Читать книгу Post-Impressions: An Irresponsible Chronicle - Strunsky Simeon - Страница 13

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I agree with the publishers of Miss Amarylis Pater's book, "The New Motherhood," that the subject is one which cannot possibly be ignored. I have not only read the book, but I have discussed it with Mrs. Hogan, and with my eldest son Harold, who will be seven next June. As a result I am confronted with certain remarkable differences of opinion.

Twenty years ago, as I plainly recall, the Sacred Function of Motherhood was not a topic of popular interest. There were a great many mothers then, of course, and there were unquestionably many more children than there are to-day. People, as a rule, spoke of their mothers with fondness, and sometimes even with reverence. The habit had been forming for several thousand years, in the course of which poets and painters never grew tired of describing mothers who were engaged in such highly useful occupations as bending over cradles, watching by sick-beds, baking, mending, teaching, laughing in play-rooms, weeping at the Cross, manipulating with equal dexterity the precious vials of love and sacrifice and the carpet slipper of justice. But though people had thus got into the way of accepting their mothers as an essential part in the scheme of things, they rarely thought it necessary to write to the editor about the Sacred Function of Motherhood. I mean in the impersonal, scientific sense in which Amarylis Pater uses the phrase.

Life in general was a pitifully unorganised, rule-of-thumb affair in those days. People fell in love because every one was doing it and without any expressed intention to advance the purposes of Evolution. They did not marry because they were anxious to render social service; but waited only till they had saved up enough to furnish a home. They bore children without regard to the future of the race. When the child came it was not a sociological event. The family did not consider the occurrence sacred, as Miss Vivian Holborn insists on calling it in her frequent communications to the press. The family contented itself with wishing the mother well and hoping the baby would not look too much like its father.

Here I thought it would be well to confirm my own impressions by the testimony of a competent witness. So I turned and called through the open door into the dining-room.

"Mrs. Hogan," I said, "what do you think of the Sacred Function of Motherhood?"

"What do I think of what?" said Mrs. Hogan.

"Of the Sacred Function of Motherhood," I repeated, rather timidly.

She looked at me with a distrustful eye, her broom suspended in midair.

Mrs. Hogan comes in once a week to help out. Distrust is her chronic attitude toward me. She has all of the busy woman's aversion for a man about the house while domestic operations are under way. But besides, she cannot quite understand why a full-grown and able-bodied man should be lolling at his desk, pen in hand, when he ought to be downtown working for his family. She is aware, of course, that all the members of my family are well-nourished, decently dressed, and apparently quite happy. But that only renders the source of my income all the more dubious. When any one asks Mrs. Hogan how many children she has, she stares for some time at the ceiling before replying. From which I gather that there must be several.

"I refer to the business of being a mother, Mrs. Hogan. Have you never felt what a sacred thing that is?"

"An' what would there be sacred about the same?" she asked, seeing that I was quite serious. "Bearin' a child every other year, an' nursin' them, an' bringin' them through sickness, an' stayin' up nights to sew an' wash an' darn, an' drivin' them out to school, an' goin' out by the day's wurrk, where's the time for anythin' sacred to come into the life of a woman?"

"Just the same it does," I said. "Motherhood, Mrs. Hogan, is so holy a thing nowadays that a great many women are afraid to touch it, preferring to write in the magazines about it. Are you aware that when you married Mr. Hogan you were performing an act of social service?"

"I was not that," said Mrs. Hogan, "I was doin' a service to Jim, besides plazin' myself. 'Twas himself needed some one to take care of him."

"But that would mean," I said, "that you were false to your own highest self. If you had read Miss Pater's book you would know that any marriage entered into without the sense of social service merely means that a woman is selling herself to a man for life for the mere price of maintenance."

"When I married Jim," said Mrs. Hogan, "he was after being out of a job for six months."

She went back to her work more than ever puzzled why my wife and the children should look so well taken care of.

In those days—I mean about the time Mrs. Hogan was married to Jim, and I was at college constructing my world of ideas out of the now forgotten books which Mr. Gaynor was always quoting—I recall distinctly that the sacred things were also the secret things. What burned hot in the heart was allowed to rest deep in the heart. Partly this was because of a common habit of reticence which we have so fortunately outgrown. But another reason must have been that life then, as I have said, was imperfectly organised. To-day we have applied the principle of the division of labour so that we no longer expect the same person to do the work of the world and to feel its sacred significance. Thus, to-day there are women who are mothers and other women who proclaim the sacred function of motherhood. To-day there are women who bring up their children, and other women who, at the slightest provocation, thrill to the clear, immortal soul that looks out of the innocent eyes of childhood.

At this moment the clear, immortal soul of my boy, Harold, finds utterance in a succession of blood-curdling howls. He is playing Indians again. The wailing accompaniment in high falsetto emanates from the immortal soul of the baby. Those two immortalities are at it again.

I call out, "Harold!"

There is a silence.

"Harold!"

With extreme deliberation he appears in the doorway. I recognise him largely by intuition, so utterly smeared up is he from crawling in single file the entire length of the hall on his stomach. Beneath that thick deposit of rich alluvial soil I assume that my son exists. I ask him what he has been doing with the baby.

He had been doing nothing at all. He had merely tied her by one leg to a chair and pretended to scalp her with a pair of ninepins. He had performed a war dance around her and every time his ritual progress brought him face to face with the baby he made believe to brain her, but he only meant to see how near he could come without actually touching her, and he would strike the chair instead. He didn't know why the baby shrieked.

"Harold," I said, "do you feel the sacred innocence of childhood brooding in you?"

He was alarmed, but bravely attempted a smile.

"Ah, father!" he said.

I looked at him severely.

"Do you know what I ought to do to you in the name of the New Parenthood?"

"Ah, father!" and his lip trembled.

"You are a disgrace to the eternal spark in you," I said.

He lowered his head and began to cry. It required an effort to be stern, but I persisted.

"Harold," I said, "you will go into your room and stand in the corner for ten minutes. Close the door behind you. I will tell you when time is up."

He dragged himself away heartbroken and I found it was useless trying to write any more. I had made two people utterly miserable. I threw down my pen and rose to take a book from the shelf, but stopped in the act. Out of Harold's room came music. I stole to the door and looked in. He had not disobeyed orders. He had merely dressed himself in one of the nurse's aprons and the baby's cap, and standing erect in his corner, he sang "Dixie," with all the fervour of his fresh young voice.

About his appearance there was nothing sacred.