"The mirror where the stars and mountains viewThe stillness of their aspect."
"The mirror where the stars and mountains viewThe stillness of their aspect."
The late Charles Albert, the hero King of Sardinia, was educated at Geneva. More than once did the future benefactor and monarch of Northern Italy stray along the road to Lausanne, or float in his little shallop on the side of Bellevue, whence he could look upon that prettiest of summer residences, Pregny, and at night could listen to the trills of the nightingales, which sing with a tenderness peculiar to the Valley of Geneva. At Pregny lived Josephine, whose Imperial spouse had driven away from Sardinia the members of the House of Savoy. But Time is a wonderful magician, and to-day near beautiful Pregny the nephew of Europe's great conqueror and conquered and the grand-daughter of Charles Albert have their own villa. The favorite residence of the late Grand Duchess Constantine of Russia was La Boissière, in the Canton of Geneva, and on the road to Chamouny, not far from the house of Sismondi. The late Duchess de Broglie, the daughter of Madame de Staël, lived during the winter in the street St. Antoine; near where M. Töpffer had his house, and in the summer at Coppet. Not far from her, at Genthod, resided that gentle daughter of America, the Baroness Rumpf, still remembered in New York as the daughter of John Jacob Astor. The Duchess de Broglie and the Baroness Rumpf are rare instances of the truest Christian womanhood in exalted stations.—But a whole magazine article would not suffice to give a list of the great, the noble, and the gifted whohave sojourned for a time in the city of Geneva.
Yet, if Geneva has borrowed some of the great of other countries, she has amply repaid the debt. She sent her Casaubon to the court of James I. of England, to be the defender of the faith. Later, she lent to England her De Lolme, who added to his distinguished political acumen such affluent philological knowledge, that he wrote one of the best works ever written on the British Constitution in the English and the French languages. She lent to Russia Le Fort, the famous general and admiral, the counsellor of Peter the Great, the originator of the Russian navy, and the founder of that army out of which grew the forces that defeated Charles XII. at Pultowa. During the tempestuous days which signalized the downfall of a monarchy, and while France was rent asunder by the mad upheavings of an infuriated populace, Necker was called to the head of the finances. After five years of indefatigable probity, and when his services had enlisted the profound gratitude of the doomed king, he was compelled to quit Paris. Recalled again, and again dismissed, his final departure was the signal for a general outbreak, which resulted in the taking of the Bastille and the overthrow of the House of Capet. Albert Gallatin she gave to the United States. How curious it is to trace the life of this son of Geneva! Graduating with honors at his native university, he came to America in 1780, was commander of a small fort at Machias while Maine was still Massachusetts, was teacher in Harvard University, filled high places under the government of Pennsylvania; elected Senator to Congress from that State, (but vacating his seat because his residence had not been sufficiently long to qualify him,) Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson, Envoy Extraordinary to sign the Treaty of Ghent, and for seven years Minister Plenipotentiary to France. He was offered the Secretaryship of State by Madison, a place in the Cabinet by Monroe, and was selected by the dominant party as a candidate for the second office in the gift of the American people. All of these last three proffered honors he refused, and passed the remainder of his long life in the genial pursuits of literature.
If Geneva has been the fireside of learning and of belles-lettres, it has not been less the home of the fine arts. Petitot, the celebrated painter on enamel, has handsomely paid his share to thechefs-d'[oe]uvresof the seventeenth century. While enjoying the capricious favors of Charles I. at Whitehall, where he had his lodgings, he worked on some of those perfect portraits which to-day have their place in the Louvre, and which for ages must remain the triumphs of minutely finished, expressive Art. Nor is the little Republic poor in contemporaneous artistic talent. Pradier was born and grew up in presence of Mont Blanc, whose sublime grandeur may well inspire the dreams of the sculptor and ennoble him. Calame, Diday, and Hubert in landscape painting, and Hornung in historical painting, (widely known by his "Death of John Calvin,") are all sons of Geneva. Thalberg, the musician, is a native of Geneva.
The habitual companionship of master minds must necessarily exert an immediate and irresistible influence upon the rapid growth of thoughts and ideas in the young. And it is not to be wondered at that those who from their earliest infancy have had the readiest access to such a companionship, and who have most fully imbibed that influence, retain through the after-years of life a strength and a boldness of originality essentially opposed to the hesitating timidity of less favored individuals. In a society like that of Geneva, where family traditions are jealously cherished as a part of the national history, and where every family has its importance and its well-defined place, the memory of distinguished men cannot perish, but is handed down from father to son, as a portion of the state patrimony. Every little boy, as he plays in the street, feels that he has reasonto be proud that he is a Genevese. It was with such sentiments and under such auspices that Töpffer glided through the years of childhood. He drank deep at the fountain of inspiration unawares, and manhood found him ready to follow those who beckoned to him from the pages of history.
Rodolphe Töpffer was born at Geneva on the seventeenth day of February, 1799. As his name indicates, he was of German descent; but his family had resided so many years in French Switzerland that he could no longer be claimed by the land of Schiller and Goethe, though it was said that one of his most distinctive literary characteristics was like that of Mozart in music,—that he blended the deep, warm feeling of Germany with the light and elegant graces of Southern Europe.
Americans who have visited the public Gallery of Art, known in Geneva as the Musée Rath, will perhaps recall a small, but very spirited, winter-scene, painted in oil, and which bears the name of Töpffer. This picture is by the father of Rodolphe. M. Töpfferle pèrewas the first of that long list of Swiss painters who became devoted students of Nature. The names of Calame, Diday, (Calame's master,) and Hubert are now known throughout the world; and that of Calame stands among the first in the rank of eminent living landscape painters. They are worthy successors of the father of Rodolphe Töpffer, who was peculiarly happy in rendering the mountain-scenes of Savoy, and in portraying those picturesque and attractive episodes of peasant-life entitled "The Village Wedding," "The Fair in Winter," etc., etc.
