CHAPTER 25.
AS January approached
its close, one thought occupied all minds in
(p. 319)
already
solemnly contracted, and to give a guarantee for the effectual protection of the
persons and property of their countrymen.’
Intimately acquainted, as Maynard was, with the Spanish pride and more than
Spanish obstinacy of the ruling classes, he feared the worst consequences from
the hostile tone of this manifesto; and his apprehensions were by no means
allayed by the additional announcement that the allied powers declined any
intervention in the domestic affairs of the country, and especially any exercise
of pressure on the will of the population with regard to their choice of a
government; because he thought he perceived in it an appeal to the masses, who
were only too ready to rise against their domestic oppressors, and who, in doing
so, would doubtless overwhelm all foreigners in one general catastrophe.
‘If the allied governments,’ said Maynard to Noel, ‘would only make terms with
Juarez, who is out and out the best president Mexico has had for years, and
enable him to hold his position until he can raise the people in his favour, and
defy the nobles with safety, all will go well. Hitherto the emancipation of the
serfs has been but a curse to them. Make Juarez strong enough to follow his own
wishes and give them the lands to which they are undoubtedly entitled, and
‘But you said that
‘So he does, but he believes that the aristocratic governments of
While thus revolving the situation, letters arrived from
‘I suppose that by the time this reaches you, you will have forgotten all about
the letter to which it is an answer. But I can’t help that. I can only judge you
as you were; not as you will be.
(p. 320)
‘I am not a bit satisfied with your account of yourself or of the Maynards. You
don’t tell me a quarter enough. I infer more, perhaps, than you will allow that
I have a right to infer; but if you will speak in riddles, and deal in the
abstract and general when I want particulars, you must take your chance of what
I may say in reply.
‘My recommendation to you to come home and get married, and settle down, seems
to have come somewhat mal à propos, to
judge by the comments to which you give vent concerning the honourable state of
matrimony in general. I should like to know what you have seen in your travels,
and what people you have been among, to produce the bitterness that pervades
your observations. I am sure mine could not have done it all. Now, please, don’t
go and charge me with jumping at conclusions, but for once praise my
penetration, if I am right in believing that the hints I have before given you
about our friends are founded in fact in short, that you, witnessing their
incongruity, commiserating their unhappiness, or, perhaps, sympathising with at
least one of them, have written under a feeling of irritation at the strength of
the tie that binds them to each other.
‘You know that I never mince matters with a friend; so that if I ever have an
idea involving an injustice, I always put myself in the way of getting myself
set right. I may be going off on a false scent entirely; but off I go anyhow,
leaving it to you to bring me back to the right track.
‘Do you know that I sometimes think you have commissioned our old friend, the “—
Review,” to preach at me in your absence. I am constantly finding the subjects
that we have discussed together, treated of in such fashion as to make me think
you dictate articles for it by some somnambulic or mesmeric process; and they
always take your side of the questions, too, which is very aggravating.
‘Your life generally has been one so detached from the ties that ordinarily bind
people, and your liberty is so inseparable a part of yourself, that you
naturally are apt to fancy that ties must be bad things in themselves. Hence,
the spectacle of any special hardship or inconvenience caused by one, makes you
revolt against all. But does it never strike you and other be-wailers of the
irrevocability of the tie matrimonial, that there are other ties as irrevocable,
binding, and galling? One can’t get rid of a “stern parent” or a refractory
child. One has to
(p. 321)
bear them
for life, and make the best of them. In the case of women, especially, is this
so. We have to live together for life, almost as closely, morally, as husband
and wife, and to adapt ourselves as painfully to each other’s tempers and
peculiarities. Luckily for me my stepmother is an angel
(though she does flirt so outrageously with your darling of an uncle); and,
luckily for her, I’m another. Perhaps I am not sufficiently alive to the special
repugnances that may exist between husband and wife. Still, I do see so much
oppression arising from family relationships, which are not in any way elected
or chosen as in marriage, that I am provoked at finding all the sympathy claimed
by those who have made their own unhappiness by an injudicious choice. No doubt
a life-long tie to a distasteful companion is a hard penance for lack of
discrimination of character; only it would be more true were character and
suitability really the things chiefly looked for in most marriages. And, if you
are honest with yourself, you will admit that such qualification is only
secondary in the choice with most men. (I say men
advisedly, as they are the only real choosers.) They are tempted by either beauty, money, or position; and the character – the
relative character to their own, I mean – is taken for granted, or read into the
chosen one, if thought of at all. And then it is always equally taken for
granted that all modification, and adaptation, and tuning to harmony, are to be
done by the poor she. I believe that, as a rule, the richer and larger nature of
the two has to prune and adapt itself to the poorer and smaller; because the
former can stoop, while the latter can’t add a cubit to its stature. I doubt,
however, if there is any real descent in the process. One is really on a nobler
platform forcing oneself down into agreement with one’s partner, than soaring
alone. That one shows most weakness who
is least able to tune itself to the pitch of the other.
‘I know you affect a keen ear for human discords, and an ardent longing to make
music of life. But I like the musician who tunes himself to his fellows or his
circumstances, and shows himself capable of solution into the great whole of
humanity. Sometimes I think difference of degree or temperature more difficult
to harmonise than radical difference of character. The warmer nature feels the
chill and contrast more painfully than the complacent self-sufficing iceberg.
(p. 322)
‘Bear with me if I persist in asserting that it is the proof and prerogative of
man’s sovereignty to modify himself to suit his
surroundings. Women, you know, are only sovereigns over men, and have no will to
spare for governing themselves!
