I shall always remember one winter evening, a little before
Christmas-time, when I took a long, solitary walk in the outskirts of
the town. The cold sunset had left a trail of orange light along the
horizon, the dry snow tinkled beneath my feet, and the early stars had
a keen, clear lustre that matched well with the sharp sound and the
frosty sensation. For some time I had walked toward the gleam of a
distant window, and as I approached, the light showed more and more
clearly through the white curtains of a little cottage by the road. I
stopped, on reaching it, to enjoy the suggestion of domestic
cheerfulness in contrast with the dark outside. I could not see the
inmates, nor they me; but something of human sympathy came from that
steadfast ray.
As I looked, a film of shade kept appearing and disappearing with
rhythmic regularity in a corner of the window, as if some one might be
sitting in a low rocking-chair close by. Presently the motion ceased,
and suddenly across the curtain came the shadow of a woman. She raised
in her arms the shadow of a baby, and kissed it; then both disappeared,
and I walked on.
What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, so
traced as to endure forever? In this picture of mine, the group
actually moved upon the canvas. The curtains that hid it revealed it.
The ecstasy of human love passed in brief, intangible panorama before
me. It was something seen, yet unseen; airy, yet solid; a type, yet a
reality; fugitive, yet destined to last in my memory while I live. It
said more to me than would any Madonna of Raphael's, for his mother
never kisses her child. I believe I have never passed over that road
since then, never seen the house, never heard the names of its
occupants. Their character, their history, their fate, are all unknown.
But these two will always stand for me as disembodied types of
humanity,--the Mother and the Child; they seem nearer to me than my
immediate neighbors, yet they are as ideal and impersonal as the
goddesses of Greece or as Plato's archetypal man.
I know not the parentage of that child, whether black or white, native
or foreign, rich or poor. It makes no difference. The presence of a
baby equalizes all social conditions. On the floor of some Southern
hut, scarcely so comfortable as a dog-kennel, I have seen a dusky woman
look down upon her infant with such an expression of delight as painter
never drew. No social culture can make a mother's face more than a
mother's, as no wealth can make a nursery more than a place where
children dwell. Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby-clothes, and
after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That
becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the
poorest home.
I know not what triumph or despair may have come and gone through that
wayside house since then, what jubilant guests may have entered, what
lifeless form passed out. What anguish or what sin may have come
between that woman and that child; through what worlds they now wander,
and whether separate or in each other's arms,--this is all unknown.
Fancy can picture other joys to which the first happiness was but the
prelude, and, on the other hand, how easy to imagine some special
heritage of human woe and call it theirs!
"I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover, might not rest
Save when he sat within the touch of thee."
Nay, the foretaste of that changed fortune may have been present, even
in the kiss. Who knows what absorbing emotion, besides love's immediate
impulse, may have been uttered in that shadowy embrace? There may have
been some contrition for ill-temper or neglect, or some triumph over
ruinous temptation, or some pledge of immortal patience, or some
heart-breaking prophecy of bereavement. It may have been simply an act
of habitual tenderness, or it may have been the wild reaction toward a
neglected duty; the renewed self-consecration of the saint, or the joy
of the sinner that repenteth. No matter. She kissed the baby. The
feeling of its soft flesh, the busy struggle of its little arms between
her hands, the impatient pressure of its little feet against her
knees,--these were the same, whatever the mood or circumstance beside.
They did something to equalize joy and sorrow, honor and shame.
Maternal love is love, whether a woman be a wife or only a mother. Only
a mother!
The happiness beneath that roof may, perhaps, have never reached so
high a point as at that precise moment of my passing. In the coarsest
household, the mother of a young child is placed on a sort of pedestal
of care and tenderness, at least for a time. She resumes something of
the sacredness and dignity of the maiden. Coleridge ranks as the purest
of human emotions that of a husband towards a wife who has a baby at
her breast,--"a feeling how free from sensual desire, yet how different
from friendship!" And to the true mother however cultivated, or however
ignorant, this period of early parentage is happier than all else, in
spite of its exhausting cares. In that delightful book, the "Letters"
of Mrs. Richard Trench (mother of the well-known English writer), the
most agreeable passage is perhaps that in which, after looking back
upon a life spent in the most brilliant society of Europe, she gives
the palm of happiness to the time when she was a young mother. She
writes to her god-daughter: "I believe it is the happiest time of any
woman's life, who has affectionate feelings, and is blessed with
healthy and well-disposed children. I know at least that neither the
gayeties and boundless hopes of early life, nor the more grave pursuits
and deeper affections of later years, are by any means comparable in my
recollection with the serene, yet lively pleasure of seeing my children
playing on the grass, enjoying their little temperate supper, or
repeating 'with holy look' their simple prayers, and undressing for
bed, growing prettier for every part of their dress they took off, and
at last lying down, all freshness and love, in complete happiness, and
an amiable contest for mamma's last kiss."
