PARENTS AND VICE-PARENTS
There is a further problem over and beyond all those heretofore set
forth,--the problem, which might be described under the term, the
complication of relatives, the problem, shall we call it, of help or
hindrance from family members, who, asked or unasked and usually
unasked, undertake to act as vice-parents prior to the resignation or
decease of parents. The relationship is not ordinarily one of
reciprocity, for, however great be the help or hurt that can be done
to a child by an intervening kinsman or kinswoman, the relation of the
child to him or her does not as a rule root very deep in the life of
the younger person.
One thing parents may ask, though usually they do not: one thing
children ought to ask, though usually they would not; namely, that
when relatives touch the life of parent and child,--as they not
infrequently do,--they shall exert their influence on behalf of
understanding between parent and child. I have seen much done to wreck
the home by those who forget that the parental-filial relation is a
sanctuary not lightly to be trespassed upon even by those who
physically dwell in close proximity thereto.
One of the commonest forms of pernicious intervention is the attempt
to mitigate parental severity, to soften parental asperity, on the
part of nice, soft, respectable kinsmen and kinswomen, who regard a
child under twenty years or even under twenty-five in some cases as a
little lap-dog to be caressed and fondled, but in no wise to be dealt
with as a human to whom much may be given and from whom more must be
asked. Parents' standards may seem, and even be, exigent, but the
attempt to modify their rigor may not be made by those lacking in
fundamental reverence for a child, and in conscious hope for its wise,
noble, self-reliant maturity.
The kind uncle and the indulgent aunt have no right under heaven to
wreak their unreasoning tenderness upon niece or nephew in such
fashion as to make any and every standard seem cruelly exigent to
the child. Parents are not uniformly, though oft approximately,
infallible, and family members have the right and duty to take counsel
with, which always means to give counsel, to parents but not in the
presence of children. I have seen children moved to distrust of
parental mandate and judgment even when these were wise and just by
reason of the malsuggestion oozing forth from relatives, the zeal of
whose intervention is normally in inverse proportion to the measure of
their wisdom. Childish rebellion against parental guidance, however
enlightened, oft dates from the time of some avuncular remonstrance
against or antique impatience with parents "who do not understand the
dear child." But there is another and a better way, and kinsfolk can
frequently find it within the range of their power to supplement
parental teaching in ways that shall be profitable alike to child and
parent.
The nearest, the most constant impact upon the child is that of the
mother, and less often of the father. The mountain summit to which
greatness ascends in the sight of multitudes is often nothing more
than some height, reached in loneliness and out of the sight of the
world by a brave, mother-soul, wrestling through unseen and unaided
struggle for that, which shall later be disclosed to the world as the
immortal achievement of a child and so acclaimed by the plaudits of
the world. One remembers, for example, that the mother of William
Lloyd Garrison wrote of her colored nurse during her illness: "A slave
in the sight of man, but a freeborn soul in the sight of God." Thus is
she revealed as the mother of the Abolition struggle.
Professor Brumbaugh,[L] who ceased for a time to be a good teacher in
order to be an indifferent Governor of his Commonwealth, tells the
story of Pestalozzi taken by his grandfather to the homes of the poor,
the child saying: "When I am a man, I mean to take the side of the
poor." "He lived like a beggar that he might teach beggars to live
like men." Truly one must find the mother behind or rather before the
man. The mother of Emerson is thus described by his son[M]: "To a
woman of her stamp, provision for her sons meant far more than mere
food, raiment and shelter. Their souls first, their minds next, their
bodies last; this was the order in which their claims presented
themselves to the brave mother's mind. Lastly in those days the body
had to look after itself very much; more reverently they put it, the
Lord will provide." After his first week of Harvard life, Mrs. Emerson
wrote to her son[N]: "What most excites my solicitude is your moral
improvement and your progress in virtue. Let your whole life reflect
honor on the name you bear." Curious from the viewpoint of modern
practice that nothing was said about the weekly or fortnightly hamper
of goodies or the cushions shortly to follow,--to say nothing of the
ceaselessly entreated remittance!
