WOMEN, CHILDREN, LOVE AND MARRIAGE

WOMEN, CHILDREN,
LOVE and MARRIAGE

BY
C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY
AUTHOR OF “THE TRUTH ABOUT WOMAN,” “WOMEN’S WILD OATS,”
“MOTHER AND SON,” ETC.

London
HEATH CRANTON, LIMITED
6 Fleet Lane E.C.4
1924

Printed in Great Britain for Heath Cranton, Ltd., by Clements Bros., Chatham

And we won’t, we simply will not face the world as we’ve made it, and our own souls as we find them, and take the responsibility. We’ll never get anywhere till we stand up man to man and face everything out, and break the old forms, but never let our pride and courage of life be broken.

D. H. LAURENCE in “Aaron’s Rod.”

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

The essays here collected were written on various occasions over a considerable space of time. This will account for the diversity in the subjects and for a certain amount of restatement of my own beliefs and position.

I have not thought it advisable to attempt to alter this, since though some of the things I have said before may be repeated, the point of view and special application are in each case different.

Some of the essays have appeared already in various journals, but all have been very carefully revised and altered and the great majority entirely re-written.

In spite of the diversity of the subjects there is a common idea beneath all the essays—a common back-ground of faith. I do not know whether I am justified in my confidence that this idea—this faith is abundantly manifest. If I should try to formulate it into one short statement, I should say it was the responsibility that the old have to the young—the debt that one generation owes to the next.

In my gospel there is one commandment which may not be broken: Ye shall not hurt a little child.

C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY.

Merton Park,
March, 1924.

Section I
WOMEN

WOMEN AND CATS

In an admirable speech that I heard a few weeks ago, women were likened to cats. I do not remember exactly in what connection, however this does not matter.

But this remark set me thinking—it was not the first time, by many, that I had heard a man sum up the evil characteristics possessed, or supposed to be possessed, by my sex by likening us to cats. I now asked myself was this true? I want to be frank. Let me confess at once that I have come to the conclusion that the speaker was right. Women and cats have many qualities in common. I have another confession to make. When I first thought of this question of women and cats, I am bound to say that I felt that I did not like either cats or women, in fact I was not sure that I didn’t dislike them.

But wait, please, my sisters, before you let your anger fall upon me. This knowledge was so wounding to my self-pride that it forced me into an inquiry. I had made a fatal mistake. I soon found the reason of my dislike. I had been thinking of women and cats as a class and not as individuals. I disliked them just as one dislikes the Chinese, Portuguese, pigs or almost any other class of beings thought of collectively. Of course this is absurd, but then nine times out of every ten we are absurd—or unreasonable, which is the same thing, and only by recognising this can we find the truth. Who is there who has never admired some individual cat? Is there any misogynist who has never loved some individual woman?

Before I come to the real subject of this woman—cat likeness, I would like to say that we women are a little tired of being classed en masse. We really are growing wearied of hearing about ourselves. We claim to be appraised as individuals, some good, some bad, most of us a compound of good qualities and bad, but not all alike, not collective. We object to this communion of character. I remember talking to a Frenchman about Englishwomen. He said, “By the ones and the twos you are charmantes, très charmantes, but altogether—no—horrible!” This male logic is ridiculous. Men revile us as a class and sell their bodies and souls to us as individuals.

Now let us look further—What are the class-cat qualities that are also the class-woman qualities?

Few subjects are at once so easy and so difficult to approach as this one of woman and also of cat—our tiny, intimate tiger. We may purr commonplaces, or scratch and spit rage, but the illusive individuality of women and cats escapes description. Yes, the more I consider this subject of women and cats the more convinced I am that this likeness is a compliment to my sex. Like Balaam’s ass of old those who set out to curse us are made to bless.

For a moment I want you to think of a beautiful kitten, of her brilliant devilry, her perfect curves, the elusive wonder of her unwinking eyes like orange flowers, the delicate nuances of expression in her tail. Now, I want you to ask yourselves the nature of your regard for this perfect animal. You prize her rather for her beauty, than for her friendship. You call her pet, idiotic names, play with her, then go away and forget her.

The kitten grows up, becomes a cat, and old. She ceases to interest you. Her work is now to catch mice—to serve you. Do you think the cat does not feel this change in her mode of life—this too sudden loss of joy, which is forced upon her as soon as she attains her maturity. If you doubt this, make a real friend—not a plaything—of a kitten. We did this once. The kitten passionately loved my husband; when he went walking she went part of the distance with him; often she waited for him, or watched for his return loudly purring a welcome. Then my husband proved faithless; the kitten grew old and less beautiful, and we got a dog; he ceased to notice her. That cat died; yes, slowly pined away from grief. I acknowledge all cats are not so sensitive; they have not been made friends. The common cat develops an immense power of ignoring your past passionate and playful petting. She becomes distantly indifferent, or coquettishly variable—purring at one hour, scratching at another. She remembers her past; she understands what you valued in her. All that is herself she keeps for herself.

Contrast the cat with the dog. The blind worship of the one, the exquisitely calm indifference of the other. The dog accepts you, whatever treatment you give him, because you have loved him for himself—made him your companion, your friend. But can you expect this from the cat? You have never made her your friend; you have not found it worth while to understand her. She deceives you. She scratches you with those exquisite velvet paws do you annoy her. You cannot teach her not to thieve. But why? She has no other weapon, and the great life force urges her to self-protection. And how splendidly she defends herself; how persistent and how successful she is in gaining her desires. And how well she understands the advantages that beauty gives to her; advantages she can gain from nothing else. There is something really splendid in the trouble the cat takes over her personal attire; to keep the seductive whiteness of her shirt front’s pretty fur, the glossy shine of her splendid tiger skin. The dog would be quite happy and proud when dirty—ugliness is allowed to him. But the cat!—only when her self-respect is dead can she neglect to be beautiful.

Yes, now I have come to think about cats, I am filled with adoration. With every force against her the cat has kept her power! Her rudeness is sublime! Her aloofness is adorable! You may scratch her chin, she will permit this if she feels inclined, but the allowing of this familiarity does not forward your intimacy with her in the least—she knows what your advances mean. Sometimes she will not respond to your supplications—you cannot compel her. She wishes to sit upon your lap, a dozen times you send her down and each time she returns; you want her to sit upon your lap, and a dozen times she refuses and jumps down. She imposes her will upon you with a lordship that admits of no dispute. The personality of the cat is persistent and overwhelming, she is inconceivably herself. Nothing living—no, not even woman—is so self-supporting—I do not mean this economically, but artistically,—and self-centred as the cat. She is the great ego—the supreme type of the Super-Me.

I have said almost nothing at all about the character of woman. Is it necessary? I think not.

THE WOMEN OF SPAIN

Wherever I go in Spain, in the streets of the towns, in the churches, in the work-rooms, I am impressed with the fine types of the women; their strength and quietness—the same quality which Valeria, the Spanish novelist, speaks of as “a notable robustness.”

There is a fascination about Spanish women not easy to define. Not all of them are beautiful, and it is, of course, easy to find women of all degrees of ugliness, but the proportion of those who are strong and beautiful seems to me to be very large. There is greater variety of types in northern than in southern Spain. While there are many women who are dark, with golden complexions, and quite Arabian eyes, a proportion of fair women will be found with bright brown, auburn, and some, even golden hair. One sees rosy complexions and blue eyes that remind one of England; though mixed grey eyes are more frequent. Many of the faces have finely modelled features, quite classic in outline. Certainly the most beautiful and distinguished faces are not found among the women of the so-called upper classes, but belong to the fish-girls and market-women of the towns and the peasants of the rural districts. And this presence of a really fine type among the workers of a race is a certain indication of an old civilisation.

Many of the women workers in northern Spain are singularly individual. They are usually tall, and have very distinct features, especially the nose. It is a face in which every line has character, much strength, and also humour, rising quickly to the beautiful eyes, but slowly to the mouth, lengthening it into a smile. They all look like women whom no man could venture to insult. I do not know whether one must attribute it to their dress—the vivid coloured handkerchiefs which set their faces, as it were, in an Oriental frame—but these women have a serious, passionate look, which is completely fascinating. They are different from the women of southern Spain, who are smaller, more graceful, perhaps more piquant, but certainly less beautiful.

Living in Spain, you come to understand that this land is really the connecting link between Europe and Africa. Both in their physical traits and in their character, the Spaniards show their relation to the North African type; seldom, indeed, is a Spaniard entirely a European. And it is amongst the women that the resemblance stands out most clearly. There are women with dark long African faces. You will see them among the flamencos of Seville or in the gipsy quarter of the Camino del Sacre-Monte at Granada,—women with slow sinuous movements, which you notice best when you see them dance, and wonderful eyes that flash a slow fire, quite unforgettable in their strange beauty. In dress you still find the Oriental love of bright and violent colours. The elegant Manilla shawls and the mantillas which give such special distinction to the women of southern Spain, are modifications of the Eastern veil. The elaborately dressed hair, built up with combs, with one rose or carnation giving a note of colour, has also a very ancient origin.

