Chapter XVIII: Wanted!--Mothers

"There are comparatively very few women not replete with maternal
love; and, by the by, take you care if you meet with a girl who
'_is not fond of children_,' not to marry her _by any means_.
Some few there are who even make a boast that they 'cannot bear
children,' that is, cannot _endure_ them. I never knew a man that
was good for _much_ who had a dislike to little children; and I
never knew a woman of that taste who was good for anything at
all. I have seen a few such in the course of my life, and I have
never wished to see one of them a second time."--_Cobbett's
"Advice to Young Men."_

Napoleon Buonaparte was accustomed to say that "the future good or bad conduct of a child depended entirely on the mother." In the course of a conversation with Madame Campan he remarked: "The old systems of instruction seem to be worth nothing; what is yet wanting in order that the people should be properly educated?" "Mothers," replied Madame Campan. The reply struck the emperor. "Yes!" said he, "here is a system of education in one word. Be it your care, then, to train up mothers who shall know how to educate their children."

"She who rocks the cradle rules the world," for she it is who guides and trains the opening minds of those who shall influence the coming generation. In its earliest years, the mother's every look, tone of voice, and action, sink into the heart and memory of her child and are presently reproduced in its own life. From this point of view the throne of motherhood ought, as Madame Laetitia Buonaparte believed, to take precedence of that of kings. When her son, on becoming an emperor, half playfully, half gravely offered her his hand to kiss, she flung it back to him indignantly, saying, in the presence of his courtiers, "It is your duty to kiss the hand of her who gave you life."

No wonder that a good mother has been called nature's _chef d'oeuvre_, for she is not only the perfection of womanhood, but the most beautiful and valuable of nature's productions. To her the world is indebted for the work done by most of its great and gifted men. As letters cut in the bark of a young tree grow and widen with age, so do the ideas which a mother implants in the mind of her talented child. Thus Scott is said to have received his first bent towards ballad literature from his mother's and grandmother's recitations in his hearing long before he himself had learned to read. Goethe owed the bias of his mind and character to his mother, who possessed in a high degree the art of stimulating young and active minds, instructing them in the science of life out of the treasures of her abundant experience. After a lengthened interview with her a traveller said, "Now do I understand how Goethe has become the man he is." Goethe himself affectionately cherished her memory. "She was worthy of life!" he once said of her; and when he visited Frankfort, he sought out every individual who had been kind to his mother, and thanked them. The poet Gray was equally grateful to his mother. On the memorial which he erected over her remains he described her as "the careful, tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her." In a corner of his room there was a trunk containing the carefully folded dresses of his dead mother, whom he never mentioned without a sigh.

When a mother once asked a clergyman when she should begin the education of her child, then four years old, he replied: "Madam, if you have not begun already, you have lost those four years. From the first smile that gleams upon an infant's cheek, your opportunity begins." Cowper's mother must have well used this opportunity considering the impression her brief companionship made upon the poet. She died when he was six years old, and yet in after-life he could say that not a week passed in which he did not think of her. When his cousin one day presented him with a portrait of his mother he said: "I had rather possess that picture than the richest jewel in the British crown; for I loved her with an affection that her death, fifty-two years since, has not in the least abated." Surely it is better for a mother to merit such love than to leave the care of her children almost entirely to servants because all her time is occupied "serving divers lusts and pleasures."

"Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an ancient Greek, "and instead of one slave, you will then have two." On the other hand, "happy is he whom his mother teacheth." One good mother is worth a hundred nurses or teachers. If from any cause, whether from necessity, or from indolence, or from desire for company, children are deprived of a mother's care, instruction, and influence, it is an incalculable loss.

Curran spoke with great affection of his mother, as a woman of strong original understanding, to whose wise counsel, consistent piety, and lessons of honourable ambition, which she diligently enforced on the minds of her children, he himself principally attributed his success in life. "The only inheritance," he used to say, "that I could boast of from my poor father, was the very scanty one of an unattractive face and person, like his own; and if the world has ever attributed to me something more valuable than face or person, or than earthly wealth, it was because another and a dearer parent gave her child a portion from the treasure of her mind."

Mrs. Wesley, the mother of John Wesley, made it a rule to converse alone with one of her little ones every evening, listening to their childish confessions, and giving counsel in their childish perplexities. She was the patient teacher as well as the cheerful companion of her children. When some one said to her, "Why do you tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?" she replied, "Because if I had told him only nineteen times I should have lost all my labour." So deep was the hold this mother had on the hearts of her sons, that in his early manhood she had tenderly to rebuke John for that "fond wish of his, to die before she died." It was through the bias given by her to her sons' minds in religious matters that they acquired the tendency which, even in early years, drew to them the name of Methodists. In a letter to her son, Samuel, when a scholar at Westminster, she said: "I would advise you as much as possible to throw your business into a certain _method_, by which means you will learn to improve every precious moment, and find an unspeakable facility in the performance of your respective duties." This "method" she went on to describe, exhorting her son "in all things to act upon principle;" and the society which the brothers John and Charles afterwards founded at Oxford is supposed to have been in a great measure the result of her exhortations.

