Three Things Part 4

Should there be some strong inherited tendency which is not good, then her most careful care and influence will be needed. There is not the slightest use in making rules and then leaving their enforcement to servants and governesses--the true mother should see that her child thoroughly understands what it is being asked to do, and why it is being asked to do it. She should appeal to its intelligence from earliest days, and make it comprehend it is for its own benefit. For children cannot when very young be influenced by high moral considerations which come with maturer years, but only by personal gain or fear--and if ruled by fear they invariably become deceitful.

It is a spiritual mother's business to show interest in all her child's tastes and occupations, and to supervise and direct them into the best channels, and if she has several children she should watch each one's idiosyncrasies and not imagine that the same method will do for them all. What good gardener would treat a rose-tree in the same fashion which he does a tulip bulb? The spiritual mother should think out for herself, guided by what she sees are their personal needs, the best method of instructing her children in true morality--that is, honour and truth, and freedom from all hypocrisy and deceit. She should not be influenced by any set-down rules of religion or dogma, or by any precepts she may have been taught herself in her youth, if they no longer convey conviction because of the change in time, otherwise she will be following custom and losing sight of _the end_.

She should make her children understand that the soiling of their own souls by committing mean actions is the greatest sin, and that what other people think or do not think of them is of no consequence, but the only vital things are what G.o.d thinks and they think of themselves. Hundreds of children's afterlives are shipwrecked because they were only taught all the dry dogmas and seemings of religion, and the real meaning was never explained to them. I know a rigorously strict clergyman's family where the children are taught and conform to all the observances of their father's church, and yet a falser, more paltry set of young creatures could not be found--they have never had it explained to them that it is impossible to hoodwink G.o.d. For a perfect example of the religious spirit _not to_ employ towards children, all mothers ought to read the immortal scene between Trilby before she dies and Mrs. Bagot--when the narrow woman expresses her puny views and Trilby puts forth her broad and true ones. It is so incredibly stupid to use obsolete methods which can never obtain the desired end just because the dominion of custom is still strong upon us, and we have not been intelligent enough to grasp and benefit by the spirit of the age. For all mothers must realise that they can never dominate the spirit of the age, and must either make vain fights with it, and be conquered to their loss, or must make terms with it and use it in its brightest and best aspect. The spirit of this age is a totally different one to the spirit of their own childhood's age. It is shorn of reverence and unquestioning obedience to elders, and is an independent creature who will only obey through conviction of good or personal benefit. Children are unerring and pitiless judges of those placed over them, and how can a mother, just because she is a mother, expect respect and reverence in her children if she earns their contempt by her conduct and selfishness?

It is the spiritual mother's duty to instil chivalry towards the other s.e.x into her little sons from earliest years, by making them polite to herself and to their sisters. She should, before they go to school and when they return for the holidays, endeavour to influence them into liking cleanliness and care of their persons, especially when with ladies. She should try to make these little men so happy and contented, so certain of sympathy and understanding that home spells heaven for them and remains the dearest memory of their lives, and for her little girls, over whom she has a far vaster influence, she should polish their minds, explain all the true and pure principles of life--teach them the value of self-control and self-respect, and watch for and encourage all their graces, so that when they arrive at the ages of seventeen and eighteen they may be fitted in all points to shine in whatever world they belong to, and take their places among the best of their cla.s.s. s.p.a.ce forbids me to go on longer, although the subject seems only just to have been begun, so large is its sphere of action, but I must give one last concrete example of two women's methods, to enforce my meaning of the importance of _the end_.

Both sent their girls to the same school, where every accomplishment was taught and the highest tone prevailed that the masters could inculcate. The first mother showed deep interest in the holidays, in all her child's lessons, directed and encouraged her, opening her understanding and broadening her point of view, while she attended to every physical grace. She explained how her child should apply the knowledge she acquired during term, so that it should grow interesting, and as far as it lay in her power she endeavoured that her daughter should be fitted with every charm and attraction which could procure for her later on a larger selection from which to choose her partner in life. The other mother let her girl run wild during the holidays, and allowed her to feel that all she learned was just an irksome duty to be forgotten the moment school was over. Her appearance, her gentle manners, her refinement, her point of view, were all left to take their own chance, from the mistaken idea that it would encourage vanity and egotism in the girl to discuss these things with her--and that she, the mother, had done all that was required of her in simply providing a good education! This second mother had completely lost sight of the end, you see, and was unconsciously only thinking of herself and not of her child at all.

And this--to think of the welfare of the child and allow no other point to obscure this--is the whole meaning of the responsibility of motherhood.

