Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Oh, Chris, why do you discourage me?”

  “I am trying tonic treatment, Emily; I am showing you a real danger; I am rousing you to flee from it. John is making money fast; there is no reason why he should always remain buried in this town. Use your influence as they do, — daily, hourly, constantly, — to predispose him to take you to another sphere. Do not always shrink and yield; do not conceal and assimilate and endeavour to persuade him and yourself that you are happy; do not put the very best face to him on it all; do not tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his habitual, cold, inexpressive manner; and don’t lay aside your own little impulsive, outspoken ways. Respect your own nature, and assert it; woo him, argue with him; use all a woman’s weapons to keep him from falling back into the old Castle Doubting where he lived till you let him out. Dispute your mother’s hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for granted without daily proof between lovers; cry down latent caloric in the market; insist that the mere fact of being a wife is not enough, — that the words spoken once, years ago, are not enough, — that love needs new leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-trees, and new branches to grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the root to cover the ground.”

  “Oh, but I have heard that there is no surer way to lose love than to be exacting, and that it never comes for a woman’s reproaches.”

  “All true as gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper, — you could not use any of these forces if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred, — that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. Thoughtless, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sacrifice, such as many women long to bestow on husband and children, soil and lower the very objects of their love. You may grow saintly by self-sacrifice; but do your husband and children grow saintly by accepting it without return? I have seen a verse which says, —

  ‘They who kneel at woman’s shrine

  Breathe on it as they bow.’

  Is not this true of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover — no true friend. Any good man soon learns to discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman’s love to his soul, her concern for his honour, her anxiety for his moral development, and the pettish cry which comes from her own personal wants. It will be your own fault if, for lack of anything you can do, your husband relapses into these cold, undemonstrative habits which have robbed his life of so much beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren ways of living are as unchristian as they are disagreeable; and you, as a good little Christian sworn to fight heroically under Christ’s banner, must make headway against this sort of family Antichrist, though it comes with a show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. Remember, dear, that the Master’s family had its outward tokens of love as well as its inward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom; and the traitor could not have had a sign for his treachery had there not been a daily kiss at meeting and parting with His children.”

  “I am glad you have said all this,” said Emily, “because now I feel stronger for it. It does not now seem so selfish for me to want what it is better for John to give. Yes, I must seek what will be best for him.”

  And so the little one, put on the track of self-sacrifice, began to see her way clearer, as many little women of her sort do. Make them look on self-assertion as one form of martyrdom, and they will come into it.

  But, for all my eloquence on this evening, the house was built in the self-same spot as projected; and the family life went on, under the shadow of Judge Evans’s elms, much as if I had not spoken. Emmy became mother of two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and fainter; while with her physical decay came increasing need of the rule in the household of mamma and sisters, who took her up energetically on eagles’ wings, and kept her house, and managed her children; for what can be done when a woman hovers half her time between life and death?

  At last I spoke out to John, that the climate and atmosphere were too severe for her who had become so dear to him, — to them all; and then they consented that the change much talked of and urged, but always opposed by the parents, should be made.

  John bought a pretty cottage in our neighbourhood, and brought his wife and boys; and the effect of change of moral atmosphere verified all my predictions. In a year we had our own blooming, joyous, impulsive little Emily once more, — full of life, full of cheer, full of energy, — looking to the ways of her household, — the merry companionship of her growing boys, — the blithe empress over her husband, who took to her genial sway as in the old happy days of courtship. The nightmare was past, and John was as joyous as any of us in his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned right side out for life; and we all admired the pattern. And that is the end of my story.

  And now for the moral, — and that is, that life consists of two parts, — Expression and Repression, — each of which has its solemn duties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs the duty of expression: to anger, envy, malice, revenge, and all uncharitableness belongs the duty of repression.

  Some very religious and moral people err by applying repression to both classes alike. They repress equally the expression of love and of hatred, of pity and of anger. Such forget one great law, as true in the moral world as in the physical, — that repression lessens and deadens. Twice or thrice mowing will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds; the roots die for want of expression. A compress on a limb will stop its growing; the surgeon knows this, and puts a tight bandage around a tumour; but what if we put a tight bandage about the heart and lungs, as some young ladies of my acquaintance do, — or bandage the feet, as they do in China? And what if we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap love in grave-clothes?

