The Galaxy, May, 1877.
by Various.
A PROGRESSIVE BABY.
OBER LAHNSTEIN, Jan. 16, 1875.
So much, Susie dear, for our small miseries between Blackwall and Rotterdam. Nurse"s sickness and the crowd of Cook"s tourists (Cook-oos!) aggravated matters; but it is always a tedious bit of way, though I never minded it in my solitary artist days, when either Dresden and happy work or home and happy rest were at end of the hard journey. What it is to be young, gay, and heart-free! For then I went always second cla.s.s--when I didn"t go third!--(except of course on the steamers, where the cheaper accommodation is too rude, and rough companionship too intimate)--and once managed the entire distance from Dresden to London for fifty thalers!--taking it leisurely too; stopping en route to "do"
Frankfort, Weimar, Heidelberg, Lourain, Bruges, and Antwerp, and to pay two or three visits at grand houses, where they didn"t dream I was fresh from the peasants" compartments!
And I"d no shillings and sixpences then to fee guards and porters, so had to dodge them, look at them as if I didn"t see them, lug about my own parcels, and freeze without a foot-warmer!
Now the way is all padded. I always go first-cla.s.s if Ronayne"s along, haven"t to lift so much as a hand satchel, am fairly smothered in comforts, as beseems the true English Philistine I"m become. I"ve the delightfullest husband and baby the round world can show; a nurse fit to command the channel fleet (if that meant wisdom in babies, and she weren"t such an outrageously bad sailor!); and I"ve about as much vim as a syllabub; am so nervous that I weep if Ronayne gets out of my sight when we go for a stroll, if too little toast comes up for my breakfast, or the chocolate isn"t frothed, or the trunk won"t lock, and have aphasia to that degree that I say cancel when I mean endorse, hair-brush when I want a biscuit, and go stumping down to dinner in a boot and a slipper, being incapable of the connected effort of memory and will that would get both feet into fellow shoes.
But I"m blissfully happy all the same, and we"ve beheld a spectacle lately that reconciles me perfectly with my own absurdity, and my awkwardness with my precious tot.
Coming up the Rhine we had a pair of fellow voyagers, circ.u.mstanced somewhat like ourselves: first baby, not over young (the couple, not the baby, which was only six weeks old!), but travelling without a nurse.
This mighty functionary had struck almost at the moment of their departure from London, and a charitable but inexperienced friend came to their aid and set forth with them in charge of the baby.
We missed them on the Batavier, which wasn"t strange, and first had our attention drawn to them by the slow Dutch landlord"s asking Ronayne, as we stood looking idly out into the formal little garden of the new Bath hotel at Rotterdam, if that was _his_ baby a young woman seated on one of the garden benches was jerking up and down so violently? "Because it was shaken about too much. Young babies couldn"t be kept too quiet."
This young woman was the benevolent friend, and I suppose the parents were off sight-seeing in the town; for every now and then the whole day through one or another of us reported encountering the young woman alone somewhere, always tossing the baby more or less about.
But next day, after we had embarked on the Rhine boat, and I had helped nurse turn our tiny state-room into a tolerable nursery (that folding ba.s.sinnette is just _invaluable_, and lulled by the motion and the breezy air, my lammie slept better in it than in her own quarters at home), I went upon deck to find Ronayne, and on the way came upon a most piteous, persistent wail, and the wail"s father and mother in abject, helpless tendance upon it.
Of course my newly-found mother"s heart took me straight to the miserable group; and after a few sympathetic inquiries, I sat down beside the mother, and took the querulous little creature in my arms, where presently it hushed off to sleep. How proud I felt! for that"s more than my own baby often condescends to do for my clumsy soothing!
The father skulked away with an immensely relieved look, soon after I sat down, and the mother grew quite confidential. She told me of the perfidious nurse"s behavior, of the friend"s heroic offer, and that they had not had a wink of sleep the night before at the hotel, for nursing the baby had made the friend so ill that they had had to send her back to London that morning. She didn"t know but it would have been better if she and baby had turned back with the overdone friend; but it was her husband"s holiday--six weeks he had--and he worked so hard the rest of the year--her husband was an author, a journalist (at sight I had guessed him a literary cus--tomer!--hair parted in the middle, crease--y clothes, spectacles, a spa.r.s.e, pointed beard, and narrow, sloping shoulders, with a stoop in "em)--and she thought his vacation oughtn"t to be spoiled or deferred by the child; and as he would enjoy it all a great deal more with her than alone, she had "trusted to luck," and was going off up the Rhine with him to make a long excursion, before proceeding to some quiet little town on the Moselle, where another nurse was in waiting for her. It was their first baby--yes; they had not been married much over a year. She was fond of it, poor baby! but it was such a pity it had come! They had not wanted children--children would utterly interfere with their plan of life. Both its father and herself were busy people. Oh, there was so much work to be done! and they had married to help each other in toil for the world, and babies were a sad hindrance.
