“Well, I saw a great deal of good sense in this, and thought it would be better for women to be content to be women. I am sure we used to be very happy long ago, before this came into our heads, but the landlady I told you of did not think so: she has two or three friends that come and talk over all the domestic and un-domestic arrangements of all their ‘gossips:’ one of these ladies is a widow—for the second time; and they say she was the death of the first by her tongue, and of the second by her temper, maybe the one helped on the other against both the poor fellows! any how, they both are dead, and she makes a great boast of never taking a third; they say she was never asked: she is what’s called a ‘strong-minded woman,’ she would say any thing, or do any thing; and what I can’t understand—though she is forever abusing the men, and letting on she hates them and their ways—is that she does every thing in the world she can to seem manly. She tramps about in high-heeled boots, with straps; she speaks in—what she calls—a ‘fine, manly tone,’ and hates soft voices, because they are womanly; she has a way of her own, of turning the rights of women into the rights of men; she parts her hair at the side, and turns it in an under roll all round—‘because it is like a man’s;’ and yet she calls ‘them men’ bears and brutes enough to fill the zoology gardens; and though she grumbles because men tyrannize over women, she is bringing up her son to have his way in every thing, and makes his sister give the cake from her hand, and the orange from her lips to pamper him.
“Now that’s mighty quare to me—she is the landlady’s prime minister—her name is Mrs. Blounet. Then there are the two Miss Hunters—Miss Cressy and Miss Mary Jane. Miss Cressy is a fine stately woman—all bone—and high-learned, and has spoken more than once on ‘Man, the oppressor;’ but, though Miss Mary Jane dresses bloomer, she does not abuse her fellow-creatures as badly as Miss Cressy. She is five years younger, and very good-looking—by candle-light. To be sure it is wonderful how the tongues of the three go against mankind, when they’re all together, and the landlady making one little lament after another, how that her husband does this, and doesn’t do that; and this often makes me think of what I heard of often, from one we both loved—you will remember who it was when I tell you the advice. ‘If you would lead a happy life, never tell your husband’s faults to any ear but his own; a woman who makes her husband’s failings a subject for conversation, is unworthy his respect or his affection.’ And, if you mind, aunty, the same woman—the heavens be her bed!—used to say, we had two ears and but one tongue: a sign that we should not say all we hear. Anyhow, it would bother the saints to hear the talk of them—Mrs. Blounet hitting ever so hard at Miss Cressy and Miss Mary Jane for being old maids; and, Miss Cressy especially, turning upon Mrs. Blounet for having two husbands—not at a time, though. It was wonderful the talk they used to have, and the suppers; and then Miss Cressy disappeared in the evenings, and poor Mr. Creed—that’s the landlady’s husband—declared she served at a confectioner’s of an evening in the dress; and my mistress said that sort of thing would crush ‘the movement altogether;’ as if the dress was thought to be ever so healthy and convenient, its going into that class as a show, and a vulgar attraction, would prevent its ever being recognized as respectable in England. Then Mrs. Blounet took stronger than ever to lecturing in pink trousers—she weighs thirteen stone—and a gray ‘tunic,’ she calls it; but it is just a short petticoat pleated full. Oh! so short.
“And Miss Mary Jane was wonderful, except when Mr. Creed had any gentlemen visitors; then she would allow that Alexander the Great, and Bonaparte, and a few more, were equal to us. But the worst of it was that this spirit of Bloomer was quite upsetting our house: the landlady took to writing about the rights of woman, and left every one of her duties uncared for. Mr. Creed is a police inspector of the P division, and often wanted a hot cup of coffee, but Mrs. Creed downright refused to make it. The baby did as it liked. The only thing its mother corrected was proofs!—long strips of printed paper, like dirty farthing ballads; and Mrs. Blounet and she would sit all day, just making mischief, and writing the botheringest nonsense that ever was, while my mistress might wait for her dinner. Think of three guineas a-week for three rooms, and done for!—and yet not able to get a chop dressed, because the landlady is practicing the rights of women—by giving us no rights at all. Now, isn’t it quare? And it was worse and worse she was getting, so that between her and the east wind, we had neither peace nor quiet—all the morning she was reading newspapers, and correcting them ‘proofs;’ all the evenings, attending public meetings. And the poor babby!—I have heard her tell her husband that if he wanted it washed, he must do it himself, for she had the rights of her sex to attend to, and it was as much his business as hers to mind it. Oh! it’s wonderful when politics get into a woman’s head how they drive nature out of it!—they beat small tea-parties, and fairs, and dances, and patterns—ay, and falling in love—out and out for making a woman forget herself. And yet if there’s a thing in the world she is proud of, it is that babby, and sitting at the head of her tea-table, pouring out tea, and laying down the law. You used to say, aunty dear, that a woman never went out and out to the bad, until her heart got into the wrong place: indeed, you and the landlady would not agree at all; for in almost every thing she had reasoned herself out of nature—and that’s what they try to do—but just wait until I tell you how things went on. We were very uncomfortable: my poor mistress kept waiting for her dinner, and if I had not studied a cookery-book as hard as ever Father Jonas—dear holy man!—studied his breviary, she must have gone days and days without a bit of proper food, for there is but one poor fag of a servant, who was born on her legs, and has kept on them ever since, to cook, and wash, and walk with the children, and lay the cloth, and wait the table, and go everybody’s messages, and open the door, and bear the ill temper of the parlors, drawing-rooms, and every floor, and faction in the house. Well, since the landlady took up with the rights of women, no slave in the free states of America has been so overworked as that poor girl; among other things, the landlady reproached her for taking no pride in laying out supper for the ‘great movers,’ as she called them, ‘in the cause of women:’ and the girl asked what good the ‘movement’ was to her, except to give her more work. Well, you should have heard the landlady’s tongue go after that—no one that did could ever forgot it—how she reproached her for want of public spirit, and proper feeling—and ‘sympathy.’ Now the best of it is, that this good woman’s husband is—as I said—a Police Inspector, though she tried hard and long to make me believe he had a ‘situation in the city,’ which did not sound like policeman. You see, darling, the English are grown very like ourselves in that; my mistress says, that a great deal of the pride and spirit they took in honest labor and its profits are gone; and forgetting the respect due to great people—I mean, aunt, great good people, and great good things—they run into every little dirty short cut to wealth they can find; and after all sorts and kinds of money—like mad: in fact, she says,—that there are as many at ‘their dirty diggings’ in the city of London, as in that place, they call it by the name of California, in a far away country. Now, to take pride out of mere money there and then, seems of all things the most unnatural for those who have souls in their bodies: the understanding that two and two make four, doesn’t seem much to be proud of, and yet that’s the beginning and end of half the knowledge and pride going—of all the knowledge the gold-seekers care about, just as if grubbing up and counting up would make them all as one as the rale quality; and then, if you say a word, they get up a cry of
‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’
and bother ye’r heart out with ‘it’s nothing what a man was, but what he is;’ and so I say, but with a different meaning,
‘A grub’s a grub for a’ that;’
and don’t tell me! all the wealth of California and Australia to the back of it, wont change a man; what he was, he is, unless something brighter than gold comes over him; the seeking and loving money never purified a heart yet, nor raised a man the breadth of a straw.
‘It’s not the wealth, but how you use it.’
I see and hear a deal about wealth, but something keeps stirring in my heart, and whispering in my ear, which, as a poor girl, I’ve no right to talk about; there are ways of working up like the little grain of mustard seed my mistress reads of, that grew into a great tree, and sheltered the houseless and homeless. Now that is a fine thing to think of, and I delight in a little story of a mouse letting a lion out of a net—there’s great comfort in that—and I feel
‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’