LADY COMPANIONS.
THE mass of correspondence from Lady Companions, to which the Daily News has recently opened its columns, is far from exhilarating reading. There is a comic element in it, especially in the repeated. complaint that it is so selfish of the men not to marry them, when they would so like to be married—as if men wanted to be " relieving officers " to their wives as well as to their sons—but the general effect is pitiful in the extreme. What a mass of miserable women there must be in the middle class, which thinks itself so well-to-do ! It is now some fifteen or sixteen years since the movement for enabling middle-class women to earn their own living first assumed a practical form, and as yet but little impression has been made upon the great body of their trouble. A number of girls who would have been badly educated are now educated well, at some cost to their feminineness perhaps, though not much, but with immense advantage to them in every other respect. A few women who would have remained untaught have become instructed, and the general standard of female culture has, in one class particularly—the wives and daughters of the profes- sionals—been perceptibly raised. The women who are fortunate have in fact benefited decidedly by the "movement," and so have the abler women employed in the business of education. They are more highly considered, they are more kindly treated, they enjoy more liberty, a few prizes have been opened out to them, and their pay has been increased, though in this last respect the improvement is less than is popularly supposed. " Good " salaries—that is, salaries out of which a competence can be saved for old age—are still seldom paid to women, while fortunes can only be made by those who possess capital, or exceptional power of organising private schools. In addition, two or three fresh careers have been opened out to women, and there may be a few score of them in England who, in one way or another, are making, by work in different profes- sions, an independence which formerly they would not have made ; but for the majority, the old story still continues true. Hardly any one is so ili-off as the educated woman who has no money, and no positive right in a home. Unless she has special capacities, her increased liberty of doing remu- nerative work—which the movement really has secured to her— is of no advantage to her, for she can find no work to do. Some work men do better almost at the same price ; some—for instance, clerk work in banks—is shut by custom ; for some the usual middle-class woman is just not educated enough ; and some she refuses from a motive which, though it may be pushed too far, has many justifications,—namely, that dislike to lose caste from which men are most certainly not exempt. Middle-class men refuse work every day from a feeling of pride which in women is condemned as " too ridiculous ;" in particular they will not, under any pressure, become domestic servants. It is evident from every line of these letters, with all their silli- nesaes, and bitternesses, and strange revelations of unconscious incapacity, that there are thousands of middle-class women in London who are almost in despair for money, who rush in hundreds for any vacancy, who inundate advertisers with letters till honest selection is rendered almost physically impossible, and who, if only they may keep their caste and not do manual labour—for which, poor things, half of them are physically incapacitated—will take any wages and accept any kind of situation. There are literally hundreds of applications for " companionships " on £20 a year, £14 is a common salary, and there are scores of letters received when the advertiser offers nothing but a " Christian home." The women who make up these crowds have not benefited by the educational movement at all, or, rather, it has injured them. As one writer complains, no nncertificated teacher has now a fair chance ; while, as she forgets to mention, there are ten women who think they are educated, and partially are so, for three who competed with each other before. Nor, we fear, has the "movement" mach improved the standard of general capacity. The women revealed in these letters have not acquired from it any more fitness for the rough-and-tumble of life. They are no doubt exceptionally unfit, for the letters come from those who complain ; but it is disheartening to see how little effect " woman's progress " has had in hardening them in a good way. They are, in reality, only fit to be supported by their friends. None of them complain of any positive injustice or wrong from their employers, except a degree of confinement which is, we fear, a genuine oppression still remaining in most house- holds ; yet they all repine, and all for the same cause, which is
if they would put it in plain words, want of affection from their employers. They seem never to have learned the lesson men learn so soon,—that people are esteemed for service, but liked for things with which service has nothing to do ; and that affectionate considerateness is not, in this work-a-clay world, to be given as per contract in aid of wages. They never seem to think that they have only to be indispensable to be well- treated, or that the female manager of a hotel or a shop would be scolded quite as sharply as they are, if anything went wrong. We shall not mock at suffering women for being too sensitive to " slights," or for regarding reproofs as insults ; but such sen- sitiveness, even if natural or commendable, is evidence of in- capacity for work. Endurance in moderation is part of the contract, and must be given like any other service. They " try" their employers, we may be sure, quite as of Len as they are tried.
