PART IIISUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES‘For me the only remedy to the mortal injustices, to the endless miseries, to the often incurable passions which disturb the union of the sexes, is the liberty of breaking up conjugal ties and forming them again.’—GeorgeSand.‘Until the marriage tie is made more flexible, marriage will always be a risk, which men particularly will undertake with misgiving.’—H. B. Marriott-Watson.ILEASEHOLD MARRIAGE À LA MEREDITH‘Twenty years of Romance make a woman look like a wreck; twenty years of Marriage make her look like a public building.’—Oscar Wilde.Leaseholdmarriage was one of the customs of early Roman society. Nowadays it has a revolutionary savour, and is so apparently impracticable that it would be hardly necessary to do more than touch upon it here, but for the fact that its most recent and most distinguished advocate in modern times is Mr George Meredith. Any suggestion from such a source must necessarily receive careful consideration. It was also advanced by the great philosopher Locke, and was considered by Milton.It is scarcely three years since our veteran novelist cast this bombshell into a delighted, albeit disapproving Press; but as memories are so short nowadays, perhaps a brief recapitulation of the circumstances might not be amiss.The beginning of the business was a letter toThe Timesby Mr Cloudesly Brereton complaining of the ‘growing handicap of marriage’ and, according to invariable custom, attacking women as the cause of it. He stated that in the middle classes ‘the exigences of modern wives are steadily undermining the attractions of matrimony; in her ever-growing demands on her husband’s time, energy, and money the modern married woman constitutes a very serious drag, and in the lower classes of society, marriage even seriously militates against a man’s finding work.’ How women can be held responsible for this last injustice was wisely not stated. It would have been difficult to prove the indictment, I think.This document’s chief claim to interest was the discussion inThe Daily Mailthat followed it, and the curious fact that the writer was married a few weeks after its publication! The usual abuse on marriage in general and women in particular followed, until the late Mrs Craigie joined the discussion, and brought to bear on it that peculiar quality of tender understanding, that wonderful insight into women’s hearts, which were among the most striking characteristics of her brilliant work.It would be a pity to quote from such a letter, so I reproduce it in full.‘Women, where their feelings are in question, are not selfish enough: they appraise themselves not too dearly, but too cheaply: it is the suicidal unselfishness of modern women which makes the selfishness of modern bachelors possible. Bachelors are not all misogynists, and the fact that a man remains unmarried is no proof that he is insensible to the charm of woman’s companionship, or that he does not have such companionship, on irresponsible terms, to a most considerable degree. Why should the average vain young man, egoistic by organism and education, work hard or make sacrifices for the sake of any particular woman, while so many are too willing to share his life without joining it, and so many more wait eagerly on his steps to destroy any chivalry or tenderness he may have been born with? Modern women give bachelors no time to miss them and no opportunity to need them. Their devotion is undisciplined and it becomes a curse rather than a blessing to its object. Why? Because women have this strange power of concentration and self-abnegation in their love; theycannot do enough to prove their kindness; and when they have done all and been at no pains to secure their own position, they realise they have erred through excess of generosity and the desire to please. This is the unselfishness shown towards bachelors.’In answer to this letter, another woman novelist, Miss Florence Warden, challenged Mrs Craigie as to the existence of such women, but elicited no further reply.The Daily Mailcommented on it thus: ‘Hundreds of thousands of our readers can give an answer to this remarkable statement out of their own experience, and we have little doubt as to what the tenor of that answer will be.’ One can imagine that this was written with a view to being read at the breakfast-tables of Villadom; but men and women of the world, whose experience is not confined to Villadom, nor their opinions of life coloured by the requirements of the Young Person, will recognise the undoubted truth of Mrs Craigie’s statements. Whilst agreeing that the state of things between the sexes which she describes is a true one, I venture respectfully to differ as to women’s motive for this ‘excess of generosity.’ Thereis an enormous amount of wonderful unselfishness among women, but it does not expend itself in this direction, in my opinion. Rather is the motive a passionate desire for their own enjoyment, the gratification of their own vanity by pleasing the opposite sex, often at the cost of their own self-respect. H. B. Marriott-Watson takes the same view in a subsequent letter, where he says: ‘Women’s unselfishness does not extend to the region of love. The sex attraction is practically inconsistent with altruism, and the measure of renunciation is inversely the measure of affection. This is the order which Nature has established, and it is no use trying to expel her. A woman may lay down her life for the man she loves, but she will not surrender him to a rival.’Another letter of interest came from Miss Helen Mathers, who stated that ‘all women should marry, but no men!’—the advantages of the conjugal state being, in her opinion, entirely on the woman’s side.At this point appeared Mr Meredith’s contribution to the discussion in the less authoritative form of an interview—not a letter or article, as, after this lapse of time, so manypeople seem to imagine. On re-reading this interview recently, I was struck with Mr Meredith’s peculiarly old-fashioned ideas about women. Where the woman question was concerned the clock of his observation seems to have stopped many decades ago.‘The fault at the bottom of the business,’ he affirms, ‘is that women are so uneducated, so unready. Men too often want a slave, and frequently think they have got one, not because the woman has not often got more sense than her husband, but because she is so inarticulate, not educated enough to give expression to her real ideas and feelings.’This was before the vogue of the suffragettes, but it is a sufficiently surprising statement for 1904. He continues:‘It is a question to my mind whether a young girl, married, say, at eighteen, utterly ignorant of life, knowing little of the man she is marrying, or of any other man in the world at all, should be condemned to live with him for the rest of her life. She falls out of sympathy with him, say, has no common taste with him, nothing to share with him, no real communion except a physical one. The life is nearly intolerable, yet manywomen go on with it from habit, or because the world terrorises them.’This is true enough, but Mr Meredith speaks as if it were still the rule, as in our grandmothers’ day, for a girl to marry in the teens, whereas it is now quite the exception. Every year the marrying age seems to advance, and blushing brides decked in orange blossoms are led to the altar at an age when, fifty years ago, they would be resigned old maids in cap and mittens. If a girl is foolish enough to marry immediately she is out of the schoolroom, she must be prepared to take the enormous risk which the choice of a husband at such an immature age must entail.Elsewhere Mr Meredith says: ‘Marriage is so difficult, its modern conditions are so difficult, that when two educated people want it, nothing should be put in their way. . . . Certainly one day the present conditions of marriage will be changed. It will be allowed for a certain period, say ten years, or—well, I do not want to specify any particular period. The State will see sufficient money is put by to provide for and educate the children. Perhaps the State will take charge of this fund. Therewill be a devil of an uproar before such a change can be made. It will be a great shock, but look back and see what shocks there have been and what changes have nevertheless taken place in this marriage business in the past.’‘The difficulty,’ he continues, ‘is to make English people face such a problem. They want to live under discipline more than any other nation in the world. They won’t look ahead, especially the governing people. And you must have philosophy, though it is more than you can hope to get English people to admit the bare name of philosophy into their discussion of such a question. Again and again, notably in their criticism of America, you see how English people will persist in regarding any new trait as a sign of disease. Yet it is a sign of health.’It will be seen that Mr Meredith puts forward the ten-year limit merely as a suggestion. I recall in one of Stevenson’s essays an allusion to a lady who said: ‘After ten years one’s husband is at least an old friend,’ and her answer was: ‘Yes, and one would like him to be that and nothing more.’ The decade seems to have a special significance in marriage.After the trying first year is over, most couples settle down comfortably enough until nearing the tenth year. The president of the Divorce Court has called this the danger zone of married life. One of the subsequent letters inThe Daily Mail, approving Mr Meredith’s suggestion, alluded to the present form of marriage as ‘the life-sentence,’ and suggested a still shorter time limit, five years for choice, since during that time a couple would have found happiness or the reverse, and in the latter case ten years was too long to wait for freedom.A writer in another paper cited America as an example of terminable marriage in full working order. ‘It appears from the statement of an American bishop that the people of the United States are actually living under Mr Meredith’s conditions already. Last year (1903) as many as 600,000 American marriages were dissolved. This means that there was one divorce to every four marriages. In some districts the proportion was more like one to two. And the most frequent cause of divorce was a desire for change!’It seems to me that the establishment of a leasehold marriage system would only resultin wholesale wretchedness and confusion, beside which the present sum of marital misery would be but a drop in the ocean. If our marriage laws must be modified, let us trust it will not be in this direction, though it is obvious enough that such a change would come as a boon to thousands of men and women, who from one cause or another have come to loathe the tie that binds them. Whether it would not also disturb the prosaic content that passes for happiness with millions more is too big a question to be more than mentioned here.The fate of those who are tied for life to lunatics, criminals, and drunkards is pitiable indeed, but an extension of the laws of divorce would meet their exceptional case, without disturbing the marriage bond of normal people. I have endeavoured to indicate some of the many difficulties of leasehold marriage in the following dialogue.IILEASEHOLD MARRIAGE IN PRACTICEA DIALOGUE IN 1999‘There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy—it is repudiation.’—Marcel Prévost.Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of forty, are lunching together. They are old friends and have not met for years.Margaret.‘How nice it is to be together again, but I’m sorry to find you so changed; you don’t look happy, what is the trouble?’Katharine.‘I ought to look happy, I’ve had wonderful luck, but the truth is, I’m utterly tired. The conditions of marriage nowadays are horribly wearing, don’t you think?’M.‘Well, of course, we miss that feeling of peace and security that our mothers talked of, but then we also miss that ghastly monotony. Think of living year after year, thirty, forty, fifty years, with the sameman! How tired one would get of his tempers.’K.‘I’m not so sure of that. Monotony of tempers is better than variety. All people have them, anyway. Besides, I’ve a notion that our fathers were nothing like so difficult to live with as our husbands are. You see, in the old days they knew they were fixed up for life, and that acted as a curb. We seem to miss that curb nowadays.’M.‘Yes, there’s something in that. I remember my grandmother, who was married at the end of the last century, used to say that her husband was her Sheet Anchor, and he called her his Haven of Rest.’K.‘Oh, I envy them! That’s what I want so badly—a haven, an anchor! How peaceful life must have been then before this horrible new system came in.’M.‘People evidently didn’t seem to think so, or why should they have altered it? But what’s your quarrel with the system? You’ve had four husbands and changed the first two almost as quickly as the law allowed.’K.‘Yes, and I’m only forty-one. I began too young—at eighteen—but one naturally takes marriage lightly when one knows it’sonly for five years. One enters upon it as thoughtlessly as our happy mothers used to start their flirtations.’M.‘The consequences are rather more serious though; we are disillusioned women at the age when they were still light-hearted girls.’K.‘It’s the families that make it so difficult. Fatherhood is quite a cult nowadays. All my husbands have been of a philoprogenitive turn, and I have eight children.’M.‘Eight children! No wonder you look worried.’K.‘Exactly! my mother would have been horrified. Two or three was the correct number in her days, four at the utmost, and five a fatality and very rare.’M.‘Well, my dear, you needn’t have had so many; you should have curbed that cult of Fatherhood. No woman is compelled to bear children nowadays, as our unfortunate grandmothers were. Have you got all eight with you?’K.‘No, that’s just the trouble. I didn’t want to have so many, but of course now I’ve got them I want them with me, and of course their fathers want them too.’M.‘Oh dear! how tiresome; that’s the worst of having children in these times. I’m sometimes glad I have none.’K.