  But, again, there are others, and their number is legion, — perhaps you and I, reader, may know something of it in ourselves, — who have an instinctive habit of repression in regard to all that is noblest and highest within them, which they do not feel in their lower and more unworthy nature.

  It comes far easier to scold our friend, in an angry moment, than to say how much we love, honour, and esteem him, in a kindly mood. Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force; love is shame-faced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the door-latch.

  How much freer utterance among many good Christians have anger, contempt, and censoriousness, than tenderness and love! I hate is said loud, and with all our force: I love is said with a hesitating voice and blushing cheek.

  In an angry mood we do an injury to a loving heart with good, strong, free emphasis; but we stammer and hang back when our diviner nature tells us to confess and ask pardon. Even when our heart is broken with repentance, we haggle and linger long before we can

  “Throw away the worser part of it.”

  How many live a stingy and niggardly life in regard to their richest inward treasures! They live with those they love dearly, whom a few more words and deeds expressive of this love would make so much happier, richer, and better; and they cannot, will not, turn the key and give it out. People who in their very souls really do love, esteem, reverence, almost worship each other, live a barren, chilly life side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting their love go by as a matter of course, a last year’s growth, with no present buds and blossoms.

  Are there not sons and daughters who have parents living with them as angels unawares, — husbands and wives, brothers and sisters in whom the material for a beautiful life lies locked away in unfruitful silence, — who give time to everything but the cultivation and expression of mutual love?

  The time is coming, they think, in some far future, when they shall find leisure to enjoy each other, to stop and rest side by side, to discover to each other these hidden treasures which lie idle and unused.

  Alas! time flies and death steals on, and we reiterate the complaint of one in
Scripture,—”It came to pass, while thy servant was busy hither and thither, the man was gone.”

  The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. “She never knew how I loved her!” “He never knew what he was to me!” “I always meant to make more of our friendship!” “I did not know what he was to me till he was gone!” Such words are the poisoned arrows which cruel Death shoots backward at us from the door of the sepulchre.

  How much more we might make of our family life, of our friendships, if every secret thought of love blossomed into a deed! We are not now speaking merely of personal caresses. These may or may not be the best language of affection. Many are endowed with a delicacy, a fastidiousness of physical organization, which shrinks away from too much of these, repelled and overpowered. But there are words and looks and little observances, thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions, which make it manifest, and there is scarce a family that might not be richer in heart-wealth for more of them.

  It is a mistake to suppose that relations must of course love each other because they are relations. Love must be cultivated, and can be increased by judicious culture, as wild-fruits may double their bearing under the hand of a gardener; and love can dwindle and die out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted in poor soil dwindle and grow single.

  Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature prevent this easy faculty and flow of expression which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian or the French life: the dread of flattery, and a constitutional shyness.

  “I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I admired her, the other day,” says Miss X.

  “And why in the world didn’t you tell her?”

  “Oh, it would seem like flattery, you know.”

  Now what is flattery?

  Flattery is insincere praise, given from interested motives, not the sincere utterance of a friend of what we deem good and lovely in him.

  And so, for fear of flattering, these dreadfully sincere people go on side by side with those they love and admire, giving them, all the time, the impression of utter indifference. Parents are so afraid of exciting pride and vanity in their children by the expression of their love and approbation, that a child sometimes goes sad and discouraged by their side, and learns with surprise, in some chance way, that they are proud and fond of him. There are times when the open expression of a father’s love would be worth more than church or sermon to a boy; and his father cannot utter it, — will not show it.

  The other thing that represses the utterances of love, is the characteristic shyness of the Anglo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race born of two demonstrative, outspoken nations — the German and the French — has an habitual reserve that is like neither. There is a powerlessness of utterance in our blood that we should fight against, and struggle outward towards expression. We can educate ourselves to it, if we know and feel the necessity; we can make it a Christian duty, not only to love, but to be loving, — not only to be true friends, but to show ourselves friendly. We can make ourselves say the kind things that rise in our hearts and tremble on our lips, — do the gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do and shrink back from; and, little by little, it will grow easier, — the love spoken will bring back the answer of love, — the kind deed will bring back a kind deed in return, — till the hearts in the family circle, instead of being so many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm airs and echoing bird-voices, answering back and forth with a constant melody of love.

  IV. SELF-WILL.

  MY little foxes are interesting little beasts; and I only hope my reader will not get tired of my charming menagerie, before I have done showing him their nice points. He must recollect there are seven of them, and as yet we have shown up only three; so let him have patience.

