_separation_; but amongst the evils of life, such have occurred, and
will occur; and the injured parties, while they are sure to meet with
the pity of all just persons, must console themselves that they have not
merited their fate. In the making one's choice, no human foresight or
prudence can, in all cases, guard against an unhappy result. There is
one species of husbands to be occasionally met with in all countries,
meriting particular reprobation, and causing us to lament, that there is
no law to punish offenders so enormous. There was a man in Pennsylvania,
apparently a very amiable young man, having a good estate of his own,
and marrying a most beautiful woman of his own age, of rich parents, and
of virtue perfectly spotless. He very soon took to both _gaming_ and
_drinking_ (the last being the most fashionable vice of the country); he
neglected his affairs and his family; in about four years spent his
estate, and became a dependent on his wife's father, together with his
wife and three children. Even this would have been of little
consequence, as far as related to expense; but he led the most
scandalous life, and was incessant in his demands of money for the
purposes of that infamous life. All sorts of means were resorted to to
reclaim him, and all in vain; and the wretch, availing himself of the
pleading of his wife's affection, and of his _power over the children_
more especially, continued for ten or twelve years to plunder the
parents, and to disgrace those whom it was his bounden duty to assist in
making happy. At last, going out in the dark, in a boat, and being
partly drunk, he went to the bottom of the Delaware, and became food for
otters or fishes, to the great joy of all who knew him, excepting only
his amiable wife. I can form an idea of no baseness equal to this. There
is more of _baseness_ in this character than in that of the robber. The
man who obtains the means of indulging in vice, by robbery, exposes
himself to the inflictions of the law; but though he merits punishment,
he merits it less than the base miscreant who obtains his means by his
_threats to disgrace his own wife, children_, and _the wife's parents_.
The short way in such a case, is the best; set the wretch at _defiance_;
resort to the strong arm of the law wherever it will avail you; drive
him from your house like a mad dog; for, be assured, that a being so
base and cruel is never to be reclaimed: all your efforts at persuasion
are useless; his promises and vows are made but to be broken; all your
endeavours to keep the thing from the knowledge of the world, only
prolong his plundering of you; and many a tender father and mother have
been ruined by such endeavours; the whole story _must come out at last_,
and it is better to come out before you be ruined, than after your ruin
is completed.
224. However, let me hope, that those who read this work will always be
secure against evils like these; let me hope, that the young men who
read it will abstain from those vices which lead to such fatal results;
that they will, before they utter the marriage vow, duly reflect on the
great duties that that vow imposes on them; that they will repel, from
the outset, every temptation to any thing tending to give pain to the
defenceless persons whose love for them have placed them at their mercy;
and that they will imprint on their own minds this truth, that a _bad
husband_ was never yet _a happy man_.
LETTER V
TO A FATHER
225. 'Little children,' says the Scripture, 'are like arrows in the
hands of the giant, and blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of
them'; a beautiful figure to describe, in forcible terms, the support,
the power, which a father derives from being surrounded by a family. And
what father, thus blessed, is there who does not feel, in this sort of
support, a _reliance_ which he feels in no other? In regard to this sort
of support there is no uncertainty, no doubts, no misgivings; it is
_yourself_ that you see in your children: their bosoms are the safe
repository of even the whispers of your mind: they are the great and
unspeakable delight of your youth, the pride of your prime of life, and
the props of your old age. They proceed from that love, the pleasures of
which no tongue or pen can adequately describe, and the various
blessings which they bring are equally incapable of description.
226. But, to make them blessings, you must act your part well; for they
may, by your neglect, your ill-treatment, your evil example, be made to
be the _contrary of blessings_; instead of pleasure, they may bring you
pain; instead of making your heart glad, the sight of them may make it
sorrowful; instead of being the staff of your old age, they may bring
your gray hairs in grief to the grave.
227. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance, that you here act
well your part, omitting nothing, even from the very beginning, tending
to give you great and unceasing influence over their minds; and, above
all things, to ensure, if possible, _an ardent love of their mother_.
