PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vol. 99.

December 6, 1890.

MODERN TYPES.

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

No. XXII.—THE MANLY MAIDEN.

The Manly Maiden may be defined as the feminine exaggeration of those rougher qualities which men display in their intercourse with one another, or in the pursuit of those sports in which courage, strength, and endurance play a part. In a fatal moment she conceives the idea that she can earn the proud title of "a good fellow" by emulating the fashions and the habits of the robuster sex. She perceives that men have a liking for men who are strong, bluff, outspoken, and contemptuous of peril, and she infers mistakenly, that the same tribute of admiration is certain to be paid to a woman who, setting the traditions of her sex at defiance, consciously apes the manly model without a thought of all that the imitation involves. She forgets that as soon as a woman steps down of her own free will from the pedestal on which the chivalrous admiration of men has placed her, she abandons at once her claim to that flattering reticence of speech, and that specially attentive courtesy of bearing, which are in men the outward and visible signs of the spiritual grace which they assume as an attribute of all women. In spite of what the crazy theorists of the perfect equality school may say, men still continue to expect and to admire in women precisely those qualities in which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their reverence and affection are bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of life. Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of language or of body, they get enough and to spare amongst themselves, and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should prefer refinement to roughness, and gentleness to gentlemen. However, these obvious considerations have no weight with the Manly Maiden. In fact they never occur to her, and hence arise failures, and humiliations, and disappointments not a few.

The Manly Maiden is not, as a rule, the natural product of a genuine country life. The daughter of rich parents, who have spent a great part of their lives in a centre of commercial activity, she is introduced to a new home in the country at about the age of fourteen. Seeing that all those who live in the neighbourhood are in one way or another associated with outdoor sports, and that the favour in which the men are held and their fame vary directly as their power to ride or to shoot straight, she becomes possessed by the notion that she too must, if she is to please at all, be proficient in the sports of men. Merely to ride to hounds is, of course, not sufficiently distinctive. Many women do that, without losing at all the ordinary characteristics of women. She must ride bare-backed, she must understand a horse's ailments and his points, she must trudge (in the constant society of men) over fallows and through turnips in pursuit of partridges, she must be able to talk learnedly of guns, of powders, and of shot, she must possess a gun of her own, and think she knows how to use it, she must own a retriever, and herself make him submissive by the frequent application of a silver-headed dog-whip.

These attainments are her ideals of earthly bliss, and she sets out to realise them with a terrible perseverance. Her father, of course, knows but little of sport. He is, however, afflicted with the ordinary desire to shine as a sportsman, and as a host of sportsmen. He stocks his coverts with game, and invites large shooting parties to stay with him. He himself takes to a gun as a hen might take to the water; although, as his daughter contemptuously expresses it, he is calculated to miss a hippopotamus at ten yards, he seems to imagine, if one may be permitted to judge from the wild frequency of his shots, that it is the easiest thing in the world to hit a pheasant or a partridge flying at ten times that distance. From such a father the Manly Maiden easily secures permission, first of all, to walk with the men while they are shooting, and subsequently to carry a gun herself.

And now the difficulties of the situation begin to make themselves felt, not, indeed, by her, for she remains sublimely unconscious to the end, but by the men who are compelled to associate with her upon her ventures. No man will ever hesitate to rebuke another for carrying his gun in such a way as to threaten danger; but, when a lady allows him to inspect the inside of her loaded gun-barrels, or shoots down the line at an evasive rabbit, he must suffer in silence, and can only seek compensation for restraining his tongue by incontinently removing his body to a safe place, where he can neither shoot nor be shot. At luncheon, however, he may be gratified by hearing the Manly Maiden rally him on the poor result of his morning's sport. She will then favour him, at length, with her opinions as to how a driven partridge or a rocketing pheasant should be shot, flavouring her discourse with copious extracts from the Badminton books on shooting, and adding here and there imaginative reminiscences of her own exploits in dealing death. In the hunting-field she will lose her groom, and babble sport to the Master, with whom she further ingratiates herself by rating and lashing one of his favourite hounds, or by heading the fox whenever he attempts to break away. She then crosses him at an awkward fence, and considers herself aggrieved by the strong language which breaks irresistibly from the fallen sportsman's lips. Later on she astonishes an elderly follower of the hounds by asking him for a draught from his flask, and completes his amazement by complaining of the thoughtless manner in which he has diluted his brandy.

In the evening she will narrate her adventures at length, amidst a chorus of admiring comments from her fond parents, and their parasites, and will follow up her triumphs of the day by pursuing the men into the smoking-room, where she permits one of them to offer her a cigarette, and imagines that she delights him by accepting it. On such an occasion she will inform one of her friends that, on the whole, she has but a poor opinion of Diana of the Ephesians, seeing that she only hunted with women, and never allowed men to approach her. From this it may be inferred that her stock of classical allusions is not quite so accurate and complete as that of a genuine sportswoman should be. Next morning she may be seen schooling her horses in the park. She has a touching faith in the use both of spur and of whip whenever the occasion seems least to demand them, and she despises the man who rides without rowels, and reverences one who attempts impossible jumps without discrimination. During the summer she spends a considerable part of her time in "getting fit" for the labours of the autumn and winter. Sometimes she even plays cricket, and has been known to address the ball that bowled her in highly uncomplimentary terms.

So the years pass on. She never learns that it is possible for a woman on certain occasions to be in the way of men, nor does her accuracy or her care with a gun increase. If she marries at all, she will marry some feeble creature who has no feeling for sport, and over whom she can lord it to her heart's content. But it is more probable that she will remain unwedded, and will develop eventually from a would-be harding-riding maiden, into a genuinely hard-featured old maid.

A MUSICAL POLE STAR.

The Irish Polar Star Musical,