The Spinster’s Last Hope

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Introduction

Mrs. Walker. “The Spinster’s Last Hope.” The Comic Offering, or Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth 2 (1832): 246–53. Print.

Written by a Mrs. Walker and published in 1832 in The Comic Offering, “The Spinster’s Last Hope” is a fascinating example of a Victorian woman using humor to discuss an issue that was central to most Victorian women’s lives: marriage. The story is narrated by a woman who has been engaged six times but never married; she loses her suitors one by one as they succumb to death, their own vices, or her competition. “The Spinster’s Last Hope” is therefore an analysis—albeit light and humorous—of the single woman’s plight in Victorian society.

As the narrator demonstrates, a failure to marry is a failure of all hope: if the woman has no place at the head of a household, she is relegated to humble, forgotten positions like those described again and again by the Bronte sisters. The spinster in Mrs. Walker’s story is made helpless and useless by remaining single, which illustrates how poorly Victorian women were educated for an independent, productive life—the spinster is an illustration of what Florence Nightingale, Francis Power Cobbe, and George Eliot asserted will happen to women who are not taught to develop themselves intellectually. “The Spinster’s Last Hope” is also significant as a part of a rising movement of women’s humor in literature; as Tamara L. Hunt observes in her article “Louisa Henrietta Sheridan’s Comic Offering and the Critics: Gender and Humor in the Early Victorian Era,” critics were reluctant to accept comedic, feminine periodicals like The Comic Offering as appropriate for women.[1] An analysis of how Mrs. Walker uses humor to explore women’s predicaments therefore provides an interesting insight into the attitudes women held toward courtship, marriage, and spinsterhood and how those women conversed with male contemporaries on the issues.

Our knowledge about the author of “The Spinster’s Last Hope” is limited. Because the editor, Louisa Sheridan, produced only five volumes of her periodical, The Comic Offering (annually from 1831 to 1835), there is little information about the periodical, its editor, or its contributing authors beyond what can be found in the volumes themselves. The identity of Mrs. Walker may thus be permanently uncertain, but she is most likely the Elizabeth Rennie Walker born in 1806 and listed in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals as a regular contributor to the New Monthly Magazine.

Though information about Eliza Walker is scarce, the evidence that The Comic Offering’s Mrs. Walker is Eliza Walker is convincing. “The Spinster’s Last Hope” is similar to Eliza Walker’s stories in both subject matter and style—her comic stories include “Letter from a Bashful Bachelor and “The Complaint of ‘le Cavalier Seul,’” both of which revolve around themes of marriage and the amusing challenges posed by courtship. Eliza contributed to the New Monthly frequently between 1821 and 1830, suggesting that she was still writing and publishing short stories when The Comic Offering was published. And as shown in her book Traits of Character, she knew Thomas Campbell (the editor of the New Monthly) as a personal friend and greatly admired his Pleasures of Hope, which Mrs. Walker quotes in “Spinster.”[2] Regardless of the authorship, however, “The Spinster’s Last Hope” provides a valuable sample of the women’s domestic humor that flourished in periodicals like The Comic Offering in the 1830s.


Transcription

The Spinster’s Last Hope

(See PDF Version)

Much has been written, more, perhaps, than ever was felt, upon the frustration and annihilation of our first hopes. Many a goodly sonnet, with its proper quantity of lines and syllables, and minus only, nature, feeling, and imagery, has been thrust before the public eye, to record that life’s vernal spring is not perennial, and to announce the new and interesting fact, that human existence has not changed its character since the period when it was denounced by Job as being of “few days and full of trouble.”[3] One would have imagined, that these words, stamped as they are in the volume of eternal truth, would have availed as a beacon to guide man, and woman too, from the dark abyss of disappointment. Yet every day’s experience shows us some unfortunate victim of excited expectations, blazoning forth his sorrows to the world, “in all the pomp and majesty of woe,”[4] and challenging its sympathy as loudly as if there were any novelty or distinctiveness in grief, and as if every heart that is warmed into life, numbered not the greater amount of its pulsations, by the dial of despair! But no more of this—I am a professed enemy to querulousness, and a consistent and decided opponent to sentimentality of all kinds—and maintain the possibility of living cheerfully and contentedly, even after one’s last hope has been laid low. Such is my case; and it behooves[5] me to introduce it, in its details.

