Be smart, dear girl, and let who will be other;
Break from the fold, not stick there like a lamb;
So shall your lot, as maid and wife and mother,
Be one Grand Slam.
An article by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in the Cornhill, on English and Teuton domestic ideals, served Punch in 1904 as the text for a ballad comparing the thrifty German Hausfrau with the extravagant English wife. The infatuated writer sums up entirely in favour of the dainty, decorative Dolly as against the patient, industrious, but dowdy Grisel. Yet in the same year Punch was much exercised with the inevitable decline of chivalry:—
Doubtless the better sort would gladly nourish
Those notions which occur in Arthur's tale;
Doubtless Romance might still contrive to flourish,
Changing its knightly for its Daily Mail,
If Woman would but give our modern gallants