love, and promise to marry, but, seeing the promise means disaster,
withdraw it, to love elsewhere; if one may love and the love be choked
to death, or frozen to entire absence of feeling, and then revive
under the warmth of new sympathy to live and feel again--if all these
things may be, and those to whom the experience comes are held to be
no more criminal than their fellows, surely there may be love, real
love, honestly given with both hands, as honestly clasped and held, and
yet--and yet--a time may come when, for one of a thousand reasons, or
for two or three, that love will wane and wane until, from illumining
the whole firmament of those within its radiance, it disappears and
leaves nothing but black, moonless night. But, by-and-by, a new moon of
love may rise, may wax to equal splendour, making as glorious as before
everything on which it shines; and the heart, forgetting none of the
past, rejoices again in the present, and says, “Life is good; let me
live it as it comes.” If that be possible, the alternate day and night
of love and loss may succeed each other more than twice or thrice, and
yet no charge, even of fickleness, may fairly lie at the door of him
or her to whom this fate may come unsought.
To love, as some can love, and be loved as well in return; to trust in
the unswerving faith, the unassailable loyalty, the unbounded devotion
of another, as one trusts in God, in the simple laws of nature, in
anything that is absolutely certain; and then to find that our deity
has feet of clay, that our perfect gem has, after all, a flaw, is
a very bad experience. Worse than all, to lose, absolutely and for
ever, and yet without death, a love that seemed more firmly rooted and
grounded in us than any sacred principle, more surely ours than any
possession secured by bolt and bar--that is a pain that passeth the
understanding of those who have not felt it. Add to this the knowledge
that this curse has come upon us as the result of our own work--folly,
blind, senseless, reckless confidence, or worse--that is the very acme
of human suffering. It is not a thing to dwell upon. On the grave
of a love that has surpassed, in the perfection of its reality, all
the dreams of imagination, and every ideal conjured out of depths of
passionate romance, grow weeds which poison the air and madden the
brain with grisly spectres. It is well to “let the dead bury their
dead”--if we only can.
There, I am at the end; or is it only the close of a chapter? I suppose
it must be the latter, for I have but now come to my friend’s
proposition, namely, that of love distributed amongst a number of
objects; all perhaps different, yet all in their way, let us hope,
equally worthy. I know how she explains it. She says she loves one man
because he appeals to her in one way, another in another; and as there
are many means of approach to her heart, so there are many who, by one
road or another, find their way to it. After all, she is probably more
candid than singular in the distribution of her affection. How many
worldlings who have reached the age of thirty can say that they have
not had a varied experience in the elasticity of their affections, in
the variety of shrines at which they have worshipped? Aphrodite and
Athene and Artemis for the men; Phœbus and Ares and Hermes for the
women; and a host of minor deities for either. Minor chords, delicate
harmonies, charming pages of melody between the tragic scenes, the
carefully scored numbers, the studied effects, which introduce the
distinguishing _motifs_ of the leading characters, in that strange
conception wherein is written all the music of their lives.
We are told that the sons of God took unto themselves wives from
the daughters of men. Do you believe they left no wives, no broken
faith, in heaven, before they came to earth to seek what they could
not find above the spheres? What form of marriage ceremony do you
suppose they went through with those daughters of men? Was it binding
until death, and did that last trifling incident only open the door
to an eternity of wedded bliss in the heaven from which earthly love
had been able to seduce these sons of God? I fear there is proof of
inconstancy somewhere. There is clear evidence of a desire for change,
and that is usually taken to be a synonym for inconstancy, as between
the sexes. The daughters of men have something to answer for, much to
be proud of; but I hardly see why either they, or their menkind, who
never drew any loving souls down from the safe heights of heaven to
be wives to them, should be expected to make a choice of a partner
early in life and never waver in devotion to that one, until death
has put them beyond the possibility of temptation. It does happen
sometimes; it is beautiful, enviable, and worthy of all praise. But
when the heart of man or woman, following that most universal law
of nature, change, goes through the whole gamut of feeling, from
indifference to passionate love, and later retraces its steps, going
back over only a few of them, or to a place, beyond indifference, where
dislike is reached, there seems no good reason why that disappointed,
disillusioned soul should be made the object of reproach, or the mark
for stones, cast by others who have already gone through the same
experience or have yet to learn it.
If we claim immortality, I think we must admit our mutability. Perhaps
the fault is not all ours. It is written:--
“Alas for those who, having tasted once
Of that forbidden vintage of the lips
That, press’d and pressing, from each other draw
The draught that so intoxicates them both,
That, while upon the wings of Day and Night
Time rustles on, and Moons do wax and wane,
As from the very Well of Life they drink,
And, drinking, fancy they shall never drain.
