‘Those then are the terms upon which I give you this guinea with which to help the daughters of uneducated women to enter the professions. And by cutting short the peroration let us hope that you will be able to give the finishing touches to your bazaar, arrange the hare and the coffee-pot, and receive the Right Honourable Sir Sampson Legend, O.M., K.C.B., LL.D., D.C.L., P.C., etc., with that air of smiling deference which befits the daughter of an educated man in the presence of her brother.’
Such then, Sir, was the letter finally sent to the honorary treasurer of the society for helping the daughters of educated men to enter the professions. Those are the conditions upon which she is to have her guinea. They have been framed, so far as possible, to ensure that she shall do all that a guinea can make her do to help you to prevent war. Whether the conditions have been rightly laid down, who shall say? But as you will see, it was necessary to answer her letter and the letter from the honorary treasurer of the college rebuilding fund, and to send them both guineas before answering your letter, because unless they are helped, first to educate the daughters of educated men, and then to earn their living in the professions, those daughters cannot possess an independent and disinterested influence with which to help you to prevent war. The causes it seems are connected. But having shown this to the best of our ability, let us return to your own letter and to your request for a subscription to your own society.
Notes and references
1. To quote the exact words of one such appeal: ‘This letter is to ask you to set aside for us garments for which you have no further use . . . Stockings, of every sort, no matter how worn, are also most acceptable . . . The Committee find that by offering these clothes at bargain prices . . . they are performing a really useful service to women whose professions require that they should have presentable day and evening dresses which they can ill afford to buy.’ (Extract from a letter received from the London and National Society for Women’s Service, 1938.)
2. The Testament of Joad, by C. E. M. Joad, pp. 210-11. Since the number of societies run directly or indirectly by Englishwomen in the cause of peace is too long to quote (see The Story of the Disarmament Declaration, p. 15, for a list of the peace activities of professional, business and working-class women) it is unnecessary to take Mr Joad’s criticism seriously, however illuminating psychologically.
3. Experiment in Autobiography, by H. G. Wells, p. 486. The men’s ‘movement to resist the practical obliteration of their freedom by Nazis or Fascists’ may have been more perceptible. But that it has been more successful is doubtful. Nazis now control the whole of Austria.’ (Daily paper, 12 March 1938).
4. ‘Women, I think, ought not to sit down to table with men; their presence ruins conversation, tending to make it trivial and genteel, or at best merely clever.’ (Under the Fifth Rib, by C. E. M. Joad, p. 58.) This is an admirably outspoken opinion, and if all who share Mr Joad’s sentiments were to express them as openly, the hostess’s dilemma — whom to ask, whom not to ask — would be lightened and her labour saved. If those who prefer the society of their own sex at table would signify the fact, the men, say, by wearing a red, the women by wearing a white rosette, while those who prefer the sexes mixed wore parti-coloured buttonholes of red and white blended, not only would much inconvenience and misunderstanding be prevented, but it is possible that the honesty of the buttonhole would kill a certain form of social hypocrisy now all too prevalent. Meanwhile, Mr Joad’s candour deserves the highest praise, and his wishes the most implicit observance.
5. According to Mrs H. M. Swanwick, the W.S.P.U. had ‘an income from gifts, in the year 1912, of £42,000.’ (I Have Been Young, by H. M. Swanwick, p. 189.) The total spent in 1912 by the Women’s Freedom League was £26,772 12s. 9d. (The Cause, by Ray Strachey, p. 311.) Thus the joint income of the two societies was £68,772 12s. 9d. But the two societies were, of course, opposed.
6. ‘But, exceptions apart, the general run of women’s earnings is low, and £250 a year is quite an achievement, even for a highly qualified woman with years of experience.’ (Careers and Openings for Women, by Ray Strachey, p. 70.) Nevertheless ‘The numbers of women doing professional work have increased very fast in the last twenty years, and were about 400,000 in 1931, in addition to those doing secretarial work or employed in the Civil Service.’ (op. cit, p. 44.)
7. The income of the Labour Party in 1936 was £50,153. (Daily Telegraph, September 1937.)
8. The British Civil Service. The Public Service, by William A. Robson, p. 16.
Professor Ernest Barker suggests that there should be an alternative Civil Service Examination for ‘men and women of an older growth’ who have spent some years in social work and social service. ‘Women candidates in particular might benefit. It is only a very small proportion of women students who succeed in the present open competition: indeed very few compete. On the alternative system here suggested it is possible, and indeed probable, that a much larger proportion of women would be candidates. Women have a genius and a capacity for social work and service. The alternative form of competition would give them a chance of showing that genius and that capacity. It might give them a new incentive to compete for entry into the administrative service of the state, in which their gifts and their presence are needed.’ (The British Civil Servant. ‘The Home Civil Service,’ by Professor Ernest Barker, p. 41.) But while the home service remains as exacting as it is at present, it is difficult to see how an incentive can make women free to give ‘their gifts and their presence’ to the service of the state, unless the state will undertake the care of elderly parents; or make it a penal offence for elderly people of either sex to require the services of daughters at home.
