CHAPTER XVIII.

BOYS AND GIRLS.

There is yet a more critical time for the parents, I think, than even the schoolroom time, and that is, first of all, when the boys go off to school; and, secondly, when we have to realise that the small nursery toddlers are grown up, and really as capable of taking care of themselves as we are ourselves. Let me speak of the boys first, as, after all, that terrible wrench is the worst experience of all, and one, I hope most truly and sincerely, which will be saved for future mothers, and that before many years have passed; for I maintain, and always shall maintain most strenuously, that there never was a worse system of education than the general education that present-day lads must go through, or be entirely different to the rest of the male sex, though even that would be a good thing in my eyes, for I cannot allow that the male half of the world is so good or so perfect at present that it cannot be improved, neither can I allow that the result of education as at present given is in any way as perfect as it might be; and as an example of what I mean it would be well to consider, I think, why the return of the boys from school is as the letting loose of a horde of barbarians on a peaceful land; and why, after the first week at all events, the urchins cease to be regarded as returned angels, and one and all are spoken of as ‘those dreadful boys.’

As an example of what I mean, I may speak of one household where the girls are gently ruled and delicately brought up by their dead mother’s bridesmaid, who gave up her own one chance of wedded happiness because of her most romantic attachment to her girlhood friend, and who, when father and mother died within a few years of each other, leaving a young and turbulent household to ‘Aunt Mary and Providence,’ came to live among the children, loving them all, but instinctively looking upon the boys as just one remove from wild animals.

At least the preparations for their return from Rugby would suggest as much, for in the big country-house drawing-room the beautiful Indian carpet is rolled up and replaced by a time-worn drugget, the little brother’s best hat and coat are relegated from the hall to Aunt Mary’s own room, covers are put on everything that can be covered, and lace curtains are moved; and, in fact, when prepared for the holidays, the whole house appears as if ready to stand a heavy and protracted siege.

Even the garden and greenhouses are rigorously locked; wire shades and iron hurdles protect tender seedlings and grass edges; the head gardener wears a countenance of mingled dread and determination; and in the stables nothing is left get-at-able save the boys’ own ponies, a venerable ‘four-wheel,’ and sundry odds and ends of ancient harness, which no one could hurt because its condition is quite hopeless already.

And in a town house, when the holidays are within appreciable distance, over and over again have I not seen similar preparations, though on a smaller scale? Have I not noted how nurse puts away the children’s best toys; how the girls in the schoolroom, aided by their agitated governess, conceal all their beloved possessions, and train their pets to ‘lie low,’ as ‘Brer Fox’ would say? Does not Paterfamilias rehearse a long code of laws, all to be enforced, he says, the moment the boys come home? And is not Materfamilias, after all, the only creature in the whole establishment who has not one _arrière pensèe_, and who finds nothing in the least to spoil the rapture of the return of those who have never for one moment been out of her thoughts since the last time she saw them off, through her tears, on their return to Dr. Swishey’s academy for young gentlemen?

Ah, the boys little know what they cause that tender soul to suffer when an extra hour’s cricket excuses them for forgetting their weekly letter home; how the omission makes her turn pale when a sudden ring at the bell comes, lest it should be a telegram summoning her to the bedside of the dear things, who are most likely rioting in the playground at the very moment; and how she is only withheld by dread of ridicule and the largeness of the railway fare from rushing off at once to see for herself that all is well; and she has to content herself with writing a loving letter of expostulation, doubtless characterised as ‘a jaw,’ and thrown aside half read through.

And when they are at home under her own roof she naturally looks forward to peace, at all events, and safety from dreads and fears such as these; but, poor soul, she soon finds out her mistake.

Her days are spent in wondering where the boys have gone to, in painfully concealing the marks of their ravages in library and staircase and hall from the paternal eye, and in propitiating the outraged schoolroom and nursery establishments, who do not see, as she does, that the fact of its being holiday time accounts for all, and that all should be forgiven those who are only at home for so short a period in the year.