There are but few incidents to record of Töpfferfils. It is in his writings mostly that he is to be found. Elsewhere he is only passing by; buttherehe dwells and shines in full radiance. His life was so quietly modest, so tranquil and far removed from the tumultuous preoccupations which belong to a fashionable society, it was so simple and pure, that the biographer is at a loss to find any striking event that may give it an outward coloring. When only a child, as he so charmingly tells us in his inimitable pages of the "Presbytère," he devoured books, all sorts of books,—indeed, all the books he could get hold of in his uncle's well-stocked library. And many an hour of his sunny boyhood did he pass at the window in the house where he was born, gazing dreamily at the mullions, arches, and fretted work of the old Cathedral, or at the distant flight of the swallows, while in his mind he dwelt upon some brilliantsaillieof Montaigne or Rabelais. His marked fondness for sketching showed itself in numerous and picturesque outlines, all of which bore the unmistakable stamp of talent, and foretold in the exuberance of the boy-fancy what the man would be. Happily for him, happily for us who are allowed to gather up the crumbs of art and authorship which fell from his ample store, Töpffer enjoyed the very best and most propitious advantages which in any country can bless childhood. He was born in the lap of a society daintily intellectual and fastidiously cultivated. His very first impressions were those of refinement. His very first steps were directed towards culture. There was no arid waste around him, and he had not to cut his way through the newly broken furrows of a young civilization. He was taken by the hand of Genius at the very outset of his career, and was never allowed to falter; for in the successive creations of his pencil and of his pen there is the same fulness of imagination, the same delicacy of observation, the same exquisite perfection of analysis. He seems to have understood so well the power of his mind, that he never ventured beyond his depth, but sustained himself through all his years of authorship with the same grace and elegance.
And nowhere could he have better artistic encouragement and emulation than in his native city. We do not remember who said that "in Geneva every child is born an artist," but the statement would bear investigation. Talent as well as taste for drawing and painting is almost universal, and belongsas well to the poor as to the rich. It may not be well known that De Candolle, the celebrated and untiring Genevese botanist, made use, in a course of lectures, of a valuable collection of tropical American plants, intrusted to his care by a Spanish botanist. Unfortunately, the herbarium was needed by its owner sooner than expected, and Professor De Candolle was requested to send it back. This he stated to his audience, with many a regret for so irreparable a loss. But some of the ladies present at once offered to copy the whole collection in one week, This was done. The drawings, "filling thirteen folio volumes, and amounting in number to eight hundred and sixty, were accurately executed by one hundred and fourteen women-artists in the time specified." In most cases the principal parts of the plants alone were colored; the rest was only pencilled with great accuracy. Where is the other city of the same size in which such a number of amateur lady-artists could be found? One of these very drawings, having been accidentally dropped in the street, was picked up by a little girl ten years old, and was returned to De Candolle, copied by the child; and it is no blemish to the collection.
The son of an artist, Töpffer found his own career ready made, and stepped into it with all the instincts of his Art-loving nature. His few early paintings are full of promise. But the young artist was not destined to distinguish himself in his chosen career. A disease of the eyes compelled him to give up his favorite pursuit. His brush, still warm from the passionate ardor with which it had been grasped, was broken and thrown away. Töpffer lamented all his life long the privation that was thus forced upon him. Art, as a profession, was closed against his eager ambition; yet he loved Art, and lived for it. Happily for him, he was still in the complete possession of all his hopes and illusions. Happily for him, he was young; and, without being discouraged by his great disappointment, he turned the bent of his mind study-ward. Töpffer became a close student of human nature. He took to analyzing it instinctively, as the bird takes to the air. He was more than a dreamer, though the charming dreams which we have from him make us half regret, perhaps, that he did something else besides dreaming. He says, in his story, "La Bibliothèque de mon Oncle,"—"The man who does not enjoy dreaming his time away is but an automaton, who travels from life to death like a locomotive rushing from Manchester to Liverpool. A whole summer spent in this listless manner does not seemde tropin a refined education. It is even probable that one such summer would not prove enough to produce a great man. Socrates dreamed his time away for years. Rousseau did the same till he was forty years old; La Fontaine—his whole life. And what a charming mode of working is that science of losing time!"
But, either dreaming or working, Töpffer knew well what he was capable of; and without impatience, without restlessness, he awaited the future, consoling himself with the sentiment he expresses so well in the following sentence:—"What can be said of those beardless poets who dare to sing at that age, when, if they were true poets, they would not have too much in their whole being with which tofeel, and to inhale silently, those perfumes which later only they may know how to diffuse in their verse? There are precocious mathematicians; but precocious poets—never."
Töpffer was right. Life is the true poet. Its teachings drop in tears, and the heart receives them kneeling, and is in no hurry to babble to the world all their silent beauty.
If Töpffer studied, it was not alone. He had devoted himself to the serious task of education. His pupils, mostly the sons of wealthy Englishmen and Russians, together with a few lads from France, Italy, and America, served only to widen his family circle. His relation to them was charming. As an authority, he used the most winning persuasion. He respected the mental individualityeven of a child, and would use his admirable tact in kindly encouraging every indication of talent, which, from want of a sufficient self-reliance or of a timely care, was hiding itself. Year after year, in vacation-time, Töpffer left the city with his thirty or forty young companions, and with them he travelled on foot through the mountains and around the lakes of Switzerland,—sometimes pushing in the track of Agassiz over glacier billows, sometimes wandering far down upon the fertile plains of Lombardy and Venetia. These were always most delightful excursions, when the ordinary halt became a common enjoyment, not only from the fun-loving spirit of the master, but also for the promise of future illustrations. After the return home, during the long winter evenings, Töpffer took either his pen or his pencil, and, with his pupils, re-gathered from their memoranda and drawings their summer impressions and adventures. Then he made his paper laugh with the spirited and piquant sketches which all know who have peeped into the "Voyages en Zig-Zag." Thus his fireside amusements have become those of the world. The "Voyages en Zig-Zag," before his death, were already classic in France. The richest luxury of type, paper, and illustration has not been spared, and edition after edition is scattered in Europe from the Neva to the Tagus. In the "Voyages" we find the most correct delineation, in words and sketches, of the peculiarities and glories of Alp-land. The exquisite French of this work has never yet found a translator.
His early style had something so fresh and so quaint that it can be accounted for only by going to the books which Töpffer studied. Hisdii majoreswere Montaigne and Amyot, and Paul Louis Courier, a learned Hellenistic scholar, as well as vivacious writer of the French Revolution and of the first Empire. For Montaigne Töpffer cherished the highest admiration. In his "Reflections and Short Disquisitions upon Art," (Réflexions et Menus Propos,) he thus tersely sums up the excellency of the French philosopher:—"Thinker full of probity and grace; philosopher so much the greater by that which he said he did not know than by that which he thought he knew." In our own language, Shakspeare was his favorite author. M. de Sainte-Beuve says, "Töpffer was sworn to Shakspeare," and adds that the works of Hogarth first taught the Genevese writer to appreciate Shakspeare, Richardson, and Fielding.
