A PATCHWORK CHARACTER.
_ACCORDING to an American monthly, the Lady's Home Journal, the following amazing inscription may be read on a monument in a Cumberland churchyard :— "Here lie the bodies of
Thomas Bond and Mary his wife.
But She was proud, peevish and passionate. She was an affectionate wife and a tender mother, But Her husband and child, whom she loved, Seldom saw her countenance without a disgusting frown ; Whilst she received visitors whom she despised with an endearing smile. Her behaviour was discreet towards strangers, But Imprudent in her family. Abroad her conduct was influenced by good breeding, But At home by ill-temper. She was a professed enemy of flattery, and was seldom known to praise or commend; But The talents in which she principally excelled Were difference of opinion and discovering flaws and imperfections. She was an admirable economist, And, without prodigality, Dispensed plenty to every person in her family, But Would sacrifice their eyes to a farthing candle. She sometimes made her husband happy with her good qualities, But Much more frequently miserable with her many failings. Insomuch that in thirty years' cohabitation He often lamented that, maugre all her virtues, He had not on the whole enjoyed two years' of matrimonial comfort. At length, Finding she had lost the affection of her husband, as well as the regard of her neighbours, family disputes having been divulged by servants, She died of vexation, July 20, 1768, Aged 48 years. Her worn-out husband survived her four months and two days, and departed this life November 22, nos, In the 54th year of his age. William Bond, brother to the deceased, Erected this stone as a Weekly monitor to the wives of this parish, That they may avoid the infamy of having Their memories handed down to posterity with a patchwork character."
This is a fearful indictment, and there is no kind-hearted reader but must feel that, whatever the faults of the poor woman thus described, she had a terrible misfortune in her brother-in-law. No doubt the picture is a true portrait. It bears the impress of truth, that everlasting hall-mark which time cannot rub out, whose outline is kept sharp by the chisel of common experience. All the same, the truth might have been differently expressed, would have been differently expressed had the portrait been painted a hundred years later, and not by a relation. The epitaph contains all the elements of tragedy, though it is but an arraignment. Had not Louis Stevenson much the same character in his mind when be wrote the following words ?—" All have some fault. The fault of each grinds down the hearts of those about him, and—let us not blink the truth—hurries both him and them into the grave. And when we find a man persevering indeed, in his fault, as all of us do, and openly overtaken, as not all of us are, by its consequences, to gloss the matter over, with too polite biographers, is to do the work of the wrecker disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard; but to call him bad, with a self-righteous chuckle, is to be talking in one's sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in the arbour." How differently the two artiste treat the same subject. Stevenson was incapable of a self-righteous chuckle. Mary Bond's brother-in-law was not. All the same, he lighted a beacon upon a "perilous seaboard" when he betrayed to the public the story of his brother's household, and brought the wives of the parish face to face with the tragic fact that it was possible for them to perform every recognised duty and fail completely in life, and even hurry both them- selves and others into the grave.
If a woman is a faithful wife, a good mother, and an admirable housekeeper, if she is civil to her neighbours and charitable to the poor, it is, from the point of view of the moralist, utterly impossible to call her anything but a good woman, to deny that she has all the essentials of character. Yet it is possible that she may be hated by her husband, her child, and the outside world of rich and poor acquaintances, and that without fault on their part. It must have been very difficult for Mrs. Bond to see the reason of her failure,— to see in front of her, as her brother-in-law saw it, the bad end to which she must surely come. Indeed, he tells us that she died of vexation when she did at last perceive the truth. Stevenson would, we think, have said that she died of grief. Of course, she did not realise that she was proud,
passionate, peevish, and censorious. People never believe that they are any of these things. She thought, no doubt, when she took herself to task, that she had an unusual sense of dignity, a certain amount of nervous irritability, a great sense of perfection, and a strong determination to maintain household sincerity. Nowadays a novelist might have written a book about her, and put all the blame upon the husband and child. "What a pathetic figure !" we should have said. "So pure-minded, so upright, so full of ideals ; a woman who saw with disdain the small follies of social life, and devoted herself successfully to her household duties and to relieving the lot of the poor; who did her duty to the utmost of her power, but whose mind was so constituted that she could not secure domestic happiness ; who asked too much of life, set before herself too high a standard ; for whom her husband and child, in spite of her love for them, became too often mere illustrations of the essential disappointingness of things." Yet the novelist of to-day, like the brother-in- law of so long ago, must, if he painted truly, have made a sad ending to his book. Mrs. Bond was preordained to fail.
The truth is that something outside what we call essentials is necessary to life. The longer one lives, the more stories one has time to follow to the end, the more clearly does one see how all-essential are the non-essentials,—how love-producing are these latter, how unsatisfactory and how indigestible is the household bread made for human nature's daily food from the crop of pure and unadulterated principle. We must mix with it, if it is to give us health, either some kindness of heart or some amiability. Now a soft heart is, we fear, a gift. Some people are not susceptible to the minor pathos of life. They are not moved to do little kindnesses because little troubles do not touch them. This—to the confusion of the moralist—it is a fact they cannot help. On the other hand, amiability is a quality any ordinary person can cultivate. It does not require any very great amount of intuitive feeling ; it requires some observation and great perseverance. It is a pity that the word is now somewhat debased in value. The quality in the market of real life will always fetch its price, will always secure for its owner a modicum of happiness. By a process of false reasoning, amiability has been connected both colloquially and in writing with weakness and stupidity. Strength and ability ensure it to no one ; consequently, says that hasty judge the public, it usually exists without them. Nothing was ever more untrue. Stupid people and weak people may be—they very seldom are—amiable by nature, but they are the only people for whom it is nearly impossible to cultivate amiability. It is very difficult for a really weak man to be sweet tempered. He is almost always angry with himself or somebody else for the disagreeable circumstances upon which he has allowed himself to be driven by the mocking winds of chance. He cannot make himself pleasant ; he cannot observe how to do so ; he has no time to spare from grumbling. Stupid people are in much the same case. They have not sufficient imagination to be amiable. The reason is that a man's own rights and privileges are so much easier for him to see and to reach after than any one else's. The first thing which the person who desires to be amiable must determine to do is never to produce fear among his own surroundings,—to be willing, in a social sense, to let every one off, so that no one regrets too bitterly having said a foolish or ill-judged thing before him, but comforts himself with the thought that it is forgotten; never, that is, to lower any one in his own esteem. The second is not to differ about matters of no importance, not to debase sincerity into contradictoriness, and not to set for other people a standard which it is unreason- able to suppose, from previous experience of their characters, that they will ever reach. The third is never to let his good principle interfere with some one else's harmless privilege, to remember that praise is a positive necessity to the spiritual and mental development of the young, and that injudicious blame acts as a blight. Mrs. Bond did not know the importance of these things, and therefore, as poor people say, she metaphorically "broke up her home," and caused as much misery as though she had run away, or taken to drink, or played ducks and drakes with her husband's fortune, not by doing anything wrong, not even by neglecting her duty, not by any of the usual methods, but simply by being disagreeable.
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