation. If she does poor work, she will only the more provoke the enemy. Nothing could have been more ambitious than Miss Martineau's theme; but, when she showed herself well qualified to handle it, no one had any disposition to consider the choice unwomanly. Such criticisms are the exponents of the century's experience. They betray the unconscious drift of the public mind. A book is modest by the side of a pamphlet. The former may wait its day: the latter aspires to immediate influence, if it does any thing,—must mould the hour. It was once the chosen weapon of Milton and Bolingbroke, later of Ward and Brougham. Is it nothing, that a woman of advanced years, writing from an invalid's chamber, feels herself competent to wield it? Was it nothing, when, by her tracts on political economy, she gave an impulse to the middle classes of her native land, for which busy political men could not find time?
Is it not Godwin who says that "human nature is better read in romance than history"? Every actual life falls short of its ideal; but a poem dares demand some approximation to its standard from the whole world. In this way, "Aurora Leigh," into which Mrs. Browning confesses she has thrown her whole heart, is a wonderful indication of human thought and feeling. In this country, there are many significant signs of progress. The name of Maria Mitchell in astronomy; of the women engaged in the Coast Survey; of the professors at Antioch, Vassar, and Oberlin,—are familiarly known, and have their own power. Only lately, a Nashua factory-girl takes the highest honors at the Oread Institute; and its principal is willing to put her and two other graduates into competition with any three college graduates in New England for examination according to the curriculum. When she finished the education she had first earned the money to procure, she left her Worcester home, and, with quiet right-mindedness, went back to Nashua to labor for an indigent family. As she tends her loom on the Jackson Corporation, she will have leisure to investigate her right to these acquisitions.
In support of this "exception," the superintendent of the New-York City Schools, long ago, reported, that its female schools, whether by merit of teachers or pupils or both, are of a much higher grade than the male schools. Eighteen girls'-schools are superior, in average attainment, to the very best boys'-school. He goes on to speak of the rapidity with which women acquire knowledge, in terms which remind us of Margaret Fuller, when she remarks of Dr. Channing, that it was not very pleasant to read to him; "for," said she, "he takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine people, with our habits of ducking, diving, or flying for truth." In speaking of her classes at Vassar College, Miss Mitchell says (1865): "I have a class of seventeen pupils, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. They come to me for fifty minutes every day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am puzzled by them daily. They show more mathematical ability, and more originality of thought, than I had expected. I doubt whether young men would show as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard College who take mathematical astronomy, do you think?"