“I do not but see that the men are as eager to quit their compting houses and strut in the drawing-room disguised in a long sword and taper wig as the women can be in a new brocade, exactly the same pattern with that of one of the Princesses. The infection has spread itself pretty equally through both sexes. And the husband has little to reproach the wife with, or the wife the husband, but what each are guilty of in the same degree.”
Merchants and bankers, in spite of the cares of business, took life very easily, spending the first part of the morning in the coffee-houses, and, after a couple of hours at the Exchange, going home to dinner at four o’clock.
The manners and customs of the eighteenth century accentuated the differences of sex, and set up artificial barriers between men and women. Foreigners, because they heard politics constantly discussed, and forming the chief interest of the citizen’s life, and because they saw the wife acquiesce in her husband’s views, concluded that politics proved a strong bond of union in family life.
“Cet intérêt repand dans le domestique un nouvel agrément: le mari y trouvant toujours quelqu’un avec qui il peut traiter à cœur ouvert, aussi longuement et aussi profondement que bon lui semble, les objets qui l’interessent le plus.”
As has been noted elsewhere, interest in politics—especially politics which dealt in personalities—was keen enough among the women of the aristocracy, for the game was being largely played by their own friends, but the women of the middle classes were generally indifferent to public affairs. Except on occasions of great public excitement, the City madam, the country squire’s lady, and the farmer’s wife knew little of what was stirring in the world of statecraft. They lumped together politics and pipes as part of the men’s amusements with which they had no direct concern. They shared their husbands’ views because they had none of their own, and it was not worth while troubling their heads about such matters as changes of Ministry, Bills in Parliament, and so forth.
Occupations and habits caused men and women to lead separate lives. Hard riding and hard drinking were the recreations of the country squire; the farmer had his out-door duties; the tradesman had his apprentices to superintend; the shopkeeper had no suburban residence, and was a shopkeeper all day long while the shutters were open. The wife occupied herself with her store-cupboard, her linen-press, and her kitchen, and gossiped in her parlour with neighbours over a dish of tea.
“The English,” wrote Le Blanc, “lose a great deal in conversing so little with the sex whom Nature has endowed with the graces, and whose company has constant charms and a certain sweetness not to be found in that of men. The conversation of women polishes and softens our behaviour; by the habit we acquire of endeavouring to please them, we contract a tone of voice equally agreeable to both sexes....
“The custom of living with what is most valuable in both sexes, makes the pleasure and happiness of life.... And ’tis by too much neglecting this custom that the English have a certain disagreeable bluntness in their character.”
In this century many things have occurred to modify the differences in the habits of the sexes, to bring men and women more into the same current of ideas, occupations, amusements. To a much greater extent than formerly the evolution of women is proceeding along the same lines as the evolution of men. In the last century men regarded women as—
“made only to take possession of their hearts, and seldom or never to afford any amusement to their minds. They prefer the pleasure of toasting their healths in a tavern to that of chatting with them in a circle. They treat them as if they had been as much of another species as of another sex. For the most part they look on them as good for nothing but to dissipate their vapours or ease the fatigue of business.”