That kiss welcomed the child into a world where joy predominates. The
vast multitude of human beings enjoy existence and wish to live. They
all have their earthly life under their own control. Some religions
sanction suicide; the Christian Scriptures nowhere explicitly forbid
it; and yet it is a rare thing. Many persons sigh for death when it
seems far off, but the desire vanishes when the boat upsets, or the
locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set in. A wise physician
once said to me: "I observe that every one wishes to go to heaven, but
I observe that most people are willing to take a great deal of very
disagreeable medicine first." The lives that one least envies--as of
the Digger Indian or the outcast boy in the city--are yet sweet to the
living. "They have only a pleasure like that of the brutes," we say
with scorn. But what a racy and substantial pleasure is that! The
flashing speed of the swallow in the air, the cool play of the minnow
in the water, the dance of twin butterflies round a thistle-blossom,
the thundering gallop of the buffalo across the prairie, nay, the
clumsy walk of the grizzly bear; it were doubtless enough to reward
existence, could we have joy like such as these, and ask no more. This
is the hearty physical basis of animated life, and as step by step the
savage creeps up to the possession of intellectual manhood, each
advance brings with it new sorrow and new joy, with the joy always in
excess.
There are many who will utterly disavow this creed that life is
desirable in itself. A fair woman in a ball-room, exquisitely dressed,
and possessed of all that wealth could give, once declared to me her
belief--and I think honestly--that no person over thirty was
consciously happy, or would wish to live, but for the fear of death.
There could not even be pleasure in contemplating one's children, she
asserted, since they were living in such a world of sorrow. Asking the
opinion, within half an hour, of another woman as fair and as favored
by fortune, I found directly the opposite verdict. "For my part I can
truly say," she answered, "that I enjoy every moment I live." The
varieties of temperament and of physical condition will always afford
us these extremes; but the truth lies between them, and most persons
will endure many sorrows and still find life sweet.
And the mother's kiss welcomes the child into a world where good
predominates as well as joy. What recreants must we be, in an age that
has abolished slavery in America and popularized the governments of all
Europe, if we doubt that the tendency of man is upward! How much that
the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a
too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury or make one's
children rich! In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment
always brings down the house. In the tumult of war both sides applaud
an heroic deed. A courageous woman, who had traversed alone, on
benevolent errands, the worst parts of New York told me that she never
felt afraid except in the solitudes of the country; wherever there was
a crowd, she found a protector.
A policeman of great experience once spoke to me with admiration of the
fidelity of professional thieves to each other, and the risks they
would run for the women whom they loved; when "Bristol Bill" was
arrested, he said, there was found upon the burglar a set of false
keys, not quite finished, by which he would certainly, within
twenty-four hours, have had his mistress out of jail. Parent-Duchatelet
found always the remains of modesty among the fallen women of Paris
hospitals; and Mayhew, amid the London outcasts, says that he thinks
better of human nature every day. Even among politicians, whom it is
our American fashion to revile as the chief of sinners, there is less
of evil than of good.
In Wilberforce's "Memoirs" there is an account of his having once asked
Mr. Pitt whether his long experience as Prime Minister had made him
think well or ill of his fellow-men. Mr. Pitt answered, "Well"; and his
successor, Lord Melbourne, being asked the same question, answered,
after a little reflection, "My opinion is the same as that of Mr. Pitt."
Let us have faith. It was a part of the vigor of the old Hebrew
tradition to rejoice when a man-child was born into the world; and the
maturer strength of nobler ages should rejoice over a woman-child as
well. Nothing human is wholly sad, until it is effete and dying out.
