Friends testimonies Against Fiction, Music, And Art

Another point raised in this same Third Query caused us no small amount of trouble: the question of whether Friends were careful to bring up the ir children in “frequently reading the Holy Scriptures, and to restrain them from reading pernicious books.” All fiction of every kind was considered “pernicious” by the Friends of those days. On this point , our mother was very strict, and we were not allowed to read even the most innocent and carefully chosen Sunday-school stories. As for novels, the very word was considered wicked, and to this day I never use it without a fleeting, instinctive sense of lawlessness, as if I were deliberately doing something wrong.

As we grew older, the line was naturally drawn less tightly, and when we became old enough to take a little more guidance of our lives into our own hands, we would sometimes snatch a fearful joy from a storybook borrowed from one of our school friends. One of my most vivid memories is of such an occasion, made all the more vivid because it was the first time I had dared to partake openly and boldly of the forbidden fruit.

It was a First-day afternoon, when nothing much seemed to be happening. I had borrowed a book from one of my schoolmates, who had told me it was “lovely,” and I took the book— with a plate of apples and gingerbread — and stretched myself across the outside of my bed to read and eat at my leisure.

The story I read that day, under such delightful circumstances, seemed to give me the nearest approach to perfect bliss I had ever experienced, and it remains in my memory as one of the happiest days of my life. The book was The Earl’s Daughter by Grace Aguilar. To my young American Quaker mind, an Earl was something like an archangel rather than an ordinary man, and to be an Earl’s daughter was almost akin to being a daughter of heaven. And to this day— despite all the disillusionment life has brought me regarding earls and their daughters — the old sense of grandeur that filled my soul with awe on that First-day afternoon long ago always returns for a moment whenever earls or countesses are mentioned in my presence.

But although I enjoyed this and other stories intensely, it was always with an uneasy conscience, and it took me fifty years to rid myself of the feeling that reading anything fictitious was a sin.

My diary is full of the struggles I endured because of this, and when I read them over now, I cannot help feeling deep pity for the hungry, ignorant young soul so tormented by the constant tendency to turn a perfectly innocent recreation into a moral offense.

What finally brought me deliverance was a sudden recognition that our Lord Himself constantly used parables — which are simply stories — to illustrate and enforce His teaching. Fiction, therefore, was not in itself, as I had always supposed, a synonym for sin. Its moral quality depended entirely on the kind of fiction it was, and often, fiction could be found to be an invaluable aid to virtue.

But I have known many Friends who have been tormented by scruples on this subject well into old age.

Music was another matter against which the Friends of my day had a very strong testimony. In a Philadelphia Discipline of 1873, I found the following passage concerning it, which clearly expresses the Quaker view: “We would renewedly caution to all our members against indulging in music, or having instruments of music in their houses, believing that the practice tends to promote a light and vain mind, and to disqualify for the serious thoughtfulness which becomes an accountable being, hastening to his final reckoning.… The spirit and language of the Discipline forbid the use of music by Friends, without any exception in favor of that called sacred.… Those m embers who indulge in the use of music, or who have musical instruments in their houses, bring themselves within the application of this second clause of the Discipline.… And if they be not reclaimed by further labor, so as to condemn their misconduct to the satisfaction of the meeting, it should proceed to testify our disunity with them.”

So strictly was the Discipline observed in this respect that I do not remember, in my young days, a single individual in our select circle who owned any sort of musical instrument, above all a piano, which was considered the gayest of the gay. Whenever I found myself in a room containing a piano, I felt as though I were treading the very borders of hell.

For many years after I became a woman, I never heard music anywhere without a secret, half- delicious sensation of tasting forbidden fruit. Even singing or whistling was frowned upon. I remember once, when a party of young Friends were spending a summer holiday together in Newport, a dear old Friend called us into his room and told us solemnly that he had been greatly grieved to hear some of us whistling in the garden the day before, and he hoped we would never again so transgress Friends’ testimonies.

