Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI.
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But such beauty is made, not born. Care and weariness and despondency
come of themselves, and groove their own furrows. Hope and intelligence
and interest and buoyancy must be wooed for their gentle and genial
touch. A mother must battle against the tendencies that drag her
downward. She must take pains to grow, or she will not grow. She
must sedulously cultivate her mind and heart, or her old age will be
ungraceful; and if she lose freshness without acquiring ripeness, she is
indeed in an evil case. The first, the most important trust which God
has given to any one is himself. To secure this trust, He has made us so
that in no possible way can we benefit the world so much as by making
the most of ourselves. Indulging our whims, or, inordinately, our just
tastes, is not developing ourselves; but neither is leaving our own
fields to grow thorns and thistles, that we may plant somebody else's
garden-plot, keeping our charge. Even were it possible for a mother to
work well to her children in thus working ill to herself, I do not think
she would be justified in doing it. Her account is not complete when she
says, "Here are they whom thou hast given me." She must first say, "Here
am I." But when it is seen that suicide is also child-murder, it must
appear that she is under doubly heavy bonds for herself.
Husbands, moreover, have claims, though wives often ignore them. It
is the commonest thing in the world to see parents tender of their
children's feelings, alive to their wants, indulgent to their tastes,
kind, considerate, and forbearing, but to each other hasty, careless,
and cold. Conjugal love often seems to die out before parental love.
It ought not so to be. Husband and wife should each stand first in the
other's estimation. They have no right to forget each other's comfort,
convenience, sensitiveness, tastes, or happiness in those of their
children. Nothing can discharge them from the obligations which they are
under to each other. But if a woman lets herself become shabby, drudgy,
and commonplace as a wife, in her efforts to be perfect as a mother, can
she expect to retain the consideration that is due to the wife? Not a
man in the world but would rather see his wife tidy, neat, and elegant
in her attire, easy and assured in her bearing, intelligent and
vivacious in her talk, than the contrary; and if she neglect these
things, ought she to be surprised, if he turns to fresh woods and
pastures new for the diversion and entertainment which he seeks in vain
at home? This is quaky ground, but I know where I am, and I am not
afraid. I don't expect men or women to say that they agree with me, but
I am right for all that. Let us bring our common sense to bear on this
point, and not be fooled by reiteration. Cause and effect obtain here as
elsewhere. If you add two and two, the result is four, however much
you may try to blink it. People do not always tell lies, when they are
telling what is not the truth; but falsehood is still disastrous.
Men and women think they believe a thousand things which they do not
believe; but as long as they think so, it is just as bad as if it
were so. Men talk--and women listen and echo--about the overpowering
loveliness and charm of a young mother surrounded by her blooming
family, ministering to their wants and absorbed in their welfare,
self-denying and self-forgetful; and she is lovely and charming; but
if this is all, it is little more than the charm and loveliness of a
picture. It is not magnetic and irresistible. It has the semblance, but
not the smell of life. It is pretty to look at, but it is not vigorous
for command. Her husband will have a certain kind of admiration and
love. Her wish will be law within a certain very limited sphere; but
beyond that he will not take her into his counsels and confidence. A
woman must make herself obvious to her husband, or he will drift out
beyond her horizon. She will be to him very nearly what she wills and
works to be. If she adapts herself to her children and does not adapt
herself to her husband, he will fall into the arrangement, and the two
will fall apart. I do not mean that they will quarrel, but they will
lead separate lives. They will be no longer husband and wife. There will
be a domestic alliance, but no marriage. A predominant interest in
the same objects binds them together after a fashion; but marriage is
something beyond that. If a woman wishes and purposes to be the friend
of her husband,--if she would be valuable to him, not simply as the
nurse of his children and the directress of his household, but as a
woman fresh and fair and fascinating, to him intrinsically lovely and
attractive, she should make an effort for it. It is not by any means
a thing that comes of itself, or that can be left to itself. She must
read, and observe, and think, and rest up to it. Men, as a general
thing, will not tell you so. They talk about having the slippers ready,
and enjoin women to be domestic. But men are blockheads,--dear, and
affectionate, and generous blockheads,--benevolent, large-hearted, and
chivalrous,--kind, and patient, and hard-working,--but stupid where
women are concerned. Indispensable and delightful as they are in real
life, pleasant and comfortable as women actually find them, not one in
ten thousand but makes a dunce of himself the moment he opens his mouth
to theorize about women. Besides, they have an axe to grind. The
pretty things they inculcate--slippers, and coffee, and care, and
courtesy--ought indeed to be done, but the others ought not to be left
undone. And to the former women seldom need to be exhorted. They take to
them naturally. A great many more women bore boorish husbands with
fond little attentions than wound appreciative ones by neglect. Women
domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation.
