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Page 39
This is your position; and as much as it is the duty of the very wealthy
to expend proportionally upon their dress, so is it yours to be
scrupulously economical, and to bring down your aspiring thoughts from
the regions of poetry and romance to the homely duties of mending and
caretaking. There will be poetry and romance too in the generous and
useful employment you may make of the money thus economised. Besides, if
you do not yet see that they exist in the smallest and homeliest of
every-day cares, it is only because your mind has not been sufficiently
developed by experience to find poetry and romance in every act of
self-control and self-denial.
There is, I believe, a general idea that genius and intellectual
pursuits are inconsistent with the minute observations and cares that I
have been recommending; and by nature perhaps they are so. The memoirs
of great men are filled with anecdotes of their incompetency for
commonplace duties, their want of observation, their indifference to
details: you may observe, however, that such men were great in learning
alone; they never exhibited that union of action and thought which is
essential to constitute a heroic character.
We read that a Charlemagne and a Wallenstein could stoop, in the midst
of their vast designs and splendid successes, to the cares of selling
the eggs of their poultry-yard,[68] and of writing minute directions
for its more skilful management.[69] A proper attention to the repair
of the strings of your gowns or the ribbons of your shoes could scarcely
be farther, in comparison, beneath your notice.
The story of Sir Isaac Newton's cat and kitten has often made you smile;
but it is no smile of admiration: such absence of mind is simply
ridiculous. If, indeed, you should refer to its cause you may by
reflection ascertain that the concentration of thought secured by such
abstraction, in his particular case, may have been of use to mankind in
general; but you must at the same time feel that he, even a Sir Isaac
Newton, would have been a greater man had his genius been more
universal, had it extended from the realms of thought into those of
action.
With women the same case is much stronger; their minds are seldom, if
ever, employed on subjects the importance and difficulty of which might
make amends for such concentration of thought as would necessarily,
except in first-rate minds, produce abstraction and inattention to
homely every-day duties.
Even in the case of a genius, one of most rare occurrence, an attention
to details, and thoughtfulness respecting them, though certainly more
difficult, is proportionally more admirable than in ordinary women.
It was said of the wonderful Elizabeth Smith, that she equally excelled
in every department of life, from the translation of the most difficult
passages of the Hebrew Bible down to the making of a pudding. You should
establish it as a practical truth in your mind, that, with a strong
will, the intellectual powers may be turned into every imaginable
direction, and lead to excellence in one as surely as in another.
Even where the strong will is wanting, and there may not be the same
mechanical facility that belongs to more vigorous organizations, every
really useful and necessary duty is still within the reach of all
intellectual women. Among these, you can scarcely doubt that the science
of economy, and that important part of it which consists in taking care
of your clothes, is within the power of every woman who does not look
upon it as beneath her notice. This I suppose you do not, as I know you
to take a rational and conscientious view of the minor duties of life,
and that you are anxious to fulfil those of exactly "that state of life
unto which it has pleased God to call you."[70]
I must not close this letter without adverting to an error into which
those of your sanguine temperament would be the most likely to fall.
You will, perhaps--for it is a common progress--run from one extreme to
another, and from having expended too large a proportion of your income
on personal decoration, you may next withdraw even necessary attention
from it. "All must be given to the poor," will be the decision of your
own impulses and of over-strained views of duty.
This, however, is, in an opposite direction, quitting the station of
life in which God has placed you, as much as those do who indulge in an
expenditure of double their income. Your dressing according to your
station in life is as much in accordance with the will of God
concerning you, as your living in a drawing-room instead of a kitchen,
in a spacious mansion instead of a peasant's cottage. Besides, as you
are situated, there is another consideration with respect to your dress
which must not be passed over in silence. The allowance you receive is
expressly for the purpose of enabling you to dress properly, suitably,
and respectably; and if you do not in the first place fulfil the purpose
of the donor, you are surely guilty of a species of dishonesty. You have
no right to indulge personal feeling, or gratify a mistaken sense of
duty, by an expenditure of money for a different purpose from that for
which it was given to you; nor even, were your money exclusively your
own, would you have a right to disregard the opinions of your friends by
dressing in a different manner from them, or from what they consider
suitable for you. If you thus err, they will neither allow you to
exercise any influence over them, nor will they be at all prejudiced in
favour of the, it may be, stricter religious principles which you
profess, when they find them lead to unnecessary singularity, and to
disregard of the feelings and wishes of those around you. It is
therefore your duty to dress like a lady, and not like a peasant
girl,--not only because the former is the station in life God himself
has chosen for you, but also because you have no right to lay out other
people's money on your own devices; and, lastly, because it is your
positive duty, in this as in all other points, to consult and consider
the reasonable wishes and opinions of those with whom God has connected
you by the ties of blood or friendship.
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