A New Atmosphere Part 10

There is another circ.u.mstance which makes strongly against any a.s.sertion of man's necessary moral inferiority to woman. The manly ideal is often one to which no woman takes exception. In poetry and romance, men, as well as women, paint heroes; and I hold that no one can project from his imagination a better character than he is himself capable of attaining. He can be all that he can portray. The stream through his pen can rise no higher than the fountain in his heart, and out of the heart are the issues of life which he may keep as pure and clear as poesy. It was no woman's hand which limned the grand, sad face of that "good king," who

"Was first of all the kings who drew The knighthood-errant of this realm and all The realms together under me, their Head, In that fair order of my Table Round, A glorious company, the flower of men, To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time.

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To lead sweet lives in purest chast.i.ty, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And wors.h.i.+p her by years of n.o.ble deeds, Until they won her; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden pa.s.sion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

Another fact must also be allowed. Individual men are often better than their principles. Men who will, in cold blood, avow sentiments really atrocious, will, in the presence of a commanding female influence, straighten up to its requirements and carry themselves tolerably well; but with their lips they will all the while deny the power which their lives obey. Many a man who rails at strong-minded women, female education, and petticoat government, who professes to believe only in stocking-mending, love, and cookery, will be utterly, though unconsciously, plastic to the hand of a truly strong-minded, educated, and controlling woman. He does not know it; power in its highest action works ever imperceptibly. Nevertheless, it is there, and he follows it. His wrong opinions help to strengthen the citadel of evil, but himself is less bad than he seems. This ought to be remembered when inquisition is made.

It would be easy to multiply evidence, but it is not necessary. Enough has been produced to show that men have evinced the highest not only of those qualities which belong to their own s.e.x, but those which are usually considered the prerogative of the other. And what men have done man may do. Life can be as lovely as its best moods. _In vino veritas_, said Roman philosophy, and builded better than it knew. In the wine of love is the truth of life. As pure, as thoughtful, as disinterested, as helpful, as manly as is the lover can the husband be. What the poet sings, that the man should live. A race that has attained a temporary exaltation can attain a permanent exaltation. If one man has bent to the stern decree of duty, knowing

"All Life needs for life is possible to will,"

all men can compa.s.s self-control. I am filled with indignation when I see the low standard accepted for man's due measurement. Well may he exclaim, in sad, despairing reproach,--

"Men have burnt my house, Maligned my motives,--but not one, I swear, Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has,"

or this Romney or Sir Blaise, who forbids me access to the holy place, denies me power to lead a saintly life. Why, it is because men can be good that we reproach them. It is because we do see in them hints of dormant excellences that we consider it worth while to keep them in a state of agitation. If they must be as bad as their badnesses, there is only one verdict: He is joined to idols; let him alone. But, beloved, I am persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though I thus speak. What has been is of no fatal import. What has been only shows the track of error; now we may follow the footsteps of truth. The old world is a world masculinized; a world of rugged, brawny, male muscularity, but slightly and partially softened by feminine touch. Man was satisfied that woman in the beginning should be taken out of him, and he has ever since been trying to grope his way alone,--with what success ages of blunder and blood bear terrible witness. Now, seeing that his _defeminization_ has failed, let him compa.s.s the spiritual restoration of her who was physically separated from him, that the twain may become one perfect being, and rea.s.sume supreme dominion. The power lies ready to his hand. Eve was never wholly torn away. Deep within every heart lies the slumbering Princess still. A hundred years and many another hundred have gone by, and round her palace-wall, round her star-broidered coverlet, her gold-fringed pillow, and her jet-black hair, the hedge has woven its ivies and woodbine, thorns and mistletoes. Burr and brake and brier, close-matted, seem to refuse approach, and even to deny existence, but ever and anon above their surly barricade gleams in some evening sun the topmost palace spires, and we know that the fated Fairy Prince shall come, and, guided by the magic music in his heart, shall find that quiet chamber; reverently, on bended knee, shall touch the tranced lips, and--lo! thought and time are born again, and it is a new world which was the old.

