To Miss Zoe Clayborn Artist
Concerning the Attentions of Married Men
I am sure, my dear niece, that you are a good and pure-minded girl, and that you mean to live a life above reproach, and I fully understand your rebellion against many of the conventional forms which are incompatible with the career of a "girl bachelor," as you like to call yourself. But let us look at the subject from all sides, while you are on the threshold of life, in the morning of your career, and before you have made any more serious mistakes than the one you mention.
For it was a mistake when you accepted Mr. Gordon's telephone message to lunch alone with him at a restaurant, even though you knew his wife might not object.
Mr. and Mrs. Gordon are happily married, parents of several children. They are broader and more liberal and more unselfish than most parents, and they went out of their path to extend courtesies to you, a young country girl—at first because you were my niece, then because they liked you personally.
When I first wrote Mrs. Gordon that you were to open a studio in Chicago after your course of study in the East, she expressed deep interest in you, and seemed anxious to have you consider her as a friend—always ready to act as a chaperon or adviser when you felt the need of wiser guidance than your own impulses.
Mrs. Gordon knew that your experience of the world was limited to a country village in the West, and two years' study at the Pratt Institute. While there she knew you boarded with a cousin of your mother's, and enjoyed the association and privileges of the daughters of the home.
To start alone in Chicago, and live in your studio, and dine from a chafing-dish, and sleep in an unfolded combination bureau and refrigerator—has more fascinations to your mind than to Mrs. Gordon's. She was reared in comfort, bordering on luxury, and while her early home life was not happy, she enjoyed all the refinements and all the privileges of protected girlhood.
She knows city life as you cannot know it, and, although she discards many of the burden—some conventions of society, she realizes the necessity of observing some of its laws.
She wanted you to feel that you had the background of a wholesome home, and the protection of clean, well-behaved married friends in your exposed situation; her attitude to you is just what she would want another woman to hold toward her daughter, were she grown up and alone in a large city.
You have been her guest, and she has been your good friend. Mr. Gordon admired you from the first, and that was a new incentive for this most tactful and liberal of wives to befriend you. She always cultivates the women he likes.
This is excellent policy on the part of a wife. If the husband has any really noble qualities or possesses a sterling character, he will appreciate and respect his wife's confidence, and never violate it; and added to this, he will usually become disillusioned with the women he has admired from a distance, when he sees them frequently at too close range.
A wife can make no greater mistake than trying to fence her husband about and obtruding high walls between him and the women he admires. Far better bring them near and turn on the calcium light.
Mr. Gordon is a born lover of the fair sex, a born gallant. He is, at the same time, a clean, self-respecting man. But he has grown a trifle selfish and a bit vain of late years.
He does not fully realize what the interesting family of children he shows with such pride to his friends has meant to their mother.
It has not occurred to him that to be the mother of three children, the youngest one year old, after six years of married life, has required a greater outlay of all the mental, moral, and physical forces than has been demanded of their father.
He is a good husband,—yet he is not the absolutely unselfish and liberal and thoughtful husband that Mrs. Gordon is wife.
If she seemed to you at all nervous, or less adaptable to your moods than he, you should stop and consider the many causes which might have led to this condition.
You are young, handsome, gifted, and unconventional, and all these things appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, and more than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend your knowledge of human nature.
You say your ambition is to know the world thoroughly,—that it will aid your art.
I think that is true, if you do not pass the border-line and lose your ideals and sacrifice your principles. Once you do that, your art will lose what it can never regain.
And remember this, my dear girl, no human being ever lived or ever will live who gained anything worth having by sacrificing the golden rule. In your search for knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with human nature, keep that motto ever before your soul's sight, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
You say Mr. Gordon said or did nothing in that tête-à-tête luncheon his wife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirely about you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoided any reference to his wife and children, surprised you.
And now you are wondering if you did wrong to accept this invitation. Never accept invitations of any kind from married men, unless the wife or some member of the family is included.
No matter how willing the wife may be to have you enjoy her husband's company, avoid tête-à-tête situations with benedicts.
You say you are not egotistical enough to imagine Mr. Gordon had any hidden motive for wanting to be alone with you, or for seemingly forgetting in his conversation that he was a husband and father. Yet I can see that in a measure it disillusioned you.
You do not ask a man to fling his wife and children at the head of each woman he meets, but you like him to recognize their existence.
