JOSEPHINE – GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS
A bright-eyed, fair, young maiden, whose satchel I should insist upon carrying to school for her every morning if I were half a century younger, came to me a day or two after the publication of my last essay, and, placing her white, taper fingers in my rough, Esau-like hand, said, "I liked your piece about the boys very much; and now I hope that you'll write something about girls." "My dear Nellie," replied I, "if I should do that I should lose all my female acquaintances. I have a weakness for telling the truth, and there are some subjects concerning which it is very dangerous to speak out 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'" The gentle damsel smiled, and looked as she still urged me on, and refused to see any danger in my giving out the plainest truth about girlhood. She had no fear, though all the truth were told; and I suppose that if we had some of Nellie's purity and gentleness remaining in our sere and selfish hearts, we should be much better and happier men and women, and should dread the truth as little as she does. But I must not begin my truth-telling by seeming to praise too highly, though it must be confessed, even at my time of life, if I were to describe the charming young person I have referred to, with the merciless fidelity of a daguerreotype and an absence of hyperbole worthy of the late Dr. Bowditch's work on Navigation, I should seem to the unfortunate "general reader" who does not know Nell, to be indulging in the grossest flattery, and panting poesy would toil after me in vain. So I will put aside all temptations of that kind, and come down to the plain prose of my subject.
"Modest as justice, and did seem a palace
For the crown'd truth to dwell in,"
There is, in fact, very little that can be said about girlhood. Those calm years that come between the commencement of the bondage of the pantalettes and emancipation from the tasks of school, present few salient points upon which the essayist (observe he never so closely) may turn a neat paragraph. They offer little that is startling or attractive either to writer or reader, —
"As times of quiet and unbroken peace,
Though for a nation times of blessedness,
Give back faint echoes from the historian's page."
The rough sports of boyhood, the out-door life which boys always take to so naturally, and all their habits of activity, give a strength of light and shade to their early years which is not to be found in girlhood. It is not enough to say that there is no difference in kind, but simply one in degree, – that the years of boyhood are calm and happy, and that those of girlhood are so likewise, – that the former resemble the garish sunshine, and the latter the mitigated splendour of the moon; for the characters of boys seem to be struck in a sharper die than those of girls, which gives them an absoluteness quite distinct from the feminine grace we naturally look for in the latter. The free-hearted boy, plunging into all sorts of fun without a thought of his next day's arithmetic lesson, and with a charming disregard of the expense of jackets and trousers, and the gentle girl, who clings to her mother's side, like an attendant angel, and contents herself with teaching long lessons to docile paper pupils in a quiet corner by the fireside, are representatives of two distinct classes in the order of nature, and (untheologically, of course, I might add) of grace. There is not a greater difference between a hockey and a crochet needle than there is between them.
I have, as a general thing, a greater liking for boys than for girls; for the vanity so common to all mankind is not developed in them at so early an age as in the latter. Still I must acknowledge that I have seen some splendid exceptions, the mere recollection of which almost tempts me to draw my pen through that last sentence. Can I ever forget – I can never forget – one into whose years of girlhood the beauty and grace of a long, pure life seemed to have been compressed? It was many years ago, and I was younger than I am now – so pardon me if I should seem to catch a little enthusiasm of spirit from the remembrance of those days. Like the ancient Queen of Carthage, Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ. I was living in London at that time, or rather at Hampstead, which had not then become a mere suburb of the great metropolis, but was a quiet town, whose bright doorplates, and well-scoured doorsteps, and clean window curtains contrasted finely with the dingy brick walls of its houses, and impressed the visitor with the general prosperity and quiet respectability of its inhabitants. In my daily walks to and from the city, I frequently met a gentleman whose gray hairs and simple dignity of manners always attracted me towards him, and exacted from me an involuntary tribute of respectful recognition. One day he overtook me in a shower, and gave me the benefit of his umbrella and his friendship – for an intimacy which ended only with his death commenced between us from that hour. He was a gentleman of good family and education, who had seen thirty years of responsible service in the employ of the Honourable East India Company, had attained a competency, and had forsworn Leadenhall Street for a pension and a quiet retreat on the heights of Hampstead. His wife was a lady of cultivated tastes, whose sober wishes never learned to stray from the path of simple domestic duty, and the presence of the books in which she found her daily pleasures.
"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."