‘Then perhaps you don’t know the law about the children of our present marriage system? A sum of money has to be invested annually for each child, in the great State Infant Trust; when the marriage is dissolved the mother has the sole custody of them, unless the father wishes to share it; in the latter case they spend half the year with each parent.’M.‘It’s fair.’K.‘I suppose so, but oh! so terribly hard on a mother! My two elder girls are almost grown up, they’ve been at a boarding school for some time, and it was easy and natural enough for George and I to share them in the holidays, but now, I can’t keep them at the school any longer, and they will have to spend half the year with him. Thank heaven, he hasn’t been married for some time, and isn’t likely to again, so I haven’t the horror of a strange woman influencing them, but how can I guide them? how have any real control or influence over them in such circumstances?’M.‘Yes, that must be very sad for you.’K.‘It’s awful, but there’s much worse than that. My second husband, Gordon, the father of Arthur and Maggie, is married again, and his wife is jealous of his eldest children, and hates the time when they come to stay. And my little Arthur is so delicate, he requires ceaseless care and studying—I never have a happy moment when he is with them; he doesn’t get on well with the other children either, and always returns from the visits looking ill and wretched. I couldn’t tell you all I have suffered on account of Arthur! Oh! when I think of him, I could curse this infamous marriage system—it is a sin against nature!’M.‘But, my dear, it’s no use abusing the laws. Why didn’t you stay with Gordon, or in the first instance with George? It’s often done, even now.’K.‘I know, I know, but George and I were utterly unsuited—we married as boy and girl. Under the old system prudent parents generally intervened, and the young couple were obliged to wait until they were sure of their own minds. But you know how things are now; in one’s first young infatuation,one is sure of five years ahead at least, and one doesn’t need to look beyond that.’M.‘Well, you were twenty-four when you married Gordon; why didn’t you choose him more carefully?’K.‘That was largely “a matter of economics” as I read in an old play calledVotes for Women, not long ago—so quaint their ideas were in those days!—and there was something in it too about “twenty-four used not to be so young, but it’s become so!” Still, I was old enough to know better, but I was light-hearted and luxury-loving, and I couldn’t live on that pittance, which was all the law compelled George to allow me. I don’t blame him, it was all he could do to save the necessary tax for the children. So I married Gordon for a home, and of course it was hateful!’M.‘And your third husband died?’K.‘Yes; the one who should have lived generally dies. I lost him after two years only, but I can’t talk of him, dear; he was just my Man of Men.’M.‘Ah! I’m glad you have had that.’K.‘Oh! I have been lucky with all my troubles, as I told you. I was alone for fouryears after I lost my Best, and I should like to have been faithful to him for ever. But I wasn’t strong enough; in spite of the dear children I was very lonely, as the elder ones were always at school.’M.‘Yes, and one wants a man, somehow, to fuss round one.’K.‘True, it’s a fatal weakness. So at last I married my good little Duncan, just for companionship. I chosehimcarefully enough. Experience has taught me a lot, and I didn’t mean to be left in the lurch at forty as so many are.’M.‘I’m glad he’s good to you. Yes; it’s fearful how many women get left alone just when they need care and love most, when their looks and freshness are gone, and their energy weakened. But, as you haven’t got that to fear, why should you be so worried now?’K.‘It isn’t exactly that I’m worried—I’m used up! Twenty years of uncertain domestic arrangements is enough to wear out anyone. I’ve never been able to feel settled in any house, or let myself get attached to a place, or plant out a garden even. One’s set of friends is always breaking up; people neverseem to buy houses and estates now, or to get rooted anywhere. In the novels of fifty years ago, how they used to complain about being in a groove! They little knew how miserable life could be for want of a permanent groove.’M.‘I dislike monotony, but it certainly has its advantages. You remember my first husband, Dick?—such a good-looking boy—he was crazy about golf and outdoor games. I got quite into his way of living, and it was a great trial when I married Cecil Innes, who hated the open air, and cared only for books and grubbing about in museums.’K.‘Why did you leave Dick?’M.‘I didn’t really want to, we were very comfy together, but he fell in love with another woman. He was mad about her, and asked me to release him. As I had no children, I thought it only fair to agree. Cecil interested me very much at first, and he adored me, but I had a very dreary time with him. You know I’m not a bit literary, and he was so “precious” and bookish, he bored me to death. I was glad to leave him for Jack, my present husband, but Cecil’s grief at parting was so frightful I shall neverforget it, and when he died soon after I felt like a murderess.’K.‘It must have been a painful experience, but one gets accustomed to these tragedies, one hears of so many. There is always one who wants to be free, and one to remain bound.’M.‘Yes; and the unwritten tradition that it is a matter of honour never to seek to hold an unwilling partner quite negatives the law that a marriage can only terminate when both parties desire it.’K.‘I’m sure the tragedies of parting one hears of nowadays are far worse than the occasional tragedies in the old days, caused by being bound, and ever so much more frequent.’M.‘It wouldn’t be such an irony ifanyonewere benefited, but as far as I can see the men suffer nearly as much as the women, especially when they are old. According to our early century newspapers, an old bachelor or widower could always get a young and charming wife, but now nobody will marry an elderly man, except the old ladies, and the men don’t want them.’K.‘It’s a pity they don’t, that would solvea lot of the unhappiness one sees around. It must be awful to be deserted in one’s old age.’M.‘Talking about the old newspapers, it’s very amusing to read them in the British Museum, and see what wonderful things were expected of the leasehold marriage system when it was first legalised. All the abuses of the old system were to disappear: divorce, adultery, prostitution, and seduction—all the social evils were to go in one clean sweep.’K.‘How absurdly shortsighted people were then. Divorce is abolished, it’s true, but the scandals and misery, broken hearts and broken homes that it caused are now multiplied a thousand times. Infidelity may be less frequent, but if people have the wish and the opportunity for it they’re not likely to wait for a certain number of years, until it ceases to be technically a sin. The same with the other evils. There will always be a large number of men who postpone marriage for financial or other reasons, and a large number of women who can only earn a living in one way—the oldest profession in the world will always be kept going! Seduction, too, is not likely to cease as long as the lawis so lenient to it. There will always be ignorant, silly, unprotected girls and always men to take advantage of them.’M.‘There seem to be just as many elderly spinsters, too, as before; the women who don’t attract men remain the same under any system, and often they are the best women.’K.‘How strange it must benever to have had a husband!’M.‘It must be peaceful, at anyrate; but spinsters don’t look any happier than married women.’K.‘I can only see one good result of the leasehold system—that women are as anxious for motherhood now as in the early century they were anxious to avoid it. We grow old with the fear of almost certain desertion and loneliness before us, and the one hope for our old age is our children——Oh! I am sorry, I forgot you had none.’M.‘Never mind, I often think of it, and whenever Jack admires or pays attention to another woman, I am in terror for fear he has found a fresh attraction and may want to leave me. What stuff they used to write formerly about the necessity for love being free. As if freedom were such a glorious thing!Why, we are all slaves to some convention or passion or theory; none of us are free, really free, and we wouldn’t like it if we were. It may be all very well for the fantastic love of novels to be free, but that strangeneed of each other, which we call “love” in real life, for want of a better term—thatmust be forged into a bond, or what help is it to us poor vacillating mortals? Love must be an Anchor in real life—nothing else is any use!’IIITHE FIASCO OF FREE LOVE‘The ultimate standards by which all men judge of behaviour is the resulting happiness or misery.’‘Conduct whose total results, immediate and remote, are injurious is bad conduct.’—Herbert Spencer.Freelove has been called the most dangerous and delusive of all marriage schemes. It is based on a wholly impossible standard of ethics. Theoretically, it is the ideal union between the sexes, but it will only become practical when men and women have morally advanced out of all recognition. When people are all faithful, constant, pure-minded, and utterly unselfish, free marriage may be worth considering. Even then, there would be no chance for the ill-favoured and unattractive.Under present conditions no couple livingopenlyin free love is known to have made a success of it—a solid, permanent success, that is. I believe there are couples who live happily together without any more durable bondthan their mutual affection, but they wisely assume the respectable shelter of the wedding ring, and call themselves Mr and Mrs. Thus their little fledgling of free love is not required to battle against the overwhelming force of social ostracism. And moreover one has no means of knowing how long these unions stand the supreme test of time. The two notable modern instances of free love that naturally rise to the mind are George Eliot and Mary Godwin. But both the men with whom they mated were already married. As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary Godwin married Shelley, and when George Lewes had passed away, George Eliot married another man—an act which most people consider far less pardonable in the circumstances than her irregular union with Lewes. Even the famous Perfectionists of Oneida relapsed into ordinary marriage on the death of their leader, Noyes, and by his own wish.As an institution, free love seems widely practised in the East End of London, but judging by the evidence of the police courts its results are certainly not encouraging. I am told that the practice is common among the cotton operatives of Lancashire. Thecollagesystem is also very prevalent in France among the working classes, and seems to answer well enough. But only when women have the ability and the opportunity to support themselves is free marriage at all feasible from the economic standpoint, and even then there remains the serious question of illegitimacy. All right-minded persons must acknowledge that the attitude of society towards the illegitimate is unjust and cruel in the extreme, resulting as it does in punishing the perfectly innocent. But every grown man and woman is aware of this attitude, and those who act in defiance of it, to please themselves or to satisfy some whim of experiment, do so in the full knowledge that on their child will fall a certain burden of lifelong disadvantage. Many perhaps are deterred from breaking the moral law by this knowledge, but the number of illegitimates born in England and Wales in 1905 was 37,300; and, in the interests of these unfortunate victims of others’ selfishness, I think it is high time a more kindly and broad-minded attitude towards their social disability was adopted.I remember as a young girl going to seea play calledA Bunch of Violets. The heroine discovers that her husband’s previous wife is alive and that her child is therefore illegitimate. She tells her daughter to choose between the parents, explaining the worldly advantages of staying with her rich, influential father. The harangue concludes with words to the effect: ‘With me you will be poor and shamed, andyou can never marry.’ Doubtless this ridiculous point of view was adopted solely for the benefit of the young girls in the audience, but its unreasonableness disgusted me for one. Even to the limited intelligence of seventeen it is obvious that, since a name is of so much importance in life, an illegitimate girl had better marry as quickly as she possibly can, in order to obtain one!Free love has recently been much discussed in connection with socialism, and, thanks no doubt to the misrepresentations of certain newspapers, the idea seems to have gained ground that the abolition of marriage and the substitution of free love was part of the socialist programme. No more untrue charge could possibly be made, as inquiries at the headquarters of the various socialist bodies will quickly prove.The people who advocate free love are very fond of arguing that so personal a matter only concerns themselves. All who think thus should have had a grave warning in a recentcause célèbre, in which murder, attempted suicide, permanent maiming, and a tangle of misery involving innocent children down to the third generation, were proved to have resulted from a ‘free’ union entered on nearly thirty years before. This and the many other tragedies of free love, which appear in the newspapers from time to time, seem to prove the mistake of imagining that we are accountable to none for our actions. A relationship which affects the future generation can never be a private and personal matter. E. R. Chapman in a very interesting essay on marriage published some years ago says: ‘To exchange legal marriage for mere voluntary unions, mere temporary partnerships, would be not to set love free, but to give love its death blow by divorcing it from that higher human element which is the note of marriage, rightly understood, and which places regard for order, regard for the common weal above personal interest and the mere self-gratification of the moment.’IVPOLYGAMY AT THE POLITE DINNER-TABLE‘Last and hardest of all to eradicate in our midst, comes the monopoly of the human heart which is known as marriage . . . this ugly and barbaric form of serfdom has come in our own time by some strange caprice to be regarded as of positively divine origin.’