The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

"The Salt of the World."

[This may be Grace Maunsell Hanna who married Charles Nelson Gwynne, M.D. Their oldest son John was born in 1889 and became a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was killed while on an errand of mercy in France or Flanders in 1915 during WWI. He had a reputation for courage and died a hero. Their other son, Owen, born in 1891, was a Second Lieutenant in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers, and was killed six months later in Mesopotamia. Their sons would have been 11 and 13 at this writing.]

When you stand on the platform of one of our large railway stations, crowded with an "excursion," going or coming, or walk through the slums and back streets of one of our large cities, it cannot fail to strike you, especially if your business take you often to these places, how terribly prevalent is ugliness; ugliness both moral and physical.

Swiftly you pass door after door, where the steam of the laundry and the smell of the coarse dinner mingle in the dark atmosphere of a crowded little living-room, where pallid ill-developed babies sit on the whitened door step, sucking green apples; or sallow, weary mothers, with mud-coloured garments carelessly pinned together, lounge and gossip, or dart after their old-faced children with shrill scolding and stinging slap. How sad life seems; how large a proportion of our brothers and sisters must regard existence as a mere treadmill of misery and failure.

We might comfort ourselves, perhaps you think, by a view of "West End" or comfortable middle-class and commercial life; by the thought of the tall, handsome girls and men, well dressed, well fed, and well educated, who walk in our fashionable streets, and drink afternoon tea in beautiful drawing-rooms, and declare themselves overworked with amusement and gaiety in one form or another. They live to enjoy what the squalid toiler produces, and their servants are drawn from these poor homes. But the daily newspaper ruthlessly tears away the silken veil that would fain deceive us into the belief that the lot of the aristocrat is the perfection of the scheme of creation, the relief in a dark picture, and that crime and poverty are co-existent, each the other's excuse and result. Often, on the contrary, it is where physical want is unknown that virtue finds it hardest to live; perhaps, indeed, want of happiness and domestic peace is the worst want of all. The lovely tinted faces of many of our countesses would look as pale, weary, and heartbroken as those of the poor mothers in the Crofts, were truth only to colour them, but a strange sympathy would make them kin could they but weep together over drunken, faithless husbands, cruel rebellious children, despair over money difficulties, and the never-ceasing necessity to "move on, move on," when woman's weakness cries for rest. When these things press on one's mind and hurt one's heart with the bitter questions, "Why is it so? What help, what comfort is there?" it is positive consolation to remind oneself of the happy homes, the happy faces, the little oasis of satisfaction that must have come within our own ken, of those lives which must be a pleasure to their Creator, and the influence their environment for good to an undreamed-of degree.

And when I bid you think of the best and happiest people that you know, the most beautiful lives in your experience, what are the faces that first spring into your mind?

I fancy they are not only the faces of great statesmen, geniuses, plutocrats, or even philanthropist. To my mind, at least, come sweeter, homelier, humbler faces; many of them rise from a background of obscurity, and to any one of them fame would appear something very unpleasant, a dazzle against which they would promptly blind their windows. These are the Salt of the Earth, the true saints, who keep alive among us belief in the divine germ in human nature.

I feel sure that there are people alive to-day, as well as those alive to memory only, some perhaps counted in our visiting list, some not seen for years, who deserve to be called saints, as much as ever did St. Elizabeth or St. Monica. Some might even be called martyrs, though their sufferings extend through a life-time, instead of a few agonizing hours at the stake.

Few families are there who do not number amongst them one such member, an invalid, the very thought of whom brings a softer expression to the eyes of her healthier relatives, revered for her patience and wondered at for her cheerfulness.

It is not many years since a boy at C. College told me of the wondrous influence exerted by an elderly lady resident there, a kind good woman, who was, and I hope still is, known as the schoolboys' friend. Utterly unable to leave her couch, and constantly racked with pain, her sofa was nearly always surrounded by their bright faces. Her hospitality was one of their greatest delights, and her friendship a safeguard and guide to their young hearts, often blessed by absent mothers.

I like to think of all the goodness that exists unknown and unadvertised, even in these days when the recording angel has taken to print. It is delightful to come across it, as it is delightful to find wild lily of the valley or white violets in the copse. For so cultured is the plant of charity, we sometimes forget that it is indigenous to human nature, and can exist apart from subscription lists and secretaries, those left hands who are so duly informed of what the right hand doeth.

