Jane and Maria laugh at John for his partiality to the Daytons, and yet they themselves feel the same attraction. At the Daytons’ they, somehow, find themselves heroines; their drawings are so admired, their singing is so charming to these uncultured ears, that they are often beguiled into giving pleasure with their own despised acquirements; and Jane, somehow, is very tolerant of the devoted attention of Will Dayton, a joyous, honest-hearted fellow, whom, in her heart of hearts, she likes none the worse for being unexacting and simple enough to think her a wonder of taste and accomplishments. Will, of course, is the furthest possible from the Admirable Crichtons and exquisite Sir Philip Sidneys whom Mrs. More and the young ladies talk up at their leisure, and adorn with feathers from every royal and celestial bird, when they are discussing ideal, possible husbands. He is not in any way distinguished, except for a kind heart, strong native good sense, and a manly energy that has carried him straight into the very heart of many a citadel of life, before which the superior and more refined Mr. John had set himself down to deliberate upon the best and most elegant way of taking it. Will’s plain, homely intelligence has often in five minutes disentangled some ethereal snarl in which these exquisite Mores had spun themselves up, and brought them to his own way of thinking by that sort of disenchanting process which honest, practical sense sometimes exerts over ideality.
The fact is, however, that in each of these families there is a natural defect, which requires something from the other to remedy it. Taking happiness as the standard, the Daytons have it as against the Mores. Taking attainment as the standard, the Mores have it as against the Daytons. A portion of the discontented ideality of the Mores would stimulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many things which might easily be made better, did they care enough to have them so; and a portion of the Daytons’ self-satisfied contentment would make the attainments and refinements of the Mores of some practical use in advancing their own happiness.
But between these two classes of natures lies another, to which has been given an equal share of ideality, — in which the conception and the desire of excellence are equally strong, but in which a discriminating common sense acts like a balance-wheel in machinery. What is the reason that the most exacting idealists never make themselves unhappy about not being able to fly like a bird or swim like a fish? Because common sense teaches them that these accomplishments are so utterly out of the question, that they never arise to the mind as objects of desire. In these well-balanced minds we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive line all through life between the attainable and the unattainable, and sets the key of desire accordingly.
Common sense teaches that there is no one branch of human art or science in which perfection is not a point for ever receding. A botanist gravely assures us that to become perfect in the knowledge of one branch of seaweeds would take all the time and strength of a man for a life-time. There is no limit to music, to the fine arts. There is never a time when the gardener can rest, saying that his garden is perfect. Housekeeping, cooking, sewing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be pushed on for ever, without exhausting the capabilities for doing better.
But while attainment in everything is endless, circumstances forbid the greater part of human beings attaining, in any direction, the half of what they see would be desirable; and the difference between the miserable idealist and the contented realist often is not that both do not see what needs to be done for perfection, but that, seeing it, one is satisfied with the attainable, and the other for ever frets and wears himself out on the unattainable.
The principal of a large and complicated public institution was complimented on maintaining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a diversity of cares. “I’ve made up my mind to be satisfied, when things are done half as well as I would have them,” was his answer, and the same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic sphere.
There is a saying which one often hears among common people, that such and such a one are persons who never could be happy, unless everything went “just so,” — that is, in accordance with their highest conceptions.
When these persons are women, and undertake the sway of a home empire, they are sure to be miserable, and to make others so; for home is a place where, by no kind of magic possible to woman, can everything be always made to go “just so.”
We may read treatises on education, — and very excellent ones there are. We may read very nice stories illustrating home management, in which book-children and book-servants all work into the author’s plan with obliging unanimity; but every real child and real servant is an uncompromising fact, whose working into our ideal of life cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. A husband is another absolute fact, of whose conformity to any ideal conceptions no positive account can be given. So, when a person has the most charming theories of education, the most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot to sit bound hand and foot, and see them all trampled under the heel of opposing circumstances.
Nothing is easier than to make an ideal garden. We lay out our grounds, dig, plant, transplant, manure. We read catalogues of roses till we are bewildered with their lustrous glories. We set our plum, pear, and peach; we luxuriate, in advance, on bushels of choicest grapes, and our theoretic garden is Paradise Regained. But in the actual garden there are cut worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for all the melons, slugs and rose-bugs for the roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, and late and early frosts, droughts, winds, and hail-storms here and there for all.
The garden and the family are fair pictures of each other. Both are capable of the most ravishing representations on paper; and the rules and directions for creating beauty and perfection in both, can be made so apparently plain that he who runneth may read, and it would seem that a fool need not err therein; and yet the actual results are always halting miles away behind expectation and desire.