But even mother begins to tire of acting as a buffer between her sons and her husband and the other members of the family. And by the time cook has given warning--heedless that she is the only woman who can cook the dinner to suit the master--because Reggie will melt lead in her spoons or playfully drop gunpowder in the fire, or because some pounds of butter mysteriously disappeared and followers were hinted at--though the state of her saucepans and George’s trouser pockets pointed out that toffee, not the policeman, was at the bottom of the loss--Materfamilias finds herself wondering how Dr. Swishey manages to look so well at the end of the term, and begins to think that perhaps after all she will not be quite as sorry as usual when the cab comes round and the boys go off, leaving her free to go out to dinner without dreading to see flames issuing out of the drawing-room windows when the carriage turns the corner of the Square on her return home, or fearing a summons from the festive board to bid her go back at once because one or other of the boys has done something dreadful either to himself or some other member of the family.

Now, granted that this is not an isolated case--and, judging from a large personal experience of ‘other folks’ children,’ I venture boldly to state that this is the rule and not the exception--I as boldly remark that the present manner of dealing with the _genus homo_ as expressed in the schoolboy is entirely a wrong one, and, waxing bolder yet, I say that the grown-up youth evolved from such an education as most lads obtain nowadays is so emphatically unsatisfactory that I am quite sure some radical change should be made in the way we bring up our boys.

Born into a home where their sisters are sheltered and cared for until they leave it for one of their own, from their very birth they are treated in an entirely different manner. As little mites they govern the house, because they are of the superior sex, and they are finally sent away from home into the great world of school, where, neither by age nor experience, can they be in the least fitted for the warfare, or enabled by careful and judicious training to hold their own, or to choose between the good and evil that is so freely offered them there. Small boys are herded with big ones, who alternately bully and confide in them; tender and sentimental fancies are derided; and the word ‘manly’ is made to express ferocity, cruelty, uncleanness, and a thousand and one awful things that, when we discover our children are aware of, we wonder feebly when and how they have acquired their knowledge.

What wonder the return of the boys is dreaded, when they come as strangers into a home where God placed them for the careful training, the unceasing supervision, of body and mind? How can a boy join in and make part of a circle that for half or even three parts of the year is complete without him? How can he respect and appreciate laws and routine that are entirely different to all he has been accustomed to more than two thirds of his time? And how can he help being spoiled, selfish, and tyrannical, when the very shortness of his residence under the home-roof is made an excuse for pampering him and making every one, man, woman, and child, give way to him, because, poor dear lad, he is only at home for the holidays, while the others are always there?

There is no doubt in my mind that boys ought to go more into the world and see more of human nature than girls need do; but with all my strength I would maintain that the ordinary boarding-school plan is a great and hideous mistake. By all means let them go to school all day; but let them at night return home, where the mother’s eye can see how they are, and how they progress with their lessons, and to insure them that best of all feeling for any one--the certain knowledge that home is home to them in the fullest sense of the word; and that, far from being outsiders or honoured guests, feared as well as honoured, they are part and parcel of the family, and bound to give and take, sharing the rough with the smooth, and helping in every way they can to aid the weaker vessels of the family, and becoming gentlemen in the widest sense of the word.

Of course, parents who keep their boys at home have little time for rest, and cannot be incessantly in the very middle of society’s whirl; but is any price too large to pay for the souls of our children--any sacrifice too great to insure that one’s boys are to the fullest degree given the benefit of our knowledge and our shielding care? And shall we not be repaid for anything it may cost us in the wear-and-tear of our brain-power if, instead of the stage-door-haunting, toothpick-gnawing ‘masher’ of the present day, we rear a race of manly, God-fearing, home-loving youths, who may restore the age of chivalry and the strong, pure, tender-hearted men that were once England’s boast?

Like most problems presented to our minds as we go through the world, there are here other sides to contemplate beyond the one we have just attempted to sketch. For there are homes where the boy’s one chance of salvation is given by a good training at school; where the vanity of the mother and the evil example of the father are worse than anything else can possibly be; and where the atmosphere is so pernicious that an honest and true-hearted schoolmaster dreads to send his pupils home, for they may once more acquire habits that he is only just beginning really to eradicate. There are also intensely weak and foolish parents who, not able to refuse themselves any gratification, cannot debar their children from having their own way, and who, not having been trained themselves, cannot train others; and there are yet others who send off their children to rid themselves of the clear-eyed tormentors who ask such tiresome questions, and will follow the example of their parents, not content to be put off with the trite remark that grown-up folks can do and say things little people would be severely punished and reprimanded for doing and saying.

