May I illustrate this by a short example which happened very near me? During the days of the EMEUTES of 1848, all the houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were concealed. "Vous etes anglaise, nous vous croyons; les anglaises disent toujours la verite," was the immediate answer, and the rioters quietly left.
Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjustified criticism if, loving and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain new features strike me as painful discrepancies in English life?
Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty [sic; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were;] as care, trouble, and refinement can make them.
It is the degree BEYOND that which to us has proved so fatal, and that I would our example could warn you from as a small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to us in our days of trouble.
May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a New-year's wish fromA FRENCH LADY. Dec. 29.
That, then, is the substance of what I would fain say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends; at all events with certainty in my own mind that I was thus far a safe guide to them.
For other and older readers it is needful I should write a few words more, respecting what opportunity I have had to judge, or right Ihave to speak, of such things; for, indeed, too much of what I have said about women has been said in faith only. A wise and lovely English lady told me, when 'Sesame and Lilies' first appeared, that she was sure the 'Sesame' would be useful, but that in the 'Lilies'
I had been writing of what I knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too true, and also that it is more partial than my writings are usually: for as Ellesmere spoke his speech on the--intervention, not, indeed, otherwise than he felt, but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote the 'Lilies' to please one girl; and were it not for what I remember of her, and of few besides, should now perhaps recast some of the sentences in the 'Lilies' in a very different tone: for as years have gone by, it has chanced to me, untowardly in some respects, fortunately in others (because it enables me to read history more clearly), to see the utmost evil that is in women, while I have had but to believe the utmost good. The best women are indeed necessarily the most difficult to know; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and the nobleness of their children; they are only to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger; and, sometimes, seem almost helpless except in their homes; yet without the help of one of them, to whom this book is dedicated, the day would probably have come before now, when I should have written and thought no more.
On the other hand, the fashion of the time renders whatever is forward, coarse, or senseless, in feminine nature, too palpable to all men:- the weak picturesqueness of my earlier writings brought me acquainted with much of their emptiest enthusiasm; and the chances of later life gave me opportunities of watching women in states of degradation and vindictiveness which opened to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and Syrian tragedy. I have seen them betray their household charities to lust, their pledged love to devotion; I have seen mothers dutiful to their children, as Medea; and children dutiful to their parents, as the daughter of Herodias: but my trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the natures that are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words of the 'Lilies'
unchanged; believing, yet, that no man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion.
What I might myself have been, so helped, I rarely indulge in the idleness of thinking; but what I am, since I take on me the function of a teacher, it is well that the reader should know, as far as Ican tell him.
Not an unjust person; not an unkind one; not a false one; a lover of order, labour, and peace. That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right to say all I care to say on ethical subjects; more, I could only tell definitely through details of autobiography such as none but prosperous and (in the simple sense of the word) faultless lives could justify;--and mine has been neither. Yet, if any one, skilled in reading the torn manuscripts of the human soul, cares for more intimate knowledge of me, he may have it by knowing with what persons in past history I have most sympathy.
I will name three.
In all that is strongest and deepest in me,--that fits me for my work, and gives light or shadow to my being, I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli.
In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Marmontel.
In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Dean Swift.
Any one who can understand the natures of those three men, can understand mine; and having said so much, I am content to leave both life and work to be remembered or forgotten, as their uses may deserve.
DENMARK HILL,1st January, 1871.
