And yet in the household the Englishwoman is quite supreme—much more so, I think, than she is in "America." She really manages all household affairs, troubling her husband with no details, but being careful to manage in such a way as to please him. For, as I have said before, the wish of the master of an English household is the law of that household. Notwithstanding all this, I have been led to the firm belief that hen-pecking is far more common in England than it is with us, and that curtain lectures are much oftener delivered there than here. "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" would hardly have suggested themselves to an American humorist, although the thing itself—if not in its perfection, in its germ—is sufficiently known here to make the humor and the satire of that series perfectly appreciated. And, strange to say, the average English husband seems to be a less independent creature than the "American." English wives more generally insist upon their prerogative of sitting solemnly up for their husbands at night; and latch-keys are regarded as a personal grievance. What American wife would think of making a fuss about a man's having a latch-key? Not a few of them, indeed, have one themselves. And yet I have seen an Englishwoman of the lower middle class flush and choke and whimper when the subject of the inalienable right of a man to a latch-key to his own house was broached, and begin to talk about the worm turning when it is trampled upon.
The devotion of Englishwomen to their families, and particularly to their children, cannot be surpassed. I believe that they are the best, the most self-sacrificing daughters, wives, and mothers in the world, except the good daughters and wives and mothers in "America"; and even them I believe they generally surpass in submissiveness and thoughtful consideration. But this is the result of the general subordination which in all things pervades English society.
It is generally believed in England, I cannot tell why, that women in "America" take part in public affairs and are much more in the eye of the world than Englishwomen are. Of this belief I met with an amusing instance. One day at dinner in a "great house" I had on one side of me a gentleman who had come in alone for lack of ladies enough to "go round"; it was a small family party. He was the brother of my hostess, a fine, intelligent fellow about twenty-five years old, who had just taken his bachelor's degree at Oxford. As I turned from his sister to him, in a pause of conversation, he asked me with great earnestness, almost with solemnity, "Is—it—true—that—in—America—the—women— sit—on—juries?" I answered instantly, and with perfect gravity, "Yes; all of them who are not on duty as sergeants of dragoons." For one appreciable delightful moment doubt and bewilderment flashed through his bright, handsome eyes, and then he, as well as others within earshot, appreciated the situation, and there was a hearty laugh and an ingenuous blush mantled his cheeks—for young men can blush in England. When I explained that in no part of that strange country "America" with which I was acquainted did women sit on juries, or take any part in public affairs, or even vote or go to public meetings, and that nine in ten of the women that I knew would be puzzled to tell who represented in Congress the districts in which they lived, who were the Senators from their States, and possibly who were their Governors, I was listened to with profound attention; and the surprise of my hearers was very manifest, and was strongly expressed. It could hardly have been otherwise; for nothing that I could have said would have brought into clearer light the fact that women in America are very much less informed upon public affairs and take very much less interest in them than is the case with almost all Englishwomen of the cultivated classes. In England almost all intelligent women of the upper and upper middle classes take a very lively interest in politics, are tolerably well informed upon the public questions of the day, and in many cases they have no inconsiderable influence upon them. The reason of this is that political life and the social life of the upper classes there are so thoroughly intermingled. Politics form the chief concern of the members of those classes; apart, of course, from their own private affairs. Hardly a woman of that class is without a husband, brother, kinsman, or friend who is, or who has been, or hopes to be a member of Parliament, or who is in diplomacy, or connected in some way with colonial affairs. Politics there are intimately connected with the great object of woman's life in modern days—social success. It is difficult for women in England, and even for men, to understand the entire severance of politics and society which obtains in "America," and to believe that a man may be a member of Congress or even a Senator, and yet be entirely without social position. Politics there are the most interesting topic of conversation among intelligent and cultivated people in general society, and such an acquaintance with political questions and party manœuvres as is here confined to a very few women indeed, whose relations to public men are peculiar, and who "go to Washington," is there very common among all women of superior position.
Of this I met with a striking illustration on my way from Warwick to Coventry. As I was about entering the railway carriage, a friend, an Englishman, who was kindly travelling with me for a day or two, and "coaching" me, told the porter who had my portmanteau to put it into the carriage. This, by the way, is permitted there. If there is room, and no one objects, you may take a huge trunk into a first-class railway carriage. Indeed, one could hardly be taken into a second-class carriage for lack of room; and a third-class carriage is hardly larger than that marvellous institution known to American women—but to no others—as a Saratoga trunk. I objected to my friend's proposal because there was a lady in the carriage. She was standing with her back to me as I spoke, but she immediately turned and said, in a clear, sweet voice, "Oh, yes; bring it in; never mind me; there's quite room enough." I never saw a more elegant woman. She was about forty years old, still very handsome, tall, with a fine lithe figure, and a gentle loftiness of manner which I might have called aristocratic, had she not reminded me strongly in every way of an "American" woman whom I had known from my boyhood. Nothing could have been more simple, frank, and good-natured than the way in which she made me and my luggage welcome. Her maid, who was standing by her, and who was herself a very lady-like person, soon left us to take her place in a second-class carriage, and we three were left in possession.