‘I suppose, however, it is all a puzzle, and you will
be writing me down a goose for trying my maiden hand upon it. Perhaps the spell
is in the ring! The man I know who most utterly fails to adapt himself to his
wife and his wife to himself, is, in the domain of simple friendship, the most
adaptable man I know; and though holding his own bravely, is yet most amenable
to criticism. He is a clergyman, as usual with my flames, a prophet – not a
priest – parson; and a philosopher as well as a bit of a wag. He lately gave
what he called a practical discourse on the faults and failings of the day, in
which I rather looked for a little self-abasement on his part. But he had the
impudence, in recommending the practice of more self-sacrifice to men, to select
marriage as one, of their neglected duties, and say that in most cases it is
more of a sacrifice to marry that to remain single. And in this way he defended
Christianity from the reproach so often brought against it, of not taking man’s
physical nature into account in its system of morality.
‘It always seems to me odd that, while the woman’s motherhood is so prominently
put forth as her only claim to exaltation, the man’s fatherhood is absolutely
ignored. As to God’s fatherhood, cela va
sans dire; but as Creator chiefly. I have contented myself,
however, with the explanation that the old creeds had so over-weighted the
masculine faculty as an object of adoration, that perhaps we needed the balance
of a religion which undervalued that element. My parson, however, pretended
that, in setting forth an example of self-sacrifice, religion is really urging
to marriage!
‘I do so wish that you would come home. I have so much that I want to talk to
you about; and in our communion of spirits, I hold the real presence of my
friend so much more comforting than his letters. Society gets more and more
disjointed, and I want you to come and be Frauen-kämpfer to an
oppressed class. I am quite sure that we poor women are worth much more than we
are allowed to be made of, and that mankind suffers by means of our
disabilities. We are kept back by our non-education and social restrictions, and
men are kept back in order to keep alongside of us. Men are brought up to
everything,
(p. 323)
and women
are brought up only for one thing, marriage: – reason enough, you will say, why
they don’t do that well: the education isn’t liberal
enough. Thus marriage forms but one of the resources or
practices of men, while women have no other. You may think the
arrangement a very nice one for your side, as securing you an ample choice; but
it is an excessively cruel one for mine: and I am quite certain that the
advantage to you is delusive, and that what you gain in quantity, is more than
lost in quality; for you have a lower order of woman to select from. The result
of the present system is that it scarcely affords an example of a woman who is
fit to be a helpmeet to man or a mother to children. I, a woman, say this.
Uneducated, even when most “accomplished,” we are
taken up by the merest trifles, absorbed in the pettiest gossipry, and destitute
of all principle, except that of deceiving men to our own advantage. What we are
you make us, – cunning and untruthful, for does not our
strength lie in our wiles?
‘Now I want to see my sex – for I have a sex, and believe myself a very woman,
in spite of poor Lord Littmass’s saying that no man would have me for wife or
mistress. He didn’t say it to me, of course, but I overheard it, and I want to
know what he meant by it, and whether it was a compliment or not. I don’t
consider it one. – Well, I want to see my sex so far emancipated from their
present disadvantages as to be more equal companions for men. I always hear that
the best part of the talk at a dinner party comes on after “the ladies” have
left the room. I cannot imagine a greater reproach to the whole system than
this. We are so compelled to mediocrity that men wait for our departure that
they may be free to indulge in excess, whether it be
one of intellectual converse or of physical debauch.
‘Do you ask my remedy for this state of things? It is, to put boys and girls
more on the same footing, and to bring them equally up to an active and
independent life, making work the purpose and marriage the accident, – a happy
one, if it may be. Why should we, more than you, be compelled to ignore our
talents and individualities, and spend our lives under the parental roof as
merest slaves to parental caprice, regarded, not as goods, but as bads and
chattels so long as we remain single? I am sure that the
average of unmarried daughters are as capable of turning their liberty to
good account as the average of unmarried sons; and better, for we have our
emotions to control
(p. 324)
us, while
men have only their principles. I have been thinking for some time that I shall
devote my money and my spinsterhood to the foundation of a college for young
ladies, who, having “finished their education,” feel an impulse to learn
something and do something useful in the world; and how can they do it better
than by helping to carry on the education of their sex. I think you could help
me in maturing my scheme. We can’t manage such matters by ourselves yet. Men
have got the start of us, and have appropriated to themselves five ounces of
brain a piece more than we have, (at least, so masculine
anatomists say,) and we want their help to adjust the inequality. So I elect you my confessor and adviser, since by virtue of that
“hieropathic affection” with which the female heart is not unduly credited, I am
bound to have a priest of some sort.
‘Your uncle has just written to say he is sending out letters to you by some
officers of this dreadful expedition. Oh! I am so alarmed lest this meddling by
foreigners should bring you all into trouble. I trust to you to make everybody
that one cares for come away if there is any danger. I am sure we can all
contrive to live at home comfortably enough without Mexican silver. Much as Mr.
Tresham once wished and urged the interference, I think he has lately changed
his mind. He allows that James Maynard has managed admirably in keeping his mine
from loss so far.’
This letter excited as much irritation as admiration on the part of Noel in
respect to its writer, and he marvelled at the vivid and rapid instinct whereby
the very reticence and vagueness of his own communication had been seized upon
by his vivacious and plain-speaking friend, and converted into evidence against
him. Spontaneous as it appeared, he detected its real art, and saw in the latter
part of it only a proof of her unwillingness to wound, and of her anxiety to
withdraw him from an imagined complication, by suggesting other fields for his
ambition. Even the apparently casual and jocular remark about Mr. Tresham’s
intimacy with Lady Bevan, read by this light, had for him a serious meaning. But
other and more pressing matters came to occupy his mind at that time.