I know a lady whose chief delight is to do good by stealth. She covers her retreat by generous and judicious subscriptions to the authorised charities, and then goes off and thoroughly enjoys herself in her own way, and that is in helping others who have somehow dropped through the meshes of the public methods of charity. Her specialty is old governesses, old servants, and lonely young men in rooms.

I should be afraid to say how many savings' bank books she holds, and carefully doles out and replenishes at intervals, for these poor old creatures who have so long lived in other people's houses as never to have learned thrift, and who have left life's battlefield "permanently disabled," but with no pension, often with no gratitude, to wear away their remaining days in some miserable refuge.

And the boys, the shy, lonely boys, fresh from their big, lively homes in the country, how welcome is her motherly wing to them. She stays not for daughters, she stops not for prudence, though of the former she has many, and of the latter all her friends credit her with none. She makes the boys welcome to her happy fireside; she wins their love, and keeps them true to heaven and home. In short, she preserves to them that belief in good womanhood which, lost early in life, is the worst bankruptcy that a soul can suffer.

In the photograph book of memory, I turn over and meet another saintly face. In a large family lived a sweet and quiet girl, a nonentity in her lively home, always occupying a back place. And to her came the angel Opportunity and showed her her vocation, and she arose and obeyed the call. From sick bed to sick bed in the families of her relatives she moved with soft, comforting presence and gentle voice, ever neglecting her own health and ministering to others, so that when Love and Health took her hands and gave her a home of her own, it seemed as if a light had gone out of the family.

There are many such in English homes, women born for adversity, who fly to the sick bed as flies the needle to the pole. Some are young, and some are sweet old maids; they have not all become hospital nurses; a few are still left to help us in our emergencies, but in home or in hospital, what a beautiful and unselfish life is that of the voluntary nurse.

Such characters are not mere pinches of salt; they are perfect lumps of it, and their influence is unbounded. But in some excellent people, the salt is only one element, the one saving grace that redeems the otherwise savourless character.

Frequent instances are afforded by mothers. When God gives a woman children, He seems to send them as He sends the rain, "on the just and on the unjust." And if there is anything good in a woman, maternity brings it out, as the salt brings out the savour of things. Say she is selfish, vain, pleasure-loving, or indolent. All that must go. Look at her kneeling beside the bedside of her sick baby, with aching back and smarting eyes, kneeling hour after hour without daring to move throughout the weary night, because a little hot hand is clutching hers, and a hoarse baby voice cries restlessly, "Don't go," each time she moves, and it is the night of the crisis. And this is the woman who tells you she is "a martyr to nerves," and is not strong enough to get up for breakfast.

When I see in the streets one of those hawkers who exchange salt from their dray for rags and rubbish, I sometimes think it is a picture of matrimony. How many a woman offers no more than dress, figure and face in return for a good man's heart! How many lives are redeemed by the exchange, and purified by the solid domestic staple of love!

Happy homes, happy wives and mothers are, I often think, the true glory of England, and the English ideal of home and womanhood is a national salt mine.

The Roman Catholic saint was an exaggeration of the idea of religious purity. The saint who, shut up in a hermit's cell, fasted and prayed and mortified his body; he was not salt to the earth, he was merely pickle. His salt had all gone to self.

Many people would disagree with me and say that the Church is "the true salt mine of England." But that depends entirely upon the application of religion to individual character. There is a town in England where sudden depressions of the earth are so frequent, the inhabitants have ceased to be alarmed when the corner of a house sinks four or five feet and obliges the inhabitants to get in at the window, or even when a horse disappears bodily through the stable floor. They know it is due to the presence of a watery stratum in the salty foundations, and that the mischief is not likely to go much further. But the position does not commend itself to strangers, and it reminds me of the strange phases under which sometimes we are asked to recognize the religious element in life.

Some have built their characters on the solid salt, dry, pure and old as Creation, and they stand firm, and benefit by every healthy property of their wondrous foundation.

But others have built on a thin crust above the watery streak, and their religion, hysterical and unreliable, produces strange phantasms of character, and not infrequently ends in religious mania.

