Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 Part 6

MOTHERHOOD.

We found my sister Harriet in a new home in Clinton Place (Eighth Street), New York city, then considered so far up town that Mr. Eaton's friends were continually asking him why he went so far away from the social center, though in a few months they followed him. Here we pa.s.sed a week. I especially enjoyed seeing my little niece and nephew, the only grandchildren in the family. The girl was the most beautiful child I ever saw, and the boy the most intelligent and amusing. He was very fond of hearing me recite the poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes ent.i.tled "The Height of the Ridiculous," which I did many times, but he always wanted to see the lines that almost killed the man with laughing. He went around to a number of the bookstores one day and inquired for them. I told him afterward they were never published; that when Mr. Holmes saw the effect on his servant he suppressed them, lest they should produce the same effect on the typesetters, editors, and the readers of the Boston newspapers. My explanation never satisfied him. I told him he might write to Mr. Holmes, and ask the privilege of reading the original ma.n.u.script, if it still was or ever had been in existence. As one of my grand-nephews was troubled in exactly the same way, I decided to appeal myself to Dr. Holmes for the enlightenment of this second generation. So I wrote him the following letter, which he kindly answered, telling us that his "wretched man" was a myth like the heroes in "Mother Goose's Melodies":

"DEAR DR. HOLMES:

"I have a little nephew to whom I often recite 'The Height of the Ridiculous,' and he invariably asks for the lines that produced the fatal effect on your servant. He visited most of the bookstores in New York city to find them, and nothing but your own word, I am sure, will ever convince him that the 'wretched man' is but a figment of your imagination. I tried to satisfy him by saying you did not dare to publish the lines lest they should produce a similar effect on the typesetters, editors, and the readers of the Boston journals.

"However, he wishes me to ask you whether you kept a copy of the original ma.n.u.script, or could reproduce the lines with equal power.

If not too much trouble, please send me a few lines on this point, and greatly oblige,

"Yours sincerely,

"ELIZABETH CADY STANTON."

"MY DEAR MRS. STANTON:

"I wish you would explain to your little nephew that the story of the poor fellow who almost died laughing was a kind of a dream of mine, and not a real thing that happened, any more than that an old woman 'lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't know what to do,' or that Jack climbed the bean stalk and found the giant who lived at the top of it. You can explain to him what is meant by imagination, and thus turn my youthful rhymes into a text for a discourse worthy of the Concord School of Philosophy. I have not my poems by me here, but I remember that 'The Height of the Ridiculous' ended with this verse:

"Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man, And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can."

"But tell your nephew he mustn't cry about it any more than because geese go barefoot and bald eagles have no nightcaps. The verses are in all the editions of my poems.

"Believe me, dear Mrs. Stanton,

"Very Truly and Respectfully Yours,

"OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES."

After spending the holidays in New York city, we started for Johnstown in a "stage sleigh, conveying the United States mail," drawn by spanking teams of four horses, up the Hudson River valley. We were three days going to Albany, stopping over night at various points; a journey now performed in three hours. The weather was clear and cold, the sleighing fine, the scenery grand, and our traveling companions most entertaining, so the trip was very enjoyable. From Albany to Schenectady we went in the railway cars; then another sleighride of thirty miles brought us to Johnstown. My native hills, buried under two feet of snow, tinted with the last rays of the setting sun, were a beautiful and familiar sight.

Though I had been absent but ten months, it seemed like years, and I was surprised to find how few changes had occurred since I left. My father and mother, sisters Madge and Kate, the old house and furniture, the neighbors, all looked precisely the same as when I left them. I had seen so much and been so constantly on the wing that I wondered that all things here should have stood still. I expected to hear of many births, marriages, deaths, and social upheavals, but the village news was remarkably meager. This hunger for home news on returning is common, I suppose, to all travelers.

Our trunks unpacked, wardrobes arranged in closets and drawers, the excitement of seeing friends over, we spent some time in making plans for the future.

My husband, after some consultation with my father, decided to enter his office and commence the study of the law. As this arrangement kept me under the parental roof, I had two added years of pleasure, walking, driving, and riding on horseback with my sisters. Madge and Kate were dearer to me than ever, as I saw the inevitable separation awaiting us in the near future. In due time they were married and commenced housekeeping--Madge in her husband's house near by, and Kate in Buffalo.

All my sisters were peculiarly fortunate in their marriages; their husbands being men of fine presence, liberal education, high moral character, and marked ability. These were pleasant and profitable years.

I devoted them to reading law, history, and political economy, with occasional interruptions to take part in some temperance or anti-slavery excitement.

Eliza Murray and I had cla.s.ses of colored children in the Sunday school.

