“Marriage is the aim and end of all sensible girls.”“Marriage is the aim and end of all sensible girls.”
realize that it is for life, and it is therefore a very serious step, and not to be taken lightly. The rushing into unions without sufficient thought is the main cause of much of the modern unhappiness. How can you expect to spend peaceful, blissful years with a man whom you have taken casually just because you liked chaffing with him and dancing with him, or playing golf? Think of the hours you must spend with him when these things will be impossible, and if you have no other tastes in common you will find yourself terribly bored. In one of my books I once wrote this maxim: “It is better to marry the life you like, because after a while the man does not matter!” It was a very cynical sentence, but unfortunatelytrue. It is only in the rarest cases that “after a while” either individual really matters to the other. They have at best become habits; they are friendly and jolly, and if “the life” is what they both like all rubs along smoothly enough. But love—that exquisite essence which turned the world into Paradise—is a thing flown away.
Now, Caroline, I want yours to be one of those rare cases where love endures for a long time, and even when it alters into friendship continues in perfect sympathy.
So, when you feel yourself becoming attracted by a young man, pull yourself together in time and ask yourself, if the affair goes on, would you really like him for a husband?
“ ‘It is better to marry the life you like, because after a while the man does not matter.’ ”“ ‘It is better to marry the life you like, because after a while the man does not matter.’ ”
Think what it would be to be with him always, at the interminable meals, for years and years, through all the tedious duties which must come with responsibility. Ask yourself if his tastes suit yours, if his bent of mind is the same, if you will be likely to agree upon general points of view. And, if you are obliged honestly to answer these questions in the negative, then have the strength of mind to crush whatever attraction is beginning to spring in your heart. Once it goes on to passion, no reason is of any use, so it is only in the beginning that judgment can be employed.
You must remember that like draws like with more or less intensity according to the force of
“Think what it would be to be with him always.”“Think what it would be to be with him always.”
characters. I know you are highly educated, Caroline, and if you do not let yourself become priggish you should draw a very nice young man. Then let us suppose you have done so, and marry him. You are thencontracting a bargain, and you have to fulfil your half. The modern young woman seems to imagine she has done quite enough by going through the ceremony, and henceforward she is to do exactly what she pleases, and only consider her own pleasure on all occasions. This attitude of mind makes things very hard upon the poor young man, who presently gets bored with her, and, as in these days honor and rigid morality are rathervieux jeu, he soon drifts away to other interests and amusements. And one cannot blame him. It is upon your obligations and behavior, not his, that I wish to write to you at length, Caroline, but in this letter I shall have time only to begin. You must start by understandingthat the natures of men and women are totally different. Men are infinitely more simple, and the British education helps them by its drumming into their heads the knowledge of what is or is not “cricket.” Their natural methods are more direct, and they are much easier to deal with. They are fundamentally and unconsciously selfish, because for generations women have been taught to give way to them. You must accept this fact and not storm and rage against it. The only way you can change it in regard to your own personal male belonging is by inspiring in him intense devotion to yourself; but, even so, it is wiser to face it and make the best of it, and not be disillusioned. You areprobably selfish also; it is one of the greatest signs of the age, the growing selfishness of women. It is not altogether a bad thing; it is a proof in one way of their increasing individuality; but meanwhile it does not tend toward their happiness. Now, Caroline, I am sure you will agree with me that to aim at happiness is a wiser and more agreeable thing than just to express the growing individuality of your sex!
I must reiterate what I said in my former letters; I am advising you for afirst startin all things. Circumstances may arise which may alter possibilities, but, to begin upon, we may as well aim at the best, and not fight windmills; storming that menoughtto be different, and thatwomen should not give way, being their superiors in most things!
It will take much longer than your lifetime (and I personally hope, in spite of the wrath I shall excite in stating this,—much longer than many lifetimes) to change the nature of men. So do not let us bother over these abstract points, but accept men as they are, dear, attractive, selfish darlings! with generous hearts and a quite remarkable faculty for playing fair in any game. So you must play fair also, and try to understand the rules and follow them. If the husband you select has a stronger character than you have, and if he is also extremely desirable to other women, the only way you will be able to keep him through all the years tocome will be by being invariably sweet, loving, and gentle to him, so that, no matter what tempers and caprices he experiences in his encounters with the many others of your sex who will fling themselves at his head, he will never have a memory but of love and peace at home. Never mindwhathe does, supposing you really love him and want to keep him, this is the only method to use. It may even seem to bore him at the end of about the first two years, but continue.
