LADIES' COMMITTEES.
WOMEN are individuals—in some sense very much more so than men ; and, as a consequence, perhaps, are not very well adapted for recording minutes. When you record a successful minute you must forget you are an individual, and instead of taking your own sense as your guide, you must take "the sense of the committee ;" and to do this you must be able and ready to merge your own sense in the sense of the committee. And who- ever has that capacity must be prepared to waive many eminent gifts. A committee-man is in many ways something less, if in others something more, than a man. If you live to make reso- lutions clear to the committee, to impress the committee, to glorify the committee, you must give up a good deal of yourself. The present able Chairman of Committee in the House of Commons, Mr. Massey, has written a history of George III. in a style that would perhaps best recommend it "to the committee." It is, we believe, an admirable work ; but yet, as private individuals, the members of the committee would probably peruse that work with greater pleasure if it had been less in the style which is best adapted to obviate difficulties in committee. Now, without dogmatizing on the reasons, it is a safe observation that women do not easily meige themselves in corporate bodies. They have no collective instinct,—no zeal for the committee as an abstract entity,—no noble disinterestedness to draw resolutions which will enhance the dignity and increase the influence of the corporate body to which they belong. They cannot make war "for an idea." Their strategy is naught in a region where victory goes with what we may call colourless strength of statement backed by unanimity, and where almost more depends on a sedulour appearance of reserve and moderation and magnanimity, than even on force of reason and a prudent array of authorities.
Nothing can illustrate this more curiously than the Parliamentary paper just published, containing the war of the Ladies' Visiting Committee of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum with the Executive Committee of that much mismanaged institution. As far as we can make out, the Ladies' Committee was on all sub- stantial points in the right, and the Gentlemen's Executive Com- mittee in the wrong, but worse political negotiation than that of the ladies we never met with. When the ladies endeavour to record their sense of an abuse, instead of stating it in vigorous impersonal language, and carefully divesting it of all appearance of emotion or prejudice,—their minute is almost less an argument than a toss of the head. Or, speaking more accurately, it is, as , it were, a verbal sniff at the person or persons inculpated. There is no preliminary exchange of impersonal statements, on any subject, before the emotional element gets up. The Ladies' Com- mittee begins its life with effervescence. It was appointed because the asylum was in real need of supervision, the Executive Couu mittee having apparently abandoned the reins entirely to its honorary secretary, Captain Fishbourne—why honorary, by the way, since the "Senior Honorary Secretary" figures in the expenditure to 31st December, 1861, for the item "To Senior Honorary Secre- tary, per resolution of Royal Commissioners, 2,235/. 3s. 8d. ? "—a man evidently of much energy and little judgment. This gentleman on one occasion authorized, through the chaplain, the whipping of a girl of nearly sixteen years of age—a sentence carried out on the refusal of their co-operation by all the servants, by the hands of the Lady Resident, Miss Clavel, herself; on another, sent girls liable to hysteria to the Mesmeric Infir- mary to be treated, without asking the advice of the regular medical officer of the establishment ; and again, appears to have got up little revival meetings amongst the girls without the authority of the chaplain, and against the wishes of the Lady Resi- dent. With such a counteracting power at work on the Executive Committee of the institution, the Ladies' Committee no doubt felt at once that it would be a struggle of personal influence. And so it proved. But instead of girding themselves for the battle like persons who knew that they must make good their footing, first establish the worth of their services, and strike last at the central mischief, they assumed from the first a tone of uncertain and fretful dictatorship, reprimanding the Executive Committee pretty sharply on the second meeting, and before the third commencing a chronic process of resignation in knots. No doubt the disorganization of the school was very great. No doubt strong remedies were required, and they, as visitors, had only a power of recommendation. They found corporal punishment in use, theft existing amongst the girls, both the Lady Superintendent and her first lieutenant, the mistress of the senior school, in the habit of absenting themselves together, and other serious relaxations of moral discipline. All this they very quickly ferreted out, and, to do them justice, they recom- mended, on the whole, very reasonable remedies. They wanted the lady resident and the chaplain to be dismissed as quite incompetent to take that independent stand, in regard to the management of the school, which was needful ; and besides this they suggested rules which though sometimes rather petty in their prescrip- tions, recommended themselves in the main to the Executive Committee, and were adopted. So that the Ladies' Committee was a. very sensible committee, after all. But their minutes, their trans- actions, their methods of procedure, are quite a curiosity. The mere language is a study, and gives an air