Where there is life there is promise. "Vitality is always hopeful," was
the verdict of the most refined and clear-sighted woman who has yet
explored the rough mining villages of the Rocky Mountains. There is apt
to be a certain coarse virtue in rude health; as the Germanic races
were purest when least civilized, and our American Indians did not
unlearn chastity till they began to decay. But even where vigor and
vice are found together, they still may hold a promise for the next
generation. Out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. Parisian
wickedness is not so discouraging merely because it is wicked, as from
a suspicion that it is draining the life-blood of the nation. A mob of
miners or of New York bullies may be uncomfortable neighbors, and may
make a man of refinement hesitate whether to stop his ears or to feel
for his revolver; but they hold more promise for the coming generations
than the line which ends in Madame Bovary or the Vicomte de Camors.
But behind that cottage curtain, at any rate, a new and prophetic life
had begun. I cannot foretell that child's future, but I know something
of its past. The boy may grow up into a criminal, the woman into an
outcast, yet the baby was beloved. It came "not in utter nakedness." It
found itself heir of the two prime essentials of existence,--life and
love. Its first possession was a woman's kiss; and in that heritage the
most important need of its career was guaranteed. "An ounce of mother,"
says the Spanish proverb, "is worth a pound of clergy." Jean Paul says
that in life every successive influence affects us less and less, so
that the circumnavigator of the globe is less influenced by all the
nations he has seen than by his nurse. Well may the child imbibe that
reverence for motherhood which is the first need of man. Where woman is
most a slave, she is at least sacred to her son. The Turkish Sultan
must prostrate himself at the door of his mother's apartments, and were
he known to have insulted her, it would make his throne tremble. Among
the savage African Touaricks, if two parents disagree, it is to the
mother that the child's obedience belongs. Over the greater part of the
earth's surface, the foremost figures in all temples are the Mother and
Child. Christian and Buddhist nations, numbering together two thirds of
the world's population, unite in this worship. Into the secrets of the
ritual that baby in the window had already received initiation.
And how much spiritual influence may in turn have gone forth from that
little one! The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the
moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it
is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New
social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him. The London
costermonger told Mayhew that he thought every man would like his son
or daughter to have a better start in the world than his own. After
all, there is no tonic like the affections. Philosophers express wonder
that the divine laws should give to some young girl, almost a child,
the custody of an immortal soul. But what instruction the baby brings
to the mother! She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very
arm grows strong, so that she can hold the dear burden longer than the
father can. She learns to understand character, too, by dealing with
it. "In training my first children," said a wise mother to me, "I
thought that all were born just the same, and that I was wholly
responsible for what they should become. I learned by degrees that each
had a temperament of its own, which I must study before I could teach
it." And thus, as the little ones grow older, their dawning instincts
guide those of the parents; their questions suggest new answers, and to
have loved them is a liberal education.
For the height of heights is love. The philosopher dries into a
skeleton like that he investigates, unless love teaches him. He is
blind among his microscopes, unless he sees in the humblest human soul
a revelation that dwarfs all the world beside. While he grows gray in
ignorance among his crucibles, every girlish mother is being
illuminated by every kiss of her child. That house is so far sacred,
which holds within its walls this new-born heir of eternity. But to
dwell on these high mysteries would take us into depths beyond the
present needs of mother or of infant, and it is better that the greater
part of the baby-life should be that of an animated toy.
Perhaps it is well for all of us that we should live mostly on the
surfaces of things and should play with life, to avoid taking it too
hard. In a nursery the youngest child is a little more than a doll, and
the doll is a little less than a child. What spell does fancy weave on
earth like that which the one of these small beings performs for the
other? This battered and tattered doll, this shapeless, featureless,
possibly legless creature, whose mission it is to be dragged by one
arm, or stood upon its head in the bathing-tub, until it finally
reverts to the rag-bag whence it came,--what an affluence of breathing
life is thrown around it by one touch of dawning imagination! Its
little mistress will find all joy unavailing without its sympathetic
presence, will confide every emotion to its pen-and-ink ears, and will
weep passionate tears if its extremely soiled person is pricked when
its clothes are mended. What psychologist, what student of the human
heart, has ever applied his subtile analysis to the emotions of a child
toward her doll?
I read lately the charming autobiography of a little girl of eight
years, written literally from her own dictation. Since "Pet Marjorie" I
have seen no such actual self-revelation on the part of a child. In the
course of her narration she describes, with great precision and
correctness, the travels of the family through Europe in the preceding
year, assigning usually the place of importance to her doll, who
appears simply as "My Baby." Nothing can be more grave, more accurate,
more serious than the whole history, but nothing in it seems quite so
real and alive as the doll. "When we got to Nice, I was sick. The next
morning the doctor came, and he said I had something that was very much
like scarlet fever. Then I had Annie take care of baby, and keep her
away, for I was afraid she would get the fever. She used to cry to come
to me, but I knew it wouldn't be good for her."
