The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-31 00:00:00

U N,

LONDON, THURSDAY 'E_VENING,

ADVICE TO TIIE, LADIES.
(From Eliza Cook's Journal)
From causes I need not now stop to trace, those
persons on whom the ladies liberally shower the epi-
thets of kill-joy, square-toes, or old quiz, have
hitherto, for the most part, had it all their own may
in the reading of " lectures" and delivering of
preachments" to our fair countrywomen. May
not I—seeing from a point of view quite different to
theirs—jot down some notions of mine on so impor-
tant a subject ? I have never heard that the alphabet
was less easily learnt from ginger-bread letters;
that draughts of medicine were rendered less effica-
cious by being flavoured with peppermint, garnished
with pink paper, and dispensed by an assistant pos-
sessed of good teeth, and valanced with those " dear
whiskers ;" nor carA believe that my observations,
and fault-finding I may add, will be the less note-
worthy for their writer's being a young bachelor,
with not the faintest intention of ever being an old
one ; but keeping at the bottom of his Pandora's box
of daily vexations, the hope of rriatrimcny.
At all events, I shall try the experiment through
the medium of passionless foolscap and ink, of making
you acquainted with some of my convictions on what
I may call lady-vices, illustrated by no highly-
finished portraitures, but mere outlines of the most
prominent characteristics of those of my female
friends, who may serve to show my meaning. And,
if you please, I shall dispense with the rules of art
altogether in my gossip to you, meeting promiscu-
ously (as I am in the habit of doing with Margaret,
of whom, more anon—though there is often some art
about that), meeting promiscuously, I say, with the
topics as they rise. And, first, my fair readers, I
would lay great stress on your not being frivolous ;
and this I would beg of you, not to be, in defiance of
those conventional rules that indicate the manufac-
ture of book marks, fly-traps with yellow paper,
canary birds inside, Porte monnaies, antiemacassars,
Joseph's• coat-like patch-work table-covers, and jug-
shaped Berlin wool
your time, in pence-pouches, as the fit disposal of
defiancen of a saying—current only
among the shallowest of men, and having no founda-
tion in truth—that "nothing profiund should be ex-
pected from the petticoats;" and in corformity with
the sentiment of that beautiful couplet in " Men-
fred,"—
Think'st thou existence cloth depend on time?
It doth, but actions are our epochs."
Bear in mind-that, as-Dr. Johnson well observes ;
" many of our hours are lost in a rotation of petty
cares, in a constant recurrence of the same employ-
ments." That you are, by nature, "noble in reason
and infinite in faculties;" that—but I will introduce
you to Mrs.` Le Grand, late Miss Pinchbeck, an ex-
cellent specimen of frivolity. .
Mrs. Le Grand, late Miss Pinchbeck, then, is a
great correspondent, that is, every afternoon she un-
locks her ladies' rose-wood writingedesk, and
papeterie, which latter contains her envelopes and
fancy note-paper, and dashes off some half-dozen
vapid notes, containing less practical utility, per-
haps, than Solomon's (in the " Stranger")
"foreign correspondence," and every morning
the business-like knock of the postman an-
nounces the arrival of' some responsive echoes wafced
to her, crossed in the writing, and sealed with motto
"hubby,"
‘Vl:daefearrs.oldSchreoses " bfess
paallteedb,h„eranhdus“boalndd
invaarniVysays
you," unfailingly,—if she sneezes; carries a Letts'
diary, in which she makes ostentatious memoranda,
probably having in it for subject-matter, followers and
unfair joints; calls any hurry she may happen to be
in a "scuffle ;" loses her housewifely keys, and then
is "in tribulation about them," and knows only two
words cf French, which she consequently wears to
death : "distingue," and "distrait." She is no reader,
indeed, she wonders how any lady can go and see
" Othello;" she parades a superstitious dread of ill-
luck on a Friday ; she will apostrophize a singed
moth fur five minutes together, in your presence ;
will speak of "styles of meat," of a cheertemonger's
"shining" in bacon, of the weather as " muggy,"
and when disposed to be jocular, aims at it by using
such exaggerating phrases as "exchequer," or
" finances," to express a purse or money ; " breaking
a charter," for making an exception, and the like. In
fine, she will go on with the same monotonous note,
as the travelling clockman announces his passing by
sounding—day after day; like, as after they have
"cast on," "knitted," and "purled" ten or
twelve rows, the votaries of crotchet and embroidery
will commence again, se, ton or twelve hours of one
day of her life and employment of it, typifies the
whole. May I not write a brief moral under this
picture. I have no high-flown views about woman's
mission to impart. I was passed the other evening
by two women, one covered about the bonnet and
cloak with small dust-fill, followed at a little distance
by two men, one of whom had doubtless been amusing
himself by pitching handsful of gravel after them. I
should not have noticed this, but that, just as they
passed me, one of the women said, in reply to an ob-
servation, I had not heard made by one of the men,
" We were not made to throw stones at, however."
Very well, I adopt your ;sentiment, madam, that wo-
man's vocation is not to have stones thrown at it, nor
is it either to be put,in a glass-case and looked at like
a wax flower—like Mrs. Le Grand. Should you have
"great taste in dress," but nothing besides, no genuine
sympathies—no degree of information—no average
intelligence—no anything? Is it fitting that you
should while away your time in conversation, well
termed small-talk, that leads to no result—elicits no

