Stray Thoughts for Girls Part 5

"Oh, cooking and nursing, and that sort of thing."

"Yes; but I was not thinking of that sort of thing. I meant things that bring you closer to others; Madame Schwetchine says that every fresh sorrow we endure is like learning a fresh language, because it enables us to speak to a fresh set of souls in their own tongue, and to sympathize.

Every fresh thing that you learn brings you in sympathy with a fresh set of people. It gives pleasure and ease to a stranger to find that some one in his new circle knows his old home, and we can try to be at home in the mental country of each person we meet, so as to be able to respond to them. If you are a genius you can have your own country, and wait in it, till you meet some fellow-countryman; but as you only want to be an ordinary woman, 'not too bright and good for human nature's daily food,'

you will give far more pleasure to others, and widen and strengthen your own mind far more, by being able to join on easily to all you meet, than by pursuing some one abstruse study, whether it be mathematics or philosophy."

"But it seems such a small thing to spend one's mind in learning odds and ends of other people's hobbies."

"But I would have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests.

How dull and shy poor little Miss Smith was yesterday, till I found that she knew Venice as well as I did. After that she quite enjoyed her visit."

"Yes, but I could not have talked about Italy. I never have a chance of going abroad."

"You do not know when you may go, and if you went to-morrow it would be a case of 'No Eyes.' You do not know an interesting piece of architecture when you see it, you would not know what pictures to look for, you would not know the history of the places you went to, and, in short, you would miss nine-tenths of the best points, for want of knowing they were there."

"Yes; I might read up countries, but it is so unlikely that I should ever see them, that it does not seem much use to read up for nothing."

"Well, supposing that you did not go, but that you had read books on Italian Art, and made out a list of the pictures you wanted to see at each great town--Florence, Venice, Rome, Siena--and knew about each painter, his history, his style, and photographs of his works, and copied out under each picture what good critics had said of it, or at least put a reference to the book where it was mentioned (_e.g._ Kingsley's description of Bellini's Doge; Browning on Fra Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Virgin; Ruskin's best descriptions); and if you looked out all the famous men of each town, and knew their history, and what parts of the town were sacred to them; if you studied the buildings of each town, looked up its architecture, and tried to draw it from photographs and ill.u.s.trations, and then hunted out all the poetry and novels about each place, and drew out a sketch of its history, marking where the local history of the town dovetailed into larger European interests, and specially where it touched England--I think, after this, you would enjoy meeting any one from Italy almost as much as if you had been there, and you would not feel you had read up for nothing. I should take a fresh country every year, and make believe that you were going to it next summer, and that you were getting ready to be 'Eyes,' and not 'No Eyes,' while there. You would have got the spirit of the country by this, far more than ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who go to it in the flesh. You are leaving school at eighteen, and by the time you are five and twenty, _i.e._ before you are fully grown up, you might have thus visited Italy, France, Germany, Spain, America, India, which would make you a fairly cultivated person."

"But it is so hard to get books; I can read Ruskin while I am with you, and when I am with Uncle Charles I could find some of the others I should want, but I can't get hold of a course of reading at home."

"But if you have such a large peg as Italy on which to hang your reading, you can always find something which bears on it--you can borrow an odd book here and there, or pick up bits in a stray magazine; several of the books you would want are cheap to buy, and, if you keep a list of them, you will be surprised to find from what odd quarters they turn up. People have a way of saying, 'Oh, do recommend me a book,' as if all subjects were equally interesting, or rather uninteresting, and they borrow the first that comes, reading it as a duty, quite regardless of the fact that it does not belong to anything they have read before, or will read after; but if they had made up their mind on a subject, the lending friend would take far more interest, and probably hunt up something that bore on the subject, while the reader would be more likely to get good."

"But if I begin Ruskin here, and then go home, where I may perhaps find an Italian history, and then go for another visit and find something else, it will all be so disjointed."

"Yes, it would be nicer if you could go on with art or architecture; but your reading will not be so desultory as to be useless, if it is all strung on the one thread of Italy, and then you can group it, as you go along, in a commonplace book. I should take a large one, and divide it among the towns I wanted to see, and then subdivide the pages given to, _e.g._ Florence, under the heads of art, history, famous men, architecture, poetry, novels, and, as I read anything on these subjects, I should jot down the substance of it under the right heading, or if it was a poem, just give the t.i.tle and one or two of the best lines. And you could keep up your French and German at the same time--suppose you read _Corinne_ and the _Improvisator_, they would both help to keep you in an Italian atmosphere."

