My Wife and I. Harry Henderson's History
Well, we shall see.
I am provoked with what you tell me about the reports of my engagement to Mr. Sydney, and I tell you now once again "No, no." I told you in my last that I was not engaged, and I now tell you what is more that I never can, shall or will be engaged to him; my mind is made up, but how to get out of the net that is closing round me I don't see. I think all these things are "perplexing and disagreeable." If a girl wants to do the fair thing it is hard to know how. First you refuse outright, and then my lord comes as a friend. Will you only allow him the liberty to try and alter your feelings, and all that? You shall not be forced; he only wants you to get more acquainted, and the result is you go on getting webbed and meshed in day after day more and more. You can't refuse flowers and attentions offered by a friend; if you take them you may be quite sure they will be made to mean more. Mamma and Aunt Maria have a provoking way of talking about it constantly as a settled thing, and one can't protest from morning till night, apropos to every word. At first they urged me to receive his attentions; now they are saying that I have accepted so many I can't honorably withdraw. And so he doesn't really give me an opportunity to bring the matter to a crisis; he has a silent taking-for-granted air, that is provoking. But the law that binds our sex is the law of all ghosts and spirits; we can't speak till we are spoken to; meanwhile reports spread, and people say hateful things as if you were trying and failing. How angry that makes me! One is almost tempted sometimes to accept just to show that one can; but, seriously, dear Belle, this is wicked trifling. Marriage is an awful, a tremendous thing, and we of the church are without excuse if we go into it lightly or unadvisedly, and I never shall marry till I see the man that is my fate. I have what mamma calls domestic ideas, and I'm going to have them, and when I marry it shall be for the man alone, not a pieced up affair of carriages, horses, diamonds, opera boxes, cashmeres with a man, but a man for whom all the world were well lost; then I shall not be afraid of the church service which now stands between me and Mr. Sydney. I cannot, I dare not lie to God and swear falsely at the altar, to gain the whole world.
I wish you could hear our new rector. He is making a sensation among us. If the life he is calling on us all to live is the real and true one, we shall soon have to choose between what is called society, and the church; for if being a church-woman means all he says, one cannot be in it without really making religion the life's business – which, you know, we none of us do or have. Dear man, when I see him tugging and straining to get our old, sleepy, rich families into heavenly ways, I think of Pegasus yoked to a stone cart. He is all life and energy and enthusiasm, he breathes fire, and his wings are spread heavenward, but there's the old dead, lumbering cart at his heels! Poor man! – and poor cart too – for I am in it with the rest of the lumber!
We are in all the usual Spring agonies now about clothes. The house reverberates with the discussion of hats and bonnets, and feathers and flowers, and overskirts and underskirts, and all the paraphernalia – and what an absurd combination it makes with the daily services in Lent. Absurd? No —dreadful! for at church we are reading of our Saviour's poverty and fasting and agonies – what a contrast between his life and ours! Was it to make us such as we are that he thus lived and died?
Cousin Sophia is happy in her duties in the sisterhood. Her church life and daily life are all of a piece – one part is not a mockery of the other. There's Ida too – out of the church, making no profession of churchly religion, but living wholly out of this bustling, worldly sphere, devoted to a noble life purpose – fitting herself to make new and better paths for women. Ida has none of these dress troubles; she has cut loose from all. Her simple black dress costs incredibly less than our outfit – it is all arranged with a purpose– yet she always has the air of a lady, and she has besides a real repose, which we never do. This matter of dress has a thousand jars and worries and vexations to a fastidious nature; one wishes one were out of it.
I have heard that nuns often say they are more blessed than ever they were in the world, and I can conceive why, – it is a perfect and blissful rest from all that troubles ordinary women. In the first place, the marriage question. They know that they are not to be married, and it is a comfort to have a definite settlement of that matter. Then all agitations and fluctuations about that are over. In the next place, the dress question. They have a dress provided, put it on, and wear it without thought or inquiry; there is no room for thought, or use for inquiry. In the third place, the question of sphere and work is settled for them; they know their duties exactly; and if they don't, there is a director to tell them; they have only to obey. This must be rest – blissful rest.