—Grant Allen.Wecall it the polite dinner-table, because we never hesitate to be extremely rude to each other, when necessary for the purposes of argument. On this particular occasion, the inevitable marriage discussion, which is always to be found in one or other of the newspapers, was the subject of conversation, and the Good Stockbroker (unmarried) was vigorously defending the Holy Estate. His moral attitude is certainly somewhat boring, but nevertheless the Good Stockbroker is one of those people to whom one really is polite. Although obvious irritation was visible on the face of the Family Egotist we listened respectfully, with the exception of theWicked Stockbroker, whose dinner was far too important in his scheme of life to be trifled with by moral conversations.Whatever the Good Stockbroker says the Weary Roué is of course bound to contradict as a matter of honour. I may mention that the Weary Roué is a man of the highest virtue and a model husband and father. His pose of evil experience has gained him his sarcastic nickname, but in no way has he earned it by his conduct. ‘You forget,’ he interposed languidly, when the Good Stockbroker paused, ‘that no less a philosopher than Schopenhauer said that the natural tendency of man is towards polygamy, and of woman towards monogamy.’‘I deny the first statement,’ said the Good Stockbroker heatedly. He was always heated where questions of morality were concerned, and was proceeding to give chapter and verse for what promised to become a somewhat dull discussion when the Bluestocking firmly interposed in her small staccato pipe:‘To hear you, one would suppose monogamic marriage was a divine institution.’‘Absurd, isn’t it?’ grinned the Weary Roué. The Good Stockbroker looked painedand cleared his throat. At this formidable signal, the Family Egotist—whose irritation had been increasing like the alleged circulation of a newspaper—showed every sign of hurling the boomerang of his opinion into the fray. This would have meant the death of all liveliness for some hours to come, and a general sigh had begun to heave, when once more our brave Bluestocking stemmed the tide.‘You make rather a cult of the Bible,’ she quacked scornfully, directing her remarks principally at the Good Stockbroker; ‘but you don’t seem very conversant with the Old Testament. You will find there ample proof that monogamic marriage is no more divine than—than polygamy or free love. Nor has it any celestial origin, since it varies with race and climate. It is simply an indispensable social safeguard.’‘I’ll have a shilling each way on it,’ murmured the Ass (an incorrigible youth, quite the Winston Churchill of our family cabinet), using his customary formula. Unheeding, the Bluestocking chirruped on severely: ‘You must know, if you have ever studied sociology, that marriage is essentially asocial contract, primarily based on selfishness. At present itstill retains its semi-barbarous form, and those who preach without reason of its alleged sacredness would be better employed in suggesting how the savage code now in vogue can be modified to meet the necessities of modern civilisation.’She paused for breath. The Good Stockbroker was pale, but faced her manfully. ‘Well done, Bluestocking!’ said the Weary Roué. ‘Wonderful woman, our Quacker,’ said the Ass, ‘I’ll have a shilling each way on her.’ The Wicked Stockbroker took a second helping of salad, and ate on unheeding, whilst the Gentle Lady at the head of the table anxiously watched the Family Egotist, who looked apoplectic and was toying truculently with a wineglass with evident danger of shortening its career of usefulness.‘I was taught,’ said the Good Stockbroker slowly, ‘to regard marriage as a sacred institution—a holy mystery.’‘Then you were taught rot,’ snapped the Bluestocking, thus living up to the worst traditions of the polite dinner-table, and quivering with intellectual fury.‘Recrimination—’ began the Good Stockbroker.(‘Good word that, I’ll have a shilling each way on it,’ murmured the Ass.)‘—is not argument,’ continued the Good Stockbroker.‘It may not be, but what you said wasrot,’ replied the Bluestocking, ‘“a holy mystery, instituted in the time of man’s innocency”—I recognise the quotation! And when was that time, pray? Are you referring to the Garden of Eden, or to what part of the Bible? The chosen people, the Hebrews, were polygamists from the time of Lamech, evidently with the approval of the Deity. Even the immaculate David had thirteen wives, and the saintly Solomon a clear thousand. Not much of a holy mystery in those days, eh?’‘Dear Bluestocking, you reallyare—’ murmured the Gentle Lady.‘Not at all; she’s perfectly sound,’ interposed the Weary Roué, gloating with ghoulish joy over the Good Stockbroker’s apparent discomfort.‘I give in,’ said the latter, and a yell of joy burst from the Ass and the Weary Roué. ‘I really cannot argue against a lady of such overwhelming eloquence,’ he continued, bowingin his delightful courtly way. ‘All the same, I shall always believe that marriage is a holy institution.’‘My dear old chap,’ said the Weary Roué, hastily, with one eye on the Family Egotist, who was certainly being treated badly that evening: ‘your high-mindedness is admirable, quite admirable, but it won’t work; it doesn’t fit into modern conditions. Theoretically, Marriage is a Holy Mystery no doubt—in practice it’s apt to be an Unholy Muddle, sometimes a Mess. Personally I believe in polygamy.’Roars of laughter were stifled in their birth, as we thought of the Weary Roué’s circumspect spouse, and his several circumspect children, discreet from birth upwards.‘So do I—a shilling each way,’ said the Ass, inevitably.‘Not for myself, of course,’ continued the Weary Roué, without a trace of a smile, ‘that is to say, not—er—not now, but speaking for the majority and—er, in the abstract, polygamy would be a sensible institution. Just think how it would simplify all our modern complications, how it would mend our two worst social evils.’‘Yes,think, please—thinking will do,’ interposed the Gentle Lady, hastily.‘How it would solve the superfluous woman question,’ continued the Weary Roué, enthusiastically. ‘Think of the enormous number of miserable spinsters who would be happily provided for.’ An indignant quack came from the Bluestocking.‘Think of the expense,’ remarked the Good Stockbroker, dryly, and the Weary Roué collapsed like a pricked gas-bag.‘Herbert Spencer says,’ continued the Good Stockbroker, ‘that the tendency to monogamy is innate, and all the other forms of marriage have been temporary deviations, each bringing their own retributive evils. After all, monogamous marriage was instituted for the protection of women, and has been held sacred in the great and noble ages of the world. Quite apart from the moral point of view, however, polygamy could only be possible in a tropical climate, where the necessities of life were reduced to a minimum, and one could live on dates and rice, but as the average man in our glorious Free Trade country can’t afford to keep one wife, in decent comfort, let alone several—Iask, how in the name of the bank rate—?’‘You stockbroking chaps are so devilish sordid,’ returned the Weary Roué. ‘Didn’t I sayin the abstract? Of course I know it wouldn’t do practically, not yet anyway, but honestly I believe it would go far to solve the whole sex problem.’‘You neither of you seem to take the woman into consideration at all,’ piped the Bluestocking. ‘Do you suppose we modern women with our resources and our education would consider such an idea for a moment?’‘Well, what do you think?’ asked the Weary Roué, with diplomatic deference.To our surprise the Bluestocking began to blush, and her blush is not the coy, irresponsible flushing of an ordinary girl, but a painful rush of blood to the face under stress of deep earnestness, the kind of blush which forces one to look away.‘Well,’ she said, with a gulp, ‘I think, perhaps—they might.’ It was obvious the admission had cost her something. We were all dumfounded. The Family Egotist forgot his burning desire for speech and ceased to threaten his wineglass; the Gentle Lady wasquite excited; the Weary Roué became almost alert, and the Good Stockbroker looked as if he were about to burst into tears.‘I think women might not be averse from polygamy—as a choice of evils,’ continued the little Bluestocking bravely, ‘for the present waste of womanhood in this country is a very serious evil. Of course the financial conditions make it impossible, as the Good Stockbroker says, but if itwerepossible, if it were instituted for highest motives, and in an entirely honourable, open manner authorised and sanctioned by the—er—the proper people—I think women could concur in it without any loss of self-respect, especially if the first ardent love of youth were over. After that, and when a woman forgets herself, having truly found herself, in the love and care of her children and a larger view of life and its duties—then I think most women could be happy in such circumstances. I think a great deal of utterly untrue stuff is talked about the agony of sexual jealousy, and women’s jealousy especially. Men may suffer thus, I can’t say, but I’m sure women don’t. It’s the humiliation, the unkindness, thebeing deceivedand supplanted that hurts so when aman is unfaithful. But if it were all fair and above-board, if it were grasped that polygamy is more suited to men’s nature, and more likely to make for the happiness of the greatest number of women—their numerical strength being so far in advance of men that they couldn’t possibly expect to have a mate each—then I really think, after women had had time to readjust their ideas to this new condition—it may take a generation or more—I think they would accept it gladly, and find peace and contentment in it.’The Bluestocking paused and looked round the circle of interested faces. Even the Ass was intent on her words, but the Good Stockbroker’s eyes were averted and the Bluestocking was quite pale as she continued:‘Of course the word at once recalls the harem, the zenana, but nothing of that kind would do. The wives would have to live separately, as the Mormons do, each in her own home, with her own circle of interests and duties, her own lifework. No one ought to live in idleness, which is the cause of all sorts of discord and trouble. Every woman should work at something, and to help someone. I’m not thinking now, ofcourse, of happily married and contented women, but of the thousands leading miserable, dull, and lonely lives, who would be infinitely happier if they had a certain week to look forward to, at regular recurring intervals, when their husbands would be living with them. It would bring love and human interest and, what is most important of all, amotiveinto their existence. I know it sounds dreadfully immoral,’ she went on, blushing again painfully, ‘but, oh! I don’t mean it likethat. After all, the chief reason why people marry is for companionship, and it is companionship that unmarried women, past the gaiety of first youth, chiefly lack. The natural companion of woman is man; therefore, as there aren’t enough husbands to go round, it follows that one might do worse than share them. I don’t say it would be as satisfactory as having a devoted husband all to oneself, but it might be for the greatest good of the greatest number, and it would surely solve to a certain extent the—the social evils.’They all clapped when she had finished somewhat breathlessly. It was obvious that the brave Bluestocking so far lacked thecourage of her opinions as to be agonisingly embarrassed at this public expression of them. The Gentle Lady, who is the most tactful creature in existence, accordingly rose before anyone had time to speak, and the two women left the room together.A babble of talk arose from the men, under cover of which the Good Stockbroker also slipped quietly away.‘Pass the port,’ said the Wicked Stockbroker, briskly. ‘She’s a deuced bright little woman, but how even the brainy ones can be so ignorant of life beats me, and how you chaps can be such hypocrites. . . . !’‘Hypocrites! what d’you mean?’ blustered the Family Egotist, who was by now almost bursting with suppressed talk.‘Not you, old chap, but the Weary Roué and the Good Stockbroker, jawing away as if they really thought monogamy was in the majority in this country, and polygamy was something new! Of course one expects it from the G. S., but you, W. R., really ought to know better—by the way, where is the G. S?’‘I think he must have gone to propose to the Bluestocking—to save her from polygamyand her own opinions,’ drawled the Weary Roué, lighting his cigarette.‘Stout fella! I believe he has!’ cried the Ass, excitedly. ‘I’ll have a shilling each way on it with any of you—I mean it, really!’‘Oh! what if he has?’ said the Family Egotist, irritably. ‘What does one fool more in the world matter? Do stop rotting, you fellows, and pass the port.’VIS LEGALISED POLYANDRY THE SOLUTION?InMr W. Somerset Maugham’s very interesting psychological study,Mrs Craddock, he makes one of his characters say: ‘The fact is that few women can be happy with only one husband. I believe that the only solution of the marriage question is legalised polyandry.’This is the kind of statement which it is only respectable to receive with horror, but if the secrets of feminine hearts could be known it might prove that a goodly amount of this horror is assumed. I decline to commit my sex either way. Mr Maugham is evidently a gentleman very deeply experienced in feminine hearts, and I daresay he knows what he is talking of. He is, moreover, safely unmarried, but even he entrenches himself behind one of the characters in his novel, and who am I that a greater courage should be expected of me?There is, of course, a marvellous virtue in the word ‘legalised.’ The most unholy and horrible marriages between fair young girls and rich or titled dotards, drunkards, orcretinsare considered perfectly proper and respectable because ‘legalised.’ Yet the people who countenance these abominations would probably be unutterably shocked by the very whisper of polyandry—an infinitely more decent relation, because regulated by honest sex attraction, and free presumably from mercenary considerations. But whether legalised polyandry isTHEsolution to the marriage question or not, it is clearly an impossible one for women-ridden England, and though of late years women have made startling strides, and shown themselves possessed of unsuspected vitality, it seems unlikely that their superfluous energies will be expended in this direction.VIA WORD FOR DUOGAMY‘God made you, but you marry yourself.’—R. L. Stevenson.Theday after the polite dinner-party, Isolda, Miranda, and Amoret came in to tea, and I retailed to them the discussion of the previous evening on polygamy.‘I see the Bluestocking’s point,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully: ‘polygamy might be acceptable to the superfluous woman who can’t marry under present conditions—the discontented spinster to whom the single state is so detestable that even polygamy would be preferable—but it would never be acceptable to the woman who can and does marry.’‘Yet how many married women put up with it nowadays?’ said Miranda; ‘aren’t there ever so many wives who condone their husband’s infidelity, and endure it as best they can, for the sake of the children, or for social reasons, or because they’re sufficiently attachedto the man to prefer a share of him to life alone without him? And what is that but countenancing polygyny?’‘Ah! but then the other women are only mistresses,’ exclaimed Isolda. ‘One might tolerate that unwillingly, but another legal wife, with rights equal to one’s own or, worse, with children to compete with one’s own—never!’‘Well, perhaps not,’ agreed Miranda; ‘I suppose a legal and permanent rival would be somewhat different, but, after all, it’s only the middle class in England who can be termed strictly monogamous—the upper and lowest are as polygynous as can be. It’s only our British hypocrisy that makes us pretend monogamy is our rule!’‘Don’t quarrel with British hypocrisy,’ said Amoret, lazily, ‘it’s our most valuable national asset. Hypocrisy simply holds the fabric of society together.’‘Agreed,’ said Isolda, ‘we must pretend to believe monogamy is the rule, for peace sake, and for the ideal’s sake. Of course everybody knows there are plenty of polygynous husbands about, and, for the matter of that, polyandrous wives, but hypocrisy isa great aid to decency, and a nation must have decency oftheoryat least, if not of practice, or we should—er—h’m—decline like the Romans.’‘I was waiting for one of you to mention the Romans,’ interposed Amoret, who for all her frivolity has a certain humorous shrewdness of her own. ‘It’s an invariable feature of all discussions on marriage. Directly one so much as breathes a suggestion that the marriage tie should be made more flexible to suit modern conditions, everyone present, except the unhappily married, pulls a long face and quotes the awful example of the Romans. Now I’ve got a gorgeous idea for solving the marriage problem.’‘Tell us,’ cried three voices in unison.‘Not yet, let’s get rid of the Romans first. I confided my idea to a man the other day, and when he had floored me with the Romans as usual, I went and looked up Gibbon.’Laughter interrupted her: the idea of our butterfly Amoret poring over Gibbon.‘Yes, I did,’ she continued, ‘and, as far as I could make out, it wasn’t their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, buttheir—what shall I say?—their general moral slackness. . . .’‘I know,’ said Isolda, coming to the rescue. ‘I was reading a frightfully interesting book about it the other day,Imperial Purple. It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely to carnal appetites, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, well, it’s absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate and the Empire collapse in consequence!’‘Hear, hear! Worthy of the Bluestocking herself!’‘Very well,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ll give in about the Romans if you like, just so as to get on with the conversation. Now let’s have your gorgeous idea, Amoret.’‘It’s just this,’ said Amoret. ‘Duogamy.’‘Duo—two?’‘Exactly—two partners apiece. We’re all so complex nowadays that one can’t possibly satisfy us. Two would just do it. Two would serve to relax the tension of marriedlife, and yet would not lead to what the newspapers call licence. Everyone would have another chance, and what the first partner lacked would be supplied by the second.’‘It’s not such a bad idea,’ said Isolda, musingly. ‘Launcelot could choose a good walker and bridge player for his alternative wife, and I’d try to find a man who hated cards and never walked a step when he could possibly ride.’‘I think it’s a grand idea,’ cried Miranda, enthusiastically. ‘Lysander could find a woman who’d play his accompaniments and love musical comedies, and I’d look out for a man who made a cult of the higher drama and had two permanent stalls at the Vedrenne-Barker Theatre.’‘It would simply solve everything,’ cried Amoret, ecstatically. ‘Whenever Theodore was disagreeable, off I’d go to my other one—and yet without feeling I was neglecting him, as he could go tohisother one. She would probably be a worthy, stolid, stayless lady with none of my faults, and when he was fed up with her stolid staylessness he could come back to me, and my very faults,you see, would be pleasing to him by reason of their contrast to hers, andvice versa.’‘It’s really a wonderful idea,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully, ‘I wonder no one thought of it before. There would be fewer old maids, as men wouldn’t be so terribly shy of matrimony when they knew there would always be that second chance. They wouldn’t expect so much from one wife as they do now. And think what a good effect it would have on our manners, too—how kind and polite and self-controlled we would be, under fear of being compared unfavourably with the other one.’‘Yes, it would certainly keep us all up to the mark,’ reflected Miranda, ‘slovenly wives would make an effort to be smart, and shrewish ones would put a curb on their tongues. Husbands would be quite loverlike and attentive, in their anxiety to outdo the other fellow.’‘It would smooth out the tangles all round,’ declared Amoret; ‘now just take the cases known to us personally. The Fred Smiths, for instance, haven’t spoken to each other for three years, just because Fred fell in love with Miss Brown and spendsnearly all his time with her. Mrs Smith is broken-hearted, Fred looks miserable enough—a home where no one speaks to you must be simply Hades—and the Brown girl is always threatening to commit suicide. The affair has quite spoilt her life, and it must be very hard luck on the Smith children, growing up in such an atmosphere. My plan would have done away with all this misery: Fred could have married Miss Brown, and gone on living happily at intervals with Mrs Smith.’‘But what would Mrs Smith do in the intervals? She happens to have found no counter attraction.’‘Well, perhaps if duogamy had been the custom, she would have looked out for one,’ said Amoret, ‘most married women could find one alternative, I’m sure. But, any way, no plan is perfect, and there are lots of wives who wouldn’t want a second husband at all, and who would be only too glad of a restful period, when no dinners need be ordered. Then take the case of the Robinsons: Dick Jones adores Mrs Robinson and is utterly wretched because he can only be a friend to her. She is very fond of him, and fondof her husband too; she could make them both very happy if they would share her.’‘I have often felt I could make two men happy,’ said Isolda. ‘Some of my best points are wasted on Launcelot. Then, too, he never tires of the country and his beloved golf, but I do, and when one of my fits of London-longing were to come over me I’d just run up to town and have a ripping time with my London husband.’‘Without feeling you were doing anything wrong,’ supplemented Amoret, whose apparent experience of the qualms of conscience struck me as being rather suspicious.‘It’s no good, girls,’ said Miranda, suddenly. ‘It’s no good—duogamy’s off! Think of the servants!’‘Horrors, the servants!’ said Isolda, blankly.‘Yes, I was afraid you would soon find out the one weak spot,’ said Amoret, regretfully. ‘Of course it would be awful having to cope with two lots of servants. One husband could afford to keep four or five, say, and the other only one or two, and each lot would get out of hand during the wife’s absence.’‘So instead of having a perfectly deevy timewith two husbands vying with each other in pleasing one, one would have a fearsome existence constantly breaking-in minions. Directly one had got A.’s servants into order, it would be time to go back to B. and do the same there.’‘No; thank you,’ said Isolda, firmly, ‘one lot is enough for me. I’ve said dozens of times, for the servant reason alone, that I wish I had never married. It would be madness to actually double one’s burden. You can strike me off the list of duogamists, Amoret, until the Servant Question is solved by some new invention of machinery, or the importation of Chinese.’‘Perhaps,’ Amoret suggested hopefully, ‘your alternative might consent to live in a hotel.’‘No such luck,’ said Isolda, mournfully, ‘when a man marries it’s mostly for a home—why else should he marry unless it’s for the children? Good gracious! I’d forgotten all about the children. Of course that settles it.’‘Thecul-de-sacof all reforms!’ said Amoret, tragically. ‘It’s impossible to suggest any revision in the marriage system that isn’tinstantly quashed by the children complication.’We all sat silent, busy with our thoughts, and then Isolda shuddered.‘Duogamy’s no good,’ she said emphatically, ‘and Iamso disappointed!’VIITHE ADVANTAGES OF THE PRELIMINARYCANTER‘Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age.’—R. L. Stevenson.Ofall the revolutionary suggestions for improving the present marriage system, the most sensible and feasible seems to me marriage ‘on approval’—in other words, a ‘preliminary canter.’ The procedure would be somewhat as follows: a couple on deciding to marry would go through a legal form of contract, agreeing to take each other as husband and wife for a limited term of years—say three. This period would allow two years for a fair trial, after the abnormal and exceptionally trying first year was over. Any shorter time would be insufficient. At the conclusion of the three years, the contracting parties would have the option of dissolving the marriage—the dissolution not to become absolute for another six months, soas to allow every opportunity of testing the genuineness of the desire to part. If no dissolution were desired, the marriage would then be ratified by a religious or final legal ceremony, and become permanently binding.In the case of a marriage dissolved, each party would be free to wed again; but the second essay must be final and permanent from the start. This restriction would be absolutely necessary if the preliminary canter plan is not to degenerate into a species of legalised free love, as there are many men, and some women, who would ‘always go on cantering,’ as Amoret expressed it once—and the upshot would be nothing less than leasehold marriage for the short term of three years.It might be urged against this plan that many couples who come to grief in the danger zone of married life—i.e.nearing the tenth year—are perfectly happy in the early years. But human love being as mutable as it is, and people and conditions being so liable to change, it is impossible to arrive at any permanent marriage system which allows for this. It must, however, be remembered that, in the majority of unhappy unions, it isnot the system, but the individuals who are to blame. The institution of the conjugal novitiate would, however, reduce the number of divorces considerably, by making less possible the miserable misfits in temperament now so prevalent. It would give a second chance to those who had made a mistake, yet without resulting in that promiscuity of intercourse which is a danger to society and fatal to the best interests of the race. Of what other scheme can the same be said?For married women in the novitiate period a new prefix would have to be invented, which they would retain if the union were dissolved.Mrswould be the distinguishing prefix of women who had entered on the final and permanent state of matrimony. Whether the wife would take the husband’s surname during the probationary term would be another question for decision by the majority; I should incline to her retaining her maiden name with the aforesaid prefix, and only assuming that of the husband with the Mrs of finality. But these are mere details.As regards the important question of thechildren, the issue of a probationary union would, of course, be legitimate, but I think wise people would see to it that no children were born to them until the marriage had been finally ratified. Certainly children would be the exception rather than the rule, but the question of their custody in the case of dissolved marriages would be one requiring the most thoughtful legislation. To divide the child’s time between the parents is an undesirable expedient, and one that must to a certain extent be harmful, since a settled existence and routine is so essential for children’s well-being. Yet to deprive the father of them altogether is equally undesirable.The conjugal novitiate is not a new scheme. It was practised prior to the Reformation in Scotland under the name of ‘hand-fasting.’ The parties met at the annual fairs, and by the ceremony of joining hands declared themselves man and wife for a year. On the anniversary of this function they were legally married by a priest—if all had gone well with them. If they had found the union a failure they parted.