Besides possessing the ability to convey instruction to others, Töpffer was a fine classical scholar. With two other literary gentlemen, he published some excellent editions of the Greek classics, which he enriched with notes. All these qualifications marked him as the man for a still higher position. Accordingly, in 1832, when only thirty-three, he was appointed Professor of Belles-Lettres in the College of Geneva. At the same time, while discharging faithfully his duties in the College, he conducted, aided by tutors, his littlepension, now so well known by the "Voyages en Zig-Zag."
It was in the midst of these various occupations that Töpffer took his recreation in contributing to the literary periodicals of Geneva superior essays on Art, and many of those charming stories which to-day delight us in the collection entitled "Les Nouvelles Génevoises." He also wrote for political journals. But what made him first known outside those communities where the French tongue is spoken were his humoristic sketches. They were not thrown off from his fertile and genial hand for gain or for renown. From childhood, under the influence of artistic example at home, and of his admiration of Hogarth, he had acquired a remarkable skill in graphically delineating whatever his close observation of men prompted. Like Hogarth, his artist-wit, his fun, and his moral teachings took the shape of series. These were handed around the circle of his intimate friends; yet he had thoughts only of his own amusement and of that of his companions, and did not contemplate offering them to thepublic. It was at the urgency of Goethe that he gave them to the world.
In 1842, as we stated before, "M. Vieux Bois" (Mr. Oldbuck) appeared in the United States; and the following year, 1843, "M. Cryptogame," under the name of "Bachelor Butterfly," (by no means so amusing or so full of hits for America as some other sketches,) delighted the Transatlantic reader.
Visitors to Geneva had their attention drawn to the "Voyages en Zig-Zag" as soon as it was published; and in 1841 "Les Nouvelles Génevoises" took the literary and artistic world of Paris by surprise. These simple graphic stories gained the hearts of thousands. French tourists and French artists sought the basin of Lake Leman, the wild passes of the Vallée de Trient, the Lac de Gers, the Col d'Anterne, and the Deux Scheidegg, wooed thither by the picturesque pages of Töpffer. The "Presbytère," a fresh story in the epistolary form, not long after crossed the Jura, and amidst the artificial, heated literature of Paris, appeared as reviving as a bracing morning in the Alps.
In this modest way M. Töpffer was unconsciously building up his European reputation. The warp of his talent is the richest of humor blended with woman-like sensibility and tenderness. Fanciful, but never exaggerated, he stands before us an amiable philosopher, whose heart is large enough to comprehend and to pity the frailties of human nature, yet whose spotless purity serves as a beacon—light on the wreck-strewn shore of human passions. He has not the exaltation nor the ardent vehemence of Rousseau, neither has he the sentimental morbidity of Xavier de Maistre. On the contrary, he is always true and always simple, and he remains within the bounds of emotion which the family circle allows. This must be accounted for by the peaceful life which he led, (a life so different from that of his French literary brothers,) as well as by the beneficial influence of the society in which he resided. That society, though cultivated and liberal, has, in contrast with that of France, remained pure. It retains as its birthright a certain nameless innocence, unknown in the polished French circles a few leagues beyond. M. de Sainte-Beuve wonders at this, and asks,—"Is it that man is kept pure and good by the magnificent beauties in which Nature rocks him there from his babyhood? Is it that the heart becomes awed in presence of that sublime calm of Nature, and, before he is aware of it, the passions have transformed themselves into a religious adoration?"
But the true source of the Genevese author's purity was apart from, though deeply influenced by Nature. He was a man of principle and of religious faith. Töpffer had but to gaze into his own heart to find all the sweet, the graceful, and the fresh poetry of his country. His untiring and patient observation of Nature is the secret of his power as a writer. He disdained nothing, for nothing seemed too small for him. Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low as the little child whose rosy cheek he patted, and who then became to him a teacher and a study. An insect crawling on a leaf,—a bit of grass bringing the joy of its short life around the stones of the pavement,—a cloud floating over the meadows,—a murmur of voices in the air,—the wings of a butterfly, or the thundering of the storm above the lake,—all and everything was the domain where his genial disposition reaped so plentiful a harvest of rare graces and smiles.
When Töpffer abandoned his brushes for his pen, it seems that the vision of his mind became intensified, and he began to study man as minutely as he had studied Nature. He became a moral portrait-painter, in the same way as his illustrious townsmen, Calame and Diday, were landscape painters. To analyze and to describe became the occupation he most delighted in; and the more minute the analysis and the more subtile the description, the more also was he pleased with it.
Töpffer's writings are eminently moral. There are few works in French literature in which the moral aspiration is so alive and the worship of duty so eloquently advocated. In reading them one feels that the writer did not step beyond his own sentiments, that he did not borrow convictions, that he did not affect the austerity of a stolen creed. He writes as he feels, and he feels rightly,—never forgetting to remain indulgent, even when he appears most unbendingly severe. Then to it all he adds an inexhaustible cheerfulness. His mind wears no dark-colored glasses; it is strong and healthy enough to bear the dazzling effulgence of the sun. Töpffer was a joyous man. If he so rapidly seized the ridiculous, it was through his love of fun; but while he laughed at others, so kind and genial was he ever that he made others join and laugh with him also.