Men, notwithstanding their high privilege, remain in their low estate,--partly because they are not enlightened out of it. They do evil, not knowing what they do. Like all despots, they have dealt more in adulation than in truth. They have heard from women the voice of flattery, the cry of entreaty, the wail of helpless pain, the impotent watchword of insurrection; but they have had small opportunity to benefit by the careful a.n.a.lysis of character, the accurate delineation and just rebuke of faults, and the calm, judicious, affectionate counsel which comes from a wise and faithful friend--like me! Women may stand before them, sweet, trusting creatures, "just as high as their hearts," to be schooled into devotion and amiable submission.

They may float demi-G.o.ddesses in some incomprehensible ether above the clouds, and receive incense and adoration. But for the ministering angel to turn into an accusing angel, for the lectured to rise and lay down the law to lecturers, is a thing which was never dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy.

"A man May call a white-browed girl Dian, But likes not to be turned upon And nicknamed young Endymion."

Nor, indeed, is it any more grateful to Dian than to Endymion. To confront man on his throne with the stern, dispa.s.sionate charge, "Thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art, that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; and thinkest thou this, O man, that thou shalt escape the judgment of G.o.d?" seems to woman so formidable a thing, that very few have had the courage to attempt it.

Many are so overborne with toil, disappointment, and faintness, that they have no heart for it. It is easier to suffer than to attempt remedy. They feel, in the lowest depths of their consciousness,

"What all their weeping will not let them say, And yet what women cannot say at all But weeping bitterly."

But they remain silent, and the case goes by default. There is, besides, a dread of personal consequences. Popular judgment is very much given to attributing general statements to private experience. If a woman is married, her adverse opinions are likely to be charged with implying conjugal discontent. If she is not married, they spring from failure and envy, and, shrinking from such opprobrium, the few women who see talk the matter over among themselves, and that is the end of it. There is also a natural reluctance to suggest that which men should do or be spontaneously, and there is a deeper reluctance, instinctive, indefinite, inexplicable.

The result is, that men go on in sin, seemingly unconscious that it is sin. They have been pursuing one course all their life, meeting obstacles, enduring fatigue, losing patience, but incapable of perceiving that they are in the wrong path until the fact is pointed out to them. They do not even understand the nomenclature of the science of right living. Speak of cheris.h.i.+ng a departed friend, and they will descant on the absurdity of going about moaning and weeping all your days. They attach no meaning to life-long tenderness but life-long namby-pambyism, something excusable in youth and "courting,"

but savoring strongly of weakness of character after the honeymoon has waned. Put before them the general allegation of selfishness, indifference, cruelty, and they will deny it with vehemence. Of course. Without such denial they could have no excuse. Moral ignorance alone saves them from utter condemnation. If they sinned wittingly,--if they said, "Yes, I am cold and hard and hateful to my wife, neglectful of my children, I give grudgingly money barely sufficient for the necessities of life, or I provide for my wife every luxury, but have no sympathy or companions.h.i.+p for her,"--if men said or could say this, even to themselves, they would be--not men, but demons. They are not demons, but men, capable of generosity, devotion, and self-sacrifice. If they knew that they were cruel, outrageous, intolerable in their most intimate relations, they would at once cease to be so, and begin to become everything that could be desired. More than this, I have so great faith in the n.o.ble possibilities of men, I believe they have so strong an inward bias towards holiness, that they will welcome the friendly hand which sets their iniquities before them. They will hear the sad story with amazement, and say one to another: "Who can understand his errors? A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this. We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. So foolish was I and ignorant; I was as a beast. But now I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. I will walk within my house with a perfect heart." And, when men shall have grown good, there will be no further complaint of women. To Lavater's list of impossible good women, Blake, the "mad painter," appends, "Let the men do their duty, and the women will be such wonders: the female life lives from the life of the male." There are exceptions, but in the ma.s.s women are not independent of received opinions, nor strong enough to front prejudice and mould society, or where they cannot mould it, to guide their own lives in its very spite. Therefore opinion needs to be right, prejudice removed, and society renovated; and men must do it. Women are generally said to make society. It is not so. Men make women, and men and women together make society. Men are the rocky stratum, women the soil which covers it. Men determine the outline, the level, the general character; women give the curves, the bloom, the grace. Rear your hills and lay your valleys, and the land shall speedily flow with milk and honey; but if you will upheave mountains and spread deserts, you may expect scant herbage on the one and but scattered oases on the other.