9. Mr Baldwin, speaking at Downing Street, at a meeting on behalf of Newnham College Building Fund, 31 March 1936.
10. The effect of a woman in the pulpit is thus defined in Women and the Ministry, Some Considerations on the Report of the Archbishops’ Commission on the Ministry of Women (1936), p. 24. ‘But we maintain that the ministration of women . . . will tend to produce a lowering of the spiritual tone of Christian worship, such as is not produced by the ministrations of men before congregations largely or exclusively female. It is a tribute to the quality of Christian womanhood that it is possible to make this statement; but it would appear to be a simple matter of fact that in the thoughts and desires of that sex the natural is more easily made subordinate to the supernatural, the carnal to the spiritual than is the case with men; and that the ministrations of a male priesthood do not normally arouse that side of female human nature which should be quiescent during the times of the adoration of almighty God. We believe, on the other hand, that it would be impossible for the male members of the average Anglican congregation to be present at a service at which a woman ministered without becoming unduly conscious of her sex.’
In the opinion of the Commissioners, therefore, Christian women are more spiritually minded than Christian men — a remarkable, but no doubt adequate, reason for excluding them from the priesthood.
11. Daily Telegraph, 20 January 1936.
12. Daily Telegraph, 1936.
13. Daily Telegraph, 22 January 1936.
14. ‘There are, so far as I know, no universal rules on this subject [i.e. sexual relations between civil servants]; but civil servants and municipal officers of both sexes are certainly expected to observe the conventional proprieties and to avoid conduct which might find its way into the newspapers and there be described as “scandalous”. Until recently sexual relations between men and women officers of the Post Office were punishable with immediate dismissal of both parties . . . The problem of avoiding newspaper publicity is a fairly easy one to solve so far as court proceedings are concerned: but official restriction extends further so as to prevent women civil servants (who usually have to resign on marriage) from cohabiting openly with men if they desire to do so. The matter, therefore, takes on a different complexion.’ (The British Civil Servant. The Public Service, by William A. Robson, pp
. 14, 15.)
15. Most men’s clubs confine women to a special room, or annexe, and exclude them from other apartments, whether on the principle observed at St Sofia that they are impure, or whether on the principle observed at Pompeii that they are too pure, is matter for speculation.
16. The power of the Press to burke discussion of any undesirable subject was, and still is, very formidable. It was one of the ‘extraordinary obstacles’ against which Josephine Butler had to fight in her campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act. ‘Early in 1870 the London Press began to adopt that policy of silence with regard to the question, which lasted for many years, and called forth from the Ladies’ Association the famous “Remonstrance against the Conspiracy of Silence”, signed by Harriet Martineau and Josephine E. Butler, which concluded with the following words: “Surely, while such a conspiracy of silence is possible and practised among leading journalists, we English greatly exaggerate our privileges as a free people when we profess to encourage a free press, and to possess the right to hear both sides in a momentous question of morality and legislation.”’ (Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, by Josephine E. Butler, p. 49.) Again, during the battle for the vote the Press used the boycott with great effect. And so recently as July 1937 Miss Philippa Strachey in a letter headed ‘A Conspiracy of Silence’, printed (to its honour) by the Spectator almost repeats Mrs Butler’s words: ‘Many hundreds and thousands of men and women have been participating in an endeavour to induce the Government to abandon the provision in the new Contributory Pensions Bill for the black-coated workers which for the first time introduces a differential income limit for men and women entrants . . . In the course of the last month the Bill has been before the House of Lords, where this particular provision has met with strong and determined opposition from all sides of the Chamber . . . These are events one would have supposed to be of sufficient interest to be recorded in the daily Press. But they have been passed over in complete silence by the newspapers from The Times to the Daily Herald . . . The differential treatment of women under this Bill has aroused a feeling of resentment among them such as has not been witnessed since the granting of the franchise . . . How is one to account for this being completely concealed by the Press?’
