Then there was Mother — dear, blessed Mother. She was just all goodness. Such an unselfish sweet person I never saw, nor one so anxious to do what was right at any cost. Even Father admitted that, when he had to.
But Mother, for all her goodness, was just like the good people in the story books: she hadn’t enough sense. It did seem, sometimes, as if she hadn’t what Alison called “common wit,” at least about Father. With us children she was wonderful, a real educator, but with him, it seemed as if her duty and unselfishness absolutely blinded her.
And I suppose, much as I love Mother, I have to admit, if this is going to be what they used to call “a veracious chronicle,” that even goodness — without sense — is sometimes wearying.
We young ones, sitting at the table, told severely by Father that we should be seen and not heard, kept quiet enough, and saw, as well as were seen. We saw a lot, even Peggy. “Little pitchers have long ears,” Father used to tell us, and, “Children pick up words as pigeons peas, and utter them again as God shall please.” I know that I picked up ever so many, and haven’t uttered them yet.
Anyway we had to see and hear all dear Mother’s patient, futile efforts to keep that father of ours good-natured. I suppose nobody really could have done it, but as early as eight or nine years old I used to think of things to say — and to not say — that I really do feel would have been wiser.
Of course Father was aggravating. But then he was a fixed fact. Fie had been a fixed fact to her ever since she married him. Surely what I, as a child, could learn in five or six years, at least two of which didn’t count for much, she, being a grownup, ought to have learned sooner.
I used to sit there, “looking like a young owl,” Father often said, listening to him and Mother, and thinking hard. I learned very young indeed that thinking was quite a different process from speaking. As a mere baby I would naturally say what I thought, but I soon found it was safer not to. If you say a thing, it is done, somehow, and nothing more happens. I mean even when you are not laughed at, or praised or punished, it’s just said — and that’s all. But if you think it, and bite hard, don’t say a single word of it, it kind of pushes. The people in the stories, the sort of people I admired, used to think a lot and never say anything until “the time was ripe.”
Why is it that people seem to imagine children cannot think? They can. I was only about eight when I discovered what a wonder-world was open to one’s mind, nothing to do but walk in.
Father always insisted on our going to bed at the stroke of the clock, a very early stroke, too. If there was time after supper and if he was in a sufficiently good humor, he would read to us; he dearly loved to read aloud. That was about the pleasantest thing we have to remember about Father — reading aloud in the evening, that is, when the things were interesting. Scott was interesting. Scott’s poems he read to us, and Scott’s novels, and old Scotch ballads. They were among the very earliest things.
But you take a child with an active mind, or any mind at all, for that matter, stir it up with literature and then clap it into bed, why, that child does not always go to sleep. I know I didn’t, nor even Peggy, at first. I’d lie there and make up stories and lovely things that might happen, as long as she would listen, and then, when she was really sound asleep, I’d go on and think them to myself. If I had my wishes! That was the usual beginning. Whether it was a fairy godmother or a magic ring — any sort of a starter — then the world was open. That old story of the husband and wife who had three wishes and wasted them all on a pudding. How I did despise that story. The poor, shortsighted idiots!
I used to begin by wishing that all my wishes might be wise and right and bring only happiness. Then I was safe, and could go ahead without feeling anxious about consequences.
At first this was so pleasant that I felt sure it must be wrong. That is one of the things children’s minds are deeply impressed with, if they are brought up as we were — that nice things are pretty sure to be wrong.
Father was awfully strict and puritanical. When he read Burns to us (we didn’t like Burns half so well as Scott, but Father praised him to the skies always), that about “the unco guid” always made me think of Father himself. At least it did when I was old enough. I can see now that all his conduct at home seemed perfectly right to him. Since I know more of life I can see that from most people’s point of view he was an unusually good man, and from his own, quite perfect. He did all the Bible commandments right, the ten, that is. Nobody seems to pay much attention to the last two. And as to being tedious and stingy and domineering and argumentative and ill-tempered and dictatorial and satirical, why, there’s nothing in the ten commandments about any of those things. It does say later on: “Fathers provoke not your children to wrath,” but I guess that is only a very little commandment.