Racial types may nearly always be best studied in the women of a nation, and this is certainly so in a very old civilisation like Spain, where many forces have combined to waste the men of the race. Representing as they do both on the physical and psychic side a conservative tendency, and with a lower variational aptitude than men, women preserve more markedly primitive racial elements of character. This may possibly explain why the women of Spain, on the whole, are finer than the men.

How well I recall these women as I have seen them often, gathered for the morning markets in the towns; chaffering, laughing, and carrying on their work in the conversational Spanish manner. Here is commercial activity united with a picturesque beauty, unspoilt by the usual ugliness of business. Ugliness is not a necessary growth of progress. There is terrible poverty in Spain. The peasants in the country and the labourers in the towns suffer much injustice in too heavy rents and an unfair burden of taxation. But as I have come to know them, I have realised that the sum of their poverty is, after all, so much less than the sum of their knowledge of the art of living. Not their poverty, but their splendid capacity for eluding its misery, is what is so remarkable. These workers have colour not only in their dresses, but in their souls.

I see again a charming scene that I chanced upon one day in the beautiful town of Vigo, which is situated in Galicia, in the extreme north-west, and is one of the seaports by which the stranger enters Spain. The day was saddened with heavy rain; a company of girls, who had just finished their work of packing the fish for market, had gathered in two empty railway vans, and were dancing together, in the most delightful way, watched and applauded by a group of youths.

It was a dance of quick movement and of great variety. It was not a dance of the feet only, every part of the girls’ bodies played its part in the performance, the swaying figures, the beckoning hands, the glittering smiles, that came and went in their dark eyes—all contributed to the dance, which like all Spanish dances was a love drama of intense passion; but always decorous, always beautiful. And the watching youths took their part by a rhythmic clapping of hands and stamping of feet. There was something infectious in this spontaneous gaiety. These girls, I felt, understand happiness, and, as I watched them, the world seemed once more a place in which workers could have their share of the joy of living.

Nor does this overflowing and joyous vigour belong to youth alone. I have seen mothers, stout and matronly, at play in the national games, throwing large heavy balls of wood along the grass with a healthy pleasure in muscular movement. Women, no longer young, may as often be seen dancing as the girls. Well, I remember one woman; she was quite old, and her skin was a yellowed mass of wrinkles. But the wrinkles on her face were but the work of time and the hardness of living, and went no deeper than the skin; they had not touched her soul. She was a little bowed, yet she held herself finely, as indeed, do all Spanish women. I shall never forget her perfect absence of self-consciousness; her abandonment as she quivered all over with the excitement of the dance—and she used her castanets with the innocent coquetry of a young girl. There is something that may well give thought in this wholesome energy, which is so abundant as to find its expression in play.

If I have emphasised the physical qualities of the women workers of Spain, it is because I regard these qualities as being the outward expression of intelligence and will. It is true that Spanish women are not educated as we count education; many of them cannot read or write. But in no other land can women be found with a finer understanding of all that is essential in womanhood.

From the earliest notices we have of Spanish women we find them possessed of a definite character of remarkable strength. Courage and strength have throughout the centuries been common qualities among Spanish women. The history of the mujeres varoniles of this land would fill a volume: women who would take the field and fight with a sagacity and ferocity equal to, and often surpassing, that of men.

We may still associate the position of women with some of the old traditions. Women are held in honour. Many primitive customs survive, in particular among the Basques; and one of the most interesting is that by which in some districts a daughter takes precedence over the sons in inheritance of land and family property. As far back as the fourth century, Spanish women insisted on retaining their own names after marriage, for we find the Synod of Elvira trying to limit this freedom. The practice is still common for sons to use the name of the mother coupled with that of the father, and even in some cases alone, showing the absence of preference for paternal descent. Velazquez, for instance, is known to the world only by the name of his mother: his father’s name was de Silva. It is significant that in no country does less stigma fall on a child born out of wedlock; and the unmarried mother meets a recognition that is rarely accorded to her elsewhere. I questioned a cultured Spaniard on the position of the prostitute; his answer is worth recording, “Our women give themselves for love much more often than for money.” This statement may have some extravagance, but I believe it corresponds to a real fact in the position of women, which persists from a time when their liberty was greater than it is to-day. The introduction of modern institutions, and especially the empty form of chivalry, has lowered the position of women. Emilia Pardo Bazan, the great woman novelist of Spain, has said, “All the rights belong to men, and the women have nothing but duties.” Yet there can be no question that some features of mother-right have left their imprint on the domestic life of Spain, and that women have in certain directions preserved a freedom and privilege which in England have never been established, and only of late claimed.

The industrial side of primitive culture has always belonged to women, and in many provinces in Spain the old custom is in active practice, owing to a shortage of men through military service and widespread emigration. The farms are worked by women, the ox carts driven by women, the seed is sown and reaped by women,—indeed, all the work is done by women. And the point to notice here is that the women have benefited by this enforced engaging in activities, which in most countries have been absorbed by men. The fine physical qualities of these workers is evident. I have taken pains to gain all possible information on this question. Statistics are not available because in Spain they have not been kept from this point of view. It is, however, the opinion of many eminent doctors, who were questioned by a Spanish friend for me on this subject, that this labour does not damage the health or beauty of the women, but the contrary, nor does it prejudice the life and health of their children.

I have seen many charming scenes of labour; and among my memories a visit I paid to a sardine factory in the town of Vigo stands out clearly. The work-rooms open directly on to the bay; here the boats come, the fish are landed and the silver heaps are washed. The airy rooms were scarcely redolent even of fish; and the most scrupulous cleanliness was evident. They were filled with girls, women, men, and boys. I learnt that both the women and men are well paid, and that there is no separation between the tasks allotted to the two sexes. Women and men labour together side by side, capacity alone deciding the kind of work done. The day’s work is the eight hours, established in Vigo by arrangement between the masters and the workers; but when a large catch of sardines comes in it must be dealt with at once, and the workers are then paid overtime on a higher scale than their weekly wages. I saw many ingenious and labour-saving machines, one, which was worked by a boy, made the keys for opening the tins at the rate of 140 a minute. I learnt that most of the machinery is supplied by Germany. I was interested to hear that the waste pieces of tin, left from cutting the boxes, were shipped to that country, to be used for making toys. It was not, however, in these things that I found my chief interest. What I chiefly remember was the fine appearance of the women. I was impressed with their smiling and contented faces. Many of them are mothers, and there is an admirable créche in connection with the sardine factory, where the children are cared for. A more industrious and charming scene of labour it would be impossible to find. I lost no opportunity of inquiry into local industrial conditions. The workers in this town are in a very favourable position, and in many respects Vigo has attained to a degree of humane development under industrial life, which other countries are toiling to achieve.

As workers the women are most conscientious and intelligent, apt to learn, and ready to adopt improvements. From my personal observations I can bear witness that their cottages, though very poor, are usually clean, and their children are universally well cared for. Nowhere are children happier or more loved than in Spain. The women are full of energy and vigour even to an advanced age. They are certainly healthy. I once witnessed an interesting episode during a motor-ride in the country districts of the north. A robust and comely Spanish woman was riding a ancas (pillion fashion) with a young caballero, probably her son. The passing of our motor frightened the steed, with the result that both riders were unhorsed. Neither was hurt, but it was the woman who pursued the runaway horse; she caught it without assistance and with surpassing skill. What happened to the man I cannot say. When I saw him he was standing in the road brushing the dust from his clothes. I presume the woman returned with the horse to fetch him.

Women were the world’s primitive carriers. In Spain I have seen women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and as firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet without sign of effort. She was the mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She was as upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that comes from perfect bodily equipoise. I do not wish to judge from trivial incidents, but I have found in these Spanish women a strength and beauty that has become rare among women to-day. When a fire breaks out in a small town or village it is the women water-carriers who act as firemen. They fetch the water from fountains and pour it upon the flames. Just recently I have read of three of these women who lost their lives in an attempt to rescue a cripple girl from a burning house.

I was never tired of looking at the Spanish water-carriers; the fountains that are in every town are the most delightful watching-places. The grace with which the women walk on the uneven roads and their perfect skill in balancing their beautiful jarras of stone or copper called forth my unceasing admiration. One result of this universal burden-carrying on the head is the perfect and dignified character of the women’s manner of walking. These women walk like priestesses who are bearing sacred vessels. They move erectly, but without stiffness, with a secure and even stride, planting the foot and heel together, light and firmly. There is something of the grace of an animal in their movements—the alertness, the perfect balance, the suggestion of hidden strength. I recall a conversation I had once with an Englishman, of the not uncommon strongly patriotic and censorious type. We were walking on the quay at La Coruna; he pointed to a group of women-bearers, who were at work unloading a vessel, and said in his indiscriminate British gallantry, “I can’t bear to see women doing work that ought to be done by men.” “Look at the women!” was the answer I made him.

It is interesting to contrast the robust heroines of Spanish writers with the feminine feebleness and inanity which so often are the ideal of English novelists. In Spanish literature vigour and virility, are qualities apart from sex and are bestowed on women equally with men.

