Chapter 10
Every one knows the great difference between city and country hospitality. Very few people in the city appear to be really pleased to see an uninvited guest, and they are far less likely to invite guests, except perhaps when giving a party, than those of the same means in the country. They are not altogether to blame in this. There are so many more people to see in the city than in the country that every one becomes a new burden, and the friendship must be very close indeed that survives such a strain. But I fear it is also true that in the city the non-essentials of life have undue weight.
XII.
BRIC-À-BRAC.
Our lives are clogged with _bric-à-brac_. Every separate article in a room may be pretty in itself, and yet the room may be hideous through overcrowding with objects which have no meaning.
The disease of _bric-à-brac_ I think, is due to two influences,--the desire of uncreative minds to create beauty, and the mania for giving Christmas presents. Both these influences have a noble source, and will probably reach more beautiful results at last. Any mind awake to beauty must try to create it, and if its power and originality are not very great, what can it do better than to apply itself to humble, every-day trifles and try to decorate them? This is certainly right, if the old principle of architecture is always remembered: "Decorate construction, do not construct decoration." A few illustrations of my meaning may be needed.
I am obliged to use blotting-paper when I write. I have always been grateful to a friend who sent me a beautiful blue blotting book, with a bunch of white clover charmingly painted on the first page. It gives me pleasure every time I write a letter. I am glad that one of my friends was artistic enough to embroider some fine handkerchiefs for me with a beautiful initial. One of my dearest possessions is the lining for a bureau drawer made of pale blue silk, with scented wadding tied in with knots of narrow white ribbon. This lies in the bottom of the drawer, and owing to the kindness of my friends shown at various times, I am able to lay upon the top of each pile of underclothing either a handkerchief case or a scent bag of blue silk or satin. Some of these trifles are corded with heavy silk, some are embroidered with rosebuds, some are ornamented with bows of ribbon, and altogether they make the drawer a "thing of beauty" which to me personally "is a joy forever," and they are never in anybody's way.
My friend has been less fortunate in the tributes of affection she has received. She has several elaborate and even pretty ties which she is obliged to append to her sofas and easy-chairs. They are believed to add to the harmony of coloring in her sitting-room, but they are very likely to be askew when the sofas and easy-chairs are in use; and as they always have to be rearranged during the process of dusting, they form an argument for delaying that duty as long as possible. She also has several head-rests and foot-rests, in which the embroidery is exquisite in itself, but which are so ill-contrived that they afford no rest to either head or foot. "They are worth having, though," she says, "because of their beauty, just as a picture is worth having though you cannot use it." "Yes," replies her husband, "they are worth having, but not worth having in the way. I do not want even the Sistine Madonna propped up in my easy-chair." Most of her friends are learning to paint, and many of them have chosen to give her at Christmas specimens of their progress mounted on pasteboard easels. These cover the tables and mantels and brackets of her sitting-room. "Ah!" she says softly, under her breath, "if they had only thought to paint book-marks instead One can never have enough book-marks. It would be delightful to have one in every book in the library, and the more beautiful the better, while the ugly ones, which perhaps come from our dearest friends, would be blessed for their usefulness besides being unobtrusive."
Sweet temper is certainly essential to a happy home; but if my friend were not too sweet tempered to hide these offerings from constant sight, her sitting-room would not be so exasperating a place. There is no room for a work-basket or a book on the tables. One is continually upsetting some frail structure, or tumbling over some well-meant æsthetic convenience.
Christmas presents are worse than any others. Even a hideous and useless gift offered at any other season may be acceptable, and we need not grudge it room, because being spontaneous, it represents love. But even the most genuine Christmas presents are becoming subject to the suspicion that they are given from a sense of duty, because gifts at that season have become a habit. I have no reason to suppose that any of my numerous kind friends grudge the Christmas presents they so generously give me; but I often find myself wondering how many of them would think of giving me anything as often as once a year if there were no special date to recall the custom to their minds.
Gifts would be far more likely to be spontaneous if they were never given regularly; if, for instance, we avoided giving anything next Christmas to anybody whom we had remembered this year--excepting always to little children, to servants, and to the poor--the three classes to whom we never venture to give _bric-à-brac_, knowing well they would laugh us to scorn instead of flattering us by calling our contributions "perfectly lovely." Now, when a gift is spontaneous, its value is quite irrespective of its use, but at the same time it is far more likely to be both beautiful and useful. We read a book that moves us. How we wish we could share it with one friend who particularly enjoys such a book! We send it to her, and it is exactly the thing she wants. On the other hand, Christmas is approaching. What shall we give our friend? She likes books. Well, then, here is a prettily bound volume which is well spoken of. We have no time to look farther, and we send it to her. She thanks us in a pretty note, but is too busy in writing a hundred notes of thanks to read the book then. It is laid by and perhaps forgotten.
