This was written in _Punch_ in July, 1842, but there is not much difference in the estimate of the feminine intellect given ten years later:--
1. Be always telling her how pretty she is.
2. Instil into her mind a proper love of dress.
3. Accustom her to so much pleasure that she is never happy at home.
5. Teach her all the accomplishments, but none of the utilities of life.
6. Keep her in the darkest ignorance of the mysteries of house-keeping.
7. Initiate her into the principle that it is vulgar to do anything for herself.
8. To strengthen the latter belief, let her have a lady's maid.
9. And lastly, having given her such an education, marry her to a clerk in the Treasury upon £75 a year, or to an ensign who is going out to India.
If, with the above careful training, your daughter is not finished, you may be sure it is no fault of yours, and you must look upon her escape as nothing short of a miracle.
[Footnote 18: George Alexander Lee (1802-51), son of a London publican and pugilist, "tiger" to Lord Barrymore, and subsequently tenor singer, music seller, lessee of Drury Lane, composer and music director at the Strand and Olympic Theatres. Among his many songs and ballads, popular in their day, were "Away, Away to the Mountain's Brow," "The Macgregor's Gathering," and "Come where the Aspens Quiver."]
[Illustration: SPORTING MAN (loquitur): "I say, Charles, that's a promising little filly along o' that bay-haired woman who's talking to the black-cob-looking man."]
The "higher education" of women was not discussed in these days of Keepsakes and Books of Beauty, though, as we have seen, the official recognition of learned women and authoresses--Mrs. Somerville and Maria Edgeworth--was supported by _Punch_. In his "Letters to a Young Man about Town," Thackeray frequently insists on the refining influence of good women in Society, but intellectual ladies met with little encouragement from his pen or pencil; he liked to see women at dinners, regretted their early departure, and suggested that the custom of the gentlemen remaining behind might be modified if not abolished; "the only substitute for them or consolation for the want of them is smoking."
_Punch_ castigates the caprice of flirts, while admitting their fascination. He ridicules the imaginary ailments of fashionable women exhausted by gaiety; but he waxes bitterly indignant over "the Old Bailey ladies" who obtained access to the chapel at Newgate to listen to the "condemned sermon" in the presence of a convicted murderer, or scrambled for seats at the trials of notorious malefactors. The only excuse for this odious curiosity was that their menfolk set the women the worst possible example. Executions were public, and were freely patronized by the nobility and gentry. The most powerful of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ deals with this ugly phase of early Victorian manners, and can be verified from the pages of _Punch_, who tells us how, on the occasion of an execution in June, 1842:--