Health and Education. Charles Kingsley

and the sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act of doing nothing.  It is not the old for whom wise men are sad: but for you.  Where is your vitality?  Where is your “Lebensglückseligkeit,” your enjoyment of superfluous life and power?  Why can you not even dance and sing, till now and then, at night, perhaps, when you ought to be safe in bed, but when the weak brain, after receiving the day’s nourishment, has roused itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure?  What there is left of it is all going into that foolish book, which the womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, delights in; because it places you in fancy in situations in which you will never stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of which, it may be, you had better never feel.  Poor Nausicaa—old, some men think, before you have been ever young.

      And now they are going to “develop” you; and let you have your share in “the higher education of women,” by making you read more books, and do more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop over desks at night after stooping over some other employment all day; and to teach you Latin, and even Greek.

      Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you learn thereby to read the history of Nausicaa of old, and what manner of maiden she was, and what was her education.  You will admire her, doubtless.  But do not let your admiration limit itself to drawing a meagre half-mediævalized design of her—as she never looked.  Copy in your own person; and even if you do not descend as low—or rise as high—as washing the household clothes, at least learn to play at ball; and sing, in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and concert-rooms by gaslight; and take decent care of your own health; and dress not like a “Parisienne”—nor, of course, like Nausicaa of old, for that is to ask too much:—but somewhat more like an average Highland lassie; and try to look like her, and be like her, of whom Wordsworth sang—

         “A mien and face

      In which full plainly I can trace

      Benignity and home-bred sense,

      Ripening in perfect innocence.

      Here scattered, like a random seed,

      Remote from men, thou dost not need

      The embarrassed look of shy distress

      And maidenly shamefacedness.

      Thou wear’st upon thy forehead clear

      The freedom of a mountaineer.

      A face with gladness overspread,

      Soft smiles, by human kindness bred,

      And seemliness complete, that sways

      Thy courtesies, about thee plays.

      With no restraint, save such as springs

      From quick and eager visitings

      Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach

      Of thy few words of English speech.

      A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife

      That gives thy gestures grace and life.”

      Ah, yet unspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant of the dark tender-hearted Celtic girl, and the fair deep-hearted Scandinavian Viking, thank God for thy heather and fresh air, and the kine thou tendest, and the wool thou spinnest; and come not to seek thy fortune, child, in wicked London town; nor import, as they tell me thou art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that London town, clumsy copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother and thy mother’s mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other women’s hair.

      It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls more and more to that of boys.  If that means that girls are merely to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are taught, in addition to what their mothers were taught; then it is to be hoped, at least by physiologists and patriots, that the scheme will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably rational country, all imperfect and ill-considered schemes are sure to gravitate.  But if the proposal be a bonâ fide one: then it must be borne in mind that in the public schools of England, and in all private schools, I presume, which take their tone from them, cricket and football are more or less compulsory, being considered integral parts of an Englishman’s education; and that they are likely to remain so, in spite of all reclamations: because masters and boys alike know that games do not, in the long run, interfere with a boy’s work; that the same boy will very often excel in both; that the games keep him in health for his work; that the spirit with which he takes to his games when in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-shop-haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious.  Moreover, they know well that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing-field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still, temper, self-restraint, fairness, honour, unenvious approbation of another’s success, and all that “give and take” of life which stand a man in such good stead when he goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and partial.

      Now: if the promoters of higher education for women will compel girls to any training analogous to our public school games; if, for instance, they will insist on that most natural and wholesome of all exercises, dancing, in order to develop the lower half of the body; on singing, to expand the lungs and regulate the breath; and on some games—ball or what not—which will ensure that raised chest, and upright carriage, and general strength of the upper torso, without which full oxygenation of the blood, and therefore general health, is impossible; if they will sternly forbid tight stays, high heels, and all which interferes with free growth and free motion; if they will consider carefully all which has been written on the “half-time system” by Mr. Chadwick and others; and accept the certain physical law that, in order to renovate the brain day by day, the growing creature must have plenty of fresh air and play, and that the child who learns for four hours and plays for four hours, will learn more, and learn it more easily, than the child who learns for the whole eight hours; if, in short, they will teach girls not merely to understand the Greek tongue, but to copy somewhat of the Greek physical training, of that “music and gymnastic” which helped to make the cleverest race of the old world the ablest race likewise: then they will earn the gratitude of the patriot and the physiologist, by doing their best to stay the downward tendencies of the physique, and therefore ultimately of the morale, in the coming generation of English women.

      I am sorry to say that, as yet, I hear of but one movement in this direction among the promoters of the “higher education of women.”4  I trust that the subject will be taken up methodically by those gifted ladies; who have acquainted themselves, and are labouring to acquaint other women, with the first principles of health; and that they may avail to prevent the coming generations, under the unwholesome stimulant of competitive examinations, and so forth, from “developing” into so many Chinese-dwarfs—or idiots.

      THE AIR-MOTHERS

      “Die Natur ist die Bewegung.”

      Who are these who follow us softly over the moor in the autumn eve?  Their wings brush and rustle in the fir-boughs, and they whisper before us and behind, as if they called gently to each other, like birds flocking homeward to their nests.

      The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass.  The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble in their play.  The brown leaves on the oak trees know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass.  And in the chattering of the dry leaves there is a meaning, and a cry of weary things which long for rest.

      “Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers the sunbeams are grown dull.  Our green summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are grown wan and wan; and the buds, the children whom we nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our seats.  Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings to the quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all things go, and become air

4

Since this essay was written, I have been sincerely delighted to find that my wishes had been anticipated at Girton College, near Cambridge, and previously at Hitchin, whence the college was removed: and that the wise ladies who superintend that establishment propose also that most excellent institution—a swimming bath.  A paper, moreover, read before the London Association of Schoolmistresses in 1866, on “Physical Exercises and Recreation for Girls,” deserves all attention.  May those who promote such things prosper as they deserve.