The Englishman’s Wife.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue X, 5 September 1903, Page 655

The Englishman’s Wife.

(By the Late Max CFRell.)

The position of woman in England has improved, but not so very much, since the days when men were allowed to meet her only while she gave them a cup of tea in her drawing-room- and at dinner time until coffee was served, when she disappeared for good. Among the masses of the people (I mean the little bourgeoisie and the working classes) the English woman is the mother of her husband's children and his housekeeper, but a housekeeper without wages, and who, unlike the cook, cannot give notice to leave. In France the wife is the friend and the confidante of her husband, the companion of his pleasures and invariably his partner in business. From the day she is married she receives from her husband instruction in his business and in the invetment of money. If she is a shopkeeper’s wife it is she who has charge of his books and his cashbox. She receives the money, books it and keeps it, too, until a round little sum is saved, and then a committee of two is formed to decide how 7 to invest it. If this French woman loses her husband it is a moral loss to her, not a material one. She can go on without him perfectly well. She is capable of carrying on the business alone; she has every detail of it at her fingers’ ends. In England a wife knows nothing of her husband’s affairs—not so much as his clerk knows—and it would often be hard for her to say whether he is on the road to wealth or to ruin. At the death of her husband an Englishwoman who has not enough to live on is obliged to become a governess, a lady companion or a working housekeeper. An Englishman gives his wife so much a month for the expenses of the house, and so much for dressing herself and the children. It is without any astonishment that an Englishwoman learns one fine morning that her husband is about to take her to a sumptuous new 7 home, or that circumstances make it expedient that they must remove to the humblest of dwellings. She follow-s the furniture. Maybe at breakfast her husband will say to her: “My dear, lam ruined. I must go to Australia and try my luek there.” She answers: “Very well, John, give me time to put on my hat.” The bohemian temperament of the Englishman contrasts strangely with his habits of industry; he is a curious blending of the ant and the grasshopper. The Frenchman has but one aim as he works—to put by some money that shall bring him enough to live on when he gets old. His wife helps him do it. When the aim is attained he knocks off work, and both he and his wife take life easily. The Englishman spends as he goes. The workman and the peasant, though they earned ten dollars a day, are satisfied to know that provision is made for them by the parish should they outlive their working days, and they spend every penny they make. The English house itself shows that its inmates take little thought for the morrow. It contains few cupboards and practically no cellars. The Englishman of the middle class orders in a dozen of wine at a time, and puts it in his sideboard. In France the most ordinary provincial house is a veritable ant’s store. The cupboards are full of linen. Even the humble home has a dark, dry corner, where the owner can put his hand upon a dusty bottle of old bordeaux the day

that he has one of his family to nurse or an old friend to feast. The cellar is to the Frenchman what the linen cupboard is to the Frenchwoman—a sanctuary. This absence of partnership between man and wife is most particularly noticed in the agricultural classes. In France the wife helps her husband till and sow his fields. On Saturdays she goes to the market of the nearest town to sell the produce of her orchard and kitchen garden. We constantly hear loud lamentations among English farmers. They declare that the earth refuses them a living on British soil; but it seems to me that English farmers have not to seek very far to find the cause of their failure. The farmer’s wife of other days, like the modern French one, was a worthy, unpretentious woman, who rose at five in the morning, superintended the servants and the farm labourers, did her own dairy work, and did not disdain to feed the pigs herself. That is even why the pigs looked so well. The English farmer’s wife of the present day is often a lady who keeps open house, and does the honours of the farmhouse with a liberality worthy of the hospitality dispensed in the neighbouring castle. She rises at nine, or has her breakfast taken to her bedside; she has horses and carriages, pones for the children, waggonettes and buggies for pleasure parties. Her time is passed in picnics, drives, visits and receptions. She aims at keeping pace with the squire’s -wife, but has this difficulty to contend with, that whereas the squire takes up his rents, whether farming be paying or not, the farmer must pay them, let the year be a good or a bad one. Ask her about farming. She knows nothing. Her husband has not told her. A French widow remains the head of the family; her authority is unquestioned. On the death of her husband the English widow becomes a dowager—that is to say, a woman that WAS. She abdicates the little power she ever possessed in favour of her eldest son. She had not been initiated into the affairs of her husband, therefore it seems quite natural to her that her son, a man, should take the reins of government into his own hands. The headmaster of a French college will tell you that the sons of widows are generally the most docile and hard-work-ing pupils. The headmaster of an English school will tell you that widows’ sons are generally lazy, wilful and unmanageable. I know an English widow who, upon my remarking to her that mothers in England seemed scarcely to have any authority over their sons, replied to me that it was quite natural that it should be so. Eaeh sex had its part to play in this world; men were made to command and women to obey. In France the mother’s authority over her sons, her influence at any rate, is perhaps too great. I am not discussing here which of the two systems is better. My object simply vvas to state some facts about the position of woman in England.