Part 9
But the race must have fathers as well as mothers; and, if we look for evidence of public service in great men, it certainly does not always lie in leaving children to the republic. On the contrary, the rule has rather seemed to be, that the most eminent men have left their bequest of service in any form rather than in that of a great family. Recent inquiries into the matter have brought out some remarkable facts in this regard.
As a rule, there exist no living descendants in the male line from the great authors, artists, statesmen, soldiers, of England. It is stated that there is not one such descendant of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Butler, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, or Moore; not one of Drake, Cromwell, Monk, Marlborough, Peterborough, or Nelson; not one of Strafford, Ormond, or Clarendon; not one of Addison, Swift, or Johnson; not one of Walpole, Bolingbroke, Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Grattan, or Canning; not one of Bacon, Locke, Newton, or Davy; not one of Hume, Gibbon, or Macaulay; not one of Hogarth or Reynolds; not one of Garrick, John Kemble, or Edmund Kean. It would be easy to make a similar American list, beginning with Washington, of whom it was said that “Providence made him childless that his country might call him Father.”
Now, however we may regret that these great men have left little or no posterity, it does not occur to any one as affording any serious drawback upon their service to their nation. Certainly it does not occur to us that they would have been more useful had they left children to the world, but rendered it no other service. Lord Bacon says that “he that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit to the public, have proceeded from unmarried or childless men; which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public.” And this is the view generally accepted,—that the public is in such cases rather the gainer than the loser, and has no right to complain.
Since, therefore, every child must have a father and a mother both, and neither will alone suffice, why should we thus heap gratitude on men who from preference or from necessity have remained childless, and yet habitually treat women as if they could render no service to their country except by giving it children? If it be folly and shame, as I think, to belittle and decry the dignity and worth of motherhood, as some are said to do, it is no less folly, and shame quite as great, to deny the grand and patriotic service of many women who have died and left no children among their mourners. Plato puts into the mouth of a woman,—the eloquent Diotima, in the “Banquet,”—that, after all, we are more grateful to Homer and Hesiod for the children of their brain than if they had left human offspring.
XXXIX. THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO MOTHERS.
From the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals we have now advanced to a similar society for the benefit of children. When shall we have a movement for the prevention of cruelty to mothers?
A Rhode Island lady, who had never taken any interest in the woman suffrage movement, came to me in great indignation the other day, asking if it was true that under Rhode Island laws a husband might, by his last will, bequeath his child away from its mother, so that she might, if the guardian chose, never see it again. I said that it was undoubtedly true, and that such were still the laws in many States of the Union.
“But,” she said, “it is an outrage. The husband may have been one of the weakest or worst men in the world; he may have persecuted his wife and children; he may have made the will in a moment of anger, and have neglected to alter it. At any rate, he is dead, and the mother is living. The guardian whom he appoints may turn out a very malicious man, and may take pleasure in torturing the mother; or he may bring up the children in a way their mother thinks ruinous for them. Why do not all the mothers cry out against such a law?”
“I wish they would,” I said. “I have been trying a good many years to make them even understand what the law is; but they do not. People who do not vote pay no attention to the laws, until they suffer from them.”
She went away protesting that she, at least, would not hold her tongue on the subject, and I hope she will not. The actual text of the law is as follows:—
“Every person authorized by law to make a will, except married women, shall have a right to appoint by his will a guardian or guardians for his children during their minority.”[8]
Footnote 8:
Gen. Statutes R. I., chap. 154, sect. 1.
There is not associated with this, in the statute, the slightest clause in favor of the mother; nor any thing which could limit the power of the guardian by requiring deference to her wishes, although he could, in case of gross neglect or abuse, be removed by the court, and another guardian appointed. There is not a line of positive law to protect the mother. Now, in a case of absolute wrong, a single sentence of law is worth all the chivalrous courtesy this side of the Middle Ages.
It is idle to say that such laws are not executed. They are executed. I have had letters, too agonizing to print, expressing the sufferings of mothers under laws like these. There lies before me a letter,—not from Rhode Island,—written by a widowed mother who suffers daily tortures, even while in possession of her child, at the knowledge that it is not legally hers, but held only by the temporary permission of the guardian appointed under her husband’s will. “I beg you,” she says, “to take this will to the hill-top, and urge law-makers in our next Legislature to free the State record from the shameful story that no mother can control her child unless it is born out of wedlock.”
