“Many families seem to think that it is a proof of family union and good-nature that they can pick each other to pieces, joke on each other’s feelings and infirmities, and treat each other with a general tally-ho-ing rudeness, without any offence or ill-feeling. If there is a limping sister, there is a never-failing supply of jokes on ‘Dot-and-go-one;’ and so with other defects and peculiarities of mind or manners. Now the perfect good-nature and mutual confidence which allow all this liberty are certainly admirable; but the liberty itself is far from making home-life interesting or agreeable.
“Jokes upon personal or mental infirmities, and a general habit of saying things in jest which would be the height of rudeness if said in earnest, are all habits which take from the delicacy of family affection.
“In all this rough playing with edge-tools, many are hit and hurt who are ashamed or afraid to complain. And, after all, what possible good or benefit comes from it? Courage to say disagreeable things, when it is necessary to say them for the highest good of the person addressed, is a sublime quality; but a careless habit of saying them, in the mere freedom of family intercourse, is certainly as great a spoiler of the domestic vines as any fox running.
“There is one point under this head, which I enlarge upon for the benefit of my own sex, — I mean table-criticisms. The conduct of housekeeping, in the present state of domestic service, certainly requires great allowance; and the habit of unceremonious comment on the cooking and appointments of the table, in which some husbands habitually indulge, is the most unpardonable form of domestic rudeness. If a wife has philosophy enough not to mind it, so much the worse for her husband, as it confirms him in an unseemly habit, embarrassing to guests and a bad example to children. If she has no feelings that he is bound to respect, he should at least respect decorum and good taste, and confine the discussion of such matters to private intercourse, and not initiate every guest and child into the grating and greasing of the wheels of the domestic machinery.
“Another thing, in which families might imitate the politeness of strangers, is a wise reticence with regard to the asking of questions and the offering of advice.
“A large family includes many persons of different tastes, habits, modes of thinking and acting, and it would be wise and well to leave to each one that measure of freedom in these respects, which the laws of general politeness require. Brothers and sisters may love each other very much, and yet not enough to make joint-stock of all their ideas, plans, wishes, schemes, friendships. There are in every family circle individuals whom a certain sensitiveness of nature inclines to quietness and reserve; and there are very well-meaning families where no such quietness or reserve is possible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may have a secret, nobody can move in any direction, without a host of inquiries and comments. ‘Whom is your letter from? Let’s see.’—’My letter is from So-and-so.’ — He writing to you? I didn’t know that. ‘What’s he writing about?’—’Where did you go yesterday? What did you buy? What did you give for it? What are you going to do with it?’—’Seems to me that’s an odd way to do. I shouldn’t do so.’—’Look here, Mary; Sarah’s going to have a dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think they’re too dear, — don’t you?’
“I recollect seeing in some author a description of a true gentleman, in which, among other traits, he was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-life in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable.
“If there is perfect unreserve and mutual confidence, let it show itself in free communications coming unsolicited. It may fairly be presumed, that, if there is anything our intimate friends wish us to know, they will tell us of it, — and that when we are on close and confidential terms with persons, and there are topics on which they do not speak to us, it is because, for some reason, they prefer to keep silence concerning them; and the delicacy that respects a friend’s silence is one of the charms of life.
“As with the asking of questions, so with the offering of advice, there should be among friends a wise reticence.
“Some families are always calling each other to account at every step of the day. ‘What did you put on that dress for? Why didn’t you wear that?’—’What did you do this for? Why didn’t you do that?’—’Now I should advise you to do thus and so.’ — And these comments and criticisms and advices are accompanied with an energy of feeling that makes it rather difficult to disregard them.
“Now it is no matter how dear and how good our friends may be, if they abridge our liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, it is inevitable that we shall come to enjoying ourselves much better where they are not, than where they are; and one of the reasons why brothers and sisters or children so often diverge from the family circle in the choice of confidants is, that extraneous friends are bound by certain laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, criticisms, or advice too far.
“Parents would do well to remember in time when their children have grown up into independent human beings, and use with a wise moderation those advisory and admonitory powers with which they guided their earlier days. Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far as possible, and avoid imposing our own peculiarities on another.
“If I were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people of individual and marked character, who, through love, have come to a perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand themselves and one another, that each may move freely along his or her own track without jar or jostle, — a family where affection is always sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive, — where all personal delicacies are respected, — and where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion in following one’s own course, unchallenged by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.
“In treating of family discourtesies, I have avoided speaking of those which come from ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these are sins more than mistakes. An angry person is generally impolite; and where contention and ill-will are, there can be no courteousness. What I have mentioned are rather the lackings of good and often admirable people, who merely need to consider in their family-life a little more of whatsoever things are lovely. With such the mere admission of anything to be pursued as a duty secures the purpose; only in their somewhat earnest pursuit of the substantials of life, they drop and pass by the little things that give it sweetness and perfume. To such, a word is enough, and that word is said.”