You are a young, romantic girl seeking the ideal.
You want to find happy wives and husbands,—men and women who have sailed away from the Strands of Imagination to the more beautiful land of the Real, from whose shores they beckon you, saying: "Here is happiness and great joy. Come and join us, and feel no fear in flinging the illusions of youth behind you."
If married men only knew that is what young women are seeking,—if married women only knew that is what young men are seeking, what reconstruction would take place in the deportment of husbands and wives!
Never yet did a married woman indulge in flirtatious or sentimental converse with a bachelor without lowering herself and all women in his heart of hearts.
Never yet did a married man seem to forget his domestic ties in the presence of single women without losing a portion of their respect, however they may have been flattered by his attentions.
In every man's heart, in every woman's, is this longing to find husbands and wives who are satisfied and happy and proud, above all other things, of their loyalty.
It would be well for you to keep this fact before the minds of the men you meet. You can, in a small way, do your little toward educating on this subject the married men you encounter. And you can save yourself some embarrassing experiences.
It is no compliment to you if the husband of your friend, or a stranger, falls in love with you.
It is an easy matter for a young, attractive woman to infatuate irresponsible men.
It is a far greater compliment to you when women respect and trust you, and when you help elevate the ideals of weak men regarding your sex.
You can study the whole Encyclopedia of Manhood without breaking through the glass doors of your friend's bookcases. And you can live a free, unconventional life without sacrificing one principle, though you may ignore some customs. It is not the custom in conventional society for young women to go to theatres or dinners alone with young men. Yet I am perfectly willing you should join the large army of self-supporting, self-respecting, and well educated girls who do these things. You have been reared with that American idea of independence, and with that confidence in your ability to protect your virtue and good name, which carries the vast majority of our young women safely through all the vicissitudes of youth, and sends them chaste wives to the altar. Our American men understand this attitude of our girls, and half of them respect it, without being forced to, as the other half can be, if woman so wills.
There is no reason, to my thinking, why you should not enjoy the companionship of interesting bachelors and widowers, and take the courtesies they offer, with no chaperon but your own pride, taste, and will. So long as you know, and these men know, that you are doing nothing and going nowhere you need remember with shame or regret, the next day, just so long you are on no dangerous path.
But you must draw the line at married men, happy or unhappy. Any confidential, tête-à-tête companionship of a single woman with a married man cheapens her in the eyes of all other men and women.
It is a simpler matter to drift into free and easy manners and call them "bohemian" than to cleanse your reputation of their stain, or lift your mind from the mire to which they inevitably lead.
Once a woman begins to excuse her lawless conduct on the ground of her "artistic temperament," there are no depths to which she may not sink.
Take pride in being at once independent yet discreet; artistic, yet sensible; a student of men, yet an example of high-minded womanhood; an open foe to needless conventions, yet a staunch friend of principles; daring in methods, yet irreproachable in conduct; and however adored by men, worthy of trust by all women.
Do not take the admiration of men too seriously. Waste no vitality in a rage over their weaknesses and vices. Regard them with patience and inspire them to strive for a better goal than self-indulgence.
You can safely take it for granted that many who approach you with compliments for your charms, and pleas for your favours, would make the same advances to any other attractive girl they chanced to encounter.
Too many young women mistake a habit for a grand passion. And they forget, while they are studying man, that he is studying woman, and testing her susceptibility to flattery and her readiness to believe in his simulated infatuation.
Do not fall into the error of so many young country girls in a large city, and imagine you can establish new laws, create a new order of things, and teach men new lessons.
A great city is like an ever-burning fire,—the newcomers who thrust in their fingers will be scorched and scarred, but the fire will not be changed or extinguished.
Keep out of the fire.
There is no reason why you should scar yourself or smoke your garments while keeping comfortably warm.
To Mr. Charles Gordon
Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After Seven Years
of Married Life
I have read your letter with care. I can readily understand that you would not appeal to your wife's mother in this matter upon which you write me, as she has been the typical mother-in-law,—the woman who never gets along well with her children, and who never wants others to succeed where she fails. I recollect your telling me how she marred the wedding ceremony, by weeping and fainting, after having nagged her poor daughter during twenty years of life, and interfered with her friendships, through that peculiar jealousy which she misnamed "devoted love."
And now you are afraid that your wife is developing the same propensity, and you ask me to use my influence to cure her of it in its incipiency. You think I stand closer to Edna than any other friend.
