No, sir; it is not all. In the first place, you know I have a sufficient contempt for our English intolerance, with regard to manners—
MEDON.
Why, yes; with reason. The influence of mere manner among our fashionable people, and the stress laid upon it as a distinction, have become so vulgarized and abused, that I should be relieved even by a reaction which should throw us out of the insipidity of conventional manner into primeval rudeness.
ALDA.
No, no, no!—no extremes: but though so sensible to the ridicule of referring the social habits, opinions, customs, of other nations, to the arbitrary standard of our own, still I could not help falling into comparisons; certain distinctions between the German and the English women struck me involuntarily. In the highest circles a stranger finds society much alike every where. A court-ball—the soirée of an ambassadress—a minister's dinner—present nearly the same physiognomy. It is in the second class of society, which is also every where, and in every sense, the best, that we behold the stamp of national character. I was not condemned to see my German friends always en grande toilette; I had better opportunities of judging and appreciating their domestic habits and manners, than most travellers enjoy.
I thought the German women, of a certain rank, more natural than we are. The moral education of an English girl is, for the most part, negative; the whole system of duty is thus presented to the mind. It is not "this you must do;" but always "you must not do this—you must not say that—you must not think so;" and if by some hardy, expanding nature, the question be ventured, "Why?"—the mamma or the governess are ready with the answer—"It is not the custom—it is not lady-like—it is ridiculous!" But is it wrong?—why is it wrong?—and then comes answer, pat—"My dear, you must not argue—young ladies never argue." "But, mamma, I was thinking——" "My dear, you must not think—go write your Italian exercise," and so on! The idea that certain passions, powers, tempers, feelings, interwoven with our being by our almighty and all-wise Creator, are to be put down by the fiat of a governess, or the edict of fashion, is monstrous. Those who educate us imagine that they have done every thing, if they have silenced controversy, if they have suppressed all external demonstration of an excess of temper or feeling; not knowing, or not reflecting, that unless our nature be self-governed and self-directed by an appeal to those higher faculties, which link us immediately with what is divine, their labour is lost.
Now, in Germany the women are less educated to suit some particular fashion; the cultivation of the intellect, and the forming of the manners, do not so generally supersede the training of the moral sentiments—the affections—the impulses; the latter are not so habitually crushed or disguised; consequently the women appeared to me more natural, and to have more individual character.
MEDON.
But the English women pique themselves on being natural, at least they have the word continually in their mouths. Do you know that I once overheard a well-meaning mother instructing her daughter how to be natural? You laugh, but I assure you it is a simple fact. Now, I really do not object to natural insipidity, but I do object to conventional insipidity: I object to a rule of elegance which makes the negative the test of the natural. It seems hard that those who have hearts and souls must needs put them into a strait-waistcoat, in order to oblige those who choose to have none; and be guilty of the grossest affectation, to escape the imputation of being affected!