A newspaper account from 1872 provided me by serendipity. A Chicago reader would have learned that Millicent Garrett Fawcett at age 25 was considered “the best speaker of any of the women who have come into public life”, at least in her own country, and “much more than ordinarily pretty”. Her Political Economy for Beginners ran through ten editions over forty years (Tenth edition, 1911).
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Link to Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s Autobiography: What I Remember (1925)
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Fawcett and His Wife
Prof. Fawcett, the liberal member of Parliament, who came so near overthrowing Mr. Gladstone is blind. When a pretty well-grown boy, but before entering the university, an accident destroyed one eye, and the spreading inflammation soon took the other. As soon as his health was restored he continued his studies with an attendant who acted as guide, amanuensis and reader. High honors and finally a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge and subsequently the publication of a work on political economy, secured him a professorship in this same college. Other publications on “Pauperism,” “Land Tenure,” and the various questions that English radicals are airing, won him great favor among the working classes, and in 1865 he entered Parliament as the representative for Brighton, a constituency composed chiefly of trades-people. Prof. Fawcett follows in the line of Mill, but as he is far less subtle, he has the good fortune to be much more popular with the ordinary mind. He is honest and has a steady nerve. He is now 38, just in the prime of his powers, with a markedly strong physique, as opposed to fineness of fibers and nervous receptivity. On the evening of the day that the telegram announced the death of President Lincoln, Prof. Fawcett was in a social gathering of liberals, and heard from a girl of 18 the exclamation, “It would have been less loss to the world if every crowned head in Europe had fallen.” He asked to be introduced to this spirited girl, who has been Mrs. Fawcett for the last five years. Mrs. Fawcett is now 25, and is, with the exception of her sister, Mrs. Anderson, perhaps the most popular woman in England. She is the best speaker of any of the women who have come into public life. She is the author of a political economy adapted for use in girls’ schools, and appears again as the largest contributor in a volume of essays, by Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett just published. She has the same clear, logical, practical type of mind as Prof. Fawcett, with an added feminine fineness. It would be difficult to find two people more consonant in their tastes and aims. Mrs. Fawcett is slight in figure and much more than ordinarily pretty; is neither distrustful nor presuming, and has that perfect balance of mind that enables her to use all her power. Her sister, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, was the first regular woman physician in that country. She is a member of the London School Board, and, what no one fails to add dresses extremely well. She has the reputation of being remarkably skillful in her profession, but I am satisfied that her exceptional qualities, like those of Mrs. Fawcett, lie in the line of practical effectiveness, rather than in original thought. The social popularity of these sisters illustrates a contrast between English and American society. Americans do not like peculiar people, not even people of peculiar excellence. A domestic uniformity is the aristocratic standard, and women who step out of this suffer more than men do. Not so there. If one shows intellectual powers above other women, or superior practical efficiency in public affairs, just so much is added to her social rank. Women are dealt with in this just as fairly as men are. Intellectual merit is the one coin that in England gets everything in exchange. It is rather singular that these three sisters [unnamed third sister: Agnes Garrett, interior designer and suffragist] should all have distinguished themselves in strong-minded lines, since the mother holds the most conservative views in regard to women’s work, and the father has no interest beyond personal pride in the success of his daughters.
Source: Chicago Evening Post, June 1, 1872, p. 3.
Image Source: National Portrait Gallery, “Henry Fawcett; Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (née Garrett“.