SYMPATHY AS AN ART.
I don’t know any circumstances of social life so “trying to men’s
souls” on both sides as the circumstances demanding sympathy. Death
is bad enough, but it is by no means the worst. Most of us have been
through that dark and terrible hour when that which seemed our all has
been laid away from our sight and from among men, and our friends have
come dressed in somber clothes, and with somber and set countenances
have one by one insisted upon laying bare the wound we would fain hide
under our mourning garb, and expressing more or less crudely, more or
less delicately, the sympathy of which they have come to assure us. It
is a social necessity that they should come. We should feel surprised
and slighted if they did not, and we do not dream of shirking the
painful duty either of receiving or of paying visits of condolence,
and yet I often wonder if it would not be well to induce a social
revolution wherein this and several other time-honored customs should
be swept away.
Time-honored, indeed, for speaking of this matter the other day to a
friend I was told that when Job fell into affliction his three friends
at once made an appointment to meet and make a collective call of
condolence. But--and here please observe the superiority of discretion
in the days of Job compared with ours--having arrived, with Job they
sat down upon the ground, and for seven days and nights nobody spoke a
word! Now, we don’t have time in this era to sit in silence seven days
and nights in the presence of our friends, but I often think if our
custom was to go and sit seven minutes, more or less, beside our friend
and then go away with a mute caress or clasp of the hand, how much
better it would be than to try to say _something_, and that generally
the wrong thing. I shall never forget a dear little unconventional
widow whom I went to see just after the sudden and shocking death of
her young husband.
“It was so good of you to come; but, oh, don’t say a word--not one
word!” gasped she, and I almost literally complied.
Yes, bereavement is bad enough, and to very few, if to any, is it given
to speak the words of comfort or reassurance. But there are sorrows far
more cruel than death; there are bereavements sudden and more hopeless
than those of the grave, and it is in these that sympathy may indeed
despair of fitly expressing itself, even by sitting silent seven days
and nights in its presence.
A man in some prominent position of trust becomes a defaulter and runs
away, leaving his wife and family to bear the shame and notoriety
of his crime, perhaps leaving them in poverty and debt as well, for
very few criminals commit but one kind of sin. A defaulter is usually
intensely selfish and considers his own desires so exclusively that he
not only appropriates moneys not his own, but his neighbor’s wife as
well, and is utterly callous as to the suffering of all sorts to which
he condemns the woman lawfully his own.
Now, what sympathy can one express to such a mourner as that wife?
What word would seem other than presumptuous and intrusive to such
bereavement? And yet we all do feel sorry for her; we all do long to
let her know it and to comfort her.
Some of us who have struggled in deep waters ourselves shrink from the
attempt and contrive some other mode of showing the true sympathy we
feel, and yet there is grief so deeply dyed with shame that positively
no notice should be taken of it--even a box of flowers, even a new
book or a card, would serve to hint at condolence too strongly, and we
remember that though speech is silver, silence is often golden.
But yet again there are griefs even deeper and more sensitive than
that of the insulted and deserted wife; there is an agony of shame,
not to be shifted to other shoulders than one’s very own; there is a
bereavement known to all the world, and yet which the sufferer would
fain hide from even her own eyes, and this is when a woman has too
readily yielded up her affections to one who simply amused himself with
her easy credulity, and when her devotion began to pall “he kissed and
rode away.” Every one in her little world knows the whole story. The
malicious whisper: “Well, she threw herself at his head. What could she
expect?” The kinder hearted ones murmur: “Poor thing! I was afraid he
didn’t mean anything.” And the sharpest sting of her mortification is
that she knows that they all know and are scoffing at her or pitying
her. Still she can bear it so long as nobody says anything--but _they
will_!
There are sure to be at least two or three well-meaning fools who
want “to express their sympathy,” who in fact insist upon doing so in
spite of all the wriggles and pantings of their victim--as helpless as
a frog under a crotched stick, with a cruel boy at the other end, or
more appropriately, a frog in the clutches of a vivisectionist, who is
determined to lay open the throbbings of “poor froggie’s heart” in the
interests of humanity! This sympathizer bides her time. She waits until
she can pen her victim in a corner, or penetrate to her bedroom, or get
her into a victoria or a _coupé_ where no interruption is possible,
and then she begins: “My dear child, I want to tell you how dreadfully
sorry I am for your disappointment; but how came you to suppose Mr.