Your first duty towards them is resolutely to prevent their drawing the
means of life _from any breast but hers_. That is their _own_; it is
their _birthright_; and if that fail from any natural cause, the place
of it ought to be supplied by those means which are frequently resorted
to without employing a _hireling breast_. I am aware of the too frequent
practice of the contrary; I am well aware of the offence which I shall
here give to many; but it is for me to do my duty, and to set, with
regard to myself, consequences at defiance.
228. In the first place, no food is so congenial to the child as the
milk of its own mother; its quality is made by nature to suit the age of
the child; it comes with the child, and is calculated precisely for its
stomach. And, then, what sort of a mother must that be who can endure
the thought of seeing her child at another breast! The suckling may be
attended with great pain, and it is so attended in many cases; but this
pain is a necessary consequence of pleasures foregone; and, besides, it
has its accompanying pleasures too. No mother ever suffered more than my
wife did from suckling her children. How many times have I seen her,
when the child was beginning to draw, bite her lips while the tears ran
down her cheeks! Yet, having endured this, the smiles came and dried up
the tears; and the little thing that had caused the pain received
abundant kisses as its punishment.
229. Why, now, did I not love her _the more_ for this? Did not this tend
to rivet her to my heart? She was enduring this _for me_; and would not
this endearing thought have been wanting, if I had seen the baby at a
breast that I had hired and _paid for_; if I had had _two women_, one to
bear the child and another to give it milk? Of all the sights that this
world affords, the most delightful in my eyes, even to an unconcerned
spectator, is, a mother with her clean and fat baby lugging at her
breast, leaving off now-and-then and smiling, and she, occasionally,
half smothering it with kisses. What must that sight be, then, to the
_father_ of the child?
230. Besides, are we to overlook the great and wonderful effect that
this has on the minds of children? As they succeed each other, they see
with their own eyes, the pain, the care, the caresses, which their
mother has endured for, or bestowed, on them; and nature bids them love
her accordingly. To love her ardently becomes part of their very nature;
and when the time comes that her advice to them is necessary as a guide
for their conduct, this deep and early impression has all its natural
weight, which must be wholly wanting if the child be banished to a
hireling breast, and only brought at times into the presence of the
mother, who is, in fact, no mother, or, at least, but half a one. The
children who are thus banished, love (as is natural and just) the
foster-mother better than the real mother as long as they are at the
breast. When this ceases, they are _taught_ to love their own mother
most; but this _teaching_ is of a cold and formal kind. They may, and
generally do, in a short time, care little about the foster-mother; the
_teaching_ weans all their affection from her, but it does not
_transfer_ it to the other.
231. I had the pleasure to know, in Hampshire, a lady who had brought up
a family of ten children _by hand_, as they call it. Owing to some
defect, she could not suckle her children; but she wisely and heroically
resolved, that her children should hang upon no _other breast_, and that
she would not participate in the crime of robbing another child of its
birthright, and, as is mostly the case, of _its life_. Who has not seen
these banished children, when brought and put into the arms of their
mothers, screaming to get from them, and stretch out their little hands
to get back into the arms of the nurse, and when safely got there,
hugging the hireling as if her bosom were a place of _refuge_? Why, such
a sight is, one would think, enough to strike a mother dead. And what
sort of a husband and father, I want to know, must that be, who can
endure the thought of his child loving another woman more than its own
mother and his wife?
232. And besides all these considerations, is there no crime in robbing
the child of the nurse, and in exposing it to perish? It will not do to
say that the child of the nurse may be dead, and thereby leave her
breast for the use of some other. Such cases must happen too seldom to
be at all relied on; and, indeed, every one must see, that, generally
speaking, there must be a child _cast off_ for every one that is put to
a hireling breast. Now, without supposing it possible, that the hireling
will, in any case, contrive to _get rid_ of her own child, every man who
employs such hireling, must know, that he is exposing such child to
destruction; that he is assisting to rob it of the means of life; and,
of course, assisting to procure its death, as completely as a man can,
in any case, assist in causing death by starvation; a consideration
which will make every just man in the world recoil at the thought of
employing a hireling breast. For he is not to think of pacifying his
conscience by saying, that _he_ knows nothing about the hireling's
child. He does know; for he must know, that she _has_ a child, and that
he is a principal in robbing it of the means of life. He does not cast
it off and leave it to perish himself, but he causes the thing to be
done; and to all intents and purposes, he is a principal in the cruel
and cowardly crime.
