C. C. Stopes

“ The superior intelligence and relative social position of the women in fishing communities has often been noted. I have heard it scornfully said of a fisher-girl, “She marry? Why, she is not able to keep a man!” In this illustrative case, the woman holds the purse, and her share in the family earnings is recognised.
Now, if privilege is based on property, and property is based on labour, how is an industrious woman shut out from the benefits of both? Why must the man only have the earner’s vote? One vivifying revelation of our half-century is the recognition of the nobility of labour. ”

“ I have met with humanity, politeness, and learning; learning not trite and superficial, but deep and accurate—true old Greek and Latin learning. When Colet discourses, I seem to hear Plato himself: In Grocyn I admire a universal compass of learning: Linacre’s acuteness, depth, and accuracy are not to be exceeded; nor did Nature ever form anything more elegant, exquisite, and accomplished than Sir Thomas More.
In a well-known letter to a friend about the choice of a wife Sir Thomas says:
May she be learned, if possible, or at least capable of being made so! ”

“ Shakespeare did not immediately die after the signing of his will. Probably the devoted care of his wife and daughters and the skill of his son-in-law soothed his dying moments. But one cannot but have a lurking suspicion of maltreatment through the crude medical notions of the time: of bleeding when there should have been feeding; of vile medicines when Nature should have been supported and not undermined by art. At all events, Dr. John Hall had not the happiness and honour to record the name of his illustrious father-in-law in his book of "Cures." ”

“ Before the close of the eighteenth century, however, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin blew a loud trumpet blast, in her indignant “Vindication of the Rights of Women.” She treats the subject on lines that men and women are only now beginning to learn to read. “There can be no duty without reason. There can be no morality without equality. There can be no justice when its recipients are only of one sex. Let us first consider women in the broad light of human creatures, who, in common with 128men, are placed upon the earth to unfold their faculties.” ”

“ To such objectors I would answer, Look out into the flat meadows where sluggish streamlets wind, and see in the inartistic clumps of pollard-willows an illustration of the manner in which “woman’s nature” has been treated by such men. Though their roots and leaves are the same, though their upward aspirations are permanent, and their vital energies restorative, yet through top-pruning at the will of others, for the use of others, the growth and the ideals of the trees have been marred for ever. ”

“ Now, it is a well-known fact that almost all very young men fancy girls older than themselves, and it is an artistic fact that a woman under thirty does look younger, and not older, than a man of the same age, if she has led a natural and simple life. It is much more than likely that the well-grown, responsible eldest son of anxious John Shakespeare looked quite as old as Anne Hathaway, seven years his senior, especially if she was slight and fair and delicate, as there is every reason to believe she was. ”

“ No amount of repetition will make a hazy and unfounded tradition into a fact, and inferences from unsound premises give no worthy conclusion. I can only bring forward a few of my facts here, and still fewer of my inferences.
Echoing the cry of old, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” the Baconians commence by crying, “Can any good come out of Stratford and Warwickshire?” and to give weight to the cry, strive to belittle the place.
It may be remembered that a fine German writer, Jean Paul Richter, insisted that a “poet should always have himself born in a small city.” ”

“ If the dignity of being able to earn money has raised women immensely in social life, their higher education has made this earning possible. Dependent sisters need no longer hang their heads in shame before supporting brothers. If they are not needed in their homes, they may go forth into the world, eat the sweet bread of honest labour, and become individuals.
But the woman is fettered still by the trammels of custom, by the protection accorded to males; false social and economic creeds which teach that man’s work must be paid higher than woman’s, whether it is better done or not ”

“ It is so much the fashion to write and speak of Shakespeare’s misfortunes, his disabilities, disadvantages, and lack of preparedness for becoming great, that perhaps I may best fit my opportunity by touching upon what I believe to be his good fortunes. It is all very true to say, that “poets are born, not made,” but there is a converse possibility, too finely expressed in Gray’s elegy to need repeating. Shakespeare might have been born a poet, and he might have been drowned in the Avon, as his contemporary of the same name was drowned in 1575 ”

“ It is not the fortune of every genius even, however associated with great deeds, to reveal the spirit of his country, and to be the voice of his age, which he helped to make what it was. Yet that was Shakespeare’s fortune and our inheritance, and for this the whole world honours him to-day. ”

“ The Laws of Chivalry refined the Upper Classes, inculcating Truth, Loyalty, Chastity, Courtesy, Liberality, Reverence for Women and Generosity to the Weak. But the real foundation of Privilege in Chivalric times was practically Strength, Courage and Success among men. Beauty, Grace and Honour among women. These qualities being temporary, were not synonymous with Justice. The position of Divinity is an unstable one, depending on the attitude of the worshippers. When Chivalry faded out of men’s hearts, women felt that the outer shell of custom meant little. ”

“ On the contrary, there is no real argument for putting Bacon out of the great sphere which he designed for himself, into one designed by his admirers, but utterly incongruous to his nature and powers. All his own contemporaries, all his immediate successors, and all their descendants for 250 years, attributed the plays to their author, Shakespeare. Guess-work began about the middle of the nineteenth century, and like a snowball rolling, gradually increased by external accretion, but not by vital energy. ”