If he is young and handsome and attractive he must have his fling, and you should let him have whatever tether he requires, while you influence him to good and beautiful things, and always know and feel certain inyour heart that the intense magnetic force of your love and sweetness will inevitably draw him back the moment the outside fascination palls. These preliminary remarks, I dare say, are calculated to provoke the fiercest argument among many girls; but wait, Caroline, until I have finished explaining the reasons and dissecting the aspects, keeping in view our end—common sense and happiness.
You must tell me if these things interest you before next month, when I will write again. Because now I must end this letter.
Your affectionate Godmother,
E. G.
February, 1913.
IAMso glad, my dear Caroline, to hear that you were interested in my last letter. It is an important subject—marriage—and one I want more fully to discuss with you. No one accomplishes any rôle successfully without some preparatory training—and the rôle of a married woman requires a good deal of thought bestowed upon it before it should be undertaken.
As I said in my last epistle, the affair is a bargain, in which too often the modern young people refuse to recognize any of the responsibilities. Let us, for the sake of our argument,suppose, Caroline, that you have fallen in love with, and married, what appears to be a suitable young man in fortune and character. We will pretend that he is the eldest son of some one of importance, and in his turn one day will occupy a great position. If you have carefully followed the advice I have been giving you, you will be so distinguished in appearance and manner that you ought to be an ornament to your new station. And you must make your husband feel from the very beginning that you mean to take the deepest interest in all his tastes and pursuits: if they are political, that you will endeavor to forward his interest and understand his aims; if they lie in the country andthe management of his estate, that you mean to fulfil all the duties which such an existence requires. If he is a soldier, a sailor, a barrister, a financier—no matter what—this same principle applies, though in the latter professions you cannot take perhaps such active interest; but you must show him that at all events you can give him your sympathy and understanding, and make his home pleasant and agreeable when he returns to it. If you make it smooth and charming for him you may be as certain that he will prefer to spend all his spare time with you as that he will break away immediately if you do not.
All human beings unconsciously in their leisure moments do what theylike best. If you find a man in his free hours doing something which he obviously cannot like, it is because toaccomplish his dutyis the thing helikes best. Thus, if you bore your husband in his leisure, he may stay with you for a while from a sense of duty, but he will begin to make excuses of work to curtail the moments, and he will snatch time from his real work for his pleasure elsewhere.
Whether you keep your husband’s love and devotion lies almost entirely with yourself and your own intelligence, and I might say sagacity! Remember this maxim: “A fool can win the love of a man, but it requires a woman ofresourcesto keep it”—the difficulty being much greater in a country like England, where thewomen are in the majority, than in another where they have to be fought for, and the men are the more numerous.
We will suppose that you desire to retain the love and devotion of your husband, and have not only married him for a home and a place in society. In this case face the fact that it is always a difficult matter for a woman to keep a man in love with her when once she belongs to him, and he has no obstacles to overcome. For man is a hunter naturally, and when the quarry is obtained his interest in that particular beast wanes, although the interest in securing by his skill another of the same species remains as active as ever.
The wise woman realizes all these primitive and deep-seated instincts in human nature, and adapts herself to them. She recognizes the futility of trying to make her personal protest effective against what is a fundamental characteristic of all male animals.
Who, seeing a wall with several gates in it, would be so foolish as to fling herself against the stones instead of quietly going through one of the openings, simply because she resented the wall’s being there at all! And yet this is what numbers—indeed the majority—of women do, figuratively, in their dealings with men; and so destroy their own happiness. But I want you to be wiser, Caroline. Realize when you embarkupon matrimony that you will have to play a difficult game, with the odds all against you, and that it will take every atom of your intelligence to win it, the prize being continued happiness. You may reply, “If Charlie requires all this management and thinking over, let him go! I would not demean myself by pandering to such things.”
And I answer, “Certainly, if to let him go will make you as happy as to keep him!” But if, on the contrary, it will make you perfectly miserable, then it will be more prudent to use a little common sense about it. Ask yourself the question frankly and then settle upon your course of conduct.