Reader, are you of the “Beau sexe,” [6] and are you married? If so, you must remember well the throbs and anxieties, the alternations of hope and fear, during the progress of the courtship which led you to the altar. But was not the preponderating fear throughout, that some untoward accident should defeat your views, and throw you back upon society without the support of that protection which you sought to achieve, by much amiability, a little finesse, it may be, and diligent dressing? Think, then, of her state, who has six times been verging into the character of a wife, and at the age of forty-five, remains to sign herself a spinster! Youth is proverbially the season of enjoyment, and so I found it—eighteen years, and 20,000l.[7]—fashion, vivacity, and personability—I hope the word neither compromises my truth nor my vanity—brought me plenty of admirers, and one unexceptionable offer. It was accepted; the ring was bought; the carriage ordered; the settlements adjusted; and I within a few days of white favours and St. George’s church, [8] when a brain fever[9]—but I will not commit sentimentalism—and this passage of my life opens such avenues to it, that I would fain rush over it. Enough—my first love died: and I lived to receive, at twenty-one, my second offer, and chronicle, also, my second disappointment! My second adorer was one who, had he been like Cassio[10]in the play, an “arithmetician,” would have divided the palm of celebrity with the American boy of calculating fame. Every act and deed was regulated with the nicest exactness, and with the sole view of adding to his fortune, subtracting from his anxieties, or dividing his cares. He lived in calculations. From the period of his making his toilet in the morning, when he balanced for half an hour, the advantages of wearing a claret or olive surtout,[11] till twelve at night, which found him in his legislative capacity in St. Stephen’s Chapel,[12] calculating on the propriety of voting with or against the minister.

Fatal to my hopes was this ruling passion. It was at a country ball, I was tried by this mental measurement, and found wanting. It was there he proved, that having neither the beauty of Miss L., the fortune of Miss W., or the influence of Miss M., the sum total might, after putting him in possession of a wife, leave him with a diminution of happiness and freedom. He, therefore, declared off, with all the quiet nonchalance possible. And the depression of the agricultural interest forming something like an excuse to my father, for the non-ratification of his engagement, he made his regrets and his conge[13] to me, with the most serious of bows, and the deepest of sighs!

Twenty-three—found me—with my hand, small and snowy as it confessedly was, unsought for. I had gone to the expense of advertising myself, by having my portrait painted for Somerset House, [14] and my name fully described in the catalogue. I rode through the park during the season,[15] at the most orthodox hours, and on an unexceptionable horse. I had attended the opera as regularly as the prompter; still it would not do; when fate suddenly achieved the desired good—an offer! I was on a visit at my uncle’s—one of my cousins was given to music—I took the hint, and warbled at him steadily and untiringly. A new song came out—it suited my voice, and I sang it with effect—the reward was an offer to make me Mrs. Algernon Tracy. But evanescent was my triumph! The York music meeting came, and Miss —, the celebrated prima donna, came too. She sang my song, and without music—it was resistless—my cousin ceased his plaudits only to seek the fair vocalist, and play the inconstant to me. A few weeks after saw him married to my rival, and myself tearing the identical song into the smallest possible atoms.

Thirty—Alas! I thought, am I then really to be an old maid? I let down my hair, and it was luxuriant, without the fostering aid of Macassar.[16] It told—a gentlemanly, but very bald man, asked my love, and unquestionably would have secured it, and my hand, too, had I not discovered in time, that he paid his devotions at a gambling house more punctually than to me; and that having already dispersed 30,000l. through the agency of “Rouge et Noir,”[17] he was ready and willing to send my 20,000l. in pursuit after it. I thought the mission somewhat contingent as to its results, and declined his offer.

Thirty to thirty-five—I was now in a feverish state of anxiety as to the progress of the years, and began studiously to avoid all allusion to birth-days; smiled with peculiar complacency upon every person who called me ‘Miss’ at first sight; adopted all the mutabilities of fashion; accepted invitations to country seats, in good hunting counties; discoursed with the Squirearchy[18] upon dogs and horses; and having, to shew my courage, and gratify the wish of one particular individual, consented to mount a horse who never would do aught but gallop (I never could do aught but trot gently); got a severe fall, and a contused head. As an indemnity for my obedience to his request, the owner of the steed began to talk of his bruised heart, and to ask me to heal it at the village church hard by. I consented—and here the destroyer of my prospects was a housekeeper—one of those middle-aged gentlewomen who exercise, in the ménage[19] of single men, such omnipotent mastery over their purses and persons. She knew her empire would terminate with the commencement of my reign, and persuaded Mr. Darnley that he would go to ruin, and she to the canal,[20] if he turned his old and faithful domestic away; —did tears and hysterics for one whole week, and appeared, at the beginning of the next, as mistress of Darnley Hall!

