A Word to Women Part 8

[Sidenote: The retrospect.]

Is there not a pleasure in conquering circ.u.mstances--in fighting poverty and making it yield to economy, contrivance, and industry? The fight is often hard and long-continued; and there are sad cases in which it ends in failure and disaster. But when courage and endurance have resulted in victory, and firm footing has been won on the steep hill of success, it is not unpleasant to look back and scan the long years of struggle, endeavouring to compute what they have done for us; how they have enriched, like the snows of winter, ground that might otherwise have remained for ever arid and unprofitable.

[Sidenote: Bargain hunting.]

[Sidenote: "The little grocer's shop."]

There is a wonderful cheap world to be found in London, like an _entresol_ between a palatial shop and a magnificent first floor. Into this curious world the girl-bachelor soon finds her way. She knows exactly the twopenny-halfpenny little shop where she can get art-muslin at a penny-three-farthings a yard. Most of it is hideous, but she is clever at picking out the few pretty pieces. She sometimes purchases a quite beautiful bit of colour for the brightening of her rooms in the shape of pottery vases for a couple of pence. No one better than the girl-bachelor knows that the best value for her money is to be found at the little grocer's shop in a poor neighbourhood. The poor are, naturally, intent on getting at least a shillingsworth for every shilling they lay out, and no tradesman can make a living in such localities unless he purveys the best provisions at fair prices. It is notorious that customers who buy in small quant.i.ties, as the poor are obliged to do, living from hand to mouth with their few shillings a week, are more profitable than those who can afford to buy largely, and the tradesman who conscientiously provides good wares at a moderate profit flourishes comfortably in such circ.u.mstances. Here the girl-bachelor gets her stores. Not for her are the plate-gla.s.s windows of the great West End "establishments," which have to pay high rentals and the cost of horses and carts and extra men to send round daily for the convenience of their customers. The little shop in the back street is good enough for her.

[Sidenote: Her thrift.]

[Sidenote: A splendid training.]

And how expert does she become in her marketing! Such a thing as waste is absolutely unknown in the tiny sphere of home of which she is the centre and the sun. The bones from her miniature joints of beef and mutton are not cast away until they are white and smooth from boiling and reboiling, the stock they yield being skilfully made up into tempting soups and savoury dishes of macaroni. There is splendid training for the future housewife in all this; not only in the matter of food itself, but in the diligent industry needed to combine its preparation with the day's work, and the practical knowledge of what such work of preparation involves. The kindest and most considerate mistresses are those who know exactly how much time and trouble it takes to produce certain results.

[Sidenote: Unfortunate man.]

Contrast the girl-bachelor with her peer of the helpless s.e.x. Look at the dingy lodging-house breakfast-table of the poor clerk. Do you see the crushed and soiled tablecloth, the cup and saucer rather wiped than washed, the fork with suspicious lack of clear outline along its p.r.o.ngs, hatefully reminiscent of previous meals, the knife powdered with brown from recent contact with the knifeboard, and the food itself untempting to the palate and not very nutritious to the system.

[Sidenote: "Cooking comes by nature."]

Cooking comes almost by nature to the bachelor-girl. With a good stove-lamp, a frying-pan, a chafing-dish, and a boilerette, with a saucepan or two and a kettle, she has an all-sufficing _batterie de cuisine_. The wonders she can work with these are known to many of her friends, and even those with comfortable establishments of their own are often fain to confess that her cookery invites them as the achievements of the queen of their kitchen often fail to do.

[Sidenote: "How it strikes a contemporary."]

And in many other essentials the girl-bachelor has the advantage of the ordinary young man. Hear what a contemporary has to say:--"The average youth, from the time he leaves school, wants unlimited tobacco for his pipes and cigarettes, and often runs to several cigars a day; he seldom pa.s.ses many hours without a gla.s.s of something--wine, spirits, or beer, according to his tastes or company, and he wants a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt of the sing-song or cheap music-hall kind, to say nothing of much more expensive meals. Tobacco would not cost him much if he were content with a little smoke when the day's work was over, instead of indulging in perpetual cigarettes. The girl has none of these expenses; she often economises, and gives herself healthy exercise by walking at least part of the way to her occupation in fine weather; she does not smoke; she rarely eats or drinks between meals, though she may nibble a bit of chocolate, which, after all, is wholesome food; her mid-day meal seldom costs more than sixpence, and she is glad after working hours to get home, where she enjoys the welcome change of reading a book and making and mending her clothes, concocting a new hat, and so forth."

