DAUGHTERS 337 



independence or pride, to work out their lives for them- 

 selves, and refuse to be helped, guided, or taught by the 

 knowledge and experience of those who have gone before 

 them in the books of the dead and the speaking of the 

 living they throw themselves back in the race in a way 

 that generally, to my knowledge, has resulted in failure. 

 Even cases of marked talent and individuality must learn 

 from others. In art and in music they must all work, at 

 first, after the manner of someone else. Supposing, for 

 instance, that Albert Diirer had lived in Venice, he would 

 have been a Venetian painter, and not have worked on the 

 lines of the old German painters. This would have been 

 greatly to his advantage. It is true that circumstances do 

 not make talent, but they immensely influence it; so 

 nothing in the lives and training of the young who are 

 no longer children, especially if they are precocious and 

 clever, is unimportant. 



On looking back, one of the disappointments of my 

 life, when I recollect how the matter was discussed and 

 written about in my girlhood, is the little progress that 

 has been made in the laying-by and organising of 

 fortunes for girls. I do not only mean leaving them a 

 few thousand pounds at the death of both parents, but, 

 as a matter of course,- either giving them a sum of money, 

 as the French do, when they marry, or giving them a 

 sufficient allowance, according to the fortunes of the 

 father, if they take to any employment and do not marry. 

 The modern hack phrase, that children owe their parents 

 nothing for bringing them into the world without their 

 leave, is of course ridiculous ; but I do think a right- 

 minded father ought to realise that a woman who has 

 not a penny she can call her own, is a kind of 

 slave. The same thing applies to a husband if a wife 

 goes to him with nothing. She cannot even give a 

 present without asking him for the money. I think 



