Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Now, Harry,” said my wife, “if we let Little Cub see the kittens before she ‘s waited on table, it’ll utterly demoralize her. So we must shut them in carefully,” which was done.

  I don’t think a dinner party was ever a more brilliant success than ours; partly owing to the fact that we were a mutual admiration society, and our guests felt about as much sense of appropriation and property in it as we did ourselves. The house was in a sort of measure “our house,” and the dinner “our dinner.” In short, we were all of us strictly en famille. The world was one thing, and we were another outside of it and by ourselves, and having a remarkably good time. Everybody got some share of praise. Mary got praised for her cooking. The cooking-stove was glorified for baking so well, and Bolton was glorified for recommending the cooking-stove. And Jim and Alice and my wife congratulated each other on the lovely looks of the dining-room. We shuddered together in mutual horror over what the wall-paper there had been; and we felicitated the artists that had brought such brilliant results out of so little. The difficulties that had been overcome in matching the paper and arranging the panels were forcibly dwelt upon; and some sly jokes seemed to pass between Jim and Alice, applicable to certain turns of events in these past operations. After dinner we had most transcendent coffee, and returned to our parlor as gay of heart as if we had been merry with wine. The kittens had got thoroughly at home by that time, having investigated the whole of the apartment, and began exhibiting some of their most irresistible antics with a social success among us of a most flattering nature. Alice declared that she should call them Taglioni and Madame Céleste, and proceeded to tie blue and pink bows upon their necks, which they scratched and growled at in quite a warlike manner. A low whine from -the entry interrupted us; and Eva, opening the door and looking out, saw poor old Stumpy sitting on the mat, with the most good-dog air of dejected patience.

  “Why, here’s Stumpy, poor fellow!” she said.

  “Oh, don’t trouble yourself about him,” said Bolton. “I’ve taught him to sit out on the mat. He’s happy enough if he only thinks I’m inside.”

  “But, poor fellow,” said Eva, “he looks as if he wanted to come in.”

  “Oh, he’ll do well enough; never mind him,” said Bolton, looking a little embarrassed. “It was silly of me to bring him, only he is so desolate to have me go out without him.”

  “Well, he shall come in,” said Eva. “Come in, you poor homely old fellow,” she said. “I dare say you ‘re as good as an angel; and to-night’s my house-warming, and not even a dog shall have an ungratified desire, if I can help it.”

  So poor Stumpy was installed by Bolton in the comer, and looked perfectly beatified.

  And now, while we have brought all our characters before the curtain, and the tableau of the fireside is complete, as we sit there all around the hearth, each perfectly at home with the other, in heart and mind, and with even the poor beasts that connect us with the lower world brightening in our enjoyment, this is a good moment for the curtain to fall on the fortunes of

  MY WIFE AND I.

  THE END

  P. S. — If our kind readers still retain a friendly interest in the fortunes of any of the actors in this story, they may hear again from us at some future day, in the

  RECORDS OF AN UNFASHIONABLE STREET.

  PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY

  A SOCIETY NOVEL

  Pink and White Tyranny: A Society Novel was first published in 1871 and in the words of the author, it is ‘A little commonplace history, all about one man and one woman, living straight along in one little prosaic town in New England’. It is not an action or plot centric book, but instead a work that concentrates on the relationship between a married couple and the absurd notions of femininity and the kind of women and subsequently wives these ideals created. The story follows and satirises the life of a nobleman in New England called John, who marries Lillie, whom he describes in patronising terms as a loveliness of ‘pink and white’. He fully expects her to adhere to the ‘angel of the house’ stereotype of Victorian gender ideology, but soon finds himself incredibly disappointed. Lille is selfish, manipulative and materialistic and John becomes disillusioned in his marriage.

  Stowe details John’s inability to reconcile his beliefs about the ideals of womanhood with the selfish and deceitful woman he married. At times the author clearly depicts John as a victim of Lillie’s manipulative and self-involved behaviour, but there is also a criticism of Victorian notions of womanhood that encourage women to become like Lillie. Beautiful women were taught to be conceited and vain and to cultivate nothing besides their physical appearance and superficial charms necessary to attract powerful and wealthy men. In order to be successful in the marriage market women were educated to be essentially useless, spoilt, weak and childish. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Rosamond Vincy is a fine example and product of this culture and the author chronicles her horrendous marriage to the potentially brilliant doctor Lydgate which ends in disaster for him. Pink and White Tyranny: A Society Novel cleverly depicts the damage and misery caused by these strictly delineated gender stereotypes to both women and men.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  The original title page

  ”Come, then, the colors and the ground prepare;

  Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air;

  Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it

  Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.”

  POPE.

  PREFACE.

  My Dear Reader, — This story is not to be a novel, as the world understands the word; and we tell you so beforehand, lest you be in ill-humor by not finding what you expected. For if you have been told that your dinner is to be salmon and green pease, and made up your mind to that bill of fare, and then, on coming to the table, find that it is beefsteak and tomatoes, you may be out of sorts; not because beefsteak and tomatoes are not respectable viands, but because they are not what you have made up your mind to enjoy.

