"The New Mother" (1882) by Lucy Clifford (1846-1929)
The Treasury of the Fantastic: Romanticism to Early Twentieth Century Literature (2013) edited by Jacob Weisman and David Sandner
Readers unfamiliar with "The New Mother" may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
My first reaction was: How might Freud have written his essay on the uncanny if, instead of being motivated by Hoffmann's "The Sandman," his insights were inspired by reading "The New Mother" (1882) by Lucy Clifford (1846-1929)?
"The New Mother" depicts domestic disaster. Clifford's family is rural: their back garden abutting the forest primeval (which should please liminalists). The father is away at sea, though the family cottage does not appear to be near a port. The two daughters go by nicknames, Turkey and Blue-Eyes; the baby is known only as the baby.
Initially, the home is an uncomplicated and untroubled family utopia.
The worm enters when Turkey and Blue-Eyes are sent to the nearby village for the mail.
“Dear children,” the mother said one afternoon late in the autumn, “it is very chilly for you to go to the village, but you must walk quickly, and who knows but what you may bring back a letter saying that dear father is already on his way to England.”
Then Blue-Eyes and the Turkey made haste and were soon ready to go. “Don’t be long,” the mother said, as she always did before they started. “Go the nearest way and don’t look at any strangers you meet, and be sure you do not talk with them.”
“No, mother,” they answered; and then she kissed them and called them dear good children, and they joyfully started on their way.
Later, on their way back out of the village, Turkey and Blue-Eyes meet a bedraggled girl beside a bridge. They talk to her, and she lets them see her musical instrument.
"....It really is a most beautiful thing, is a peardrum,” the girl said, looking at it, and speaking in a voice that was almost affectionate.
“Where did you get it?” the children asked.
“I bought it,” the girl answered.
“Didn’t it cost a great deal of money?” they asked.
“Yes,” answered the girl slowly, nodding her head, “it cost a great deal of money. I am very rich,” she added.
And this the children thought a really remarkable statement, for they had not supposed that rich people dressed in old clothes, or went about without bonnets.
She might at least have done her hair, they thought; but they did not like to say so.
“You don’t look rich,” they said slowly, and in as polite a voice as possible.
“Perhaps not,” the girl answered cheerfully.
At this the children gathered courage, and ventured to remark, “You look rather shabby”—they did not like to say ragged.
“Indeed?” said the girl in the voice of one who had heard a pleasant but surprising statement. “A little shabbiness is very respectable,” she added in a satisfied voice. “I must really tell them this,” she continued. And the children wondered what she meant. She opened the little box by the side of the peardrum, and said, just as if she were speaking to someone who could hear her, “They say I look rather shabby; it is quite lucky, isn’t it?”
“Why, you are not speaking to anyone!” they said, more surprised than ever.
“Oh dear, yes! I am speaking to them both.”
“Both?” they said, wondering.
“Yes. I have here a little man dressed as a peasant, and wearing a wide slouch hat with a large feather, and a little woman to match, dressed in a red petticoat, and a white handkerchief pinned across her bosom. I put them on the lid of the box, and when I play they dance most beautifully. The little man takes off his hat and waves it in the air, and the little woman holds up her petticoat a little bit on one side with one hand, and with the other sends forward a kiss.”
“Oh! let us see; do let us see!” the children cried, both at once.
Then the village girl looked at them doubtfully.
“Let you see!” she said slowly. “Well, I am not sure that I can.Tell me, are you good?”
“Yes, yes,” they answered eagerly, “we are very good!”
“Then it’s quite impossible,” she answered, and resolutely closed the lid of the box.
They stared at her in astonishment.
“But we are good,” they cried, thinking she must have misunderstood them. “We are very good. Mother always says we are.”
“So you remarked before,” the girl said, speaking in a tone of decision.
Still the children did not understand.
“Then can’t you let us see the little man and woman?” they asked.