I cannot, of course, p.r.o.nounce that it is absolutely impossible for woman to attain a truer life without man's co-operation. The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will. What revolution may await us in the future no one knows. Fired by what impulse woman may throw off the stupor which has enthralled her so long, array herself in her beautiful garments and mount upward to the heavenly heights, whose air alone her spirit pants to breathe, whose paths alone her feet are framed to tread, I do not know. Yet blessed as is that day, come when and how it will, I would it were ushered in by a peaceful dawn. Better that woman should take her place alone, moved by an ineffable disdain, than that she should remain forever in her low estate. Better still that man and woman should go together, he bringing his st.u.r.dy strength to shorten, she lending her manifold grace to lighten, the path that leads up thither; and both, following the still, small voice of love, shall find no roughness, shall feel no grief, shall fear no evil, but shall walk softly till the end come, and shall rest in the peace of the beloved.

L'ENVOI.

O sweet my friend, hastening with happy steps to your marriage-morn, O my poet, singing under your hawthorn-tree the song that never can grow old, am I then a bird of evil omen? Does it thunder towards the left as I pa.s.s by? Be not so credulous. I take no l.u.s.tre from the golden-bright day that lies half-hidden under the mild haze of September: but I would that fair day's light should s.h.i.+ne as the brightness of the firmament for ever and ever. I breathe no blight upon the hawthorn, no discord to the song; but I would the bloom of the one and the melody of the other might never die away. Dream, O maiden! your pleasant dreams; sing, O poet! your happy songs; but while the flush of the sunrise is yet ruddy on your brows, think it not strange that I leave your sweet light and go down to them who are sitting in the region and shadow of death.

Have _I_ written this book? It is but the voice of a thousand aching hearts. Ten thousand dreary lives are wrought into its pages. It is the sorrow of just such hearts as yours, the disappointment of just such hopes, that have found a record here. The gloom that gathers on these leaves is gloom that hangs over paths just as fair as yours in their glad beginning. I feast my eyes on the beautiful temple of your promise, and I pray that you may go no more out of it forever; but I cannot forget that all my life I have seen highway and byway strewn with the fragments of temples which in their majesty of completeness must have been just as marvellous as yours. And being fully persuaded in my own mind that there is a way whereby the wondrous edifice may be made as enduring as it is brilliant, shall I not proclaim it throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof, that the trumpet of the jubilee may sound? You shall not make the darkness your pavilion, because the world is hung with gloom; but neither shall you reckon it offence, if I cannot wholly rejoice in your light for thinking of the great mult.i.tudes who are sitting in a darkness which may be felt. To-day is lost, but it is not too late for the morrow.

Wasted life can never be restored;--

"Though every summer green the plain, This harvest cannot bloom again."

Only beyond the grave can a new life spring into beauty, and the death of this be swallowed up in victory. But for the lives that have not yet been lavished, for the "poor little maidens" of great-hearted Dr.

Luther, for gentle Magdalenchen, fiery young Lenore, merry Beatrice, skipping along their separate paths, each to her unknown womanhood, or walking already through its shadowy ways,--how earnestly for them do we covet the best gift! But if they fail of this, shall not one show them how to live worthily without it? Shall not one bid them see how poor and false and mean is everything which offers itself instead; how sad were the exchange of an ideal good for a base reality; how fatal the disaster when the sacred torch pales before a grosser flame? So through these summer days, my little maid, when all sweet summer sounds but echo to you the music of one low voice, add to the happy thought within your heart this happiest thought of all: There shall come a day when the same sky that bends in blessing above your head shall bend,--no cloud to darken, but only to adorn, no fogs to hide, but only mist-wreaths to deck its blue,--soft, serene, and beautiful, above an earth purified by the same love which makes to you all things pure. Through that new atmosphere, my poet, the tuneful voices of your song shall go, wakening all the woods to melody, summoning shy response from the ever-charmed hills, ringing out over the listening waters, giving and gathering sweetness wherever a human heart throbs; till earth, all a-quiver with the harmony, shall lift from the dust her long-neglected lyre, sweep once more to her place among the stars, and raise again her happy voice in the unforgotten music of the spheres.