ACCOMPLISHMENTS

A pictorial critic, commending the water-colour painting of Mr. Arthur Rich, says that, after examining his firm and serious work, "it is impossible to think that there is anything trivial in the art of Aquarelle—that it is, as has been said, 'a thing Aunts do.'"

A thing Aunts do. I linger on the words, for they suggest deep thoughts. Many and mysterious are the tricks of language—not least so the subtle law by which certain relationships inevitably suggest peculiar traits. Thus the Grandmother stands to all time as the type of benevolent feebleness; the Stepmother was branded by classical antiquity as Unjust; and Thackeray's Mrs. Gashleigh and Mrs. Chuff are the typical Mothers-in-Law. The Father is commonly the "Heavy Father" of fiction and the drama. The Mother is always quoted with affection, as in "Mother-wit," our Mother-country, and our Mother-tongue. "A Brother," ever since the days of Solomon, "is born for adversity," and a Brother-officer implies a loyal friend. A Sister is the type of Innocence, with just a faint tinge or nuance of pitying contempt, as when the Vainglorious Briton speaks of the "Sister Country" across St. George's Channel, or the hubristic Oxonian sniggers at the "Sister University" of Cambridge. Eldest and Younger Sons again, as I have before now had occasion to point out, convey two quite different sets of ideas, and this discrepancy has not escaped the notice of the social Poet, who observes that—

"Acres and kine and tenements and sheep
Enrich the Eldest, while the Younger Sons
Monopolize the talents and the duns."

"My Uncle," in colloquial phrase, signifies the merchant who transacts his business under the sign of the Three Golden Balls; and to these expressive relationships must be added Auntship. "A thing Aunts do," says the pictorial critic; and the contumelious phrase is not of yesterday, for in 1829 a secularly-minded friend complained that young Mr. William Gladstone, then an Undergraduate at Christ Church, had "mixed himself up so much with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who are really, for the most part, only fit to live with maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits." To paint in water-colour and to keep tame rabbits are pursuits which to the superficial gaze have little in common, though both are, or were, characteristic of Aunts, and both are, in some sense, accomplishments, demanding natural taste, acquired skill, patience, care, a delicate touch, and a watchful eye. Perhaps these were the particular accomplishments in which the traditional Aunt "specialized," though she had never heard that bad word; but, if she chose to diffuse her energies more widely, the world was all before her where to choose; and, by a singular reversal of the law of progress, there were more "accomplishments" to solicit her attention a hundred years ago than there are to-day.

When the most fascinating of all heroines, Di Vernon, anticipated posterity by devoting her attention to politics, field sports, and classical literature, she enumerated, among the more feminine accomplishments which she had discarded, "sewing a tucker, working cross-stitch, and making a pudding"; and she instanced, among the symbols of orthodox femininity "a shepherdess wrought in worsted, a broken-backed spinet, a lute with three strings, rock-work, shell-work, and needle-work." We clear the century with a flying leap, and find ourselves in the company of a model matron, with surroundings substantially unchanged: "Mrs. Bayham-Badger was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it." Miss Volumnia Dedlock's accomplishments, though belonging to the same period, were slightly different: "Displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of coloured paper, and also singing to the guitar in the Spanish tongue and propounding French conundrums in country houses, she passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date, and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath." Perhaps she had been educated by Miss Monflathers, "who was at the head of the head Boarding and Day Establishment in the town," and whose gloss on the didactic ditty of the Busy Bee so confounded the emissary from the Waxworks.

"In books, or work, or healthful play

is quite right as far as genteel children are concerned, and in their case 'work' means painting on velvet, fancy needle-work, or embroidery." Do even Aunts paint on velvet, or cut ornaments out of coloured paper, in this "so-called Twentieth Century"? I know no more pathetic passage in the Literature of Art than that in which Mrs. Gaskell enumerated Miss Matty's qualifications for the work of teaching:—

"I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon a time I had heard her say she could play 'Ah! vous dirai-je maman?' on the piano; but that was long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement had died out years before. She had also once been able to trace patterns very nicely for muslin embroidery, but that was her nearest approach to the accomplishment of drawing, and I did not think it would go very far. Miss Matty's eyes were failing her, and I doubted if she could discover the number of threads in a worsted-work pattern, or rightly appreciate the different shades required for Queen Adelaide's face, in the loyal wool-work now fashionable in Cranford."

The allusion to Queen Adelaide's face fixes the narrative between 1820 and 1830, and George Eliot was depicting the same unenlightened period when she described the accomplishments provided by Ladies' Schools as "certain small tinklings and smearings." Probably all of us can recall an Aunt who tinkled on the piano, or a First Cousin once Removed who smeared on Bristol Board. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose invincible force and evergreen memory carry down into the reign of King Edward VII. the traditions of Queen Charlotte's Court, is a singularly accomplished Aunt, and she has just made this remarkable confession: "At different times I have attempted many kinds of amateur work, including book illumination, leather-working, wood-carving, and, of late years, a kind of old-fashioned paper-work, which consists in arranging little slips of coloured paper into decorative designs, as was done at the end of the eighteenth century. When completed, this work is made up into boxes, trays, or mounts for pictures." Surely in this accomplishment Miss Volumnia Dedlock lives again. And then Lady Dorothy, lapsing into reminiscent vein, makes this rather half-hearted apology for the domestic artistry of bygone days: "Years ago ladies used to spend much more of their time in artistic work of some kind or other, for there were not then the many distractions which exist to-day. Indeed, in the country some sort of work was a positive necessity; and though, no doubt, by far the greater portion of what was done was absolutely hideous, useless, and horrible, yet it served the purpose of passing away many an hour which otherwise would have been given up to insufferable boredom."

Yes, the fashions of the world succeed one another in perpetual change; but Boredom is eternally the enemy, and the paramount necessity of escaping from it begets each year some new and strange activity. The Aunt no longer paints in water-colours or keeps tame rabbits, flattens ferns in an album, or traces crude designs with a hot poker on a deal board. To-day she urges the impetuous bicycle, or, in more extreme cases, directs the murderous motor; lectures on politics or platonics, Icelandic art, or Kamschatkan literature. Perhaps she has a Cause or a Mission pleads for the legal enforcement of Vegetarian Boots, or tears down the knocker of a Statesman who refuses her the suffrage. Perhaps her enthusiasms are less altruistic, and then she may pillage her friends at Bridge, or supply the New York Sewer with a weekly column of Classy Cuttings. "Are you the Daily Mail?" incautiously chirped a literary lady to an unknown friend who had rung her up on the telephone. "No, I'm not, but I always thought you were," was the reply; and so, in truth, she was.