to be neat and decent in the arrangement of our person, but to be also
what the French call _coquette_,--or to put it in plain English, there
should be an endeavor to make ourselves look handsome in the eyes of our
dearest friends.
“Many worthy women, who would not for the world be found wanting in the
matter of personal neatness, seem somehow to have the notion that any
study of the arts of personal beauty in family-life is unmatronly; they
buy their clothes with simple reference to economy, and have them made
up without any question of becomingness; and hence marriage sometimes
transforms a charming, trim, tripping young lady into a waddling matron
whose every-day toilette suggests only the idea of a feather-bed tied
round with a string. For my part, I do not believe that the summary
banishment of the Graces from the domestic circle as soon as the first
baby makes its appearance is at all conducive to domestic affection. Nor
do I think that there is any need of so doing. These good housewives
are in danger, like other saints, of falling into the error of
neglecting the body through too much thoughtfulness for others and too
little for themselves. If a woman ever had any attractiveness, let her
try and keep it, setting it down as one of her domestic talents. As for
my erring brothers who violate the domestic sanctuary by tousled hair,
tumbled linen, and muddy shoes, I deliver them over to Miss Jennie
without benefit of clergy.
“My second head is, that there should be in family-life the same
delicacy in the avoidance of disagreeable topics that characterizes the
intercourse of refined society among strangers.
“I do not think that it makes family-life more sincere, or any more
honest, to have the members of a domestic circle feel a freedom to blurt
out in each other’s faces, without thought or care, all the disagreeable
things that may occur to them: as, for example, ‘How horridly you look
this morning! What’s the matter with you?’--‘Is there a pimple coming on
your nose? or what is that spot?’--‘What made you buy such a dreadfully
unbecoming dress? It sets like a witch! Who cut it?’--‘What makes you
wear that pair of old shoes?’--‘Holloa, Bess! is that your party-rig? I
should think you were going out for a walking advertisement of a
flower-store!’--Observations of this kind between husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters, or intimate friends, do not indicate sincerity,
but obtuseness; and the person who remarks on the pimple on your nose is
in many cases just as apt to deceive you as the most accomplished
Frenchwoman who avoids disagreeable topics in your presence.
“Many families seem to think that it is a proof of family union and
good-nature that they can pick each other to pieces, joke on each
other’s feelings and infirmities, and treat each other with a general
tally-ho-ing rudeness without any offence or ill-feeling. If there is a
limping sister, there is a never-failing supply of jokes on
‘Dot-and-go-one’; and so with other defects and peculiarities of mind or
manners. Now the perfect good-nature and mutual confidence which allow
all this liberty are certainly admirable; but the liberty itself is far
from making home-life interesting or agreeable.
“Jokes upon personal or mental infirmities, and a general habit of
saying things in jest which would be the height of rudeness if said in
earnest, are all habits which take from the delicacy of family
affection.
“In all this rough playing with edge-tools many are hit and hurt who are
ashamed or afraid to complain. And after all, what possible good or
benefit comes from it? Courage to say disagreeable things, when it is
necessary to say them for the highest good of the person addressed, is a
sublime quality; but a careless habit of saying them, in the mere
freedom of family intercourse, is certainly as great a spoiler of the
domestic vines as any fox running.
“There is one point under this head which I enlarge upon for the benefit
of my own sex: I mean table-criticisms. The conduct of housekeeping, in
the present state of domestic service, certainly requires great
allowance; and the habit of unceremonious comment on the cooking and
appointments of the table, in which some husbands habitually allow
themselves, is the most unpardonable form of domestic rudeness. If a
wife has philosophy enough not to mind it, so much the worse for her
husband, as it confirms him in an unseemly habit, embarrassing to guests
and a bad example to children. If she has no feelings that he is bound
to respect, he should at least respect decorum and good taste, and
confine the discussion of such matters to private intercourse, and not
initiate every guest and child into the grating and greasing of the
wheels of the domestic machinery.
“Another thing in which families might imitate the politeness of
strangers is a wise reticence with regard to the asking of questions and
the offering of advice.
“A large family includes many persons of different tastes, habits, modes
of thinking and acting, and it would be wise and well to leave to each
one that measure of freedom in these respects which the laws of general
politeness require. Brothers and sisters may love each other very much,
and yet not enough to make joint-stock of all their ideas, plans,
wishes, schemes, friendships. There are in every family-circle
individuals whom a certain sensitiveness of nature inclines to quietness
and reserve; and there are very well-meaning families where no such
quietness or reserve is possible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may
have a secret, nobody can move in any direction, without a host of
inquiries and comments, ‘Who is your letter from? Let’s see.’--‘My
letter is from So-and-So.’--‘_He_ writing to you? I didn’t know that.
