Morris Rosenfeld - "Songs of Labor and Other Poems"

Charles Sainte Foi - "Serious Hours of a Young Lady"

James Bovell Mackenzie - "A Treatise on the Six Nation Indians"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "Songs of Labor and Reform"

Woman in the Ninteenth Century

M >> Margaret Fuller Ossoli >> Woman in the Ninteenth Century







WOMAN IN POVERTY.


Woman, even less than Man, is what she should be as a whole. She is
not that self-centred being, full of profound intuitions, angelic
love, and flowing poesy, that she should be. Yet there are
circumstances in which the native force and purity of her being teach
her how to conquer where the restless impatience of Man brings defeat,
and leaves him crushed and bleeding on the field.

Images rise to mind of calm strength, of gentle wisdom learning from
every turn of adverse fate,--of youthful tenderness and faith undimmed
to the close of life, which redeem humanity and make the heart glow
with fresh courage as we write. They are mostly from obscure corners
and very private walks. There was nothing shining, nothing of an
obvious and sounding heroism to make their conduct doubtful, by
tainting their motives with vanity. Unknown they lived, untrumpeted
they died. Many hearts were warmed and fed by them, but perhaps no
mind but our own ever consciously took account of their virtues.

Had Art but the power adequately to tell their simple virtues, and to
cast upon them the light which, shining through those marked and faded
faces, foretold the glories of a second spring! The tears of holy
emotion which fell from those eyes have seemed to us pearls beyond all
price; or rather, whose price will be paid only when, beyond the
grave, they enter those better spheres in whose faith they felt and
acted here.

From this private gallery we will, for the present, bring forth but
one picture. That of a Black Nun was wont to fetter the eyes of
visitors in the royal galleries of France, and my Sister of Mercy,
too, is of that complexion. The old woman was recommended as a
laundress by my friend, who had long prized her. I was immediately
struck with the dignity and propriety of her manner. In the depth of
winter she brought herself the heavy baskets through the slippery
streets; and, when I asked her why she did not employ some younger
person to do what was so entirely disproportioned to her strength,
simply said, "she lived alone, and could not afford to hire an
errand-boy." "It was hard for her?" "No, she was fortunate in being
able to get work at her age, when others could do it better. Her
friends were very good to procure it for her." "Had she a comfortable
home?" "Tolerably so,--she should not need one long." "Was that a
thought of joy to her?" "Yes, for she hoped to see again the husband
and children from whom she had long been separated."

Thus much in answer to the questions, but at other times the little
she said was on general topics. It was not from her that I learnt how
the great idea of Duty had held her upright through a life of
incessant toil, sorrow, bereavement; and that not only she had
remained upright, but that her character had been constantly
progressive. Her latest act had been to take home a poor sick girl who
had no home of her own, and could not bear the idea of dying in a
hospital, and maintain and nurse her through the last weeks of her
life. "Her eye-sight was failing, and she should not be able to work
much longer,--but, then, God would provide. _Somebody_ ought to
see to the poor, motherless girl."

It was not merely the greatness of the act, for one in such
circumstances, but the quiet matter-of-course way in which it was
done, that showed the habitual tone of the mind, and made us feel that
life could hardly do more for a human being than to make him or her
the _somebody_ that is daily so deeply needed, to represent the
right, to do the plain right thing.

"God will provide." Yes, it is the poor who feel themselves near to
the God of love. Though he slay them, still do they trust him.

"I hope," said I to a poor apple-woman, who had been drawn on to
disclose a tale of distress that, almost in the mere hearing, made me
weary of life, "I hope I may yet see you in a happier condition."
"With God's help," she replied, with a smile that Raphael would have
delighted to transfer to his canvas; a Mozart, to strains of angelic
sweetness. All her life she had seemed an outcast child; still she
leaned upon a Father's love.

The dignity of a state like this may vary its form in, more or less
richness and beauty of detail, but here is the focus of what makes
life valuable. It is this spirit which makes poverty the best servant
to the ideal of human nature. I am content with this type, and will
only quote, in addition, a ballad I found in a foreign periodical,
translated from Chamisso, and which forcibly recalled my own laundress
as an equally admirable sample of the same class, the Ideal Poor,
which we need for our consolation, so long as there must be real
poverty.

