LETTERS TO A DAUGHTER. id H UMAN nature suffers from a
passion to be instructive," says Mr. Hubert Bland in a set of papers on social subjects which he has just published under the title of " Letters to a Daughter" (T. Werner Laurie, 3s. 6d. net). The sentence explains the book. Mr. Bland has a desire to instruct,—a desire which, as his words imply, is not limited to the pedagogue or the moralist. The public, we are sure, will be glad to learn what it can from his letters. They are eminently readable. How far the instruction they contain is suited to the age of their supposed recipient—a girl of nineteen—is another matter. " An intimate letter is the achievement of two personalities," we read—" it is a. kind of dialogue in which one of the interlocutOrs is silent, or rather, is heard only by the other." This is very true, and Mr. Bland has the skill to illustrate his words. He.wants to show us what, in his opinion, a young woman of nineteen or twenty should be, what should be her aim in life, and.by what means she should proceed towards it. He succeeds in his literary effort. We see the daughter as well as the father, and realise that she is the outcome of a particular system of upbringing. A portrait fronting the title-page tells us that she is handsome and strong- looking, both physically and mentally. We understand from the letters that she has lived always among a small and highly cultivated set of people, who do not underestimate their im- portance in the world, and who speak of themselves as " we." She has had the run of her father's library since she could read, —only one bookshelf has ever been kept locked, and that on account of the expensive nature of the bindings. She has lived in an atmosphere redolent of discussion and innocent of conclusions since she could listen with any under- standing, and has talked since she could talk at all of " the things that matter." If a woman so brought up marries out- side the circle of kindred souls, she marries to be miserable,— so much the letter-writer takes for granted. " The man who marries you," he says to his daughter, " must talk our language." He must also "read and admire Henry James," and he must not misunderstand when "you happen to speak a trifle elusively." He lays it down as an axiom that " a truly civilised woman, one of us, would rather live with a Zulu (assegais and all) who understood what she was after, than with a thing in up-and-down collars (and golf sticks) who was for ever asking her to explain herself."
The great aim which this most modern instructor of youth sets before his daughter is that she should "be delightful," and to this end almost all his advice is directed. It is the one accomplishment which will last,le says. " We can keep our daughters silly, but we can't keep them young." A middle- aged woman, if she is not a delightful woman, is nothing. Now no one in the world, in his opinion, can accomplish this task without trying. "If you wish to be universally delightful, you must be prepared to make of yourself a work of Art. Nature has given you the materials; it is for you to work them up, remembering that a naturally-gifted young woman is no more a delightful young woman than a box of colours is a picture." A pretty girl of what used to be called " parts " is sure to be pleasing to men,—on this score she needs no advice, unless it be to avoid the temptation to let vanity make her exacting. But with this success she must not be satisfied. "Double your efforts to be delightful to women," exhorts
the anxious father, "suffer bores gladly," and make no display of unusual erudition, but rather conceal all intel- lectual advantage. Above all, prejudice must be avoided. A delightful woman cannot be prejudiced. All men and women have a right to their own opinions, but none should go so far as to be " anti " anything. The spirit which condemns is evidently, in his eyes, the spirit of prejudice.
When the daughter, with a precocity by no means delight- ful to the reader, asks on what terms she had best be with
an older woman, a fellow-guest, of whose conduct she from observation, and apparently with reason, disapproves, her father writes her a homily upon charity, the upshot of which is,—do not condemn, do not imitate. " The moral code of society is not equally valid in all its clauses," he bids her remember. He hates rules, and will not on any subject give his daughter so many as she would like. " There are no oughts' unrelated to particular persons," he declares upon another occasion ; and in reply to the pointed inquiry, " What are the limits of flirtation ? " writes a long, indeterminate, and highly entertaining essay. They are, he says, " shifting limits, they change from age to age" and "from social set to social set" ; but whatever they are, or were, or will be, "there is plenty of room well within those limits for you to entertain yourself, and others, in security." The practical part of the advice given is sensible enough and strict enough. It is to do nothing which is underhand, and write nothing which may not be read by any one. " When somebody is trying to get back somebody's letters, somebody has leaped the limits." It is only in theory that Mr. Bland departs from conventionality, and only when he generalises that he becomes a cynic. " You wish you knew all about men, do you ? " he writes in answer to a letter that has made him suspect that his daughter's thirst for instruction arises from her having fallen in love. Men, he tells her, while prone to a mad- ness called falling in love, and capable of solid affection for feminine relations and friends, do not, upon the whole, like Or desire the society of the fairer sex. Chivalry is, in fact, a delusion. All the epigrams and proverbs in every language relating to women are unflattering, and, he has