"It is only during the last two or three years that Edna has shown this tendency," you say. "Until then she seemed to me the most sensible and liberal-minded of women, always admiring the people I liked, and even going out of her way to be courteous and cordial to a woman I praised. Of late she has seemed so different, and has often been sarcastic, or sulky, or hysterical, when I showed the common gallantries of a man fond of the society of ladies."
You think it is her inherited tendency cropping out, and that she is unconscious of it herself.
Well now permit me, my dear Mr. Gordon, to be very frank with you.
I met your wife only once before she married you.
She was a merry-hearted, healthy girl, with superb colour, and the figure of a young Venus. She was a belle, and much admired by many worth-while men.
During her honeymoon, she wrote me a most charming letter speaking of her happiness, and of her desire to make you an ideal wife.
You and Edna were my guests for a few days when your first child was a year old. She seemed more beautiful than ever, with an added spiritual charm, and you were the soul of devotion.
You are the type of man who pays a compliment as naturally as he breathes, and whose vision is a sensitive plate which retains an impression of every feminine grace. This impression is developed in the memory-room afterward, and framed in your conversation.
The ordinary mind calls such a man a flirt, or, in common parlance, "a jollier;" but I know you to be merely appreciative of womankind in general, while your heart is beautifully loyal to its ideal. You are a clean, wholesome man, who could not descend to intrigue. You are fine-looking, and you possess a gift in conversing.
Of course women are attracted to you. Edna was proud of this fact, and seemed to genuinely enjoy your popularity.
That was five years ago.
One year ago I visited your home. Edna was the mother of three children, born during the first five years of marriage.
She had sacrificed her bloom to her babies, and was pallid and anaemic. Her form had lost its exquisites curves, and she seemed years older than her age-older indeed than you, although she is four years your junior. It is a mere incident to be a father of three children. It is a lifetime experience to be their mother. She had developed nerves, and tears came as readily as laughter came of old.
She was devoted to her children, and felt a deep earnestness regarding her responsibility as a mother. But she was still the intensely loving wife, while you had sunk your rôle of lover-husband in that of adoring father.
You did not seem to think of Edna's delicate state of health, or notice her fading beauty. You regarded her as a faithful nurse for your children, and whenever you spoke of her it was as the mother, not as the sweetheart and wife.
When I mentioned the drain upon a woman's vitality to bring three robust children into life in five years, you said it was only a "natural function," and referred to the old-time families of ten and twelve children. Your grandmother had fourteen, you said, and was the picture of health at seventy-five.
My own grandmother gave ten children to the world. But we must recollect how different was the environment in those days.
Our grandmothers lived in the country, and knew none of the strain and excitement of these modern times. The high pressure of social and financial conditions, as we know them, the effort to live up to the modern standards, the congested city life and the expensive country life, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our women than our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of the care and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesome country fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly that they can only whirl around and around and attend "to business," and all the care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nurses and governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry to the wife.
You assured me Edna had all the assistants in caring for her children she wanted, but you did not realize that every paid employé in a household is, as a rule, just so much more care to the mistress, not less than a tax on the husband's purse and, consequently, on his time.
What Edna craves is your love, your attention, your sympathy, not the service of paid domestics. She wants you to notice her fading bloom, and to take her in your arms and say, tenderly, "Little girl, we must get those old roses back. And we must go away for a new honeymoon, all alone, and forget every care, even if we forget the babies for a few days."
One little speech like that, one little outing like that, would do more toward driving away the demon of jealousy than all I could by a thousand sermons and homilies.
I remember at your own board you made me uncomfortable talking about my complexion, which you chose to say was "remarkable for a woman of my age." And then you proceeded to describe some wonderful beauty you had seen at the Country Club the day previous, and all the time I saw the tears hidden back under the lids of Edna's tired eyes, and a hurt look on her pale face. Do you imagine she was jealous of your compliment to me? or of your praise of the girl's beauty at the Country Club?
No, no, my dear Mr. Gordon, I know Edna too well to accuse her of such petty feelings. She was only hurt at your lack of taste in accenting her own lost bloom by needlessly emphasizing another's possession of what had once been hers.
Yet she called upon the young lady that very day and invited her to luncheon, and even then you indulged in pronounced admiration of the guest's cheeks, gallantly requesting your wife to have the bouquet of carnation pinks removed from the table, as they were so shamed by the complexions of the ladies.
