A popular writer of romantic fiction, Helen Mathers (the pen name of Ellen Buckingham Reeves) was only 17 when she composed her first novel, Comin’ Thro' the Rye. That "foolish little book," as she described it in later years, was based in part on her experiences growing up with a dictatorial father and 11 brothers and sisters in Somerset, England.
In an interview included in Helen Black's book Notable Women Authors of the Day (1893), Mathers described her seemingly haphazard writing process:
The essay "A Contrast in Generations" originally appeared in the collection The New Lady Teazle and Other Stories and Essays (1903). Note how Mathers uses a series of comparisons and analogies in her sympathetic defense of the younger generation and the "Order of the New."
by Helen Mathers (1853 - 1920)
Pretty frequently nowadays, we hear complaints of the selfishness displayed by girls towards their mothers, sons towards their fathers, but in point of fact, they are not one bit more selfish than their parents and grandparents were before them; only the latter were coerced into silence, and, thereby became little sneaks and liars, while the young people of today are above-board, and don’t pretend to a respect they see no reason to give, if undeserved.
Looking closely into the limitations of youth, we find it contrary to the whole scheme of Nature to try and put old heads on young shoulders, and to expect from young people those qualities that their elders have only most unwillingly learned from painful experience. And if you make clamorous demands on children’s duty, their time, and their company, what do you get? Little old, old men and women, who have been cheated out of their glorious kingdom of youth, cheated out of their illusions, their irresponsibility, all the happy, casual joys in which youth is so rich, and to which they can never bring the same keen appetite again. A healthy child does not know what the word selfishness means: it fulfils itself, it joys in life, and when a hundred reasons are advanced to prove as premeditated a mere childish fault, it can only, with bursting heart, feel the injustice of its elders, who expect in the child a divination of duty that they themselves in childhood never possessed.
Nature teaches us no such painful adaptation of youth to age; she throws out her warm, living children, and leaves them to fend for themselves after but brief tenderness on the part of their parents; and though, of course, the adventurous youngsters make terrible mistakes, and get badly knocked about, sometimes even are gobbled up altogether, at any rate they don’t carry a hateful pack of experience to weigh them down, and effectually prevent them from reaching their full meridian of mental and physical strength. Be for ever putting a drag on the bounding impulses of youth, discourage all its noble, ridiculous flights to the sublime, invent base reasons for thoughtless actions, committed out of sheer light-heartedness and frolic, and what do you get but leadened hearts, and puzzled, saddened looks from young, eager eyes?
And I will say unhesitatingly, that the attitude of children nowadays to their parents has much to recommend it in its frankness, and outspokenness, in the far greater comprehension existing between them than formerly, when we were continually taught our duty towards our parents, but never had theirs expounded towards us. When they had partly clothed, fed, smacked, and Bibled us (probably the cockering came from our mothers, and the smackings from our fathers), they mostly regarded their duty as ended, and “Shut the door after you, do as you’re told” extended with most of us from childhood well on into youth. But is it not better for the young to be suffered to grow unhindered to the full maturity of their powers, than to be the product of other people’s minds and views, their individuality plucked up in childhood as a weed? The “New” home, in which father and mother, sons and daughters, are all real good pals, working and playing in unison, can give points to the “Old,” where respect indeed flourished, but sometimes hidden seeds of revolt sprang to full-grown rebellion, and there resulted a bitterness between parent and child very seldom to be met with now. The wise make comrades of their grown, and growing-up children, and certainly the relationship stands on a franker, saner basis than that of autocrat on the one side, and slave on the other. Thus in home life, as in love, the Old Order has given way to the New. And undoubtedly this drawing together of youth and middle age is good for the elders, and conduces to freshness of spirit; the high wall between father and son, mother and daughter is down, and they do not shout different and strange languages to each other across it. When a boy is able to say, “Dad, I’ve got into a mess, and want your advice,” there is visible a delightful camaraderie between them, infinitely preferable to the former terror of the impulsive youngster, lest the “Governor” should turn him out of the house for some indiscretion perfectly natural to youth.
Many a daughter is saved from a life-long blunder in marriage, or entanglement with a bad man, because she has made a “pal” of her mother, and loved and trusted her, without that exaggerated and unnatural respect, which was carefully instilled into the last generation, and with such totally inadequate results. Thus it happens, that when the present-day fathers or mothers show themselves human, and liable to err, the children do not judge them harshly, as we should have done ours. If the veil between us and our parents had been rent, not all the king’s horses, nor all the king’s men, could have put them together again in our estimation, but our children, in a spirit of much greater humanity, will say, “Silly old mater, she really mustn’t do so-and-so,” or “Poor old dad, he has been a bit of a duffer, but we must buck him up,” and this fellow feeling is a very delightful thing, and must bring much warm, human comfort to their elders. To see a family of grown-up sons and daughters on the happiest terms with their parents, is a sight to gladden the heart, but it is one that by its very frankness of exchange of thought and opinions, was absolutely impossible to a past generation, where the personal bias and wishes of children were not even consulted in their education, much less the choice of a profession.