What firm judgment is here, what tenderness without weakness, what
discreet motherhood! When Christmas came, it appears that baby hung up
her stocking with the rest. Her devoted parent had bought for her a
slate with a real pencil. Others provided thimble and scissors and
bodkin and a spool of thread, and a travelling-shawl with a strap, and
a cap with tarletan ruffles. "I found baby with the cap on, early in
the morning, and she was so pleased she almost jumped out of my arms."
Thus in the midst of visits to the Coliseum and St. Peter's, the drama
of early affection goes always on. "I used to take her to hear the
band, in the carriage, and she went everywhere I did." But the love of
all dolls, as of other pets, must end with a tragedy, and here it
comes. "The next place we went to was Lucerne. There was a lovely lake
there, but I had a very sad time. One day I thought I'd take baby down
to breakfast, and, as I was going up stairs, my foot slipped and baby
broke her head. And O, I felt so bad! and I cried out, and I ran up
stairs to Annie, and mamma came, and O, we were all so sorry! And mamma
said she thought I could get another head, but I said, 'It won't be the
same baby.' And mamma said, maybe we could make it seem so."
At this crisis the elder brother and sister departed for Mount Righi.
"They were going to stay all night, and mamma and I stayed at home to
take care of each other. I felt very bad about baby and about their
going, too. After they went, mamma and I thought we would go to the
little town and see what we could find." After many difficulties, a
waxen head was discovered. "Mamma bought it, and we took it home and
put it on baby; but I said it wasn't like my real baby, only it was
better than having no child at all!"
This crushing bereavement, this reluctant acceptance of a child by
adoption, to fill the vacant heart,--how real and formidable is all
this rehearsal of the tragedies of maturer years! I knew an instance in
which the last impulse of ebbing life was such a gush of imaginary
motherhood.
A dear friend of mine, whose sweet charities prolong into a third
generation the unbounded benevolence of old Isaac Hopper, used to go at
Christmas-time with dolls and other gifts to the poor children on
Randall's Island. Passing the bed of a little girl whom the physician
pronounced to be unconscious and dying, the kind visitor insisted on
putting a doll into her arms. Instantly the eyes of the little invalid
opened, and she pressed the gift eagerly to her heart, murmuring over
it and caressing it. The matron afterwards wrote that the child died
within two hours, wearing a happy face, and still clinging to her
new-found treasure.
And beginning with this transfer of all human associations to a doll,
the child's life interfuses itself readily among all the affairs of the
elders. In its presence, formality vanishes, the most oppressive
ceremonial is a little relieved when children enter. Their influence is
pervasive and irresistible, like that of water, which adapts itself to
any landscape,--always takes its place, welcome or unwelcome,--keeps
its own level and seems always to have its natural and proper margin.
Out of doors how children mingle with nature, and seem to begin just
where birds and butterflies leave off! Leigh Hunt, with his delicate
perceptions, paints this well: "The voices of children seem as natural
to the early morning as the voice of the birds. The suddenness, the
lightness, the loudness, the sweet confusion, the sparkling gayety,
seem alike in both. The sudden little jangle is now here and now there;
and now a single voice calls to another, and the boy is off like the
bird." So Heine, with deeper thoughtfulness, noticed the "intimacy with
the trees" of the little wood-gatherer in the Hartz Mountains; soon the
child whistled like a linnet, and the other birds all answered him;
then he disappeared in the thicket with his bare feet and his bundle of
brushwood.
"Children," thought Heine, "are younger than we, and can still remember
the time when they were trees or birds, and can therefore understand
and speak their language; but we are grown old, and have too many
cares, and too much jurisprudence and bad poetry in our heads."