Should someone, whose innermost being has been disturbed by grief, bereavement, illness, or the near approach of death, wish and long for a spiritual counsellor, how difficult it is to remember even one face, amongst the many which weekly adorn our pulpits, which has to us the stamp of reality, the visible seal of spirituality, the unseen halo of true saintship, an ideal priest before whom the heart may be willingly laid bare with strong hope of heaven-sent counsel.

I have known one such and only one. He was no monk or celibate, but a man who had tested every human tie and had learned their joy and sorrow; a man to whom the shyest girl was not afraid to tell her love affairs, and whose advice she was willing to accept; a man revered as much as beloved in his family circle, who held a baby at the font as if he loved it, and yet whose theological works were regarded as text-books; a man with the face of a saint and the voice of a woman, save and except when in the presence of sin.

I freely confess that my estimate of the whole church, from a purely personal point of view, would be a good deal lower had I never lived under this well-beloved vicar, the late Bishop Wynne, of Killaloe.

When I try to recall to memory some others who have influenced my life, I recognise that the dominant note in each and all was goodness.

There was the dear old governess who always assured me that if I was no one else's pet, I was hers, and that she stoutly believed in my ultimate reformation. She gave me heart for further efforts after schoolroom righteousness, and now I go with my children to see her in a back street of Dublin, with utmost gratitude in my soul. There she lives, and works for a septuagenarian sister who is her idol, and to whose welfare all her plans are subservient. Cheerfully she recounts her blessings, chief amongst which is the fact that she has a most excellent and clean landlady, that she still can work for this darling sister, and has so many dear old friends who come to see her.

The nearest approach to an ideal woman that I can remember is one I love so dearly I cannot pretend to say whether in other eyes she may be beautiful. To me that pale, strong, refined face, with the kind eyes, blue as turquoises, beneath the smoothly parted auburn hair, and crowned with the love and reference of husband, child and friends, is beautiful with the beauty of goodness. As I turn over the pages of my child-life I come upon this picture, and I see once again the queenly figure as she walks under the apple trees in the old walled garden, gathering a basketful of dahlias, asparagus-tops, and the little crimson tea roses that clustered round the old dial. A mushroom hat trimmed with ribbon quillings round brim and crown shades her dear kind face, and the beautiful white hands just touched with freckles are encased in big gauntlet gloves, for she gardens much, inspects the beehives herself, and gathers the figs and wall fruit in that old-fashioned garden. How many happy Gloire de Dijons and Virginia creeper swing round the windows, where a horse shoe hung over every door, and dogs were everywhere! How well I remember her inexorable rule--"Ten minutes' perfect quiet after dinner," when we all gathered on the hearthrug in the firelight of the sandalwood-scented drawing-room, where a gory Siva in ivory, amongst many other Indian curiosities, formed a perfect foil to the face of the sweet mistress of the house, and where we beguiled her into the family annals for which she was famous. Poor people from the village sought her advice and homely medicinal remedies. She was an authority upon recipes and stitches alike. Reproof from her lips was accompanied by a smile that disarmed resentment. Children ran to her to mend their broken toys, and lovers won her keenest interest, for--dare I whisper it?--she was a keen matchmaker. Very troubled seas in her own experience had taught her how to pilot others, to weep with those who wept, as she ever unselfishly rejoiced with happier hearts. I think the secret of her wonderful mental poise must have lain somewhere between the silver-rimmed covers of the old-fashioned book, which was her only companion, when for an hour every morning she disappeared; the book which bore her grandmother's name on its silver clasps, and whose teaching was in her heart.

To leave for a moment the moral ideal, let us glance at the physical; for salt is not only good but very beautiful, as anyone can testify who has seen the glistening walls of a salt mine. I love to look on beauty. If the world had not gone wrong we should all be beautiful, I suppose. What a difference in your seaside holiday does the discovery of a pretty girl amongst the visitors make. What a zest it gives to society! Everyone takes an interest in meeting her, in guessing which of her admirers is the favoured one, admiring the tilt of her Tam O'Shanter from which the witching little curls blow out, in making up names for her, and building elaborate theories about her and her belongings! To the elderly ladies especially, her bright existence supplies a smack of romance and interest, and they are never tired of watching her at the band.