I’ve heard Mother ask him for money — when she had to, just had to — to buy thread to sew our clothes with. He’d argue about it, and want to see her accounts. Poor Mother. Just to ask for her account book was enough to make her cry almost. She had no head for figures, and he had. He had everything as clear as could be in his mind, and kept insisting on her keeping her expenses like that, and she really could not do it, though she tried. It wasn’t, I can see now, that he meant to hurt her so much, but it was so hard on Mother!
I believe — this means now that I know so much more about life — I believe that people can be as brutal to each other’s minds as they used to be in old times to their bodies. They can lash and burn and torture, they can cramp young brains as the Chinese do young feet, they can imprison and load with chains and starve and rack — all without its showing outside or anybody’s blaming them.
And I’ve seen Mother wince when Father spoke to her just as if it were a whip. She’d set her teeth and turn white and hold her hands tight, other times; and pray, pray dreadfully, for strength to bear it, to be patient, to do her duty, to love, honor and obey. Of course she never dreamed I was under the bed.
To get away from all this and think things into shape — make everything all right in my mind — was a great relief, as you can well imagine. So I used to lie there nights and arrange it all in my mind — what I’d do if I had my wishes. I would be perfectly beautiful, of course, and so wise and good! Mother should grow well and happy and have all the lovely soft clothes she wanted — gray and lavender and pale rose and pearl, the colors she liked best. And she should have money, all the money she wanted, and we would refurnish the house from top to bottom — I had heard her wish for new furniture.
The furniture, and Mother’s clothes, and Peggy’s and mine, too, used to last me interminably. I always got to sleep before the last rooms were done, or the wardrobe.
Then there was the splendid margin of Giving Away. We had a sort of Fortunatus purse, of course, and all the poor people we knew became quite comfortable at once.
And when I was particularly angry about something, there were hours of fearful pleasure spent in doing things to my enemies. I always enjoyed that part of the fairy stories, when the wicked sister was put in a barrel set with knives and rolled down hill. Children certainly are cruel.
For Father I never was quite sure what to do. Mostly I changed him, changed him so that he was hardly recognizable, but so that we could love him. I always did want to love Father, but couldn’t. Peggy did, though, I really believe.
But all that was only thinking. Daytimes I had to manage, if I could.
As for Alison McNab, nobody could have managed her, not the great Machiavelli himself, I am sure. She had nursed Father when he was little, and spanked him, and I am convinced she came to this country to look after him. She loved Mother dearly — she had to. But I know if she had not had caring for Father built into her constitution that way, she never would have put up with him.
Come to think of it, he never was as outrageous to her as he was to Mother. Alison had a sharp tongue and a cool head. I loved to hear her “answer back,” always polite enough, and “knowing her place,” but holdin
g her own perfectly. And the Scotch dishes she cooked for him made her safe to keep the place, no matter what she said. Scones and shortcakes and brose and haggis and lots of queer things. Mother never caught the knack of it.
Once or twice I tried my hand on Alison, but she would fix those very small, very keen eyes of hers on me, and seem to see through my little devices.
“You’re ower wise for one o’ your years,” she would say dryly. “I misdoubt you’re ower wise altogether.”
But then Alison always did what she ought to; I didn’t have to manage her.
So at home, though Peggy and Mother were easy — real easy — and Alison hard, the only practical difficulty was Father. He was the Master and Owner and Governor. He “commanded and forbade and released prisoners and remitted the customs taxes” like the sultans in the stories, only mostly he imprisoned and put the taxes on.
