Behaving just as Lancelot used to do;
Only you cannot keep it up much longer
When once the weaker sex becomes the stronger.
Matrons and Militants
An equally interesting feature of the times was what might be alternatively called the Revolt or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. Perhaps the first mention of what threatened to be an unfair competition of the matron with the maid is to be found in the verses in 1896, where we read of the modern woman:—
If married and mother she yet plays her part,
With six charming children she still must look "smart,"
For, judging by facts, what Society likes
Is a maid who is bold, and a matron who bikes.
Golf and dancing, however, were the great opportunities of the young middle-aged women who refused to retire to the shelf as in early Victorian days. In 1904 Punch printed a story about golf, in which a maiden aunt "scores" overwhelmingly and turns out to be a champion player, to the confounding of her nephew and niece, a dénoûment beyond imagination's widest stretch twenty years earlier.