Whiteladies

“ Everard only smiled, and pointed out to them the servants about the gate of Whiteladies, and Miss Susan and Miss Augustine standing out in the sunshine in their gray gowns. The young people threw the carriage doors open at either side, and had alighted almost before it stopped. And then came that moment of inarticulate delight, when friends meet after a long parting, when questions are asked in a shower and no one answers, and the eyes that have not seen each other for so long look through and through the familiar faces, leaping to quick conclusions. ”

“ Giovanna, who sat opposite to him, and who was by this time familiarized with the routine of Whiteladies, scarcely talked at all; and though Miss Susan, by way of setting him “at his ease,” asked a civil question from time to time about his journey, what kind of crossing he had experienced, and other such commonplace matters; yet the old linendraper was abashed by the quiet, the dimness of the great room around him, the strangeness of the mansion and of the meal. ”

“ To die young, and leave orphan children behind; or to die younger still, letting the line drop and fall back upon cadets of the house, was the usual fate of the Austins of Whiteladies—unfortunate people who bore the traces of their original sin in their very name.
Miss Susan Austin was, at the moment when this story begins, seated in the porch of the manor, on a blazing day of July, when every scrap of shade was grateful and pleasant, and when the deep coolness of the old-fashioned porch was a kind of paradise. ”

“ Lane and his sister, the rebels had an intimation that some of the brothers were instrumental in his Majesties preservation; so that besides the temptations Humphry overcame at Shefnal, William Penderel was twice questioned at Shrewsbury on the same account by Capt. Fox and one LLuellin a sequestrator, and Richard was much threatned by a peevish neighbour at Whiteladies; but neither threats nor temptations were able to batter the fort of their loyalties. ”

“ During the night after the battle he found himself in the midst of the Scottish cavalry, a body of men too numerous to elude pursuit, and too dispirited to repel an enemy. Under cover of the darkness, he separated from them with about sixty horse; the earl of Derby recommended to him, from his own experience, the house of Boscobel as a secure retreat; and Charles Giffard undertook, with the aid of his servant Yates, to conduct him to Whiteladies, another house belonging to Mrs. Cotton, and not far distant from Boscobel. ”

“ Let us delight to reflect minutely on every particular, and especially on such as most approach to miracle; let us sum up the number of those, who were privy to this first part of his Majesties disguise and concealment; Mr. Giffard, the five Penderels, their mother and three of their wives, Col. Carlis, Francis Yates and his wife, some of the inhabitants of Whiteladies, Mr. Woolf, his wife, daughter and maid, Mr. Whitgreave and his mother, Mr. Huddleston, Col. Lane and his sister ”

“ THE WORLD WELL LOST. By E. Lynn Lintoy.
CHATTO & WINDUS, LONDON.
CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS.
Post 8vo. Illustrated boards.
DEAR LADY DISDAIN. By Justin McCartuy.
THE WATERDALE NEIGHBOURS. By Justin McCarruy.
MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER. By Justin McCargtuy. A FATR SAXON. By Justin McCagruy. LINLEY ROCHFORD. By Justin McCarrzy. MISS MISANTHROPE. By Justin McCarrtuy. THE EVIL EYE. By Karsarine 8S. Macqvomw. LOST ROSE. By Karuarine S. Macevow. OPEN! SESAME! By Frorence Marryat. WHITELADIES. By Mrs. Orremant. ”

“ I am getting into a snaggy channel by speaking on woman at all. It is to the mass of African women, untouched by white culture, but with an enormous influence over their sons and brothers, that I am now referring as a [Pg 377] factor in the dislike to the advance of white civilisation; and I have said they do not like it because, for one thing, they do not know it; that is to say, they do not know it from the inside and at its best, but only from the outside. Viewed from the outside in West Africa white civilisation, to a shrewd mind like hers, is an evil thing for her boys and girls. ”

“ Indeed, the greater portion of the colored women, in the days of slavery, had no greater aspiration than that of becoming the finely-dressed mistress of some white man. Although freedom has brought about a new order of things, and our colored women are making rapid strides to rise above the dark scenes of the past, yet the want of protection to our people since the old-time whites have regained power, places a large number of the colored young women of the cities and towns at the mercy of bad colored men, or worse white men. ”

“ Have you noticed in Washington—or anywhere in the South—that a negro is always seen with a girl at least one shade whiter than himself? The same instinct to rise, to get closer to the standard of the white man, whom they slavishly admire, is in the women as well as in the men. They are the weaker sex and must submit to Circumstance, but they would sacrifice the whole race for marriage with a white man. If you had left this girl to her fate, she would have gone to the devil, for a woman as white as that would have starved rather than marry a negro. ”

“ That very same pride, in fact, which impels the woman of the superior class to shrink with a horror, which seems to her instinctive, from any connection with the men of the inferior class, as a degradation from her own level, a sentiment: not regulated by color, but by condition, — since a white woman of refinement and education would just as soon think of marrying a negro as one of your newly-imported Irish clod-hoppers, even though he might be an Apollo in figure, and, when the dirt was washed off, a perfect Adonis in complexion ”

“ The revolt of white women against this preordained destiny has in these latter days reached splendid proportions, but it is the revolt of an aristocracy of brains and ability,—the middle class and rank and file still plod on in the appointed path, paid by the homage, the almost mocking homage, of men. ”