VII. EXACTINGNESS.
AT length I am arrived at my seventh fox, — the last of the domestic quadrupeds against which I have vowed a crusade; and here opens the chase of him. I call him —
EXACTINGNESS.
And having done this, I drop the metaphor, for fear of chasing it beyond the rules of graceful rhetoric, and shall proceed to define the trait.
All the other domestic faults of which I have treated have relation to the manner in which the ends of life are pursued; but this one is an underlying, false, and diseased state of conception as to the very ends and purposes of life itself.
If a piano is tuned to exact concert pitch, the majority of voices must fall below it; for which reason most people indulgently allow their pianos to be tuned a little below this point, in accommodation to the average compass of the human voice. Persons of only ordinary powers of voice would be considered absolute monomaniacs, who should insist on having their pianos tuned to accord with any abstract notion of propriety or perfection, — rendering themselves wretched by persistently singing all their pieces miserably out of tune in consequence.
Yet there are persons who keep the requirements of life strained up always at concert pitch, and are thus worn out and made miserable all their days by the grating of a perpetual discord.
There is a faculty of the human mind to which phrenologists have given the name of ideality, which is at the foundation of this e
xactingness. Ideality is the faculty by which we conceive of and long for perfection; and at a glance it will be seen, that, so far from being an evil ingredient of human nature, it is the one element of progress that distinguishes man’s nature from that of the brute. While animals go on from generation to generation, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, practising their small circle of the arts of life no better and no worse from year to year, man is driven by ideality to constant invention and alteration, whence come arts, sciences, and the whole progress of society. Ideality induces discontent with present attainments, possessions, and performances, and hence come better and better ones. So in morals, ideality constantly incites to higher and nobler modes of living and thinking, and is the faculty to which the most effective teachings of the great Master of Christianity are addressed. To be dissatisfied with present attainments, with earthly things and scenes, to aspire and press on to something for ever fair, yet for ever receding before our steps, — this is the teaching of Christianity, and the work of the Christian.
But every faculty has its own instinctive, wild growth, which, like the spontaneous produce of the earth, is crude and weedy.
Revenge, says Lord Bacon, is a sort of wild justice, obstinacy is untutored firmness, — and so exactingness is untrained ideality; and a vast deal of misery, social and domestic, comes, not of the faculty, but of its untrained exercise.
The faculty, which is ever conceiving and desiring something better and more perfect, must be modified in its action by good sense, patience, and conscience, or it induces a morbid, discontented spirit, which courses through the veins of individual and family-life like a subtle poison.
In a certain neighbourhood are two families whose social and domestic animus illustrates the difference between ideality and the want of it.
The Daytons are a large, easy-natured, joyous race, hospitable, kindly, and friendly.
Nothing about their establishment is much above mediocrity. The grounds are tolerably kept, the table is tolerably fair, the servants moderately good, and the family character and attainments of the same average level.
Mrs. Dayton is a decent housekeeper, and so her bread be not sour, her butter not frowy, the food abundant, and the table-cloth and dishes clean, she troubles her head little with the niceties and refinements of the ménage.
She accepts her children as they come from the hand of Nature, simply opening her eyes to discern what they are, never raising the query what she would have had them, — forming no very high expectations concerning them, and well content with whatever develops.
A visitor in the family can easily see a thousand defects in the conduct of affairs, in the management of the children, and in this, that, and the other department of the household arrangements; but he can see and feel, also, a perfect comfortableness in the domestic atmosphere that almost atones for any defects. He can see that in a thousand respects things might be better done, if the family were not perfectly content to have them as they are, and that each individual member might make higher attainments in various directions, were there not such entire satisfaction with what is already attained.
Trying each other by very moderate standards and measurements, there is great mutual complacency. The eldest boy does not get an appointment in college, — they never expected he would; but he was a respectable scholar, and they receive him with acclamations such as another family would bestow on a valedictorian. The daughters do not profess, as we are told, to draw like artists, but some very moderate performances in the line of the fine arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. They thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the whole family listen and approve. All unite in singing, in a somewhat discordant and uncultured manner, a few psalm-tunes or songs, and take more comfort in them than many amateurs do in their well-executed performances.
So goes the world with the Daytons; and when you visit them, if you often feel that you could ask more and suggest much improvement, yet you cannot help enjoying the quiet satisfaction which breathes around you.
Now right across the way from the Daytons live the Mores; and the Mores are the very opposites of the Daytons.