They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic
life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche,
and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those
duties shall spread and occupy the whole space.
This mistake is the foundation of a world of wretchedness and ruin. I
can see Satan standing at the mother's elbow. He follows her around into
the nursery and the kitchen. He tosses up the babies and the omelets,
delivers dutiful harangues about the inappropriateness of the piano
and the library, and grins fiendishly in his sleeve at the wreck he is
making,--a wreck not necessarily of character, but of happiness; for I
suppose Satan has so bad a disposition, that, if he cannot do all the
harm he would wish, he will still do all he can. It is true that there
are thousands of noble men married to fond and foolish women, and they
are both happy. Well, the fond and foolish women are very fortunate.
They have fallen into hands that will entreat them tenderly, and they
will not perceive that anything is kept back. Nor are the noble men
wholly unfortunate, in that they have not taken to their hearths shrews.
But this is not marriage.
There are women less foolish. They see their husbands attracted in other
directions more often and more easily than in theirs. They have too much
sterling worth and profound faith to be vulgarly jealous. They fear
nothing like shame or crime; but they feel the fact that their own
preoccupation with homely household duties precludes real companionship;
the interchange of emotions, thoughts, sentiments, a living and palpable
and vivid contact of mind with mind, of heart with heart. They see
others whose leisure ministers to grace, accomplishments, piquancy, and
attractiveness, and the moth flies towards the light by his own nature.
Because he is a wise and virtuous and honorable moth, he does not dart
into the flame. He does not even scorch his wings. He never thinks of
such a thing. He merely circles around the pleasant light, sunning
himself in it without much thought one way or another, only feeling
that it is pleasant; but meanwhile Mrs. Moth sits at home in darkness,
mending the children's clothes, which is not exhilarating. Many a woman
who feels that she possesses her husband's affection misses something.
She does not secure his fervor, his admiration. His love is honest and
solid, but a little dormant, and therefore dull. It does not brace, and
tone, and stimulate. She wants not the love only, but the keenness and
edge and flavor of the love; and she suffers untold pangs. I know it,
for I have seen it. It is not a thing to be uttered. Most women do
not admit it even to themselves; but it is revealed by a lift of the
eyelash, by a quiver of the eye, by a tone of the voice, by a trick of
the finger.
But what is the good of saying all this, if a woman cannot help herself?
The children must be seen to, and the work must be done, and after that
she has no time left. The "mother of a young and increasing family,"
with her "pale, thin face and feeble step," and her "multiplied and
wearying cares," is "completely worn down with so many children." She
has neither time nor spirit for self-culture, beyond what she may obtain
in the nursery. What satisfaction is there in proving that she is far
below where she ought to be, if inexorable circumstance prevent her from
climbing higher? What use is there in telling her that she will alienate
her husband and injure her children by her course, when there is no
other course for her to pursue? What can she do about it?
There is one thing that she need not do. She need not sit down and write
a book, affirming that it is the most glorious and desirable condition
imaginable. She need not lift up her voice and declare that "she lives
above the ills and disquietudes of her condition, in an atmosphere of
love and peace and pleasure far beyond the storms and conflicts of this
material life." Who ever heard of the mother of a young and increasing
family living in an atmosphere of peace, not to say pleasure, above
conflicts and storms? Who does not know that the private history of
every family with the ordinary allowance of brains is a record of
incessant internecine warfare? If she said less, we might believe her.