.new fact, and could possibly have no Q.R.D. written
at the end of it ? I, at all events, will launch
Barchell's (in the " Vicar of Wakefield") expressive
criticism, "Fudge' "at you for it. I, at all events,
will assert that the cares of house- keeping, whether
shared by a family of daughters, or discharged
single-handed, are not so engrossing ; but that you,
who are engaged in no. regular occupation, have the
amplest leisure for laying in a stock of that learning,
which is justly pronounced better than houses and
lands.

Mrs. Bell Wether too is a lady who I hope will not
include you among her disciples. She is a great
stickler for conventionalities ("I should like to do
what is proper, of course," in her own words), tells
you that no fashionable person would be seen in town
after August 12th ; that the Queen has taken her
nge Burke supplieswrot e a
physician with her on her tour ; or that a new ladies'
ear. trumpet has been invented, shaped like a fiewer.
her The
book idea
oon each)
of t ;
e
sublime
pe
nd
e peerage and ba r oet
beautiful
(a
indeed, she has an implicit respect for the great, in
the abstract, and will prose half an hour
together
as to
what relationship my Lord Tom Noddy bears to Lady
Noodlehead, and whose tide he will succeed to; she
would lose anything rather than caste ; and
over her tea, which she makes from a tea-urn,
she will affect a very finical horror of low neigh-
bourhoods and humble '
people. Poor quivering s 11. irt-
hand in White's-rents, ragged hawker in Brown's-
lane, she knows you not ! And yet, tell her of a
shipwreck in the other hemisphere, read to her of a
conflagration leagues away,
and she will show such
" a dejected 'haviour of the visage, together with all
forms, modes, shows of grief," as makes me recall a
phrase in the cheap outfitters' advertisements,
" mourning to any extent at five minutes' notice."
But let me now, however, turn to a more congenial
subject ; let me leave the Le Grinds find Bell
Wethers (polished grates may I call them, compared
with stoves glowing with a ruddy, crackling fire), let
me leave these, and all who in their anxiety to be
lady-like forget to be womanly, and turn to that
Joan of whom I confess myself to be the Darby, that
certain party who has not the least idea of high life—
Margaret. Mind, Iby no means desire to affirm that
Margaret is the N. of ,to whom lam irrevo-
cably willed to be the M. of —.No, if it were in
that certain state, I should hardly last week have
been exacting the customary tribute, which had
cost me a three minutes' chase and all my breath,
from a very pretty girl in pink, at kiss in the
ring, or reassuring her engaging terror, while what
was billed as " a sanguine display of fireworks" was
going on, hard by : or at a still latter period have,
Petrarch:like, dogged a" very Laura of charmers
in a slate-coloured bonnet, and a black silk visite,
a full two miles out of my way, until, indeed, her
abruptly stopping to exchange salutations with a rival
in a shooting coat and garden hat at the corner of a
street, obliged my simultaneous disappearance down
an opposite one. Oh no, we are not engaged, though
as she sews a button on for me, she asks what
we men would do without her sex, I cannot help be-
ginning to think. I shall never be able to do without
her; though, when I am sufficiently happy to be
holding skeins for her to reel, and she calls all my
fingers thumbs in such a bewitching way, that 1: do
sometimes catch myself glancing at the unringed
fourth finger of her left hand ; and though often,when
roused by some remark of hers from a wrapt contem-
plation of her, I begin to wonder 'whether this may
not be the private interview preparatory to a final
settlement, mentioned in matrimonial advertisements.
I will attempt a faint outline of her appearance :
Ivory shoulders, pearly teeth, ruby lips, ebon hair,
these are some of the gifts which, fused into one person,
make her " a real fortune to a husband ;" but could I
daguerreotype the " feminine assault " of her smile
when she corrects a trifling misstatement with, ne_
I tell a story— or tells your and her humble servant
of wet nights, that he will "go home by water,
then"—you—why you too, perhaps, would be want-
ing to launch into the honourable estate of matrimony
with so winsome a steersmate.

And as I consider Margaret as coming near enough
to womanly perfection for my purpose, I shall just
finish this paper With her description.
Claude
She works
ccilatesvhainligerbiltgrtanYcomuarnt: and, in
for her living with her bands, which may excuse her
f.ndnees for light reading in leisure hours; she can
..hvuravialt,thwisiteh
a word, generally with that numerous claw of travel-
stained pedestrians who, towards the close of a wet
day in the spring
with
that ptrhe' that
tx
of the year --, and at the opening
of many a dry novel I call to mind, are continually
arriving at romantic road-side inns. (I know that