"Yes, I could keep up my reading, but how about the grammar?"

"I should recommend you to take a very conversational novel and turn a page of it into both French and German every week; this would keep up all the rules of grammar, and, though you might make mistakes, you would gain fluency in expressing yourself, which is much more needed than grammatical accuracy if you go abroad, for a course of lessons will set you right about the grammar at any time, but would not make you talk, if you had allowed yourself to get tongue-tied by not practising translation from English into French; and I should advise you to translate very freely, and use the dictionary as little as possible; if you cannot remember the exact rendering, twist the sentence and paraphrase it, till you can manage it, simply to learn to express your thoughts easily. I should say an hour a week of this would keep up both French and German."

"But you have said nothing of English History and Literature."

"I should be inclined to drop English History for the first year, because you know so much more of that than of Foreign and Ancient History, but if you like it I should take some one prominent reign--Elizabeth or Charles I., or Anne or George III., and get to know all the chief people, read their memoirs, and what they themselves wrote, so as to feel among friends whenever you hear a name of that period mentioned--and read all essays, etc. that you can find upon it. To keep your mind generally open, I should make a chart of contemporary history and another of literature, taking one century a month, and leaving plenty of s.p.a.ce for adding things afterwards.

In Literature, I should take one of the Men of Letters every month, or one of the Foreign Cla.s.sics, and at the same time read any of the man's own works that I could. Modern poets and novelists and essayists I should read at odd times, _specially making it a matter of conscience never to open a novel before luncheon_! I should read my poets not only promiscuously, as the fancy took me, but compare their treatment of different subjects; _e.g._, you might make yourself a private New Year's Eve service, of all the poems on it you can find--Coleridge, Tennyson, and Elia's prose poem on the same subject. Or you could make a Shepherd's Calendar for yourself, and copy out under each month what poets have said about it, and its flowers and features generally: or a Poet's Garden; collect all the bits about flowers, and make a 'Poet's Corner' in your garden, admitting no flower that cannot bring some poetry as its credential. It will make country life far more enjoyable if you know your poets as Thomas Holbrook, in 'Cranford,' knew Tennyson."

"I should like all that, Aunt Rachel; but you have not said anything that sounds like stiff reading yet."

"No; and you ought to have something that will tax all your powers, as well as this general cultivation, which will be all pleasant. I should take some really stiff book, on Logic or Political Economy, or Butler's 'a.n.a.logy,' and after each morning's work make a careful a.n.a.lysis of the argument, leaving one side of your MS. book blank, that you may put in afterwards any ill.u.s.trations or criticisms of your own, or others, that may occur to you in the future. I should always keep a stiff book in hand and treat it so, even if all other regularity and plan in my reading fell through--it would be a backbone."

"But I shall have so much writing to do if I am to make a commonplace book on each subject."

"It will make you slower, but much surer. I know a girl who writes a review of every book she reads, giving extracts, and an abstract of the argument and her own opinion of it. She finds it most useful, both as practice in expressing her thoughts and for reference afterwards."

"But it would take so long."

"You would be well repaid, and you would not read any books in your time for study which were not worth taking trouble with. In reading a book, I should put a mark to everything that struck me, and at the end of a chapter should look over the marked bits, and put a second mark to those parts that seemed specially important, after I had mastered the drift of the chapter. It would then be easy, when you had finished the book, to write a review, for you would only look at the doubly marked bits."

"And am I to do no science?"

"I should vary your science with your opportunities, because you have no strong turn for any one in particular. When you go to town in the winter for that long visit you should get some cooking lessons, and before you go you should get the books recommended by the South Kensington Cookery School, and study the bookwork on the subject. When you go away in the summer, you should take up geology, or botany, or whatever suits the place you go to."

"But I shall only have smatterings of things at this rate!"