of flutter, and prejudice, and personal injury to their views which directly neutralizes their moral effect. Whether the ladies think or know a thing they always say they "feel" it, which imparts an undertoneboth of faintness and sensitive- ness to their sentences. "We feel that the chaplain has assumed powers not authorized by the Executive Committee ;"—a matter that, if it was not clearly known, could scarcely rest on feminine intui- tions; "we feel corporal punishment to be totally inadmissible in a girls' school," "we feel that the Lady Superintendent is unequal to the control of such an establishment," which mean evidently "we think." Then, again, there is a tendency to make their suggestions a sort of personal matter as between sex and sex. The Executive Committee are usually "the gentlemen." "The Ladies' Committee beg to suggest for the consideration of the gentlemen." "it is now, therefore, both with surprise and regret that they learn that . . . . the gentlemen's intended reforms will be confined, &c." Again, they parade their anticipation that the gentlemen will thwart them, and the effort it has cost them to tell their true opinion "where we had reason to believe that some of the Executive Com- mittee did not agree with us in our notions of the kind of manage- ment suitable in a female asylum for orphans." Then, what is the law which determines the use of the third or first person plural in those documents it would be difficult for any man to under- stand. On the 10th May, 1862, "We, the undersigned ladies, beg to make the following statement," which is accordingly made in the third person, for a considerable time, as though made in the name of the whole Committee, though only applying to the subscribers, but which arbitrarily returns to the fl.-st person again before winding up.
These are trifles except as diminishing the weight of the minutes. But the method of warfare is more unfortunate still. After two constitutional meetings they get up an unconstitutional one in the middle of the month, which is not really a committee-meeting at all, and write a letter at it to menace resignation if their demands are not complied with. The Executive Committee had not as yet seriously thwarted them, though it had declined to abolish entirely solitary confinement as one of the punishments for the children,—but the ladies anticipating defeat, back their temon- strances with in unofficial threat, thus laying themselves open to the ever,nte reply that the Executive Committee are "unable to receive 14ghe letter officially, not being agreed on at a meeting of the Ladies' Committee regularly summoned." Then the unofficial letter is justi- fied and adopted by a minute of the next meeting, and most of the ladies "suspend the exercise of their functions," till they are informed what portion of their suggestions has been carried out, which is, we suppose, their mode of striking work, in order to frighten the gentle- men into submission. There are three "non-society "ladies, however, who decline to join in this strike,—Lady Sarah Lindsay, who was the wife of one of the Executive Committee, Mrs. Lefroy, and Mrs. Fishbourne, the wife, we imagine, of the despotic " Honorary " Secretary. Then, finally, as the Executive Committee won't dismiss the Chaplain and Lady Resident, four ladies resign firing off a sharp letter, three declare the same intention, but wait for the appeal to the Royal Commissioners, and three withhold their decision alto- gether. Then the three who were in a state of suspended ani- mation as committee-women, finding their defeat confirmed on appeal by the Royal Commission, secede with another sharp letter, and there are left only six, and of practical attendants only three, of whom Lady Sarah Lindsay appears to be the leader, Mrs. Fish- bourne entering a minute that she could not sign something very un- important, as she considered it "important to consult Lady Sarah Lindsay." Considering that in drift the ladies are almost invariably right--that no one who understands the state of the school can doubt that both Chaplain and Lady Superintendent ought to have been removed,—a more unfortunate history of confused buzz towards that end could scarcely be imagined. The Chaplain, it seems, stated in writing that both he and the Lady Super- intendent acted as the mere instruments of Captain Fishbourne, "whose decision was considered by them to be final, and his arrangements indisputable, whether according to their views or not ;" and yet the ladies having this testimony, and the proof that Captain Fishbourne's influence had been used to whip a girl nearly sixteen years old, and for other objectionable ob- jects, were utterly unable to make any effective use of their information.
The truth is, the Ladies' Committee was a fiction ;—the ladies acted in detail ; out of committee when they could ; even when in committee in a tone and language which gave the effect of threaten- ing clouds of individual feeling,—of hysteria lowering in isolated places,—of indignant ladies sniffing at the gentlemen's folly and blindness,—in short, of a general bubbling up of what Tennyson calls "the soft and milky rabble of womankind," but which vouch- safed no ray of grave united conviction, clear of dust and tears. And yet, as we said, they were right. If they could but learn how to record a frigid minute, and feel but a glimmering of a col- lective mind! Their scent for mismanagement is invaluable, but not even an executive committee of husbands could make of them an efficient pack. Individuality is their foible as well as their strength.
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