Everything about their establishment is brought to the highest point of culture. The carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is velvet, the flower-beds ever blooming, the fruit-trees and vines grow exactly like the patterns in the best pomological treatises. Within doors the housekeeping is faultless, — all seems to be moving in time and tune, — the table is more than good, it is superlative, — every article is in its way a model, — the children appear to you to be growing up after the most patent-right method, duly trained, snipped, and cultured, like the pear-trees, and grape-vines. Nothing is left to accident, or done without much laborious consideration of the best manner of doing it; and the consequences, in the eyes of their simple unsophisticated neighbours, are very wonderful.
Nevertheless, this is not a happy family. All their perfections do not begin to afford them one tithe of the satisfaction that the Daytons derive from their ragged and scrambling performances.
The two daughters, Jane and Maria, had naturally very sweet voices, and when they were little, trilled tunes in a very pleasant and bird-like manner. But now, having been instructed by the best masters, and heard the very first artists, they never sing or play; the piano is shut, and their voices are dumb. If you request a song, they tell you that they never sing now; papa has such an exquisite taste, he takes no interest in any common music; in short, having heard Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, and others of the tuneful shell, this family have concluded to abide in silence. As to any music that they could make, it isn’t to be thought of.
For the same reason, the daughters, after attending, for a quarter or two, the drawing exercises of a celebrated teacher, threw up their pencils in disgust, and tore up very pretty and agreeable sketches which were the marvel of their good-natured, admiring neighbours. If they could draw like Signor Scratchalini, if they could hope to become perfect artists, they tell you they would have persevered; but they have taken lessons enough to learn that drawing is the labour of a lifetime, and, not having a life-time to give to it, they resolve to do nothing at all.
They have also, for a similar reason, given up letter-writing. If their chirography were as elegant as Charlotte Cushman’s, — if they were perfect mistresses of polite English, — if they were gifted with wit, humour, and fancy, like the first masters of style, — they would take pleasure in epistolary composition, and be good correspondents; but anything short of that is so intolerable, that, except in cases of life and death or urgent business, you cannot get a line out of them. Yet they write very fair, agreeable, womanly letters, and would write much better ones, if they allowed themselves a little more practice.
Mrs. More is devoured by care. She sits with a clouded brow in her elegant, well-regulated house; and when you talk with her, you are surprised to learn that everything in it is in the most dreadful disorder from one end to the other. You ask for particulars, and find that the disorder has relation to exquisite standards of the ways of doing things, derived from observation of life in the most subdivided state of European service, — to all of which she has not as yet been able to raise her domestics. You compliment her on her cook, and she responds, in plaintive accents, “She can do a few things decently, but she is nothing of a cook.” You refer with enthusiasm to her bread, her coffee, her muffins and hot rolls, and she listens and sighs. “Yes,” she admits, “these are eatable, — not bad; but you should have seen the rolls at a certain café in Paris, and the bread at a certain nobleman’s in England, where they had a bakery in the castle, and a French baker, who did nothing at all but refine and perfect the idea of bread. When she thinks of these things, everything in comparison is so coarse and rough! — but then she has learned to be comfortable.” Thus, in every department of housekeeping, to this too-well instructed person,
“Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.”
Not a thing in her wide and a
pparently beautifully-kept establishment is ever done well enough to elicit from her more than a sigh of toleration. “I suppose it must do,” she faintly breathes, when poor human nature, having tried and tried again, evidently has got to the boundaries of its capabilities; “you may let it go, Jane; I never expect to be suited.”
The poor woman, in the midst of possessions and attainments which excite the envy of her neighbours, is utterly restless and wretched, and feels herself always baffled and unsuccessful. Her exacting nature makes her dissatisfied with herself in everything that she undertakes, and equally dissatisfied with others. In the whole family there is little of that pleasure which comes from the consciousness of mutual admiration and esteem, because each one is pitched to so exquisite a tone that each is afraid to touch another for fear of making discord. They are afraid of each other everywhere. They cannot sing to each other, play to each other, write to each other; they cannot even converse together with any freedom, because each knows that the others are so dismally well-informed and critically instructed.
Though all agree in a secret contempt for their neighbours over the way, as living in a most heathenish state of ignorant contentment, yet it is a fact that the elegant brother John will often, on the sly, slip into the Daytons’ to spend an evening, and join them in singing glees and catches to their old rattling piano, and have a jolly time of it, which he remembers in contrast with the dull, silent hours at home. Kate Dayton has an uncultivated voice, which often falls from pitch; but she has a perfectly infectious gaiety of good nature, and when she is once at the piano, and all join in some merry troll, he begins to think that there may be something better even than good singing; and then they have dances and charades and games, all in such contented, jolly, impromptu ignorance of the unities of time, place, and circumstance, that he sometimes doubts, where ignorance is such bliss, whether it isn’t in truth folly to be wise.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 528