Chapter 1
STRAY THOUGHTS FOR GIRLS
by
L. H. M. SOULSBY
"I sing the Obsolete"
New and Enlarged Edition
Longmans, Green, and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London New York and Bombay
1903
DEDICATED TO
GIRLS AT THE "AWKWARD AGE."
"An unlessoned girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd, Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn."
PREFACE
What _is_ the awkward age?
Certainly not any special number of years. It is most frequently found between the ages of thirteen and twenty-seven, but some girls never go through it, and some never emerge from it!
I should be inclined to define it as the age during which girls are asked--and cannot answer--varying forms of the question which so embarrassed the Ugly Duckling: "Can you purr--can you lay eggs?"
Most girls on growing up pass through an uncomfortable stage like this, in which neither they nor their friends quite know what niche in life they can best fill--sometimes, because of their own undisciplined characters; sometimes, because the niche itself seems to be lacking. Whether this stage be their misfortune or their fault, it is an unpleasant one--both for themselves and for their friends. With much sympathy for both, I dedicate these few suggestions to my known and unknown friends who are passing through it.
L. H. M. SOULSBY. OXFORD, April 4, 1893.
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION
In bringing out a new edition, the book has been enlarged by adding papers on "Making Plans," "Conversation," "Get up, M. le Comte!" "Sunday," and "A good Time;" "Coming out" has been omitted, and "Friendship and Love" somewhat altered. The present form has been adopted in order to make it match the other volumes of "Stray Thoughts."
L. H. M. SOULSBY. BRONDESBURY, Nov. 23, 1903.
CONTENTS
LINES WRITTEN ON BEING TOLD THAT A LADY WAS "PLAIN AND COMMONPLACE"
THE VIRTUOUS WOMAN
MAKING PLANS
CONVERSATION
AUNT RACHEL; OR, OLD MAIDS' CHILDREN
"GET UP, M. LE COMTE!"
A FRIDAY LESSON
A HOME ART; OR, MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS
ESPRIT DE CORPS
ROUGH NOTES OF A LESSON
HOLIDAYS
SUNDAY
FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE
A GOOD TIME
"The Sweet, Sweet Love of Daughter,
"I have discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in one's whole life one can never have more than a single mother. You may think this obvious and (what you call) a trite observation.... You are a green gosling! I was at the same age (very near) as wise as you, and yet I never discovered this (with full evidence and conviction, I mean) till it was too late."--_Gray's Letters_.
"of Sister,
"The Blessing of my later years Was with me when a Boy She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And love, and thought, and joy." Wordsworth.
"and of Wife."
"The thousand still sweet joys of such As hand in hand face earthly life." M. Arnold.
"I desired to make her my wife, knowing that she would be a counsellor of good things, and a comfort in cares and grief. For her conversation hath no bitterness; and to live with her hath no sorrow, but mirth and joy."--_Wisdom of Solomon_.
LINES
WRITTEN ON BEING TOLD THAT A LADY WAS "PLAIN AND COMMONPLACE."
You say that my love is plain, But that I can never allow When I look at the thought for others That is written on her brow.
The eyes are not fine, I own, She has not a well-cut nose, But a smile for others' pleasures And a sigh for others' woes:
Quick to perceive a want, Quicker to set it right, Quickest in overlooking Injury, wrong, or slight.
Nothing to say for herself, That is the fault you find! Hark to her words to the children, Cheery and bright and kind.
Hark to her words to the sick, Look at her patient ways; Every word she utters Speaks to the speaker's praise.
"Nothing to say for herself," Yes! right, most right, you are, But plenty to say for others, And that is better by far.
Purity, truth, and love, Are they such common things? If hers were a common nature, Women would all have wings.
Talent she may not have, Beauty, nor wit, nor grace, But, until she's among the angels, She cannot be commonplace.
Arthur Heathcote.
The Virtuous Woman.
A FAREWELL BIBLE LESSON TO GIRLS ON LEAVING SCHOOL.
"Wisdom ordereth all things strongly and sweetly."--WISDOM viii. 1 (Vulg.).
It would be interesting to make a "Garden of Women" from the poets, collecting the pictures of "Fair Women" they have drawn for us, but I want to consider specially the ideal woman of that ancient poet Solomon, and to see how far she can be translated into modern life.
The subject ought to be considered by you who are leaving a school you have loved and valued, and which you should commend to the world, by showing that it has made you fit for home. Beaumaris School has a blank shield for its arms, with the motto, "_Albam exorna_," "Adorn the white;" you are all starting with white shields, and you _can_ adorn the white: it is not only in Spenser that we find Britomarts. You are as much a band of champions as were King Arthur's Knights; you have all the same enemy, have made the same vows, and for a year have been in fellowship, learning and practising the same lessons: can you help feeling that there is a responsibility laid on you, to see that the world shall be the better because of you? Be like Sir Galahad with his white shield on which "a bloody cross" was signed, when he had fought and won.
