MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

'Une femme aimable doit avoir nonseulement les grâces extérieures, mais les grâces du cœur et des sentiments.' MME. DE LAMBERT.

In the fine old Tudor Hall of New Place, one wintry afternoon, there were seated round the oak logs, which glowed in the carved fireplace, a lady of middle age and her guest, a Frenchwoman well known in Paris society. Madame des Deux Mondes sat with the Nineteenth Century in her lap, and both mothers were discussing the 'Revolt of the Daughters' in the last number, as they waited for the return of their two girls from the ice.

'Bien spirituelle, ma chère, fine et gracieuse,' said the French lady, 'but every time I come to your wonderful country I find you occupied with something new. Now, has your charming Ida joined this army of insurgent Amazons?' 'I cannot deny that my child feels the movement like all other young women,' said the hostess; 'but what do you find so surprising in Mrs. Crackanthorpe's clever piece?'

'Mais tout! Everything!' rejoined the French lady. 'You know the young girl in the play says, "Lorsqu'une demoiselle est bien élevée, elle pense toujours comme sa maman," and absurd though that is, it is yet true that in France we have no question of this kind. But, forgive me, you English love to dwell upon your difficulties; is it not possible that you exaggerate the trouble?' 'I fear not,' said the other. It is not pretty to hear wives congratulated upon having no daughters, and there is no doubt that many of our girls are profoundly restless and dissatisfied."

The Frenchwoman sprang to her feet: But the art of living, and the joy of being young, and the delight of the first experience of life! Ah! chère madame! how willingly would we taste of these again! And she stretched out her arms to the clear flames.

'Our young girls sen to have forgotten how to be young in your sense,' said the Englishwoman, 'they all of them try to talk like women of mature years. You know, by the way, a brilliant Girton friend of ours who says that all might yet be well if we could only have three generations of single women.'

Truly you English are a wonderful people!' said Madame des Deux Mondes; 'the remedy of our young Girton friend is worthy of the Précieuses Ridicules. But your girls must be in a sad condition if they are not happy at home, and yet do not wish to be wives and mothers.' 'Ah, well! they are not all so advanced as that,' laughed the hostess. Many of our girls are the very salt of the earth, and we can still boast of our happy homes. I believe that my Ida looks upon me as her best friend, as she is certainly mine. But in very many households the girls do not seem happy themselves, nor do they apparently succeed in making those around them happy. Only yesterday I had a sad visit from an old friend, who has, at considerable cost to herself, and after much effort, won for her daughter a University training. The child is now settled at home, but she does not make herself happy. She seems to have little or no sympathy with her mother, she is not willing to share the family life, she does not seem to know what to do with her own. She complained to her mother the other day that visitors had been asked to the house, as they interfered with her plans for study. The mother, who, in my judgment, is greatly superior to the daughter, is naturally much disheartened. I wish that I could believe this to be a solitary case; but through Ida I hear the other side of the question, the troubles of many girls, and indeed they often come to consult me in their difficulties, for they know I am sympathetic.'

'You think, then, the mothers are in fault? As a French mother that interests me much,' said Madame des Deux Mondes.

'Yes and no,' returned the other. There are causes at work over which mothers as such can have no control. Ours is a time of transition, and all our ideas, political, social, and even religious, are being tested anew as with fire. We shall emerge, doubtless, all the stronger for the ordeal; our sons, meanwhile, are the pioneers of the new life, how should our daughters escape their share of the burden? Perhaps a more immediate cause, and one closely connected with the new social conditions, is the new education. We must all admit that much has been done for the higher education of women in this last generation. We have hardly yet gathered the fruits of that important movement. At present we are face to face with the undoubted fact that girls to-day have had a very different training from their mothers. The dullest girl probably has a smattering of Latin, and has read and forgotten some Euclid; she, poor child, firmly believes that her mother was brought up on Mangnall's Questions and the Child's Guide to Knowledge-the result is not to edification.'

'Poor child indeed!' retorted the French lady; 'she must have a very great want of humour, for she must know very well that she could not fill her mother's place. What about the mother's skill in managing the household, gathering a pleasant society for her young

people, arranging for the special and very different wants of each member of her family? The art of living cannot be taught by examination papers, and it is just this that the mother has learnt and the girl has not. In the years from eighteen to twenty-one or twenty-two we French mothers think that our daughters are learning some of the most precious lessons of their lives: how to write a letter, how to read a book, how to throw off the self-consciousness of the school-girl. Everything is new, and, while our daughters take in the larger life at every pore, they gradually gather material to form judgments, they develop their personality. These years are a true école des femmes. But tell me, you who are all advocates for prolonging the school life of the girl into the college life of the woman, how do you find it work? Your son when he goes to college enters the world; your daughter, by the nature of the case, can do no such thing; for her the years at college must be more or less years of cloistered seclusion. We in France are watching the experiment with the greatest interest.'

'I am not sure that I am ready with an answer,' said the English mother. I suppose that for the highest academic training in special subjects a college life is essential. For the average girl the experiment is still so new that we can hardly pronounce upon it. You must, however, admit that it has raised the standard of education for women all over the country.'

'Doubtless it has, and your girls ought to have been the happier for it; however, perhaps, as you say, it is too soon to draw conclusions. But, chère madame, all foreign mothers would say that you should do as they do, and arrange suitable marriages for your daughters.'

