Practical hints are not wanting either. The best stepping-stones to fortune are "a sort of veteran women of condition" who, besides having great experience, feel flattered by the least attention from a young fellow and in return render him excellent services by pointing out to him those manners and attentions which pleased and engaged them when they were in the pride of their first youth and beauty, and are therefore the most likely to prove effective.
In conclusion, two instances may here be quoted of the excellent father's recommendable advice to his son in regard to the exploitation of female sympathies. The first regards that Mme du Bocage whose name will be mentioned again in connection with her relations to the Bluestocking circles in England. When young Stanhope was residing in Paris and frequenting some salons, Lord Chesterfield advised his son to make the French lady his confidante and confess to her his eagerness "to please", asking her in true hypocritical fashion to teach him her secret of pleasing everybody. Offered under different circumstances this might have been a pretty compliment, coming as it did from the pen of such a cynic and confirmed womanhater it was about the worst insult that could be offered to a lady of "esprit" and dignity.
But the second passage is even worse. The exemplary father here suggests a full scheme for political advancement through the intermediacy of a lady of unsullied reputation, who was to be courted and inveigled into granting her concurrence in a manner so beyond words that we must let the letter speak for itself. "A propos, on m'assure que Mme de Blot, sans avoir des traits, est joli comme un coeur, et que nonobstant cela, elle s'en est tenu jusqu'ici scrupuleusement à son mari, quoiqu'il ait déja plus qu'un an qu'elle est mariée. Elle n'y pense pas; il faut décrotter cette femme-là. Décrottez vous done tous les deux réciproquement. Force, assiduités, attentions, regards tendres, et déclarations passionnées de votre côté produiront au moins quelque velléité du sien. Et quand une fois la velléité y est, les oeuvres ne sont pas loin."
Social life in the eighteenth century had indeed sunk to the appalling depth which such letters as Chesterfield's reveal, through an utter lack of purpose. The time was entirely void of social interest. At a time when the French philosophy which had been so largely stimulated by British example found its way into the assemblies of Paris, awakening a vivid intellectual interest in thousands of minds and giving birth to a national thought-life which laid the theoretical foundations not only of the coming changes in the social order, but also of that glorious edifice of science of which the nineteenth century was to witness the rapid growth—English society was content to let things remain as they were and did not at once respond to the call that came from beyond the Channel. If England, too, contained a number of social abuses that were rank and appealed to the justice of Heaven, they did not heed them. The self-sufficiency thus revealed remained characteristic of the better classes in England, and was in the majority of cases increased rather than lessened by the outbreak of the Revolution, when most Englishmen felt secure in the conviction that in England there were no great wrongs to be righted. It had its origin in gross selfishness and coarse materialism, which did not leave the bulk of the nation an opportunity to realise the miserable condition of the poorer classes in Ireland,—in England itself there was comparatively little pauperism in the beginning—or the gross injustice of the prevailing system of Parliamentary representation, or the cruelty of punishments, or the abominable condition of the jails in which thousands of small offenders were abandoned to the horrors of slow and gradual extinction, or the shame of the execrable system of slavery prevailing in the colonies. It was not until the second half of the century that the great humanitarian movement began to make rapid progress; before that great dawn British society remained undisturbed while pursuing their round of pleasure which was interrupted only by death. Of the heralds of a better time, who acted according to their lights, and of whom some were doomed to failure, while others were to see their efforts crowned with ultimate success, it is gratifying to think that a fair percentage were women. If the education of men was sadly inadequate, that of women was so hopelessly neglected that ladies of quality could hardly sign their own name. They were, upon the whole, quite content to remain in ignorance. Their horror of the "femme savante" was such, that all appearance of even the slightest degree of learning was carefully avoided. The result was disastrous. Dean Swift can hardly be said to rank among the defenders of the sex, and yet even he recognised the absurdity of this utter ignorance. In a letter, dated October 7th 1734, occurring in Mrs. Delany's correspondence, and addressed to her, he says: "I speak for the public good of this country; because a pernicious heresy prevails here among the men, that it is the duty of your sex to be fools in every article except what is merely domestic; and to do the ladies justice, there are very few of them without a good share of that heresy, except upon one article, that they have as little regard for family business as for the improvement of their minds." He proposes to "carry Mrs. Delany about among his adversaries", and (I will) "dare them to produce one instance where your want of ignorance makes you affected, pretending, conceited, disdainful, endeavouring to speak like a scholar, with twenty more faults objected by themselves, their lovers or their husbands. But I fear your case is desperate, for I know you never laugh at a jest before you understand it, and I must question whether you understand a fan, or have so good a fancy at silks as others; and your way of spelling would not be intelligible."