“ Inheritance was equal and independent of sex, either in relations of descent or of marriage. The children all inherited equally, with a certain special tender consideration for the youngest, male or female. A widow had the half of her husband’s property till she married again; a widower had the half of his wife’s property, while he remained single. This equality in property necessarily gave the women of Kent fuller privilege. The recognition of the freedom of womanhood naturally made the men of Kent more free. “Of all the English shires, be ye surnamed the Free.” ”

“ There are many reasons that made the “small city” of Stratford eminently suitable for the birthplace of a poet. It was at the very heart of England, the centre of the converging influences of descent and of legend from British and Saxon and Danish ancestors. The great Roman roads crossed not far off, and Stratford, with her substantial bridge, was on the line of traffic. Stratford was a thriving town, “emporiolum non inelegans,” says Camden. Its gentle, undulating scenery lay just on the borders of a great forest,
Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing. ”

“ The loudest Puritan cry of the seventeenth century was, it is true, “No Bishop;” but the practical work Puritanism was really allowed to do in politics was to make the representation of women in the Lower House theoretically impossible.
As antagonistic to the doctrine of the subjection of women are the Principles of Liberty. How can men become truly free that ignore, for others, the liberties founded on the same reasonings by which they enfranchised themselves? Yet every great era in the Evolution of so-called Popular Liberty has been marked by contemporary restrictions of Feminine Freedom. ”

“ Her elder son had died before his father, her second, Henry, had become sole heir to his great house when he was eight years old. He seems to have inherited, not only her beauty and her natural tints, as may be seen by his fine portrait also preserved at Welbeck, but to have resembled her in her characteristics. Cultured in taste, with a strong appreciation of humour, refined in sentiment, religious in spirit, she was generally able to control the self-will of her temper by a strong sense of duty, though sometimes her hasty impulsiveness verged almost on imprudence ”

“ Many mistakes have been taken for facts, many fallacious arguments based upon erroneous premises. A Review of the History of Women that have hitherto ever exercised any privilege is necessary for generalisations to be based thereon. For by this process we may unite the followers of Legality and Precedent with the worshippers of Justice and Equality, and the union of the two forces, like those of the sun and moon upon the sea, may raise the high “tide in the affairs of women that leads on to fortune.” ”

“ Not such a Thames could Shakespeare see, not such a passage could Shakespeare know—but a descent in heavily-laden barges on a busy stream, more cumbered with dangerous locks and weirs than it is to-day, at each of which was a struggle for life and property, and probably a battle with the lock keepers “who sold water.” ”

“ It is absurd, therefore, to believe that a wife’s earnings are limited to those hours that she takes from her husband’s service and sells to some other employer of labour, who pays her in so much coin of the realm. ”

“ But in it there is something biographical, something suggestive; it shows us the tired creator of poems, exhausted from lack of sleep, “Nature’s sweet restorer,” weary of the bustling London life, who had returned, as soon as possible, to seek rest at home among his own people, and met an over-early death in the unhealthy spring-damps of 1616. A happy suggestion of the thoughtful poetic soul, of which the modern restored and adapted representation had deprived us, but only a suggestion. We sadly ask, where is the true likeness of our Shakespeare? ”

“ An indivisible inheritance, such as a title, fell in abeyance among daughters until decided by the selection of the Crown, though it was generally granted to the eldest daughter. [i.] Unless a woman, therefore, was an only child, she did not succeed to the entire advantages of “the heir,” but as only child, and sole heiress, she inherited to the full the rights and privileges of her father, brother, or ancestor. Sex-in-itself did not disqualify a woman from anything. There was no excusing a woman a duty, and consequently no denying her a privilege. ”

“ No book of Jane’s witticisms has come down to us, nor any allusions to them, as in the case of her predecessor Scogan, and her contemporary Will Somers, so that it is probable that her sayings were neither very brilliant nor very broad, and that she was one who rather warmed and illumined life by a genial humour, than one who flashed upon it startling coruscations of wit. ”

“ The courage of Nicholaa de la Haye and Black Agnes of Dunbar; of the Countess of Derby and the Marchioness of Hamilton during the Civil War has been emulated by many others. Some men assert scornfully that women are not fit for privilege or power. To assert a thing is not to prove it. If women are not fit for the Franchise, perhaps it may be made fit for them. It is perfectly certain that they are fitted to enjoy justice and to benefit by freedom. Some sentimentalists say that women are too pliable and delicate to be exposed to the roughnesses of political life. ”

“ Yet every one who approaches the Stratford bust is more disappointed in it, as a revelation of the poet, than even in the crude lines of Droeshout. There is an entire lack of the faintest suggestion of poetic or spiritual inspiration in its plump earthliness. ”

“ The relations of representation to taxation are assailed. New bases of privilege are being proposed. There are those who hold that Property is no sound foundation on which to build a Constitution. Some would put in its place the notion of Justice, which others name the right of the Individual. But those who accept this are divided into two great classes, the first considering Justice in its own nature, and treating Individuals as the indivisible units to which Justice is to be applied, units not to be segregated by any test into groups receiving Justice or no Justice. ”