“Madam,” said a polite prince of the House of Wasa to his wife, “we married you that you might give us children, not advice.” A remark worthy of Napoleon I. The Englishman says the same thing to his wife. So Mrs. John Bull gives her husband plenty of children, but very little advice.
But things are altering. Thanks to the higher education that is being administered to young Englishwomen; thanks to Girton College, Newnham College, the High Schools, and other institutions that are being founded day by day, with the object of stripping woman of the attributes that render her so attractive in our sight, all that has been said and repeated about the reserve, the modesty, the innocence of the Englishwoman, the virtues that made of her a model wife and housekeeper, all this, I say, will soon be quite out of date.
Formerly girls were sent to receive their education at the hands of some good women who did not teach them much, I am prepared to admit, but who did not fail to fit them to be good wives, good mothers, and good housekeepers. Now they are taught Latin and Greek, mathematics and natural philosophy, political economy and medicine, yes, medicine, and no one knows what besides. They wear men’s hats known as wide-awakes (much too wide awake to please most of us), and masculine looking coats, and they stare you in the face in manly fashion. When are the trousers coming?
Take care, friend John, you are on a downward and dangerous path. I see you presiding over meetings of blue-stockings and hear you adding your voice to theirs in their demand for women’s rights. It seems to me that it is your future happiness that you stake. You will have a wife who will know the differential and integral calculus, but will be all unskilled in the art of making those nice puddings and pies you like so much. No more warm slippers awaiting you by the fender; instead of the song of the kettle on the hob, that sweet household melody, you will hear the litany of the Rights of Woman; no more kisses on your wife’s half-closed eyelids, she will wear spectacles. You will be able to console yourself, by taking refuge in your club, and grumbling there to your heart’s content, or by going to a restaurant and, at the price of a tip, buying the right of blowing up the waiter. But remember that, to have a good grumble in, there’s no place like home; and if your dinner is not to your liking, why, you can blow up your wife for nothing.
Some English ladies are moving heaven and earth to get Parliament to pass an Act which will allow them to vote. They will, perhaps, one day go so far as to demand seats in the House of Commons.
What is to be done with the women? Owing to the emigration of the men, this is indeed a problem that England will ere long have to solve in one way or another.
“The emigration of two or three hundred thousand of our women would be a great boon to us,” said Lord Shaftesbury the other day; “it would even be the greatest blessing that could happen to England.” The wish is not a gallant one, but it is sensible and practical.
It is even calculated that, if this wish could be realised, the number of women that would remain, would still surpass by 500,000 the number of her Britannic Majesty’s male subjects.
Now, supposing that one day or the other every man enters the holy estate of matrimony, the above figures prove that, in this realm, about 800,000 ladies are condemned to a condition of single blessedness. Miss Miller, Miss Cobbe, and other leaders of the Sisterhood of St. Catharine would quickly remedy this sad state of things, if they were allowed to vote, and one day to change the Parlement into Bavardement.
Miss Cobbe, the destroying angel of Man’s rights, exclaimed at a meeting held in London, on the 13th of June, 1884, that “she regretted that she could not fight and pull down park railings to accomplish her object.”