If you decide to try to keep him,attend to your means of attraction. While you were engaged to him you would not have allowed him to see you looking ugly or unappetizing for the world—such things are even more important after you are married. Never under any circumstances let him have the chance of feeling physically repulsed—for the very first time he experiences this sensation that will be the beginning of the end of his beingin lovewith you, although he may go on treating you in a very kind and friendly way. But if you want to keep him in the blissful state, attend far more to pleasing his eye and his ear when alone with him than to pleasing the world when you go out. Let him feel that whatever admiration you provoke—and the more you do provoke the better he will love you—still that your most utterly attractive allurements are reserved as special treats for himself alone. If I were able to give girls only one sentence of advice as to how to keep their husbands in love with them, I should choose this one—Never revolt the man’s senses. For, remember, this particular aspect of affection called being in love is caused by the senses of both participants being exalted. He is moved by what he thinks he sees in his beloved, and she likewise; and, if the realities are far below the mark of his or her imaginary conception of them, so much the more careful should each one be to keep up the illusions. Very deep affection can remainwhen all sense of “being in love” is over, but it has lost its exquisite aroma of sweetness.
A man will go on being in love with even a stupid woman who never fails to please his eye and his ear—whereas he will lose all emotion for the cleverest who revolts either. Grasp this truth, that the personal attraction in a connection like marriage is of colossal importance, for the moment that is over the affair will subside into a duty, a calm friendship, or an armed neutrality. It can no longer be a divine happiness. So if you can keep this great joy by using a little intelligence and forethought, how much better to do so! I hope you agree with me, Caroline?
Remember, all the other women
“If you want to keep him in the blissful state, attend to pleasing his eye and his ear when alone with him.”“If you want to keep him in the blissful state, attend to pleasing his eye and his ear when alone with him.”
your husband will meet will only be showing their most agreeable sides to him without the handicap of daily intercourse. Remember, also, that, though he may have the most honorable desire to be faithful to you in the letter and the spirit, he cannot by his own will suppress or increase his actual emotion toward you, and if you destroy his ideal of you it cannot be his fault if his ardor cools. That is one point of gigantic importance which I want to hammer into your head, child—whatever a person thinks and feels about you, you yourself are responsible for. You have given his or her sensibilities that impression, exactly as when you look in a mirror your reflection is reproduced.
People complain of being misunderstood, but it is because they themselves, unconsciously perhaps, have given the cause for misunderstanding. A girl may say a man is a brute and a false traitor, because in May he was passionately loving, making every vow to her, but by October he had cooled, and by December he had become in love with someone else! Granted that some men have fickle natures and more easily stray than others, still the actual emotion for a particular person is not under any human being’s control, only the demonstrations of it. I must be very explicit about this statement in case you misunderstand me.
I mean that no man or woman can love or unlove at will—(by “love” Iam still meaning all the emotions which are contained in the state called “being in love”). This state in man or woman is produced, as I said before, by some attraction in the loved one, just as a needle is attracted by a magnet. If the magnetic power were to lessen in the magnet the needle could not prevent itself from falling away from it—or if another and stronger magnet were placed near the needle it would be drawn to that. It—the needle—would only be obeying natural laws and therefore would not be responsible.
Which, then, could you blame—the original magnet or the needle?
Obviously the magnet is responsible.
You may reply. But the magnetdid not wish to lessen in attraction; that and the arrival of the stronger magnet were pure misfortunes and accidents of fate.
Granted—but this only brings in a third influence—it does notthrow the blame upon the needle. So I want you to understand, Caroline, that if a man ceases to love you it is your own fault—or misfortune—never his fault; just as, if you cease to love the man, it is his fault or misfortune, not yours.
These are truths which ninety-nine women out of a hundred do not care to face. But the wise hundredth, realizing that she is the magnet, tries her uttermost to keep her magnetic power strong enough to withstand all misfortune or the attacks of othermagnets—that is, if she wishes to keep the man who is the needle.
And if he leaves her she must ask herselfhow she is in fault. She mustnever blame him. If she cannot discover that she is in fault at all, she is then in the position of the first magnet—and it is her misfortune; but misfortune can be turned into success by intelligence, and, with skill, a magnet can be recharged.
Now do you clearly understand this argument, Caroline? I hope so, because I have put it plainly enough to make you conscious of your personal responsibility in the matter of being able to retain your husband’s love. So we can get back to the subject of the vital importance of keeping his senses pleased with you.There are numbers of girls who at the end of a month of marriage have done, said, and looked things which they would have died rather than let their fiancés perceive, hear, or see, and yet who are much astonished and feel resentful and aggrieved because they begin to reap the harvest of their own actions in the fact of their husbands showing less love and respect for them.
How illogical! How foolish!
