Every rule has its exception, every medal its reverse side; but this does not prove the rule to be a bad one, or the medal to be made of base alloy. The liberty and confidence accorded, in England, to youth and even to childhood, are much better calculated to instil into them the sentiments of independence, self-respect, and responsibility, than the system of watchfulness and mistrust, in which French children, whether at home or in school, are brought up. When I spoke of youth and childhood, I might have added that even the very babies have their liberty; for, in England, they are not swathed and transformed into little mummy-like bundles; their heads are left uncovered, their limbs unconfined, they can stretch and kick to their heart’s content. Up to four or five years of age, they wear no long stockings, but their little calves are allowed to grow brown and hardy with exposure to the summer’s sun and winter’s wind; yet, I am not aware that the English are less straight about the legs or more bald about the head, than the French, whom I would remind that Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote, “The countries in which the children are swathed, are the ones which swarm with hunchbacks, and cripples of every description.”
Air, air, more air! is the constant cry of our children.
English girls rarely marry before they are twenty-two or -three years old; many make very good marriages, when they are close upon thirty.
In this country, marriages are not knocked up in a few days, nor in a few months. A young man of about twenty will engage himself to a girl of eighteen, and the lovers remain thus engaged for two, three, and four years.
For the young girl, it is a delightful time. During her engagement, she enjoys almost all the pleasures of matrimony, knows none of its cares; moreover she is free. It is no wonder she often does her best to make the pleasure last as long as possible. She had rather murmur sweet nothings with her lover, than shut herself up with him in a semi-detached, and murmur against the price of coals and butter.
The day she marries, she is said to be settled, that is, established, extinguished.
I do not wish to imply that, in an English household, the wife does not find happiness awaiting her; nothing is further from my meaning. On the contrary, I should say that she could enter upon her new life with more confidence than her French sister, because the responsibility she assumes is smaller, and because she has invariably been taught how to keep house.
In France, the wife is the confidante, and, I say it to her honour, the mistress of her husband. In England, she is only the mistress of the household, the housekeeper.
In France, it is generally the wife of a tradesman who has charge of his books and his cash-box, and never were either intrusted to better guardianship than that of the goddess of order and economy that men call la Française. If she happens to lose her husband, she is capable of carrying on the business without him, and I could name a great number of important houses of business that are managed by widows—the famous Bon Marché among others. The emancipation of woman, in France, is proclaimed by the frequency of the inscription Mdlle. So-and-so, and Mdme. Vve. So-and-so, over the shop doors. It is independence.
In England, a wife knows nothing of her husband’s affairs—not more than a clerk knows of the affairs of his employer, and it would often be hard for her to say whether he is on the road to riches or to ruin. At the death of her husband, an Englishwoman, who has not enough to live on, becomes a governess, a lady companion, a housekeeper, or a nurse. It is servitude.