That the Discipline on this matter was no dead letter is proved by the fact that, when I was older, and this testimony was beginning to lose its power over the less “concerned” members, I knew several instances in which Friends — though otherwise exemplary — were actually disowned simply for having a piano in their homes.

And as late as 1865, when we presented our son Frank with a cottage organ (we did not dare give him a piano, feeling that organs were somehow “plainer”), we were obliged to hide it in one of the top rooms of the house in order to spare the feelings of our Quaker relatives.

I shall never forget my astonishment when I first realized that musical instruments were not only permitted in the Bible, but that we were actually commanded to use them. One day, reading the Psalms, I could hardly believe my eyes when I came to Psalm 150: “Praise ye the Lord. Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; praise Him with stringed instruments and organs.” I never heard a Friend explain how they justified ignoring this.

“Plainness,” in my day, also excluded pictures everywhere except in books. No respectable Quaker would hang pictures on the walls, nor did they feel free to have their likeness taken. Even daguerreotypes, when they first appeared, were consider ed “gay” by all the truly “sound” Friends. I believe the idea was that having one’s picture might encourage vanity. And for some obscure reason, pictures or statuary were felt to be spiritually dangerous — temptations to idolatry. I grew up firmly believing it was wicked to visit an art gallery or to look at a statue.

I remember clearly, at about seventeen, breaking loose from all the traditions of my upbringing and going — my heart pounding as if on some perilously wicked adventure — into the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. There stood a marble group of Hero and Leander, and Leander was not very fully clothed. I still see myself standing before it, heart in my throat, saying inwardly, “I suppose I shall go straight to hell for this, but I cannot help it. If I must go, I must — , but I will look at this statue.” No words can express how daring a sinner I felt myself to be. And I remember my astonishment distinctly to find myself afterward standing safely in Broad Street, quite unharmed, without having experienced the swift judgment of an offended Creator.

I can still see that marble group vividly, far more vividly than any sculpture I have seen since.

Though I doubt it would now be considered great art, it has lived in my memory as the acme of all art, for it marked my emancipation into an entirely unknown world. Nothing dreadful happened to me, and I gradually gained courage for more, until I learned that a gift for art is as truly a divine bestowal as a gift for mathematics, and therefore cannot be wrong to cultivate. And gradually Friends also learned this; the old scruples against art and music have almost entirely disappeared.

Another testimony included under “plainness of apparel” in my youth was one against beards.

When Friends’ customs first crystallized, smooth faces were the universal fashion. Consequently, in keeping with the principle of not following changing worldly fashions, when beards became popular, Quakers clung to the clean-shaven face. As the fashion for beards became more insistent, the Quaker resistance grew firmer, until — gradually, and without any real reason I ever heard —it became a “religious testimony.” By the time I was born, it was one of the strictest.

I vividly recall the first time I saw a “preacher” wearing a beard. He was a visit ing Friend from England, where they were less strict. Yet despite my great reverence for English Friends, his beard seemed to me so plainly the mark of the Evil One that I felt it almost sinful to listen to his preaching. In several “strict” Meetings, he w as refused entrance to the gallery because of his beard, and I remember well the grave concern expressed by the Philadelphia Elders over this sad evidence of “the gradual encroachments of a worldly spirit in London Yearly Meeting.”

This testimony against beards, I believe, is shared — though probably for different reasons — by Roman Catholic priests and by High Church clergymen of the Church of England. But Friends have long since abandoned it, along with many other strict testimonies of my childhood. They still practice moderation in dress and speech, and in the furnishing of their homes and the ordering of their lives; but they have mostly given up any idea that a special cut of clothing or the suppression of natural gifts in literature, art, or music is necessary for divine favor.

Yet one cannot help admiring the sturdy adherence to what they sincerely believed was a religious duty, even though it now seems to us a mistaken one, that characterized those dear old saints.