Remember that these words were spoken where they belonged, in the very heart of Belgravia, to the very people who deserved them, and respect the brave purity which compelled lips as well as pen to utterance. It would scarce be honest not to say, in this connection, that Mrs. Jameson took some pains, so long as she lived, to separate herself from the American Woman's-Rights party—a party, it may be, only represented to her by the vulgar pretension of travelling Bloomers. Some of us take comfort in remembering how much more easily the misrepresentations of the press, or the intrusions of unfit subjects on womanly discussion, will float across the wide Atlantic, than our weightier works. When she said, in the same breath, concerning a decree of the French Consulate, "I confess, I should like to see a decree of our Parliament beginning with a recognition that women do exist as a part of the community, whose responsibilities are to be acknowledged, and whose capabilities are to be made available, not separately, but conjointly with those of men," we know that she worked for us and with us, and forgive the want of recognition in gratitude for the real service.
Mrs. Gaskell has perhaps done more than any woman of this century, not confessedly devoted to our cause, to elevate the condition of her sex, and disseminate liberal ideas as to their needs and culture. The first part of her career was one of those brilliant successes which startle us into surprise and admiration. It was checked midway by the publication of her life of Charlotte Bronté, the best and noblest of her works. Checked, because condemned in that instance without a hearing, she could never afterwards feel the elastic pleasure which was natural to her in composing and printing; and, for three long years afterwards, never touched her pen. I would not allude to this subject, if every notice of her, since her death, had not done so; repeating the old censure, as a matter of course. Here in America, we exculpate her. The public was wrong, in the first place, inasmuch as it has come to demand biography before biography is possible. The publisher was wrong, in the second; for he ought to have known, and could easily have ascertained, how plain a statement the English law would permit. The public was still further wrong, when it attributed misapprehension and carelessness to a woman whom it very well knew to be incapable of either. I, for one, shall never forgive nor forget the officious censure given by one who must have known that the legal apology tendered, in Mrs. Gaskell's absence, to protect her pecuniary interests, had the unfortunate effect to put her in a position where explanation and self-defence were alike impossible. Mrs. Gaskell had deserved the steady confidence of the public.
I have kept till the last the name of Fredrika Bremer, whose good fortune it was to secure lasting benefits to her sex. God sent to her early years dark trials and privations. Her father's tyrannical hand crushed all power and loveliness out of her life. At first, she rebelled against her sufferings; but, when he died in her girlhood, she was able to see that they lent strength to her efforts for her sex. It was the rumor of what we are doing in this country for women that first drew her hither. It is not the fashion for Miss Bremer's friends fully to recognize her position in this respect. I owe my own convictions on the subject of suffrage to the reflections she awakened. When I told her that my mind was undecided on this point, she showed her disappointment so plainly, that I was forced to reconsider the whole subject. Miss Bremer did not hurry her work: she had a serene confidence that she should be permitted to finish what she had begun. She secured popularity by her cheerful humor, her genuine feeling, her true appreciation of men, and her insight into the conditions of family happiness, before she made any direct appeal against existing laws. Those who will read her novels thoughtfully, however, will see that she was, from the first, intent upon making such an effort possible. From the beginning, she pleaded for the social independence of wives; asked for them a separate purse; showed that woman could not even give her love freely, until she was independent of him to whom she owed it. To a just state of society, to noble family relations, entire freedom is essential.
Under her influence, females had been admitted to the Musical Academy. The directors of the Industrial School at Stockholm had attempted to form a class, and Professor Quarnstromm had opened his classes at the Academy of Fine Arts to women. Cheered by her sympathy, a female surgeon had sustained herself in Stockholm; and Bishop Argardh indorsed the darkest picture she had ever drawn, when he pleaded with the state to establish a girls'-school. It was at this juncture that Miss Bremer published "Hertha." This book was a direct blow aimed at the laws of Sweden concerning women. By this time, she had herself become, in Sweden, what we might fitly call a "crowned head." She was everywhere treated with distinction; and her sudden appearance in any place was greeted with the enthusiasm usually shown by such nations only to their princes. She said of her new book, "I have poured into it more of my heart and life than into any thing which I have ever written;" and verily she had her reward. She was at Rome, two years after,—in 1858,—when the glad news reached her, that King Oscar, at the opening of the Diet, had proposed a bill entitling women to hold independent property at the age of twenty-five. All Sweden had read the book which moved the heart of the king; and the assembled representatives rent the air with their acclamations.
In the following spring, the old University town of Upsala, where her friend Bergfalk occupies a chair, granted the right of suffrage to fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on their own account. The representative whom their votes went to elect was to sit in the House of Burgesses. Miss Bremer was not ashamed to shed happy tears when this news reached her. If she had ever reproached Providence with the bitter sorrow of her early years, she was penitent and grateful now. Then was fulfilled the prophecy which she had uttered, as she left our shores, "The nation which was first among Scandinavians to liberate its slaves, shall also be the first to emancipate its women."
This is not the place to unfold the delicate sheaths of meaning with which flower-like Robert Browning invests his thought; but the man who wrote the "Blot on the Scutcheon," and the exquisite sketch of "Pippa Passes," has done such justice to the sex, and so far helped the cause of right feeling and right thinking in respect to some of the most delicate problems that concern it, that we are compelled to speak of him gratefully. His marriage, too, is still fragrant; a full-fruited flower of promise to the world, which makes us see the best things possible, and believe that the time is coming when man and woman will not seldom stand before the altar as equal and individual, yet sacredly one. To Elizabeth Browning, to whom was given in her life that place of pre-eminence among women which Shakespere must always hold among men, we owe grateful thanks, for the scholarly achievement, the conscientious study, the womanly zeal, which distinguished all her work. When theology sometimes wrestled with poetry in her speech, we translated it into a freer tongue, and thanked her all the same. In "Aurora Leigh" she stabbed every conventional falsity to the heart, and held the ear tenaciously till she had delivered all her oracle.
"I read a score of books on womanhood,
To prove, if women do not think at all,
They may teach thinking,—books demonstrating
Their right of comprehending husband's talk,
When not too deep, and even of answering."
"I perceive
The headache is too noble for my sex:
You think the heartache would sound decenter."
"Such praise
As men give women, when they judge a book,
Not as mere work, but as mere woman's work,
Expressing the comparative respect,
Which means the absolute scorn."
The woman who wrote these words counsels us from her grave; and, taught by her, we do not hesitate to say,—
"Deal with us nobly, women though we be,
And honor us with truth, if not with praise."