You know that I admire the old-fashioned type of woman--the womanly woman,--and you will not suspect me of wishing you to start off "on some adventure strange and new," but I do want you not to be content to lead a commonplace life; you _must_, anyway, live your life: resolve that by God's grace you will live it _nobly_. You cannot alter the outward form of your life,--you will probably be surrounded by very commonplace household duties, and worries, and jars,--but you can be like King Midas, whose touch turned the most common things to gold. We have it in our power, as Epictetus tells us, to be the gold on the garment of Life, and not the mere stuff of which Fate weaves it. We can choose whether we will live a king's life or a slave's: Marcus Aurelius on his throne was a king, for nothing could conquer him; but Epictetus in chains was equally unconquerable and equally a king. We all have the choice between the Crown and the Muck Rake, and I think we sometimes turn to the straws and the rubbish, not because they are fascinating to us, but because they seem the only things open to us: we do not feel as if our lives had anything to do with Crowns. If you think of your various homes from the point of view of turning their "necessities to glorious gains," and as a field for winning your spurs, I suspect you are each feeling that this is very "tall talk" for such a commonplace home as yours. "All lives have an ideal meaning as well as their prose translation;" but you feel perhaps that you are sure to be swamped in little bothers and duties, and pleasures, and dulness and stagnation, so that you will find it hard to see any ideal meaning at all. This is not true, and to look on an ideal life as "tall talk" is a snare of the Devil; and in these days of common sense and higher education we need to guard against it, and to remember that "a thing may be good enough for practical purposes, but not for ideal purposes." "Ideal life" is not tall talk, but our plain duty, unless our Lord was mocking us when He said, "Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
To know our ideal is one step towards attaining it. "So run, not as uncertainly; so fight, not as one that beateth the air." Before taking such a definite step in life as leaving school, it would be very interesting to draw up a plan of what you would like your life to be, and also of what you hope to make of the life apparently before you, which may be very different from the life you would like. If you kept it, like sealed orders, for five years, it would be interesting to see how your views had changed, and how prayers had been answered in unexpected ways, and it would also be a solemn warning to see, as we assuredly should, that wilful prayers had been heard to our hurt.
Bacon, when he made a new start as Solicitor-General, made a survey of his life, past and future, his faults and blunders, his strong and weak points, his hopes, the books he meant to read and to write, the friends he wished to make. I am sure that thinking over our own lives as a whole would strengthen and guide us. We rush into action and fight our best, but we do not make a plan of the campaign, and thus much of our energy is wasted by misdirected effort; and, in leaving a school-life of rule and regularity, you will be much tempted to slip through the day without the safeguard of a life of Rule; but, until you _are_ the saints you are _called_ to be, you cannot afford to do without this help. We must remember the warning of St. Francis de Sales against playing at being angels before we are men and women.
On the other hand, you will need to guard against the temptation to make your rules unbending and inconsiderate, to follow your ideal, heedless of the fact that you thereby become tiresome to your people. How often the home people feel jealous of school, and say it has cut a girl off from her home interests, that she comes back full of outside friendships and interests and new principles. Of course she does; if not, what good would school have done her? But she ought to feel how natural and how _loving_ is this (often unexpressed) jealousy, and, by sympathetic tact, to avoid rousing it, and not to be always thrusting school interests down home throats. The duty of a life of rule at home is all the more complex because home pleasures are duties too; if it was only a question of self-denial it would be plain sailing, but your mother likes you to go out, and your brothers want you, and if you refuse to enjoy yourself it hurts them: if you even betray that you would rather be doing something else, you spoil their pleasure, for a "martyr" to home duty is a most depressing sight to gods and men. And the complexity lies in the fact that you enjoy going, and conscience pricks you every now and then because you never read, and you seem to go through the day in a slipshod way, with no definite rule,--no daily cross-bearing, no self-restraint to give salt to the day. At school you have a definite duty of self-improvement set before you, and everything urges you to follow it. This remains a duty when you go home, but it is very hard to reconcile it with the many things that clash--not the least of these being our own laziness when the help of external pressure is taken away. You have had intellectual advantages, and you will be downright sinful if you fritter all your time away over flowers and tennis, and never read because you do not like to be thought unsociable: you are bound to improve your talents, but take it as your motto, that _rules should be iron when they clash with our own wishes, and wax when they clash with those of others_.