the justice to add, unfair; yet from their very unfair- ness he draws support' for his argument. Men desire to be entertained, and, so long as they are not in love, they find the society of men the more entertaining. Nevertheless, his picture of marriage as he believes it should be is not an unideal one. No man, he constantly reiterates, is in love long ; but "the thing that should follow is friendship, friend- ship of a peculiar, a unique sort; friendship touched by tenderness, mixed with memories, coloured by emotion." It is dullness and stupidity which account, he assures his corre- spondent, for the larger number of those marriages which can be called failures. There is no such unromantic place as the Divorce Court. It is full of " the dusty, the dowdy, the humdrum, and, this is the odd thing, the middle-aged !" "Brains are your best stand-by in marriage as in most other of life's perplexities," he teaches. The best of life is the reward of the wise, he is sure, but even at best he does not lead his daughter to expect too much. "I want you," he says, "to find life interesting—you are sure not to find it happy." Money counts for little in his scheme of life. He warns his daughter not to cultivate the rich. " There is little or nothing worth having to be got from them," he argues. " The fact that you have made yourself even a trifle more agreeable to a rich man or woman than you would have done to a poor person is sure, sooner or later, to inflict upon you a feeling of self-despite, of self-humiliation. It is as well," he continues, " to have as few of those sorts of feelings as
possible A woman with scars on her self-respect is never quite delightful."
These letters mark, while at the same time, no doubt, they exaggerate, a change of sentiment. Girls of the cultivated class are not brought up as they were. Many Causes have combined to bring about a difference of feeling, among them the growth of Imperialism. The young men of the educated classes leave the country, and parents from the top to the bottom of the great middle class are faced with the necessity of making some provision for a proportion of their daughters, and giving some outlet to their energies other than that provided by matrimony. A clergyman dying and leaving nrumirried daughters unprepared for any kind of work was
formerly pitied, now he is very generally blamed. The fact that it may not improbably fall to the lot of any girl not belonging to rich parents to lead her life in strenuous com- petition with men has altered the mind of the public on the subject of female education. Dependence is no longer so much cultivated nor knowledge so much restricted. With greater attention to physical health has come greater mental vigour. Also it cannot be denied that, in accordance with the perpetual swing of the social pendulum towards laxity, it is just now more necessary than it was thirty years ago that a young woman should be able to take care of herself. Something has been lost and something gained. It is possible that we may at no very distant period lose from the English world 4 very charming person, perhaps the most perfect product of an artificial system of upbringing,—the young woman whose guarded life has preserved for her the heart and the outlook of a child. With her will go the type of romance she inspired, and a type of love which cannot be cynically set down as madness. That she thinks too well of the world and expects of it more happiness than it has to offer can hardly be regarded as a meaningless delusion on her part by a society which believes in " suggestion," " will-power," and " mental atmospheres." We may some day find the world less happy and worse for the absence of her faith. Something of her charm may be due to her ignorance ; something, also, to an insight which belongs to the single-minded, and which the mists of second-hand experience often serve only to obscure. Ott the other hand, if the young woman who seems to be taking her place is certainly not adorable, she is eminently companion.. able. Judging by averages, and not by individuals, the change may not be for the worse. There are fewer vain and silly women than there were, and fewer spiteful ones. They are not so idle-minded as they used to be. An empty-headed wife stuck up on an artificial moral pedestal is poor company for a way- faring man. The object of education is not to make a charming girl, but a good woman, capable of serving her generation.
There is, of course, no use in making comparisons. Only one thing is certain. We cannot reproduce the past. We must move with the times or be benighted. The setting sun of a passed-away ideal ripens no fruit. The system of education which forty years ago produced a " delightful " woman will produce a dull one to-day. Nevertheless, we think Mr. Bland goes too far. The matron who is truly British, even though she belongs to " us," will be sure to adopt a com- promise. It is one thing to keep a woman in the state of mind of a child, and quite another to discuss with her the absolute or merely expedient character of the Seventh Com- mandment before she is twenty. It is one thing to nourish —or rather starve—a girl's mind on worthless "goody" books, and quite another to set no limit to her appetite for fiction. Even our author admits the possible advantage of a short index expurgatoriv,s. Most of our readers, we are sure, would accept any list he might make, and add to it, for their girls. If we were to set to work to compose an index, we should be inclined to include Mr. Bland's "Letters to a Daughter,"—but then we have the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of high ideals, and of people doing things because they are right, and not because it pays on the whole to do them.
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