Only those qualities were considered worth developing which were calculated to excite desire in the opposite sex. Women were skilled in the commonplace conversation of the gaming-table, and were taught to dance and to play the spinet, or the harpsichord, and to say ballads, regardless of talent. Household duties and needlework were held in less repute, and the qualities of the mind were utterly disregarded. All feminine education was deliberately discouraged.[23]
In marriage the wife was completely subjected to the husband's authority. If he proved inconstant—which was the rule—and transferred his attentions to other women, it was considered most unwise in the wife to object, the approved course being to pretend ignorance of the fact, lest the husband should be displeased at being taken to task by his inferior. About 1700 Lord Halifax's "Advice to a Daughter" was published; and being the reflections of a man of recognised social abilities, became a standard-work not only in England, but also on the other side the Channel, where it was translated into French and repeatedly quoted with great deference. Viewed in the light of the conditions then prevailing it must be unreservedly admitted that the advice is absolutely the best that could be given under the circumstances. Mr. Lyon Blease's indignation in quoting it, seems due rather to very natural disgust at the social conditions that necessitated it, than to the nature of the advice in itself. Lord Halifax exhorts his daughter to consider that she "lives in a time which hath rendered some kind of frailties so habitual that they lay claim to large grains of allowance." This reasoning would seem faulty to a moralist, but there is more. "This being so, remember that next to the danger of committing the fault yourself, the greatest is that of seeing it in your husband. Do not seem to look or hear that way, if he is a man of sense he will reclaim himself; the folly of it is of itself sufficient to cure him; if he is not so, he will be provoked, but not reformed." In other words he advises her to "eat her half loaf and be happy", rather than disturb her share of happiness by aiming higher than is compatible with the character and morality of the average male. Halifax further observes that a benign indulgence on the wife's part for the husband's wanderings will "make him more yielding in other things", i. e. he admonishes his daughter to make a compromise, enabling her to acquire certain advantages by conniving at her husband's faithlessness! This is certainly pretty bad; but there seems no room for any doubt that Halifax indeed struck the key-note of eighteenth century opinion.
So far we have looked at the purely negative side of the picture, which presents no features that can be called redeeming. Before passing to the brighter side to examine the utterances of those who aimed at the moral improvement of the female sex, or at an amelioration of their social position, or both, we shall have to make some mention of the views expressed by Swift in his "Letter to a Young Lady on her Marriage". The general tone is certainly not encouraging. It holds the male sex to be absolutely superior in matters physical, intellectual and moral. While criticising with his habitual sarcasm the errors, fopperies and vices of the female sex, Swift does not even trouble to consider what has made them so depraved. The nearest suggestion of possible blame to the male sex in regard to their treatment of women is to be found in a passage in the "Hints towards an Essay on Conversation". There are certain signs of a coming dawn in this passage. After complaining of the degeneracy of conversation, "with the pernicious consequences thereof upon our humours and dispositions," Swift suggests that it may be partly owing to "the custom arisen for some time past of excluding women from any share in our society, farther than in parties at play, or dancing, or in the pursuit of an amour." In this respect he readily admits the superiority of the more peaceable part of Charles the First's reign, "the highest period of politeness in England," when the example set by France, and the love-ideals prevailing among French society found English followers, "and although we are apt to ridicule the sublime Platonic notions they had, or personated, in love and friendship; I conceive their refinements were grounded upon reason, and that a little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low." This astonishing avowal on the part of one so inclined to cynicism throws a most unfavourable light upon the relations between the sexes in the early years of the eighteenth century.
However, if it could not be denied that manners and morals had decayed, Swift never doubted that the female sex were chiefly responsible. In his advice to the young bride their depravity is contrasted with the sound wisdom and the more dignified conduct(!) of their lords and masters. Swift satirises the worthlessness of the females who spend their afternoon visiting their neighbours to indulge in talking scandal, and whose evenings are devoted to the gambling-table. His opinion of the sex in general is such as to make him emphatically warn his young protégée against the dangers of female conversation. "Your only safe way of conversing with them is, by a firm resolution to proceed in your practice and behaviour directly contrary to whatever they say or do." The fondness of the sex for finery disgusts him to such an extent, that he "cannot conceive them to be human creatures, but a certain sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey."
Such was the verdict Swift passed upon the women of his time, whose moral ideals, he was willing to grant, might be and ought to be the same as those of men, always excepting "a certain reservedness, which however, as they manage it, is nothing but affection and hypocrisy."
Man being superior to woman in every respect, also morally, it follows that her chief aim should be to render herself more worthy of him. Swift here introduces that pernicious theory of "relativity" which in Rousseau's "Emile" was to arouse the indignation of Mary Wollstonecraft. An effort is to be made to raise women out of that pool of iniquity into which they have sunk, not so much for the sake of their precious souls, as to render them more acceptable companions to men. Whatever in Swift seems to favour a certain degree of emancipation owes its origin to this consideration. He does not believe in what he calls "the exalted passion of a French romance". By the time his first passion is spent, the husband will want a companion to amuse and cheer his leisure hours. Some provision should be made for the years to come when, beauty having disappeared forever, it will be necessary to fall back upon the accomplishments of the mind as a substitute, by means of which the husband's esteem may be gained. Thus, by a process differing materially from that of the feminists, Swift arrives at the same conclusion; viz. that the first step towards improvement is the institution of some kind of mental education for women. At the same time he has little confidence in the mental capacities of the female sex, so that his claims are in truth modest enough. Books of history and travel represent the limit of what he deems them capable of grasping; and he even recommends the making extracts from them, should the fair reader's memory happen to be a little weak! For the rest the task of instructing woman will necessarily devolve upon man; i. e. upon the husband and upon those of his friends whom he judges best calculated to enrich her mind by their advice and conversation, and to set her right should her imagination tend to lead her judgment astray! "Learned women," in the full sense of the term, were an abomination to Swift, who believed the average female intellect to be so deficient that "they could never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a schoolboy."