PART IVCHILDREN—THECUL-DE-SACOF ALLREFORMS‘An early result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain is the founding, through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother, of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity. . . . One day there appears in this roofless room that which is to teach the teachers of the world—a Little Child.’—Henry Drummond.‘Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in child-bearing.’—Grant Allen.‘Children are a man’s power and his honour.’—Hobbes.ITO BEGET OR NOT TO BEGET—THE QUESTIONOF THE DAY‘Marriage is therefore rooted in family rather than family in marriage.’—Westermarck.Ifwe could leave children out of the question, the readjustment of the conjugal conditions would be simple enough. But Amoret has truly called this problem ‘thecul-de-sacof all reforms.’ Any system, whatever its form, whether leasehold marriage, free love, polygamy, polyandry, or duogamy—any scheme that tends to confuse the fatherhood of the child, or deprive the child of the solid advantages of a permanent home—is hopeless from the start. This, however, obviously applies only to the couples who have children. Formerly those who married expected to have a family, and were disappointed if this hope were not fulfilled. That it was possible to limit the number of their offspring, or even to avoid parenthood entirely, was of courseunknown to them. Nowadays all this is changed, and the doctrines of Malthus obtain everywhere.Bernard Shaw says: ‘The artificial sterilisation of matrimony is the most revolutionary discovery of the nineteenth century.’ It certainly makes possible the revolutionary suggestions about marriage, or ratherwouldmake them more feasible if the ‘discovery’ were universally put into practice.Let us take it then, that where children are desired no relaxation of our present marriage system is advisable, and that people who wish to experiment in new matrimonial schemes must resolutely avoid the ‘cul-de-sacof all reforms,’ and remain childless.To beget or not to beget—that is the question nowadays, and a very vexed question it is. There is hardly a subject on which opinions are more diversified. Some people regard parenthood as the most horrible disaster; others think that to die without creating is to have lived uselessly. I heard a woman say once: ‘I hate children; it’s much better to keep a few dear dogs,’ and she was not an ignorant or devitalised girl, but a healthy, sensible, fully developed youngwoman of six-and-twenty. Not long ago another woman, in announcing her engagement to me, added in the same breath that she didn’t mean to have children on any account. Mr George Moore, in that sinister and repulsive book,The Confessions of a Young Mansays: ‘That I may die childless, that when my hour comes I may turn my face to the wall, saying, I have not increased the great evil of human life—then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for ever.’ (One wonders on reading this why Mr Moore continues to perpetuate the great evil of human life in his own person, when he could so easily end his existence without paining anyone!)But I have heard many people, both men and women, married and single, say that without children marriage is meaningless, in which opinion I heartily concur. More than one young woman dowered with generous blood, vitality, and courage has confided in methat whether she should marry or not she wished to be a mother at all costs. It is one of the disastrous results of men’s shrinking from matrimony that fine women like these must deliberately stifle this glorious passion of motherhood, or pay a terrible price for expressing it—a price exacted not only from themselves but from the child to whom they have given life. Such women, however, are not often met with.And now we come to the reason why people do not want children. ‘We can’t afford it’ is the plea most frequently heard, and a despicably selfish one it is. I have said previously that every man can afford to marry—when he meets the right woman. To this I add that every man who can afford a wife can also afford a child. People who are too selfish to afford a couple of children (or at least one, sad though it be for the youngster to have neither brother nor sister) ought not to marry at all. Some people say they are happy enough without little ones. A good many women deliberately forgo their prospect of motherhood because it would interrupt their pleasures, spoil the hunting season, interfere with their desire to travel or theircraze for games. Perhaps some day they may think too high a price was paid for indulgence in these hobbies. Others honestly dislike children, and would be entirely at a loss in possessing them. It is as well that such people should have none: the poor little unwanted ones can always be recognised.‘Delicacy’ is another plea put forward by neurotic women who are not one whit too delicate to bear a child. Where the ill-health is genuine, or some constitutional weakness or disorder is present, of course this plea is sensible enough. An apparently sane woman once told me quite seriously that she would have liked a child, only she often had a bad cough in the winter, and would not risk the possibility of ‘handing it on.’ Her lungs were perfectly sound, it was merely a temporary cough that troubled her. On the same occasion another woman present remarked that she too would have liked a child, only ‘there wouldn’t be room in our flat, and it is so convenient, we shouldn’t like to leave it.’ My state of mind on hearing these remarks could only have been adequately expressed by knocking these two ladies down and trampling on them, and as this coursewould not have found favour with our hostess, I had to content myself with merely being rather rude to them.I believe the root of the whole matter is that the maternal instinct is not so general as formerly. The causes for this I am not wise enough to determine. It may be due to the greater enfranchisement of women, the widening of women’s lives and ambitions, the new occupations, the new interests which have so transformed feminine existence. Maternity and the grievous and irksome processes of its accomplishment are apt to interfere with all this. The instinct of motherhood is still doubtless innate in the majority; when the babies come, often unwelcome, the instinct reasserts itself as a rule, but it is certainly not general for the average woman of to-day to feel it stirring before marriage or actual motherhood, and I honestly believe that the number of women who, like the female bee, are utterly without this instinct is yearly increasing. It has often occurred to me that men are really fonder of children than are women. In my own experience, I hardly know a man who does not love them, whereas I know many women who positively detestchildren, and many others who only endure their own because they must. I have also observed that quite devoted mothers dislike all other children, whereas men, if fond of the little ones at all, seem fond of every child. Note the attention men will pay a not particularly attractive child in a railway carriage, whilst the women present are entirely indifferent to it. A lady who has kept a girls’ school for many years told me recently that in her opinion the very nature of girls seems changing, and love of dolls and babies is apparently decaying. Can this be generally true? Is it possible that the higher education of women has such grave drawbacks?Fortunately for the honour and ideals of our country, the philoprogenitive element is still in an overwhelming majority and many people who for various reasons do not actually want children are ready enough to welcome the Stork if he does elect to pay them a visit. In after years they will tell one that they can’t imagine what life would have been like without the noise of little feet throughout the house, the clamour of little voices, the tender faces of little children.IITHE PROS AND CONS OF THE LIMITEDFAMILY‘The child—Heaven’s gift.’—Tennyson.Onthe other hand, though I think it the greatest possible mistake for legally married people to intentionally remain childless, for any reason other than mental or physical degeneration, I am strongly against the Lutheran doctrine of unlimited families. Times have changed since Luther’s day, and the necessity for small families is fairly obvious in the twentieth century for all but very wealthy people. Where money is no object, and the parents are thoroughly robust, the great luxury of a large family may be indulged in. And itisa luxury, let cynics sneer as they choose. We modern parents with our two and three children, or our one ewe lamb who can scarcely be trusted out of our sight because he is our unique creative effort—wemiss much of the real domestic joy that our mothers and fathers must have known, with their baker’s dozen or so of lusty boys and girls. Our children can’t even get up a set of tennis among themselves without borrowing one or more from another household. Much of the anxiety and worry we suffer over our rare offspring was unknown in the days when blessings were numerous, and families ran into two figures as a matter of course.Nowadays these joys are the luxuries of the wealthy, who, however, rarely avail themselves of this special privilege of riches. With the necessities of life getting dearer every year, a continual panic in the money market, and the pressure of competition assuming nightmare proportions—a small family of two or three children is all the man of moderate income can allow himself. Four is an outside number, but it is worth making some sacrifices to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has recently stated inThe American Journal of Sociologythat although restriction ‘results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,’yet there are ‘disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both parents and children miss many of the best lessons of life; the type to be standardised is not the family of one to three but the family of four to six.’ The German scientist, Möbius, has also stated his opinion that the general adoption of the two-children system would lead to deterioration of the race.But whether the family numbers one or six, it is all one to Father Bernard Vaughan, who in his violent attack on modern parents draws no distinction between the rich man who has but one child and the hard-working professional man who has several. To limit one’s family at all is in his eyes a heinous and revolting sin, ‘a vile practice,’ and people who do it are ‘traitors to an all-important clause in the sacred contract which they called upon God to witness they meant to keep.’ This last is hardly logical—none of us are responsible for the wording of the marriage service, and we cannot very well interrupt the recital of its barbaric formulæ to explain that there are limitations to our desire for multiplication.Father Vaughan also says that this disinclination to multiply means ‘the extinctionof Christian morality,’ and constitutes ‘defiance of God.’ It is not clear to me why a respectable middle-class couple who decide that three children is a more suitable number than twelve or fourteen for an income of, say, £300 a year, should be accused of defying God by this exercise of common-sense and self-control. Is the idea that the children will only be sent if the Almighty wishes us to have them, and it is therefore impious to regulate the number? It would be just as fair to accuse a young woman who refuses several offers of marriage of defying God, since He clearly wishes her to marry. Bodily ills and accidents presumably come from the same divine agency, yet no one thinks it sinful to seek to remedy these with the means science has provided for the purpose. Why are the means of regulating families made known to us if we are not to use them when population-pressure becomes acute? The doctrine of Free-will becomes a positive farce if Father Vaughan is right. If he confined his remarks to people who deliberately refuse to haveanychildren, he would have found many adherents, but he alienates our sympathy by the very excess of his denunciation. Heeven brands as immoral the practice of regulating the time between the births of children, which is so essential to the mother’s health. Apparently he would think it right for a woman to have a baby every eleven months or so, irrespective of her husband’s limited income, until she became an ailing wreck or died of over-production, leaving her family in the plight of being motherless. His remarks are of course directed principally at ‘smart’ society people, but as Father Vaughan considers lack of means no excuse for ‘deliberate regulation of the marriage state,’ his strictures must be taken as applying to all alike. One feels inclined to echo with a character inThe Merry-Go-Round: ‘In this world it is the good people who do all the harm.’I learn that as long ago as 1872, before there was any perceptible fall in the birth-rate to consider, an article by Mr Montagu Crackenthorpe, Q.C., appeared inThe Fortnightly Review, contending that small families were a sign of progress rather than of retrogression. This article was recently republished in a book entitledPopulation and Progress. There are many other books on the subject,and to them I must refer those of my readers who desire further knowledge of this very important problem. I have no space for an exhaustive consideration of it here. It is a subject essentially considered by the majority from a narrow, personal point of view, for it is impossible to expect people struggling for existence to ‘think imperially,’ and put the needs of the Empire before the limitations of their income. The question from the economic standpoint has been exhaustively dealt with by that master of political economy, Mr Sidney Webb in a pamphlet entitledThe Decline of the Birth Rate, published by the Fabian Society at 1d.I wish I could convince people, however, of the mistake of having only one child. The loss to the parents is heavy and to the child incalculable. All parents who have tried it know what disadvantages they experience in their early attempts at training, when there is ‘no one to play with,’ and no one to give up to—perhaps the most important of life’s lessons. Two or more children growing up together are twice as easy to manage and to teach as is one alone, andinfinitely happier in every way. Later on, schoolfellows to a certain extent supply the deficiency, but the only child is still no less an object for commiseration, as are his parents. All their hopes are centred in the one, and, as the circumstances almost inevitably combine to spoil the one, their hopes are more or less handicapped. Parents find out too late that they have made a mistake.I was at a children’s party not long ago where ‘sole hopes’ were greatly in the majority. A lovely little family trio consisting of a boy and two tiny girls was much admired and the mother openly envied. Several of the mothers present said they often wished that Joan or Tommy had a brother or sister. As few of the children mentioned were over five, the difficulty did not seem insuperable, but opinions were unanimous among the ladies that it was ‘too late to start the nursery again’; ‘it was no good unless the two could grow up together, five years was too great a gap,’ and so on. No doubt they will one day bitterly regret their timidity, as many women to my personal knowledge have already done. Joan or Tommy may be taken from them, or what is worse may turn out unloving andundutiful, and in that sad day they will have no other children to turn to.If the facile writers of those endless newspaper articles on the degeneracy of modern women really wish to make good their case, they had better abandon their foolish complaints as to women’s inability to manage the spinning-wheel or preserve pickles, and other tasks which the progress of machinery have rendered unnecessary. Let them instead turn their attention for proof of degeneracy to the strange helplessness of middle-class mothers in training their children, and their dread of nursery complications. I know many a woman whose financial ability and capacity for organising almost amounts to genius, who would doubtless not be at a loss in dealing with a burglar, yet who would on no account face the terrors of a longish railway journey in sole charge of her two-year-old child, whilst to ‘take the baby at night’ once in a way during the nurse’s absence from home is a nerve-shattering experience which necessitates at least one day’s complete rest in bed afterwards.