On one occasion, when there was to be a festival, speaking in the church, a procession through the streets, and other public performances for the Sunday-school celebration, some narrow-minded bigots objected to the colored children taking part. They approached Miss Murray and me with most persuasive tones on the wisdom of not allowing them to march in the procession to the church. We said, "Oh, no! It won't do to disappoint the children. They are all dressed, with their badges on, and looking forward with great pleasure to the festivities of the day.

Besides, we would not cater to any of these contemptible prejudices against color." We were all a.s.sembled in the courthouse preparatory to forming in the line of march. Some were determined to drive the colored children home, but Miss Murray and I, like two defiant hens, kept our little brood close behind us, determined to conquer or perish in the struggle. At last milder counsels prevailed, and it was agreed that they might march in the rear. We made no objection and fell into line, but, when we reached the church door, it was promptly closed as the last white child went in. We tried two other doors, but all were guarded. We shed tears of vexation and pity for the poor children, and, when they asked us the reason why they could not go in, we were embarra.s.sed and mortified with the explanation we were forced to give. However, I invited them to my father's house, where Miss Murray and I gave them refreshments and entertained them for the rest of the day.

The puzzling questions of theology and poverty that had occupied so much of my thoughts, now gave place to the practical one, "what to do with a baby." Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions,--requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs,--yet there is not sufficient attention given to the preparation for this office. If we buy a plant of a horticulturist we ask him many questions as to its needs, whether it thrives best in suns.h.i.+ne or in shade, whether it needs much or little water, what degrees of heat or cold; but when we hold in our arms for the first time, a being of infinite possibilities, in whose wisdom may rest the destiny of a nation, we take it for granted that the laws governing its life, health, and happiness are intuitively understood, that there is nothing new to be learned in regard to it. Yet here is a science to which philosophers have, as yet, given but little attention. An important fact has only been discovered and acted upon within the last ten years, that children come into the world tired, and not hungry, exhausted with the perilous journey. Instead of being thoroughly bathed and dressed, and kept on the rack while the nurse makes a prolonged toilet and feeds it some nostrum supposed to have much needed medicinal influence, the child's face, eyes, and mouth should be hastily washed with warm water, and the rest of its body thoroughly oiled, and then it should be slipped into a soft pillow case, wrapped in a blanket, and laid to sleep. Ordinarily, in the proper conditions, with its face uncovered in a cool, pure atmosphere, it will sleep twelve hours. Then it should be bathed, fed, and clothed in a high-necked, long-sleeved silk s.h.i.+rt and a blanket, all of which could be done in five minutes. As babies lie still most of the time the first six weeks, they need no dressing. I think the nurse was a full hour bathing and dressing my firstborn, who protested with a melancholy wail every blessed minute.

Ignorant myself of the initiative steps on the threshold of time, I supposed this proceeding was approved by the best authorities. However, I had been thinking, reading, observing, and had as little faith in the popular theories in regard to babies as on any other subject. I saw them, on all sides, ill half the time, pale and peevish, dying early, having no joy in life. I heard parents complaining of weary days and sleepless nights, while each child, in turn, ran the gauntlet of red gum, jaundice, whooping cough, chicken-pox, mumps, measles, scarlet fever, and fits. They all seemed to think these inflictions were a part of the eternal plan--that Providence had a kind of Pandora's box, from which he scattered these venerable diseases most liberally among those whom he especially loved. Having gone through the ordeal of bearing a child, I was determined, if possible, to keep him, so I read everything I could find on the subject. But the literature on this subject was as confusing and unsatisfactory as the longer and shorter catechisms and the Thirty-nine Articles of our faith. I had recently visited our dear friends, Theodore and Angelina Grimke-Weld, and they warned me against books on this subject. They had been so misled by one author, who a.s.sured them that the stomach of a child could only hold one tablespoonful, that they nearly starved their firstborn to death. Though the child dwindled, day by day, and, at the end of a month, looked like a little old man, yet they still stood by the distinguished author.

Fortunately, they both went off, one day, and left the child with Sister "Sarah," who thought she would make an experiment and see what a child's stomach could hold, as she had grave doubts about the tablespoonful theory. To her surprise the baby took a pint bottle full of milk, and had the sweetest sleep thereon he had known in his earthly career. After that he was permitted to take what he wanted, and "the author" was informed of his libel on the infantile stomach.

So here, again, I was entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt without chart or compa.s.s. The life and well-being of the race seemed to hang on the slender thread of such traditions as were handed down by-ignorant mothers and nurses. One powerful ray of light illuminated the darkness; it was the work of Andrew Combe on "Infancy." He had, evidently watched some of the manifestations of man in the first stages of his development, and could tell, at least, as much of babies as naturalists could of beetles and bees. He did give young mothers some hints of what to do, the whys and wherefores of certain lines of procedure during antenatal life, as well as the proper care thereafter.

