The case of the only child seems to ask a word of kindness here. At the best, the case of the only child is a somewhat mournful one,—somewhat forlorn,—because it is unnatural. If it is unnatural for a multitude of children of the same age to herd together in an Infant school, it is at least as much so for a little creature to live alone among people with full-grown brains, and all occupied with the pursuits and interests of mature life. It is very well for the father to romp with his child at spare times, and for the mother to love it with her whole heart, and sympathise with it, with all the sympathy that such love can inspire. This is all well: but it does not make them children,—nor, therefore, natural companions for a child. In this case, above all others, it is desirable that the child should be sent to school, when old enough: and especially if the only one be a boy. A good day school, where play is included, may do much to obviate the disadvantages of the position. If this cannot be done, it is really hardly to be hoped that mischief will not be done on the one side or the other,—of too much or too little attention and sympathy. Some may wonder at the idea of the only child being in danger of having too little sympathy from its parents: but such cases are very conceivable and are occasionally witnessed. If everybody sees how an only child,—the light and charm of the house, the idol of the mother, and the pet of everybody, must unavoidably become of too much importance in its own eyes, and suffer accordingly,—who should feel this so anxiously and constantly as the conscientious parents of an only child? and what is more probable than that, in their anxiety not to spoil the mind they have under their charge, they should carry the bracing system somewhat too far, and depress the child by giving it less fostering and sympathy than it needs? They would not, for its own sake, have it troublesome to their friends, or self-important, or selfish; and they keep it back. But alas! if put back, the little thing is driven into loneliness; and children are not made for loneliness, in any but a desert life. Give a child the desert to rove in, with brown sheep to tend, and a young camel to play with, and rocks and weeds, and springs and stars and shrubby palms to live amongst, and he may make a very pleasant life of it, all alone; but not if he lives in a street, and must not go out alone, and passes his life among square rooms and stair-cases, and the measured movements of grown-up people. An only child must be troublesome, as long as he is a child. He craves play, and sympathy, and constant companionship: and he cannot do without them—he must not be required to do without them. If he is not sent to school, grown people must be his companions and playfellows,—the victims to his restlessness; and he must be troublesome.—The case is nearly the same,—only somewhat less desperate,—with a girl. Her parents cannot, if they have eyes, hearts, or consciences, see her pine. They must either provide her with natural companionship, or they must let themselves and their friends be appropriated by her as companions, till she grows up into fitness to be a companion to them.—It is not included in this necessity that there should be selfishness of temper and manners. The more fully and naturally the needs of the social nature are met and supplied, the less is the danger of this kind arising from peculiarity of position.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CONCLUSION.
Is there any other department of Household Education than those on which I have touched? No one can be more aware than I am of the scantiness of what I have said, when compared with the vastness of the range and of the importance of the subject. I could only, as I declared at the beginning, tell a little of what I have seen and thought of the training of families in private life: but, admitting the meagre character of the whole, is there any one department left untouched? I am not aware of any that could be treated of in a volume for general reading.
Some may, perhaps, ask for a chapter on Social Habits: and an important subject it truly is. But it appears to me to be included in that of Family Habits and Manners. The same simplicity and ingenuousness, the same respect and kindliness, the same earnestness and cheerfulness, which should pervade the conduct and manners in the interior of the household are the best elements of conduct and manners in the world. I see no discretion and no grace which is needed in wider social intercourses that is not required by those of home. To the parents there may be some anxiety and uneasiness when their sons and daughters make intimacies out of the house. The warm friendships of youth may not perhaps be such as the parents would have chosen. They may be such as surprise and disappoint the parents. But the very fact of the surprise and disappointment should show them that there is something more in the matter than they understand or should seek to control. They cannot control the sympathies of any one; and no one being can fully understand the affinities which exist between others. The points to be regarded are clear enough: and when the best is done that can be done, the rest may be left without anxiety.
The main point is to preserve the full confidence of the young people. If perfect openness and the utmost practicable sympathy be maintained, all must be safe. Young people must win their own experience. They must find out character for themselves: they must try their own ground in social life; they must be self-convicted of the prejudices and partialities which belong to their immaturity; and, while their own moral rectitude and their ingenuous confidence in their parents subsist, they can take no permanent harm from casual associations which may be far from wise. The parents should remember too how very important a part of the training of each individual is of a kind which the parents have nothing to do with but to witness, and to have patience with, as a piece of discipline to themselves.
