The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

FRIENDSHIPS OF MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.

THE first species of exclusively female friendship is that which exists between mother and daughter. The maternal tie of organic instinct and moral guardianship on the one side, and the filial tie of respect, dependence, and gratitude on the other, form the ordinary connection of mothers and daughters. In exceptional cases, these bonds of affectionate protection and pious love are lifted out of the faded commonplace of custom by deep mutual appreciation and sympathy, broadened and brightened into a friendship emphatically worthy of the name. The sight of a mother and a daughter thus happily paired is beautiful and holy. And there are far more examples of it than the world knows.

Probably, the best representation of this union is the one afforded by Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan. These celebrated ladies, among the most brilliant of the long roll of distinguished French women, were possessed of every charm of person and spirit, fascinating grace, dignity, intelligence, accomplishments, purity, and generosity. In their early years, they were inseparable. They hung on each other's looks and motions. The wish of the mother was the instinctive law of the child. The beautiful image of the daughter, loved to the verge of distraction, seemed gradually to occupy the whole being of the mother. For, as Madame de Sévigné successively lost her idolized husband and her most endeared friend, the unhappy Fouquet, the maternal instinct seemed to take up into itself all the baffled or bereaved passions, and, magnified and vivified by the appropriation, to transform itself into a friendship which almost annihilated her individuality, beneath the ideal stamp and transfused impression of that of her daughter. The pain of parting from her was like the anguish of tearing the soul out of the body. During the period of their separation, memory took the place of sight; ideas, of actions; correspondence, of conversation. She constantly writes to the absent one, and seems to live only for this. Every observation, reflection, emotion, finds a place in the tender and immortal record. She spares no pains to make her letters interesting to the receiver. She writes, "I shall live for the purpose of loving you. I abandon my life to that occupation." It is affecting to note the agitation of the mother at every ruffle on the life of the daughter. In tracing the thoughts, feelings, events, that vibrated across the relation between them, one can hardly escape the conviction, that the soul of the younger friend was ideally superimposed on the self-abnegating soul of the elder friend, and governed it, as the mental processes of a magnetized person are said to be superseded by the personality and states of consciousness of the magnetizer. A single passion has seldom so consistently ruled a being as the affection of Madame de Sévigné for her daughter; and it was returned by the latter with all the fervor of which her less ardent nature was capable. The collection of letters in which the sentiment and its manifold workings are enshrined, created, as Lamartine says in his eloquent sketch, a new species of literature, and formed an epoch in authorship. "The genius of the hearth held the pen, and the heart flowed through it. The literature of the family, or confidential conversation written out, began. It is the classic of closed doors."

This friendship had an earthly close worthy of its progress. For, when Madame de Grignan was attacked by a dangerous and lingering malady, her mother watched incessantly by her bedside, as she had formerly watched by her cradle. After three months of sleepless care, she had the joy of seeing the beloved patient return to life; but she had given her own in exchange. "Intense affection alone seemed to have enabled her to retain existence until the convalescence of Madame de Grignan, when it fled, having fulfilled its last object upon earth. She expired in the arms of her daughter, and surrounded by her weeping grandchildren. Her last glance fell upon the being enshrined in her soul, and restored to health by her care. She was interred in the chapel of the Chateau de Grignan. But her letters are her true and living sepulchre. Grignan holds her body; but her correspondence contains her soul."