Of course it was gracefully worded in the plural, but your pallid wife could not claim her share of it, and you should have realized the fact. And the reason she could not was that she had sacrificed her health in your service, in giving your children to you, and in losing her lover.
She adores her splendid babies, but she is still a woman and a wife,—though you seem to ignore that she is anything but a mother.
Right about face, Mr. Gordon, and become the lover you were, and jealousy will be driven from your threshold.
It is your own lack of thoughtfulness, your own tactless and tasteless methods with your wife, which have caused the change in her manner. She is not jealous, she is only lonely, heart-hungry, disillusioned.
You are less noble, less considerate, less tender, less sympathetic than she believed. For the man to whom these adjectives can be applied will guard, love, and cherish the wife of his youth, and the mother of his children, before all other considerations; and he will understand how sensitive a fading wife may be, and not confound that sensitiveness with ignoble jealousy.
It is you, Charles Gordon, who must cure your wife of nerves, hysteria, and incipient jealousy, not I.
To Mrs. Clarence St. Claire
Concerning Her Husband
I am sorry that your matrimonial barque meets so many rough winds while hardly out of Honeymoon Bay.
Clarence and you seemed so deeply in love when I last saw you, six months after your wedding, that I had hoped all might go well with you.
I knew the disposition of Clarence to be tainted with jealousy, but hoped you would be able to eradicate it from his nature.
You know his poor mother suffered agonies from the infidelities of his father before Clarence was born. She had married a handsome foreigner with whom she was desperately enamoured, while he cared only for the fortune she brought him.
While still in the full light of the honeymoon he began to indulge in flirtations and amours, and poor Clarence, during the important prenatal period of life, received the mark of suspicion and the tendency to hypersensitiveness which then dominated the mother.
By the time Elise was born she had passed through the whole process, and was passive and indifferent.
I cannot help a sensation of amusement, even in face of the condition you describe (which is little short of tragic), as I recall the letter Clarence wrote begging me to try and prevent, by fair means or foul, his sister's marriage to old Mr. Volney.
That was two years before you and Clarence were married.
Elise, we all know, wedded for the money and position Mr. Volney gave, in return for her young beauty.
Clarence and you were ideal lovers, seeing nothing in the world outside of your own selves.
Yet Elise is quite contented, and Mr. Volney uses what little brain he has left to exult over his possession of such a beautiful young wife.
Elise upholds his dignity and flatters him into a belief that he is a great philanthropist and a social power, and in this way she has the handling of his millions, which is her idea of happiness. She travels, entertains, and poses for photographs and paintings in imported gowns, and there is no rumour of discontent or divorce.
Meanwhile, Clarence, who was so opposed to her marriage because it was loveless, is making a mess of his own love-match, through his jealousy.
You, who knew him to be insanely jealous as a lover, and who seemed to be flattered with what you thought a proof of his devotion, appeal to me now to know what to do with the husband who is destroying your love and your happiness! Surely, if Elise knew of this she might well say, "He laughs best who laughs last."
I know that you were absorbed in Clarence for the first year of your married life, and that you gave no least cause for any jealousy, and I know, as you say, that even then he was often morbid and unhappy over nothing at all.
He was jealous even of girl friends and relatives, and if you attended a matinée with one of them, he sulked the whole evening.
This was little more than he did as a lover, and you should have begun in those days to reason him out of such moods.
You imagined then it was his mad love for you which caused his unreasonable jealousy.
But jealousy is self-love, and selfishness lies at the root of such conditions of mind as his.
A woman should say to a man who sulks or goes into tantrums when she pays courteous attentions to relatives or acquaintances, "You are lowering my ideal of you—I cannot love a man who will indulge such unworthy moods. You insult my womanhood and doubt my principles by your suspicions; you intimate that I have neither truth, or judgment, or pride. You must conquer yourself, and learn to trust me and to believe in me, or I must decide I am no woman for you to take as a life companion." A man should take the same course toward a jealous sweetheart or wife.
A few quiet but firm assertions of this nature, when you were being wooed, would have given Clarence an idea that he could lose you, and that he was making himself ridiculous in your eyes. Instead, you boasted to your friends how wildly infatuated he was, and Clarence took new pride in his own blemish of character.
