Elsewhere she declares: "In the solitude of the virgin forest I am calm, tranquil, experience no ennui and am almost merry. When I am obliged to leave the great woodland the power to struggle grows less in me. I become of an excessive sensibility. I feel more keenly life's blows. I am not armed for elbowing my way and making a place for myself in the sunshine. I neither love nor understand anything except my virgin forest. There, indeed, I suffer from the inclemency of the weather, from hunger, from sickness; but these are only physical sufferings and are soon forgotten, while moral and interior pains, on the contrary, are ineradicable."[179]
And still again she tells us: "The solitude of the virgin forest has become a necessity for me; it attracts me by its mysterious silence, and only in the great woods have I the impression of being at home."[180]
Can we wonder that such an ardent lover of Nature and such a strenuous votary of science was able to forget herself in her work and was able, notwithstanding her toils and her sufferings, to produce six quarto volumes of reports, in as many years, on the unexplored regions which she had so carefully surveyed and charted? Can we be surprised that her labors received due recognition from learned societies in both the New and the Old World, and that she was acclaimed as an explorer who had rendered distinct service to the cause of natural science, as well as to geography?[181]
When we recall the labors of this lone daughter of France in the wilds of the tropics, with no one to communicate with except her half-civilized servants and boatmen, we instinctively hark back to days not long past and estimate the enormous progress women have made in social and intellectual freedom within but a few decades.
Owing to the policy of repression which so long prevailed regarding the intellectual efforts of women, and the social obstacles which prevented them from publicly acknowledging the offspring of their genius, women like the Brontë sisters, George Sand and George Eliot were compelled to conceal their identity under male designations. Because it was considered immodest for a woman to appear before the public as an author, Lady Nairne, after Burns, the most popular song writer in Scotland, felt obliged to keep secret the authorship of her beautiful poems.
Similarly, family honor made it incumbent on Fanny Mendelssohn to refrain from publishing her musical compositions under her own name. Accordingly, they appeared along with those of her brother Felix, and so similar are they in color and sentiment to his own productions that they are indistinguishable from them, unless the author's signature be attached. To satisfy an inane public opinion, they long contributed "to swell the volume of her brother's fame," and there is reason to believe that some of them still appear under his name at the present day.
Yes, truly, when one recalls these and similar facts, one cannot help exclaiming: "What a marvelous change in the attitude of the world toward women within the memories of those still living!" Women like Miss Ormerod, Miss Kingsley and Mme. Coudreau would have been ostracized if they had dared to attempt, in the days of Lady Nairne, the Brontë sisters and Fanny Mendelssohn, what they may now do not only without censure but without exciting more than passing comment. The ban has been lifted from what was for ages tabu for women, and the sphere of their intellectual activities is now almost coëxtensive with that of the sterner sex. Not only does society no longer point the finger of scorn at the woman naturalist or the woman explorer, but it showers honors on her while living and erects monuments to her memory when dead. A great change, indeed, and one long and ardently desired. Verily, tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
FOOTNOTES:
[164] In his erudite work, Geschichte der Botanik, Vol. III, p. 517, Koenigsberg, 1856, Ernest H. F. Meyer gives in a few words his estimate of the excellence of Hildegard's Physica: "Aber als ehrwürdiges Denkmal des Alterthums und einer zu jener Zeit nicht gemeinen Naturkentniss empfehlen sich zumal deutschen Naturforschern ihre vier Bücher der Physica.... Denn nicht nur der deutsche Botaniker und Zoologe finden in ihrer Physik fast die ersten rohen Anfänge vaterländische Naturforshung, auch dem Artzt bietet sic für jene Zeit überraschende Erscheinung dar, eine nicht von Dioskorides abgeleitete, sondern unverkennbar aus der Volksüberlieferung geschöpfte Heilmittellehre; und der Sprachforscher stösst im lateinischen Text beinahe Zeile um Zeile auf deutsche Ausdrücke seltener Sprachformen."