When she says so much, we cannot help suspecting. To make the best of
anything, it is not necessary to declare that it is the best thing.
Children must be taken care of, but it is altogether probable that there
are too many of them. Some people think that opinion several times more
atrocious than murder in the first degree; but I see no atrocity in it,
and there is none. I think there is an immense quantity of nonsense
about, regarding this thing. For my part, I don't credit half of it. I
believe in Malthus,--a great deal more than Malthus did himself. The
prosperity of a country is often measured by its population; but quite
likely it should be taken in inverse ratio. I certainly do not see why
the mere multiplication of the species is so indicative of prosperity.
Mobs are not so altogether lovely that one should desire their
indefinite increase. A village is honorable, not according to the
number, but the character of its residents. The drunkards and the
paupers and the thieves and the idiots rather diminish than increase its
respectability. It seems to me that the world would be greatly benefited
by thinning out. Most of the places that I have seen would be much
improved by being decimated, not to say quinqueted or bisected. If
people are stubborn and rebellious, stiff-necked and uncircumcised,
in heart and ears, the fewer of them the better. A small population,
trained to honor and virtue, to liberality of culture and breadth of
view, to self-reliance and self-respect, is a thousand times better than
an overcrowded one with everything at loose ends. As with the village,
so with the family. There ought to be no more children than can be
healthily and thoroughly reared, as regards the moral, physical, and
intellectual nature both of themselves and their parents. All beyond
this is wrong and disastrous. I know of no greater crime, than to give
life to souls, and then degrade them, or suffer them to be degraded.
Children are the poor man's blessing and Cornelia's jewels, just so long
as Cornelia and the poor man can make adequate provision for them. But
the ragged, filthy, squalid, unearthly little wretches that wallow
before the poor man's shanty-door are the poor man's shame and curse.
The sickly, sallow, sorrowful little ones, shadowed too early by life's
cares, are something other than a blessing. When Cornelia finds her
children too many for her, when her step trembles and her cheek fades,
when the sparkle flats out of her wine of life and her salt has lost its
savor, her jewels are Tarpeian jewels. One child educated by healthy and
happy parents is better than seven dragging their mother into the grave,
notwithstanding the unmeasured reprobation of our little book. Of
course, if they can stand seven, very well. Seven and seventy times
seven, if you like, only let them be buds, not blights. If we obeyed the
laws of God, children would be like spring blossoms. They would impart
as much freshness and strength as they abstract. They are a natural
institution, and Nature is eminently healthy. But when they "come
crowding into the home-nest," as our book daintily says, they are a
nuisance. God never meant the home-nest to be crowded. There is room
enough and elbow-room enough in this world for everything that ought to
be in it. The moment there is crowding, you may be sure something wrong
is going on. Either a bad thing is happening, or too much of a good
thing, which counts up just the same. The parents begin to repair
the evil by a greater one. They attempt to patch their own rents by
dilapidating their children. They recruit their own exhausted energies
by laying hold of the young energies around them, and older children are
bored, and fretted, and deformed in figure and temper by the care
of younger children. This is horrible. Some care and task and
responsibility are good for a child's own development; but every care,
every toil, every atom of labor that is laid upon children beyond
what is solely the best for their own character is intolerable and
inexcusable oppression. Parents have no right to lighten their own
burdens by imposing them upon the children. The poor things had nothing
to do with being born. They came into the world without any volition of
their own. Their existence began only to serve the pleasure or the pride
of others. It was a culpable cruelty, in the first place, to introduce
them into a sphere where no adequate provision could be made for their
comfort and culture; but to shoulder them, after they get here, with
the load which belongs to their parents is outrageous. Earth is not a
paradise at best, and at worst it is very near the other place. The
least we can do is to make the way as smooth as possible for the
new-comers. There is not the least danger that it will be too smooth.
