on the matter of parties. It has been, as you know, a great party
week, and Old Blobbs, in a casual kind of way, desired to know my
opinion of them. Celeste looked a little uneasy at this request, for
there is nothing that so delights that Dear Child as a party crush,
and nothing is sweeter to her than the fine disorder of her green
silk, after young Gauche has emptied his sherry over it, or old Mrs.
Dalrymple, who is _chaperoning_ her two nieces to the marital market,
has spilled a plate of escalloped oysters upon it, and that overgrown
boy of the Midases, who is out for the first time, has trodden them
in and disturbed the integrity of the _panier_ besides. She regards
all these things as the veteran does his scars, and loves to talk of
them in her "confidences" to her two-and-forty dear young friends,
who have just bobbed in after dinner to say "How do you do?" and
inquire if it was really true, that bit of scandal about Matilda
So-and-So and young Codliver. The company immediately pushed their
chairs back. Mignon called the Canary from his cage for its morning
meal, and as it flew to its customary place upon her shoulder, and
watched with its sharp little black eyes the bread which was being
crumbled for it, I thought I would rather talk about those two
birds than parties. Blanche sat with her fine eyes half closed, as
dear old Rossini used to sit at his table, and listened in a dreamy
sort of way. Aurelia had all she could do to keep the baby still by
threatening it with her shapely fore-finger, while Old Blobbs took
his fifth baked potato, a feat in gormandizing which incurred a
glance from Mrs. Blobbs that would have withered any other person and
caused a rustle of her black silk (for Mrs. B. _will_ wear her black
silk to breakfast), eloquent with promises of something between the
curtains which would not be as soothing as a lullaby nor as delicious
as a love-song.
And I spoke somewhat after the following manner: Some time ago I did
myself the pleasure to give you my opinion of fashionable public
weddings. Upon that occasion, you will remember that my principal
objection to those weddings, was the fact that people mistake
vulgarity for elegance. The same fatal mistake applies to public
parties, as they are usually given; where genuine elegance becomes
impossible, and there are no opportunities offered for the display of
taste.
You all well know that party giving, at present, is a mere
competition. Mrs. So-and-So issues her cards for two hundred.
Mrs. This-and-That immediately sends out three hundred, and Mrs.
Whether-or-No, at her party, increases her list to five hundred,
and so on. Now, I have no hesitation in pronouncing this simple
vulgarity. You cannot make miscellaneous herding elegant. In the
first place the social element is killed. To claim that you have
five hundred friends is simply stupid. To claim that you have fifty
is susceptible of doubt. If you have five, you are much better
off. Your five hundred people are, then, merely acquaintances. In
the race to get ahead of some one else, you have invited scores of
people you don't care a straw for, scores of others who don't care a
straw for you, scores of boobies and simpletons, and when you have
herded and packed them together, in a house not capable of holding
one-fourth that number comfortably, you have simply made a vulgar
crush, where no one knows his neighbor, and where mutual acquaintance
is impossible, because, however peripatetic you may be in principle,
you are stationary in fact. To make such an affair elegant, is in
the nature of things impossible. Mere show, noise, glitter, gilt,
gingerbread, and gew-gaw, are not elegance. Taste cannot be exercised
among, nor appreciated by a genteel mob. In forms of art, in matters
of taste and true elegance, there must be the element of repose.
It is indispensable to perfection. A gathering of people without
any conditions of age, character, or quality, literally packed
into a space so small, that locomotion becomes impossible; a table
which your restaurateur can't make a success, owing to this fact;
an intellectual atmosphere, surcharged only with the small gossip
and twaddle of the hour; an utter absence of culture, which alone
could impart the repose of true elegance; a meretricious display of
glitter, and no true gold; a feasting which is only gormandizing--for
in such a miscellaneous gathering you cannot keep out the gluttons;
an absence of all true courtesy, because it is impossible to exercise
it in the crush; an occasion which does not offer a single inducement
for attendance, in the way of art, music, literature, or the best
forms of social intercourse--is all that you have accomplished.
