THE FOUR ROYAL PRINCESSES
PRINCESS ROYAL, PRINCESS ALICE, PRINCESS LOUISE, AND PRINCESS HELENA
As for her accomplishments, they comprised, apart from the knowledge of a few pieces on the guitar and the piano, some slight power of sketching or flower-painting in water-colours. Of course it was nothing better than the amusement of an amateur. As for attempting literature, no one, with very few exceptions, ever thought of it. There was then but a limited demand for women’s literary work—a very limited demand—yet there had already been some very fine work done by women. Mrs. Ellis was writing those famous and immortal works of hers on the Women of England, the Mothers of England, the Wives of England, the Daughters of England,—so far as I know, for the subject is inexhaustible, the Housemaids of England. These essays, which I fear, dear reader, you have never seen, endeavoured to mould woman on the theory of recognised intellectual inferiority to man. She was considered beneath him in intellect as in physical strength; she was exhorted to defer to man, to acknowledge his superiority—not to show herself anxious to combat his opinions. At this very time, one woman at least—Harriet Martineau—was proving to the world that there were exceptions to the inferiority of the sex in matters of reason; while another woman—Marian Evans—already grown up, was shortly to enter the field with another illustration of the same remarkable fact.
It has been often charged against Thackeray that his good women were insipid. Thackeray, like most artists, could only draw the women of his own time, and at that time they were undoubtedly insipid. Men, I suppose, liked them so. To be childishly ignorant; to carry shrinking modesty so far as to find the point of a shoe projecting beyond the folds of a frock indelicate; to confess that serious subjects were beyond a woman’s grasp; never even to pretend to form an independent judgment; to know nothing of Art, History, Science, Literature, Politics, Sociology, Manners;—men liked these things; women yielded to please the men; her very ignorance formed a subject of laudable pride with the Englishwoman of the Forties.
Painting by Winterhalter
“FIRST MAY 1851”
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON PRESENTING A BIRTHDAY GIFT TO HIS GODSON, PRINCE ARTHUR
As for doing serious work, the girl of that period shrank appalled at the very thought. To earn one’s livelihood was the deepest degradation; the most sincere pity was felt for those unhappy girls whose fathers died or failed, or left them unprovided, so that they must needs do something. It was pity mingled with contempt. Even this meek and gentle maiden of the early Victorian period could feel—and could show—the emotion of contempt. Readers of Cranford will remember how the unfortunate lady opened a tea shop; those ladies who were too old or too ignorant for teaching—“going out” as a governess—sometimes set up a “fancy” shop, where children’s things—lace, embroideries, things in wool and pretty trifles—were sold. I remember such a shop kept by two gentlewomen, old, reduced, decayed; but they were very sad, always in the lowest depressions; I fear it was but a poor business. There were no professions open to women. Those who did not marry—they were comparatively few—stayed at home with one of the brothers, generally the eldest, and as often as not, such an unmarried sister proved the angel of the house. Sometimes, to be sure, the lot was hard, and she was made to feel her dependence. In general, I like to believe, the single woman of the family, in whom all confided, in whom all trusted,—the nurse of the sick; the contriver and designer of the girls’ frocks; the maker of fine cakes and the owner of choice recipes; who knew all the branches of a numerous family; who kept together the brothers and cousins who would fly apart but for her,—was as much valued as she deserved to be.
