A Courageous Letter

DEAREST ELIZABETH,—
You say in your letter, ‘ Do not scold or sympathize — I can do plenty of that for us both. Just tell me as completely as possible what you did and why, and whether or not it has paid.’ How could I scold you? Don’t you suppose I know that a desperate woman is a mad woman, and that none of her reasoning will bear the earmarks of sanity?
And even though you forbid it, I do sympathize. I realize that this last blow is altogether merciless because it comes at the end of four almost unbearable years, and because it comes at a time when you believed that the worst really was over. It’s all so futile — like the killing of a soldier in that last hour before the signing of the Armistice!
But, merciless or not, the emergency is here and has to be faced. Since you feel that my meeting of a similar emergency may have in it something of practical value for you, I am opening wide the book of my experience. What I did and why, and whether or not it has paid, is all here for you to read.
The first thing I did was to call the children into conference. Because of the gravity of our situation, it seemed to me to be the only way. I felt that our only hope for survival lay in complete coöperation.
I began by reminding them that their father is a man of rare ability, and that his record of achievement is such that we all have justifiable reason to be proud. I assured them that eventually a man of their father’s ability and experience must find his place in the economic world. I warned them,

however, that I did not know how long this readjustment might take, and I refused to hold out to them any false hope. Meanwhile, we were going right on being proud of him and having faith in him.
I felt this was of infinite importance to Jim and to myself, for the children’s pride and faith in their father have been very precious to us both.
Then I did a very prideful thing: I got out the history of their father’s family and traced for them the part these men and women, whose name they bear, had played in the founding, the developing, and the perpetuating of this country. I said, ‘You see, once upon a time this country had need for men and women like you. That need may come again. Consequently, I am not going to allow you to be wasted.’ I told them that the history of mankind was full of periods when just to survive was triumph. (And this, Elizabeth, is my answer to your question, ‘ If I can offer my children nothing but a bare existence, why bother with that existence at all?‘)
I admitted that, for the present, adequate shelter, the simplest of food, and something in the way of clothes were the very most we could do for them. With these bare essentials they must learn to be content, though naturally I neither expected nor wanted them to be satisfied with so little. You see I was almost brutally honest, because I had to be. I knew that if I tried to play ‘Pollyanna’ and went about singing, —

and then that rainbow failed to make its appearance, I should no longer have the confidence of my children. I had to have their confidence if I was to see them through.
I told them that the fight for survival was always a grim business, but that we were not going to be one bit grim about it. On the contrary, we were going to be the jolliest group of soldiers that were ever put through a forced march.
I warned them that each one of us would have to develop great respect for a penny, but that we did not have to come to worship it. To me that has always seemed one of the most unpleasant characteristics of so many people of little means; they overestimate the importance of money and underestimate the value of everything else.
Frankly, I told the children that we were going to be poor, — this had been wished upon us, — but that we did not have to become impoverished unless we wished, because we were still rich in so much that made life worth living. I went over these riches one by one because it seemed to me that this was definitely a time for taking inventory.
‘You children,’ I told them, ‘have more than average health and intelligence. There has always been harmony in your home and there always will be — something of which few children of this age can boast. You have beautiful memories of places, and your lives have touched interesting and worth-while people. You have always had the best in books and they are friends who will stand by you in the worst of days. You have a good radio which frequently brings you the best in music and sometimes splendid bits of drama as well. These are your riches; with them you will have to be content for the present.’
Then, since it was still inventory time, I told each one how I thought he was particularly well adapted to go through this adjustment period and where I thought he might prove to be particularly vulnerable. I went even further and did what only a twentieth-century mother would do: I told them just where I anticipated trouble in myself.
‘ No crisis has ever yet found me lacking in courage,’ I told them, ‘but I am not certain that I have enough of the dogged, persistent kind of courage which can hold out day after day. If I am lacking in that, I shall have to develop it, and you children will have to bear with me and help me in every way you can while I am learning. In fact, our success in this new venture will be determined largely by the sympathy and understanding and tenderness we display toward each other.’
It was a big order I was giving my children and no one appreciated that fact more fully than I. First, no matter what happened, they were to keep intact their pride and their faith in their father. Second, they were to be content with existence, keeping in mind that people of their calibre were not so common that their country could afford to waste them. Third, they must learn the nice art of respecting money without worshiping it, and the equally nice art of being poor without being impoverished. Finally, though each one of them would be passing through a period of intensive change and adjustment, each must be patient and tolerant and kind to the other.