Again and again the thoughtful reader will be struck with this in the works of the Spanish writers. It is a point of such interest that one would like to linger upon it. I may mention, as one instance, Cervantes’ heroines: the “illustre Fregona,” “beautiful, with cheeks of rose and jessamine, and as hard as marble,” and Sancho’s daughter, who was “tall as a lance, as fresh as an April morning, and as strong as a porter.” Of Tirso de Molina, the great Spanish dramatist, it has been said that he gives “all vigour to his women and all weakness to his men.” Nor has this robust ideal of womanhood changed. We meet the same qualities among the women depicted by the Spanish writers to-day. Blasco Ibanez, in his “Flor de Mayo,” describes a young woman who could meet “a stolen embrace with a superb kick, which more than once had felled to the ground a big youth as strong and firm as the mast of his boat.” Among the heroines of Juan Valera we find “Juanita” who, “as a girl could throw stones with such precision that she could kill sparrows, and leap on the back of the wildest colt or mule,” while Dona Luz “could dance with a sylph, ride like an Amazon, and in her walk resembled the divine huntress of Delos.”

It may of course be argued that these are chosen types that cannot fairly be said to represent Spanish women. Yet the Spanish writers are realists in a much truer sense than is understood amongst English novelists, and it must be admitted that the persistence of the same qualities in so many heroines proves a fundamental veracity in the type presented; and from my own experience, I can testify that the women I have known, in their vigour and independence, show the qualities of these portrait women.

The fact can scarcely be passed over that these heroines almost all belong to the country districts, sometimes even to the poorest people, and if, as in the case of “Dona Luz,” they spring from a different class, they are, as a rule, illegitimate, combining aristocratic distinction with plebian vigour. This corresponds with my own observations. I have found the women workers more robust and more intelligent than the women of the middle and upper classes.

Nor is the explanation far to seek. The preparation that these women receive for life is far inferior to that of the workers, who co-operate with men, and whose lives are as actively productive, and work as capably performed. The women of the richer classes lead lives of marked inferiority; without opportunity for work, and compelled to an existence of restricted activity, it is impossible to develop their physical and intellectual qualities.

Most of these ladies, except when quite young, are stout, they are less intelligent than the peasants, and few of them have ever appealed to me as being beautiful. I hasten to add, however, that they all have the fascination that belongs to Spanish women; a charm not easy to define. I have spoken of this quality before, let me try to make it clearer now. I believe it is that all these “senoras” and “senoritas” understand that they are women, and instead of this bringing them unhappiness and causing, as it so often does, the indefinite unquietness that characterises so many English and American women, you feel that they are glad that this is so. This is why they are so attractive. Spanish women are in harmony with themselves, which gives them something of that exquisite appeal which belongs to all natural things. This is the reason too, why the older women are so good-humoured, smiling and gay; they have none of them missed their womanhood.

Here is the real reason of the admiration which these women so universally arouse,—as women they are so perfect. This is a question that reaches very deeply; it is a quality so easy to see, so difficult to explain. What I wish to make clear is that the modern English ideal for women leaves a wide margin open to desire; the innermost forces of life too often are left unsatisfied, while the women of Spain, with all their restrictions, know what it is that, after all, really brings happiness for women. Which is the wiser knowledge?

The restrictions for women will pass with the expansion of modern life, and then the strong personality of Spanish women, their energy and good sense, will inevitably find expression when opportunity is given to them. But never can they fall, in pursuit of outside things, into the error of forgetfulness of their womanhood. There does not appear to be any vagueness in the souls of these women: our women have so often too much. In the composed presence of the Spanish ladies I have felt that it is little profit to a woman if, in gaining the world, she should lose herself.

THE DANGEROUS AGE
A TRACT FOR THE TIMES

I

Under this title the Danish writer, known as Karin Michaelis, in the far-back years before the war—a time now marked as the terrible period of the suffrage craze, gave to the world a remarkable and intimate revelation of a woman. It is perhaps the most illuminating work that has been written in recent years about women, from its rare quality of femininity, expressed with an unconscious sincerity and biting truth.

It is very late in the day to describe a book which, though now forgotten, was, at the time of its publication, very widely read and still more widely criticised and discussed in almost all European countries. It appeared at a time of great feminist unrest, which accounts, to some extent, for the reception it gained.

The story matters very little, for it is not as the confession of one woman that “The Dangerous Age” gains its importance, it is because it affords a diagnosis of an old and a very great evil, as well it is an acute observation of a certain type of woman’s soul or character.

It is from this aspect that I wish to approach it, and for this reason I have called it “A Tract for the Times.”

Thus it is of very little importance to my present purpose that the book is not a new one. It does not matter if the story is remembered, or indeed, if the book itself has, or has not, been read. If the reader will recall to his or her mind any one of the restless, unsatisfied women they must know—women, not young but not old, they will have the history (the variety in the details will not matter at all) of Elsie Lindtner, the heroine of this story.

This admirable piece of observation deals with a section of women who have come into being through our industrial civilisation with its wrong ideals and stupid customs. Marcel Prévost[1] in his preface to the book, speaks of Elsie Lindtner’s confession as a revelation of the feminine soul of all time. With the latter part of this opinion I entirely disagree. Rather would I say that it is a revelation of the soul of woman as that soul has been evolved through the repression of natural instincts and the want of satisfying fields for the expression of energy, in an atmosphere which very surely gives birth to the modern demons of confused desires and unconscious unhappiness.

The title of the book is not, I think, well chosen. The Dangerous Age—Elsie Lindtner was forty-two when she wrote her confession—was dangerous because of the life which had preceeded it. There is, without doubt, a cleavage in life, which may be said to be marked by the diminishing of attraction towards the opposite sex. But this is common to men as well as to women. It belongs to no special age, and its proportion of danger to the individual rests, first on the fulness or poverty of experience before this period arrives, and secondly on the power to extract from the past the joyous impulse for continuous living. But to Elsie Lindtner, as to all women of such false and restricted experience, it was far more than a cleavage, and because she had never lived simply and completely, she experienced that emptiness which strikes the soul with death when the consciousness comes that the opportunities of life are passing.

The terror of approaching age robbed her of all her hope of future happiness, just because she had emptiness in her past.

It is easy to condemn her, to speak of her selfishness, her falseness, her colossal egoism—there are few adjectives of condemnation that I have not heard applied to the Elsie

Lindtner’s of life. Yet if we look at the matter rightly, rather ought we to admire her for the perfect self-sacrifice with which she pursued the one occupation.

II

The question at its root is one of right functioning. For mark the real point of Elsie Lindtner’s history is this: all her actions were based on search for pleasure. To gain the possessions of this world was the fixed aim for which she bartered her soul. What does she tell us in one of her letters? She is writing of her school-days. A class mate had said to her, “Of course, a prince will marry you, for you are the prettiest girl here.” She carried the words home to a maid who added to the poison:

“That’s true enough,” she said, “a pretty face is worth a pocketful of gold.”

“Can one sell a pretty face, then?” the child asked.

“Yes, to the highest bidder,” was the answer given.

The seed thus sown gave a rich harvest. Sex-trade became the object, which Elsie Lindtner pursued with the same unflinching purpose which directs all those who create for themselves the false gods of possessions. Truly, while we support with our praise the successful financier, we cannot in justice give less esteem to the woman who pursues the same end in the way that is the easiest and surest of success.

It is no part of my purpose to give a resumé of the history of Elsie Lindtner. The details matter little; a structure of life built on a false foundation must of necessity fall to ruin. And there is another point I wish to make clear. The destroying penalty paid by this woman for the gain of wealth and position was a failure of the power to love. The real explanation of her unrest, hysteria, and manifold symptoms of excitement was caused by the unceasing warfare within her of two antagonistic forces—the desire for comfort and ease, partly instinctive, but also fixed by habit, strengthened by a wish to keep the moral dignity imposed upon women by the conditions of the society in which she lived, fighting with the deeply instinctive desire for satisfying sex experience to fulfil the functioning of life.

It is necessary for women to speak plainly. You cannot deny the needs of the body, or prostitute their use, without the soul paying its penalty. That is what women too often forget. A false purity held Elsie Lindtner from giving herself to her lover, Jorgen Mallthe, and kept her faithful in the letter of the law to the husband she had married for his wealth. She had no children. I say without any doubt that she would have been a purer and a better, because a happier and more healthy woman, if she had followed the cry of her heart, at the first, as she was driven in the end to want to do—when it was too late. That she did not do this, but chose to sacrifice her lover in the same way that she had sacrificed her husband must, in my opinion, be counted as sin against her. Only the falseness which had wrapped her own life in a net of pretence could have made her fail to see the truth for herself.

It is a fact of very special importance that Elsie Lindtner and all the women who enter into this book belong to the Scandinavian race, among whom chastity was extolled as the chief virtue of a woman, while any lapse was punished with terrible severity. If the husband of an ancient Dane discovered his wife in adultery he was allowed to kill and castrate her lover. “There is a city,” says the Scandinavian Edda, “remote from the sun, the gates of which face the north, poison rains there through a thousand openings, the place is all composed of the carcasses of serpents. There run certain torrents, in which are plunged the bodies of the perjurers, assassins, and those who seduce married women. A black-winged dragon flies incessantly round and devours the bodies of the wretched who are there imprisoned.” Again, the Icelandic Hava Maél contains this caustic apophthegm “Trust not the words of a girl, neither to those which a woman utters, for their hearts have been made like the wheel that turns round; levity was put into their bosoms. Trust not to the ice on one day’s freezing, neither to the serpent which lies asleep, nor to the caresses of her you are going to marry.”

