But there is often in families another and an Undomestic Daughter, who aspires to be in all things unlike the usual run of common or domestic daughters. From an early age she will have been noted in the family circle for romantic tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for impossible conflicts, of which they themselves, absorbed as they are in the examination and pocket-money struggles of boyhood, have no conception whatever. The effort to plant the tree of romance in an ordinary middle-class household was predestined to failure. Her disappointments are constant and crushing. Desires and capacities which, with careful nurture, might have come to a fair fruit, are chilled and nipped by the frost of neglect and ridicule. Her mind becomes warped. The work that is ready to her hand, the ordinary round of family tasks and serviceableness, repels her. She turns from it with distaste, and thus widens still more the gulf between herself and her relatives. Hence she is thrown back upon herself for companionship and comfort. She dissects, for her own bitter enjoyment, her inmost heart. She becomes the subtle analyst of her own imaginary motives. She calls up accusing phantoms to charge her before the bar of her conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict of guilty on every count of the indictment. In short, she becomes a thoroughly morbid and hysterical young woman, suspicious, and resentful even of the sympathy which is rarely offered to her. In the meantime, two of her younger sisters are wooed and won in the orthodox manner by steady-going gentlemen, of good position and prospects. The congratulations showered upon them, and the rejoicings which attend them on their wedding days, only serve to add melancholy to the Undomestic Daughter, who has already begun to solace herself for her failure to attract men by the reflection that matrimony itself is a failure, and that there are higher and worthier things in life than the wearing of orange-blossoms, and going-away dresses. It must be said that her parents strive with but little vigour against their daughter's inclination. Her father having hinted at indigestion as the cause of her unhappiness, and finding that the hint is badly received, shrugs his inapprehensive shoulders, and ceases to notice her. Her mother, persuaded that sanity is to be found only on the maternal side of the family, lays the peculiarities of her daughter to the charge of some abnormal paternal ancestor. Having thus, by implication, cleared herself from all responsibility, she feels that she is better able to take a detached and impartial view of errors which, seeing they are those of her own flesh and blood, she professes herself utterly unable to understand or to correct.
The Undomestic Daughter thus acquires the conviction that she herself is the most miserably crushed member of a down-trodden sex. In this, and in the agreement which she exacts from two or three melancholy friends, she seeks a solace for her sufferings. After a time, however, she discovers that this is insufficient. It must be said to her credit that her energies find the outlet of a passive sorrow inadequate. She burns to prove that one who is misunderstood and despised cannot only find useful work to do, but can do it better than her humdrum domestic sisters. Unfortunately, however, she overlooks the obvious and easy duties of her home. She scans the remote corners of the world. Her bruised spirit flutters about the bye-ways of charitable effort, and at length she establishes herself as a visitor, a distributer of tracts and blankets, and an instructor of factory girls. It is unnecessary to insist that these occupations are useful and praiseworthy in the abstract. It may be doubted, however, whether they should be undertaken by one who has to neglect for them equally necessary but less attractive labours.
The Undomestic Daughter, however, rejoices in the performance of work, which, as it were, sets a seal to her wretchedness, and stamps her as a being apart from the ruck of her sex. She now takes her meals alone, and at her own hours. She probably breakfasts at half-past seven, and dashes out to interview the Secretary of the Society for Improving the Cultivation of Mustard and Cress on the Desert Patches of the Mile End District. After this she will hasten to Lambeth, in order that mothers residing in that teeming quarter of the town may be blessed with mittens and mob-caps, and returning thence she devotes an hour or so to lectures which are to make her expert in tending the ailments of humanity. Occasionally the family arrangements are upset, in order that she may have her dinner at an hour which will make it convenient to her to attend the meeting of an Institute for Reading Historical Novels to Working Girls, and her father will lose all his available stock of good temper on finding that the moments generally devoted by him to soup are occupied to his exclusion by the apple-tart provided for his busy daughter. Hence come more storms and misunderstandings. Paternal feet are put down—for a time, and neglected excellence pines in bed-rooms.
Shortly afterwards the Undomestic Daughter discovers that nature intended her to be a hospital nurse, and she takes advantage of a period when her mother, being occupied in tending a younger brother through scarlatina cannot offer a determined opposition, to wring an unwilling consent from her father, and to leave her home in order to carry out her plan. This phase, however, does not last many weeks, and she is soon back once more on the parental hands. Thus the years pass on, the monotony of neglecting her home being varied by occasional outbursts of enthusiasm which carry her on distant expeditions in strange company. During one of these she falls in with a lay-preacher, who to a powerful and convincing style adds the fascination of having been turned from an early life of undoubted dissipation. She sits at his feet, she flatters him as only a woman can flatter a preacher, and having eventually married him, she helps him to found a new religion during the intervals that she can spare from the foundation of a considerable family. Warned by her own experience, she will never allow her daughters to be seen without their sewing or their knitting. Her sons will all be forced to learn useful trades, and it is quite possible that as time passes she may irritate even her husband, by constantly holding herself up to her somewhat discontented family as a pattern of all the domestic virtues.
Nursery Rhyme.
(Trade's Union Version.)
Bah! bah! Blackleg! Have you any pluck?
Backing up the Masters when the Men have struck!