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 midair, 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 homemaking 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 jeweled 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.