We are making another friend an informal visit. We see that her needle-book is getting shabby. We hasten to get bits of kid and silk and flannel, and make her a new one with our daintiest stitches, and she is delighted. She uses it every day, and likes to remember that we thought of her comfort. But what shall we give her for Christmas? We think she has everything. We have too many friends to remember now, for time for such a dainty piece of sewing. Let us buy her some kind of an ornament. It is true that the French clock and the vases and the match receivers and two or three pictures on easels already crowd the mantel-piece, but there is an odd little bronze image which would not be amiss among them. It costs rather more than we can afford to pay, but we love her, and wish to give her something, and are at our wits' end to know what. She receives it graciously, and every time she dusts her ornaments she remembers us affectionately. "I don't grudge dusting this," she says sweetly to herself, "for my dear friend gave it to me, and I would do a great deal more than this for her." Of course, in a family where a servant dusts, the present is forgotten the moment it is placed on the shelf.
I remember the dearest of little girls who once made me a Christmas present of a purse of her own embroidering. The colors she chose were brilliant, but hardly beautiful; the material rather flimsy, the sewing was far beyond criticism, and if I had ever been rash enough to intrust any money to such a purse, I should have returned home penniless. But I was enchanted with the gift. I shall keep it as long as I live wrapped in the crumpled tissue paper in which this darling child folded it in her wish to make it look as attractive as possible. I can never even think of this gift without fancying the tiny unskillful fingers as they toilsomely labored over those silks that would catch and twist, and I think of the sweet brow and eyes which bent over the work, and am as sure as if I had seen it of the loving smile which hovered about the childish lips at the thought that she was going to give me a pleasant surprise.
But as this little maiden grew up the cares of Christmas multiplied. There came a time when she had money to spend, and a host of friends to spend it upon, and when she certainly had not time personally to conduct the making of the number of Christmas presents she thought necessary to bestow. She was much too loyal to leave me out on this occasion, and if I were to judge of the degree of her affection by the proportion of her money which she spent upon me, she must have regarded me still as one of her dearest friends. She gave me a pair of exquisite cut glass vases, which, when placed in the sunshine, were certainly most beautiful with the flashing of colors. Their outline too was a lovely curve, but unfortunately such that it was impossible to put any flowers in the vases. At the base they were too slender to receive even one rose-stalk, while they were so broad at the top that it would have required a whole nosegay to fill them. If I had had a vast empty drawing-room which was to be filled with _bric-à-brac_, I could have found a place for them; but they were too delicate for my tiny parlor where there is so little elbow-room that slight things are in danger of being overturned. Of course I prize the vases and love the giver, but I know she never would have given them to me but for the feeling that the time had come to make a present; and so, while I shall cherish the little purse as long as I live, I have resolved that if the vases are ever broken, I will not treasure the fragments.
From these two roots, the love of creating beauty and the desire to express love for our friends on the same day of every year, such luxuriant vines have grown that unless we prune them carefully we are in danger of being completely entangled by them. There are still, perhaps, some waste places which our useless _bric-à-brac_ might make beautiful, and if we know any bare homes, let us by all means do something to brighten them; but let us not make for ourselves or give to our friends any small article which does not express use as well as beauty. We need not be at a loss if we remember Oscar Wilde's declaration that every article used in a house should be something which had given pleasure to the maker, that is, that it should be artistic. When all useful _bric-à-brac_ has become beautiful, we shall no longer desire to make or possess beautiful _bric-à-brac_ which is not useful. Of course I know that "Beauty is its own excuse for being," and I see in a fine picture, for instance, an appeal to the higher faculties which is more useful than usefulness. This I do not see in _bric-à-brac_, certainly not if the objects are to be so crowded in a small room that no one can see anything more than prettiness in them. Instead of my beautiful vases with their shifting lights, which do, after all, give me real pleasure sometimes when I am not too anxious lest I should break them, cut glass tumblers would have given me the same æsthetic enjoyment renewed at every meal. I might break a tumbler to be sure, but I should have the full enjoyment of it while it lasted.
XIII.
EMOTIONAL WOMEN.
