I do not mean to complain of my condition—far from it. But I wish to say, that since, from the small care taken by English parents to double the condition of their daughters, it is clear the state of "single blessedness" is of higher account in our own "favoured country" than in any other in Europe; it certainly behoves the guardians of the public weal to afford due protection and encouragement to spinsters.
Every body knows that Great Britain is the very fatherland of old maids. In Catholic countries, the superfluous daughters of a family are disposed of in convents and béguinages, just as in Turkey and China they are, still more humanely, drowned. In certain provinces of the east, pigs are expressly kept, to be turned into the streets at daybreak, for the purpose of devouring the female infants exposed during the night—thus benevolently securing them from the after torments of single "blessedness."
But a far nobler arrangement was made by that greatest of modern legislators, Napoleon—whose code entitles the daughters of a house to share, equally with sons, in its property and bequeathments; and in France, a woman with a dowery is as sure of courtship and marriage, as of death and burial. Nay, so much is marriage regarded among the French as the indispensable condition of the human species, that parents proceed as openly to the task of procuring a proper husband for their daughter, as of providing her with shoes and stockings. No false delicacy—no pitiful manoeuvres! The affair is treated like any other negotiation. It is a mere question of two and two making four, which enables two to make one. How far more honest than the angling and trickery of English match-making—which, by keeping men constantly on the defensive, predisposes them against attractions to which they might otherwise give way! However, as I said before, I do not wish to complain of my condition.
I only consider it hard that the interests of the wives of England are to be exclusively studied, when the unfortunate females who lack the consolations of matronhood are in so far greater want of sustainment; and that all the theories of the perfectionizement of the fair sex now issuing from the press, should purport to instruct young ladies how to qualify themselves for wives, and wives how to qualify themselves for heaven; and not a word addressed, either in the way of exhortation, remonstrance, or applause, to the highly respectable order of the female community whose cause I have taken on myself to advocate. Have not the wives of England husbands to whisper wisdom into their ears? Why, then, are they to be coaxed or lectured by tabby-bound volumes, while we are left neglected in a corner? Our earthly career, the Lord he knows, is far more trying—our temptations as much greater, as our pleasures are less; and it is mortifying indeed to find our behavior a thing so little worth interference. We may conduct ourselves, it seems, as indecorously as we think proper, for any thing the united booksellers of the United Kingdom care to the contrary!
Not that I very much wonder at literary men regarding the education of wives as a matter of moment. The worse halves of Socrates, Milton, Hooker, have been thorns in their sides, urging them into blasphemy against the sex. But is this a reason, I only ask you, for leaving, like an uncultivated waste, that holy army of martyrs, the spinsterhood of Great Britain?
Mr Editor, act like a man! Speak up for us! Write up for us! Tell these little writers of little books, that however they may think to secure dinners and suppers to themselves, by currying favour with the rulers of the roast, the greatest of all women have been SINGLE! Tell them of our Virgin Queen, Elizabeth—the patroness of their calling, the protectress of learning and learned men. Tell them of Joan of Arc, the conqueror of even English chivalry. Tell them of all the tender mercies of the Soeurs de Charité! Tell them that, from the throne to the hospital, the spinster, unharassed by the cares of private life, has been found most fruitful in public virtue.
Then, perhaps, you will persuade them that we are worth our schooling; and the "Old Maids of England" may look forward to receive a tabby-bound manual of their duties, as well as its "Wives." I have really no patience with the selfish conceit of these married women, who fancy their well-doing of such importance. See how they were held by the ancients!—treated like beasts of burden, and denied the privilege of all mental accomplishment. When the Grecian matrons affected to weep over the slain, after some victory of Themistocles, the Athenian general bade them "dry their tears, and practise a single virtue in atonement of all their weaknesses." It was to their single women the philosophers of the portico addressed their lessons; not to the domestic drudges, whom they considered only worthy to inspect the distaffs of their slaves, and produce sons for the service of the country.
In Bath, Brighton, and other spinster colonies of this island, the demand for such a work would be prodigious. The sale of canary-birds and poodles might suffer a temporary depression in consequence; but this is comparatively unimportant. Perhaps—who knows—so positive a recognition of our estate as a definite class of the community, might lead to the long desiderated establishment of a lay convent, somewhat similar to the béguinages of Flanders, though less ostensibly subject to religious law—a convent where single gentlewomen might unite together in their meals and devotions, under the government of a code of laws set forth in their tabby-bound Koran.
Methinks I see it—a modern temple of Vesta, without its tell-tale fires—square, rectangular, simple, airy, isolated—chaste as Diana and quiet as the grave—the frescoed walls commemorating the legend of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand—the sacrifice of Jephtha's daughter—Elizabeth Carter translating Epictetus—Harriet Martineau revising the criminal code. In the hall, dear Editor, should hang the portrait of Christopher North—in that locality, appropriately, a Kit-cat!
Ponder upon this! The distinction is worthy consideration. As the newspapers say, it is an "unprecedented opportunity for investment!" For the sole Helicon of the institution shall be—"Blackwood's Entire" its lady abbess—