Now that you have to live day, and night, and week, and month, and year, with this trait, it seems a less romantic phase of devotion, I fancy. But you are not wise to grow reckless and ignore the wishes of your husband in all ways, because he is unreasonable. "Since he is so absolutely impossible to please," you say, "I may as well please myself. I have decided to take some of the liberties so many of my acquaintances do, and enjoy life outside my home if I cannot enjoy it within."
Then you proceed to tell me how more than half your associates drive, lunch, and dine with men acquaintances, and how old-fashioned they consider your scruples. And you tell me that, despite your rectitude, Clarence insults you almost daily by his unreasoning jealousy of men, women, and even children.
"I have about made up my mind to be less prudish and enjoy myself, as I am sure Clarence cannot be any more jealous than he is," you say.
Now since you have asked my advice in the matter, I can only urge you to reconsider this last determination.
So long as you are, according to law and in the eyes of the world, the wife of a man, you cannot escape comment if you are frequently seen in public places alone with another.
Were you to look into the hearts of other men who ask you to dine, drive, or lunch alone with them, you would find a feeling of increased respect when you decline, although they may show only disappointment on the surface. I know that many wives of unblemished reputation accept courtesies of this kind from masculine friends, and I of course understand that circumstances may arise which make an occasional acceptance proper.
But the fewer such occasions, the better and the safer for the married woman. The man who is perfectly willing his wife should appear frequently in public with other men does not fully appreciate the dignity of her position or his own, or else he has lost his love for her.
The fact that your husband is jealous without reason is no excuse for giving him reason. The moment men know that a husband is inclined to jealousy, he falls in their estimation, and they are seized with a desire to aggravate him, while they sympathize with the wife.
The sympathetic friend of the abused wife is a dangerous companion for her. He may mean to be platonic and kind, but almost invariably he becomes sentimental and unsafe.
Once in a thousand times the absolutely happy wife of a husband she respects as well as loves can enjoy a platonic friendship with a man who respects her, and himself, and her husband. But even that situation is liable to prove insecure, if they are much together, owing to the selfishness and weakness of human nature when the barriers of convention are removed.
But the unhappy wife must take no chances with Fate.
She must either decide to accept her lot and bear it with philosophy, or escape from it and begin life over, after the courts have given her the right to reconstruct her destiny.
You know all that entails. It is not a pleasant process.
If your love for your husband is entirely dead, and you feel that he has forfeited all right to your sympathy, pity, or patience, then break the fetters and go free. But if you feel that you are not ready for that ordeal, and that you must still remain living under the same roof with him, and continue to bear his name, then do not join the great army of wives who are to be seen in public restaurants and hotels dining tête-à-tête with "platonic friends" over emptied glasses.
You can but make trouble for yourself and add to the misery of your husband by such a course. In your particular case, I feel that your knowledge of the jealous disposition of the man you married renders it your duty to bear and forbear, and to try every method of reformation before you resort to the very common highway of divorce as an exit from your unhappiness.
A woman has no right to complain of the fault in a husband which she condoned in a lover. And a man has no right to complain of the fault in a wife he condoned in a sweetheart. Yet both may strive to correct that fault.
Insist upon having women and men friends who can be received at your home in presence of your husband. Make Clarence realize how he belittles himself in your estimation by unreasoning jealousy. Give him to understand that you want to love him and respect him, and that you have no intention of lowering your standard of behaviour, because he is constantly expecting you to. Tell him it mortifies you to find greater pleasure away from him than in his presence, yet when he insults you with his suspicions, and destroys your comfort with his moods, you can no longer think of him as your girlhood's ideal.
Ask him to try, for your sake, to use more common sense and self-control in this matter, and to help you to restore the happiness which seems flying from your wedded lives.
Do nothing to aggravate or irritate him, but do not give up your friends of either sex; this is but to increase his inclination to petty tyranny, while it will in no sense lessen his jealousy.
And when you are alone, endeavour to think of him always as sensible, reasonable, and kind.
By your mental picture you can help to cure him of the blight he received before his birth. It is the task set many a wife, to counteract the errors and neglect of mothers.
Look to the Divine source for help in your work, and remember the lovely qualities Clarence possesses when he is not under the ban of this prenatal mark.
Love him out into the light if you can—and I believe you can if you are not too soon discouraged.
It is a nobler effort to try and create in your husband the ideal you have in your mind, than to go seeking him elsewhere.