VII

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD. SECOND PAPER

What I always wish to impress upon the readers who are kind enough to be interested in the articles which I write is to keep the end aimed at in view. So in this second paper upon the responsibility of motherhood, I must begin by reiterating this necessity.

No mother has a right to drift and trust to chance for the welfare of her children, and however they develop, for good or ill, she must in greater or lesser degree be held responsible.

The period when animals cease all interest in and care for their offspring only commences when these latter can safely be left to look after themselves; and so it should be with human beings. But, judging the ages relatively of animals and mankind, numbers of human mothers entirely neglect their progeny long before they have come even to the fledgling stage! How often in society one sees women of forty-five and younger with daughters of fifteen to twenty, about whose real characters and souls they know nothing! They have always been too busy with their own personal interest to give the time and sympathy required for a real mother's understanding of her children. Servants and governesses have been the directors through the most critical period of the girls' lives, and it is merely a piece of luck if they have imbibed no ill from them.

There are numbers of worthy and innocent women married to men whose characters have certain forcible and unpleasant traits, which are more than likely to be reproduced in their children, but from the limited education these good creatures have received, and the absence of all habit of personal a.n.a.lysation of cause and effect, they never realise that it is their bounden duty to be on the lookout for the first signs of the hereditary traits appearing, and the necessity for using special care and influence to counteract them.

A woman (unless too vain) knows very well her own failings and her own good qualities, and can, if she is wise, suppress or encourage them when they show in her children; but she cannot trace the characteristics of remote ancestors, or even be certain of what her husband has on his side endowed their joint offspring with, so her duty is to be on the watch from the very commencement, and to use her intelligence as she already uses it in every ordinary affair in life.

People of even the most mediocre understanding are quite sensible enough to select the right implements to carry on any work that they have undertaken. A woman about to sew a fine piece of muslin does not dash haphazard into her work-basket and pick out any needle which comes first, and any thread, coa.r.s.e or fine, which is handy. She would know very well that her work would be a sorry affair if she did so, and that, on the contrary, she must choose the exact fineness of both thread and needle to sew this particular bit of stuff satisfactorily, the ones she may have employed an hour before upon firm cloth being of no use for muslin.

She is keeping _the end_ in view.

LOOKING AHEAD

But countless numbers of mothers never understand that any different method is necessary with different children; they just go on in the old way they have been taught when young themselves, if they trouble at all about the matter.

Every woman who has a child ought to ask herself these questions: Who is responsible for this child being in the world? Am I and my husband responsible, or is the child responsible itself? The answers are ridiculously obvious, and, when realised, the remembrance of them should entail grave obligations upon the parents.

The mother should look ahead and try to determine whether or no what seems to be showing as the result of the ideas of up-bringing in the past fifteen years is good or bad.

The main features of that system being the relaxation of all discipline and the cessation of the inculcation of self-control, because the standards suddenly became different. Formerly, to perform Duty (spelt with a big D!) was the only essential matter in life, and to obtain happiness was merely a thing by the way. In the past fifteen years the essential goal sought after has been happiness, and duty has been merely the thing by the way. But a very large number of the mothers of England have not perhaps begun to develop sufficient scope of brain to enable them to judge what will eventually bring happiness; they can only see the immediate moment, and to indulge their children's every desire seems to be the simplest way. But they forget that during this short and impressionable stage of life all strength and will-power and self-control ought to be enforced and encouraged, to enable the loved children to withstand hardships and to attract happiness in the long after years. A mother should ask herself if it is worth while, in securing a joyous and irresponsible childhood and adolescence, to leave her children at the end of them unarmed and at the mercy of every adverse blast. The great dangers which seem to be resulting from the system of upbringing in the last fifteen years are that at seventeen or eighteen most young people are satiated with pleasure and blase with life, while they have no definite aim or end of achievement in view, and absolutely no sense of duty or responsibility to the community.

THE FIRST OBLIGATION

It would seem to me that a mother's first obligation is to enforce discipline, and to teach self-control from the earliest infancy with the fondest loving care, and to transmit that sense of responsibility for n.o.ble citizenship into her children which should have been her own guiding star.

But, again, to do so she must not employ obsolete methods without taking into account the spirit of the age which has aroused a sense of personal liberty in the youngest child, and makes it refuse to accept rules and regulations on trust. It must be convinced that they are for its good, or it will only bow to them by fear, learn to deceive, and remain rebellious and determined at the first opportunity to throw off the yoke and go its own way. I will give a concrete case of what I mean upon this point, to show how even a good woman can misunderstand the real meaning of the responsibility of motherhood, and by her method of upbringing can allow misfortune to fall upon her young family.