‘To start the nursery again,’ with all its complicated machinery, when the sole hopehas got over its teething torments, can walk, feed itself, and generally be companionable, is a prospect before which modern mothers seem to quail. The remedy is to multiply the number of hopes before the nursery has time to be outgrown by Hope No. 1, in fact to keep the nursery going a good many years longer than is nowadays fashionable—though by no means for the unlimited period advised by Father Vaughan and other celibate priests entirely ignorant of nurseries and their exigences!IIIPARENTHOOD: THE HIGHEST DESTINY‘O happy husband! happy wife!The rarest blessing Heaven drops downThe sweetest treasure in spring’s crown,Starts in the furrow of your life.’—Gerald Massey.PerhapsI may be accused of dealing with marriage in a too flippant manner. Most of the treatises that I have read have erred in the opposite direction and have treated the subject from a tediously transcendental point of view. I have purposely tried to deal with realities, with facts, with matrimony as it really is—I mean as it really appears to me—in this very workaday world, and not as it might be in a glorious ideal world of noble spirits.In truth, marriage, as it is carried out by the large majority does not seem to me to possess much of a sacred element. What is there holy in the fact of two human beings agreeing to live together to suit their ownconvenience, for purely social and domestic reasons, and very often with a strong commercial motive? There is, of course, a certain sanctity about all love, but, of the various kinds of human love, the sexual variety seems the least holy in itself. Family love, where the tie of blood exists, the love between friends—purest of all affections—is often more essentially sacred than the so-called holy love between husband and wife. Marriage, the mere social and physical union of men and women,apart from parenthood, is simply a partnership—resulting, if you like, in an enormous increase of happiness and good to the contracting parties—essentially an excellent contract, but a mere mundane contract for all that. But when the children come, when the divine and wonderful miracle is accomplished, then, indeed, is marriage placed on a wholly different basis, and in dealing with it, I willingly take my shoes from off my feet, for it is holy ground.On the birth of a child the union that produced it acquires an immortal significance. Formerly of importance only to the two people concerned, the union is now of importance to the State and to posterity, and consequentlya truly awful responsibility devolves on the parents. On the physique, the character, the intelligence of each child the fate of future generations may depend. If we do not feed our child properly he may be rickety, and a future generation may be deformed for our carelessness. If we do not teach him thoroughly the duty of self-control he may become a drunkard or a libertine, and a thousand subsequent evils may curse our grandchildren. ‘The responsibilities of perpetuating the existence of a race, with all its immeasurable possibilities of sin and suffering, is one from which the boldest might recoil. But the only effective way of improving the lot of man is to rear up a new generation of better stock. For the reflecting to shirk parentage is to make over the future to the spawn of unreflecting indulgence. In the world’s great field of battle no duty is higher than to keep the ranks of the forces of Light well filled with recruits. It is to no holiday that our offspring are called—rather it is to a combat long and stern, ending in inevitable death.’5It has been truly said that children are thewealth of nations: if we were to take our parenthood very seriously indeed—far, far more seriously than we now do, surely this would prove the strongest defence against the moral and physical decay of which we hear so much. I would like to see parenthood elevated to the dignity of a great spiritual ideal. Not that I advocate the ultra-glorification of mere procreation in itself, though to bring fine and healthy children into the world is an excellent service, and one that men and women ought to take the highest pride in, but ‘to summon an immortal soul into being—what act is comparable to this?’ To train the new-born spirit to grow towards the sun, striving to develop in it the nobler possibilities of the complex human organism and make of it an ‘upright, heaven-facing speaker’—what better lifework can a man or woman hope to achieve, what greater monument to leave behind?If parenthood were to become a great ideal, in time public opinion—that mighty weapon—would grow so strong that unworthy parenthood would be regarded with disfavour by all decent people. The unfit would not dare to commit the crime of perpetuating their kind,and the stigma attached to this sin against the community might eventually even equal the stigma attached nowadays to the awful crime of cheating at cards!Inspired by the ideal of noble parenthood, maidens would look for the father’s heart in their lovers; men would seek the beautiful maternal qualities in the girls they were wooing, and the material considerations that now so largely influence both would obtain less and less. The bond of marriage would be strengthened a hundredfold. Infidelity would be rarer, for the husband and wife who had been blessed with children would feel that their union had been dignified, made truly indissoluble. The father and mother who had embraced for the first time over the form of their first-born could never forget that ineffable moment. The man and woman who had shared a baby between them, taught it to talk and to play and guided its first faltering steps, could never lightly set aside the vows that bound them. The soft hands of little children were made to link men and women’s hearts together, and wonderfully they fulfil the task!‘Only when we become fathers and mothersdo we realise all that our fathers and mothers have done for us’—and what a revelation it is! What a new heaven and a new earth are opened to us by the magic of a little child’s presence in our home—the little body that has been mysteriously fashioned in our image, the little soul given into our keeping.But for the children, marriage would indeed be a universal failure. In their interest it was instituted and it is they who make it possible. Children make a happy union perfect and an indifferent one happy. Very often they patch up an utter failure into at least an endurable partnership. When a childless marriage proves happy—really happy—it is generally because the man and woman are particularly attached to each other, or are people of unusual character.One knows of rare instances where husband and wife have grown dearer and more closely knit by reason of having no other object to divide their affection. The wife, with lesser cares, not needing to merge the sweetheart in the mother, remains more youthful in her husband’s eyes than would otherwise be possible, whilst on the man is lavished her maternal as well as her wifely devotion, andhe is at once husband and child to her. In such a union one can see the sacred element, although it has produced no children; a couple of this kind does not seem to miss the little ones that never come. The same is sometimes the case with artists, whose whole interest and creative energies are absorbed in their work.With all my heart I despise those married people in full possession of health and strength who deliberately elect to remain childless. With all my heart I pity the celibate and those to whom children are denied. Yet they have compensations—though they lose the rapture, they miss also the infinite anxieties, the innumerable worries, the constant self-denial, the often bitter disappointments. Children bring many other pains than those of birth. Tennyson says, ‘the saddest soul in all the world is she that has a child and sees him err.’ Yet by some subtle alchemy of nature, the strings of mother hearts are sometimes attuned even more tenderly to the children who err. I think one of the most beautiful lines ever written occurs in Stephen Philips’Marpessa. When the maid Marpessa rejects the god in favourof the humble mortal lover, of the latter she says:‘And he shall give me passionate children, notSome radiant god that will despise me quite,But clamouring limbs, and little hearts that err.’But the clamouring limbs soon wax great, alas! out of all recognition; the little hearts become wise and worldly and err in a less pleasing manner—our passionate children outgrow us quickly nowadays. That is the real tragedy of motherhood—to be outgrown.PART VHOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED‘To dwell happily together they should be versed in the niceties of the heart and born with a faculty for willing compromise.’‘Goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single virtue, for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised.’—R. L. Stevenson.IA FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORMWithinthe last twenty-five years the worst injustices of our marriage laws have been rectified, and compared with them the remaining grievances appear relatively mild. It is scarcely credible in these days of advanced women that only a few years ago a husband could take possession of his wife’s property and spend it as he liked, or, what is still more monstrous, could appoint a stranger as sole guardian to his children after his death, entirely ignoring the natural rights of the mother.The most serious injustice remaining is that the relief of divorce is more accessible to men than to women. This obviously is a law made by men for their own advantage, but its existence is a blot on the fair fame of English justice, and also of English morality, that a husband’s infidelity should be so lightly regarded. Let us hope the day is not far off when the conditions of divorce will be exactly the same for both parties.The opinion is almost universally held nowadays that a dissolution of marriage should be obtainable if either party be a confirmed drunkard, or a lunatic, or be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. How degrading it is to the best instincts of our sex that a woman can get a decree of nullity of marriage by proving certain physical disabilities on the part of the husband, which in no way affect her happiness, health, or self-respect, yet can only obtain the partial relief of separation if her husband be a drunkard, an adulterer, and a criminal—so long as she cannot additionally prove cruelty or desertion! It is also an injustice that divorce should be so expensive that only people with money or the very poor (by means of proceedingsin forma pauperis) can afford it.Perhaps the most necessary reform of all is that the marriage of the mentally and physically unfit be legally prevented, or rather that they should be prevented from having children, which is all that really matters. It would be perfectly feasible to ensure the sterilisation of the unfit, though a law to this effect wouldrequire the most delicate handling, and one can hardly imagine a parliament of men blundering through it with any degree of success. Perhaps it may come to pass in the day when we have the ideal Government that represents both sexes and all classes. A health certificate signed by doctors in the service of the State should certainly be compulsory before any marriage could be ratified. When cancer, tubercle, insanity, and all the attendant ills of alcoholism and of riotous living have infected every family in the land, our far-seeing lawgivers may begin to realise the necessity for some restriction of this kind. At present, the liberty of the subject is preserved at too heavy a cost to the race.Another much-needed reform is that children born out of wedlock should be legitimised by subsequent marriage of the parents, as in many other countries. This would hurt no one, could not possibly encourage vice, and would enable many grievous wrongs to be righted. The present regulation is unreasonable in the extreme.England is almost the only European country where no attempt is made to provide a dowry for the daughters, exceptamong the wealthy classes. Quite well-to-do Englishmen think it unnecessary to give their daughters anything during their lifetime, though they are willing to seriously inconvenience themselves to start their sons well in life. English fathers give everything to their sons; in many of the Continental countries the daughters are rightly considered first, and among all classes, rich and poor alike, the parents strive to provide some kind of a dowry for them, beginning to save from the day of the child’s birth.I feel sure that ifdotsfor daughters became the custom in this country an enormous impetus would be given to marriage, and much trouble between husband and wife would be avoided if the woman had some means of her own, however small. It is surely most humiliating and unpleasant for a well-bred woman to be dependent on her husband for every omnibus fare and packet of hairpins!English people, however, are apt to pride themselves on their faults, and are moreover so incurably sentimental that they take credit to themselves for being the exception in this respect to other countries, and boast thatthere is no inducement but love for them to marry. In the same absurd and improvident spirit is the customary disinclination to ask for settlements on our daughters. Only of very rich men is this expected, whereas it is but right that every man should make a settlement on his wife, if only of the furniture and the policy of life insurance.A chapter on marriage reforms would not be complete without some reference to our barbarous marriage service. Is it any good complaining about it, though? Ever since I learnt to read I have been reading attacks on it; apparently no one has a good word to say for it, not even clergymen, yet still it remains in use, unamended, just as it was written in the days of James I. If ever a man-made religious formula required revising to suit the progress of ideas it is this one. How can the Church expect us to regard marriage as a sacrament when its conditions are expressed in such coarse language and from so false a standpoint. Is it not false to glorify by inference those persons who have ‘the gift of continency,’ a ‘gift’ which, if common to the majority, would soon result in the extinction of the human race? Thisspecial clause is a horrible insult to a pure-minded, innocent bride, and is wholly unnecessary. Surely if no other improvement is made, this opening explanation of the ‘causes’ for which marriage was ordained might well be omitted, if only for the fact that it places last the principal reason for marrying—i.e.