Father had severe ideas of discipline and how children should be “trained.” People act as if children were performing dogs or horses, or something that has to be “broken.” Mother felt very differently. She had studied to be a kindergarten teacher before Father married her; she really cared about children and making them happy. But Father scorned “all these morbid modern follies of child-culture” and used to take pleasure in ridiculing and abusing Mother’s ideas. He wouldn’t let us go to a kindergarten, but he couldn’t help mother’s teaching us in the nursery in that wise way, so we really had some advantage of it.
I think Mother was too easy with us, partly to offset his severity, but we soon learned how to change our behavior as soon as Father’s key turned in the lock. I noticed that if we did anything he disapproved of he always blamed Mother for it, showing at great length how our misconduct was due to her false ideas.
Now I would often have done as I liked and taken my punishment — a punishment is only a price, it doesn’t kill you. But I hated to hurt her.
I read in one of my story books of a strange, precocious boy who read Emerson. So I read Emerson too, or tried to, as early as twelve or thirteen. Some of it I could understand, and it was good sense.
“‘If you want anything, pay for it and take it,’ says God.” That struck me as reasonable.
I used to figure up what a thing would cost, and whether I could afford it or not, and if it hadn’t been for Mother, I think I could have indulged in far more liberties. But I couldn’t afford to have Mother hurt any more than she had to be.
As I grew up I noticed more and more how horrid Father was to Mother, and one of the problems I set myself to work out was how to... well how to mitigate him. I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t take Mother away, or Peggy. But there are always ways. I’d say to myself: “Now suppose he were a Giant or an Ogre — and had us — what could I do to outwit him?” Or, “Suppose he were an Enemy, and had us in prison, or enslaved. What could I do for Mother and Peggy?” Opposition was out of the question, or Conquest, or Escape. Wives and children can’t escape, it appears. I tried to think that out, but gave it up.
Once I went to Mr. Cutter about it. In George MacDonald’s books the minister does such wonderful things with families, always. Mr. Cutter was very kind, but he didn’t seem to appreciate the point of view at all.
“My dear little girl,” he said to me, “a child has no right to criticize her parents. You read too many story books with that active brain of yours. Your business is to study your lessons and obey your parents. You are getting morbid, my dear.”
You see, he didn’t know. When he called, Father was polite enough; and I dare say he was to strangers, generally; and as to his treatment of us, well I guess I didn’t make it clear. People didn’t know he drank either, and they thought he was a “good family man” because he stayed at home evenings. And as he didn’t beat us until we screamed, nobody knew what we suffered. Peggy minded it least. She had a sunny temperament and was unobserving. At school she was very successful and well liked, and she didn’t do things Father disliked at home. I didn’t either, but then I wanted to, and felt the restrictions.
I don’t think Peggy ever realized how much Mother suffered either, or half appreciated the bitter satire and veiled condemnation with which he talked to her, right before us. And I guess she slept sounder than I did and didn’t hear him keeping Mother awake nights with his long-drawn-out faultfinding. I heard him. I used to lie and clench my hands and shut my teeth tight, and get madder and madder. I could see so easily how Mother could have made it better for herself, in several ways.
But dear Mother had no vestige of diplomacy. She would provoke him when it wasn’t necessary, interrupt him when he was nearly through and have to hear it all over again; submit where she needn’t have, and resist when it was no use. Poor little Mother.
One thing Mother loved dearly was flowers. We had a big yard and a vegetable garden, and every year she would beg him to let her have tulip beds, and set out roses and so on, and he would not have it. She liked to have flowers all around in the house and on the table and on herself, and Father got the idea that this was unhygienic. Also I think it was partly contrariness, just because Mother urged him at inopportune moments, and once he had taken a stand he wouldn’t ever give up.
I observed this; it flashed across me all at once when I was nearly twelve, that they had this discussion every spring.
I had kept a diary since I was eight. One of the things I most often put down was: “Father scolded Mother,” or “Father quarreled with Mother,” and usually, “about flowers” or “about visitors” or “about us children” or “about money” — whatever it was about. So now I looked over these diaries and sure enough, this was an annual quarrel about flowers.