I think of it sometimes, and wonder why it is that this dress question must smother us women and wear us out, and take our whole life and breath as it does! In our family it is perfectly fearful. If one had only one's self to please, it is hard enough – what with one's own fastidious taste, with dressmakers who never keep their word, and push you off at the last moment with abominable things; but when one has pleased one's self, then comes mamma, and then all the girls, every one with an opinion; and then when this gauntlet is run, comes Aunt Maria, more solemn and dictatorial than the whole – so that by the time anything gets really settled, one is so fatigued that life doesn't seem really worth having.
I told Mr. Henderson, in our little discussion last night, that I envied men because they had a chance to live a real, grand, heroic life, while we were smothered under trifles and common-places, and he said, in reply, that the men had no more chances in this way than we; that theirs was a life of drudgeries and detail; and that the only way for man or woman was to animate ordinary duties by a heroic spirit. He said that woman's speciality was to idealize life by shedding a noble spirit upon its ordinary trifles. I don't think he is altogether right. I still think the opportunities for a noble life are ten to one in the hands of men; but still there is a great deal in what he says. He spoke beautifully of the noble spirit shown by some women in domestic life. I thought perhaps it was his mother he was thinking of. He must have known some noble woman, for his eye kindled when he spoke about it.
How I have run on – and what a medley this letter is. I dare not look it over, for I should be sure to toss it into the fire. Write to me soon, dearest Bella, and tell me what you think of matters so far.
Your ever loving
Eva.CHAPTER XX.
I BECOME A FAMILY FRIEND
I have often had occasion to admire the philosophical justice of popular phrases. The ordinary cant phraseology of life generally represents a homely truth because it has grown upon reality like a lichen upon a rock. "Falling in love" is a phrase of this kind; it represents just that phenomenon which is all the time happening among the sons and daughters of Adam in most unforeseen times and seasons, and often when the subject least intends it, and even intends something quite the contrary.
The popular phrase "falling in love" denotes something that comes unexpectedly. One may walk into love preparedly, advisedly, with the eyes of one's understanding open; but one falls in love as one falls down stairs in a dark entry, simply because the foot is set where there is nothing for it to stand on, which I take to be a simile of most philosophical good resolutions.
I flattered myself at this period of my existence, that I was a thorough-paced philosopher; a man that had outlived the snares and illusions of youth, and held himself and all his passions and affections under most perfect control.
The time had not yet come marked out in my supreme wisdom for me to meditate matrimonial ideas: in the mean while, I resolved to make the most of that pleasant and convenient arbor on the Hill Difficulty which is commonly called Friendship.
Concerning this arbor I have certain observations to make. It is most commodiously situated, and commands charming prospects. We are informed of some, that on a clear day one can see from it quite plainly as far as to the Delectable Mountains. From my own experience I have no doubt of this fact. For a young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, not at present in circumstances to marry, what is more charming than to become the intimate friend in a circle of vivacious and interesting young ladies, in easy circumstances, who live in a palace surrounded by all the elegancies, refinements, and comforts of life?
More blissful still, if he be welcomed to these bowers of beauty by a charming and courteous mamma who hopes he will make himself at home, and assures him that they will treat him quite as one of the family. This means, of course, that perfect confidence is reposed in his discretion. He is labeled – "Safe." He is to gaze on all these charms, with a disinterested spirit, without a thought of personal appropriation. Of course he is not to stand in the way of eligible establishments that may offer, but meanwhile he can make himself generally agreeable and useful. He may advise the fair charmers as to their reading and superintend the cultivation of their minds; he may be on hand whenever an escort is needed to a party, he may brighten up dull evenings by reading aloud, and in short may be that useful individual that is looked on "quite as a brother, you know."
