CHAPTER VII. A LESSON IN PHILANTHROPY.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Brownson, Orestes Augustus
Full of my new resolution, I immediately set myself at work to carry it into effect. The safest and most expeditious way of doing it, I thought, would be to place myself at once in communication with some prominent and well-instructed philanthropist. Accordingly, I started forthwith for Philadelphia, to consult the beautiful and fascinating young lady, who, in my previous visit, had so warmly and energetically defended the eating of the forbidden fruit at the suggestion of that first of philanthropists, as a brave, heroic, and disinterested act. She, of all my acquaintances and friends, was unquestionably the one best fitted to complete my initiation into the mysteries of philanthropy, and to inspire and direct me in my efforts at world-reform.
This lady, whom, out of respect to the great Montanus, who claimed to be the Paraclete or Comforter, and professed to have the power of working miracles very much of the character of those wrought by our modern mesmerizers and spiritualists, I must be permitted to call Priscilla, had some years before touched my fancy, and if the truth must be confessed, had made more than an ordinary impression on my heart. She had often visited me in my waking dreams, as a lovely, though flitting vision. She was at my last visit at least twenty-five years old, but as fresh and as blooming as at seventeen, when first I had the pleasure of meeting her. She was a sweet lady, with a lovely and graceful figure, exquisitely moulded, regular and expressive features, and as learned, as brilliant, as fascinating, and as enthusiastic as the celebrated Hypatia of Alexandria, who stirred up the zeal of the good monks of Nitria, gave so much trouble to Saint Cyrill, and spread such a halo around expiring paganism. She had been sent by the Abolition Society as a delegate to the great Anti-Slavery World’s Convention at London, and being denied a seat in that illustrious body, because a woman, she had turned her attention to the question of woman’s rights, and, after travelling a few months on the continent, had returned home well instructed in Godwin’s Political Justice, and a devout believer in Mary Wolstonecroft. She was liberal in her views, and very far from being a “one-idea” woman.
Her mind was large and comprehensive, and her heart was capacious and loving enough to embrace and warm all classes of reformers, white, red, black, religious, moral, political, social, and domestic.
The morning after my arrival in the City of Brotherly Love, I called on Priscilla at her residence in Arch Street, as I supposed with her mother. I found her surrounded by some ten or a dozen reformers, variously dressed; some in petticoats, some in pantaloons: some with and some without beards; the majority appearing to be of what grammarians call the epicene gender. She greeted me kindly, and requested me to be seated; she would be disengaged in a few moments. I took a seat, and amused myself as well as I could in studying the interesting group before me, and considering the sort of materials that go to the making up of a world-reformer, and the charming associates I was likely to have in my new career. Having listened to their several reports, heard their suggestions, and given them her directions, Priscilla soon dismissed them with a sweet smile, and a graceful salute with her hand, that would have done credit to the grace and dignity of an empress. She then seated herself near me, and welcomed me most cordially and affectionately to Philadelphia. My visit was an unexpected pleasure, but all the more welcome. “But,” she exclaimed, looking me more closely in the face, and struck with my changed and careworn expression, “what in the world, my friend, has happened to you?”
I was about to reply, when I observed that we were not alone. An exceedingly meek and submissive-looking man, if man he could be called, had just entered the room, and seemed to be hesitating whether to advance or retreat. I looked inquiringly at Priscilla.
“O, it is only my husband,” she replied. Then turning, with her sweet face to him, with an indefinable charm in her soft musical tones, said, “You may leave us, dear James. This gentleman and I would be alone.”
He quietly retreated through the door he had entered, gently closed it, and went away without speaking a word, or betraying the least sign of discontent.
“But, my dear madam,” said I, “this takes me by surprise. I was not aware that you had a husband.”
“Possibly not; yet I have been married these five years.”
“What! you were married when I was in the city last year and had the pleasure of meeting you, and having that most pleasant and instructive conversation with you?”
“Most assuredly.”
“This alters my plan. I had made up my mind,—”
“Not to marry me yourself?”
“Pardon me, my dear madam, but I own that I had dreamed of something of the sort.”
“You might have done worse. I could have made you a good wife, but you would never have made me a good husband.”
“Why not? I am not precisely a man to be slightly rejected.”