Still, notwithstanding these sides to the picture, we can boldly state that if boys were invariably part of a household, if their parents accept their responsibilities and see they have no right to pay some careless person--any one, in fact, who wants to make money by teaching--to take their responsibilities off their hands, we should very soon have a different state of things as regards the male sex as a whole; and at all events we should cease to dread the holidays and speak of our sons as ‘those dreadful boys.’

But the selfishness of the ordinary parent, and the cupidity of the orthodox schoolmaster, whose real profits are made from the boarders, and who, therefore, discourages to the best of his power the idea of home-boarders, are twin giants in the way of those who only ask to be allowed to bring up their own children in their own way, and I can but look forward and hope for other mothers all that I have only been able to demand for myself in part, and that a very small part of all I would have wished for the boys, who, once given over to school, only return for good for a few moments, as it were, on their way to the real battle of life, which soon engulfs them entirely, and so we never really have our boys our own, nor are allowed to train them for ourselves at a time when we alone should be able to do it satisfactorily, because we alone should understand them best and know what they inherit mentally and bodily; in fact, the nursery and schoolroom once passed through, we have lost our children, and have only now to think how we can make home happy for them until they leave us for their own homes, which will depend on our early training whether they are happy ones or not.

And indeed one of the most abstruse of all our numerous domestic problems is shadowed forth in the words ‘quite grown-up,’ for there are few fathers and mothers who realise, it seems to me, that their children have actually passed through nursery and schoolroom, and are in deed and truth quite grown-up, and in consequence of this the domestic relations become strained, and home ceases to be the pleasant retreat it used to be from the throng and turmoils of the outside world.

There are most certainly households where the relations are more than strained, where open hostility replaces the old-time affection, and from whence sons rush to ‘the bad,’ and daughters marry the first man that asks them, simply because they wish for freedom and to be able to do as they like.

Naturally, they often enough discover they have exchanged King Log for King Stork, and wish themselves at home once more over and over again; but that such cases are not only possible, but are continually occurring around us, seems to me so sad, that I should like to say a few words on the subject of ‘The Proper Relations between Parents and Children,’ hoping in some measure to propose a solution to the problem.

In the first place, we are in some measure suffering from the rebound that has taken place when the severe bonds that bound our parents were removed. They suffered themselves so greatly from the petty tyrannies that were considered the right thing in their youth, that, in desiring to save their children from similar misery, they have gone to the other extreme, and allowed such laxity of manner that children rule the house, as in America, and barely condescend in their grown-up stage to consult their parents at all about their engagements, their occupations, or even their friendships or their marriages.

Surely there is a medium between the discipline that enforced silence on the child until all originality was crushed out of him, that thought severe strictures on the dress and personal appearance of one’s daughters the sole way of checking vanity, and that refused confidence because it was lowering oneself from the awful height occupied by a parent, and that which is conspicuous by its absence, and that results in an independent race of young people, who respect nothing, and are certainly not going to make an exception in the case of their father and mother, who are either ready to go as great lengths as their children, or else suddenly assert an authority that only exists in their own imaginations, and that causes a turmoil because opposition is as unexpected as it is arbitrary.

If we would have authority we must have it from the very beginning, and I am old-fashioned enough myself to be a great believer in the nursery and nursery frocks for very little children. I am always angry, I confess, when I see a small lady of four or five dressed up to the eyes in a fantastic frock designed to attract attention to the tiny wearer, of which she is all too conscious, and carried about from this luncheon to that tea, to the weariness of herself and all who are not connected with her; and indeed do well to be angry, for did not she, as one of those specimens, refuse to go into the country because she found it so extremely dull; and also because I know it is from such a bringing-up as this that we obtain the emancipated female or the fast girl, who thinks of nothing but ‘dress’ and ‘the service,’ and which results, all too often, in making home miserable for the elder folk, who only see in the pretty child a plaything flattering to their vanity, and do not recognise the fact that, much sooner than we expect it, she in her turn will be quite grown-up.

