English lady

“ I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people class under the name of woman. ”

“ If one resolutely goes on scraping off the man-made chalk from the manners and actions of English women, one is frequently rewarded with the pleasure of arriving at last at the woman behind the chalk. This is more especially the case in women of the higher classes. The only time in England I felt something of that painful bliss that mortals call love, was in the case of a lady friend of mine who, under mountains of London clay, hid away a passionate, loving woman. ”

“ To this day, a great lady, accustomed to company, blushes in the presence of an unknown man, and feels bashful like a little girl: the blue eyes are dropped, and a child-like shame flies to her rosy cheeks. Englishwomen have not the smartness, the boldness of ideas, the assurance of bearing, the precocity, which with the French make of a young girl, in six months, a woman of intrigue and the queen of a drawing-room. ”

“ Even the men that have been out all day seem to have got hold of the right women and look almost awake.”
“Lady Pat says that English women are much more amusing than they used to be, and I adore them, myself. ”

“ We have suggested, on a former occasion, that our conventional notions of the sex, in its gentle, modest, and retiring characteristics, are derived from the every-day young lady; and in like manner we venture to opine that the every-day married lady is the English wife of foreigners and moralists. Thus she is a national character, and a personage of history; and yet there she sits all the while in that corner, knitting something or other, and thinking to herself that she had surely smelt a puff of tar as she was passing the pantry. ”

“ She does not look at all awful and belligerent, like the massive English women one often sees. You at once feel her to be a benevolent giantess, and apprehend no harm from her. She is a lady, and perfectly well mannered, but with a sort of naturalness and simplicity that becomes her ”

“ But after all, it will be found, I believe, that be the language and behaviour ever so obsequious, it is all designed to end alike—The English, the plain English, of the politest address, is,—"I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: pray be so good as to let me be your master,"—"Yes, and thank you too," says the lady's heart, though not her lips, if she likes him. ”

“ Every one is prepared for “larks,” but the women are even more brilliantly and resolutely prepared than the men; there is no better chance to follow the range of type—not that it is to be called large—of the British female of the lower orders. The lady in question is usually not ornamental. She is useful, robust, prolific, excellently fitted to play the somewhat arduous part allotted to her in the great scheme of English civilisation, but she has not those graces which enable her to lend herself easily to the decoration of life. ”

“ She’s tremendously pretentious and of course isn’t a lady. The servants are not at all like English ones and come p. 459bursting in, the footman—they’ve only one—and the maids alike, at all sorts of hours, in the most sudden way. ”

“ I was informed that many of the lower classes in the capital had the idea that, if the English conquered them, they should be no longer slaves, and not have a poll-tax to pay. If this be true, and I was assured it was so, who can calculate what the consequences of such a belief spread among the populace might be, or how soon the hollow fabric of the Russian government would fall into ruins? If this conviction once enter into the national mind, the nobility may soon find that they have a greater enemy in their oppressed peasantry than in a foreign army. ”

“ Looked at from another side, the great lady of the eighteenth century bears favourable comparison with the great lady of modern times. She was a more distinct individual influence in society than her successors. ”

“ A true-bred Englishman would never have behaved with the civility of good breeding to a wife so forced upon him. He could never have thought it possible to have established any one in his house on the terms on which Emmeline was to be placed. But although Lord Fitzhenry looked upon the observance of English customs in a total retirement after marriage as particularly irksome, it never could make him wanting in respect, and even in kindness, to one of Emmeline’s sex. ”

“ Good conversation is one of the highest attainments of civilized society. It is the readiest way in which gifted minds exert their influence, and, as such, is worthy of all consideration and cultivation. I remember hearing an English traveler say, many years ago, on being asked how the conversational powers of the Americans compared with those of the English—"Your fluency rather exceeds that of the old world, but conversation here is not cultivated as an art." ”

“ The young ladies appear to have adopted the maxim, "Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most." They study variety in ornament rather than profusion. "What are their manners like?" is a difficult question to answer. That there is a great difference between the manners of English and American ladies may be inferred from some remarks made to me by the most superior woman whom I met in America, and one who had been in English society in London. ”

“ There is one thing more which goes a long way towards the continued health of these English ladies, and therefore towards their beauty; and that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic institutions. They do not, like us, fade their cheeks lying awake nights ruminating the awful question who shall do the washing next week, or who shall take the chambermaid's place, who is going to be married, or that of the cook, who has signified her intention of parting with the mistress. ”

“ That it is still bright, in spite of all that change in social conditions could do to tarnish it, is in itself an antidote to pessimism.
After all, it is the English wife and mother who is chiefly responsible for good manners in the home,158 and it is in the home that her own manners are most attractive. Nearly every Englishwoman is an admirable hostess, and there is a particular flavour about the welcome given by an Englishwoman in her own dwelling. ”

“ The most censorious foreigner caught by the radiation of an Englishwoman within her own four walls could not come away unmelted. Like the nightly twinkle of ships’ lights on the dark chilly waters of a harbour innumerable English hearths stud the external coldness of our country with spots of warmth and brightness. The genial fire is tended by the Englishwoman, the paragon of vestal domesticity. ”