But rolling Heaven from His ambush whispers,
So in my licence is it not set down:
Ah for the sweet societies I make
At Morning, and before the Nightfall break;
Ah for the bliss that coming Night fills up,
And Morn looks in to find an empty Cup!”
I do not seek to persuade you; it is a subject we often discuss, on
which we never agree. I only state the facts as I know them, and I am
for the truth!--even though I wish it were not true--rather than for a
well-sounding pretence, which usually covers a lie. I have believed;
I have seen what, with my life, I would have maintained was perfect,
changeless love; and I have seen that love bestowed, in apparently
equal measure, on another; while, sometimes, the first affection has
died utterly, or, at others, it has never died at all, and the wavering
heart, divided in allegiance, has suffered agonies of remorse, and at
last begged one object of its devotion to shun it for ever, and so help
it “to be true to some one.”
There you find a result almost the same as that so candidly confessed
by my friend; but the phases through which either will pass to arrive
at it are utterly different. Fate and circumstances, the prolonged
absence of the lover, misunderstandings, silence, and the ceaseless,
wearing efforts of another to take the place of the absent--the absent,
who is always wrong;--these things will loosen the tightest bond,
when once the enemy at the gate has established a feeling of sympathy
between himself and the beleaguered city. If at last there is a
capitulation, it is only when the besieged is _au bout de ressources_;
only made in extreme distress, only perhaps under a belief of
abandonment by one on whom the city relied for assistance in its dire
need.
My candid friend has no regrets, passes through no phases of feeling,
sees no harm, means none, and for herself is probably safe. Only
her heart is large and warm; she desires sympathy, intellectual
companionship, amusement, passionate adoration. She gets these things,
but not all from the same man, and she is prepared to give love in
return for each, but it is love with a wise reservation. Sometimes she
cannot understand why the objects of her catholic affections are not
equally satisfied with the arrangement, and she thinks their discontent
is unreasonable. She will learn. Possibly, as she acquires knowledge,
she may change. Nothing is more certain than that there is, if not
always, very very often, the widest difference in the world between
the girl of twenty and the woman of thirty. It is a development, an
evolution,--often a startling one,--and if men more often realised what
is likely to come, waited for it, and understood it when it arrived,
there would be a deal less unhappiness in the world.
That, however, is another question, about which I should like to talk
to you on another day, for it has interest.
Of love, and change in the object of love, I think you will not deny
the possibility. If you have never known such change, you are the
exception, and out of your strength you can afford to deal gently
with those weaker vessels whose feelings have gone through several
experiences. But has your faith never wavered? Have your affections
been set on one man, and one only; and are they there to-day, as
strong, as single-hearted, as true and as contented as ever? I wonder;
pardon me if I also doubt!
I have spoken only of those cases where the love that was has ceased
to be; ceased altogether and gone elsewhere, or so changed from what
it was, that it no longer knits together those it once held to the
exclusion of all others. But I might remind you that there are many
other phases, all of which imply change, or at least such difference
as must be counted faithlessness. Your quick intelligence can supply
a multitude of instances from the unfortunate experiences of your
friends, and I will only cite one that is not altogether unheard of.
It is this; when two people are bound by the ties of mutual love, and
fate divides them by time and distance, it sometimes happens that one
will prove faithless in heart, while remaining firmly constant in deed.
That is usually the woman. The other may be faithless in deed; but he
says to himself (and, if he has to confess his backsliding, he will
swear the same to his lady) that his affections have never wavered.
He often does not realise that this statement, the truth of which he
takes such trouble to impress upon his outraged goddess, adds to the
baseness of his deed. It is curious, but it is true, that the woman,
if she believes, will pardon that offence, while she would not forgive
the heart-faithlessness of which she is herself guilty. He is not
likely to learn that her fealty has wandered; he takes a good deal for
granted, and he does not easily believe that such things are possible
where he is concerned; but, should he suspect it, should she even
admit that another has aroused in her feelings akin to those she had
hitherto only felt for him, he will hold that aberration from the path
of faith rather lightly, though neither tears nor blood could atone for
a faithless deed, such as that of which he stands convicted.
Woman realises that if man’s lower nature takes him into the gutter,
or even less unclean places, he will not hanker after whatever it was
that attracted him when once his temptation is out of sight. She
despises, but she estimates the disloyalty at its right value in a
creature for whose want of refinement she learns to feel a certain
contempt. Man, busy about many other things, treats as trivial a lapse
which implies no smirch on his honour; and he, knowing himself and
judging thereby, says, “Out of sight, out of mind.” It seldom occurs
to him that, where the woman’s heart has been given away from him,
he has already lost at least as much as his utmost dread; and even
that is more likely to follow, than he to return to one who has never
aroused in him any feeling of which he cares to think. Therefore, he is
inclined rather to be amused than distressed; and, still mindful of his
own experiences, he dismisses the matter from his thoughts with almost
a sense of satisfaction. But he is wrong: is he not?