If you stagger under the weight which you have imprudently assumed,
stagger. But don't be such an unutterable coward and brute as to
illumine your own life by darkening the young lives which sprang from
yours. I often wonder that children do not open their mouths and curse
the father that begat and the mother that bore them. I often wonder that
parents do not tremble lest the cry of the children whom they oppress go
up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and bring down wrath upon
their guilty heads. It was well that God planted filial affection and
reverence as an instinct in the human breast. If it depended upon
reason, it would have but a precarious existence.
I wish women would have the sense and courage--I will not say, to
say what they think, for that is not always desirable--but to think
according to the facts. They have a strong desire to please men, which
is quite right and natural; but in their eagerness to do this, they
sometimes forget what is due to themselves. To think namby-pambyism for
the sake of pleasing men is running benevolence into the ground. Not
that women consciously do this, but they do it. They don't mean to
pander to false masculine notions, but they do. They don't know that
they are pandering to them, but they are. Men say silly things, partly
because they don't know any better, and partly because they don't want
any better. They are strong, and can generally make shift to bear their
end of the pole without being crushed. So they are tolerably content.
They are not very much to blame. People cannot be expected to start on
a crusade against ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy
conception. The edge does not cut them, and so they think it is not much
of a sword after all. But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile
and intimate acquaintance with realities. They ought to know what is
fact and what is fol-de-rol. They ought to distinguish between the
really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men do not,
it is women's duty to help them. I think, if women would only not be
quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great
deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, and single-minded, and
discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and
decisive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is not to be womanly. To
be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not
womanly. And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite
so patient. They often exhibit a degree of long-suffering entirely
unwarrantable. There is no use in suffering, unless you cannot help it;
and a good, stout, resolute protest would often be a great deal more
wise, and Christian, and beneficial on all sides, than so much patient
endurance. A little spirit and "spunk" would go a great way towards
setting the world right. It is not necessary to be a termagant. The
firmest will and the stoutest heart may be combined with the gentlest
delicacy. Tameness is not the stuff that the finest women are made of.
Nobody can be more kind, considerate, or sympathizing towards weakness
or weariness than men, if they only know it exists; and it is a wrong to
them to go on bolstering them up in their bungling opinions, when a few
sensible ideas, wisely administered, would do so much to enlighten them,
and reveal the path which needs only to be revealed to secure their
unhesitating entrance upon it. It is absurd to suppose that unvarying
acquiescence is necessary to secure and retain their esteem, and that a
frank avowal of differing opinions, even if they were wrong, would work
its forfeiture. A respect held on so frail a tenure were little worth.
But it is not so. I believe that manhood and womanhood are too truly
harmonious to need iron bands, too truly noble to require the props of
falsehood. Truth, simple and sincere, without partiality and without
hypocrisy, is the best food for both. If any are to be found on either
side too weak to administer or digest it, the remedy is not to mix it
with folly or falsehood, for they are poisons, but to strengthen the
organisms with wholesome tonics,--not undiluted, perhaps, but certainly
unadulterated.
O Edmund Sparkler, you builded better than you knew, when you reared
eulogiums upon the woman with no nonsense about her!
MY SHIP.
Mist on the shore, and dark on the sand,
The chilly gulls swept over my head,
When a stately ship drew near the land,--
Onward in silent grace she sped.
Lonely, I threw but a coward's glance
Upon the brave ship tall and free,
Joyfully dancing her mystic dance,
As if skies were blue and smooth the sea.
I breathed the forgotten odors of Spain,
Remembered my castles so far removed,
For they brought the distant faith again
That one who loves shall be beloved.
Then the goodly galleon suddenly
Dropped anchor close to the barren strand,
And various cargoes, all for me,
Laid on the bosom of my land.
O friend! her cargoes were thy love,
The stately ship thy presence fair;
Her pointed sails, like wings above,
Shall fill with praises and with prayer.
* * * * *
BETROTHAL BY PROXY: A ROMANCE OF GENEALOGY.
CHAPTER I.