As I said, the order was large — much too large to hope to fill completely. But these children of ours have come so close to filling the order that our pride in them is colossal.
You want to know if the rewards have been worth the struggle. I do not know. It is too early to tell because I am still so close to it all.
There is a law of compensation. You and I both believe that. But whether the compensation is or is not proportionate remains to be seen.
My children know more about courage and steadfastness and self-control than many people learn in a lifetime of living. Besides that, they have gone far in tolerance and understanding. Never will they say as their mother used to do, ’How in the world did people like that ever get into such a jam anyway?’ because they know too much about ‘jams’ to be impatient with anybody who is in one.
They have taken big strides in the art of coöperation, and it is no mean art to master. They have developed perspective, for, when one fixes his eyes upon the mountains, the molehills over which he stumbles slip by unnoticed. I thought of that about Thanksgiving time when a girl whom I used to see often in the old days ran in tearing her hair because her Christmas cards were going to be a bit later than she had expected. I sat with my hands idle in my lap — they should have been doing so many things just then — and I thought to myself, ’No daughter of mine will ever take on about nothing.’ I know it is true, too.
But still, with all this to their good, I wonder if it is best that my children should have to learn so much so soon. It is very like sending a ten-year-old child to college. It is possible that he could do the work, but why should he? I like an ordered existence, with everything coming along in its rightful place. I like childhood to be childish, and age to be dignified. This pushing of a child into adulthood — either in mind or in character — has no appeal for me.
As a family we have become genuinely fond of each other and beautifully friendly. Not many families can make a similar boast. I realized that the other day when a girl who seemingly has everything enviable in the world said, ‘I’m so glad that Joan is old enough to take to the movies,’ — Joan is four, — ’because now I know what to do with her on Nana’s afternoon out. She used to drive me so frantic that by the time it was seven o’clock I just fell into bed unconscious.’ Perhaps I am vainglorious, but I could not help contrasting that mother’s experience with one of my own. Last fall when little David started off for his first day of school, he stopped at the drive, turned around, and came back to say to me, ‘Mother, I just want to tell you that I think you and I’ve had a bully time here together.’ Mother complex? I don’t believe so, for of all our children he has adjusted himself to school the most easily and the most happily. You see, he was fortified by his intensive course in coöperation here at home.
As a family we have become rank opportunists. Our faith in ‘to-morrow’ has been so often betrayed that we put no stock in it whatsoever. To-day is here. To-morrow may never come. So we set out to squeeze every last drop of pleasure and fun out of each day as it passes.
The other morning, while we were at breakfast, a gorgeous Kentucky cardinal perched on a snow-covered limb just outside the window. I carried that picture with me the whole day through, even when the washing machine broke down in the midst of the washing.
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that it is just an affectation — this prizing of such simple and commonplace experiences. I used to believe that, too, in the days when my plate was so heaped with good things that my only dilemma lay in choosing. But, when that plate goes suddenly bare, one learns to appreciate the little that is left or else one spends his life in drooping melancholy. We, as a family, do not choose to droop.

In some ways it is easier to have a good time than it ever was before; first, because we are so eager for happiness, and then because we are no longer weighed down with the appurtenances of nice living. For example, picnics used to be the bane of my existence because there was so much to prepare and then to pack. Now, we take a meat pie out of the oven, put a couple of bottles of milk and a few apples into a basket, and, with these very trifling impedimenta, wander down to the creek to eat our dinner. It’s surprising how delicious this simple fare becomes when eaten under the trees.
Still, I miss nice living, and so will you. You will miss much else besides, such as folks that are stimulating, places that are new and different. You’ll miss comfort and luxury, and, above all, you will miss the future. I have, anyway. Until I became an opportunist I never realized how much of my time I spent dreaming of the children’s future. I wanted to do so much for them, especially for the girls — one feels that a man-child can get by somehow, if he has the proper stuff in him. Now all that has changed, and the change has been very difficult for me to accept. But I think I am a bit more reconciled than I was a few weeks ago, and all because of an experience which I know will interest you.