The train started with that gentle, unobtrusive motion which is usual on English railways, and we fell into the chat of fellow travellers. I was charmed with her. Her voice and her manner of speech would have made the recitation of the multiplication table agreeable. She had a son at Oxford, which I had left a few days before, and it proved that we had common acquaintances there. She showed, with all her superiority of manner, social and personal—for she was what would have been called in the last generation a superior woman—that deference to manhood which I have mentioned before as a trait of Englishwomen. Ere long my companion mentioned that we had been at Kenilworth that day. She replied, "Oh, I must go there. I have never been. Why! It is just like Americans to go to Kenilworth. All the Americans go to Kenilworth, and to Warwick Castle, and to Stratford." My companion replied that we had been at all those places. She laughed merrily, and said, "You ought to have been Americans to do that." My friend then told her that I was an "American." She turned upon me almost with a stare, and after a moment of silence spoke to me again, but with a perceptible and very remarkable change of manner. It was very slight—of a delicate fineness. Her courtesy was not in the least diminished, nor her frankness; but the perfectly unconscious and careless expression of her face was impaired, and her attention to me was a little more pronounced than it had been before. She inquired if I had been pleased with my visit to Kenilworth, and told me that a novel had been written about it by Sir Walter Scott. "But perhaps you have read it," she added. "Have you met with it?" I answered, "I have heard of it"; and my inward satisfaction was great when I saw that I had done so with a face so unmoved that she replied with a gracious instructiveness of manner, "Oh, you should have read it before you went to Kenilworth; it would so have increased your pleasure. But the next best thing for you is to read it now." I thanked her, and said that I should like to do so. I think that she would have gone on to recommend a perusal of the works of William Shakespeare to me in connection with my visit to Stratford on Avon, although she looked at me in a puzzled way once or twice. But my companion, although I saw he was amused at something in her talk, marred whatever hopes I had of further instruction by breaking in with some remark upon the politics of Warwickshire. She rose to his fly like a trout on a hazy day, and in a minute or two she had forgotten my existence in her discussion with him of a topic which plainly was to her of far more interest than all the Scotts that could have dwelt in Kenilworth, and all the Shakespeares that could have stood in Stratford. He was a Birmingham magnate, and knew everything that was going on in the country; but she was his equal in information, and it seemed to me his superior in political craft. To every suggestion of his she made some reply that showed that the question was not new to her. She knew all the ins and outs of the politics of the county: who could be expected to support this measure, who was sure to oppose that. She knew all about the manufacturing interests of Birmingham: who had retired from active management; who was coming in; what money had been taken out of this establishment, what changes had taken place in the other, and had an opinion as to what effect this was going to have upon Parliament. I never heard the beginning of such political talk from a woman in America, even from one whose husband was in politics. The train stopped; her maid appeared, and she bade us courteously good-by, with the puzzled look in her eye as it rested upon the fellow passenger to whom she had recommended the perusal of "Kenilworth"; and then my companion told me, what indeed I had been sure of all along, that she was a member of the governing class.
A few days before, I had observed in Oxford, where a local election was impending, small posters addressed to "The Burgesses," and these invariably began "Ladies and Gentlemen," a form of "campaign document" as foreign to us as it would be to peoples subject to the Salique law—than which worse laws have long prevailed in many countries.
Not only in politics but in business women appear much more prominently than they do in "America." If they do not keep hotels, which they sometimes do, they manage them, whether they are great or small. The place which in "America" is filled by that exquisite, awful, and imperturbable being, the hotel clerk, is filled invariably in England by a woman—so at least I always found it, and I found the change a very happy one. To be met by the cheery, pleasant faces of these bright, well-mannered women, to be spoken to as if you were a human being whom, in consideration of what you are to pay, it was a pleasure to make as comfortable as possible, instead of being treated with lofty condescension, or at best with serene indifference, was a pleasant sensation. And these women did their work so quietly and cheerfully, and yet in such a businesslike way, that it was a constant pleasure to come into contact with them. Dressed in black serge or alpaca, they affected no flirting airs, and directed or obeyed promptly and quietly. And yet their womanhood constantly appeared in their manner and in their thoughtfulness for the comfort of those who were in their care. They always had a pleasant word or a smile in answer to a passing remark, were always ready to answer any question or give any information, and were pleased at any acknowledgment of satisfaction. Naturally it was so; for they were women; and they were chosen, it seemed to me, for their pleasant ways as well as for their efficiency. From not one of them, from one end of England to the other, in great cities or in quiet country towns and villages, did I receive one surly word or look, or anything but the kindest and promptest attention. I can say the same of the shop women, who waited upon customers not as if they were consciously condescending in the performing of such duties, but cheerfully and pleasantly, and with a show of interest that a purchaser should be satisfied. Their dress was almost invariably the same black unornamented serge or alpaca, which, by the way, is the commonest street dress of all women of their condition. In the telegraph offices the clerks are generally women; and indeed, women seem to do everything except plough, drive omnibuses and railway engines, and be soldiers and policemen. They keep turnpikes, where turnpikes still exist; and in Sussex I saw a woman's name with her husband's upon the pike-house. Indeed, it seemed to me that in all public affairs, from politics down to turnpike keeping, women were very much more engaged and before the world in England than in America, although I saw no jury-women or she sergeants.