  Now, a novel, in our days, is a three-story affair, — a complicated, complex, multiform composition, requiring no end of scenery and dramatis personae, and plot and plan, together with trap-doors, pit-falls, wonderful escapes and thrilling dangers; and the scenes transport one all over the earth, — to England, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, and Kamtschatka. But this is a little commonplace history, all about one man and one woman, living straight along in one little prosaic town in New England. It is, moreover, a story with a moral; and for fear that you shouldn’t find out exactly what the moral is, we shall adopt the plan of the painter who wrote under his pictures, “This is a bear,” and “This is a turtle-dove.” We shall tell you in the proper time succinctly just what the moral is, and send you off edified as if you had been hearing a sermon. So please to call this little sketch a parable, and wait for the exposition thereof.

  CHAPTER I.

  FALLING IN LOVE.

  “Who is that beautiful creature?” said John Seymour, as a light, sylph-like form tripped up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where he was lounging away his summer vacation.

  “That! Why, don’t you know, man? That is the celebrated,
the divine Lillie Ellis, the most adroit ‘fisher of men’ that has been seen in our days.”

  “By George, but she’s pretty, though!” said John, following with enchanted eyes the distant motions of the sylphide.

  The vision that he saw was of a delicate little fairy form; a complexion of pearly white, with a cheek of the hue of a pink shell; a fair, sweet, infantine face surrounded by a fleecy radiance of soft golden hair. The vision appeared to float in some white gauzy robes; and, when she spoke or smiled, what an innocent, fresh, untouched, unspoiled look there was upon the face! John gazed, and thought of all sorts of poetical similes: of a “daisy just wet with morning dew;” of a “violet by a mossy stone;” in short, of all the things that poets have made and provided for the use of young gentlemen in the way of falling in love.

  This John Seymour was about as good and honest a man as there is going in this world of ours. He was a generous, just, manly, religious young fellow. He was heir to a large, solid property; he was a well-read lawyer, established in a flourishing business; he was a man that all the world spoke well of, and had cause to speak well of. The only duty to society which John had left as yet unperformed was that of matrimony. Three and thirty years had passed; and, with every advantage for supporting a wife, with a charming home all ready for a mistress, John, as yet, had not proposed to be the defender and provider for any of the more helpless portion of creation. The cause of this was, in the first place, that John was very happy in the society of a sister, a little older than himself, who managed his house admirably, and was a charming companion to his leisure hours; and, in the second place, that he had a secret, bashful self-depreciation in regard to his power of pleasing women, which made him ill at ease in their society. Not that he did not mean to marry. He certainly did. But the fair being that he was to marry was a distant ideal, a certain undefined and cloudlike creature; and, up to this time, he had been waiting to meet her, without taking any definite steps towards that end. To say the truth, John Seymour, like many other outwardly solid, sober-minded, respectable citizens, had deep within himself a little private bit of romance. He could not utter it, he never talked it; he would have blushed and stammered and stuttered wofully, and made a very poor figure, in trying to tell any one about it; but nevertheless it was there, a secluded chamber of imagery, and the future Mrs. John Seymour formed its principal ornament.

  The wife that John had imaged, his dream-wife, was not at all like his sister; though he loved his sister heartily, and thought her one of the best and noblest women that could possibly be.

  But his sister was all plain prose, — good, strong, earnest, respectable prose, it is true, but yet prose. He could read English history with her, talk accounts and business with her, discuss politics with her, and valued her opinions on all these topics as much as that of any man of his acquaintance. But, with the visionary Mrs. John Seymour aforesaid, he never seemed to himself to be either reading history or settling accounts, or talking politics; he was off with her in some sort of enchanted cloudland of happiness, where she was all to him, and he to her, — a sort of rapture of protective love on one side, and of confiding devotion on the other, quite inexpressible, and that John would not have talked of for the world.

  So when he saw this distant vision of airy gauzes, of pearly whiteness, of sea-shell pink, of infantine smiles, and waving, golden curls, he stood up with a shy desire to approach the wonderful creature, and yet with a sort of embarrassed feeling of being very awkward and clumsy. He felt, somehow, as if he were a great, coarse behemoth; his arms seemed to him awkward appendages; his hands suddenly appeared to him rough, and his fingers swelled and stumpy. When he thought of asking an introduction, he felt himself growing very hot, and blushing to the roots of his hair.

  “Want to be introduced to her, Seymour?” said Carryl Ethridge. “I’ll trot you up. I know her.”

  “No, thank you,” said John, stiffly. In his heart, he felt an absurd anger at Carryl for the easy, assured way in which he spoke of the sacred creature who seemed to him something too divine to be lightly talked of. And then he saw, Carryl marching up to her with his air of easy assurance. He saw the bewitching smile come over that fair, flowery face; he saw Carryl, with unabashed familiarity, take her fan out of her hand, look at it as if it were a mere common, earthly fan, toss it about, and pretend to fan himself with it.

  “I didn’t know he was such a puppy!” said John to himself, as he stood in a sort of angry bashfulness, envying the man that was so familiar with that loveliness.