The example of such mothers as Lord Byron's serves for a warning, for it shows that the influence of a bad mother is quite as hurtful as that of a good one is beneficial. She is said to have died in a fit of passion, brought on by reading her upholsterer's bills. She even taunted her son with his personal deformity; and it was no unfrequent occurrence, in the violent quarrels which occurred between them, for her to take up the poker or tongs, and hurl them after him as he fled from her presence. It was this unnatural treatment that gave a morbid turn to Byron's after-life; and, careworn, unhappy, great, and yet weak as he was, he carried about with him the mother's poison which he had sucked in his infancy. Hence he exclaims, in "Childe Harold"--

"Yet must I think less wildly:--I have though
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, _untaught in youth my heart to tame_,
_My springs of life were poisoned_,"

In like manner, though in a different way, the character of Mrs. Foote, the actor's mother, was curiously repeated in the life of her joyous, jovial-hearted son. Though she had been heiress to a large fortune, she soon spent it all, and was at length imprisoned for debt. In this condition she wrote to Sam, who had been allowing her a hundred a year out of the proceeds of his acting: "Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt; come and assist your loving mother, E. Foote." To which her son characteristically replied--"Dear mother, so am I; which prevents his duty being paid to his loving mother by her affectionate son, Sam Foote."

Mothers ought not to deceive themselves so far as to think that when they over-indulge their children they are exhibiting genuine mothers' love. In reality they are merely shifting their method of self-pleasing. We believe the love of God to be the supreme love; but have we ever reflected that in that awful love of God for His poor children of clay there must be mingled at once infinite tenderness and pity, and at the same time a severity which never shrinks from any suffering needed to recall us from sin? This is the ideal of all love towards which we should strive to lift our poor, feeble, short-sighted, selfish affections; and which it above all concerns a parent to strive to translate into the language of human duty. This is the truest love, the love which attaches itself to the very soul of the child, which repents with it, with tears bitterer than its own, for its faults, and, while heaping on it so far as may be every innocent pleasure, never for an instant abandons the thought of its highest and ultimate welfare.

The loving instruction of a mother may seem to have been thrown away, but it will appear after many days. "When I was a little child," said a good old man, "my mother used to bid me kneel down beside her, and place her hand upon my head while she prayed. Ere I was old enough to know her worth she died, and I was left too much to my own guidance. Like others, I was inclined to evil passions, but often felt myself checked and, as it were, drawn back by a soft hand upon my head. When a young man I travelled in foreign lands, and was exposed to many temptations; but, when I would have yielded, that same hand was upon my head, and I was saved. I seemed to feel its pressure as in the happy days of infancy; and sometimes there came with it a voice in my heart, a voice that was obeyed: 'Oh do not this wickedness, my son, nor sin against God.'"

With children you must mix gentleness with firmness. "A man who is learning to play on a trumpet and a petted child are two very disagreeable companions." If a mother never has headaches through rebuking her little children, she shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up. At the same time, a mother should not hamper her child with unnecessary, foolish restrictions. It is a great mistake to fancy that your boy is made of glass, and to be always telling him not to do this and not to do that for fear of his breaking himself. On the principle never to give pain unless it is to prevent a greater pain, you should grant every request which is at all reasonable, and let him see that your denial of a thing is for his own good, and not simply to save trouble; but once having settled a thing hold to it. Unless a child learns from the first that his mother's yea is yea, and her nay nay, it will get into the habit of whining and endeavouring to coax her out of her refusal, and her authority will soon be gone.

Unselfish mothers must be careful not to make their children selfish. The mother who is continually giving up her own time, money, strength, and pleasure for the gratification of her children teaches them to expect it always. They learn to be importunate in their demands and to expect more and more. If the mother wears an old dress that her idle son may have a new coat, if she works that he may play, she is helping to make him vain, selfish, and good-for-nothing. The wise mother will insist upon being the head of her household, and with quiet unobtrusive dignity she will hold that place. She should never become the subject of her own children. Even in such mere external matters as dress and furniture her life should be better equipped. The crown should be on her head, not on theirs. Thus from babyhood they should be habituated to look up to, not down on, their mother. She should find time, or make it, to care for her own culture; to keep her intellectual and her art nature alive. The children may advance beyond her knowledge; let her look to it that they do not advance beyond her intellectual sympathies. Woe to both her and them if she does not keep them well in sight!

Happiness is the natural condition of every normal child, and if the small boy or girl has a peculiar facility for any one thing, it is for self-entertainment. One of the greatest defects in our modern method of treating children is to overload them with costly and elaborate toys, by which we cramp their native ingenuity or perhaps force their tastes into the wrong channel. The children of the humbler and the unpampered classes are far happier than are those children whose created wants are legion and require a fortune for their satisfaction.

Some mothers believe that they are exhibiting the proper "maternal feelings" in keeping their children at home when they should send them forth into the world, where alone they can be taught the virtue of self-dependence. A time will come when the active young man who is checked by foolish fondness will exclaim with bitterness--

"Prison'd and kept, and coax'd and whistled to--
Since the good mother holds me still a child,
Good mother is bad mother unto me!
A worse were better!"

Far more truly loving is the mother who sends her son into the battle of life preferring anything for him rather than a soft, indolent, useless existence. Such a mother is like those Spartan mothers who used to say to their sons as they handed to them their shields, "With it or upon it, my son!" Better death than dishonour was also the feeling of the mother of the successful missionary William Knibb. Her parting words to him were "William, William! mind, William, I had rather hear that you had perished at sea, than that you had dishonoured the Society you go to serve."

Never promise a child and then fail to perform, whether you promise him a bun or a beating, for if once you lose your child's confidence you will find it all but impossible to regain it. Happy is the mother who can say, "I never told my child a lie, nor ever deceived him, even for what seemed his good." Robert Hall once reproved a young mother because, in putting a little baby to bed, she put on her own nightcap, and lay down by it till it went to sleep. "Madam," said the eloquent preacher, "you are acting a lie, and teaching the child to lie." It was in vain that the mother pleaded that the child would not go to sleep. "That," said Hall, "is nonsense. Properly brought up it must sleep. Make it know what you want; obedience is necessary on its part, but not a lie on yours."