I read several chapters to the nurse. Although, out of her ten children, she had buried five, she still had too much confidence in her own wisdom and experience to pay much attention to any new idea that might be suggested to her. Among other things, Combe said that a child's bath should be regulated by the thermometer, in order to be always of the same temperature. She ridiculed the idea, and said her elbow was better than any thermometer, and, when I insisted on its use, she would invariably, with a smile of derision, put her elbow in first, to show how exactly it tallied with the thermometer. When I insisted that the child should not be bandaged, she rebelled outright, and said she would not take the responsibility of nursing a child without a bandage. I said, "Pray, sit down, dear nurse, and let us reason together. Do not think I am setting up my judgment against yours, with all your experience. I am simply trying to act on the opinions of a distinguished physician, who says there should be no pressure on a child anywhere; that the limbs and body should be free; that it is cruel to bandage an infant from hip to armpit, as is usually done in America; or both body and legs, as is done in Europe; or strap them to boards, as is done by savages on both continents. Can you give me one good reason, nurse, why a child should be bandaged?"

"Yes," she said emphatically, "I can give you a dozen."

"I only asked for one," I replied.

"Well," said she, after much hesitation, "the bones of a newborn infant are soft, like cartilage, and, unless you pin them up snugly, there is danger of their falling apart."

"It seems to me," I replied, "you have given the strongest reason why they should be carefully guarded against the slightest pressure. It is very remarkable that kittens and puppies should be so well put together that they need no artificial bracing, and the human family be left wholly to the mercy of a bandage. Suppose a child was born where you could not get a bandage, what then? Now I think this child will remain intact without a bandage, and, if I am willing to take the risk, why should you complain?"

"Because," said she, "if the child should die, it would injure my name as a nurse. I therefore wash my hands of all these new-fangled notions."

So she bandaged the child every morning, and I as regularly took it off.

It has been fully proved since to be as useless an appendage as the vermiform. She had several cups with various concoctions of herbs standing on the chimney-corner, ready for insomnia, colic, indigestion, etc., etc., all of which were spirited away when she was at her dinner.

In vain I told her we were homeopathists, and afraid of everything in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms lower than the two-hundredth dilution. I tried to explain the Hahnemann system of therapeutics, the philosophy of the principle _similia similibus curantur_, but she had no capacity for first principles, and did not understand my discourse. I told her that, if she would wash the baby's mouth with pure cold water morning and night and give it a teaspoonful to drink occasionally during the day, there would be no danger of red gum; that if she would keep the blinds open and let in the air and suns.h.i.+ne, keep the temperature of the room at sixty-five degrees, leave the child's head uncovered so that it could breathe freely, stop rocking and trotting it and singing such melancholy hymns as "Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound!" the baby and I would both be able to weather the cape without a bandage. I told her I should nurse the child once in two hours, and that she must not feed it any of her nostrums in the meantime; that a child's stomach, being made on the same general plan as our own, needed intervals of rest as well as ours. She said it would be racked with colic if the stomach was empty any length of time, and that it would surely have rickets if it were kept too still. I told her if the child had no anodynes, nature would regulate its sleep and motions. She said she could not stay in a room with the thermometer at sixty-five degrees, so I told her to sit in the next room and regulate the heat to suit herself; that I would ring a bell when her services were needed.

The reader will wonder, no doubt, that I kept such a cantankerous servant. I could get no other. Dear "Mother Monroe," as wise as she was good, and as tender as she was strong, who had nursed two generations of mothers in our village, was engaged at that time, and I was compelled to take an exotic. I had often watched "Mother Monroe" with admiration, as she turned and twisted my sister's baby. It lay as peacefully in her hands as if they were lined with eider down. She bathed and dressed it by easy stages, turning the child over and over like a pancake. But she was so full of the magnetism of human love, giving the child, all the time, the most consoling a.s.surance that the operation was to be a short one, that the whole proceeding was quite entertaining to the observer and seemingly agreeable to the child, though it had a rather surprised look as it took a bird's-eye view, in quick succession, of the ceiling and the floor. Still my nurse had her good points. She was very pleasant when she had her own way. She was neat and tidy, and ready to serve me at any time, night or day. She did not wear false teeth that rattled when she talked, nor boots that squeaked when she walked. She did not snuff nor chew cloves, nor speak except when spoken to. Our discussions, on various points, went on at intervals, until I succeeded in planting some ideas in her mind, and when she left me, at the end of six weeks, she confessed that she had learned some valuable lessons. As the baby had slept quietly most of the time, had no crying spells, nor colic, and I looked well, she naturally came to the conclusion that pure air, suns.h.i.+ne, proper dressing, and regular feeding were more necessary for babies than herb teas and soothing syrups.