III

Now, it may be asked: What has all this to do with Elsie Lindtner? My answer is: “Everything!” The customs of a past social life do subsist beneath the surface of modern society; we cannot without strong effort escape from the chains of our inheritance. In the sad nations of the cold north, where the natural joy of the body has been regarded as something to be fought with and denied, a perpetual confusion has arisen at the very source of life. For the sex-passion is a force, huge and fateful, which has to be reckoned with. Woman is more primitive, more intuitive, more emotional than man. And the outlets allowed to her in the past have been more restricted; thus the price she pays for any repression of the natural rights of love is heavier. Elsie Lindtner’s history is a sermon to all those who set up the false god of chastity for women.

I am aware that this statement will arouse opposition—especially in women. To-day we hear much talk, and often among women who are working nobly for the better life for women, of control of sex and the need of imposing on men the same code of repression which for so long has been imposed upon them. This is, of course, very natural, but that does not make it wise. It is a truth realised by few women that repression is not, and never can be, control. There seems to be a very widespread opinion that to use the divine gift of sex even in marriage, for joy, is wrong. One would be inclined to laugh, if the sadness of this falsehood did not make one want to weep.

The whole subject, wide as life itself, escapes anything like adequate treatment. The lady—the Elsie Lindtners of society—the household drudge and the prostitute, are the three main types of women resulting in our so-called civilisation of to-day, from the process of the past, and it is hard to know which is the most wretched, which is the most wronged, the most destructive, and the furthest removed from that ideal woman which a happier future may evolve.

What, then, in conclusion, is the lesson to be learnt from this “Tract for the Times?” Women must be free—free to work and free to love. Then, and then only, can they claim to be the fitting mates of men, then and then only, will they be able to fulfil aright their supreme work as the mothers of the sons and daughters of the race. This is the path along which freedom is to be found. What, then, is the individual woman to do? This question is one which women at the present have to answer for themselves. But one thing is certain—they must have the courage to tear from their eyes the old and the new bandages that have kept them, and still keep them, in the darkness of ignorance; better even to sin and know the truth than to live in falsehood and in a child’s world of pretence.

THE LEGAL POSITION OF THE MOTHER

In spite of the rapid advance that has been made, the legal disabilities of women are still great. Especially is this so in their relationship to their children.

Here where they should be supreme women have really no rights at all under our laws.

They are not the legal parents of their own children. Only if their child is illegitimately born, have they any rights of guardianship. The law recognises the father as the one parent. He is entitled to the custody of the children. He alone can say where they shall live or how they shall be brought up: he alone has the legal right to decide how they shall be educated or what religion they shall follow. No promise that he makes, either before or after marriage is binding. The man may change his mind at any time. The woman has no remedy. It is evident how terrible a force for evil these rights may easily become in the hands of an unscrupulous or vindictive man. If, for instance, the woman does not choose to live where the husband directs, he may take her children from her. Again, if there is any difference of opinion between the two parents the opinion of the one parent—the father, must prevail. And this is so even when the mother, and not he, is the supporter of the family.

And the injustice continues even after death. The father has the right to appoint a guardian to act with the mother, but a guardian appointed by the mother can act only after both parents are dead. The children have to be brought up according to any wishes expressed by the father or even which it is inferred he has intended to express. This is especially apt to cause trouble with regard to religion. Any relation of the father (even when he himself has been either indifferent or irreligious) may claim to have a woman’s children trained, against her wishes, in the religion professed by the father’s family on the ground that the father was nominally a member of that church.

Of course, when there is agreement between the parents, as happily is the case in the great majority of marriages, the law does not matter. Indeed very few mothers have any conception of their position under the law. That is the only reason why these horrible and out-of-date laws have not been repealed.

Fortunately they are unlikely to remain a dark blot upon our statute book. An admirable Bill has been formulated under the direction of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, which will remedy this long-standing injustice. It has the long title of the Guardianship, Maintenance, Custody and Marriage of Infants Bill. Its two great objects are:—

(1) To make the mother as well as the father the legal parent of her children.

(2) To impose upon both fathers and mothers the liability to maintain their children according to their means.

There are many further admirable provisions, as for instance, the one which gives both parents equal rights in appointing guardians. Where the child is under 16 and has no property, present or expectant, the case may be dealt with in Courts of Summary Jurisdiction (or Police Courts). This is most important, as it makes the benefits of the equal guardianship possible to the working classes, which would not be so, if cases, as at present, had to be heard in High Courts or County Courts.

I shall not trouble to answer the few determined obstructionists who have opposed this Bill. They say that it will cause difficulty in the home, and provide a reason for quarrel between husband and wife. I have too high an opinion of men and women and of their love of their children to believe this. The cases of dispute, sufficiently serious to be brought into the courts, will always be comparatively few. And a decision of justice will be much easier when the partners have an equal status. Then the welfare of the children will be the decisive factor and not as now, the desires of the parents.

Equal guardianship laws are in operation already in many countries: and wherever they have been established they have worked excellently and must be regarded as a complete success.

PROBLEMS OF BIRTH CONTROL

It is generally admitted that there is much to be gloomy about in these days of bad trade and post-war morals. And yet, perhaps, the poor old world does improve in some respects.

One of the most hopeful signs of this improvement to me is the very widespread interest that has been taken of late in birth control. Conferences are held, law-suits are fought and won; pamphlets are written and in almost every town lectures are given, and everywhere groups of earnest-minded people come together to discuss and to learn. Our sense of responsibility has been quickened in connection with birth and the bringing a new life into the world. In a deeper and more practical way we have come to know that no child should be born unwanted.

Now, possibly all this suggests no very great moral advance to you. It may be that you regard it as wrong to regulate births in any way. Yet surely it is well for this difficult problem to be carefully considered in open discussion. To avoid error we must have knowledge. For myself, as I have listened to speakers or read of what is being done, though possibly I am in sharp opposition to much that is believed and advised, yet always I am glad when I reflect that only a little while ago the very mention of birth control would have been impossible at any public meeting, nor would any paper have noticed it.

Everywhere since the war the increased interest in the question has been astonishing. Is it, I have asked myself, that the terrible loss of life has forced us at last to have a deeper understanding of the value of life? Certainly all over the world women and men are beginning to understand the right of every child to be well-born.

The relations between the poverty of the family and its size must be considered in connection with this question. Much stress is also rightly laid on the injurious effect on the mother of continuous and unwilling child-bearing, and on the resulting terrible wastage of life in mis-carriages and still-births. Personally, I should always like to hear more of the effect on the children unfortunate enough to live. For the child is unfortunate who is born into a home unwanted by its mother.

To give life well it must be given gladly. There can be no deeper tragedy than an unwilling motherhood.

The moral and religious aspects of family limitation have to be considered. It needs to be emphasised how more and more religion to-day refuses to divorce the spiritual from the material necessities of man, and how it begins to appreciate that the bread-and-butter difficulties of life have the greatest effect on the moral character of the people.

If a criticism on the work of those who advocate birth control may be offered, it is that too much time is spent in saying what everyone agrees with. Propositions, which all who think at all practically accept, are gravely supported with elaborate arguments. More might be accomplished if these elementary questions were left and freer discussions given to the many grave problems which still await investigation. There are so many questions on which far more knowledge needs collecting before any definite conclusions of permanent value can be accepted.

Roughly classified, birth control needs to be studied from three different aspects:—

First, there is the effect upon the married couple.

Second, there is the effect upon the child.

And lastly, there is the effect of voluntary limitation of the birth-rate upon society.

In estimating the consequences to the man and the woman, it is impossible to neglect the psychological results.

The effect upon the mind is far stronger and more lasting than any more direct result. I mean, it is what the individual woman or man feels about limitation that is important for them. It is their own attitude to what they do that will mainly decide the results it will have. This is a question of the deepest complication. And much more knowledge is needed, and the greatest care is called for not to form hasty and unproved opinions. It is, I must insist, an individual question that can never be arbitrarilly decided, even by those competent to form a decision. That is why so much that is said, even by doctors who ought to know better, is so absurd.

Much easier to estimate is the effect upon the child. Here we seem to be on firmer ground. To save the unwanted child from being born or conceived by drunken or syphilitic parents is a work of such plain morality that there would appear to be no room for difference of opinion.

Yet the question is deeper and far more difficult than this; there are, indeed, a whole group of problems connected with it. There is, for instance, the case of the only child, who always suffers grave disadvantages, brought up in a home with adults.

Again the childless or one-child marriage is often not happy for those who love children. This is felt, in particular, when one partner desires children and the other refuses to have them born. And it must not be forgotten that all that affects the parents, must also have its results on any child that is born. Apart from economic necessities, the small, limited family is, in many ways, harder to bring up than the large family.