Young men who glide into this position in families, generally, I believe, enjoy it quite as much as the moth-millers who seem to derive such pleasure from the light and beat of the evening lamp, and with somewhat similar results. But though thousands of these unsophisticated insects singe their wings every evening, the thousand-and-first one comes to the charge with a light heart in his bosom, and quite as satisfied of his good fortune as I was when Mrs. Van Arsdel with the sweetest and most motherly tones said to me, "I know, Mr. Henderson, the lonely life you young men must lead when you first come to cities; you have been accustomed to the home circle, to mother and sisters, and it must be very dreary. Pray, make this a sort of home; drop in at any time, our parlors are always open, and some of us about; or if not, why, there are the pictures and the books, you know, and there is the library where you can write."
Surely it was impossible for a young man to turn away from all this allurement. It was the old classic story: —
"The mother Circe with the Syrens three,Among the flowery kirtled Naïdes."Mrs. Van Arsdel, as I said, was one of three fair sisters who had attained a great celebrity, in the small provincial town where they were born, for their personal charms. They were known far and near as the beautiful Miss Askotts. Their father was a man rather in the lower walks of life, and the fortunes of the family were made solely by the personal attractions of the daughters.
The oldest of these, Maria Askott, married into one of the so-called first New York families. The match was deemed in the day of it a very brilliant one. Tom Wouverman was rich, showy, and dissipated; and in a very few years ran through both with his property and constitution, and left his wife the task of maintaining a genteel standing on very limited means.
The second sister, Ellen, married Mr. Van Arsdel when he was in quite modest circumstances, and had been carried up steadily by his business ability to the higher circles of New York life. The third had married a rich Southern planter whose fortunes have nothing to do with my story.
The Van Arsdel household, like most American families, was substantially under feminine rule. Mr. Van Arsdel was a quiet, silent man, whose whole soul was absorbed in business, and who left to his wife the whole charge of all that concerned the household and his children.
Mrs. Van Arsdel, however, was under the control of her elder sister. There are born dictators as well as born poets. Certain people come into the world with the instinct and talent for ruling and teaching, and certain others with the desire and instinct of being taught and ruled over. There are people born with such a superfluous talent for management and dictation that they always, instinctively and as a matter of course, arrange not only their own affairs but those of their friends and relations, in the most efficient and complete manner possible. Such is the tendency of things to adaptation and harmony, that where such persons exist we are sure to find them surrounded by those who take delight in being guided, who like to learn and to look up. Such a domestic ruler was Mrs. Maria Wouverman, commonly known in the Van Arsdel circle as "Aunt Maria," a name of might and authority anxiously interrogated and quoted in all passages of family history.
Now the fact is quite striking that the persons who hold this position in domestic policy are often not particularly strong or wise. The governing mind of many a circle is not by any means the mind best fitted either mentally or morally to govern. It is neither the best nor the cleverest individual of a given number who influences their opinions and conduct, but the person the most perseveringly self-asserting. It is amusing in looking at the world to see how much people are taken at their own valuation. The persons who always have an opinion on every possible subject ready made, and put up and labeled for immediate use, concerning which they have no shadow of a doubt or hesitation, are from that very quality born rulers. This positiveness, and preparedness, and readiness may spring from a universal shallowness of nature, but it is none the less efficient. While people of deeper perceptions and more insight are wavering in delicate distresses, balancing testimony and praying for light, this common-place obtuseness comes in and leads all captive, by mere force of knowing exactly what it wants, and being incapable of seeing beyond the issues of the moment.
Mrs. Maria Wouverman was all this. She always believed in herself, from the cradle. The watchwords of her conversation were always of a positive nature. "To be sure," "certainly," "of course," "I see," and "I told you so."