Be patient and wait awhile. Such love as you and Clarence felt in your courtship and early marriage cannot so soon have died. It is only sleeping, and suffering from a nightmare. Awaken it to life and reality and happiness.
To Young Mrs. Duncan
Regarding Mothers-in-Law
And so the serpent has appeared in your Eden, attired in widow's weeds, and talking the usual jargon of "devoted mother love." I do not like to say I told you so, but you must remember our rather spirited discussion of this very serpent, when you announced your engagement and said Mr. Duncan's mother was to make her home with you after your return from abroad.
I had met Mrs. Duncan, and I knew her type all too well. Alfred is her only child, and she adores him, naturally, but it is adoration so mingled with selfishness and tyranny that it is incapable of considering the welfare of its object.
Mrs. Duncan was always jealous of any happiness which came to her son through another source than herself. That type of mother love is to be encountered every day, and that type of mother believes herself to be the most devoted creature on earth; while the fact is, she sits for ever in the boudoir of her mentality, gazing at her own reflection. She loves her children because they also reflect herself, and is incapable of unselfish pleasure in their happiness apart from her.
You will remember I urged you to wait until you could have a home, however humble, alone with your husband, and even at the cost of that most undesirable condition, a long engagement.
But you assured me with much spirit that you had every confidence in your power to win Mrs. Duncan's heart, and to crown her declining years with peace and happiness.
As well talk of decking a porcupine with wreaths of flowers, and making it a household pet, to coddle and caress.
When I congratulated Mrs. Duncan on her son's engagement to such a sweet, bright girl as my cousin, she assumed a martyr expression and said, "She hoped he would be happy, even if her own heart must suffer the pain of losing an only son."
"But," I urged, "he really adds to your life by bringing you the companionship of a lovely daughter. My cousin will, I am sure, prove such to you."
"I have no doubt your cousin is a most estimable girl," Madame Duncan answered, with dignity, "but I have never yet felt the need of any close companion save my son. You, having no children, are excusable for not understanding my feelings, now when another claims his thoughts."
"Yet the world is maintained by such occurrences," I replied. "You took some mother's son, or you would not have had your own."
With austere self-righteousness Mrs. Duncan corrected me.
"I married an orphan," she said.
"How thoughtful of you," I responded. "But you see it is not lack of thought, only an accident of fate, which has prevented my cousin from marrying an orphan. There are not enough desirable orphans to keep our young women supplied with husbands, you know."
I think Mrs. Duncan suspected me of covert sarcasm, for she changed the topic of conversation. But I heard her afterward talking to a bevy of women on the sorrow of giving up a child after having reared him to manhood's estate, and her listeners all seemed duly sympathetic.
Of course, my dear Ruth, there is an element of sadness in the happiest of marriages for the parents of children. I think it is particularly sad when a mother gives up a daughter, whose every thought she has shared, and whose every pleasure she has planned, and sees her embark upon the uncertain ocean of marriage, with a strange pilot at the helm.
The really good and loving mother endears herself to that pilot, and loves him and seeks his affection for her daughter's sake. She hides her own sorrow in her heart, and does not shadow her daughter's voyage by her repining.
The man who is worthy of a good girl's love will understand what it must mean to a mother to give her daughter to him, and he will in every way seek to recompense her for her loss, by bestowing upon her sympathy, courteous attentions, and a son's devotion.
Just so will the girl, who is worthy of being a good man's wife, seek to make his mother love her.
I know how you have tried to win Mrs. Duncan's heart. I know your amiable, sweet disposition, and your unselfishness and tact, and I know how you failed.
I can imagine your feelings when you overheard Mrs. Duncan say to a caller that she was going to leave your house and take rooms elsewhere, as she could not endure your "billing and cooing."
Do you know, Ruth, that nearly all the trouble between mothers-and daughters-in-law is due to vanity and jealousy.
Fifty mothers are friends to their daughters' husbands where one is a friend to her son's wife. That is because, wholly unconsciously to herself, the mother resents another woman sharing the attention of a man she loves. The fact that he is her son, and that the love he gives his wife is a wholly different sentiment, does not prevent blind, unreasoning jealousy from dominating her nature.
Mrs. Duncan wants to stand always in the centre of the stage, with every other woman in the play in the background.
It is a most pathetic situation for a man,—this position between a wife and a jealous mother. My heart always aches for the man in the case even more than for the woman who is misused.
