There was a lady, whose husband was a wealthy manufacturer in the North of England, who came to London once or twice a year, and for several years called on me; having much sympathy with my various interests. She appeared to be a confirmed invalid, crawling with great difficulty out of her carriage into our dining-room, and lying on a sofa during her visits. One day I was told she had come, and I was hastening to receive her downstairs, when a tall, elegant woman, whom I scarcely recognized, walked firmly and lightly, into my drawing-room, and greeted me cordially with laughter in her eyes at my astonishment.
“So glad to see you so well!” I exclaimed, “but what has happened to you?”
“It is you who have effected the cure!” she answered.
“Good gracious! How?”
“Why, I read your Little Health of Ladies, and I resolved to set my doctor at naught and go about like other people. And you see how well I am! There was really nothing the matter with me but want of exercise!”
I saw her several times afterwards in good health; and once she brought me a beautiful gold bracelet with clasp of diamonds set in black enamel, which she had had made for me, and which she forced me to accept as a token of her gratitude. I am fond of wearing it still.
Another incident strongly confirmed my belief in the source of much of the evil and misery arising from the Little Health of Ladies. Travelling one day from Brighton I fell into conversation with a nice-looking, well-bred woman the only other occupant of the railway carriage. Speaking of the salubrity of Brighton, she said, “I am sure I have reason enough to bless it. I was for fourteen years a miserable invalid on my sofa in London; my doctor telling me I must never go out or move. At last I said to my husband, ‘It is better to die than to go on thus;’ and, in defiance of our Doctor, he brought me away to Brighton, and there I soon grew, as you see, quite strong; and—and,—I must tell you, I have a little baby, and my husband is so happy!”
That clever Gynæcologist lost, I daresay, a hundred, or perhaps two hundred, a year by the escape of his patient from his assiduous visitations; but the lady gained health and happiness; her husband his wife’s companionship; and both of them a child! How much of the miseries and ill-health, and, in many cases, death of women (of the poorer classes especially) lies at the door of medical practitioners and operators, too fond by half of the knife, is known to those who have read the recent articles and correspondence respecting the Women’s Hospitals and “Human Vivisection” therein in the Daily Chronicle (May, 1894) and in the Homœopathic World for June.
Quite apart from the doctors, however, a great deal of the sickliness of women is undoubtedly due to wretched fashions of tight-lacing, and wearing long and heavy skirts, and tight, thin boots, which render free exercise of their limbs impossible. Nothing makes me really despair of my sex, except looking at fashion-plates; or seeing (what is much worse still, being wicked, as well as foolish) the adornments so many women use of dead birds, stuck on their empty heads and heartless breasts. These things are a disgrace to women for which I have often felt they deserve to be despised and swept aside by men as soulless creatures unworthy of freedom. But alas! it is precisely the women who adopt these idiotic fashions in dress, and wear (abominable cruelty!) Egrets as ornaments, who are not despised but admired by men, who reserve their indifference and contempt for their homely and sensible sisters. Men in these respects are as silly as the fish in the river caught by a gaudy artificial fly on a hook, or enticed into a net by a scrap of scarlet cloth, and a glittering morsel of brass. I often wonder whether women are generally, as little capable of forming a discriminating judgment of men?
Lastly, there is a cause of female ill-health which always impresses me with profoundest pity, and which has never, I think, been fairly brought to the front as the origin of a large part of feminine feebleness. I mean the common want, among women who earn their livelihood, of sufficiently brain-nourishing and stimulating food. Let any man, the strongest in the land in body and mind, subsist for one week on tea without milk, and bread and butter, and at the end of that time, he will, I venture to predict, have lost half his superiority. His nervous excitability and cheerfulness may remain, or even be enhanced, but the faculty of largely grasping and strongly dealing with the subjects presented to him, and of doing thorough and complete work, nay even the desire of such perfection and finish, will have abated; and the fatal slovenliness of women’s work will probably have begun to show itself. The physical conditions under which the human spirit can alone (in this life) carry out its purpose and attain its maximum of vigour, are more or less lacking to half the women even in our country; and almost completely wanting to the poor prisoners of the Zenanas of India and the cripples of China. Exercise in the open air, wholesome and sufficient food, plenty of sleep at night,—every one of these sine qua non elements of real Health of Mind, as well as of Body, are out of reach of one woman out of every two; yet we remark, curiously, on the inferiority of their work! It is a vicious circle in which they are caught. They take lower wages because they can live more cheaply than men; and they necessarily live on those low wages too poorly to do anything but poor work;—and again their wages are paltry because their work is so poor!