As We Are and As We May Be | Page 5

if they can teach. In music, a really good composer, player, or singer, is always received with joy and the usual solid marks of approval. In this great open Market there is no favouritism possible, because the public, which is scornful of failure--making no allowance, and receiving no excuses--is also generous and quick to recognise success. In this Market clever women have exactly the same chances as clever men; their work commands the same price. George Eliot is as well paid as Thackeray; and the Market is full of the most splendid prizes both of praise and pudding. It is a most wonderful Market. In all other Markets the stalls are full of good things which the vendors are anxious to sell, but cannot. In this Market nothing is offered but it is snapped up greedily by the buyers; there are even, indeed, men who buy up the things before they reach the open Market. In other Markets the cry of those who stand at the stalls is 'Buy, buy, buy!' In this Market it is the buyers who cry out continually, 'Bring out more wares to sell.' Only to think of this Market, and of the thousands of gentlewomen outside, fills the heart with sadness.
For outside, there is quite another kind of Market. Here there are long lines of stalls behind which stand the gentlewomen eagerly offering their wares. Alas! here is Art in every shape, but it is not the art which we can buy. Here are painting and drawing; here are coloured photographs, painted china, art embroideries, and fine work. Here are offered original songs and original music. Here are standing long lines of those who want to teach, and are most melancholy because they have no degree or diploma, and know nothing. Here are standing those who wait to be hired, and who will do anything in which 'general intelligence' will show the way; lastly, there is a whole quarter at least a quarter--of the Market filled with stalls covered with manuscripts, and there are thousands of women offering these manuscripts. The publishers and the editors walk slowly along before the stalls and receive the manuscripts, which they look at and then lay down, though their writers weep and wail and wring their hands. Presently there comes along a man greatly resembling in the expression of his face the wild and savage wolf trying to smile. His habit is to take up a manuscript, and presently to express, with the aid of strange oaths and ejaculations, wonder and imagination. ''Fore Gad, madam!' he says, ''tis fine! 'Twill take the town by storm! 'Tis an immortal piece! Your own, madam? Truly 'tis wonderful! Nay, madam, but I must have it. 'Twill cost you for the printing of it a paltry sixty pounds or so, and for return, believe me, 'twill prove a new Potosi.' This is the confidence trick under another form. The unfortunate woman begs and borrows the money, of which she will never again see one farthing; and if her book be produced, no one will ever buy a copy.
The women at these stalls are always changing. They grow tired of waiting when no one will buy: they go away. A few may be traced. They become type-writers: they become cashiers in shops; they sit in the outer office of photographers and receive the visitors: they 'devil' for literary men: they make extracts: they conduct researches and look up authorities: they address envelopes; some, I suppose, go home again and contrive to live somehow with their relations. What becomes of the rest no man can tell. Only when men get together and talk of these things it is whispered that there is no family, however prosperous, but has its unsuccessful members--no House, however great, which has not its hangers-on and followers, like the ribauderie of an army, helpless and penniless.
Considering, therefore, the miseries, drudgeries, insults, and humiliations which await the necessitous gentlewoman in her quest for work and a living, and the fact that these ladies are increasing in number, and likely to increase, I venture to call attention to certain preventive steps which may be applied--not for those who are now in this hell, but for those innocent children whose lot it may be to join the hapless band. The subject concerns all of us who have to work, all who have to provide for our families; it concerns every woman who has daughters: it concerns the girls themselves to such a degree that, if they knew or suspected the dangers before them they would cry aloud for prevention, they would rebel, they would strike the Fifth Commandment out of the Tables. So great, so terrible, are the dangers before them.
The absolute duty of teaching girls who may at some future time have to