The Idler/"The Eldest Sister" As She Really Is

HO does not know the traditional picture of the eldest sister, that sweet-natured, amiable, cushiony sort of person, who dries our tears with her own handkerchief, and suffers us to embrace her with our sticky little hands, and kiss her with our jammy little mouths? It is a very old picture, and we have all believed in it at some time or another; but the only people who are thoroughly taken in by it are the people who have never had an eldest sister of their own. The best cure for such a picture is to have an elder sister at once. It is impossible to judge from watching other people's eldest sisters, for their public character is so misleading; for instance, they always kiss the "little ones" in public, and they do it so well that the stray visitor goes away charmed, and wishes she, too, had a nice, velvety person about the place who would pat her on the cheek and give her the best cake out of the dish. That is where the eldest sister is such a fraud. We who are younger sisters would like to say what happens when the stray visitor has departed; the little ones are sent back to the nursery, and the eldest sister stays behind and finishes up the cream with a teaspoon.

On Sunday the eldest sister reigns supreme. On Sunday we learn our Collect and try to say it to her, while she sits with her eyes turned away from the book to show that she knows it by heart already. But we catch her glancing down at it when she thinks we are not looking, and we begin to giggle, and are forthwith told that we do not realise how wrong it is to laugh on such a very serious occasion. I am very much afraid we do not. On Sunday, too, we look at the coloured German prints in a big Scriptural picture-book. Therein is Noah in a blue coat; and Adam in a carmine mantle, which might by some be considered an anachronism; and Abel lying on the ground, out of perspective, in a pool of crimson-lake which was evidently painted with the last brushful of the crimson-lake which had coloured Cain's coat and Cain's knife and Cain's hair; while a hand, representing Providence, is hanging loosely out of a substantial lamp-black cloud which looks as though it might drop down at any moment. And therein, too, is Moses in the burning bush; and this picture we like best of all, for it is one mass of crimson-lake, with incidental splashes of to give it a lurid effect; and we amuse ourselves much by trying to fit his large and broad sandals, which are standing on end in the foreground, on to his tiny feet, which seem to have been placed as an afterthought near the hem of his garment. We are very fond of this picture-book, and we please our eldest sister immensely by pointing out the principal characters in it correctly. Even eldest sisters do not know everything, and ours never guesses how little we should know about Noah if he wore a purple coat like Shem, instead of the blue one.

The most annoying trait of the eldest sister is that she is always right. She always makes unpleasant prophecies, and they always come true. It is enough to make one suspect that she got someone to anoint her with oil in her youth. Sometimes, for instance, we hire an extra man to help the regular gardener in the height of the summer season. There is always a singular charm about an extra man which at once deceives everybody in the house, and causes the regular gardener to give warning on the spot. But our eldest sister i& never deceived. "That man will turn out badly," she says, and she accentuates her attentions to the regular gardener. Of course, he does turn out badly; would he be an extra man if he didn't? But our eldest sister has gained her point, so she snubs the regular gardener, who is inclined to presume on her indulgence, and she takes up the annoying and exultant attitude of the Delphic Oracle. We almost expect to find her poking about for omens among the bones of the chicken we had for dinner yesterday.

It is the same thing if we go for a picnic and really mean to enjoy ourselves. However cloudless the day, our eldest sister prognosticates rain before we start; she puts all the mackintoshes and umbrellas she can find into the carriage, and she persists in hearing thunder in the distance all the way. Nobody else ever hears it, but when we tell her so she merely looks up defiantly at the blue sky as if to say, "So you think I'm nothing but another weak-spirited Canute, do you?" Certainly, if Canute had been an eldest sister the sea would have been compelled to turn back; no simple law of Nature could withstand her. And such is our confidence in her prophetic instinct that we lose all our spirits and wait gloomily for the end; and when the storm really does come on the way home, which of course it does, she is so proud of her foresight that she hardly minds the rain at all. It is really more than we can bear sometimes; why should Fortune always be on the side of the eldest sister?

The prettiest picture of the eldest sister exists in the sick-room, where she is supposed to tend the suffering little one with loving, tender care. Could anything be more affecting than the sight of our eldest sister bending over us, denying herself for our sakes, and doing all she can to alleviate our pain? Speaking as a younger sister, we do not know anything more painful. At all times she seems to think that we sadly overcrowd a world which is already not select enough for her, and that our only use in being here is to cause her to be the eldest sister. But it is the crown and top of our offence when we catch cold and have to be nursed. She might easily leave us to somebody else's care, but she never will.

"What touching devotion!" say her friends. They do not know. "You deserve to suffer," is her favourite remark to us; "didn't I tell you not to sit on that damp grass, last Thursday fortnight?"

We feel quite sure that if she had not told us not to sit on the damp grass on the aforesaid date, it would never have given us cold; but we only reply in husky tones that we shall be all right to-morrow.

"All right? That you won't; you don't leave this room for ten days if I can help it"; and feeling that she has thoroughly got us this time, she claps on a burning hot poultice unexpectedly, which, of course, is the last thing that ought to be done with a burning hot poultice, and she begins grumbling forthwith at the trouble we are causing her. We beg her not to bother about us, and tell her there is no need for her to nurse us at all; but this annoys her more than ever, for she cannot bear to have her self-sacrifice proved unnecessary.

"Just when we didn't want any colds about the place," she says, bearing down upon us viciously with the camphorated oil; "it will go through the house for certain; I feel quite choky myself. Want of consideration for the happiness of others, I call it. Now keep yourself covered up, do, and I will read you the Psalms for to-day."

We never know why we have more prayers than usual when we are ill, and we feel it reduces us to the level of the poor people in the village. But we are glad of anything that brings a pause in the remedies even for a moment.

It is a terrible thing to be a younger sister. But, after all, it cannot be much worse than to be an eldest sister and to have to live up to a standard of perfection. For an eldest sister can never allow herself the small luxuries of imperfect human nature; she can never eat the fruit out of the pie and leave the crust, because she has to tell her younger sisters that they should take it as it comes; she can never have jam and butter on her bread at once, because she has to keep up the fiction that such ways are extravagant; she can never leave anything on her plate at dinner-time, because it is her duty to point out that such wastefulness accounts, in some indistinct way which she never clearly explains, for the starvation of the masses in the East End. We do not know if the masses in the East End cease to starve when we do manage to clear our plates by eating more than we want; but our eldest sister's political economy has been acquired, like her theology, mainly for the purposes of convenience, and on this occasion it only serves as a means of getting to the next course as soon as possible.

The ways of the eldest sister are wary and subtle. Trusting, unknowing humanity must inevitably fall a victim to them. But there is always one person who knows them thoroughly well; and that is—the youngest sister.