PART IIISUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES‘For me the only remedy to the mortal injustices, to the endless miseries, to the often incurable passions which disturb the union of the sexes, is the liberty of breaking up conjugal ties and forming them again.’—GeorgeSand.‘Until the marriage tie is made more flexible, marriage will always be a risk, which men particularly will undertake with misgiving.’—H. B. Marriott-Watson.
‘For me the only remedy to the mortal injustices, to the endless miseries, to the often incurable passions which disturb the union of the sexes, is the liberty of breaking up conjugal ties and forming them again.’—GeorgeSand.
‘Until the marriage tie is made more flexible, marriage will always be a risk, which men particularly will undertake with misgiving.’—H. B. Marriott-Watson.
‘Twenty years of Romance make a woman look like a wreck; twenty years of Marriage make her look like a public building.’—Oscar Wilde.
Leaseholdmarriage was one of the customs of early Roman society. Nowadays it has a revolutionary savour, and is so apparently impracticable that it would be hardly necessary to do more than touch upon it here, but for the fact that its most recent and most distinguished advocate in modern times is Mr George Meredith. Any suggestion from such a source must necessarily receive careful consideration. It was also advanced by the great philosopher Locke, and was considered by Milton.
It is scarcely three years since our veteran novelist cast this bombshell into a delighted, albeit disapproving Press; but as memories are so short nowadays, perhaps a brief recapitulation of the circumstances might not be amiss.
The beginning of the business was a letter toThe Timesby Mr Cloudesly Brereton complaining of the ‘growing handicap of marriage’ and, according to invariable custom, attacking women as the cause of it. He stated that in the middle classes ‘the exigences of modern wives are steadily undermining the attractions of matrimony; in her ever-growing demands on her husband’s time, energy, and money the modern married woman constitutes a very serious drag, and in the lower classes of society, marriage even seriously militates against a man’s finding work.’ How women can be held responsible for this last injustice was wisely not stated. It would have been difficult to prove the indictment, I think.
This document’s chief claim to interest was the discussion inThe Daily Mailthat followed it, and the curious fact that the writer was married a few weeks after its publication! The usual abuse on marriage in general and women in particular followed, until the late Mrs Craigie joined the discussion, and brought to bear on it that peculiar quality of tender understanding, that wonderful insight into women’s hearts, which were among the most striking characteristics of her brilliant work.It would be a pity to quote from such a letter, so I reproduce it in full.
‘Women, where their feelings are in question, are not selfish enough: they appraise themselves not too dearly, but too cheaply: it is the suicidal unselfishness of modern women which makes the selfishness of modern bachelors possible. Bachelors are not all misogynists, and the fact that a man remains unmarried is no proof that he is insensible to the charm of woman’s companionship, or that he does not have such companionship, on irresponsible terms, to a most considerable degree. Why should the average vain young man, egoistic by organism and education, work hard or make sacrifices for the sake of any particular woman, while so many are too willing to share his life without joining it, and so many more wait eagerly on his steps to destroy any chivalry or tenderness he may have been born with? Modern women give bachelors no time to miss them and no opportunity to need them. Their devotion is undisciplined and it becomes a curse rather than a blessing to its object. Why? Because women have this strange power of concentration and self-abnegation in their love; theycannot do enough to prove their kindness; and when they have done all and been at no pains to secure their own position, they realise they have erred through excess of generosity and the desire to please. This is the unselfishness shown towards bachelors.’
In answer to this letter, another woman novelist, Miss Florence Warden, challenged Mrs Craigie as to the existence of such women, but elicited no further reply.The Daily Mailcommented on it thus: ‘Hundreds of thousands of our readers can give an answer to this remarkable statement out of their own experience, and we have little doubt as to what the tenor of that answer will be.’ One can imagine that this was written with a view to being read at the breakfast-tables of Villadom; but men and women of the world, whose experience is not confined to Villadom, nor their opinions of life coloured by the requirements of the Young Person, will recognise the undoubted truth of Mrs Craigie’s statements. Whilst agreeing that the state of things between the sexes which she describes is a true one, I venture respectfully to differ as to women’s motive for this ‘excess of generosity.’ Thereis an enormous amount of wonderful unselfishness among women, but it does not expend itself in this direction, in my opinion. Rather is the motive a passionate desire for their own enjoyment, the gratification of their own vanity by pleasing the opposite sex, often at the cost of their own self-respect. H. B. Marriott-Watson takes the same view in a subsequent letter, where he says: ‘Women’s unselfishness does not extend to the region of love. The sex attraction is practically inconsistent with altruism, and the measure of renunciation is inversely the measure of affection. This is the order which Nature has established, and it is no use trying to expel her. A woman may lay down her life for the man she loves, but she will not surrender him to a rival.’
Another letter of interest came from Miss Helen Mathers, who stated that ‘all women should marry, but no men!’—the advantages of the conjugal state being, in her opinion, entirely on the woman’s side.
At this point appeared Mr Meredith’s contribution to the discussion in the less authoritative form of an interview—not a letter or article, as, after this lapse of time, so manypeople seem to imagine. On re-reading this interview recently, I was struck with Mr Meredith’s peculiarly old-fashioned ideas about women. Where the woman question was concerned the clock of his observation seems to have stopped many decades ago.
‘The fault at the bottom of the business,’ he affirms, ‘is that women are so uneducated, so unready. Men too often want a slave, and frequently think they have got one, not because the woman has not often got more sense than her husband, but because she is so inarticulate, not educated enough to give expression to her real ideas and feelings.’
This was before the vogue of the suffragettes, but it is a sufficiently surprising statement for 1904. He continues:‘It is a question to my mind whether a young girl, married, say, at eighteen, utterly ignorant of life, knowing little of the man she is marrying, or of any other man in the world at all, should be condemned to live with him for the rest of her life. She falls out of sympathy with him, say, has no common taste with him, nothing to share with him, no real communion except a physical one. The life is nearly intolerable, yet manywomen go on with it from habit, or because the world terrorises them.’
This is true enough, but Mr Meredith speaks as if it were still the rule, as in our grandmothers’ day, for a girl to marry in the teens, whereas it is now quite the exception. Every year the marrying age seems to advance, and blushing brides decked in orange blossoms are led to the altar at an age when, fifty years ago, they would be resigned old maids in cap and mittens. If a girl is foolish enough to marry immediately she is out of the schoolroom, she must be prepared to take the enormous risk which the choice of a husband at such an immature age must entail.
Elsewhere Mr Meredith says: ‘Marriage is so difficult, its modern conditions are so difficult, that when two educated people want it, nothing should be put in their way. . . . Certainly one day the present conditions of marriage will be changed. It will be allowed for a certain period, say ten years, or—well, I do not want to specify any particular period. The State will see sufficient money is put by to provide for and educate the children. Perhaps the State will take charge of this fund. Therewill be a devil of an uproar before such a change can be made. It will be a great shock, but look back and see what shocks there have been and what changes have nevertheless taken place in this marriage business in the past.’
‘The difficulty,’ he continues, ‘is to make English people face such a problem. They want to live under discipline more than any other nation in the world. They won’t look ahead, especially the governing people. And you must have philosophy, though it is more than you can hope to get English people to admit the bare name of philosophy into their discussion of such a question. Again and again, notably in their criticism of America, you see how English people will persist in regarding any new trait as a sign of disease. Yet it is a sign of health.’
It will be seen that Mr Meredith puts forward the ten-year limit merely as a suggestion. I recall in one of Stevenson’s essays an allusion to a lady who said: ‘After ten years one’s husband is at least an old friend,’ and her answer was: ‘Yes, and one would like him to be that and nothing more.’ The decade seems to have a special significance in marriage.After the trying first year is over, most couples settle down comfortably enough until nearing the tenth year. The president of the Divorce Court has called this the danger zone of married life. One of the subsequent letters inThe Daily Mail, approving Mr Meredith’s suggestion, alluded to the present form of marriage as ‘the life-sentence,’ and suggested a still shorter time limit, five years for choice, since during that time a couple would have found happiness or the reverse, and in the latter case ten years was too long to wait for freedom.
A writer in another paper cited America as an example of terminable marriage in full working order. ‘It appears from the statement of an American bishop that the people of the United States are actually living under Mr Meredith’s conditions already. Last year (1903) as many as 600,000 American marriages were dissolved. This means that there was one divorce to every four marriages. In some districts the proportion was more like one to two. And the most frequent cause of divorce was a desire for change!’
It seems to me that the establishment of a leasehold marriage system would only resultin wholesale wretchedness and confusion, beside which the present sum of marital misery would be but a drop in the ocean. If our marriage laws must be modified, let us trust it will not be in this direction, though it is obvious enough that such a change would come as a boon to thousands of men and women, who from one cause or another have come to loathe the tie that binds them. Whether it would not also disturb the prosaic content that passes for happiness with millions more is too big a question to be more than mentioned here.
The fate of those who are tied for life to lunatics, criminals, and drunkards is pitiable indeed, but an extension of the laws of divorce would meet their exceptional case, without disturbing the marriage bond of normal people. I have endeavoured to indicate some of the many difficulties of leasehold marriage in the following dialogue.
‘There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy—it is repudiation.’—Marcel Prévost.
Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of forty, are lunching together. They are old friends and have not met for years.
Margaret.‘How nice it is to be together again, but I’m sorry to find you so changed; you don’t look happy, what is the trouble?’
Katharine.‘I ought to look happy, I’ve had wonderful luck, but the truth is, I’m utterly tired. The conditions of marriage nowadays are horribly wearing, don’t you think?’
M.‘Well, of course, we miss that feeling of peace and security that our mothers talked of, but then we also miss that ghastly monotony. Think of living year after year, thirty, forty, fifty years, with the sameman! How tired one would get of his tempers.’
K.‘I’m not so sure of that. Monotony of tempers is better than variety. All people have them, anyway. Besides, I’ve a notion that our fathers were nothing like so difficult to live with as our husbands are. You see, in the old days they knew they were fixed up for life, and that acted as a curb. We seem to miss that curb nowadays.’
M.‘Yes, there’s something in that. I remember my grandmother, who was married at the end of the last century, used to say that her husband was her Sheet Anchor, and he called her his Haven of Rest.’
K.‘Oh, I envy them! That’s what I want so badly—a haven, an anchor! How peaceful life must have been then before this horrible new system came in.’
M.‘People evidently didn’t seem to think so, or why should they have altered it? But what’s your quarrel with the system? You’ve had four husbands and changed the first two almost as quickly as the law allowed.’
K.‘Yes, and I’m only forty-one. I began too young—at eighteen—but one naturally takes marriage lightly when one knows it’sonly for five years. One enters upon it as thoughtlessly as our happy mothers used to start their flirtations.’
M.‘The consequences are rather more serious though; we are disillusioned women at the age when they were still light-hearted girls.’
K.‘It’s the families that make it so difficult. Fatherhood is quite a cult nowadays. All my husbands have been of a philoprogenitive turn, and I have eight children.’
M.‘Eight children! No wonder you look worried.’
K.‘Exactly! my mother would have been horrified. Two or three was the correct number in her days, four at the utmost, and five a fatality and very rare.’
M.‘Well, my dear, you needn’t have had so many; you should have curbed that cult of Fatherhood. No woman is compelled to bear children nowadays, as our unfortunate grandmothers were. Have you got all eight with you?’
K.‘No, that’s just the trouble. I didn’t want to have so many, but of course now I’ve got them I want them with me, and of course their fathers want them too.’
M.‘Oh dear! how tiresome; that’s the worst of having children in these times. I’m sometimes glad I have none.’
K.‘Then perhaps you don’t know the law about the children of our present marriage system? A sum of money has to be invested annually for each child, in the great State Infant Trust; when the marriage is dissolved the mother has the sole custody of them, unless the father wishes to share it; in the latter case they spend half the year with each parent.’
