Infelice Part 18

"Ceres did eat of it!" exclaimed her son, adroitly avoiding a tweak of the ear, by throwing his head back, beyond the touch of her fingers.

"A wretched pagan fable, sir, with which orthodox bishops should hold no communion. Tell me, you beardless Gamaliel, where you acc.u.mulated your knowledge relative to the education of girls? Present us a chart of your experience. You talk of hampering and cramping Regina's faculties, as if I had put her brains in a pair of stays, and daily tightened the lacers."

"I am inclined to think the usual forms of female education have precisely that effect. The fact is, mother, it appears that women in this country are expected to come the reserve magazines of piety, of religious fervour, on the certainly powerful principle that 'ignorance is the mother of devotion.' True knowledge, which springs from fearless investigation, is a far n.o.bler and more reliable conservator of pure vital Christianity."

"_Exempli gratia_, Miss Martineau and Madame Dudevant, who are crowned heads among the _cognoscenti?_ Or perhaps you would prefer a second 'La Pelouse,' governed by Miss Weber, who certainly agrees with you, 'that girls are trained too delicately to allow the mind to expand.' Illuminated and expanded by 'philosophy' and 'social progress' she and Madame Dudevant long ago literally abjured stays, and glory in the usurpation of vests, pantaloons, coats, and short hair. Be pleased to fancy my Regina, my blue-eyed s...o...b..rd, shorn of that

'Gloriole of ebon locks on calmed brows'!

I would rather see her in her coffin, shrouded in a ruffled pinafore."

"Much as I love her, so would I; but, Elise, we will antic.i.p.ate no such dreadful destiny. She has a clear fine mind, is studious and ambitious, but certainly not a genius, unless it be in music; and she can be trained into a cultivated refined woman, sufficiently conversant with the sciences to comprehend their contemporaneous development, without threatening us with pedantry, or adopting a style suitable to the groves of Crotona in the days of Damo, or the abstruse mystical diction that doomed Hypatia to the mercy of the monks. After all, why scare up a blue-stockinged ogre, which may have no intention of depredating upon our peace; for to be really learned is no holiday amus.e.m.e.nt in this c.u.mulative age, and offers little temptation to a young girl. Not long since, I found a sentence bearing upon this subject, which impressed itself upon my mind, as both strong and healthy: 'And by this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself; and true education is a deadly cold thing, with a gorgon's head on her s.h.i.+eld, and makes you every day think worse of yourself. Worse in two ways also, more is the pity: it is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignorance, and the personal sense of fault.'"

"In that event, may I venture to wonder where and how you and Dougla.s.s stand in your own estimation? If quotations are _en regle_, I can match your reverence, though unfortunately my feminine memory is not like yours, a tireless beast of burden, and I must be allowed to read. Here is the book close at hand, in my stocking basket. Now, wise and gentle sirs, this is my ideal of proper, healthful, feminine education, as contrasted with pur new-fangled method of making girls either lay-figures for millinery, jewellery, and frizzled false hair, or else--far more horrible still--social hermaphrodites, who storm the posts that have been a.s.signed to men ever since that venerable and sacred time when 'Adam delved and Eve span,' and who, forsaking holy home haunts, wage war against nature on account of the mistake made in their s.e.x, and clamour for the 'hallowed inalienable right'

to jostle and be jostled at the polls; to brawl in the market place, and to rant on the rostrum, like a bevy of bedlamities. Now when I begin to read, listen, and tell me frankly, whether when you both make up your minds to present me, one a sister, the other a daughter, you will select your wives from among quaint Evelyn's almost obsolete type, or whether you will commit your name, affections, wardrobe, larder, pantry and poultry to a strong-minded female 'scientist,' who will neglect your socks and b.u.t.tons, to ascertain exactly how many _Vibriones_ and _Bacteria_ float in a drop of fluid, and when you come home tired and very hungry, will comfort you, and n.o.bly atone for the injury of an ill-cooked and worse-served dinner, by regaling your weary ears with her own ingenious and brilliant interpretation and translation of _aelia Laelia Crispis!_ Here is my old-fas.h.i.+oned English damsel, meek as a violet, fresh as a dewy daisy, and sweet as a bed of thyme and marjoram. 'The style and method of life are quite changed, as well as the language, since the days of our ancestors, simple and plain as they were, courting their wives for their modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other economical virtues then in reputation. And when the young damsels were taught all these at home in the country at their parents'

houses; the portion they brought being more in virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives.

Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the comfort of their poor neighbours, and use of the family, which wholesome diet and kitchen physic preserved in health. Then things were natural, plain, and wholesome; nothing was superfluous, nothing necessary wanted. The poor were relieved bountifully, and charity was as warm as the kitchen, where the fire was perpetual.' Now, if Regina were only my child, I should with some modifications train her after this mellow old style."

"Then I am truly thankful she is not my sister! Fancy her pretty pearly fingers encrusted with gingerbread-dough; or her entrance into the library heralded by the perfume of moly, or of basil and sage, tolerable only as the familiars of a dish of sausage meat! Don't soil my dainty white dove with the dust and soot and rank odours that belong to the culinary realm."

"Your white dove? Do you propose to adopt her? A month hence when you are on your way to India, what difference can it possibly make to you, whether she is as brown as a quail or black as a crow? Before you come back, she will have been conscripted into the staid army of matrons, and transmogrified into stout Mrs. Ptolemy Thomson, or lean and careworn Mrs. Simon Smith, or worse than all, erudite Mrs.

Professor Belshazzar Brown, spelling Hercules after the learned style, with the loss of the u, and the subst.i.tution of a k; or making the ghost of Ulysses tear his hair, by writing the name of his enchantress 'Kirke'!"

As Mrs. Lindsay spoke the smile vanished from her lips, and looking keenly at her son's countenance she detected the change that crossed it, the sudden glow that mounted to the edge of his hair.

Avoiding her eyes, he answered hastily: "Suppose those distinguished gentlemen you mention chance to be scholars, _savans_, and disposed to follow the advice of Joubert in making their matrimonial selection: 'We should choose for a wife only the woman we should choose for a friend, were she a man.' Think you mere habits of domesticity, or skill in herbalism, would arrest and fix their fancy?"

"But, Bishop, they might consider the Talmud more venerable authority than Joubert, and the Talmud says, so I am told: 'Descend a step in choosing a wife; mount a step in choosing a friend.'"

"Thank heaven! there is indeed no Salique Law in the realm of learning. Mother, I believe one of the happiest auguries of the future consists in the broadening views of education that are now held by some of our ablest thinkers. If in the morning of our religious system, St. Peter deemed it obligatory on us to be able and 'ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,' how doubly imperative is that duty in this controversial age, when the popular formula has been adopted, 'to doubt, to inquire, to discover;' when the hammer of the geologist pounds into dust the idols of tradition, and the lenses of astronomy pierce the blue wastes of s.p.a.ce, which in our childhood we fondly believed were the _habitat_ of cherubim and seraphim. Now, mother, if you will only insure my ears against those pink tweezers, of which they bear stinging recollections, I should like to explain myself."

Mrs. Lindsay plunged her hands into the depths of her stocking basket, and said sententiously:

"The temple of Ja.n.u.s is closed."

"What is the origin of the doctrine that erudition is the sole prerogative of men, and that it proves as dangerous in a woman's hands, as phosphorus or gunpowder in those of a baby----"

"Why Eve's experience, of course. A ton of gunpowder would not have blown up the garden of Eden more effectually, than did her light touch upon an outside branch of the tree of knowledge. I should say Genesis was acceptable authority to a young minister of the Gospel."

"That is a violation of the truce, Elise. You are skirmis.h.i.+ng with his picket line. Go on, Dougla.s.s."

"It is evidently a remnant of despotic barbarism, a fungoid growth from Oriental bondage----"

"Bishop, may I be allowed to ask if you are referring to Genesis?"

"Dear little mother, I refer to the popular fallacy, that in the same ratio that you thoroughly educate women, you unfit them for the holy duties of daughter, wife, and mother. Is there an inherent antagonism between learning and womanliness?"

"Indeed, dear, how can I tell? I am not a 'Della-Cruscan.' I only 'strain' milk into my dairy pans."

"Elise, do be quiet. You break the thread of his argument."

"Then it is entirely too brittle to hold the ponderous propositions he intends to string upon it. Proceed, my son."

"Are we to accept the unjust and humiliating dogma that the more highly we cultivate feminine intellect, the more un-feminine, unlovely, unamiable the individual certainly becomes? Is a woman sweeter, more gentle, more useful to her family and friends, because she is unlearned? Does knowledge exert an acidulating influence upon female temper, or produce an ossifying effect on female hearts? Is ignorance an inevitable concomitant of refinement and delicacy?