"THE OLD WASHERWOMAN.

"Among yon lines her hands have laden,
A laundress with white hair appears,
Alert as many a youthful maiden,
Spite of her five-and-seventy years;
Bravely she won those white hairs, still
Eating the bread hard toll obtained her,
And laboring truly to fulfil
The duties to which God ordained her.

"Once she was young and full of gladness,
She loved and hoped,--was wooed and won;
Then came the matron's cares,--the sadness
No loving heart on earth may shun.
Three babes she bore her mate; she prayed
Beside his sick-bed,--he was taken;
She saw him in the church-yard laid,
Yet kept her faith and hope unshaken.

"The task her little ones of feeding
She met unfaltering from that hour;
She taught them thrift and honest breeding,
Her virtues were their worldly dower.
To seek employment, one by one,
Forth with her blessing they departed,
And she was in the world alone--
Alone and old, but still high-hearted.

"With frugal forethought; self-denying,
She gathered coin, and flax she bought,
And many a night her spindle plying,
Good store of fine-spun thread she wrought.
The thread was fashioned in the loom;
She brought it home, and calmly seated
To work, with not a thought of gloom,
Her decent grave-clothes she completed.

"She looks on them with fond elation;
They are her wealth, her treasure rare,
Her age's pride and consolation,
Hoarded with all a miser's care.
She dons the sark each Sabbath day,
To hear the Word that falleth never!
Well-pleased she lays it then away
Till she shall sleep in it forever!

"Would that my spirit witness bore me.
That, like this woman, I had done
The work my Master put before me
Duly from morn till set of sun!
Would that life's cup had been by me
Quaffed in such wise and happy measure,
And that I too might finally
Look on my shroud with such meek pleasure!"


Such are the noble of the earth. They do not repine, they do not
chafe, even in the inmost heart. They feel that, whatever else may be
denied or withdrawn, there remains the better part, which cannot be
taken from them. This line exactly expresses the woman I knew:--

"Alone and old, but still high-hearted."


Will any, poor or rich, fail to feel that the children of such a
parent were rich when

"Her virtues were their worldly dower"?


Will any fail to bow the heart in assent to the aspiration,

"Would that my spirit witness bore me
That, like this woman, I had done
The work my Maker put before me
Duly from morn till set of sun"?


May not that suffice to any man's ambition?






[Perhaps one of the most perplexing problems which beset Woman in her
domestic sphere relates to the proper care and influence which she
should exert over the domestic aids she employs. As these are, and
long must be, taken chiefly from one nation, the following pages
treating of the Irish Character, and the true relation between
Employer and Employed, can hardly fail to be of interest. They
contain, too, some considerations which Woman as well as Man is too
much in danger of overlooking, and which seem, even more than when
first urged, to be timely in this reactionary to-day.--ED.]


THE IRISH CHARACTER.


In one of the eloquent passages quoted in the "_Tribune_" of
Wednesday, under the head, "Spirit of the Irish Press," we find these
words:

"Domestic love, almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him
(the Irishman) from becoming a fanatic and a misanthrope, and
reconciles him to life."

This recalled to our mind the many touching instances known to us of
such traits among the Irish we have seen here. We have known instances
of morbidness like this. A girl sent "home," after she was well
established herself, for a young brother, of whom she was particularly
fond. He came, and shortly after died. She was so overcome by his loss
that she took poison. The great poet of serious England says, and we
believe it to be his serious thought though laughingly said, "Men have
died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Whether or not
death may follow from the loss of a lover or child, we believe that
among no people but the Irish would it be upon the loss of a young
brother.

Another poor young woman, in the flower of her youth, denied herself,
not only every pleasure, but almost the necessaries of life to save
the sum she thought ought to be hers before sending to Ireland for a
widowed mother. Just as she was on the point of doing so she heard
that her mother had died fifteen months before. The keenness and
persistence of her grief defy description. With a delicacy of feeling
which showed the native poetry of the Irish mind, she dwelt, most of
all, upon the thought that while she was working, and pinching, and
dreaming of happiness with her mother, it was indeed but a dream, and
that cherished parent lay still and cold beneath the ground. She felt
fully the cruel cheat of Fate. "Och! and she was dead all those times
I was thinking of her!" was the deepest note of her lament.