233. And if an argument could possibly be yet wanting to the husband; if
his feelings were so stiff as still to remain unmoved, must not the wife
be aware that whatever _face_ the world may put upon it, however custom
may seem to bear her out; must she not be aware that every one must see
the main _motive_ which induces her to banish from her arms that which
has formed part of her own body? All the pretences about her sore
breasts and her want of strength are vain: nature says that she is to
endure the pains as well as the pleasures: whoever has heard the
bleating of the ewe for her lamb, and has seen her _reconciled_, or at
least pacified, by having presented to her the skin or some of the blood
of her _dead_ lamb: whoever has witnessed the difficulty of inducing
either ewe or cow to give her milk to an alien young one: whoever has
seen the valour of the timid hen in defending her brood, and has
observed that she never swallows a morsel that is fit for her young,
until they be amply satisfied: whoever has seen the wild birds, though,
at other times, shunning even the distant approach of man, flying and
screaming round his head, and exposing themselves to almost certain
death in defence of their nests: whoever has seen these things, or any
one of them, must question the _motive_ that can induce a mother to
banish a child from her own breast to that of one who has already been
so unnatural as to banish hers. And, in seeking for a motive
_sufficiently powerful_ to lead to such an act, women must excuse men,
if they be not satisfied with the ordinary pretences; they must excuse
_me_, at any rate, if I do not stop even at love of ease and want of
maternal affection, and if I express my fear, that, superadded to the
unjustifiable motives, there is one which is calculated to excite
disgust; namely, a desire to be quickly freed from that restraint which
the child imposes, and to _hasten back_, unbridled and undisfigured, to
those enjoyments, to have an eagerness for which, or to wish to excite a
desire for which, a really delicate woman will shudder at the thought of
being suspected.
234. I am well aware of the hostility that I have here been exciting;
but there is another, and still more furious, bull to take by the horns,
and which would have been encountered some pages back (that being the
proper place), had I not hesitated between my duty and my desire to
avoid giving offence; I mean the employing of _male-operators_, on those
occasions where females used to be employed. And here I have _every
thing_ against me; the now general custom, even amongst the most chaste
and delicate women; the ridicule continually cast on old midwives; the
interest of a profession, for the members of which I entertain more
respect and regard than for those of any other; and, above all the rest,
_my own example to the contrary_, and my knowledge that every husband
has the same apology that I had. But because I acted wrong myself, it is
not less, but rather more, my duty to endeavour to dissuade others from
doing the same. My wife had suffered very severely with her second
child, which, at last, was still-born. The next time I pleaded for _the
doctor_; and, after every argument that I could think of, obtained a
reluctant consent. Her _life_ was so dear to me, that every thing else
appeared as nothing. Every husband has the same apology to make; and
thus, from the good, and not from the bad, feelings of men, the practice
has become far too general, for me to hope even to narrow it; but,
nevertheless, I cannot refrain from giving my opinion on the subject.
235. We are apt to talk in a very unceremonious style of our _rude_
ancestors, of their _gross_ habits, their _want of delicacy_ in their
language. No man shall ever make me believe, that those, who reared the
cathedral of ELY (which I saw the other day), were _rude_, either in
their manners or in their minds and words. No man shall make me believe,
that our ancestors were a rude and beggarly race, when I read in an act
of parliament, passed in the reign of Edward the Fourth, regulating the
dresses of the different ranks of the people, and forbidding the
LABOURERS to wear coats of cloth that cost _more_ than _two shillings a
yard_ (equal to _forty shillings_ of our present money), and forbidding
their wives and daughters to wear sashes, or girdles, _trimmed with gold
or silver_. No man shall make me believe that this was a _rude_ and
beggarly race, compared with those who now shirk and shiver about in
canvass frocks and rotten cottons. Nor shall any man persuade me that
that was a _rude_ and beggarly state of things, in which (reign of
Edward the Third) an act was passed regulating the wages of labour, and
ordering that a woman, for _weeding in the corn_, should receive a penny
a day, while a _quart of red wine_ was sold for _a penny_, and a pair of
men's shoes for _two-pence_. No man shall make me believe that
_agriculture_ was in a _rude_ state, when an act like this was passed,
or that our ancestors of that day were _rude_ in their minds, or in
their thoughts. Indeed, there are a thousand proofs, that, whether in
regard to domestic or foreign affairs, whether in regard to internal
freedom and happiness, or to weight in the world, England was at her
zenith about the reign of Edward the Third. The _Reformation_, as it is
called, gave her a complete pull down. She revived again in the reigns
of the Stuarts, as far as related to internal affairs; but the
'_Glorious Revolution_' and its debt and its taxes, have, amidst the
false glare of new palaces, roads, and canals, brought her down until
she is become the land of domestic misery and of foreign impotence and
contempt; and, until she, amidst all her boasted improvements and
refinements, tremblingly awaits her fall.
