“I was intensely ambitious to excel in something; for I felt in my own breast that women were capable of taking a higher place in creation than that assigned them in my early days, which was very low” (p. [60]). “Nor ... should I have had courage to ask any of them a question, for I should have been laughed at. I was often very sad and forlorn; not a hand held out to help me” (p. [47]). “My father came home for a short time, and, somehow or other finding out what I was about, said to my mother, ‘Peg, we must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days’” (p. [54]). “I continued my mathematical and other pursuits, but under great disadvantages; for, although my husband did not prevent me from studying, I met with no sympathy whatever from him, as he had a very low opinion of the capacity of my sex, and had neither knowledge of nor interest in science of any kind” (p. [57]). “I was considered eccentric and foolish; and my conduct was highly disapproved of by many, especially by some members of my own family” (p. [80]). “A man can always command his time under the plea of business: a woman is not allowed any such excuse” (p. [164]). And so on.
At last in 1831—Mrs. Somerville being then fifty-one—her work on “The Mechanism of the Heavens” appeared. Then came universal recognition, generous if not prompt, a tardy acknowledgment. “Our relations,” she says, “and others who had so severely criticised and ridiculed me, astonished at my success, were now loud in my praise.”[[12]] No doubt. So were, probably, Cinderella’s sisters loud in her praise, when the prince at last took her from the chimney-corner, and married her. They had kept for themselves, to be sure, as long as they could, the delights and opportunities of life; while she had taken the place assigned her in her early days,—“which was very low,” as Mrs. Somerville says. But, for all that, they were very kind to her in the days of her prosperity; and no doubt packed their little trunks, and came to visit their dear sister at the palace, as often as she could wish. And, doubtless, the Fairyland Monthly of that day, when it came to review Cinderella’s “Personal Recollections,” pointed out, that, as soon as that distinguished lady had “achieved something positively valuable,” she received “prompt and generous recognition.”
LIV.
FOREIGN EDUCATION.
There is a fashionable phrase which always awakens my inward protest,—“the advantages of foreign education.” Every summer brings within my view a large class of people who have perhaps spent their youth in Europe, and then have taken Europe for their wedding-tour; and then, after a year or two at home, have found it an excellent reason for going abroad again “to give the children the advantage of foreign education, you know.” And, as it is in regard to girls that this advantage is especially claimed, it is in respect to them that I wish to speak.
In some ways, undoubtedly, the early foreign training offers an advantage. It is a thing of very great convenience to have the easy colloquial command of one or two languages beside one’s own; and this can no doubt be obtained far more readily by a few years of early life abroad than by any method employed in later years at home. There are also some unquestionable advantages in respect to music, art, and European geography and history. The trouble is, that, when we have enumerated these advantages, we have mentioned all.
And, as a further trouble, it comes about that these things, being all that are better learned in Europe, are easily assumed, by what may be called our Europeanized classes, to be all that are worth learning, especially for girls. When, in such circles, you hear of a young lady as “splendidly educated,” it commonly turns out that she speaks several languages admirably, and plays well on the piano, or sketches well. It is not needful for such an indorsement that she should have the slightest knowledge of mathematics, of logic, of rhetoric, of metaphysics, of political economy, of physiology, of any branch of natural science, or of any language, or literature, or history, except those of modern Europe. All these missing branches she would have been far more likely to study, if she had never been abroad: all these, or a sufficient number of them, she would have been pretty sure to study at a first-class American “academy” or high school. But all these she is almost sure to have missed in Europe,—missed them so thoroughly, indeed, that she is likely to regard with suspicion any one who knows any thing about them, as being “awfully learned.”
Yet it needs no argument to show that the studies thus omitted by girls taught in Europe are the studies which train the intellect. That a girl should know her own powers of body and mind, should know how to observe, how to combine, how to think; that she should know the history and literature of the world at large, and in particular of the country in which she is to live,—this is certainly more important than that she should be able to speak two or three languages as well as a European courier, and should have nothing to say in any of them.
A very few persons I have known who contrived, while living abroad, to keep a home atmosphere round their children, and who, by great personal effort, succeeded in giving to their girls that solid early training which is to be had in every high school in this country, but is only to be obtained by personal effort, and under great disadvantages, in Europe. Wiser still, in my judgment, were those who trusted America for the main training, but contrived early to secure for their children the needful year or two of foreign life, for the learning of languages alone. Perhaps we exaggerate, too, the absolute necessity of foreign study, even for modern languages. The Russians, who are the best linguists in Europe, are not in the habit of expatriating themselves for that purpose; and perhaps we have something to learn from them in this direction, as well as in the line of Professor Runkle’s machine-shops.