What’s he writing about?’--‘Where did you go yesterday? What did you
buy? What did you give for it? What are you going to do with
it?’--‘Seems to me that’s an odd way to do. I shouldn’t do so.’--‘Look
here, Mary; Sarah’s going to have a dress of silk tissue this spring.
Now I think they’re too dear,--don’t you?’
“I recollect seeing in some author a description of a true gentleman, in
which, among other traits, he was characterized as the man that asks the
fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into
home-life in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more
agreeable.
“If there is perfect unreserve and mutual confidence, let it show itself
in free communications coming unsolicited. It may fairly be presumed,
that, if there is anything our intimate friends wish us to know, they
will tell us of it,--and that when we are on close and confidential
terms with persons, and there are topics on which they do not speak to
us, it is because for some reason they prefer to keep silence concerning
them; and the delicacy that respects a friend’s silence is one of the
charms of life.
“As with the asking of questions, so with the offering of advice, there
should be among friends a wise reticence.
“Some families are always calling each other to account at every step of
the day. ‘What did you put on that dress for? Why didn’t you wear
that?’--‘What did you do this for? Why didn’t you do that?’--‘Now _I_
should advise you to do thus and so.’--And these comments and criticisms
and advices are accompanied with an energy of feeling that makes it
rather difficult to disregard them.
“Now it is no matter how dear and how good our friends may be, if they
abridge our liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, it is
inevitable that we shall come to enjoying ourselves much better where
they are not than where they are; and one of the reasons why brothers
and sisters or children so often diverge from the family-circle in the
choice of confidants is, that extraneous friends are bound by certain
laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, criticisms, or advice too far.
“Parents would do well to remember in time when their children have
grown up into independent human beings, and use with a wise moderation
those advisory and admonitory powers with which they guided their
earlier days. Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far
as possible, and avoid imposing our own personalities on another.
“If I were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people
of individual and marked character, who through love have come to a
perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand
themselves and one another that each may move freely along his or her
own track without jar or jostle,--a family where affection is always
sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,--where all personal
delicacies are respected,--and where there is a sense of privacy and
seclusion in following one’s own course, unchallenged by the
watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a
knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.
“In treating of family discourtesies, I have avoided speaking of those
which come from ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these are sins
more than mistakes. An angry person is generally impolite; and where
contention and ill-will are, there can be no courtesy. What I have
mentioned are rather the lackings of good and often admirable people,
who merely need to consider in their family-life a little more of
whatsoever things are lovely. With such the mere admission of anything
to be pursued as a duty secures the purpose; only in their somewhat
earnest pursuit of the substantials of life they drop and pass by the
little things that give it sweetness and perfume. To such a word is
enough, and that word is said.”
VII.
EXACTINGNESS.
At length I am arrived at my seventh fox,--the last of the domestic
quadrupeds against which I have vowed a crusade,--and here opens the
chase of him. I call him
_EXACTINGNESS_.
And having done this, I drop the metaphor, for fear of chasing it beyond
the rules of graceful rhetoric, and shall proceed to define the trait.
All the other domestic faults of which I have treated have relation to
the manner in which the ends of life are pursued; but this one is an
underlying, false, and diseased state of conception as to the very ends
and purposes of life itself.
If a piano is tuned to exact concert pitch, the majority of voices must
fall below it; for which reason, most people indulgently allow their
pianos to be tuned a little below this point, in accommodation to the
average power of the human voice. Persons of only ordinary powers of
voice would be considered absolute monomaniacs, who should insist on
having their pianos tuned to accord with any abstract notion of
propriety or perfection,--rendering themselves wretched by persistently
singing all their pieces miserably out of tune in consequence.
Yet there are persons who keep the requirements of life strained up
always at concert pitch, and are thus worn out and made miserable all
their days by the grating of a perpetual discord.
There is a faculty of the human mind to which phrenologists have given
the name of _Ideality_, which is at the foundation of this exactingness.
Ideality is the faculty by which we conceive of and long for perfection;
and at a glance it will be seen, that, so far from being an evil
ingredient of human nature, it is the one element of progress that
distinguishes man’s nature from that of the brute. While animals go on
from generation to generation, learning nothing and forgetting nothing,
practising their small circle of the arts of life no better and no worse
from year to year, man is driven by ideality to constant invention and
alteration, whence come arts, sciences, and the whole progress of
society. Ideality induces discontent with present attainments,
possessions, and performances, and hence come better and better ones. So
in morals, ideality constantly incites to higher and nobler modes of
living and thinking, and is the faculty to which the most effective
teachings of the great Master of Christianity are addressed. To be
dissatisfied with present attainments, with earthly things and scenes,
to aspire and press on to something forever fair, yet forever receding
before our steps,--this is the teaching of Christianity, and the work of
the Christian.
