PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 99.

September 6, 1890.

MODERN TYPES.

(By Mr. Punch's own Type Writer.)

No. XVIII.—THE UNDOMESTIC DAUGHTER.

The race of daughters is large, but their characteristics, vocations, and aptitudes, are but little understood by the general public. It is expected of them by their mothers that they should be a comfort, by their fathers that they should be inexpensive and unlike their brothers, and by their brothers that they should be as slaves, submissively attached to the fraternal car of triumph. The outside public, the mothers and fathers, that is to say, of other daughters, look upon them vaguely, as mild and colourless beings, destitute alike of character, of desires and of aspirations. And it must be said that daughters themselves, before matrimony absorbs their daughterhood and relieves them of their mothers, seem to be in the main content with the calm and limited existence which their relations and the voice of tradition assign to them. Most of them after they have passed through the flashing brilliance of their first season, and the less radiant glow of their second, are happy enough to spend the time that must elapse ere the destined knight shall sound the trumpet of release at the gates of the fortress, in an atmosphere of quiet domestic usefulness. One becomes known to fame, and her friends, as being above all others, "such a comfort to her mother." She interviews the cook, she arranges the dinners, she devises light and favourite dishes to blunt the edge of paternal irritability by tickling the paternal palate, she writes out invitations, presides at the afternoon tea-table, and, in short, takes upon herself many of those smaller duties which are as last straws to the maternal back. Another becomes the sworn friend and ally of her brothers, whom she assists in their scrapes with a sympathy which is balm to the scraped soul, and with a wisdom in counsel, which can only spring from a deep regret at not having been herself born a boy, and capable of scrapes.

But there is often in families another and an Undomestic Daughter, who aspires to be in all things unlike the usual run of common or domestic daughters. From an early age she will have been noted in the family circle for romantic tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for impossible conflicts, of which they themselves, absorbed as they are in the examination and pocket-money struggles of boyhood, have no conception whatever. The effort to plant the tree of romance in an ordinary middle-class household was predestined to failure. Her disappointments are constant and crushing. Desires and capacities which, with careful nurture, might have come to a fair fruit, are chilled and nipped by the frost of neglect and ridicule. Her mind becomes warped. The work that is ready to her hand, the ordinary round of family tasks and serviceableness, repels her. She turns from it with distaste, and thus widens still more the gulf between herself and her relatives. Hence she is thrown back upon herself for companionship and comfort. She dissects, for her own bitter enjoyment, her inmost heart. She becomes the subtle analyst of her own imaginary motives. She calls up accusing phantoms to charge her before the bar of her conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict of guilty on every count of the indictment. In short, she becomes a thoroughly morbid and hysterical young woman, suspicious, and resentful even of the sympathy which is rarely offered to her. In the meantime, two of her younger sisters are wooed and won in the orthodox manner by steady-going gentlemen, of good position and prospects. The congratulations showered upon them, and the rejoicings which attend them on their wedding days, only serve to add melancholy to the Undomestic Daughter, who has already begun to solace herself for her failure to attract men by the reflection that matrimony itself is a failure, and that there are higher and worthier things in life than the wearing of orange-blossoms, and going-away dresses. It must be said that her parents strive with but little vigour against their daughter's inclination. Her father having hinted at indigestion as the cause of her unhappiness, and finding that the hint is badly received, shrugs his inapprehensive shoulders, and ceases to notice her. Her mother, persuaded that sanity is to be found only on the maternal side of the family, lays the peculiarities of her daughter to the charge of some abnormal paternal ancestor. Having thus, by implication, cleared herself from all responsibility, she feels that she is better able to take a detached and impartial view of errors which, seeing they are those of her own flesh and blood, she professes herself utterly unable to understand or to correct.

The Undomestic Daughter thus acquires the conviction that she herself is the most miserably crushed member of a down-trodden sex. In this, and in the agreement which she exacts from two or three melancholy friends, she seeks a solace for her sufferings. After a time, however, she discovers that this is insufficient. It must be said to her credit that her energies find the outlet of a passive sorrow inadequate. She burns to prove that one who is misunderstood and despised cannot only find useful work to do, but can do it better than her humdrum domestic sisters. Unfortunately, however, she overlooks the obvious and easy duties of her home. She scans the remote corners of the world. Her bruised spirit flutters about the bye-ways of charitable effort, and at length she establishes herself as a visitor, a distributer of tracts and blankets, and an instructor of factory girls. It is unnecessary to insist that these occupations are useful and praiseworthy in the abstract. It may be doubted, however, whether they should be undertaken by one who has to neglect for them equally necessary but less attractive labours.

The Undomestic Daughter, however, rejoices in the performance of work, which, as it were, sets a seal to her wretchedness, and stamps her as a being apart from the ruck of her sex. She now takes her meals alone, and at her own hours. She probably breakfasts at half-past seven, and dashes out to interview the Secretary of the Society for Improving the Cultivation of Mustard and Cress on the Desert Patches of the Mile End District. After this she will hasten to Lambeth, in order that mothers residing in that teeming quarter of the town may be blessed with mittens and mob-caps, and returning thence she devotes an hour or so to lectures which are to make her expert in tending the ailments of humanity. Occasionally the family arrangements are upset, in order that she may have her dinner at an hour which will make it convenient to her to attend the meeting of an Institute for Reading Historical Novels to Working Girls, and her father will lose all his available stock of good temper on finding that the moments generally devoted by him to soup are occupied to his exclusion by the apple-tart provided for his busy daughter. Hence come more storms and