The nursery stage should emphatically be a time for shabby clothes and dolls and noise, and for healthy natural play. The midday meal should be the only one taken with the mother, who, however, should make a point of knowing all about the others, and should also contrive to be often in the nursery, and have the children with her for not less than an hour or two a day.

To insure happiness with a grown-up family these tiny beginnings should be well studied. The mother’s influence should be so much felt, and so indispensable to the house, that when withdrawn for a while it should indeed be something more than missed. But familiarity in early childhood breeds contempt in youth; and it is well known that a child who is always with grown-up people never knows what childishness is, and never becomes as healthy-minded as one who has had a little wholesome neglect from society and from perpetual supervision of its elders.

When we as parents begin to see the children growing up, we should, I maintain, then carefully see that our own immediate friends are those whose society and conversation can do our girls no harm. When I have occasionally heard talk that has brought blushes to my checks at my mature age, and seen the young girls not only listening but joining in it, I have almost been tempted to declare my girls shall never go into society at all; but as I know this is impossible, I have made up my mind whose houses they shall go to, reserving to myself the right to tell them boldly why such and such a one is not a desirable acquaintance.

Then, too, their own friends, made at school or at the homes of mutual acquaintances, should be welcomed emphatically whenever they like to come. I remember too well feeling much aggrieved at not being able to ask an occasional friend to tea to refuse this privilege. But if the friends become too numerous, it is easy to point out that either you cannot afford such indiscriminate visiting, or to restrict the number of visitors to a certain number; only let it be understood that their friends are always welcome in moderation, and that, though you are delighted to see them, you do not expect them thrown on your hands for entertainment, and that you assume the right to point out to your children the desirability or the reverse of any of their acquaintances, and that you expect them to give due weight to your opinion.

It is more than necessary, in my mind, to keep perpetually before one’s children that the home into which they were born is their inheritance that nothing can take from them. And by this I do not mean that I consider a parent bound to provide fortunes for either sons or daughters. I have too often seen the great harm of this to advocate it for one moment; but that they should always not only be welcome there, but claim as a right the shelter and counsel and affection that are their due, no matter what they have done or how grievously they have sinned. For _no_ cause should a father or mother refuse to see their own child, and they should a thousand times more never allow the unmarried daughter to feel herself a burden, whose food and shelter are grudged her, any more than they should continually hint that marriage is a woman’s only destiny, refusing to the girls the ample education lavished on the sons, and so depriving them of every means of making their own living.

But grown-up daughters, in my eyes, are a most precious possession, if properly brought up. They at last take some of the heavy burdens a mother has always to bear alone off her shoulders; and if she be moderately intelligent, and has intelligently brought up the girls, there is no reason why they should not be a thousand times more valuable in her eyes than they were as pretty babies and engaging little girls.

But then we must remember that they are grown-up, that they have an opinion more or less valuable, and that they have idiosyncrasies to be respected, the while they respect ours, remembering our position towards them, our fuller experience, and our affectionate care for them. As long as the parents live, they should be master and mistress in the house; but the children should be as viceroys, helping their parents in every way that they can in their social duties and in the routine of the house. It is trying, we know, to have the piano going and billiard-balls rolling when we want to read Jones’s speech on Home Rule, or Gladstone’s latest statements; but it is far more trying not to know where one’s children are, and to feel they are happier anywhere else than in their own homes.

It is their home as much as it is ours, and it will be home indeed if by judicious training in their youth we have made friends of our children, if we have given them our confidence, our affection, and our best days, and have not become strangers to them by being perpetually in society when they were as perpetually sent to school; the while we have not become too familiar, and make them old before their time, by taking them with us to gatherings in smart frocks when they ought to have been disreputably shabby in pinafores in the nursery. Then we shall discover that our grown-up sons and daughters are not so many cuckoos pushing us out of the old nest, but intelligent friends and companions--all the more delightful to us because they are quite grown-up.