“Oh dear, no!” the girl answered. “I only show them to naughty children.”
“To naughty children!” they exclaimed.
“Yes, to naughty children,” she answered; “and the worse the children the better do the man and woman dance.”
She put the peardrum carefully under her ragged cloak, and prepared to go on her way.
“I really could not have believed that you were good,” she said, reproachfully, as if they had accused themselves of some great crime. “Well, good day.”
“Oh, but do show us the little man and woman,” they cried.
“Certainly not. Good day,” she said again.
“Oh, but we will be naughty,” they said in despair.
“I am afraid you couldn’t,” she answered, shaking her head. “It requires a great deal of skill, especially to be naughty well. Good day,” she said for the third time. “Perhaps I shall see you in the village tomorrow.”
And swiftly she walked away, while the children felt their eyes fill with tears, and their hearts ache with disappointment.
“If we had only been naughty, ”they said, “we should have seen them dance; we should have seen the little woman holding her red petticoat in her hand, and the little man waving his hat. Oh, what shall we do to make her let us see them?”
“Suppose,” said the Turkey, “we try to be naughty today; perhaps she would let us see them tomorrow.”
“But, oh!” said Blue-Eyes, “I don’t know how to be naughty; no one ever taught me.”
The Turkey thought for a few minutes in silence.
“I think I can be naughty if I try,” she said. “I’ll try to-night.”
And then poor Blue-Eyes burst into tears.
“Oh, don’t be naughty without me!” she cried. “It would be so unkind of you. You know I want to see the little man and woman just as much as you do. You are very, very unkind.” And she sobbed bitterly.
From this point, the happy life in the cottage is turned topsy-turvy. Each night Turkey and Blue-Eyes escalate their annihilating bad behavior. Each day, the girl with the peardrum tells them they aren't naughty enough.
Their mother warns them repeatedly: the proof of love is in obedient behavior.
“....if you love me you couldn’t make me unhappy.”
“Why couldn’t we?” they asked.
Then the mother thought a while before she answered; and when she did so they hardly understood, perhaps because she seemed to be speaking rather to herself than to them.
“Because if one loves well,” she said gently, “one’s love is stronger than all bad feelings in one, and conquers them. And this is the test whether love be real or false, unkindness and wickedness have no power over it.”
“We don’t know what you mean,” they cried; “and we do love you; but we want to be naughty.”
“Then I should know you did not love me,” the mother said.
“And what should you do?” asked Blue-Eyes.
“I cannot tell. I should try to make you better.”
“But if you couldn’t? If we were very, very, very naughty, and wouldn’t be good, what then?”
“Then,” said the mother sadly—and while she spoke her eyes filled with tears, and a sob almost choked her—“then,” she said, “I should have to go away and leave you, and to send home a new mother, with glass eyes and wooden tail.”
“You couldn’t,” they cried.
“Yes, I could,” she answered in a low voice; “but it would make me very unhappy, and I will never do it unless you are very, very naughty, and I am obliged.”
“We won’t be naughty,” they cried; “we will be good. We should hate a new mother; and she shall never come here.” And they clung to their own mother, and kissed her fondly.
But when they went to bed they sobbed bitterly, for they remembered the little man and woman, and longed more than ever to see them; but how could they bear to let their own mother go away, and a new one take her place?
Naughtiness in the cottage takes on the character of hysteria: a "madness of crowds" in a crowd of two little girls. They are driven to a frenzy that their naughtiness is never naughty enough.
They tell the girl they have been threatened with a new mother.
“They all threaten that kind of thing. Of course really there are no mothers with glass eyes and wooden tails; they would be much too expensive to make.”