Concluded on page two
In an interview included in Helen Black's book Notable Women Authors of the Day (1893), Mathers described her seemingly haphazard writing process:
I have no writing room and no particular table. . . . Indeed I can't say in the least how my books get written. I jot down anything that I especially observe, or think of, on a bit of paper, and when I have a great many pieces I sort them out, and usually pin them together in some sort of sequence. . . . [M]y composition, when really begun, is very rapid, and my ideas seem to run out of my pen.
The essay "A Contrast in Generations" originally appeared in the collection The New Lady Teazle and Other Stories and Essays (1903). Note how Mathers uses a series of comparisons and analogies in her sympathetic defense of the younger generation and the "Order of the New."
A Contrast in Generations
by Helen Mathers (1853 - 1920)
Pretty frequently nowadays, we hear complaints of the selfishness displayed by girls towards their mothers, sons towards their fathers, but in point of fact, they are not one bit more selfish than their parents and grandparents were before them; only the latter were coerced into silence, and, thereby became little sneaks and liars, while the young people of today are above-board, and don’t pretend to a respect they see no reason to give, if undeserved.
Looking closely into the limitations of youth, we find it contrary to the whole scheme of Nature to try and put old heads on young shoulders, and to expect from young people those qualities that their elders have only most unwillingly learned from painful experience. And if you make clamorous demands on children’s duty, their time, and their company, what do you get? Little old, old men and women, who have been cheated out of their glorious kingdom of youth, cheated out of their illusions, their irresponsibility, all the happy, casual joys in which youth is so rich, and to which they can never bring the same keen appetite again. A healthy child does not know what the word selfishness means: it fulfils itself, it joys in life, and when a hundred reasons are advanced to prove as premeditated a mere childish fault, it can only, with bursting heart, feel the injustice of its elders, who expect in the child a divination of duty that they themselves in childhood never possessed.
Nature teaches us no such painful adaptation of youth to age; she throws out her warm, living children, and leaves them to fend for themselves after but brief tenderness on the part of their parents; and though, of course, the adventurous youngsters make terrible mistakes, and get badly knocked about, sometimes even are gobbled up altogether, at any rate they don’t carry a hateful pack of experience to weigh them down, and effectually prevent them from reaching their full meridian of mental and physical strength. Be for ever putting a drag on the bounding impulses of youth, discourage all its noble, ridiculous flights to the sublime, invent base reasons for thoughtless actions, committed out of sheer light-heartedness and frolic, and what do you get but leadened hearts, and puzzled, saddened looks from young, eager eyes?
And I will say unhesitatingly, that the attitude of children nowadays to their parents has much to recommend it in its frankness, and outspokenness, in the far greater comprehension existing between them than formerly, when we were continually taught our duty towards our parents, but never had theirs expounded towards us. When they had partly clothed, fed, smacked, and Bibled us (probably the cockering came from our mothers, and the smackings from our fathers), they mostly regarded their duty as ended, and “Shut the door after you, do as you’re told” extended with most of us from childhood well on into youth. But is it not better for the young to be suffered to grow unhindered to the full maturity of their powers, than to be the product of other people’s minds and views, their individuality plucked up in childhood as a weed? The “New” home, in which father and mother, sons and daughters, are all real good pals, working and playing in unison, can give points to the “Old,” where respect indeed flourished, but sometimes hidden seeds of revolt sprang to full-grown rebellion, and there resulted a bitterness between parent and child very seldom to be met with now. The wise make comrades of their grown, and growing-up children, and certainly the relationship stands on a franker, saner basis than that of autocrat on the one side, and slave on the other. Thus in home life, as in love, the Old Order has given way to the New. And undoubtedly this drawing together of youth and middle age is good for the elders, and conduces to freshness of spirit; the high wall between father and son, mother and daughter is down, and they do not shout different and strange languages to each other across it. When a boy is able to say, “Dad, I’ve got into a mess, and want your advice,” there is visible a delightful camaraderie between them, infinitely preferable to the former terror of the impulsive youngster, lest the “Governor” should turn him out of the house for some indiscretion perfectly natural to youth.
Many a daughter is saved from a life-long blunder in marriage, or entanglement with a bad man, because she has made a “pal” of her mother, and loved and trusted her, without that exaggerated and unnatural respect, which was carefully instilled into the last generation, and with such totally inadequate results. Thus it happens, that when the present-day fathers or mothers show themselves human, and liable to err, the children do not judge them harshly, as we should have done ours. If the veil between us and our parents had been rent, not all the king’s horses, nor all the king’s men, could have put them together again in our estimation, but our children, in a spirit of much greater humanity, will say, “Silly old mater, she really mustn’t do so-and-so,” or “Poor old dad, he has been a bit of a duffer, but we must buck him up,” and this fellow feeling is a very delightful thing, and must bring much warm, human comfort to their elders. To see a family of grown-up sons and daughters on the happiest terms with their parents, is a sight to gladden the heart, but it is one that by its very frankness of exchange of thought and opinions, was absolutely impossible to a past generation, where the personal bias and wishes of children were not even consulted in their education, much less the choice of a profession.
Concluded on page two
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