To please a man after marriage every attraction which lured him into the bond should be continually kept up to the mark, because there are, then, the extra foes to fight—the natural hunting instinct in man and the destroying power of satiety. How could a girl hope to keep her husbandas a lover when she herself had abandoned all the ways of a sweetheart and had assumed little habits which would be enough to put off any man! If you have done everything a woman can possibly do to be physically and mentally desirable to your husband, and yet have failed to keep his love, you must search more deeply for the reason, and when you have found it, no matter how the discovery may wound your vanity or self-esteem, you must use the whole of your wits to remedy its result if you are unable to eradicate its cause.
He may have idiosyncrasies—watch them and avoid irritating them. He may have some taste which you do not share, and haveshown your antagonism to. Try to hide this, and if the taste is not a low one try to take an interest in it. Try always and ever to keep the atmosphere between you in harmony.
If the lessening of your attraction for him has been engendered by the arrival of a stronger magnet on the scene, your efforts must be redoubled to replenish your own magnetic powers. You certainly will not draw him back to you by making the contrast between yourself and his new attraction the greater through being disagreeable. If he outrages your truest feelings, let him see that he has hurt you, but do not reproach him—not because you may not have just cause to do so, but because givingway to this outlet for your injured emotions would only defeat your own end, that of bringing him back to yourself.
You may be perfectly certain that if that aim of your being remains unchanged, and your love continues strong enough to make your methods vitally intelligent, you will eventually draw him away from anything on earth back to the peaceful haven of your tender arms. All this I am saying presupposing that you are “in love” with the man, and the greatest desire of your life is to keep his love in return.
But supposing that his actions kill your affection (this, though, is not so likely to happen as that your actions will damp his—because of thathunting instinct in man making him more fickle by nature)—but supposing it does happen that you find yourself utterly disillusioned and disgusted, then all you can aim at is to obtain peace and dignity in your home, and at least merit your husband’s respect, and the respect of all who know you. But this possibility I must leave the discussion of to another letter; it would be a digression in this one.
The magnet and the needle simile works both ways. If your husband ceases to draw your affection he will only have himself or his misfortune to blame—not you. We have been speaking of emotions hitherto, and of their impossibility of control—and to leave the discussion at that wouldopen a dangerous door to those feather brains who never, if they can help it, look at the real meaning of an argument, but adapt it and turn it to fit their own desires. So I must forcibly state that, although the actual emotion in its coming or going is not under human control, the demonstration of it most emphatically is, being entirely a question of will. A strong will can master any demonstration of emotion, and it is the duty of either the young husband or wife sternly to curb all vagrant fancies in themselves, whose encouragement can only bring degradation and disaster.
I am confining myself now to enlightening you, Caroline, upon your own responsibilities. If your healthshould not be good use common sense and try to improve it—make as light of it as possible, and do not complain. It is such a temptation to work upon a loved one’s feelings and secure oceans of sympathy, but often the second or third time you do so an element of boredom—or, at best, patient bearing of the fret—will come into his listening to your plaints. If he is ill himself do not fuss over him, but at the same time make him feel that no mother could be more tender and thoughtful than you are being for his comfort. Do not be touchy and easily hurt. Remember he may be thoughtless, but while he loves you he certainly has no deliberate intention of wounding you. Be cheerful and gay, and ifhe is depressed by outside worries show him you think him capable of overcoming them all. Let your thoughts of him be always that he is the greatest and best, and the current of them, vitalized by love, will assist him to become so in fact.
Think of all the young couples that you know. How few of them are really in love with each other after the first year! They have bartered the best and most exquisite joy for such poor returns—and they could have kept their Heaven’s gift if they had only thought carefully over the things which are likely to destroy it.
I believe you play the piano most charmingly, Caroline—in an easy way which gives pleasure to everyone.Do not, when you marry, give this up and let it be relegated into the background, as so many girls do with their accomplishments. And if your husband should be one of those rich modern young men who seem to have no sense of balance or responsibility, but pass their lives rushing from one sport to another, try to curb his restlessness and teach him that a great position entails great obligations and that he must justify his ownership of it in the eyes of the people who now hold the casting vote in their inexperienced hands. I believe, from the little I know about politics, that I am a Conservative, Caroline—but, when I see an utter recklessness and indifference to their nation’s greatness and a wild tearingafter pleasure apparently the only aims of young lives in the upper classes, it sickens me with contempt and sorrow that they should give the enemy so good a chance to blaspheme.
