On Growing Up Tough

by Taylor Caldwell

  They have invaded our public schools with their love-cult, and so our young men and women in their teens continue to regard themselves as children long after puberty, and demand constant love from everyone with whom they come into contact. They have written so many books about a “child’s need to be loved” that parents are afraid to slam their little monsters’ behinds when caught in some particularly ugly offense. They have so cowed many of our clergy that the poor men no longer dare talk about sin, but only of “victims of society” and “lovelessness in the home,” and Freud, of course. Children are no longer commanded to honor their parents; they are taught that they should be the honored. A policeman, formerly the guardian and friend of children, and a stern admonisher of potential little criminals, must not open his mouth unless he is a “pal” and “understands.” The victim of a murderer is despised; the murderer is cosseted. Love is too precious a thing to be wasted indiscriminately on those who eagerly take advantage of it and hold out their hands for more.

  Only recently, a friend of mine, a fine man of high principle and devotion to his country, was defeated in a political election by a mediocre, mealy-mouthed man. Why? My friend was childless, and he had resolutely halted a scheme for spending enormous sums of money for unnecessary school-palaces with hot and cold running pools and with a proposed curriculum of homemaking, home economics, bird calling, folk dancing, folk stories, and social adjustment. But the mealy-mouthed man had five children, and he rousingly spoke of “spending more and more time with the kids,” and could we afford NOT to have those lovely schools and the lovely program? Naturally, he won hands down. And why not? The love-cultists were right behind him, ringing doorbells in his behalf, getting up petitions, stealthily threatening the hardheaded and sensible, and accusing those who opposed them of “hating children.” The matter of prudence, principle, patriotism, sensible administration, honor and righteousness and a regard for the hard-pressed taxpayer, was not even mentioned.

  “Hate the Communists, if you want to,” they tell you, “but love the Russians.” The Russians want us to love them. We don’t. And so they are bewildered, confused, angry, indignant, and perhaps just a little resentful. Who can blame them?

  Yes, a professor said that to me only recently. When I refuted his maudlin and sinister premises, he did not look at me with love. He called me a “reactionary.”

  Sometimes I find myself choking on the insistent sweetness others try and force upon me. But one thing is sure; they don’t love me, thank God! I have that to remember—that I’ve resisted successfully the attempts to love me and I have kept my right “not to be loved.”

  That is liberty. I refuse the right to be loved indiscriminately, without any effort on my part. I have only the right to earn it.

  15 Plastic People

  A few months ago my husband and I “dined” with a psychiatrist and his wife, both ebullient, bubbling and radiant.

  Now, though I work anywhere from fourteen to eighteen hours a day, at the hardest kind of work, I eat but one real meal a day. I was always a fussy eater with a built-in dislike for food: no doubt due to the fact that my parents were British and were always downing five full meals a day, three of them heavy in meat. That’s quite enough to make a sensitive person have an aversion to food for the rest of her life.

  Besides, there’s too much work to do in the world and too much to see and do to waste time filling your gizzard. Except when you are honestly hungry, after hard work.

  The psychiatrist’s wife first served a suspect-looking brown broth, which she delightedly informed the guests was “mock turtle.” Later came something that bore a faint resemblance to lamb chops. But these had the most dreadful taste … “mock lamb chops!” We all smiled politely. Then, of course, there was a dish of “instant potatoes,” a huge rabbity salad, some hot rolls that tasted of hay, a sweetish dessert covered with something white and whipped, and then tiny little cups of “health” coffee: that is, a brew minus all coffee and suggestive of something I will not mention. Now this was my meal of the day and I was hungry—and I ate. However, I still felt faint and depleted. I was soon informed why.