236. However, to return from this digression, _rude_ and _unrefined_ as
our mothers might be, plain and unvarnished as they might be in their
language, accustomed as they might be to call things by their names,
though they were not so _very delicate_ as to use the word
_small-clothes_; and to be quite unable, in speaking of horn-cattle,
horses, sheep, the canine race, and poultry, to designate them by their
sexual appellations; though they might not absolutely faint at hearing
these appellations used by others; _rude_ and _unrefined_ and
_indelicate_ as they might be, they did not suffer, in the cases alluded
to, the approaches of _men_, which approaches are unceremoniously
suffered, and even sought, by their polished and refined and delicate
daughters; and of unmarried men too, in many cases; and of very young
men.
237. From all antiquity this office was allotted to _woman_. Moses's
life was saved by the humanity of the Egyptian _midwife_; and to the
employment of females in this memorable case, the world is probably
indebted for that which has been left it by that greatest of all
law-givers, whose institutes, _rude_ as they were, have been the
foundation of all the wisest and most just laws in all the countries of
Europe and America. It was the _fellow feeling_ of the midwife for the
poor mother that saved Moses. And none but a _mother_ can, in such
cases, feel to the full and effectual extent that which the operator
ought to feel. She has been in the same state _herself_; she knows more
about the matter, except in cases of very rare occurrence, than any
_man_, however great his learning and experience, can ever know. She
knows all the previous symptoms; she can judge more correctly than man
can judge in such a case; she can put questions to the party, which a
man cannot put; the communication between the two is wholly without
reserve; the _person_ of the one is given up to the other, as completely
as her own is under her command. This never can be the case with a
man-operator; for, after all that can be said or done, the native
feeling of women, in whatever rank of life, will, in these cases,
restrain them from saying and doing, before a man, even before a
_husband_, many things which they ought to say and do. So that, perhaps,
even with regard to the bare question of comparative safety to life, the
midwife is the preferable person.
238. But safety to life is not ALL. The preservation of life is not to
be preferred to EVERY THING. Ought not a man to prefer death to the
commission of treason against his country? Ought not a man to die,
rather than save his life by the prostitution of his wife to a tyrant,
who insists upon the one or the other? Every man and every woman will
answer in the affirmative to both these questions. There are, then,
cases where people ought to submit to _certain death_. Surely, then, the
mere _chance_, the mere _possibility_ of it, ought not to outweigh the
mighty considerations on the other side; ought not to overcome that
inborn modesty, that sacred reserve as to their _persons_, which, as I
said before, is the charm of charms of the female sex, and which our
mothers, _rude_ as they are called by us, took, we may be satisfied, the
best and most effectual means of preserving.
239. But is there, after all, any thing _real_ in this _greater
security_ for the life of either mother or child? If, then, risk were so
great as to call upon women to overcome this natural repugnance to
suffer the approaches of a man, that risk must be _general_; it must
apply to _all_ women; and, further, it must, ever since the creation of
man, _always_ have so applied. Now, resorting to the employment of
_men_-operators has not been in vogue in Europe more than about seventy
years, and has not been _general_ in England more than about thirty or
forty years. So that the _risk_ in employing midwives must, of late
years, have become vastly greater than it was even when I was a boy,
or the whole race must have been extinguished long ago. And, then, how
puzzled we should be to account for the building of all the cathedrals,
and all the churches, and the draining of all the marshes, and all the
fens, more than a thousand years before the word '_accoucheur_' ever
came from the lips of woman, and before the thought came into her mind?