Yet we must yield _sensibly_, and not allow our time to be needlessly wasted--at all events, by brothers and sisters and friends. It is different with a father or mother: they are only lent to us for a part of our lives, and no memory of sensible, useful work will be to us the same pleasure in after years as the thought of the time that passed more pleasantly for a mother because we spent it in idle (!) talk, or the knowledge that a father had enjoyed the feeling that we were always at hand if he wanted us. A strong-minded woman might consider matters differently, and feel that a language learnt, or a district visited, was of more value, but we shall not be able to reason so when we see life in the new light which death throws upon it; the little restrictions of home life will then assume a very different aspect.
Unless you are driven with an unusually loose rein, you will probably be irked by having to be punctual, and to account for your letters and for your goings and comings; but if you ever feel inclined to resent it, just think what it will be when you are left free--free to be late because there is no one to wait dinner for you, free to come and go as you will because there is no one who cares whether you are tired or not; some of these days you will give anything to be once more so "fettered."
Higher education often makes girls feel it waste of time to write notes for their mothers, and to settle the drawing-room flowers: they "must go and read." Now, what mental result, what benefit to the world, will result from an ordinary woman's reading, which can, in any way, be comparable to the value of a woman who diffuses a home-atmosphere, and is always "at leisure from herself"? You know that I care very much for your reading--you will have plenty to do if you read all the books I have begged you to study--but if it gave your mother pleasure for you to be at the stupidest garden-party, I should think you were wasting your time terribly if you spent it over a book instead. Some people think ordinary society, and small talk, beneath them:--well! do not let the talk be smaller than you can help, but remember Goulburn's warning, "Despise not little crosses, for they have been to many a saved soul an excellent discipline of humility."
But to come at last to Solomon's ideal--what is our first impression of her? Surely it is _strength_, and we probably feel her strong-minded, and rather a "managing woman"--and, as a rule, these are not loved. I feel that she wants some sorrow to humanize her--she would hardly be sorry for less prosperous, less sensible people: the modern feeling of, "the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!" has never gone home to her; she is not like Ruskin's "gentleman" who has tears always in his eyes, in spite of the smile on his lips; she is not "quick to perceive the want" in the many lives, which are empty or crippled, though, perhaps, seemingly prosperous: things turn out well with her, and she deserves it, so the sight of her would bring home a sense of undeservingness to the less fortunate; she cannot speak so as to be "understanded of" them; she is not one of those who have learnt that "_avoir beaucoup souffert c'est comme ceux qui savent beaucoup de langues, avoir appris à tout comprendre, et à se fairs comprendre de tous_." But the virtues Solomon describes need not result in this type, which is antagonistic to us; extremes meet, and it is the exaggeration of a very lovable type--the woman who gives you the feeling of rest and protection and strong motherliness, who is as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. "The meekness and gentleness of Christ" is translated by Matthew Arnold as the "sweet reasonableness," and this makes a very lovable woman. Sweet unreasonableness makes a more _taking_ one, but not a _keeping_ one. Butterfly women have more fascinating ways, but Spring-time comes to an end--the day will come for all women when others will come to them to be ministered to, to be rested and soothed and raised. It is sad to watch many who have the faded pretty ways which once was all that was required of them, and who, in middle life, cannot understand why their belongings find them so inadequate! Long ago, Swift warned girls against making nets instead of cages, but they have not all learnt wisdom yet. And the main point is, not how you can get, or give, most amusement, but how you can give most comfort; and no one goes to a weak person for that. There are few things certain in life, but one of these few is, that others will come to each one of us, in doubt, in sorrow, in pain, in ignorance, and that, through negligence and ignorance of ours, they may go away uncomforted, unhelped, untaught, and this, though each one of us has it in her power to become, through God's grace, one of those Queens of Consolation of whom Dante spoke.
I think the Virtuous Woman ought to be on her guard against hardness: it is her temptation, naturally, as it was that of the Elder Brother,--but love and humility can make even strength lovable. And for those who are in no danger of being too like the Virtuous Woman, but who are still struggling out of a lower life, I am quite sure that weakness is the rock ahead. It must be so for nearly all women: their feelings are keener and sooner developed than those of men, and they are less trained in intellect and self-control. Their chief value lies in intuition and impulse, and their chief danger also. You will never be the "Virtuous Woman" if you are self-indulgent in novels which dwell on feelings, in daydreams, in foolish friendships, which only bring out the emotional side of your nature, instead of strengthening you to do what is right, and widening your sensible interests in life. There is but one certain protection against this temptation, and we find it in Proverbs xxxi.; I mean, _industry at home_.