  “Only four hundred and fifty calories in everybody’s dinner!” our hostess said looking about her for applause. (She didn’t get any.) Rather upset by our lack of appreciation and enthusiasm, she rushed out her recipes. Every foul thing on her menu was composed of near-synthetics or outright synthetics. For instance, as she proudly told us, the white, sweet-tasting stuff on the alleged dessert had not been cream at all. It was, and I quote the actual ingredients: “Polysorbate 60, sorbitan, monostearate, sodium citrate carrageenin, artificial color, water, vegetable fat, sugar.” The “mock lamb chops” had been chopped, leftover cooked vegetables, flavored with “carameldin,” and fried in “unsaturated fats.” The potatoes had been cold, dried chips until they had been introduced to water, and the coffee—well, never mind. The only thing for real was that rabbity salad; and, as raw vegetables disagree with me, it made me sick within a few minutes.

  “We all eat too much,” the psychiatrist’s lady confided to us as we groaned and quietly chewed dyspepsia tablets. “Don’t you think so?” She looked earnestly at us; we had not said a word. She herself was in the large forties in dress size. I’ll bet my next year’s income that she privately intoxicated herself on real butter, real meat, real vegetables, and real cream and coffee. She had the look of those who actually become drunk on food, a fat and surfeited and greedy look.

  And before we went home, we were introduced to her fake wool rugs, her fake silk draperies, her fake wood paneling, her fake carved furniture, her fake china ornaments, and so help me, her fake children.

  How is it possible to have “fake” children? Mrs. Psychiatrist had managed it. The children were huge, pallid, empty-faced, stolid of demeanor, and had as much life as stuffed animals—which they resembled. They did not speak; they grunted or squealed, or both together. Their lifeless eyes had no living light. Their hair was nylon, by the looks of it. They walked jerkily, like automatons. They both had “dates” and went grunting and squealing out of the house, no doubt to some dark and airless lair, far from sunlight and moonlight and starlight, far from the great and swelling fragrance of the earth, far from grass and country roads and the winds of the solitary midnight.

  Now one can understand the poor buying synthetic fabrics to imitate those of authentic sources. One can even understand “drip-dries” if one is traveling in a hurry or cannot afford laundry services. One might also understand the poor eating fake foods, like those of Mrs. Psychiatrist, if they cannot afford to buy the actual thing. But to buy synthetics in cold blood, with malice aforethought, and with more-or-less real money, is something I cannot understand. Worse, it’s a deception, a fraud, and a lie.

  Look at the chickens now on the market. Immense, flabby, insipid, tasteless. They have been pumped full of hormones to make a regular one-pound frying chicken a balloon-like monstrosity of three or even four pounds. There have been some mild hints from medical authorities to the effect that “one does not know if those hormones may be carcinogens.” What “one” does not know about the food he eats will not later haunt him!

  The market is now full of “taste-boosters” such as heavily salted and preserved chicken-fat, or beef-fat, or chemicals. We use the “boosters” or we resign ourselves to absolutely odorless and tasteless meals. Once, when a chicken was roasting in the oven a house was filled with fragrance. Once, when bread was being baked, or even bought bread was being toasted, the kitchen was lilting with heavenly scents. But now everything is deodorized—fake.

  I remember that my mother brought silk-velvet draperies from England in 1907. When she died, in 1953, she had two pairs left, almost intact. But they were real. They were not “miracle” fabrics which fall apart in a couple of years, after a large initial cost. If these “new” fabrics were cheap one could avoid them, but they appear in the most lavish stores. Try to find honest-to-God cotton dresses, linens, curtains
or whatever these days, or actual silk, or good hearty wool. Every infernal thing is “mixed” for “better wear,” they say.

  I remember when my husband managed, after some effort, to buy an all-wool suit. The majority were “mixed.” Again, if they were cheap it would not matter so much. But one thinks of the average working-man, with his hard-earned money, buying fake goods of all kinds which will disintegrate within a short time. That is theft on the most cynical scale. One thinks, too, of the children growing up and trying to survive on suspect food, full of nasty, intruded chemicals and fluorides and “artificial flavorings.” Are they never again to know cotton, silk, wool, linen, and the good taste of natural fowl and meat and authentic bread? Are they never to touch honest wood again, and stone? To what sort of a false and deceptive world have we introduced them, where everything fakes the actual, and nothing is sound and true any longer?

