“I have never desired children; have always been bitterly opposed to the coming of each new claimant upon my time and labor,” I once heard a lady say. “Two of mine never breathed, and I experienced a sensation of joyful relief when I found that my cares were not then to be increased. Yet I love my children very much as they grow older, and my conscience assures me that I have discharged my duty to them faithfully. I accept them as inevitable evils which religion and philosophy require me to endure as well and gracefully as possible.”
Yet the speaker was not a “strong-minded woman,” in the popular acceptation of the term. She believed in St. Paul, and had never read a word of Malthus in her life, if indeed she were aware of the existence of that author. She reprobated women’s colleges and learned ladies; stayed at home and kept her husband’s house with all diligence, and was generally regarded as a pattern wife and estimable member of society. I declare, nevertheless, that if she spoke the truth in this instance, her babies were motherless. They had a capable nurse; one who discharged the external duties of her position with conscientious fidelity, and who, in the course of time, as any tolerably warm-hearted nursery-maid could not but have done, grew into a more lively degree of interest in the winsome beings committed to her charge. But of true mother-love—the beautiful instinct, and sacred as beauful—the blending of hope and longing and solicitude that, not content with receiving the dear trust with eager embrace at the threshold of what we call life, goes forth to meet it in that mysterious, imperfect existence which even she does not wholly comprehend, and from the moment the revelation of the coming advent is known to herself, studies the comfort and well-being of the one whose name may perhaps never be written among the living upon the earth; watching and regulating the workings of her physical nature; keeping her mind calm and free; hushing every wild heart-beat, lest the irregular throb should disturb the exquisitely susceptible organization of that which lies so near it—that always marvelous, yet ever-renewed miracle of human devotion, which Deity does not shun to name in connection with His own boundless, perfect love; of this, the decent matron in question knew about as much as I do of Sanscrit, or the dialect spoken by the natives among the coffee groves of Borrioboola-Gha.
I am happy to believe that the maternal care which antedates the birth of its object is becoming daily a subject of deeper thought and more enlightened comprehension, with those whose duty it is to be instructed in this regard. It is only among the ignorant or the reckless that we find total disbelief and utter neglect of the laws which treat of the intimate and subtle relation existing between mother and child. It is no longer customary to scout as old wives’ fables the tales of horrible wrong done by passionate or imprudent women to the bodies and intellects of their unborn babes. But we have still much to learn, and more to heed upon this vital point.
Passing thus briefly over the earliest phase of motherly duty, we come to the education of the living, breathing, “necessary evil,” or cherished blessing, as the parent’s taste or principles may determine the little stranger to be. The pink, plump, piping bantling has been exhibited to the usual round of ceremonious visitors, and passed muster with all—in the mother’s hearing—having been praised by one as the image of his papa, and by another, no less discerning, as his mother’s miniature, and, content with having acted well its part, in voting him to be a “remarkably fine child,” the “finest of the season,” Society dismisses the subject and remands baby to his curtained crib in the darkest corner of the nursery. For all that Society cares or thinks, he may, in that convenient retreat, slumber away the seasons of infancy and adolescence in a sort of Rip Van Winkle torpor, until his long clothes drop from his growing frame like the husk from a ripe nut. Society does not regard a “human boy”—as Mr. Chadband has it—as having arrived at the “interesting age” until he attains the age of discretion. Young lady cousins, enthusiastic school-girls, or matrons, incited to the examination by thoughts of their own little ones, occasionally lift the lace curtain and turn down the coverlet; call him an “angel,” and remark in rapturous whispers upon his increasing size and comeliness, and forget all about him by the time they reach the foot of the stairs. Or, an old friend of the family who “dotes upon babies,” begs that the “cherub” may be brought down to the parlor, saying, in pathetic reproach, “To think, my love, how seldom I see the darling!” Really deceived into a belief of the sincerity of her visitor’s desire, mamma sends off an order to nurse; baby is caught up from his crib of ease, thrust into a clean slip, his tender scalp brushed to the right and left of the line—more or less imaginary—where the down—alias hair—ought to part, until the soft, throbbing spot on the top of his head pulsates faster and harder with pain and fright. Duly prepared for inspection, he performs the journey to the lower floor, where he undergoes a vigorous kissing from the baby-lover, who “must hold him” herself. The blinds are opened, that his budding beauties may be clearly seen, and while the connoisseur goes into a transport of admiration, Master Baby, alarmed, fluttered, and uncomfortable, first looks long and piteously into the strange visage above him, and proceeds to express his sentiments by wrinkling up his cherubic nose and opening his cherry mouth for a squall.
“There! take him, nurse!” says the visitor, hastily. “He does not fancy new acquaintances. In a year or two, he will be just at the interesting age, and we shall be capital friends. Not a word, my dear!”—to Mamma, who stammers an apology. “All young children behave worst when we want them to show off their prettiest ways.”
This may be true, but for my part I don’t blame the babies.
Most Papas are shy or negligent of their heirs or heiresses at this epoch. It is quite common to hear ladies relate, as a proof, I suppose, of their spouses’ superiority to small matters, that they are utterly careless of their babies while they are in arms.
“Mr. C. never notices one of his until it is two years of age,” remarks Mrs. C. “Then, when he sees that it is a pretty plaything, he becomes quite fond of it, enjoys frolicking with it.”
As he would with a puppy, which, frisking about his feet, should attract his lordship’s attention to its graceful shape and winning ways!
“Mr. D. thinks young babies disgusting little animals,” laughs Mrs. D., in reply. “He says that he would not kiss one under eighteen months old, for five hundred dollars!”