My Lady's Bower.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VII, Issue 2, 1 November 1902, Page 138

My Lady's Bower.

By Alma

Lady readers are invited to discuss current topics in these pages, suggest subjects for discussion, and also to contribute photographic studies on any subject of interest. Contributions should be addressed: "Editor My Lady's Bower, New Zealand Illustrated Magazine," and should arrive early in the month. In all cases where stamps are enclosed for the purpose photos will be returned.

A PLEA FOR LADIES' CLUBS.?. j#!iLUB life belongs to the childMp^ hood of the English-speaking TOP. nation. It belongs to those S^Ji far-away days when the allw l conquering Saxons drove out the ancient Britons and colonized new England, bringing along with them their wives, children, slaves and cattle, and establishing their own manners and customs in the land of their adoption. Now, these fair-haired, blue-eyed Saxons, with their high ideal of womanhood, were essentially a gregarious race, otherwise they had never brought their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds along with them. The men loved to meet and give their rede upon all topics, and consequently the Guild with its Guild Hall was one of the first institutions of the township.

These Guilds in their primitive he-. ginnings were clubs pure and simple. In the Guild Hall the men met of an evening, and over the ale-horn discussed the burning question of the hour. Often in the Guild Hall the lot of decision was drawn and then the woman was called in to hold the bag, and sometimes to draw the lot. On all other occasions women were rigidly excluded from the Guild Hall.

The British woman was a fighting animal, the Roman women were fashionable ladies, lovers of luxury and fine raiment ; the Norman

women were famed for their coquetry as well as for their learning, but the Saxon woman was before all else domestic, the very word for lady (hlaf ord)— loaf-giver suggests as much. Their sphere of action was the home sphere, and these deep-bosomed, large-limbed women made themselves respected as well as beloved. It is a noticeable fact that while the Britons and Romans intermarried freely, intermarriage between a Saxon man and a British or Roman woman, or a British and Roman man with a Saxon woman was a capital offence, and the penalty death.

Not so was it with the old Northmen — the Vikings — when they conquered that part of France, since known as Normandy and Brittany. They so intermarried as to merge many of their national traits and and characteristics. They adopted the already existing feudal system of land tenure, in short they approximated to the conquered race, among whom they dwelt, not only as to custom and habit, but also as to speech and language. Nevertheless, the strain of the Viking blood made it possible, later on, for Saxons and Normans to intermarry, and after the Norman Conquest they became as one nation, although I venture to hope that the Saxon element prevails. It is from the Normans we get our romantic and chivalrous impulses ; from the Saxons our love of home and home

ties, and the value of the latter impulse upon the community is not to be despised.

We have quite recently been commemorating the virtues of the greatest of our Saxon kings, Alfred the Great, and if you have read the lectures and essays and articles this celebration has evoked, you

will realize how much that great king was indebted to the influence of a good mother. But, inasmuch as it is not given to every women to he a mother, and only

one

woman in ten can hope to have a husband and home of her own, the value of clubs for women, or, indeed, of anything that gives them the right to be regarded as separate factors in the social community cannot be ignored. The term " Old Maid " is absolutely out of date, so is the genus which belongs to the era 'of bandoline, night-caps, short-waisted dresses and side curls. We live in an age of bachelor women and of ladies' clubs. To be unmarried has ceased to be a term of reproach. The sex has, so to speak, asserted itself ; it has justified its existence independently of man. That certain individuals have gone too far and made the whole sex look ridiculous by so doing, is the inevitable result of re-action.. These women are not the products of the 19th or even of the 20th Centuries. They can trace their descent back to the days of Boadicea and the Amazons.

In the sumptuary laws of Richard 11. it is enacted that inasmuch as ladies of high degree, clad in the guise of knights, and thereby not to be distinguished therefrom, do ride to tourney, by which many and grave scandals have arisen in the land, it is henceforth forbidden to the ladies of England that they assume the habits of men, wear any sort of armour, or ride as men do, astride on horseback.