I suggested that the work of moulding an immortal soul, fashioning the character and destinies of a little human creature, seemed to me labor mighty enough for any one"s energies and ambition. But she answered me a little sharply, that there were souls enough in the world already; she wanted to be responsible for no more mistakes and wretchedness. However, she fortunately was well and strong, and if she got a good nurse, she would be able to devote herself to work, and to help her husband as she had done before the child came. Was I interested in the woman question?
I answered somewhat tamely, that I was very much interested in whatever made women better; that I believed in women, and that this rather wearisome planet wouldn"t even be worth condemning without them.
Ah! Then she supposed I had attended the suffrage meetings in London?
Her marriage had brought her to London. Before that she had lived in B----, and was secretary of the Woman"s Suffrage a.s.sociation there.
Perhaps I had seen her name--Alice Thorpe? Now it was Malise. Her husband was Clement Malise of "The Aurora."
This was said a little proudly, but with the pretty pride a wife has a right to show when she believes she has a clever husband. And a good woman I am sure she was beside whom I sat--kindly, conscientious, earnest, spirited, full of aspiration and zeal gone astray. Pleasant to look upon, too, when I came to separate her from her disfiguring and thoroughly British travelling costume--a hat like an inverted basin, with a long white ostrich feather, dingy, uncurled, and forlornly drooping; a violet stuff gown all bunchy and tormented with woollen ruffles, ruches, and k.n.o.bby rosettes, and a dark blue bag of a waterproof garment which I took to be the feminine correspondent of that masculine wrap, the Ulster coat--a covering that would turn Apollo himself into a bagman. Not very tall, solidly rather than gracefully made, with a rather driven-together face, the excessively bulging forehead crowding down upon a nose curved like a bird"s beak, and a pair of deep-set eyes of wonderful beauty--clear, gray, intense, brilliant, and shaded by long dark lashes. Add a delicate, rather sarcastic mouth, a complexion of exquisite fairness, dark brown hair without any warmth in its color, hanging in slender short curls down her neck, and that is Mrs. Malise.
We had a great many conversations after this initial one, and I believe I have promised to look them up this winter in London. They"re not so very far from us--going by the underground; Notting Hill Gate"s their station, and I really feel a call to look after that baby. He"s a fine child, but was generally so miserable and cross that almost n.o.body took other than offensive notice of him. At first I pitied his poor mother when pa.s.sengers and crew, even, made much of my baby when she came up all placid, white as a snowdrop, daintily fresh, and feathery, and soft, with her lace frills, like a little queen in nurse"s arms; but my pity was thrown away, for Mrs. Malise only said, "I cannot spare the time to keep my baby in white, so made that gray flannel dressing gown for him to travel in. It"s capital, and not showing the dirt, will last the whole journey." And the little thing was so untidy! For he was treated exactly like a parcel; his parents handled him like one, a rather dangerous one, at arm"s length, and like a parcel he was deposited about, sometimes among rolls of carpeting on the deck, or on beer casks, while his father and mother were hanging over the boat"s rail staring at castles and ruins, or reading up in the guide-book; sometimes happed up in a shawl on the floor, or on a bed made up on chairs, his head on the lowest one, his mother craning her head out at window to lose no bit of river scenery. One day I nearly sat down upon him, as he was left, quite by himself, lying across a camp-chair; wherever, in unexpected, impossible corners, one stumbled upon a solitary gray object, it was sure to be this poor mite, bemoaning himself for having come into a place so full of cold, wet, sour smells and stomach-ache--a place where he wasn"t wanted, and n.o.body had time to look after him.
"Name"s Malise, eh?" said Ronayne. "_Malaise_, if that poor little beggar knows anything about it"; and "little Malaise" we always call the child.
"Cries? What"s he to do but cry?" burst out nurse one day in high indignation. "There"s that silly woman as thinks a young baby must only have three meals a day like grown folks; and so she"s off a-tramping about the deck, and leaving him here a-sucking at an empty bottle, and filling himself as full of wind as he can hold! And there"s _them things_ (nurse"s favorite euphuism for an article of attire she detests) as is hardly ever changed, and him sopping wet most of the time! I should like to whip her!"