We said that his genius was universal. He is eminently so in his artistic creations. Take, for instance, his unique comic sketches and compare them with those of other leading caricaturists. Our impression must be that none are like his. Leech, Doyle, and Gavarni have attained a reputation which the world acknowledged long ago, and which no one would dare dispute; yet they differ entirely from the Genevese caricaturist. "Oldbuck" (M. Vieux Bois) is as universal as music or Shakspeare, and belongs to no one country in particular. All of Leech's pretty women, his "Mr. Briggs" and his "Frederick Augustus," with his "Haw" and other swell words and airs, are all unmistakably English. They could have been born on no other soil than England. It requires an Englishman, or an American familiar with English fashions and foibles, to appreciate them. The German, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Italian, or the Russian, could no more understand them without a previous initiation, or study and experience of English manners, than they could speak English without long application and practice. The same may be said of Richard Doyle's famous "Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson." Here we have an irresistible series of sketches, depicting what the famous trio saw, what they said, and what they did, in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. The interest of that work lies in an intense expression of English nationality, carried everywhere by the three Englishmen. Their mishaps and adventures are exactly such as every American has witnessed a thousand times, when some of his cousins from the fast-anchored isle have visited him. Gavarni, though freer with his pencil than either Doyle or Leech, is still as much of a Parisian as Albert Smith was a Londoner. Every one of his spirited sketches is intensely French, and, above all, Parisian. To a person who knew nothing of Paris, who had never been in Paris, and who was not somewhatau faitwith the gay and triste, the splendid and squalid, the brilliant and unequal society there, these sketches would be meaningless. Again, Gavarni's pictures are not series. He does not develop his heroes and heroines. He does not make us feel for them in their mishaps. We do not laughwiththem, as we would with friends or acquaintances, but we laughatthem. We do not once recognizeourselvesin them. His portraits stand before us, but we gaze at them as we would at some half-civilized creatures, with curiosity more than with mirth; and while we admire and acknowledge the truthfulness of the sketch, we do not desire to have any familiarity or contact with the individuals represented. Furthermore, Gavarni is more limited than Doyle, by making the "Sweep," the "Rag-Picker," the "Grisette," tell his or her own story; and what each one says is necessary to the comprehension of the person before you. But very different is Töpffer. He possesses, with the funny conception of Leech and Doyle, a freer pictorial conception than either, and holds a pencil that is more at command than Gavarni's. In his single outlines, often of the rudest kind, there is the very rollicking of freedom, the exact hitting of traits and character. He dashes down his creationwith the quickness of thought, and with as much confidence that Messrs. Oldbuck, Crépin, and Jabot will leap into the very existence he wishes them to assume, as Giotto had, when, with a single sweep of his arm, he drew his magic circle. It may be objected, that the comparison between the two Englishmen and the two Continentals is hardly equal. Doyle and Leech lost, doubtless, much of their freedom by drawing with hard pencils upon box for the wood-engraver. Töpffer and Gavarni swept the soft, yielding crayon over the lithographer's stone, and hence we have the very conception of the artists in their sketches.
The whole Continent roared over "M. Vieux Bois," then England began to laugh, and finally America. Yet "M. Vieux Bois" was only the portrait of a foolish old bachelor in love. Though born in Geneva, he was neither Swiss nor French, neither English nor American; he was simply human. He exemplifies Töpffer's universality.
I have already mentioned the "Nouvelles Génevoises," the "Voyages en Zig-Zag," and the "Presbytère." But it is not possible to quote from them. Before pages so lively and so picturesquely effective, one feels embarrassed in selecting any particular portion, lest another should be left unnoticed,—like the child, who, being told that he may help himself to choice flowers, feels afraid that he will not take those he most wants, and, in his hesitation, dares not so much as untie the bouquet. The reader must choose for himself. He can accompany the amiable philosopher in his summer excursions, take the Alpine-stock, and with him visit the mountain solitudes, or linger around the blue lakes—those air-hung forget-me-nots—which gem the highest valleys of Switzerland.
His remaining works, published in book-form, are "Rosa et Gertrude," and the "Réflexions et Menus Propos d'un Peintre Génevois, ou Essai sur le Beau dans les Arts."
"Rosa et Gertrude," given to the public a short time before his death, is considered by some as holding the first place in Töpffer's works of imagination. It is a touching story of two orphan girls, deeply attached to each other, one of whom, deceived and maltreated by the world, receives that kind and Christian charity "which thinketh no evil" from M. Bernier, the good old clergyman, who is the guardian of Rosa and Gertrude, as well as the narrator of their simple history. In this book Töpffer has abandoned the humoristic, his ordinary vein in his short stones, and in taking up the more serious mode of treating his characters has succeeded so well that Albert Aubert of Paris, in his criticism, says, "In 'Rosa and Gertrude' M. Töpffer has surpassed himself"; and yet it is not so characteristic as his other writings.
However, that one of M. Töpffer's works which, it seems to me, is destined to live longest in the future, is his "Réflexions et Menus Propos," etc.,—"Reflections and Short Disquisitions on Art." Here are the results of twelve years' meditations on Art, by one whofeltArt in his inmost soul, and who understood its practice as well as its theory. In this work we find a Ruskin without dogmatism, uncertainty, or man-worship. If Töpffer had written several volumes on his favorite subject, we should not find him, in each succeeding tome, taking back what he had said in the first. He studied, reflected, rewrote, and then waited patiently for years before he committed his mature judgment to the perpetuity of print. Long before Ruskin's first volume appeared, Töpffer's "Réflexions et Menus Propos" had commanded the admiration of the best writers and artists of the Continent. As an æsthetic and philosophic work, it is of the highest value. Pearls of thought and beauty are dropped on every side. It is relieved by fanciful episodes; and yet the whole book starts from and plays around a stick of India ink! It is not merely a volume in which the professional artist can gain great advantage, but one by which the general reader is fascinated as well as instructed. The former may discern its scope and itsimportance in the felicity with which Töpffer illustrates the true aim of Art, as being the expression, the idealization, and not the rigid copy of Nature. He maintains that Nature should be the only teacher, and that we are to be wedded to no man's mannerism.
It is to be hoped that some day the "Réflexions et Menus Propos" may be rendered into English by one fully acquainted, not only with French, but with the philosophic and the æsthetic writings of France. If the late Bayle St. John (whose knowledge of the French language and manner of thought was so thorough) had possessed the finished style of the author of "Six Months in Italy," he would have been the very man to have introduced M. Töpffer's works to English readers.
Whoever reads the works which I have thus briefly mentioned will regret that so genial and gifted a man as M. Töpffer should have been so soon snatched away from earth. It is rare to find in any author's or artist's life such calm happiness as that which smiled over his existence. Fame did not spoil him; and if he lived long enough to win it, he died too soon to enjoy it.
The last two years of M. Töpffer's life were years of continual suffering, through which his amiable cheerfulness never faltered. When he was told by his physicians that he could not recover, as if he thought only of alleviating the sorrow of those who loved him, he did not give way for one hour to impressions of sadness, and his private journal alone received the confidence of the keen regret he felt in taking farewell of his young wife and his lovely children. To the very last day of his life his friends found him in the evening surrounded by his family, and even then handling the pencil for their amusement and his own.
On Sundays, Calame dined with him; and we may imagine what a brilliant coloring of thought must have characterized the conversation of these two sympathetic men.