Correspondingly to this, Mrs. Van Arsdel, her next sister, was one who said habitually, "What would you do, and how would you do it?" and so the domestic duet was complete. Mrs. Wouverman did not succeed in governing or reclaiming her husband, but she was none the less self-confident for that; and having seen him comfortably into his grave, she had nothing to do but get together the small remains of the estate and devote herself to "dear Ellen and her children." Mrs. Wouverman managed her own house, where everything was arranged with the strictest attention and economy, and to the making a genteel appearance on a small sum, and yet found abundance of time to direct sister Ellen and her children.
She was a good natured, pleasant-mannered woman, fond of her nieces and nephews; and her perfect faith in herself, the decision of all her announcements, and the habitual attitude of consultation in which the mother of the family stood towards her, led the Van Arsdel children as they grew up to consider "Aunt Maria," like the Bible or civil government, as one of the great ready-made facts of society, to be accepted without dispute or injury.
Mrs. Wouverman had her own idea of the summum bonum, that great obscure point about which philosophers have groped in vain. Had Plato or Anaxagoras or any of those ancient worthies appealed to her, she would have smiled on them benignantly and said: "Why yes, of course, don't you see? the thing is very simple. You must keep the best society and make a good appearance."
Mrs. Van Arsdel had been steadily guided by her in the paths of fashionable progression. Having married into a rich old family, Aunt Maria was believed to have mysterious and incommunicable secrets of gentility at her command. She was always supposed to have an early insight into the secret counsels of that sublime, awful, mysterious "they," who give the law in fashionable life. "They don't wear bonnets that way, now!" "My love, they wear gloves sewed with colored silks, now!" or, "they have done with hoops and flowing sleeves," or, "they are beginning to wear hoops again! They are going to wear long trains," or, "they have done with silver powder now!" All which announcements were made with a calm solemnity of manner calculated to impress the youthful mind with a sense of their profound importance.
Mr. Van Arsdel followed Aunt Maria's lead with that unquestioning meekness which is so edifying a trait in our American gentlemen. In fact he considered the household and all its works and ways as an insoluble mystery which he was well pleased to leave to his wife; and if his wife chose to be guided by "Maria" he had no objection. So long as his business talent continued yearly to enlarge his means of satisfying the desires and aspirations of his family, so long he was content quietly and silently to ascend in the scale of luxurious living, to have his house moved from quarter to quarter until he reached a Fifth Avenue palace, to fill it with pictures and statuary, of which he knew little and cared less.
Under Aunt Maria's directions Mrs. Van Arsdel aspired to be a leader in fashionable society. No house was to be so attractive as her's, no parties so brilliant, no daughters in greater demand. Nature had generously seconded her desires. Her daughters were all gifted with fine personal points as well as a more than common share of that spicy genial originality of mind which is as a general thing rather a characteristic of young American girls.
Mr. Van Arsdel had had his say about the education of his sons and daughters. No expense had been spared. They had been sent to the very best schools that money could procure, and had improved their advantages. The consequences of education had been as usual to increase the difficulties of controlling the subject.
The horror and dismay of Mrs. Van Arsdel and of Aunt Maria cannot be imagined when they discovered almost immediately on the introduction of Ida Van Arsdel into society that they had on their hands an actual specimen of the strong minded young woman of the period; a person who looked beyond shows, who did her own thinking, and who despised or approved with full vigor without consulting accepted standards, and was resolutely resolved not to walk in the ways her pastors or masters had hitherto considered the only appointed ones for young ladies of good condition.
To work embroidery, go to parties, entertain idlers and wait to be chosen in marriage, seemed to a girl who had spent six years in earnest study a most lame and impotent conclusion to all that effort; and when Ida Van Arsdel declared her resolution to devote herself to professional studies, Aunt Maria's indignation and disgust is not to be described.
"So shocking and indelicate! For my part I can't imagine how anybody can want to think on such subjects! I'm sure it gives me a turn just to look into a work on physiology, and all those dreadful pictures of what is inside of us! I think the less we know about such subjects the better; women were made to be wives and mothers, and not to trouble their heads about such matters; and to think of Ida, of all things, whose father is rich enough to keep her like a princess whether she ever does a thing or not! Why should she go into it? Why, Ida is not bad looking. She is quite pretty, in fact; there are a dozen girls with not half her advantages that have made good matches, but it's no use talking to her. That girl is obstinate as the everlasting hills, and her father backs her up in it. Well, we must let her go, and take care of the others. Eva is my god-child, and we must at any rate secure something for her." Something, meant of course a splendid establishment.