The influence of a father upon his son comes to light as one reads Dr.
Emerson's life of his father: "In view of the son's shrinking from all
attempts to wall in the living truth with forms, his father's early
wish and hope, while still in Harvard, of moving to Washington and
there founding a church without written expression of faith or
covenant, is worthy of note." One comes to see that a man is what he
is because of the love he bears his mother, as one reads of Commodore
Perkins[O] that on the eve of the Battle of Mobile Bay he wrote to
her: "I know that I shall not disgrace myself no matter how hot the
fighting may be, for I shall think of you all the time." Thomas
Wentworth Higginson[P] tells that his own strongest impulse in the
direction of anti-slavery reform came from his mother. Being once
driven from place to place by an intelligent negro driver, my mother
said to him that she thought him very well situated after all; on
which he turned and looked at her, simply saying: "Ah, Missus, free
breath is good." Respecting his arrest later in connection with John
Brown and Harper's Ferry, Higginson writes[Q]: "Fortunately it did not
disturb my courageous mother, who wrote: 'I assure you it does not
trouble me, though I dare say that some of my friends are
commiserating me for having a son riotously and routously engaged.'"
Again and again, we look back and find that the great deed or noble
utterance of some historic figure is merely the echo of an earlier
word or deed of a forbear. We have seen it in the influences that
shaped or in any event steered Garrison, Mazzini, Pestalozzi. Former
President Tucker[R] of Dartmouth College declares that the memorable
speech of the Defender of the Constitution is to be explained not by
his own greatness. His father had made it before him.... This speech
was in his blood. The fact is that the great address of the Defender
of the Constitution was made by his father fifty years earlier when
Colonel Webster moved New Hampshire to enter the Union." The
grandfather of Theodore Parker was the minister of Concord at the time
of the Concord fight and on the Sunday previous he had preached on the
text: "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
That a kinsman or kinswoman may equal, even surpass, a parent in
influence wide and deep upon a child might be variously illustrated.
No more familiar illustration obtains than that of Mary Moody, aunt
of Emerson, of whom his son writes: "She gave high counsel. It was the
privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably high standard
indicated in their childhood, a blessing which nothing else in
education could supply. Lift up your aims, always do what you are
afraid to do, scorn trifles,--such were the maxims she gave her
nephews and which they made their own.... Be generous and great and
you will confer benefits on society, not receive them, through life.
Emerson himself said of his aunt[S]: her power over the mind of her
young friends was almost despotic, describing her influence upon
himself as great as that of Greece or Rome.
It may in truth often be a sister who brings strength and heartening
to a man. Ernest Renan writes to his sister Henriette[T]: "But that
ideal does not exist in our workaday world, I fear. Life is a
struggle, Life is hard and painful, yet let us not lose courage. If
the road be steep, we have within us a great strength; we shall
surmount our stumbling-block. It is enough if we possess our
conscience in rectitude, if our aim be noble, our will firm and
constant. Let happen what may, on that foundation we can build up our
lives." Again he wrote to her: "My lonely, tired heart finds infinite
sweetness in resting upon yours. I sometimes think that I could be
quite happy in a simple, common life, which I should ennoble from
within. Then I think of you and look higher." The tender inquisitress
was not satisfied, declares the biographer of Renan,[U] until all was
pure, exact, discreet and true. She said to her brother: Be thou
perfect. Most of all she sought to cultivate in him the habit of
veracity, a habit the seminary had not inculcated it appears. So great
was the influence of Henriette that for years afterward not only did
her brother act as she would bid him act, but, far rarer triumph of
her love, he thought as she would have bid him think, in all
seriousness, in all tenderness, with a remote and noble elevation,
checking as they rose those impulses toward irony, frivolity,
scepticism, which she had not loved.