Was it worth accomplishing? You know it was not, my dear madame, as
well as I. You know that when you wake up the next morning, you are
utterly disgusted with the whole affair, and that there is not a
single element of gratification in remembering it, except the empty
honor of beating Mrs. So-and-So. You know that nine-tenths of those
who were present did not enjoy a single minute of comfort, and look
back upon your party as a bore, while the happy ones are those whose
regrets lie upon your table.
And all this, simply because it was vulgar--not vulgar as meaning
immoral or low, but as meaning silly and common. You have made your
house too common. No party can be a success, in the best sense of
the word, in which there is not some discrimination used in inviting
your guests. You should always arrange, if possible, to bring
people together of similar tastes, and then have some central point
to hold them together. If you _must_ invite five hundred people,
you had better make five parties of one hundred each, carefully
discriminating, so that your guests may enjoy themselves, than to
herd the whole five hundred into one, and thus make a mere rush,
scramble, crush and guzzle of it, and transform your house into
a menagerie. I am glad to know that this view is not confined to
myself, but that in good society, (not the "best" society, for that
is almost always the worst), the home parties are included in small
soirees of a distinctive character, in which there is ample room for
the display of cultivated and artistic elegance, admission to which
is deemed an honor.
But do not forget above all, that when a thing becomes
miscellaneous, it becomes vulgar, and that judicious exclusiveness
and cultured repose are absolutely essential to true elegance. The
most delicate rose in the garden planted among hollyhocks, and
sunflowers, and weeds, loses all its beauty and fragrance.
Old Blobbs had finished his potato, and was far advanced upon his
sixth, when I concluded. He heartily agreed with me, although Celeste
was pouting her pretty lips, and said that he desired to make a few
remarks also, whereupon Mignon commenced teasing the Canary with a
geranium leaf from our breakfast bouquet, and Mrs. Blobbs suddenly
excused herself, which did not, however, deter Blobbs from saying his
say.
January 10, 1869.
_AURELIA'S BABY._
It is necessary I should say something about Aurelia's Baby, for it
is the only baby in the whole world. At least Aurelia thinks so--just
as any other mother thinks.
I suppose there never was a baby born into this vale of tears,
that its mother did not suppose to be the only baby in the world.
I suppose those poor women who were the mothers of Nero, Richard,
Elizabeth, Robespierre, Marat, and the latest murderer who has
expiated his villainies on the gallows-tree, thought the same thing,
equally with the mothers of all good and blessed people. I see no
good reason why they should not, for the birth of the first baby
revolutionizes the world. The mother passes into a new sphere of
being, illumined by other suns and stars, in which other flowers
blossom and other birds sing, and the only inhabitants of which
are she and the baby. All her great love centres in the baby, and
where all her love centres, of course, there is her world. The whole
world of the baby is limited by the boundaries of its mother's eyes.
You may have noticed a baby lying in its nurse's arms, looking up
into the sky with wide-staring, vacant eyes and blank face. It
has no more intelligence in its face than a small kitten or any
other sucking possibility. In the arms of a nurse, all babies are
alike--merely breathing bits of blank vacancy--apple-dumplings,
with plums for eyes, and stuffed with colic. But, change the scene,
and place the baby in the arms of its mother, and, somehow, by some
strange necromancy that passes between the two, some subtle link
of affinity, that baby's face lights up with intelligence and its
little white soul looks out of the eyes as it recognizes its world
in the calm, holy eyes of the mother; for I think every mother's
eyes, from Aurelia's to some wild Indian mother's, crooning strange
weird lullabies under tropic palms, to her first born, are saintly
when they gaze into the sweet face of the first baby. And I believe
that the angels do not know such a love as exists between those two
mortals.