Of course I am not thinking of the jealous men. They are impossible
people whom no one pities. They never see that, while they make
themselves hateful to every one who is unhappily thrown into contact
with them, they only secure their own misery. I believe there are men
who are jealous of the door-mat. These are beyond the help of prayer.
XII
DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM
I agree with you that few things are more astonishing than the want of
sympathy between parents and their daughters. Many fathers and mothers
seem to be absolutely insensible to the thoughts, the desires, and the
aspirations of those for whom they usually profess, and probably feel,
a very great affection. There are two principal causes for this very
common state of matters. One is the difference in age between parents
and children. The fathers and mothers are losing, or have already lost,
their interest in many of those things which are just beginning to most
keenly interest their children. The children are very quick to see
this, and the confidence they will give to a comparative stranger they
withhold from parents, to whom they are too shy to confess themselves,
because they dread ridicule, coldness, displeasure. The other cause of
estrangement is the fact that parents will insist upon regarding their
daughters as children until they marry, and sometimes even afterwards;
and they are so accustomed to ordering and being obeyed, that they
cannot understand independence of thought. Their children are always
children to them; they must do exactly what they are told without
question; they ought not to have any ideas of their own, and, if they
are really good Christian children, well brought up and a credit to
their parents, they must, before all things, be obedient and have no
likes and dislikes, no opinions that are not those of their parents. As
with crows, they must be feathered like the old birds and caw, always
and only caw, if they wish to be heard at all.
It sounds, and it seems, unreasonable, and yet one sees it every day,
and the amused or enraged spectator, with no fledglings of his own,
is lost in wonderment at the crass stupidity of otherwise sensible
people, who, while they do these things themselves, and glory in their
own shame, will invite attention to the mote in their neighbour’s
eye, which ought to be invisible to them by reason of the great beam
in their own. I suppose it never occurs to them that they are all the
time committing hateful and unpardonable crimes; that their want of
intelligent appreciation is driving their children to resort to all
kinds of concealment, subterfuge, and deceit; while home becomes often
so hateful to a girl that she seizes the first opportunity of leaving
it, and makes her life a long misery or something worse.
If the spectator dared, or cared, to speak the naked truth to a parent,
I can imagine that dignified individual choking with respectable rage
at the bare suggestion that he was in any sense responsible for his
daughter’s regrettable conduct. Yet surely the father and the mother
are blameworthy, if they decline to treat their grown-up daughters as
intelligent creatures, with the instincts, the yearnings, the passions
for which they are less responsible than their parents. “You must do
this, because I was made to do it; and you must not do that, because
I was never allowed to do it. You must never question my directions,
because they are for your good; because you are younger than I am, and
cannot therefore know as well as I do; because I am your mother and
you are my daughter; and, in my day, daughters never questioned their
mothers.” All this, and a great deal more, may be admirable; but it
does not seem so. It may even answer sometimes; but that is rather
cause for surprise than congratulation. It does fail, often and badly;
but the parents are the last to realise the fact, and probably nothing
would ever persuade them that the failure is due to their methods. If
ever it comes home to parents that their revolted children have grown
to hate them, they call them “unnatural,” and almost expect the earth
to open and swallow them up, as happened to Korah and all his company.
To onlookers the position often seems intolerable, and they avoid it,
lest they should be tempted to interfere and so make matters worse.
Nowadays, intelligent opinion is not surprised when tyranny is followed
by rebellion. The world is getting even beyond that phase. Both men and
women demand that their opinions should be heard; and where, amongst
English-speaking people, they can be shown to be in accordance with
common-sense, with freedom of thought, and with what are called the
Rights of Man, they usually prevail. Children do not often complain
of tyranny, and they seldom revolt; but they bitterly resent being
treated as if they were ten years old when they are twenty, when
their intelligence, their education, and even their knowledge of the
world entitle them to hold and express opinions. Nay, more, they are
conscious of what is due to their own self-esteem, their family, and
their order; and there are better ways of keeping them true to high
purposes and lofty ideals than by treating them as children, whose
intentions must always be suspected, because prone to naughtiness. The
finer feelings are often strongest in youth; life and its experiences
blunt them. While they are there, it is well to encourage them.
Sympathy from an equal can easily do that; but, unless equality in
speech be granted, the being who is held in bondage will be shy to
express thoughts and aspirations that may be ridiculed, and will also
resent the position of inferiority to which he or she is relegated for
reasonless reasons.