They are able, however, to make the sacrifice of even these intense
family affections in a worthy cause. We knew a woman who postponed
sending for her only child, whom she had left in Ireland, for years,
while she maintained a sick friend who had no one else to help her.

The poetry of which I have spoken shows itself even here, where they
are separated from old romantic associations, and begin the new life
in the New World by doing all its drudgery. We know flights of poetry
repeated to us by those present at their wakes,--passages of natural
eloquence, from the lamentations for the dead, more beautiful than
those recorded in the annals of Brittany or Roumelia.

It is the same genius, so exquisitely mournful, tender, and glowing,
too, with the finest enthusiasm, that makes their national music, in
these respects, the finest in the world. It is the music of the harp;
its tones are deep and thrilling. It is the harp so beautifully
described in "The Harp of Tara's Halls," a song whose simple pathos is
unsurpassed. A feeling was never more adequately embodied.

It is the genius which will enable Emmet's appeal to draw tears from
the remotest generations, however much they may be strangers to the
circumstances which called it forth, It is the genius which beamed in
chivalrous loveliness through each act of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,--the
genius which, ripened by English culture, favored by suitable
occasions, has shed such glory on the land which has done all it could
to quench it on the parent hearth.

When we consider all the fire which glows so untamably in Irish veins,
the character of her people, considering the circumstances, almost
miraculous in its goodness, we cannot forbear, notwithstanding all the
temporary ills they aid in here, to give them a welcome to our shores.
Those ills we need not enumerate; they are known to all, and we rank
among them, what others would not, that by their ready service to do
all the hard work, they make it easier for the rest of the population
to grow effeminate, and help the country to grow too fast. But that is
her destiny, to grow too fast: there is no use talking against it.
Their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to their priesthood,
their pliancy in the hands of demagogues, threaten continuance of
these ills; yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as most
valuable elements in the new race. They are looked upon with contempt
for their wont of aptitude in learning new things; their ready and
ingenious lying; their eye-service. These are the faults of an
oppressed race, which must require the aid of better circumstances
through two or three generations to eradicate. Their virtues are their
own; they are many, genuine, and deeply-rooted. Can an impartial
observer fail to admire their truth to domestic ties, their power of
generous bounty, and more generous gratitude, their indefatigable
good-humor (for ages of wrong which have driven them to so many acts
of desperation, could never sour their blood at its source), their
ready wit, their elasticity of nature? They are fundamentally one of
the best nations of the world. Would they were welcomed here, not to
work merely, but to intelligent sympathy, and efforts, both patient
and ardent, for the education of their children! No sympathy could be
better deserved, no efforts wiselier timed. Future Burkes and Currans
would know how to give thanks for them, and Fitzgeralds rise upon the
soil--which boasts the magnolia with its kingly stature and majestical
white blossoms,--to the same lofty and pure beauty. Will you not
believe it, merely because that bog-bred youth you placed in the
mud-hole tells you lies, and drinks to cheer himself in those endless
diggings? You are short-sighted, my friend; you do not look to the
future; you will not turn your head to see what may have been the
influences of the past. You have not examined your own breast to see
whether the monitor there has not commanded you to do your part to
counteract these influences; and yet the Irishman appeals to you, eye
to eye. He is very personal himself,--he expects a personal interest
from you. Nothing has been able to destroy this hope, which was the
fruit of his nature. We were much touched by O'Connell's direct appeal
to the queen, as "Lady!" But she did not listen,--and we fear few
ladies and gentlemen will till the progress of Destiny compels them.




THE IRISH CHARACTER.


Since the publication of a short notice under this head in the
"_Tribune_," several persons have expressed to us that their
feelings were awakened on the subject, especially as to their
intercourse with the lower Irish. Most persons have an opportunity of
becoming acquainted, if they will, with the lower classes of Irish, as
they are so much employed among us in domestic service, and other
kinds of labor.

We feel, say these persons, the justice of what has been said as to
the duty and importance of improving these people. We have sometimes
tried; but the want of real gratitude which, in them, is associated
with such warm and wordy expressions of regard, with their
incorrigible habits of falsehood and evasion, have baffled and
discouraged us. You say their children ought to be educated; but how
can this be effected when the all but omnipotent sway of the Catholic
religion and the example of parents are both opposed to the formation
of such views and habits as we think desirable to the citizen of the
New World?