In 1844, when M. Töpffer had just concluded his romance of "Rosa et Gertrude," his disease took an alarming turn, and he became aware that he was fast drawing to the close of his earthly voyage. After two repeated visits to the French watering-place of Vichy, he returned to Geneva. Towards the end of the following winter he was obliged to abandon those duties which hitherto had been to him so pure an enjoyment. Unable now to write, he tried painting, which, it will be remembered, he had given up in early manhood. Leaning heavily forward in his chair, his easel before him, he painted with an enthusiasm which was the last of his life. But that diversion could not be kept up long, and he was soon compelled to sit motionless, awaiting his release.
On the morning of the 8th of June, 1846, consoled by the hopes of the Christian, he expired. On the 14th he was followed to his final resting-place by the whole city, among whom were those who in him had lost their friend, their colleague, and their master. His remains sleep in the cemetery of Plain-palais, which he has so graphically described in "La Peur"; but his memory and his works still live in the minds of his countrymen, and his fame is daily widening, wherever the good, the true, and the beautiful are appreciated.
"Well, what will you do with her?" said I to my wife.
My wife had just come down from an interview with a pale, faded-looking young woman in rusty black attire, who had called upon me on the very common supposition that I was an editor of the "Atlantic Monthly."
By the bye, this is a mistake that brings me, Christopher Crowfield, many letters that do not belong to me, and which might with equal pertinency be addressed, "To the Man in the Moon." Yet these letters often make my heart ache,—they speak so of people who strive and sorrow and want help; and it is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for help which you know it is perfectly impossible for you to give.
For instance, you get a letter in a delicate hand, setting forth the old distress,—She is poor, and she has looking to her for support those that are poorer and more helpless than herself: she has tried sewing, but can make little at it; tried teaching, but cannot now get a school,—all places being filled, and more than filled; at last has tried literature, and written some little things, of which she sends you a modest specimen, and wants your opinion whether she can gain her living by writing. You run over the articles, and perceive at a glance that there is no kind of hope or use in her trying to do anything at literature; and then you ask yourself, mentally, "What is to be done with her? What can she do?"
Such was the application that had come to me this morning,—only, instead of by note, it came, as I have said, in the person of the applicant, a thin, delicate, consumptive-looking being, wearing that rusty mourning which speaks sadly at once of heart-bereavement and material poverty.
My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs. Crowfield; and it is to be confessed that this worthy woman spends a large portion of her time and wears out an extraordinary amount of shoe-leather in performing the duties of a self-constituted intelligence-office.
Talk of giving money to the poor!—what is that, compared to giving sympathy, thought, time, taking their burdens upon you, sharing their perplexities? They who are able to buy off every application at the door of their heart with a five or ten dollar bill are those who free themselves at least expense.
My wife had communicated to our friend, in the gentlest tones and in the blandest manner, that her poor little pieces, however interesting to her own household circle, had nothing in them wherewith to enable her to make her way in the thronged and crowded thoroughfare of letters,—that they had no more strength or adaptation to win bread for her than a broken-winged butterfly to draw a plough; and it took some resolution in the background of her tenderness to make the poor applicant entirely certain of this. In cases like this, absolute certainty is the very greatest, the only true kindness.
It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged shade which passed over her thin, tremulous features, when this certainty forced itself upon her. It is hard, when sinking in the waves, to see the frail bush at which the hand clutches uprooted; hard, when alone in the crowded thoroughfare of travel, to have one's last bank-note declared a counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, under the shade of this disappointment; and so, coward that I was, I turned this trouble, where I have turned so many others, upon my wife.
"Well, what shall we do with her?" said I.
"I really don't know," said my wife, musingly.
"Do you think we could get that school in Taunton for her?"
"Impossible; Mr. Herbert told me he had already twelve applicants for it."
"Couldn't you get her plain sewing? Is she handy with her needle?"
"She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her side, and cough; and the Doctor has told her it will not do for her to confine herself."
"How is her handwriting? Does she write a good hand?"
"Only passable."
"Because," said I, "I was thinking if I could get Steele and Simpson to give her law-papers to copy."
"They have more copyists than they need now; and, in fact, this woman does not write the sort of hand at all that would enable her to get on as a copyist."
"Well," said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at last hitting on a bright masculine expedient, "I'll tell you what must be done. She must get married."
"My dear," said my wife, "marrying for a living is the very hardest way a woman can take to get it. Even marrying for love often turns out badly enough. Witness poor Jane."
Jane was one of the large number of people whom it seemed my wife's fortune to carry through life on her back. She was a pretty, smiling, pleasing daughter of Erin, who had been in our family originally as nursery-maid. I had been greatly pleased in watching a little idyllic affair growing up between her and a joyous, good-natured young Irishman, to whom at last we married her. Mike soon after, however, took to drinking and unsteady courses, and the result has been to Jane only a yearly baby, with poor health, and no money.
"In fact," said my wife, "if Jane had only kept single, she could have made her own way well enough, and might have now been in good health and had a pretty sum in the savings bank. As it is, I must carry not only her, but her three children, on my back."
"You ought to drop her, my dear. You really ought not to burden yourself with other people's affairs as you do," said I, inconsistently.
"HowcanI drop her? Can I help knowing that she is poor and suffering? And if I drop her, who will take her up?"
Now there is a way of getting rid of cases of this kind, spoken of in a quaint old book, which occurred strongly to me at this moment:—
"If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, 'Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,' notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?"
I must confess, notwithstanding the strong point of the closing question, I looked with an evil eye of longing on this very easy way of disposing of such cases: a few sympathizing words, a few expressions of hope that I did not feel, a line written to turn the case into somebody else's hands,—any expedient, in fact, to hide the longing eyes and imploring hands from my sight was what my carnal nature at this moment greatly craved.
"Besides," said my wife, resuming the thread of her thoughts in regard to the subject just now before us,—"as to marriage, it's out of the question at present for this poor child; for the man she loved and would have married lies low in one of the graves before Richmond. It's a sad story;—one of a thousand like it. She brightened for a few moments, and looked almost handsome, when she spoke of his bravery and goodness. Her father and lover have both died in this war. Her only brother has returned from it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and her poor old mother to care for, and so she seeks work. I told her to come again to-morrow, and I would look about for her a little to-day."
"Let me see, how many are now down on your list to be looked about for, Mrs.Crowfield?—some twelve or thirteen, are there not? You've got Tom's sister disposed of finally, I hope,—that's a comfort!"
