quietly for a time with the contemplation of her perplexities and
anxieties, he at last unfolds to her the mysterious counsels of his will
by declaring to another of her lovers, in her presence, that he “has the
intention of asking this young lady to become his wife.” During the
engagement, however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity by
insisting prematurely on the right divine of husbands, and, as she
proves fractious, announces to her, that, much as he loves her, he sees
no prospect of future happiness in their union, and that they had better
part.
The rest of the story describes the struggles and anguish of the two,
who pass through a volume of distresses, he growing more cold, proud,
severe, and misanthropic than ever, all of which is supposed to be the
fault of naughty Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint of him,
could she only have found her highest pleasure in letting him have his
own way. Her conscience distresses her; it is all her fault; at last,
worn out in the strife, she resolves to be a good girl, goes to his
library, finds him alone, and, in spite of an insulting reception,
humbles herself at his feet, gives up all her naughty pride, begs to be
allowed to wait on him as a handmaid, and is rewarded by his graciously
announcing, that, since she will stay with him at all events, she _may_
stay as his wife; and the story leaves her in the last sentence sitting
in what we are informed is the only true place of happiness for a woman,
at her husband’s feet.
This is the solution which the most cultivated women of England give of
the domestic problem.
According to these fair interpreters of English ideas, the British lion
on his own domestic hearth, standing in awful majesty with his back to
the fire and his hands under his coat-tails, can be supposed to have no
such disreputable discussions as we have described; since his partner,
as Miss Bronté says, has learned to know her keeper, and her place at
his feet, and can conceive no happiness so great as hanging the picture
and setting the piano exactly as he likes.
Of course this will be met with a general shriek of horror on the part
of our fair republican friends, and an equally general disclaimer on the
part of our American gentlemen, who, so far as we know, would be quite
embarrassed by the idea of assuming any such pronounced position at the
fireside.
The genius of American institutions is not towards a _display_ of
authority. All needed authority exists among us, but exists silently,
with as little external manifestation as possible.
Our President is but a fellow-citizen, personally the equal of other
citizens. We obey him because we have chosen him, and because we find it
convenient, in regulating our affairs, to have one final appeal and one
deciding voice.
The position in which the Bible and the marriage service place the
husband in the family amounts to no more. He is the head of the family
in all that relates to its material interests, its legal relations, its
honor and standing in society; and no true woman who respects herself
would any more hesitate to promise to yield to him this position and the
deference it implies than an officer of state to yield to the President.
But because Mr. Lincoln is officially above Mr. Seward, it does not
follow that there can be nothing between them but absolute command on
the one part and prostrate submission on the other; neither does it
follow that the superior claims in all respects to regulate the affairs
and conduct of the inferior. There are still wide spheres of individual
freedom, as there are in the case of husband and wife; and no sensible
man but would feel himself ridiculous in entering another’s proper
sphere with the voice of authority.
The inspired declaration, that “the husband is the head of the wife,
even as Christ is the head of the Church,” is certainly to be qualified
by the evident points of difference in the subjects spoken of. It
certainly does not mean that any man shall be invested with the rights
of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply that in the family state he
is the head and protector, even as in the Church is the Saviour. It is
merely the announcement of a great natural law of society which obtains
through all the tribes and races of men,--a great and obvious fact of
human existence.
The silly and senseless reaction against this idea in some otherwise
sensible women is, I think, owing to the kind of extravagances and
overstatements to which we have alluded. It is as absurd to cavil at the
word _obey_ in the marriage ceremony as for a military officer to set
himself against the etiquette of the army, or a man to refuse the
freeman’s oath.
Two young men every way on a footing of equality and friendship may be
one of them a battalion-commander and the other a staff-officer. It
would be alike absurd for the one to take airs about not obeying a man
every way his equal, and for the other to assume airs of lordly
dictation out of the sphere of his military duties. The mooting of the
question of marital authority between two well-bred, well-educated
Christian people of the nineteenth century is no less absurd.