Which reminds me to say that I think Eve's baby, which she named
Cain, had the advantage of Aurelia's baby in some respects. The
chronicles of that day do not show that the baby Cain was obliged to
take soothing syrup, squills, or paregoric. There is no proof that
the angels smiled at him or talked to him in his sleep, as they do to
modern babies through the medium of colic. Cain could wander about
at his own sweet will, without any danger of catching the whooping
cough, measles, chicken-pox or any other of the contagious infantile
necessities which have been imposed upon all coming babies by his
mother's exploits in stealing and eating apples. Adam did not have to
walk the floor o' nights, have his whiskers pulled out by the roots,
or buy rattles and india-rubber rings. There isn't a line on record
to show that the infantile Cain suffered from pins sticking into his
blessed little legs and arms. I do not suppose that the old ladies
of the neighborhood came in every day or so, and scared Eve's life
out of her, by conjuring up all sorts of diseases, with all sorts of
remedies and cheerful predictions that Cain would die young, although
I think it would have been better for Cain if he had. Holy Writ does
not show, again, that Cain was entrusted in his marsupial days, to
the care of that curious compound of a gin bottle and a baby-tender,
who has a profound contempt for the mother, knows more than all the
rest of the world combined, and looks upon a physician as a foe to
the human race. I do not suppose Cain was kissed within an inch of
his life by prospective young mothers and youthful females, who have
graduated from the doll stage of their existence, nor that he was
rigged up in bib, pinafore, and ribbon, until he was purple in the
face, with the point of one very sharp pin inserted into the end of
his back, and placed on exhibition in a state of squalls and general
disgust consequent upon the aforesaid point, which he could feel,
if he couldn't see. The youthful Cain was not made the victim of
the maternal meetings, and crammed with Watts' hymns, and chapters
of the Bible before he was into his fig-leaf breeches--and right
here, I suppose somebody will say he would have turned out better
if he had been brought up in this manner, to which I might retort
with the fact that Abel was not subjected to the cramming process
either. Cain never bumped his precious little head by falling out of
his crib. He could not fall out of the cradle of the beautiful white
arms of the first mother, which encircled him with their zone of
love, and which, I warrant you, yearned for him even when he wandered
through the earth, with the brand upon his brow, and the stain upon
his heart, and our common mother mourned in the depths of a triple
agony. And it is to be recorded as one of the incidents of his early
days, that Eve was a healthy woman, and he was not brought up on
chalk and water, and did not ruin his small stomach with candy and
sweetmeats, presented by injudicious, but kindly disposed people,
whose generosity was only equalled by their stupidity.
I am getting away from Aurelia's baby somewhat, but there are still
some analogies between Aurelia and Eve untouched upon, and, as I am
writing this screed I will be obliged to you if you do not interrupt
me again, but leave me to say my say in my own manner. I candidly
confess to you that I don't know where this baby business will take
me, or when I shall get through talking about it, but just at present
I prefer to let the subject take me along at will. I had rather trust
myself to babies, than some grown people who insist upon interruption.
After this necessary parenthetical defence of my rights, I may say
that although the youthful Cain turned out very badly, I do not
suppose that Eve--as she sat under the pleasant trees of Eden, and
watched the little Cain playing in the flowers, while all the birds,
as yet unharmed by man, came and sang to her--ever thought her
first-born would be a murderer, or ever saw anything in his face, as
he lay upon her bosom, but love and joy. For the good God never made
anything ugly or bad. All that comes from his hand is perfect and
beautiful. No human being, do I sincerely believe, is born absolutely
ugly. The ugly man has made himself ugly. The ugly woman is at fault
herself.
And as Aurelia sits looking into the eyes of her baby, I do not think
she ever dreams of what may be in store for it in the coming days.