  Can we expect such children to honor the noble actualities of patriotism, faith, honor, morality, loyalty, when they are surrounded by lies in their food and their drink, in their houses and in their schools? Can we expect the boys to be manly if there is nothing strong and masculine around them, and girls to be womanly if they are urged only to be “feminine”?

  And that brings me to the heart of the matter. Once girl-children were taught by their mothers to know and cherish the arts of creating a home and the joys of devotion to children. They were taught to sew, wash, iron, cook, clean. They were taught modesty and piety, tenderness and chasity. In short, they were taught to be women. But what are they taught now? They are taught, by commercials and advertisements, and by foolish, childish mothers, to be cheaply seductive rather than naturally charming, to take a passionate interest in every passing fad and fashion rather than to love the abiding.

  Little girls are early encased in false-front bras, and girdles. They paint their faces and bake their hair. They talk like tarts instead of young ladies. When they do speak of future husbands, they do not suggest that they’d prefer a man of courage and strength, fidelity and patience, intelligence and kindness. They squeal that they want someone who resembles the current singing “star” with “lots and lots of money for fun-times and clothes and furs.” Of course, they confide to you, if the marriage they intend “doesn’t work out” they’ll get a divorce.

  Once upon a time fathers taught their sons to be men, to be proud and fearless, brave and devoted. They taught them to love the Lord their God, and to go to church. They were taught to honor and to reverence their country; they were taught that only rascals are not patriotic; only traitors do not lift their eyes joyously to our flag. The “idle rich” were despised, not out of envy but out of honest disgust for worthlessness. The quick buck was regarded as contemptible. Mendicancy was intolerable and shameful. I have heard working-class fathers say to their boys, “Never eat the bread of charity. It will choke your soul.” To acquire something one had not earned, and something which had belonged to a neighbor, was out-and-out theft to honorable Americans of yesterday.

  But what are many of our boys today? Prissy, whining, cynical synthetics, almost sexless in their plastic sameness. There is little to praise in them, no authority, no masculinity. They are kept from an authentic knowledge of life by their plaster parents; they are housed in playpens until they have been graduated from college. They are taught they are “children” when they are old enough to be parents, themselves. They are “youths” to middle-age. They are surrounded by inanimate or animated synthetics in human form. They bring their synthetic dream-world into adult relationships. Their wives must remain “young and attractive” into weary middle-age. Their wives must be “enthusiastic,” no matter how hard the struggle during the day with little children. In short, their wives must be dream-images in a fake world, a world of neon mirages.

  16 Why Not a SPUVV?

  While all these proliferating societies are being formed, why not one called SPUVV, the Society for the Protection of Us Victims of “Victims”?

  From the very dawn of history there have been “victims” of one damned thing or another, and all of them tearful and whimpering and dependent, and all of them, without fail, coming to us real victims for help and bread and gold and the blood of our sons and grandsons. If they haven’t been “victims” of human tyrants, they have been “victims” of obscure diseases—all of them costly. No one begrudges helping a real victim, say of Communism or of the excesses of our own government, but why should the average American be forced to “aid” and “love” the Disadvantaged, Culturally Deprived, and Underprivileged, who are that way by the grace of laziness, sloth, their own addiction to mendicancy, and their passionate aversion to work? There isn’t a day that my mail isn’t flooded with appeals to aid the “victims,” but it is a rare day when someone appeals for help in a fight against oppressive bureaucrats, sentimental judges, and vindictive social workers who want landlords to be “forced” to grace modest houses or apartments with luxurious “built-in” kitchens and gardens for the “deprived,” or an extra bathroom to be used as a wood-storage receptacle.

  Sympathy is poured on the “victims” by the tubful by all the brotherly-lovers who despise us mere toilers in the vineyards. Who pities the authentic victims? No bloody person, that’s who.