Their only child, "one fair daughter, and no more," was a gentle and merry-hearted creature, who, in the short and murky days of November, filled that cottage with a more than June-like sunshine. Her parents always had a deep sympathy with that unfortunate Empress of France whose dismission from the throne was the commencement of the downward career of the first Napoleon, and bore witness to it by giving her name to their only child. They lived only three or four doors from my lodgings, and there were few days passed after the episode of the umbrella in which I did not find a welcome in their quiet home. Their daughter was their only idol, and I soon found myself a convert to their innocent system of paganism. We all three agreed that Josey was the incarnation of all known perfections, and the lapse of forty years has not sufficed to weaken that conviction in my mind. She had risen just above the horizon of girlhood, and the natural beauty of her character made the beholder content to forget even the promise of her riper years. I do not think she was what the world calls handsome. I sometimes distrust my judgment in the matter of female beauty; indeed, some of my candid friends have told me that I had no judgment in such things. Well, as I was saying, Josey was not remarkable for personal beauty – in fact, I think I remember some persons of her own sex who thought her "very plain" – "positively homely" – and wondered what there was attractive about her. There are circumstances under which I should not have hesitated to attribute such remarks to motives of envy and jealousy; but as they came from girls whose attractions of every kind were far below those of the gentle creature whom they delighted to criticise, how can I account for them? Josey's complexion was dark – her forehead, like those of the best models of female comeliness among the ancients, low. Her teeth were pearly and uniform, and her clear, dark eyes seemed to reflect the happiness and hope which were the companions of her youth. Her beauty was not of that kind which consists in mere regularity of features; it was far superior to that. You could discern under those traits, none of which were conspicuous, a combination of mental and social qualities which were far above the fleeting charms that delight so many, and which age, instead of destroying, would increase and perfect. She was quiet and gentle, without being dull or moody; light-hearted and cheery, without being frivolous; and witty, without being pert or conceited. Her unaffected goodness of heart found many an opportunity of exercise. I often heard of her among the poor, and among those who needed words of consolation even more than the necessaries of life. It was her delight to intercede with the magistrate who had inflicted a punishment on some disorderly brother of one of her poor clients, and to obtain his pardon by promising to watch over him and insure his future good behaviour; and there were very few, among the most reckless, who were not restrained by the thought that their offences would give pain to the kind-hearted girl who had so willingly become their protector.
During the months that I lived at Hampstead my intercourse with that excellent family was as familiar as if I had been one of their own kindred. A little attack of rheumatism, which confined me to my lodging for a fortnight or three weeks, proved the constancy of their friendship. The old gentleman came daily to see me – told me all the news from the city, and read to me; the mother sent me some of her favourite books; and Josey came to get assistance in her Latin and French, and brought me sundry little pots of grape jelly and other preserves, which tasted all the sweeter for being the work of her fair hands. It was a sad parting when I was called away to America – sad for me; for I told them that I hoped that my absence from England would be but temporary, when I felt inwardly that it might extend to several years.
Two or three months after my arrival at home, I received a letter from the old gentleman, written in his deliberate, round, clerk-like style, informing me of his wife's death. A note was enclosed from Josey, in which she described with her pencil the spot where her mother was buried in the old churchyard, and told me of her progress in her studies. More than a year passed by without my hearing from them at all, two or three of my letters to them having miscarried. Nearly seven years elapsed before I visited England again. Two years before that, I had read the decease of the old gentleman, in a stray London newspaper. I had written to Josey, sympathizing with her in her desolation, but had received no answer. So, the day after my arrival in London, I determined to make a search for the beloved Josey. I went to Hampstead, and my heart beat quicker as I approached the cottage where I had spent so many happy hours. My throat felt a little choky, as I recognized the neat bit of hedge before the door, the graceful vine which overhung it, and the familiar arrangement of the flower pots in the frames outside the windows; but my hopes received a momentary check when I found a strange name on the plate above the knocker. I knocked, and inquired concerning the former occupants of the house. After a severe effort to overcome the Bœotian stupidity of the housemaid, she ushered me into the little breakfast room, and said she would "call her missus." Almost before I had time to look about me, Josey entered the room. The little girl whose Latin exercises I had corrected, and who had always lived in my memory as she appeared in those days, suddenly came before me
"A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright
With something of an angel light."