True beauty and magnetic charm are rare gifts. I can recall but few faces that seemed to me irresistibly beautiful, fascinating in expression as well as perfect in feature--faces which refuse to pass into oblivion, but which dwell in the memory, like illustrations in a long-read book. But three I have known and can never forget. One, a bewitching Irish face, glowing and sparkling with colour, while the kind and ready smile only displayed a perfect row of pearly teeth above a dimpled chin. I don't think any novelist could exaggerate the charm of that face. Have you ever met a "Venus of Milo" in real life? I have. Gentle, large and tall, so sweet and fair, with her magnificent hair and slow beautiful smile. Minnie W. always reminded me of this perfect type of womanhood. Alas! the third I recall was too tender a flower for our harsh world, and whilst still in the prime of her exquisite youth, she was cut down, and her memory is for ever undimmed by cruel age or decay. Her loveliness was of that type which makes you tremble, and with good reason; for her petal face and cheek of rose were tinted by no hand of health; and with the slight tall figure, graceful as a reed, and the crown of golden hair, robbed you of all thought but that of an angel.

The late court pageant, that waking "dream of fair women," gives us courage for the race. England can still show beauty as beautiful as in the days of Reynolds, Lely, or Gainsborough; and America seems almost to improve upon the type.

As to men, I fear the race is degenerate. How rarely in these days do we meet a man who can rival the type of the "old school" in height, presence or manner; how rare even is the crown of silver hair! Men seem now to go bald-headed to the grave, and it is not to be wondered at when you think of the stress of life. Only once in my life have I known a man who might have stood for the portrait of one of those grand Old Testament characters--Abraham, Joseph, or David, the "gentlemen" of the Bible. But I have met the type once, and have often thought how difficult it must be for that man's daughters to marry if they expect to find husbands worthy of their father! Honour carried into the minutest details of life, Roman honour and probity; chivalry worthy of a sailor, to every woman, extended even to the oldest and poorest whom his charity relieved; tenderness as of a woman to the weak; justice to all, even to his own hinderance, such were the traits of his character. No wonder he was loved by rich and poor alike, that servants begged to come back "for the master's sake," and that half his unselfishness, his goodness, and his generosity, were only found out after his death. A great traveller, a sporting country gentleman, a simple Christian, a wise and kind father, husband and brother, what higher type could poor humanity reach?

It was my lot at one time to ravel citywards on a certain morning weekly in the "business" tram, that one which conveyed the City Fathers to their offices. Often I was the only lady present, and being but in my teens, I felt very shy. For all that, I managed to see and inwardly comment on the faces that lined that tram, and tried to read their business in the character lines of each. But my chief impression was that a nice benevolent face was very uncommon, and that one might summarise them as very forbidding samples of humanity. One looked angry and apoplectic, another weary and emaciated, the next perhaps was fussy and foolish, his neighbour pompous, another mean, the others cantankerous, harsh, sordid or hypocrites. The shy young lady gave them all names in her own mind characteristic of their faces, and I find the following entry in her journal kept during that period:--

"Went to the Orphan School as usual and taught needle-work for two hours. Missed from my old gentlemen in the tram the Sheep and the Weasel, but Messrs. Camel, Fox, Hawk, Pug Dog and Canary were there as usual. The poor Hippopotamus I fear has got a cold, for he wore a large blue muffler with yellow spots; and I thought Piggie looked rather pale, but that may be only because Rent-day is so near. My nice brown-eyed old Collie as usual gave up his seat to me with great gallantry; I like him, and pretended not to see that Old White Bear had been really first to offer."

My observations on mankind as thus exhibited gave me an idea that money-making does not lend itself advantageously to the formation of character or physique, and that perhaps inherited riches are a wise provision of Providence to give the character a chance to develop the nobler qualities of generosity, sympathy and gentleness.

We have not improved the type in six thousand years. I fear even the young men do not strike me as ideal. If it is hard in real life to find a Col. Newcome, it is hard, too, to find a John Ridd, a John Halifax, or an Esmond. Our pale-faced little young men, early smokers, extravagant and precocious in their development, shine chiefly in ball rooms, and ask of every profession, Church, Army, or what you will, the question, "will it pay?"

These are the men who will marry our daughters.

