The Scholastic Hen and her Chickens. (Cruikshank, 1846.)
Miss Thimblebee loquitur. "Turn your heads the other way, my dears, for here are two horridly handsome officers coming."
Lady fainting, and a man in consternation supporting her head: "Clara, Clara! dearest, look up! Don't! Clara, I say! You don't know any nice young man! I am an ass, with my stupid jealousy. And you shall have your velvet shawl. Come, Clara! Now then, Clara, please!"
Lady dropping two letters into the post-office. First letter:
"My kind Amédée,—This evening, toward eight, at the Red Ball. Mind, now, and don't keep waiting your
Clara."
Second letter:
"My Henry,—Well-beloved, judge of my despair—I have a sore throat that is simply frightful. It will be impossible for me to go out this evening. They even talk of applying twenty leeches. Pity a great deal, and love always, your
Clara."
In these numberless satires upon women, executed by pen and pencil, there is a certain portion of truth, for, indeed, a woman powerfully organized and fully developed, but without mental culture and devoid of the sentiment of duty, can be a creature most terrific. If the possession of wealth exempts her from labor, there are four ways in which she can appease the ennui of a barren mind and a torpid conscience. One is deep play, which was, until within seventy years, the resource chiefly relied upon by women of fashion for killing the hours between dinner and bed; one is social display, or the struggle for the leadership of a circle, an ambition perhaps more pernicious than gambling; another is intrigues of love, no longer permitted in the more advanced countries, but formerly an important element in fashionable life everywhere; finally, there is the resource of excessive and ceaseless devotion, the daily mass, the weekly confession, frequent and severe fasting, abject slavery to the ritual. Of all these, the one last named is probably the most injurious, since it tends to bring virtue itself into contempt, and repels the young from all serious and elevated modes of living. Accordingly, in studying the historic families of Europe, we frequently find that the devotee and the debauchee alternate, each producing the other, both being expressions of the same moral and mental defect. But whether a mindless woman gambles, dresses, flirts, or fasts, she is a being who furnishes the satirist with legitimate material.