"Smatterings are very good things in their way, so long as you are not misled into thinking them more than they are! They are the keys which will enable you, in the future, to follow up the subject for which you may have any special opportunities. They also prevent your being quite a dumb note anywhere,--it is something to be able to listen intelligently! Besides, if your mind is open on all sides, you will never find any one dull, for you are almost certain to be able to gain information on some one of the subjects you are interested in."

"I don't see how I can get all these things in, Aunt Rachel, for I shan't have much time."

"I think you might manage two hours a day, and I should divide the week thus: Monday and Friday I should give to Italy or any subject which you meant to take as the staple of your reading; Tuesday take a science, and Wednesday English literature; Thursday take a stiff book and half an hour of French; Sat.u.r.day take ancient history or mythology and half an hour of German. I should write an essay every week at odd moments, if I were you, for you ought to think things out for yourself as well as filling your mind with other people's thoughts by reading, but you could work out your essay in your head while walking or waiting for any one. I should also advise you to make a list of every book you read after leaving school; you will find it very interesting in after years, especially if you put a short criticism on each."[2]

"But surely I had better do more than one subject in a day? I should get tired of reading one book for two hours."

"You might vary your treatment of the subject. For instance, take notes of the History of Italy for one hour, and look out descriptions of pictures for another. In literature you could read about your author for one hour, and read his works for the next. In your science, give half the time to book-work, and the rest to practical work."

"But would it not be a more thorough change to go to a new subject?"

"So it would, but you may not be able to fit in two hours' reading with your duty to your neighbour! On any day that you could honestly be only a half-timer, you are far less likely to get careless, and to despair of regularity, if you get a bit of your day's subject, than if you have to leave one of your subjects entirely undone."

Even Aunt Rachel's good advice came to an end at last, as in course of time did Urith's visit, and also the Midsummer term, after which she left school with the best possible intentions, and announced them at home with much dignity. But, far from being allowed to carry on her course of study, it became a study with her two small brothers to prevent such morbid fancies from taking effect. They won golden opinions from the servants those holidays, who said that the young gentlemen had never been so little trouble before. They suddenly became as full of "resources within themselves" as Mrs. Elton herself, to the admiration of the whole family, except of the unfortunate Urith, who might have unravelled the mystery, since the cultivation of her domestic virtues by startling and unexpected interruptions of her reading, occupied such of their spare time as was not devoted to the mental exercise of devising new plans for her discomfiture on the morrow.

But, happily for Urith, holidays are terminable, and when the boys left she hoped to do great things. But visitors came to stay in the house, special friends of her own, with strong theories as to the value of co-operation in the matter of brushing their hair at night.

Midnight conversations did not conduce to work before breakfast or to much energy after it. It was, therefore, with very mingled feelings that Urith welcomed Aunt Rachel, her outside conscience, whose yearly visit was usually an unmixed pleasure to her.

Having written much about her intentions at first starting, she was not surprised when her aunt, on the first evening of her visit, settled herself for a talk, and began--

"How is the reading going on? You were very sensible in saying that you meant to begin at once on leaving school, so as not to get out of the habit of work, and as you have now had three months I suppose you have something to show for it?"

"Well, I thought I should have had, but, you see, the boys wouldn't let me!"

"I don't see why you need have drawn the boys' attention to what you were doing; but since they left--"

"The house has been full!"

"Yes, my dear, but as you generally do have visitors, your reading will never flourish at this rate."

"Well, I couldn't neglect them."

"No; but they don't require entertaining before breakfast, do they?"

"No; but I was so sleepy."

"What time did you go to bed?"

"Well, I suppose I ought not to have stayed in Barbara's room, but Alice had so many stories to tell us of her adventures that I did not leave them till after twelve o'clock."

"As Alice is by no means tongue-tied in the daytime, her adventures might have kept, and if you went to bed in proper time, you might get half an hour before breakfast. But what do you do after breakfast?"

"Oh, then the flowers want doing, and mamma always wants some notes to be answered, and then it is so fine that we go for a walk, and don't get back till after luncheon, and then visitors come, and I must be there to talk to them; and when it gets cool, people come in for tennis, and as to reading after that, why, one barely gets time to dress for dinner, and in the evening they like me to play to them, and papa wants the paper read to him, and you know, Aunt Rachel, you always said home duties ought to come first, so I don't see when a girl at home is to read!"