The time of my introduction into the family circle was a critical one.
In the race for fashionable leadership Mrs. Van Arsdel had one rival whose successes were as stimulating and as vexatious to her as the good fortune of Mordecai the Jew was to Haman in Old Testament times.
All her good fortune and successes were spoiled by the good fortune and successes of another woman, who was sure to be a little ahead of her in everything that she attempted; and this was the more trying as this individual began life with her, and was a sort of family connection.
In days of her youth there was one Polly Sanders, a remote cousin of the Askotts, who was reputed a beauty by some. Polly was what is called in New England "smart." She was one who never lost an opportunity, and, as the vulgar saying is, could make every edge cut. Her charms were far less than those of the Misses Askott, and she was in far more straitened circumstances; but she went at the problem of life in a sort of tooth-and-nail fashion, which often is extremely successful. She worked first in a factory, till she made a little money, with which she put herself to school – acquired showy accomplishments, and went up like a balloon; married a man with much the same talent for getting along in the world as herself; went to Paris and returned a traveled, accomplished woman, and the pair set up for first society people in New York; and to the infinite astonishment of Mrs. Wouverman, were soon in a position to patronize her, and to run a race, neck and neck, with the Van Arsdels.
What woman's Christian principles are adequate to support her under such trials? Nothing ever impressed Aunt Maria with such a sense of the evils of worldliness as Polly Elmore's career. She was fond of speaking of her familiarly as "Polly;" and recalling the time when she was only a factory-girl. According to Aunt Maria, such grasping, unscrupulous devotion to things seen and temporal, had never been known in anybody as in the case of Polly. Aunt Maria, of course, did not consider herself as worldly. Nobody ever does. You do not, I presume, my dear madam. When your minister preaches about worldly people, your mind immediately reverts to the Joneses and the Simpsons round the corner, and you rather wonder how they take it. In the same manner Aunt Maria's eyes were always being rolled up, and she was always in a shocked state at something these dreadful, worldly, dressy Elmores were doing. But still they went on from conquering to conquer. Mrs. Elmore was a dashing leader of fashion – spoke French like a book – was credibly reported to have skated with the Emperor at the Bois de Boulogne – and, in short, there was no saying what feathers she didn't wear in her cap.
The Van Arsdels no sooner did a thing than the Elmores did more. The Van Arsdels had a house in Fifth Avenue; the Elmores set up a French chateau on the Park. The Van Arsdels piqued themselves on recherché society. The Elmores made it a point to court all the literati and distinguished people. Hence, rising young men were of great value as ornaments to the salons of the respective houses – if they had brought with them a name in the literary world, so much the more was their value – it was important to attach them to our salon, lest they should go to swell the triumphs of the enemy.
The crowning, culminating triumph of the Elmores was the engagement, just declared, of Maria, the eldest daughter, to young Rivington, of Rivington Manor, concerning which Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were greatly moved.
The engagement was declared, and brilliant wedding preparations on foot that should eclipse all former New York grandeurs; and what luminary was there in the Van Arsdel horizon to draw attention to that quarter?
"Positively, Ellen," said Aunt Maria, "the engagement between Eva and Wat Sydney must come out. It provokes me to see the absurd and indelicate airs the Elmores gives themselves about this Rivington match. It's really in shocking taste. I'm sure I don't envy them Sam Rivington. There are shocking stories told about him. They say he is a perfect roué– has been taken home by the police night after night. How Polly, with all her worldliness, can make such an utter sacrifice of her daughter is what I can't see. Now Sydney everybody knows is a strictly correct man. Ellen, this thing ought to come out."