We were invited to the Town Club to a dinner party, and I did anticipate it, not only because that sort of thing is rare now, but because I very much wanted to meet one of the guests. If I were to tell you her name you would recognize her at once, for her father is a personage. The best of everything has gone into the making of that girl: the finest schools, extensive travel, unusual contacts — all that a mother most covets for her own daughters.
My dear Elizabeth, I have never in all my life been so thoroughly disappointed in anyone. She was most unprepossessing in appearance—thin and sallow and neurotic. Her voice was shrill and her manner shrewish. Her husband, who appeared to be a very likable fellow, bore the brunt of her ill temper. She ’rode’ him mercilessly and was anxious that we all should be an appreciative audience to the ‘ riding.’
Afterward several people made it their business to tell me, confidentially, that he drank too much. No wonder he drank! If I were he I should go out and drown myself in the hardest liquor I could find, for his only hope of peace or of happiness lies in some sort of oblivion.
In the same party was a girl who impressed me more than any stranger ever has. She was lovely to look at, she was beautifully poised, her voice was charming, she had the ‘grand manner’ and yet was delightfully gracious. I kept thinking, ‘Someone has made a mistake. Surely this is the girl with the many advantages!’ But when I inquired I found that she had been her husband’s secretary before her marriage and that her education had been confined to high school and a very short business course.
Now I have not lost my good common sense to such an extent that I instantly conclude that every secretary who marries her employer is a lady, and every girl of unlimited opportunity necessarily develops into a sallow, neurotic shrew. But this experience did remind me that the word ‘educate’ means to draw or lead forth, and, if there is nothing to lead forth, not one or a dozen schools can truly educate. On the other hand, if my daughters should have in themselves something worth while, it is possible that they will become true gentlewomen anyway.
That thought has been something of a consolation to me, and I pass it on because I know that your darkest hours will come when you allow yourself to contrast what you can do for your children with what you had intended to do.
There is another pitfall, too, against which I would warn you, and again I am going to tell you of an experience of mine which might help you. When a family of eight children moved into the house across the street I was all ready to throw up both hands and sink for the last time. I knew, of course, that there would be noise — quarrelings and wranglings and scoldings. And it was summer! To my surprise and delight, none of my fears were realized. In the whole time they lived there I never once heard the mother’s voice raised in scolding. She was one of the calmest and most beautifully tranquil persons I have ever seen. I was both relieved and astonished, but much too busy to wonder how this new neighbor had come by so much serenity.
Then one day I saw my son looking at me speculatively, and presently he asked, ‘Mother, do you think you could raise eight children without raising your voice?’
I confessed that I not only thought I could n’t but knew I could n’t. I said, ‘Suppose you find out for me how it’s done.’
After considerable sleuthing my son turned in his report, and what he discovered has stood me in mighty good stead. The mother of eight, he reported, was very wise in her choice of discards. Somewhere along the way she had come to accept the fact that she could not maintain the same standard of living with eight children that she could if she had but one. Jimmy reported that the house was always in order, but that often it was not dusted. The children wore serviceable clothes which did not show soil and were not too frequently washed, though the children themselves showed signs of frequent bathing. Furthermore the sheets were washed but not ironed, and the same was true of the towels. This sort of compromise went right on down the line.
To women like you and me, such a compromise is difficult to effect. Spotlessness — not just cleanliness — has been our birthright and the birthright of our children. But I warn you that in this new and changed world into which we have been thrust spotlessness comes at too high a figure. It is just another luxury which we must learn to do without.
Of course in fiction one does encounter women with unlimited strength, and, since authors of unquestioned integrity continue to write about such people, I am certain they must exist — somewhere. It has never yet been my privilege to meet one of these tireless souls. On the contrary, all the women I have known have had definite energy limitations. When they push themselves past those limitations, they become cross and unreasonable and not at all pleasant to live with. So I warn you that, unless you are certain you are one of these indefatigable souls, you must learn to compromise. If a film must gather somewhere, let it be on your windows and not on your spirit, which must be bright enough to show your children the way.
You and I, Elizabeth, have been dealt a no-honor hand. If ever we are able to take a trick, it will be because we have made such wise and careful discards. I think that we are going to take some tricks yet. When or how I do not know. But I am not ready to throw down my hand in disgust, and I feel confident that, when you have had a little longer to accustom yourself to your changed circumstances, you will want to go on playing the hand, too.
Meanwhile, I love you and believe in you.
MARY