Looking toward sunset

by Unknown

A dear friend of mine, whom it was some good man’s loss not to have for a life-mate, adopted the orphan sons of her brother, and reared them with more than parental wisdom and tenderness, caring for all their physical wants, guiding them in precept and example by the most elevated moral standard, bestowing on them the highest intellectual culture, and studying all branches with them, that she might in all things be their companion.

Nor is it merely in such connections, which somewhat resemble wedded life, that single women make themselves useful and respected. Many remember the store kept for so long a time in Boston by Miss Ann Bent.

Her parents being poor, she early began to support herself by teaching. A relative subsequently furnished her with goods to sell on commission; and in this new employment she manifested such good judgment, integrity, and general business capacity, that merchants were willing to trust her to any extent. She acquired a handsome property, which she used liberally to assist a large family of sisters and nieces, some of whom she established in business similar to her own. No mother or grandmother was ever more useful or beloved. One of her nieces said: “I know the beauty and purity of my aunt’s character, for I lived with her forty years, and I never knew her to say or do anything which might not have been said or done before the whole world.”

I am ignorant of the particulars of Miss Bent’s private history; but doubtless a woman of her comely looks, agreeable manners, and excellent character, might have found opportunities to marry, if that had been a paramount object with her. She lived to be more than eighty-eight years old, universally respected and beloved; and the numerous relatives, toward whom she had performed a mother’s part, cheered her old age with grateful affection.

There have also been many instances of single women who have enlivened and illustrated their lives by devotion to the beautiful arts. Of these none are perhaps more celebrated than the Italian Sofonisba Angusciola and her two accomplished sisters. These three “virtuous gentlewomen,” as Vasari calls them, spent their lives together in most charming union. All of them had uncommon talent for painting, but Sofonisba was the most gifted. One of her most beautiful pictures represents her two sisters playing at chess, attended by the faithful old duenna, who accompanied them everywhere. This admirable artist lived to be old and blind; and the celebrated Vandyke said of her, in her later years: “I have learned more from one blind old woman in Italy, than from all the masters of the art.”

Many single women have also employed their lives usefully and agreeably as authors. There is the charming Miss Mitford, whose writings cheer the soul like a meadow of cowslips in the springtime. There is Frederica Bremer, whose writings have blessed so many souls. There is Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Hamilton, and our own honored Catherine M. Sedgwick, whose books have made the world wiser and better than they found it.

I am glad to be sustained in my opinions on this subject by a friend whose own character invests single life with peculiar dignity. In a letter to me, she says: “I object to having single women called a class. They are individuals, differing in the qualities of their characters, like other human beings. Their isolation, as a general thing, is the result of unavoidable circumstances. The Author of Nature doubtless intended that men and women should live together. But, in the present state of the world’s progress, society has, in many respects, become artificial in proportion to its civilization; and consequently the number of single women must constantly increase. If humanity were in a state of natural, healthy development, this would not be so; for young people would then be willing to begin married life with simplicity and frugality, and real happiness would increase in proportion to the diminution of artificial wants. This prospect, however, lies in the future, and many generations of single women must come and go before it will be realized.

“But the achievement of character is the highest end that can be proposed to any human being, and there is nothing in single life to prevent a woman from attaining this great object; on the contrary, it is in many respects peculiarly favorable to it. The measure of strength in character is the power to conquer circumstances when they refuse to cooperate with us. The temptations peculiarly incident to single life are petty selfishness, despondency under the suspicion of neglect, and ennui from the want of interesting occupation. If an ordinary, feeble-minded woman is exposed to these temptations, she will be very likely to yield to them. But she would not be greatly different in character, if protected by a husband and flanked with children; her feebleness would remain the same, and would only manifest itself under new forms.

“Marriage, under favorable circumstances, is unquestionably a promoter of human happiness. But mistakes are so frequently made by entering thoughtlessly into this indissoluble connection, and so much wretchedness ensues from want of sufficient mental discipline to make the best of what cannot be remedied, that most people can discover among their acquaintance as large a proportion of happy single women as they can of happy wives. Moreover, the happiness of unmarried women is as independent of mere gifts of fortune, as that of other individuals. Indeed, all solid happiness must spring from inward sources. Some of the most truly contented and respectable women I have ever known have been domestics, who grew old in one family, and were carefully looked after, in their declining days, by the children of those whom they faithfully served in youth.

“Most single women might have married, had they seized upon the first opportunity that offered; but some unrevealed attachment, too high an ideal, or an innate fastidiousness, have left them solitary; therefore, it is fair to assume that many of them have more sensibility and true tenderness than some of their married sisters. Those who remain single in consequence of too much worldly ambition, or from the gratification of coquettish vanity, naturally swell the ranks of those peevish, discontented ones, who bring discredit on single life in the abstract. But when a delicate gentlewoman deliberately prefers passing through life alone, to linking her fate with that of a man toward whom she feels no attraction, why should she ever repent of so high an exercise of her reason? This class of women are often the brightest ornaments of society. Men find in them calm, thoughtful friends, and safe confidants, on whose sympathy they can rely without danger. In the nursery, their labors, being voluntary, are less exhausting than a parent’s. When the weary, fretted mother turns a deaf ear to the twenty-times-repeated question, the baffled urchins retreat to the indulgent aunt, or dear old familiar friend, sure of obtaining a patient hearing and a kind response. Almost everybody can remember some samples of such Penates, whose hearts seem to be too large to be confined to any one set of children.