I think Mrs. Malise is a good deal drawn toward me for two or three reasons. She has found out that I"ve been an artist--lived by myself, had my studio, paid my way--and she accordingly respects me as a member of the sisterhood who"s at least tried to do something. Then I agree far too closely with St. Paul, and she "don"t altogether hold with Paul,"
and wants to convert me to whatever form of kaleidoscopic non-belief she cherishes. Then I"m too luke-warm about the suffrage. I admit that I see no reason why I shouldn"t have it, but I don"t and can"t see in my having it the panacea for all social ills. I"m asked what I think of Hodge in England, and Terence and Scip in the United States getting rights withheld educated women citizens; and I can only plead pitifully that while Hodge and Terence and Scip are ignorant and boorish, I, having already roughed it a good deal, would rather individually not contest anything very closely with them--a plea which is most justly scouted as a mere get-off--a bit of heartless fine-ladyism. Have I read Mill? No. From the time my school days ended, at seventeen, for ten--no, twelve years, until I married, two years ago, I had neither time nor eyes for reading. Why, I could almost count upon my fingers the books I had read--"after school-books, of course, and then some anatomical reading which don"t count; there"s--let me see--"The Improvisatore,"
Vasari"s "Lives of Painters," "Charles Auchester," Rio"s "Lectures on Christian Art," "Christie Johnstone," "La Mare au Diable," two or three of Balzac"s novels, and all of poetry and of Ruskin I could ever lay hands on!"
She looked astonished for a moment; then her face brightened. "Here"s richness!" I"m sure her thought might have been translated. "Here"s a virgin soil with nothing to dispute the growth of good seed." And I feel I"m to be taken in hand. I"m quite ready. It is even something to look forward to in the horrible London winter. She told me "little Malaise"
is to be brought up after the most recently approved scientific manner, by weight, measure, and clockwork. His birth, even, was a triumph of principle, for on that occasion Mrs. Malise was attended by a young woman who had been unsuccessful in her medical studies, and failed to obtain her degree--"Because I believed it jealousy, you know, and I wished to encourage her!"
When he is three or four years old (certainly as early as they take them!) he is to be put in the kindergarten at Geneva, and left there for some years. It"s a consolation to think that he can"t be anywhere more desolate than he"s sure to be at home.
Meanwhile, work for papa and mamma, and bouts of colic for him, poor little chap!
Last night I a.s.sisted at a distance at his nightly bath. The combined forces of father and mother were required for this process, and the ceremony was so utterly whimsical that I should have enjoyed it without a pang if the small object most concerned had only been a dog. The pair had stationed themselves in a strong draught, and the child, cold, unhappy, lay stripped and squirming on his mother"s lap, while from a cup full of water in a tiny basin she _dabbed_ him with a bit of flannel precisely as if he were an ink splash which she was essaying to soak up with blotting paper before it should spread about much!
The father"s part was to try and present an available surface for the dabbing, which he did by drawing out first an arm, then a leg of the child at full length, just as one pulls an elastic cord to find how far it will stretch, letting it go with a snap when at full tension--as he dropped arm or leg when little Malaise resented such unwarrantable experiments on his ductility by a sudden, louder-than-usual roar. It was piteous! But to see that father and mother--he lanky, spectacled, grave as an owl, she serious, abstracted, revolving doubtless some scheme of work, mechanically getting through this piece of business, recognized as necessary by their conscientiousness, but perplexing in its nature, and unaccountable as having fallen to their lot--no propriety, no indignant sympathy for the baby, could quite withstand the drollery of the scene.
But nothing could pacify nurse! "The idiots!" she almost screamed. "The child will die, and I hope it will, for she"s not fit to have it. I hope it will die!"
BIEBRICH, 21st.
I have kept this open, thinking I could tell you definitely when we shall get into our quarters at Schwalbach, but nothing is settled yet, and we"ve been pottering about in these river towns. As Schlangenbad and Wiesbaden are very full, I counsel my lord to stop here where we are well off; for this is a very comfortable hotel, and I don"t want to do any more unpacking till we are finally bestowed in our rooms at the Villa Authes.
There is an abandoned palace of the Grand Duke of Na.s.sau here--one of the ruins in King William"s track of "66. It is so melancholy to see these ruined princ.i.p.alities. Union"s a very nice word, but forced union, matrimonial or political, is not comfortable either to see or endure.
However, here"s the palace, with its lovely neglected gardens, gra.s.s uncut, wild flowers flaunting where should be trim velvet turf only, fountains plashing in weedy ponds--and an admirable resort we find the shaded avenues and deserted parterres for ourselves and our small queen.
We could scarce be better provided for.
To-day, watching from our windows the steamer coming down the river, we spied, on its deck, our travelling companions again--Mr. and Mrs.
Malise--and, sure enough, the little gray parcel on the bench not far from mamma! Going at last, I hope, toward that nurse on the Moselle.
Poor little Malaise!
Address your next as last year. And with fond love to the whole household,
Your Lil.