It seemed such a simple, nice thing, too, for Mother to have a garden to suit her. She had very few things as she liked them. It would be good for her health, I knew. And I began to wonder if this one thing couldn’t be managed; if I could get around Father in this it might help in bigger things. So I studied earnestly about it.
There was his Scotchness — that ought to be a help. And his funny mixture of parsimony and then suddenly spending all the money there was in some plan of his, when we needed coal or the market bill was crowding. If only he could be got to want the garden — and Mother would keep still and let me work it!
I had read in several story books of Scotch gardeners, always Scotch gardeners, and it used to astonish me as much as their making marmalade in that country. Why orange marmalade should be made in a land where there are neither oranges nor sugar was always a mystery to me. Indeed it is yet. I’d as soon look for guava jelly from Siberia, or canned peaches from Greenland. However, there did seem to be something in this Scotch gardening idea. I began to besiege the nice man at the public library for books on gardens and gardening, especially Scotch; and such as were interesting I’d take home and read. I’d read extracts to Mother or Peggy.
When Father was good-natured, I’d ask him how to pronounce this or that queer Scotch name, and if he’d ever been to such a place, and if it was true that Lord Hiltover had the finest flowers in all Britain, and if he knew the Edinburgh man who got the prize for roses in three successive seasons. Then he’d look at the pictures and get interested, and talk about Scotland, as he was always ready to do, and to encourage us in studying anything Scotch — I knew that. Then I found a book on “Scientific Gardening for Profit” and began to try to figure out the sums in it. They didn’t come out right — I wasn’t very careful — and then I’d say, “Oh, Father, this Mr. McVeigh says he can raise so many roses off so many feet of ground — just working at it evenings — and I’ve done it and it doesn’t come out half so many.” Then he’d scold me, say I had no head for figures; take up the quarrel as earnestly as if he were Mr. McVeigh himself.
“How much land is that?” I’d ask. “Is it twice as much as our yard?”
No, he said, it was not. We had more, in fact.
“Well anyhow,” I persisted, “I don’t believe he could do it in that much time; he must have hired someon
e to do the real work. Or perhaps he was an exceptional man — a real genius. Nobody could really raise such flowers on that much land now. See,” I showed him, “he says here that he began in the autumn to prepare for his rose garden and by the next summer he counted so many hundred blossoms on the first planting. Do you think it could be done, Mother?”
Then Mother took a hand just as I hoped she would, disputing the statements of Mr. McVeigh. She said she had tried it in Pennsylvania and it couldn’t be done — and that the climate was better there than it was here, and far better than in Scotland she was sure.
Then Father rose to the occasion and argued — for hours. He said the Scotch were the greatest gardeners the world had ever known, and cited their triumphs by the score. He said women had no capacity for handling tools or raising flowers, let alone vegetables, and that they had not brains enough to see the truth in plain figures given by an intelligent and experienced man.
“Here is this conceited, ignorant young Miss” (he meant me of course, and I looked as miserable as I could), “disputing this clear and rational statement. I shall take pleasure in showing you that this thing can be done, madam, exactly as Mr. McVeigh says.”
You see, Father was nothing if not scientific; he was always planning things — things that never succeeded, to be sure. But he kept on planning. So now he launched out in books on gardening, bought big ones that we couldn’t afford, and cuttings and slips and seeds, and bulbs; set up hot beds; and was forever fussing around in the garden in the long summer evenings. By next spring we did have quite a garden, and in two or three years it was lovely. He didn’t work at it much after the first year, and he wouldn’t let Mother have flowers in the house, but the garden was there all the same. And Mother got lots of comfort out of it.
CHAPTER THREE
They say that if horses only realized their strength we could not manage them as we do. That is true enough; anybody can see it. What we never learn — at the time, I mean — is that if children realized their strength we could not manage them as we do, either.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 87