But why go to literature for a recognition of what one may see by
opening one's eyes? Before my window there is a pool, two rods square,
that is haunted all winter by children,--clearing away the snow of many
a storm, if need be, and mining downward till they strike the ice. I
look this morning from the window, and the pond is bare. In a moment I
happen to look again, and it is covered with a swarm of boys; a great
migrating flock has settled upon it, as if swooping down from parts
unknown to scream and sport themselves here. The air is full of their
voices; they have all tugged on their skates instantaneously, as it
were by magic. Now they are in a confused cluster, now they sweep round
and round in a circle, now it is broken into fragments and as quickly
formed again; games are improvised and abandoned; there seems to be no
plan or leader, but all do as they please, and yet somehow act in
concert, and all chatter all the time. Now they have alighted, every
one, upon the bank of snow that edges the pond, each scraping a little
hollow in which to perch. Now every perch is vacant again, for they are
all in motion; each moment increases the jangle of shrill
voices,--since a boy's outdoor whisper to his nearest crony is as if he
was hailing a ship in the offing,--and what they are all saying can no
more be made out than if they were a flock of gulls or blackbirds. I
look away from the window once more, and when I glance out again there
is not a boy in sight. They have whirled away like snowbirds, and the
little pool sleeps motionless beneath the cheerful wintry sun. Who but
must see how gradually the joyous life of the animal rises through
childhood into man,--since the soaring gnats, the glancing fishes, the
sliding seals are all represented in this mob of half-grown boyhood
just released from school.
If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the
whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No
circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has
that possession. It is a freemasonry. Wherever one goes, there are the
little brethren and sisters of the mystic tie. No diversity of race or
tongue makes much difference. A smile speaks the universal language.
"If I value myself on anything," said the lonely Hawthorne, "it is on
having a smile that children love." They are such prompt little beings;
they require so little prelude; hearts are won in two minutes, at that
frank period, and so long as you are true to them they will be true to
you. They need no argument, no bribery. They have a hearty appetite for
gifts, no doubt, but it is not for these that they love the giver. Take
the wealth of the world and lavish it with counterfeited affection: I
will win all the children's hearts away from you by empty-handed love.
The gorgeous toys will dazzle them for an hour; then their instincts
will revert to their natural friends. In visiting a house where there
are children I do not like to take them presents: it is better to
forego the pleasure of the giving than to divide the welcome between
yourself and the gift. Let that follow after you are gone.
It is an exaggerated compliment to women when we ascribe to them alone
this natural sympathy with childhood. It is an individual, not a sexual
trait, and is stronger in many men than in many women. It is nowhere
better exhibited in literature than where the happy Wilhelm Meister
takes his boy by the hand, to lead him "into the free and lordly
world." Such love is not universal among the other sex, though men, in
that humility which so adorns their natures, keep up the pleasing
fiction that it is. As a general rule any little girl feels some
glimmerings of emotion towards anything that can pass for a doll, but
it does not follow that, when grown older, she will feel as ready an
instinct toward every child. Try it. Point out to a woman some bundle
of blue-and-white or white-and-scarlet in some one's arms at the next
street corner. Ask her, "Do you love that baby?" Not one woman in three
will say promptly, "Yes." The others will hesitate, will bid you wait
till they are nearer, till they can personally inspect the little thing
and take an inventory of its traits; it may be dirty, too; it may be
diseased. Ah! but this is not to love children, and you might as well
be a man. To love children is to love childhood, instinctively, at
whatever distance, the first impulse being one of attraction, though it
may be checked by later discoveries. Unless your heart commands at
least as long a range as your eye, it is not worth much. The dearest
saint in my calendar never entered a railway car that she did not look
round for a baby, which, when discovered, must always be won at once
into her arms. If it was dirty, she would have been glad to bathe it;
if ill, to heal it. It would not have seemed to her anything worthy the
name of love, to seek only those who were wholesome and clean. Like the
young girl in Holmes's most touching poem, she would have claimed as
her own the outcast child whom nurses and physicians had abandoned.
"'Take her, dread Angel! Break in love
This bruised reed and make it thine!'
No voice descended from above,
But Avis answered, 'She is mine!'"
When I think of the self-devotion which the human heart can contain--of
those saintly souls that are in love with sorrow, and that yearn to
shelter all weakness and all grief--it inspires an unspeakable
confidence that there must also be an instinct of parentage beyond this
human race, a heart of hearts, cor cordium. As we all crave something
to protect, so we long to feel ourselves protected. We are all infants
before the Infinite; and as I turned from that cottage window to the
resplendent sky, it was easy to fancy that mute embrace, that shadowy
symbol of affection, expanding from the narrow lattice till it touched
the stars, gathering every created soul into the armsof Immortal Love.