But every faculty has its own instinctive, wild growth, which, like the
spontaneous produce of the earth, is crude and weedy.
Revenge, says Lord Bacon, is a sort of wild justice, obstinacy is
untutored firmness,--and so exactingness is untrained ideality; and a
vast deal of misery, social and domestic, comes, not of the faculty, but
of its untrained exercise.
The faculty which is ever conceiving and desiring something better and
more perfect must be modified in its action by good sense, patience, and
conscience, or it induces a morbid, discontented spirit, which courses
through the veins of individual and family life like a subtle poison.
In a certain neighborhood are two families whose social and domestic
_animus_ illustrates the difference between ideality and the want of it.
The Daytons are a large, easy-natured, joyous race, hospitable, kindly,
and friendly.
Nothing about their establishment is much above mediocrity. The grounds
are tolerably kept, the table is tolerably fair, the servants moderately
good, and the family character and attainments of the same average
level.
Mrs. Dayton is a decent housekeeper, and so her bread be not sour, her
butter not frowy, the food abundant, and the table-cloth and dishes
clean, she troubles her head little with the niceties and refinements of
the _ménage_.
She accepts her children as they come from the hand of Nature, simply
opening her eyes to discern what they _are_, never raising the query
what she would have had them,--forming no very high expectations
concerning them and well content with whatever develops.
A visitor in the family can easily see a thousand defects in the conduct
of affairs, in the management of the children, and in this, that, and
the other portion of the household arrangements; but he can see and
feel, also, a perfect comfortableness in the domestic atmosphere that
almost atones for any defects. He can see that in a thousand respects
things might be better done, if the family were not perfectly content to
have them as they are, and that each individual member might make higher
attainments in various directions, were there not such entire
satisfaction with what is already attained.
Trying each other by very moderate standards and measurements, there is
great mutual complacency. The oldest boy does not get an appointment in
college,--they never expected he would; but he was a respectable
scholar, and they receive him with acclamations such as another family
would bestow on a valedictorian. The daughters do not profess, as we are
told, to draw like artists, but some very moderate performances in the
line of the fine arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. They
thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the whole family listen and approve.
All unite in singing in a somewhat uncultured manner a few psalm-tunes
or songs, and take more comfort in them than many amateurs do in their
well-drilled performances.
So goes the world with the Daytons; and when you visit them, if you
often feel that you could ask more and suggest much improvement, yet you
cannot help enjoying the quiet satisfaction which breathes around you.
Now right across the way from the Daytons live the Mores; and the Mores
are the very opposites of the Daytons.
Everything about their establishment is brought to the highest point of
culture. The carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is velvet, the
flower-beds ever-blooming, the fruit-trees and vines grow exactly like
the patterns in the best pomological treatises. Within doors the
housekeeping is faultless,--all seems to be moving in time and
tune,--the table is more than good, it is superlative,--every article is
in its way a model,--the children appear to you to be growing up after
the most patent-right method, duly trained, snipped, and cultured, like
the pear-trees and grape-vines. Nothing is left to accident, or done
without much laborious consideration of the best manner of doing it; and
the consequences, in the eyes of their simple, unsophisticated
neighbors, are very wonderful.
Nevertheless this is not a happy family. All their perfections do not
begin to afford them one tithe of the satisfaction that the Daytons
derive from their ragged and scrambling performances.
The two daughters, Jane and Maria, had naturally very sweet voices, and
when they were little, trilled tunes in a very pleasant and bird-like
manner. But now, having been instructed by the best masters, and heard
the very first artists, they never sing or play; the piano is shut, and
their voices are dumb. If you request a song, they tell you that they
never sing now; papa has such an exquisite taste, he takes no interest
in any common music; in short, having heard Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni,
Mario, and others of the tuneful shell, this family have concluded to
abide in silence. As to any music that _they_ could make, it isn’t to be
thought of.
For the same reason, the daughters, after attending a quarter or two on
the drawing-exercises of a celebrated teacher, threw up their pencils in
disgust, and tore up very pretty and agreeable sketches which were the
marvel of their good-natured admiring neighbors. If they could draw like
Signor Scratchalini, if they could hope to become perfect artists, they
tell you, they would have persevered; but they have taken lessons enough
to learn that drawing is the labor of a lifetime, and, not having a
lifetime to give to it, they resolve to do nothing at all.
They have also, for a similar reason, given up letter-writing. If their
chirography were as elegant as Charlotte Cushman’s,--if they were
perfect mistresses of polite English,--if they were gifted with wit,
humor, and fancy, like the first masters of style,--they would take
pleasure in epistolary composition, and be good correspondents; but
anything short of that is so intolerable, that, except in cases of life
and death or urgent business, you cannot get a line out of them. Yet
they write very fair, agreeable, womanly letters, and would write much
better ones, if they allowed themselves a little more practice.
