R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

The Women Poets of the 'Seventies 115bicycling, though Mr Punch was sure bicycling was apastime utterly unsuited to the gentler sex. And rinkomaniatoo—the daughters of the middle classes gyratedwildly, with wheels on their feet much as Mercury hadwings on his ankles, in the arms of the sons of the middleclasses with whom the barest introduction had broughtthem together. And women wrote—but compared withthese athletics, and compared with this Higher Education,a copy of verses was surely a harmless thing? Letthem write by all means; let them write even novels—though Mr Punch must have a dig at Miss RhodaBroughton—the wielding of a pen, at any rate, did notdevelop the muscles of the forearm or necessarily flattenthe chest. The whole agitation was deplorable; but ifwomen must assert themselves at last, after centuries ofconvenient though perhaps rather humiliating subjection,then possibly fiction and poetry were less offensive formsof self-expression than Higher Education and bicycling,which could have nothing but a disastrous effect oncookery and the comfort of man.But now I would ask you to observe what curiouscreatures poets are, how little advantage they take ofopportunities offered them, and how remote they livefrom the busy world and its doings. Here we are in 1870,at the very beginning of all this stirring about women'srights, and woman's equality, with Professor Huxleylecturing to women in South Kensington, and Miss RhodaBroughton coming up as a flower, and women putting onthe gown of a Bachelor of Arts, and a thousand arrowsbeing loosed at the bullseye—by women—and a thousandcroquet balls being tapped through the hoop—by women—and a Mrs Punch intruding on Mr Punch's paper—which is as outrageous as a woman walking into a man'sclub—and Miss Florence Nightingale terrorising SidneyHerbert, and married women sticking to their own8-2