Does the knowledge of Greek and Latin cast a blight over the flower-garden, or a mildew in the pantry and linen closet; or do the cla.s.sics possess the power of curdling all the milk of human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady's energies, that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers?

Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation of so grossly absurd and monstrous a dogma! Have not you boxed my ears, because, when stumbling through the 'Anabasis,' my Greek p.r.o.nunciation tortured your fastidious and correct taste? Did not you tell me that you read nearly the whole of Sall.u.s.t by spreading the book open on the dairy shelf while you churned, thus saving time? And did not that same sweet golden b.u.t.ter, made under the shadow of a Latin dictionary, win you the State Fair Premium, of that very silver cup, from which I drank my milk, as long as I wore knee-pants and round jackets? Was it not my father's fond boast that his wife's proficiency in music was equalled only by her wonderful skill in making m.u.f.fins, pastry, and _omelette soujflee?_"

With genuine chivalric tenderness in look and tone he inclined his head; but though a tear certainly glistened in Mrs. Lindsay's bright eyes, she answered gayly:

"Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-b.u.t.tered sop of flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your thirty pieces of potent praise."

"I think," said Mr. Hargrove, taking a bunch of cherries from the fruit-stand on the library table,--"I think the whole matter may be resolved into this; the ambitious clamours and Amazonian excesses of this epoch, are the inevitable consequence of the rigid tyranny of former ages; which sternly banished women to the numbing darkness of an intellectual night, denying them the legitimate and natural right of developing their faculties by untrammelled exercise. This belief in feminine inferiority is still expressed in Mohammedan lands, by the custom of placing a slate or tablet of marble on a woman's grave, while on that of men a pen or penholder is laid, to indicate that female hearts are mere tablets, on which man writes whatever pleases him best. In sociology, as well as physics and dynamics,--the angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence,--the psychologic rebound is ever in proportion to the mental pressure; one extreme invariably impinges upon the opposite,--and when the pendulum has reached one end of the arc, it must of necessity swing back to the other. In all social revolutions the moderate and reasonable concessions which might have appeased the discontent in its incipiency are gladly tendered much too late in the contest, when the insurgents stung by injustice and conscious of their grievances, refuse all temperate compromise, and run riot. This woman's-rights and woman's-suffrage abomination is no suddenly concocted social bottle of yeast: it has been fermenting for ages, and, having finally blown out the cork, is rapidly leavening the ma.s.s of female malcontents."

"But, Uncle Peyton, you surely discriminate between a few noisy ambitious sciolists who mistake lyceum notoriety for renown, and the n.o.ble band of delicate, refined women whose brilliant attainments in the republic of letters are surpa.s.sed only by their beautiful devotion to G.o.d, family, and home? Fancy Mrs. Somerville demanding a seat in Parliament, or Miss Herschel elbowing her way to the hustings! Whose domestic record is more lovely in its pure womanliness than Hannah More's, or Miss Mitford's, or Mrs.

Browning's? who wears deathless laurels more modestly than Rosa Bonheur? It seems to me, sir, that it is not so much the amount as the quality of the learning that just now ought to engage attention.

I see that one of the ablest and strongest thinkers of the day has handled this matter in a masterly way, and with your permission I should like to read a pa.s.sage: 'In these times the educational tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in the ground; and I confess I should very much like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit of literature and of art. No educational system can have a claim to permanence, unless it recognizes the truth that education has two great ends, to which everything else must be subordinated. One of these is to increase knowledge; the other is to develop the love of right and the hatred of wrong. At present, education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of the power of expression, and of the sense of literary beauty. The matter of having anything to say beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or of possessing any criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish between the G.o.d-like and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I think I do not err in saying that if science were made the foundation of education, instead of being at most stuck on as cornice to the edifice, this state of things could not exist.' Such is the system I should like to see established in our own country."

"Provided you could reply upon the moderation of the teachers; for unless wisely and temperately inculcated, this system would soon make utter s.h.i.+pwreck of the n.o.blest interests of humanity. For many years I have watched attentively the doublings of this fox, and while I yield to no man in solemn fidelity to truth, I want to be sure that what I accept as such, is not merely old error under new garbs, only a change of disguising terms. Science has its fetich, as well has superst.i.tion, and abstruse terminology does not always conceal its stolid gross proportions. The complete overthrow and annihilation of the belief in a personal, governing, prayer-answering G.o.d, is the end and aim of the gathering cohorts of science, and the sooner masking technicalities are thrown aside the better for all parties.