"Well, I'm sorry to say she came back on my hands yesterday," said my wife, patiently. "She is a foolish young thing, and said she didn't like living out in the country. I'm sorry, because the Morrises are an excellent family, and she might have had a life-home there, if she had only been steady and chosen to behave herself properly. But yesterday I found her back on her mother's hands again; and the poor woman told me that the dear child never could bear to be separated from her, and that she hadn't the heart to send her back."
"And, in short," said I, "she gave you notice that you must provide for Miss O'Connor in some more agreeable way. Cross that name off your list, at any rate. That woman and girl need a few hard raps in the school of experience before you can do anything for them."
"I think I shall," said my long-suffering wife; "but it's a pity to see a young thing put in the direct road to ruin."
"It is one of the inevitables," said I, "and we must save our strength for those that are willing to help themselves."
"What's all this talk about?" said Bob, coming in upon us rather brusquely.
"Oh, as usual, the old question," said I,—"'What's to be done with her?'"
"Well," said Bob, "it's exactly what I've come to talk with mother about. Since she keeps a distressed-women's agency-office, I've come to consult her about Marianne. That woman will die before six months are out, a victim to high civilization and the Paddies. There we are, twelve miles out from Boston, in a country villa so convenient that every part of it might almost do its own work,—everything arranged in the most convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting, patent-right, perfective manner,—and yet, I tell you, Marianne will die of that house. It will yet be recorded on her tombstone, 'Died of conveniences.' For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a bed in one corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a fire-place only six feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin baker,—that's all. I lived deliciously in an establishment of this kind last summer, when I was up at Lake Superior; and I am convinced, if I could move Marianne into it at once, that she would become a healthy and a happy woman. Her life is smothered out of her with comforts: we have too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knickknacks, too much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets; the children all have too many clothes;—in fact, to put it Scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is cankered,—and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I have come to the agency-office for-distressed-women to take you out to attend to her.
"The fact is," continued Bob, "that, since our cook married and Alice went to California, there seems to be no possibility of putting our domestic cabinet upon any permanent basis. The number of female persons that have been through our house, and the ravages they have wrought on it for the last six months, pass belief. I had yesterday a bill of sixty dollars' plumbing to pay for damages of various kinds which had had to be repaired in our very convenient water-works; and the blame of each particular one had been bandied like a shuttlecock among our three household divinities. Biddy privately assured my wife that Kate was in the habit of emptying dust-pans of rubbish into the main drain from the chambers, and washing any little extra bits down through the bowls; and, in fact, when one of the bathing-room bowls had overflowed so as to damage the frescoes below, my wife, with great delicacy and precaution, interrogated Kate as to whether she had followed her instructions in the care of the water-pipes. Ofcourse she protested the most immaculate care and circumspection. 'Sure, and she knew how careful one ought to be, and wasn't of the likes of thim as wouldn't mind what throuble they made,—like Biddy, who would throw trash and hair in the pipes, and niver listen to her tellin'; sure, and hadn't she broken the pipes in the kitchen, and lost the stoppers, as it was a shame to see in a Christian house?' Ann, the third girl, being privately questioned, blamed Biddy on Monday and Kate on Tuesday; on Wednesday, however, she exonerated both; but on Thursday, being in a high quarrel with both, she departed, accusing them severally not only of all the evil practices aforesaid, but of lying, and stealing, and all other miscellaneous wickednesses that came to hand. Whereat the two thus accused rushed in, bewailing themselves and cursing Ann in alternate strophes, averring that she had given the baby laudanum, and, taking it out riding, had stopped for hours with it in a filthy lane, where the scarlet fever was said to be rife,—in short, made so fearful a picture, that Marianne gave up the child's life at once, and has taken to her bed. I have endeavored all I could to quiet her, by telling her that the scarlet-fever story was probably an extemporaneous work of fiction, got up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann, and that it wasn't in the least worth while to believe one thing more than another from the fact that any of the tribe said it. But she refuses to be comforted, and is so Utopian as to lie there, crying,—'Oh, if I only could get one that I could trust,—one that really would speak the truth to me,—one that I might know really went where she said she went, and really did as she said she did!' To have to live so, she says, and bring up little children with those she can't trust out of her sight, whose word is good for nothing,—to feel that her beautiful house and her lovely things are all going to rack and ruin, and she can't take care of them, and can't see where or when or how the mischief is done,——in short, the poor child talks as women do who are violently attacked with housekeeping fever tending to congestion of the brain. She actually yesterday told me that she wished, on the whole, she never had got married, which I take to be the most positive indication of mental alienation."
"Here," said I, "we behold at this moment two women dying for the want of what they can mutually give one another,—each having a supply of what the other needs, but held back by certain invisible cobwebs, slight, but strong, from coming to each other's assistance. Marianne has money enough, but she wants a helper in her family, such as all her money has been hitherto unable to buy; and here close at hand is a woman who wants home-shelter, healthy, varied, active, cheerful labor, with nourishing food, kind care, and good wages. What hinders these women from rushing to the help of one another, just as two drops of water on a leaf rush together and make one? Nothing but a miserable prejudice,—but a prejudice so strong that women will starve in any other mode of life, rather than accept competency and comfort in this."
"You don't mean," said my wife, "to propose that ourprotégéeshould go to Marianne as a servant?"
"I do say it would be the best thing for her to do, the only opening that I see,—and a very good one, too, it is. Just look at it. Her bare living at this moment cannot cost her less than five or six dollars a week,—everything at the present time is so very dear in the city. Now by what possible calling open to her capacity can she pay her board and washing, fuel and lights, and clear a hundred and some odd dollars a year? She could not do it as a district school-teacher; she certainly cannot, with her feeble health, do it by plain sewing; she could not do it as a copyist. A robust woman might go into a factory and earn more; but factory-work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily, week in and out, in the same movement, in close air, amid the clatter of machinery; and a person delicately organizedsoon sinks under it. It takes a stolid, enduring temperament to bear factory-labor. Now look at Marianne's house and family, and see what is insured to yourprotégéethere.
