English Girls in the Olden Time [pp. 366-369]

THE LADIES' REPOSITOR.
marry off their daughters, as hard as their
descendants find this business. The subject is
not very pleasant, and, in fact, is not altogether
wholesome. Late English novels, and a good
deal of writing in English weekly papers like
the Saturday Review, afford material for a large
book, which might be called, "The Perfect
Angler for a Husband;" or, "How the Good
Mother got her Daughter Married." After
some reflection and balancing of pen and certain moralizings, this writer decides to hand
the subject over to the other sex.
The virtues which are praised by the good
wife have a certain English flavor about them;
they grow elsewhere, to be sure, but the fruit is
more ruddy, and has a refined aroma in AngloSaxon life. The girls, when they become wives,
are to be cheerful, and true, and blameless of
life, and to love their husbands above all earthly
things. Thrift and forethought are the good
wifen thh'o1g points. -ier daughter is charged
not to waste her husband's substance, but to
help him to get and to keep. When her daughters are born, she is to begin to lay by things
against their marriage. Pleasant reminder of
blankets, bed-quilts, pillow-cases, feather-beds,
and numberless pieces of household stuff, collected against happy wedding days by old-fashioned American mothers.
The persistence of early customs is shown
by the caution given to housewives to keep their
own keys. The English housewife keeps them
to this day.
The subject of dress could not be passed by
in a book for girls; but it occupies a small place
in the good wife's. Her daughter must not ruin
her husband by extravagance, nor show off in
borrowed glitter, nor envy people who can dress
better than her purse permits.
To such thriftful counsels on the use of money
much of Englislh hlome-life owes its success.
The farthings which the prudent Anglo-Saxon
wife lays up in housekeeping gear for her daughters, her Latin race sister is too apt to spend in
jewelry, lottery tickets, spectacular displays, or
fine dresses. The English household, with a
prudent wife at its head, never leaked out farthings, much less shillings, through these social
crevices where so much of our money goes in
these days. But let us not forget that it is
mean to keep, and stingy to save, and that selfdenial now means doing as your neighbors do.
It is to be regretted that our good wife
thought it a duty to charge her daughter against
profanity. Women did swear in those days,
even when they went regularly to Church, not
staying away for the rain. There was a very
coarse grain in the life of that time. Even
good Queen Bess, long after that, was rather
careless in her choice of words when she got
angry, which she did pretty often. Another bit
of the wisdom of Solomon appears in the command not to curse your children when they are
saucy, but to give them a smart flogging. The
rod was not spared in those days; but probably
some children were spoiled by it, or in spite
of it.
The collectors and editors of old manuscripts
have found a good many incidents of early
English education, from which it is known that
young people of both sexes have durus and
stultus declined to them very freely. Perhaps
the boys had the hardest time of it; at any
rate, we know most about their tribulations.
But there are not wanting proofs of the sorrows
of the girls.
Agnes Paston not only sent (r457) to pray
the master of her son that, if her boy "hath not
done well, nor will not amend, he will truly
belash him till he will amend;" but she seems
to have "belashed" her marriageable daughter
with her own hands. Cleve writes-Paston
Letters-on the 29th of June, I454:
"She-the daughter-was never in so great
sorrow as she is nowadays, for she may not
speak with no man, whosoever come, ne not may
see nor speak with my man, nor with servants
of her mother's, but that she beareth her on
home otherwise than she meaneth; and she
hath since Easter the most part been beaten
once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice
on a day, and her head broken in two or three
places."
Aschlam was stimulated to write his "schlolemaster" by the news "that divers scholars of
Eton be run away from the school for fear of
beating;" but the girls seem also to have appealed to his compassion, for hle represents Lady
Jane Grey as saying:
"One of the greatest benefits that God ever
-gave me is that he sent me so sharpe and severe
parents and so gentlea scholemaster. For when
I am in presence either of father or mother,
whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand or go,
eate, drinke, be merie or sad, be sewying, plaiying,
dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it as
it were in soch weight, mesure, and number,
even so perfetlie as God made the world, or
els I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea, presentlie some tymes with pinches,
nippes and bobbes, and other waies, which I will
not name for the honor I bear them, so without
measure misordered, that I thinke myself in hell
till tyme cum that I must go to Ml. Elmer, who
teache theme so jentlie, so pleasantlie, with soch
faire allurements to learning, that I thinke al the
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