It is a healthy, happy, often a merry, cheery life; and if the girl-bachelor often sighs to be rich, the wish is not allowed to generate discontent, but serves to arouse a wholesome ambition which may lead, in time, to the realisation of the wish. And who so happy, then, as the matured and cultured woman who reaps where she has sown, and finds, in the fullest development of her faculties the real meaning of the highest happiness, viz., living upward and outward to the whole height and breadth and depth of her innate possibilities.

_THE MIDDLE-AGED CHAPERON._

[Sidenote: The miseries of the chaperon.]

[Sidenote: Draughts.]

[Sidenote: The charge who cannot dance.]

Many are the miseries of the middle-aged chaperon! Is it not enough, think you, to see one's lost youth reflected in the blithesome scene, to remember the waltzes of long ago, to recall the partners of the past, and the pleasant homage no longer forthcoming, and to feel within a response to the music and the rhythm of the dance, ridiculously incongruous with an elderly exterior, without suffering any added woes? And yet they are manifold. There are the draughts! Windows opened for the relief of heated dancers, pour down cold airs on the uncovered shoulders of chilly chaperons. What cared they for draughts in the long-ago, when all the world was young? But now a draught is a fearsome thing. But worse, far worse, is the girl who cannot dance, who treads on her partners' toes, and knocks against their knees, and is returned with a scowl to her wretched chaperon. "I know you are going to the Mumpshire ball," says some one.

"Would you mind taking my girl with you?" If she is a bad performer she is returned with astonishing alacrity and punctuality at the end of each dance; and quite perceptibly to her temporary guardian's practised eye is the word pa.s.sed round among the young men to avoid her as they would the--something. After a few dances, a sense of vicarious guilt seizes upon the chaperon. She knows the shortcomings of her charge are to be visited partly upon herself, and she antic.i.p.ates the angry glare with which each man returns the young woman, and retreats in haste, malevolently eyeing the chaperon.

[Sidenote: The reward.]

And the reward? The reward is to be treated with great stiffness by the girl's mother, and to hear that she said: "I shall never ask Mrs.

What's-her-name to take my girl to a ball again. Her own daughters danced every dance, while my poor child was left out in the cold. I think they might have introduced their partners to her."

[Sidenote: Romance.]

[Sidenote: And Death.]

Such are the small gnat-like stings of the present moment, while the poor chaperon is remembering the dances of long ago, the dark-eyed partner who waltzed so exquisitely, and whose grave is in the dismal African swamp so far away; the lively, laughing, joking boy who would put his name down for half a dozen dances, only to have it promptly scratched out again with many scoldings. He is now a very fat man with a disagreeable habit of snorting in cold weather. How gladly the chaperon's thoughts fly away from him, living, substantial, commonplace, to the poor fellow who died at sea on his way home from that horrid war in Afghanistan. How strangely true it is that were it not for grisly Death, and pain and grief, there would be no true romance in all the world. If every life were an epic, or an idyll, would not both be commonplace?

_LIGHTHEARTEDNESS._

[Sidenote: Lightheartedness and animal spirits.]

[Sidenote: Cheerfulness.]

Oh! what a delightful quality it is, both to the possessor and his friends. Lightheartedness is sometimes confused with "animal spirits," but it is not at all the same thing. The latter we share with the young lambs in the meadows, the young goats on the rocky hillsides, the merry schoolboy in the days of his irresponsible youth, and the madcap schoolgirl who thinks those hours lost that are not spent in laughing.

