Character Part 19

"Poets," says Hazlitt, "are a longer-lived race than heroes: they breathe more of the air of immortality. They survive more entire in their thoughts and acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we had lived at the same time with them. We can hold their works in our hands, or lay them on our pillows, or put them to our lips.

Scarcely a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men, still breathing and moving in their writings; the others, the conquerors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy [19so to speak]

between thought and thought is more intimate and vital than that between thought and action. Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles into flame; the tribute of admiration to the MANES of departed heroism is like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of time harden into substances: things, bodies, actions, moulder away, or melt into a sound--into thin air.... Not only a man's actions are effaced and vanish with him; his virtues and generous qualities die with him also. His intellect only is immortal, and bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only things that last for ever." [1918]

CHAPTER XI.--COMPANIONs.h.i.+P IN MARRIAGE.

"Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, Shall win my love."--SHAKSPEARE.

"In the husband Wisdom, In the wife Gentleness."--GEORGE HERBERT.

"If G.o.d had designed woman as man's master, He would have taken her from his head; If as his slave, He would have taken her from his feet; but as He designed her for his companion and equal, He took her from his side."--SAINT AUGUSTINE.--'DE CIVITATE DEI.'

"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.... Her husband is known in the gates, and he sitteth among the elders of the land.... Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her husband, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."-- PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

THE character of men, as of women, is powerfully influenced by their companions.h.i.+p in all the stages of life. We have already spoken of the influence of the mother in forming the character of her children. She makes the moral atmosphere in which they live, and by which their minds and souls are nourished, as their bodies are by the physical atmosphere they breathe. And while woman is the natural cherisher of infancy and the instructor of childhood, she is also the guide and counsellor of youth, and the confidant and companion of manhood, in her various relations of mother, sister, lover, and wife. In short, the influence of woman more or less affects, for good or for evil, the entire destinies of man.

The respective social functions and duties of men and women are clearly defined by nature. G.o.d created man AND woman, each to do their proper work, each to fill their proper sphere. Neither can occupy the position, nor perform the functions, of the other. Their several vocations are perfectly distinct. Woman exists on her own account, as man does on his, at the same time that each has intimate relations with the other. Humanity needs both for the purposes of the race, and in every consideration of social progress both must necessarily be included.

Though companions and equals, yet, as regards the measure of their powers, they are unequal. Man is stronger, more muscular, and of rougher fibre; woman is more delicate, sensitive, and nervous. The one excels in power of brain, the other in qualities of heart; and though the head may rule, it is the heart that influences. Both are alike adapted for the respective functions they have to perform in life; and to attempt to impose woman's work upon man would be quite as absurd as to attempt to impose man's work upon woman. Men are sometimes womanlike, and women are sometimes manlike; but these are only exceptions which prove the rule.

Although man's qualities belong more to the head, and woman's more to the heart--yet it is not less necessary that man's heart should be cultivated as well as his head, and woman's head cultivated as well as her heart. A heartless man is as much out-of-keeping in civilized society as a stupid and unintelligent woman. The cultivation of all parts of the moral and intellectual nature is requisite to form the man or woman of healthy and well-balanced character. Without sympathy or consideration for others, man were a poor, stunted, sordid, selfish being; and without cultivated intelligence, the most beautiful woman were little better than a well-dressed doll.

It used to be a favourite notion about woman, that her weakness and dependency upon others const.i.tuted her princ.i.p.al claim to admiration.

"If we were to form an image of dignity in a man," said Sir Richard Steele, "we should give him wisdom and valour, as being essential to the character of manhood. In like manner, if you describe a right woman in a laudable sense, she should have gentle softness, tender fear, and all those parts of life which distinguish her from the other s.e.x, with some subordination to it, but an inferiority which makes her lovely." Thus, her weakness was to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful, characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" s.e.x. She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent intelligence--or as a wife, mother, companion, or friend.

Pope, in one of his 'Moral Essays,' a.s.serts that "most women have no characters at all;" and again he says:--

"Ladies, like variegated tulips, show: 'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe, Fine by defect and delicately weak."

This satire characteristically occurs in the poet's 'Epistle to Martha Blount,' the housekeeper who so tyrannically ruled him; and in the same verses he spitefully girds at Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at whose feet he had thrown himself as a lover, and been contemptuously rejected.

But Pope was no judge of women, nor was he even a very wise or tolerant judge of men.

It is still too much the practice to cultivate the weakness of woman rather than her strength, and to render her attractive rather than self-reliant. Her sensibilities are developed at the expense of her health of body as well as of mind. She lives, moves, and has her being in the sympathy of others. She dresses that she may attract, and is burdened with accomplishments that she may be chosen. Weak, trembling, and dependent, she incurs the risk of becoming a living embodiment of the Italian proverb--"so good that she is good for nothing."