18 STANFIELD GARDENS, } SOUTH KENSINGTON, } February 10, 1875 }
At last I"ve seen my "poor little Malaise" again. Your questions would have kept him in my memory if there had been a chance of my forgetting the woful baby; and so soon as we were warmly settled into house, home habits, and friendly circle again (and O how charming even London in winter is after seven mortal weeks in Ireland, where scarce anybody has two pence, and everybody is lazy, and everything above the peasant rank is saturated with conventionality and the poorest pride! For the Great Mogul approves of his grandchild, and was pleased to insist on the prolongation of our visit till I was nearly wild with having to behave myself, and during the last week was a dozen times on the very brink of "breaking out." Oh, that horrid life of buckram, inanity, and do-nothing-ism! Even Ronayne, who knows pretty much the worst of me, thought I had gone crazy when we were once fairly off in the train--a carriage all to ourselves. I sang, I whistled, I gnawed chicken-bones, I talked all the slang I could remember, I smoked a cigarette--I went generally to the mischief. And when we had really got back to dear No.
18, and were cosy in the dining-room over our dessert, no speering servant by, I put my elbows on the table; I made a tipsy after-dinner speech, Ronayne applauding, and calling, "Hear! hear!" I rushed around to his end of the table and hugged him, making a "cheese" on my way back--in short, the Bohemian Lil Graham avenged liberally the suffocations the Great Mogul"s daughter-in-law had nearly died of. If ever I stop one hour over a fortnight in the home of my husband"s fathers again! A fortnight is just supportable)--and to go back to my first-page sentence, I set forth one morning to hunt up the little man.
I found my people easily enough--a good house in a good street--"A large house, that must require much thought and care," I said to Mrs. Malise; whereupon she told me the care did not fall upon her, as the house was, after an imperfect fashion, conducted as a cooperative boarding-house--a germ, she hoped, of a cooperative hotel or family club. Half a dozen or so of their friends occupied the house with them, and they paid an admirable housekeeper to manage for them. It was only a make-shift--not what one liked to mention when speaking of future possibilities of confederated homes--had I read the article in a late number of the "Victoria Magazine" containing a magnificent picture of cooperative living?--but better than dreary lodgings or isolated homes, especially when a woman devoted her life to other than household duties. I replied that I believed every ardent spirit at some time or another was discontented with the beaten way, and dreamed of glorious possibilities of a.s.sociate life and labor, wherein all selfishness should be suppressed, justice and all the beat.i.tudes reign, and souls develop all their capabilities scarce conscious of even the body"s hampering; but that practically the only successful lay experiment in communism I had ever heard of was that early one of the Indians in Paraguay under the care of the Jesuit missionaries--Phalansterians who wore their rosaries around their necks because they had no pockets in which to carry them!
And I thought that people without bonds of kinship or close sympathy would not happily bear being forced into incessant, intimate companionship unless they were either saints or prodigies of imperturbable courtesy.
Well, life was a choice of evils, she answered me, and their experiment had so far succeeded very well. But I might judge for myself a little: would I, with my husband, dine with them on either one of such and such days the next week, to meet this confederate household a.s.sembled? This was an advance I had not counted on. My especial interest was in the child, and though I liked well enough for myself accepting an invitation that promised to be something out of the common way in dinners, I was hardly prepared to pledge Ronayne. He not only likes a good dinner, and feels injured when he doesn"t get it, but he is very particular as to the society in which he eats it. He can be gloriously jolly and informal when he likes; but he wouldn"t be his father"s son if he weren"t what I call just a bit sn.o.bbish about the people he will know in England--London especially.
But if he was going in for the correct thing, why on earth did he insist upon marrying me? Because I never was the correct thing, and he fell it love with me when he was quite old enough to know better; and after his friends had for years reckoned him as a fastidious, foreordained bachelor; _he_ says because I was so wholly unlike the young ladies of his generation that he was surprised out of himself.
And mamma told him all my faults that he didn"t know already, and how people had insisted before upon marrying me, and two or three times I had been silly enough to half think I would let them, and then backed out and vowed I would have no husband but Art--and was generally so impressed with the risks he ran that I believe she even wept over his prospective unhappiness. But he would have his way; he didn"t want a housekeeper; he didn"t want a well informed young lady; his shirt-b.u.t.tons and stocking-darning weren"t likely to depend upon his wife; he should hate a patient Grizzle; he didn"t marry for his friends--you can imagine the rash arguments. But I gave him a last chance of escape, for the night before we were married; when I"d given away all my old clothes, and the license was bought, the ring in his breast-pocket, and the wedding breakfast being laid in the next room, I said to him before all of them in papa"s study:
"Ronayne, don"t you want one more chance of freedom? Are you frightened about to-morrow morning, and the pell-mell household mamma promises you?
Because if you are, I"ll let you off now. You may run away in the night.
I"ll be a forsaken maiden, and papa shan"t have the loch dragged, or advertise a "Mysterious and Heart-Rending Disappearance.""
"Too late. It"s a hopeless case. I"m much too far gone for that. And I"m not going to help you to get rid of me, Mistress Lil."