And as women by their gentleness, tact, and goodness influence affairs and governments and countries, through men, a thousand-fold more than the cleverest suffragettes could influence these things by securing votes for women—I do implore you, Caroline, when your turn comes to be the inspiration of some nice young husband, to use your power over him to make him truly feel the splendor of his inheritance in being an Anglo-Saxon, and his tremendous obligation to come up to the mark.
Now you will think I am becoming too serious, so I will say good-night, child.
Your affectionate Godmother,
E. G.
March, 1913.
IFINDI must continue the subject we discussed in the last letter for a little, Caroline, because, besides the question you have written to ask me to answer, there are still some remarks I want to make about marriage which may be for your enlightenment.
You write: “How would it be if the man I were to fall in love with and marry were to be really fonder of me than I of him? Should I still have to use such a lot of intelligence to keep him?”
Now, in reply to that, I want you to remember what I said about thehunting instinct in man. Well, obviously, if he cares more for you than you do for him, that instinct would still be in a state of excitement; so that you would have this very powerful factor upon your side to assist you in keeping your husband’s interest and affection. Marriages are generally much happier when this is the case, but it cannot be arranged—it is a question, one might almost say, of luck. Nothing was ever truer than the French proverb, “Between two lovers there is always one who kisses and one who holds the cheek.” And if the girl is the one who holds the cheek she is fortunate indeed. But for some unaccountable reason, although this often happens during the period of courtship, after marriagethe rôles change, and it will be then that the young wife will require all her intelligence to keep what she has learned to appreciate.
And no knowledge of the fact that your husband cares more for you than you do for him ought to make you lessen your determination to be attractive to him. To be absolutely unkind or cruel would not have so alienating an effect as to be unattractive. No woman can count upon her power if she ceases to charm the man’s senses. Should you be happy enough to love a little less than your husband, you may feel that all this analyzing of cause and effect which I have been treating you to does not altogether apply in your case, but still, if youare wiseyou will taketo heart most of it, and so hold what you have won.
Supposing you have returned from your honeymoon still mistress of the situation, and, taking no trouble to please your husband, are just asserting your own individuality and only consulting your own likes and dislikes. Remember you have all your lives in front of you, and that satiety is an ever-present danger. He adores you still—but he will see you every day, and, if you take no pains to please him, that fact will militate against a continuance of his adoration, and you may suddenly realize that he is less eager to worship you—calmer under your caprices, not so disturbed at your displeasure, and you will know that, unlessyou use every art a woman possesses, your power over his emotions will continue to wane.
There are some weak characters in men who are always ruled by their wives, but of these I do not speak, because no woman ever really loves them from the beginning, and you and I, Caroline, are discussing marriages of love and how to keep the volatile little god an inmate of your hearth and home.
If a girl has married a real man, there are three things she must not forget:
That the man is stronger than she is; that the man is freer than she is; that the man is more open to flattery than she is. And, as he is stronger, so he will break bonds which are irksometo him more readily. And, as he is freer, he will have more opportunity to indulge vagrant desires. And, as he is more open to flattery, so will he be the easier prey of any other woman who may happen to fancy him.
Thus, Caroline, even if he loves you more than you love him, you cannot afford with safety to diminish your attractions for him. For, if you do, it follows logically that he, as the needle, will eventually be no longer drawn to a magnet whose magnetic force has decreased.
Now I want to discuss the two possibilities which I told you last time must be for another letter. The first one was, supposing that you find yourself at the end of the first year
“Above all, do not be dramatic.”“Above all, do not be dramatic.”
or two utterly disillusioned and disgusted—what then is best to be done? Look the whole situation carefully in the face, and see what roads will lead to better or worse conditions. Above all, do not be dramatic. The ineradicable,insatiable dramatic instinct in some women has caused them, for the pleasure they unconsciously take in a “scene,” to ruin their own and their husbands’ lives. Men are not dramatic: they do not “make scenes”—they loathe them; they loathe exhibitions of emotion which, nine times out of ten, do not occur until some action of their own provokes them, the action having proved that their interest in their wives is going off. The wise woman instantly appreciates this point, and knows that, if she gives way to her, perhaps just, reproaches, she will be adding another millstone round her own neck in a further weakening of her attraction for, and influence over, the man. The wise woman makesquite sure that the matter which has annoyed her is really important—she banishes it if not, and, if it is, she states her case quietly and with dignity, so that her husband can answer her without heat, and give her explanations—or excuses.