With regard to the effect of birth control on society, it is now becoming a familiar reflection that often those least fitted to carry out parental duties, because of faults of character or misfortune of circumstances, have the largest families.

Here the main problem is not so much to teach the mere knowledge of how families are to be limited as to induce that control and to stir up such desire as will lead to limitation being practised.

But of course, the alteration of the characters of men and women is a task of too great difficulty to be treated as a side issue.

Yet I would not end with any word of discouragement. As I started by saying, the mere consideration of these difficult questions in the broad light of day must be felt, by all of us who are old enough to remember the attitude in the past, as a wholesome sign of the times.

We care more, and very slowly we are growing more honest.

Section II
CHILDREN

A BOY’S MISERY

Quite the saddest thing I have come across for some time is the account of the suicide from remorse of a widow, who drowned herself in utter misery; her body being found near the spot where a fortnight before that of her son, aged eleven, had been discovered. The boy, it seems had committed suicide after being accused of stealing money belonging to his mother.

Even from the bare outline of what happened there stands out stark, like some haunting fiend of pain, the agony suffered by this boy and mother before each sought the merciful quietness of death.

I find myself conscious of emotion stronger and more vexing than the strangling sense of pity. I am angry at the waste of two lives, and especially of the fine young life so grievously destroyed. Why, I ask myself, do we torture children by forcing on their sensitive natures punishment for failure in right conduct, while we make no attempt to understand the hidden struggles and unexplained emotions that almost always are the cause? How is it we fail to remember so completely our own growth, the mistakes we made, the undiscovered sins that now we have forgotten?

This boy stole from his mother. A thief you call him—a bad and ungrateful son.

But wait—think! Why did he steal?

An easy question, perhaps, you will say to answer. He desired to buy sweets, wished to visit the cinema; he had been betting with his marbles and getting into bad habits; or he wanted to swagger as a capitalist among his friends. Yes, that sounds probable enough; some such were, I expect, the reasons given by the mother, probably believed in by the boy himself. For so often we force the acceptance of our adult stupidities upon our children. The poor boy counted himself a thief, believed that he had sinned; he felt that he had wronged the mother whom he loved so much. He did not know, for there was no one to tell him, that he did not care at all for the money he stole for these trivial reasons. No, he did not know. But underneath, hidden in the darkness of his young soul, there was a stronger driving imperative, unknown and unsuspected by any one, most of all by the boy himself, which was the irresistible force that caused him to steal.

The reason of his action is really simple and would be recognised at once by any psychologist. It must be sought in the relation of the boy to his mother. He was not loved enough. At least, in some way, he was unhappy in his home relationship—at conflict in his innermost nature. He stole money, though, he did not know it, because he wanted love.

Of his life, through his eleven years, I lack the information that would provide us with the necessary details of proof. It is exceedingly improbable that the details will be forthcoming, for this boy was unknown and his death even at the time, caused no stir. But it is a very certain inference from the evidence of the excessive remorse that drove him to take his own life that, sometime in his earlier years, he had suffered some shock of jealousy or stress of misery in relation to his mother, that initiated the trouble, which later had to force an expression by means of his thefts.

I hope that I make my meaning clear. The idea of “transferring” a feeling into a quite different action may be a little strange to you. Yet everyone knows that, if you are angry with someone and dare not show it, you may gain relief from some kind of violent action entirely unconnected with the cause of the angry feelings. The boy who is afraid of his father, or is otherwise unhappy in his home, is very likely to be a “bully,” he takes what he has suffered out of someone weaker than himself. And it is the same process when the suppressed painful feelings of jealousy or other unhappiness take the form of spending money. The impulse is so powerful that if the money cannot be got in any other way, it will be stolen.

In many children there arises jealousy in connection with their home relationships, often without reason, but none the less real to the childish imagination, and this causes them to doubt the parental love that is as necessary to them as the sun to the flower. In its mild and practically harmless form this feeling of being neglected, which few children quite escape, is only occasionally active and remains unrecognised, though it is the frequent cause of irritability, of minor sicknesses and faults in behaviour. The results in aggravated cases are far more important, and cause, not infrequently, such a desperate consciousness of inferiority, with an always pressing sense of wanting something, that there arises an overpowering physical and spiritual necessity for the liberation of the hidden trouble. This relief is found usually in acts of violence, frequently in stealing.

In the case we are considering we see the boy, beyond all shadow of doubt, over-sensitive, the symptoms of the unconscious trouble expressing themselves, on the one side, in an exaggerated feeling of inferiority, and, on the other, in a compelling need to find opportunity for the assertion of power. I do not know just how it happened. Maybe, his mother, who has paid with her life in passionate remorse, was too hindered with the troublesome details of life to be able to cultivate and pick the flowers of love. I cannot know, but I do know that in the tender psyche or soul of that poor boy was some terrible need for his mother’s love—a want which he did not understand, indeed, of which he was probably wholly unaware. He may even have been in outward rebellion, have thought he was indifferent to his mother, but such a state would but furnish further witness to the trouble within. Had he known what it was he wanted, he would not have done what he did. But the ever-disturbing need, causing confusion in his soul, drove him to steal the most obvious thing that he was without and his mother possessed—that was money.

I do not hesitate to state that in the great majority of cases of boyish thieving the reasons for the act must be sought in some deeply hidden cause, marking some inner disturbance, with a feeling of wanting something which the boy does not understand. The taking of small sums of money or other pilfering acts is a covering-mask, and has no connection with crime. There is one thing further that it is necessary to remember. Though the fault of boyish thieving is not in itself a sign of any moral failure in the character, our treatment of such small thefts—our adult stupidity in understanding the difficulties and seeking out the concealed unhappiness of the young soul, often hounds on the stealing boy into the thief.

We make criminals of the young because we are blind and hardened with our own failures and minor struggles. We also cause, as in the case of this boy who killed himself, the most heart-breaking tragedies. It is appalling even to contemplate the suffering brought quite uselessly upon boys and girls by grown-up foolish ignorance.

We show too little imagination in our treatment of the child who does wrong. We rarely remember his almost terrible sensitiveness, nor do we consider the unusual advantage (from the point of view of the child) that we possess just in being grown-up. And nothing, as I have said before, is to the boy plainer as a sign of this grown-up freedom than the power we have (or rather that they think we have) to spend money how we like and when we like. That is why the taking of money is one of the most common symbolic acts for a boy’s wish for love or power.

That boyish theft is often pathological is proved by the fact that the objects stolen are often useless to the boy, that they are hidden away, and, as a rule, forgotten, and further that the boy forgets, or almost forgets, what he has stolen or how he took them. Some boys have a passion for stealing certain objects which they will take over and over again. Those who have had anything to do with delinquent children well know these symptoms.

In nearly all cases the thieving is repeated over long periods; although each act may be followed by violent remorse. Parents and all those who have to deal with these childish wrong doers, should know that this sorrow, especially if it is emotionally excessive, serves only to increase the tendency to a fresh repetition of the theft. For remorse fixes the boy’s attention on his stealing, and, still more, on the pleasurable feelings that unconsciously to himself are connected with the act. He remembers these, though he does not know it, whenever he thinks of his wickedness in stealing. And this fixity of attention in itself is a kind of rehearsal of the act, that is very likely to lead to an actual performance of it. Boyish remorse is, no doubt, gratifying to parents, but, almost invariably, it is harmful to the boy.

Whenever the boy thinks how bad he is, how wrong and disastrous an act would be, he is in danger of being compelled to perform that act. Most of us have experienced this, but we forget its application to the moral conduct of the young. Once think how terrible it would be to fall down the precipice, and the idea of jumping down approaches.

Remorse is a form of temptation. And all forms of temptation should, if possible, be avoided in dealing with the misconduct of children. If your boy steals money do not leave money lying about. Also, even if he has stolen money several times, express no faintest suspicion as to his not using honourably any money entrusted to him, for some necessary purpose, such as paying railway fares or buying a school book. Never be suspicious over the change such a child brings you. As he steals from a feeling of inferiority, and, in particular, because through jealousy, whether imagined or real, he feels himself less blessed with the love of those about him than other more confident children, any sign of your not being able to trust him, must render him more liable to err.

If the thieving boy were treated with sympathy and understanding, and loved and helped, instead of being blamed and often cruelly punished, there would be fewer grown-up thieves.

CRIMINALS MADE IN OUR NURSERIES

Every child suffers sometimes from a feeling of inferiority. He is so much smaller and weaker than the grown-ups who control his play and his work that he feels uncomfortably helpless against their authority, which to him seems often to be exercised in an arbitrary and unkind way.

There are times when this consciousness of being little and weak is so overwhelming that the child is bound to do something to convince himself of his own powerfulness.

It is then that he becomes naughty. For the very easiest way to command the attention of his mother, and the other adults who are with him, is by being naughty. Good, he is left alone. The grown-ups go on with their own occupations. He feels neglected. At most he is mildly praised. “Johnnie is a nice quiet boy to-day.” But this is very different from the attention he commands when he is naughty. He defies authority. For a short time he becomes a despot, ruling the grown-ups who usually rule him. His sensation of power is intensely enjoyable. And the more disturbance he makes in the nursery life the deeper is his satisfaction. Of course, he is sorry afterwards. But his sorrow is not really for the first period of successful rebellion, but for the following time after his power fails.

