LADY-GUIDES.
ONDON, besides its size, its population, its wealth, and
its innumerable objects of interest, is distinguished by being the only capital in Europe that does not possess a class of valets de place. In Rome, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and even in the smallest of the Italian towns, the guiding of travellers and strangers in their efforts to see sights and do shopping is a recognised business. Even in Egypt three hundred years before the Christian era, Herodotus found a caste of dragomans ready, like Mr. Cook's agents, to show the traveller Thebes or Memphis in two or ten days, according to the time at his disposal, and to post him in all the lore of the monuments and temples. To this day throughout the East, the professional guide exists as an institution which all travellers agree in using without feeling the sense of humiliation which is supposed to attach in Europe to engaging the services of a valet de place. Only in London is the stranger doomed to wander in worlds unrealised, and to attempt to carry out a plan, devised with all simplicity in the privacy of his chamber at the hotel, for combining in one morning's outing visits to the Tower and the British and South Kensington Museums, with an hour's shopping at Shoolbred's. The reproach, however, will, we trust, not rest on London much longer. A Society has, been formed, bearing the title of "The Lady-Guide Asso- ciation," which is to undertake the work, of supplying London with certificated guides. Ladies of culture and, intelligence are to be specially trained for the work, and when duly qualified, will undertake all or any of the following duties. They will take ladies, or mixed parties of gentlemen and ladies—but never gentlemen travelling en garcon—sight- seeing in London, and explain the antiquities and curiosities, or conduct their charges to the best and cheapest shops, with equal alacrity. Again, they will meet single and unprotected
young ladies at the stations, and deposit them in safe, clean, and respectable lodgings, and, when deposited, assist the young ladies aforesaid in the business upon which they have come to London. Lastly, and as supplemental to their more regular duties, the lady-guides may be introduced into the domestic circle as a sort of occasional caretakers, who will look after the house and superintend the children while the mistress is temporarily engaged elsewhere. The lady-guides who will undertake the duties we have enumerated will be divided into three classes of varying proficiency, and with an ascending scale of remuneration. "The charge for a first-class certifi- cated guide will be 3s. for an hour only, 4s. for two hours, and is. for each succeeding hour, or per day 8s. 6d., per week 22 5s., or per month 28 8s. For second-class guides, the scale would be 2s. per hour, 3s. for two hours, and 9d. for each suc- ceeding hour. The tariff for the third-class guide would be is. 6d. per hour, 2s. 6d. for half-a-day, and 4s. for a whole day, with corresponding rates for a week or a month."
With this attempt to provide London with a class of " drago- women "—if we may coin so barbarous a word without laying ourselves open to the suspicion that we imagine that " Mussul- woven " is the feminine plural of " Mussulman "—we must express our complete approval, and not merely because it will provide an honourable occupation well suited to women forced to earn their own bread, but because we believe that a real want will be filled thereby. Every one who thinks for a moment of his or her country relations and friends who have come up to town and been made miserable by their inability to cope with the size and complexity of London, will feel with pleasure that the time is coming when an intelligent lady-guide will be available to take charge of maiden aunts who want to go and see a solicitor in Westminster, and who insist on combining such an expedition with Madame Tussand's and St. Paul's. Who has not been asked to explain to one of his female relatives how she is to perform a series of topographical feats in London of which, were a map drawn, it would resemble nothing so much as that which shows the journeys of St. Paul depicted upon the Asia Minor sheet in a Biblical atlas With Dickens's "Dictionary of London," the "A B C," Bacon's "Map of the Metropolitan Area," and the book of fares pressed into the service, you try to explain a route which will just enable her to do what she wants to do, if she catches every train and omnibus, and mis- takes no street or turning. Yet even when you have at last started her on her way, primed with a store of sound in- formation, her parting word upon the doorstep convinces you that she hopelessly confuses Oxford Street with Piccadilly, and that the great fundamental facts of London geography, which you prided yourself upon having instilled with exceptional power and brilliancy, have failed to make even the slightest impression. Who is there, too, who cannot recall the end of such an adventure,—how your poor relative returns hungry and bedraggled towards nightfall, unable to give any better account of herself than that she got lost early in the day and took to the Underground, and that all she knows as to what happened then, is that she passed Westminster Bridge Railway Station five times; caught like a squirrel in a cage, and sent revolving in the great wheel of London? Provided with a lady-guide, no such misadventure could take place. By all means, then, let us wish success to the Association which has undertaken to supply so great a public need.
But while looking forward to the appearance of the lady- guide in London, we must not be supposed to consider that the profession is one which can be lightly and easily under- taken. The lady-guide must be possessed of no small store of learning,—historical, artistic, topographical, commercial, and statistical. There is a story that a London schoolboy once translated the well-known aphorism of the Latin grammar which tells us that of mortals none is at all times virtuous, by the general proposition, "Nobody knows all the hours of the omnibus." The lady-guide, however, must not only know all the hours of the omnibus, but be possessed of the faculty of combining portions of different routes for a cross-journey, and of telling with an eagle's glance from the curb-stone, whether the vehicle blazing with red, white, green, and gold is a "Bell and Horns," a "Royal Oak," a Hammersmith Broad- way, or a St. John's Wood 'bus. And her knowledge must not stop here. She must have plenty of information on general topics. When, for instance, she is asked "Is such a play worth seeing?" she must not only be able to say
"Yes" or "No," but to give her reasons for liking or disliking Again, if she is asked where would be the best place to get a new lamp, a carpet, a parrot, and a pair of tongs, she must not, as a matter of course, answer,. " Shoolbred's " or the "Stores," but must be able, from a minute course of reading in advertisements and price-lists, to suggest who at the moment is offering the public a specially good article of the kind inquired. for. The complete list of points upon which knowledge could be usefully possessed by the lady- guide is far too long for us to enter on here. Persons inclined to regard the matter in a light and irreverent spirit might, in- deed, declare that it should embrace the whole range of human knowledge, and might suggest that the certificate should only be given after an examination which should combine the chief features in the curriculum of every University. The notion of a certificate examination for lady-guides does, without doubt,. open an enormously wide field of view. Fancy a paper begin- ning with such questions as, "Explain the difference between the schools of Pheidias and Praxiteles in sculpture, and of Leonardo and Raphael in painting," and ending with, "Arrange a route (with sketch map) by which a party of five, father, mother, daughter, and two boys, may, starting from Bayswater, visit the Tower, the Record Office, the Law Courts, lunch at the Cock Tavern,' and return by the British Museum, Madame Tussaud's, and the Army and Navy Stores.. The boys are to have their hair cut during the morning, and some independent form of amusement is to be found for the- father while the rest of the party are looking at_the Elgin Marbles. Expenses not to exceed 21, including lunch."
With such frivolous suggestions, however, we do not wish to- hold further parley. In sober earnest, we feel convinced that the institution of lady-guides will be one both valuable to the public and useful to the ladies who desire other employ- ment than that of teaching,—the most irksome of all ways of gaining a livelihood to those possessed of no special aptitude. The field is new, and it is entirely free from com- petition with men, an enormous advantage, for the competitioii of the weak with the strong must always end in the weak being pushed out of employment, or only enabled to retain it by the sacrifice of reasonable remuneration.
Previous page