We answer first with regard to those who have grown up in another
land, and who, soon after arriving here, are engaged in our service.

First, as to ingratitude. We cannot but sadly smile on the remarks we
hear so often on this subject.

Just Heaven!--and to us how liberal! which has given those who speak
thus an unfettered existence, free from religious or political
oppression; which has given them the education of intellectual and
refined intercourse with men to develop those talents which make them
rich in thoughts and enjoyment, perhaps in money, too, certainly rich
in comparison with the poor immigrants they employ,--what is thought
in thy clear light of those who expect in exchange for a few shillings
spent in presents or medicines, a few kind words, a little casual
thought or care, such a mighty payment of gratitude? Gratitude! Under
the weight of old feudalism their minds were padlocked by habit
against the light; they might be grateful then, for they thought their
lords were as gods, of another frame and spirit than theirs, and that
they had no right to have the same hopes and wants, scarcely to suffer
from the same maladies, with those creatures of silk, and velvet, and
cloth of gold. Then, the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table
might be received with gratitude, and, if any but the dogs came to
tend the beggar's sores, such might be received as angels. But the
institutions which sustained such ideas have fallen to pieces. It is
understood, even In Europe, that

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that,
A man's a man for a' that."


And being such, has a claim on this earth for something better than
the nettles of which the French peasantry made their soup, and with
which the persecuted Irish, "under hiding," turned to green the lips
white before with famine.

And if this begins to be understood in Europe, can you suppose it is
not by those who, hearing that America opens a mother's arms with the
cry, "All men are born free and equal," rush to her bosom to be
consoled for centuries of woe, for their ignorance, their hereditary
degradation, their long memories of black bread and stripes? However
little else they may understand, believe they understand well _this
much_. Such inequalities of privilege, among men all born of one
blood, should not exist. They darkly feel that those to whom much has
been given owe to the Master an account of stewardship. They know now
that your gift is but a small portion of their right.

And you, O giver! how did you give? With religious joy, as one who
knows that he who loves God cannot fail to love his neighbor as
himself? with joy and freedom, as one who feels that it is the highest
happiness of gift to us that we have something to give again? Didst
thou put thyself into the position of the poor man, and do for him
what thou wouldst have had one who was able to do for thee? Or, with
affability and condescending sweetness, made easy by internal delight
at thine own wondrous virtue, didst thou give five dollars to balance
five hundred spent on thyself? Did you say, "James, I shall expect you
to do right in everything, and to attend to my concerns as I should
myself; and, at the end of the quarter, I will give you my old clothes
and a new pocket-handkerchief, besides seeing that your mother is
provided with fuel against Christmas?"

Line upon line, and precept upon precept, the tender parent expects
from the teacher to whom he confides his child; vigilance unwearied,
day and night, through long years. But he expects the raw Irish girl
or boy to correct, at a single exhortation, the habit of deceiving
those above them, which the expectation of being tyrannized over has
rooted in their race for ages. If we look fairly into the history of
their people, and the circumstances under which their own youth was
trained, we cannot expect that anything short of the most steadfast
patience and love can enlighten them as to the beauty and value of
implicit truth, and, having done so, fortify and refine them in the
practice of it.

This we admit at the outset: First, You must be prepared for a
religious and patient treatment of these people, not merely
_un_educated, but _ill_-educated; a treatment far more religious
and patient than is demanded by your own children, if they were born
and bred under circumstances at all favorable.

Second, Dismiss from your minds all thought of gratitude. Do what you
do for them for God's sake, and as a debt to humanity--interest to the
common creditor upon principal left in your care. Then insensibility,
forgetfulness, or relapse, will not discourage you, and you will
welcome proofs of genuine attachment to yourself chiefly as tokens
that your charge has risen into a higher state of thought and feeling,
so as to be enabled to value the benefits conferred through you. Could
we begin so, there would be hope of our really becoming the
instructors and guardians of this swarm of souls which come from their
regions of torment to us, hoping, at least, the benefits of purgatory.