  As before stated, little foxes are the little pet sins of us educated, good Christians, who hope that we have got above and far out of sight of stealing, lying, and those other gross evils against which we pray every Sunday, when the Ten Commandments are read. They are not generally considered of dignity enough to be fired at from the pulpit; they seem to us too trifling to be remembered in church; they are like the red spiders on plants, — too small for the perception of the naked eye, and only to be known by the shrivelling and dropping of leaf after leaf that ought to be green and flourishing.

  I have another little fox in my eye, who is most active and most mischievous in despoiling the vines of domestic happiness, — in fact, who has been guilty of destroying more grapes than anybody knows of. His name I find it difficult to give with exactness. In my enumeration I called him Self-Will; another name for him — perhaps a better one — might be Persistence.

  Like many another, this fault is the overaction of a most necessary and praiseworthy quality. The power of firmness is given to man as the very granite foundation of life. Without it, there would be nothing accomplished; all human plans would be unstable as water on an inclined plane. In every well-constituted nature there must be a power of tenacity, a gift of perseverance of will; and that man might not be without a foundation for so needful a property, the Creator has laid it in an animal faculty, which he possesses in common with the brutes.

  The animal power of firmness is a brute force, a matter of brain and spinal cord, differing in different animals. The force by which a bulldog holds on to an antagonist, the persistence with which a mule will plant his four feet and set himself against blows and menaces, are good examples of the purely animal phase of a property which exists in human beings, and forms the foundation for that heroic endurance, for that perseverance, which carries on all the great and noble enterprises of life.

  The domestic fault we speak of is the wild, uncultured growth of this faculty, the instinctive action of firmness uncontrolled by reason or conscience, — in common parlance, the being “set in one’s way.” It is the animal instinct of being “set in one’s way” which we mean by self-will or persistence; and in domestic life it does the more mischief from its working as an instinct, unwatched by reason and unchallenged by conscience.

  In that pretty new cottage which you see on yonder knoll are a pair of young people just in the midst of that happy bustle which attends the formation of a first home in prosperous circumstances, and with all the means of making it charming and agreeable. Carpenters, upholsterers, and artificers await their will; and there remains for them only the pleasant task of arranging and determining where all their pretty and agreeable things shall be placed. Our Hero and Leander are decidedly nice people, who have been through all the proper stages of being in love with each other for the requisite and suitable time. They have written each other a letter every day for two years, beginning with “My dearest,” and ending with “Your own,” &c.; they have sent each other flowers and rings and locks of hair; they have worn each other’s pictures on their hearts; they have spent hours and hours talking over all subjects under the sun, and are convinced that never was there such sympathy of souls, such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reasonable, perfect foundation for mutual esteem.

  Now it is quite true that people may have a perfect agreement and sympathy in their higher intellectual nature, — may like the same books, quote the same poetry, agree in the same principles, be united in the same religion, — and nevertheless, when they come together in the simplest affair of every-day business, may find themselves jarring and impinging upon each other at every step, simply because they are to each person, in respect of daily personal habits and personal likes and dislikes, a thousand little individualities with which reason has nothing to do, which are not subjects for the use of logic, and to which they never think of applying the power of religion, — which can only be set down as the positive ultimate facts of existence with two people.

  Suppose a blue jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecsta
sy in comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is the only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should die there in a month of damp and rheumatism. She never heard of going to housekeeping in anything but a nice little pendulous bag, swinging down from under the branches of a breezy elm; he is sure he should have water on the brain before summer was over, from constant vertigo, in such swaying, unsteady quarters, — he would be a sea-sick blue jay on land, and he cannot think of it. She knows now he don’t love her, or he never would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy hole picked out of rotten wood; and he knows she doesn’t love him, or she never would want to make him uncomfortable all his days, by tilting and swinging him about as no decent bird ought to be swung. Both are dead-set in their own way and opinion; and how is either to be convinced that the way which seemeth right unto the other is not best? Nature knows this, and therefore, in her feathered tribes, blue jays do not mate with orioles: and so bird-housekeeping goes on in peace.

  But men and women as diverse in their physical tastes and habits as blue jays and orioles are wooing and wedding every day, and coming to the business of nest-building, alias housekeeping, with predilections as violent, and as incapable of any logical defence, as the oriole’s partiality for a swing-nest and the jay’s preference of rotten wood.