Here is a lady of the highest rank, who comes of a steady and worthy stock, and who has been brought up herself strictly and well. She marries a man of great position, but with rather wild blood in his veins. She has no modern ideas of only desiring a small family; she wishes to and intends to do her duty to her state, and is by no means set upon personal amus.e.m.e.nt.

As the years go on she becomes the mother of four boys and two girls.

She engages the best nurses for them, and, later on, the best governesses and tutors. The children are taught their catechism on Sundays and are drilled as those of their cla.s.s into having good outward manners and behaviour. They are given orders without explanations, which they are expected to obey unquestioningly, and they are duly punished when they are disobedient. They see their parents at stated hours each day, and are seemingly a well-regulated and satisfactory young brood.

The good woman and great lady's time is naturally much occupied with social duties, and duties to her husband's tenants, and to various charities and good works in which she is interested. She fulfils all these admirably, and is generally held in affection and respect. All the children have been treated exactly the same by her, although she knows that her husband has a dishonourable, gambling, scapegrace brother who has had to be sent to Australia, and that her husband himself has had tastes, the reverse of orthodox where his emotions were concerned, though happily he has not jeopardised the family fortunes as his brother would have done had he been head. All the children have been so well brought up and instructed in the tenets of the Church that she feels quite placid and sure that she has done all that could be expected of her, and is horribly surprised and distressed when disasters presently occur. She looks upon them as the will of G.o.d and fate, but feels in no way to blame personally.

A HATRED OF PREACHING

It had never struck her intelligence that boys with such heredity in them should have been specially influenced and directed from earliest youth towards ideas of the finest honour and proudest responsibility in keeping unblemished their ancient name; that all the stupidities and follies of gambling should have been pointed out to them; that the certain temptations which are bound to beset the path of those in their position should have been fully explained to them--all this done in a simple, common-sense fashion which would convince their understanding. She had never thought that it would be wise to make them clearly comprehend why they should try to resist bad habits and youthful l.u.s.ts of the flesh--not so much from the point of view that such things are sins, as because science and experience have shown that the indulgence in them spoils health and brain and pleasure in manhood. Boys are creatures full of common sense, and their education in public schools broadens and helps their understanding of logical sequences, if only things are explained to them without mystery and too much spiritual emphasis being put upon them. They so hate being preached at! No young, growing person in normal animal health and spirits can be guided and coerced to resist the desires of the body _solely_ by religious and moral teaching; he must have some definite reward and gain upon this earth held out to him as well; there must be some tangible reason for abstinence to convince his imagination and strengthen his will. And the gain he is offered if he resists certain temptations is that he will grow strong and powerful, and the better able, when his judgment is ripe enough to discriminate properly, to enjoy real pleasures later on. When the adolescent spiritual self begins to rule him, then the moral point can be more forcibly pressed home; but it is quite futile while he is at the growing animal stage.

Our good and highly placed mother of whom we are speaking has never thought of any of these laws of cause and effect, as applied to her own nearest and dearest, although she is accustomed to think out schemes for the betterment and development of her Girls' Friendly societies, or for furthering her husband's political interests in the country.

INHERITED CHARACTER

She sees good little well-behaved daughters coming down in "the children's hour" and receives favourable reports from the governesses, and has no idea, or even any speculation about what strange and new thoughts and emotions may be commencing to germinate in their brains.

Mildred has perhaps inherited her father's _volage_ nature where the other s.e.x are concerned, and early shows tendencies which ought to be sympathetically checked and directed. Catherine has got a strong touch of Uncle Billy's unscrupulousness, and is often deceitful and scheming, with a wonderful apt.i.tude for the nursery dominoes and other games of chance. But both, taught by Fraulein or Mademoiselle--and that good old Nurse Timson!--only show their mother their sweetest side when in her company, and are meek, well-behaved little mice, influenced to be thus not from any moral conviction--because if that were so they would be good at all times as well--but swayed by the certain knowledge of personal physical gain if they make a good impression upon mother, and certain punishment and unpleasantness from the governesses if they do not. All goes along smoothly until the rising sap of nature begins to dominate their lives; then some outward and visible sign of their inherited tendencies begins to show, the force causing its expression being stronger for the time than any other thing.

