"I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand
and no man regarded."--Pro. i. 24.
I
Circumstances, at different times, have made me think and care very
deeply about the injustice suffered by children born outside the
protection of legal marriage; it was, indeed, when I was still
young--young in experience and very ignorant of life; long before I
began to write, at the time when I was headmistress of a private school
for girls, that the question first forced itself into my consciousness.
It was in this way. I was told suddenly that the parents of two sisters
who had entered my school as boarders were living together without being
married. I was requested to send the children away. I can recall the
scene through the length of the years; the excitement of the parent who
was my informer; the kind of curious enjoyment she displayed in telling
me the story, an enjoyment which surprised me so much and angered me at
the time, but which, of course, is so easy to account for. I did not
understand then those "ever-moving and so to speak immortal wishes of
our Unconscious,"[151:1] residing in us all, ready to break loose and
force some expression in our daily lives.
I am glad to know that young and ignorant as I was my quick instinctive
dislike to this moral mud-raking helped and saved me. I would not send
the two children away, and refused to take any notice whatever of their
illegal birth.
I can hear still the sharp, surprised notes of Mrs. X's unpleasant voice
as she turned to me and asked: "Now, Miss Gasquoine Hartley, what are
you going to do?" How great was her amazement when I answered "Nothing!"
She urged the necessity for action on account of my position and for the
welfare of the school; pleaded the possible hurt done to her own
children and all the other pupils. "You must be sensible," she insisted,
"and send these bastards away. Of course, it is very sad for them, and
one would not like to have to do it, but the sins of the parents," etc.,
etc.... You know the kind of beastly hypocritical talk. I need not
continue.
Although I had no vivid realization at that time of the injustice of
this view, anger sprang up hot within me. I was rude. I told Mrs. X that
she might take her daughters away from my school; that I was willing for
her to tell her beastly story to the parents of all my other pupils;
that then they, if they wished to do so, might remove their daughters,
as for me, I would continue my school with two pupils--the children she
had told me were bastards.
I rather fancy, so ignorant was I then, that this was the first time I
had heard that word "bastard," at any rate I felt the word emotionally,
in a sharp and different way, when I heard it applied to little
children, whom I knew and loved, was caring for and teaching. In this
way, the greatest good was done me. I was made to feel. And when, in the
later years of my life, I was brought by circumstances to consider the
fate of the illegitimately born child, I was prepared already to
understand the unprotected helplessness of these unfortunate little
ones. I fully realized the cruel uncertainty that dogs like a foul
shadow their young footsteps, the shame of their unhonored birth, which
separates them from other children (and a child suffers so terribly from
being separated, dislikes so passionately being different from its
companions), shame that may always be brought suddenly as a hindrance
against them, so that, even under the most favorable circumstances, they
live in danger; grow up sensitive and passionately possessive, because
so many things all other children have by right, relations who really
are relations, a father and the right to use his name, a
birth-certificate that does not record their parents' sin, are demanded
from them in vain, so that at every turn they must fear the sword of
contempt, against which they have no shield.