is not regulated much by the fashions, and she is always the first to come down when the ladies have gone upstairs to change their dress.
Her greatest accomplishment is to drive. With the whip in one hand and the reins in the other, and a key-bugle behind, she would not exchange places with the Queen herself.
With all these peculiarities and manly addictions, however, the FAST LADY is good hearted, very good natured, and never guilty of what she would call "a dirty action." Her generosity, too, must be included amongst her other faults, for she gives to all, and increases the gift by sympathy. She is always in good humour, and, like gentle dulness, dearly loves a joke. She is an excellent daughter, and her father dotes on her and lets her do what she likes, for "he knows she will never do anything wrong, though she is a strange girl." In the country she is greatly beloved. The poor people call her "a dear good Miss," and present their petitions and unfold all their little griefs to her. She is continually having more presents of pups sent to her than she knows what to do with. The farmers, too, consult her about their cows and pigs, and she is the godmother to half the children in the parish.
Her deficiencies, after all, are more those of manner than of feeling. She may be too largely gifted with the male virtues, but then she has a very sparing collection of the female vices. Nature may be to blame for having made her one of the weaker vessels, but imperfect and manly as she is, she still retains the inward gentleness of the woman, and many fine ladies, who stand the highest in the pulpits of society, would preach none the less effectively if they had only as good a heart—even with the trumpery straw in which, like a rich fruit, it is enveloped—as the MODEL FAST LADY.
Fast Young Lady (to Old Gent): "Have you such a thing as a lucifer about you, for I've left my cigar lights at home."
This was written seventy years ago, but within the last decade we have seen Miss Compton frequently impersonating rôles of which the leading traits were, in essentials, identical with those of the Model Fast Lady. The model woman, married or unmarried, as represented by the writers and artists of Punch, was feminine, kindly, but colourless, though the "deviations from the norm" are not overlooked—the lion-huntresses of Belgravia; thrusting matrons; willing victims of the social tread-mill and the "petty decalogue of Mode"; cynical high-priestesses of the marriage market.
When we turn to the higher education of women generally the attitude assumed is nearly always one of mild chaff. Punch refused to take it seriously, and propounded his own scheme for a female university, in which the fashionable accomplishments are enumerated in detail:—
French and Italian as spoken in the fashionable circles, music, drawing, fancy-work, and the higher branches of dancing, will form the regular curriculum. A minor examination on these subjects, or a "Little Go," will be instituted before the Spinstership of Arts can be tried for. The examined shall be able to "go on" anywhere in "Télémaque," or in the conversations in Veneroni's Grammar; to play a fantasia of Thalberg's; to work a pair of slippers in Berlin wool; and to dance the Cachuca and Cracovienne.
For the degree of Spinster, the candidate shall be examined in various novels by Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Balzac, and others; also in the libretto of the last new opera. She shall be able to play or sing any of the fashionable pieces or airs of the day, and shall give evidence of an extensive acquaintance with Bellini, Donizetti, Labitzky, and Strauss. She shall draw and embroider, in a satisfactory manner, various fruits, flowers, cottages and a wood, Greeks and Mussulmen. Lastly, she shall dance, with correctness and elegance, a "pas de deux" with any young gentleman who may be selected for the purpose.
There shall be likewise, with respect to music and dancing, an annual examination for honours. The candidates shall evince a familiarity with the most admirable feats of Taglioni, and the Ellslers, and with the most difficult compositions of Herz, Czerny, and Bochsa; though if they like they may be allowed to take up, in preference, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber.
These examinations shall be called respectively the Musical and the Dancing Tripos. No one shall be admissible to the latter who has not taken honours in the former. The gradations or distinction shall be as follows: In the Musical Tripos the foremost damsel shall be entitled the Senior Warbler; next shall follow the Simple Warblers; the Bravissimas shall come next; then the Bravas; and finally those who barely get their degree.
The first dancer shall be denominated La Sylphide; after her shall be ranked the Sylphs; next to these the first and second Coryphées; and lastly, as before, the merely passable.
MISS WALKER: A FEMALE POLITICIAN, 1842
Women and Politics
This article is fairly typical of the attitude of Punch towards what we now call "Feminism"—a term so new that in the New English Dictionary it is dismissed in half a dozen words as a rare word meaning "the qualities of females"! That definition, however, was given in 1901. Now it would have to be revised to include the movement for political emancipation, economic independence, and admission to the professions. References to female politicians begin in the third volume, where we find the very unsympathetic and even acid sketch here given of Miss Walker, "the female Chartist." Eight years elapsed before ladies were admitted to the gallery of the House of Commons, though, even then, carefully screened from view by the metal work of the "Grille," an Orientally obscuring device which lasted till Georgian days. The possibility of their appearing on the floor of the House is never seriously contemplated; the "Parliamentary female" included amongst the "ladies of creation" in the Almanack for 1852 is modelled on Mrs. Jellyby—Bleak House had been coming out serially from March, 1852, onwards. The pioneers of the invasion of the professions hailed from America. Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., of Boston,25 is mentioned in 1848, and in the following year Punch welcomed the innovation in verse:—
AN M.D. IN A GOWN
Young ladies all, of every clime,
Especially of Britain,
Who wholly occupy your time
In novels or in knitting,
Whose highest skill is but to play,
Sing, dance, or French to clack well,
Reflect on the example, pray,
Of excellent Miss Blackwell!
For Doctrix Blackwell—that's the way
To dub in rightful gender—
In her profession, ever may
Prosperity attend her!
Punch, a gold-handled parasol
Suggests for presentation,
To one so well deserving all
Esteem and admiration.
The Bloomer Craze
BLOOMERISM—AN AMERICAN CUSTOM
Punch's commendation rather declines in dignity in the last stanza. But we are hardly prepared for his condemnation of women doctors in 1852 merely on the illogical ground that they were unfitted to walk the hospitals or use the scalpel. The better training of nurses had been urged before the days of Florence Nightingale; Punch appreciated the gossiping humours of Mrs. Gamp, but he was very far from regarding her as a ministering angel. To the "strong-minded female," however, he had a strong antipathy, and in his pictures rather ungenerously emphasized the unloveliness, even the scragginess, of the advocates of women's rights. The famous Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a vigorous suffragist and temperance reformer, but Punch was only concerned with her campaign on behalf of "trouserloons." "Bloomers" were a constant theme