  Ah! John, John! You wouldn’t, for the world, have told to man or woman what a fool you were at that moment.

  “What a fool I am!” was his mental commentary: “just as if it was any thing to me.” And he turned, and walked to the other end of the veranda.

  “I think you’ve hooked another fish, Lillie,” said Belle Trevors in the ear of the little divinity.

  “Who…?”

  “Why! that Seymour there, at the end of the veranda. He is looking at you, do you know? He is rich, very rich, and of an old family. Didn’t you see how he started and looked after you when you came up on the veranda?”

  “Oh! I saw plain enough,” said the divinity, with one of her unconscious, baby-like smiles.

  “What are you ladies talking?” said Carryl Ethridge.

  “Oh, secrets!” said Belle Trevors. “You are very presuming, sir, to inquire.”

  “Mr. Ethridge,” said Lillie Ellis, “don’t you think it would be nice to promenade?”

  This was said with such a pretty coolness, such a quiet composure, as showed Miss Lillie to be quite mistress of the situation; there was, of course, no sort of design in it.

  Ethridge offered his arm at once; and the two sauntered to the end of the veranda, where John Seymour was standing.

  The blood rushed in hot currents over him, and he could hear the beating of his heart: he felt somehow as if the hour of his fate was coming. He had a wild desire to retreat, and put it off. He looked over the end of the veranda, with some vague idea of leaping it; but alas! it was ten feet above ground, and a lover’s leap would have only ticketed him as out of his head. There was nothing for it but to meet his destiny like a man.

  Carryl came up with the lady on his arm; and as he stood there for a moment, in the coolest, most indifferent tone in the world, said, “Oh! by the by, Miss Ellis, let me present my friend Mr. Seymour.”

  The die was cast.

  John’s face burned like fire: he muttered something about “being happy to make Miss Ellis’s acquaintance,” looking all the time as if he would be glad to jump over the railing, or take wings and fly, to get rid of the happiness.

  Miss Ellis was a belle by profession, and she understood her business perfectly. In nothing did she show herself master of her craft, more than in the adroitness with which she could soothe the bashful pangs of new votaries, and place them on an easy footing with her.

  “Mr. Seymour,” she said affably, “to tell the truth, I have been desirous of the honor of your acquaintance, ever since I saw you in the breakfast-room this morning.”

  “I am sure I am very much flattered,” said John, his heart beating thick and fast. “May I ask why you honor me with such a wish?”

  “Well, to tell the truth, because you strikingly resemble a very dear friend of mine,” said Miss Ellis, with her sweet, unconscious simplicity of manner.

  “I am still more flattered,” said John, with a quicker beating of the heart; “only I fear that you may find me an unpleasant contrast.”

  “Oh! I think not,” said Lillie, with another smile: “we shall soon be good friends, too, I trust.”

  “I trust so certainly,” said John, earnestly.

  Belle Trevors now joined the party; and the four were soon chatting together on the best footing of acquaintance. John was delighted to feel himself already on easy terms with the fair vision.

  “You have not been here long?” said Lillie to John.

  “No, I have o
nly just arrived.”

  “And you were never here before?”

  “No, Miss Ellis, I am entirely new to the place.”

  “I am an old habituée here,” said Lillie, “and can recommend myself as authority on all points connected with it.”

  “Then,” said John, “I hope you will take me under your tuition.”

  “Certainly, free of charge,” she said, with another ravishing smile.

  “You haven’t seen the boiling spring yet?” she added.

  “No, I haven’t seen any thing yet.”

  “Well, then, if you’ll give me your arm across the lawn, I’ll show it to you.”

  All of this was done in the easiest, most matter-of-course manner in the world; and off they started, John in a flutter of flattered delight at the gracious acceptance accorded to him.

  Ethridge and Belle Trevors looked after them with a nod of intelligence at each other.

  “Hooked, by George!” said Ethridge.

  “Well, it’ll be a good thing for Lillie, won’t it?”

  “For her? Oh, yes, a capital thing for her!”

  “Well, for him too.”

  “Well, I don’t know. John is a pretty nice fellow; a very nice fellow, besides being rich, and all that; and Lillie is somewhat shop-worn by this time. Let me see: she must be seven and twenty.”

  “Oh, yes, she’s all that!” said Belle, with ingenuous ardor. “Why, she was in society while I was a schoolgirl! Yes, dear Lillie is certainly twenty-seven, if not more; but she keeps her freshness wonderfully.”

  “Well, she looks fresh enough, I suppose, to a good, honest, artless fellow like John Seymour, who knows as little of the world as a milkmaid. John is a great, innocent, country steer, fed on clover and dew; and as honest and ignorant of all sorts of naughty, wicked things as his mother or sister. He takes Lillie in a sacred simplicity quite refreshing; but to me Lillie is played out. I know her like a book. I know all her smiles and wiles, advices and devices; and her system of tactics is an old story with me. I shan’t interrupt any of her little games. Let her have her little field all to herself: it’s time she was married, to be sure.”