In the relations between parents and children, perhaps the most
surprising point is the absolute disregard of the pitiless vengeance of
heredity. Men and women seem to forget that some of their ancestors’
least attractive attributes may appear in their descendants, after
sparing a child or skipping a generation. The guiding traits (whether
for good or evil) in most characters can be traced with unerring
accuracy to an ancestor, where there is any record of family history.
One child is predestined to be a musician, another a soldier, and
a third a commonplace or remarkable sinner. Identical methods of
education and treatment may not suit all equally well. Because a
parent has lived only one life, the half-dozen children for whom he is
responsible may not, even in the natural course of events, turn out to
be exact replicas of their father, nor thrive on the food which reared
him to perfection.
I do not pretend that there are not many exceptions; but the daughters
who are the victims of parental zeal, or parental repression, are so
numerous that, in England at any rate, they probably form the majority
of their kind. Of those who marry, the greater number may be entirely
well-mated. Every one must hope that it is so. Some there are who are
not so fortunate; and some, again, begin well but end in disaster,--due
to their own mistakes and defects, to those of their husbands, or to
unkind circumstances. With the daughters who are favoured by Fortune
we have no concern. For the others, there is only one aspect of their
case with which I will bore you, and that because it seems to me to be
to some extent a corollary to my last letter. If a girl has ideas and
intelligence beyond those of her parents; if she has felt constraint
and resented it; if she has exercised self-repression, while she
longed for sympathy, for expansion, for a measure of freedom--such
an experience, especially if it has lasted for any time, is not the
best preparation for marriage. Married life--where man and woman
are in complete sympathy, where mutual affection and admiration
make self-sacrifice a joy, and trouble taken for the other a real
satisfaction--is not altogether an easy path to tread, with sure and
willing feet, from the altar to the grave. Many would give much to be
able to turn back: but there is no return. So some faint and others
die; some never cease from quarrelling; some accept the inevitable
and lose all interest in life; while a few get off the road, over the
barriers, break their necks or their hearts, or simply disappear out of
the ken, beyond the vision, of their kind.
I think much of the unhappiness that comes to be a millstone round the
necks of married people is due, primarily, to the deep ignorance of
womankind so commonly displayed by mankind. It is a subject that is
not taught, probably because no man would be found conceited enough to
profess more than the most superficial knowledge of it. Some Eastern
writers have gone into the question, but their point of view differs
from ours, as do their climate, their religion, their temperament,
habits, and moral code. Their teachings are difficult to obtain; they
are written in languages not commonly understood, and they deal with
races and societies that have little in common with Europeans. Michelet
has, however, produced a book that may be read with advantage by all
those who wish to acquire a few grains of knowledge on a subject that
has such an enthralling interest at some period of most men’s lives.
It is not exactly easy to indicate other aids to an adequate conception
of the feminine gender, but they will not be found in the streets and
gutters of great cities.
The school-boy shuns girls. He is parlously ignorant of all that
concerns them, except that they cannot compete with him in strength
and endurance. He first despises them for their comparative physical
weakness; then, as he grows a little older, a certain shyness of the
other sex seizes him; but this usually disappears with the coming of
real manhood, when his instincts prompt him to seek women’s society.
What he learns then, unless he is very fortunate, will not help him to
understand and fully appreciate the girl who somewhat later becomes his
wife--indeed, it is more likely to mislead him and contribute to her
unhappiness. Unite this inexperienced, or over-experienced, youth with
the girl who is ready to accept almost any one who will take her from
an uncongenial home, and it says a good deal for the Western world that
the extraordinary difficulties of the position should, in so large a
proportion of cases, be overcome as well as they are.
In the rage for higher education, why does not some philanthropic
lady, some many-times-married man, open a seminary for the instruction
of inexperienced men who wish to take into their homes, for life and
death, companions, of whose sex generally, their refined instincts,
tender feelings, reckless impulses, strange cravings, changeful moods,
overpowering curiosity, attitudes of mind, methods of attack and
defence, signals of determined resistance or speedy capitulation, they
know, perhaps, as little as of the Grand Llama. What an opportunity
such a school would afford to the latest development of woman to
impress her own views upon the rising generation of men! How easily she
might mould them to her fancy, or, at least, plant in them seeds of
repentance, appreciation, and constancy, to grow up under the care of
wives for whose society the Benedictentiary would have somewhat fitted
them.
It is really an excellent idea, this combination of Reformatory of the
old man and Education of the new. Can you not see all the newspapers
full of advertisements like this:--
PREPARATION OF GENTLEMEN FOR MATRIMONY