Light-heartedness is ingrained in the very nature of those who enjoy it; while animal spirits are merely one of the exterior circ.u.mstances, incident to youth and health in a world that was created happy, and will never lose traces of that original Divine intention. Cheerfulness, again, is distinct from both. Men are always telling women that it is the duty of the less-burdened s.e.x to meet their lords and masters with cheerful faces; and if any doubt were felt as to the value of the acquirement--for cheerfulness often has to be acquired and cultivated like any other marketable accomplishment--shall we not find a ma.s.s of evidence in the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the daily papers? Do not all the lady-housekeepers and companions describe themselves as "cheerful"? Lone, lorn women could scarcely be successes in either capacity, and cheerfulness is a distinct qualification for either post. A sort of feminine Mark Tapleyism must occasionally be needed to produce it, and keep it in full bloom.

[Sidenote: In trouble and work.]

Well, 'tis our duty to be cheerful, and those of us that are lighthearted have no difficulty about it. The quality survives troubles of every sort, and lifts its possessor over many a Slough of Despond, into which the heavy-hearted would sink and be overwhelmed. And what a boon is lightheartedness when there is work to do! The man who whistles over his carpentering is happy, and his work is all the better for it. The mother who is chirpy in the nursery finds it an easy matter to manage the youngsters. They adore her bright face. And there are women who keep up this delightful sunniness of disposition well on to seventy years.

"The world that knows itself too sad Is proud to keep some faces glad,"

says Owen Meredith, and it is good to see the happy twinkle in some aged eyes.

[Sidenote: With advancing years.]

[Sidenote: The humours of life.]

In married life there comes a time when the romance of love, like a glorious "rose of dawn," softening down into the steady light of noonday, becomes trans.m.u.ted into a comfortable, serviceable, everyday friendship and comradeship. In the same way the animal spirits of youth often fade with maturity into a seriousness which is admirable in its way, a serenity which keeps a dead level of commonplace. If there is no natural lightheartedness to fall back upon, there then arises the everyday man or woman, with countenance composed to the varied businesses of life, and never a gleam of fun or humour to be found in eyes or lips. They go to the play on purpose to laugh, and enjoy themselves hugely in the unwonted exercise of facial muscles; but for weeks between whiles they seem unconscious of the infinite possibilities of humorous enjoyment that lie about them. It needs the joyous temperament to extract amus.e.m.e.nt from these. If that is absent the fields of fun lie fallow. At a recent entertainment for children a boy employed in selling chocolate creams cried his wares in such a lugubrious tone of voice as to be highly inconsistent with their inviting character. "Chocklits!" "Chocklits!" he groaned on the lower G, as though he had been vending poison for immediate use. Only two of the children present saw the fun of this. And so it is with these endless unrehea.r.s.ed effects of daily life. The lighthearted seize them and make of them food for joy. And lightheartedness is of every age, from seven to seventy-seven and perhaps beyond it. Was there not once a blithe old lady who lived to the age of 110, and died of a fall from a cherry tree then?

The joyous natures have their sorrows:--

"The heart that is earliest awake to the flowers Is always the first to be touched by the thorns."

[Sidenote: "The merry heart."]

They have their hardships, their weary times, their trials of every sort, but the inexhaustible vivacity inherent in them acts as wings to bear them lightly over the bad places, where wayfarers of the ordinary sort must be broadly shod to pa.s.s without being engulfed. It is practically inextinguishable, and it makes existence comparatively easy.

"The merry heart goes all the day, The sad tires in a mile-a."

[Sidenote: The enemy.]

The chief enemy of lightheartedness is the constant companionship of the grim, the glum, the gloomy, and the grumpy, the solemn and the pragmatical. Who shall compute what bright natures suffer in an environment like this? Day after day, to sit at table opposite a countenance made rigid with a practised frown, now deeply carved upon the furrowed brow; to long for sunshine and blue skies, and be for ever in the shadow of a heavy cloud; to feel that every little blossom of joyfulness that grows by the wayside is nipped and shrivelled by the east wind of a gloomy nature; this, if it last long enough, can subdue even lightheartedness itself; can, like some malarial mist, blot out the very sun in the heavens from the ken of those within its influence.

[Sidenote: The cultivation of humour.]

More pains should be taken to develop the sense of fun and the possibilities of humorous perception of girls and boys. They should be taught to look at the amusing side of things. But teachers are so afraid of "letting themselves down," of losing dignity (especially those who have none to lose!), that they cannot condescend to the study of the humorous.