While the husband has a certain power confided to him for the support
and maintenance of the family, and for the preservation of those
relations which involve its good name and well-being before the world,
he has no claim to an authoritative exertion of will in reference to the
little personal tastes and habits of the interior. He has no divine
right to require that everything shall be arranged to please him, at the
expense of his wife’s preferences and feelings, any more than if he were
not the head of the household. In a thousand indifferent matters which
do not touch the credit and respectability of the family, he is just as
much bound sometimes to give up his own will and way for the comfort of
his wife as she is in certain other matters to submit to his decisions.
In a large number of cases the husband and wife stand as equal human
beings before God, and the indulgence of unchecked and inconsiderate
self-will on either side is a sin.
It is my serious belief that writings such as we have been considering
do harm both to men and women, by insensibly inspiring in the one an
idea of a licensed prerogative of selfishness and self-will, and in the
other an irrational and indiscreet servility.
Is it any benefit to a man to find in the wife of his bosom the
flatterer of his egotism, the acquiescent victim of his little selfish
exactions, to be nursed and petted and cajoled in all his faults and
fault-findings, and to see everybody falling prostrate before his will
in the domestic circle? Is this the true way to make him a manly and
Christ-like man? It is my belief that many so-called good wives have
been accessory to making their husbands very bad Christians.
However, then, the little questions of difference in every-day life are
to be disposed of between two individuals, it is in the worst possible
taste and policy to undertake to settle them by mere authority. All
romance, all poetry, all beauty are over forever with a couple between
whom the struggle of mere authority has begun. No, there is no way out
of difficulties of this description but by the application, on both
sides, of good sense and religion to the little differences of life.
A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that
_setness in trifles_ which is the result of the unwatched instinct of
self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.
Every man and every woman, in their self-training and self-culture,
should study the art of _giving up in little things_ with a good grace.
The charm of polite society is formed by that sort of freedom and
facility in all the members of a circle which makes each one pliable to
the influences of the others, and sympathetic to slide into the moods
and tastes of others without a jar.
In courteous and polished circles, there are no stiff railroad-tracks,
cutting straight through everything, and grating harsh thunders all
along their course, but smooth, meandering streams, tranquilly bending
hither and thither to every undulation of the flowery banks. What makes
the charm of polite society would make no less the charm of domestic
life; but it can come only by watchfulness and self-discipline in each
individual.
Some people have much more to struggle with in this way than others.
Nature has made them precise and exact. They are punctilious in their
hours, rigid in their habits, pained by any deviation from regular rule.
Now Nature is always perversely ordering that men and women of just
this disposition should become desperately enamored of their exact
opposites. The man of rules and formulas and hours has his heart carried
off by a gay, careless little chit, who never knows the day of the
month, tears up the newspaper, loses the door-key, and makes curl-papers
out of the last bill; or, _per contra_, our exact and precise little
woman, whose belongings are like the waxen cells of a bee, gives her
heart to some careless fellow, who enters her sanctum in muddy boots,
upsets all her little nice household divinities whenever he is going on
a hunting or fishing bout, and can see no manner of sense in the
discomposure she feels in the case.
What can such couples do, if they do not adopt the compromise of reason
and sense,--if each arms his or her own peculiarities with the back
force of persistent self-will, and runs them over the territories of the
other?
A sensible man and woman, finding themselves thus placed, can govern
themselves by a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on a
life-battle, can modify their own tastes and requirements, turn their
eyes from traits which do not suit them to those which do, resolving, at
all events, however reasonable be the taste or propensity which they
sacrifice, to give up all rather than have domestic strife.
There is one form which persistency takes that is peculiarly trying: I
mean that persistency of opinion which deems it necessary to stop and
raise an argument in self-defence on the slightest personal criticism.
John tells his wife that she is half an hour late with her breakfast
this morning, and she indignantly denies it.
“But look at my watch!”