Scientific research and a.n.a.lysis, n.o.bly brave, patient, tireless, and worthy of all honour and grat.i.tude, have manipulated, decomposed, and then integrated the universal clay, but despite microscope and telescope, chemical a.n.a.lysis, and vivisection, they can go no further than the whirring of the Potter's wheel, and the Potter is nowhere revealed. The moulding Creative hand and the plastic clay are still as distinct, as when the gauntlet was first flung down by proud ambitious constructive science. Animal and vegetable organisms have been a.n.a.lyzed, and 'the idea of adaptation developed into the conception that life itself, "is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive in correspondence with external co-existence and sequences."' Now to the ma.s.ses who are pardonably curious concerning this problem of existence, is this result perfectly satisfactory? The 'Physical basis of life' has been driven into a corner, hunted down, seized at last, and over the heads of an eager, panting, chasing generation, is triumphantly dangled this 'Scientific Fox' brush, 'Nucleated Protoplasm, the structural unit!' But how or whence sprang the laws of 'Protein'? Hatred of certain phrases is more bitter than of the principles they express, and because theologians cling to the words G.o.d,' Creative Acts, Divine Wisdom, Providential Adaptation, scientists declare them the _dicta_ of ignorance, superst.i.tion, and tradition, and demand that we shall bow before their superior wisdom, and subst.i.tute such terms as 'Biogenesis,' 'Abiogenesis,' and 'Xenogenesis.' But where is the economy of credulity? The problems are only crowded by a subtle veil of learned or scientific verbiage, and their solution does not induce the expenditure of faith. The change of names is not worth the strife, for the Clay and the Potter are still distinct, and He who created cosmic laws cannot reasonably or satisfactorily be confounded with, or merged in His own statutes.

Creeds, theories, systems are not valuable because they are religious and traditional, or because they are scientific or philosophical, but solely on account of their truth. So, Dougla.s.s, I am not sure that your essentially scientific method will teach Regina any more real wisdom in ethics, or in aetiolgy, than her great-grandmother possessed."

"You forget, Uncle Peyton, that in this rapidly advancing age only improved educational systems will enable men and women to appreciate the importance of its discoveries."

"My dear boy, are sudden and violent changes always synonymous with advancement? Is transition inevitably improvement? Was the social status of Paris after the revolution of 1790 an appreciable progress from the morals, religious or political, that existed in the days of Fenelon? In mechanical, agricultural, and chemical departments the march is indeed n.o.bly on and upward, the discoveries and improvements are vast and wonderful, and for these physical material blessings we are entirely indebted to Science, toiling, heroic, and truly beneficent Science. In morals, public or private--religion, national or individual--or in civil polity, have we advanced? Has liberty of action kept pace with liberty of opinion? Are Americans as truly free to-day as they certainly were fifty years ago? In aesthetics do we surpa.s.s Phidias and Praxiteles, Raphael and Michael Angelo? Is our music more perfect than Pergolesi's or Mozart's? Can we exhibit any marvels of architecture that excel the glory of Philae, Athens, Paestum, and Agra? Are wars less b.l.o.o.d.y, or is crime less rampant? Our arrogant a.s.sumption of superiority is sometimes mournfully rebuked.

For instance, one of the most eminent and popular scientists of England emphasised his views on the necessity of 'improving natural knowledge,' by ascribing the great plague of 1664, and the great fire of 1666--which in point of population and of houses, nearly swept London from the face of the globe--to ignorance and neglect of sanitary laws, and to the failure to provide suitable organizations for the suppression of conflagrations. He proudly a.s.serted that the recurrence of such catastrophes is now prohibited by scientific arrangements 'that never allow even a street to burn down,' and that 'it is the improvement of our own natural knowledge which keeps back the plague.' I think I am warranted in the a.s.sumption that our American Fire Departments, Insurance Companies, and Boards of Health are quite as advanced, progressive, and scientific as similar a.s.sociations in Great Britain; yet the week after I read his argument, an immense city lay almost in ruins; and ere many months pa.s.sed, several towns and districts of our land were scourged, desolated by pestilence so fatal, so unconquerable, that the horrors of the plague were revived, and the living were scarcely able to sepulchre the dead. Now and then we have solemn admonitions of the Sisyphian tendency of the attempt so oft defeated, so persistently renewed to banish a Personal and Ruling G.o.d, and subst.i.tute the scientific fetich, 'Force and Matter,' 'Natural Law,' 'Evolution,' or 'Development.' While I desire that the basis of Regina's education shall be sufficiently broad, liberal, and comprehensive, I intend to be careful what doctrines are propounded; for unfortunately all who sympathize with the atheism of Comte, have not his n.o.ble frankness, and fail to print as he did on his t.i.tle-page:

'_Reorganiser sans Dieu ni roi, Par le culte systematique de l'Humanite_.'"

"Oh, Peyton! what fearfully, selfishly long sentences you and Dougla.s.s inflict upon each other, and upon me! The colons and semicolons gather along the lines of conversation like an army of martyrs, and to my stupidly weary ears that last, that final period, was a most 'sweet boon'--a crowning blessing. If Regina's nightingale soul is to be vexed by such disquisitions as those from which you have been quoting, I must say it made a sorry bargain in exchanging brown feathers for pink flesh, and would have had a better time trilling madrigals in some hawthorn thicket or myrtle grove. I see plainly I might as well carry my dear old Evelyn--fragrant with mint and marjoram--back upstairs, and wrap it up in ancient camphor-scented linen, and put it away tenderly to sleep its last sleep in the venerable cedar chest, where my grandfather's huge knee-buckles, and my great-grandmother's yellow brocaded silk-dress, with its waist the length of my little finger, and the sleeves as wide as a balloon. Gentlemen, permit me one parting paragraph, before I write 'finis' on this matter of education, and 'hereafter for ever hold my peace.' Be it distinctly understood, 'by these presents,' that if that child Regina grows up a blue-stocking, or a metempsychosist, a scientist or a freedom-shrieker, a professor of physics or a pract.i.tioner of physic, judge of a court or mayor of a city, biologist, sociologist, heathen or heretic, it will be no work or wish of mine; for to each and all of these threatened, progressive abominations, I, Elise Lindsay, do hold up clean hands, and cry, Avaunt!"

"I thought my sister had long since learned that borrowing trouble necessitated the payment of usurious interest? Just now our little girl carries no gorgon's head; let her alone. The most imperatively demanded change in our system of female training, is the addition of a few years in which to work. American girls are turned out upon society when they should be beginning their apprentices.h.i.+p under their mothers' eyes in all household arts and sciences; and they are wives and mothers before they are able physically, mentally, or morally to appreciate the sacred, solemn responsibilities that inhere in such positions. If our girls pursued methodically all the branches of a liberal and cla.s.sical education, including domestic economy, until they were at least twenty, how much misery would be averted!

how many more really elegant interesting women would be added to the charm of society, usefulness to country, happiness and sanct.i.ty of home! Had I means to bestow in such enterprises, I should like to endow some inst.i.tution, and stipulate for a chair of household-arts-and-sciences-and-home-duties; and Regina should not go into general society until she had graduated therein."

"Not another word of conspiracy against my little maid's peace! Lean forward a little, Peyton, and look at her yonder, coming along the rose-walk. See how the pigeons follow her. She has been gathering raspberries, and I promised she should make all she could pick into jelly for poor old Tobitha Meggs. How pure and fair she looks in her white dress! Dear little thing! Sometimes I am wicked enough to wish she had no mother, for then she would be wholly ours, and we could keep her always. Listen, she is singing Schubert's '_Ave Maria_'."

After a moment's silence Mrs. Lindsay rose, and, pa.s.sing her arm around her son's neck, leaned her cheek against his head, as he sat near his uncle, and looking through the open door at the slowly approaching figure.

"Bishop, if I were an artist, I would paint her as a priestess at Ephesus, chanting a hymn to Diana; and instead of Hero and the pigeons, place brown deer and spotted fawns on mossy banks in the background."

"Pooh! What a hopeless pagan you are, Elise? If I were a sculptor I would chisel a statue of purity, and give it her countenance."

And Mr. Lindsay smiled in his mother's face, and said only for her ear:

"Do not her eyes ent.i.tle her to be called Glaukopis?"