And here, even in the use of this _word_, we have a specimen of the
_refined delicacy_ of the present age; here we have, varnish the matter
over how we may, modesty in the _word_ and grossness in the _thought_.
Farmers' wives, daughters, and maids, cannot now allude to, or hear
named, without _blushing_, those affairs of the homestead, which they,
within my memory, used to talk about as freely as of milking or
spinning; but, have they become more _really modest_ than their mothers
were? Has this _refinement_ made them more _continent_ than those _rude_
mothers? A jury at Westminster gave, about six years ago, _damages_ to a
man, calling himself a gentleman, against a farmer, because the latter,
for the purpose for which such animals are kept, had a _bull_ in his
yard, on which the windows of the gentleman looked! The plaintiff
alleged, that this was _so offensive_ to his _wife_ and _daughters_,
that, if the defendant were not compelled to desist, he should be
obliged to _brick up his windows, or to quit the house_! If I had been
the father of these, at once, _delicate_ and _curious_ daughters, I
would not have been the herald of their purity of mind; and if I had
been the suitor of one of them, I would have taken care to give up the
suit with all convenient speed; for how could I reasonably have hoped
ever to be able to prevail on delicacy, _so exquisite_, to commit itself
to a pair of bridal sheets? In spite, however, of all this '_refinement_
in the human mind,' which is everlastingly dinned in our ears; in spite
of the '_small-clothes_,' and of all the other affected stuff, we have
this conclusion, this indubitable _proof_, of the falling off in _real_
delicacy; namely, that common prostitutes, formerly unknown, now swarm
in our towns, and are seldom wanting even in our villages; and where
there was _one_ illegitimate child (including those coming before the
time) only fifty years ago, there are now _twenty_.
240. And who can say how far the employment of _men_, in the cases
alluded to, may have _assisted_ in producing this change, so disgraceful
to the present age, and so injurious to the female sex? The prostitution
and the swarms of illegitimate children have a natural and inevitable
tendency to lessen that respect, and that kind and indulgent feeling,
which is due from all men to virtuous women. It is well known that the
unworthy members of any profession, calling, or rank in life, cause, by
their acts, the whole body to sink in the general esteem; it is well
known, that the habitual dishonesty of merchants trading abroad, the
habitual profligate behaviour of travellers from home, the frequent
proofs of abject submission to tyrants; it is well known, that these may
give the character of dishonesty, profligacy, or cowardice, to a whole
nation. There are, doubtless, many men in Switzerland, who abhor the
infamous practices of men _selling themselves_, by whole regiments, to
fight for any foreign state that will pay them, no matter in what cause,
and no matter whether against their own parents or brethren; but the
censure falls upon the _whole nation_: and '_no money, no Swiss_,' is a
proverb throughout the world. It is, amidst those scenes of prostitution
and bastardy, impossible for men in general to respect the female sex to
the degree that they formerly did; while numbers will be apt to adopt
the unjust sentiment of the old bachelor, POPE, that '_every woman is,
at heart, a rake_.'
241. Who knows, I say, in what degree the employment of _men_-operators
may have tended to produce this change, so injurious to the female sex?
Aye, and to encourage unfeeling and brutal men to propose that the dead
bodies of females, if _poor_, should be _sold_ for the purpose of
exhibition and dissection before an audience of men; a proposition that
our '_rude_ ancestors' would have answered, not by words, but by blows!
Alas! our women may talk of 'small-clothes' as long as they please; they
may blush to scarlet at hearing animals designated by their sexual
appellations; it may, to give the world a proof of our excessive modesty
and delicacy, even pass a law (indeed we have done it) to punish 'an
_exposure of the person_'; but as long as our streets swarm with
prostitutes, our asylums and private houses with bastards; as long as we
have _man_-operators in the delicate cases alluded to, and as long as
the exhibiting of the dead body of a virtuous female before an audience
of men shall not be punished by the law, and even with death; as long as
we shall appear to be satisfied in this state of things, it becomes us,
at any rate, to be silent about purity of mind, improvement of manners,
and an increase of refinement and _delicacy_.