Another fine example of a noble and glowing friendship between a mother and her daughter is furnished by Madame de Rambouillet and Julie d'Angenne. They were equally endowed with loveliness of person, attractiveness of mind, elevation of character, and perfection of manners. They were the magic centres of every circle in which they moved together. When the plague, of which all Paris was in terror, seized Madame de Rambouillet's youngest son, she nursed him; and Julie shut herself in the room with them till the boy died. The sweet harmony of their souls and intercourse was unmarred, unalloyed, in life and in death. Some mothers make slaves of their daughters; some are slaves to them; some even find rivals in them. Some are prevented from forming friendships, by tyranny on one side or by insubordination on the other; by selfishness there or by heartlessness here. Envy, vanity, fickleness, spite, festering incompatibilities of character, often prove fatal in these veiled and intimate relations. But when the characters of mother and daughter are happy accords, or accurate counterparts, rich, lofty, ardent, and disinterested, the solidly assured friendship which results, is a felicity scarcely inferior to any known on earth. The example of such a relation between Mrs. Browne and Mrs. Hemans was charming. Its inexpressible preciousness to the sensitive soul of that sweet singer, every reader of sensibility, who traces the numerous allusions to it in her letters and poems, will recognize with emotion. There is much in the relation between a mother and the wife of her son to create peculiar interest and love. And they, allowing for exceptions of an opposite character, become the warmest friends in unnumbered instances. A better example can hardly be desired than is furnished in the sweet pastoral tale of Hebrew Scripture. What passage in literature is more pervaded with the pathetic charm of the affection of the early world than the story of Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitish ancestress of David and of Jesus? Ruth said, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; and thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I he buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." So they two, Naomi and Ruth, went till they came to Bethlehem; and there did they sojourn together until the end.

All the near ties of kindred, by the closeness of association and sympathy naturally consequent on them, must often prove the fostering occasions or incentives of warm and lasting friendships between those whom they draw together. In thousands of families there is an aunt who becomes to her nieces a friend only less intimate and trusted than the mother herself. Such was the case with Mrs. Barhauld and her brother's only daughter, Lucy Aikin. In a multitude of families there are likewise cousins bound to each other by bonds as numerous and glowing as those of sisterhood. So, too, there are countless examples in which a wife and the sister of her husband grow into the most ardent sincerity of friendship. An interesting instance of this union is celebrated by Pliny in his famous panegyric of Trajan. Pliny says it is a wonder for two ladies of the same quality to dwell in the same place, without feuds or contention. But he declares that Plotina and Marciana, the wife and the sister of Trajan, never disputed over the right of precedence; but had the same intentions, and followed the same course of life; nay, were scarcely to be distinguished as two different persons.

Mrs. Hemans writes, on the eve of the removal of her brother George to Ireland, "I fear I shall feel very lonely and brotherless, as I have always been one of a large family circle before. I could laugh or cry when I think of the helplessness I have contrived to accumulate." And then she adds, with reference to her sister-in-law, "In her I shall be deprived of the only real companion I ever had. She is to leave me on Saturday next; and I am haunted by those melancholy words of St. Leon's guest, the unhappy old man with his immortal gifts, Alone! Alone!"

THERE is also another unspeakably important class of womanly friendships; namely, those subsisting between sisters. In the fourth book of the Aeneid, Virgil powerfully paints this union in the example of Dido and Anna. Scott has drawn an impressive picture of such a friendship, in the characters of Minna and Brenda Troil; and a still more affecting one in the story of Jeannie and Effie Deans. Thrown into constant intimacy, with an endearing community of inheritance, duties, and associations-multitudes of sisters must become ardent friends. The failure of that result, in consequence of base qualities, irritating circumstances, or cold and meagre natures, is a great misfortune and loss in a household: the fruition of it is a blessing worthy of the most earnest gratitude of its subjects. Perhaps there is no species of friendship more sure to elude publicity. It plays its undramatic part in domestic scenes, avoiding, rather than asking, the notice of the world. We need not wonder, that there are so few examples of it sufficiently exciting and public to induce the historian or biographer to narrate their stories.

Hannah More and her four sisters were a group of happy friends, who kept house together for more than half a century. The union of Hannah and Martha was especially one of entire admiration and fondness. In Wrington churchyard the remains of the five sisters rest together under a stone slab, enclosed by an iron railing, and overshadowed by a yew-tree.

Mary and Agnes Berry, who were such widely courted favorites, in the most intellectual society of the time of their ardent friend, Horace Walpole, dwelt together, for over eighty years, in entire and fervent affection: and they now sleep side by side in their grave at Petersham.