As to the manners of Englishwomen, they are, like the manners of other women, good, bad, and indifferent. And chiefly they are indifferent; being in this particular also like others, especially of the Teutonic races; which races, my readers may like to be reminded, are the Deutsch (which we call German), the Hollanders, the Anglo-Saxon (or better, the English), and the Scandinavians (Swedes, Norsemen, Danes, and Icelanders). The average manners of these peoples, even of the women among them, are on the whole truly indifferent. They are not coarse, but as surely they are not polished. Manner, however, is a very different thing from manners; and in manner Englishwomen, from the highest class to the lowest, are all more or less charming—strong-minded women and lodging-house keepers being of course excepted. This charm, like all traits and effects of manner, is not easy to describe; but it left upon me at this time, as it had left before, an impression of its being the outcoming of an intense consciousness of womanhood, and with this a feeling of modest but very firm self-respect. The most intelligent Englishwoman, even in her most exalted moments, never seems to resolve herself into a bare intelligence. Her mind is always clad in woman's flesh; and her body thinks. Thus conscious of her own womanhood, she keeps you conscious of it, not merely by the facts that her hair is long, her face beardless, and that her body (in the evening the lower part of it at least) is covered with voluminous and marvellous apparel—in a word, not merely by outer show.
All this is but the outward sign; and it might exist—as it so often does, I shall not say where—in women, without the least of that grace, not of movement or of speech, or even of thought, but of moral condition, which is to me the chiefest charm in woman. How often have I sat by one of such women talking—no, talked at (for it reduces me to silence)—in such a splendid and overwhelming manner, and with such a superior consciousness of intellectuality, that I could not but think that except for the silk and the lace, and the lack of moustaches, and the evident expectation of a compliment, I might as well have been talking with a man (only a man would have said more with less fuss), and that I longed for the companionship of some pretty, well-bred ignoramus, whose head was full only of common sense, and whose soul as well as whose body was of the female sex. England is not without women of the other kind, I suppose, but they are so rare that I met with none; while all the women that I did meet had the soft, sweet charm given by the contented consciousness of their womanhood. Womanhood looks out from an Englishwoman's eyes; it speaks in every inflection of her voice. No matter how clever she may be, how well informed, she never utters mind pure and simple; she never lays a bare statement of thought or of fact before you. She is too modest. A piece of her mind she does, indeed, sometimes give you. But then, be sure, she is, of all times, the most thoroughly womanlike and absolved from intellectuality; being, however, thus in her excitement not peculiar among her sex. At all other times she leaves an impression of gentleness, and a lack of intellectual robustness; and, if you are a man at least, she, without any seeming intention of so doing, keeps you constantly in mind that she is trusting to you—to your strength, your ability, your position—to ensure that she shall be treated with respect and tenderness, and taken care of; and that therefore she owes you deference, and that it becomes her to be not only as charming but as serviceable as possible. Even in the hardest women there is a remnant at least of this. An Englishwoman shall be a sort of she-bagman, a traveller for manufacturers, and in the habit of riding second or even third class alone, from one end of England to the other (and I talked with such women), and she shall yet show you this gentle, womanly consciousness. A woman's eye there never looks straight and steady into yours, saying, "I am quite able to take care of my own person, and interests, and reputation. Don't trouble yourself about me in those respects. Meantime, sir, I am taking your measure." There is always a mute appeal from her womanhood to your manhood. This charm belongs to the Englishwoman of all ranks, and beautifies everything that she does, even if she does it awkwardly, which is not always. She shows it if she is a great lady and welcomes you, or if she is a housemaid and serves you. Not actually every Englishwoman is thus of course; for there are hard, and proud, and cruel, and debased women there, as there are elsewhere. But, apart from these exceptions, this is the manner of Englishwomen; and, in so far as a man may judge, this manner, or the counterpart of it, does not forsake them when they are among themselves.
This soft charm of the Englishwoman's manner is greatly helped and heightened by her voice and her manner of speaking. In these she is not only without an equal, but beyond comparison with the women of any other people, except the few of her own blood and tongue in this country, who have like voices and the same utterance. The voices and the speech of Englishwomen of all classes are, with few exceptions, pleasant to the ear—soft and clear; their words are well articulated, but not precisely pronounced. They speak without much emphasis, yet not monotonously, but with gentle modulation. Their speech is therefore very easily understood—much more so than that of persons who speak louder and with stronger emphasis. You rarely or never are obliged to ask an Englishwoman to repeat what she has said because you have failed to catch her words. This soft, yet crisp and clear and easily flowing speech, is, as I have said, common to the whole sex there.