'That, in England, my dear friend, is quite impossible. Our mothers would bungle over it, our daughters would not suffer it, and our young men would join Lobengula sooner than be made victims.' I know,' said Madame des Deux Mondes,' I know, and I can only repeat that you English are a wonderful people! But where are our own girls? should they not be home by now? You know that in England I do as the English-but-' As she spoke the door opened, and two girls entered the room. Ida, the English girl, was tall and fair, and seemed about twenty years of age; she was clad in a dress of close-fitting serge with gaiters. Marguerite, her French companion, who wore a Polish skating costume, was dark, and somewhat older, shorter, and slighter than her friend. Both girls were flushed with exercise and seemed radiant with health and happiness.

Oh, mother!' said Ida, 'I wish you had been with us. We have had a capital time. The ice was quite first-rate, and Marguerite here showed them how to skate. It was such fun; the other girls would not believe that she was French because she skated so well, and so elegantly too, but when she made a curtsy to the squiress on saying good-bye, they had to believe. Why don't English girls make curt

sies I wonder? I suppose because we could never do them so well,'
and she began a series of mock curtsies to her mother and Madame
des Deux Mondes. 'Our French curtsy is the result of a long tra-
dition,' said Marguerite, smiling, 'you must not hope to catch it in
that flippant way; but here is tea, and I must make ready!
• Oh!
I can't wait,' said Ida, flinging herself on to a low seat and tossing off
her hat and furs. There will be no tea-cake, if you don't make
haste,' she called after her friend. A few minutes later found the
little party seated round the tea-table, and Ida began again, 'What
have you been doing, mother?-not been out, I am afraid.'

Well, no; we became so much interested in our discussion that we sat on round the fire. You would be interested, too, in what we were saying. We were talking of French and English girls, and said that there were many promising English girls who seemed to fail to adjust themselves to their lives. How does it strike you, Marguerite?'

'I think your English girls are splendid, madame; they are so frank, and brave, and fearless, and then they are so grand to look upon. Does not your poet say "divinely tall"? But they are not aimables; forgive me, but I do not find the English for that.' 'Won't adorable do?' cried Ida with a laugh.

'No, no,' said Marguerite, not at all.'

our aimable means

'You mean amiable surely,' said the hostess. 'Not at all,' said Madame des Deux Mondes; being graceful in everything, with the wish to be kind to everybody. Yes,' she continued, 'with all their faults, our French girls are certainly aimables. I do not know if that is in the curriculum of Girton, but it is not in any examination paper I ever saw.'

'Well,' continued Marguerite, 'I do not think it would be possible for a French girl to do what I saw two English girls do to-day on the ice. Our hostess, you must know, madame, was very kind, and she had provided chairs, and a tent, and hot coffee for the skaters, but the girls of whom I spoke called out in a loud voice to some friends, in hearing of the hostess, to come away to their lake much better ice-it was getting a bore to stay any longer. Whereupon this little party went off. I suppose that, as girls in England are nothing if not frank, when they get bored they find it simplest to say so; but it is not aimable.'

'Mais c'est mal élevé,' said Madame des Deux Mondes.

'It is very often done,' said Ida, 'but you know our English girl is like the child in the rhyme :

When she is good she is very very good,

But when she is bad she is horrid.

'I wish, my dear Ida,' said her mother, that you would tell Madame des Deux Mondes something of what you were telling me of the grievances of your young friends.'

'They are so many, it is difficult to select,' replied Ida. 'I had better take them by the letters of the alphabet. A told me that there was not a really useful book in the house; that she was very anxious to study history, but that her parents resolutely discouraged all attempts on her part to get the necessary books. She said that she had an allowance for her clothes, which was more than she wanted, but she had to account for this from the millinery point of view.' 'Mon Dieu !' exclaimed Madame des Deux Mondes.

'B told me,' continued Ida, that though there were plenty of books in the house, it was considered waste of time for her to read them. C said that her music had been given up as almost hopeless at school, but that she was now obliged to practise two hours every day, thus sacrificing most precious time. D complained that her whole heart was in painting, but that she was denied a fire in the only room in which she could find the proper light. E told me that she was very keenly interested in following a course of lessons on economics, but that she had to miss half the lessons because a proper escort could not be found for her, and she was not permitted to go alone. But this is only a selection from many stories of the kind. Then there are the girls who are not allowed to read the books they want to read, to see the plays they want to see, and, I am half ashamed to repeat it, one of them actually told me of a mother who had given her daughter a novel to read, but had pinned up the three most interesting chapters with a bonnet pin.'

'My dear child!' 'Mais c'est inouï!' exclaimed both mothers in a breath.

'Well,' said Ida, 'I did not invent the story. I was told it in a very serious way, and I was also told that when the chapters had been read the pin was replaced. But there are many other complaints coming from girls who have really become women, that they are not free to order their own lives, not free to make their own friends, or to see them when made, and that they lead a pinched and narrowed existence.

It is passing strange,' said the French lady, that these difficulties do not beset us. I have heard of such cases, but I believe them to be as happily rare with us as you tell me they are unhappily common with you. And yet our girls have been until quite lately very rigidly bound by conventions.'

'But,' objected Ida, 'your girls, as a rule, do not care for serious things, do they? We here always think of them as principally concerned with dress and amusement.'

'I think I can answer you,' said Madame des Deux Mondes. 'If the training of our girls were so bad as is commonly supposed in England, how could they develop into the capable and devoted women that we find in France? Women with us count for so much. Our peasant's wife works as hard as her husband, and is often the more