And those daughters, what of them? Thank God, the home-girl is not quite extinct, and in eddies of every society there are still to be found model daughters. Without any effort I can remember two good women who have entirely sacrificed their lives, their youth, health, beauty, and all prospect of marriage--one for the care of an aged mother, and the other to her father; and who have been left, practically in old age, to begin life again, when existence had been drained of all its joys, like a tree killed by the ivy it supported. "Of such," we may reverently say, "are the Kingdom of Heaven."

The times are good for women; it is the woman's day. All that fosters a good woman's character and develops her intellect has now become fashionable. Charity is the fashion, hygiene is the fashion, children's rights are recognised as clearly as their mothers', humanitarianism rules the roost, and women are honoured, humoured, and encouraged in our land as women have not been since the world began!

What power is hers, when even her smile has an influence! And a happy woman's face is one of the most beautiful and wholesome sights in life.

How pleasant is it, even in a crowded bus, when as you look round upon your fellow-travellers and note the unfailing English travelling mask rigid on every countenance, to find opposite you a pleasant girl's face, full of moral sunshine. Sociable and cheerful, she seems to know everybody and to like everybody, and everybody brightens at the sight of her. She even takes her ticket with a smile.

The happiest face I can at this moment remember is that of a lady, no longer young, whose whole life has been a tragedy. Every relationship of life to her has but spelt bereavement; every joy has but made the inevitable sorrow more grievous and more difficult to bear. And yet her tears and smiles are so near, one feels that her happy heart has been to the bitter waters of life what the prophet's salt was to the bitter waters of the well, an alchemy which sweetened, purified and turned all to wholesome use.

"They blame me for ever being happy," she said to me pathetically, "they think every smile on my face a reproach to my dead husband, but if I could not hold on to what joy is left me, I, too, should soon go under." And I felt that as long as she could wear that sweet expression like "clear shining after rain" in a face where even the luxuriant grey hair seemed to be rippling in smiles, she retained at least one of heaven's best gifts.

Yes, a happy face and pleasant manner is of greater value than most of us stop to remember. What a difference it makes in a servant, for instance! At some doors the face of the woman is like a death warrant, and her manner conveys an impression of a life scarcely to be tolerated. You feel as if you had injured her by giving her the trouble to answer the door. Doctors know this well, and unconsciously add much to their wives' difficulties by insisting upon having a "pleasant-looking maid who will not scare away the patients," while the poor mistress of the house tells him he ought to be thankful she can get any sort of servant in these days. Indeed, we need salt in the kitchen as much as in the parlour, and a good servant may certainly be included in one's definition of the necessary elements to make life happy.

It often strikes me to wonder how it is that scandals invariably come round in the end to the ears of the victim. It seems almost impossible that the world could contain a person so cruel, so hard, and so meddling, as to deliberately tell a friend of unkind stories or speeches uttered of them behind their backs. Yet such a link is never failing, and it is often a good woman, an excellent member of society, who being firmly convinced that one part of her mission in life is to tell unpleasant truths, thus makes innocent people writhe under the knowledge of misrepresentation or animadversion. The creed of such is that medicine is always unpleasant, and virtue must needs be disagreeable. In fact, they view the pleasant course as almost inevitably sure to be wrong. They certainly are disagreeable themselves, though apparently well-meaning, and thus amply justify their theory. We might call them the "Salines" of society. Painfully "plain spoken," as they call themselves, they are occasionally useful, but usually only mischievous. How many old friends have not estranged; how many happy marriages have they not arrested! Sometimes this lady will lecture the mother upon the worldliness or flirtaceous propensities of her daughters; sometimes she will set the children up in religious conceit to despise their parents; sometimes she goes no further than inquisitive contempt and dictation about one's domestic habits, with self-righteous complacency about her own; sometimes it is only a friendly hint that our servants sell the suet, couched in the same mysterious, horror-stricken tones that might have announced the presence of dynamite in the coal-box. One lady, soon after I was married, remarked to me that seeing me so continually out driving with my husband, she couldn't help wondering what condition my house and servants must be in! And another took a great deal of trouble to inform me that my cook (who was openly engaged with my knowledge, and most respectably) had been seen walking with a man! But one such informer was delightfully crestfallen when she discovered that the soldier whose twilight visits to the house of a friend of mine she had carefully tracked, was no less than a son of the master of the house.