Now, it is very important for the mother to understand this. The real problem is to minimise as much as can be of the child’s enjoyment of naughtiness.

Any unwisdom on the mother’s part such as her being too emotionally concerned, indulging in nagging or violent anger, may have very serious results. Inevitably the child feels as he sees his mother’s tears and want of control, “I have caused this.” Instead of being weak he is master of his mother. That is why usually he is good after he has been naughty.

But this kind of nursery behaviour is disastrous to the child’s character.

Let me tell you a rather striking story to illustrate this. A young boy, very naughty, was sent to bed. His mother, greatly troubled, went some hours later to his room. He was kneeling, praying. She thought he was asking God to forgive him. But this was what she heard: “Please, dear God, forgive my bad mummy for being so unkind to poor little Freddy.” The boy grew up in the most unfortunate way. I cannot give the details and there were, of course, several causes. Yet certainly his character suffered the first wrong in the nursery from an unwise emphasising by his mother of his own importance.

The naughty child is always the child over-occupied with thoughts of himself. And his feelings are unhealthily important to him just because he finds himself for some cause at a disadvantage. Parents, unconsciously, but very foolishly, emphasise their children’s inferiority; they speak of their weakness, tell them they are too little to do this or that, never realising the danger of what they are doing.

Children must not be subjected to conditions of emotional stress, which increase unnecessarily their inevitable consciousness of inferiority in an adult world. If the parents do not find out and remedy the cause of these feelings (which they ought to know are invariably present whenever a child is naughty) and provide an expression by which the desired power is gained in a right way, let me warn them that they are dangerously limiting their children’s chance of a successful and happy life. By connecting pleasure with bad conduct, they are certainly, though they do not know it, making the way easy for every kind of future bad conduct.

The fate of all children is decided in the nursery; criminals are made there as well as saints and heroes.

THE TYRANNY OF PARENTS

In the life of every girl and every boy there come times when they must, and should, free themselves from the thraldom of the home.

This may sound hard to parents, who desire almost always to keep their children in tutelage, and cannot often even think of them except as belonging to the home and to themselves.

Yet the young must rebel, must escape from this too-closely-binding yoke of love. They have to break away from the moorings of safety; to adventure; to find a place for themselves; to get into the world and to establish their own lives as women and men.

We should hear much less of trouble between parents and children if fathers, and especially mothers, could be made to understand that the conflict with their growing boys and girls is not a personal conflict; that it has nothing, or at least very little, to do with the actual situation, and is not directly dependent on anything that either the parents or the children may do or may not do. And this is comforting to parents—it does not mean that their children love them less.

No, the conflict is based on an inescapable psychological opposition. It is the necessity of the young to escape from the tyranny of the old.

The parent’s hand is needed to steady the child, while it is unable to stand firmly on its own feet or to guide its own steps; but as the child grows older, it must learn to walk alone. If the mother persists in holding out a hand, never lets the child fall down, she destroys a proper independence and the hand held-out-too-long is used to satisfy the mother’s selfish desire; to give her the pleasure she gains from the child’s dependence on herself, and not because of any need of the child for help.

You will see the application of this illustration.

Many mothers prolong the years of childish helplessness and absence of initiative because they do not want their children to grow up. Especially they check the boy’s or the girl’s independent feelings and impulses by persistently guiding them.

There is an immense, but usually unrecognised, selfishness in the apparently devoted parent. Such devotion ignores the right of the young to discover for themselves.

The separation between parent and child needs to be more than a mere separation in space. Sending a boy or a girl away to school or elsewhere does not separate it from the home ties; often such a separation but serves to bind them more fixedly. What is needed is a psychological separation—an emotional freedom from the too-crippling dependence of childhood. There is the need to take the home standards and compare them with other standards of the world; the getting rid of the old excessive reverence for the parents. They, too, must be criticised and judged.

This process of liberation is difficult and very painful to the child; that is why so often there is rebellion and unkindness. And the danger is greater because, at this period, the boy or the girl is so easily discouraged, turns back so readily with kindness to the old safety. And if this is countenanced by the parents, who continue to offer a too-protective affection, the character of the boy or the girl is weakened so that in after years they will not be able to meet the necessities of adult action.

The too fond mother or father perpetuates the childhood of their sons and daughters. They are a far more real danger to their children than neglectful or careless parents.

It is worthwhile considering some of the reasons why parents do too much for their children; are too careful to keep them bound to the home and within the protection of parental love.

The parents who have failed in satisfying their own desires see in their children a new opportunity. They hope for vicarious satisfaction. And for this reason, rather than for the reasons of unselfish love which they believe rule their conduct, they will sacrifice themselves so that their children may achieve what they have failed in gaining. They are to hand down and maintain their name, to keep in the world their family, and all that seems of value in themselves—all that would be lost by their approaching extinction.

If we stop to think, we shall see how common and easy it is for parents to use their children as instruments of satisfaction. Wherever one or other parent is unhappy, suffering under some unsatisfied desire, they seek to satisfy these desires through their children. Do we not know that the wife, and sometimes also the husband, not happy in their own marriage concentrate their hopes of a satisfying life on their children. The mother wants her daughters to be literally, wholly devoted to her; she loves again in her love for her sons; or the father compensates himself with his devotion to his daughters, while he seeks to satisfy his desire for power by completely directing the life of his sons.

All this is quite wrong. It breaks the power of the young; turns them into dutiful automatons, instead of rebellious adventurers. Constantly thwarted, too much protected, they become necessarily less capable of effort, with a weakened power for action. The model boy or girl of parents and schoolmasters is almost always a failure in life.

Such parents love their children too selfishly and too possessively. Seeking emotional relief, they drain for themselves the storehouse of energy which their children ought to preserve for their own lives.

The danger is deep and far reaching, a too great and unhealthy attachment to either parent may, and often does, cause an inability to transfer an adequate share of loyalty and affection from the parent to the wife or husband. It may check the desire to marry. The man’s choice of a life partner is guided by an infantile vision of his idealised mother; and then, after marriage, he will seek from his wife the feelings of a mother. That is, he will want to be helped and mothered instead of wishing to guide and protect.

This is a very frequent cause of unhappiness in marriage.

Strange as this may seem, the true Don Juan owes his incapacity to find satisfaction in love to the fact that he searches unconsciously for what he can never find, the lost features of his childhood’s mother. He is unfaithful to all women because he is faithful to one woman.

Again the girl may feel towards her husband as she did towards her father; she may be too obedient, too uncritical to be a true helpmate; or, and this is much more serious, a too excessive identification with the mother may render difficult and even impossible the right response to love.

It is not too much to say that, wherever there is this over-attachment and persistence of the childhood attitude, or where the conflict to break from the too heavy tyranny is very severe, the whole career and the whole love-history of the adult life is settled and decided—damned and fated to disaster from the start. Indeed the seed of failure, of unhappiness, even of crime and vice, often is set in helpless children by the selfishness and ignorance of over-affectionately helpful parents, whose too much interference, too emotional solicitude, blocks the narrow passes that lead on to open and independent life.

THE SUPERFLUOUS FATHER

In many homes, where there are children, the father seems a stranger—almost an intruder.

The central figure in the family is the mother. All the details of her life are familiar to the children; she is seen shopping, cooking, looking after the home. The father is a little mysterious; he goes adventuring in the unknown world. He is picturesque and wonderful; an exciting figure that arouses nursery admiration—but he is unnecessary.

At first the mother occupies all the child’s attention. She supplies food, comfort, shelter, teaching and brings happiness to the nursery. She is the first love-object and of supreme importance; the starting point of all those interests of the children which lie outside of themselves.

But the other parent—the superfluous father, comes both as interrupter and friend into this mother-child circle. He plays with the children, opens up new delightful ways of interest, brings the movement that children love. But also he is a disturber. He absorbs the mother, draws her attention and care from the children. He upsets the order and balance of the nursery. He almost dethrones the baby.

Thus at a very early age jealousy of the father begins to stir and unsettle the nursery peace. Usually we either treat this childish jealousy as a joke or refuse to admit its presence, but it is deadly earnest to the child itself. If the mother is capricious, varying in her attentions to her husband and to her children, or if she is over-tender and too demonstratively affectionate, this jealousy may, and indeed, must work great and permanent evil.

You see, it imposes a conflict in the exquisitely responsive child, between the emotions of hate and anger and envy born of jealousy, and the emotions of love and admiration and obedience dependent on a sense of the benefits conferred by the father.

It is the duty of the mother so to balance her favours and her love that the rights of the husband and the children are both maintained, and neither side is tempted to be a monopolist.

For it is not only the children who are jealous of the father. Often the father is jealous of the children. And often he has cause. Some women, when once the child is born, regard their husbands solely as the person for providing money necessary for the maintenance of the home. In any other capacity she has ceased to desire him, frankly he is in the way.