‘for the mutual society, help and comfort.’ The Church of England might well take a lesson from the Quakers or from the New Jerusalem Church, a religious community founded on the writings of that great mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. In the case of the Society of Friends, the procedure is simple in the extreme. After a time spent in silent prayer, the parties stand and, holding hands, say solemnly in turn: ‘Friends, I take this my friend, A. B., to be mywife, promising, through divine assistance, to be untohera loving and faithfulhusband, until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.’ The New Church formula is longer, but equally beautiful and free from objectionable matter.IISOME PRACTICAL ADVICE TO HUSBANDS AND WIVES‘One doesn’t want a lot of fine sentiments in married life—they don’t work.’—W. Somerset Maugham.Themost valuable piece of advice it is possible to give a couple starting on the ‘long and straight and dusty road’ of matrimony is: ‘Blessed are they who expect little.’ The next best is ‘Strive to realise your ideal, but accept defeat philosophically.’ It is difficult to live happily with a person who has a very high ideal of us; somehow it creates in us an unholy longing to do our worst. Miranda often says to me: ‘The reason Lysander and I are so perfectly happy is because we never mind showing our worst side to each other, we never feel we need pretend to be better than we are.’ Mark this, Bride and Bridegroom; remember a pedestal is a very uncomfortable place to settle on, and don’t assign this uncomfortable elevation to yourlife’s partner. More marriages have been ruined by one expecting too much of the other than by any vice or failing.On the other hand, at the risk of being tedious, I must repeat that the most essential thing in Marriage is respect. It is above love, above compatibility, above even the priceless sense of humour. Respect will hold the tottering edifice of matrimony together when passion is dead and even love has faded. Respect will make even the ‘appalling intimacy’ endurable, and will bring one through the most trying disagreements, with no bruise on the soul, whatever wounds there may be in the heart. Therefore, Bride and Bridegroom, cultivate respect between you at all costs and, men and women, nevernevermarry anyone you don’t really respect, however passionately you may love. I believe one can be fairly happy in marriage without love, once the ardours and madness of extreme youth have passed. Without respect one can never be anything but wretched.‘There is always one who loves and one who is beloved.’ If you find you are the one who loves, remember—it is the better part,especially for a woman. Don’t weary your companion with constant claims, with scenes and reproaches, tears and prayers, it will serve you no purpose, and probably only alienate the beloved from you. And, while on the subject of tears, let me urgently warn all wives against giving way to this natural feminine weakness. The sensible, hard-headed, athletic girls of to-day as a rule scorn to do so; but after marriage occasions for weeping occur that these self-reliant young spinsters never dream of. But the old idea that tears prevailed against a man, and served to soften the harder male heart, is entirely exploded; and, if women only realised it, tears distil a poison that acts as a fateful irritant to love and often causes its death. Just at first, when he is quite young and in the height of his ardour, tears may influence a man, but not for long, and very seldom after marriage. They frequently gain their end, however, as exceptionally tender-hearted men often so dread tears that they immediately concede the point at issue on the appearance of this danger-signal. But their irritation is none the less, and they often end in disliking the woman who has traded on their gentleness,and taken what they consider is an unfair advantage of them. The wife who weeps perpetually, whenever things go wrong, does not command anyone’s respect or sympathy, and generally drives her husband to seek the society of other women. Men detest a sad face in their home—other than their own, that is. If they are ever miserable, they feel entitled to let themselves go, but their wives must not, or when they do, it must certainly not take the form of tears. The brilliant anonymous author ofThe Truth about Manadvises women to remember that men ‘must never be contradicted, reproached, or censured.’ To this I would add emphatically that he must never on any account be cried at.Is it necessary to advocate the cultivation of the most perfect courtesy between you? Not at first possibly, but it certainly will be. The time may even come when Perseus may raise his voice and roar out his disapproval of Persephone. A certain type of man always shouts when annoyed, not at his friends or clients of course; merely to his clerks and his servants and his wife and the people who are afraid of him. This was a nasty habit ofour grandfathers—modern wives are hardly meek enough to stand much of it. However, if Perseus by some freak of atavism ever should so far forget himself in this way, Persephone will find the Biblical soft answer more efficacious than the loudest returning volume of sound. To speak in anexaggeratedlygentle voice always shames the shouter of either sex into silence.Courtesy is more necessary between husband and wife than in any other relation in life. A great deal of bitterness would be saved if this were studiously remembered. Nothing is more painful than to hear a married couplebeing rudeto one another, and the claims of courtesy would prevent all sorts of remarks that belong to the category of the better-left-unsaid. Women, especially, have sometimes a most objectionable habit of hurling home-truths at their husband’s head whenever temper runs a little high; and most men are sensitive enough under their shield of cultivated indifference to resent this acutely, and remember stinging sentences of this kind for years. The fact that they are generally pointedly true does not make them less objectionable. Some wives who are in realitydevoted to their husbands, nevertheless make a point of invariably belittling them in private and public, and, though he would rarely admit it, this takes the heart out of a man more than one unversed in the hearts of men could possibly believe. The truth is, men like admiration and praise just as much as women do, though it is part of their strange code to conceal this. They resent a snub just as bitterly as a woman does; why shouldn’t they?And while we are on this subject, let me whisper to Persephone what a wonderfully soothing effect a little judicious flattery has on the race of husbands, and how smoothly it makes the marital wheels go round. I don’t mean false, blatant, absurd flattery, such as men often bestow on us when desirous to please, not realising that compliments laid on with a trowel are an insult to one’s intelligence. Nothing of that kind, of course, but delicate, subtle, loving flattery. An attitude of gentle admiration toward your Perseus, subdued a little possibly for public use, but none the less markedly appreciative, will not only endear you more to him than any protestation of your love could do, but will have an excellenteffect on him mentally and morally. Just as you always feel dazzling when in company of people who admire you and always talk brilliantly when with those who think you clever, similarly Perseus will be spurred on by your admiration (real or assumed) to try to justify it.The same thing applies to you, gallant Perseus. A compliment to your Persephone’s bright eyes, a word of awed adulation for her new hat, or of praise for her conduct as a hostess will not only make her absurdly happy but will materially increase your capital in Love’s Bank, by laying up treasure for you in Persephone’s heart.By way of illustration, I will quote two real conversations I heard not long ago. The first was between a young couple, Pelleas and Nicolette, who had recently started housekeeping on a small income. They had been giving an afternoon party, and all the guests had left but me. (I am a privileged person, as you must have noticed; nobody minds being natural before me.)Nicolette heaved a sigh of relief as the front door shut for the last time, and turned with sparkling eyes to Pelleas.‘Hasn’tit been a success?’ she said enthusiastically.‘Not bad,’ said Pelleas.‘Aren’t the flowers lovely, and haven’t I made the rooms look sweet? Don’t you think it was all done very nicely, dear? I did work so hard!’ she added, longing for a word of praise.‘Pooh! d’you call cutting up a few cakes work?’ was the answer.Nicolette happens to be a discreet woman who knows when to be silent, but she looked sad, and all her natural pleasure in her little entertainment was spoiled. How delighted she would have been if Pelleas had kissed her, and told her she had made a charming hostess, and all her arrangements had been perfection. The annoying part of it is that this is what he reallydidthink. He was bursting with pride of his home and his wife, and inclined to think himself a very fine fellow for having won such a charming and clever woman. Only it wasn’t his way to say so!The second instance was when I had been trying to reconcile Geraint and his wife. I was always very fond of dear old Geraint,and the utter misery of his married life was a source of great trouble to me. On this occasion we talked freely, and from the depths of his sore heart he brought up woe upon woe. ‘Here’s another instance,’ he said at length. ‘It’s rather ridiculous, but you won’t laugh at me, I know. Of course it’s absurd of me to have remembered it, but—well, I have. She was sitting up in bed brushing her hair, I came into the room to ask if there was anything I could bring her from town, and I happened to stand at her dressing-table and straighten my tie. We were both reflected in the mirror and she said, suddenly, with a little laugh: “What an ugly brute you are!” . . . that’s all, she said it quite politely, but—well, it hurt me absurdly, it was so devilish unnecessary. And I suppose it’s true, too, I’d never thought of it before, but I often have since. . . .’Yet another example of how not to do it: ‘If I’m shabby,’ a despairing wife told me once, ‘he says: “Why can’t you look decent.” When I’m smart, it’s “More new clothes! I don’t know who’s going to pay for them.” If themenuis exceptional he says: “This extravagance will ruin me,”and when it’s ordinary he asks: “Is that all?”’I have previously referred to men’s clubs as a boon to wives, and so they have always appeared to me. But evidently this opinion is not generally held, as a number of women have recently expressed in print their intention—when they get the vote—of agitating for complete abolition, or at least compulsorily early closing, of all men’s clubs. It seems sadly ridiculous that women should want their husbands compelled by Act of Parliament to return to them at a fixed hour. Let me endeavour to convert these misguided wives, if any of them should deign to read this book.Dear ladies, almost everything your husbands cannot get at home they can get at the club—the more completely their wants are satisfied the more pleasant they are to live with, and consequently your home is the happier! If they have a hobby, they generally join a club connected with it, or where they can meet other men similarly enslaved. Be it politics, sport, horses, cards, music, golf, or the theatre—if it is in their blood, itmust come out, and sensible wives allow it to do so. A hobby suppressed means a hubby embittered. At the club they can have their rubber, or their rage against the Government; they can put half-a-sovereign in the sweep-stake, and compare notes about last night’s grand slam and their latest bunker, or whatever the term may be. At the club they can meet other men, and have a complete change both from office and home, consequently returning to both work and wife refreshed and stimulated thereby.When your cook has managed, by that occult secret of her own, to get the locked tantalus open and it isn’t consequently convenient or possible to have any dinner at home, you remain calm, and break it to your lord on the telephone, for can he not feast royally—yet economically—at the club? And when you are away on a holiday he can do the same, and spend a pleasant evening there afterward, instead of moping about alone in the empty house. When you indulge in disagreements of a disturbing nature, if ever you do, the same friendly haven is open to him, surely a more comfortable