Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  There have been just such hours to me, in which I have seen the hopes of manhood, the love of woman, the possession of a home, the opportunities for acquisition of name, and position, and property, all within sight, within grasp, yet all made impossible by my knowledge and consciousness of the deadly drift and suction of that invisible whirlpool.

  The more of manliness there yet is left in man in these circumstances, the more torture. The more sense of honor, love of reputation, love of friends, conscience in duty, the more anguish. I read once a frightful story of a woman whose right hand was changed to a serpent, which at intervals was roused to fiendish activity and demanded of her the blood of her nearest and dearest friends. The hideous curse was inappeasable, and the doomed victim spellbound, powerless to resist. Even so the man who has lost the control of his will is driven to torture those he loves, while he shivers with horror and anguish at the sight.

  I have seen the time when I gave earnest thanks that no woman loved me, that I had no power to poison the life of a wife with the fear, and terror, and lingering agony of watching the slow fulfillment of such a doom.

  It is enough to say that with every advantage — of friends, patronage, position — I lost all.

  The world is exigeant. It demands above everything that every man shall keep step. He who cannot falls to the rear, and is gradually left behind as the army moves on.

  The only profession left to me was one which could avail itself of my lucid intervals. The power of clothing thought with language is in our day growing to be a species of talent for which men are willing to pay, and I have been able by this to make myself a name and a place in the world; and what is more, I hope to do some good in it.

  I have reflected upon my own temptation, endeavoring to divest myself of the horror with which my sense of the suffering and disappointment I have caused my friends inspires me. I have settled in my own mind the limits of human responsibility on this subject, and have come to the conclusion that it is to be regarded precisely as Mary Lamb and Charles Lamb regarded the incursion of the mania which destroyed the peace of their life. A man who undertakes to comprehend and cure himself has to fight his way back alone. Nobody understands, nobody sympathizes with him, nobody helps him — not because the world is unfeeling, but because it is ignorant of the laws which govern this species of insanity.

  It took me, therefore, a great while to form my system of self-cure. I still hope for this. I, the sane and sound, I hope to provide for the insane and unsound intervals of my life. And my theory is, briefly, a total and eternal relinquishment of the poisonous influence, so that nature may have power to organize new and healthy brain-matter, and to remove that which is diseased. Nature will do this, in the end, for she is ever merciful; there is always “forgiveness with her, that she may be feared.” Since you have known me, you have seen that I live the life of an anchorite — that my hours are regular, that I avoid exciting society, that I labor with uniformity, and that I never touch any stimulating drink. It is a peculiarity of cases like mine that for lengths of time the morbid disease leaves us, and we feel the utmost aversion to anything of the kind. But there is always a danger lying behind this subtle calm. Three or four drops of alcohol, such as form the basis of a tincture which a doctor will order without scruple, will bring back the madness. One five-minutes’ inadvertence will upset the painful work of years, and carry one away as with a flood. When I did not know this, I was constantly falling. Society through all its parts is full of traps and pitfalls for such as I, and the only refuge is in flight.

  It has been part of my rule of life to avoid all responsibilities that might involve others in my liability to failure. It is now a very long time since I have felt any abnormal symptoms, and if I had not so often been thrown down after such a period of apparent calm, I might fancy my dangers over, and myself a sound man.

  The younger Hestermann was a classmate and chum of mine in college, and one whose friendship for me has held on through thick and thin. He has a trust in me that imposes on me a painful sense of responsibility. I would not fail him for a thousand worlds, yet if one of my hours of darkness should come I should fail ignominiously.

  Only one motive determined me to take their offer — it gave me a chance to provide for you and for Caroline. I dare do it only through trusting you for a friendship beyond that of the common; in short, for a brotherly kindness such as Charles Lamb showed to Mary, his sister. If the curse returns upon me, you must not let me ruin myself and you; you must take me to an asylum till I recover. In asking this of you, I am glad to be able to offer what will be to you an independent position, and give you that home and fireside which I may not dare to hope for myself.

  In the end, I expect to conquer, either here or hereafter. I believe in the Fatherhood of God, and that He has a purpose even in letting us blindly stumble through life as we do; and through all my weakness and unworthiness I still hold his hand. I know that the whole temptation is one of brain and nerves, and when He chooses He can release me. The poor brain will be cold and still for good and all some day, and I shall be free and able to see, I trust, why I have been suffered thus to struggle. After all, immortality opens a large hope, that may overpay the most unspeakable bitterness of life.

  Meanwhile, you can see why I do not wish to be brought into personal relations with the only woman I have ever loved, or ever can love, and whose happiness I fear to put in peril. It is an unspeakable delight and relief to have this power of doing for her, but she must not know of it.

  Also, let me tell you that you are to me more transparent than you think. It requires only the penetration of friendship to see that you are in love, and that you hesitate and hang back because of an unwillingness to match your fortunes with hers.

