"Although your future will not concern me, I often find myself
thinking of it. I fear you will soon find that the world has not yet
provided a place and a sphere of action for wise and well-instructed
women. In my younger days, when the companionship of my fellows was
a necessity to me, I voluntarily set aside my culture, relaxed my
principles, and acquired common tastes, in order to fit myself for
the society of the only men within my reach; for, if I had to live
among bears, I had rather be a bear than a man. Let me warn you
against this. Never attempt to accommodate yourself to the world by
self-degradation. Be patient; and you will enjoy frivolity all the
more because you are not frivolous: much as the world will respect
your knowledge all the more because of its own ignorance.
"Some day, I expect and hope, you will marry. You will then have an
opportunity of making an irremediable mistake, against the
possibility of which no advice of mine or subtlety of yours can
guard you. I think you will not easily find a man able to satisfy in
you that desire to be relieved of the responsibility of thinking out
and ordering our course of life that makes us each long for a guide
whom we can thoroughly trust. If you fail, remember that your
father, after suffering a bitter and complete disappointment in his
wife, yet came to regard his marriage as the happiest event in his
career. Let me remind you also, since you are so rich, that it would
he a great folly for you to be jealous of your own income, and to
limit your choice of a husband to those already too rich to marry
for money. No vulgar adventurer will be able to recommend himself to
you; and better men will be at least as much frightened as attracted
by your wealth. The only class against which I need warn you is that
to which I myself am supposed to belong. Never think that a man must
prove a suitable and satisfying friend for you merely because he has
read much criticism; that he must feel the influences of art as you
do because he knows and adopts the classification of names and
schools with which you are familiar; or that because he agrees with
your favorite authors he must necessarily interpret their words to
himself as you understand them. Beware of men who have read more
than they have worked, or who love to read better than to work.
Beware of painters, poets, musicians, and artists of all sorts,
except very great artists: beware even of them as husbands and
fathers. Self-satisfied workmen who have learned their business
well, whether they be chancellors of the exchequer or farmers, I
recommend to you as, on the whole, the most tolerable class of men I
have met.