“From the moment,” she says, “when the will was read to me, I have made no effort to set it aside. I wait till God reveals his plans, so far as my own condition is concerned. But out of my keen comprehension of this great wrong, notwithstanding my submission for myself, my whole soul is stirred,—for my child, who is a little woman; for all women, that the laws may be changed which subject a true woman, a devoted wife, a faithful mother, to such mental agonies as I have endured, and shall endure till I die.”
In a later letter she says, “I now have his [the guardian’s] solemn promise that he will not remove her from my control. To some extent my sufferings are allayed; and yet never, till she arrives at the age of twenty-one, shall I fully trust.” I wish that mothers who dwell in sheltered and happy homes would try to bring to their minds the condition of a mother whose possession of her only child rests upon the “promise” of a comparative stranger. We should get beyond the meaningless cry, “I have all the rights I want,” if mothers could only remember that among these rights, in most States of the Union, the right of a widowed mother to her child is not included.
By strenuous effort, the law on this point has in Massachusetts been gradually amended, till it now stands thus: The father is authorized to appoint a guardian by will; but the powers of this guardian do not entitle him to take the child from the mother.
“The guardian of a minor ... shall have the custody and tuition of his ward; and the care and management of all his estate, except that the father of the minor, if living, and in case of his death the mother, they being respectively competent to transact their own business, shall be entitled to the custody of the person of the minor and the care of his education.”[9]
Footnote 9:
Public Statutes, chap. 139, sect. 4.
Down to 1870 the cruel words “while she remains unmarried” followed the word “mother” in the above law. Until that time, the mother if remarried had no claim to the custody of her child, in case the guardian wished otherwise; and a very painful scene once took place in a Boston court-room, where children were forced away from their mother by the officers, under this statute; in spite of her tears and theirs; and this when no sort of personal charge had been made against her. This could not now happen in Massachusetts, but it might still happen in some other States. It is true that men are almost always better than their laws; but, while a bad law remains on the statute-book, it gives to any unscrupulous man the power to be as bad as the law.
SOCIETY.
“Place the sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a severe morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.”—EMERSON: _Society and Solitude_, p. 21.
XL. FOAM AND CURRENT.
Sometimes, on the beach at Newport, I look at the gayly dressed ladies in their phaëtons, and then at the foam which trembles on the breaking wave, or lies palpitating in creamy masses on the beach. It is as pretty as they, as light, as fresh, as delicate, as changing; and no doubt the graceful foam, if it thinks at all, fancies that it is the chief consummate product of the ocean, and that the main end of the vast currents of the mighty deep is to yield a few glittering bubbles like those. At least, this seems to me what many of the fair ladies think.
Here is a nation in which the most momentous social and political experiment ever tried by man is being worked out, day by day. There is something oceanlike in the way in which the great currents of life, race, religion, temperament, are here chafing with each other, safe from the storms through which all monarchical countries may yet have to pass. As these great currents heave, there are tossed up in every watering-place and every city in America, as on an ocean-beach, certain pretty bubbles of foam; and each spot, we may suppose, counts its own bubbles brighter than those of its neighbors, and christens them “society.”
It is an unceasing wonder to a thoughtful person, at any such resort, to see the unconscious way in which fashionable society accepts the foam, and ignores the currents. You hear people talk of “a position in society,” “the influential circles in society,” as if the position they mean were not liable to be shifted in a day; as if the essential influences in America were not mainly to be sought outside the world of fashion. In other countries it is very different. The circle of social caste, whose centre you touch in London, radiates to the shores of the island; the upper class controls, not merely fashion, but government; it rules in country as well as city; genius and wealth are but its tributaries. Wherever it is not so, it is because England is so far Americanized. But in America the social prestige of the cities is nothing in the country; it is a matter of the pavement, of a three-mile radius.
Go to the farthest borders of England: there are still the “county families,” and you meet servants in livery. On the other hand, in a little village in Northern New Hampshire, my friend was visited in the evening by the landlady, who said that several of their “most fashionable ladies” had happened in, and she would like to exhibit to them her guest’s bonnet. Then the different cities ignore each other: the rulers of select circles in New York find themselves nobodies in Washington, while a Washington social passport counts for as little in New York. Boston and Philadelphia affect to ignore both; and St. Louis and San Francisco have their own standards. The utmost social prestige in America is local, provincial, a matter of the square inch: it is as if the foam of each particular beach along the seacoast were to call itself “society.”