17. Flesh wounds were of course inflicted during the battle of Westminster. Indeed the fight for the vote seems to have been more severe than is now recognized. Thus Flora Drummond says: ‘Whether we won the vote by our agitation, as I believe, or whether we got it for other reasons, as some people say, I think many of the younger generation will find it hard to believe the fury and brutality aroused by our claim for votes for women less than thirty years ago.’ (Flora Drummond in the Listener, 25 August 1937.) The younger generation is presumably so used to the fury and brutality that claims for liberty arouse that they have no emotion available for this particular instance. Moreover, that particular fight has not yet taken its place among the fights which have made England the home, and Englishmen the champions of, liberty. The fight for the vote is still generally referred to in terms of sour deprecation: ‘. . . and the women . . . had not begun that campaign of burning, whipping, and picture-slashing which was finally to prove to both Front Benches their eligibility for the Franchise.’ (Reflections and Memories, by Sir John Squire, p. 10.) The younger generation therefore can be excused if they believe that there was nothing heroic about a campaign in which only a few windows were smashed, shins broken, and Sargent’s portrait of Henry James damaged, but not irreparably, with a knife. Burning, whipping and picture-slashing only it would seem become heroic when carried out on a large scale by men with machine-guns.
18. The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, M.D., p. 72.
19. ‘Much has lately been said and written of the achievements and accomplishments of Sir Stanley Baldwin during his Premierships and too much would be impossible. Might I be permitted to call attention to what Lady Baldwin has done? When I first joined the committee of this hospital in 1929, analgesics (pain deadeners) for normal maternity cases in the wards were almost unknown, now their use is ordinary routine and they are availed of in practically 100 per cent of cases, and what is true of this hospital is true virtually for all similar hospitals. This remarkable change in so short a time is due to the inspiration and the tireless efforts and encouragement of Mrs Stanley Baldwin, as she then was . . .’ (Letter to The Times from C. S. Wentworth Stanley, Chairman House Committee, the City of London Maternity Hospital, 1937.) Since chloroform was first administered to Queen Victoria on the birth of Prince Leopold in April 1853 ‘normal maternity cases in the wards’ have had to wait for seventy-six years and the advocacy of a Prime Minister’s wife to obtain this relief.
20. According to Debrett the Knights and Dames of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire wear a badge consisting of ‘a cross patonce, enamelled pearl, fimbriated or, surmounted by a gold medallion with a representation of Britannia seated within a circle gules inscribed with the motto “For God and the Empire”. This is one of the few orders open to women, but their subordination is properly marked by the fact that the ribbon in their case is only two inches and one quarter in breadth; whereas the ribbon of the Knights is three inches and three quarters in breadth. The stars also differ in size. The motto, however, is the same for both sexes, and must be held to imply that those who thus ticket themselves see some connection between the Deity and the Empire, and hold themselves prepared to defend them. What happens if Britannia seated within a circle gules is opposed (as is conceivable) to the other authority whose seat is not specified on the medallion, Debrett does not say, and the Knights and Dames must themselves decide.
21. Life of Sir Ernest Wild, K.C., by R. J. Rackham, p. 91.
22. Lord Baldwin, speech reported in The Times, 20 April 1936.
23. Life of Charles Gore, by G. L. Prestige, D.D., pp. 240-41.
24. Life of Sir William Broadbent, K.C.V.O., F.R.S., edited by his daughter, M. E. Broadbent, p. 242.
25. The Lost Historian, a Memoir of Sir Sidney Low, by Desmond Chapman-Huston, p. 198.
26. Thoughts and Adventures, by the Rt Hon. Winston Churchill, p. 57.
27. Speech at Belfast by Lord Londonderry, reported in The Times, 11 July 1936.
28. Thoughts and Adventures, by the Rt Hon. Winston Churchill, p. 279.
29. Daily Herald, 13 February 1935.
30. Goethe’s Faust, translated by Melian Stawell and G. L. Dickinson.
31. The Life of Charles Tomlinson, by his niece, Mary Tomlinson, p. 30.
32. Miss Weeton, Journal of a Governess, 1807-1811, edited by Edward Hall, pp. 14, xvii.
33. A Memoir of Anne Jemima Clough, by B. A. Clough, p. 32.
34. Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, by Josephine Butler, p. 189.
35. ‘You and I know that it matters little if we have to be the out-of-sight piers driven deep into the marsh, on which the visible ones are carried, that support the bridge. We do not mind if, hereafter, people forget that there ARE any low down at all; if some have to be used up in trying experiments, before the best way of building the bridge is discovered. We are quite willing to be among these. The bridge is what we care for, and not our place in it, and we believe that, to the end, it may be kept in remembrance that this is alone to be our object.’ (Letter from Octavia Hill to Mrs N. Senior, 20 September 1874. The Life of Octavia Hill, by C. Edmund Maurice, pp. 307-8.)