M.‘It’s fair.’
K.‘I suppose so, but oh! so terribly hard on a mother! My two elder girls are almost grown up, they’ve been at a boarding school for some time, and it was easy and natural enough for George and I to share them in the holidays, but now, I can’t keep them at the school any longer, and they will have to spend half the year with him. Thank heaven, he hasn’t been married for some time, and isn’t likely to again, so I haven’t the horror of a strange woman influencing them, but how can I guide them? how have any real control or influence over them in such circumstances?’
M.‘Yes, that must be very sad for you.’
K.‘It’s awful, but there’s much worse than that. My second husband, Gordon, the father of Arthur and Maggie, is married again, and his wife is jealous of his eldest children, and hates the time when they come to stay. And my little Arthur is so delicate, he requires ceaseless care and studying—I never have a happy moment when he is with them; he doesn’t get on well with the other children either, and always returns from the visits looking ill and wretched. I couldn’t tell you all I have suffered on account of Arthur! Oh! when I think of him, I could curse this infamous marriage system—it is a sin against nature!’
M.‘But, my dear, it’s no use abusing the laws. Why didn’t you stay with Gordon, or in the first instance with George? It’s often done, even now.’
K.‘I know, I know, but George and I were utterly unsuited—we married as boy and girl. Under the old system prudent parents generally intervened, and the young couple were obliged to wait until they were sure of their own minds. But you know how things are now; in one’s first young infatuation,one is sure of five years ahead at least, and one doesn’t need to look beyond that.’
M.‘Well, you were twenty-four when you married Gordon; why didn’t you choose him more carefully?’
K.‘That was largely “a matter of economics” as I read in an old play calledVotes for Women, not long ago—so quaint their ideas were in those days!—and there was something in it too about “twenty-four used not to be so young, but it’s become so!” Still, I was old enough to know better, but I was light-hearted and luxury-loving, and I couldn’t live on that pittance, which was all the law compelled George to allow me. I don’t blame him, it was all he could do to save the necessary tax for the children. So I married Gordon for a home, and of course it was hateful!’
M.‘And your third husband died?’
K.‘Yes; the one who should have lived generally dies. I lost him after two years only, but I can’t talk of him, dear; he was just my Man of Men.’
M.‘Ah! I’m glad you have had that.’
K.‘Oh! I have been lucky with all my troubles, as I told you. I was alone for fouryears after I lost my Best, and I should like to have been faithful to him for ever. But I wasn’t strong enough; in spite of the dear children I was very lonely, as the elder ones were always at school.’
M.‘Yes, and one wants a man, somehow, to fuss round one.’
K.‘True, it’s a fatal weakness. So at last I married my good little Duncan, just for companionship. I chosehimcarefully enough. Experience has taught me a lot, and I didn’t mean to be left in the lurch at forty as so many are.’
M.‘I’m glad he’s good to you. Yes; it’s fearful how many women get left alone just when they need care and love most, when their looks and freshness are gone, and their energy weakened. But, as you haven’t got that to fear, why should you be so worried now?’
K.‘It isn’t exactly that I’m worried—I’m used up! Twenty years of uncertain domestic arrangements is enough to wear out anyone. I’ve never been able to feel settled in any house, or let myself get attached to a place, or plant out a garden even. One’s set of friends is always breaking up; people neverseem to buy houses and estates now, or to get rooted anywhere. In the novels of fifty years ago, how they used to complain about being in a groove! They little knew how miserable life could be for want of a permanent groove.’
M.‘I dislike monotony, but it certainly has its advantages. You remember my first husband, Dick?—such a good-looking boy—he was crazy about golf and outdoor games. I got quite into his way of living, and it was a great trial when I married Cecil Innes, who hated the open air, and cared only for books and grubbing about in museums.’
K.‘Why did you leave Dick?’
M.‘I didn’t really want to, we were very comfy together, but he fell in love with another woman. He was mad about her, and asked me to release him. As I had no children, I thought it only fair to agree. Cecil interested me very much at first, and he adored me, but I had a very dreary time with him. You know I’m not a bit literary, and he was so “precious” and bookish, he bored me to death. I was glad to leave him for Jack, my present husband, but Cecil’s grief at parting was so frightful I shall neverforget it, and when he died soon after I felt like a murderess.’
K.‘It must have been a painful experience, but one gets accustomed to these tragedies, one hears of so many. There is always one who wants to be free, and one to remain bound.’
M.‘Yes; and the unwritten tradition that it is a matter of honour never to seek to hold an unwilling partner quite negatives the law that a marriage can only terminate when both parties desire it.’
K.‘I’m sure the tragedies of parting one hears of nowadays are far worse than the occasional tragedies in the old days, caused by being bound, and ever so much more frequent.’
M.‘It wouldn’t be such an irony ifanyonewere benefited, but as far as I can see the men suffer nearly as much as the women, especially when they are old. According to our early century newspapers, an old bachelor or widower could always get a young and charming wife, but now nobody will marry an elderly man, except the old ladies, and the men don’t want them.’
K.‘It’s a pity they don’t, that would solvea lot of the unhappiness one sees around. It must be awful to be deserted in one’s old age.’
M.‘Talking about the old newspapers, it’s very amusing to read them in the British Museum, and see what wonderful things were expected of the leasehold marriage system when it was first legalised. All the abuses of the old system were to disappear: divorce, adultery, prostitution, and seduction—all the social evils were to go in one clean sweep.’
K.‘How absurdly shortsighted people were then. Divorce is abolished, it’s true, but the scandals and misery, broken hearts and broken homes that it caused are now multiplied a thousand times. Infidelity may be less frequent, but if people have the wish and the opportunity for it they’re not likely to wait for a certain number of years, until it ceases to be technically a sin. The same with the other evils. There will always be a large number of men who postpone marriage for financial or other reasons, and a large number of women who can only earn a living in one way—the oldest profession in the world will always be kept going! Seduction, too, is not likely to cease as long as the lawis so lenient to it. There will always be ignorant, silly, unprotected girls and always men to take advantage of them.’
M.‘There seem to be just as many elderly spinsters, too, as before; the women who don’t attract men remain the same under any system, and often they are the best women.’
K.‘How strange it must benever to have had a husband!’
M.‘It must be peaceful, at anyrate; but spinsters don’t look any happier than married women.’
K.‘I can only see one good result of the leasehold system—that women are as anxious for motherhood now as in the early century they were anxious to avoid it. We grow old with the fear of almost certain desertion and loneliness before us, and the one hope for our old age is our children——Oh! I am sorry, I forgot you had none.’
M.‘Never mind, I often think of it, and whenever Jack admires or pays attention to another woman, I am in terror for fear he has found a fresh attraction and may want to leave me. What stuff they used to write formerly about the necessity for love being free. As if freedom were such a glorious thing!Why, we are all slaves to some convention or passion or theory; none of us are free, really free, and we wouldn’t like it if we were. It may be all very well for the fantastic love of novels to be free, but that strangeneed of each other, which we call “love” in real life, for want of a better term—thatmust be forged into a bond, or what help is it to us poor vacillating mortals? Love must be an Anchor in real life—nothing else is any use!’
‘The ultimate standards by which all men judge of behaviour is the resulting happiness or misery.’
‘Conduct whose total results, immediate and remote, are injurious is bad conduct.’—Herbert Spencer.
Freelove has been called the most dangerous and delusive of all marriage schemes. It is based on a wholly impossible standard of ethics. Theoretically, it is the ideal union between the sexes, but it will only become practical when men and women have morally advanced out of all recognition. When people are all faithful, constant, pure-minded, and utterly unselfish, free marriage may be worth considering. Even then, there would be no chance for the ill-favoured and unattractive.
Under present conditions no couple livingopenlyin free love is known to have made a success of it—a solid, permanent success, that is. I believe there are couples who live happily together without any more durable bondthan their mutual affection, but they wisely assume the respectable shelter of the wedding ring, and call themselves Mr and Mrs. Thus their little fledgling of free love is not required to battle against the overwhelming force of social ostracism. And moreover one has no means of knowing how long these unions stand the supreme test of time. The two notable modern instances of free love that naturally rise to the mind are George Eliot and Mary Godwin. But both the men with whom they mated were already married. As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary Godwin married Shelley, and when George Lewes had passed away, George Eliot married another man—an act which most people consider far less pardonable in the circumstances than her irregular union with Lewes. Even the famous Perfectionists of Oneida relapsed into ordinary marriage on the death of their leader, Noyes, and by his own wish.
As an institution, free love seems widely practised in the East End of London, but judging by the evidence of the police courts its results are certainly not encouraging. I am told that the practice is common among the cotton operatives of Lancashire. Thecollagesystem is also very prevalent in France among the working classes, and seems to answer well enough. But only when women have the ability and the opportunity to support themselves is free marriage at all feasible from the economic standpoint, and even then there remains the serious question of illegitimacy. All right-minded persons must acknowledge that the attitude of society towards the illegitimate is unjust and cruel in the extreme, resulting as it does in punishing the perfectly innocent. But every grown man and woman is aware of this attitude, and those who act in defiance of it, to please themselves or to satisfy some whim of experiment, do so in the full knowledge that on their child will fall a certain burden of lifelong disadvantage. Many perhaps are deterred from breaking the moral law by this knowledge, but the number of illegitimates born in England and Wales in 1905 was 37,300; and, in the interests of these unfortunate victims of others’ selfishness, I think it is high time a more kindly and broad-minded attitude towards their social disability was adopted.
I remember as a young girl going to seea play calledA Bunch of Violets. The heroine discovers that her husband’s previous wife is alive and that her child is therefore illegitimate. She tells her daughter to choose between the parents, explaining the worldly advantages of staying with her rich, influential father. The harangue concludes with words to the effect: ‘With me you will be poor and shamed, andyou can never marry.’ Doubtless this ridiculous point of view was adopted solely for the benefit of the young girls in the audience, but its unreasonableness disgusted me for one. Even to the limited intelligence of seventeen it is obvious that, since a name is of so much importance in life, an illegitimate girl had better marry as quickly as she possibly can, in order to obtain one!
Free love has recently been much discussed in connection with socialism, and, thanks no doubt to the misrepresentations of certain newspapers, the idea seems to have gained ground that the abolition of marriage and the substitution of free love was part of the socialist programme. No more untrue charge could possibly be made, as inquiries at the headquarters of the various socialist bodies will quickly prove.
The people who advocate free love are very fond of arguing that so personal a matter only concerns themselves. All who think thus should have had a grave warning in a recentcause célèbre, in which murder, attempted suicide, permanent maiming, and a tangle of misery involving innocent children down to the third generation, were proved to have resulted from a ‘free’ union entered on nearly thirty years before. This and the many other tragedies of free love, which appear in the newspapers from time to time, seem to prove the mistake of imagining that we are accountable to none for our actions. A relationship which affects the future generation can never be a private and personal matter. E. R. Chapman in a very interesting essay on marriage published some years ago says: ‘To exchange legal marriage for mere voluntary unions, mere temporary partnerships, would be not to set love free, but to give love its death blow by divorcing it from that higher human element which is the note of marriage, rightly understood, and which places regard for order, regard for the common weal above personal interest and the mere self-gratification of the moment.’
‘Last and hardest of all to eradicate in our midst, comes the monopoly of the human heart which is known as marriage . . . this ugly and barbaric form of serfdom has come in our own time by some strange caprice to be regarded as of positively divine origin.’—Grant Allen.
