Make the girls’ room pretty, and the girls will like to sit there and spend their time carefully within the charming walls; but do not for one moment tolerate laziness, lounging, or novel-reading; and as long as the girls are at home, see that the mornings, at all events, are properly employed. The results of the day should be seen, should be inspected, and the masters or mistresses, who should still attend to continue some lessons (German, music, and painting being the best, I think), should be interviewed now and again about the progress of the pupil; and a watchful but not inquisitorial eye should be kept on all that goes on in the room, else we shall find it turned into a rubbish-place, or a spot where all is play and nothing useful is ever done.
Lessons in dressmaking and in cooking should be given, if possible, to every girl; and she should also at the earliest age possible be taught to knit socks and stockings, and, above all, she should, in the very fullest sense of the word, learn her duty to her neighbours, and be taught that her superior advantages both of time and money should be tithed for those whose lives lack so much, and could be made so very much brighter were we all to do our duty by them. I am not an advocate for slumming; I do not consider any girl should have a district, and, unless in the country, Sunday-school teaching is not always to be attempted; but some part of the day should be set aside, either for working for the poor—amply represented to me by the Sisters at the Kilburn Orphanage—or in making some life brighter. In the country it is easy to collect flowers for hospitals, or to ask dwellers in courts to tea in the garden in London, to make things which will be useful, and to take girls and boys occasionally to some museum or picture gallery, just for an hour’s change from the crowded streets.
I think girls should always do one thing during the day, as a matter of custom, for the poor; but whatever is done should be done under some direction. Young folks are enthusiastic and hurried, and often do more harm than good by indiscriminate charity. But then the clergyman of the parish can sometimes be consulted, and when he cannot, I say, Send to Kilburn, to the Orphanage in Randolph Gardens. There, without consideration of creed, with large and vigorous minds and hearts, all are helped; and all work can be used, all help received, with the perfect assurance that what we send there will emphatically reach those for whom it is meant, and that there are no highly paid secretaries to come before the poor and suffering.
These are all large matters to be discussed in this book, but I cannot think they are out of place. I am thankful to say that far more people trouble themselves now about their poorer neighbours than in bygone days; that rich men realise that they are only stewards of their property, and that they should administer their goods for the poor as well as for themselves; that while the owner of a large park and magnificent pictures is not bound to cut up the former for allotment-grounds, or distribute the latter among the denizens of Whitechapel, he is bound to allow them to see both, under proper control, whenever he is called upon to do so; that garden-parties for the poor are far more necessary than garden-parties for the rich; and that all who regard life rightfully and have had a large share of life’s best things are bound, by their duty to God and their neighbour, to administer them in some measure for the poor, who will gradually become more fit to share them as we show them our possessions and teach them how to regard them properly. Under these circumstances there is great hope that our girls may advance farther than we have done, and, being most carefully trained from their earliest days to remember God’s poor, may do so as a matter of course, and may consider that day wasted indeed which cannot show at least one thing done to alleviate some of the misery and poverty there is in this overcrowded world of ours.
The weaker sex indeed! We may be weak physically—we are, we allow that; we allow that our impulsiveness, our weakness, our very structure, forbids us battling with the men, shoulder to shoulder, in that dreadful scrimmage for life in which some women would cast us all; and all we beg is to be allowed to confess that, and have some shelter provided for us, where we can do our part of the world’s work—our part, that a weak mind cannot undertake, but that is essentially the woman’s part—the part of beautifier of the home and administrator of the finances, and, through the home, of the outside world, too, where we see all men as our brothers and sisters, and where we recognise our place as helpers (not rivals), of consolers (not competitors) of the men, who should do the sheltering and home-providing that no woman, except under most exceptional circumstances, can possibly manage by herself alone.
Therefore, if all who have girls remember this, and instil in their hearts the fact that we want them at home, that even if they should not marry or become senior wranglers, or anything else equally prominent and unpleasant, their lives can be busy and useful and fully occupied, and of infinite use in their generation, we shall do something for the world at large even if we let all this grow only out of the innocent preparation of the girls’ room when they have reached the end of the first stage of their life, and become in some measure mistresses of themselves. But, for fear I may be considered too solemn and serious, and for fear that my readers may think I am adverse to gaiety, and would not let girls enjoy themselves under any circumstances whatever, I will finish this chapter, and pass on to consider far more frivolous things—namely, how to manage one’s dress allowance, and, furthermore, how best to arrange for any festivities we may be able to afford when we have maidens in the household who are anxious to ‘come out.’
CHAPTER VII.
COMING-OUT AND DRESS.
I always regard the expression ‘coming-out’ as rather a ridiculous one, when used by the ordinary upper middle-class household; yet, as it has become a recognised part of our vocabulary, I suppose we must all adopt it when we talk of that enchanting period of a girl’s life which occurs when she is about eighteen, and is in some measure emancipated from the control and ever-watchful care which have been her portion from the day she was born until the joyful moment arrives when the books may be closed and the schoolroom-door shut, and she takes her place among her elders as a right, and not on sufferance any more.
Here I should like to pause for a moment to impress upon all mothers who may read my book that a girl should remain absolutely in the schoolroom until she reaches her eighteenth birthday; the longer she can be kept from the turmoil of life, from the shams and wearinesses of ordinary society, and from any temptations to shirk her education, the better. She will not be pleased with her mother at the time; she will think regretfully and, may be, angrily of those of her less guarded, more ‘fortunate’ (?) friends, who are ‘all over the place’ at seventeen, who never read an instructive book or think of anything save dress, admirers, and what dissipation is in store for them next; but when she looks back at her girlhood from the altitude of that calm, sheltered middle-age I wish for all girls for whom I care, she will see what she has to thank her mother for, and all the disagreeable feelings she had then towards her will be atoned for a thousandfold in the flood of grateful affection which will fill her heart, and in the love which she will entertain for one who trained her so carefully, and who cared for no present lack of affection, because she knew quite well she would infallibly and at no very late date reap her reward.