THE DECAY OF HOME LIFE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2233, 30 May 1881, Page 3

THE DECAY OF HOME LIFE.

[*‘ Federal Australian.]

To the philosophical observer of the social phenomena of the day, the doca> of home life is one of the saddest and most unsatisfactory of the many novel phases of development which force themselves upon his attention. Formerly one of the chief sources of the moral strength and beauty of the English character was to bo found in the domestic habits of the people. They were a homoloving race ; cultivating the fireside virtues, and cherishing, in the privacy of the household circle, tastes and feelings, affections and sympathies, occupations and enjoyments, of which the outside world know little or nothing, excepting in so far as it saw that this mode of existence conduced to the nurture of honest, truthful, and courageous men, and of pure, refined, graceful, and good women. Of hospitality there was no stint, but it was a cordial, unostentatious, and simple hospitality. And in thousands of country mansions, rectories, vicarages, farmhouses, and middle-class residences, there was an immense 'amount of elegant comfort, and of agreeable social intercourse and enjoyment. English literature is rich in descriptions of a life like this. In poems, biographies, diaries, and letters, it shines out upon us with a radiance peculiarly its own. It inspired the muse of Oowper ; it communicated a delicate charm to the writings of Mary Bussell Mitford ; and it is vividly depicted in the verse of Rogers, and of Coventry Patmore; while our best works of fiction are those which describe the home life of our countrymen and countrywomen, and exhibit the growth of character, and the nobility of conduct, which have been the practical outcome of that life. The happiness they .enjoyed was independent of wealth } and many of the pleasures by which they wore surrounded, were quite compatible with the receipt of an income no larger than that of Charles Lamb in the India House, and with the occupation of a cottage as modest as that of the authoress of " Our Village ” at Three-mile Cross, for— Small change of scene, small space his home requires, Who leads a life of satisfied desires. But we have changed all that. The immense expansion which industry has undergone in all parts of the civilised world during the last fifty years, owing, in a great measure, to the tremendously increased productive forces of mankind, occasioned by the introduction of steam as a motive power, and to the wonderful achievements of science and of mechanical invention, has led to the creation of wealth in greater amount and by more rapid processes than at any former period in the history of the western world. Artificial wants have multiplied with equal rapidity, and human ingenuity is taxed to the utmost extent to anticipate or to satisfy them. Hence the wide diffusion of luxurious habits, which spread downwards from the highest to the lowest strata of society; and which are accompanied by feelings of dissatisfaction and malaise in the minds of those who find, in the larger command of luxuries enjoyed by people belonging to a higher grade than themselves, a continually operating motive for envy and discontent.

Simultaneously with tho rise and progress of this state of things, there may bo observed a morbid craving for notoriety and publicity. For, while home has ceased to be attractive; and while a centrifugal force seems to lead to the dispersion of its inmates, who are restless until they have turned their backs upon it for the evening, or for tho holiday, as tho case may be, the frequenters of tho ballroom, the theatre, tho concert, or the private party, are consumed by a feverish desire to see their names in print, and even to have some mention made of the dresses they wear. It is a pitiful ambition ; and it is not very easy to imagine the extreme diminutiveness of the mind which is capable of deriving any gratification from such a parade of names, and such a record of drapery and millinery. But the fact remains ; and it only serves to show how deplorable is the declension which has taken place from tho modest dignity and delicate reserve of the English gentlewoman of other days, to the obtrusive vulgarity and self-assertion of tho unwomanly “ girl of the period.” Life has ceased to be a domestic drama, in tho performance of which there is abundant scope for tho exercise of the noblest and most endearing qualities of human nature ; and it has become a tawdry and wearisome parade. A refuge is sought from vacuity of mind and heart in tho excitement of a crowd. Even the capacity to admire the beautiful in nature and art seems to be dying out, and this has been painfully apparent during the time the International Exhibition has boon open ; when streams of young people of both sexes have been, and still are to be seen flowing up and down the main avenues, vacantly gazing at each other, honr after hour, and as indifferent to the splendid collection of objects of interest which has been gathered together in that building, as if they had no existence whatever. Instead of returning home with minds enriched by a store of new ideas, with enlarged information, and with their taste and judgment educated and refined by observation, comparison, and reflection, all they have acquirefl has been a knowledge of the dresses worn by Miss This, or Mr That, or tho Widow The Other. They went to the Exhibition, not for the purpose of inspecting and admiring its contents, not to learn something concerning the national products, the arts and industries of the various countries of the world; not even to gratify the emotions of admiration and delight which it is qualified to excite; but to see and mingle with a crowd, to lounge about, and, in the genteel slang of the day, to “loaf.”

The phenomenon is one of those straws, floating on the surface of the stream of society, which denote both the strength and the set of the current. And where feebleness and frivolity enter so largely into the moral and mental character of our future men and women, what sort of homes are they likely to establish and occupy hereafter ? The inane conversations and empty pastimes with which they beguile themselves now will become “flat, stale and unprofitable,”even before the bloom of the young wife’s fugitive beauty begins to fade, and before the forehead of the husband has begun to pucker with the cares and anxieties of daily life. And what will remain ? Weariness and ennui, a distaste for simple pleasures, an incapacity for tranquil enjoyments, and a total absence of tbe qualities most essential to domestic happiness. The bread-winner of the household makes the mortifying discovery that he has entered into a life-long partnership with a woman whose theory of existence is that it should be made up of pleasures exclusively, that it should be one long round of balls, evening parties, races, visits to the theatres, and other delassements ; that she should be supplied with a succession of new dresses made in the latest fashion, with abundance of jewellery, and with a liberal supply of pocket money ; and that whatever interferes with that pleasure—as for example the duties and responsibilities of maternity—is something to be regarded with aversion and to bo rebelled against. The wife, on the other hand, finds out, in too many instances, that the affection she has inspired is "purely superficial; that it bad uo deep root, because it merely sprang from admiration of personal attractions which begin to wane vary rapidly in a climate like ours, and that when these have disappeared she becomes an object of comparative indifference, and occasionally of neglect, to her husband. Both of them are unadapted by habit and training for a home life; and each goes his or her own way in pursuit of the happiness they have failed to find under their own roof tree. And us are the parents, such are the children ; and us is the family, such is society. The evil is, therefore, not merely a serious but a growing one ; and it is all the more alarming, because once in Rome, and a second time in Franco, history records that a similar slate of things wen the prelude to, and one of the causes of a grout social cataclysm.