Ye who listen with impatience to the Reports of Historical Societies and
have hitherto neglected to subscribe to an Antiquarian Journal, ye who
imagine that there can be no intelligent and practical reply to the
_cui bono?_ shake of the head which declines to supply the funds for a
genealogical investigation, attend to the history of my adventure in
Foxden.
There!--I like to begin with the Moral; for no sensible man will leave
the point and purpose of his testimony to the languid curiosity of a
spent reader. Dr. Johnson never did so; and who am I to question his
literary infallibility? So if you do not take kindly to the solemn
rumble of the Johnsonese mail-coach of a sentence in which we set out,
receive the purport of it thus: It is of advantage to be on good terms
with one's ancestors: Also; men absorbed in this practical present may
be all the better for a little counter irritation with the driest twigs
of the family-tree.
And now, _Why did I marry Miss Hurribattle?_ I am sure I had no
intention of doing so. In the first place, when about eighteen years of
age, I had firmly determined never to marry anybody. Then there were so
many nice _tea-ing_ families in the Atlantic city whose principal street
was decorated by my modest counsellor's sign, that I really must excuse
the rather unpleasant wonder of several friends at my out-of-the-way
selection. That a somewhat experienced advocate, who had resisted for
three years the fascinations of city belle-ship, should spend the legal
vacation in a visit to an old gentleman he never saw before, and return
affianced to a lady nobody had ever heard of,--I own there was something
temptingly discussible in the circumstance; and knowing that fine relish
for personal topics which distinguishes the American _conversazione_,
how could I hope to escape? At first, it was a little awkward, when I
went to a party, to see people who were talking together glance at me
and murmur on with increased interest. Sometimes, when the wave of talk
retreated a little, I would catch the prattle of some retiring rill to
this effect: "But who are these Hurribattles? What an odd name! I wonder
if that had anything to do with it."
The querist, whoever he or she might be, had unconsciously struck upon
the explanation of the whole matter. Yes, it was the name: it had a
great deal to do with it. And if you will allow me to step back a little
into the past, and thence begin over again in good storyteller fashion,
I will endeavor to make you understand how it all came about.
If I were obliged to designate in one word the profession and calling
of Colonel Prowley of Foxden, I should say he was a _Correspondent_. Of
course I do not mean a regular newspaper-correspondent, paid to concoct
letters from Paris in the office of the "Foxden Regulator"; nor yet the
amateur ditto, who is never tired of making family-tours to the White
Mountains. But rather was he a gentleman, with an immense epistolary
acquaintance all over the country, whose main business in life consisted
in writing letters to all sorts of persons in a great variety of places.
And this he did as his particular contribution towards the solution
of this question: What in the world--or rather, what in the United
States--is a man to do who accumulates sufficient property to relieve
him from the necessities of active business? The answers offered to this
inquiry of the Democratic Sphinx are, as we all know, various enough.
Some men, of ready assurance and fluent speech, go into politics; some
doze in libraries; some get up trotting-matches and yacht-races; while
others dodge the difficulty altogether by going to disport themselves
among the arts and letters of a foreign land. Colonel Prowley,
with considerable originality, was moved to find employment in
_letter-writing_, pursuing it with the same daily relish which many
people find for gossip or small-talk. And this is the way in which I
came to be favored with the good gentleman's communications. About three
years ago a friend in England procured for me a book that I had long
coveted,--Morton's "New English Canaan," printed at Amsterdam in the
year 1637. This little volume, after the novelty of a fresh perusal was
past, I happened to lend to a young gentleman of our boarding-house, who
prepared short notices of books for one of the evening papers. He, it
would appear, thought that some account of my acquisition might supply
the matter for his diurnal paragraph. At all events, I received, some
days after, a letter dated from Foxden, and bearing the signature of
Elijah Prowley. It was couched in the old-fashioned style of compliment
and excuses for the liberty taken,--which liberty consisted in
requesting to have a fac-simile made of a certain page of a work that he
had traced through a newspaper-article to my possession. The object, he
said, was to supply the deficiency in a copy of the "Canaan" that had a
place in his own library. Of course the request was complied with, and
the correspondence begun.
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