When Mrs. X. is announced, in fact, you are always prepared for some disagreeable, if wholesome, information, or vigorous strictures upon your friends and a series of questions about yourself; why you were absent from church last Sunday; whether you sit up for your husband; what you spend upon dress in a year; and how on earth you can afford a summer holiday. Bicarbonate of soda, combined with tartaric acid, could not create a greater disturbance than our well-meaning busybody.

What a contrast is that salt of the earth, the good old maid! No parish is perfect without her; she is the forewoman of charity, the unpaid curate, the free matrimonial agency! In fact, should you find any particularly prosperous work going on in church circles it is generally a case of cherchez la femme, and that not a young one. The world could not get on without "auntie," every little waiting-maid who passes under her hands comes out of it a valuable and well-trained servant; she almost invariably takes the Mothers' Meeting, or teaches young ladies how to cut out economically at the "Dorcas." Sometimes with greater talents she does greater things, starts "Soldiers' Institutes," like Miss [Elise] Sandes, or is the "Sailors' Friend," like Miss [Agnes] Weston of world-wide celebrity. How much have not these two women alone done to remove the stigma upon fallen humanity!

But life is not all charity, though a good deal of it is, and Society has its leaders and promoters as well as Virtue and Philanthropy. We have our "Cerebos," the refined article which adorns dinner tables in vessels of silver and crystal, as well as its plainer, homelier, but equally useful friend of the kitchen wall-box, or the nursery salt cellar which shares honours with the piano feet.

And so in every town are to be found social leaders, clever tactful women to whom everyone turns in emergency. They have the knack of leading, of "getting-up" things successfully, they are the prime movers of that big bazaar, or this successful concert, nobody can get up private theatricals without them, and their presence at an entertainment ensures success. Is an H. Secretary wanted, or a person to read aloud at a Mothers' Meeting, is a church in debt, or a clergyman in despair, to this good woman they all go, and like a tangled cord she solves the difficulty with quick intuition, or throws herself into the gap. She has the gift of divining the peculiar gift of each individual, she proposes exactly the right person for secretary, suggests the very lady who will be flattered at being asked to take the chief stall at a bazaar and spend her money freely there, she knows the obscure lady with the gentle voice who reads so well, the penniless favourite who makes everything "go" with a swing, she has always "heard of the very thing that's wanted," and "knows the very man who will do." And this is what salt does, it brings out the latent flavours of other things, it makes the invalid enjoy his beef-tea, and the healthy man his two eggs at breakfast, and it is the keystone of the pleasure of a pic-nic!

There is one form of salt which seems scarcely to find its analogy in human life, the great salt sea, the most powerful and purifying element in the world, and withal the most destructive. I would liken it to the life of man, as opposed to that of woman, whose domain is more suitably the peaceful heritage of the abiding earth. But the life of the man is strong and stern--now merciful, as it brings health to the invalid, food to the toilers and beauty to the world; now destructive, as it tears down, and wrecks, or provides a highway for the great warships, and a grave for many a noble life. Yet in its very nature is the saving element bound up, as the glorious instinct to heal, to educate or to work in some other way for the ultimate progress of humanity, is born in the heart of every man that comes into the world, and the pursuit of which, selfish or unselfish, becomes his life and second nature.

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It is customary in cold countries for anyone who meets a person unconsciously suffering from frost-bite to immediately rush to the rescue by vigorously rubbing a handful of snow or salt upon the affected feature and so restore circulation by friction.

I often wish that I could rub a handful of moral salt into the characters of people who are visibly deteriorating under the influence of too much prosperity, old age, or other causes, as some do, and only too plainly showing it in their countenances and conversation!

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The perversion of life's best gifts is salt without savour.

Here we have marriage without love, and religion without spirituality, art pursued for gain, and charity for self interest, beauty that is not "all-glorious within," and strength in the toils of indolence. The Divorce Court is a monument of Dead Sea Salt, the "infant insurance" system is another sad anomaly of our boasted civilisation, and indeed it seems as if the twentieth century has started in such a sad, bad, old world, it will need all the genius of its great writers, all the art of its great painters, all its humanitarianism and its open Bible, to keep before us the beautiful old elementary ideal of "Man made in the image of God," the human goodness that is the true salt of the earth.

Typed by LovieWie, August, 2023; Proofread by LNL, August, 2023