She must never forget that the momentary relief and satisfaction of indulging her anger is but a poor consolation when it has produced resentment and repulsion in her husband’s mind—even if, as in the case of our present argument, she herself no longer cares for him. Whatever the man has done, she ought to say or do nothing which can make him feelless respect for herselfin return.
If you can keep in front of you always that basic principle which Iexplained in my first letter, it will guide you on all occasions, and, if you are disillusioned and disgusted with your husband, it will suggest the finest course for you to take. Try to be just, do not repine, admit to yourself that you have lost the first prize in the lottery of marriage, but that there is still the second to be obtained, namely, an unassailable position, your husband’s respect, perhaps the interest in possible children, the interest in your life and your place in the world. And, above all, that inward peace which comes from the knowledge that you at least on your side are keeping up the dignity of your name and station.
You may say all this would be but a very second best, when love hadbeen shipwrecked. I fully admit it, but it is more advisable to obtain the second best than the tenth—or to go under altogether.
Accept the fact that such happiness as you had hoped for is not for you, and decide to be a noble woman and do your duty. Reflection will tell you that whatever you sow you will reap, so, if this misfortune should come to you, keep your head, Caroline, and use your common sense.
Another thing to remember is that you will not always be young, and that many years of your life will probably be passed when the respect of the world, a great position, and the material advantages will count more than the romantic part of love.
“A great position will count more than the romantic part of love.”“A great position will count more than the romantic part of love.”
And if, through your disillusion and disgust, and the pain of broken idols, you permit yourself to act foolishly and with want of dignity at a period when love seems of supreme importance,you will be laying up limitations for yourself. And it is only the fool who lays up limitations for himself or herself. You will not have got love back by acting so, and you will have lost what might have compensated you in the future. Nothing is more pitiful than the position of the woman of forty-five who has made scandals in her youth, quarreled with her husband and broken up her home, just because she herself was unhappy and the man was a brute. She is then left with none of the consolations of middle age. No one considers her; she is spoken of by her friends and relations as “poor So-and-so.” If she has had children, they have grown up under the wretched conditions of anatmosphere of partisanship for either parent. She is ever conscious of an anomalous position, and has to go through more humiliations than she would have had to do if she had borne bravely the anguishes of the time of trial, and used the whole of her intelligence to better the state of things.
However much a man may turn into a brute, if he has once loved the woman she must in some way be to blame, because love is so strong a master that it can soften the greatest wretch, and if the woman had kept him loving her she would have kept her influence over him as well.
So you can see, Caroline, the tremendous responsibility you will be taking upon yourself when youmarry, and how terribly, tragically foolish it will be of you to enter into this bond lightly and without due reflection.
Now for the other subject I alluded to: the permitting and encouraging of vagrant fancies. In these days, when no discipline has been taught girls, and very little principle, they are prone to indulge any caprice which comes into their heads. Good-looking and attractive young women like you, Caroline, are bound to have many temptations to look elsewhere for diversions very soon after they are married. And here wisdom—quite apart from high principle—should teach you to resist as much as possible, because of the end. Ask yourself if it is worthwhile to start a ball rolling which can only roll down hill—if it is worth while, for the momentary gratification of vanity, to open a door which will let in complete disillusion for the life which you have undertaken to live. Because all forbidden excitements are like drugs—they have to be taken in stronger and stronger doses to produce their effect, until the patient is a wretched maniac or dies under the strain. Suggestion and a strong will are such great helps to happiness. Suggest to your subconscious mind that you are perfectly happy and contented with your legitimate mate—make the current between you one of tenderness and charm, and sternly control every unbalanced fancy. I quote here anotherof my maxims: “It is a wise man who knows when he is happy and can appreciate the divine bliss of the tangiblenow. Most of us retrospect or anticipate, and so lose the present.”
Do not retrospect—do not anticipate. Go on from day to day enjoying the good things which fate has given you:ménagethem like a careful housewife—use forethought—quite a different thing to anticipation! Recognize that you are happy and decide what makes you so, and how you can continue to employ the methods to keep this joyous state. Be perfectly calm, and believe that nothing can alter or interrupt the enchanting present. For do not forget—each one draws to himself or herselfwhat his or her thoughts dwell upon. Those who lay up for a rainy day attract the rainy day as surely as those who always believe that good will come secure good. A very useful thing for you to do is to look round at all your young married friends, and see what niches they have carved for themselves in the world—which ones are considered and have prestige, which are treated as nobodies, which are laughed at or pitied. Then try to decide upon the grade in public opinion you would desire to occupy yourself, and what are the causes of your friends being in whatever places they are. You will get a number of advantageous hints if you do this before you embark upon marriage yourself.