All young men are reared to think mother-love the most unselfish and wonderful devotion on earth, even in the face of facts which so often prove it otherwise; and when a son sees his mother unhappy he is inclined to make every possible excuse for her, because he feels that to take issue against her will put him in a false light before the whole established order of society, and that he will beat his head against traditions wherever he turns.
So, he ofttimes tries to conciliate the wife he has promised to cherish, and to convince her that she may exaggerate matters, and that she may even be the aggressor, and then he finds himself standing between two raging fires, with no escape save through flames, and over hot fagots, which will leave him scarred for life.
Sometimes the wife is in the wrong. Sometimes a man marries a woman who is so narrow and so selfish and so jealous that she begrudges the husband's mother her son's affection. But I must affirm that, in my observation of humanity, I have seen but one such wife, where I have seen ten jealous and unreasonable mothers.
And with what pleasure and admiration I recall the few beautiful and noble mothers-in-law I have known! I can count them on the fingers of one hand without including the thumb. I mean mothers of sons.
There are just four whom I can recall. They really loved their sons, and loved whatever and whoever gave those sons happiness.
One mother objected to her son's choice before marriage, and tried vainly to convince him that he had made a mistake. But after his marriage she took the girl into her heart, made her a companion and friend, and when the son began to discover her glaring faults, she told him to be patient and wait, and that all would be well. Instead of saying, "I told you so," she said, "Your wife is young, and has had no wise hand to guide her. You married her for love, and if you exercise the love-spirit, and are patient and self-controlled in your treatment of her, she will overcome these faults which annoy you."
And day by day she called his attention to the pleasing qualities the girl possessed, and by praise, tact, love, and sympathy bridged over the threatened chasm.
The couple live happily together to-day, thanks to the mother-in-law. Oh, that there were more such mothers of sons!
Be as patient and sweet as you can, dear Ruth, toward Mrs. Duncan; think how difficult the situation is for your husband, and say or do nothing to make it harder for him. But allow Mrs. Duncan to live by herself, and, if need be, bear many privations cheerfully that she may do so, and that you may have your own home in peace. Every wife is entitled to that, and if she has made every possible effort which love and tact can make to cast the seven devils of jealousy out of her mother-in-law, and they still remain, it is for the general welfare that two separate households exist.
When a son has done all he can in reason to make his mother happy, save to turn against the wife he has promised to cherish, he is a cad and a weakling if he does the latter. He must learn that it is a larger duty to be a just man than to be an obedient son.
I am sure Mr. Duncan will have the character and judgment to do what is right in this matter.
To a Young Man
Ambitious for Literary Honours
Your achievements in college, where you distinguished yourself in rhetoric and literature, would justify you in thinking seriously of a career as an author.
And the fact that your father wishes you to take charge of his brokerage business, and to relinquish your literary aspirations, should not deter you from carrying out your ambitions.
Prom your mother you inherit a mind and temperament which wholly unfit you for the pursuits your father follows and enjoys. You are no more suited to make a successful broker than he is fitted to write an Iliad.
Try and make him understand this, and try and convince him that to yield to his wishes in this matter, means the sacrifice of your tastes, the waste of your talents, and the destruction of your happiness.
If he cannot be convinced by your consistent and respectful arguments, then you must quietly, but firmly, refuse to accept a career distasteful to you.
No parent has a right to drive a child into so undesirable a path for life as this would prove to one of your nature.
Your father would think the horticulturist insane, who took a delicate fern and planted it in arid soil, on a hilltop, far from shade, and expected it to thrive and bear blossoms like the cactus.
Yet this would be no more unreasonable, than to expect a son of your temperament and inclinations to be happy and successful in Wall Street.
It is a curious study to watch parents, and to observe their utter lack of knowledge regarding a child's nature and capabilities; and to find them not only ignorant in those important matters, but unwilling to be enlightened.
You say it makes your father angry to have any one refer to your literary talents.
I remember when your father bred race-horses, and how proud he was that a two-year-old colt showed traits and points noticeably like its high-priced dam.
He chose for your mother, a woman of rare mind, and of poetic taste, and why should he not be proud and glad that his son resembles her? When will fathers learn that sons are more frequently like their mothers, and daughters like their fathers, than otherwise?