On the other hand, the education of young men too often errs on the side of selfishness. While the boy is incited to trust mainly to his own efforts in pus.h.i.+ng his way in the world, the girl is encouraged to rely almost entirely upon others. He is educated with too exclusive reference to himself and she is educated with too exclusive reference to him. He is taught to be self-reliant and self-dependent, while she is taught to be distrustful of herself, dependent, and self-sacrificing in all things. Thus, the intellect of the one is cultivated at the expense of the affections, and the affections of the other at the expense of the intellect.

It is unquestionable that the highest qualities of woman are displayed in her relations.h.i.+p to others, through the medium of her affections. She is the nurse whom nature has given to all humankind. She takes charge of the helpless, and nourishes and cherishes those we love. She is the presiding genius of the fireside, where she creates an atmosphere of serenity and contentment suitable for the nurture and growth of character in its best forms. She is by her very const.i.tution compa.s.sionate, gentle, patient, and self-denying. Loving, hopeful, trustful, her eye sheds brightness everywhere. It s.h.i.+nes upon coldness and warms it, upon suffering and relieves it, upon sorrow and cheers it:--

"Her silver flow Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, Right to the heart and brain, though undescried, Winning its way with extreme gentleness Through all the outworks of suspicion's pride."

Woman has been styled "the angel of the unfortunate." She is ready to help the weak, to raise the fallen, to comfort the suffering. It was characteristic of woman, that she should have been the first to build and endow an hospital. It has been said that wherever a human being is in suffering, his sighs call a woman to his side. When Mungo Park, lonely, friendless, and famished, after being driven forth from an African village by the men, was preparing to spend the night under a tree, exposed to the rain and the wild beasts which there abounded, a poor negro woman, returning from the labours of the field, took compa.s.sion upon him, conducted him into her hut, and there gave him food, succour, and shelter. [201]

But while the most characteristic qualities of woman are displayed through her sympathies and affections, it is also necessary for her own happiness, as a self-dependent being, to develope and strengthen her character, by due self-culture, self-reliance, and self-control. It is not desirable, even were it possible, to close the beautiful avenues of the heart. Self-reliance of the best kind does not involve any limitation in the range of human sympathy. But the happiness of woman, as of man, depends in a great measure upon her individual completeness of character. And that self-dependence which springs from the due cultivation of the intellectual powers, conjoined with a proper discipline of the heart and conscience, will enable her to be more useful in life as well as happy; to dispense blessings intelligently as well as to enjoy them; and most of all those which spring from mutual dependence and social sympathy.

To maintain a high standard of purity in society, the culture of both s.e.xes must be in harmony, and keep equal pace. A pure womanhood must be accompanied by a pure manhood. The same moral law applies alike to both.

It would be loosening the foundations of virtue, to countenance the notion that because of a difference in s.e.x, man were at liberty to set morality at defiance, and to do that with impunity, which, if done by a woman, would stain her character for life. To maintain a pure and virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be pure and virtuous; both alike shunning all acts impinging on the heart, character, and conscience--shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed, can never be entirely thrown out again, but mentally embitters, to a greater or less extent, the happiness of after-life.

And here we would venture to touch upon a delicate topic. Though it is one of universal and engrossing human interest, the moralist avoids it, the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is almost considered indelicate to refer to Love as between the s.e.xes; and young persons are left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love-stories that fill the shelves of circulating libraries. This strong and absorbing feeling, this BESOIN D'AIMER--which nature has for wise purposes made so strong in woman that it colours her whole life and history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man--is usually left to follow its own inclinations, and to grow up for the most part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.

Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of love, it might at all events be possible to implant in young minds such views of Character as should enable them to discriminate between the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable pa.s.sions which so often usurp its name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature."

It is by means of this divine pa.s.sion that the world is kept ever fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds an effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age. It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the beams it casts forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem and admiration, has an elevating and purifying effect on the character.

It tends to emanc.i.p.ate one from the slavery of self. It is altogether unsordid; itself is its only price. It inspires gentleness, sympathy, mutual faith, and confidence. True love also in a measure elevates the intellect. "All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning, and the most gifted minds have been the sincerest lovers. Great souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true delights. The sentiment even brings to light qualities before lying dormant and unsuspected. It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul, and stimulates the mental powers. One of the finest compliments ever paid to a woman was that of Steele, when he said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, "that to have loved her was a liberal education." Viewed in this light, woman is an educator in the highest sense, because, above all other educators, she educates humanly and lovingly.