"In the first place, a home,—a neat, quiet chamber, quite as good as she has probably been accustomed to,—the very best of food, served in a pleasant, light, airy kitchen, which is one of the most agreeable rooms in the house, and the table and table-service quite equal to those of most farmers and mechanics. Then her daily tasks would be light and varied,—some sweeping, some dusting, the washing and dressing of children, the care of their rooms and the nursery,—all of it the most healthful, the most natural work of a woman,—work alternating with rest, and diverting thought from painful subjects by its variety,—and what is more, a kind of work in which a good Christian woman might have satisfaction, as feeling herself useful in the highest and best way: for the child's nurse, if she be a pious, well-educated woman, may make the whole course of nursery-life an education in goodness. Then, what is far different from many other modes of gaining a livelihood, a woman in this capacity can make and feel herself really and truly beloved. The hearts of little children are easily gained, and their love is real and warm, and no true woman can become the object of it without feeling her own life made brighter. Again, she would have in Marianne a sincere, warm-hearted friend, who would care for her tenderly, respect her sorrows, shelter her feelings, be considerate of her wants, and in every way aid her in the cause she has most at heart, the succor of her family. There are many ways besides her wages in which she would infallibly be assisted by Marianne, so that the probability would be that she could send her little salary almost untouched to those for whose support she was toiling,—all this on her part."
"But," added my wife, "on the other hand, she would be obliged to associate and be ranked with common Irish servants."
"Well," I answered, "is there any occupation, by which any of us gain our living, which has not its disagreeable side? Does not the lawyer spend all his days either in a dusty office or in the foul air of a court-room? Is he not brought into much disagreeable contact with the lowest class of society? Are not his labors dry and hard and exhausting? Does not the blacksmith spend half his life in soot and grime, that he may gain a competence for the other half? If this woman were to work in a factory, would she not often be brought into associations distasteful to her? Might it not be the same in any of the arts and trades in which a living is to be got? There must be unpleasant circumstances about earning a living in any way; only I maintain that those which a woman would be likely to meet with as a servant in a refined, well-bred, Christian family would be less than in almost any other calling. Are there no trials to a woman, I beg to know, in teaching a district school, where all the boys, big and little, of a neighborhood congregate? For my part, were it my daughter or sister who was in necessitous circumstances, I would choose for her a position such as I name, in a kind, intelligent, Christian family, before many of those to which women do devote themselves."
"Well," said Bob, "all this has a good sound enough, but it's quite impossible. It's true, I verily believe, that such a kind of servant in our family would really prolong Marianne's life years,—that it would improve her health, and be an unspeakable blessing to her, to me, and the children,—and I would almost go down on my knees to a really well-educated, good, American woman who would come into our family, and take that place; but I know it's perfectly vain and useless to expect it. You know we have tried the experiment two or three times of having a person in our family who should be on the footing of a friend, yet do the duties of a servant, and that wenevercould make it work well. These half-and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting intheir demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the firm determination that we will have no sliding-scale in our family, and that whoever we are to depend on must come withbona-fidewillingness to take the position of a servant, such as that position is in our house; andthat, I suppose, yourprotégéewould never do, even if she could thereby live easier, have less hard work, better health, and quite as much money as she could earn in any other way."
"She would consider it a personal degradation, I suppose," said my wife.
"And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, "I should respect her far more profoundly for her willingness to take that position, when adverse fortune has shut other doors."
"Well, now," said I, "this woman is, as I understand, the daughter of a respectable stone-mason; and the domestic habits of her early life have probably been economical and simple. Like most of our mechanics' daughters, she has received in one of our high schools an education which has cultivated and developed her mind far beyond those of her parents and the associates of her childhood. This is a common fact in our American life. By our high schools the daughters of plain workingmen are raised to a state of intellectual culture which seems to make the disposition of them in any kind of industrial calling a difficult one. They all want to teach school,—and school-teaching, consequently, is an overcrowded profession,—and, failing that, there is only millinery and dress-making. Of late, it is true; efforts have been made in various directions to widen their sphere. Type-setting and book-keeping are in some instances beginning to be open to them.
"All this time there is lying, neglected and despised, a calling to which womanly talents and instincts are peculiarly fitted,—a calling full of opportunities of the most lasting usefulness,—a calling which insures a settled home, respectable protection, healthful exercise, good air, good food, and good wages,—a calling in which a woman may make real friends, and secure to herself warm affection: and yet this calling is the one always refused, shunned, contemned, left to the alien and the stranger, and that simply and solely because it bears the name ofservant. A Christian woman, who holds the name of Christ in her heart in true devotion, would think it the greatest possible misfortune and degradation to become like him in taking upon her 'the form of a servant.' The founder of Christianity says, 'Whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat or he that serveth? ButIam among you as he that serveth.' But notwithstanding these so plain declarations of Jesus, we find that scarce any one in a Christian land will accept real advantages of position and employment that come with that name and condition."
"I suppose," said my wife, "I could prevail upon this woman to do all the duties of the situation, if she could be, as they phrase it, 'treated as one of the family.'"
"That is to say," said Bob, "if she could sit with us at the same table, be introduced to our friends, and be in all respects as one of us. Now as to this, I am free to say that I have no false aristocratic scruples. I consider every well-educated woman as fully my equal, not to say my superior; but it does not follow from this that she would be one whom I should wish to make a third party with me and my wife at mealtimes. Our meals are often our seasons of privacy,—the times when we wish in perfect unreserve to speak of matters that concern ourselves and our family alone. Even invited guests and family friends would not be always welcome, however agreeable at times. Now a woman may be perfectly worthy of respect, and we may be perfectly respectful to her, whom nevertheless we do not wish to take into the circle of intimate friendship. I regard the position of a woman who comes to perform domestic service as I do any other business relation. We have a very respectable young lady in our employ who does legal copying for us, and all is perfectlypleasant and agreeable in our mutual relations; but the case would be far otherwise, were she to take it into her head that we treated her with contempt, because my wife did not call on her, and because she was not occasionally invited to tea. Besides, I apprehend that a woman of quick sensibilities, employed in domestic service, and who was so far treated as a member of the family as to share our table, would find her position even more painful and embarrassing than if she took once for all the position of a servant. We could not control the feelings of our friends; we could not always insure that they would be free from aristocratic prejudice, even were we so ourselves. We could not force her upon their acquaintance, and she might feel far more slighted than she would in a position where no attentions of any kind were to be expected. Besides which, I have always noticed that persons standing in this uncertain position are objects of peculiar antipathy to the servants in full; that they are the cause of constant and secret cabals and discontents; and that a family where the two orders exist has always raked up in it the smouldering embers of a quarrel ready at any time to burst out into open feud."