Ultimately their mother gives up on Turkey and Blue-Eyes. In a story filled with horrors, this scene must be horror's apex:
Then again the children went home, and were naughty, oh, so very very naughty that the dear mother’s heart ached, and her eyes filled with tears, and at last she went upstairs and slowly put on her best gown and her new sun bonnet, and she dressed the baby all in its Sunday clothes, and then she came down and stood before Blue-Eyes and the Turkey, and just as she did so the Turkey threw the looking-glass out of the window, and it fell with a loud crash upon the ground.
“Good-bye, my children,” the mother said sadly, kissing them. “Good-bye, my Blue-Eyes; good-bye, my Turkey; the new mother will be home presently. Oh, my poor children!” and then weeping bitterly the mother took the baby in her arms and turned to leave the house.
“But, mother,” the children cried, “we are—” and then suddenly the broken clock struck half-past ten, and they knew that in half an hour the village girl would come by playing on the peardrum. “But, mother, we will be good at half-past eleven, come back at half-past eleven,” they cried, “and we’ll both be good, we will indeed; we must be naughty till eleven o’clock.” But the mother only picked up the little bundle in which she had tied up her cotton apron and a pair of old shoes, and went slowly out at the door. It seemed as if the children were spellbound, and they could not follow her. They opened the window wide, and called after her:
“Mother! mother! oh, dear mother, come back again! We will be good, we will be good now, we will be good for evermore if you will come back.”
But the mother only looked round and shook her head, and they could see the tears falling down her cheeks.
“Come back, dear mother!” cried Blue-Eyes; but still the mother went on across the fields.
“Come back, come back!” cried the Turkey; but still the mother went on. Just by the corner of the field she stopped and turned, and waved her handkerchief, all wet with tears, to the children at the window; she made the baby kiss its hand; and in a moment mother and baby had vanished from their sight.
Shortly after the mother departs, the girl with the peardrum stops at the cottage.
“We have done all you told us,” the children called, when they had recovered from their astonishment. “Come and see; and now show us the little man and woman.”
The girl did not cease her playing or her dancing, but she called out in a voice that was half speaking half singing, and seemed to keep time to the strange music of the peardrum.
“You did it all badly. You threw the water on the wrong side of the fire, the tin things were not quite in the middle of the room, the clock was not broken enough, you did not stand the baby on its head.”
Then the children, still standing spellbound by the window, cried out, entreating and wringing their hands, “Oh, but we have done everything you told us, and mother has gone away. Show us the little man and woman now, and let us hear the secret.”
As they said this the girl was just in front of the cottage, but she did not stop playing. The sound of the strings seemed to go through their hearts. She did not stop dancing; she was already passing the cottage by. She did not stop singing, and all she said sounded like part of a terrible song. And still the man followed her, always at the same distance, playing shrilly on his flute; and still the two dogs waltzed round and round after him—their tails motionless, their legs straight, their collars clear and white and stiff. On they went, all of them together.
“Oh, stop!” the children cried, “and show us the little man and woman now.”
But the girl sang out loud and clear, while the string that was out of tune twanged above her voice.
“The little man and woman are far away. See, their box is empty.”
And then for the first time the children saw that the lid of the box was raised and hanging back, and that no little man and woman were in it.
“I am going to my own land,” the girl sang, “to the land where I was born.” And she went on towards the long straight road that led to the city many many miles away.
“But our mother is gone,” the children cried; “our dear mother, will she ever come back?”
“No,” sang the girl; “she’ll never come back, she’ll never come back. I saw her by the bridge: she took a boat upon the river; she is sailing to the sea; she will meet your father once again, and they will go sailing on, sailing on to the countries far away.”
And when they heard this, the children cried out, but could say no more, for their hearts seemed to be breaking.
Then the girl, her voice getting fainter and fainter in the distance, called out once more to them. But for the dread that sharpened their ears they would hardly have heard her, so far was she away, and so discordant was the music.
“Your new mother is coming. She is already on her way; but she only walks slowly, for her tail is rather long, and her spectacles are left behind; but she is coming, she is coming—coming—coming.”
