Two Ladies.

Abstract

The present generation is much disposed to think that a great many ideas are of its invention, which are in reality as old as the hills, and as firmly rooted in human nature as are these ancient summits in the green earth. One of these, and a very prominent one, is that of the employment of women – a supposed novelty which has given to many busy persons in our age the delightful conviction of being themselves inventors, apostles, and missionaries of an altogether novel undertaking – one for which it was not unlikely they might be sent to the stake, if not of actual burning, at least of popular indignation and opposition. The critics of women – who are more or less the whole male sect,’ just as the female part of the community are the unsparing though less demonstrative critics of men – are fond of saying that heat and excitement are unfailing accompaniments of all female advocacy, whatsoever its objects may be; and perhaps there is something of this in the polemical, warlike, and indignant assertion of the right of women to toil, which has been of late days so strenuously put forth. We are not inclined to combat that assertion. For our own part, we are much disposed to believe that the greatest and most fundamental wrong done to women in this world is the small appreciation ever shown – at least in words – of the natural and inevitable share of the world’s work which they cannot avoid, and which no one can say they do not fulfil unmurmuringly. So long as the occupations of mother and housekeeper are taken for granted as of no particular importance, and the woman who discharges them is treated simply as one of her husband’s dependants, her work bearing no comparison with that of the ‘bread-winner,’ so long will all hot-headed and high-spirited women resent the situation. But this is not the question that we have here to discuss. We began by saying that the present generation considers itself to have invented the idea that women have a right to the toils and rewards of labour, notwithstanding the long array of facts staring them in the face from the beginning of history, by which it is apparent, that whenever it has been necessary, women have toiled, have earned money, have got their living and the living of those dependent upon them, in total indifference to all theory. The ‘widow-woman with her ‘sma family’ – and there is scarcely any one who is not acquainted with two or three specimens of this class – has not waited for any popular impulse, poor soul, to put her shoulder to the wheel, nor has stopped to consider whether the work she could get to do was feminine, so long as she could get it, and could get paid for it, and get bread for her children. In all classes of society the existence of need has been a key which has opened spheres of labour to women, and developed capabilities of work which have had nothing to do with any theory. And even on a much higher level than that which we have already indicated, those persons are few who do not number among their acquaintance some lady whom the necessities of existence have forced into active competition with other stragglers for bread. These workers, perhaps, may not have found their career so dignified as that, for example, of the young female conveyancer whom we lately heard of, whose chambers in Lincoln’s Inn are thronged by clients; but at all events they managed to keep their heads above water, and did their work, though with little blowing of trumpets. The two ladies * whose memorials lie before us – one the record of a life which is over, the other the recollections of a still vivacious and active intelligence, which we hope may yet derive a great deal of tranquil pleasure from the evening time of life – give admirable proof of what we have said. They were friends, and belonged to the same society more or less: they were in full tide of their lives, if not beginning to wane, when the agitations of recent times were but beginning; which did not hinder them, however, from stepping into the busy current of active life when necessity made it desirable so to do – finding work that suited them, and doing it, as well as if all England got up in church on Sunday and said, ‘I believe that women ought to be allowed to work’ at all the trades in the world. Anna Jameson and Fanny Kemble were not, it may be said, ordinary women; they had each a special gift – but it was not the highest manifestation of that gift, that either possessed. Fanny Kemble was not worthy, she would herself be the first to admit, to loose the latchet 1 of her aunt, the great Mrs Siddons, who preceded her in her trade; nor can Mrs Jameson be considered a person of that overmastering genius which holds its place by divine right. And neither the one nor the other had, so far as these books indicate, that strongest stimulus of a womans exertion, a family of children to be brought up. Yet neither of them found any obstacles worth speaking of between them and the professions which they respectively chose.