“Your watch isn’t right.”
“I set it by railroad time.”
“Well, that was a week ago; that watch of yours always gains.”
“No, my dear, you’re mistaken.”
“Indeed I’m not. Did I not hear you telling Mr. B---- about it?”
“My dear, that was a year ago,--before I had it cleaned.”
“How can you say so, John? It was only a month ago.”
“My dear, you are mistaken.”
And so the contest goes on, each striving for the last word.
This love of the last word has made more bitterness in families and
spoiled more Christians than it is worth. A thousand little differences
of this kind would drop to the ground, if either party would let them
drop. Suppose John is mistaken in saying breakfast is late,--suppose
that fifty of the little criticisms which we make on one another are
well-or ill-founded, are they worth a discussion? Are they worth
ill-tempered words, such as are almost sure to grow out of a discussion?
Are they worth throwing away peace and love for? Are they worth the
destruction of the only fair ideal left on earth,--a quiet, happy home?
Better let the most unjust statements pass in silence than risk one’s
temper in a discussion upon them.
Discussions, assuming the form of warm arguments, are never pleasant
ingredients of domestic life, never safe recreations between near
friends. They are, generally speaking, mere unsuspected vents for
self-will, and the cases are few where they do anything more than to
make both parties more positive in their own way than they were before.
A calm comparison of opposing views, a fair statement of reasons on
either side, may be valuable; but when warmth and heat and love of
victory and pride of opinion come in, good temper and good manners are
too apt to step out.
And now Christopher, having come to the end of his subject, pauses for a
sentence to close with. There are a few lines of a poet that sum up so
beautifully all he has been saying that he may be pardoned for closing
with them.
“Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love;
Hearts that the world has vainly tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something light as air, a look,
A word unkind, or wrongly taken,--
O, love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken!
For ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin,
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship’s smiling day,
And voices lose the tone which shed
A tenderness round all they said,--
Till, fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts so lately mingled seem
Like broken clouds, or like the stream,
That, smiling, left the mountain-brow
As though its waters ne’er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part forever.”
V.
INTOLERANCE.
“And what are you going to preach about this month, Mr. Crowfield?”
“I am going to give a sermon on _Intolerance_, Mrs. Crowfield.”
“Religious intolerance?”
“No,--domestic and family and educational intolerance,--one of the seven
deadly sins on which I am preaching,--one of ‘the foxes.’”
* * * * *
PEOPLE are apt to talk as if all the intolerance in life were got up and
expended in the religious world; whereas religious intolerance is only a
small branch of the radical, strong, all-pervading intolerance of human
nature.
Physicians are quite as intolerant as theologians. They never have had
the power of burning at the stake for medical opinions, but they
certainly have shown the will. Politicians are intolerant. Philosophers
are intolerant, especially those who pique themselves on liberal
opinions. Painters and sculptors are intolerant. And housekeepers are
intolerant, virulently denunciatory concerning any departures from their
particular domestic creed.
Mrs. Alexander Exact, seated at her domestic altar, gives homilies on
the degeneracy of modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations of Dr.
Holdfast as to the falling off from the good old faith.
“Don’t tell me about pillow-cases made without felling,” says Mrs.
Alexander; “it’s slovenly and shiftless. I wouldn’t have such a
pillow-case in my house any more than I’d have vermin.”
“But,” says a trembling young housekeeper, conscious of unfelled
pillow-cases at home, “don’t you think, Mrs. Alexander, that some of
these old traditions might be dispensed with? It really is not necessary
to do all the work that has been done so thoroughly and exactly,--to
double-stitch every wristband, fell every seam, count all the threads of
gathers, and take a stitch to every gather. It makes beautiful sewing,
to be sure; but when a woman has a family of little children and a small
income, if all her sewing is to be kept up in this perfect style, she
wears her life out in stitching. Had she not better slight a little, and
get air and exercise?”