As has been observed before, there seems to be a fine provision in human nature for rectifying home tendencies which would otherwise be too strong, and for supplying the imperfections of home experience by the process which takes place,—the revolution of moral tastes which ensues,—upon the introduction of young people into a wider circle than that of home. The parents have naturally,—unavoidably,—laid the most stress in the training of their children on those qualities which are strongest in themselves, and slight, more or less, such as they disregard, or are conscious of not excelling in themselves. When the young people go out into the world, they are struck by the novel beauty of virtues in full exercise which they have seen and heard but little of, and fall in love with them, and with those who possess them, and, with a fresh enthusiasm, cherish them in themselves. Thus it is that we so often see whole families of young people becoming characterised by the virtues in which their parents are most deficient; and also, as a consequence, by the faults which are the natural attendants of those virtues. I have seen a case of parents, indulgent and faithful to their children, virulently censorious to the rest of the world;—the children, while wearing pinafores, disgusting from their gleeful gossip, picked up from the elders, scorning and quizzing everybody's thoughts and ways;—and those same children, when abroad in the world as men and women, growing first grave,—then just and fair,—then philosophical, and at last indulgent, as the truly philosophical must ever be. They preserved the keen insight into character and the movements of mind in which they had been trained at home, after first recognising, and then opening their hearts to the beauty of charity. I have seen the children of imprudent, lavish, and embarrassed parents turn out eminently correct in their management of money matters:—the children of an untidy mother turn out perfectly methodical;—the children of a too social father, remarkably retired and domestic; and so on. Very often the new and late virtue becomes too prominent, excluding the hereditary opposite qualities; and in that case, when these young people become parents, the same process takes place, and their children strongly resemble their grandparents. It is a curious spectacle,—that of such a moral oscillation;—and it is so common that every one may observe it. One of the pieces of instruction that it yields is to parents;—that they must now let Nature work, and take off their hands from meddling. They may themselves learn something if they will, in silence and sympathy, from the spectacle of the expansion of their children; and they may take the lesson into a light and easy heart if they have hitherto done their duty as well as they know how. There is nothing in what they see to hurt any but an improper pride: and they may make sure of an increased reverence and love from their children if they have the magnanimity to go hand in hand with them into new fields of moral exercise and enterprise, and to admit the beauty and desirableness of what they see.
Here we have arrived at the ultimate stage of Household Education,—that where the entire household advances together, in equal companionship, towards the great object of human existence, the perfecting of each individual in it. We set out with the view that the education of a household comprehended the training and discipline of all its members; and here we find ourselves at the same point again, amidst a great difference in the circumstances. They are no longer all under the same roof. One may be in the distant town; another in a far country; a third in the next street, but seen only on Sundays: but still they are one Household company, living in full confidence and sympathy, though their eyes may seldom meet, and a clasp of the hand may be a rare luxury. The mother who once received discipline from her child when he was a wailing infant, keeping her from her rest at midnight, receives another discipline from him now when she sees him in earnest pursuit of some high and holy aim whose nobleness had become somewhat clouded to her through the cares of the world, and her very solicitude for him. The father who had suffered perhaps too keenly from some gross faults of his thoughtless boys in their season of turbulence, receives from them now a new discipline—a rebuke full of sweetness,—in the proof they offer that he had distrusted Nature,—had failed in faith that she would do her work well, if only the way was duly kept open for her. There is a new discipline for them in the gradual contraction of the family circle, in the deepening quietness of the house, and in the loss of the little hourly services which the elderly people now think they hardly valued enough while they had them every hour. We can never say that any part of the discipline of life is over for any one of us; and that of domestic life is certainly not over for affectionate parents whose children are called away from their side, however unquestionable the call may be.
As for the younger generation of the household,—their education by their parents never ceases while the parents live: and the less assertion the parents make of this, the deeper are the lessons they impress. The deepest impressions received in life are supposed to be those imparted to the sensitive and tenacious mind of childhood: but the mature reverence and affection of a manly mind are excited more efficaciously than the emotions of childhood can ever be when the active men and women who were once the children of a household see their grey-haired parents in the midst of them looking up to Nature, and reaching after Truth and Right with the humble trust and earnest docility which spread the sweetest charm of youth over the countenance of age. However many and however rich are the lessons they have learned from their parents, assuredly, in such a case, the richest is the last.
THE END
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