  I was three years old—ah, dreadful day!—when I was first a victim of a “victim.” My gay Irish grandmother, when visiting us in Manchester from her houses either in Killarney, Dublin, London, Paris, Rome, Leeds, Glasgow, or Edinburgh, used to bring me a special delight which I think all the French call marrons glacés (sugared roasted chestnuts, first dipped in honey). They usually came in lovely tin boxes with a nymph on the cover in Full Color TV, without the peacock. Sometimes they came in milk-glass blown into the shape of a swan—very special, usually one pound extra in price. (Mama appropriated these, and that was one of the victimizations.) Anyway, on my third birthday Grandmother brought me my lovely delight in a beautiful French box, this time porcelain in the shape of a cello. I remember it well. I can’t see a cello even now without a tear in my eye.

  It seems that the boy across the street, a giant about five years old, had suddenly become Deprived. I’m not certain of what he had been Deprived, but he had. So, when Grandmother presented me with the china cello, perfect to the simulated strings, Mama said, “Janet, you have so many gifts, wouldn’t you like to give Poor Kenneth that beautiful present?”

  Janet said no at once.

  Grandmother said, “Ann, why should the bairne?” Mama became very emotional. I clung to the cello, savoring the delights therein in anticipation. Mama said, “But the Poor Boy really needs the sweets more than she does.”

  Janet and Grandmother said simultaneously, “Who said so?”

  Mama didn’t dare slam Grandmother, for Grandmother had the Cash in the family, but I could see that she dearly wished to slam me.

  “Is the lad starving?” asked Grandmother. “If so, take him some bread and jam and a bit of beef.”

  But Kenneth wasn’t starving. At least I gathered that, for Mama looked scornful. It was something else, and what it was I never quite understood. Mama suddenly made a dive for my treasure, whipped it out of my hands, and as she was an old lady of twenty-one years she was forced to totter painfully out of the house with what she had incontinently swiped from me for the benefit of the “victim.” I ran to the window, tore apart the curtains, and roared wildly when I saw Mama lay my gift, with flourishes, in the hands of Kenneth. Grandmother shook her head. “There’s nae end to fools, lassie,” she said. “Mind ye dinna become one of them.”

  The next day Unfortunate, Deprived Kenneth threw the china cello against our door and it was smashed to pieces. I looked at the wreckage with heartbreak, but Mama said with violin notes in her voice, “Poor Boy.” (I noticed that none of the sweets were in the fragments, however.) At that age, three, I was, I confess, less Christian than I later became, so I went out and selected a nice pointed boulder from our garden, waylaid Kenneth that afternoon and cracked
him over the head with it. It gave me almost as much satisfaction as eating the marrons glacés, myself, but not quite. My thoughts were very sinful.

  It comes to me at this moment that the Unfortunate across the seas, or wherever, are constantly returning Uncle Sam’s gifts with the equivalent of the smashed china cello—with the sweets eaten. Whenever one of our Embassies is stoned or burned or vandalized in one of the Deprived Nations, I think of my darling cello, and I also think of pointed boulders.

  Apparently other events of a similar nature happened to me in my childhood, though kind nature has softened the memory of most of them. I well remember when I was thirteen, and Wilson’s War broke out. Mama and Papa, Britons both—and we were all in America then—became very stirred up indeed. I don’t know how they, and my Sunday school teacher, wangled it, but I found myself, in the company of my best friend, Irma Jones, soliciting for Aid to the Allies.

  Irma Jones was a colored girl. We were both big girls, standing heads over our mates, and unusually healthy and sturdy, and perhaps that is why we were chosen as victims. We took counsel together. Irma was a sensible young person, and she said to me, “Why’re they fighting, anyway?” I said it had something to do with the Kaiser. He was cutting off Belgians’ ears, it was alleged, though the Kaiser was also alleging that the Belgians were cutting off Germans’ ears. It seemed less heinous to our parents and teachers for Belgians to do what the Germans were doing, though why I never did discover. They both bled and the process was undoubtedly painful. My arguments made Irma dubious, and she rubbed her own ears. “Well, anyway,” she declared with the resignation of the victimized, and we set out on our collections, somberly plowing away on our skates. We had our doubts, but at least what we were doing was Approved, and as it was rare for us to do anything of that nature we were Uplifted—a little.