It has been said that no man and no woman can be regarded as complete in their experience of life, until they have been subdued into union with the world through their affections. As woman is not woman until she has known love, neither is man man. Both are requisite to each other's completeness. Plato entertained the idea that lovers each sought a likeness in the other, and that love was only the divorced half of the original human being entering into union with its counterpart. But philosophy would here seem to be at fault, for affection quite as often springs from unlikeness as from likeness in its object.

The true union must needs be one of mind as well as of heart, and based on mutual esteem as well as mutual affection. "No true and enduring love," says Fichte, "can exist without esteem; every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any n.o.ble human soul." One cannot really love the bad, but always something that we esteem and respect as well as admire. In short, true union must rest on qualities of character, which rule in domestic as in public life.

But there is something far more than mere respect and esteem in the union between man and wife. The feeling on which it rests is far deeper and tenderer--such, indeed, as never exists between men or between women. "In matters of affection," says Nathaniel Hawthorne, "there is always an impa.s.sable gulf between man and man. They can never quite grasp each other's hands, and therefore man never derives any intimate help, any heart-sustenance, from his brother man, but from woman--his mother, his sister, or his wife." [202]

Man enters a new world of joy, and sympathy, and human interest, through the porch of love. He enters a new world in his home--the home of his own making--altogether different from the home of his boyhood, where each day brings with it a succession of new joys and experiences. He enters also, it may be, a new world of trials and sorrows, in which he often gathers his best culture and discipline. "Family life," says Sainte-Beuve, "may be full of thorns and cares; but they are fruitful: all others are dry thorns." And again: "If a man's home, at a certain period of life, does not contain children, it will probably be found filled with follies or with vices." [203]

A life exclusively occupied in affairs of business insensibly tends to narrow and harden the character. It is mainly occupied with self-watching for advantages, and guarding against sharp practice on the part of others. Thus the character unconsciously tends to grow suspicious and ungenerous. The best corrective of such influences is always the domestic; by withdrawing the mind from thoughts that are wholly gainful, by taking it out of its daily rut, and bringing it back to the sanctuary of home for refreshment and rest:

"That truest, rarest light of social joy, Which gleams upon the man of many cares."

"Business," says Sir Henry Taylor, "does but lay waste the approaches to the heart, whilst marriage garrisons the fortress." And however the head may be occupied, by labours of ambition or of business--if the heart be not occupied by affection for others and sympathy with them--life, though it may appear to the outer world to be a success, will probably be no success at all, but a failure. [204]

A man's real character will always be more visible in his household than anywhere else; and his practical wisdom will be better exhibited by the manner in which he bears rule there, than even in the larger affairs of business or public life. His whole mind may be in his business; but, if he would be happy, his whole heart must be in his home. It is there that his genuine qualities most surely display themselves--there that he shows his truthfulness, his love, his sympathy, his consideration for others, his uprightness, his manliness--in a word, his character. If affection be not the governing principle in a household, domestic life may be the most intolerable of despotisms. Without justice, also, there can be neither love, confidence, nor respect, on which all true domestic rule is founded.

Erasmus speaks of Sir Thomas More's home as "a school and exercise of the Christian religion." "No wrangling, no angry word was heard in it; no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness." Sir Thomas won all hearts to obedience by his gentleness. He was a man clothed in household goodness; and he ruled so gently and wisely, that his home was pervaded by an atmosphere of love and duty. He himself spoke of the hourly interchange of the smaller acts of kindness with the several members of his family, as having a claim upon his time as strong as those other public occupations of his life which seemed to others so much more serious and important.

But the man whose affections are quickened by home-life, does not confine his sympathies within that comparatively narrow sphere. His love enlarges in the family, and through the family it expands into the world. "Love," says Emerson, "is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon mult.i.tudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and nature with its generous flames."

It is by the regimen of domestic affection that the heart of man is best composed and regulated. The home is the woman's kingdom, her state, her world--where she governs by affection, by kindness, by the power of gentleness. There is nothing which so settles the turbulence of a man's nature as his union in life with a highminded woman. There he finds rest, contentment, and happiness--rest of brain and peace of spirit.

He will also often find in her his best counsellor, for her instinctive tact will usually lead him right when his own unaided reason might be apt to go wrong. The true wife is a staff to lean upon in times of trial and difficulty; and she is never wanting in sympathy and solace when distress occurs or fortune frowns. In the time of youth, she is a comfort and an ornament of man's life; and she remains a faithful helpmate in maturer years, when life has ceased to be an antic.i.p.ation, and we live in its realities.

