Note 130 — Chapter VIII · DAILY LIFE. (Women.)

Virtually, these two different versions of how an idle woman passed her time agree remarkably well, and they let a whole flood of daylight into the inner life of the time—on what they breakfasted when they dined, what time the opera began, etc. Apart from opera, the play, and cards, how were the females of the middle class to amuse themselves of an evening? Say they had been busy all day, the evenings had to be passed somehow. There was very little of that domesticity and home life of which we are so proud, for the men spent their evenings at their club, their coffee-house, the tavern, or the play, so they had to amuse themselves with such innocent games as hot cockles, questions and commands, mottoes, similes, cross purposes, blindman's buff, and a game called 'Parson has lost his Cloak,' or else 'Bouts rimés,' which consisted of giving four terminal words of any kind so that they rhymed, and then some one else filling up the blank lines, and making four lines of sensible poetry.[130] In fact, just the same amusements that are now compelled to be resorted to as pastimes in a village home. The better class had musical evenings, for chamber music was popular, but the spinets and harpsichords were of moderate compass, and very slight in sound. They danced country dances too, any quantity of them; and there was the curse of the age—cards—as a never-failing resource.