The Female Spectator issued a protest against that devotion to the needle, which was regarded as one of the cardinal virtues in women:—
“Nor can I by any means approve of compelling young ladies of fortune to make so much use of the needle, as they did in former days, and some few continue to do. In my opinion a lady of condition should learn just as much of cookery and of work as to know when she is imposed upon by those she employs in both those necessary occasions, but no more. To pass too much of her time in them may acquire her the reputation of a notable housewife, but not of a woman of fine taste, or any way qualify her for polite conversation, or of entertaining herself agreeably when alone. It always makes me smile when I hear the mother of fine daughters say, ‘I always keep my girls at their needle.’ One, perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt for a bed, and a third engaged to make a whole dozen of shirts for her father. And then when she has carried you into the nursery and shewn you them all, add, ‘It is good to keep them out of idleness; when young people have nothing to do, they naturally wish to do something they ought not.’”
In the second half of the century, when the influence of the fashionable world was more strongly felt among the bourgeoisie, the boarding-school, with its flimsy accomplishments and its lack of solid education, began to attract the daughters of a different class. Hitherto it had been the monopoly of the so-called gentlefolk, but now mingling with these were the daughters of tradesmen and farmers, who had money to spend and a fancy for making “ladies” of their girls. It may have been a step up in the social ladder for these newcomers, but from an educational point of view it was no gain. The training of the fashionable boarding-school was only a veneer.
To the French it seemed odd and unnatural to see English parents sending their children off to boarding-schools, or to be educated abroad at the convent schools of Paris. In France young girls were kept at home with their mothers much more than in England.
“Les parens se débarassent de leurs enfans,” writes La Combe in his “Tableau de Londres,” “en les jettant au hazard dans des pensions ou des académies. Ils semblent rougir de voir leurs enfans se former sous leurs yeux; ils prefèrent des étrangers, qui n’ont ni attachement ni la connaissance des passions des enfans qu’on leur confie, et les elévent tous avec indifférence sur le même plan. Il serait plus raisonnable d’avoir les enfans chez soi, d’étudier leur goût, leur penchant, de les façonner peu à peu par la douceur et les caresses, à la docilité au travail, à l’honnêteté et de les familiariser insensiblement avec tout ce qu’ils doivent savoir un jour et pratiquer dans la société. On est étonné, à Paris surtout, lorsqu’on voit arriver de jeunes Anglaises dans les couvents. Quoi? dit on, les mœurs sont donc bien corrompues à Londres pour nous charger d’élever les demoiselles.”
As the century grew older the habits and amusements of the leisured classes spread to the trading community.
“I will not presume to say that all the misfortunes the city of London at present labours under are owing to their preposterous fondness of following the fashions of the court; but that they are in a great measure so I believe most people will readily enough agree to.”[68]
Speaking of a City dame who had taken up with the fashions of the West-end, the same writer observed—
“A great courtier now become, she looks with contempt on her former fellow-citizens, joins in the laugh coquets and beaus set up whenever any of them appear, and sees not that herself is equally an object of ridicule to those she is so vain of imitating. Thus despising and despised without one real friend, she lives a gawdy, glittering, worthless member of society, and endured by those whose example has rendered her such, on no other account than that immense wealth which they find means to share with her, while she imagines they are doing her an honour.”
The busy merchants and traders whose wives were so eager to be in the fashion were themselves no less anxious to be up to the times.