The influence of the Catholic priesthood must continue very great till
there is a complete transfusion of character in the minds of their
charge. But as the Irishman, or any other foreigner, becomes
Americanized, he will demand a new form of religion to suit his new
wants. The priest, too, will have to learn the duties of an American
citizen; he will live less and less for the church, and more for the
people, till at last, if there be Catholicism still, it will be under
Protestant influences, as begins to be the case in Germany. It will
be, not Roman, but American Catholicism; a form of worship which
relies much, perhaps, on external means and the authority of the
clergy,--for such will always be the case with religion while there
are crowds of men still living an external life, and who have not
learned to make full use of their own faculties,--but where a belief
in the benefits of confession and the power of the church, as church,
to bind and loose, atone for or decide upon sin, with similar
corruptions, must vanish in the free and searching air of a new era.

* * * * *

Between employer and employed there is not sufficient pains taken on
the part of the former to establish a mutual understanding. People
meet, in the relations of master and servant, who have lived in two
different worlds. In this respect we are much worse situated than the
same parties have been in Europe. There is less previous acquaintance
between the upper and lower classes. (We must, though unwillingly, use
these terms to designate the state of things as at present existing.)
Meals are taken separately; work is seldom shared; there is very
little to bring the parties together, except sometimes the farmer
works with his hired Irish laborer in the fields, or the mother keeps
the nurse-maid of her baby in the room with her.

In this state of things the chances for instruction, which come every
day of themselves where parties share a common life instead of its
results merely, do not occur. Neither is there opportunity to
administer instruction in the best manner, nor to understand when and
where it is needed.

The farmer who works with his men in the field, the farmer's wife who
attends with her women to the churn and the oven, may, with ease, be
true father and mother to all who are in their employ, and enjoy
health of conscience in the relation, secure that, if they find cause
for blame, it is not from faults induced by their own negligence. The
merchant who is from home all day, the lady receiving visitors or
working slippers in her nicely-furnished parlor, cannot be quite so
sure that their demands, or the duties involved in them, are clearly
understood, nor estimate the temptations to prevarication.

It is shocking to think to what falsehoods human beings like ourselves
will resort, to excuse a love of amusement, to hide ill-health, while
they see us indulging freely in the one, yielding lightly to the
other; and yet we have, or ought to have, far more resources in either
temptation than they. For us it is hard to resist, to give up going to
the places where we should meet our most interesting companions, or do
our work with an aching brow. But we have not people over us whose
careless, hasty anger drives us to seek excuses for our failures; if
so, perhaps,--perhaps; who knows?--we, the better-educated, rigidly,
immaculately true as we are at present, _might_ tell falsehoods.
Perhaps we might, if things were given us to do which we had never
seen done, if we were surrounded by new arrangements in the nature of
which no one instructed us. All this we must think of before we can be
of much use.

We have spoken of the nursery-maid as _the_ hired domestic with
whom her mistress, or even the master, is likely to become acquainted.
But, only a day or two since, we saw, what we see so often, a
nursery-maid with the family to which she belonged, in a public
conveyance. They were having a pleasant time; but in it she had no
part, except to hold a hot, heavy baby, and receive frequent
admonitions to keep _it_ comfortable. No inquiry was made as to
_her_ comfort; no entertaining remark, no information of interest
as to the places we passed, was addressed to her. Had she been in that
way with that family ten years she might have known _them_ well
enough, for their characters lay only too bare to a careless scrutiny;
but her joys, her sorrows, her few thoughts, her almost buried
capacities, would have been as unknown to them, and they as little
likely to benefit her, as the Emperor of China.

Let the employer place the employed first in good physical
circumstances, so as to promote the formation of different habits from
those of the Irish hovel, or illicit still-house. Having thus induced
feelings of self-respect, he has opened the door for a new set of
notions. Then let him become acquainted with the family circumstances
and history of his new pupil. He has now got some ground on which to
stand for intercourse. Let instruction follow for the mind, not merely
by having the youngest daughter set, now and then, copies in the
writing-book, or by hearing read aloud a few verses in the Bible, but
by putting good books in their way, if able to read, and by
intelligent conversation when there is a chance,--the master with the
man who is driving him, the lady with the woman who is making her bed.
Explain to them the relations of objects around them; teach them to
compare the old with the new life. If you show a better way than
theirs of doing work, teach them, too, _why_ it is better. Thus
will the mind be prepared by development for a moral reformation;
there will be some soil fitted to receive the seed.

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