“ There is a soft, winning, captivating way about some of those girls that makes them perfectly resistible. I don't wonder at the envy, rage, and jealousy of our white women. They can't help being conscious of their own inferiority in these respects. ”

“ Women careless in their household and slatternly in their dress grew more careful in the keeping of their homes and the arrangement of their attire. Women of the better class of their own race, coming among them awakened their self-respect. Prejudice and pride of race had separated them from their white neighbors and the more cultured of their race had shrunk from them in their ignorance, poverty and low social condition and they were left, in a great measure, to themselves—ostracised by the whites on the one side and socially isolated from the more cultured of their race on the other hand. ”

“ And yet they grow fat on their many ills, and prosper, and lay a heavy hand over all the world and tread mightily upon its peoples. And their women, too, are soft as little babes, most breakable and never broken, the mothers of men. And out of all this softness, and sickness, and weakness, come strength, and power, and authority. They be gods, or devils, as the case may be. I do not know. What do I know, I, old Imber of the Whitefish? Only do I know that they are past understanding, these white men, far-wanderers and fighters over the earth that they be. ”

“ The examples of valor and virtue on which their minds are fed are exclusively white examples. What wonder, then, that each generation comes to maturity with the idea imbedded in its mind that only white men are valorous and fit to rule and only white women are virtuous and entitled to chivalry, respect and protection? What wonder that they think, almost instinctively, that the Negro’s proper place, nationally and internationally, is that of an inferior? It is only what we should naturally expect. ”

“ But unless she is not only allowed but encouraged to emerge out of her world with the shameful fruit of her guilty life and love, and so to confront her white paramour or betrayer in his world, how is the lower world ever to rid itself of such as she, or the upper one of such as he? In the segregation and outlawry of the black woman under such conditions lie the white woman's greatest danger, lie the white race's greatest danger from admixture of the races, lies the South's greatest danger to its morals. ”

“ So, I say, let the white women get busy and teach morality and respect to their own, and we shall see how that will work out. As for illegitimate children, the bearing of these is not confined to women of the Negro race by any means. The white infant asylums will give ample proof of this. We know full well that a white man may not marry a colored girl in the South, but we wonder just why it is he does not marry the white girl whom he seduces? ”

“ For there arises unbidden, unavoidably, in the minds of such women the ugly question, whose daughter is she, and whose mistress is she to be? For in the girl's veins may flow the proudest blood of the South. And this possibility, aye, probability, so shameful to both races, no one in the South knows better than the Southern white woman. What happens? The most natural thing in the world, but not the wisest. The hatred, the suspicion, the fear of these women find expression in scorn, in active ill-will, not only toward that particular girl, but toward her whole class as well. ”

“ The class of white women who were required to work in the fields belonged to the lowest rank in point of character. Not having been born in Virginia and not having thus acquired from birth a repugnance to association with the Africans upon a footing of social equality, they yielded to the temptations of the situations in which they were placed. The offence, whether committed by a native or an imported white woman, was an act of personal degradation that was condemned by public sentiment with as much severity in the seventeenth century as at all subsequent periods.... ”

“ Did you never wonder whether he ever had loved at all?"
"You have made me wonder, to-night, whether, at some period of your life, you have not loved some woman of your own race and color. You must have had some opportunities of knowing white women."
"Very few. An' my pride was agin seekin' what I knew was not for me; for the woman I fancied to myself was no common white woman. White Rose, I carried a young man's heart in my bosom until I was near sixty, an' then I lost it." ”

“ There are a very few instances where white women, who, are abandoned to all respect for the popular sense of propriety of their own sex and race, that have cohabited with black men; and also where giddy white girls have been decoyed into matrimonial alliances with them, through the illusion of a delusive feeling of romance ”

“ There are, to put it mildly, hundreds—yes, thousands—of trusting mothers in the smaller cities, the towns, villages and farming communities of the United States who believe that their daughters are "getting on fine" in the city, and too busy to come home for a visit or "to write much," while the fact is that these daughters have been swept into the gulf of white slavery [Pg 51] —the worst doom that can befall a woman. ”

“ I refer to a class composed of the illegitimate offspring of white men and coloured women (mulattoes or quadroons) , who, from habits of early life, the advantages of education, and the use of wealth, are too much superior to the negroes, in general, to associate with them, and are not allowed by law, or the popular prejudice, to marry white people. The girls are frequently sent to Paris to be educated, and are very accomplished. They are generally pretty, often handsome. I have rarely, if ever, met more beautiful women than one or two whom I saw by chance, in the streets. ”

“ No other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to insult. ”

“ There are in the institution several girls and women of color, and I asked the superintendent if the white inmates exhibited any prejudice against them on account of their color. To my surprise, the answer was that the contrary is the case. The whites look up to the colored girls, and seem either to have a respect for them or to be fascinated by them. This surprising statement was supplemented by another, that the influence of the colored girls on the whites is not good; the white girl who seeks the company of the colored girl deteriorates, and the colored girl does not change. ”

“ These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as women, and their greatest source of amusement is to see a white man carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man!
They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not subject, and even enslave, us to women. ”