The mother type often ceases, after motherhood, to be the loving mate—the wife. There is so little time for love making in a nursery home. The man becomes a superfluity, his demands tend to be delegated to holidays that are planned, but do not often occur.

Nature herself seems to condemn the man in his capacity as father. So delicate is the bond which attaches him to the child as compared with the unbreakable bindings which hold the child to the mother; so readily can he be pushed outside the circle of the family, where, as a member apart, he will inevitably seek his own interests and pleasures.

Now, whether this complete severance happens or not, some conflict between the father and his children, especially between father and sons is almost bound to occur. This is a war which is normal and, indeed, inevitable—far more so than any class-war, any opposition and struggle between the nations.

Have we not read of the solitary polygamous father of the past, the Old Man of the Tribe, who drove his sons out of the horde as they grew up, because in his greed he wanted all the women to be his wives? Much time has passed since then, but these emotions are very old and very strong. Pity and the gentler feelings of civilisation enable the father to accept the son as a member of the family and as a companion instead of a rival. But echoes remain of the old instincts of jealous rivalry.

No science is so difficult or so important as psychology. It is because parents do not understand their own minds or the minds of their children that they make such mistakes. They do not see that some jealousy and opposition in family relationships are inevitable and, in fact, useful. Else the child would never grow up, would always be overwhelmed by its parents.

So do not let us be too alarmed if sons oppose fathers, or if fathers are wanting in sympathy with their sons.

Yet it must be remembered finally, on the other side, that the authority of the father has to be maintained. Superfluous in the family, from one point of thought, his influence is nevertheless of the most urgent importance. Without it a too great dependence on self is fostered at too early an age, which sets up an intolerant and unreasoning hatred of all authority and an inability to suffer any kind of restraint.

The father thus needs to preserve his rights and duties within the home. If women have had to fight for the Vote and the open door to the profession, the father may have to fight for the love of his children and the key to the nursery.

He must refuse to be regarded as superfluous.

THE PERFECT MOTHER

A few weeks ago a shower of sudden rain brought me for shelter into the house of a kindly stranger, who beckoned me in from the position I had taken under the thickly foliaged trees, bordering her garden. She was a woman who exuded kindness. You know the type—opulent in figure, wholesome and ripe, her face beaming in wide wrinkles of pink flesh.

The sudden generous smile of the big mouth showed her the possessor of a real charm. Her eyes had a blue twinkle that attracted laughter. Quite plainly she would be delightful as a mother. For about her was something that conjured visions of nursery fires, of warm, sweet bread-and-milk, of sugar plums after nasty powders, and of kisses and forgiveness given for childish wrong doing, without any unfair bargaining for repentence.

But this woman had no child. Nature does not always, in this matter, act as intelligently as she might. We all know of many Betsy Trotwoods. On the other hand, we find children lavished wastefully—yes, children, swarming in the cold homes of mothers who do not want them—women without understanding of children or any trace of parental passionateness. Do you not recall many modern prototypes of Mrs. Jellaby?

I felt my bowels ache for this woman with her rich and wasted motherhood. Her opulent affections were lavished not, as they should have been, on the tender warm bodies of little children, but on dogs.

Never have I seen so many dogs: they were placed all over the rather small room. Both easy chairs were occupied by a canine seater. There was a mother with new baby-pups in a lined basket before the great fire. Another dog who was sick was in another basket, wrapped in a shawl, on the other side of the fire. The room was stifling, and had a sick, close, doggy smell. And though I am a lover of dogs, I felt disgusted. I really hated those pampered toys, that snarled and snapped and grumbled at me in the most horrible way. Believe me, I am not exaggerating. You could not speak. The whole room was dogs. Enough! Let us leave them and get on to something of greater value.

It was that thought which caught and gripped my attention. This woman’s unfilled life. I could not forget it: it stayed with me long after I had left the house—a memory not to be obliterated.

She was forlorn among her dogs. It was a tragedy of waste. I have had so many dreams of the perfect mother that I was stung to anger and impatience to find her, at last here, squandering her affections on a canine brood.

The situation was so plain. This woman needed children, if not of her flesh, then adopted and made her own by the rich fullness of her motherhood.

NOBODY’S CHILDREN

CHILD ADOPTION: A MUCH NEEDED REFORM

It was a short time after I had found “the perfect mother” thus wasted, that there came into my hands the “White Paper” which gives in full the wise and interesting Report of the Committee on Child Adoption. I knew that here was just the very thing that was wanted. Here was shewn the means by which the motherly childless woman and the motherless child could be brought together.

The desire for child adoption has never been stronger than it is at the present time. But I do not hesitate to say that, in the present absence of any law to regulate and safeguard adoption, the position is so set about with difficulties and so pressed with continuous dangers that the practice ought to be actively discouraged. It is dangerous for the adopter and, what matters even more, it is dangerous for the child.

The emphatic and unanimous decision of the Committee was that there is immediate necessity for a change in the law to make the adoption of children legal in this country. Every one who gave evidence was unanimously in favour of adoption in all cases where, for one reason or another, any child could not have the care of its own parents. It is much better for every child to be brought up in a home than in an institution. Not only is it cheaper, but the child benefits far more. But adoption needs to be regulated and legalised. The child is too precious a possession to leave to anyone to do with as they desire.

The report recommends:—

1. That after obtaining the consent of the real parents and the adopting parents, as well as the consent of the child, if he (or she) is over fourteen, all adoption shall be sanctioned by a judicial authority.

2. That confidential official inquiries shall be made from time to time, as to the child’s progress and happiness in the adopted home.

3. That the child shall take the adopter’s name, and shall have, as far as is possible, the position of a natural child.

This Report was presented in June, 1921. Yet nothing has been done. And what I wish to emphasize with all the power that I have, is the crime of this delay and the urgent need there is for immediate legislation. Children are waiting to be adopted; childless people are waiting to adopt. Surely it ought not to be difficult to frame a simple law that would safeguard the interests of both.

There is little wonder that hitherto adoption has not been popular in this country. One strong reason that has prevented the far-sighted from attempting it is that in England there is no legal method by which adoption can be carried out. And because of this there is, as I have said, too much danger connected with it, as well as not enough certainty of its continuance. For the law grants the foster-parent no recognised control over the child.

There is the ever present fear, increasing as the years pass and the child grows up, lest the natural parent shall come one day and claim the right to take the child away—an injustice specially likely to happen as the child becomes older and is able to earn money.

Then there is, on the other side, the possibility (often realised) of the adoption being a commercial transaction between the parent (most frequently an unmarried mother) and a foster-parent, by which the latter receives a sum of money and takes over an unwanted child, who most frequently dies. It is horrible to contemplate.

But indeed, always, there is the dangerous position of the adopted child, who has no settled position, no legal claim on the foster-parents, who may adopt a child in the most solemn manner and keep it all through the attractive years of childhood, then, when the less attractive years of adolescence begin, or when any change in circumstances makes the adopted child no longer wanted, they can calmly withdraw their protection and turn the child out of their home. Again, I say, it is horrible to contemplate. The destiny of the adopted child is controlled throughout the unprotected years of childhood and of youth by the whim and caprice, both of the natural parent and the adopted-parent.

And do not comfort yourself by believing that these are merely imaginary troubles. They occur every day as every one knows who has any knowledge of the practice and results of child adoption in this country. I personally know of many cases of injustice that have brought disaster and unhappiness to the child. Let me tell you one. A boy was adopted by a man, unmarried, a minister of God, who was a social worker and greatly attached to children. But later in his life the man married. Under pressure from his mother, accounted as a religious and good woman, the adoption was cancelled, the boy, wanted no longer, was sent to a home for homeless children. No one troubled about him. Or take another case where an illegitimately born child—a baby girl, was abandoned and afterwards reclaimed three times during the first five years of her life! Each time the mother took her away from a happy home with foster-parents who loved and cared well for her. Then after a few months of neglect the mother again abandoned her. They had no legal remedy against the caprice of the mother.

These unguarded children belong to nobody. Here is an amazing gap in our law. It is worse than that—it is an amazing gap in our consciousness and sense of social responsibility. “Nobody’s children!” the phrase has a pitiable and stinging significance. Yet it is just this state of things we are countenancing with our lazy and callous indifference. There are tens of thousands of little ones for whom to-day it is bitter truth that they belong to no one. Orphaned, or unwanted by their natural-parents, many of them are being adopted in the worst and most casual manner—handed out “on probation” like a cat or a dog.

And if you doubt the truth of this statement, listen to the judgment of the Committee on Child Adoption as to the disgraceful carelessness with which adoption is being carried on in this country;

“We believe that the absence of proper control over the ‘adoption’ of children over seven years of age and under that age unless payment is made, results in an undesirable traffic in child life with which no one can interfere, unless proceedings are taken against the adopting parent for cruelty or neglect; children may be handed from one person to another, with or without payment, advertised for disposal, and even sent out of the country without any record being kept. Intermediaries may accept children for ‘adoption’ and dispose of them as and when they choose. Homes and institutions for the reception of the children exist which are not subject to any inspection.” (Paragraph 61, page 10 of the Report.)

