_Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne_
I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before you
began your course of action.
You wrote me after you entered Vassar and asked me what I thought of
your doing so.
You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what I
thought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of good
wishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and ask
me to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you and
the doctor.
"He did not take my view of the matter at first," you say, "but he does
now. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinion
before I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college before
finishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to make
him wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so I
consented."
Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, and
that you have the best husband in the world. But you have decided
musical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroad
to cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition has
taken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of your
classmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to take
a two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with an
accomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded.
"One never knows what the future holds," you say, "and it is the duty of
every woman to make the most of herself." Both remarks are as true as
they are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original in
expressing herself.
But there is another duty a woman should not forget--the duty to stand
by her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems the
doctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad he
did not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has an
ailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfully
seconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home.
When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season,
there is something wrong with his heart.
Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going so
far, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. You
evidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel that
he is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. The
American husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now,"
you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the talents God gave
her just as a man does, and that it is a wrong against her 'higher self'
to crush down these ambitions. He realizes, too, that this separation
means greater powers of usefulness for me in the future, and greater
opportunities for pleasure. It will be a long and lonely time for both
of us, as I shall only come home once or twice and the doctor may not be
able to go over at all, though I hope he will. But the expense of my
studies will of course be great, and we shall both need to economize. It
is my intention to start a little conservatory after I return and take a
few high-priced pupils. In that way I can reimburse our expenditure."
But can you, my dear Winifred, _reimburse your mutual losses in other
ways_? You do not seem to realize what such a separation may mean. You
are both young and both attractive. I know now that you are beginning to
be angry at my suggestion, but, fortunately, you cannot interrupt me,
and you must hear what I have to say.
Of course you are not a frivolous flirt, or a silly-headed creature
with no ideals or principles. You have nothing of the adventuress in
your composition, but you are a young woman, with personal charms and
talents, and life will be unutterably desolate for you if you make a
recluse of yourself. You will be surrounded by people of artistic
temperaments and tastes, and I know, if you do not, that many of these
people do lack ideals, and some of them lack principles and take pride
in the fact. "Art for art's sake, life for pleasure's sake," is their
motto. The entire situation will be full of danger for you. But far more
danger will surround your husband. A man's temptations are always
greater than a woman's. That is, there are _more_ temptations in his
pathway, from the fact that he is by nature and environment less guarded
and protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe. And of all
men, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed to
temptation. He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer of
domestic secrets. Many a woman believes she is ill only because she
desires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herself
disturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society of
her minister.
Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise his
reputation or disgrace his calling readily. I hear Doctor McAllister
spoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows a
well-balanced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a'
that," my dear Winifred.
We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand
of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine
creatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from
the wife he loves for months and years.
Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or
sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble
or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure
forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits
of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no
woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting
the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying
and pleasure-seeking wives.
I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true--_gambling-houses
and dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave town
for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when
crops are ripe._ I do not suppose your husband will seek the
companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as
seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe
he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as
men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction
and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young
wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake
of any possible attainment.
You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his
comfort secondary to your ambitions.
If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not
loyal to you, it would be different.
But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted
marrying him.
Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make
what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband
can accompany you before you go abroad to study.
The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been
"abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Do
not be one of them.
There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy,
united married life is one.