“Don’t tell me about air and exercise! What did my grandmother do? Why,
she did all her own work, and made grandfather’s ruffled shirts besides,
with the finest stitching and gathers; and she found exercise enough, I
warrant you. Women of this day are miserable, sickly, degenerate
creatures.”
“But, my dear Madam, look at poor Mrs. Evans, over the way, with her
pale face and her eight little ones.”
“Miserable manager,” said Mrs. Alexander. “If she’d get up at five
o’clock the year round, as I do, she’d find time enough to do things
properly, and be the better for it.”
“But, my dear Madam, Mrs. Evans is a very delicately organized, nervous
woman.”
“Nervous! Don’t tell me! Every woman now-a-days is nervous. She can’t
get up in the morning, because she’s nervous. She can’t do her sewing
decently, because she’s nervous. Why, I might have been as nervous as
she is, if I’d have petted and coddled myself as she does. But I get up
early, take a walk in the fresh air of a mile or so before breakfast,
and come home feeling the better for it. I do all my own sewing,--never
put out a stitch; and I flatter myself my things are made as they ought
to be. I always make my boys’ shirts and Mr. Exact’s, and they are made
as shirts ought to be,--and yet I find plenty of time for calling,
shopping, business, and company. It only requires management and
resolution.”
“It is perfectly wonderful, to be sure, Mrs. Exact, to see all that you
do; but don’t you get very tired sometimes?”
“No, not often. I remember, though, the week before last Christmas, I
made and baked eighteen pies and ten loaves of cake in one day, and I
was really quite worn out; but I didn’t give way to it. I told Mr. Exact
I thought it would rest me to take a drive into New York and attend the
Sanitary Fair; and so we did. I suppose Mrs. Evans would have thought
she must go to bed and coddle herself for a month.”
“But, dear Mrs. Exact, when a woman is kept awake nights by crying
babies--”
“There’s no need of having crying babies; my babies never cried; it’s
just as you begin with children. I might have had to be up and down
every hour of the night with mine, just as Mrs. Evans does; but I knew
better. I used to take ’em up about ten o’clock, and feed and make ’em
all comfortable; and that was the last of ’em, till I was ready to get
up in the morning. I never lost a night’s sleep with any of mine.”
“Not when they were teething?”
“No. I knew how to manage that. I used to lance their gums myself, and I
never had any trouble: it’s all in management. I weaned ’em all myself,
too: there’s no use in having any fuss in weaning children.”
“Mrs. Exact, you are a wonderful manager; but it would be impossible to
bring up all babies so.”
“You’ll never make me believe that: people only need to begin right. I’m
sure I’ve had a trial of eight.”
“But there’s that one baby of Mrs. Evans’s makes more trouble than all
your eight. It cries every night so that somebody has to be up walking
with it; it wears out all the nurses, and keeps poor Mrs. Evans sick all
the time.”
“Not the least need of it; nothing but shiftless management. Suppose I
had allowed my children to be walked with; I might have had terrible
times, too; but I began right. I set down my foot that they should lie
still, and they did; and if they cried, I never lighted a candle, or
took ’em up, or took any kind of notice of it; and so, after a little,
they went off to sleep. Babies very soon find out where they can take
advantage, and where they can’t. It’s nothing but temper makes babies
cry; and if I couldn’t hush ’em any other way, I should give ’em a few
good smart slaps, and they would soon learn to behave themselves.”
“But, dear Mrs. Exact, you were a strong, healthy woman, and had strong,
healthy children.”
“Well, isn’t that baby of Mrs. Evans’s healthy, I want to know? I’m sure
it is a great creature, and thrives and grows fat as fast as ever I saw
a child. You needn’t tell me anything is the matter with that child but
temper and its mother’s coddling management.”