What a happy man must Edmund Burke have been, when he could say of his home, "Every care vanishes the moment I enter under my own roof!" And Luther, a man full of human affection, speaking of his wife, said, "I would not exchange my poverty with her for all the riches of Croesus without her." Of marriage he observed: "The utmost blessing that G.o.d can confer on a man is the possession of a good and pious wife, with whom he may live in peace and tranquillity--to whom he may confide his whole possessions, even his life and welfare." And again he said, "To rise betimes, and to marry young, are what no man ever repents of doing."

For a man to enjoy true repose and happiness in marriage, he must have in his wife a soul-mate as well as a helpmate. But it is not requisite that she should be merely a pale copy of himself. A man no more desires in his wife a manly woman, than the woman desires in her husband a feminine man. A woman's best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge. "The brain-women," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "never interest us like the heart-women." [205] Men are often so wearied with themselves, that they are rather predisposed to admire qualities and tastes in others different from their own. "If I were suddenly asked," says Mr. Helps, "to give a proof of the goodness of G.o.d to us, I think I should say that it is most manifest in the exquisite difference He has made between the souls of men and women, so as to create the possibility of the most comforting and charming companions.h.i.+p that the mind of man can imagine." [206] But though no man may love a woman for her understanding, it is not the less necessary for her to cultivate it on that account. [207] There may be difference in character, but there must be harmony of mind and sentiment--two intelligent souls as well as two loving hearts:

"Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, Two in the tangled business of the world, Two in the liberal offices of life."

There are few men who have written so wisely on the subject of marriage as Sir Henry Taylor. What he says about the influence of a happy union in its relation to successful statesmans.h.i.+p, applies to all conditions of life. The true wife, he says, should possess such qualities as will tend to make home as much as may be a place of repose. To this end, she should have sense enough or worth enough to exempt her husband as much as possible from the troubles of family management, and more especially from all possibility of debt. "She should be pleasing to his eyes and to his taste: the taste goes deep into the nature of all men--love is hardly apart from it; and in a life of care and excitement, that home which is not the seat of love cannot be a place of repose; rest for the brain, and peace for the spirit, being only to be had through the softening of the affections. He should look for a clear understanding, cheerfulness, and alacrity of mind, rather than gaiety and brilliancy, and for a gentle tenderness of disposition in preference to an impa.s.sioned nature. Lively talents are too stimulating in a tired man's house--pa.s.sion is too disturbing....

"Her love should be A love that clings not, nor is exigent, Enc.u.mbers not the active purposes, Nor drains their source; but profers with free grace Pleasure at pleasure touched, at pleasure waived, A was.h.i.+ng of the weary traveller's feet, A quenching of his thirst, a sweet repose, Alternate and preparative; in groves Where, loving much the flower that loves the shade, And loving much the shade that that flower loves, He yet is unbewildered, unenslaved, Thence starting light, and pleasantly let go When serious service calls." [208]

Some persons are disappointed in marriage, because they expect too much from it; but many more, because they do not bring into the co-partners.h.i.+p their fair share of cheerfulness, kindliness, forbearance, and common sense. Their imagination has perhaps pictured a condition never experienced on this side Heaven; and when real life comes, with its troubles and cares, there is a sudden waking-up as from a dream. Or they look for something approaching perfection in their chosen companion, and discover by experience that the fairest of characters have their weaknesses. Yet it is often the very imperfection of human nature, rather than its perfection, that makes the strongest claims on the forbearance and sympathy of others, and, in affectionate and sensible natures, tends to produce the closest unions.

The golden rule of married life is, "Bear and forbear." Marriage, like government, is a series of compromises. One must give and take, refrain and restrain, endure and be patient. One may not be blind to another's failings, but they may be borne with good-natured forbearance. Of all qualities, good temper is the one that wears and works the best in married life. Conjoined with self-control, it gives patience--the patience to bear and forbear, to listen without retort, to refrain until the angry flash has pa.s.sed. How true it is in marriage, that "the soft answer turneth away wrath!"

Burns the poet, in speaking of the qualities of a good wife, divided them into ten parts. Four of these he gave to good temper, two to good sense, one to wit, one to beauty--such as a sweet face, eloquent eyes, a fine person, a graceful carriage; and the other two parts he divided amongst the other qualities belonging to or attending on a wife--such as fortune, connections, education [20that is, of a higher standard than ordinary], family blood, &c.; but he said: "Divide those two degrees as you please, only remember that all these minor proportions must be expressed by fractions, for there is not any one of them that is ent.i.tled to the dignity of an integer."

It has been said that girls are very good at making nets, but that it would be better still if they would learn to make cages. Men are often as easily caught as birds, but as difficult to keep. If the wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so that it shall be the cleanest, sweetest, cheerfulest place that her husband can find refuge in--a retreat from the toils and troubles of the outer world--then G.o.d help the poor man, for he is virtually homeless!