thing for you than to have him maledicting about the housewhile the little difference is cooling off. In short, there is no end to the blessings and benefits of a man’s club, and why in the world you want to abolish them, dear ladies, I for one cannot imagine.Of course the necessary moderation should be observed, as with all other good things, and club nights once or twice a week should suffice. On these occasions the wife can have a picnic dinner—always a joy to a woman—with a book propped up before her, can let herself go and let her cook go out. Or if she be of a strenuous turn she can utilise the free evening to get her accounts and correspondence up to date. Or be her habit gay she can go out on her own account and do a little dinner and theatre with a discreet admirer, or even with a friend of her own sex. Look at it how you will, a club, provided a man does not abuse it, is an unalloyed blessing in married life.But perhaps it is the tragic fate of the wives in question not to be able to trust their husbands, and with cause. Perhaps their hearts hold sorrowful knowledge of betrayal, and they fear that the club may be used to shield an evening spent in company less desirablefrom the wifely point of view. Even so, the club is a blessing, for at least a woman canhopeand try to believe her husbandisreally there, whilst if he has no club to go to, the transparency of his alternative excuse must give colour to her worst suspicions. If a man is resolved to do this sort of thing, nothing can stop him; should one pretext to spend his time away from home fail, he will put forward another, and the less chance his wife has of discovering the real state of affairs the better for her peace of mind.That ignorance is bliss is a profound truth in married life and wives should strive to be guided by it. I believe women exist who actually make a practice of going through their husbands’ pockets when opportunity offers, presumably in the expectation of finding some incriminating letter or bill. What they expect to gain in the event of an unpleasant discovery, heaven alone knows! Nothing but a more or less hateful scene, and a consequent loss of all peace between them, without the real source of the trouble being affected in the least. Fortunately few husbands are fools enough to carry compromising documents on their persons. Inany case this surveillance is revolting, and where mutual respect exists, for which I have so strongly urged the necessity, these lapses of taste could not occur.In justice to those unhappy women who suffer the terrible affliction of a husband given to excessive drink or gambling, I must add that, when this is the case, a wife is right to try by every means in her power to keep her husband away from his club, which offers greater opportunities than the home circle for indulging in these vices.And now for a special word to men. On a foregoing page I mentioned the possibility of a married woman going out to dinner and the theatre with a man friend. In London life this is so usual an occurrence that any explanation of it would seem homely and a little absurd to the initiated. But the initiated are a very small section of the community, and as this book is humbly put forward for anyone interested in marriage to read—in short, for everyone whowillread it—I propose therefore to enlarge somewhat on this theme for the benefit of the uninitiated majority. A great many men would never dream ofallowing their wives to go out at night alone with other men; why, I cannot pretend to know, since they surely cannot insult their wives and their friends by the idea of any impropriety in connection with them. Possibly it is due to the survival of some primitive masculine feeling that they cannot explain. (In former times husbands were even more exacting, and under the Justinian code a man could divorce his wife merely for going to a circus without his consent, or for going to baths and banquets with other men!) To me it seems equally as unreasonable as women’s disapproval of men’s clubs. Just as a sensible wife makes no objection to her husband’s club, so a wise husband allows his wife to be taken out by another man, if she desire it. If he knows anything of the feminine temperament—and no man should marry till he does—he realises that the admiration of other men is pleasing to his wife, and a little gaiety has a wonderful effect on her spirits.I remember the time when Theodore and Amoret used to disagree violently on this point, but eventually Theodore gave way. ‘He used to think it so wrong of me to likehaving other men a tiny bit in love with me,’ Amoret said, ‘but I explained to him that I liked it because it gave me such a nice powerful feeling and was a kind of added zest in life. Then he always said it was very dangerous for a married woman to have any zest in life apart from her husband, and I used to answer thathehad no end of zests apart from me, and what was I to do during the long evenings when he was eternally playing bridge. Finally I promised it would make me more contented and able to bear the monotony of marriage better, if only he would let me go. He thought it was awfully wicked of me to call marriage monotonous, and said his mother would have been horrified at such a remark. I told him it was no good expecting a young wife to behave like one’s mother, and he said he’d rather I didn’t. Then we laughed, and the dear old boy gave in, and said that Everard was a white sort of man, and might take me out once as a trial trip. Since then I’ve gone to theatres with them all, and I’m fonder of Theodore the more I see of other men, and ever so much more peaceful and contented.’Which testimony speaks for itself.Few seem to realise the many advantages of marrying a man of a silent habit. The ideal husband rarely talks; he realises that women prefer to do this themselves, and that there is not room for two talking people in one happy family. The loquacious man had better look out for a silence-loving woman, and marry her immediately he finds her. Such creatures are as rare as comets, and as a rule they are generally married already to equally silent husbands—another of Nature’s painful bungles. Nothing is more appalling than to have to entertain one of these speechless couples; an over-talkative pair is infinitely preferable, as at least one can listen peacefully and let them run on.An endless source of trouble between married couples is the money question. Wives are often extravagant and generally sinfully ignorant of financial matters at the start. Undoubtedly, as Isolda says: ‘Money (and Menials) mar Matrimony.’ Of the second I cannot trust myself to write, but I know that money—the want of it, the withholding of it, and the mis-spending of it—is responsible for a great deal of conjugalconflict. Some men seem to imagine their wives ought to be able to keep house without means, and these unfortunate women have to coax and beg and make quite a favour of it before they can obtain their due allowance. Even then they are treated like children, and their use of the money is inquired into in a most insulting manner, as if there was such a royal margin for extravagance.I remember the case of poor little Hildebrand. He was a very young husband, and had been brought up in a very old-fashioned way. One of his quaintly mediæval notions was that woman had no financial capacity and could on no account be trusted with cash. If he had had time, I really think he would have done all the housekeeping himself. Fortunately for the peace of that family this was impossible. However, he exercised as much supervision over theménageas was possible, even to the extent of looking over the tradesmen’s books. Of course he did not understand theircrypticsymbols in the least, and it was a funny sight to see little Hildebrand poring over the small red books, and puckering his conscientious brows in an agony of puzzlement. Every now and then hewould turn for enlightenment to his wife, who happily possessed a very robust sense of humour.‘What’s this, Valeria, “3 m’lade, 11½d.”?’‘Three pounds of marmalade, dear, it’s cheap enough, surely.’‘Too cheap to be good, I’m sure, you’d better get a superior quality.’‘But, my dear boy, itisthe best!’‘Oh!’ Slightly discomfited Hildebrand would resume his study of the grocer’s hieroglyphics and presently a deep sigh would burst forth from him.‘What’s the matter, darling? Are those wretched accounts annoying you?’ Valeria would ask sympathetically, suppressing her desire to laugh.‘These fellows keep their books so deucedly queerly. What does this mean “1 primrose, 7½d., and 12 foreign safety, 1½d.”?’‘One pound of Primrose candles and a dozen boxes of matches; we must have them, and it’s only 9d. anyway.’‘That’s not the point. What’s this, “2 sunlight, 1s. 2d.”?’‘Two boxes of Sunlight Soap for cook—it’ll last ages.’‘And this, “one brooks, 3d.”?’‘Why, Brookes’ Soap, of course.’‘Is that what we use? . . . Really I don’t see anything to laugh at.’‘Excuse me, dear, I really couldn’t help it, the idea ofuswashing with Monkey Brand is too excruciatingly funny. Of course it’s for the pots and pans and sinks!’‘You seem to use a great deal of soap in the house.’‘No, dear, quite a little, as anyhousekeeperwould tell you’ (Valeria could not resist this thrust), ‘and I don’t think you would like the result if we economised in soap. But why worry so, since the total is reasonable? You’ll find nothing there but absolute necessities. Why won’t you leave it all to me?’In the end he was compelled to, but few wives would have shown Valeria’s patience under this very unnecessary infliction.Of course this is an extreme case, but a great many men do interfere in their wives’ department to a most irritating extent. To my mind the perfect way is for the whole financial budget of the house to be left to the wife, just as the whole budget of the office or estate is left to the husband. I amnow dealing of course with people of limited means. As a rule, a man has quite enough money worry during his day’s work and does not want any more of it when he gets home. To have to sit down to write cheques in the evening is a task that seems to bring out all the worst qualities in a husband. He may enter the house a devoted lover, and heap evening papers, flowers, and chocolates on his wife’s knee. During dinner he may be genial, witty, affectionate, delightful—but present him with a bundle of bills at ten P.M. with the remark that really these ought to be seen to—and at once he becomes a fierce, snarling, primitive, repulsive, and blasphemous creature. No matter if his balance at the bank be ever so satisfactory, no matter if every bill be for something he has personally required, and no single one incurred by his wife—these facts weigh not at all with him. Bills are bills, and at the sight of them husbands become savages. If I should call on Miranda one morning about the seventh or eighth of the month, I am sure to find her red-eyed and worn and to be told: ‘Last night Lysander said he’d do the bills and of course he’s been damning and blasting eversince, though they’re ridiculously small this month.’ Exactly the same with Isolda. ‘Launcelot wrote the month’s cheques last night,’ she will say, ‘and handling bills always has a terrible effect on him; it’s a kind of disease with him, poor dear, and I never can sleep after it.’ Yet both Launcelot and Lysander are in every other respect ideal husbands.My advice to wives therefore is: Firstly, do away with all weekly or cash payments, which are a weariness to the wifely brain. Check all books once a week, examine the items with whatever degree of care your tradesmen’s moral standard requires. Enter these sums in an account-book. At the end of the month, when all the bills are in, prepare a monthly balance-sheet for your husband. He will assuredly glance first at the total and should it be satisfactory he will look no further if he be wise. Let him then write one cheque to cover the whole amount, pay it into your bank, and you do the rest. When the bills arrive for rates, and whatever else is sent in quarterly, include them in your monthly list, and thus your husband will only have to write twelve cheques a year on behalfof his home instead of scores. The fearful frenzies that beset him monthly will thus be reduced to a minimum. If you have stables or an extensive wine-cellar give orders that the bills for these and any other item which belongs to the man’s department should be sent to his office or club, together with his tailor’s and other personal bills. Thus you will not suffer when their settlement becomes necessary. It is a strange fact that a man sits down like a lamb to write cheques at his office, although at home the same business would cause him to raise the roof and shake the foundations.Volumes could be written on how to be happy though married, but my last page is at hand. To sum up therefore. Wives: if you would be happy, remember, make much of your husband, flatter him discreetly, laugh at his jokes, don’t attempt to put down his club, never tell him home truths, andnevercry.Husbands: praise and admire your wife and let other men admire her too; don’t interfere in her department; write your monthly cheque with a cheerful mien; bereasonable about money even if you cannot be generous, and be not overfond of your own voice.And, both of you: be very tolerant, expect little, give gladly, put respect before everything, cultivate courtesy and love each other all you can. If you do all this you are sure to be happy, though married. Hear also what Robert Burton says in his wonderful book,The Anatomy of Melancholy. ‘Hast thou means? Thou hast none, if unmarried, to keep and increase them. Hast none? Thou hast one, if married, to help and get them. Art in prosperity? Thine happiness is doubled with a wife. Art in adversity? She’ll comfort and assist thee. Art at home? She’ll drive away melancholy. Art abroad? She’ll wish for thee in thy absence and joyfully welcome thy return. There’s nothing delightsome without society, and no society as sweet as matrimony!’THE ENDCOLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
PART IVCHILDREN—THECUL-DE-SACOF ALLREFORMS‘An early result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain is the founding, through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother, of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity. . . . One day there appears in this roofless room that which is to teach the teachers of the world—a Little Child.’—Henry Drummond.‘Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in child-bearing.’—Grant Allen.‘Children are a man’s power and his honour.’—Hobbes.
