XII. SYMPATHY AS AN ART.

I don’t know any circumstances of social life so “trying to men’s souls” on both sides as the circumstances demanding sympathy. Death is bad enough, but it is by no means the worst. Most of us have been through that dark and terrible hour when that which seemed our all has been laid away from our sight and from among men, and our friends have come dressed in somber clothes, and with somber and set countenances have one by one insisted upon laying bare the wound we would fain hide under our mourning garb, and expressing more or less crudely, more or less delicately, the sympathy of which they have come to assure us. It is a social necessity that they should come. We should feel surprised and slighted if they did not, and we do not dream of shirking the painful duty either of receiving or of paying visits of condolence, and yet I often wonder if it would not be well to induce a social revolution wherein this and several other time-honored customs should be swept away.

Time-honored, indeed, for speaking of this matter the other day to a friend I was told that when Job fell into affliction his three friends at once made an appointment to meet and make a collective call of condolence. But—and here please observe the superiority of discretion in the days of Job compared with ours—having arrived, with Job they sat down upon the ground, and for seven days and nights nobody spoke a word! Now, we don’t have time in this era to sit in silence seven days and nights in the presence of our friends, but I often think if our custom was to go and sit seven minutes, more or less, beside our friend and then go away with a mute caress or clasp of the hand, how much better it would be than to try to say something, and that generally the wrong thing. I shall never forget a dear little unconventional widow whom I went to see just after the sudden and shocking death of her young husband.

“It was so good of you to come; but, oh, don’t say a word—not one word!” gasped she, and I almost literally complied.

Yes, bereavement is bad enough, and to very few, if to any, is it given to speak the words of comfort or reassurance. But there are sorrows far more cruel than death; there are bereavements sudden and more hopeless than those of the grave, and it is in these that sympathy may indeed despair of fitly expressing itself, even by sitting silent seven days and nights in its presence.

A man in some prominent position of trust becomes a defaulter and runs away, leaving his wife and family to bear the shame and notoriety of his crime, perhaps leaving them in poverty and debt as well, for very few criminals commit but one kind of sin. A defaulter is usually intensely selfish and considers his own desires so exclusively that he not only appropriates moneys not his own, but his neighbor’s wife as well, and is utterly callous as to the suffering of all sorts to which he condemns the woman lawfully his own.

Now, what sympathy can one express to such a mourner as that wife? What word would seem other than presumptuous and intrusive to such bereavement? And yet we all do feel sorry for her; we all do long to let her know it and to comfort her.

Some of us who have struggled in deep waters ourselves shrink from the attempt and contrive some other mode of showing the true sympathy we feel, and yet there is grief so deeply dyed with shame that positively no notice should be taken of it—even a box of flowers, even a new book or a card, would serve to hint at condolence too strongly, and we remember that though speech is silver, silence is often golden.

But yet again there are griefs even deeper and more sensitive than that of the insulted and deserted wife; there is an agony of shame, not to be shifted to other shoulders than one’s very own; there is a bereavement known to all the world, and yet which the sufferer would fain hide from even her own eyes, and this is when a woman has too readily yielded up her affections to one who simply amused himself with her easy credulity, and when her devotion began to pall “he kissed and rode away.” Every one in her little world knows the whole story. The malicious whisper: “Well, she threw herself at his head. What could she expect?” The kinder hearted ones murmur: “Poor thing! I was afraid he didn’t mean anything.” And the sharpest sting of her mortification is that she knows that they all know and are scoffing at her or pitying her. Still she can bear it so long as nobody says anything—but they will!

There are sure to be at least two or three well-meaning fools who want “to express their sympathy,” who in fact insist upon doing so in spite of all the wriggles and pantings of their victim—as helpless as a frog under a crotched stick, with a cruel boy at the other end, or more appropriately, a frog in the clutches of a vivisectionist, who is determined to lay open the throbbings of “poor froggie’s heart” in the interests of humanity! This sympathizer bides her time. She waits until she can pen her victim in a corner, or penetrate to her bedroom, or get her into a victoria or a coupé where no interruption is possible, and then she begins: “My dear child, I want to tell you how dreadfully sorry I am for your disappointment; but how came you to suppose Mr. Smith was serious in his attentions? Tell me all about it, dear. It will comfort your poor heart to speak out. Did the man ever really ask you to marry him?” And so on until the deserted damsel is ready to fling herself out of the vehicle under the horse’s feet and feels that the loss of her lover is as nothing compared with the shame of being pitied and sympathized with.

Or take the case of a man who has been horse-whipped or kicked or slapped in the face by another man stronger and bigger and therefore braver than himself. He doesn’t want to know that his friends are sorry for him! He would much rather be suffered to imagine that they hadn’t heard of it, and yet there are plenty of thick-skinned idiots who will on the first opportunity rush up with outstretched hand:

“My dear fellow, I want to tell you how indignant I am at the way that brute treated you! Fairly kicked you down the steps of the club-house, they tell me! Just like these great hulking beasts who think, because they are big and strong, a little fellow like you or me must give in to all their insolence!”

Probably the man thus apostrophized at once measures the other “little fellow” with his eye, and mentally decides that he can thrash him at least, and will do so on the first opportunity.