There is no nuisance so insupportable to a woman as a "com- panion " who is unsuitable, except, indeed, a husband cursed with the same drawback ; and both employer and companion are only fortunate in that they can go apart. The whole com- plaint is unreasonable; but it is a proof not of women's innate and incurable unreasonableness, but of their lack of effective discipline for the hard work of life.
We cannot but doubt, in reading these letters, whether the best friends of women might not direct their energies profitably in a somewhat different direction. Education is good, and liberty to work is good, and the right to vote may possibly be good, though we do not think so ; but pecuniary independence would, for the majority of such women as write these letters, be better than them all. A change of opinion among men on this subject would relieve or prevent more suffering than any opening of the professions. Men in England are too careless of the pecuniary future of their daughters. They will keep up insurances for their wives, and they will part with considerable sums to " put out " their sons ; but they will not make persistent and painful efforts to secure their daughters' independence. On the Continent, men will. A custom much more sacred to most Continentals than any dogma of the Churches, compels every man with any pretensions to docency to save for his daughter's dot, sometimes even for a sister's or niece's ; and he invariably does it,—or at least as invariably as an English father provides decent food and raiment while he is alive. The sacrifices undergone by French, German, and Italian fathers for this end are untold, and furnish the key to much of the more sordid side of life upon the Con- tinent. Mr. Hamerton, in his charming description of rural French life, tells a suggestive story on the subject illustrating
that meanness of the French bourgeoisie which we English so despise:— "One of my bourgeois friends talked to me very frankly on this subject, and said what is worth repeating, and what is not to be denied. All my life,' he said, ' I have had the reputation of being exceedingly avaricious, because I have been careful about money, and have never been willing to let my substance be squandered by idle people for their amusement. Now, please consider how far I have deserved this reputation for avarice. I have saved money, it is true; but it has always been for others, not for my own pleasures. You know how simply I dress and live, and how few indulgences I give myself.' Here let me observe that the argument may be fairly considered weak, for the most avaricious people dress and live the most simply. But when my friend asserted that be had saved for others, it was most true. He had been in his own person a sort of general insurance company for the benefit of all his relations, and of his wife's relations too. He began life with nothing ; when he had made money, one of the first things be did was to present a snug little property to his father, which gave him a retreat for his old age, and the means of passing it comfortably. My friend's wife, with his hearty approval, made handsome yearly allowances to her poor relations. He did the same to other relations besides his father. He had two daughters, one of whom married a barrister. A very short time after their marriage the barrister was stricken down by paralysis, and so prevented from pursuing his profession. On this the miserly' father-in-law stepped in, and made him an allowance of 2400 a year, that the misfortune might be less severe. Besides these aids to relations he had often assisted friends ; 'but,' he said, ' I will not lend money to be spent in luxuries. I did so, foolishly, once or twice when I was young, and found it only encouraged idleness, so I abut my purse to genteel applicants who are anxious to keep np their gentility. If I had not been what is called a miser, I should have been unable to help my poor relations in their need.' All this was true ; the 'miserly' man had, in fact, been little else than a beautiful contrivance of Providence for distributing wealth wisely to those who needed it, and the more he gave the more he prospered, yet the private household expenses of himself and his wife are still fixed at £360 a year, and this includes £60 for a little tour."
To make such sacrifices for a daughter's dowry is contrary to our manners, and not altogether expedient ; but it would be well worth while to do it for a daughter's independence, and it might not be difficult to make it one of the social duties. Opinion is not slow to grow, when the practice inculcated is visibly just ; and though death cuts all obligations, not one man in a thousand is careless about contempt which will be poured. on him after death. Wills always agree more or less with popular sentiment; and if it were considered infamous to leave a daughter penniless to the mercy of the world, we should very soon find that an unthought-of thrift had become possible, and that, as in France, " my daughter's portion " would be precisely the fund which not even pecuniary pressure would induce the father to break in upon. English- men have already given women rights to their own in pecuniary matters almost as full as law can convey, and con- sidering how impossible that reform once seemed, we cannot believe that this one is hopelessly out of the question. The educated woman wants a great many things in our day, and some things, perhaps, which are not good for her ; but the thing she wants most—at least, if we may judge from these letters, which any woman of experience could multiply by the hundred— is to have a hundred a year of her own which she cannot fool away. Without that, she enters the battle of life nnarmoured, and at a disadvantage for which neither education, nor liberty, nor the vote will be the smallest compensation.
Previous page