Her whole world is in the present. But as I watch them, smoking my
cigar, I cannot help seeing visions in the smoke, and I sometimes
shudder as I think that the sweet blue eyes may lose all their light
of beauty, and purity, and innocence, and burn with the fierce flame
of passion, or be dimmed with the mists of misery, or darkened with
the night of anguish through which she may have to pass; that the
little soft pink-and-white feet may have to travel and bleed on
the flinty roads to which they are all unused, and that, weary and
travel-worn, soiled and dusty, they may find no resting place this
side of Heaven, save in the long rest under the flowers; that the
tiny hands which now grasp at the world, as if they would clutch it
all in the little fists, may full soon fold themselves, tired with
the conflict, may grasp another only to be deceived, only to wither
and waste away, only to be crossed above a cold, silent heart, with
a flower in their marble fingers, may know cruel grasps of parting,
and heart-ache, may do the deed which shall dishonor the sweet
mother-hand which must too soon cease to guide, and must let go the
hold which it would fain keep forever.
And in all the great joy in her eyes, I see no traces of a shadow
which may come into the house; no fear that some day the sun will
not shine for her, and the stars be darkened in the cruel heavens;
that the baby which but yesterday filled all the home with the
light of her eyes and the silvery music of her voice, will be lying
cold and still in the chamber overhead; that the little waxen face
moulded into a moment's unearthly beauty, by that cunning sculptor,
Death, will cease to respond to her; that the white and green of the
cross and the crown, and the half opened rose-bud, no whiter than
the fingers holding it, will be the only souvenirs of her whom the
jealous angels carried away in the night watches, because she was
fairer than they. I think sometimes of these things as I sit watching
them, but I know that she does not, and I pray Heaven to avert the
cruel blow, and that the mother may be waiting for the child at
the Gate Beautiful, and not the child waiting for the mother; and
that all the good angels may watch over them, and shield them both,
however deep the waters through which they may pass.
I think that Aurelia's face has suffered "a sea-change" since the
little one was born; that it has been transfigured into something
more beautiful--a serenity, and holy calm, which is not altogether
beauty, but a rapt and saintly expression, such as you may see in
the Madonna della Sedia of Raphael. I think you will often see it in
young mothers at certain times. All that was there before imprinted
by the wear and friction of life, with its petty annoyances,
vexations and passions, all the weariness and _ennui_, all the storms
and conflicts, seem to have passed away, and in their stead has
settled down a placid, gentle, saintly expression, just as after the
noise and bustle, the smoke and dust, the jangle and jar of the day,
come the brooding wings of the twilight, the holy hush of evening,
and the silence of the stars.
January 17, 1869.
_THE QUARREL._
Old Blobbs, who always takes a fiendish delight in chaffing
Fitz-Herbert, immediately proceeded to enlighten him, by declaring it
was nothing of the sort. "I suppose, my young friend, that Lambele
had the same right to get married as Mrs. Blobbs had, and would give
the same reason. I suppose, if you live long enough, sir, you will
find some foolish young woman who will want to marry _you_, although
I think you will be quite old by that time. Mrs. Blobbs and I have
lived together a great many years. With all due deference to Mrs.
Blobbs, we have had a good many clouds in our sky, and some storms.
It is not for me to say who has caused these storms, nor to insinuate
that it is not altogether necessary for us to have had clouds in our
sky. Perhaps, if the sun shone all the time, we should not appreciate
each other as we do. At the same time, Mrs. B. will join me in saying
that it is a blessed thing to be married. Why, sir, look at J. Grau,
who has been sitting under the willows of Babylon, playing the harp
all his life, in single blessedness, and is going to marry a young
New York lady, of charming beauty and great expectations. Now, you
may ask why J. Grau, who has always been wedded to art (when it
paid), wants to marry? It will make a man of J. Grau, sir--make a
man of him. It makes a man of any one. A man without a wife is a
boat without oars. It will drift without purpose, and finally go
to pieces. He is a jug without a handle--a bow without an arrow.