The temporary dissatisfaction of your father is not so sad to contemplate as your own lifelong disappointment if you accede to his wishes in this matter.
Each individual has a right to choose his own career in life, so long as that career is respectable and bodes no evil to humanity.
If, as your father threatens, he refuses to give you support while you are exploring the field of literature, you should feel grateful to him for this unintentional incentive to success.
I do not agree with those who consider the necessity to earn money a misfortune to genius.
I believe the greatest works of art given to the world have been brought to light through necessity.
The artistic temperament is almost invariably combined with a propensity to dream, and to float upon the clouds of imagination.
The ranks of wealth and comfort are full of talented and accomplished people who "never are, but always to be" great.
One great man in a score may have been reared in affluence, but I doubt if the statistics would show so large a percentage.
There are many hills which contain valuable ore, but if the owner sits in ease upon these elevations, and gazes at the sunsets, he does not find the ore. If he is a poor man, and takes his pick and digs, he finds his fortune.
At first he may cast out only loose earth and stones, but by this very necessity to find valuables, he continues to search until the ore is reached.
Were you to remain at home and enjoy all the benefits of your father's wealth, I doubt if you would have the persistence to dig down into the mine you possess within you.
You would sit on the hilltop and dream.
If you are forced to write to live, you may cast up some rubbish from the surface; yet by the continual digging you will reveal all that lies below.
Regarding the style you speak of adopting, let your feeling come first, your style of expressing that feeling second. Say nothing merely to exhibit your style—and hold back some strong feelings until you can give them the best expression.
As to the methods of getting your work before the public and the "influence" you need, I can only assure you that unless you write with purpose, and power, and passionate enjoyment of your art, forgetful of all things save your desire to express yourself, no influence on earth can do more than give you a page in a magazine, or a column in a newspaper for an occasion or two. And if you do write under those conditions, you will need no influence: for it is just such writing the world wants; and the editors and publishers will be forced to read you, whether they are inclined to or not.
Christopher Columbus found his continent because he was so determined, so persistent, so certain that unknown lands awaited him.
It made no difference who told him that all the earth had been discovered, and that he would never be able to succeed in his wild venture. His purpose was too strong to be influenced by the doubts of others.
It has always seemed to me that God would have made a continent to reward such a search, had it not already existed.
Unless you set forth on the sea of literature, with the spirit of a Columbus in your soul, you may as well give up the idea of finding the Port of Glory. If you do set forth with that spirit, you need ask no mortal influence.
God is the only influence genius needs.
Perseverance the only method.
To find the way to success alone, is the test of talent.
Some influential author might give you the entreé once to a magazine. But editors and publishers are men of purely business instincts, and they will not accept work on the recommendation of any third party, which they think their public will not like. Their constant effort is to find what that public does like, and the unknown author has an equal advantage with the genius, if he sends such material.
An author once told me that he "trapped" twenty manuscripts and sent them out to editors, and all came back unread, as his "trap" proved.
Since he sent them forth with such doubts in his mind, it is no wonder his trap succeeded and his manuscripts failed.
No great literary fire of purpose could be in the mind of a man who spent thought and time on such a plot to trick an editor. And because there was no great flame, the inanimate manuscripts were returned unread. For even a package of paper sends out its "aura," and invites or repels attention.
If you are discouraged by the people who tell you that "everything has been written," and that you can only be a faint echo of greater souls, then you do not deserve success. I have no doubt the croakers of that day told Shakespeare the same.
It seems that Shakespeare did take many old themes and other people's plots and ideas to re-create in his own way. And what a way! Surely he who best uses an idea is most entitled to the credit.
There is nothing new under the sun, but there is always the new audience. For the majestic old poem of Spring, bound over in new covers of green, God creates fresh, eager young eyes and hearts each year. And not yet has he said to the year, "Do not attempt another spring—there have been so many before, you can but repeat their beauties." Then why should any mortal say to the poet or the author, "Do not try to write—it has all been said before."
Proceed, my young friend, and write what is in your heart. Nothing quite the same was ever in any heart before, and yet the greater part of it has been in all hearts, and will be in all hearts, so long as the world lasts.
Remember that when you write from the heart, it will go to the hearts of your readers: and when you write from your head it will go no lower than the head.
And if the critics score or ridicule you, consider yourself on the path to success.
If you have a message for the world, nothing and nobody can prevent you from delivering it.
He only fails who has nothing to say.