In our last paper on this subject we reduced the word “culture” to
its simple and original meaning, and used the familiar illustration
of a plot of garden ground, showing that weeds would spring up if
cultivation were neglected; that things useful and beautiful alike
flourish in the ideal garden; that the quality of the soil and other
conditions should be taken into account by the wise cultivator; and
that, culture being a process as well as a result, a little work in
that direction is better than none at all. We might follow the simile
further; but we are now met by a difficulty, and can imagine some
critic expostulating, “Your illustration of the garden is all very
well, but it breaks down at the most important point. The ground cannot
cultivate itself, and needs an experienced gardener. If let alone, it
becomes, as you have said, a tangle of weeds and deserves Hamlet’s
words—
“‘Fie on’t! Ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.’
“So our mental faculties, our whole nature, are like a garden
susceptible of being properly cultivated; but _when there is no
gardener_, no intelligence from without to direct the process, what is
to be done?”
The simile, it is true, does break down, as similes are apt to do if
pushed too far. And, dear reader, we freely confess that in the term
“self-culture” all the difficulty is expressed. It is a hard matter to
be dependent upon one’s unaided efforts in this matter. We may even go
further and confess that nothing can quite make up for the contact with
people of culture, the student life in the atmosphere of a college, the
marvellous, enchanting process of education received when one is old
enough to appreciate it.
We cannot perhaps wonder if those who know the stimulus of University
life at its keenest, the delight of interchange of thought, the
unspeakable associations
“Of that sweet city with her dreaming spires,”
look with serenest pity on any attempt at “culture” outside that and
kindred regions.
But it is exclusive and cruel to laugh down the attempts of the
partially educated to attain farther; and certainly it is unreasonable
to tell them, “You must have all, or nothing.”
Much can be done by the most ignorant—no one can say how much—and at
any rate it is worth the while of every reader who scans this page to
do something towards the process of self-culture. For there are outside
helps within the reach of all. No girl, however cut off she may be from
people who can help her to study, can be, especially in the present
day, altogether cut off from Books.
How much books may do, is a commonplace often dilated upon. But have
you, who are glancing down this column, ever reflected upon it as
regards your own individual self?
How fine a thing you would think it if you had the privilege of
introduction to some great author and could exchange a few words with
him! How great an honour if you could enjoy his friendship, and spend
an hour with him from time to time in intimate conversation! What a
means of culture you would consider it to be!
But the power of reading admits you to the society of the wise and
great without let or hindrance, and to their society at their best
moments. It is often a very disappointing thing to be introduced to the
literary hero or heroine of one’s adoration. One expects an utterance
equal to the author’s reputation, and there comes instead some
commonplace suggested by the surrounding circumstances. We have heard
of a young lady devotee taken down to dinner by a great poet, whom
to meet had been her dream for years. She listened for his voice in
breathless silence, unable to eat for excitement, but he said nothing
during soup, fish, entrées; until at length, on the appearance of a
fresh course, he remarked, “I like mutton cut in wedges.”
Whether the story be true or not, it is a good illustration. On first
meeting a stranger it is impossible for the wisest man to drag up from
the depths of his being some remark equal to his reputation. There is
nothing to call it forth, and it would probably sound affected, or
far-fetched, if he began instantly to “talk like a book,” especially
like his own books. You cannot get at the inner nature of the man
without long friendship, and without a likeness of disposition. But in
his book you find him at once, with no tedious preliminary process, at
his very best. As Mr. J. R. Lowell has said, the art of reading is the
talisman that admits “to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest
and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments; that enables us
to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to
the sweetest voices of all time.”
To the girl, then, who has aspirations, or even a dim stirring of faint
desire, after self-culture, we may say, “Read; in the second place,
Read; and yet again, Read.”
In Matthew Arnold’s published _Letters_, he gives a piece of excellent
advice to a young lady who is a relation of his:
“If I were you, I should now take to some regular reading, if it were
only an hour a day. It is the best thing in the world to have something
of this sort as a point in the day, and far too few people know and use
this secret. You would have your district still and all your business
as usual, but you would have this hour in your day, in the midst of it
all, and it would soon become of the greatest solace to you. Desultory
reading is a mere anodyne, regular reading, well chosen, is restoring
and edifying.”
It would be a good thing if every girl would study Ruskin’s _Sesame and
Lilies_, and follow the advice therein contained. It has been so often
quoted that we hesitate again to transcribe it; but it cannot be read
too frequently.