‘An early result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain is the founding, through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother, of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity. . . . One day there appears in this roofless room that which is to teach the teachers of the world—a Little Child.’—Henry Drummond.
‘Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in child-bearing.’—Grant Allen.
‘Children are a man’s power and his honour.’—Hobbes.
‘Marriage is therefore rooted in family rather than family in marriage.’—Westermarck.
Ifwe could leave children out of the question, the readjustment of the conjugal conditions would be simple enough. But Amoret has truly called this problem ‘thecul-de-sacof all reforms.’ Any system, whatever its form, whether leasehold marriage, free love, polygamy, polyandry, or duogamy—any scheme that tends to confuse the fatherhood of the child, or deprive the child of the solid advantages of a permanent home—is hopeless from the start. This, however, obviously applies only to the couples who have children. Formerly those who married expected to have a family, and were disappointed if this hope were not fulfilled. That it was possible to limit the number of their offspring, or even to avoid parenthood entirely, was of courseunknown to them. Nowadays all this is changed, and the doctrines of Malthus obtain everywhere.
Bernard Shaw says: ‘The artificial sterilisation of matrimony is the most revolutionary discovery of the nineteenth century.’ It certainly makes possible the revolutionary suggestions about marriage, or ratherwouldmake them more feasible if the ‘discovery’ were universally put into practice.
Let us take it then, that where children are desired no relaxation of our present marriage system is advisable, and that people who wish to experiment in new matrimonial schemes must resolutely avoid the ‘cul-de-sacof all reforms,’ and remain childless.
To beget or not to beget—that is the question nowadays, and a very vexed question it is. There is hardly a subject on which opinions are more diversified. Some people regard parenthood as the most horrible disaster; others think that to die without creating is to have lived uselessly. I heard a woman say once: ‘I hate children; it’s much better to keep a few dear dogs,’ and she was not an ignorant or devitalised girl, but a healthy, sensible, fully developed youngwoman of six-and-twenty. Not long ago another woman, in announcing her engagement to me, added in the same breath that she didn’t mean to have children on any account. Mr George Moore, in that sinister and repulsive book,The Confessions of a Young Mansays: ‘That I may die childless, that when my hour comes I may turn my face to the wall, saying, I have not increased the great evil of human life—then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for ever.’ (One wonders on reading this why Mr Moore continues to perpetuate the great evil of human life in his own person, when he could so easily end his existence without paining anyone!)
But I have heard many people, both men and women, married and single, say that without children marriage is meaningless, in which opinion I heartily concur. More than one young woman dowered with generous blood, vitality, and courage has confided in methat whether she should marry or not she wished to be a mother at all costs. It is one of the disastrous results of men’s shrinking from matrimony that fine women like these must deliberately stifle this glorious passion of motherhood, or pay a terrible price for expressing it—a price exacted not only from themselves but from the child to whom they have given life. Such women, however, are not often met with.
And now we come to the reason why people do not want children. ‘We can’t afford it’ is the plea most frequently heard, and a despicably selfish one it is. I have said previously that every man can afford to marry—when he meets the right woman. To this I add that every man who can afford a wife can also afford a child. People who are too selfish to afford a couple of children (or at least one, sad though it be for the youngster to have neither brother nor sister) ought not to marry at all. Some people say they are happy enough without little ones. A good many women deliberately forgo their prospect of motherhood because it would interrupt their pleasures, spoil the hunting season, interfere with their desire to travel or theircraze for games. Perhaps some day they may think too high a price was paid for indulgence in these hobbies. Others honestly dislike children, and would be entirely at a loss in possessing them. It is as well that such people should have none: the poor little unwanted ones can always be recognised.
‘Delicacy’ is another plea put forward by neurotic women who are not one whit too delicate to bear a child. Where the ill-health is genuine, or some constitutional weakness or disorder is present, of course this plea is sensible enough. An apparently sane woman once told me quite seriously that she would have liked a child, only she often had a bad cough in the winter, and would not risk the possibility of ‘handing it on.’ Her lungs were perfectly sound, it was merely a temporary cough that troubled her. On the same occasion another woman present remarked that she too would have liked a child, only ‘there wouldn’t be room in our flat, and it is so convenient, we shouldn’t like to leave it.’ My state of mind on hearing these remarks could only have been adequately expressed by knocking these two ladies down and trampling on them, and as this coursewould not have found favour with our hostess, I had to content myself with merely being rather rude to them.
I believe the root of the whole matter is that the maternal instinct is not so general as formerly. The causes for this I am not wise enough to determine. It may be due to the greater enfranchisement of women, the widening of women’s lives and ambitions, the new occupations, the new interests which have so transformed feminine existence. Maternity and the grievous and irksome processes of its accomplishment are apt to interfere with all this. The instinct of motherhood is still doubtless innate in the majority; when the babies come, often unwelcome, the instinct reasserts itself as a rule, but it is certainly not general for the average woman of to-day to feel it stirring before marriage or actual motherhood, and I honestly believe that the number of women who, like the female bee, are utterly without this instinct is yearly increasing. It has often occurred to me that men are really fonder of children than are women. In my own experience, I hardly know a man who does not love them, whereas I know many women who positively detestchildren, and many others who only endure their own because they must. I have also observed that quite devoted mothers dislike all other children, whereas men, if fond of the little ones at all, seem fond of every child. Note the attention men will pay a not particularly attractive child in a railway carriage, whilst the women present are entirely indifferent to it. A lady who has kept a girls’ school for many years told me recently that in her opinion the very nature of girls seems changing, and love of dolls and babies is apparently decaying. Can this be generally true? Is it possible that the higher education of women has such grave drawbacks?
Fortunately for the honour and ideals of our country, the philoprogenitive element is still in an overwhelming majority and many people who for various reasons do not actually want children are ready enough to welcome the Stork if he does elect to pay them a visit. In after years they will tell one that they can’t imagine what life would have been like without the noise of little feet throughout the house, the clamour of little voices, the tender faces of little children.
‘The child—Heaven’s gift.’—Tennyson.
Onthe other hand, though I think it the greatest possible mistake for legally married people to intentionally remain childless, for any reason other than mental or physical degeneration, I am strongly against the Lutheran doctrine of unlimited families. Times have changed since Luther’s day, and the necessity for small families is fairly obvious in the twentieth century for all but very wealthy people. Where money is no object, and the parents are thoroughly robust, the great luxury of a large family may be indulged in. And itisa luxury, let cynics sneer as they choose. We modern parents with our two and three children, or our one ewe lamb who can scarcely be trusted out of our sight because he is our unique creative effort—wemiss much of the real domestic joy that our mothers and fathers must have known, with their baker’s dozen or so of lusty boys and girls. Our children can’t even get up a set of tennis among themselves without borrowing one or more from another household. Much of the anxiety and worry we suffer over our rare offspring was unknown in the days when blessings were numerous, and families ran into two figures as a matter of course.
Nowadays these joys are the luxuries of the wealthy, who, however, rarely avail themselves of this special privilege of riches. With the necessities of life getting dearer every year, a continual panic in the money market, and the pressure of competition assuming nightmare proportions—a small family of two or three children is all the man of moderate income can allow himself. Four is an outside number, but it is worth making some sacrifices to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has recently stated inThe American Journal of Sociologythat although restriction ‘results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,’yet there are ‘disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both parents and children miss many of the best lessons of life; the type to be standardised is not the family of one to three but the family of four to six.’ The German scientist, Möbius, has also stated his opinion that the general adoption of the two-children system would lead to deterioration of the race.
But whether the family numbers one or six, it is all one to Father Bernard Vaughan, who in his violent attack on modern parents draws no distinction between the rich man who has but one child and the hard-working professional man who has several. To limit one’s family at all is in his eyes a heinous and revolting sin, ‘a vile practice,’ and people who do it are ‘traitors to an all-important clause in the sacred contract which they called upon God to witness they meant to keep.’ This last is hardly logical—none of us are responsible for the wording of the marriage service, and we cannot very well interrupt the recital of its barbaric formulæ to explain that there are limitations to our desire for multiplication.
Father Vaughan also says that this disinclination to multiply means ‘the extinctionof Christian morality,’ and constitutes ‘defiance of God.’ It is not clear to me why a respectable middle-class couple who decide that three children is a more suitable number than twelve or fourteen for an income of, say, £300 a year, should be accused of defying God by this exercise of common-sense and self-control. Is the idea that the children will only be sent if the Almighty wishes us to have them, and it is therefore impious to regulate the number? It would be just as fair to accuse a young woman who refuses several offers of marriage of defying God, since He clearly wishes her to marry. Bodily ills and accidents presumably come from the same divine agency, yet no one thinks it sinful to seek to remedy these with the means science has provided for the purpose. Why are the means of regulating families made known to us if we are not to use them when population-pressure becomes acute? The doctrine of Free-will becomes a positive farce if Father Vaughan is right. If he confined his remarks to people who deliberately refuse to haveanychildren, he would have found many adherents, but he alienates our sympathy by the very excess of his denunciation. Heeven brands as immoral the practice of regulating the time between the births of children, which is so essential to the mother’s health. Apparently he would think it right for a woman to have a baby every eleven months or so, irrespective of her husband’s limited income, until she became an ailing wreck or died of over-production, leaving her family in the plight of being motherless. His remarks are of course directed principally at ‘smart’ society people, but as Father Vaughan considers lack of means no excuse for ‘deliberate regulation of the marriage state,’ his strictures must be taken as applying to all alike. One feels inclined to echo with a character inThe Merry-Go-Round: ‘In this world it is the good people who do all the harm.’
I learn that as long ago as 1872, before there was any perceptible fall in the birth-rate to consider, an article by Mr Montagu Crackenthorpe, Q.C., appeared inThe Fortnightly Review, contending that small families were a sign of progress rather than of retrogression. This article was recently republished in a book entitledPopulation and Progress. There are many other books on the subject,and to them I must refer those of my readers who desire further knowledge of this very important problem. I have no space for an exhaustive consideration of it here. It is a subject essentially considered by the majority from a narrow, personal point of view, for it is impossible to expect people struggling for existence to ‘think imperially,’ and put the needs of the Empire before the limitations of their income. The question from the economic standpoint has been exhaustively dealt with by that master of political economy, Mr Sidney Webb in a pamphlet entitledThe Decline of the Birth Rate, published by the Fabian Society at 1d.
I wish I could convince people, however, of the mistake of having only one child. The loss to the parents is heavy and to the child incalculable. All parents who have tried it know what disadvantages they experience in their early attempts at training, when there is ‘no one to play with,’ and no one to give up to—perhaps the most important of life’s lessons. Two or more children growing up together are twice as easy to manage and to teach as is one alone, andinfinitely happier in every way. Later on, schoolfellows to a certain extent supply the deficiency, but the only child is still no less an object for commiseration, as are his parents. All their hopes are centred in the one, and, as the circumstances almost inevitably combine to spoil the one, their hopes are more or less handicapped. Parents find out too late that they have made a mistake.