Industry is a leading feature of Solomon's ideal, and nothing but plenty to do can possibly keep our minds fresh and sweet, and wholesome and strong,--and hence, strengthening for others. Feeling is the only part of a woman's nature which will develop of itself:--her mind will not grow unless definitely cultivated, and no more will her conscience, but if she leave the field fallow, weeds of foolish feelings and fancies spring up on all sides. This is why it is your duty, when you leave, not to allow yourself to be idle: not only because God expects you to bring your sheaves with you at the Last Day, but because your field cannot stand empty--if good grain is not there, weeds will be. And manual work--gardening or housework--gives more fresh air to the mind than anything else. If you ever, as _Punch_ expresses it, "find your doll stuffed with sawdust," if life seems a disappointment, and you are a prey to foolish fancies, and have lost your spring, then try being really tired out in body by useful work, and see if you do not find it an effectual tonic. Some say that these "mental measles" are a phase which the modern girl must inevitably pass through: perhaps so, but I should be disappointed if you went through them,--at all events, if you did so in the hopelessly idiotic way that many do! I should be disappointed if, in the future, you came and said, "I am in the dark, and Life is all a tangle!" I do feel you ought to have learnt that "the light of Duty shines on every day for all." "We always have as much light as we need, though often not as much as we would like," and if you honestly want to do your next duty, you will have light enough to do it by. Come to me, by all means, if you like, and say, "I feel idle and good-for-nothing, and don't particularly want to see my Duty!" but do not moan about Life being all perplexity! It is always nobler to do your duty than to leave it undone: make this principle your sheet-anchor, and spiritual feelings and light will come some day, if God sees fit. It does not always do to apply direct remedies to these "measles:" if your mind is out of gear, leave it alone, and attack it through the body by industry. And industry _at home_ is best; here was the true strength of the Virtuous Woman. The strength of her modern descendant lies abroad: she is strong and admirable, she does splendid work, but there is always a tinge of excitement to help one through outside work. Things done among father and mother, brothers and sisters, are either very peaceful or very flat, according as your feelings are either wholesome or unwholesome--there is none of the pleasurable excitement, generally more or less feverish, of working with friends we love and admire; it is the difference between milk and wine. I do not think wine wrong, but I think it is much better to cultivate a taste for milk; you must watch yourselves, and not get to feel home things dull. Some are so strong in home, so wrapped up in their own family, that outsiders feel _de trop_, which of course is a fault on the other side. If we have happy homes, it is a trust for the use of others; we can give a home feeling to those who are less fortunate as they pass by us, like the swallow flying through the lighted hall. Lonely people may gain a sense of home from this large-heartedness in the happy, a feeling of rest and repose, which is the very essence of the atmosphere I should like my Virtuous Woman to shed around her; she must "do good by effluvia;" in her home, "roof and fire are types only of a nobler light and shade--shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea. And wherever a true wife comes this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot: yet home is wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far for those who else were homeless."
Let us now consider the Virtuous Woman verse by verse. Solomon is describing a rich woman with an "establishment," a sphere and husband and children, as if a woman's life was not complete without this. And no more it is; it may be very useful and very beautiful, but it is not complete. Girls are often blamed for thinking too much about marriage: I think they do not do it enough,--at least in the right way; you are not fit to be wives now, and you should aim at becoming so, and to do that, you must be fit to manage your house and to teach your children; if you fit yourselves to be perfect wives, you will at least be very perfect old maids, and find plenty to do for other people's children! But your life would then be incomplete. St. Paul is misquoted when his words in Cor. vii. 34 are used to condemn marriage; our Lord puts it before all other earthly ties, and it is used as a type of His love for His Church, which should guard us from two errors in connection with it. If married love is to be a type, however faint, of Christ's love for His Church, there must be no unworthiness connected with it; "no inner baseness we would hide;" no marrying for the sake of being married, for the dignity and position, or the worldly advantages it may bring; and there must be no matchmaking or flirtation that a woman need be ashamed of afterwards. "Let the wife see that she reverence her husband," says St. Paul, and the husband must be able to reverence her. And there must be no selfishness, no getting entangled in engagements that must bring trouble on others; to marry _for_ money is degrading, but a woman may redeem it by being a good wife; to marry _without_ money means debt, which is irretrievably degrading, and is altogether selfish instead of romantic.
But, married or single, rich or poor, Solomon's Virtuous Woman gives us principles to go on.
"_The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her_." Is not trustworthiness a main point in those we respect? Do we not require our Virtuous Woman to be reliable, not to repeat what we say to her, not to forget her promises, in short, that we know "where to have her"?