Peters Mother

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Peter's Mother

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Title: Peter's Mother
Author: Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
Release Date: December 14, 2003 [EBook #10452]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MOTHER ***

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PETER'S MOTHER
NEW EDITION

WITH INTRODUCTION
BY
MRS. HENRY DE LA PASTURE
1906
And I left my youth behind For somebody else to find.
TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF MY ONLY BROTHER
LT. COLONEL WALTER FLOYD BONHAM, D.S.O.

TO MY AMERICAN READERS
The author of "Peter's Mother" has been bidden of the publishers, who
have incurred the responsibility of presenting her to the American
public, to write a preface to this edition of her novel. She does so with
the more diffidence because it has been impressed upon her, by more
than one wiseacre, that her novels treat of a life too narrow, an
atmosphere too circumscribed, to be understood or appreciated by
American readers.
No one can please everybody; I suppose that no one, except the old
man in Aesop's Fable, ever tried to do so. But I venture to believe that
to some Americans, a sincere and truthful portrait of a typical
Englishwoman of a certain class may prove attractive, as to us are the
studies of a "David Harum," or others whose characteristics interest
because--and not in spite of--their strangeness and unfamiliarity. We do
not recognise the type; but as those who do have acknowledged the
accuracy of the representation, we read, learn, and enjoy making
acquaintance with an individuality and surroundings foreign to our own
experience.
There are hundreds of Englishwomen living lives as isolated, as
guarded from all practical knowledge of the outer world, as entirely

circumscribed as the life of Lady Mary Crewys; though they are not all
unhappy. On the contrary, many diffuse content and kindness all
around them, and take it for granted that their own personal wishes are
of no account.
Indeed it would seem that some cease to be aware what their own
personal wishes are.
With anxious eyes fixed on others--the husband, father, sons, who
dominate them,--they live to please, to serve, to nurse, and to console;
revered certainly as queens of their tiny kingdoms, but also helpless as
prisoners.
Calm, as fixed stars, they regard (perhaps sometimes a little wistfully)
the orbits of brighter planets, and the flashing of occasional meteors,
within their ken; knowing that their own place is
unchangeable--immutable.
That the views of such women are often narrow, their prejudices many,
their conventions tiresome, who shall deny? That their souls are pure
and tender, their hearts open to kindness as are their hands to charity,
nobody who knows the type will dispute. They lack many advantages
which their more independent sisters (no less gifted with noble and
womanly qualities) enjoy, but they possess a peculiar gentleness, which
is all their own, whether it be adored or despised.
When one of their number happens to be cleverer, larger minded, more
restless, and impatient, it may be, by nature than her sisters, tragedy
may ensue. But not often. Habit and public opinion are strong
restrainers, stronger sometimes than even the most carefully inculcated
abstract principles.
To turn to another phase of the story--there was a time during the Boer
War when there was literally scarcely a woman in England who was
not mourning the death of some man--be he son, brother, or husband,
lover or friend,--and that time seems still very, very recent to some of
us.

The rights and wrongs of a war have nothing to do with the sympathy
all civilised men and women extend to the soldiers on both sides who
take part in it.
"_Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do or die_,"
and whether they "do or die," the mingled suspense, pride, and anguish
suffered by their women-kind rouses the pity of the world; but most of
all, for the secret of sympathy is understanding, the pity of those who
have suffered likewise. So that such escapades as Peter's in the story,
being not very uncommon at that dark period (and having its
foundation in fact), may have touched hearts over here, which will be
unmoved on the other side of the Atlantic. I cannot tell. I have known
very few Americans, and though I have counted those few among my
friends,