“ I have no doubt of this, that one reason why the Englishwoman is a success is that she starts as a31 good little English girl, or even a bad one. No little girl in the world is so attractive, not the overdressed bébé, all ribbons and laces, of the French, not the dumpy product of the German, not the pallid bambina of the Italian, and least of all the spoilt little horror of the American. ”

“ Woman in England has never been a mystery, an intricate engine with simple aims and complicated methods, of a different order from man with his complex aims and simpler methods. The texture of English life is, and has always been, compounded of both as the warp and the woof—the more active man passing rapidly between the more stable feminine strands which keep his thread in place. ”

“ The old model Englishwoman who sneezed exactly at the same hour her great grandmother did, and sat down, and rose up, and went out, and came in whenever her husband bade her,—and made no objection, at the same time, to any irregularity either in his hours or habits,—it seems, has disappeared. Instead, we have that horror,—the English female-physician; the English female would-be voter; in short, the English female who asserts her right to individuality, in action and opinion, equally with her husband. ”

“ In height, in figure, in suppleness and grace of build, the Scottish woman can give her English sister many points. In the matter of facial beauty, too, the Englishwoman cannot be said particularly to shine. At a Drawing-Room, at the opera, the beauty of England spreads itself for your gaze; and the amazing lack both of beauty and the promise of it appals you. If we are to believe the society papers, there is not an ugly nor a plain-featured woman of means in all broad England. ”

“ That is to say, that, having all the various charms of English women, the ideal English girl must top them all with that quality which is specially the English man’s, just as the English hero, the Nelson, the Sydney, having all the various glories of other heroes, must top them all with that quality which is specially the English woman’s—tenderness. ”

“ But the lack of variety in the lives of the women was more than compensated for by the opportunities which were furnished them by quiet and seclusion for the improvement of their minds and the cultivation of those finer qualities of character which are the basis of the refinement and good manners of the cultivated English women of the present day. It is not too much to say of the Middle Ages that without the peculiar circumstances of manorial living, the culture, confidence, self-containment, and initiative of the English woman would not have become as they are—her predominant characteristics. ”

“ The inner light, however, the participation in a perfect spirit and a peculiar, fine-flavoured quality, which distinguishes the English home does not, I fear, carry with it an irreproachability in externals. Here the English wife is perhaps less admirable. The temperamental harmony of the home so often is somewhat oddly contrasted with the decorative inharmoniousness of its material objects. Let me hasten to admit that when the Englishwoman has taste in her choice of a setting for herself she has very good taste indeed. ”

“ In the eyes of English people the words 'English' and 'perfect' are synonymous. For once they are fairly right. I have said it elsewhere: 'When an Englishwoman is beautiful, she is beyond competition, she is a dream, a perfect angel of beauty.' When she is ugly—the Lord help her!—she has not a redeeming feature, not even that intelligent, bright expression which saves the plainest American woman from hopelessness. ”

“ Time was when the phrase, 'a fair young English girl,' meant the ideal of womanhood; to us, at least, of home birth and breeding. It meant a creature generous, capable, modest; something franker than a Frenchwoman, more to be trusted than an Italian, as brave as an American but more refined, as domestic as a German and more graceful. ”

“ Such a task was presented in the endeavor to trace along from remotest times to the present day the influence of woman upon the life and character, the efforts and ideals, of that race which has come to be known as English, although this name may not properly be used until time has spun into the vista of the past peoples as vigorous, if not influential, as the one that stands, the inheritor of their virility, at the apex of modern civilization, whose women, clasping hands throughout the British Empire, form a splendid chain of hope for womankind in all the world. ”

“ An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese. England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them. Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes. ”

“ The manner of an English woman is not so devoid of restraint; and a stranger, especially if he be a foreigner, may observe a look which borders on disdain in [24] her countenance. Even among the loveliest features, something of a sulky air often appears. ”

“ After Easter, I suppose every body will be in town; and I trust Lady Florence will then return among the number, for I really feel quite in a strange country. I am now so little used to the forms, and cold, stiff proprieties of English ways, that, to tell the truth, I find London very dull and stupid, and was really delighted to-night, when I saw Lord Fitzhenry, to talk over delightful foreign days with him. Mr. Pelham, don’t you find English society 294much changed for the worse? I think my country folks are pleasanter any where than in their own land ”

“ In the eyes of the American women who have not lived the home-life of the English or mixed with the women of good English society, and who have been fed on ideas and opinions given in some American books or published in the newspapers of the smaller American cities, the English women are silly, sat-upon, ignorant creatures, seedy and dowdy, badly shaped, badly dressed, and who can only talk of their babies and their servants. ”

“ An understanding and estimate of her influence in these more conspicuous relations will depend upon a proper appreciation of the English home as the principal source of the English woman's dignity and power. Much that has entered into the ideals [pg 5] of the English race can be fully accounted for only in the light of home ideals. By such considerations, then, as have been thus far set forth, we shall be guided in our endeavor to tell the story of woman's life in the ages of Britain's history. ”

“ Had her life been as circumscribed as that of the women of a cultured people, English civilization would not owe to woman the recognition which is her due as a creative force in the arts, in science, in literature, in religion, and in all the ever-widening circle of human interests. ”