I was at a children’s party not long ago where ‘sole hopes’ were greatly in the majority. A lovely little family trio consisting of a boy and two tiny girls was much admired and the mother openly envied. Several of the mothers present said they often wished that Joan or Tommy had a brother or sister. As few of the children mentioned were over five, the difficulty did not seem insuperable, but opinions were unanimous among the ladies that it was ‘too late to start the nursery again’; ‘it was no good unless the two could grow up together, five years was too great a gap,’ and so on. No doubt they will one day bitterly regret their timidity, as many women to my personal knowledge have already done. Joan or Tommy may be taken from them, or what is worse may turn out unloving andundutiful, and in that sad day they will have no other children to turn to.
If the facile writers of those endless newspaper articles on the degeneracy of modern women really wish to make good their case, they had better abandon their foolish complaints as to women’s inability to manage the spinning-wheel or preserve pickles, and other tasks which the progress of machinery have rendered unnecessary. Let them instead turn their attention for proof of degeneracy to the strange helplessness of middle-class mothers in training their children, and their dread of nursery complications. I know many a woman whose financial ability and capacity for organising almost amounts to genius, who would doubtless not be at a loss in dealing with a burglar, yet who would on no account face the terrors of a longish railway journey in sole charge of her two-year-old child, whilst to ‘take the baby at night’ once in a way during the nurse’s absence from home is a nerve-shattering experience which necessitates at least one day’s complete rest in bed afterwards.
‘To start the nursery again,’ with all its complicated machinery, when the sole hopehas got over its teething torments, can walk, feed itself, and generally be companionable, is a prospect before which modern mothers seem to quail. The remedy is to multiply the number of hopes before the nursery has time to be outgrown by Hope No. 1, in fact to keep the nursery going a good many years longer than is nowadays fashionable—though by no means for the unlimited period advised by Father Vaughan and other celibate priests entirely ignorant of nurseries and their exigences!
‘O happy husband! happy wife!The rarest blessing Heaven drops downThe sweetest treasure in spring’s crown,Starts in the furrow of your life.’—Gerald Massey.
‘O happy husband! happy wife!
The rarest blessing Heaven drops down
The sweetest treasure in spring’s crown,
Starts in the furrow of your life.’
—Gerald Massey.
PerhapsI may be accused of dealing with marriage in a too flippant manner. Most of the treatises that I have read have erred in the opposite direction and have treated the subject from a tediously transcendental point of view. I have purposely tried to deal with realities, with facts, with matrimony as it really is—I mean as it really appears to me—in this very workaday world, and not as it might be in a glorious ideal world of noble spirits.
In truth, marriage, as it is carried out by the large majority does not seem to me to possess much of a sacred element. What is there holy in the fact of two human beings agreeing to live together to suit their ownconvenience, for purely social and domestic reasons, and very often with a strong commercial motive? There is, of course, a certain sanctity about all love, but, of the various kinds of human love, the sexual variety seems the least holy in itself. Family love, where the tie of blood exists, the love between friends—purest of all affections—is often more essentially sacred than the so-called holy love between husband and wife. Marriage, the mere social and physical union of men and women,apart from parenthood, is simply a partnership—resulting, if you like, in an enormous increase of happiness and good to the contracting parties—essentially an excellent contract, but a mere mundane contract for all that. But when the children come, when the divine and wonderful miracle is accomplished, then, indeed, is marriage placed on a wholly different basis, and in dealing with it, I willingly take my shoes from off my feet, for it is holy ground.
On the birth of a child the union that produced it acquires an immortal significance. Formerly of importance only to the two people concerned, the union is now of importance to the State and to posterity, and consequentlya truly awful responsibility devolves on the parents. On the physique, the character, the intelligence of each child the fate of future generations may depend. If we do not feed our child properly he may be rickety, and a future generation may be deformed for our carelessness. If we do not teach him thoroughly the duty of self-control he may become a drunkard or a libertine, and a thousand subsequent evils may curse our grandchildren. ‘The responsibilities of perpetuating the existence of a race, with all its immeasurable possibilities of sin and suffering, is one from which the boldest might recoil. But the only effective way of improving the lot of man is to rear up a new generation of better stock. For the reflecting to shirk parentage is to make over the future to the spawn of unreflecting indulgence. In the world’s great field of battle no duty is higher than to keep the ranks of the forces of Light well filled with recruits. It is to no holiday that our offspring are called—rather it is to a combat long and stern, ending in inevitable death.’5
It has been truly said that children are thewealth of nations: if we were to take our parenthood very seriously indeed—far, far more seriously than we now do, surely this would prove the strongest defence against the moral and physical decay of which we hear so much. I would like to see parenthood elevated to the dignity of a great spiritual ideal. Not that I advocate the ultra-glorification of mere procreation in itself, though to bring fine and healthy children into the world is an excellent service, and one that men and women ought to take the highest pride in, but ‘to summon an immortal soul into being—what act is comparable to this?’ To train the new-born spirit to grow towards the sun, striving to develop in it the nobler possibilities of the complex human organism and make of it an ‘upright, heaven-facing speaker’—what better lifework can a man or woman hope to achieve, what greater monument to leave behind?
If parenthood were to become a great ideal, in time public opinion—that mighty weapon—would grow so strong that unworthy parenthood would be regarded with disfavour by all decent people. The unfit would not dare to commit the crime of perpetuating their kind,and the stigma attached to this sin against the community might eventually even equal the stigma attached nowadays to the awful crime of cheating at cards!
Inspired by the ideal of noble parenthood, maidens would look for the father’s heart in their lovers; men would seek the beautiful maternal qualities in the girls they were wooing, and the material considerations that now so largely influence both would obtain less and less. The bond of marriage would be strengthened a hundredfold. Infidelity would be rarer, for the husband and wife who had been blessed with children would feel that their union had been dignified, made truly indissoluble. The father and mother who had embraced for the first time over the form of their first-born could never forget that ineffable moment. The man and woman who had shared a baby between them, taught it to talk and to play and guided its first faltering steps, could never lightly set aside the vows that bound them. The soft hands of little children were made to link men and women’s hearts together, and wonderfully they fulfil the task!
‘Only when we become fathers and mothersdo we realise all that our fathers and mothers have done for us’—and what a revelation it is! What a new heaven and a new earth are opened to us by the magic of a little child’s presence in our home—the little body that has been mysteriously fashioned in our image, the little soul given into our keeping.
But for the children, marriage would indeed be a universal failure. In their interest it was instituted and it is they who make it possible. Children make a happy union perfect and an indifferent one happy. Very often they patch up an utter failure into at least an endurable partnership. When a childless marriage proves happy—really happy—it is generally because the man and woman are particularly attached to each other, or are people of unusual character.
One knows of rare instances where husband and wife have grown dearer and more closely knit by reason of having no other object to divide their affection. The wife, with lesser cares, not needing to merge the sweetheart in the mother, remains more youthful in her husband’s eyes than would otherwise be possible, whilst on the man is lavished her maternal as well as her wifely devotion, andhe is at once husband and child to her. In such a union one can see the sacred element, although it has produced no children; a couple of this kind does not seem to miss the little ones that never come. The same is sometimes the case with artists, whose whole interest and creative energies are absorbed in their work.
With all my heart I despise those married people in full possession of health and strength who deliberately elect to remain childless. With all my heart I pity the celibate and those to whom children are denied. Yet they have compensations—though they lose the rapture, they miss also the infinite anxieties, the innumerable worries, the constant self-denial, the often bitter disappointments. Children bring many other pains than those of birth. Tennyson says, ‘the saddest soul in all the world is she that has a child and sees him err.’ Yet by some subtle alchemy of nature, the strings of mother hearts are sometimes attuned even more tenderly to the children who err. I think one of the most beautiful lines ever written occurs in Stephen Philips’Marpessa. When the maid Marpessa rejects the god in favourof the humble mortal lover, of the latter she says:
‘And he shall give me passionate children, notSome radiant god that will despise me quite,But clamouring limbs, and little hearts that err.’
‘And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite,
But clamouring limbs, and little hearts that err.’
But the clamouring limbs soon wax great, alas! out of all recognition; the little hearts become wise and worldly and err in a less pleasing manner—our passionate children outgrow us quickly nowadays. That is the real tragedy of motherhood—to be outgrown.
PART VHOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED‘To dwell happily together they should be versed in the niceties of the heart and born with a faculty for willing compromise.’‘Goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single virtue, for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised.’—R. L. Stevenson.
‘To dwell happily together they should be versed in the niceties of the heart and born with a faculty for willing compromise.’
‘Goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single virtue, for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised.’—R. L. Stevenson.
Withinthe last twenty-five years the worst injustices of our marriage laws have been rectified, and compared with them the remaining grievances appear relatively mild. It is scarcely credible in these days of advanced women that only a few years ago a husband could take possession of his wife’s property and spend it as he liked, or, what is still more monstrous, could appoint a stranger as sole guardian to his children after his death, entirely ignoring the natural rights of the mother.
The most serious injustice remaining is that the relief of divorce is more accessible to men than to women. This obviously is a law made by men for their own advantage, but its existence is a blot on the fair fame of English justice, and also of English morality, that a husband’s infidelity should be so lightly regarded. Let us hope the day is not far off when the conditions of divorce will be exactly the same for both parties.
The opinion is almost universally held nowadays that a dissolution of marriage should be obtainable if either party be a confirmed drunkard, or a lunatic, or be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. How degrading it is to the best instincts of our sex that a woman can get a decree of nullity of marriage by proving certain physical disabilities on the part of the husband, which in no way affect her happiness, health, or self-respect, yet can only obtain the partial relief of separation if her husband be a drunkard, an adulterer, and a criminal—so long as she cannot additionally prove cruelty or desertion! It is also an injustice that divorce should be so expensive that only people with money or the very poor (by means of proceedingsin forma pauperis) can afford it.
Perhaps the most necessary reform of all is that the marriage of the mentally and physically unfit be legally prevented, or rather that they should be prevented from having children, which is all that really matters. It would be perfectly feasible to ensure the sterilisation of the unfit, though a law to this effect wouldrequire the most delicate handling, and one can hardly imagine a parliament of men blundering through it with any degree of success. Perhaps it may come to pass in the day when we have the ideal Government that represents both sexes and all classes. A health certificate signed by doctors in the service of the State should certainly be compulsory before any marriage could be ratified. When cancer, tubercle, insanity, and all the attendant ills of alcoholism and of riotous living have infected every family in the land, our far-seeing lawgivers may begin to realise the necessity for some restriction of this kind. At present, the liberty of the subject is preserved at too heavy a cost to the race.
Another much-needed reform is that children born out of wedlock should be legitimised by subsequent marriage of the parents, as in many other countries. This would hurt no one, could not possibly encourage vice, and would enable many grievous wrongs to be righted. The present regulation is unreasonable in the extreme.
England is almost the only European country where no attempt is made to provide a dowry for the daughters, exceptamong the wealthy classes. Quite well-to-do Englishmen think it unnecessary to give their daughters anything during their lifetime, though they are willing to seriously inconvenience themselves to start their sons well in life. English fathers give everything to their sons; in many of the Continental countries the daughters are rightly considered first, and among all classes, rich and poor alike, the parents strive to provide some kind of a dowry for them, beginning to save from the day of the child’s birth.
I feel sure that ifdotsfor daughters became the custom in this country an enormous impetus would be given to marriage, and much trouble between husband and wife would be avoided if the woman had some means of her own, however small. It is surely most humiliating and unpleasant for a well-bred woman to be dependent on her husband for every omnibus fare and packet of hairpins!
