OLD TIMES.
On a clear spring morning more than fifty years ago, Cousin Antoinette and
I sat on the front porch of Cottage Hall ready for a ride and waiting for
the stable boy to bring up our ponies. We were in the act of mounting when
my father appeared and inquired where we were going.
“We shall not take a long ride, papa. We are not going anywhere, and shall
return in good time for breakfast.”
“You will do nothing of the kind. You have no brother here to ride with
you, and it is improper for two young ladies to be seen on the public road
alone so early in the morning.” He then ordered the horses back to the
lot. We were obliged to submit to his authority without protest, though I
was ready to say, “There is a word sweeter than ‘mother, home, or heaven,’
and that word is ‘liberty.’” Contrast this with the freedom of the modern
girl on her bicycle!
Once when I left the schoolroom on account of a disagreement with the
governess, my stepmother thought my father should require me to return and
apologize. “No,” he replied, “she elects her own life and must abide by
her choice; she shall not be coerced.” I was never afterward a student in
any schoolroom, though at this time only in my thirteenth year. I had been
in class with girls three or four years older than myself, and was
considered quite mature in person and mental development. I early
ascertained that girls had a sphere wherein they were expected to remain
and that the despotic hand of some man was continually lifted to keep them
revolving in a certain prescribed and very restricted orbit. When mild
reproofs failed there were always other curbs for the idiot with eccentric
inclinations.
Yet it was with my father’s full consent, even by his advice, that at
fifteen years of age I married Edwin Thomas Merrick, for he thought I
could not enter too soon upon woman’s exclusive path, and be marching
along towards woman’s kingdom with a companion in the prime of a noble
manhood. I was indebted for my “bringing up” to the young man I married.
He was more than twice my age, and possessed many times over my amount of
wisdom. In one of Mr. Merrick’s love-letters, written in 1839, alluding to
a remark of mine on the absurdity of a “young thing like me” being
companionable for a man of thirty years, he says: “Is it not ‘ridiculously
absurd’ for a young lady who talks seriously of moving an island in the
lake of Windermere to suppose she is not old enough to marry anybody? I
have been reared in the cold North where mind and person come to maturity
slowly; you in the sunny South where the flower bursts at once into full
luxuriance and beauty.” Lover-like, he compliments me by continuing: “I
have never discovered in you anything to remind me of the disparity of our
ages; but, on the contrary, I have found a maturity of judgment,
correctness of taste and extent of accomplishments which cause me to feel
that you have every acquisition of a lady of twenty; and I have been
happier in your society than in that of any other human being.”
My husband, the nephew of my stepmother, was born July 9th, 1809, in
Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He was an advocate and jurist, served as
district judge of the Florida parishes, and was twice elected chief
justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
The entire household at Cottage Hall was devoted to “Cousin Edwin,” as he
was called after our Southern fashion of claiming kinship with those we
like. I remember that when Mrs. Lafayette Saunders heard that Mrs. Thomas
had made this match, she replied: “It is a pity she did not do the same
for all the family, for she surely has made a good one for Caroline!” For
a year and a half Mr. Merrick and I had seen much of each other and had
exchanged frequent letters, many of which have been sacredly preserved to
the present time. Bishop John C. Keener, who was his lifelong friend, said
of him at the time of his death: “Judge Merrick was always a bright,
delightful person in his family and with his acquaintances and friends. He
was a scholar, and was familiar with several modern languages, especially
French and German. He had an investigating mind, loved to explore the
recent wonders of science, and the doctrine of evolution he accepted. Few
men had rounded their career into a grander expression of all the high
qualities which concur in the useful citizen and the influential public
magistrate. He was an incorruptible and capable judge, which is the most
important and admirable character in the official constituency of
government.”
The Law Association of New Orleans, in their tribute to his memory, said
to him--using his own words at a like meeting in honor of Chief Justice
Eustis: “His judicial opinions show a comprehensive intellect, cultivated
by long study, and familiarized with the sentiments of the great writers
and expounders of the law. They were, as became them, more solid than
brilliant, more massive than showy. They are like granite masonry, and
will serve as guides and landmarks in years to come. He was domestic,
temperate and simple in his habits; modest, patient, punctual, and
exceedingly studious. In his family relations he was a good husband, a
wise and loving father. He loved his fellow-men and enjoyed the success of
others. He encouraged young men, and with his brethren of the bar he was
always considerate, courteous and generous.”
Thus he received a beautiful and eloquent tribute which dealt with both
his public and private life.
In his home Mr. Merrick was always gentle and lovable without the least
apparent pride. He would entertain with the greatest simplicity the
youngest child in the house; and this fact reminds me of a little boy who
deposited with tears a bouquet at his lifeless feet. To the inquiry “Who
sent them?” he replied: “I brought them. For three years he has given me
money to buy all my school books, and I am so sorry he is dead!” In a
letter my daughter-in-law had written me while we were in Virginia during
one of his last summers on earth, she asked: “Does father still roam over
the hills gathering flowers for you to wear as he used to do?” Even in his
old age his cheerfulness, his equipoise and sweetness never deserted him.
In regard to early marriages, I cannot, in view of my own experience and
long life of contentment and domestic happiness, say aught unfavorable,
though there is another side to the question and modern custom tends
increasingly towards marriage at a later period. As it is true that the
progeny of immature plants and animals do not equal in vigor and capacity
for endurance the offspring of fully developed specimens, so human beings
who desire to establish a home and intend to bring up a family, should not
be children, but full-grown, matured men and women; yet, all things else
being equal, it is surely better they should unite to make up a perfect
life before the season of youth has passed away, and the man became
_blasé_, the woman warped. Men are much concerned about our sex and the
duties and peculiar functions belonging thereto. It is my opinion that
they too need some instruction in regard to the exercise and regulation of
their own relations and responsibilities toward the future welfare of the
race. They have decided that brain work is detrimental to the full
development of the organization of the female; but they do not worry over
the effects of tobacco, whisky and certain vile habits upon the congenital
vigor of both boys and girls. Fathers and medical men ought to look well
to the hygienic duties of their own sex; then both sexes would be born
with better capacity for life and growth, and the poor mother would not be
obliged to spend so much care and trouble in rearing the offspring of
debilitated manhood. Nature does not work in a hurry. She is patient,
persistent and deliberate, never losing sight of her own great ends, and
inexorable as to her rights.
If study could check and thwart a child’s growth Margaret D’Ossoli would
have been a case of arrested development instead of a large-souled woman.
It was her father who kept her little head all day over Greek and Latin
exercises at the age of seven years, when she should have been playing
with her dolls and romping in the fresh outdoor air. It was her father, M.
Necker, who trained Madame de Stael into a woman whom the great Napoleon
hated and even feared so much that he insulted her childless wifehood by
telling her that what France needed was mothers, and sent her into
banishment.
It is useless to get up a lamentation that the race will die out and
children be neglected because woman is going to college and becoming
informed and intellectual. Nature will take care that she keeps to her
principal business, which is to become a willing (or unwilling) medium to
continue the species.