Later in the evening, the visiter was sitting in the library, when Mr. B. entered that portion of the house. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. He knew that he had done great things, and he desired, as all men do, to have his wife share in the pleasure—nay, to double the pleasure to him by her kind, affectionate, partial commendation of his labors, and hearty rejoicings at his success.
“It was, Cornelia,” said he, “one of my most fortunate hits, and when I summed up the testimony and presented the cause of the injured widow, there was not a dry eye in the court-room; and the gallery was crowded with ladies. Mrs. Campbell sat in front, listening with the most marked attention—”
“Did she—what dress did Mrs. Campbell wear?”
“Dress—but——”
It was ever thus. Whatever effort Blackstone made—whatever applause abroad followed his exertions, there was an entire want of sympathy at home. Not that Mrs. B. was without high mental powers, not that those powers lacked cultivation; but she had no knowledge of what a public man expects of his home, no comprehension of the great fact, that no out-of-door applause, no huzza of the multitude, no approval of even a judicious public is complete in its effect upon the recipient, unless sanctioned and sealed by the council at home—a council the head and chief of which is the wife, but which includes every member of the domestic circle. Distinguished men are not candidates alone for applause. They receive the censure, the vituperation, and persecution sometimes of those whose views they may oppose. Whose good they can no longer promote—for whom they have done the ninety-nine good acts but failed in their attempt at the hundredth—and that failure cancels all obligations for former success; how prospective is public gratitude!
Blackstone of course had his opponents, and when he entered his house, stung with insults from impeached motives, and felt how faithless had been those upon whom he had leaned, a word or two of kindness, one intimation that he could and would survive all such attacks. One gentle, soothing strain from a wife who knows or ought to know the most sensitive spot on which the public thong had fallen, and who can apply the soothing ointment of affection—one cheering word would have lifted him over the difficulty and made him feel that in himself he had the material of resistance, and the weapons of final victory. A glass or two of brandy stiffens the nerves and rallies the mind to its wonted tone—that application must, of course, be increased in amount whenever renewed, or the effect will cease—and we need not tell what must be the consequence of such a resort.
The remedy of wife-like sympathy, domestic soothing, may indeed, like the latter, need augmentation by frequency of application—but it comes from a source that is never dried up by use, that increases by drafts upon it—and produces no injurious effects upon the mind or body made recipient of its soothing power.
I know now, because I know more than I have above related, that the errors of Blackstone, his short-coming, the comparative dimness of his once glowing fame which seemed marked to “shine more and more unto the perfect day;” his want of perseverance—his new habits of remissness—his loss of fame—all, all are due to a want of home—of that which makes his house his home—makes home—home.
I speak not here of the thousand instances in which incompatability of temper forever precludes family enjoyment—where vice, or what is next to vice, want of domestic proprieties, disturb the peace of home; I cite no instance of the defeat of a man’s high purpose, and the baffling of the noble aims which elevated talents and finished education may form—I quote not shipwrecks like those which may be due to the vulgar mind or the vicious course of the wife—such causes are usually as obvious as their effects. The men of more spirit than judgment breaks away from the destructive cause, and tries to acquire an independence of home. Man is not independent of home, if he has a place which he calls home, and all his life, and all his conduct, and all his experience must and will derive their coloring in no mean degree from that home, however man may treat its condition or seek to place himself beyond its influence.
The distinguished Mr. Coke of South Carolina, seemed to me in some considerable intercourse, to have rather a brilliant fancy, but to lack that severe discipline which goes to make a man truly and permanently great and popular—yet he seldom failed in producing a considerable effect on an audience which he addressed, whatever might be the subject, and nervous as was his system—he rarely evinced on the morning after a defeat any tokens of irritation or discouragement. His wife made it her business, and it became her pleasure to be an auditor of his narrations—to hear his complaints against individuals at the moment of anger and seem to forget his charges when returning equanimity led him to speak in a different tone and temper of his vigorous and sometimes successful antagonist.