English people, however, are apt to pride themselves on their faults, and are moreover so incurably sentimental that they take credit to themselves for being the exception in this respect to other countries, and boast thatthere is no inducement but love for them to marry. In the same absurd and improvident spirit is the customary disinclination to ask for settlements on our daughters. Only of very rich men is this expected, whereas it is but right that every man should make a settlement on his wife, if only of the furniture and the policy of life insurance.
A chapter on marriage reforms would not be complete without some reference to our barbarous marriage service. Is it any good complaining about it, though? Ever since I learnt to read I have been reading attacks on it; apparently no one has a good word to say for it, not even clergymen, yet still it remains in use, unamended, just as it was written in the days of James I. If ever a man-made religious formula required revising to suit the progress of ideas it is this one. How can the Church expect us to regard marriage as a sacrament when its conditions are expressed in such coarse language and from so false a standpoint. Is it not false to glorify by inference those persons who have ‘the gift of continency,’ a ‘gift’ which, if common to the majority, would soon result in the extinction of the human race? Thisspecial clause is a horrible insult to a pure-minded, innocent bride, and is wholly unnecessary. Surely if no other improvement is made, this opening explanation of the ‘causes’ for which marriage was ordained might well be omitted, if only for the fact that it places last the principal reason for marrying—i.e.‘for the mutual society, help and comfort.’ The Church of England might well take a lesson from the Quakers or from the New Jerusalem Church, a religious community founded on the writings of that great mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. In the case of the Society of Friends, the procedure is simple in the extreme. After a time spent in silent prayer, the parties stand and, holding hands, say solemnly in turn: ‘Friends, I take this my friend, A. B., to be mywife, promising, through divine assistance, to be untohera loving and faithfulhusband, until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.’ The New Church formula is longer, but equally beautiful and free from objectionable matter.
‘One doesn’t want a lot of fine sentiments in married life—they don’t work.’—W. Somerset Maugham.
Themost valuable piece of advice it is possible to give a couple starting on the ‘long and straight and dusty road’ of matrimony is: ‘Blessed are they who expect little.’ The next best is ‘Strive to realise your ideal, but accept defeat philosophically.’ It is difficult to live happily with a person who has a very high ideal of us; somehow it creates in us an unholy longing to do our worst. Miranda often says to me: ‘The reason Lysander and I are so perfectly happy is because we never mind showing our worst side to each other, we never feel we need pretend to be better than we are.’ Mark this, Bride and Bridegroom; remember a pedestal is a very uncomfortable place to settle on, and don’t assign this uncomfortable elevation to yourlife’s partner. More marriages have been ruined by one expecting too much of the other than by any vice or failing.
On the other hand, at the risk of being tedious, I must repeat that the most essential thing in Marriage is respect. It is above love, above compatibility, above even the priceless sense of humour. Respect will hold the tottering edifice of matrimony together when passion is dead and even love has faded. Respect will make even the ‘appalling intimacy’ endurable, and will bring one through the most trying disagreements, with no bruise on the soul, whatever wounds there may be in the heart. Therefore, Bride and Bridegroom, cultivate respect between you at all costs and, men and women, nevernevermarry anyone you don’t really respect, however passionately you may love. I believe one can be fairly happy in marriage without love, once the ardours and madness of extreme youth have passed. Without respect one can never be anything but wretched.
‘There is always one who loves and one who is beloved.’ If you find you are the one who loves, remember—it is the better part,especially for a woman. Don’t weary your companion with constant claims, with scenes and reproaches, tears and prayers, it will serve you no purpose, and probably only alienate the beloved from you. And, while on the subject of tears, let me urgently warn all wives against giving way to this natural feminine weakness. The sensible, hard-headed, athletic girls of to-day as a rule scorn to do so; but after marriage occasions for weeping occur that these self-reliant young spinsters never dream of. But the old idea that tears prevailed against a man, and served to soften the harder male heart, is entirely exploded; and, if women only realised it, tears distil a poison that acts as a fateful irritant to love and often causes its death. Just at first, when he is quite young and in the height of his ardour, tears may influence a man, but not for long, and very seldom after marriage. They frequently gain their end, however, as exceptionally tender-hearted men often so dread tears that they immediately concede the point at issue on the appearance of this danger-signal. But their irritation is none the less, and they often end in disliking the woman who has traded on their gentleness,and taken what they consider is an unfair advantage of them. The wife who weeps perpetually, whenever things go wrong, does not command anyone’s respect or sympathy, and generally drives her husband to seek the society of other women. Men detest a sad face in their home—other than their own, that is. If they are ever miserable, they feel entitled to let themselves go, but their wives must not, or when they do, it must certainly not take the form of tears. The brilliant anonymous author ofThe Truth about Manadvises women to remember that men ‘must never be contradicted, reproached, or censured.’ To this I would add emphatically that he must never on any account be cried at.
Is it necessary to advocate the cultivation of the most perfect courtesy between you? Not at first possibly, but it certainly will be. The time may even come when Perseus may raise his voice and roar out his disapproval of Persephone. A certain type of man always shouts when annoyed, not at his friends or clients of course; merely to his clerks and his servants and his wife and the people who are afraid of him. This was a nasty habit ofour grandfathers—modern wives are hardly meek enough to stand much of it. However, if Perseus by some freak of atavism ever should so far forget himself in this way, Persephone will find the Biblical soft answer more efficacious than the loudest returning volume of sound. To speak in anexaggeratedlygentle voice always shames the shouter of either sex into silence.
Courtesy is more necessary between husband and wife than in any other relation in life. A great deal of bitterness would be saved if this were studiously remembered. Nothing is more painful than to hear a married couplebeing rudeto one another, and the claims of courtesy would prevent all sorts of remarks that belong to the category of the better-left-unsaid. Women, especially, have sometimes a most objectionable habit of hurling home-truths at their husband’s head whenever temper runs a little high; and most men are sensitive enough under their shield of cultivated indifference to resent this acutely, and remember stinging sentences of this kind for years. The fact that they are generally pointedly true does not make them less objectionable. Some wives who are in realitydevoted to their husbands, nevertheless make a point of invariably belittling them in private and public, and, though he would rarely admit it, this takes the heart out of a man more than one unversed in the hearts of men could possibly believe. The truth is, men like admiration and praise just as much as women do, though it is part of their strange code to conceal this. They resent a snub just as bitterly as a woman does; why shouldn’t they?
And while we are on this subject, let me whisper to Persephone what a wonderfully soothing effect a little judicious flattery has on the race of husbands, and how smoothly it makes the marital wheels go round. I don’t mean false, blatant, absurd flattery, such as men often bestow on us when desirous to please, not realising that compliments laid on with a trowel are an insult to one’s intelligence. Nothing of that kind, of course, but delicate, subtle, loving flattery. An attitude of gentle admiration toward your Perseus, subdued a little possibly for public use, but none the less markedly appreciative, will not only endear you more to him than any protestation of your love could do, but will have an excellenteffect on him mentally and morally. Just as you always feel dazzling when in company of people who admire you and always talk brilliantly when with those who think you clever, similarly Perseus will be spurred on by your admiration (real or assumed) to try to justify it.
The same thing applies to you, gallant Perseus. A compliment to your Persephone’s bright eyes, a word of awed adulation for her new hat, or of praise for her conduct as a hostess will not only make her absurdly happy but will materially increase your capital in Love’s Bank, by laying up treasure for you in Persephone’s heart.
By way of illustration, I will quote two real conversations I heard not long ago. The first was between a young couple, Pelleas and Nicolette, who had recently started housekeeping on a small income. They had been giving an afternoon party, and all the guests had left but me. (I am a privileged person, as you must have noticed; nobody minds being natural before me.)
Nicolette heaved a sigh of relief as the front door shut for the last time, and turned with sparkling eyes to Pelleas.
‘Hasn’tit been a success?’ she said enthusiastically.
‘Not bad,’ said Pelleas.
‘Aren’t the flowers lovely, and haven’t I made the rooms look sweet? Don’t you think it was all done very nicely, dear? I did work so hard!’ she added, longing for a word of praise.
‘Pooh! d’you call cutting up a few cakes work?’ was the answer.
Nicolette happens to be a discreet woman who knows when to be silent, but she looked sad, and all her natural pleasure in her little entertainment was spoiled. How delighted she would have been if Pelleas had kissed her, and told her she had made a charming hostess, and all her arrangements had been perfection. The annoying part of it is that this is what he reallydidthink. He was bursting with pride of his home and his wife, and inclined to think himself a very fine fellow for having won such a charming and clever woman. Only it wasn’t his way to say so!
The second instance was when I had been trying to reconcile Geraint and his wife. I was always very fond of dear old Geraint,and the utter misery of his married life was a source of great trouble to me. On this occasion we talked freely, and from the depths of his sore heart he brought up woe upon woe. ‘Here’s another instance,’ he said at length. ‘It’s rather ridiculous, but you won’t laugh at me, I know. Of course it’s absurd of me to have remembered it, but—well, I have. She was sitting up in bed brushing her hair, I came into the room to ask if there was anything I could bring her from town, and I happened to stand at her dressing-table and straighten my tie. We were both reflected in the mirror and she said, suddenly, with a little laugh: “What an ugly brute you are!” . . . that’s all, she said it quite politely, but—well, it hurt me absurdly, it was so devilish unnecessary. And I suppose it’s true, too, I’d never thought of it before, but I often have since. . . .’
Yet another example of how not to do it: ‘If I’m shabby,’ a despairing wife told me once, ‘he says: “Why can’t you look decent.” When I’m smart, it’s “More new clothes! I don’t know who’s going to pay for them.” If themenuis exceptional he says: “This extravagance will ruin me,”and when it’s ordinary he asks: “Is that all?”’
I have previously referred to men’s clubs as a boon to wives, and so they have always appeared to me. But evidently this opinion is not generally held, as a number of women have recently expressed in print their intention—when they get the vote—of agitating for complete abolition, or at least compulsorily early closing, of all men’s clubs. It seems sadly ridiculous that women should want their husbands compelled by Act of Parliament to return to them at a fixed hour. Let me endeavour to convert these misguided wives, if any of them should deign to read this book.
Dear ladies, almost everything your husbands cannot get at home they can get at the club—the more completely their wants are satisfied the more pleasant they are to live with, and consequently your home is the happier! If they have a hobby, they generally join a club connected with it, or where they can meet other men similarly enslaved. Be it politics, sport, horses, cards, music, golf, or the theatre—if it is in their blood, itmust come out, and sensible wives allow it to do so. A hobby suppressed means a hubby embittered. At the club they can have their rubber, or their rage against the Government; they can put half-a-sovereign in the sweep-stake, and compare notes about last night’s grand slam and their latest bunker, or whatever the term may be. At the club they can meet other men, and have a complete change both from office and home, consequently returning to both work and wife refreshed and stimulated thereby.
When your cook has managed, by that occult secret of her own, to get the locked tantalus open and it isn’t consequently convenient or possible to have any dinner at home, you remain calm, and break it to your lord on the telephone, for can he not feast royally—yet economically—at the club? And when you are away on a holiday he can do the same, and spend a pleasant evening there afterward, instead of moping about alone in the empty house. When you indulge in disagreements of a disturbing nature, if ever you do, the same friendly haven is open to him, surely a more comfortable thing for you than to have him maledicting about the housewhile the little difference is cooling off. In short, there is no end to the blessings and benefits of a man’s club, and why in the world you want to abolish them, dear ladies, I for one cannot imagine.