Octavia Hill (1838-1912) initiated the movement for ‘securing better homes for the poor and open spaces for the public . . . The “Octavia Hill System” has been adopted over the whole planned extension of [Amsterdam]. In January 1928 no less than 28,648 dwellings had been built.’ (Octavia Hill, from letters edited by Emily S. Maurice, pp. 10-11.)
36. The maid played so important a part in English upper-class life from the earliest times until the year 1914, when the Hon. Monica Grenfell went to nurse wounded soldiers accompanied by a maid [Bright Armour, by Monica Salmond, p. 20], that some recognition of her servi
ces seems to be called for. Her duties were peculiar. Thus she had to escort her mistress down Piccadilly ‘where a few club men might have looked at her out of a window,’ but was unnecessary in Whitechapel, ‘where malefactors were possibly lurking round every corner.’ But her office was undoubtedly arduous. Wilson’s part in Elizabeth Barrett’s private life is well known to readers of the famous letters. Later in the century (about 1889-92) Gertrude Bell ‘went with Lizzie, her maid, to picture exhibitions; she was fetched by Lizzie from dinner parties; she went with Lizzie to see the Settlement in Whitechapel where Mary Talbot was working . . .’ (Early Letters of Gertrude Bell, edited by Lady Richmond.) We have only to consider the hours she waited in cloak rooms, the acres she toiled in picture galleries, the miles she trudged along West End pavements to conclude that if Lizzie’s day is now almost over, it was in its day a long one. Let us hope that the thought that she was putting into practice the commands laid down by St Paul in his Letters to Titus and the Corinthians, was a support; and the knowledge that she was doing her utmost to deliver her mistress’s body intact to her master a solace. Even so in the weakness of the flesh and in the darkness of the beetle-haunted basement she must sometimes have bitterly reproached St Paul on the one hand for his chastity, and the gentlemen of Piccadilly on the other for their lust. It is much to be regretted that no lives of maids, from which a more fully documented account could be constructed, are to be found in the Dictionary of National Biography.
37. The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, collected and edited by Elsa Richmond, pp. 217-18.
38. The question of chastity, both of mind and body, is of the greatest interest and complexity. The Victorian, Edwardian and much of the Fifth Georgian conception of chastity was based, to go no further back, upon the words of St Paul. To understand their meaning we should have to understand his psychology and environment — no light task in view of his frequent obscurity and the lack of biographical material. From internal evidence, it seems clear that he was a poet and a prophet, but lacked logical power, and was without that psychological training which forces even the least poetic or prophetic nowadays to subject their personal emotions to scrutiny. Thus his famous pronouncement on the matter of veils, upon which the theory of women’s chastity seems to be based, is susceptible to criticism from several angles. In the Letter to the Corinthians his argument that a woman must be veiled when she prays or prophesies is based upon the assumption that to be unveiled ‘is one and the same thing as if she were shaven.’ That assumption granted, we must ask next: What shame is there in being shaven? Instead of replying, St Paul proceeds to assert, ‘For a man indeed ought not to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God’: from which it appears that it is not being shaven in itself that is wrong; but to be a woman and to be shaven. It is wrong, it appears, for the woman because ‘the woman is the glory of the man.’ If St Paul had said openly that he liked the look of women’s long hair many of us would have agreed with him, and thought the better of him for saying so. But other reasons appeared to him preferable, as appears from his next remark: ‘For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man; for neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man: for this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels.’ What view the angels took of long hair we have no means of knowing; and St Paul himself seems to have been doubtful of their support or he would not think it necessary to drag in the familiar accomplice nature. ‘Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a dishonour to him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering. But if any man seemeth to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.’ The argument from nature may seem to us susceptible of amendment; nature, when allied with financial advantage, is seldom of divine origin; but if the basis of the argument is shifty, the conclusion is firm. ‘Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law.’ Having thus invoked the familiar but always suspect trinity of accomplices, Angels, nature and law, to support his personal opinion, St Paul reaches the conclusion which has been looming unmistakably ahead of us: ‘And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church.’ The nature of that ‘shame’, which is closely connected with chastity has, as the letter proceeds, been considerably alloyed. For it is obviously compounded of certain sexual and personal prejudices. St Paul, it is obvious, was not only a bachelor (for his relations with Lydia see Renan, Saint Paul, p. 149. ‘Est-il cependant absolument impossible que Paul ait contracté avec cette soeur une union plus intime? On ne saurait l’affirmer’); and, like many bachelors, suspicious of the other sex; but a poet and like many poets preferred to prophesy himself rather than to listen to the prophecies of others. Also he was of the virile or dominant type, so familiar at present in Germany, for whose gratification a subject race or sex is essential. Chastity then as defined by St Paul is seen to be a complex conception, based upon the love of long hair; the love of subjection; the love of an audience; the love of laying down the law, and, subconsciously, upon a very strong and natural desire that the woman’s mind and body shall be reserved for the use of one man and one only. Such a conception when supported by the Angels, nature, law, custom and the Church, and enforced by a sex with a strong personal interest to enforce it, and the economic means, was of undoubted power. The grip of its white if skeleton fingers can be found upon whatever page of history we open from St Paul to Gertrude Bell. Chastity was invoked to prevent her from studying medicine; from painting from the nude; from reading Shakespeare; from playing in orchestras; from walking down Bond Street alone. In 1848 it was ‘an unpardonable solecism’ for the daughters of a gardener to drive down Regent Street in a hansom cab (Paxton and the Bachelor Duke, by Violet Markham, p. 288); that solecism became a crime, of what magnitude theologians must decide, if the flaps were left open. In the beginning of the present century the daughter of an ironmaster (for let us not flout distinctions said today to be of prime importance), Sir Hugh Bell, had ‘reached the age of 27 and married without ever having walked alone down Piccadilly . . . Gertrude, of course, would never have dreamt of doing that . . .’ The West End was the contaminated area. ‘It was one’s own class that was taboo; . . .’ (The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell, collected and edited by Elsa Richmond, pp. 217-18.) But the complexities and inconsistencies of chastity were such that the same girl who had to be veiled, i.e. accompanied by a male or a maid, in Piccadilly, could visit Whitechapel, or Seven Dials, then haunts of vice and disease, alone and with her parents’ approval. This anomaly did not altogether escape comment. Thus Charles Kingsley as a boy exclaimed: ‘. . . and the girls have their heads crammed full of schools, and district visiting, and baby linen, and penny clubs. Confound!!! and going about among the most abominable scenes of filth and wretchedness, and indecency to visit the poor and read the Bible to them. My own mother says that the places they go into are fit for no girl to see, and that they should not know such things exist.’ (Charles Kingsley, by Margaret Farrand Thorp, p. 12.) Mrs Kingsley, however, was exceptional. Most of the daughters of educated men saw such ‘abominable scenes’, and knew that such things existed. That they concealed their knowledge, is probable; what effect that concealment had psychologically it is impossible here to inquire. But that chastity, whether real or imposed, was an immense power, whether good or bad, it is impossible to doubt. Even today it is probable that a woman has to fight a psychological battle of some severity with the ghost of St Paul, before she can have intercourse with a man other than her husband. Not only was the social stigma strongly exerted on behalf of chastity, but the Bastardy Act did its utmost to impose chastity by financial pressure. Until women had the vote in 1918, ‘the Bastardy Act of 1872 fixed the sum of 5s. a week as the maximum which a father, whatever his wealth, could be
made to pay towards the maintenance of his child.’ (Josephine Butler, by M. G. Fawcett and E. M. Turner, note, p. 101.) Now that St Paul and many of his apostles have been unveiled themselves by modern science chastity has undergone considerable revision. Yet there is said to be a reaction in favour of some degree of chastity for both sexes. This is partly due to economic causes; the protection of chastity by maids is an expensive item in the bourgeois budget. The psychological argument in favour of chastity is well expressed by Mr Upton Sinclair: ‘Nowadays we hear a great deal about mental troubles caused by sex repression; it is the mood of the moment. We do not hear anything about the complexes which may be caused by sex indulgence. But my observation has been that those who permit themselves to follow every sexual impulse are quite as miserable as those who repress every sexual impulse. I remember a class-mate in College; I said to him: “Did it ever occur to you to stop and look at your own mind? Everything that comes to you is turned into sex.” He looked surprised, and I saw that it was a new idea to him; he thought it over, and said: “I guess you are right.”’ (Candid Reminiscences, by Upton Sinclair, p. 63.) Further illustration is supplied by the following anecdote: ‘In the splendid library of Columbia University were treasures of beauty, costly volumes of engravings, and in my usual greedy fashion I went at these, intending to learn all there was to know about Renaissance art in a week or two. But I found myself overwhelmed by this mass of nakedness; my senses reeled, and I had to quit.’ (op. cit., pp. 62-3.)