You will find that simplicity, good manners, and absence of all pretense are things which attract everyone. You will be wise never to be drawn into a set one iota lower than the one you wish to shine in. Weed your acquaintances and remain faithful to your friends. Society is composed, so to speak, of three loops. There is the very common loop which, at its upper edge, slightly overlaps the one above it, so that the best of these common people will just be seen at the worst of the middle loop’s parties. The middle loop, in its turn, overlaps at its highest point the third and great loop, which never mingles with the first and lowest one. You, Caroline, will enter society by the best door, so see that you are not drawn to thelower edge of your loop, and so into the vortex beneath. A large section of the world rave and storm that people are snobs who desire to be in the best society, but they forget that it is entirely the most amusing, the most intelligent and the most desirable, and therefore a very natural goal for newcomers to aim at. The cleverest men go where they meet the cleverest and most entertaining women. And these are naturally to be found among the leisured classes, who have had time to polish all their attractions, who have had money enough to see the world and cultivate their critical faculties, who have learned to dress and to move and to please the eye and ear, and whose abodes provide their guests not only with rich food and drink andspacious rooms, but surround them with an atmosphere of taste and distinction as well. And when you see people with a fine title or great riches commanding no prestige, you may know it is because in themselves they have failed to come up to the standard of what the best society requires. It is also the fashion to say wealth is necessary to a position in society. It may be, if you are only trying to enter it, but it is certainly not the case if you have a right to your position, and are already there. Then, if you have just a sufficiency to swim with the tide, and are charming and agreeable in yourself, you can create a position for yourself and be the desired guest at all the best houses.
My aim for you, Caroline, is thatyou should come out this May with every chance to have a glorious springtime of life, and then marry the nicest young man, and live as happily as is possible ever afterwards. But you must not start with impossible illusions. Men are not angels, but spoilt, attractive darlings! And very few come anywhere near the heroes of romance. If you fall in love with one who may be of good family and position but is much less rich than yourself, Caroline, do not, when you are married, ever under any circumstances taunt him with the fact, as, I am sorry to say, some of the rich American women who have married Englishmen have done. Never insinuate or infer that the money is yours, and therefore you aremistress of the situation. The man, although he may forgive you, will never recover from the sting and the humiliation, and you will have created a canker in his feelings for you which nothing you can ever afterward do will heal. Remember that, if you have married a man poorer than yourself, you did it deliberately and because you were convinced at the time that what he had to offer you in exchange was worth while accepting. In these days no one is forced into marriage, least of all an heiress like you, Caroline. And nothing can be meaner or more unladylike than to remind your husband that it is you who hold the purse-strings. Where love is, there never should be any desire to humiliate, and, when love fliesaway, friendship can stay, and dignity and respect take his place.
If your husband has a fine spirit you will have wounded him beyond redress by taunting him with your money, and, if he has a small mind, you will have galled him into enmity, besides having fallen far short of that respect for yourself which is the mainstay of my basic principle.
Never ask your husband questions. If you do, you may be certain he will only tell you the truth when he feels inclined—and one day you will find it out, and then think he is always lying. Do not worry him when he is tired. Never tell him of the petty delinquencies of the servants. Learn to manage these yourself. Do not be egotistical and talk about yourself.Do not recount to him the better position or greater pleasures enjoyed by your friends. But, on the other hand, do not be meek and submissive and without character, pandering to all his weaknesses. Hold your own opinions when they are just and right, and from the very first day inspire him with regard for you as well as love. Let everyone in your new home understand that you mean to deserve their respect, and so will exact its observance. Whether people are respected in their own houses or not lies entirely with themselves, and not with the manners or characters of their relations and servants. You can be feared and respected, or you can be revered and respected, or you can be outwardly respected and inwardlydespised. You will be well served in the first case; you will be exquisitely served in the second; and you will be cheated and mocked in the third. It lies with yourself which of these you choose to call forth. You may think, Caroline, that, considering you are only just coming out, I might be talking to you upon lighter and more frivolous subjects; but, as you are pretty and an heiress, the marriage question will crop up so very soon that I feel that now, while you will still listen to me, is my only chance to impress its importance upon you—because the lighter things are for such a little time, and marriage is for so many years! But in my next and last letter before I shall see you, I will revert to the ways of girls, to giveyou your last polish before you make your curtsey to the King and Queen in May.