Mrs. More is devoured by care. She sits with a clouded brow in her
elegant, well-regulated house; and when you talk with her, you are
surprised to learn that everything in it is in the most dreadful
disorder from one end to the other. You ask for particulars, and find
that the disorder has relation to exquisite standards of the ways of
doing things, derived from observation of life in the most subdivided
state of European service,--to all of which she has not as yet been able
to raise her domestics. You compliment her on her cook, and she
responds, in plaintive accents, “She can do a few things decently, but
she is nothing of a cook.” You refer with enthusiasm to her bread, her
coffee, her muffins and hot rolls, and she listens and sighs. “Yes,” she
admits, “these are eatable,--not bad; but you should have seen the rolls
at a certain _café_ in Paris, and the bread at a certain nobleman’s in
England, where they had a bakery in the castle, and a French baker, who
did nothing all the while but to refine and perfect the idea of bread.
When she thinks of these things, everything in comparison is so coarse
and rough!--but then she has learned to be comfortable.” Thus, in every
department of housekeeping, to this too well-instructed person,
“Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.”
Not a thing in her wide and apparently beautifully kept establishment is
ever done well enough to elicit from her more than a sigh of toleration.
“I suppose it must do,” she faintly breathes, when pool human nature,
having tried and tried again, evidently has got to the boundaries of
its capabilities; “you may let it go, Jane; I never expect to be
suited.”
The poor woman, in the midst of possessions and attainments which excite
the envy of her neighbors, is utterly restless and wretched, and feels
herself always baffled and unsuccessful. Her exacting nature makes her
dissatisfied with herself in everything that she undertakes, and equally
dissatisfied with others. In the whole family there is little of that
pleasure which comes from the consciousness of mutual admiration and
esteem, because each one is pitched to so exquisite a tone that each is
afraid to touch another for fear of making discord. They are afraid of
each other everywhere. They cannot sing to each other, play to each
other, write to each other; they cannot even converse together with any
freedom, because each knows that the others are so dismally well
informed and critically instructed.
Though all agree in a secret contempt for their neighbors over the way,
as living in a most heathenish state of ignorant contentment, yet it is
a fact that the elegant brother John will often, on the sly, slip into
the Daytons’ to spend an evening, and join them in singing glees and
catches to their old rattling piano, and have a jolly time of it, which
he remembers in contrast with the dull, silent hours at home. Kate
Dayton has an uncultivated voice, which often falls from pitch; but she
has a perfectly infectious gayety of good-nature, and when she is once
at the piano, and all join in some merry troll, he begins to think that
there may be something better even than good singing; and then they have
dances and charades and games, all in such contented, jolly, impromptu
ignorance of the unities of time, place, and circumstance, that he
sometimes doubts, where ignorance is such bliss, whether it isn’t in
truth folly to be wise.
Jane and Maria laugh at John for his partiality to the Daytons, and yet
they themselves feel the same attraction. At the Daytons’ they somehow
find themselves heroines; their drawings are so admired, their singing
is so charming to these simple ears, that they are often beguiled into
giving pleasure with their own despised acquirements; and Jane, somehow,
is very tolerant of the devoted attention of Will Dayton, a joyous,
honest-hearted fellow, whom, in her heart of hearts, she likes none the
worse for being unexacting and simple enough to think her a wonder of
taste and accomplishments. Will, of course, is the farthest possible
from the Admirable Crichtons and exquisite Sir Philip Sidneys whom Mrs.
More and the young ladies talk up at their leisure, and adorn with
feathers from every royal and celestial bird, when they are discussing
theoretic possible husbands. He is not in any way distinguished, except
for a kind heart, strong native good sense, and a manly energy that has
carried him straight into the very heart of many a citadel of life,
before which the superior and more refined Mr. John had set himself
down to deliberate upon the best and most elegant way of taking it.
Will’s plain, homely intelligence has often in five minutes disentangled
some ethereal snarl in which these exquisite Mores had spun themselves
up, and brought them to his own way of thinking by that sort of
disenchanting process which honest, practical sense sometimes exerts
over ideality.
The fact is, however, that in each of these families there is a natural
defect which requires something from the other for completeness. Taking
happiness as the standard, the Daytons have it as against the Mores.
Taking attainment as the standard, the Mores have it as against the
Daytons. A portion of the discontented ideality of the Mores would
stimulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many things which might
easily be made better, did they care enough to have them so; and a
portion of the Daytons’ self-satisfied contentment would make the
attainments and refinements of the Mores of some practical use in
advancing their own happiness.