One of the boys gambles, and goes to the Jews for money. The eldest son and heir, who has never had the wiles of women revealed and explained to him, or the temptations which are bound to be thrust upon him because of his great position in the world pointed out to him, succ.u.mbs to the fascinations and falls into the snares of a cunning chorus girl. Our good mother and great lady has steadily avoided even admitting that there can be s.e.x questions in life, and has rigorously banished all possible discussion of them as not being a subject which should be talked of in any nice family. She has never given any especial teaching to arouse pride in his old name in her eldest son, or impressed the great responsibility there is in the worthy guardianship of the fine position G.o.d has endowed him with. He has just been allowed to drift with the rest, and, unwarned and unarmed, has fallen in the first fight with his physical emotions.

INSTINCTS UNCHECKED

A third son is apparently the darling of the G.o.ds; he is full of charm. But, fearing that the gambling propensities of his second brother should come out in him also, his parents keep him with special strictness and very short of money. The same absence of all explanations of the meaning of things has been his portion as well as that of his brothers and sisters. He has never been enlightened as to the possible workings of heredity, and shown how that as the vice of gambling is in the blood it will require special will-power to overcome it. None of these things has been pointed out to him, and so, being restive at restraint and worried for money, he soon slips into easy ways, and often allows women to help him in his difficulties.

Uncle Billy's instincts and his own father's have combined in him.

Both could have been checked and diverted into sane channels with loving foresight and knowledge and sympathy.

The fourth son goes early into the Navy, and the discipline and the inheritance of his mother's more level qualities turn him into a splendid fellow; but this is mere chance, and cannot be counted as accruing from his mother's care.

Here is a case where every outward circ.u.mstance seemed to be propitious, and where both parents were good and respected members of their cla.s.s and race. But neither had the intelligence to realise an end, or consciously to keep it in view; they were solely ruled by tradition and what seemed to them--especially the mother--to be the proper and well-established religious methods for the bringing up of their children. So the remorseless laws of cause and effect rolled on their Juggernaut car and crushed the victims.

Now, if this mother had had the end--that of her children's happiness and welfare--really in view, she would have questioned herself as to the best methods of obtaining that end, and would not have been content just to go on with the narrow ideas which had held sway in her own day, and which had perhaps then succeeded very well, because, as I said before, they were aided by the two forces now stultified--namely, a tremendous discipline and a spirit of the age which brought no suggestion of a struggle for personal liberty to young minds. Had she thought out all these things, she would have understood the responsibilities of motherhood in their real sense, and not only in the sense which the outward appearance judges good. She would have poured love and sympathy on each one of her children separately and individually, since she was the half-cause of their coming to earth.

She would have studied each one's character, and with determined concentration have inculcated the necessary pride in fine actions in them, knowing what their pitfalls would be likely to be. She would have taught the simple religion of respect for the loan G.o.d has made in giving their bodies a soul, and she would have watched for possible signs of ill, and would finally have guided each one through the dangerous age on to the time when every man and woman must answer for himself and herself.

Heredity is sometimes stronger than even the wisest bringing up; but who can say how many families might not have been saved and kept together by a prudent and understanding mother's love?

There is a story, which exactly ill.u.s.trates the point of the importance of keeping _the end_ in view, told of the Iron Duke in the Peninsular War. I cannot remember the exact details, and they are of no consequence. The point is this: There was a certain tremendously obstinate Spanish general whom the Duke (then Sir Arthur Wellesley) found very difficult to lead. The moment had arrived when it was absolutely necessary for success that this general should move his troops to a certain position. He was a man filled with his own importance, and he refused huffily to do so unless the English chief went down upon his knees to him!

The Iron Duke is reported to have replied to this message in some such words as these: "Good Lord! the winning of the day is the essential thing, not the resisting of the man's vanity! I'll go down upon my knees with pleasure if that will make him move his troops!" He did, and the Spanish general conceded the request and the day was won.

The great commander and astute Englishman had _the end_ in view, you see, whereas the lesser brain of the Spaniard would have sacrificed the battle for a personal whim, having lost sight, in his vanity, of the importance of the main issue.

How many parents do this day after day and year after year, clinging to obsolete methods, trying to rule by worn-out precepts, all because--when you come to a.n.a.lyse it--their own sense of importance really matters to them more than their children's welfare, and no one has opened their eyes to see themselves and their actions in the true light.

Although the case which I have just given of the seemingly good mother was drawn from the highest cla.s.s, and so at first sight might not be said to apply to lesser grades, yet I want to show that this is not so, but that the same principle applies to the most modest little family.

Every mother should study how best she can develop and elevate the souls which by her own part-action she has brought into being, and make that aim her first thought--for surely the satisfaction of the feeling that one has succeeded in training one's own children to high ideals and the attainment of happiness would be greater in old age than any gratification from the acquirement of social supremacy or realised personal ambitions.