Smith was serious in his attentions? Tell me all about it, dear. It
will comfort your poor heart to speak out. Did the man ever really ask
you to marry him?” And so on until the deserted damsel is ready to
fling herself out of the vehicle under the horse’s feet and feels that
the loss of her lover is as nothing compared with the shame of being
pitied and sympathized with.
Or take the case of a man who has been horse-whipped or kicked or
slapped in the face by another man stronger and bigger and therefore
braver than himself. He doesn’t want to know that his friends are sorry
for him! He would much rather be suffered to imagine that they hadn’t
heard of it, and yet there are plenty of thick-skinned idiots who will
on the first opportunity rush up with outstretched hand:
“My dear fellow, I want to tell you how indignant I am at the way that
brute treated you! Fairly kicked you down the steps of the club-house,
they tell me! Just like these great hulking beasts who think, because
they are big and strong, a little fellow like you or me must give in to
all their insolence!”
Probably the man thus apostrophized at once measures the other “little
fellow” with his eye, and mentally decides that he can thrash him at
least, and will do so on the first opportunity.
Among my acquaintances on one side or the other of the water I am proud
to include a lady whose father was hung, and justly so, for murder. Of
course, the most of her friends painfully avoided any subject within
rifle shot of the subject, but I heard that more than one well-meaning
person had attempted to _sympathize with her_ and thereby nearly drove
the poor woman to madness.
Or think of a mother whose son has committed some shameful crime,
and is either a fugitive from justice or is suffering her penalties.
Fancy _any_, sympathy, even the most delicate being anything but an
offense to such a sufferer. In fact, there is no love upon whose death
it is not safer to count than upon that of a mother. It is positively
indestructible, and I have never found any other class of love to
which that word would apply. Certainly some wives have loved some
husbands, some maidens have loved some lovers, some women have loved
some men “not wisely, but too well,” through good report and ill,
through fortune and misfortune, cruelty and kindness, faithfulness and
unfaithfulness, even to the bitter end; but this unreasoning constancy
cannot be predicted of wives or _fiancées_ or mistresses as a rule.
Much depends upon the individual.
But in the case of mothers it is the rule, especially as regards
her sons. The bad boy may develop into the unmitigated scamp, the
profligate, the villain, the jailbird, but though she may be driven
to discard him, to banish him from her sight, to declare that she no
longer calls him son, there is always at the core of her heart an
undying flame of love, a divine forgiveness and pity and longing that
she could not if she would quench or destroy. Let the sinner but reach
his mother’s feet, let him never so clumsily plead, “Mother, I have
sinned--oh, forgive me!” and his pardon is assured. Even though her
judgment, her reason, her conscience, sternly condemn him, that mother
love of hers will rise up and drown them all in the torrent of its
deathless force.
In the Scripture story it is set forth as a memorable thing that the
_father_ of the prodigal son forgave him. It is not even mentioned that
his mother did, for, not to be irreverent, “that goes without saying.”
Doubtless she had forgiven him long before he set out for home, and
indeed it is probable enough that it was the telepathy of her love and
forgiveness that induced him to relinquish his foul living and return.
Well, then, is it not obvious that with such love as this in the
background no mother will patiently accept sympathy for her son’s
misdeeds? It will only anger her and rouse her to defend him, even
though no defense be possible. If she is a womanish sort of woman, she
will probably adopt the “_tu quoque_” form of resentment and say: “Yes,
I know Harry has done a foolish thing, but it arose entirely from his
desire to help and shield a friend. You must remember all young men
are not like your John, always considering what is best for his own
interests.”
If she is not womanish, but womanly, the best you can expect is, “Thank
you, but this is a subject upon which I do not wish to talk.”