There is something pathetic, therefore, in the unwearied pains taken by ambitious women to establish a place in some little, local, transitory domain, to “bring out” their daughters for exhibition on a given evening, to form a circle for them, to marry them well. A dozen years hence the millionnaires whose notice they seek may be paupers, or these ladies may be dwelling in some other city, where the visiting cards will bear wholly different names. How idle to attempt to transport into American life the social traditions and delusions which require monarchy and primogeniture, and a standing army, to keep them up—and which cannot hold their own in England, even with the aid of these!
Every woman, like every man, has a natural desire for influence; and if this instinct yearns, as it often should yearn, to take in more than her own family, she must seek it somewhere outside. I know women who bring to bear on the building-up of a frivolous social circle—frivolous, because it is not really brilliant, but only showy; not really gay, but only bored—talent and energy enough to influence the mind and thought of the nation, if only employed in some effective way. Who are the women of real influence in America? They are the school-teachers, through whose hands each successive American generation has to pass; they are those wives of public men who share their husbands’ labor, and help mould their work; they are those women, who, through their personal eloquence or through the press, are distinctly influencing the American people in its growth. The influence of such women is felt for good or for evil in every page they print, every newspaper-column they fill: the individual women may be unworthy their posts, but it is they who have got hold of the lever, and gone the right way to work. As American society is constituted, the largest “social success” that can be attained here is trivial and local; and you have to “make believe very hard,” like that other imaginary Marchioness, to find in it any career worth mentioning. That is the foam, but these other women are dealing with the main currents.
XLI. “IN SOCIETY.”
One sometimes hears from some lady the remark that very few people “in society” believe in any movement to enlarge the rights or duties of women. In a community of more marked social gradations than our own, this assertion, if true, might be very important; and even here it is worth considering, because it leads the way to a little social philosophy. Let us, for the sake of argument, begin by accepting the assumption that there is an inner circle, at least in our large cities, which claims to be “society,” _par excellence_. What relation has this favored circle, if favored it be, to any movement relating to women?
It has, to begin with, the same relation that “society” has to every movement of reform. The proportion of smiles and frowns offered from this quarter to the woman-suffrage movement, for instance, is about that offered to the anti-slavery agitation: I see no great difference. In Boston, for example, the names contributed by “society” to the woman-suffrage festivals are about as numerous as those formerly contributed to the anti-slavery bazaars; no more, no less. Indeed, they are very often the same names; and it has been curious to see, for nearly fifty years, how radical tendencies have predominated in some of the wellknown Boston families, and conservative tendencies in others. The traits of blood seem to outlast successive series of special reforms. Be this as it may, it is safe to assume, that, as the anti-slavery movement prevailed with only a moderate amount of sanction from “our best society,” the woman-suffrage movement, which has at least an equal amount, has no reason to be discouraged.
But on looking farther, we find that not reforms alone, but often most important and established institutions, exist and flourish with only incidental aid from those “in society.” Take, for instance, the whole public-school system of our larger cities. Grant that out of twenty ladies “in society,” taken at random, not more than one would personally approve of women’s voting: it is doubtful whether even that proportion of them would personally favor the public-school system so far as to submit their children, or at least their girls, to it. Yet the public schools flourish, and give a better training than most private schools, in spite of this inert practical resistance from those “in society.” The natural inference would seem to be, that if an institution so well established as the public schools, and so generally recognized, can afford to be ignored by “society,” then certainly a wholly new reform must expect no better fate.
As a matter of fact, I apprehend that what is called “society,” in the sense of the more fastidious or exclusive social circle in any community, exists for one sole object,—the preservation of good manners and social refinements. For this purpose it is put very largely under the sway of women, who have, all the world over, a better instinct for these important things. It is true that “society” is apt to do even this duty very imperfectly, and often tolerates, and sometimes even cultivates, just the rudeness and discourtesy that it is set to cure. Nevertheless, this is its mission; but so soon as it steps beyond this, and attempts to claim any special weight outside the sphere of good manners, it shows its weakness, and must yield to stronger forces.
