I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by a man, in which his own
wife keeps house, is not always, or of course, a home. What is it, then,
that makes a home? All men and women have the indefinite knowledge of
what they want and long for when that word is spoken. "Home!" sighs the
disconsolate bachelor, tired of boarding-house fare and buttonless
shirts. "Home!" says the wanderer in foreign lands, and thinks of
mother's love, of wife and sister and child. Nay, the word has in it a
higher meaning, hallowed by religion; and when the Christian would
express the highest of his hopes for a better life, he speaks of his
_home_ beyond the grave. The word home has in it the elements of love,
rest, permanency, and liberty; but besides these it has in it the idea
of an education by which all that is purest within us is developed into
nobler forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the
home-fireside was taken on the Master's knee when he would explain to
his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom.
Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and sacred thing, that the
power to create a HOME ought to be ranked above all creative
faculties. The sculptor who brings out the breathing statue from cold
marble, the painter who warms the canvas into a deathless glow of
beauty, the architect who built cathedrals and hung the world-like dome
of St. Peter's in mid-air, is not to be compared, in sanctity and
worthiness, to the humblest artist, who, out of the poor materials
afforded by this shifting, changing, selfish world, creates the secure
Eden of a _home_.
A true home should be called the noblest work of art possible to human
creatures, inasmuch as it is the very image chosen to represent the last
and highest rest of the soul, the consummation of man's blessedness.
Not without reason does the oldest Christian church require of those
entering on marriage the most solemn review of all the past life, the
confession and repentance of every sin of thought, word, and deed, and
the reception of the holy sacrament; for thus the man and woman who
approach the august duty of creating a home are reminded of the sanctity
and beauty of what they undertake.
In this art of home-making I have set down in my mind certain first
principles, like the axioms of Euclid, and the first is,--
_No home is possible without love._
All business-marriages and marriages of convenience, all mere culinary
marriages and marriages of mere animal passion, make the creation of a
true home impossible in the outset. Love is the jewelled foundation of
this New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, and takes as many
bright forms as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of that mysterious
vision. In this range of creative art all things are possible to him
that loveth, but without love nothing is possible.
We hear of most convenient marriages in foreign lands, which may better
be described as commercial partnerships. The money on each side is
counted; there is enough between the parties to carry on the firm, each
having the appropriate sum allotted to each. No love is pretended, but
there is great politeness. All is so legally and thoroughly arranged,
that there seems to be nothing left for future quarrels to fasten on.
Monsieur and Madame have each their apartments, their carriages, their
servants, their income, their friends, their pursuits,--understand the
solemn vows of marriage to mean simply that they are to treat each other
with urbanity in those few situations where the path of life must
necessarily bring them together.
We are sorry that such an idea of marriage should be gaining foothold in
America. It has its root in an ignoble view of life,--an utter and pagan
darkness as to all that man and woman are called to do in that highest
relation where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance on both
sides, by which all the grand work of home-building, all the noble pains
and heroic toils of home-education,--that education where the parents
learn more than they teach,--shall be (let us use the expressive Yankee
idiom) _shirked_.
It is a curious fact that in those countries where this system of
marriages is the general rule there is no word corresponding to our
English word _home_. In many polite languages of Europe it would be
impossible neatly to translate the sentiment with which we began this
essay, that a man's _house_ is not always his _home_.
Let any one try to render the song, "Sweet Home," into French, and one
finds how Anglo-Saxon is the very genius of the word. The structure of
life, in all its relations, in countries where marriages are matter of
arrangement, and not of love, excludes the idea of home.
How does life run in such countries? The girl is recalled from her
convent or boarding-school, and told that her father has found a husband
for her. No objection on her part is contemplated or provided for; none
generally occurs, for the child is only too happy to obtain the fine
clothes and the liberty which she has been taught come only with
marriage. Be the man handsome or homely, interesting or stupid, still he
brings these.
How intolerable such a marriage! we say, with the close intimacies of
Anglo-Saxon life in our minds. They are not intolerable, because they
are provided for by arrangements which make it possible for each to go
his or her several way, seeing very little of the other. The son or
daughter, which in due time makes its appearance in this _menage_, is
sent out to nurse in infancy, sent to boarding-school in youth, and in
maturity portioned and married, to repeat the same process for another
generation. Meanwhile, father and mother keep a quiet establishment, and
pursue their several pleasures. Such is the system.
Houses built for this kind of life become mere sets of reception-rooms,
such as are the greater proportion of apartments to let in Paris, where
a hearty English or American family, with their children about them,
could scarcely find room to establish themselves. Individual character,
it is true, does something to modify this programme. There are charming
homes in France and Italy, where warm and noble natures, thrown
together, perhaps, by accident, or mated by wise paternal choice, infuse
warmth into the coldness of the system under which they live. There are
in all states of society some of such domesticity of nature that they
will create a home around themselves under any circumstances, however
barren. Besides, so kindly is human nature, that Love, uninvited before
marriage, often becomes a guest after, and with Love always comes a
home.