I was once speaking with a lady in London whose son had just been
pursued and brought back from the continent under a charge of
aggravated breach of trust when another lady came up and took her hand
with a murmur of, “Dear Mrs. Blank, I want to tell you how sorry I
am----” “What! You have heard of it already!” exclaimed Mrs. Blank,
with a smile like the flash of a bayonet. Then half turning to me
she continued: “I have lost my coachman, you know. Actually the poor
fellow dropped dead in the stables this morning, and I am perfectly
heartbroken. The best old soul that ever held a whip. He was my
father’s coachman, and actually put me on the first pony I ever rode.
But I can’t think how you heard of it so soon, my dear, except that
I believe you make it a point to gather every bit of news that is
stirring, don’t you?” And with this little blow in the face Mrs. Blank
sailed off, leaving her would-be sympathizer gasping.
But there is no need of swelling the list of cases where the truest
sympathy is expressed by apparent ignorance of any cause for sympathy.
Every person of delicacy or a sensitive organization will recognize
such cases for themselves, and to those who are not delicate and
sensitive in their own personality, no amount of teaching will effect
the object. You cannot train a rhinoceros into a thin-skinned Arab
steed, nor a cactus into a sensitive plant. Most people and most
things die very much what they are born, and the clumsy sympathizer no
doubt will exist when the world ceases, just as it did when it began to
be.
But there are cases, and plenty of them, where true and tender sympathy
is like the very dew of heaven upon the parched and drooping flowers.
There are tender souls that long for sympathy, just as a little child
holds up its hurt finger for every one to “kiss and make well.” To such
persons, and to sorrow of the ordinary outspoken sort, with no tinge
of shame about it, let us give sympathy with a free and generous hand.
But, above all, let it be the right of _kind_ sympathy. It is in many
cases, if not in all, more blessed to give than to receive, and this
applies to gifts of sympathy quite as much as to more tangible matters.
I once knew a lady who said she had been to church all her life, but
had not been able to acquire grace sufficient to enjoy being pitied by
anybody for anything. Of course this was pride, and pride is naughty,
but very universal. Sometimes it takes the form of _amour propre_,
which is something a little different from self-love, although that is
the only English equivalent for the phrase. But _amour propre_ is a
very delicate thing to handle. Sometimes it is hurt by being touched;
sometimes it is still more hurt by being let alone; sometimes such
a person as this wants to be sympathized with, and yet is irritably
watchful lest the sympathy they demand should seem to place them at
fault for their misfortune.
You say to such a one, “How could you trust that man when every one
said he was dishonest?” and the sufferer nearly flies in your face with
the assertion that she is no more credulous than other people; but, etc.
It is, in one word, a very dangerous and delicate matter either to give
or receive sympathy, and all I can say is, remember, like fire, water
and gunpowder, it is a good thing so long as you know how to manage it,
but if you don’t--for heaven’s sake, let it alone.
XIII.
WOMEN OF THE WORLD.
Don’t you occasionally meet some good, honest, stupid man--sometimes,
but not often, a woman instead of a man--who really cannot take in a
new idea? You propound it to him, and he laughs in a good-natured,
indulgent sort of way and shakes his head, which, by the way, is
generally a fat and red-skinned head, a little bald on top, and says:
“Yes, yes, that’s your fancy, but there’s nothing in it, you know. It’s
all been settled long ago, and pretty well settled, too--pretty well
settled, too.”
Now, did it ever occur to you that such a man is a very fair type of
the world at large? Of course the exterior varies. In Italy, Spain,
France and other Latin countries the speaker is lean and dark and
melancholy instead of jolly. He shrugs his shoulders, and raises his
eye-brows, and throws out his hand, with the fingers spreading like the
sticks of a fan, and in his own musical tongue enunciates the very same
idea with the Anglo Saxon:
“It is all settled long ago. What has been will be. There is no room or
need for change. _Patienza!_”
When a Latin says _patienza_ it means that he absolutely won’t even
think about doing what you wish to have him do, or even try to listen
to your arguments in favor of the new course. It is very exasperating,
but not quite so much so as the good-natured chuckle, often accompanied
with the rattle of small currency in the trousers pockets, of the
middle-aged Anglo-Saxon.