One of these stronger forces is religion, which should train men and women to a far higher standard than “society” alone can teach. This standard should be embodied, theoretically, in the Christian Church; but unhappily “society” is too often stronger than this embodiment, and turns the church itself into a mere temple of fashion. Other opposing forces are known as science and common-sense, which is only science written in short-hand. On some of these various forces all reforms are based, the woman-suffrage reform among them. If it could really be shown that some limited social circle was opposed to this, then the moral would seem to be, “So much the worse for the social circle.” It used to be thought in anti-slavery days that one of the most blessed results of that agitation was the education it gave to young men and women who would otherwise have merely grown up “in society,” but were happily taken in hand by a stronger influence. It is Goethe who suggests, when discussing Hamlet in “Wilhelm Meister,” that, if an oak be planted in a flower-pot, it will be worse in the end for the flower-pot than for the tree. And to those who watch, year after year, the young human seedlings planted “in society,” the main point of interest lies in the discovery which of these are likely to grow into oaks.
But the truth is, that the very use of the word “society” in this sense is narrow and misleading. We Americans are fortunate enough to live in a larger society, where no conventional position or family traditions exert an influence that is to be in the least degree compared with the influence secured by education, energy, and character. No matter how fastidious the social circle, one is constantly struck with the limitations of its influence, and with the little power exerted by its members as compared with that which may easily be wielded by tongue and pen. No merely fashionable woman in New York, for instance, has a position sufficiently important to be called influential compared with that of a woman who can speak in public so as to command hearers, or can write so as to secure readers. To be at the head of a normal school, or to be a professor in a college where co-education prevails, is to have a sway over the destinies of America which reduces all mere “social position” to a matter of cards and compliments and page’s buttons.
XLII. THE BATTLE OF THE CARDS.
The great winter’s contest of the visiting-cards recommences at the end of every autumn. Suspended during the summer, or only renewed at Newport and such thoroughbred and thoroughly sophisticated haunts, it will set in with fury in the habitable regions of our cities once more. Now will the atmosphere around Fifth Avenue in New York be darkened—or whitened—at the appointed hour by the shower of pasteboard transmitted from dainty kid-gloved hands to the cotton-gloved hands of “John,” through him to reach the possibly gloveless hands of some other John, who stands obsequious in the doorway. Now will every lady, after John has slammed the door, drive happily on to some other door, re-arranging, as she goes, her display of cards, laid as if for a game on the opposite seat of her carriage, and dealt perhaps in four suits,—her own cards, her daughters’, her husband’s, her “Mr. and Mrs.” cards, and who knows how many more? With all this ammunition, what a very _mitrailleuse_ of good society she becomes; what an accumulation of polite attentions she may discharge at any door! That one well-appointed woman, as she sits in her carriage, represents the total visiting power of self, husband, daughters, and possibly a son or two beside. She has all their counterfeit presentments in her hands. How happy she is! and how happy will the others be on her return, to think that dear mamma has disposed of so many dear, beloved, tiresome, social foes that morning! It will be three months at least, they think, before the A’s and the B’s and the C’s will have to be “done” again.
Ah! but who knows how soon these fatiguing letters of the alphabet, rallying to the defence, will come, pasteboard in hand, to return the onset? In this contest, fair ladies, “there are blows to take, as well as blows to give,” in the words of the immortal Webster. Some day, on returning, you will find a half-dozen cards on your own table that will undo all this morning’s work, and send you forth on the war-path again. Is it not like a campaign? It is from this subtle military analogy, doubtless, that when gentlemen happen to quarrel, in the very best society, they exchange cards as preliminary to a duel; and that, when French journalists fight, all other French journalists show their sympathy for the survivor by sending him their cards. When we see, therefore, these heroic ladies riding forth in the social battle’s magnificently stern array, our hearts render them the homage due to the brave. When we consider how complex their military equipment has grown, we fancy each of these self-devoted mothers to be an Arnold Winkelried, receiving in her martyr-breast the points of a dozen different cards, and shouting, “Make way for liberty!” For is it not securing liberty to have cleared off a dozen calls from your list, and found nobody at home?
If this sort of thing goes on, who can tell where the paper warfare shall end? If ladies may leave cards for their husbands, who are never seen out of Wall Street, except when they are seen at their clubs; or for their sons, who never forsake their billiards or their books,—why can they not also leave them for their ancestors, or for their remotest posterity? Who knows but people may yet drop cards in the names of the grandchildren whom they only wish for, or may reconcile hereditary feuds by interchanging pasteboard in behalf of two hostile grandparents who died half a century ago?