  Let me suggest, do you not owe it as a matter of justice, after so much intimacy as has existed, to give her the opportunity to choose between a man and circumstances? If the arrangement between us goes into effect, you will have a definite position and a settled income. Go to her like a man and lay it before her, and if she is worthy of you she will come to you.

  “He either fears his fate too much,

  Or his deserts are small,

  That dares not put it to the touch

  To gain or lose it all.”

  God grant you a home and fireside, Harry, and I will be the indulgent uncle in the chimney-corner.

  Yours ever, —

  BOLTON.

  CHAPTER XXIX. PERTURBATIONS

  SCENE. — Ida’s Study — Ida busy making notes from a book. Eva sitting by, embroidering.

  EVA: “Heigho! how stupid things are. I am tired of everything. I am tired of shopping — tired of parties —— tired of New York — where the same thing keeps happening over and over. I wish I was a man. I ‘d just take my carpet-bag and go to Europe. Come now, Ida, pray stop that, and talk to me, do!”

  Ida (putting down her book and pen): “Well — and what about?”

  “Oh, you know! — this inextricable puzzle — what does ail a certain person? Now he didn’t come at all last night, and when I asked Jim Fellows where his friend was (one must pass the compliment of inquiring, you know), he said, ‘Henderson had grown dumpy lately,’ and he couldn’t get him out anywhere.”

  “Well, Eva, I’m sure I can’t throw any light on the subject. I know no more than you.”

  “Now, Ida, let me tell you, this afternoon when we stopped in the Park, I went into that great rustic arbor on the top of the hill there, and just as we came in on one side I saw him in all haste hurrying out on the other, as if he were afraid to meet me.”

  “How very odd!”

  “Odd! Well, I should think it was; but what was worse, he went and stationed himself on a bench under a tree where he could hear and see us, and there my lord sat —— perhaps he thought I didn’t see him, but I did.

  “Lillie and Belle Forrester and Wat Jerrold were with me, and we were having such a laugh! I don’t know when I have had such a frolic, and how silly
it was of him to sit there glowering like an owl in an ivy bush, when he might have come out and joined us, and had a good time! I ‘m quite out of patience with the creature, it’s so vexatious to have him act so!”

  “It is vexatious, darling, but then as you can’t do anything about it, why think of it?”

  “Because I can’t help it. Can you have a real friendship for a person and enjoy his society, and not care in the least whether you have it or not? Of course you can’t. We were friends — quite good friends, and, I’m not ashamed to say I miss him very much, and then to have such an unaccountable mystery about it. I should think you ‘d miss him, too.”

  “I do somewhat,” said Ida, “but then you see I have so much more to think of. I have my regular work every day for papa, and I have my plan of study, and to say the truth, so far as I am concerned, though I liked Mr. Henderson very much, yet I don’t miss him.”

  “Well, Ida, now I want to ask you, didn’t you think he acted as if” —

  “As if he were in love with you, you would say.”

  “Well — yes.”

  “He certainly did, if I am any judge of symptoms; but then, dear, men are often in love with women they don’t mean to marry.”

  “Who wants to marry him, I should like to know? I ‘m not thinking of that.”

  “Well, then, Eva, perhaps he has discovered that he wants to marry you; and, perhaps, for some reason he regards that as impossible, and so is going to try to keep away.”

  “How perfectly hateful and stupid of him! I’d rather never have seen him.”

  “A man generally has this advantage over a woman in a matter of this sort, that he has an object in life which is more to him than anything else, and he can fill his whole mind with that.”

  “Well, Ida, that’s all very true, but what object in life can a girl have who lives as we do; who has everything she can want without an effort — I for instance?”

  “But I have an object.”

  “Yes, I know you have, but I am different from you. It would be as impossible for me to do as you do as for a fish to walk upright on dry land.”

  “Well, Eva, this objectless, rootless, floating kind of life that you and almost all girls lead is at the bottom of nearly all your troubles. Literally and truly you have nothing in the world to do but to amuse yourselves; the consequence is that you soon get tired of almost every kind of amusement, and so every friendship and flirtation assumes a disproportioned interest in your minds. There is real danger now that you may think too much of Mr.” —

  “Oh, stuff and nonsense, Ida! I won’t, so there! I’ll put him out of my head forthwith and bolt the door. Give me a good stiff dose of reading, Ida; one of your dullest scientific books, and get me to write you an analysis of it as we did at school. Here, let me see, ‘Descent of Man.’ Come, now, I’ll sit down and go at it.”

  Eva sits down with book, pencil, and paper, and turns over the leaves. “Let’s try how it looks. ‘Sexual Selection’! Oh, horrid! ‘Her Ape-like Proportions’! I should be ashamed to talk so about my ancestors. Apes!

  —— of all things — why not some more respectable animal? lions or horses, for example. You remember Swift’s story about the houyhnhnms. Isn’t this a dreadfully dull book, Ida?”