Both the one and the other are simply voicing the prevailing sentiment
of their species about many matters, and chief of them just now about
the proper place of women in the world.
Long ago, so says our friend, especially the middle-aged Anglo-Saxon,
this was all settled.
Woman, lovely creature, was designed like the daisies to modestly
ornament and embellish the path of man. She was to love, honor and
obey, if she was permitted to marry him, and she was to serve and
obey him under all circumstances and in every relationship. While she
was young and pretty, man would admire and flatter her, even going
to great lengths of folly in proving to her how much he loved her so
long as she remained out of reach. But once she yielded to his frantic
solicitations and became “the crown of his existence,” the programme
changed entirely. If a crown of existence, after a few years it was in
the fashion of an old hat--soft and pliable, easy to wear around home,
but none too good to be tossed into a corner or “hung up” indefinitely
when its wearer chose to go out into the world.
But the world turns over every day, and in spite of gravitation and
cohesion and various other laws of nature, things do get occasionally
turned upside down and “a little mixed.” Certainly it is a pity--that
is, from the masculine point of view--that Galileo ever arose to
interfere with the good old order of things when the solid plane of
earth stood still and a man might know what to expect. But so it is.
There is always some troublesome creature ready to suggest things are
not what they seem nor what it has always been convenient to believe
they were.
“It does move, nevertheless,” remarked Galileo, as he signed his
recantation of just this heretical error, and woman--nay, let us give
her the biggest capital in the composing box, and say Woman--is just
the same sort of revolutionist as was Galileo. Very calm and gentle and
rather timid, so that she may even be coaxed or bullied into signing a
recantation of her firmest convictions, but always sweetly murmuring as
she does so: “Nevertheless it does move.”
So, having acquired some new ideas in the course of this Galileoistic
revolution and rebellion, lovely woman began to wonder why her
sphere was necessarily a very small and monotonous circle, too much
resembling the sphere of a horse in a cider mill, and why it should
not be an ellipse, a rhomboid, a parabola, and anything in or outside
of geometry, so long as it was something big and free and universal.
Woman’s sphere! Why not talk of man’s sphere, and be always worrying
around and fussing and fretting to see that he does not get out of
it? Man’s sphere is the sphere of the world--nay, of the universe--so
far as he has ability to grasp it. Then why isn’t woman’s sphere just
the same? Her character and capacities are very much like those of
man, although, like him, she as a sex ranges through many grades of
capacity and intelligence. Some women are childish and silly. Some
men are fools. Some women are governed by feeling and by personal
prejudice; but surely more men are governed by prejudice, with not even
the excuse of personal grounds, but merely blind and unreasoning. As
for feeling, I will acknowledge that few men are governed by their
hearts in worldly matters, but most of them are ruled by their pockets,
and perhaps that tribunal is neither nobler nor safer than the woman’s
feelings. Whatever the right or wrong of the matter, however, the fact
remains that woman has rather abruptly but very decidedly enlarged
and readjusted her sphere until it has become, like that of man,
practically unlimited except by individual capacity.
This position being granted--and I will say, in all courtesy, whether
it is granted or not--it becomes essential to also readjust some other
things before one can with no faltering voice define woman’s future
position in the world.
Man’s estimate of woman is one of the things needing readjustment. I
have clearly set forth his long established, hereditary convictions, or
rather prejudices, in the matter--those dear old prejudices to which he
clings as did the deacon to his “one hoss shay,” until some fine day
when all at once they crumble into dust beneath him, and he remains
seated among the ruin in an attitude at once mournful and ridiculous.
Would it not be better, dear sir, before that day comes, to provide
a new and modern vehicle and respectfully put the old “shay” into a
museum or lumber room? Only don’t let your new “kirredge” be a sulky, I
beg of you!