Among my acquaintances on one side or the other of the water I am proud to include a lady whose father was hung, and justly so, for murder. Of course, the most of her friends painfully avoided any subject within rifle shot of the subject, but I heard that more than one well-meaning person had attempted to sympathize with her and thereby nearly drove the poor woman to madness.

Or think of a mother whose son has committed some shameful crime, and is either a fugitive from justice or is suffering her penalties. Fancy any, sympathy, even the most delicate being anything but an offense to such a sufferer. In fact, there is no love upon whose death it is not safer to count than upon that of a mother. It is positively indestructible, and I have never found any other class of love to which that word would apply. Certainly some wives have loved some husbands, some maidens have loved some lovers, some women have loved some men “not wisely, but too well,” through good report and ill, through fortune and misfortune, cruelty and kindness, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, even to the bitter end; but this unreasoning constancy cannot be predicted of wives or fiancées or mistresses as a rule. Much depends upon the individual.

But in the case of mothers it is the rule, especially as regards her sons. The bad boy may develop into the unmitigated scamp, the profligate, the villain, the jailbird, but though she may be driven to discard him, to banish him from her sight, to declare that she no longer calls him son, there is always at the core of her heart an undying flame of love, a divine forgiveness and pity and longing that she could not if she would quench or destroy. Let the sinner but reach his mother’s feet, let him never so clumsily plead, “Mother, I have sinned—oh, forgive me!” and his pardon is assured. Even though her judgment, her reason, her conscience, sternly condemn him, that mother love of hers will rise up and drown them all in the torrent of its deathless force.

In the Scripture story it is set forth as a memorable thing that the father of the prodigal son forgave him. It is not even mentioned that his mother did, for, not to be irreverent, “that goes without saying.” Doubtless she had forgiven him long before he set out for home, and indeed it is probable enough that it was the telepathy of her love and forgiveness that induced him to relinquish his foul living and return.

Well, then, is it not obvious that with such love as this in the background no mother will patiently accept sympathy for her son’s misdeeds? It will only anger her and rouse her to defend him, even though no defense be possible. If she is a womanish sort of woman, she will probably adopt the “tu quoque” form of resentment and say: “Yes, I know Harry has done a foolish thing, but it arose entirely from his desire to help and shield a friend. You must remember all young men are not like your John, always considering what is best for his own interests.”

If she is not womanish, but womanly, the best you can expect is, “Thank you, but this is a subject upon which I do not wish to talk.”

I was once speaking with a lady in London whose son had just been pursued and brought back from the continent under a charge of aggravated breach of trust when another lady came up and took her hand with a murmur of, “Dear Mrs. Blank, I want to tell you how sorry I am——” “What! You have heard of it already!” exclaimed Mrs. Blank, with a smile like the flash of a bayonet. Then half turning to me she continued: “I have lost my coachman, you know. Actually the poor fellow dropped dead in the stables this morning, and I am perfectly heartbroken. The best old soul that ever held a whip. He was my father’s coachman, and actually put me on the first pony I ever rode. But I can’t think how you heard of it so soon, my dear, except that I believe you make it a point to gather every bit of news that is stirring, don’t you?” And with this little blow in the face Mrs. Blank sailed off, leaving her would-be sympathizer gasping.

But there is no need of swelling the list of cases where the truest sympathy is expressed by apparent ignorance of any cause for sympathy. Every person of delicacy or a sensitive organization will recognize such cases for themselves, and to those who are not delicate and sensitive in their own personality, no amount of teaching will effect the object. You cannot train a rhinoceros into a thin-skinned Arab steed, nor a cactus into a sensitive plant. Most people and most things die very much what they are born, and the clumsy sympathizer no doubt will exist when the world ceases, just as it did when it began to be.

But there are cases, and plenty of them, where true and tender sympathy is like the very dew of heaven upon the parched and drooping flowers. There are tender souls that long for sympathy, just as a little child holds up its hurt finger for every one to “kiss and make well.” To such persons, and to sorrow of the ordinary outspoken sort, with no tinge of shame about it, let us give sympathy with a free and generous hand. But, above all, let it be the right of kind sympathy. It is in many cases, if not in all, more blessed to give than to receive, and this applies to gifts of sympathy quite as much as to more tangible matters.

I once knew a lady who said she had been to church all her life, but had not been able to acquire grace sufficient to enjoy being pitied by anybody for anything. Of course this was pride, and pride is naughty, but very universal. Sometimes it takes the form of amour propre, which is something a little different from self-love, although that is the only English equivalent for the phrase. But amour propre is a very delicate thing to handle. Sometimes it is hurt by being touched; sometimes it is still more hurt by being let alone; sometimes such a person as this wants to be sympathized with, and yet is irritably watchful lest the sympathy they demand should seem to place them at fault for their misfortune.

You say to such a one, “How could you trust that man when every one said he was dishonest?” and the sufferer nearly flies in your face with the assertion that she is no more credulous than other people; but, etc.

It is, in one word, a very dangerous and delicate matter either to give or receive sympathy, and all I can say is, remember, like fire, water and gunpowder, it is a good thing so long as you know how to manage it, but if you don’t—for heaven’s sake, let it alone.