“That may be; and had you proposed in season, I might not have rejected you. I am glad, however, that you did not, for I might have loved you, and you alone, and then I should never have become a philanthropist, and devoted all my sympathies and energies to the emancipation of my sex, and to the development and progress of my race. You would have engrossed all my thoughts and affections, and have been my tyrant.”
“But if I had loved you in return, and laid my own heart at your feet?”
“That would have made the matter worse. In loving me you would only have loved yourself, and sought only your own pleasure. Men usually love only to sacrifice her they love to themselves; while woman, when she loves, is ready to sacrifice herself to her beloved. Man’s love is selfish; woman’s is disinterested.”
“Women are disinterested creatures, and never exact any return for their love!”
“They are more disinterested than you believe. There is nothing that a true woman will not do for him she loves. She will abandon herself without reserve to his wishes, go through fire and water, nay, hell itself, for him, and take delight in damning her own soul, to please him.”
“That is because her love is an instinct, a blind passion, a sort of madness or frenzy, not a sober, rational affection.”
“Perhaps so; but it is rather because her love is love. Unhappily, woman feels, she does not reason, or if she reasons, it is only in the interest of her feeling. Reason is cold, calculating; love is warm and self-sacrificing. It is heedless of consequences.”
“And therefore is the better for having reason or prudence for a companion.”
“It is clear that you have never loved.”
“Perhaps not; but at any rate I think I could have loved you very much in your own fashion.”
“That is not improbable, at least, as far as it is in your calculating nature; for I have been thought to have my attractions, and it would not be difficult to make any man my slave—unless I loved him. Yet you would always have loved me as a master, and have always held me in subjection. There are natures born to command. You would never have loved me as my dear James loves me, and never have been the meek, submissive, quiet, dear good man that he is. His love is not tyrannical, and it imposes no burden on me. He interferes with none of my plans, restrains none of my movements, and is satisfied with feeling that he is my husband and belongs to me, without once presuming to think of me as his wife and as belonging to him.”
“That is charming, and must, no doubt, entirely satisfy your heart.”
“That is my own affair. But I will tell you that it does not, and that it does.”
“But that is a riddle; pray rede it.”
“It does not satisfy the deep want of the heart to love, for no woman can love, with all her heart, a man she can make her slave, or who does not maintain himself as her master. But as I would not become any one’s slave, as I would not that any man should engross all my affections, and compel me to live all my life in love’s delirium, it satisfies, and more than satisfies me. It leaves me free to be a philanthropist, and does not compel me to give up to one what was meant for mankind. If my husband engrossed all my affections I should be happy and contented at home, and should never seek relief in going abroad.”
“And should it not be so?”
“Consult the parsons and old-fashioned moralists, and they will tell you that it should. But I am a philanthropist. My James loves me sincerely, warmly, disinterestedly, consults my wishes, does whatever I require of him, has full confidence in me, is proud of me, and never doubts that whatever I do is perfect. That is enough.”
“But do you return his love with a disinterestedness and generosity equal to his own?”
“Why should I? It is enough for him that I permit him to love me, and to call himself my husband. For myself, I remain free to be a philanthropist. I cannot give my heart to any individual. I reserve its deepest and holiest affections for mankind.”
“But mankind, without individuals, is an abstraction, a nullity; and to love the race, without loving individuals, is worse than loving a statue or a shadow.”
“Ah! my dear friend, I see that you have not studied the profound philosophy of Plato, and are still a Nominalist, and therefore an egotist. You are still a psychologist, stuck fast in the slough of individualism.”
“It may be so, my dear Priscilla, but I am willing and even anxious to be liberated and set right. I have resolved, let come what will, to be a philanthropist, and to become a world-reformer; and it is to solicit your instructions and assistance to this end that I have visited your city, and sought my interview with you this morning.”
She shook her head and looked doubtingly.
“Do not doubt it,” I said, “I am serious, never more serious in my life. I am on the verge of important discoveries, and perhaps well-nigh within reach of a more than human power. But it is necessary that I at first become a philanthropist, unite myself with the movement party of the age, and take a decided and an active part in the great philanthropic reforms now so widely agitated, and live henceforth for mankind, and not for myself alone.”