But descending--or ascending--from metaphor to plain statement and
prognostication, it has become essential to the prosperity of the world
in the immediate future that men as a sex should radically change their
point of view with regard to this question. Women can no longer be set
aside with a caress or pushed aside with a scowl or walked over as if
unseen and unknown outside of their old treadmill. They have developed
during the last score of years into a new and thus far unclassified
power. Like the electric fluid, woman presents to the astonished and
rather frightened gaze of her comrade, man, a force far surpassing any
other yet known, and capable of revolutionizing all existing processes
if only it can be equipped with safe machinery and so far comprehended
as to be trusted to work after the desired methods.
Thus far man, the lord of creation, has been rather worsted, or, as
some people say, “bested,” by both electricity and femininity, but it
is to be hoped that, following the precept to “live and learn,” he
will finally evolve the true meaning of the puzzle just now presented
by both. When that time comes, the world having hitherto bumped along
very lamely and painfully over the corduroy road of prejudice and
precedent, with half its wheels rendered useless by a chain drag, will
begin to travel not only more comfortably, but more expeditiously, and
the passengers will find themselves able to think and talk of something
outside the discomforts of the passage.
Woman’s position in the world of the future will be a good deal like
the position of the yeast in a mass of dough--pervading the otherwise
heavy and lifeless material with energy and impulse, developing
resources unused and perhaps unsuspected, lifting the whole substance
from mere material into the wholesome food of man, the traditional
“staff of life.” In the social world she has already done this, and
with more and more authority. In the literary world she has marched
in her army of occupation and taken up good, solid ground, fully
intrenched mid fortified by “works” that no engineer can afford to
despise. From this serene stronghold she sends out her advanced guard,
her corps of construction, her light skirmishers, and occasionally
under some able leader a little body of veterans, who intrench
themselves upon some new vantage ground, which they hold calmly and
impregnably, in spite of all warning cries and shrieks that they have
passed beyond their sphere and must retreat.
In the world of art woman has also defined her position as a living and
growing power. Men have always encouraged the idea that a cultivated
woman should know something about art--that is, she should be able
to tell the work of one artist from another and should be able to
intelligently follow his instructions in the matter of forming tastes
and opinions. Also it was nice for a lady to be able to make pretty
little pencil sketches of a tree and a pond, an impossible cottage in
the background. Sometimes she might aspire to water colors and have a
dear little portfolio of washy views to exhibit to him of an evening.
A few eccentric and strong minded young women were capable perhaps of
copying in oil color the pictures originated by men, and might, in
fact, be permitted to do so, if they were accompanied to the galleries
by some elder female or suitable male guardian, for, of course, being
a woman, she would not have sense or self-respect enough to protect
herself.
But now that women come forward as artists, not copyists; now that more
than one woman has said, “If Rosa Bonheur can, why cannot I?” now that
it is more and more clearly proved day by day that a woman’s intuitive
perception of character and daring analysis, added to her facile touch
and delicate feeling, makes her the best portrait painter in the world
if she has the artistic endowment, why, now, poor bewildered man has
to drop his dear old time-honored statement that woman never invents,
but simply copies; that she is only the moon to his sun and all the
rest of it. If she can divine and put into form the soul of a man
instead of simply copying his lineaments, what is to hinder her from
painting the soul of nature and the true inwardness of events?
But now at last woman presents herself in the world of business, and
not as an employee or as a capitalist simply, but in all capacities.
She modestly feels and pleasantly says that there is really nothing
beyond her capacity in any form of business with which man has hitherto
coped. She feels herself competent to discuss bonds and stocks and
loans, and even the silver question and tariff.
She sees nothing beyond her in the question of manufactures or of
imports. She can gauge the values of teas and sugars and spices in bulk
as well as by retail. She is no more alarmed by a bale of cloth or a
case of silk or cartons of lace than she is by a single yard of these
fabrics. She is quite aware that several women have ventured into the
business world upon an extended scale, and have come to grief and some
times to obloquy, but she gently inquires if the rash pioneers of a new
advance are to be taken as just specimens of the army behind, or if
because a short time ago an unlicensed mob hurled themselves upon the
new lands just open to the people it is proved that our western country
cannot be decently settled?