That the mother and the girl with the peadrum walk out of their lives within hours of each other must be more than coincidence. The mother and the girl are symmetrical phenomena: obedience and transgression, honesty and secrets, open and hidden, rural cottage and village street.
"The New Mother" certainly compliments "The Sandman." Its didactic, disproportionate, scolding moral motif, though, lets it fall short of Hoffmann's spectacular weird achievement.
Clifford's slingshot ending, even so, leverages tremendous power.
Suddenly, while they were sitting by the fire, they heard a sound as of something heavy being dragged along the ground outside, and then there was a loud and terrible knocking at the door. The children felt their hearts stand still. They knew it could not be their own mother, for she would have turned the handle and tried to come in without any knocking at all.
“Oh, Turkey!” whispered Blue-Eyes, “if it should be the new mother, what shall we do?”
“We won’t let her in,” whispered the Turkey, for she was afraid to speak aloud, and again there came a long and loud and terrible knocking at the door.
“What shall we do? oh, what shall we do?” cried the children, in despair. “Oh, go away!” they called out. “Go away; we won’t let you in; we will never be naughty any more; go away, go away!”
But again there came a loud and terrible knocking.
“She’ll break the door if she knocks so hard,” cried Blue-Eyes.
“Go and put your back to it,” whispered the Turkey, “and I’ll peep out of the window and try to see if it is really the new mother.”
So in fear and trembling Blue-Eyes put her back against the door, and the Turkey went to the window, and, pressing her face against one side of the frame, peeped out. She could just see a black satin poke bonnet with a frill round the edge, and a long bony arm carrying a black leather bag. From beneath the bonnet there flashed a strange bright light, and Turkey’s heart sank and her cheeks turned pale, for she knew it was the flashing of two glass eyes.
She crept up to Blue-Eyes. “It is—it is—it is!” she whispered, her voice shaking with fear, “it is the new mother! She has come, and brought her luggage in a black leather bag that is hanging on her arm!”
“Oh, what shall we do?” wept Blue-Eyes; and again there was the terrible knocking.
“Come and put your back against the door too,Turkey,” cried Blue-Eyes; “I am afraid it will break.”
So together they stood with their two little backs against the door. There was a long pause. They thought perhaps the new mother had made up her mind that there was no one at home to let her in, and would go away, but presently the two children heard through the thin wooden door the new mother move a little, and then say to herself—“I must break open the door with my tail.”
For one terrible moment all was still, but in it the children could almost hear her lift up her tail, and then, with a fearful blow, the little painted door was cracked and splintered.
With a shriek the children darted from the spot and fled through the cottage, and out at the back door into the forest beyond. All night long they stayed in the darkness and the cold, and all the next day and the next, and all through the cold, dreary days and the long dark nights that followed.
They are there still, my children. All through the long weeks and months have they been there, with only green rushes for their pillows and only the brown dead leaves to cover them, feeding on the wild strawberries in the summer, or on the nuts when they hang green; on the blackberries when they are no longer sour in the autumn, and in the winter on the little red berries that ripen in the snow. They wander about among the tall dark firs or beneath the great trees beyond. Sometimes they stay to rest beside the little pool near the copse where the ferns grow thickest, and they long and long, with a longing that is greater than words can say, to see their own dear mother again, just once again, to tell her that they’ll be good for evermore—just once again.
And still the new mother stays in the little cottage, but the windows are closed and the doors are shut, and no one knows what the inside looks like.
Now and then, when the darkness has fallen and the night is still, hand in hand Blue-Eyes and the Turkey creep up near to the home in which they once were so happy, and with beating hearts they watch and listen; sometimes a blinding flash comes through the window, and they know it is the light from the new mother’s glass eyes, or they hear a strange muffled noise, and they know it is the sound of her wooden tail as she drags it along the floor.
Like Hawthorne's Goodman Brown, clearly their remaining hours will be gloom.
"The New Mother" can also be read here.
Jay