So now I will say good-night, child.
Your affectionate Godmother,
E. G.
April, 1913.
ASthis is the last letter I shall write to you before we meet, Caroline, I shall have to collect all the little things I want to say to you which are much easier to write than to express personally. And so, first, I shall begin by suggesting what you had better avoid. The whole tendency (as I think I said in a former letter) of modern society is toward rowdiness and vulgarity, and if one is very young and full of spirits it is so easy to be led away into indiscretions when one sees most of one’s companions doing the same thing. But it is very foolish and notin our scheme to secure for you prestige and a brilliant future, my child, so I shall be quite ruthless in what I am going to say.
It is very much the fashion now to lunch and dine at restaurants; even the most youthful débutantes go to them with their chaperons, or to large boy-and-girl dinners before balls or theater parties, when there may be only one or two of the mothers present. I must give you a few hints as to what I notice is common and unattractive behavior on these occasions. One can derive a cynical amusement from sitting quietly and watching the entrance and exit of people in restaurants, so atrocious are the movements of most of them. It is seldom that anyone seems to rememberthat in public true distinction is shown by the quietest and most dignified bearing. You will see women and girls flustering in, dragging on their gloves and taking great strides, or waddling in these very narrow skirts, all self-conscious and plainly aware that they are being observed by those sitting on the chairs at the sides of the halls. In a public place true breeding should give you the same repose as at home, and all but your own personal acquaintances should be apparently unobserved. So, Caroline, cultivate this unconscious bearing. Finish your toilet, in the way of adjustment of gloves, etc., etc., before you leave the dressing-room, and then walk easily and without looking about you to join your party. Andwhen you are at the table, do not lean your elbows upon it! If you have this deplorable modern habit in your own or intimate friends’ houses, for heaven’s sake leave it behind you when you come out! To see a lot of—presumably—ladies lounging all over the cloth, as they lean forward eagerly to talk to theirvis-à-visor the persons next them, is not an engaging sight, and only a few years ago it would have been considered as branding them as belonging to another world. Whatever laxity oftenuehas become habitual in private life, surely you can realize that it is very cheap to indulge in it in public, and that the fact that everything is cheap now is no reason for you, who are starting in life, and wish to bedistinguished, to follow the fashion. There is another frightful thing numbers of people do as they leave restaurants—you will see them twisting their tongues round their teeth or making some movement of the lips which gives the impression that they have hardly finished their meal as they walk out! It is perfectly revolting. It seems horrible to have to speak of such things, child, but one sees them happen so constantly that I am obliged to warn you.
Try to walk through halls gracefully, without self-consciousness or swinging arms; and when the dinner has begun, enter into the spirit of it, and endeavor to be agreeable to your neighbors, but never forget that youare in a public place, and that at other tables there are strangers whom you do not know, and before whom you certainly do not wish to make yourself of no account. I have seen boy-and-girl parties at restaurants where, if one had not known the names of the actual people, one would have presumed they were a set of young hoydens imagining themselves at a village feast. All noisy or unrestrained behavior is really very vulgar in any mixed company. I am sure you will agree with me about this, Caroline, and, if you will give yourself time to reflect what self-respect really means, you will discover that, if it is innate, it will guide you better than any words of mine; and that even as an acquired quality it makesthe only infallible standard to judge the expediency or inexpediency of certain conduct by. You may, if you are petulant, retort, “Goodness gracious, if I have got to be thinking all the time of how I am behaving, I shall be a stuck-up, unnatural thing, and won’t have any fun!” Now, listen, Caroline. We will make the simile that society is an operatic stage, or, to give a still more up-to-date example, the Russian Ballet! A certain organized institution. It could not go on if the dancers had not been taught at all and thought they could cavort about as they pleased on the plea of being natural. The higher the state of their training, themore perfectly naturaldo their movements appear. So you, before entering society,should learn in such perfection all the technical part of polish that to do the right thing comes naturally to you, and gives you time, so to speak, to encourage your individual talent, and be a Pavlova or a Karsavina. But, if you are only at the stage of the last-joined chorus-girl, you cannot hope to dance thepas seul! Should you desire to be so perfectly savage that you need never think if you are doing ugly and unattractive things or not, then you have no business to try to enter society at all, which is admittedly a civilized circle, with standards of behavior which are the result of centuries of evolution. It is not a primeval forest, where you can climb trees and roll on the grass at will! No one forces you to entersociety, but for heaven’s sake, if you do, decide to do it well!