Besides the obstinacy of the nurse, I had the ignorance of physicians to contend with. When the child was four days old we discovered that the collar bone was bent. The physician, wis.h.i.+ng to get a pressure on the shoulder, braced the bandage round the wrist. "Leave that," he said, "ten days, and then it will be all right." Soon after he left I noticed that the child's hand was blue, showing that the circulation was impeded. "That will never do," said I; "nurse, take it off." "No, indeed," she answered, "I shall never interfere with the doctor." So I took it off myself, and sent for another doctor, who was said to know more of surgery. He expressed great surprise that the first physician called should have put on so severe a bandage. "That," said he, "would do for a grown man, but ten days of it on a child would make him a cripple." However, he did nearly the same thing, only fastening it round the hand instead of the wrist. I soon saw that the ends of the fingers were all purple, and that to leave that on ten days would be as dangerous as the first. So I took that off.

"What a woman!" exclaimed the nurse. "What do you propose to do?"

"Think out something better, myself; so brace me up with some pillows and give the baby to me."

She looked at me aghast and said, "You'd better trust the doctors, or your child will be a helpless cripple."

"Yes," I replied, "he would be, if we had left either of those bandages on, but I have an idea of something better."

"Now," said I, talking partly to myself and partly to her, "what we want is a little pressure on that bone; that is what both those men aimed at.

How can we get it without involving the arm, is the question?"

"I am sure I don't know," said she, rubbing her hands and taking two or three brisk turns round the room.

"Well, bring me three strips of linen, four double." I then folded one, wet in arnica and water, and laid it on the collar bone, put two other bands, like a pair of suspenders, over the shoulders, crossing them both in front and behind, pinning the ends to the diaper, which gave the needed pressure without impeding the circulation anywhere. As I finished she gave me a look of budding confidence, and seemed satisfied that all was well. Several times, night and day, we wet the compress and readjusted the bands, until all appearances of inflammation had subsided.

At the end of ten days the two sons of Aesculapius appeared and made their examination and said all was right, whereupon I told them how badly their bandages worked and what I had done myself. They smiled at each other, and one said:

"Well, after all, a mother's instinct is better than a man's reason."

"Thank you, gentlemen, there was no instinct about it. I did some hard thinking before I saw how I could get a pressure on the shoulder without impeding the circulation, as you did."

Thus, in the supreme moment of a young mother's life, when I needed tender care and support, I felt the whole responsibility of my child's supervision; but though uncertain at every step of my own knowledge, I learned another lesson in self-reliance. I trusted neither men nor books absolutely after this, either in regard to the heavens above or the earth beneath, but continued to use my "mother's instinct," if "reason"

is too dignified a term to apply to woman's thoughts. My advice to every mother is, above all other arts and sciences, study first what relates to babyhood, as there is no department of human action in which there is such lamentable ignorance.

At the end of six weeks my nurse departed, and I had a good woman in her place who obeyed my orders, and now a new difficulty arose from an unexpected quarter. My father and husband took it into their heads that the child slept too much. If not awake when they wished to look at him or to show him to their friends, they would pull him out of his crib on all occasions. When I found neither of them was amenable to reason on this point, I locked the door, and no amount of eloquent pleading ever gained them admittance during the time I considered sacred to the baby's slumbers. At six months having, as yet, had none of the diseases supposed to be inevitable, the boy weighed thirty pounds. Then the stately Peter came again into requisition, and in his strong arms the child spent many of his waking hours. Peter, with a long, elephantine gait, slowly wandered over the town, lingering especially in the busy marts of trade. Peter's curiosity had strengthened with years, and, wherever a crowd gathered round a monkey and hand organ, a vender's wagon, an auction stand, or the post office at mail time, there stood Peter, black as coal, with "the beautiful boy in white," the most conspicuous figure in the crowd. As I told Peter never to let children kiss the baby, for fear of some disease, he kept him well aloft, allowing no affectionate manifestations except toward himself.

My reading, at this time, centered on hygiene. I came to the conclusion, after much thought and observation, that children never cried unless they were uncomfortable. A professor at Union College, who used to combat many of my theories, said he gave one of his children a sound spanking at six weeks, and it never disturbed him a night afterward. Another Solomon told me that a very weak preparation of opium would keep a child always quiet and take it through the dangerous period of teething without a ripple on the surface of domestic life. As children cannot tell what ails them, and suffer from many things of which parents are ignorant, the crying of the child should arouse them to an intelligent examination. To spank it for crying is to silence the watchman on the tower through fear, to give soothing syrup is to drug the watchman while the evils go on. Parents may thereby insure eight hours' sleep at the time, but at the risk of greater trouble in the future with sick and dying children. Tom Moore tells us "the heart from love to one, grows bountiful to all." I know the care of one child made me thoughtful of all. I never hear a child cry, now, that I do not feel that I am bound to find out the reason.

In my extensive travels on lecturing tours, in after years, I had many varied experiences with babies. One day, in the cars, a child was crying near me, while the parents were alternately shaking and slapping it.