Of course the necessary moderation should be observed, as with all other good things, and club nights once or twice a week should suffice. On these occasions the wife can have a picnic dinner—always a joy to a woman—with a book propped up before her, can let herself go and let her cook go out. Or if she be of a strenuous turn she can utilise the free evening to get her accounts and correspondence up to date. Or be her habit gay she can go out on her own account and do a little dinner and theatre with a discreet admirer, or even with a friend of her own sex. Look at it how you will, a club, provided a man does not abuse it, is an unalloyed blessing in married life.
But perhaps it is the tragic fate of the wives in question not to be able to trust their husbands, and with cause. Perhaps their hearts hold sorrowful knowledge of betrayal, and they fear that the club may be used to shield an evening spent in company less desirablefrom the wifely point of view. Even so, the club is a blessing, for at least a woman canhopeand try to believe her husbandisreally there, whilst if he has no club to go to, the transparency of his alternative excuse must give colour to her worst suspicions. If a man is resolved to do this sort of thing, nothing can stop him; should one pretext to spend his time away from home fail, he will put forward another, and the less chance his wife has of discovering the real state of affairs the better for her peace of mind.
That ignorance is bliss is a profound truth in married life and wives should strive to be guided by it. I believe women exist who actually make a practice of going through their husbands’ pockets when opportunity offers, presumably in the expectation of finding some incriminating letter or bill. What they expect to gain in the event of an unpleasant discovery, heaven alone knows! Nothing but a more or less hateful scene, and a consequent loss of all peace between them, without the real source of the trouble being affected in the least. Fortunately few husbands are fools enough to carry compromising documents on their persons. Inany case this surveillance is revolting, and where mutual respect exists, for which I have so strongly urged the necessity, these lapses of taste could not occur.
In justice to those unhappy women who suffer the terrible affliction of a husband given to excessive drink or gambling, I must add that, when this is the case, a wife is right to try by every means in her power to keep her husband away from his club, which offers greater opportunities than the home circle for indulging in these vices.
And now for a special word to men. On a foregoing page I mentioned the possibility of a married woman going out to dinner and the theatre with a man friend. In London life this is so usual an occurrence that any explanation of it would seem homely and a little absurd to the initiated. But the initiated are a very small section of the community, and as this book is humbly put forward for anyone interested in marriage to read—in short, for everyone whowillread it—I propose therefore to enlarge somewhat on this theme for the benefit of the uninitiated majority. A great many men would never dream ofallowing their wives to go out at night alone with other men; why, I cannot pretend to know, since they surely cannot insult their wives and their friends by the idea of any impropriety in connection with them. Possibly it is due to the survival of some primitive masculine feeling that they cannot explain. (In former times husbands were even more exacting, and under the Justinian code a man could divorce his wife merely for going to a circus without his consent, or for going to baths and banquets with other men!) To me it seems equally as unreasonable as women’s disapproval of men’s clubs. Just as a sensible wife makes no objection to her husband’s club, so a wise husband allows his wife to be taken out by another man, if she desire it. If he knows anything of the feminine temperament—and no man should marry till he does—he realises that the admiration of other men is pleasing to his wife, and a little gaiety has a wonderful effect on her spirits.
I remember the time when Theodore and Amoret used to disagree violently on this point, but eventually Theodore gave way. ‘He used to think it so wrong of me to likehaving other men a tiny bit in love with me,’ Amoret said, ‘but I explained to him that I liked it because it gave me such a nice powerful feeling and was a kind of added zest in life. Then he always said it was very dangerous for a married woman to have any zest in life apart from her husband, and I used to answer thathehad no end of zests apart from me, and what was I to do during the long evenings when he was eternally playing bridge. Finally I promised it would make me more contented and able to bear the monotony of marriage better, if only he would let me go. He thought it was awfully wicked of me to call marriage monotonous, and said his mother would have been horrified at such a remark. I told him it was no good expecting a young wife to behave like one’s mother, and he said he’d rather I didn’t. Then we laughed, and the dear old boy gave in, and said that Everard was a white sort of man, and might take me out once as a trial trip. Since then I’ve gone to theatres with them all, and I’m fonder of Theodore the more I see of other men, and ever so much more peaceful and contented.’
Which testimony speaks for itself.
Few seem to realise the many advantages of marrying a man of a silent habit. The ideal husband rarely talks; he realises that women prefer to do this themselves, and that there is not room for two talking people in one happy family. The loquacious man had better look out for a silence-loving woman, and marry her immediately he finds her. Such creatures are as rare as comets, and as a rule they are generally married already to equally silent husbands—another of Nature’s painful bungles. Nothing is more appalling than to have to entertain one of these speechless couples; an over-talkative pair is infinitely preferable, as at least one can listen peacefully and let them run on.
An endless source of trouble between married couples is the money question. Wives are often extravagant and generally sinfully ignorant of financial matters at the start. Undoubtedly, as Isolda says: ‘Money (and Menials) mar Matrimony.’ Of the second I cannot trust myself to write, but I know that money—the want of it, the withholding of it, and the mis-spending of it—is responsible for a great deal of conjugalconflict. Some men seem to imagine their wives ought to be able to keep house without means, and these unfortunate women have to coax and beg and make quite a favour of it before they can obtain their due allowance. Even then they are treated like children, and their use of the money is inquired into in a most insulting manner, as if there was such a royal margin for extravagance.
I remember the case of poor little Hildebrand. He was a very young husband, and had been brought up in a very old-fashioned way. One of his quaintly mediæval notions was that woman had no financial capacity and could on no account be trusted with cash. If he had had time, I really think he would have done all the housekeeping himself. Fortunately for the peace of that family this was impossible. However, he exercised as much supervision over theménageas was possible, even to the extent of looking over the tradesmen’s books. Of course he did not understand theircrypticsymbols in the least, and it was a funny sight to see little Hildebrand poring over the small red books, and puckering his conscientious brows in an agony of puzzlement. Every now and then hewould turn for enlightenment to his wife, who happily possessed a very robust sense of humour.
‘What’s this, Valeria, “3 m’lade, 11½d.”?’
‘Three pounds of marmalade, dear, it’s cheap enough, surely.’
‘Too cheap to be good, I’m sure, you’d better get a superior quality.’
‘But, my dear boy, itisthe best!’
‘Oh!’ Slightly discomfited Hildebrand would resume his study of the grocer’s hieroglyphics and presently a deep sigh would burst forth from him.
‘What’s the matter, darling? Are those wretched accounts annoying you?’ Valeria would ask sympathetically, suppressing her desire to laugh.
‘These fellows keep their books so deucedly queerly. What does this mean “1 primrose, 7½d., and 12 foreign safety, 1½d.”?’
‘One pound of Primrose candles and a dozen boxes of matches; we must have them, and it’s only 9d. anyway.’
‘That’s not the point. What’s this, “2 sunlight, 1s. 2d.”?’
‘Two boxes of Sunlight Soap for cook—it’ll last ages.’
‘And this, “one brooks, 3d.”?’
‘Why, Brookes’ Soap, of course.’
‘Is that what we use? . . . Really I don’t see anything to laugh at.’
‘Excuse me, dear, I really couldn’t help it, the idea ofuswashing with Monkey Brand is too excruciatingly funny. Of course it’s for the pots and pans and sinks!’
‘You seem to use a great deal of soap in the house.’
‘No, dear, quite a little, as anyhousekeeperwould tell you’ (Valeria could not resist this thrust), ‘and I don’t think you would like the result if we economised in soap. But why worry so, since the total is reasonable? You’ll find nothing there but absolute necessities. Why won’t you leave it all to me?’
In the end he was compelled to, but few wives would have shown Valeria’s patience under this very unnecessary infliction.
Of course this is an extreme case, but a great many men do interfere in their wives’ department to a most irritating extent. To my mind the perfect way is for the whole financial budget of the house to be left to the wife, just as the whole budget of the office or estate is left to the husband. I amnow dealing of course with people of limited means. As a rule, a man has quite enough money worry during his day’s work and does not want any more of it when he gets home. To have to sit down to write cheques in the evening is a task that seems to bring out all the worst qualities in a husband. He may enter the house a devoted lover, and heap evening papers, flowers, and chocolates on his wife’s knee. During dinner he may be genial, witty, affectionate, delightful—but present him with a bundle of bills at ten P.M. with the remark that really these ought to be seen to—and at once he becomes a fierce, snarling, primitive, repulsive, and blasphemous creature. No matter if his balance at the bank be ever so satisfactory, no matter if every bill be for something he has personally required, and no single one incurred by his wife—these facts weigh not at all with him. Bills are bills, and at the sight of them husbands become savages. If I should call on Miranda one morning about the seventh or eighth of the month, I am sure to find her red-eyed and worn and to be told: ‘Last night Lysander said he’d do the bills and of course he’s been damning and blasting eversince, though they’re ridiculously small this month.’ Exactly the same with Isolda. ‘Launcelot wrote the month’s cheques last night,’ she will say, ‘and handling bills always has a terrible effect on him; it’s a kind of disease with him, poor dear, and I never can sleep after it.’ Yet both Launcelot and Lysander are in every other respect ideal husbands.
My advice to wives therefore is: Firstly, do away with all weekly or cash payments, which are a weariness to the wifely brain. Check all books once a week, examine the items with whatever degree of care your tradesmen’s moral standard requires. Enter these sums in an account-book. At the end of the month, when all the bills are in, prepare a monthly balance-sheet for your husband. He will assuredly glance first at the total and should it be satisfactory he will look no further if he be wise. Let him then write one cheque to cover the whole amount, pay it into your bank, and you do the rest. When the bills arrive for rates, and whatever else is sent in quarterly, include them in your monthly list, and thus your husband will only have to write twelve cheques a year on behalfof his home instead of scores. The fearful frenzies that beset him monthly will thus be reduced to a minimum. If you have stables or an extensive wine-cellar give orders that the bills for these and any other item which belongs to the man’s department should be sent to his office or club, together with his tailor’s and other personal bills. Thus you will not suffer when their settlement becomes necessary. It is a strange fact that a man sits down like a lamb to write cheques at his office, although at home the same business would cause him to raise the roof and shake the foundations.
Volumes could be written on how to be happy though married, but my last page is at hand. To sum up therefore. Wives: if you would be happy, remember, make much of your husband, flatter him discreetly, laugh at his jokes, don’t attempt to put down his club, never tell him home truths, andnevercry.
Husbands: praise and admire your wife and let other men admire her too; don’t interfere in her department; write your monthly cheque with a cheerful mien; bereasonable about money even if you cannot be generous, and be not overfond of your own voice.
And, both of you: be very tolerant, expect little, give gladly, put respect before everything, cultivate courtesy and love each other all you can. If you do all this you are sure to be happy, though married. Hear also what Robert Burton says in his wonderful book,The Anatomy of Melancholy. ‘Hast thou means? Thou hast none, if unmarried, to keep and increase them. Hast none? Thou hast one, if married, to help and get them. Art in prosperity? Thine happiness is doubled with a wife. Art in adversity? She’ll comfort and assist thee. Art at home? She’ll drive away melancholy. Art abroad? She’ll wish for thee in thy absence and joyfully welcome thy return. There’s nothing delightsome without society, and no society as sweet as matrimony!’
COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.