A highly emotional young lady was once defending the reasoning powers of her sex at the dinner-table of a cultivated and fair-minded physician who finally took occasion to say sweetly to her: "No doubt the reason of women equals that of men; but I believe the trouble is that all men like a woman a little better if she is governed by feeling rather than by reason."
"Oh," said the young lady in a glow, "that is like saying that you would a little rather a woman would not be truthful!"
"I hope not," said the physician.
The friend who told me the anecdote added that of the two young ladies who were at the time members of the physician's family, there was no question that he greatly preferred the one who was most reasonable and least emotional!
Some one else tells me of a clever young lady who applied for a position as dramatic critic upon a newspaper. The editor recognized her ability and her knowledge of the drama, but he said he was afraid to employ a woman in such a department, lest her feelings should prevent her telling the exact truth. She would be biased herself, and praise the things she liked, and then she would have her personal favorites among the actors. The young lady who believed herself capable of justice was greatly hurt.
Are women really excessively emotional? And if so, is it well that they should be?
I suppose most people would agree that women are more emotional than men, and that this peculiarity comes in a great measure from their delicate physical organization, and in a great measure from the encouragement they get from men in indulging their feelings. Nobody admires a woman when her emotions reach the point of hysteria, and, in fact, those who have encouraged her up to that point are often least patient with her when the crisis comes. The general belief about hysteria is that it is caused by the culpable weakness of a selfish nature, and that is often true. But there are important exceptional cases becoming more and more numerous, where the parents have cultivated what they and their friends consider fine feelings so assiduously that the poor child is born helplessly weak and nervous, and a prey to every vibration in the spiritual atmosphere about her.
Now what are _fine_ feelings? Jealousy, envy, hatred, and others of that class are not fine, and yet they are extremely common among those women who are sensitive and highly organized. They do belong more frequently than we sometimes think to the outfit of an emotional woman. A woman who would not hurt a fly has violent antipathies to excellent people. She would not hurt them either. She would delight in giving them food and clothing if they were in want. She wishes she need not hurt their feelings, but she usually does give pain, because her own feelings are paramount. The important point however is that she is unjust in her judgments. She exaggerates the faults of her foes, as well as the virtues of her friends, and widens every breach.
But we all know that jealousy and envy and hatred are wrong, even if we endeavor to dignify them with finer names, and all of us who have any moral purpose do make our stand against them.
When, therefore, we speak in praise of a woman's emotional nature, we are thinking of a nature in which generosity swallows up justice, and duty is forgotten, because "love is an unerring law." We cannot be too generous, or too loving, or too sensitive to beauty and honor.
But men are as generous and loving as women, so, after all, we do have something a little different from this in our minds when we speak of the emotional nature of women. Do we not mean that a woman is unreasonable?
Love can never be too great, but it is often unwise. All affectionate women who have reached middle age must have received many confidences from girls who have been mistaken in supposing themselves loved by men who have grown tired of them. A girl often suffers intensely in such a case, and it is hard to know how much is due to wounded love, and how much to wounded pride. I suppose most of us have been astonished to see how often when a girl's life seems both to herself and her friends to have been utterly wrecked she is capable of responding to a new lover, and if he proves to be a fine man, how full and fine her own life becomes. This is right, and most natural to the most emotional natures, that is, to those which answer most readily to outside influences. Yet we all have a feeling that sudden and frequent changes of this kind show a shallow character, and girls sometimes make a pathetic struggle to resist new possibilities of happiness, because they cannot bear to admit that the old love can die.
The weakness of character in this case comes from the being ready to love any one who will make us the central figure without regard to any more solid foundation. Such love comes from vanity and is good for nothing. A girl cannot be too careful to guard against such an emotion.
And then, why should a woman cease to love a man simply because she is disappointed to find that he does not love her? Many times the fault is her own. She has believed he loved her because she wished to believe so. But if she has loved him because he was worth being loved, she has a right to cherish that love even when she knows it is hopeless, provided she does not hurt other people. I think it is happily not often that an altogether hopeless love continues long in full vigor, but occasionally it does. If the old lover marries, the woman who cannot conquer her love certainly ought to separate herself as far from him as possible. Any fine theory of being able to be a silent providence in his life is sure to prove fallacious, and to bring suffering to somebody. And it is not best for her to say much to her own friends of her sorrow. She either pains them or tires them. Any love which causes her to do this is unreasonable. I suspect that some women find their love slipping away from them and try to hold it fast by the expedient of talking about it. No love that has to be held in that way is worth keeping. There are loves we should cherish just as there are others which we ought to cast out, but nothing is real which cannot be retained except by making ourselves a burden to other people.
