“Of all the sorrows in which the female character may participate there are few more affecting than those of an Authoress--often insulated and unprotected in society--with all the sensibility of the sex, encountering miseries which break the spirits of men!” This delicate expression of sympathy for a woman’s literary struggles was written by the elder Disraeli as late as 1840. Truly we have raced along the rails of progress since then at express speed--and the “affecting” sorrows of an “Authoress” (with a capital A) now affect nobody except in so far as they make “copy” for the callow journalist to hang a string of cheap sneers upon. The Authoress must take part with the Author in the general rough-and-tumble of life--and she cannot too quickly learn the truth that when once she enters the literary arena, where men are already fisticuffing and elbowing each other remorselessly, she will be met chiefly with “kicks and no ha’pence.” She must fight like the rest, unless she prefers to lie down and be walked over. If she elects to try for a first place, it will take her all her time to win it, and, when won, to hold it; and, in the event of her securing success, she must not expect any chivalrous consideration from the opposite sex, or any special kindness and sympathy from her own. For the men will consider her “out of her sphere” if she writes books instead of producing babies, and the women will, in nine cases out of ten, begrudge her the freedom and independence she enjoys, particularly if such freedom and independence be allied to fortune and fame. This all goes without saying. It has to be understood and accepted uncomplainingly. The “old-fashioned” grace of chivalry to women, once so proudly lauded by poets and essayists as the distinguishing trait of all manly men, is not to be relied on in the Life Literary--for there it is as dead as door-nails. Men can be found in the literary profession who will do anything to “down” a woman in the same calling, and, if they cannot for shame’s sake do it openly, they will do it behind her back. “’Tis pitiful, ’tis wondrous pitiful”--for the men! But if the woman concerned has studied her art to any purpose she will accept calumny as a compliment, slander as a votive wreath, and “envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness” (from which, with pious hypocrisy, the most envious and uncharitable persons pray “Good Lord deliver us” every Sunday) as so many tokens and proofs of her admitted power. And none of these things need disturb the equanimity of the Life Literary. “Can any man cast me out of the Universe? He cannot; but whithersoever I may go there will be the sun and the moon, and the stars and visions, and communion with the gods!”[6]