  “No, I don’t find it so. I am deeply interested in it, though I admit it is pretty heavy.”

  “But, then, Ida, you see it goes against the Bible, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily as I see.”

  “Why, yes; to be sure. I haven’t read it; but Mr. Henderson gave me the clearest kind of a sketch of the argument, and that is the way it impressed me. That to be sure is among the things I principally value him for; he is my milk-skimmer; he gets all the cream that rises on a book and presents it to me in a portable form. I remember one of the very last really comfortable long talks we had; it was on this subject, and I told him that it seemed to me that the modern theory and the Bible were point-blank opposites. Instead of men being a fallen race, they are a rising race, and never so high as now; and then, what becomes of the Garden of Eden, and St. Paul? Now, for my part, I told Mr. Henderson I wasn’t going to give up all the splendid poetry of Milton and the Bible, just because Mr. Darwin took it into his head that it was not improbable that my seventy-fifth millionth grandfather might have been a big baboon with green nose and pointed ears!”

  “My dear Eva, you have capital reasons for believing and not believing. You believe what seems most agreeable and poetic.”

  “Exactly, Ida; and in those far-off regions, sixteen million billion ages ago, why shouldn’t I? Nobody knows what happened there; nobody has been there to see what made the first particle of jelly take to living, and turn into a germ cell, and then go working on like yeast, till it worked out into all the things we see. I think it a good deal easier to believe the Garden of Eden story, especially as that is pretty and poetical, and is in the dear old Book that is so sweet and comfortable to us; but then Mr. Henderson insists that even if we do hold the Evolution theory, the old Book will be no less true. I never saw a man of so much thought who had so much reverence.”

  “I thought you were going to study Darwin and not think of him,” said Ida.

  “Well, somehow, almost everything puts me in mind of him, because we have had such long talks about everything; and, Ida, to tell the truth, I do believe I am intellectually lazy. I don’t like rough hard work, I like polishing and furbishing. Now, I want a man to go through all this rough, hard, stupid, disagreeable labyrinth of scientific terms, and pick out the meaning and put it into a few, plain words, and then I take it and brighten it up and put on the rainbows. Look here, now, think of my having to scrabble through a bog like this in the ‘Origin of Species:’ —

  “‘In Carthamus and some other compositæ the central achenes alone are furnished with a pappus; and in Hyoseris the same head yields achenes of three different forms. In certain Umbelliferæ the exterior seeds, according to Tanch, are orthospermous, and the central one cœlospermous, and this difference has been considered by De Candolle as of the highest systematic importance in the family.’

  “Now all this is just as unintelligible to me as if it were written in Choctaw. I don’t know enough to know what it means, and I’m afraid I don’t care enough to know. I want to know the upshot of the whole in good plain English, and then see whether I can believe it or not; and isn’t it a shame that things are so that one cannot have a sensible man to be one’s guide, philosopher, and friend without this everlasting marriage question coming up? If a woman makes an effort to get or keep a valuable friend, she is supposed to be intriguing and making unfeminine efforts for a husband. Now this poor man is perfectly wretched about something — for I can see he has really gone off shockingly, and looks thin and haggard, and I can’t just write him a note and ask him to come and finish his résumé of Darwin for me without going over the boundaries; and the worst of it is, it is I who set these limits —— I myself who am a world too proud to say the first word or give the slightest indication that his absence isn’t quite as agreeable as his presence.”

  “Well, Eva, I can write a note and request him to call and see me,” said Ida, “and if you like, I will. I have no sort of fear what he will think of me.”

  “I would not have you for the world. It would look like an advance on our part — no indeed. These creatures are so conceited, if they once find out that you can’t do without them” —

  “I never observed any signs of conceit in Mr. Henderson.”

  “Well, I have made it an object to keep him a little humble, so far as his sex will permit, you see. But seriously, Ida, is not it curious about this marriage matter? Everybody says it’s what we are made for, all the novels end with it, all the poems are about it, you are hearing about it in one way or other all the time; and yet all this while you are supposed not to care anything about it one way or the other. If a man be ever so agreeable to you, and do ever so much to make you like him, you must pretend that you
are quite indifferent to him, and don’t care whether he comes or goes, until such time as he chooses to launch the tremendous question at you.”

  “Well,” said Ida, “I admit that there is just this absurdity in our life; but I avoid it all by firmly laying a plan of my own, and having a business of my own. To me marriage would be an interruption; it would require a breaking up and reconstruction of my whole plan, and of course I really think nothing about it.”

  “But are you firmly resolved never to marry?”

  “No; but never, unless I find some one more to me than all on which I have set my heart. I do not need it for my happiness. I am sufficient to myself; and besides I have an object I hope to attain, and that is to open a way by which many other women shall secure independence and comfort and ease.”