Thirty-five to forty—is a fearful age for spinsters—offers come “like angel’s visits, few and far between.”[21] To me they never came at all; and I have now to narrate the climax of my fears, and the death of my hopes, which took place in the October of 1830. In an evil hour I accompanied some friends to Paris, who had given me sundry hints as to the preference the Frenchmen had for English wives. Arrived in the metropolis, many of the Parisians, with a laudable desire to give pleasure, inquired of me when I should be twenty-five! One whose mustachios were particularly well arranged, and whose decorations were abundant, and upon whom I had begun to look with strong interest, asked me one day to accompany him to the English Ambassador’s chapel; and whilst surveying the altar, insinuated his desire to confer upon me there the title of Madame. He obtained my promise; and the next day obtained, alas! also from me, an order upon Lafitte, [22] which put him in possession of the whole of my property! He quitted Paris with the avowed intent of laying out some thousands of my francs in the purchase of a chateau[23] in Normandy. For any thing I know to the contrary, he may have done so; but this I know, that I have never seen him or my money since. I lost my follies with my fortune; I re-crossed the channel,[24] and obtained a situation as humble companion in Lady D.’s family. And here I am, cheerful and happy; though every chance of changing my name has vanished for ever! And “the spinster’s last hope” has failed her.

Notes

  1. ↑ Tamara L. Hunt, “Louisa Henrietta Sheridan’s Comic Offering and the Critics: Gender and Humor in the Early Victorian Era,” Victorian Periodicals Review 29 (1996): 99, Print.
  2. ↑ Eliza Rennie, Traits of Character: Being Twenty-five Years’ Literary and Personal Recollections, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1860, Google Book Search, Web, 2 Nov. 2007.
  3. ↑ Job 14:1: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble” (KJV).
  4. ↑ In Shakespeare’s King Richard II, King Richard of England mourns having to relinquish his crown to a rival: “With mine own breath [I] release all duty’s rites: / All pomp and majesty I do forswear” (4.1.214–15).
  5. ↑ In the original, “behoves.”
  6. ↑ The fair sex (French).
  7. ↑ Today, this would be about 1,380,000 pounds or 2,900,00 U.S. dollars (VW).
  8. ↑ Probably a church in Southwark, London. Francis Miltoun, Dickens’ London, Boston: L.C. Page, 1903, 110, Print.
  9. ↑ Brain fever was “a term for inflammation of the brain, ‘and also for other fevers, as typhus, with brain complications’” (OED).
  10. ↑ Cassio, the lieutenant in Shakespeare’s Othello, is valued as an arithmetician and theorist who helps Othello with battle strategies.
  11. ↑ Claret is a purplish-red color named after Bordeaux wine; a surtout was a man’s frock coat (OED).
  12. ↑ The part of the Houses of Parliament used for meetings of the House of Commons (“Houses of Parliament,” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2007, Web, 30 Oct. 2007).
  13. ↑ i.e., he took leave of her (French).
  14. ↑ The headquarters of the Royal Academy of Arts (“Royal Academy of Arts,” Encyclopedia Britannica).
  15. ↑ The time between Easter and August when the upper classes participated in social gatherings in London. During the season, the wealthy often rode in carriages or on horseback through the city’s parks at certain hours of the day to socialize (Liza Picard, Victorian London, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005, 207, Print.
  16. ↑ Macassar oil was a reddish-brown liquid supposedly from Macassar in Indonesia; it was used to give the hair color and a glossy sheen. Because the oil would often rub off onto furniture from the back of the head, Victorians placed anti-macassars (cloth edged with lace) over the backs of their chairs to prevent staining (Picard 170).
  17. ↑ 30,000l. would be about 2,070,000 pounds or 4,300,000 U.S. dollars today (VW). Rouge et Noir is French for “Red and Black.” It was a popular European card game in which players bet for the highest value in successive rows of cards laid out and labeled as red or black rows (“Trente et Quarante,” Encyclopedia Britannica).
  18. ↑ A squire was a landed gentleman. Squirearchy is “the collective body of squires, landed proprietors, or country gentry” (OED).
  19. ↑ Household (French).
  20. ↑ This is possibly a suicide threat—because of their accessibility, canals were often sites of suicide for women in Victorian England (Olive Anderson, Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England, Oxford: Clarendon, 1987, 356, Print).
  21. ↑ From Pleasures of Hope, by the Scottish Romantic poet Thomas Campbell (1777–1844): “What though my winged hours of bliss have been / Like angel-visits, few and far between” (part 2, lines 374–75).
  22. ↑ Probably Jean Lafitte (1780–1825), a French privateer and smuggler who ran illicit business operations from the United States (“Jean Lafitte,” Encyclopedia Britannica).
  23. ↑ Castle (French).
  24. ↑ The English Channel, which separates England from France.


Edited by: Peterson, Christie: section 1, Fall 2007


From: Volume 2 (The Comic Offering, or Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth)

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