Another unreasonable love is that which a woman feels for a man who has really treated her dishonorably. It is true that we do not love simply for merit. There are sympathies between men and women as between parents and children with which merit has little to do. One great reason that emotional women attract men is because they can make a hero out of such unheroic stuff. And why should we try always to see the exact reality as if that were nearer the truth than the same reality transfigured by ideal light? The more we believe in others, the better and happier we all are. A man full of faults, selfish, and even vicious, may be helped by a woman who trusts him. But when he has forsaken her, it is not often that she can be of much real service to him. She must indeed forgive him, but when she has genuinely forgiven him, the glamour of love will usually have disappeared. If she insists upon shutting herself up from other love for his sake, she should question herself as to the part sentimentality and perversity bear in her character.
Most of the best work done in the world is done in the face of what seem to be insurmountable difficulties. Our faith moves mountains. An impossible duty is done. The fact that women ignore the impossibility is their strongest power. This, I suppose, is what the physician meant when he said that men liked a woman a little better if she was not always governed by reason. "Love believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." We all like to have such love as that lavished upon us. It is a noble love which glorifies the object by keeping in view all the time the ideal which is to be some day realized. It is something very different from the weak love which distorts the object simply because of its personal connection with us. But no doubt women who are weakly emotional in this way do have a great attraction for men, that is, so long as the man himself is an object of their emotions. Such women are pretty sure to have lovers when better and more unselfish women are overlooked. They do not wear very well, and men tire of them, especially when they exercise their emotions in new fields; and as wives (after marriage) and sisters and mothers they prefer the quieter and less impassioned women. But the great and ardent loves which influence a life still belong to the women of ardent feelings.
Ardent feelings well controlled,--that is our ideal; but how few women of strong feelings do control them well, and how few who have perfect self-control have very strong feelings!
Which shall we choose, the strong feelings or the self-control? We have not complete choice in the matter, for we must begin with the temperament we are born with. Others may choose to love or hate us for the temperament we are not responsible for, but what can we do for ourselves?
I believe the hardest task is that of the cool-blooded women. How are they to make themselves feel without becoming hypocrites? Pretending to feel any emotion is no help in feeling it. Nevertheless, we are not entirely helpless. There are ways of nourishing noble germs of feeling even when the natural soil is cold and dry.
One way is to clear the ground of weeds. A cool nature is sometimes peculiarly prone to envy and suspicion. A woman with little love of her fellow-creatures sits alone in her home day after day, and thinks of her own troubles and the shortcomings of her neighbors till it seems impossible to love anybody but herself. Such emotions as stir the dull current of her life are all selfish. But if she has the one saving virtue of being able to perceive her narrowness, the remedy is in her own hands. For she can go out and speak to somebody, and even a passing greeting sometimes sets the blood flowing afresh. And there is always somebody she can help, though, it may be only a child who is in some trifling difficulty. Every act of this kind makes another easier, and every such act nourishes the little germ of love in the heart. I have no doubt that persistence in doing small kindnesses for every one about her would be potent enough to transform the coldest of us into a woman glowing with love. Yet I cannot say I have ever seen such a transformation. I suppose that is because the cold nature does not perceive its coldness or desire to change. Still there are surely some of us who know that love in us is only a stunted plant, and who do sincerely desire its more luxuriant growth. Those of us who have ardent feelings towards our friends know that we are often worse than cold towards those we do not fancy. We sometimes, alas, take a certain pride in our sensitiveness in this particular. We justify our hatred for uncongenial people till we have fairly faced the truth that love is the law of our being, and that we _must_ love our neighbor. Then, though we cannot change our temperament, yet by the doing of prosaic duties, the germ of love may be made to bud and blossom. At least do not let us allow the turmoil of every-day affairs to crowd out love. We have not time to see our friend. A letter written to us with love and care is hastily skimmed and thrown aside. We do not answer it for many weeks, and then our haste is our apology for saying nothing we really care for. And by and by the love grows faint. Perhaps our friend dies, and the package of affectionate letters we once saved as precious lies forgotten in a drawer. Our friend did not fail us, we should love her just as dearly again if we were with her daily, but the love has been crowded out.
Now, some of us are really overtasked with necessary work; but usually our hurry comes from our ambition or our indolence. If love were really first with us, we should find time for our friends.