It would make a man of _you_, sir, although it might take more
than one woman to do it. Your prospects for an early attainment of
that desideratum would be better under the wings of Brigham Young,
albeit the 'heft' of the labor would come upon your marital female
fractional parts. Any further information you desire, you can obtain
from Mrs. Blobbs, if you apply between the hours of two and three,
when she is invariably at peace with me and all the rest of the
world." Whereupon Fitz-Herbert smoothed his back hair and looked at
himself in the mirror opposite, and Mrs. Blobbs' black silk began to
rustle, when Mignon prevented an outbreak between Jupiter and Juno by
declaring it was a shame to have the pleasure of the breakfast-table
marred with any differences. The Canary stopped singing when Mignon
spoke, ashamed of his music, and as the Dear Creature arose and
kissed the frown out of Mrs. B.'s face, and smoothed down Old Blobbs'
iron-gray locks, she said: "We must have no naughty words, my dear
Blobbs, in this golden sunlight and under these blue heavens. Let us
thank the good God who sent us gifts of days like these in the new
year, and who tempers the winter winds in blessings to the firesides
of the poor, and not mar their perfect beauty with our little
differences." And she took Blobbs' hard, horny hand, and Mrs. B.'s
thin and withered hand in her own little white hands, and, placing
them together, said: "We will have no more quarrels, my dears, and,
under clear and cloudy skies--in bright or stormy weather--when roses
are blooming and roses are dying--when the birds build among the
leaves, and when no birds fly under the gray heavens--we will go hand
in hand and heart to heart, for life is too short for us to quarrel
in. The sun is low down in the west, and our shadows grow longer. We
have but a little way to go down the hill, and one of us must leave
the other before we get to the foot of it. We will, therefore, forget
all about the rough journeys up the hill, and make the rest of our
way lighter and brighter, in remembrance of that day, so long ago,
when we placed our hands together thus, and promised so to do." And
there were tears in Mrs. Blobbs' face, and Old Blobbs' face lighted
up with an expression none of us had ever seen it wear before. As
the old couple sat for some time, hand in hand, and neither of them
spoke, we knew that the trumpets were singing truce, and that the
battle was over.
January 23, 1869.
_A WOMAN NOT OF THE PERIOD._
* * * * * * * *
But thus formally embracing the Woman of the Period, I cannot
altogether suppress memories, and among them will come memories not
of the period; a woman who believes that God Almighty did not intend
to unsex her; a woman who believes that as soon as her dependence
upon man ceases, she loses all her loveliness; a woman whose home
is a perennial spring, from which flow the purest of pleasures; a
woman who sends out her boys and girls into the world, clothed with
her own graces of humility, and beauty, and goodliness, whereby they
may crown her old age with blessing; a woman who is queen at her
own fireside, and rules her own household with the sceptre of love;
a woman who governs because she serves; a woman whose influence
radiates far and wide from the home circle, as light and heat radiate
from the sun; a woman upon whose breast you first opened your eyes
to the light of day, and a woman upon whose breast you would fain
lie when you close your eyes forever to the light, and prepare to go
through the darkness alone; a woman to whom invisible forces are ever
drawing you, under all suns, in all times, and in all wanderings,
be they never so far; a woman, the perfume of whose prayers always
follows you, in good or evil report; a woman who always clings to
you, even to the depths of degradation; a woman whose great love is
superior to all the accidents of time; a woman whose still, small
voice, warning finger, and pleading eyes, are ever present with
you when overwhelmed with sore temptations; a woman whose price
is above rubies, who worketh willingly with her hands, who giveth
meat to her household, who stretcheth her hands to the poor, whose
husband is known in the gates, when _he_, (not she), sitteth among
the elders of the land; who openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in
whose tongue is the law of kindness; who looketh well to the ways of
her household, and whose children and her husband also arise up and
call her blessed; a woman to whom you look up, and whom you worship,
though no halo, except that of love, sheds its light upon her sweet
face; a woman whose life is too holy to be debased with politics, too
industrious to be wasted on empty babble, too lofty and too noble to
be dragged down to the level of man; a woman, best of all women--your
mother and my mother.
February 13, 1869.
_A TRIP TO HEAVEN._