From this it is very apparent that the young ladies of the Mth Century were as inclined to ape the man as the fast young lady of to-day. And if imitation be the sincerest form of flattery, then ought the menkind to feel vastly flattered.

There are certain social factors that have gone far to emancipate the women of to-day from the unwritten, yet all compelling, laws which have hitherto held her in thrall.

Foremost among these I put bicycles in their relation to her outdoor life and occupations, and ladies' clubs in their relation to her social economy.

The. pursuit of athletics has had a big hand in the development of the modern woman. Look at the girls growing up around us, so tall and broad and finely proportioned, look at their free and fearless gait, and contrast them with the timid and conventional young ladies of Jane Austen's novels.

From croquet to tennis, and from tennis to golf, cricket, or even hockey, is a far cry, but the bicycle has done more than either of these, for it has placed the country within easy reach of the city •girl, has given her a motive for, and an interest in, outdoor exercise, and thereby saved her from

that morbid introspection which is the bane of all women. Oh ! those hours of weary thought while we darn the socks and make the •clothes, the brain idle, only the hands busy, inside the monotonous ticking of the clock and outside nothing to distract. The dull routine of a woman's life needs some sort of violent re-action, and the l.icycle supplies that need, and in sunplying it has developed many a woman's best qualities. It "has made her aware of her personal independence ; it has given her a definite source of recreation, and in this relation has placed her on an equality with her working brother.

Once mounted on her machine (purchased often enough with her own earnings) the woman becomes an independent factor, and can act as she pleases, irrespective of the will of anyone else. Before the days of cycles if a girl did not care for outdoor games, was not good at them in point of fact, if she did not live within reach of a river, or the sea, to boat on, she spent her hours of recreation in the house poring over a silly, senti-

mental novel, or else went for a long and dreary walk with some dull woman friend as stranded in ideas as herself.

All that is at an end now, by hook or by crook every English girl (who cares to have one) has achieved her bicycle, not to speak of the woman who has long since left girlhood behind. She can scour the country at will, can share long rides wiith her brothers and friends, or can enjoy herself alone. So much for the outdoor life, and the new field opened up to women by which they can participate in the same. My business is not to discuss athletics, but ladies' clubs, and all this is only by way of preliminary.

The problem of the unmarried woman was in the childhood of the world solved by polygamy, in the Middle Ages by the convent system, the unmarried woman became a nun and her future was provided for. Seldom was it that she 'aad any choice in the matter, being bred to the convent from the cradle. Out of six girls in a family three would be dedicated to matrimony, and the remaining three to the life religious.

Our modern Anglican Sisterhood in no way answers to the convent, for the girls and women who enter the sisterhood enter it on their own initiation, and as often as not against the wishes of their parents and guardians. Yet, inasmuch, and in as far as the Anglican Sisterhood

lessens the supply of unmarried women, the system is to be commended on purely mundane and secular grounds. For it has come to pass that since there are more women than men in eveiy civilized community, and since some men elect to remain- untrammelled by the ties of wife and family, a large

section of the women of England and of the colonies must be content to live out their lives alone.

Another equally large section of the community have decided that

they, like the men, are not keen on the laws of family and domestic life, and prefer to remain free and unmated. These also are to be commended on the same ground as the Anglican Sisterhood, because they lessen a supply already so largely in excess of the demand. Among these bachelor women has arisen the desire for a club where, like the bachelors of the other sex, they can meet and enjoy themselves socially and intellectually.

In this instance it was the demand that created the supply, and the supply varied in accordance with the demand. Hence the diversity in ladies' clubs — their aims and objects. In London there are at least fifty ladies' clubs, all well patronized, and each with its own several individuality.

[The- above is the first instalment of an interesting article forwarded by Miss Laura Stubbs, a member of the Grosvenor Crescent Club, who recently visited New Zealand. It will be continued in our next issue,]