"Well," said I, "here lies the problem of American life. Half our women, like Marianne, are being faded and made old before their time by exhausting endeavors to lead a life of high civilization and refinement with only such untrained help as is washed up on our shores by the tide of emigration. Our houses are built upon a plan that precludes the necessity of much hard labor, but requires rather careful and nice handling. A well-trained, intelligent woman, who had vitalized her finger-ends by means of a well-developed brain, could do all the work of such a house with comparatively little physical fatigue. So stands the case as regards our houses. Now over against the women that are perishing in them from too much care, there is another class of American women that are wandering up and down, perishing for lack of some remunerative employment. That class of women, whose developed brains and less developed muscles mark them as peculiarly fitted for the performance of the labors of a high civilization, stand utterly aloof from paid domestic service. Sooner beg, sooner starve, sooner marry for money, sooner hang on as dependents in families where they know they are not wanted, than accept of a quiet home, easy, healthful work, and certain wages, in these refined and pleasant modern dwellings of ours."
"What is the reason of this?" said Bob.
"The reason is, that we have not yet come to the full development of Christian democracy. The taint of old aristocracies is yet pervading all parts of our society. We have not yet realized fully the true dignity of labor, and the surpassing dignity of domestic labor. And I must say that the valuable and courageous women who have agitated the doctrines of Woman's Rights among us have not in all things seen their way clear in this matter."
"Don't talk to me of those creatures," said Bob, "those men-women, those anomalies, neither flesh nor fish, with their conventions, and their cracked woman-voices strained in what they call public speaking, but which I call public squeaking! No man reverences true women more than I do. I hold a real, true, thoroughly goodwoman, whether in my parlor or my kitchen, as my superior. She can always teach me something that I need to know. She has always in her somewhat of the divine gift of prophecy; but in order to keep it, she must remain a woman. When she crops her hair, puts on pantaloons, and strides about in conventions, she is an abortion, and not a woman."
"Come! come!" said I, "after all, speak with deference. We that choose to wear soft clothing and dwell in kings' houses must respect the Baptists, who wear leathern girdles and eat locusts and wild honey. They are the voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for a coming good. They go down on their knees in the mire of life to liftup and brighten and restore a neglected truth; and we that have not the energy to share their struggle should at least refrain from criticizing their soiled garments and ungraceful action. There have been excrescences, eccentricities, peculiarities about the camp of these reformers; but the body of them have been true and noble women, and worthy of all the reverence due to such. They have already in many of our States reformed the laws relating to woman's position, and placed her on a more just and Christian basis. It is through their movements that in many of our States a woman can hold the fruits of her own earnings, if it be her ill luck to have a worthless, drunken spendthrift for a husband. It is owing to their exertions that new trades and professions are opening to woman; and all that I have to say of them is, that in the suddenness of their zeal for opening new paths for her feet, they have not sufficiently considered the propriety of straightening, widening, and mending the one broad, good old path of domestic labor, established by God Himself. It does appear to me, that, if at least a portion of their zeal could be spent in removing the stones out of this highway of domestic life, and making it pleasant and honorable, they would effect even more. I would not have them leave undone what they are doing; but I would, were I worthy to be considered, humbly suggest to their prophetic wisdom and enthusiasm, whether, in this new future of woman which they wish to introduce, woman's natural, God-given employment ofdomestic serviceis not to receive a new character and rise in a new form.
"'To love and serve' is a motto worn with pride on some aristocratic family shields in England. It ought to be graven on the Christian shield.Servantis the name which Christ gives to theChristian; and in speaking of his kingdom as distinguished from earthly kingdoms, he distinctly said, that rank there should be conditioned, not upon desire to command, but on willingness to serve.
"'Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be yourservant.'
"Why is it, that this name of servant, which Christ says is the highest in the kingdom of heaven, is so dishonored among us professing Christians, that good women will beg or starve, will suffer almost any extreme of poverty and privation, rather than accept home, competence, security, with this honored name?"
"The fault with many of our friends of the Woman's Rights order," said my wife, "is the depreciatory tone in which they have spoken of the domestic labors of a family as being altogether below the scope of the faculties of woman. 'Domestic drudgery' they call it: an expression that has done more harm than any two words that ever were put together.
"Think of a woman's calling clear-starching and ironing domestic drudgery, and to better the matter turning to type-setting in a grimy printing-office! Call the care of china and silver, the sweeping of carpets, the arrangement of parlors and sitting rooms, drudgery; and go into a factory and spend the day amid the whir and clatter and thunder of machinery, inhaling an atmosphere loaded with wool and machine-grease, and keeping on the feet for twelve hours, nearly continuously! Think of its being called drudgery to take care of a clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and dress and care for two or three children, to mend their clothes, tell them stories, make them playthings, take them out walking or driving; and rather than this, to wear out the whole livelong day, extending often deep into the night, in endless sewing, in a close room of a dressmaking establishment! Is it any less drudgery to stand all day behind a counter, serving customers, than to tend a door-bell and wait on a table? For my part," said my wife, "I have oftenthought the matter over, and concluded, that, if I were left in straitened circumstances, as many are in a great city, I would seek a position as a servant in one of our good families."
"I envy the family that you even think of in that connection," said I. "I fancy the amazement which would take possession of them as you began to develop among them."
"I have always held," said my wife, "that family work, in many of its branches, can be better performed by an educated woman than an uneducated one. Just as an army where even the bayonets think is superior to one of mere brute force and mechanical training, so, I have heard it said, some of our distinguished modern female reformers show an equal superiority in the domestic sphere,—and I do not doubt it. Family work was never meant to be the special province of untaught brains, I have sometimes thought I should like to show what I could do as a servant."
"Well," said Bob, "to return from all this to the question, What's to be done with her? Are you going tomydistressed woman? If you are, suppose you takeyourdistressed woman along, and ask her to try it. I can promise her a pleasant house, a quiet room by herself, healthful and not too hard work, a kind friend, and some leisure for reading, writing, or whatever other pursuit of her own she may choose for her recreation. We are always quite willing to lend books to any who appreciate them. Our house is surrounded by pleasant grounds, which are open to our servants as to ourselves. So, let her come and try us. I am quite sure that country air, quiet security, and moderate exercise in a good home will bring up her health; and if she is willing to take the one or two disagreeables which may come with all this, let her try us."
"Well," said I, "so be it; and would that all the women seeking homes and employment could thus fall in with women who have homes and are perishing in them for want of educated helpers!"
On this question of woman's work I have yet more to say, but must defer it to another month.