It would be an incalculable gain to domestic happiness, if people would begin the concert of life with their instruments tuned to a very low pitch: they who receive the most happiness are generally they who demand and expect the least.
Ideality often becomes an insidious mental and moral disease, acting all the more subtly from its alliances with what is highest and noblest within us. Shall we not aspire to be perfect? Shall we be content with low measures and low standards in anything? To these inquiries there seems of course to be but one answer; yet the individual driven forward in blind, unreasoning aspiration, becomes wearied, bewildered, discontented, restless, fretful, and miserable.
An unhappy person can never make others happy. The creators and governors of a home, who are themselves restless and inharmonious, cannot make harmony and peace. This is the secret reason why many a pure, good, conscientious person is only a source of uneasiness in family-life. They are exacting, discontented, unhappy; and spread the discontent and unhappiness about them. They are, to begin with, on poor terms with themselves; they do not like themselves; they do not like their own appearance, manners, education, accomplishments; on all these points they try themselves by ideal standards, and find themselves wanting. In morals, in religion, too, the same introverted scrutiny detects only errors and evils, till all life seems to them a miserable, hopeless failure, and they wish they had never been born. They are angry and disgusted with themselves; there is no self-toleration or self-endurance. And persons in a chronic quarrel with themselves are very apt to quarrel with others. That exacting nature which has no patience with one’s own inevitable frailties and errors has none for those of others; and thus the great motive by which Christianity enforces tolerance of the faults of others, loses its hold. There are people who make no allowances either for themselves or anybody else, but are equally angry and disgusted with both.
Now it is important that those finely-strung natures in which ideality largely predominates should begin life by a religious care and restraint of this faculty. As the case often stands, however, religion
only intensifies the difficulty, by adding stringency to exaction and censoriousness, driving the subject up with an unremitting strain, till the very cords of reason sometimes snap. Yet, properly understood and used, religion is the only cure for the evil of diseased ideality. The Christian religion is the only one that ever proposed to give to all human beings, however various the range of their nature and desires, the great underlying gift of rest. Its Author, with a strength of assurance which only supreme divinity can justify, promises rest to all persons, under all circumstances, with all sorts of natures, all sorts of wants, and all sorts of defects. The invitation is as wide as the human race: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you REST.”
Now this is the more remarkable, as this gracious promise is accompanied by the presentation of a standard of perfection which is more ideal and exacting than any other that has ever been placed before mankind, — which, in so many words, sets up absolute perfection as the only true goal of aspiration.
The problem which Jesus proposes to human nature is endless aspiration steadied by endless peace, — a perfectly restful, yet unceasing effort after a good which is never to be attained till we attain a higher and more perfect form of existence. It is because this problem is insolvable by any human wisdom, that He says that they who take His yoke upon them must learn of Him, for He alone can make the perfect yoke easy, and its burden light.
The first lesson in this benignant school must lie like a strong, broad foundation under every structure on which we wish to rear a happy life, — and that is, that the full gratification of the faculty of ideality is never to be expected in this present stage of existence, but is to be transferred to a future life. Ideality, with its incessant, restless longings and yearnings, is snubbed and turned out of doors by human philosophy, when philosophy becomes middle-aged and sulky with repeated disappointments, — it is be-rated as a cheat and a liar, — told to hold its tongue and take itself elsewhere; but Christianity bids it be of good cheer, still to aspire and hope and prophesy, and points to a future where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality.
A full faith in such a perfect future — a perfect faith that God has planted in man no desire which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in that future — gives the mind rest and contentment to postpone for a while gratifications that will certainly come at last.
Such a faith is better even than that native philosophical good sense which restrains the ideal calculations and hopes of some; for it has a wider scope and a deeper power.
We have seen, in our time, a woman gifted with all those faculties which rejoice in the refinements of society, dispensing the elegant hospitalities of a bountiful home — joyful and giving joy. A sudden reverse has swept all this away; the wealth on which it was based has melted like a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen her with her little family beginning life again in the log-cabin of a Western settlement. We have seen her sitting in the door of the one room that took the place of parlour, bed-room, and nursery, cheerfully making her children’s morning toilette by the help of the one tin wash-bowl that takes the place of her well-arranged bathing and dressing-rooms; and yet, as she twined their curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a jest and cheerful word for all. The few morning-glories that she was training over her rude porch seemed as much a source of delight to her as her former green-house and garden; and the adjustment of the one or two shelves whereon were the half-dozen books left of the library, her husband’s private papers, and her own and her children’s wardrobes, was entered into daily with a zealous interest as if she had never known a wider sphere.