Yet she was hardly changed at all. She had lost none of those charming qualities which had made the thought of her precious to me during long years of absence. She had gained the maturity and dignity of womanhood without losing any of the simplicity and light-heartedness of girlhood. She was married. Her husband was a literary man of considerable reputation. Though only in middle age, he was a great sufferer with the gout. He was, generally speaking, a patient man; but I found, after I became intimate with him, that his pains sometimes made him express himself with a force of diction somewhat in advance of the religious prejudices of his gentle Josey, who tended him and ministered to his wants like an angel, as she was. But excuse me for wandering so far from my theme. To make a long story short, Josey went to Italy with her husband, who had been ordered thither by his physicians, and I never saw her afterwards. She deposited her husband's remains in the cemetery where those of Shelley and Keats repose, and found for two or three years a consolation for her bereaved spirit in residence in that city which more than all others proclaims to our unwilling hearts the vanity and transitoriness of this world's hopes, and the glory of the unseen eternal. Years after, I met one of her husband's friends in Paris, who told me that some four years after his death, she had entered a convent of a religious order devoted to the reclaiming of the degraded of her sex, in Brussels. There she had found a fitting occupation for the natural benevolence of her heart, and the peace which the world could not give. She had concealed the glory of her good works under her vow of obedience – her personality was hidden under the common habit of her Order – the very name which was so dear to me had been exchanged for another on the day that saw her covered with the white veil of the novice. I was about returning to England from the continent when I heard this, and I resolved to take Belgium's fair capital in my route. I found the convent readily enough, and waited in its uncarpeted but scrupulously clean parlour some time for the Lady Superior. She was a lady of dignified mien, with the clear complexion, the serene brow, and the dovelike eyes so common among nuns, and her face lighted up, as she spoke, with a gentle smile, which seemed almost like a presage of immortality. I explained my errand, and she told me that the good English sister had been dead more than a year. The intelligence pained me, and it gave me a feeling of self-reproach to notice that the nun, who had been with her in her last hour, spoke of her as if she had merely passed into another part of the convent we were in. The Superior, perceiving my emotion, conducted me through the garden of the convent to a shady corner of the grounds, where there were several graves. She stopped before a mound, over which a rose bush bent affectionately, as if its white blossoms craved something of the purity which was enshrined beneath it. At its head was a simple wooden cross, on which was inscribed the name of "Sister Helen Agnes," the date of her death, and the common supplication that she might rest in peace; and that was the only memorial of Josey that remained to me.
I have not forgotten, dear reader, that I am writing about girls; but having brought forward one who always seemed to me to be about as near perfection as it is vouchsafed to poor humanity to approach, I could not help following her to the end, and showing how she went from a beautiful girlhood to a still more beautiful womanhood, and a death which all of us might envy; and how lovely and harmonious was her whole career. For I feel that the consideration of the contrast which most of the young female readers of these pages will discover between themselves and Josey, will do them some good.
I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their tongues can wag, (forty-woman power,) and clinging inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, à la Napolitaine. Their independence is quite refreshing. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden Opera House with half the consciousness of making a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delightful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence; for perfect modesty does not even know how to blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their teens! How careful they are that the crinoline "sticks out" properly before they venture on the road to school! If Mother Goose (of blessed memory) could take a look into this world now, she would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her patrons, —
"Come with a whoop – come with a call," &c., —
for she would find that it is now their custom to come with a hoop when they come for a call.
When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulet's garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that interesting young person: —
"She speaks, yet she says nothing."
I have seen many young ladies of Juliet's time of life in my day of whom the same thing might be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet take them on such a subject as the trimming of a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those entertaining topics more or less connected with the adornment of their persons, and how voluble they are! To the stronger sex, which of course cares nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on such themes are mere unmeaning words; but I must do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, that gimp, and flounces, and trimming generally, have a real, tangible existence.
How sentimental they are! In my young days albums were all the rage among young ladies; but now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and young ministers have taken their place. What pains will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. Simkins! They swarm around him after service, like flies around the bung of a molasses cask. Raphael never had such a face as his; Massillon never preached as he does. What a wilderness of worsted work are they not willing to travel over for his sake! How do they exhaust their inventive faculties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the feet at which they delight to sit! But when Simkins marries old Thompson's youngest daughter and a snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popularity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his stead among the volatile devotees; and Simkins then sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of the favour his preaching of the gospel found among those thoughtless young people than was the popularity of the good-looking light comedian, after whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black frock coat.
Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girlhood. Whatever meets their eyes is either "splendid" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term not contained in their lexicon. They take a momentary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their smiles until some new face takes his place in their fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are frittered away in successive flirtations before their possessors have reached womanhood. But it would be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about "speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few victims of the tender passion, from Pyramus and Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown hanging on his arm, – who have not sadly needed the advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen very few people in my day who really speak the truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for a fault which is common to all mankind.
Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent with cunning; but in most girls I think the two things are singularly combined. I am told that there is an academy in this city, frequented by many young women, known as the School of Design. The fact is a gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish nature had led me to suppose that there were very few indeed of the young ladies of these days who required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the fact as a good omen for the sex. Action from impulse carries its young victims to the extremes of good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the majority of her sex. Defeated in their hopes, they are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blistered Adam's cowardly tongue.
But I am making a long preachment, and yet I have said very little. I must leave my young friends, however, to draw their own lessons from the portrait I have given of one whose perfections would far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculpture their later career after any less perfect shape. There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dressmaker parading the streets, and more true women presiding over the homes of America. The imitation of her virtues will be found a better preservative of beauty than any eau lustrale; for it will create a beauty which "time's effacing fingers" are powerless to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a source of perpetual benediction.