Wecall it the polite dinner-table, because we never hesitate to be extremely rude to each other, when necessary for the purposes of argument. On this particular occasion, the inevitable marriage discussion, which is always to be found in one or other of the newspapers, was the subject of conversation, and the Good Stockbroker (unmarried) was vigorously defending the Holy Estate. His moral attitude is certainly somewhat boring, but nevertheless the Good Stockbroker is one of those people to whom one really is polite. Although obvious irritation was visible on the face of the Family Egotist we listened respectfully, with the exception of theWicked Stockbroker, whose dinner was far too important in his scheme of life to be trifled with by moral conversations.
Whatever the Good Stockbroker says the Weary Roué is of course bound to contradict as a matter of honour. I may mention that the Weary Roué is a man of the highest virtue and a model husband and father. His pose of evil experience has gained him his sarcastic nickname, but in no way has he earned it by his conduct. ‘You forget,’ he interposed languidly, when the Good Stockbroker paused, ‘that no less a philosopher than Schopenhauer said that the natural tendency of man is towards polygamy, and of woman towards monogamy.’
‘I deny the first statement,’ said the Good Stockbroker heatedly. He was always heated where questions of morality were concerned, and was proceeding to give chapter and verse for what promised to become a somewhat dull discussion when the Bluestocking firmly interposed in her small staccato pipe:
‘To hear you, one would suppose monogamic marriage was a divine institution.’
‘Absurd, isn’t it?’ grinned the Weary Roué. The Good Stockbroker looked painedand cleared his throat. At this formidable signal, the Family Egotist—whose irritation had been increasing like the alleged circulation of a newspaper—showed every sign of hurling the boomerang of his opinion into the fray. This would have meant the death of all liveliness for some hours to come, and a general sigh had begun to heave, when once more our brave Bluestocking stemmed the tide.
‘You make rather a cult of the Bible,’ she quacked scornfully, directing her remarks principally at the Good Stockbroker; ‘but you don’t seem very conversant with the Old Testament. You will find there ample proof that monogamic marriage is no more divine than—than polygamy or free love. Nor has it any celestial origin, since it varies with race and climate. It is simply an indispensable social safeguard.’
‘I’ll have a shilling each way on it,’ murmured the Ass (an incorrigible youth, quite the Winston Churchill of our family cabinet), using his customary formula. Unheeding, the Bluestocking chirruped on severely: ‘You must know, if you have ever studied sociology, that marriage is essentially asocial contract, primarily based on selfishness. At present itstill retains its semi-barbarous form, and those who preach without reason of its alleged sacredness would be better employed in suggesting how the savage code now in vogue can be modified to meet the necessities of modern civilisation.’
She paused for breath. The Good Stockbroker was pale, but faced her manfully. ‘Well done, Bluestocking!’ said the Weary Roué. ‘Wonderful woman, our Quacker,’ said the Ass, ‘I’ll have a shilling each way on her.’ The Wicked Stockbroker took a second helping of salad, and ate on unheeding, whilst the Gentle Lady at the head of the table anxiously watched the Family Egotist, who looked apoplectic and was toying truculently with a wineglass with evident danger of shortening its career of usefulness.
‘I was taught,’ said the Good Stockbroker slowly, ‘to regard marriage as a sacred institution—a holy mystery.’
‘Then you were taught rot,’ snapped the Bluestocking, thus living up to the worst traditions of the polite dinner-table, and quivering with intellectual fury.
‘Recrimination—’ began the Good Stockbroker.
‘—is not argument,’ continued the Good Stockbroker.
‘It may not be, but what you said wasrot,’ replied the Bluestocking, ‘“a holy mystery, instituted in the time of man’s innocency”—I recognise the quotation! And when was that time, pray? Are you referring to the Garden of Eden, or to what part of the Bible? The chosen people, the Hebrews, were polygamists from the time of Lamech, evidently with the approval of the Deity. Even the immaculate David had thirteen wives, and the saintly Solomon a clear thousand. Not much of a holy mystery in those days, eh?’
‘Dear Bluestocking, you reallyare—’ murmured the Gentle Lady.
‘Not at all; she’s perfectly sound,’ interposed the Weary Roué, gloating with ghoulish joy over the Good Stockbroker’s apparent discomfort.
‘I give in,’ said the latter, and a yell of joy burst from the Ass and the Weary Roué. ‘I really cannot argue against a lady of such overwhelming eloquence,’ he continued, bowingin his delightful courtly way. ‘All the same, I shall always believe that marriage is a holy institution.’
‘My dear old chap,’ said the Weary Roué, hastily, with one eye on the Family Egotist, who was certainly being treated badly that evening: ‘your high-mindedness is admirable, quite admirable, but it won’t work; it doesn’t fit into modern conditions. Theoretically, Marriage is a Holy Mystery no doubt—in practice it’s apt to be an Unholy Muddle, sometimes a Mess. Personally I believe in polygamy.’
Roars of laughter were stifled in their birth, as we thought of the Weary Roué’s circumspect spouse, and his several circumspect children, discreet from birth upwards.
‘So do I—a shilling each way,’ said the Ass, inevitably.
‘Not for myself, of course,’ continued the Weary Roué, without a trace of a smile, ‘that is to say, not—er—not now, but speaking for the majority and—er, in the abstract, polygamy would be a sensible institution. Just think how it would simplify all our modern complications, how it would mend our two worst social evils.’
‘Yes,think, please—thinking will do,’ interposed the Gentle Lady, hastily.
‘How it would solve the superfluous woman question,’ continued the Weary Roué, enthusiastically. ‘Think of the enormous number of miserable spinsters who would be happily provided for.’ An indignant quack came from the Bluestocking.
‘Think of the expense,’ remarked the Good Stockbroker, dryly, and the Weary Roué collapsed like a pricked gas-bag.
‘Herbert Spencer says,’ continued the Good Stockbroker, ‘that the tendency to monogamy is innate, and all the other forms of marriage have been temporary deviations, each bringing their own retributive evils. After all, monogamous marriage was instituted for the protection of women, and has been held sacred in the great and noble ages of the world. Quite apart from the moral point of view, however, polygamy could only be possible in a tropical climate, where the necessities of life were reduced to a minimum, and one could live on dates and rice, but as the average man in our glorious Free Trade country can’t afford to keep one wife, in decent comfort, let alone several—Iask, how in the name of the bank rate—?’
‘You stockbroking chaps are so devilish sordid,’ returned the Weary Roué. ‘Didn’t I sayin the abstract? Of course I know it wouldn’t do practically, not yet anyway, but honestly I believe it would go far to solve the whole sex problem.’
‘You neither of you seem to take the woman into consideration at all,’ piped the Bluestocking. ‘Do you suppose we modern women with our resources and our education would consider such an idea for a moment?’
‘Well, what do you think?’ asked the Weary Roué, with diplomatic deference.
To our surprise the Bluestocking began to blush, and her blush is not the coy, irresponsible flushing of an ordinary girl, but a painful rush of blood to the face under stress of deep earnestness, the kind of blush which forces one to look away.
‘Well,’ she said, with a gulp, ‘I think, perhaps—they might.’ It was obvious the admission had cost her something. We were all dumfounded. The Family Egotist forgot his burning desire for speech and ceased to threaten his wineglass; the Gentle Lady wasquite excited; the Weary Roué became almost alert, and the Good Stockbroker looked as if he were about to burst into tears.
‘I think women might not be averse from polygamy—as a choice of evils,’ continued the little Bluestocking bravely, ‘for the present waste of womanhood in this country is a very serious evil. Of course the financial conditions make it impossible, as the Good Stockbroker says, but if itwerepossible, if it were instituted for highest motives, and in an entirely honourable, open manner authorised and sanctioned by the—er—the proper people—I think women could concur in it without any loss of self-respect, especially if the first ardent love of youth were over. After that, and when a woman forgets herself, having truly found herself, in the love and care of her children and a larger view of life and its duties—then I think most women could be happy in such circumstances. I think a great deal of utterly untrue stuff is talked about the agony of sexual jealousy, and women’s jealousy especially. Men may suffer thus, I can’t say, but I’m sure women don’t. It’s the humiliation, the unkindness, thebeing deceivedand supplanted that hurts so when aman is unfaithful. But if it were all fair and above-board, if it were grasped that polygamy is more suited to men’s nature, and more likely to make for the happiness of the greatest number of women—their numerical strength being so far in advance of men that they couldn’t possibly expect to have a mate each—then I really think, after women had had time to readjust their ideas to this new condition—it may take a generation or more—I think they would accept it gladly, and find peace and contentment in it.’
The Bluestocking paused and looked round the circle of interested faces. Even the Ass was intent on her words, but the Good Stockbroker’s eyes were averted and the Bluestocking was quite pale as she continued:
‘Of course the word at once recalls the harem, the zenana, but nothing of that kind would do. The wives would have to live separately, as the Mormons do, each in her own home, with her own circle of interests and duties, her own lifework. No one ought to live in idleness, which is the cause of all sorts of discord and trouble. Every woman should work at something, and to help someone. I’m not thinking now, ofcourse, of happily married and contented women, but of the thousands leading miserable, dull, and lonely lives, who would be infinitely happier if they had a certain week to look forward to, at regular recurring intervals, when their husbands would be living with them. It would bring love and human interest and, what is most important of all, amotiveinto their existence. I know it sounds dreadfully immoral,’ she went on, blushing again painfully, ‘but, oh! I don’t mean it likethat. After all, the chief reason why people marry is for companionship, and it is companionship that unmarried women, past the gaiety of first youth, chiefly lack. The natural companion of woman is man; therefore, as there aren’t enough husbands to go round, it follows that one might do worse than share them. I don’t say it would be as satisfactory as having a devoted husband all to oneself, but it might be for the greatest good of the greatest number, and it would surely solve to a certain extent the—the social evils.’
They all clapped when she had finished somewhat breathlessly. It was obvious that the brave Bluestocking so far lacked thecourage of her opinions as to be agonisingly embarrassed at this public expression of them. The Gentle Lady, who is the most tactful creature in existence, accordingly rose before anyone had time to speak, and the two women left the room together.
A babble of talk arose from the men, under cover of which the Good Stockbroker also slipped quietly away.
‘Pass the port,’ said the Wicked Stockbroker, briskly. ‘She’s a deuced bright little woman, but how even the brainy ones can be so ignorant of life beats me, and how you chaps can be such hypocrites. . . . !’
‘Hypocrites! what d’you mean?’ blustered the Family Egotist, who was by now almost bursting with suppressed talk.
‘Not you, old chap, but the Weary Roué and the Good Stockbroker, jawing away as if they really thought monogamy was in the majority in this country, and polygamy was something new! Of course one expects it from the G. S., but you, W. R., really ought to know better—by the way, where is the G. S?’
‘I think he must have gone to propose to the Bluestocking—to save her from polygamyand her own opinions,’ drawled the Weary Roué, lighting his cigarette.
‘Stout fella! I believe he has!’ cried the Ass, excitedly. ‘I’ll have a shilling each way on it with any of you—I mean it, really!’
‘Oh! what if he has?’ said the Family Egotist, irritably. ‘What does one fool more in the world matter? Do stop rotting, you fellows, and pass the port.’
InMr W. Somerset Maugham’s very interesting psychological study,Mrs Craddock, he makes one of his characters say: ‘The fact is that few women can be happy with only one husband. I believe that the only solution of the marriage question is legalised polyandry.’
This is the kind of statement which it is only respectable to receive with horror, but if the secrets of feminine hearts could be known it might prove that a goodly amount of this horror is assumed. I decline to commit my sex either way. Mr Maugham is evidently a gentleman very deeply experienced in feminine hearts, and I daresay he knows what he is talking of. He is, moreover, safely unmarried, but even he entrenches himself behind one of the characters in his novel, and who am I that a greater courage should be expected of me?