Now, in the neighborhood where she lives, Mrs. Alexander Exact is the
wonderful woman, the Lady Bountiful, the pattern female. Her cake never
rises on one side, or has a heavy streak in it. Her furs never get a
moth in them; her carpets never fade; her sweetmeats never ferment; her
servants never neglect their work; her children never get things out of
order; her babies never cry, never keep one awake o’ nights; and her
husband never in his life said, “My dear, there’s a button off my
shirt.” Flies never infest her kitchen, cockroaches and red ants never
invade her premises, a spider never had time to spin a web on one of her
walls. Everything in her establishment is shining with neatness, crisp
and bristling with absolute perfection,--and it is she, the
ever-up-and-dressed, unsleeping, wide-awake, omnipresent, never-tiring
Mrs. Exact, that does it all.
Besides keeping her household ways thus immaculate, Mrs. Exact is on all
sorts of charitable committees, does all sorts of fancy-work for fairs;
and whatever she does is done perfectly. She is a most available, most
helpful, most benevolent woman, and general society has reason to
rejoice in her existence.
But, for all this, Mrs. Exact is as intolerant as Torquemada or a
locomotive-engine. She has her own track, straight and inevitable; her
judgments and opinions cut through society in right lines, with all the
force of her example and all the steam of her energy, turning out
neither for the old nor the young, the weak nor the weary. She cannot,
and she will not, conceive the possibility that there may be other sorts
of natures than her own, and that other kinds of natures must have other
ways of living and doing.
Good and useful as she is, she is terrible as an army with banners to
her poor, harassed, delicate, struggling neighbor across the way, who,
in addition to an aching, confused head, an aching back, sleepless,
harassed nights, and weary, sinking days, is burdened everywhere and
every hour with the thought that Mrs. Exact thinks all her troubles are
nothing but poor management, and that she might do just like her, if she
would. With very little self-confidence or self-assertion, she is
withered and paralyzed by this discouraging thought. _Is_ it, then, her
fault that this never-sleeping baby cries all night, and that all her
children never could and never would be brought up by those exact rules
which she hears of as so efficacious in the household over the way? The
thought of Mrs. Alexander Exact stands over her like a constable; the
remembrance of her is grievous; the burden of her opinion is heavier
than all her other burdens.
Now the fact is, that Mrs. Exact comes of a long-lived, strong-backed,
strong-stomached race, with “limbs of British oak and nerves of wire.”
The shadow of a sensation of nervous pain or uneasiness never has been
known in her family for generations, and her judgments of poor little
Mrs. Evans are about as intelligent as those of a good stout Shanghai
hen on a humming-bird. Most useful and comfortable, these Shanghai
hens,--and very ornamental, and in a small way useful, these
humming-birds; but let them not regulate each other’s diet, or lay down
schemes for each other’s housekeeping. Has not one as much right to its
nature as the other?
This intolerance of other people’s natures is one of the greatest causes
of domestic unhappiness. The perfect householders are they who make
their household rule so flexible that all sorts of differing natures may
find room to grow and expand and express themselves without infringing
upon others.
Some women are endowed with a tact for understanding human nature and
guiding it. They give a sense of largeness and freedom; they find a
place for every one, see at once what every one is good for, and are
inspired by Nature with the happy wisdom of not wishing or asking of any
human being more than that human being was made to give. They have the
portion in due season for all: a bone for the dog; catnip for the cat;
cuttle-fish and hempseed for the bird; a book or review for their
bashful literary visitor; lively gossip for thoughtless Miss Seventeen;
knitting for Grandmamma; fishing-rods, boats, and gunpowder, for Young
Restless, whose beard is just beginning to grow;--and they never fall
into pets, because the canary-bird won’t relish the dog’s bone, or the
dog eat canary-seed, or young Miss Seventeen read old Mr. Sixty’s
review, or young Master Restless take delight in knitting-work, or old
Grandmamma feel complacency in guns and gunpowder.
Again, there are others who lay the foundations of family life so
narrow, straight, and strict, that there is room in them only for
themselves and people exactly like themselves; and hence comes much
misery.