The italics in this passage are mine; will you try to think what these conditions, which you are permitting, mean? Think of them with your hearts, not with your heads! And if you have a child of your own, passionately dear to your life, try to realise the abominable position—the cruelty that can hardly be escaped, as if it were your child, who was thus being handed callously from one person to another, without protection, without any form of legal guardianship.

We talk much of the nation’s care for children. Would it not then seem a necessary step to have some just provision of our law to protect the helpless unwanted child, who at present belongs to nobody? Humanity, and even good sense answers, “Yes.” The Common Law of England has hitherto always said most emphatically, “No.” Except for a reference to adoptions which has managed to slip into a marginal note of a Finance Act, there is no recognition of adoption in our laws.

The right thing to do is the simple thing. We have on the one hand, these homeless children, whose numbers have become much larger in these last years and with the change and slackening in responsible conduct, while on the other hand, we have, an increased number of women who are childless and will never be able to marry. The problem, at its simplest, is this: What can be done to bring together the childless woman with a mother’s nature and the motherless child?

I am not forgetting the Institutions that are already in existence. There are two agencies for arranging adoption, as well as other religious and social societies, and many homes, from which children can be adopted. These agencies are doing admirable work, but they cannot do a tenth part of what ought to be done. And the very worst cases, in which the child most urgently needs protection, often cannot be reached at all. This problem is too big to be muddled through privately. It is the concern of the whole nation.

The first necessary step is to legalise adoption. Until that is done, nothing can be done.

At present as I have told you, the position is one of very great danger. The law grants the foster-parents no recognised legal control over the child. The mother, or her relatives, unless obviously immoral and unfit persons, may at any time claim back the child.

Even in the most favourable circumstances there is danger, and a never-ending uncertainty that cuts at the very root of the adopted relationships. I repeat: neither the foster-parent or the child has any security. And at any time, and for any reason, the child may be taken from his home. Directly he (or she) grows up and is able to earn money, the needy relatives, with an eye on those small earnings or on the much larger sums squeezable from the foster-parents, may prove an ever-threatening nuisance. If the foster-parent acts boldly and resists such claim, the relative may apply for a writ of Habeas Corpus in the High Court, when (under the Custody of the Children’s Act, 1891) the case is decided at the discretion of the Court. As a rule, the interests of the child are considered, and, in this respect, matters have much improved of late years. But even if the decision is given in favour of the foster-parents so that the child remains in the home in which it has been reared and is loved, there is a period of ceaseless anxiety; and, that the decision will be favourable is certain only when the character of the claiming relative can be proved to be bad.

So curious is the law that it is safer to adopt the child of bad or doubtful parentage (where this can be proved) than the child of good and respectable people.

The other side of the position has also to be considered. As is evident, the foster-parents may be bad. This we have seen. And what I want to emphasise further is that here too the danger threatens the unprotected child. Just as the law gives no recognised protection to the good foster-parents, so it affords no protection to the child against a bad foster-parent.

All the time I am trying to drive into your consciousness the terrible position of the child that has no legal claims; no kind of safeguard. He (or, of course, she, and the girl babies are adopted much oftener than boys) may be adopted simply as playthings, or to satisfy deeply unconscious instincts of cruelty, or as an investment for the time when they can earn money. Also they can be cast off at the caprice of their adopters.

A further and permanent injustice, operative even under happy conditions and in a good home, arises from the fact that the adopted child is without rights of inheritance. If his foster parents, however rich, die intestate, he has no share in the family property. At any time in his life he may be left penniless and friendless, without recognition that he belongs to anyone.

Such uncertainty is awful. Try to realise the suffering which it must bring to the child, ever dogging his footsteps like a menacing shadow.

Our sluggard imaginations must surely be stirred now our attention has been directed to this gap in our law. I wish that my pen had greater power to bring home to everyone concerned—and everyone who cares or professes to care for the welfare of children is concerned—the iniquity of allowing the continuance of conditions that must bring nothing less than tragedy into the lives of these unfortunate and unprotected little ones.

This is almost the only country which does not recognise and legalise adoption: all that needs to be done is to bring our law up to the standard which prevails in other lands. We alone are neglectful. It is one of the many social matters concerning children on which Great Britain has seriously fallen behind the example of its own daughter States. The United States, Australia and New Zealand have all gone far ahead of the Mother Country in their legislation in regard to child adoption. All the forty-eight States of the Union have now Acts regulating adoption. But perhaps the Model Act is that of Western Australia, passed in 1891. It provides for the complete and careful guardianship of all adopted children. The Act has worked admirably, and with a very few alterations could be adopted to the needs of this country.

And it must not be thought that all this recognition and protection of adoption is a new thing, and, as such, possible to dismiss as unnecessary, belonging to an over-protective and grandmotherly system of law. Such a belief would be far from the truth. Students of history know how almost universal was the practice of adoption in older civilisations. Roman law recognised the custom and adoption was extremely common. I could give many other examples. Especially interesting is the custom in India, where among the Hindoos, when a child is adopted into a new family, it goes through the religious ceremonies belonging to death before quitting the home in which it was born, and afterwards goes through the religious ceremonies belonging to birth on reaching the new home. The old bond is completely severed and a new social, religious and legal bond created.

I would ask your attention to this wise provision made by one of the oldest civilisations, which often understood so much more practically and simply the needs of a social situation.

If the full necessary security is to be given to the practice of adoption there must clearly be a complete passing over of the duties and rights of the natural-parents to the adopting parents. Adoption ought to be undertaken only solemnly and with due understanding of all the difficulties, and the necessary precautions. The closest enquiries, in every case, need to be made as to the bona fide intentions and complete suitability of the adopting parents: guarantees must be given of their intentions and ability to bring up and care for the child. It would also be equally necessary, except in exceptional cases of proved cruelty and unfit parentage, to ascertain the reasons why the parents—or parent in the case of an illegitimately born child—desired to give up their rights of guardianship. But when once this has been done, and any order of adoption made, the parental relationship ought to be transferred completely from the natural to the adopting parents.

And in the interests of the child, I would have this transference carried out with the severest restrictions. I would not allow a parent, or parents, who once gave up the guardianship of the child any rights of visitation. Such visits, even under the happiest circumstances cause disturbance, remind the child unceasingly of its difficult position as an adopted child. They tend to create confusion, with feelings of dissatisfaction and jealousy; comparison between the old home and the new home; conflicts between the affection for the adopted-parents and the very possible drawing back of natural affection for the real parents.

All ways adoption must be difficult.

Science has shewn us how terribly the future of the child depends on its early relationships in the home; its relation to its mother, on whom it depends for the first childish satisfactions, its relations to its father, to its brothers and sisters. The adopted relationships can never be quite the same as the natural relationships. We now know how easily jealousy and unhappiness can arise in the heart of even the youngest child, and what havoc to the after life these feelings may bring. If we remember this, we shall realise better the disturbing emotions likely to be aroused when one parent is lost and replaced by another. That is why everything possible needs to be done to give to adopted parenthood the strongest stability. The adoption of a child ought never to be undertaken lightly. It is, perhaps, the most binding and the most solemn, and the most fatefully responsible of any human relationship.

A righteous law of adoption needs to guard the adopted child so that the voluntary relationship is as binding in every way and as permanent as the natural relationship. For this reason the adopted child should, in my opinion, have the same rights of inheritance as all other children. Nothing short of this can do justice to the adopted child.

We talk a great deal to-day about children and their rights, but very few of us realise at all practically and fully the change of attitude, in particular in connection with property and the rights of inheritances, that are likely to be necessary, if, in all circumstances, our theories are to be expressed in our daily conduct.

The whole question is complicated and very difficult, there is, indeed, no easy way out.

LET US PENSION THE MOTHERS.

I was attending a conference to consider the best steps to be taken to aid mothers and to stop the sacrifice of the lives and health of little children. All kinds of suggestions were made. We talked much, we proposed and discussed, but none of us seemed able to agree what ought to be done.

Then a strong man, an observant lawyer, rose. He spoke with the biting American twang. His words were few: “Why don’t you pay poor mothers?”

The brilliant simplicity of this question stirred at once our powers of understanding.

It was Judge Neil who spoke. In brief phrases he told us what had been done in America. Mother’s pensions, which are in reality children’s pensions, have been established in most of the forty-eight States of the Union. They are granted until the children are fourteen, or, in the case of delicate children, until sixteen. State-appointed supervisors watch over the welfare of the children to ensure that the money given is well spent by the mother.

As Judge Neil placed the facts before us, this plan of paying mothers instead of forcing them to go out as workers, possibly at “sweated” wages, and then paying other people in an institution to do their work, seemed so simple that I was filled with wonder that we had not long ago thought of so easy and obvious a reform. It is strange that it is so often the most simple things that we never think of doing. I believe it is because we think of reforms intellectually; we are not human enough to feel.

Now, it is just Judge Neil’s humanity that set his feet upon the right way. Listen to the story of how first he came to think of mother’s pensions:—

In 1911, a poor widow, broken by the burden of supporting her family, was condemned to have all her five children taken from her.

“Better to shoot her than take away her children.” said Judge Neil. He then asked how much it would cost to maintain the children in a State institution.