Such facility of accommodation to life’s reverses is sometimes supposed to be merely the result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament; in this case it was purely the work of religion. In early life, this same woman had been the discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with vain longings in the midst of real and substantial comfort, had felt even the creasing of the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable annoyance. Now she has resigned herself to the work and toil of life as the soldier does to the duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, enjoying with a free heart the small daily pleasures which spring up like wild-flowers amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking to the end of the campaign for rest and congenial scenes.
This woman has within her the powers and gifts of an artist; but her pencils and her colours are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour after hour darning her children’s stockings, and turning and arranging a scanty wardrobe which no ingenuity can make more than decent. She was a beautiful musician; but a musical instrument is now a thing of the past; she only lulls her baby to sleep with snatches of the songs which used to form the attraction of brilliant salons. She feels that a world of tastes and talents are lying dormant in her while she is doing the daily work of a nurse, cook, and seamstress; but she remembers WHO took upon Him the form of a servant before her, and she has full faith that her beautiful gifts, like bulbs sleeping under ground, shall come up and blossom again in that fair future which He has promised. Therefore it is that she has no sighs for the present or the past, — no quarrel with her life, or her lot in it; she is in harmony with herself and with all around her; her husband looks upon her as a fair daily miracle, and her children rise up and call her blessed.
But, having laid the broad foundation of faith in a better life, as the basis on which to ground our present happiness, we who are of the ideal nature must proceed to build thereon wisely.
In the first place, we must cultivate the duty of self-patience and self-toleration. Of all the religionists and moralists who ever taught, Fénelon is the only one who has distinctly formulated the duty which a self-educator owes to himself. HAVE PATIENCE WITH YOURSELF is a direction often occurring in his writings, and a most important one it is, — because patience with ourselves is essential if we would have patience with others. Let us look through the world. Who are the people easiest to be pleased, most sunny, most urbane, most tolerant? Are they not persons, from constitution and temperament, on good terms with themselves, — people who do not ask much of themselves or try themselves severely, and who, therefore, are in a good humour for looking upon others? But how is a person who is conscious of a hundred daily faults and errors to have patience with himself? The question may be answered by asking, What would you say to a child who fretted, scolded, dashed down his slate, and threw his book on the floor, because he made mistakes in his arithmetic? You would say, of course, “You are but a learner; it is not to be expected that you will not make mistakes; all children do. Have patience.” Just as you would talk to that child, talk to yourself. Be reconciled to a lot of inevitable imperfection; be content to try continually, and often to fail. It is the inevitable condition of human existence, and is to be accepted as such. A patient acceptance of mortifications and of defeats of our life’s labour is often more efficacious for our moral advancement than even our victories.
In the next place, we must school ourselves not to look with restless desire to degrees of excellence in any department of life which circumstances evidently forbid our attaining. For a woman with plenty of money and plenty of well-trained servants to be content to have fly-specked windows, or littered rooms, or a slovenly-ordered table, is a sin. But in a woman in feeble health, encumbered with a flock of restless little ones, and whose circumstances allow her to keep but one servant, it may be a piece of moral heroism to shut her eyes on many such things, while securing mere essentials to life and health. It may be a virtue in her not to push neatness to such lengths as to wear herself out, or to break down her only servant, and to be resigned to have her tastes and preferences for order, cleanliness, and beauty crossed, as she would resign herself to any other affliction. No purgatory can be more severe to people of a thorough and exact nature than to be so situated that they can only half do everything they undertake; yet such is the fiery trial to which many a one is subjected. Life seems to drive them along without giving them time for anythin
g; everything is a ragged, hasty performance, of which the mind most keenly sees and feels the raggedness and hastiness. Even one thing done as it really ought to be done, would be a rest and refreshment to the soul; but nowhere, in any department of its undertakings, is there any such thing to be perceived.
But there are cases where a great deal of wear and tear can be saved to the nerves by a considerate making up of one’s mind as to how much, in certain circumstances, had better be undertaken at all. Let the circumstances of life be surveyed, the objects we are pursuing arranged and counted, and see if there are not things here and there that may be thrown out of our plans entirely, that others may be better executed.
What if the whole care of expensive table luxuries, like cake and preserves, be thrown out of a housekeeper’s budget, in order that the essential articles of cookery may be better prepared? What if ruffling, embroidery, and the entire department of kindred fine arts be thrown out of her calculations in providing for the clothing of a family? Many a feeble woman has died of too much ruffling, as she patiently sat up night after night sewing the thread of a precious, invaluable life into elaborate articles which her children were none the healthier or more virtuous for wearing.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 529