There is, of course, a marvellous virtue in the word ‘legalised.’ The most unholy and horrible marriages between fair young girls and rich or titled dotards, drunkards, orcretinsare considered perfectly proper and respectable because ‘legalised.’ Yet the people who countenance these abominations would probably be unutterably shocked by the very whisper of polyandry—an infinitely more decent relation, because regulated by honest sex attraction, and free presumably from mercenary considerations. But whether legalised polyandry isTHEsolution to the marriage question or not, it is clearly an impossible one for women-ridden England, and though of late years women have made startling strides, and shown themselves possessed of unsuspected vitality, it seems unlikely that their superfluous energies will be expended in this direction.
‘God made you, but you marry yourself.’—R. L. Stevenson.
Theday after the polite dinner-party, Isolda, Miranda, and Amoret came in to tea, and I retailed to them the discussion of the previous evening on polygamy.
‘I see the Bluestocking’s point,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully: ‘polygamy might be acceptable to the superfluous woman who can’t marry under present conditions—the discontented spinster to whom the single state is so detestable that even polygamy would be preferable—but it would never be acceptable to the woman who can and does marry.’
‘Yet how many married women put up with it nowadays?’ said Miranda; ‘aren’t there ever so many wives who condone their husband’s infidelity, and endure it as best they can, for the sake of the children, or for social reasons, or because they’re sufficiently attachedto the man to prefer a share of him to life alone without him? And what is that but countenancing polygyny?’
‘Ah! but then the other women are only mistresses,’ exclaimed Isolda. ‘One might tolerate that unwillingly, but another legal wife, with rights equal to one’s own or, worse, with children to compete with one’s own—never!’
‘Well, perhaps not,’ agreed Miranda; ‘I suppose a legal and permanent rival would be somewhat different, but, after all, it’s only the middle class in England who can be termed strictly monogamous—the upper and lowest are as polygynous as can be. It’s only our British hypocrisy that makes us pretend monogamy is our rule!’
‘Don’t quarrel with British hypocrisy,’ said Amoret, lazily, ‘it’s our most valuable national asset. Hypocrisy simply holds the fabric of society together.’
‘Agreed,’ said Isolda, ‘we must pretend to believe monogamy is the rule, for peace sake, and for the ideal’s sake. Of course everybody knows there are plenty of polygynous husbands about, and, for the matter of that, polyandrous wives, but hypocrisy isa great aid to decency, and a nation must have decency oftheoryat least, if not of practice, or we should—er—h’m—decline like the Romans.’
‘I was waiting for one of you to mention the Romans,’ interposed Amoret, who for all her frivolity has a certain humorous shrewdness of her own. ‘It’s an invariable feature of all discussions on marriage. Directly one so much as breathes a suggestion that the marriage tie should be made more flexible to suit modern conditions, everyone present, except the unhappily married, pulls a long face and quotes the awful example of the Romans. Now I’ve got a gorgeous idea for solving the marriage problem.’
‘Tell us,’ cried three voices in unison.
‘Not yet, let’s get rid of the Romans first. I confided my idea to a man the other day, and when he had floored me with the Romans as usual, I went and looked up Gibbon.’
Laughter interrupted her: the idea of our butterfly Amoret poring over Gibbon.
‘Yes, I did,’ she continued, ‘and, as far as I could make out, it wasn’t their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, buttheir—what shall I say?—their general moral slackness. . . .’
‘I know,’ said Isolda, coming to the rescue. ‘I was reading a frightfully interesting book about it the other day,Imperial Purple. It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely to carnal appetites, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, well, it’s absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate and the Empire collapse in consequence!’
‘Hear, hear! Worthy of the Bluestocking herself!’
‘Very well,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ll give in about the Romans if you like, just so as to get on with the conversation. Now let’s have your gorgeous idea, Amoret.’
‘It’s just this,’ said Amoret. ‘Duogamy.’
‘Duo—two?’
‘Exactly—two partners apiece. We’re all so complex nowadays that one can’t possibly satisfy us. Two would just do it. Two would serve to relax the tension of marriedlife, and yet would not lead to what the newspapers call licence. Everyone would have another chance, and what the first partner lacked would be supplied by the second.’
‘It’s not such a bad idea,’ said Isolda, musingly. ‘Launcelot could choose a good walker and bridge player for his alternative wife, and I’d try to find a man who hated cards and never walked a step when he could possibly ride.’
‘I think it’s a grand idea,’ cried Miranda, enthusiastically. ‘Lysander could find a woman who’d play his accompaniments and love musical comedies, and I’d look out for a man who made a cult of the higher drama and had two permanent stalls at the Vedrenne-Barker Theatre.’
‘It would simply solve everything,’ cried Amoret, ecstatically. ‘Whenever Theodore was disagreeable, off I’d go to my other one—and yet without feeling I was neglecting him, as he could go tohisother one. She would probably be a worthy, stolid, stayless lady with none of my faults, and when he was fed up with her stolid staylessness he could come back to me, and my very faults,you see, would be pleasing to him by reason of their contrast to hers, andvice versa.’
‘It’s really a wonderful idea,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully, ‘I wonder no one thought of it before. There would be fewer old maids, as men wouldn’t be so terribly shy of matrimony when they knew there would always be that second chance. They wouldn’t expect so much from one wife as they do now. And think what a good effect it would have on our manners, too—how kind and polite and self-controlled we would be, under fear of being compared unfavourably with the other one.’
‘Yes, it would certainly keep us all up to the mark,’ reflected Miranda, ‘slovenly wives would make an effort to be smart, and shrewish ones would put a curb on their tongues. Husbands would be quite loverlike and attentive, in their anxiety to outdo the other fellow.’
‘It would smooth out the tangles all round,’ declared Amoret; ‘now just take the cases known to us personally. The Fred Smiths, for instance, haven’t spoken to each other for three years, just because Fred fell in love with Miss Brown and spendsnearly all his time with her. Mrs Smith is broken-hearted, Fred looks miserable enough—a home where no one speaks to you must be simply Hades—and the Brown girl is always threatening to commit suicide. The affair has quite spoilt her life, and it must be very hard luck on the Smith children, growing up in such an atmosphere. My plan would have done away with all this misery: Fred could have married Miss Brown, and gone on living happily at intervals with Mrs Smith.’
‘But what would Mrs Smith do in the intervals? She happens to have found no counter attraction.’
‘Well, perhaps if duogamy had been the custom, she would have looked out for one,’ said Amoret, ‘most married women could find one alternative, I’m sure. But, any way, no plan is perfect, and there are lots of wives who wouldn’t want a second husband at all, and who would be only too glad of a restful period, when no dinners need be ordered. Then take the case of the Robinsons: Dick Jones adores Mrs Robinson and is utterly wretched because he can only be a friend to her. She is very fond of him, and fondof her husband too; she could make them both very happy if they would share her.’
‘I have often felt I could make two men happy,’ said Isolda. ‘Some of my best points are wasted on Launcelot. Then, too, he never tires of the country and his beloved golf, but I do, and when one of my fits of London-longing were to come over me I’d just run up to town and have a ripping time with my London husband.’
‘Without feeling you were doing anything wrong,’ supplemented Amoret, whose apparent experience of the qualms of conscience struck me as being rather suspicious.
‘It’s no good, girls,’ said Miranda, suddenly. ‘It’s no good—duogamy’s off! Think of the servants!’
‘Horrors, the servants!’ said Isolda, blankly.
‘Yes, I was afraid you would soon find out the one weak spot,’ said Amoret, regretfully. ‘Of course it would be awful having to cope with two lots of servants. One husband could afford to keep four or five, say, and the other only one or two, and each lot would get out of hand during the wife’s absence.’
‘So instead of having a perfectly deevy timewith two husbands vying with each other in pleasing one, one would have a fearsome existence constantly breaking-in minions. Directly one had got A.’s servants into order, it would be time to go back to B. and do the same there.’
‘No; thank you,’ said Isolda, firmly, ‘one lot is enough for me. I’ve said dozens of times, for the servant reason alone, that I wish I had never married. It would be madness to actually double one’s burden. You can strike me off the list of duogamists, Amoret, until the Servant Question is solved by some new invention of machinery, or the importation of Chinese.’
‘Perhaps,’ Amoret suggested hopefully, ‘your alternative might consent to live in a hotel.’
‘No such luck,’ said Isolda, mournfully, ‘when a man marries it’s mostly for a home—why else should he marry unless it’s for the children? Good gracious! I’d forgotten all about the children. Of course that settles it.’
‘Thecul-de-sacof all reforms!’ said Amoret, tragically. ‘It’s impossible to suggest any revision in the marriage system that isn’tinstantly quashed by the children complication.’
We all sat silent, busy with our thoughts, and then Isolda shuddered.
‘Duogamy’s no good,’ she said emphatically, ‘and Iamso disappointed!’
‘Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age.’—R. L. Stevenson.
Ofall the revolutionary suggestions for improving the present marriage system, the most sensible and feasible seems to me marriage ‘on approval’—in other words, a ‘preliminary canter.’ The procedure would be somewhat as follows: a couple on deciding to marry would go through a legal form of contract, agreeing to take each other as husband and wife for a limited term of years—say three. This period would allow two years for a fair trial, after the abnormal and exceptionally trying first year was over. Any shorter time would be insufficient. At the conclusion of the three years, the contracting parties would have the option of dissolving the marriage—the dissolution not to become absolute for another six months, soas to allow every opportunity of testing the genuineness of the desire to part. If no dissolution were desired, the marriage would then be ratified by a religious or final legal ceremony, and become permanently binding.
In the case of a marriage dissolved, each party would be free to wed again; but the second essay must be final and permanent from the start. This restriction would be absolutely necessary if the preliminary canter plan is not to degenerate into a species of legalised free love, as there are many men, and some women, who would ‘always go on cantering,’ as Amoret expressed it once—and the upshot would be nothing less than leasehold marriage for the short term of three years.
It might be urged against this plan that many couples who come to grief in the danger zone of married life—i.e.nearing the tenth year—are perfectly happy in the early years. But human love being as mutable as it is, and people and conditions being so liable to change, it is impossible to arrive at any permanent marriage system which allows for this. It must, however, be remembered that, in the majority of unhappy unions, it isnot the system, but the individuals who are to blame. The institution of the conjugal novitiate would, however, reduce the number of divorces considerably, by making less possible the miserable misfits in temperament now so prevalent. It would give a second chance to those who had made a mistake, yet without resulting in that promiscuity of intercourse which is a danger to society and fatal to the best interests of the race. Of what other scheme can the same be said?
For married women in the novitiate period a new prefix would have to be invented, which they would retain if the union were dissolved.Mrswould be the distinguishing prefix of women who had entered on the final and permanent state of matrimony. Whether the wife would take the husband’s surname during the probationary term would be another question for decision by the majority; I should incline to her retaining her maiden name with the aforesaid prefix, and only assuming that of the husband with the Mrs of finality. But these are mere details.
As regards the important question of thechildren, the issue of a probationary union would, of course, be legitimate, but I think wise people would see to it that no children were born to them until the marriage had been finally ratified. Certainly children would be the exception rather than the rule, but the question of their custody in the case of dissolved marriages would be one requiring the most thoughtful legislation. To divide the child’s time between the parents is an undesirable expedient, and one that must to a certain extent be harmful, since a settled existence and routine is so essential for children’s well-being. Yet to deprive the father of them altogether is equally undesirable.
The conjugal novitiate is not a new scheme. It was practised prior to the Reformation in Scotland under the name of ‘hand-fasting.’ The parties met at the annual fairs, and by the ceremony of joining hands declared themselves man and wife for a year. On the anniversary of this function they were legally married by a priest—if all had gone well with them. If they had found the union a failure they parted.