Gower. But all this while we have been very rude. Here is Madame Guyon come to tell us her story, and we have kept her, I don’t know how long, standing at the door.
Kate. Yes, let us hear your paper first, Mr. Atherton: we can talk afterwards, you know.
So Atherton began to read.
QUIETISM.
Part I.—Madame Guyon.
I.
Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe was born on Easter-eve, April 13th, 1648, at Montargis. Her sickly childhood was distinguished by precocious imitations of that religious life which was held in honour by every one around her. She loved to be dressed in the habit of a little nun. When little more than four years old, she longed for martyrdom. Her school-fellows placed her on her knees on a white cloth, flourished a sabre over her head, and told her to prepare for the stroke. A shout of triumphant laughter followed the failure of the child’s courage. She was neglected by her mother, and knocked about by a spoiled brother. When not at school, she was the pet or the victim of servants. She began to grow irritable from ill-treatment, and insincere from fear. When ten years old, she found a Bible in her sick room, and read it, she says, from morning to night, committing to memory the historical parts. Some of the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and the Life of Madame de Chantal, fell in her way. The latter work proved a powerful stimulant. There she read of humiliations and austerities numberless, of charities lavished with a princely munificence, of visions enjoyed and miracles wrought in honour of those saintly virtues, and of the intrepidity with which the famous enthusiast wrote with a red-hot iron on her bosom, the characters of the holy name Jesus. The girl of twelve years old was bent on copying these achievements on her little scale. She relieved, taught, and waited on the poor; and, for lack of the red-hot iron or the courage, sewed on to her breast with a large needle a piece of paper containing the name of Christ. She even forged a letter to secure her admission to a conventual establishment as a nun. The deceit was immediately detected; but the attempt shows how much more favourable was the religious atmosphere in which she grew up, to the prosperity of convents than to the inculcation of truth.
With ripening years, religion gave place to vanity. Her handsome person and brilliant conversational powers fitted her to shine in society. She began to love dress, and feel jealous of rival beauties. Like St. Theresa, at the same age, she sat up far into the night, devouring romances. Her autobiography records her experience of the mischievous effects of those tales of chivalry and passion. When nearly sixteen, it was arranged that she should marry the wealthy M. Guyon. This gentleman, whom she had seen but three days before her marriage, was twenty-two years older than herself.
The faults she had were of no very grave description, but her husband’s house was destined to prove for several years a pitiless school for their correction. He lived with his mother, a vulgar and hard-hearted woman. Her low and penurious habits were unaffected by their wealth; and in the midst of riches, she was happiest scolding in the kitchen about some farthing matter. She appears to have hated Madame Guyon with all the strength of her narrow mind. M. Guyon loved his wife after his selfish sort. If she was ill, he was inconsolable; if any one spoke against her, he flew into a passion; yet, at the instigation of his mother, he was continually treating her with harshness. An artful servant girl, who tended his gouty leg, was permitted daily to mortify and insult his wife. Madame Guyon had been accustomed at home to elegance and refinement,—beneath her husband’s roof she found politeness contemned and rebuked as pride. When she spoke, she had been listened to with attention,—now she could not open her mouth without contradiction. She was charged with presuming to show them how to talk, reproved for disputatious forwardness, and rudely silenced. She could never go to see her parents without having bitter speeches to bear on her return. They, on their part, reproached her with unnatural indifference towards her own family for the sake of her new connexions. The ingenious malignity of her mother-in-law filled every day with fresh vexations. The high spirit of the young girl was completely broken. She had already gained a reputation for cleverness and wit—now she sat nightmared in company, nervous, stiff, and silent, the picture of stupidity. At every assemblage of their friends she was marked out for some affront, and every visitor at the house was instructed in the catalogue of her offences. Sad thoughts would come—how different might all this have been had she been suffered to select some other suitor! But it was too late. The brief romance of her life was gone indeed. There was no friend into whose heart she could pour her sorrows. Meanwhile, she was indefatigable in the discharge of every duty,—she endeavoured by kindness, by cheerful forbearance, by returning good for evil, to secure some kinder treatment—she was ready to cut out her tongue that she might make no passionate reply—she reproached herself bitterly for the tears she could not hide. But these coarse, hard natures were not so to be won. Her magnanimity surprised, but did not soften minds to which it was utterly incomprehensible.[[315]]
Her best course would have been self-assertion and war to the very utmost. She would have been justified in demanding her right to be mistress in her own house—in declaring it incompatible with the obligations binding upon either side, that a third party should be permitted to sow dissension between a husband and his wife—in putting her husband, finally, to the choice between his wife and his mother. M. Guyon is the type of a large class of men. They stand high in the eye of the world—and not altogether undeservedly—as men of principle. But their domestic circle is the scene of cruel wrongs from want of reflection, from a selfish, passionate inconsiderateness. They would be shocked at the charge of an act of barbarity towards a stranger, but they will inflict years of mental distress on those most near to them, for want of decision, self-control, and some conscientious estimate of what their home duties truly involve. Had the obligations he neglected, the wretchedness of which he was indirectly the author, been brought fairly before the mind of M. Guyon, he would probably have determined on the side of justice, and a domestic revolution would have been the consequence. But Madame Guyon conceived herself bound to suffer in silence. Looking back on those miserable days, she traced a father’s care in the discipline she endured. Providence had transplanted Self from a garden where it expanded under love and praise, to a highway where every passing foot might trample it in the dust.