“Have you measured and mapped out this short life and its
possibilities? Do you know if you read this that you cannot read that;
that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and
gossip with your housemaid or your stable boy when you may talk with
queens and kings? Will you jostle with the common crowd for _entrée_
here and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open
to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days,
the chosen and the mighty of every place and time?”
Time is precious and is fleeting fast. There would be less poring over
fashion-plates, fewer pennies spent on miscellaneous collections of
tawdry scraps of useless information garnished with comic anecdotes, if
it were realised that each hour spent in aimless, silly reading is an
hour lost, never to be regained.
This may seem “a counsel of perfection.” We do not say, read nothing
at all of the ephemeral literature whose aim is to enliven and amuse,
but if you have any desire for self-culture, read something else as
well. If you get into the habit of this light, disconnected, desultory
reading, you will find it spoil your taste and your appetite for
anything else. The loss you will suffer will be simply incalculable.
Amuse a few spare minutes at the railway station, on the tedious
journey, by all means: but do not let your reading stop short at mere
entertainment or information about dress.
It is a terrible thing when this power of reading—the instrument,
almost the only instrument, of self-culture—is turned so persistently
to other ends that it becomes a warped and worthless tool.
“It is of paramount importance,” says Schopenhauer, the German
philosopher, “to acquire the art _not_ to read.... We should recollect
that he who writes for fools finds an enormous audience, and we should
devote the ever scant leisure of our circumscribed existence to the
master spirits of all ages and nations—those who tower over humanity,
and whom the voice of Fame proclaims; only such writers cultivate and
instruct us.”
Too stringent perhaps! and yet a truth lies here which may well be
taken to heart. A more modern critic, Frederic Harrison, puts it thus:
“Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of
taking up a book with a purpose; every bit of stray information which
we cram into our heads without any sense of its importance is for the
most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads
and choked off from our minds.... We know that books differ in value as
much as diamonds differ from the sand on the seashore ... and I cannot
but think the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of the
actual power of using them.”
What to read, will form the subject of future articles; only let the
girl who scans this page make up her mind that she will follow its
advice and read _something_. “Studies serve for delight, for ornament,
and for ability” is a familiar sentence of Lord Bacon. Even the busiest
girl can lay this to heart and profit by it, as was shown by some
articles which appeared in THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER on the life of working
girls—“My Daily Round.” Some of the most charming sentences in those
interesting papers were the sentences where appreciation of literature
as a companion to the scant hour of freedom held a conspicuous place.
Life is often a very hard and sordid thing, and far too many women are
forced to spend their days in detail of a distasteful kind. We must not
extol a spirit of discontent with “the trivial round, the common task,”
and must remember the French motto, “When one cannot have what one
likes, one must like what one has.” Yet we all need a resource. Every
man or woman, young or old, ought to have a refuge wherein to flee
from the worries and minute cares of “this troublesome world”—a refuge
that shall prove
“The world’s sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil.”
And for this self-culture is invaluable.
Walter Besant somewhere observes that he often sees in London
omnibuses, girls returning from the work of the day, whose lips are
noiselessly moving. Their look is harassed, and they are talking
to themselves in irritated fashion of what has gone wrong; perhaps
uttering imaginary repartees to unreasonable employers. Some
engrossment in poetry or romance, some mental diversion which should
force them to turn away their thoughts, would be a panacea, and they
might dwell with consolation, remembering such employers, on one of the
antitheta of Lord Bacon—“In reading we hold converse with the wise; in
the business of life, generally with the foolish.”
And study is a priceless relief and refuge to women in any grade of
society. A girl who really loves reading possesses an inexhaustible
charm to lift her above the little worries of daily life, in whatever
sphere that life may be.
In Switzerland one finds a summer stay in the valleys, beautiful and
fertile as they are, beset by certain annoyances, of which perhaps the
most dire and disturbing is a peculiar sort of fly, like a horse-fly,
that settles and stings even through a thick glove. The most lovely
summer resorts beside the lakes are infested by this creature, which
comes everywhere with slow, sleepy virulence, alighting upon face and
hands and thrusting in its poison. To escape it, one must go to the
mountains; far up on the fragrant slopes where the pine trees hang in
air, and the torrent leaps down among them, and the blue gloom of the
valley lies below, and the everlasting snows stretch far away behind,
up and up against the sky. Here there are no poisonous insects to buzz
and sting; the wanderer has ascended too high.
So in life we can escape the trivial vexations and irritations of
life by rising above them to the height of some lofty thought, some
beautiful idea, whence we can view the plains of daily existence with
its petty cares and stings far, far below.
LILY WATSON.
(_To be continued._)
SOCIAL INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF AN EAST END GIRL.